Solar Express

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  You can’t do any more now.

  She wrenched her concentration back to her own solar difficulties, hoping that her message wouldn’t be unduly delayed and that the message within the message was clear to Chris and didn’t scream out too loudly to those reading it before Chris did.

  62

  THE NEW YORK TIMES

  25 NOVEMBER 2114

  [OTTAWA] Last night, after acrimonious debate during a rare Saturday session, in a close vote of 73–71, the Noram Senate approved a supplemental appropriations bill for the Department of Off-Earth Affairs, clearing the legislation for President Yates’s signature. The vote was heralded as a victory for the Administration, but foreshadows more bitter infighting over funding in the continuing lame-duck session, despite the looming threat of possible military action by the Sinese Federation against the Indian-UAAS alliance. The vote would not have occurred if President Yates had not called the Senate into session to deal with military issues related to the Sinese/Indian escalation. Conservative Party chair Edward Spalin declared that the loss of three seats in the election earlier this month would not change the calculus of the fight over next year’s budget. “The people are tired of their tax dollars being poured into space when so much remains undone here on Earth.”

  “Pouring money down a rat-hole to perpetuate a global hoax.” That was how Senator Riccardo Castenada (CP-NY) characterized the Administration’s funding request. He also released documents that purported to show that Space Service officials authorized the Noram manned expedition to investigate the “nonexistent alien artifact” termed the Solar Express, using funds appropriated for other purposes. Castenada’s amendment to censure DOEA Secretary Luvalle was defeated on a straight party-line vote of 80–65. Castenada reiterated his contention that the Solar Express was not only a hoax, but a fraud designed to funnel government funds to the military-space combine at the expense of urgent domestic needs.

  Senator Craig Savage (CP-ID) attempted to amend the bill to require all funds used for DOEA procurement be spent in North America. That attempt was ruled nongermane by Vice President Saint-Denis, despite a protest by Senator Castenada.

  When Senator Kim Greywinter [D-ALB] observed that events had proved Castenada, referred to as the “individual representing New York,” had been wrong about the Sinese probe to the Solar Express and the subsequent Sinese manned expedition, Castenada replied, “I don’t care if the Sinese pour billions down their rat-hole; that doesn’t mean we should.”

  Castenada was investigated earlier this year by the Noram Inspector-General’s office in regard to charges that he revealed classified DOEA material to the media after the Administration failed to provide additional disaster relief to New York City. That investigation was closed without comment by the Inspector General.

  In related developments, EC Chancellor Rumikov, recently returned to Vienna, again called on both Noram and the Sinese Federation to share fully any scientific information recovered from missions to investigate the Solar Express. He called their present failure to do so deplorable.

  Sinese Minister for Space Wong Mengyi let it be known through ministry officials that it was absurd to think that the Sinese research vessel investigating the Solar Express was a hurriedly converted space warship, since the Sinese refused to be the first to militarize outer space, unlike others who had already engaged in covert militarization …

  The Yates Administration declined to comment on the veiled Sinese charges about covert militarization. There was no word about whether the President would request additional funds for the Department of Defense to deal with the current international crisis.

  63

  RECON THREE

  25 NOVEMBER 2114

  Early Sunday morning, Tavoian checked the CO2 levels again, up more than slightly to one point nine percent, more than one percent over the recommended SMAC of point seven percent for missions exceeding seven days, but CO2 levels had been bouncing between one point seven and one point eight for several days, depending on his level of activity. They were up especially after he’d exercised, but the atmosphere system seemed to be handling the CO2 adequately, if not outstandingly. There was also the continued loss of reserve air, now down to twenty percent, because of all the repairs and equipment refittings requiring use of the lock.

  What can you do except worry. Besides, you’ll be leaving in a few days. Still, almost a thirty percent increase in a day was something to watch. He knew that the SMAC levels were protective, and that people had survived at higher levels, but that above three percent over several days, there were definite, if minor, adverse impacts, and above five percent the effects were worse. Above seven percent … He didn’t want to go there.

