“They should be just as involved as the rest of us,” Archer said. She’d talked to some of her nonscientific friends. They were scared.
“Should be. But I have a healthy mistrust of private industry. I prefer to keep things under government control.” Where she or someone like her could oversee the work, Archer thought. The key word in Maddox’s last sentence wasn’t “government.” It was “control.”
“We can do probes,” Killius said.
“What about a defense system?”
Killius frowned. “A planetary defense system? That’s not something we can do alone. I’m sure the other nations would have something to say about it. In the ’80s, when President Reagan suggested the Star Wars system—”
“I know your institutional memory is long,” Maddox said. “So’s mine. And Reagan’s system, in addition to being forty years out-of-date, never got off the ground. And it wasn’t designed to protect us from things arriving from outer space. Instead, it was to protect us from things launched into-space from other countries. It’s not applicable. If we’re doing a planetary defense system, the other nations will benefit from it.”
“If we present it to them properly,” Archer said, finally understanding one of the reasons she was here. Her work at STScI was largely a matter of international cooperation and coordination. “If we give them a say-so in much of what we do.”
“I’d prefer this to be an American-run project,” Maddox said.
“Forgive me, General,” Archer said, “but you can have a project that’s run formally by the Americans, and you’ll get a lot of protest. Or you can have one run informally by us, with much of the control situated in this country, and you’ll get almost no protest at all.”
“This has happened with your telescopes?”
“Yes,” Archer said. “And I’m speaking from experience in times of peace. We’re not at peace now. There should be even more cooperation.”
Killius was studying her salad, working her way methodically through all the lettuce and pushing the croutons aside. She looked like a woman who knew she was being doubleteamed. Archer wanted to take her aside and assure her that it hadn’t been set up beforehand, that she hadn’t agreed to the meal to badger Killius into a position she didn’t want to be in.
The very first waiter, the one who had brought Archer her drink, appeared and whisked away their salad plates. He cleaned the crumbs off the tablecloth with a little brush and then put large platters down before leaving as silently as he had arrived.
“So,” Maddox said. “A defense system. We have ideas, and we’ve already talked to a few of your people. What we really need from NASA isn’t a design for the defense system, but your cooperation in using manned shuttles to set it up.”
“Oh,” Killius said. “We don’t become a long arm of the Defense Department, then.”
Archer stiffened, wondering if Maddox would take offense. But she wasn’t even looking at Killius. She was looking at the headwaiter, who was carrying a tray of food on three fingertips. He bowed and placed the tray on its little cart. On top were dishes covered with silver warmers.
“The filet,” he said with just a hint of a British accent. Archer wondered why it was that all headwaiters spoke with that same accent, that same precision. Was it taught to them in headwaiter school?
“Mine,” she said.
He waved it in front of her, before setting it down and removing the cover with a flourish. Then he repeated the procedure with the lobster and the duck.
“Do your meals look satisfactory?”
“As good as usual, Claude,” Maddox said. Her tone clearly held dismissal. The headwaiter nodded, grabbed his tray, and left.
“The long arm of the Defense Department?” Maddox said softly. Archer winced. She had hoped Maddox hadn’t heard that. “You sound as if that’s a problem, Jesse. NASA and Defense have always worked together closely.”
“And been separate agencies.”
“This is not the time to worry about who’s in charge of what,” Maddox said. “The lines are probably going to blur mightily before this thing is over.”
Killius stared at her lobster as if she suddenly didn’t know how to eat it.
“They’ve already blurred,” Archer said. “Even between countries.”
The cooperation they had all seen on the Tenth Planet Project wouldn’t have been possible a year before.
“Jesse,” Maddox said. “What’s bothering you?”
Killius pushed her plate away. She hadn’t touched the lobster. “Change bothers me,” she said, her head down. Then she raised it. “It’s not you, General. It’s the new ways of thinking. I’m a better bureaucrat than scientist, I guess, but I’m both, ultimately, and both operate by strict rules. Suddenly I find myself in a world in which the old rules no longer apply, not to science, and not to bureaucracy.”
“The old rules do apply,” Maddox said. “But it’s the old wartime rules, not peacetime rules. None of us worked during the Cold War—in fact, we were all children when it ended—but that’s the model NASA has to look to now. An enemy so great that we might not be able to destroy it, but we have to put our best effort into it. That attitude got us into outer space in the first place.”
“We’re not trying to go to space, General,” Killius said. “No.” Maddox spoke softly. “We’re trying to save Earth.” Archer let out a small breath. Her hands were trembling. Killius looked at both of them for a moment. She was pale beneath her makeup. “Probes, and manned shuttle missions.”
“Yes,” Maddox said. “That’s all we’re asking.”
“That’s a lot,” Killius said. “We’re stretched now.”
“I’m trying to change that,” Maddox started, but Killius raised a hand to stop her.
“If you can guarantee the money,” Killius said, “I can guarantee results.”
Maddox met Killius’s gaze for a moment. Archer found herself holding her breath. The two women were staring at each other as if they could read each other’s minds.
