Leonard-Shou Gibbon McBride frowned.
He was seated in the cabin of a Quintex Corporation
patroller, a short-range, one-man space vehicle used for
security duty in the Torus. The spacecraft was currently
several thousand kilometers from Mars' orbit, near the edge
of the sprawling asteroid field. A high-band distress
signal had brought him and his partner here, and McBride
could now see the source: a loneboat whose main power had
failed, apparently in tandem with a hull breach which had
sent the vehicle into an uncontrolled spin.
The loneboat was rotating fast enough to pin the pilot
down, which made its tangential velocity at least twelve or
thirteen meters per second. The motion of its center of
gravity was negligible, and unnoticeable since the
patrollers had matched velocity with the loneboat. Stopping
the thing with two single-thrust drives would be tricky
nonetheless. McBride moved his patroller up next to the
loneboat while his partner flanked it on the opposite side.
"That's about fifteen meeps tangential," reported Kyle-
Bartelt Jemison, waving to McBride. "Two gees. Must be a
tourist."
"Roger that." Any astro would have been able to make
simple repairs, at least a velocity correction, under two
gravities. McBride punched up a tactical model on his
screen. "See if he's still conscious. Ask him to shut off
his distress call."
Jemison parked his ship and flipped on the radio.
McBride saw the red light on his console wink off a few
seconds later, as the computer painted numbers and velocity
vectors across his tactical display. He transmitted the
information to Jemison and switched on his secondary
gyrostabilizers. The two patrollers began moving in a tight
circle, matching their velocities to the loneboat's
spinning.
"Rock and roll," came Jemison's voice. He had already
informed the loneboat pilot of their planned rescue attempt;
the cancellation of the distress signal had been an
acknowledgment. Two gravities of acceleration pressed him
against the back of his seat, and the loneboat seemed
motionless beside him.
"Shooters locked." McBride glanced at his clock. "Now-
now-now."
Four silver lines glinted against the blackness of
interplanetary space, connecting the two patrollers to the
disabled loneboat. Electricity flashed through the cables
as soon as the clamps secured themselves to the vessel's
hull, and blue flame roared from the patrollers' main
engines. The three vessels slowed together in a mechanical
ballet, whirling against a backdrop of silver-spotted
darkness.
Suddenly, the cables between the loneboat and Jemison's
craft came loose, and the patroller lurched away from the
other two ships. The entire assembly's center of gravity
shifted before McBride could shut off his thrusters, and his
patroller swung around the loneboat, still attached by the
cables.
"Jick!" swore Jemison as he doused the alert klaxon.
His patroller came to a halt, spun around, and headed back
toward the other two ships.
McBride felt a jerk as the loneboat slammed into his
cables, and quickly re-vectored his thrust to counteract the
unexpected but predictable spin. He managed to halt it in a
matter of seconds, and it occurred to him that the sudden
stop might have injured the pilot. The loneboat hull was
intact, but the radio antenna had just been crushed.
A few keystrokes, and McBride's cables silently
unlatched themselves and drifted toward the loneboat. He
could see the gaping hole, where a cargo hold had blown out,
as the boat drifted past the patroller's underside. They
would have had to make a personal inspection anyway.
Jemison had reeled his cables back in, and now fired
his maneuvering jets to come up alongside McBride, who was
matching the loneboat's course again. "Cable failure. We'd
better check the electricals when we get back."
"Right." McBride reset his board. "The antenna's dead.
Is his laser working?"
"It's a she, and her cooling systems are out."
"Looks like a house call. You or me?"
"Hey, I've got a wife and kid," said Jemison.
McBride chuckled and reached for his helmet.
Freefall.
The blue-and-grey patroller shrank behind McBride. His
ebony eyes focused on one of the cables trailing behind the
loneboat, and he placed his hand over the thin shape,
centering it behind his heavy white glove. It grew larger
as he watched with quiet patience, thinking of oceans and
beaches. He had left Earth ten days ago, and he had spent
most of the preceding month lying on a towel in Rio De
Janeiro. He smiled as he remembered the rest of his
vacation.
His hand connected with the cable, and he made a fist
and curled his legs toward his body. Inertia tugged on him
as he stopped falling. Then his other hand came up, and he
pulled himself toward the loneboat itself, slowly tightening
the graceful arc inward, towing a medical kit and toolbox.