  There were worse things than an elevated CO2 level. At least, he could breathe without ripping his lungs out, unlike his mother. He didn’t like thinking about that, or that Kit was alone with their parents. Not totally alone, but she’d had to deal with so much already. He’d tried to be encouraging, sympathetic, and caring in his last message back to her, but the fact was that he wouldn’t have been able to go Earthside even if he’d been on Donovan Base. All that didn’t make him feel any better.

  He turned from the environmental indicators, considering how much he wanted to use the ISV and the spy-eyes, since his stock of thruster propellant was down to twenty-eight percent. Then he frowned and asked, “When will we reach the orbit of Mercury? Using the averaged orbit figure of fifty-eight million kays?”

  AT PRESENT ESTIMATED VELOCITIES, RECON THREE WILL REACH A POINT FIFTY-EIGHT MILLION KAYS FROM THE SUN AT 0721 UTC ON NOVEMBER TWENTY-NINTH.

  That was days earlier than anyone had calculated—except Alayna. A wry smile appeared and vanished. With three days left, thruster propellant isn’t going to be a concern. It also meant that Tavoian needed to think through what else he could do, what else he and his remotes could possibly discover.

  Over the past two days, he had deployed the ISV and the larger spy-eyes to the other four points of the imaginary hexagon where he thought there might be additional other passageways leading to the “drive” chamber. The results had been less than he’d hoped for. One more spy-eye had vanished, but at three of the points, there had been passageways leading in the direction of the drive chamber. Each of those passageways had ended in a closed passage, apparently where the entry to the drive chamber should have been. None of the long passageways had shown any indication of an entry to a possible ship launching bay. The fourth point, although it had been the second investigated, might also have led to the drive chambers, except at a point corresponding to where the other passageways began, there was a solid bulkhead. Whether that meant that there was a passageway, or nothing at all, was impossible to tell.

  Tavoian felt as though he were spinning his wheels, figuratively as well as literally, on the smooth, almost-frictionless surfaces of the artifact. He also had the feeling that the Sinese were running into the same problem. From what he could tell, they also hadn’t come up with much, for all the spy-eyes and remotes that swarmed over the artifact. There certainly hadn’t been any concentration of space-sleds, spy-eyes, or remotes in any one locale.

  After studying the map that the AI had constructed, Tavoian began to prepare one ISV, a rover, some signal repeaters, and the fiber-optic spooling device to investigate areas that neither he nor the Sinese had yet looked into.

  Shortly after he’d dispatched that ISV, losing more atmosphere in the process, while he was studying the monitors, especially the one focused on the larger Sinese ship, he observed two of the sleds or tugs moving slowly toward the artifact, one towing a large assembly, the other tethered to the assembly and following. The slowness of movement suggested to Tavoian that the equipment—whatever it was—was fairly massive, and that the second sled was there to decelerate that substantial mass so that it would not smash into the artifact.

  “Didn’t they have that assembly out yesterday, trying to test or cut through the hull?” Tavoian already knew. His q
uestion was rhetorical. So far as he and the ship’s AI had determined, the Sinese had had no success. So why are they trying it on the dark material? Or are they trying something different?

  Because he couldn’t get that good a view of what the Sinese were doing, Tavoian decided to send out the remaining ISV and a pair of spy-eyes to see what the Sinese were trying, especially since he had had both ISVs investigating passageways when the Sinese had used the laser assembly earlier, and the only images had been from Recon three and not particularly clear. The Sinese had been observing his investigations, and it only seemed fair that he should be able to observe theirs, if from a discreet distance. He wasn’t about to hazard the ISV by getting as close as the ten meters that the Sinese spy-eyes had been to his remotes. Depending on the Sinese reaction, or lack thereof, he might ease one of the spy-eyes closer.

