by Ben Bova
But the reminders were always there.
Of the four sunstations on Mercury, the facility located in Chao Meng-fu crater at the south pole was the largest and most complex on the small planet. Unlike the stations built in craters spaced equidistant around the equator at Al-Jahiz, Theophanes and Robertson, the Chao Meng-fu sunstation was a completely self-sustaining research station with a full lab and monitoring equipment, real-time communication links to Earth-Luna as well as the orbital platforms nearing completion around the Sun, even a local heavy-launch facility. The station enjoyed a permanent population of twenty people, evenly divided between Academy scientists and Imperial military personnel, but had extensive accommodations that could host three times that number comfortably. As always, Adela doubted the need for a military presence, but Dr. Rice, Mercury director-inresidence, was quick to point out that despite their military uniforms and training, the soldiers served more in a technical capacity than a military one.
“I’m afraid we never came up with anything more exotic than ‘Main Control,’” Rice was saying as he led her through the facility. Each turn he made, through every hallway and corridor they walked, was with a practiced ease that required barely a glance at the well-marked directional signs and arrows located every few dozen meters. Adela was grateful for the signs: If she somehow became separated from Rice, she wouldn’t make a fool of herself finding her way back to the personnel dome.
“This whole place is like a labyrinth, with nine separate buildings and domes,” he went on, “all connected by ground-level corridors; one room is pretty much like another here, except for size and function. All but Main Control, that is. It functions as the heart of the sunstation … . Well, actually it’s the heart of the entire project. From here we control the three monitor stations on the equator, as well as all activities in solar orbit.” They rounded yet another corner and Rice paused in front of a doorway, momentarily studying the terminal screen next to it. “That’ll become even more important when the time comes to actually start it all up.”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “‘Main Control’ seems to fit nicely. That’s what its function seems to be, after all.”
Rice shrugged with a hint of embarrassment and reached for the opening plate. “When I designed the station fifty years ago, I had in mind to honor you by naming the facility after you. But once the station was built and I assumed authority here ten years ago, I, uh, just got busy doing things. ‘Main Control’ was what stuck.”
“I am honored, Temple,” Adela said warmly. “Putting the project first is much more important than naming things; it’s what I would have done.”
Rice chuckled. “Thanks. Oh—and speaking of names, we haven’t gone in much for formality around here. Call me ‘Tem.’ It’s a nickname I got used to about a hundred years ago. No one’s called me Temple since—well, since I can remember.”
It was good to see Templeton Rice again. The astrophysicist had been present at the initial test of the wormhole feeder system that was at the very heart of the project to save Earth’s Sun, and Adela had worked very closely with him for several years before going into cryosleep. Like everyone else she encountered from her past, he looked older. But Rice had been quite young when she knew him before—when she met him following the test, he had been in cryosleep only twice: once on the way to the test site eight light-years from Earth-Luna, and again on the way back. Adela shook her head in frustration at trying to sort out apparent ages from chronological age, and promised herself for the hundredth time since her awakening to try to stop mentally tallying the passage of time in people’s lives.
“Here we are.”
They entered a small chamber, obviously an anteroom to Main Control. The tiny room appeared to be used mainly as a lounge area. There were soft chairs here, a video entertainment unit, and two small tables surrounded by stools. A galley kitchen had been set up on a low countertop in one corner, and the smell of fresh coffee filled the room. The rich aroma was delightful, but the lure of seeing Main Control was stronger.
Even as they walked through the doorway, Adela could see that Main Control was a beehive of activity, most of it centered around an equipment console that had been turned over on the floor to her right. Several people—some in lab coats, others in clothing with a distinct military aspect to it—had gathered around the unit; one had even crawled halfway into the open bottom and was cursing softly as he fidgeted with something on the inside. But once she was in the room her eyes were immediately drawn to the panorama at her left, and what she saw there made her immediately forget what was happening at the console.
Occupying the entire far wall, and arcing halfway up the ceiling nearly over her head, was a curved holoframe that displayed perhaps the most awesome vista of space Adela had ever seen. In the center hung the Sun, bold and beautiful, the image dampened to naked-eye brightness. A low range of hills on the horizon cast long, somber shadows and gave the image the appearance that she was standing—alone and unprotected—on the Mercurian surface. She knew better, of course: located a mere two degrees’ latitude from the planet’s south pole, the sunstation was too low below the rim of Chao Meng-fu to ever see anything but perpetual shadow. This image was obviously being taken from atop the tower located on the south pole itself.
She knew instinctively that this was a genuine, real-time image taken from above the shielding, even though what she was looking at now had obviously been enhanced. Numerous captions and notations seemingly floated in space at various points, and bright yellow circles gave the location of the orbitals, too small to be seen at this magnification.
But it was the roiling surface of the Sun that called out to her, as if trying to draw her into the very heart of Earth’s daystar. It almost seemed that she could see the everburning flames of the star itself, moving gracefully in the same light-giving dance it had performed for countless millennia. Waving in incongruous silence, the wisps of flame seemed to call out to her, beckoning for her to come dance with them for all eternity.
