Solar Express

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “That might be the beginning of something less desirable. If things don’t get better, we might end up being military pilots for real.”

  “Things won’t get that bad. Not after what resulted from the Middle East Meltdown.”

  “That was more than thirty years ago.”

  “People forget, and the ones who remember get old and die.” Keiser stretched slowly, then rose. “I’m off to meet with Associate Director Xun Sun.”

  “A Sinobloc team? Why are they using a Noram burner? The Sinese burners are almost as fast as ours.” If not faster.

  “It’s a joint Noram/Sinese investigation team. Xun Sun is the head of the Noram side.”

  “About the nanotech meltdown?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. I was told not to ask anything about their mission, and no one’s saying.”

  “Good luck. When do you break orbit?”

  “Early tomorrow. After the last Sinese arrives.” Keiser moved toward the briefing console that Tavoian had left.

  As he left the briefing area, Tavoian wondered if he’d ever be as cynical as the older pilot, or if Keiser had just been born that way.

  Back in the cubicle that was technically his “cabin,” a space on the innermost section of the habitat wheel, and the one that had the lightest “gravity,” although after all the years in space the spacers and the physicists still argued over whether the spin-created force that approximated gravity was centrifugal or centripetal, Tavoian composed a message, then read it over a last time before he linked to the pilots’ network to send it. On Earth or on Luna, they could have linked and talked directly, but personal transspace links weren’t allowed, at least not on DOEA installations, ostensibly for reasons of both bandwidth and security, not to mention the costs of real-time, full-image communications … or even burst-sent full-image comm.

  Alayna—

  Nothing new here. Headed your way—LLOS—with some bureaucrats late tomorrow. Strange how space changes perspective, that I’d think half a moon away is “your way.” I’m still on the local shuttle runs. Hel3 worries have DOEA cutting back on everything. The thing is—I don’t see any slowdown in vasimr slowboats bringing it back from the lunar elevator, and all the burners are topped off before each run.

  The good thing about shuttle runs is I get hours and experience with lower rads, and that means I can keep piloting longer—and higher pay! Maybe I’ll even make major one of these days. Exploration or equipment refit runs in-sys from Earth pile on the rads. Hazpay doesn’t really compensate for that. But then, after a while, shuttle runs, well, they’re all the same … or close to it. From what you’ve said, you’ve actually got a wider range of duties than most pilots. You’ve got to be astronomer, maintenance tech, ground transporter for that maintenance, cook, and chief bottle washer. All I have to do is to deliver passengers and high priority cargo and not damage anything in the process. Still don’t understand why there aren’t two of you there.

  He paused. She’d said something about that, that there was a mining base south of the crater, and that was deemed close enough for backup. He smiled ironically. It wasn’t as though he had any real backup once he lit off a burner. He glanced back at the text.

  I never asked you. Do you get any breaks? If you do … where can you go?

  Oh … I’m attaching that political book I told you about. I’d like your thoughts on what he has to say, especially the second paragraph on page 37 … if and when you have a moment to read and think.

  Tavoian double-checked to make sure the book file was attached before linking, checking the encryption, and sending off the message and the attachment.

  Then he accessed the station database and looked up the powers of the Noram Inspector-General.

  3

  DAEDALUS BASE

  26 MARCH 2114

  Alayna woke to flashing lights in her sleeping cubicle. There was no alarm. That meant a problem, but not an emergency.

  “Marcel? What’s wrong?” Her voice sounded rough and hoarse, but then it always did when she first woke up, more so at Daedalus Base, with an atmospheric pressure closer to that of Denver than that of New Hampshire.

  “A thirty-five-kilometer section of the radio telescope is inoperative. It appears that a hundred-meter section will have to be replaced.”

  “Where?” She sat up slowly. It hadn’t taken her long at Daedalus Base to realize that quick and abrupt movements when still sleep-fogged could be painful in low grav.

  “Four kilometers north and fifteen point three kilometers east of the control center.”

  “Why the alarm?”

  “In five hours, Arecibo takes control of the telescope for a deep search. The inoperative section has reduced effectiveness by five percent.”

  “Frig!” Alayna understood. Unless she could complete the repairs by then the Space Research Institute (Noram) would complain that COFAR’s reduced sensitivity had compromised whatever the combined search was investigating. At the least, it wouldn’t look good for Alayna. At the worst, SRI headquarters might reduce the payments to the Farside Foundation. She stood and took two steps to the narrow wardrobe, which she opened to locate and extract the one-piece undersuit required for compatibility with the exosuit used for outside lunar surface maintenance.

  No matter how sophisticated the system, things happened that needed to be fixed, and decades of experience had shown that a reasonably intelligent and well-trained human being on the spot was far more cost-effective than either excessive redundancy or repeated repair missions, or even AI-controlled robotics. Add to that the fact that sophisticated equipment was more expensive than a nearly endless supply of overeducated young postdoctoral professionals eager to obtain both jobs and experience. During her first week at COFAR, when Luis had walked her through everything, she’d half wondered if she’d ever remember it all, even with Marcel as backup.

