Losers in Space

by John Barnes

  “They can’t turn Virgo around,” Glisters repeats, “no matter how much money they spend. Physics beats economics every time.”

  Derlock gives him a little mock round of applause. “Right on target. I checked this, but I want Glisters and Susan to recheck it for me. Virgo’s engines are only big enough to do course corrections, and they only take on enough reaction mass at Earth for the delta-v to put them close to Mars at the other end.”

  “I never heard of delta-v,” Emerald says, as if that means it can’t affect her.

  Notes for the Interested, #3

  ALDRIN CYCLERS: the bus line to Mars, but the bus can’t turn around

  Earth goes around the sun in one year; Mars goes around the sun in 1.88 years. The result of this is that Earth passes Mars every 26 months. The point where one planet passes another in orbit is called an opposition (because at that point, from the viewpoint of the Earth, the sun is on one side of the Earth and Mars is exactly opposite it, on the other side). At opposition, the distance between two planets is the smallest it can be, so that’s a good time to cross.

  Up and high refer to moving away from the source of the gravity, and down and low to moving toward it. Within the solar system the main source of gravity is the sun, so when spaceships travel inside the solar system, they go up (away from the sun) or down (toward the sun); Mars is higher than the Earth (orbits farther from the sun). In 2129, those terms have mostly replaced the ones we use today, inner and outer, which tend to see the solar system as a territory with the sun as its capital, rather than the more accurate image of a gravity field around the sun.

  Buzz Aldrin, the second man to land on the moon, developed the idea of putting a spaceship or station in a 26-month orbit around the sun, with the low side of the orbit at the same distance from the sun as Earth, timing it so that it would hit that low point 4 months before an opposition. Thus the ship would pass very close to Earth, and then its orbit would carry it up to Mars in only about 4 months, a very fast trip. If the ship did not land on Mars (instead sending crew and cargo down to Mars in smaller spacecraft, called caps in this story), then the ship would continue on, and 26 months later, it would cross Earth’s orbit again, 4 months before another Mars opposition.

  So once you have the ship up and running, it’s a fast free ride from Earth to Mars every 26 months. To be in a 26-month orbit, a ship must spend as much time going away from the sun (the 13-month up-leg) as it does coming down (the down-leg). Because of the shape and position of the orbits (see diagram p. 58), even though obviously every cycler goes up and down, only the up-leg or the down-leg, not both, can be in the right position to give a fast 4-month ride between the planets. On Virgo, it’s the up-leg, so Virgo is an up-cycler.

  There are also down-cyclers, like Leo, which are set up to pass Mars at opposition on their down-leg, and then Earth 4 months later; down-cyclers are a fast free ride back. No ship can be both an up- and a down-cycler; if it has a leg in the right position at opposition, then its other leg will be 13 months away from opposition, and not go near either planet.

  So the price of the “fast free ride” is that you also have to take a long ride that is not free at all. For 22 months out of 26, the cycler is just coming back to its starting point and is not good for anything. Out of its 26-month orbit, a cycler is only hauling stuff and people between planets for 4; if the 4 are when it’s upbound (Earth–Mars) it’s an up-cycler, if they are when it’s downbound, it’s a down-cycler.

  Because the timing is tied to opposition, up-cyclers and down-cyclers all pass Mars within a few weeks of each other—those few months are an extremely busy time for Martian settlers, as the caps bring in new immigrants and imports from the up-cyclers, and take people and goods to the down-cyclers for return to Earth.

  If Earth and Mars came into opposition at the exact same part of their orbits every time, you would never need any fuel at all. But, in fact, the position where they come into opposition changes each time through the cycle, moving about two months forward on each orbit each time. So it’s necessary to change the course a little bit on every trip. A change in course, in rocket science, is called a delta-v; delta is the math symbol for “change in” and v stands for “velocity,” which technically is a speed and a direction. (Ten miles an hour is a speed, north is a direction, and ten miles an hour going north is a velocity.)

