Cosmic Tales - Adventures in Sol System

by T. K. F. Weisskopf

  "No, that would be a Life Support issue," Aksia said, "why would we be worrying about Life Support? This is a communications problem. Their transmitter program has suddenly started beaming messages to us every ten minutes instead of at their regular shift time, and they can't fix it. And we can't tell them how to fix it, because it's only transmitting, not receiving. I need a Com Spec to fast-ship over there and take care of the problem, and you and Dom are the only ones without prior commitments."

  "I'd be more than happy to go," Dom volunteered. "Some of those SprOUTs are real hunks."

  Aksia gave him a fish-eyed stare. "That," she said, "is why I'm sending Elaine. At least she'll keep her mind on the job."

  Fast-ship transport between Ceres Base and the asteroids was hideously expensive, but at least Base was paying for this trip. And once she got there, Elaine had to admit that Aksia had been right—in more ways than one. Even if the tanned, buffed SprOUTs had been of her sexual preference, she wouldn't have been interested in them. Not when she had Bryce to come home to! And thinking about Bryce, and about the possibility that Jana was sneaking down to Life Support to make time with him while she was off-base, inspired Elaine to get the SprOUT transmitter program fixed with record speed. It wasn't complicated, really—just a matter of resetting some base code registers that had been overwritten when they added a broccoli/tomato genetic code to an already overloaded central processing unit. Elaine tried to document and explain what she'd done to the SprOUT technician so that he could fix it himself next time this happened, but after three attempts she gave up and simply recommended that they take some budget from Genetic Adventures and give it to Computing Support for more memory or even a whole new system.

  She arrived back on base in mid-shift to a series of increasingly urgent messages amounting to, "get back to comcen at once!" with more and more flashing lights and warning beepers attached to each one.

  "About time!" Aksia snapped as soon as Elaine entered the ComCen tube. "Where've you been?"

  "SprOUTs Colony. You sent me, remember?"

  "Well, look what's happened while you were away!" Aksia sneezed and pointed at Elaine's pod. "I've already sent for Bryce from Life Support to dispose of it, but Elaine, you must not let this happen again, do you understand? You and your boyfriend from Pieds Nus are continually disrupting our tube!"

  "He's not my boyfriend," Elaine began, "and . . . ohhhh." Something resembling a ball of gray and yellow yarn was clawing its way up the sides of her pod, mewing piteously. "It's a kitten!" She rushed to detach the fuzzy bundle and cuddled it against her shoulder. "I haven't seen one of these since I was a little girl on Earth."

  "I should hope not," Aksia said. "Animal dander is a major allergen. We can't have this sort of thing contaminating the atmosphere. If I'd been here when that idiot from Pieds Nus brought it in, I'd never have let him just leave it."

  "Orlin was here? In person? And I missed him?" Elaine told herself that there was absolutely no reason to feel so upset at the news. After all, every single contact with Orlin Okusa had been a disaster for her career at ComCen.

  Aksia waved her hand impatiently. "I have no idea who he was. Thank goodness that nice young man will take it away for us."

  "Orlin? He's still here?"

  "No, Bryce from Life Support. I've already sent for him. He's been a great help all round. Since you didn't do anything about the Unity in Diversity Day decorations—"

  "I wasn't here," Elaine pointed out, without much heat. "And I did email you a suggestion while I was on SprOUTs. After I fixed their system." It was much more interesting to lay her cheek against the kitten's warm fur than to argue with Aksia.

  "Banners were a good idea," Aksia conceded grudgingly, "but your idea of having banners to represent each of the asteroid colonies was terrible."

  "I thought the idea of UDD was to show how well we all get along and tolerate one another's ideas."

  "VolksAlliance banners would offend Nuevo Aliyah, Nuevo Aliyah banners would offend the Islamic -Renaissance, Naturist banners would offend the Neo-Victorians. . . ." Aksia threw up her hands. "You, Elaine, you would manage to offend everybody. But Bryce saved the day. He printed out these banners for us to use instead." Aksia pointed at the pale sheets of algypaper hanging down from the rounded top of the tube. Each one bore a saying lettered in pastel rainbow colors. Friends are angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly.

  "Very nice," Elaine said. Rhymes with Bryce. The kitten was vibrating. Purring, that was what they called it. "They ought to go very well with the Vronsolo audios. What's he going to do with the kitten?"

