The Precipice (Asteroid Wars)

by Ben Bova

  She gave him a withering look. “What makes you think I want to save the Earth?”

  “Not even to save your grandchildren?” He said it with a smile.

  Cardenas gasped when she realized what he meant. “You’re threatening my family?”

  He put on an innocent air. “Did I make a threat?”

  “You’re despicable!”

  Humphries slowly got to his feet, like a man weary of dealing with an obstinate child. “Dr. Cardenas,” he said slowly, “your options are few. Please hear me out.”

  “I won’t say a word to anyone.”

  “I’m not talking about that now.”

  She started to reply, then thought better of it.

  “At least listen to what I have to say.”

  She stared at him.

  “Think of your grandchildren back there on Earth,” Humphries coaxed. “Their future is in your hands.”

  Still without saying a word, Cardenas slowly sat on the sofa, facing Humphries.

  “That’s better,” he said smiling. “We’re both reasonable people. I’m sure we can work this out”

  George walked softly toward them, listening intently.

  STARPOWER 1

  Sitting in her command chair on the bridge, Pancho asked, “How do we know the bugs ain’t chewin’ away at us now?”

  Dan had never before seen Pancho look morose. Her long, lantern-jawed face was deadly serious now; her usual cocky grin had vanished.

  “They were eating copper,” Dan replied. “We got rid of the wire sample. The bugs went out the hatch with it”

  “You hope.”

  “Fervently,” said Dan.

  “Well, the ship’s wiring doesn’t use any copper,” Pancho said hopefully.

  “It’s all fiber optic. I know.”

  “There’s plenty of copper here and there, though,” Pancho went on. “Maybe only trace amounts, but if we got nanobugs eatin’ copper, they could knock out half the microprocessors on board.”

  “That’s great,” Dan groused.

  “The MHD channel!” she blurted. “It’s got a superconducting magnet wrapped around it!”

  “Holy Christ!”

  “If that goes, the magnet’U dump all its energy—”

  “It’ll explode?”

  “Like a frickin’ bomb,” Pancho said.

  “Great. Just perfect,” Dan muttered. “And there’s not a double-damned thing we can do about it, is there?”

  She shook her head. “Just hope it hasn’t been infected.”

  Dan felt shaky inside. He had to swallow before he could speak. “Not much we can do if it has been.”

  “Could be worse,” Pancho said, with false jollity. “If we had bugs that ate carbon, they’d be chewin’ on us.”

  Dan saw no humor in that. “Where’s Amanda?” he asked, pointing to the empty co-pilot’s chair. “Shouldn’t she be on duty up here?”

  “She’s back with Lars.”

  “In the sensor bay?”

  “Yup. He’s tryin’ to jury-rig the electron microscope to get nanometer resolution.”

  “So he can see nanobugs?”

  “If there’re any to be seen, right.”

  “Those two seem to spend a lot of time together,” Dan grumbled.

  “Come to think of it, that’s true.”

  Dan said nothing. He didn’t like the idea of Amanda and Fuchs playing around together, but he had no evidence that they were. Fuchs seemed like a pretty stiff straight arrow. But you never know, Dan said to himself. Amanda certainly seems to enjoy being with him.

  Pancho jabbed a finger toward one of the touchscreen displays. “Well, at least the magnetic shield’s holdin’ up okay. We’re safe from radiation storms… for th’ time being.”

  For the time being, Dan echoed silently.

  “And the MHD channel?”

  She tapped at a screen. “Normal as pie.”

  “The bugs haven’t infected it, then.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “I think I’ll go back to the sensor bay,” Dan muttered. “See how those two are getting along.”

  “Gonna be their chaperon?” Pancho teased.

  “Am I that obvious?”

  “You sure are, boss. A real worrywart.”

  “Do you think they need a chaperon?”

  “Prob’ly not. Mandy can take care of herself. Lars isn’t like Humphries.”

  Nodding his agreement with Pancho’s assessment of the situation, Dan said, “So I’ll see how he’s doing with the electron microscope.”