This is what I am here for, she thought, and suddenly realized that she had been holding her breath as she stared openmouthed at the magnificent display of omnipotent power. She let her breath out slowly, deliberately, and tried to imagine this star as a living being. And as she did, she felt an incredible sadness flow over her to think that this mighty presence would—without human intervention—die.
I am not going to let you die, she said silently, purposefully, and felt a smile come to her lips. I am going to save you.
“It’s something when you see it like this for the first time, isn’t it?”
The new voice pulled her back, too quickly, from her reverie. Turning, she found a tall, balding man standing before her, Rice at his side. She recognized the grinning man as one of the lab-coated men she’d seen at the equipment console when she first entered Main Control.
“This is Dr. Sander Boscawen,” Rice said by way of introduction. “As my feeder insertion specialist, he’s in charge of the solar orbitals. That’s his console they were fussing with a few moments ago.” He nodded toward the other side of the room, where Adela now could see that the console had been righted. Five people stood near it, their attention focused in her direction.
“New configurations,” he said in an annoyed tone as he grasped her hand and shook it vigorously. “They’re always reconfiguring the thing. Wish they’d just leave it alone.”
Adela got the impression that the scientist was truly irritated by whatever work was being performed on the console, but as he spoke all traces of aggravation melted quickly away. “Dr. Montgarde, it is such a pleasure to meet you! I’ve followed your work all my life. It was your original theories on the project to save Earth’s Sun, in fact, that first drew me to astrophysics. If you have a few moments, Doctor, I’d like to show you what we’ve been able to do with the …” Boscawen’s voice trailed off, his excited mood changing from sheer delight to embarrassed disappointment as he looked to his console. “Uh … m
aybe later when we have the reconfiguration done.”
“It’s all right,” Adela assured him. “I’ll be here for several days. I’ve been going over all the additional work that’s been done on my original data, and must admit I’m impressed with what you’ve been able to do here, ‘reconfigurations’ aside.”
Rice laughed. “It’s a constant battle between us and the solar orbitals. Every time they take new header readings for the feeder insertion, we reconfigure the console manually. It’s easier than rechipping.”
“Rechipping?” Adela asked.
“Sorry, it’s a slang term for reprogramming console memory.”
Adela let her breath out in frustration. “Sometimes, Temple, er, Tem, I think I’ve awakened into an entirely new language. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t feel I’m being left unintentionally out of one conversation or another. So what’s this ‘rechipping’? Is it a problem that I could be working on?”
“Oh, no; nothing like that. We can do it easily enough, and do so from time to time as a matter of regular maintenance with all the new data we’re constantly getting from Luna. But on a busy day like today the orbitals might take a dozen or more header readings and request a new configuration every time. It’s not exactly prescribed procedure, but we’ve found it’s easier to have some extra bodies on duty, flip it over and just to do it manually.” Rice lowered his voice to a near whisper, then added, “And that’s where having the military around comes in handy.”
One of the others had moved away from the console and joined their discussion. The woman was tall, almost statuesque, with a figure that was hard to disguise even in the allpurpose lab coats nearly everyone here wore.
“What else would we need the Imperial guards for?” she asked jokingly as she approached, extending her hand. Like Boscawen, she almost literally beamed as she spoke. When the woman shook Adela’s hand, she seemed barely able to contain her excitement. Adela felt a twinge of self-consciousness at the unabashed admiration she’d received, at least from the scientific community, nearly everywhere she went.
“Hi. I’m Juliette Le Châtelier,” the woman went on, “Tem’s subdirector. Call me Julie. It’s so good to finally get to meet you.”
“And you,” Adela replied, finally managing to pry her hand loose from the admiring scientist’s. “I’ve been studying your work here ever since I came—what’s the accepted expression now?—‘out of the tank’? I’m very impressed with what you’ve all accomplished here.” She paused in thought a moment, then asked, “I’m trying to place your accent. And your name—I think I once knew a Le Châtelier family a long time ago.”
“You honor me, Doctor.” Le Châtelier grinned, and nodded delightedly. “I’m from Gris. It was my family you knew.”
Adela’s mouth dropped. “You … you’re from home?” Le Châtelier’s head bobbed. “I’ve called up every file I could find on home, but you’re the first Grisian I’ve encountered since waking up. Gris me manque beaucoup! Quelles nouvelles de patrie?”
“Tout il fait beau patrie soi. Gris il … ah, I’m sorry … Je regrette d’avoir a dire que, Français …” Le Châtelier shook her head and spoke once more in English. “I’m afraid we don’t speak French on Gris much anymore. My grandmother taught me years ago; I’m surprised I even remembered how to say that much … .”
“It’s all right,” Adela said, raising a hand to stop her. “I understand completely. If there’s anything I’ve learned in the last month it’s that tachyon communications and wormhole travel have a tendency to homogenize things, especially languages. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, but please, I’m dying to learn more about home than what’s in the recordings I’ve viewed.” The two began chattering ecstatically—Adela asking question after question, Le Châtelier telling Adela of how her homeworld had grown from the harsh mining planet of her birth to the thriving world it was now.