  "Same thing he did with the tree, I suppose."

  "Recycling? He's going to kill it?" Walk gently through the world and know its beauty, the next banner exhorted.

  Aksia looked away. "Base regulations, Elaine."

  "Um . . . Right. Base regulations. I understand, of course." Love is the only reality and everything that is not love is not real.

  "But would you let me take it down to Life Support myself?" She couldn't remember exactly how much was in her savings account, and she couldn't check with the kitten clinging to her wrist. Learn to be calm and you will always be happy.

  "We really need you here . . . oh, all right. I'll cancel the call to Bryce."

  Elaine had always assumed that all airlocks were the same: boring gray chambers where your spacesuit kept you from feeling the rush of pressurized air blowing any dust or contaminants you'd brought with you into the filter ducts. And in functional design, this one was just like all the others she'd been through. But it wasn't boring, and it wasn't gray. The walls were painted in rainbows of saturated color, the floor was painted green, and arrowed signs in cheerful, eccentric lettering declared this way out, this way for the space crud, and this way in.

  After she passed through the airlock, the suit-removal room with its moving holographic designs didn't quite stun her. She was even able to decipher the signs. suit storage here, and shoe storage here, were the only ones that seemed to apply to her.

  There wasn't anything that applied to her main problem. Elaine slipped her ship sandals off, tagged them with her name and ID, dropped them in the offered bin and proceeded to Immigration Control.

  Which consisted of just one person, lounging on a slanted surface covered with something that looked like sim-grass.

  A young man with dark skin, high sharp cheekbones, and an engaging smile. And bare feet.

  "Do you have any idea," Elaine demanded, "how much it cost me to get a fast-ship round-trip ticket from Ceres just to bring this back to you? They wouldn't let me ship it, you know. It has to be personally escorted." She tried to hold out the kitten, but it had one paw hooked into her collar and the other one entangled in her hair.

  "Elaine," the young man said happily. "Yes, I was counting on that. Er . . . What happened?" His nose wrinkled slightly as she came closer.

  "Spacesuits," Elaine said dangerously, "have no plumbing attachments for cats. I'm surprised you didn't discover that when you brought this thing to Ceres. Here, take it. I can't keep a cat on Ceres, you should have known that."

  Orlin grinned. "Well, you did say you hadn't any vacation time coming, so I had to get you here some way. I knew you wouldn't let Zoroaster be recycled."

  "Zoroaster?"

  Orlin stroked the fluffy gray ball on Elaine's shoulder and gently detached first one clinging paw, then the other. "His mother came of ancient Persian lineage. Let me get you something fresh to wear."

  Elaine felt cleaner, if somewhat less like herself, after she retired into the changing room again to exchange her odiferous travel clothes for the light, colorful sarong that Orlin had offered her.

  "Seems a pity to come this far and not see something of the colony," Orlin pointed out, and Elaine had to agree. It would have been rude to dash off immediately. She looked for a way around the sim-grass but could see no stepping stones.

  "Right this way," Orlin held ou
t his hand to her. "Don't you see the sign?"

  It hovered above the bank of green sim-grass, a holographic projection: please DO walk on the grass.

  "It's real!" Elaine discovered. The soft blades were tickly against her bare toes.

  "Of course. Why waste space on simulated grass when you can have the real thing growing and helping to keep the atmosphere clean?"

  Elaine looked across the hollow sphere of Pieds Nus and saw more green, interspersed here and there with sapphire pools of water. Clusters of buildings rose like honeycombs here and there, glass-walled structures built on networks of structural girders. Some of the walls were transparent; others were set to reflect bright colors, patterns, or the golden light coming from the plasma tubes that grew out of the floor every few meters.

  "Would you like to see how our residences are arranged? I live in this one." Orlin pointed to a spiral building like a section of nautilus shell stood on edge, with pearl and iridescent glass walls.

  As they walked over the springy grass, a soft breeze caressed Elaine's shoulders. It felt very strange to have bare shoulders and no belt around her waist. The springy, living grass under her feet felt even stranger. The only familiar thing was the weight of the wristlister on her arm. Pretty soon it would be beeping the five-minute warning for her return flight.