  “Good excuse,” Pancho said, laughing.

  Wishing he could forget his fears of the nanobugs, Dan left the bridge, poured himself a mug of coffee in the wardroom, and then headed along the passageway to the sensor bay. He could see them through the open hatch to the cramped little compartment, standing amid the humming instruments and flickering display screens, deep in earnest conversation.

  My god, they look like Beauty and the Beast, Dan thought. Even in rumpled tan coveralls, with her shining blonde hair pinned up in a sensible, no-nonsense fashion, Amanda looked gorgeous. Her big blue eyes were totally focused on Fuchs. In his usual dead-black pullover and slacks, his barrel-chested thickset body made him look like a feral animal out of some wildlife vid: a boar or a black bear. But he wasn’t growling or snarling at Amanda. Far from it.

  “How’s it going?” Dan asked as he stepped through the open hatch.

  They looked startled, as if they hadn’t seen him approaching.

  Pointing to the gray tube of the miniaturized electron microscope, Dan forced a grin and asked, “Find any nanobugs?”

  Fuchs turned away from Dan, toward the microscope. “No, it’s hopeless. This machine will never resolve nanometer objects.”

  Dan wasn’t surprised. “It wasn’t designed to.”

  “I had thought perhaps I could boost its power” Fuchs went on, “but that was an idle hope.”

  “We’ve been reviewing the long-range sensor data,” Amanda said, her cheeks slightly red. “Looking for a suitable asteroid, you know.”

  “And?”

  Fuchs broke into a happy grin. It was so unusual that Dan was taken aback.

  “We have an embarrassment of riches,” he said, tapping at one of the touchscreens. “There are more than a dozen metal-rich bodies within a day’s flight of us, or less.”

  Amanda said, “We’ve been trying to decide which one we should aim for.”

  Dan smiled at her. “That’s easy. Go for the biggest one.”

  George held his breath as he edged closer to the corner of the big bedroom where Humphries and Dr. Cardenas sat. They both looked tense, although he seemed strung high with anticipation, while fear and anger glowered clearly on Cardenas’s face.

  George knew that they couldn’t see him, yet he felt anxious, almost frightened to be this close to them, invisible or not. Don’t sneeze, he warned himself. Don’t fookin’ breathe.

  “All right,” Cardenas said tightly. “I’m listening.”

  Leaning slightly toward the sofa on which Cardenas sat, Humphries clasped his hands together and began, “Suppose I set you up in your own laboratory in some remote location on Earth. My father has holdings in Libya, for example. We could bring your grandchildren there, to be with you.”

  “And what would I be expected to do at this remote laboratory?” Cardenas asked. Her voice was without inflection, like an automaton’s, her face a frozen mask.

  “Nanomachines could be made to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, can’t they? Break the molecules down into carbon and oxygen atoms. The carbon could be buried, the oxygen released back into the air or sold as an industrial gas, whatever. That could stop the greenhouse warming in a year or two!”

  Cardenas’s expression did not change. “Nanotechnology is banned, you know that. No matter how you want to use it, you can’t make nanomachines anywhere on Earth. You’d have the GEC, the world government, every religious nut on Earth going crazy i
f you even hinted that you’re thinking of using nanotechnology.”

  Humphries smiled patiently. “We won’t tell them, for god’s sake. We just start doing it. In secret Out in the Sahara or the middle of the ocean or Antarctica, anywhere. In a year or maybe even less, they’ll start noticing the carbon dioxide levels going down. We can take out the other greenhouse gases, as well. They’ll see that the greenhouse warming is lessening. Then we’ll have them all by the balls! They’ll have to accept what we’re doing. They’ll have no choice.”

  “And what happens if these nanomachines don’t work exactly right? What happens if they start taking other carbon compounds apart? like you, for instance. You’re made of carbon atoms, aren’t you?”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “I know it won’t happen,” she said. “Because I won’t do it. It’s an absurd scheme.”

