Solar Express

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Interrogative ship status,” he asked the AI.

  SHIP IS READY FOR RELEASE.

  Tavoian checked the displays, activated the restraint warning, then opened the commlink. “OpsCon, FusEx three, ready for release.”

  “FusEx three, wait one.”

  “Three, standing by.”

  Tavoian wondered how long the wait would be, since his screens showed no objects obviously in the path of the ship, but the screens—radiation combined sensor systems—didn’t show anything that might be approaching from beneath or around the station, then asked the AI, “Interrogative traffic?”

  OPS IS REPOSITIONING SUDAM LONGLINER.

  “Inbound or outbound?”

  THAT INFORMATION IS NOT AVAILABLE.

  Tavoian wondered whether the rumors about Sudam developing a hidden asteroid habitat had any basis in fact, then shook his head. The energy signature of a burner, or even a high-gee lobbed cargo shell, was too difficult to conceal, especially if you didn’t want to take forever to get somewhere. And if Sudam had the capability of the mythical reactionless drive … they certainly wouldn’t be still partnering with Noram on the WestHem elevator … although they remained anything but pleased with the Noram monopoly and control over the Low Lunar Orbit Station and the lunar elevator and the Lagrange Point stations.

  “FusEx three, cleared for release. Release will occur in thirty seconds. Cleared to use thrusters. Do not activate drive until you are cleared for ignition.”

  “OpsCon, three green for release. Will await clearance for ignition.” Tavoian switched the ship from station power to the ship auxiliary power, then put the AI in maneuvering mode, necessary to ease the ship clear of the station and to align it for the optimal course and trajectory for the Lunar Low Orbit Station … or where it would be when FusEx three arrived.

  “Three, you’re disengaged. Clear to maneuver.”

  While the announcement of disengagement was superfluous and after the fact, since the ship’s systems knew as soon as the physical separation occurred, the clearance was not. “Commencing maneuvering this time.”

  Tavoian watched as the AI used the thrusters to ease the ship away from the upper ring where the various spacecraft using ONeill Station docked. He could have maneuvered the ship manually, but that was reserved for emergencies or unusual circumstances, since the AIs invariably used less thruster propellant. Even so, he was ready to override the AI at the slightest hint of something going awry. It didn’t, of course, and the AI reported, SEPARATION ACHIEVED.

  “Commencing orientation.” Tavoian switched to the AI. “Destination is Lunar Lower Orbit Station. Begin destination orientation.”

  After several moments, the AI replied, ORIENTATION COMPLETE. READY FOR IGNITION.

  “FusEx three, you’re cleared for ignition.”

  “OpsCon, understand cleared for ignition.” Tavoian gave the command to the AI, “Ignite drive.”

  DRIVE IGNITED.

  “FusEx three, you are cleared to activate drive and depart.”

  “Activate drive.”

  DRIVE ACTIVATED.

  Initially, there was the faintest sense of pressure, pushing Tavoian straight down in his couch. That faint pressure continued to build for the next several minutes until it reached one gee, leveling out at that point. During the buildup of acceleration, the AI switched ship functions from auxiliary power to the bleed-off generator, and Tavoian checked to make certain that the generator was fully online.

  Even knowing that the AI was doing the same thing, Tavoian continued to monitor the screens displayed before him, showing in real-time every body of any size that might conceivably pose a problem for the ship. Despite all the near-Earth sweeping operations, there was still too much space junk left over anywhere within the orbit of Luna around Earth and even farther out, and that didn’t include chunks of rock too small to be called asteroids that appeared occasionally from nowhere. While they might not be asteroids, except to astronomers, they were pretty much disaster to the burner on a fast Earth-Luna run that happened to meet one, small as the odds were. There had only been one collision with a true rock in the past decade … but there had been almost a score of dings, dents, and survivable perforations from space junk, and the resulting damages and near deaths had resulted in lawsuits, international disputes, and a tacit agreement to deal with anyone or anything who added to the problem.