  To change velocity, a ship in space must use some kind of rocket. The material that goes out the back of the rocket is called “reaction mass.” Aldrin proposed that for reaction mass, the ship could use ice mined from the moon.

  It took a huge amount of reaction mass to put six ships into Aldrin cycler orbits, but that was 30 years before the time of this story. Once the ships were in their correct orbits, since they no longer needed the gigantic engine arrays and fuel tanks, they melted them down and used them as material for other parts of the ship; the Aldrin cyclers were literally “built on the fly.”

  Now, in 2129, as they pass by the Earth and Moon, they take on only enough reaction mass to tweak the orbit with just enough delta-v to stay close to Mars—much, much less delta-v than it took to launch the ship in the first place.

  Of course, since each ship is carrying passengers and cargo for only 4 months, and it’s in a 26-month orbit, for 22 months it carries no cargo and passengers as it runs through empty space. After passing Mars, an up-cycler keeps rising away from the sun for 9 more months, and then takes 13 months to fall back to Earth. This will come up later.

  The Dissatisfied Duo keeps right on whining, and Glisters and Derlock keep right on explaining, and I seriously consider exploding. After a while I can’t resist trying to get it across, myself. “To change to an orbit that came directly back to Earth, they’d need a hundred times or more their own mass in lunar ice—”

  Emerald styles an expression like a cat trying to figure out what stinks. “Well, sheeyeffinit, so what? I mean, that’s my point and you’re not listening, but whatever. I don’t see why they won’t just buy more lunar ice.”

  Derlock says, “Because they have nothing but vacuum ahead for the next sixty or seventy million kilometers. There will be no one there to sell it to them, with no way to deliver it, no matter how much anyone spends.”

  “That seems kind of unfair,” Fleeta says. “People should be able to buy what they want.”

  Fleeta takes Fendrisol, the best therapy there is, but it doesn’t fix the damage already done, and it only slows the brain’s deterioration. Emerald is struck temporarily dumb by the thought that she might sound as if she’s agreeing with Fleeta. She stops and actually seems to think, a miracle right there.

  “Not enough ice to turn around with,” Emerald says.

  “Right.”

  “And nowhere to buy it, no matter how much they pay.” Emerald seems very proud of having understood.

  Wychee adds, “All right, now I’ve got it. Why didn’t you say so?”

  Derlock bravely tries to work his way back to his plan. “So if we take one of the last caps up to Virgo, which is the last up-cycler to pass Earth on this opposition, and stow away, and don’t come out till we’re out of cap range of Earth, they have no way to send us back. Virgo has to go to Mars, and they have to take us. And at Mars, all they can do is send us back on Leo, which is the last down-cycler for this opposition.”

  “So we get back—then what?” Glisters asks. “The foamhouse?”

  “It’d be fun to have you in the foamhouse with me,” Stack says, leering at Glisters. “I’d ultra make you my ultra bitch, Glissy.”

  Derlock says, “Shut up, Stack. No one will do any time.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Emerald says, “when your plan involves like n-nillion anti-PermaPaxPerity felonies.”

  Derlock grins. “This is where I’m so glad I have the father I do. We’ll have the most famous celeb-law and overriding-media-interest lawyer in the solar system on our side. Dad will eat this one up for an appetizer, and then chew up the Martian Settlement Autho
rity, the Space Patrol, the PermaPaxPerity Authority, and the whole UN for a main course. We probably won’t do even one hour in the foamhouse. We’ll tour Mars like royalty.” He hammers his point till you’d think it would break. “Just think about the publicity—oh, god, god, god! the publicity. Children of celeb-eenies—stowaways to Mars!” He writes it in the air in about 150-point type. “And once we’re in a few million meeds, whatever we do will sell—Glisters’s porn, Marioschke’s philosophopoems—”

  That’s what Marioschke calls that shit that takes her three days to write one lousy screen of (and half that screen is white space—the good half). I guess “philosophopoems” is better marketing than “drippy little insipidities from a dippy fat chickie who can’t punctuate.”