  The most frustrating part was being so close to such an array of equipment, and being able to use it so little, at least so far. That thought didn’t help Alayna’s frame of mind as she prepared for the repair mission. Almost half an hour later, she finished suiting up while breathing a high oxygen mixture in order to accommodate the lower pressure and higher oxygen levels she’d be breathing for the next several hours—if not longer.

  When she finished the suit pressurization level tests, she opened the suit comm link. “Marcel, comm check.”

  “All your frequencies are clear. Ten percent loss on lowband.”

  “I’m not going far enough for that to matter.”

  Next came the inspection of the roller. Alayna made certain that the batteries were fully charged, then put a spare in the equipment bin. She couldn’t have done that if the break in the antenna had been another ten kilometers farther out. After that came the two prepackaged sections of polyimide film—and its embedded dipole antennas—that barely fit in the open cargo bin at the back of the roller. She couldn’t help but notice that there were only ten sections left. Still … according to the logs, sometimes years had gone by without the need for replacing antenna sections. As almost an afterthought, she added another package of antistatic wipes to the package already in the equipment bin.

  Another fifteen minutes passed by the time she had the roller moving out of the lock. Then she had to guide it through the maze of paths and tunnels, designed so that the rollers could reach every part of the radio-telescope antenna without rolling across any of the meter-wide polyimide swathes. Physically replacing the polyimide film would always require some travel since the rows stretched fifty kilometers in each direction, but going just fifteen wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Then, if the damage had been at forty-nine kilometers, the reduction in antenna effectiveness would have been minuscule, unlike the five percent reduction that Marcel had reported. The big problem was that replacing a hundred meters of damaged film was going to be a chore, especially since Alayna had only done one replacement of fifty meters, and that had been of aging polyimide close to the CO
FAR control center, and had been almost a practice repair, close as it had been to the base center.

  Almost forty minutes later, she slowed the roller to a stop. From where she sat on the open vehicle, she couldn’t see any damage. “There’s no obvious impact, Marcel. Where does the damaged section start?”

  “Section fifteen-point-three. There should be a yellow stripe indicating where the sections join.”

  Alayna forced herself to scan the edge of the film slowly, finally catching sight of a yellow tab, rather than a stripe. Then she checked to make certain she had the antistatic wipes in the suit’s belt patch. As soon as she stepped off the roller, her boots sank into the regolith—not that much, perhaps a few centimeters, but a haze of dust rose, almost climbing up her boots and legs.

  Walking slowly and carefully, she made her way to the edge of the antenna film, where she inspected the yellow tab, which had the numbers 15.2, indicating that she’d stopped a good hundred meters short. Which might be why you don’t see any damage. “Marcel … the tab indicates fifteen-two.”

  “The roller’s calibration must be off.”

  Alayna didn’t voice, not even subvocally, what she felt about that as she turned back toward the roller. When she got back into the driver’s seat to move forward another hundred meters, she had to keep wiping her faceplate with an antistatic wipe in order to see where she was directing the roller. By the time she stopped at the connection/disconnection point another hundred meters farther east, she’d had to discard the first wipe, stuffing it into the waste bag beside the driver’s seat, and was using a second.

  This time she could see the damage to the antenna, not all that obvious—just a series of punctures in the film. After she took the separator—a short rod that looked like an oversized flat screwdriver—from the tool box, she got off the roller carefully. Her boots went into the dust almost ankle deep. She glanced around. The damaged section of the antenna film had been laid over the dust as well.

  “Marcel, there’s a lot of dust here.”

  “Where you are doesn’t have any observations on that.”

  She didn’t feel like commenting. Instead, she moved toward the yellow tab, leaning down and verifying the section number before easing the separator into the groove at the end, and moving it slightly. Nothing happened.

  She applied more force, cautiously, slowly wedging the two sections apart. By the time she’d separated the connections between the two sections, she was sweating, not heavily, but more than she would have liked, despite the fact that the only humidity in the suit came from her.

  Then she had to roll up the damaged section. The film was light enough, especially in lunar gravity, but she was very careful, and moved slowly, until the first damaged section, except for the last few meters, was in a rough cylinder. By then, she was wiping her suit faceplate every few steps. After separating the first damaged section from the next one, she began rolling up the second section.

  “Your internal suit temperature is getting too high,” observed Marcel.

  “That’s all I need,” snapped Alayna. Nonetheless, she straightened up and just stood quietly, trying to breathe easily. She looked eastward, but could see nothing, given the dust on her faceplate. She slowly and gently wiped the faceplate clear, knowing that even fine class II dust was highly abrasive.

  From what she could finally see, she had only another five or six meters left to roll before she could separate the second section. Then would come the even harder work.

  After what seemed forever, she cleared her throat. “Marcel?”

  “Your temperature’s down. Not as much as would be optimal.”