  While he’d “seen” small asteroids before on lunar runs, neither he nor the AI detected anything that wasn’t supposed to be near them … although they passed less than ten kays from a small piece of something metallic less than ten minutes after leaving ONeill Station.

  Tavoian thought about reading Alayna’s message again, then shook his head. With his luck, something would happen. He kept watching the screens and checking the drive indicators.

  After eighty minutes of acceleration, he made the required announcement. “Approaching turnover. Please take your couches and strap in.” His passengers were in their couches well before the AI cut the drive, and initiated turnover, using the thrusters to rotate the burner end to end, so the drive nozzles were facing their destination.

  Some of the Sinese burners used dual drives, but SpacePlus, the manufacturer of FusEx three and all Noram fusionjets, had opted for the simpler single drive configuration—a far more cost-effective design that eliminated the additional drive system, as well as swiveled couches or the need for passenger restraint during decel. The single drive system did necessitate an extremely precise rotation not required of a dual drive system. All in all, the three-hour trip was essentially eighty-five minutes of one-gee acceleration, ten minutes of changeover in weightlessness, and eighty-five minutes of deceleration.

  Ninety-one minutes later, FusEx three floated nearly motionless off the upper docking ring of the Lunar Lower Orbit Station. The lower docking ring, beneath the station, was for lunar landing shuttles.

  Tavoian link-pulsed the station. “LunaCon, FusEx three, standing by for docking.”

  “FusEx three, maintain position this time.”

  “Maintaining position.” Now what? “Anything incoming?” he asked the AI.

  THERE IS A LANDER DOCKING ON THE LOWER RING.

  “That shouldn’t affect us.”

  “FusEx three, this is LunaCon. Interrogative deliverables.”

  “LunaCon, passengers and clearances, cargo manifest to you.”

  “Thank you, three.”

  Did they know you’re carrying an inspection team? Tavoian frowned. How could they not?

  One minute passed, then two. After another five minutes, the comm buzzed. “FusEx three, cleared for approach and docking.”

  “LunaCon, three, commencing approach this time.”

  Once the AI confirmed the grapples were secure and that the station umbilical was connected, Tavoian switched to station power.

  “FusEx three, lock secure. You’re cleared for disembarkation and off-loading.”

  “Stet, LunaCon.”

  After a last check of the station power, Tavoian shut down the ship’s aux power before continuing shutdown procedures … for everything but habitability. Then he turned off the restraint light. Given that docking rings had no rotation, there was no gravity or any semblance of such, and after opening the hatch between the control deck and the forward passenger deck, he went down the ladder hand over hand.

  Even before he was near the deck, all three of the passengers were looking at him.

  “What was the delay?” asked Hart.

  “There was a lander docking. They might have had problems with that. Luna Control didn’t say.” As he moved through the air toward the lock, carefully, he didn’t say that he wasn’t about to ask. “You can get your gear. You’re cleared to disembark.” After a hesitation, he asked, “Where are you headed on Luna?”

  “Where the Inspector-General has sent us,” replied Deveau pleasantly. “I’m sure you understand.”

  “I’m afraid I do.” To Tavoian, Deveau’s resp
onse meant that the man was either excessively self-important, or that someone, or lots of someones, were in trouble. Neither was a particularly good thing. He checked the lock pressure, then offered the authentication and pressed the lock stud, standing back as the inner hatch slid open.

  The only one of the three who said anything as they entered the lock, awkwardly enough to show that they weren’t that experienced in weightlessness, was Perez.

  “Have a safe return trip.”

  “Thank you.” Tavoian closed the inner lock, then opened the outer one. Once he saw that all three and their gear were securely in the station’s receiving umbilical, he closed the outer lock.

  You need to send Alayna a message. It couldn’t hurt, one way or another, but he’d have to wait until he’d dealt with the cargo and determined what his layover was going to be.

