Laserized radio transmissions, or laserlines, had to be sent with extreme accuracy. Stationary ships and space stations could receive them fairly easily over short distances since the sender knew their exact position in space. But few ships remained perfectly stationary, especially if they were moored to an asteroid. Even the slightest deviation in position would result in a missed message. Trying to hit a ship in flight was next to impossible. It had been done, but only when the ships were extremely close.
“If the Italians stick with their scheduled flight path,” said Selmo, “they’ll decelerate in ten days. They gave us a point to target for communications when they stop. If we wanted to send them a laserline at that point, we could.”
“So we basically do nothing for ten days?” asked Marco. “If this is an invasion, we could be losing precious time. What if this thing is headed to Earth? Ten days could make all the difference.”
“There’s nobody closer?” asked Father.
“There’s a corporate ship a few days from here,” said Selmo. “A Juke vessel. They’ve been sitting there for a while doing nothing as far as we can tell. Assuming they haven’t moved since our last scan, we could send them a message.”
“What would we tell them?” asked Javier, one of Victor’s uncles. “‘Hey, there’s an alien ship out there. Keep your eyes peeled.’ They wouldn’t believe us.”
“They wouldn’t have to believe us,” said Toron. “If we showed them where to look and they had a decent sky scanner, they could see it themselves.”
“You said we could send the message to people we trust,” said Marco. “Since when do we trust corporates?”
There was a murmur of assent from the crowd.
“They’re the closet ship,” said Toron. “And therefore, they’re the best qualified vessel to see exactly what we’ve seen. If we want to corroborate our data, they’re the most sensible choice.”
“I don’t like working with corporates,” said Marco.
“Nor do I,” said Toron. “But if this object is indeed a starship, who better to tell than corporates? Their communication systems are far superior to ours. They have relay satellites across the system. If a warning has to be sent to Earth, they’re the people to do it, not us.”
The room was quiet a moment.
“Whatever this object is,” said Concepción, “it won’t be close for at least several weeks and probably not for a few months. I think Toron’s recommendation to proceed with caution is wisest at this point. I am as alarmed as all of you, but if and when we send a warning, I want to have some degree of certainty as to what we’re dealing with. I suggest we notify this Juke vessel and give the Italians the same message in ten days. With all three of us analyzing this, we have a much better chance of understanding it. In the meantime we maintain our position, we continue with the dig, and we let Toron and Edimar track this thing. Any objections?”
“Yes,” said Victor.
Everyone turned to him. Concepción looked surprised. “You have an objection, Victor?”
Victor scanned the room. Everyone stared. Some looked annoyed. It wasn’t his place to question Concepción. He shouldn’t even be here.
“I mean no one any disrespect,” said Victor, “least of all you, Concepción. But I don’t think this is our decision to make.”
“Of course it’s our decision,” said Toron. “Who else could make it?”
“Everyone,” said Victor. “This affects everyone. This changes everything. This is an alien starship. We have no right choosing when it’s revealed to everyone else. It affects the entire human race. We all agree that there are basically two scenarios here. Either it’s peaceful or it isn’t. If it’s peaceful, than we have nothing to lose by detaching from the rock now and sending out a transmission to as many ships and stations as we can hit. If there are pirates, they will react to the information, not to the people giving it. We should spread the word. We should inform the world. We get the news to Earth as quickly as possible. We let them decide how to proceed for themselves. And if this ship’s intentions are not peaceful, then we do the exact same thing. We warn as many people as we can and we start building defenses immediately. Toron suggests that by sending out a blanket transmission we might draw the attention of the alien ship and make ourselves its first target. But even if that’s true, so what? We’re eighty-seven people. There are over twelve billion people on Earth. If we have to sacrifice ourselves to protect millions or billions more, then we would do that.”
“It isn’t that cut and dried,” said Toron. “You’re making big assumptions about this ship when we don’t know yet if it is a ship. We know next to nothing.”
“That’s my point,” said Victor. “What right do we have to assume to be experts on this? Isn’t it far more likely that someone else will be better equipped to interpret this thing than we are? And who’s to say the Italians or even the Juke ship will be experts either? We should tell them, yes, but we should tell everyone else, as well. That creates the greatest likelihood of us learning as much as we can as quickly as we can.”
Toron turned to Concepción. “With all due respect, ma’am, this is precisely why Council meetings are intended for people of a certain age and maturity. Vico’s intentions are good. And were this a mechanical problem, I would value his input greatly. But this is not a mechanical problem. He’s speaking of matters that he doesn’t fully understand. Nor should he be speaking at all since he isn’t a member of this Council.”
“I’m not a Council member, true,” said Victor. “But I am a member of this family. And more importantly, I’m a member of the human race, which could very well be threatened here.”
“Are you honestly suggesting that we put the safety of other ships, other families, complete strangers, above our own?” said Toron. “Above the safety of your own mother and father? Your cousins and aunts?”
“I’m suggesting that the preservation of the human race is more important than the preservation of this family.”
“You would abandon the family that quickly?” said Toron. “Well, I hope I never have to fight for this family with you at my side.”
