A12 Who Can Own the Stars?

by Mackey Chandler

  When the man sat the device in his hands down, laid the probe on the bench, and tipped his optical visors back to look at Holbrook, he held up his tablet with a grayscale image quickly, and asked, “What do you think this is?”

  Martin frowned at it, eyes flicking back and forth. “There’s no scale,” he complained.

  “No, consider it an x-ray. The darker contrast corresponds to density.”

  “Do you have a scan that differentiates conductor and insulator?” Martin asked.

  Holbrook tapped at the pad a bit. “The false colors are orange for conductive materials, red for metals, and blue for insulators. Contrast addresses resistance.”

  He showed the man again. The fellow was unimpressed with the miracle of sensor technology displayed. Instead, he requested, “Please do a slow rotation and flicker back and forth between the two scans.”

  That was a sufficiently complex request that it took Dr. Holbrook a bit to instruct the computer working remotely for the pad what it should do. Martin waited patiently.

  After the screen displayed a couple of full rotations Martin requested, “Speed it up a hundred times.”

  Holbrook was skeptical. That would put the flicker rate well past the ability of human perception. Still, he had this much time invested. He did as Martin requested, and let it cycle through that presentation one time for himself. It didn’t do anything to inform him any better, but he showed it to Martin.

  Martin stared at it unblinking for several cycles, nodding his head to some rhythm that Holbrook could not imagine related to the video. Then he closed his eyes and kept nodding for a couple more of the cycle periods. Holbrook decided that meant he was done with it and killed the display.

  “Is this device about a meter on the short side?” Martin asked.

  “No, considerably smaller than that,” Holbrook demonstrated with his hands.

  “There is a duct-like structure I’d have assumed was a waveguide. The fed end seems to have some sort of transducer. But the output end has floating reflectors at the mouth instead of a horn. They serve no function I understand. If it is so small it would have to be operating at millimeter wavelengths and we don’t usually try to fabricate waveguides at those higher frequencies.”

  “What sort of transducer?” Holbrook demanded.

  “Like none I’ve ever seen,” Martin admitted. “The back end appears to have an optic fiber going in, then a jumble of shapes, and a weird adaptor or transition with a reverse tapered probe sticking into the guide. You’d probably think of that as an antenna. But the backstop wall behind it isn’t just a flat wall, it’s a complicated shape. Damned if I know why.”

  “Anything else that doesn’t look customary to you?” Holbrook asked.

  “Bring up the x-ray again so I can point at it,” Martin requested.

  “OK, backtracking the optic fiber it comes out of this round thing that looks like a highway roundabout with a D20 in the middle. There’s one fiber feeding it but two coming out. One to what I’m pretty sure is the output I already described to you. The other one goes over here and is attached to the sort of dumbbell shape that’s empty, or pretty close to it if the x-ray is to be believed,” Martin said tracing it with a finger.

  “What’s a D20?”

  Martin looked at him oddly. “A die with twenty faces.” When Holbrook didn’t seem to get it, he made a shaking and casting motion with his hand.

  “Oh, OK. But that other fiber doesn’t have any adaptor thing with a probe sticking out of it at the end,” Holbrook objected.

  “Nope. It’s such a small simple connection I’d bet it feeds the light into that cavity without any processing,” Martin guessed. “It may have a tiny lens inside that sleeve.”

  “To what end?” Holbrook wondered.

  “Got me. If it comes back out it has to go back up the same fiber. There’s no other connection. I’d say if you want to know, go feed some light down that fiber and see if you get anything out of the waveguide.”

  “But I don’t see anywhere to power it,” Holbrook objected.

  “Neither do I. Maybe you need to feed a lot of light down that fiber,” he speculated.

  Holbrook thought about that and nodded his thanks. “Maybe, eventually, but we are far from doing any active experiments that could alter or damage it. I’m going to write up your speculations and post them internally for the research group. I’ll post this scan for everybody to view too.”