  6

  DAEDALUS BASE

  30 MARCH 2114

  On Friday, Alayna slept later. Now that the sun line had reached and passed the COFAR installation, and it was lunar “day,” the highest priority use of the various telescopes had diminished, and she needed to catch up on her sleep, especially before the inspection team arrived. But then, part of that lost sleep time had been devoted to studying the briefing materials sent to her, clearly designed to highlight the importance and cost-effectiveness of COFAR.

  Even so, she was awake by 0600 UTC. In little more than a half hour, she was seated in the control center. After checking the equipment and getting a report from Marcel, she surveyed the messages. At the top of the queue was one from Alfen Braun, wanting to know the status of the Noram IG inspectors. Alayna immediately replied that the inspectors had not arrived, and that she did not have an ETA, but that she would inform the director as soon as she knew more. Especially after the message she’d received from Chris two days earlier, she had to admit that she was more than a little concerned. If the inspectors found anything wrong that was her fault, and possibly even that wasn’t, COFAR might escape relatively unscathed, but she most likely would not. If she fouled up, or there was any hint of that, she could likely forget about a future career in astrophysics. And she had to take care of their food and other needs. That was clearly spelled out in the MOU. It did make sense, of a sort, because there weren’t any other quarters in Daedalus Crater.

  Speaking of which … “Who’s using the optical arrays, especially the solar telescope and the associated equipment?” She could have looked up the schedule, but asking Marcel was quicker.

  “The Solar Research Institute,” replied the AI, as pleasantly as always.

  “They don’t restrict my right to use whatever data and observations they’re making, right?”

  “You can use their observational data, but you can’t publish without their approval. According to the records, they’ve never withheld approval.”

  That’s assuming you can develop something worth publishing over the next two years … and you ever get enough time to carry it out.

  During her doctoral research Alayna had come across a reference to “regular” and longer-lasting solar mini-granulations. For the last two centuries, astronomers had described the solar granulations as the manifestation of convection in the visible reaches of the solar photosphere. From over a century’s worth of observations, at least those recorded and published, all but a handful of the mini-granules observed had fit the multi-fractal model first observed in the early twenty-first century by the orbiting Hinode Solar Observatory and by the Big Bear Solar Observatory before its destruction in 2031, as well as by the ill-fated Advanced Solar Telescope. The short-lived Inner System Solar Observatory (ISSO) had recorded and transmitted a series of observations/data apparently observed at the frequency of Helium 1 that purported to show possible regular mini-granules. Before the consortium backing the ISSO could follow up, a particularly violent coronal mass ejection had effectively destroyed the observatory, and the international funding crisis of 2081 had precluded the struggling EC from replacing it.

  One very good reason for an observatory like COFAR. Not that the Moon’s shield against a large CME was anywhere near as effective as Earth’s, but COFAR had deployable shields … and a live human to repair damage.

  From what Alayna had discovered, the very few so-called regular mini-granulations had been dismissed as artifacts of the space between the “normal” semiregular granulations and the multi-fractal mini-granulations … or possibly as some sort of shape created by the interacting flux lines of adjacent granulations.

  Because the magnetic Reynolds number of solar plasma was so high, that allowed the possibility of magnetic structures of a few meters, not that even COFAR could detect something that small, but the possibility certainly was consistent with the observations of mini-granulations, and possibly far smaller magnetic structures … the only problem being that a high Reynolds number usually signified turbulent flow and instability, and the multi-fractal mini-granulations didn’t appear to have a significant difference in stability from regular granulations, possibly, Alayna thought, because the instability was manifested in the fractal shape rather than in a shorter duration? But then, wouldn’t a “regular shaped” mini-granulation exist for a longer period, rather than a shorter one?