  “I’ll move more carefully.” In fact, out of necessity, Alayna made certain her movements were more deliberate as she finished rolling up the last few meters of the second section. Separating it from the remainder of the antenna row was easier than the first and second separations had been. After finishing rolling it up she had to walk back to the roller. There she unloaded the first section of new antenna film, unsealed it, and was about to begin fitting the old and new sections together when she realized that the area around each receiving clip socket was covered with dust … and if she pressed the two sections together without cleaning each and every socket first … then the dust would work into the socket and before long, perhaps immediately, given the electrostatic properties of the dust, the connections wouldn’t be tight, and likely the antenna still wouldn’t work.

  Cleaning and sealing was tedious … and every other receptacle required a new antistatic wipe. Just cleaning and sealing the 120-centimeter-wide section took more than twenty minutes. When she finished, she almost didn’t want to link to the AI again.

  She did. “Marcel, linkage test, please.”

  “The links are secure. A reception test is not possible until you unroll the rest of the antenna.”

  Alayna moved and did that, but because she was moving backward in order to avoid stepping on the film, it took longer to unroll than it had to roll up the damaged section, especially since the dust was clinging to everything.

  “Marcel, reception test?”

  “Signals being received from the new section.”

  At least that works. Then she had to walk back to the roller and move it forward to unload the second section, open it, and unroll it enough to be able to connect the two new sections. While she had to wipe down the contact points and the area around the receiving sockets, the connection was easier because there wasn’t nearly the dust gathered on the replacement antenna sections.

  Her back didn’t ache; it twinged painfully by the time she had unrolled the second section. Worrying about that would have to wait.

  She was about halfway through connecting the second section to the rest of the antenna row when Marcel pulsed. “You have thirty minutes before Arecibo takes control.”

  Had she been out almost three hours? Frig! “I’ll be done with the repairs before that.” But there was no way she and the roller would make it back to COFAR center by then.

  Twenty-one minutes later, Alayna and the roller, as well as two rolls of inoperative antenna polyimide film, an enormous number of used antistatic wipes, and a coating of dust, headed back toward the COFAR maintenance lock.

  Although Marcel had verified the repair had been successful, just before the roller reached the open lock door, she linked to the AI. “Is the antenna still fully operative?”

  “It is fully operative, Dr. Wong-Grant. The roller caused a slight interference field on your return, but that was minimal.”

  And frigging unavoidable.

  When the lock closed, Alayna just looked at the dust-coated roller. Her back ached, as did her head, and her eyes were burning … and sooner or later she’d have to clean the roller. Otherwise the dust would migrate into places where it could do real damage.

  You don’t have to clean it this moment.

  She did have to get through shutting down the roller, as well as connecting it to the charging system. She unloaded the rolls of damaged antenna film and stacked them in the waste room. She couldn’t put them through the reprocessor for another week, not until “day” arrived, and she had full solar power. Next she had to clean the exosuit. By the time she was back inside the installation, she was shivering because her undersuit was soaked.

  She did take a warm, if short shower, before pulling on a dry station-suit, and then heading to the control center. The console alert light was flashing.

  When she saw the first message, the priority one that had triggered the alert, she relaxed.

  Your system reports EFA exceeding three hours. Please report reentry.

  That was an inquiry request from the Lunara Mining installation south of Daedalus Crater, most likely automatic, although it bore Harris’s name as sender. Her response was swift and short.

  Reentry at 1143 UTC. Extended exterior repairs, successfully accomplished. Appreciate your watchfulness. Thank you.

  Her next step was to monitor the performance o
f all systems, but as Marcel had already informed her, all optical and radio systems were operating at close to optimal levels. She nodded, more in relief than approval.

  Before she started in on checking the rest of the message queue, she went to the galley and fixed some tea. She also ate several biscuits. Then she carried the sealed mug back to the control center where she settled before the console.

  Despite all the early space-age hype about living longer in low-grav, what experience had shown, both on the space elevator and on Luna, was that prolonged low-grav wasn’t any form of anagathic, but just created the early onset of muscular degeneration and osteoporosis, not to mention various other conditions that were anything but life-extending. That was why Alayna’s first postdoc employment was at COFAR, a job that was anything but glamorous, and a combination of basic maintenance technician, janitor, and second-level astronomer. Being in good physical condition, having an outstanding academic record, and enough publications that had gotten some attention meant that, unlike many other young and largely inexperienced postdocs, she had real and gainful employment … if under less than optimal conditions and pay … and if only for two years.

  Alayna had been sipping the tea for less than a minute when the console flashed again.

  The second alert message was from Dorthae Wrae, the Foundation’s chief of operations.

  Dr. Wong-Grant:

  The Space Research Institute (SRI(N)) has informed us that for the first ten minutes of the joint Deep Listen operation there was low-level interference at COFAR, the frequency of which was consistent with operation of a roller. How did this occur? Was it absolutely necessary? Please report immediately.

  “Shit!” Ten lousy minutes because there was so much dust that everything needed anti-triboelectric wipedown?

  At least Wrae wasn’t demanding a full-comm real-time link, but that was understandable. Given both the cost of full-band face-to-face communications and the annoying two- to three-second delay, the Foundation seldom initiated or authorized direct real-time links. Costs drove everything, and that was another reason why Alayna had a station designed and built to hold ten people all to herself—except on rare occasions.