“I can guarantee the money,” Maddox said.
“Then you’ll have your probes. I’ll make sure we’ll know everything humanly possible about those aliens by the time they make their return trip around the sun. And you can have all the shuttles you can pay to get into orbit.”
“Good,” Maddox said. “I can’t ask for more.”
She picked up her fork and poked at her duck. Archer cut another piece of steak. It was one of the best steaks she had eaten for a long time. After a moment, Killius pulled her plate closer and began to pick apart the lobster.
Maddox took a bite of duck and then smiled. “The meeting’s over,” she said. “Let’s have a real conversation, about men, and vid stars, and whether or not we should have dessert.”
Archer looked at her.
Killius seemed startled.
Maddox raised her eyebrows. “We don’t get chances like this very often,” she said, “and I suspect our chances will be fewer and fewer over the next couple of months.”
She took a bite of duck, chewed for a moment, and then cut another piece. It was as if she couldn’t get enough.
She said, “Eat well, ladies. We have to enjoy the good things in life while we still have them.”
The words didn’t encourage Archer to eat more. Instead, they nearly stole her appetite. While we still have them. Even Maddox thought that ultimately they’d lose.
Archer shuddered.
She had a hunch Maddox was right.
April 29, 2018
22:07 Universal Time
168 Days Until Second Harvest
General Gail Banks felt the shuttle shudder as it attached itself to the docking bay outside one of the units of the International Space Station. Sloppy work, that. A shuttle should never shudder when it docked, especially in space, where so many things could go wrong.
She waited for the all clear, then unhooked all her seat belts locking her into the passenger chair. She had purposely stayed out of the c
ockpit—she’d learned through bitter experience that she couldn’t be hands-off when faced with a less competent pilot than she was, and most pilots never came up to her exacting standards. When she had been in charge of the shuttle program, pilot testing had been rigorous. So rigorous, in fact, that some idiot had complained to the media, which then sicced the congressional doofuses on the case. Congressmen who had Air Force bases in their home states, and tons of pilots who someday dreamed of flying to the moon as their constituents, suddenly demanded an investigation.
And so, Banks had to spend a week out of her life sitting in front of microphones in the House of Representatives, defending her standards to a bunch of people who wouldn’t know what standards were if a lobbyist didn’t tell them. It had been all she could do to keep her contempt to a minimum.
Not that it did any good. She was the public face for the program, and so, of course, she was the one whose head went on the block. She got several apologies from her superiors, all of whom said they wouldn’t have removed her from duty if it had been their choice. But it hadn’t been. The suits had decided that standards were too rigorous. Our pilots weren’t getting a fair shake.
And now she had to tolerate a shuddery docking on the International Space Station. A shuddery docking on the wrong part of the ISS could create all sorts of internal problems for the station. If she had time, she would try to affect the piloting problems from here.
She wouldn’t have time, and she knew it. She was on the tightest deadline of her life.
“Ready, General?” The pilot poked his head through the separator.
“Are you certain we’re properly docked?” she asked. “That was a rough connection.”
“All systems go according to the board.”
“I don’t give a damn about the board,” she said. “You eyeball it, mister, and then we disembark. I’ve got nuclear missiles onboard this beast, and I’m not going to lose one of them to your carelessness.”
The pilot’s face flushed. “Yes, sir.” He disappeared into the cockpit again.
She clutched a rung and waited. He hadn’t turned the low gravity on yet either, and they would need it to unload those missiles. This part of the ISS, the newest part, had continual gravity—not as strong as Earth’s—but enough so that the permanent members of the ISS’s staff didn’t get osteoporosis or other degenerative bone and muscle diseases. No matter how much exercise folks did in zero g, it didn’t substitute for the good old force of gravity herself.
Through the closed cockpit door, she heard the slide of the pilot’s exit. Well, at least he took her advice. Only she didn’t think it was her tone that worried him. She thought it was probably the mention of the missiles. Most folks didn’t like the mention of nuclear and warhead in the same sentence, let alone in the same phrase.
She smiled to herself, and floated toward one of the windows. The ISS was a strange place. The first pieces, Russian-built, went up before the turn of the century. The ISS was, as its name suggested, an international project that had been initially designed for research. But as more private industry got into space travel, and as governments saw the point of it, the suggestion of turning the ISS into an interplanetary way station gained legs. The problem was that the ISS wasn’t designed for it. Sure, it had modules upon modules upon modules, but they were held together with spit and glue, and a whole lot of prayer. The newest pieces could barely talk to the younger pieces, and the oldest piece, called Zarya by its designers, was mostly shut down because it had become so dangerous. Unfortunately, it was smack-dab in the middle of the main section of the station, so it couldn’t be disassembled or jettisoned, at least not without great effort, great expense, and great risk.