Every astro was part gymnast, part deep-sea diver, and part
fighter pilot.
A dull noise rang in his ears as his boots magnetically
attached themselves to the hull, and he stood up to wave to
Jemison. Two steps put him at the mouth of the compromised
cargo hold.
"Definitely blown out," McBride observed, shining his
helmet light into the hold. He saw warped fragments of
metal supports and partitions. "The interior is intact.
Looks like a structural failure."
"Roger that." Jemison studied the schematic being
displayed on his screen, wondering what could have happened
to the loneboat. Most hull breaches were caused by rocks or
debris smashing into and through a vessel.
"Wait." McBride leaned forward. Something whitish was
reflecting light from parts of the mangled compartment.
"There's ice in here."
"Water?" Jemison began programming a crude simulation.
"Coolant failure?"
"Possibly. See if there was an airlock into that
hold." The suited figure stood upright again. "I'm heading
forward."
Every step was a minor battle. McBride passed a
registry number and the insignia of Ariane Odyssey on his
way to the main airlock. The only sounds were his own
breathing and the clanging of his boots against bare hull:
the sounds of space. He began humming to himself. Jemison
grimaced in anticipation of the inevitable singing.
Thankfully, McBride turned his radio off first.
Giant steps are what you take / Walking on the moon / I
hope my legs don't break / Walking on the moon...
Two verses and three key changes later, he was standing
on the loneboat's passenger module. The cabin windows had
been silvered over to reflect lasers and radar. McBride
fished a wrench from his toolkit and rapped three times on
the airlock's outer door. A moment later, yellow lights
began flashing around the portal. He put away his wrench
and took a step back, waiting for the airlock to cycle.
"What the hell are you idiots doing?" the woman snapped
as the inner door opened. McBride blinked, cradling his
helmet under his left arm. "You nearly broke my neck!"
"Sorry. Electrical problems." He made a visual
inspection of the cabin, a somewhat cramped white box. "Do
you require medical attention?"
"I said `nearly.'" The pilot tried to stare him down
with pale blue eyes, then shook her head briefly and
extended her left hand. "No. Carolyn-Lane Leefield, Ariane
Odyssey."
McBride grasped the offered hand, noting that she was
not ignorant of Torie custom. "Leonard-Shou McBride, Quintex
Torus."
They stared at each other for a scarce moment.
Leefield was easily as tall as McBride, who had "grown" four
centimeters since taking up residence in the Torus. Her
lithe form still seemed stockier than McBride's, and her
shoulder-length hair-- a pleasant shade of brown, Leonard
thought-- was too long for her to be anything but an
Earther. Nonetheless, McBride had been an Earther once, and
he could appreciate the musculature. Leefield's annoyance
momentarily dulled her alertness, allowing McBride's eyes to
wander more than they should have.
"Was that you singing outside?"
"No. Maybe you should get your hearing checked..."
McBride blinked. "How's the boat?"
"My main power is out. Batteries will last another
four hours." Leefield nodded toward the rear of the vessel.
"I need to repair two generators and reset the reactor."
McBride nodded and swung the toolkit behind his back.
"Let's park this thing first."
Jemison had slaved the other patroller to his own and
finished running simulations. He transmitted the results
for McBride and Leefield to see. "Assuming the hold was full
of boiling water, it's possible that the cargo airlock blew
out."
Leefield sighed. "The hold was water-cooled. I blew
out the airlock manually."
McBride gave her a puzzled look. "Just for laughs?"
"The cargo was destabilizing after I lost power. I had
to get rid of it." She was obviously embarrassed, either by
the fact of the accident or the circumstances of her rescue.
McBride knew better than to ask what she had been
transporting, or why the explosives had been placed so they
would rip out the entire wall of the hold.
"Should we be going after your cargo?" asked Jemison,
causing McBride to wince. His partner still hadn't mastered
the art of non-conversation.
"The crates have their own homing beacons. The company
will retrieve them."
"Let's full-stop the boat, Kyle," ordered McBride.
"Wilco." The channel closed with a snap. Leefield
strapped herself into the pilot's seat as McBride pushed
himself toward the other chair.
"I tell you, something's going on."