  “Doc, when you figure it out let me know, OK?”

  “If and when, I’ll let you know,” Holbrook promised.

  * * *

  “Linda Pennington took the morning shuttle to Home,” Dakota told Heather. “She decided to accept your offer and requested connections through all the waypoints to North America. She intended to ask you directly but I assured her I could authorize them and send the pass notices to her pad. I figured she might have one last snarky jab she couldn’t resist dropping on you and I didn’t want to be responsible for that.”

  “Thank you, I think I’m past allowing her to provoke me to murder, but why test it again? Do me a favor, however, and drop a text on Mo’s children warning them she is passing through Home.” Heather looked back at her work screen, but she was frowning and not seeing it.

  “Hold on that,” she told Dakota suddenly. “Are any of the flights beyond Home refundable and did you get confirmation she actually boarded?”

  Dakota looked horrified. “I assumed she left since she requested passage. That’s my bad. All of them are refundable including this morning’s lift on the Morris shuttle. I’ll check their status right now.”

  Heather just read some news waiting on Dakota, not even trying to work while she waited to hear if Linda scammed them out of the fare.

  “She did board the morning shuttle,” Dakota reported. “While I was at it, I checked with housekeeping. Pennington took a couple of bags and left everything else in the corridor with a sticky note that says “FREE” on the wall behind it. If she intends to cash out any of her fares, she hasn’t done it yet. None of them show as canceled.”

  “Good. I’d still like you to text Mo’s children, but tell them their mother is arriving on the Morris shuttle and we believe she is continuing to Earth as she is holding tickets. I don’t know that she’d try to create problems for them, but with her, you never know. She may intend to pass right through to Earth but sit and stew on it the flight to Home and decide she’s been mistreated again and has to do something about it.”

  “OK, I’ll do that right now,” Dakota said, happy Heather didn’t seem to think she’d errored too seriously. “How did a nice man like Mo ever marry that sort of a person?”

  Heather looked up, but Dakota was already looking down sending the texts, so it was a rhetorical question. That was good, because she wondered the same thing.

  * * *

  Vic wasn’t entirely happy with the level of noise the wagon made. It was loaded down with soft containers so the bottom didn’t act as a sounding board but it was amazing how quiet everything was now, since The Day. Waking up in the morning one heard the birds and walking along the road unseen small creatures could be heard scurrying away from their approach. The slightest breeze could be heard sighing through the treetops when it wasn’t strong enough to be felt at ground level. Even the insects buzzed and clicked loudly with no traffic noise to cover it up.

  Caution made him space them out further from each other on the road than they’d done other trips. The wagon was too heavy to let Vic take point and have Eileen pull it in the middle. Reluctantly, because it made sense, he allowed Alice to take point because she was small, could retreat quickly. He had to admit she had a real knack for walking silently. They had no indication her hearing wasn’t as keen as theirs and an important factor was that she wanted to do it. She stayed ahead as far as practical, stopping occasionally to let them catch up if they threatened to fall out of her sight around a curve, and to listening for anyone approaching from their front.

&n
bsp; After a couple of hours of doing that, Alice stopped and let them catch up.

  “There’s a man ahead of us. He’s just a little slower than us and I’ve caught a peek of him twice. Once the road was fairly straight and I could see beyond him a few hundred meters. He seems to be alone and he has a big backpack on that sticks up behind his head and makes it pretty hard to check behind him. What do you want me to do if he stops and takes a break?”

  “You stop too,” Vic decided. “We’re going to make the festival with no trouble at all. If he stops, we’ll waste a little time to take a break too, and wait to see if he moves on. If he has some problem and doesn’t continue, we’ll approach him but all three of us together. He’s less likely to be aggressive with three people than one. If he’s carrying such a big pack, I’m guessing he’s taking trade goods to the fair.”

  “We three look more like a family than a bunch of outlaws,” Eileen pointed out. “If it was three men approaching, he should be much more worried.”