  Derlock rolls on. “F.B. not only gets to be famous, but being on Virgo, with access to the external instruments, he’ll even have time to work up a couple brilliant discoveries.” And maybe, I think to myself, remembering one of Pop’s biggest roles, the Wizard will give him a brain! “Whatever any of us want to do, it will be famous because it was done by a famous stowaway to Mars.”

  After all the eyes and attention from Derlock, what I want to do does not require going to Mars; a short walk down the hall would take care of it very nicely.

  What he’s doing to me is basically what he’s doing to all the moes: offering everything we want deep inside in his cupped hands. But as nice and supported and cradled as that feels, he also has a long sharp fingernail dug into our soft little dreams, and he’s gently pulling; we can let him drag us along, or he’ll pop our dreams like garden slugs. He ticks off points with one extended index finger like he’s smearing boogers on a mirror. “Celeb family. Massive media coverage. Popular story meeting the public need for entertainment. That adds up to all punishment suspended—don’t you people ever watch crime meeds?”

  “Actually we won’t hurt anybody, either,” Glisters says. “Will we?”

  “There might be a tiny bit of property damage if we do it the way I think we will,” Derlock says, “but you’re right that ‘no harm to persons and minimal harm to property’ will help our case. It isn’t necessary, though.”

  That little isn’t necessary, though makes me shudder. I see Emerald and Wychee also notice.

  Derlock looks around the room. “I guess maybe you all don’t watch many crime meeds. What do you think ‘sentence suspended on grounds of overriding media interest’ means?”

  Creepier and creepier. Penn Slabilis’s famous case that established that principle was Munshi v. Slabilis—in which he successfully pleaded guilty to a rape charge but received no punishment. Since then he’s helped a half dozen celeb-eenies literally get away with murder, and he very nearly won the case for Chiang, the man who invented happistuf. Maybe we aren’t going to hurt anyone, but it wouldn’t matter to Derlock if we were.

  “Is media, like, lots of meeds?” Fleet asks. “So that’s like lots of the meeds are interesting when people ride over things?”

  “Close enough,” Derlock says, with a warm smile.

  She glows like a beautiful saint at having gotten something right. I miss her so badly.

  “Susan,” Emerald says, “this only works if you’re willing to lie to your aunt—so, do you really want to?”

  I style Bold Pout just like my coach taught me. “Well, you know, Aunt Destiny loves me, and in her heart, she’ll like that spunk and initiative in her niece.”

  That was zoomed: great speech, likeable content but styled all bratty-sexy. Glisters winks and flashes me a thumbs-up; he recorded it, because he’s always got a camera running someplace just in case one of us reveals a boob or styles a pose. That’ll pop up in some meed. I could almost hug the giant-headed albino freak, if we both wore pressure suits and I wiped mine down real good just after.

  2

  SOLID GOLD TURD

  March 13, 2129. Later that night, Susan’s bedroom, Achiever Dormitory, Excellence Shop, Oregon-Idaho District, Earth.

  LATER THAT EVENING, all comfy-nakies with Derlock on my bed, I raise my head from his nice pecs, doing the hair-across-my-face thing that I know will work if anything will. “I want a big favor from you.”

  “Within reason.” Derlock kisses the top of my head, which feels exactly like lips on the top of my head. Why do guys think that’s romantic? “We’ll be splyctered all over if we declare when we come out of hiding on Virgo. Want to do that then?”

  “Oh, yeah. But that’s not the favor. It’s more complicated. Bari and King aren’t going along to Virgo because they’re planning to take the laughing dive. That’s the real reason I’m breaking up with Bari; I already went through losing Fleeta to happistuf, and I’m not going to watch that happen all over again. Especially not when he’s planning to take it all the way to death. And since what one takes, the other takes, if I want to save Bari, I’ll have to save King as well. Don’t bother telling me you can’t help; you’re the main supplier here, and if you decide Bari and King don’t get any happistuf, they don’t.”

  “It’s their choice.”

  “Choice? Like Fleeta? She used to be a genius. Now she’s competing to get titty shots splyctered into ultra nasty meeds.”