Six hours had passed since McBride and Jemison had
finished repairs on the Ariane loneboat and returned to
their home base on the asteroid New Montana. Transparent
bubble domes and docking ports lined the exterior of the
giant rock, which had been mined and hollowed out and was
now home to several thousand Quintex Corporation employees
and their families. The two security officers sat in a
booth on the spaceward side of the company cafeteria,
enjoying the view of the stars and steaming mugs of coffee.
"Kyle, you're too paranoid for your own good." McBride
shook his head, short black hair waving in New Montana's low
gravity, and took another gulp of his coffee. The hot
liquid rolled a tingling sensation across the surface of his
tongue.
"Think about it." Jemison leaned forward
conspiratorially, his dark, African features gaining
shadows. "That loneboat came from Mars. Where was it
going?"
"Jupiter. Ariane's got a new base on Io." The moons of
Jupiter had recently become the latest fad in commercial
ventures, and Ariane, as usual, was jumping on the
bandwagon.
"And what was it hauling?"
McBride shrugged, resigning himself to his fate.
"Something which began destabilizing when main power
failed. She said that the hold was water-cooled. So the
power plant runs an environmental control system for the
cargo."
"The only problem is," offered McBride, "anything that
important would have its own backups, in the crates
themselves."
Jemison nodded, pausing to take a sip of coffee before
continuing. "Unless they wanted her to lose the cargo."
McBride squinted almond-shaped eyes at his companion.
"Come again?"
"Why assign an Earther to pilot a loneboat? Right now
the trip takes about a week, at one gee, to get from Mars to
Jupiter. A dozen things might go wrong in that time.
Ariane's got plenty of trained astros; why not send one of
them?
"I'll tell you why," he continued before McBride could
respond. "Either they wanted someone trained in espionage,
or they wanted someone who would have trouble fixing a dead
loneboat. Someone who would guarantee that the cargo was
jettisoned into space."
"What's the advantage of dumping your cargo several
hundred thousand kilometers from your destination?" wondered
McBride.
"Maybe you don't really want the cargo to reach
Jupiter." A slightly wicked twinkle had come into Jemison's
preternaturally hazel eyes. "Maybe what's on the manifest
isn't really what's in the crates, and you want to lose it
for someone else to pick up."
"So you're suggesting that Ariane is now into
smuggling." The company had endured its share of scandals,
but they had never done anything illegal. Anthony Galza was
as well-respected and sometimes feared as Jacob Quinn,
Quintex's own CEO.
Jemison shrugged. "The only things I know of which
would need to exist in a regulated environment are
controlled substances and biological samples."
"C'mon, Kyle," McBride sighed, "it was probably just
breeder-grade plutonium. Calm down."
A laugh rumbled from Jemison's chest, wrinkling the
khaki fabric of his uniform. "Len, you just don't think
about these things enough."
"I think about them plenty. I don't take them
seriously."
"Conspiracies exist," insisted Jemison. "Sometimes,
when something gets big enough to cover the sky, you begin
to believe that it is the sky."
"You miss clouds," McBride decided. Jemison had
emigrated from Earth just over a year ago, to explore new
employment in the Torus, and still fell into his old habits
occasionally. His wife and daughter had assimilated more
easily, presumably because they had not been thrust into a
null-gravity vehicle and told to fly reconnaissance missions
through mostly empty space.
"I miss daylight," said Jemison. "You're trying to
change the subject."
"Yes." McBride reached a hand into his shirt pocket and
produced a small piece of plastic. He slid it across the
table with a smirk.
"`Carolyn-Lane Leefield'," Jemison read aloud. "`Ariane
Odyssey, Project Skyscraper.' Len, you old dog."
McBride grinned and dropped the card back into his
pocket. "Let's talk about... football."
Three-quarters of a century ago, the Californian
billionaire Madison Quinn died, bequeathing the family
business to his only child, Katherine. Within two decades,
she had merged Quinn Textiles with two technology firms,
dubbed the conglomerate Quintex International, and married a
dedicated stargazer. In the same time, the United States'
National Aeronautics and Space Administration had completed
its Phoenix orbital vehicle project, put Space Station
Freedom into orbit, and sent two unmanned probes to Mars.
The next half-century saw an enormous surge in the
exploration of space. The European Space Agency became
privatized and renamed itself Ariane Odyssey, after its most
successful launch vehicle. Mir, the Russian space station,
added three internationally managed modules and became the
first permanent orbital spaceport. Quintex International
expanded, becoming Quintex Corporation, and entered the
computer and astronautics industries.