Zarya wasn’t her problem. The ISS really wasn’t. She was running ops from here, and her biggest problem wasn’t the missiles. It was the deadline. When General Clarissa Maddox assigned Banks the task, she’d said, “I know this deadline is tight. In fact, it’s damn near impossible. But you’re the only person I know who can make the impossible happen efficiently and well.”
It was, Banks knew, both a vote of confidence and an apology for all the things that had happened with the shuttle program. But Banks also knew she wouldn’t be assigned a mission this critical strictly as an apology. She had to be the best for the job, just like Maddox said she was.
There was no margin for error. She wouldn’t allow any. She’d make sure these missiles were unloaded, and then when the next shipment came up, she’d make sure those missiles were properly taken care of, as well.
And she would keep doing that until all the area around the space station was filled with missiles. And then the aliens would see that they attacked the wrong people.
Maddox’s plan was a good one, and Banks was proud to be the one who would make sure everything got done right. She wouldn’t make any friends on this job, but she might just save a few billion human lives.
She grinned.
As long as they were killing a few billion aliens in the process, she could live with that.
5
May 6, 2018
9:02 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time
161 Days Until Second Harvest
Leo Cross was late and of all the places to be late to, NanTech wasn’t one of them. He had forgotten how these old streets outside the Beltway jammed during rush hour. He was five miles from NanTech and it felt like he was five hundred miles away.
His car was on automatic, following the directions given by the guidance system installed somewhere in Detroit.
“What do those idiots know about D.C.?” he muttered and shut off the guidance system. The Mercedes squawked, “Are you certain—?” before he shut off the vocal controls as well. Then he took over the steering himself, turned right onto a side street, and drove fifteen miles over the speed limit through a residential area that had been built around the time he was born.
He hoped no children were playing hooky from school, no dogs decided to take that moment to cross the road, no cats chased a mouse across his path. He hadn’t driven hands-on in months, not since the last time he’d rented a car in, what? Oregon? when he went out to see Bradshaw for the very first time.
It was rather liberating. He hadn’t realized how controlled he felt by this expensive car, by its automatic everything—so smooth you can forget how to drive and still get where you’re going in comfort, according to the stupid radio ads. Well, he was getting where he was going, in comfort, and on time, because he was taking matters into his own hands.
The back streets had none of the crunch of the main thoroughfares. He was beginning to see the problems inherent in automatic guidance systems.
He turned into the NanTech employee lot, bounced over a few speed bumps, and parked behind the building. There was no gilt here, no fancy scrollwork to mar the glass-and-steel design. It looked so ’90s. He’d always found that amusing. He was coming to the cutting edge of nanotechnology, and the building looked dated.
He walked in the back door, ignoring the building as it greeted him—everything at NanTech talked—and happy to avoid the bug sculpture in the lobby. That’s what Bradshaw called it anyway. The sculpture was supposed to be of a human form covered with nanomachines. Instead, Bradshaw said, it looked like some poor guy covered with ants.
Cross pressed a button for the elevator. He debated, as he waited for the doors to open, whether or not to shut off the vocal unit, but then decided not to. He was late. He deserved it.
Besides, he didn’t know where everyone was meeting.
The elevator doors slid open silently. The elevator was empty. Cross cursed under his breath, and stepped inside.
Dr. Cross. You are half an hour late. I will take you to the fifteenth floor.
“Thanks,” he muttered, knowing he didn’t sound grateful at all. He hated having inanimate objects talk to him. Portia Groopman, she of the genius mind trapped in a twenty-year-old’s body, said she found all this idle chatter “comforting.”
Cross was really
afraid to think about what the world would be like in his old age.
If the world survived to his old age.
He shuddered, wishing that for one day he could forget how very close they all were to losing everything.
The elevator doors opened. The nanomachines had formed a series of teddy bear sculptures, all of them pointing to the left.
“Cute, Portia,” Cross said.
She had designed the nanosculptures, as she called them. They changed daily, sometimes hourly. Nanomachines were programmed to form several different images. Usually the changes followed a prearranged program, but sometimes someone—usually Portia—made them do something special for a guest. In this case, a late guest.
Cross followed the pointing bears down one hallway until he reached an open doorway. Inside, he saw Bradshaw, Portia, and two other members of NanTech’s whiz squad, as Bradshaw called them. None of the NanTech employees on this team, at least, were older than twenty-five.
“Hey, Leo, it’s about time,” Portia said. She looked up from the screen she’d been studying. She was a slight girl, whose delicate frame made her seem even slighter. She wore rose-tinted glasses and had her black hair cut in a perfect wedge. Her skin was tanned from her trip to South America with Bradshaw.
Bradshaw looked up at the mention of Cross’s name. Bradshaw was the oldest member of the Tenth Planet Project. He was nearly sixty, although he didn’t look it. He had lost weight since coming to Washington, D.C., but he still had love handles, as Britt called them, and his graying hair needed a trim. He, too, had tanned on this last trip, and it accented the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth.
“Leo,” he said. “You’re late.”
“It’s the damn car,” Cross said, and came into the room. “It insisted on driving us the slow route.”
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