  "My friends thought it was a waste of money, taking the kitten to Ceres," Orlin said. "Especially when I didn't even get to see you. And they thought you'd just hand Zoroaster over to Ceres Base Life Support and we'd never see him again either." His free hand caressed the kitten on his shoulder, and it vibrated so loudly that Elaine could hear it.

  "I couldn't," Elaine said indignantly. "They would have recycled him."

  Orlin smiled down at her. "I knew you wouldn't let that happen, Elaine Byelski Coms Spec 4. You know, Pieds Nus needs a communications manager. Somebody with initiative, who's good at solving problems."

  "I shouldn't think you'd have any trouble recruiting."

  "Ah, well, you see, we like to get someone who will fit in and appreciate our philosophy of life. And we can't pay very well. Mining Pieds Nus while we hollowed it out paid off our initial colony start-up debt to Earth, but since then we've chosen to use as much of our space as possible for public parks like this one, instead of cramming it with zero-g manufacturing bubbles and telecommuting offices. So our asteroidal tax base isn't much. But the job comes with amenities. Your own apartment, for instance. There's space in my spiral; you could have your own rooms there. And—"

  Elaine's listbot beeped, and she held up her wrist to see that the screen showed Return flight departing 005:00.

  "And if you turned in the return half of your ticket, you'd have enough money to live on while you decided whether you liked it here enough to stay." Orlin paused. "While we got to know each other better."

  "If there's a salary and apartment that goes with the position, I wouldn't need to turn in my return ticket," Elaine pointed out.

  Return flight departing 004:30.

  "Anyway, I got the cheapest rate I could. It's non-refundable."

  Orlin sighed. "Do you want to go back and catch your fast-ship?"

  Return flight departing 004:00.

  Elaine reached up to stroke the kitten perched on Orlin's shoulder. It purred loudly, gathered its haunches, and launched itself across space at her head. Elaine ducked instinctively; the kitten tumbled into the branches of a miniature flowering tree, hissed its disapproval, and disappeared beneath the shrubbery.

  "Oh, no! Zoroaster? Zoroaster!" Elaine dropped to her knees and reached futilely under the low—growing branches. The kitten retreated with a disdainful hiss.

  Return flight departing 002:30. The listbot started a siren wail of warning and Zoroaster took off in fright. Elaine jabbed at the alarm button to turn it off, but too late.

  "How will we ever find him now?"

  "Oh, he'll come back when he's hungry," Orlin said. "But I don't think you're going to make your return flight." He cupped one hand under her elbow and helped her up. That felt strange, too. Bare shoulders . . . bare feet . . . a cat purring against her face . . . a friendly hand under her elbow . . .

  "I guess I'd better apply for that communications job, then," Elaine said.

  The personal side of the listbot beeped at her with a list of reminders. Get date with Bryce. Fall in love. Get married.

  "What's it fussing about now?" Orlin inquired.

  "Oh, nothing important." Elaine tapped in one last command that stopped the beeping for good.

  Erase all.

  HIGH ROLLER

  This story is set in Allen's "Near Space" future history, and his first venture back into that territory in five years. Mankind won't take only its higher aspirations into space, it'll take universal principles, like "A sucker is born every minute."

  Allen M. Steele

  We came into Nueva Vegas through the service entrance on the crater's north side. Our hiding place was a pressurized cell inside a water tank carried by a cargo hauler. We played possum while the vehicle came to a stop and casino security scanned the tank; the water surrounding us blocked the neutrino sweep, and our skinsuits stealthed everything else. The tractor began moving again; we felt it enter the vehicle airlock, then it stopped once more and there was another long wait while the airlock pressurized and electromagnetic scrubbers whisked away the dusty regolith. We rolled forward again; another minute passed, then we came to a halt and I heard JoJo's voice through my headset:

  "Clear."

  About time. I'd been flat on my back during the forty-kilometer ride down the Apollo Highway from Port Armstrong, and my arms were beginning to cramp from holding the equipment bag against my chest. I reached up, found the hatch lockwheel, twisted it clockwise, and pushed it open, then sat up and squirmed up through the half-meter manhole. Jen was right behind me; I crouched on top of the hauler and took her bag from her, then helped her out of the tank.

  As we'd expected, we were in the garage beneath the crater. Rovers, buses, and various maintenance vehicles were parked all around us. No one in sight; the day-shift workers had long-since clocked off and the night-shift guys had already clocked in. JoJo was the only guy around, and he didn't count.