  “What’s absurd about it?” Humphries demanded.

  A slight, sardonic smile cracked Cardenas’s facade. “You don’t have any idea of how enormous Earth’s atmosphere is. Do you know how many tons of carbon dioxide you’d have to remove? Billions! Tens of billions, at least! You’d have to cover Africa with nanomachines to remove that much carbon dioxide!”

  “I’m sure that’s an exaggeration,” Humphries muttered, scowling.

  Cardenas shot to her feet, startling George. “All right, you’d merely have to cover the Sahara desert. It’s still beyond belief!”

  “But—”

  “And you’d never be able to keep it secret. Not a program of that scale.”

  “But it could be done, couldn’t it?”

  “It could be started,” she admitted. “Until some fanatic drops a nuke on us. Or laces our drinking water with plague bacillus.”

  “I can protect you against terrorists,” Humphries said.

  Cardenas paced to the window, obviously thinking furiously. Turning back to Humphries, she said, “Using nanomachines on that scale is an invitation to disaster. Some fruitcake could steal a handful and reprogram them to take apart… plastics, for example. Or petroleum. Or use them as assassination weapons. You’re talking about gobblers, for Christ’s sake!”

  “I know that,” Humphries said coldly.

  Cardenas shook her head. “It won’t work. Aside from the sheer physical scale of the project, the authorities on Earth would never grant approval for using nanomachines. Never! And I can’t say that I’d blame them.”

  Humphries slowly got to his feet. “You refuse to even try?”

  “It’s a hopeless task.”

  He sighed theatrically. “Well, I’ve tried to be reasonable. I thought we might be able to work something out.”

  “Let me go,” Cardenas said, with a pleading note in her voice.

  “I thought it would be a way for you to be with your grandchildren, as you want to be.”

  “Just let me go.”

  He gave her a sad look. “You know I can’t do that. It’s too great a risk for me.”

  “You can’t keep me here forever!”

  With a small shrug, Humphries asked, “What do you propose as a way out of this impasse?”

  She stared at him, open-mouthed.

  “I mean, you can see my problem. I know you can. How can I let you go when there’s every chance that you’ll tell people that I’m responsible for Dan Randolph’s death?”

  “But I’m responsible, too.”

  “Yes, I know. But you’d confess to it, wouldn’t you?”

  “I…” she hesitated, then said in a low, defeated voice, “I suppose I would, sooner or later.”

  “There you are,” Humphries said softly. “The problem remains.”

  “You’re going to have to kill me.”

  “I don’t want to do that. I’m not a cold-blooded murderer. In fact, I’d like to see you reunited with your grandchildren, if it’s at all possible. There must be some way we can work together, some way we can find around this problem.”

  “I don’t see any,” Cardenas whispered.

  “Well, think it over,” Humphries said, heading for the door. “I’m sure you can come up with a solution, if you just put your mind to it”

  He smiled as he opened the door and left. George saw the guard standing out in the hallway before Humphries closed the door and its lock clicked shut.

  As he strode down the hallway, Humphries mused to himself, It could work! If we could spread enough nanoma-chines I could break the greenhouse warming in a couple of years. They’d be on their knees with gratitude.

  He decided to put a small team of experts together to study the possibilities dispassionately. Cardenas isn’t the only nanotechnology guru in Selene, he assured himself.

  BREAKOUT

  Kris Cardenas stared at the locked door for several silent moments after Humphries left, then she suddenly broke into racking sobs. Face buried in her hands, body bent, she stumbled to the bed and threw herself onto it, crying inconsolably.

  George stood uncertainly in the far corner of the bedroom, wondering what he should do. She’s already hysterical, he said to himself. If I go and tap her on the shoulder and say, “Hi! I’m an invisible man!” she’ll probably freak out altogether.

  So he waited, fidgeting unhappily, until Cardenas stopped crying. It didn’t take long. She sat up on the bed, took a deep breath, then got to her feet and went to the lavatory. When she came out again, it was obvious to George that she had washed her face and put on some makeup. But her eyes were still red, puffy.