  “But till she got caught, her world was a paradise, and she’ll still never be sad again.”

  “And if she ever goes off Fendrisol, she’ll lose the rest of her brain function and die in a few months; she’s a happy idiot with the same name and face that used to be occupied by a great person.” I can feel myself tearing up and I want to punch him, great eyes and chin and charisma notwithstanding. “And Bari and King are planning to take the fast laughing dive straight to the bottom—check into a hotel room on the moon, order auto renew, cancel all maid service, and gasp happistuf every few hours till they don’t have the mental capacity to operate the inhaler.”

  “It’s what Bari’s always wanted. His whole life has been leading up to it.” Derlock freezes. I must be styling something ultra scary. He mutters, “Besides, they’ll get caught.”

  “Bari’s mother doesn’t want to admit he exists; it’ll take them longer to find her than it’ll take him to die. King’s father is a ground explorer on the Titan expedition. By the time anyone signs a permission for the Moon Marshals to go into the room, Bari and King will either be dead or happy vegetables.”

  “Strange, isn’t it? You want me to save those guys, who don’t want to be saved; and not saving Chiang, who fought every step of the way to live, is my dad’s greatest regret.”

  Notes for the Interested, #4

  HAPPISTUF: the drug that keeps on giving, and the most popular execution of the century

  There really are prions. A prion is a twisted, reshaped protein that, when it encounters a protein like the one it was made from, reshapes it into another prion—sort of a contagious distortion. The composition of the molecule does not change, but the change in shape changes its behavior, the way a wadded-up necklace won’t go through a narrow hole but the same necklace pulled out straight will go easily.

  In effect, a prion reshapes its target protein into more copies of itself, and sometimes those copies do bad things. Common prions found in nature cause mad cow disease, scrapie in sheep, wasting disease in elk, and kuru in humans. It is not clear yet why so many of the known disease prions attack the brain and nervous system.

  Engineers in the 2010s are already very close to being able to reshape proteins and other large molecules on cue in the laboratory; computational scientists are closing in on predicting what a molecule will do from its shape. Once both abilities are fully in place, instead of testing natural substances to see what they do, we will be able to decide what we want a molecule to do, and make and shape the molecule to do it.

  By the time of this story, more than 100 years in the future, designing and building a particular molecule to do a particular thing may be something anyone can do at home with a simple, cheap kit.

  Thus in this future, in May 2117, Chiang Shau-Lu, a miney who had never
passed the PotEvals because of poor verbal skills, invented happistuf. Until his arrest in December 2118, he sold it, and the “gaspers” that shot it deep into users’ lungs in quarter-gram doses, for just enough to cover costs. By the time he was caught, he had distributed over 40 kilograms of it in the 300 largest cities on Earth, sometimes working 18-hour days to cover as much territory as possible.

  His arrest triggered a booby-trap program, which instantly put up hundreds of different meeds, on dozens of faces, telling everyone how to make happistuf by geneering 11 simple changes into a prion that could be extracted from many rodent brains; the original prion was harmless even to the rodents.

  Over 300 million people downloaded those meeds before they were all taken down; anyone could make happistuf after that.

  Happistuf alters a protein found in human brain cells into a form that locks the pleasure centers into a full-on state that literally feels better than a mother’s hug, a massive orgasm, a standing ovation, and a hot fudge sundae all at once. It blocks the receptors you need to feel sadness, fear, anger, or anxiety. And it kills the happistuf-infected brain cells—releasing more happistuf to infect more cells—a few weeks after infection, thus slowly destroying the brain.

  On just one dose of happistuf, a person is enjoying things more intensely within five minutes; incapable of sadness within a week; clumsy and noticeably dimmer within three months; and three years later, irreversibly severely retarded. Death comes when a vital function shuts down, typically five years after the first dose. But since there’s a big rush right after a gasp, most people don’t take it once; they take it repeatedly. Once-a-week serious gaspers, if untreated, die within a year; those who take the laughing dive, gasping every few hours until they are too mentally incapacitated to operate the inhaler, can die within two weeks.