Ariane Odyssey established the first manned base on
Mars and began scouting the asteroids of the Torus for
possible mining and settlement. Quintex established the
first permanent lunar base, and helped NASA develop its
Gryphon interplanetary vehicle. Dozens of private companies
set up stations on the Moon, establishing the first major
colony in the solar system. People began taking up
permanent residence off the Earth.
The assassination of General Secretary Samuel Gregory
panicked the United Nations, which set up a lunar colony and
relocated its headquarters in record time. Nearly all of
Earth's industrialized nations signed the United Nations
Space Fleet Treaty, turning a good quarter of the lunar
surface into a base of operations for a military
organization which answered to one planet but no single
nation. NASA became part of UNSF, and the Treaty favored
defense over exploration.
Quintex constructed a Mars base within Ariane's
biosphere. While UNSF built a navy, the two corporate
giants collaborated to mine the Torus, also colonizing New
Montana, New Burgundy, City of Light, and a host of other
large rocks. Private companies developed a myriad of
interplanetary spacecraft, expediting the spread of human
civilization through the Torus. The asteroid belt had
become the new frontier, and "Tories" soon gained a
reputation for being independent, intelligent, and
capitalist. People began saying, perhaps melodramatically,
that the last days of federalism were at hand, and the
future would belong to those who had escaped the cradle of
Earth.
The display blinked and lit up with the information
Jemison had requested. McBride slid a data disc into the
recording circuit, which hummed for a second. A green lamp
winked on, indicating that the computer had finished
printing their mission briefing.
"Escort duty," Jemison read as McBride dropped the disc
into one of his many pockets. They started back toward the
other side of the hangar, where they had been working on
their patrollers. "Four miners on a fringe survey. Looks
like I'll get to finish that book after all."
McBride wiped a hand on his blue coveralls. "Do you get
the feeling we're being punished?"
"Punished?" A knowing smile tugged at Jemison's mouth.
"What could they possibly want to punish us for?"
Everybody in New Montana remembered, of course.
McBride and Jemison, Echo Section's best pilots, had gone
temporarily insane and driven Quintex's prized VF-42
defenders within five meters of twelve asteroids during the
company's last astronautics exhibition. Though several
million people were suitably impressed by this
demonstration, Jacob-Martin Taggart Quinn had immediately
ordered the demotion of the pair. The CEO was highly
protective of his company's spacecraft.
McBride and Jemison had never been able to fully
explain their actions, even after a formal inquiry and
dozens of informal conversations. Of course, the doctors
found nothing mentally or physically wrong, and the security
office had spoken well enough of them to keep them with
Quintex. Their current answer to any question about the
incident was that sometimes, you have to do something crazy
to make sure you can still tell the difference.
They usually ate lunch alone.
"I suppose we deserve it," sighed McBride as they
reached the patrollers. "Damn stupid stunt."
Jemison pulled open a hatch and paused. "Fun, though.
And we thought of it all by ourselves..."
"Well." McBride grinned broadly. "Where'd you put the
new APUs?"
"Port side, your ship." The shorter man sat down beside
a cooling element. "So what's going on with you and Miss
Derelict?"
"Nothing at all." McBride swapped a new ancillary
processing unit into his patroller's forward radar computer.
"Those repairs took an awful long time," mused Jemison,
opening a heat sink.
McBride gave him a disapproving look. "You don't get
out much, do you, Kyle?"
"`Out' is a vacuum. You didn't talk to her?"
"The conversation was limited to reactor cores and
generator housings."
"You planning to stay in touch?"
"Do you know how much a call to Io costs?"
"There's always E-mail." Countless communication
satellites in the Solar System provided many services, not
the least of which was sustaining the Internet. It still
surprised some that Tories would support such a socialist
system, but the fact was that it worked, and capitalists
tend to be pragmatic as well as greedy.
"Do you have a life of your own, Kyle?" McBride
restarted the forward radar and watched its test lights
cycle from red to yellow to green.
"Yes, but it's not nearly as interesting as yours."
"Ah, self-esteem problems too."
Jemison waved an air filter at his friend. "When's the
last time you fell in love?"
"About ten hours ago. Is this conversation going to
continue?"
"No, thank you."
Copyright © 1996 Curtis C. Chen. All Rights Reserved.