Dreo nodded. “Everyone appreciates what you do, Vico, but this is an adult conversation.”
“What am I missing?” said Victor. “What am I failing to understand because of my age?”
“Do you know what it’s like to have a wife?” said Toron. “To have children?”
“Of course not,” said Victor.
“Then perhaps you can understand why we’d consider your suggestion a bit naïve. I will emphatically reject any idea that puts my wife and children in danger. I would choose to save one of my own daughters over saving ten strangers. Or a hundred strangers. And so would every other parent in this room. It’s easy for you to speak of noble sacrifices when you have nothing to lose.”
“Toron’s right,” said Dreo. “Our first obligation is to ourselves. And let’s think about this diplomatically, too. If we cause an alarm and it proves to be nothing, we’ll look like fools to the other families. No one would zog with us, no one would trade with us. We’d do ourselves irreparable harm for no reason.”
“I’m not suggesting that we scream ‘invasion’ to the world,” said Victor. “I’m merely seconding my mother’s original suggestion. We tell everyone exactly what we know and allow them to look into it as much as we are. Why would anyone think less of us for our giving them irrefutable evidence? We don’t have to give them gloom and doom predictions. We just give them the facts. If anything, this would build our standing among the families. We would earn everyone’s gratitude and respect for informing them. Consider the situation in reverse: If we were to learn after an attack by an alien starship that another family knew of the existence of that ship and did nothing to warn us, we would despise that family. We would blame them for our losses.”
Toron turned to Concepción. “Victor is your invited guest, Concepción. But he is monopolizing the floor.”
“He hasn’t spoken
any more than you have,” said Father.
“Yes,” said Toron. “And I am a member of this Council. He is not. He is disrespecting the captain.”
“She asked for objections,” said Mother. “He politely voiced one.”
“Which he had no authority to do,” said Toron. “I recognize that your son can do no wrong in your eyes, but by the code of this Council, he is out of line.”
“I happen to agree with him,” said Marco.
“I agree with him also,” said Toron. “Everyone here wants to do the right thing. Of course we will send a warning to everyone if that ever proves necessary. But right now is too soon. We don’t know enough. And for Victor to presume to know how pirates would respond is laughably naïve.”
“We don’t even know if there are pirates this far out,” said Father.
“Exactly,” said Toron. “We don’t know. That’s why we should be prudent, not rash. I propose we put it to a general vote.”
“I second that,” said Father.
Concepción looked at the crowd. “Objections?”
There were none.
“Very well,” said Concepción. “All those who agree with sending out a blanket transmission immediately.”
A third of the room raised their hand, including Mother, Father, and Marco. Edimar raised her hand as well, but a withering look from her father made her put it down again. Victor kept his hand down since he wasn’t a member of the Council. Concepción took a visible count, nodded, and said, “All those who feel we should inform only the Italians and Juke ship at this point.”
The remaining hands in the room went up, a much larger portion of people. Toron allowed himself a small, triumphant smile.
They were going to do nothing, Victor realized. Nothing immediate anyway, nothing significant, nothing that would ensure their safety in the coming months. They would send out two messages, and then they would sit and wait and hopefully learn something new.
Victor wasn’t going to wait with them. He couldn’t control when and how the family warned others, but he could control the mechanical functionality of the ship. He could make improvements to the ship’s defenses and weapons. He didn’t need Council approval for that.
The meeting was breaking up. People were dispersing.
“You tried, Vico,” said Mother. “I’m proud of you for that.”
“Thank you, Mother.” He turned to Father. “We should focus on the pebble-killers first.”
“Agreed,” said Father, already tapping a command into his handheld. “I’ll wake up Mono.”
Victor knew he wouldn’t have to explain himself to Father. It was obvious what they needed to do. They had to find a way to make the pebble-killers more powerful and lethal. With the whole ship helping, the work would have gone much faster, but now it was going to be just the three of them. Victor hurried from the room. Toron and others would probably think that his quick departure was that of a pouting teenager who had lost an argument, but Victor didn’t care. Let them think what they wanted. He had work to do.
CHAPTER 5
Benyawe
Lem was in his office with the lights out, watching a holo simulation of asteroid 2002GJ166 being hit with the glaser. It was a simple holo sim. Only ten seconds long. But the engineers who had put it together had spent three days building it. Every detail of the asteroid had been meticulously re-created. The engineers had even gone so far as to painstakingly re-create the mineshaft the free miners had cut into the rock. In all aspects it was identical to the real thing, albeit a thousand times smaller. At first, nothing happened. Then, as the glaser hit it, the asteroid exploded, sending thousands of rock fragments shooting outward in every direction like a giant growing sphere of gravel. Soon the pieces of the sphere became so far apart that the sphere lost any semblance of shape and all that was left was empty space. The holo sim winked out. Lem turned to Dr. Dublin and Dr. Benyawe, who were standing beside his desk patiently waiting for his reaction. “It’s completely obliterated,” said Lem. “How am I supposed to mine an obliterated asteroid?”