  He had to hurry to ready the second ISV and spy-eyes, but the Sinese were moving so deliberately that they were still positioning the assembly when the ISV moved out of Recon three’s lock and toward the alien artifact. Tavoian halted the ISV roughly a hundred meters from the artifact. From there he dispatched the spy-eyes, as he sat before Recon three’s controls and took in the views from both spy-eyes and the ISV. He spread the spy-eyes to each side and halted them around twenty meters from the space-sleds.

  Two figures in white spacesuits were working with the large assembly, trying to position it and maintain that position over the slowly rotating artifact. The view from the nearer spy-eye strongly suggested that what it viewed was a high-energy laser, one that had to be powered by a linked chain of supercapacitors. And it was aimed at a center of one of the rectangular sides of a hexagon—which doubtless was an entry point. Tavoian was more than sure that the Sinese had discovered what he had about entries to the hexagonal chambers. The two sleds moved farther apart, the assembly held between them on a cable, with perhaps ten meters separating each sled from the assembly.

  Tavoian frowned. That much distance between them? Are the idiots really going to aim a high-powered laser at that entry point?

  He had scarcely thought those words when energy seemed to flare from the artifact back at the Sinese laser. The images from both spy-eyes blanked. Then the rear of the entire Sinese assembly exploded.

  Tavoian immediately had the ISV scanner focus on one sled and then the other. Each of the men piloting a sled seemed to be unhurt, although the shattered and fused laser assembly was hurtling away from the artifact and passed within fifty meters of the ISV.

  Neither spy-eye resumed transmitting images.

  “Can you control the spy-eyes?”

  NEGATIVE. NO RESPONSE TO COMMANDS.

  Without an AI rover on board the ISV, there was no way Tavoian could immediately recover the incapacitated spy-eyes. So he eased the ISV back, setting it on a return course to Recon three, then checked on the other ISV, well over five hundred meters away. All indicators were normal. “Can you determine what happened?” He had his own ideas, but the AI had direct access to all sensors, which recorded the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

  THE SINESE ACTIVATED A UV LASER. THE MATERIAL REFLECTED IT BACK AND AMPLIFIED IT. THE BEAM SPREAD. THE HEAT EXPLODED THE SUPERCAPACITORS.

  For a moment Tavoian wondered. Then he shook his head. He almost laughed, except it was a wonder the two Sinese hadn’t been killed. With the change in the hull’s reflectivity, the silver material simply had absorbed all the laser’s energy when the Sinese had used the laser on the hull the day before. But the dark material had done exactly what the single thread had done when Tavoian had used a laser to cut it … except the Sinese had used a far higher powered laser.

  “I’ll need those images for my report.”

  The ship’s AI did not respond.

  “How are the other spy-eyes doing, the ones with the other ISV?”

  THEY HAVE NOT RETURNED.

  Tavoian decided against waiting until the end of the day before reporting to the colonel and began to compose a report detailing exactly what the Sinese had attempted to do and what the results had been. He thought about adding a line about how the Sinese attempt suggested that they were feeling thwarted, and that the universal reaction to being denied entry was to use a bigger battering ram or a larger hammer. He decided against it. The colonel could—and would—draw his own conclusions, and if he didn’t come to one similar to Tavoian’s, a junior major telling him that wasn’t going to change a thing.

  Once he dispatched the message, with several of the more graphic images, although the laser flashback had been so brief that the only image any of the feeds had was an instant of whiteness, he checked on the Sinese. They had apparently returned to the massive research dreadnought. “Was there any sign of injury to either Sinese pilot?”

  THERE WAS NO SIGN OF PERSONNEL INJURY. ONE SLED HAD TO BE TOWED BY THE OTHER. ASYMMETRIC THRUST INDICATED THE THRUSTER UNIT CLOSEST TO THE LASER ASSEMBLY FAILED.

  “Let me know if any sleds or large remotes leave the Sinese vessels.”

  WILL NOTIFY YOU.

  Tavoian went back to studying the AI’s plot of unvisited areas of the artifact, at least until Alayna’s message arrived, which he immediately began to read.