  Well, you can’t stand here like a fookin’ idiot forever, George told himself. Do something!

  Before he could decide what to do, Cardenas walked to the window and pressed her fingers against the glass. Then she turned and seemed to survey the room. With a slight nod, she walked to the bare little desk and picked up its wooden, cushioned chair. It seemed heavy for her, but she carried it, tottering slightly, to the window.

  She wants to crash the window and jump out of here, George realized. She’ll just end up hurting herself.

  He touched her arm lightly and whispered, “Excuse me.”

  Cardenas flinched and let the chair thump to the carpeting. She blinked, stared, saw nothing.

  “Excuse me, Dr. Cardenas,” George whispered.

  She spun around in a complete circle, eyes wide.

  “Who said that?”

  George cleared his throat and replied, a little louder, “It’s me, George Ambrose. I’m—”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  George felt slightly embarrassed. “I’m invisible.”

  “I’m going crazy,” Cardenas muttered. She sank down onto the chair, right there in the middle of the room.

  “No you’re not,” George said, still keeping his voice low. “I’m here to get you out of this place.”

  “This is a trick.”

  “Is this room bugged? Do they have any cameras in here?”

  “I… don’t think so…”

  “Look,” George said, then immediately realized it was a foolish term to use. “I’m gonna take off me hood so you can see me face. Don’t get scared now.”

  Cardenas looked more suspicious than frightened. George yanked the hood off his head and pulled off his face mask. It felt good to feel cool air on his skin.

  She jumped out of the chair. “Christ almighty!”

  “No, it’s just me,” he said, with a slight grin. “George Ambrose. I work for Dan Randolph, y’know.”

  Comprehension lit her eyes. “Walton’s stealth suit! He didn’t destroy it, after all.”

  “You know about it.”

  “Me, and four other people.”

  “There’s a few more now,” George said.

  “How in the world did you ever—”

  “No time for that now. We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  “How?”

  George scratched at his beard. “Good question.”

  “You didn’t bring along a suit for me, did you?” Cardenas said.

  “
Should have, shouldn’t I? We just didn’t think of it. We weren’t certain where you were.”

  “So what do we do?”

  George thought it over for a few moments. “They keep you in this room all the time?”

  Cardenas nodded.

  “Door’s locked, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. And there’s a guard outside… at least, every time they’ve brought a meal in to me there’s been a guard out in the hall. I imagine he’s armed.”

  George’s face lit up. “When do they bring you meals? When’s the next one coming?”

  Several hours later there was a single rap on the door, and then Cardenas heard the lock click. She glanced swiftly about the room but could no longer see George.

  The door opened and the same silent, sour-faced woman in dark uniform came in, carrying a dinner tray. Cardenas could see a wiry young man standing on the other side of the doorway. The woman deposited the tray wordlessly on the coffee table in front of the sofa and then departed, still silent and dour. The guard closed the door and locked it again.

  Cardenas sat on the sofa. For the first time in days she had an appetite. She felt George’s bulk settling on the cushions beside her.

  “Smells good,” George said.

  She took the lid off a platter of fish fillets and vegetables.

  “Looks good, too,” George added.

  “You’re hungry,” she said.

  “Haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

  “Help yourself.”

  George didn’t wait to be coaxed. He lifted off his face mask again and dug in. Cardenas watched as fork and knife moved seemingly by themselves and chunks of dinner rose to his face, which seemed to be floating in midair. She found that if she looked hard enough, directly at him, she could see a faint flickering glitter, almost subliminal. Reflection of the ceiling lights scattered by the chips, she thought. But you have to know he’s there to see it, and even then it’s almost below the perception level.

  “Don’t you want any?” George asked.

  “No, you go ahead.”

  “Eat the veggies, at least”

  “I’ll take the salad.”

  The meal was finished in a few minutes. George put his mask on again and completely disappeared.

  “D’you tell ‘em you’re finished or do they send the maid back for the tray automatically?”