“Maybe you two would like the rest of us to leave,” Rice asked facetiously after several minutes. “We could all come back another time …?”
“I’m sorry, Tem,” Adela replied. “You’re right, we’ll save it for later. Please, show me around.”
Rice did just that, describing and demonstrating each system and subsystem in Main Control, much to Adela’s delight. Although her team had brought her completely up to speed on every step that had been achieved over the last two centuries on the project to save Earth’s Sun, this was her first chance to have some literal hands-on contact with one of the most important aspects of the actual hardware that would get the job done. Her satisfaction regarding the implementation of her work turned sour, however, as they neared the end of Rice’s impromptu guided tour of Main Control.
The three Imperial guards who had been helping Boscawen reconfigure the troublesome console earlier had not left and had, instead, remained quietly to one side of the room. “This is Lieutenant Jerzy Koll,” Rice said, introducing one of them, a tall, muscular young man who looked barely old enough to be in the Imperial service. The man was partially out of uniform, reflecting the casual atmosphere of the station, and wore only a tank-top undershirt. “He’s in charge of the military detachment assigned to Chao Meng-fu.”
“It’s good to meet you.” Adela had begun to offer her hand, but reconsidered when the young man abruptly drew himself to attention, hands riveted at his side, and nodded curtly. The other two stood straighter as well, although they seemed considerably less respectful in their manner than Lieutenant Koll had been. It was clear that the relationship between the military and the eager scientists here was a strained one at best.
“Ma’am” was all the man offered. His eyes didn’t meet hers. The others, too, merely stared across the room.
There was a sudden, awkward silence that lasted several moments. Even the other scientists who had, until now, been actively chattering among themselves, discussing what the esteemed Dr. Montgarde had said about their work, turned and watched what was happening. There was something more going on here, Adela knew, than simple discomfort between the military and scientific arms of the Empire. In fact, she almost got the feeling that more than a few people in the room had expected this.
“I think that’ll be all for now, Jerzy,” Rice said uncomfortably, but with authority. “The orbitals have pretty much finished up for today, I think. And we can put off any further reconfigurations on the console until tomorrow. You and your men are dismissed.”
The soldier hesitated for a moment, then reached for the shirt he’d tossed casually over the back of a chair. Slinging it over his shoulder, he nodded weakly at Rice, and left. The other two followed wordlessly.
Julie Le Châtelier yawned audibly and stretched her arms as far in front of her as she could. Adela heard a tiny cracking sound that must have been her elbows.
“Well, I’ve had it for tonight,” she said good-naturedly. “You two can talk all night if you want to, but I’m turning in.”
Adela and Rice wished her good night, and she left Main Control. As she left, Adela thought she heard another stifled yawn from the anteroom before the door slid shut.
The room was empty now but for the two of them, the lights had been dimmed and the holographic image of the Sun—also at a subdued level of brightness—was the only illumination. No other light was needed. There was another disconcerting moment of silence, similar to the one earlier in the day when she had first met the Imperial guards; but this time, the silence was one between friends, the kind where neither knew what to say first.
“Do they hate her, too?” Adela finally offered, her voice tinged with bitterness. “The soldiers? And how about the others working with you here, the ones who wouldn’t even be here today to meet me? What did they do, hide out in their rooms to avoid being around all of us? Or was it just me they were avoiding?”
Rice shook his head. “No, they don’t hate her. But they distrust her, just as they distrust me or anyone else who looks to the aliens as anything but a threat to humanity.” He stared away for several quiet
moments, his eyes on the beautiful solar vista lighting the room. After a minute, he turned from the Sun and looked dejectedly to the floor.
“Things are happening here that are not good, Adela,” he said in a disappointed, if not fearful, voice. “Relationships are strained and there’ve been a few confrontations. As you saw earlier, some people aren’t even talking to each other except when necessary, and our efficiency is beginning to suffer as a result. Even simple tasks—ordinary, everyday things like … like rechipping the consoles are becoming difficult. If I don’t do something to correct this situation soon, I’m afraid our productivity will be compromised to the point where the project itself may be affected.” He paused, looking quickly at her. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to indicate there’s any real danger to our work here, but I’m concerned that the completion date might need to be pushed back if we can’t put these differences aside.”
“I see. What are you thinking of doing?”
Rice let his breath out in a long, slow puff. “I’m thinking of reassigning some of the more resentful research personnel to Luna or to one of the other facilities, and bringing in some fresh faces. The Imperial guards, too. Oh, I suppose Koll’s all right, even though he’s a bit on the moody side.”
“Moody’s a good word for him.” Adela chuckled.
“Yeah,” Rice said, returning her smile. “I suppose so. Anyway, I’m concerned that if I don’t break up the mix of personalities here soon, somebody’s going to snap.”
“More of Jephthah’s legacy, I suppose.” Adela shook her head at the thought of this mysterious man whose sole purpose seemed to be to spread fear. “I see his handiwork everywhere. I wonder if I’m to blame for that as well?”
He sighed heavily, the sound echoing plaintively in the empty room. “Look, they don’t hate you. Not really. It’s just that …” His voice trailed off.