  Vic looked surprised. “You’re right. I was about to say we’d approach in a line to make it harder to see how many of us there are or that you two are smaller at a distance, but trying to look stealthy would be worrisome. We should line up near side by side if we must approach and pass him. Eileen in the middle just a few steps back so if we do have to run for cover, we don’t get in each other’s way.”

  “It’s a plan,” Eileen agreed, but by the time Alice took point again, he had moved on. They followed him the rest of the way to Mast’s fair, where he disappeared in the crowd.

  The first thing Vic did was look for John the chicken farmer. He was right where he’d been in the fall, so that was easy. He was set up with a grill but hadn’t started a fire yet. He also had a wagon but it was a child’s toy wagon, cut in half, and extended by a long plywood box. That let it hold three big coolers none of which were alike.

  “I have your eggs and the manual,” John said. He had a boy with him who looked to be ten or eleven. He didn’t introduce him and the boy was quiet.

  “That’s good, John. I tell you what. We haven’t set up and the Woodleighs didn’t come with us this year. If you want to camp together, we can guard each other during the night and take turns watching our goods in the day,” Vic offered.

  “That sounds fine to me, but be aware Carl here is a year or two short of being able to take a watch,” John said.

  “That’s fine,” Vic gestured at Alice. “I’d have Alice stand a first watch or the last watch in the morning, but not in the middle of the night.”

  John looked her over, noting she was armed and got an unwavering poker-faced stare right back from the girl. It didn’t take him long at all to decide that Alice standing a watch was OK with him. A curt nod acknowledged that to Vic. His boy, Carl, didn’t appear to feel slighted by that.

  “Do you have a tent to set up?” John asked. “I have a tarp and two poles and intend to do a lean-to. That’s why I set up on the edge of the woods like this.”

  “If the weather holds, we’ll sleep in the open,” Vic said. “I get nervous if I can’t see all around me.”

  Vic inquired if John knew the Olsens, but he shook his head no when Vic described them. John couldn’t even place their house though he had to have passed it. There were lots of old mailboxes still standing but at the ends of driveways to abandoned homes.

  John had long thin stakes in the ground with a bright yellow cord strung knee-high from one to the other in a half-circle around his wagon and goods. His grill was set up in the middle of that arc and business conducted there.

  “The roll of rope is over there by the end stake,” John pointed. “If you want to cut a couple more posts from the woods you can extend my boundary out further to make it clear we’re together,” John invited. “The rope is long enough.”

  “I’ll do that, and across the back of us on the wood line of you don’t mind.”

  “I should have thought of that,” John admitted. “Pick a couple of trees by each end and use them to string it a bit higher. If it’s strung up waist or chest-high they can’t say they didn’t see it, can they? I’ll show Eileen your stuff and how to care for it. You guys are getting an entire small cooler to take home. It keeps the eggs warm. I don’t want to risk repacking and losing them. Next festival I’d like the cooler back though.”

  When Vic was done, they were fenced off in an approximate half circle. He looked around. The lawns were filling up steadily, though most people wanted to be near the lanes Mr. Mast marked off with stakes, leading to his barn doors or by the outhouses. A few sellers set up clear down by the road, hoping to get customers when they arrived before they started wandering around the crowd.

  He saw the ex-deputy, Arlo, strolling around looking at the displays of goods without picking anything up or showing much interest. When Arlo looked up, he locked eyes with Vic but didn’t give any sign of recognition. Vic took that as a hint and stopped staring at him.

  A passing man did recognize Vic and came over to the rope. “Mr. Foy, do you by any chance have any of those bigger nails left? I’d be interested in a trade for some.”

  “Come on inside and I’ll show you what I have this time. I took down another old outbuilding and saved all the hardware. I have things at home I didn’t bring too.” He was an older man and Vic didn’t insult him by offering a hand but stood close to help if he had any trouble high-stepping over the boundary rope.