  Dear Chris,

  Something struck him … and it took him a moment to realize that she’d never used a salutation … or the word “dear” before. Not once. He read even more carefully, not racing through the words as he often did, and by the end of the first paragraph he had a good idea why she’d written as she had. The first words of the second paragraph, about Icarus, confirmed his feelings.

  But why did the colonel let her message go through? Tavoian smiled. Because it was written in a way that allowed him to ignore what wasn’t written in the words. And who knew? It could be that the colonel might yet order him to depart … or leave the departure time to Tavoian’s discretion.

  Tavoian did smile at Alayna’s last three words.

  Less than an hour later, the ship’s AI reported that the spy-eyes had completed their investigation of the first set of hexagonal chambers and were moving to the second set.

  “Will either disabled spy-eye be within easy range of the ISV returning from the artifact when it finishes the next set of investigations?”

  ONE CAN BE RECOVERED WITH A MINIMAL COURSE CHANGE. THE OTHER WAS PROPELLED AWAY FROM THE ARTIFACT BY THE MISDIRECTED THRUSTER FROM THE DAMAGED SINESE SPACE-SLED.

  “Recover the one, then, on the way back.” Tavoian wasn’t certain he’d learn anything from it, or even be able to repair it, but it was worth the effort. He still didn’t want to send out the other ISV for just a recovery of a damaged spy-eye. Even with only three days left, he was wary about using thruster propellant.

  Once he had made certain that the second round of investigation was in progress, he went back to watching the Sinese and keeping an eye on the artifact. He also needed to work on a reply to Alayna.

  At that thought, he smiled again.

  64

  DAEDALUS BASE

  26 NOVEMBER 2114

  By early Monday morning, Alayna was even more worried, both about Chris and about the images and data coming from the solar array. The photosphere was showing greater convective activity, as evidenced by the more rapid dispersal of magnetic force lines, and consequently, the more rapid dispersal of the comparatively few sunspots, but conversely there had been a drop in cosmic-ray diurnal anisotropic amplitude over the past days, when it should have been maintaining a higher level, since the sun was in a solar minimum. The solar radiation received at COFAR had increased to almost fourteen hundred watts per square meter, definitely above the average of 1368. While a two point three percent increase wouldn’t sound like much to most people, it was definitely impressive and not normal. There were more multi-fractal mini-granulations, considerably more than there should have been under the ambient solar conditions, which had already been at a higher level. While that might help her observations and reveal something new, she couldn’t discern anything that
might suggest reasons for what she was observing. But then, the sun’s activities had never been exactly totally predictable.

  You’ve got better observations and a greater chance for discovering some interrelation … and that bothers you?

  The question that nagged her most about the alien artifact was something that in some ways seemed minor, compared to the unexplained acceleration, and that was the hull of the artifact, in particular the precision of the difference in light reflection and absorption for the thirty-two circles manifested on the outer hull. Neither she nor Marcel had been able to come up with a scientifically plausible reason for the difference between the circles and the rest of the hull. Given the precision of the artifact’s construction … there should be a reason. Except Alayna hadn’t yet been able to come up with even an implausible reason, let alone a plausible one. That meant she was missing something.

  She also kept worrying about Chris, especially how much faster the artifact was carrying him sunward. “Marcel, do you have better calculations on when 2114 FQ5 will reach a point of fifty-eight million kilometers from the sun and its probable speed at that time? Oh … and at what distance will it likely reach a speed of seventy kilometers per second?”

  “2114 FQ5 has a calculated present velocity of sixty-two kilometers per second. Assuming the present rate of acceleration, it will reach the fifty-eight-million-kilometer distance at 2314 UTC on November twenty-eighth. It will reach a speed of seventy kilometers per second at 0931 UTC on November twenty-ninth.”

  Frig! Frig! Frig! Now what? All she could do was to send Chris a message and hope that he got it … or failing that, that he and his AI could calculate close enough to see the dangers. She could have Marcel calculate a course that would separate his ship from the artifact—

  She shook her head. Chris’s AI was doubtless far better at that and had more of the necessary data. “What about the artifact’s course and perihelion distance?”