  There had even been one study showing that the small number of “regular” mini-granulations was simply the mathematical result of the huge number of observations. In short, the study postulated that, occasionally, the fractal mini-granulations and larger granulations would interact in a way that left a regular “space” between them. Not only did Alayna have her doubts about that, but she was working on a line of research that might further investigate the mini-granulations—not that they were actually “mini,” since most of those observed and recorded had the equivalent of an “effective diameter” of six hundred kilometers, although virtually none were actually even close to circular. Of course, she had chosen to look into the mini-granulations at the time of a solar minimum, but she had no idea how that might affect her work, even if earlier studies had suggested “quiet sun” areas were more suitable for such study. But the phases of the solar cycle don’t always coincide with the opportunity to do research.

  A faint chime announced another incoming message, from Harris at Lunara Mining. It was short.

  The Noram inspectors will be leaving here at about 1200 UTC with the pack train. The train will wait for their return. Enjoy their company.

  The “pack train” was an AI-guided series of lunar rollers from the Lunara base that carried supplies for Daedalus Base. Almost half a century ago, Lunara had built a maglev from their base to the south polar terminal of the lunar elevator. Alayna wasn’t so sure that the charges from others using the maglev weren’t the difference between Lunara’s making a profit and barely breaking even.

  Alayna immediately replied.

  Thanks for the heads-up. Please let me know if they’re delayed. Let’s hope the train doesn’t have to wait here too long.

  Surprisingly, there was an immediate response.

  Better you than us.

  Alayna smiled.

  She was glad she’d inspected the quarters the day before. They were spartan, but clean, and everything was laid out.

  She glanced at the displays again, then asked Marcel, “Have we had any response from the IAU on that anomaly?”

  “No, Dr. Wong-Grant. We have not.”

  “Do you have any thoughts on what it might be?” Although Alayna suspected that the anomaly was most likely a comet, she wanted Marcel’s assessment, even as she wondered, far from the first time, if AIs actually had “thoughts.”

  “It’s unlikely to be an asteroid or a body in a regular orbit at that distance from the sun. Jupiter’s gravity would have swept it away long ago. That suggests a cometary orbit, but the light composition doesn’t come close to matching any known comet, and the observations suggest that its temperature is close to that of a solid body.”

  “A solid body in a long-period cometary orbit—a burned-out remna
nt of a cometary nucleus? Maybe a sungrazer with a metallic…” She broke off. Silver and silicates hadn’t ever shown up as the principal elements of any comet or asteroid, but the lack of heat strongly suggested that it was just a lump of something. As one early scientist was reputed to have said, “Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine—it is stranger than we can imagine.” Eddington … or was it Haldane? Alayna shrugged. Either way, it was likely true. “The IAU should have notified us if it’s something already discovered, shouldn’t they?”

  “It could be that someone else, or several others, discovered it at the same time. Or it could be that the IAU is waiting for more reports from us or others.”

  Alayna nodded. The IAU would do what it would do. Before she started studying what was coming in from the Solar Institute’s programmed observations, she took a moment to call up Chris’s latest message and read through it again, and not just to see what he had observed about the Noram IG’s inspection team.

  Alayna—

  I’m parked here at Lunar Low Orbit for the next two days, maybe longer, waiting for a high priority cargo of some sort. Deposited the passengers on the LL Orbit Station, and while I’m waiting for two returning VIPs and some sort of high priority cargo, thought I’d send off a message.

  My passengers were rather closemouthed about what they will be doing and where they might be visiting. That alone would suggest that anyone they do visit should be rather cautious. These days, it looks like caution is the watchword, especially since the Sinese report of a successful orbit change of an iceberg asteroid toward Mars.

  That part of the message bothered Alayna, because changing the orbits of large chunks of ice or rock carried implications that went far beyond science, astronomy, or astrophysics. But while she worried, she couldn’t do much about it. Her eyes went back to the message.

  Since you’re not likely to read much of Observations soon, or not until you’ve been sunside for a while, there’s another passage you might find interesting. I’ll even include it here.