The Makarhu was less than a day away from the real asteroid. Chubs’s “Red Light Green Light” approach had worked flawlessly for nine days. El Cavador was oblivious. The free miners had shown no sign of knowing another ship was approaching their position. No threatening radio messages, no warning shots, nothing. Either they were exceptionally good at playing dumb, or they were in for the surprise of their life.
Now, however, the engineers were telling Lem through a holo sim that it didn’t matter anyway, because the glaser was going to annihilate the asteroid and leave them empty-handed. “This is unacceptable,” said Lem. “There’s nothing left of the asteroid.”
“Our math could be off,” said Dublin. “We’ve never fired the glaser at an object this big before. The simulation only runs the data we give it, and we don’t have a lot of data. Much of this is conjecture.”
“Then what’s the point of building a simulation?” said Lem. “You’re showing me what might happen? I can do that myself. I have a pretty decent imagination. Forgive me for being blunt, Dr. Dublin, but guesswork doesn’t help us here. I need facts. What you’re showing me are half facts. And to be perfectly honest, not the half facts I want to see. The glaser is a mining tool. We’re in the business of extracting minerals. What you’re showing me is skeet shooting. I don’t care if you blow up the asteroid, but sending millions of pieces hurtling away in every direction is not going to work. Miners can’t chase down rock fragments all day. The glaser is supposed to expedite the mining process, not complicate it. I can tolerate this reaction with pebbles, but not with big rocks. That isn’t what the Board had in mind.”
“You don’t want guesswork, Lem,” said Benyawe, “but guesswork is mostly what we have. We haven’t done enough field tests to predict with a high degree of accuracy what exactly is going to happen. That is why the mission was designed the way it was, with us conducting many tests using gradually larger asteroids.”
Lem shook his head. “The original plan is gone. We’re seven weeks behind schedule. We have a new plan now, one we’ve been following for nine days. I agree that our original plan is the ideal, but circumstances have changed.”
“Then all we can show you are possibilities,” said Benyawe, “nothing definitive. We won’t know that until we blast the real thing. We can try to minimize the gravity field more, and that might lessen the explosion, but we cannot predict how far the field will spread.”
Lem rubbed his eyes, exhausted. It hadn’t been a very pleasant nine days. And another round of “data talk” with the engineers wasn’t helping. Part of the problem was the lighting—or rather, the lack thereof. Per Chubs’s instructions, Lem had ordered the ship to “go dark” when they had set out for the asteroid. This meant turning off all exterior and most interior lights in order to remain invisible from El Cavador’s light-sensitive sky scanner. Lem had expected this to be a challenge. Moving around the ship in near darkness would take some getting used to. What he hadn’t anticipated was how the lack of light had put everyone in an irritated, cheerless mood. Normally Lem could move through the halls of the ship and hear laughter and friendly conversation. These days the halls were as silent as they were dark.
Even more annoying was the constant stopping and starting of the ship. To sneak up undetected, the Makarhu remained motionless when they were exposed to El Cavador’s side of the asteroid, then the ship rushed forward whenever El Cavador was on the far side. Stopping. Starting. Stopping. Starting. It made sleep next to impossible, and Lem’s body felt anxious and fatigued because of it.
“You’re right,” said Lem. “I’m asking for the impossible. I’m asking you to tell me what will happen without allowing you to gather the data to formulate an answer. That’s not fair. I realize that. But we are at the eleventh hour, and we have one shot at this. I’m only asking that we do all we can to make that one shot work.”
Dublin began gathering his things. “We’ll see what we c
an do, Mr. Jukes.”
“I have full confidence in you,” said Lem.
Dublin launched himself toward the exit, but Benyawe stayed behind.
“May I have a word, Lem?” she asked.
“You may have a hundred, Dr. Benyawe. It will keep me awake.”
“I have remained silent on this issue since we set out for this asteroid,” said Benyawe, “but if I don’t say something now, before we get there, I’ll be disappointed in myself.”
Lem knew where this was going. As he had expected, the decision to bump the free miners was unpopular with the engineers. Their world was black or white. An experiment failed or it didn’t. Data was right or it wasn’t. The prototype worked or it didn’t. The idea of a gray area, wherein it was acceptable under certain circumstances to take a dig site by force, was hard for an engineer to swallow. They all knew that Juke Limited was involved in unsavory business practices, but it was much easier to turn a blind eye to such things from the safe and cozy rooms of one’s lab back on Luna. Out here in the deep of space, the hard truth of it stared you in the face.
Lem held up a hand. “If you’re going to tell me you think bumping these free miners is morally wrong, save your breath. I feel the same way.”
“You do?”
“Absolutely. It’s cheating, basically. And bullying. Not to mention extremely dangerous.”
“Then why are we doing it?”
“Because the alternative is an eight-month round-trip. If we go that far, we will seriously deplete our fuel supplies. Plus we have no guarantee that the farther asteroid will be any more vacant than this one. Who’s to say there isn’t a whole fleet of free miners moored to the other asteroid?”
“Those aren’t our only options,” said Benyawe. “We could proceed with the mission as planned. It’s not too late for that. We look for more pebbles of gradually greater size and adjust the glaser as we go along. Free miners don’t touch pebbles. This would be a nonissue.”
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