  In fact, JoJo wouldn't count for much of anything until I reactivated him. Once Jen and I pulled our masks out of our bags and put them on, I climbed up to the hauler's cab, turned a valve to bleed off the air, and unsealed the hatch. He sat behind the yoke, two meters of ceramic polymer, dumb as a moonrock. Had to be that way; if he'd retained his programming during the ride to the casino, it might have been downloaded at the security checkpoint and searched by the local DNAI. So his memory had been scrubbed before we left Port Armstrong, leaving behind only a well-buried instruction to transmit the all-clear once the hauler had arrived and his peripheral sensors didn't register any body-heat signatures. He'd driven us here without even knowing it.

  The next order of business was bringing JoJo back into the game. I opened my bag, pulled out my pad, and linked it to the serial port on his chest. A double-beep from my pad, reciprocated by another double-beep from his chest; lights flashed on his cylindrical head, then his limbs made a spasmodic jerk.

  "Reload complete. All systems operational." Then his head snapped toward me. "Nice to see you again, Sammy. You're looking particularly reptilian today."

  Good. He recognized me even though I was now wearing my disguise. "Welcome back, JoJo," I said, then stepped aside so he could see Jen. "You know our partner, of course."

  "Yo, Jen! How's it going, girl? Found any good cow pies lately?"

  She wasn't amused. "Say it again, tinhead," she murmured, "and I'll download you into a vacuum cleaner."

  "Everyone, relax." JoJo was just being funny, sure, but I'd like to find the guy who invented personality subroutines for AIs. "We've got a job to do. JoJo, can you modem the casino comp?"

  "Let me work on it." A moment passed. "Nyet. Too many lock-outs. I'll need direct interface." />
  I was expecting that. "No problem. We'll try again once we find a comp." I jumped down off the tractor; JoJo followed me, his slender limbs whirring softly as he unfolded himself from the cab. I locked the cab, then turned to him. "Gimme an eyes-up of the layout, basement only. Pinpoint our location."

  "You got it, chief." An instant later, a holo of Nueva Vegas's subsurface levels appeared upon the lenses of my mask. Our whereabouts were marked as three luminous points at the outer circle of a concentric maze of corridors, tunnels, rooms, and shafts. Nueva Vegas's quantum comp lay within a sealed vault at the center of this maze, protected by umpteen levels of defense, both electronic and physical. Ever heard of Fort Knox, the place in Kentucky where the old USA once kept its gold supply back when gold was actually worth something? The DNAI had that degree of protection, and then some. Impossible to penetrate, or so I'd been told.

  But then again, that wasn't our problem. We were after bigger game.

  I located the nearest service lift that went directly to the crater floor; it was only a few dozen meters away, down a short corridor. "Everyone ready? Got your stuff?" Jen nodded within her mask; JoJo blinked some diodes my way. "Okay, then," I said, and picked up my bag. "Let's roll."

  Nueva Vegas is built within Collins Crater, about thirty kilometers from the Apollo 11 Historical Site. A tour bus that will take you out there, and also to the Surveyor 5 landing site just a few klicks away and the Mare Tranquillitatis Battlefield Memorial a few hundred klicks north near Arago Crater. Most visitors don't do that, though. Nueva Vegas wasn't the first lunar casino resort, but most guidebooks consider it to be the best. The table stakes are good, and the payout is excellent; even if you don't gamble, there's vices you won't easily find back on Earth. Not too many places where you can legally purchase a 250-gram bag of Moondog Gold, or hire a double-jointed google—pardon me, a Superior—to be your companion for the evening.

  But it's still a place for the rich. A cheap room near the crater floor costs 300 lox per sol; for this you get a bed, a passcard for the shower stall down the corridor, five complimentary chips, and a discount coupon for the all-you-can-eat buffet. A two-room suite—complete with its own personal bath, private balcony, mini-bar, and free Continental breakfast—will set you back a cool million for a two-week stay. High rollers rate the best accommodations, of course: spacious apartments on the upper levels of the crater rim, with outside windows, catered dining, personal masseurs, an unlimited line of credit, and all the liquor, dope, and sex you can take. If you have to ask how much that costs, then you have no business being there.