  “I’m going to the outhouses,” Alice informed him.

  Vic looked for Arlo but didn’t see him. Neither was Eileen in sight when he looked the other way. He’d have walked Alice there if he didn’t have a customer, but it would look very strange to ask her to wait.

  “I don’t see Eileen around to go with you,” Vic hinted, craning his neck.

  “I think that’s where she was headed,” Alice said. She was already climbing over the roped-off area and Vic decided to let it go. The grounds were thick with people everywhere now, the entire route to the outhouses. It wasn’t like an Olsen could snatch her away in the middle of a crowd.

  “I have seventy-three of the big sixteen penny nails,” Vic told the fellow.

  * * *

  April’s com dinged. It wasn’t urgent but it was the tone that said it was a friend. She set aside her reading material and checked. It was Dr. Ames, better known to her as Jelly.

  “My favorite doctor,” April greeted him. “Do you have a new gene mod for me?”

  “Alas, you have attained human perfection, and I can’t improve on you.”

  “Human, sure. Surely you can transcend that with hooves or something,” April suggested.

  “The Chinese will be happy to take your money,” Ames told her.

  “They might get confused and disassemble me into retail parts,” April worried.

  “Sooo sorry, wong patient,” Ames said with a fake sing-song voice and looked genuinely distressed. That would get him ten to twenty years as a hate crime, mocking tonal languages in North America or Europe.

  “You should have been an actor,” April said.

  “Aren’t we all?” Jelly asked, suddenly philosophical.

  “Nah, lots of people can’t even tell a lie keeping their mouth shut,” April said. “Jeff and Irwin both shout what they are thinking on their face. But you didn’t call about that. What’s on your mind tonight?”

  “I called to brag. You got me started, modifying mushrooms and such for the Cabbage Mines. I wanted to show you this first. This is my latest project and likely my biggest success.”

  He held up a translucent square container. There was a uniform mass of growth media and roots in the bottom. The golden colored plants sticking up from that were only about a hundred millimeters high but had an impressive head for their size.

  “Some kind of grain?” April asked but her face was screwed up in thought.

  “Not some kind, wheat!” Jelly zoomed his com camera out, set the container down, and plucked one of the grain heads. After he rolled it hard b
etween his hands, he held it up to the camera to show her the liberated berries.

  “How can such a tiny plant possibly yield that much grain?” April wondered. “I mean, leaves are like little solar cells, right? They can only absorb so much energy to support the chemical process.”

  “Photosynthesis, yes, yes. I’m so proud of you. You cut right to the heart of the matter. They would indeed grow stunted and sickly out in the open in an Earth field. These however are gene-modified to have a higher density of those components that do the conversion. They also put less energy into their structure as a consequence. Indeed, besides not fruiting in sunlight at natural levels, they would lodge easily in a gentle wind. They are fragile. However at lunar gravity in a sheltered environment, with five times as much light at critical frequencies, they thrive.”

  “We’ll have bread, no matter what happens with Earth,” April realized.

  “We already have other grains,” Jelly pointed out,” but wheat is such a part of our culture. I don’t doubt eventually we’d have grown the Earth variety as a luxury, no matter how dear. This lets you grow it in about a quarter of the volume.”

  “Will this be all that less dear with your royalties?” April wondered.

  “If I’m not reasonable about it, flour isn’t that expensive from Earth. I intend to take the long view, as I’ve seen you three do. It means we can take wheat with us to the stars in and other habitats and planets. In a hundred years it may be a huge cash flow. I’m not so impatient I insist on making an immediate killing. It’s an investment. I learned a lot from it too. You need two sets of tunable LEDs for this variant to get optimum growth and protein yields, because it needs two different frequencies of light. We’re developing ways to know when two or more bands are needed.”

  “Life extension has changed how long we are willing to wait on a return,” April agreed. “So what’s your next big trick?”

  Jelly laughed. “That left you impressed for all of ten minutes, didn’t it?”