Analog SFF, June 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Titan was a dynamic place, its surface sculpted by erosion and weather, its methane lakes ever shrinking and expanding, its orbit tweaked and tugged in a complex dance by sixty-plus lesser moons, the entire world tidally flexed by Saturn's immense gravity. Software tried, with mixed success, to align radar images. Human eyes were still the best at matching multiple views of a canyon or lakeshore or hill captured at different resolutions, at different times, from different angles. Nor did the hills always stay put between radar studies. Dunes hundreds of feet tall and hundreds of miles long—dunes not of sand, but of exotic hydrocarbons (looking, the one time a probe had landed to look, like wet coffee grounds—drifted with the seasons. The marvel was that Valerie and her grad students had stitched together even this poor semblance of a topo map.

  Here and there, maddeningly, areas remained pitch black. Not yet scanned. Titan Incognita.

  Water bottle in hand, she stared at the tan layer—what there was of it. The latest survey had produced hardly any data. No data she might have chalked up to bad aim, but the bit that had come in confirmed proper aiming, and diagnostics confirmed correct operation of the receiver.

  So what had happened? A software glitch that somehow discarded the radar echoes? Always possible, but she had seen nothing indicative of mishandled data. Radio interference that perfectly canceled the signal but did not reveal itself? Very implausible.

  It took a while for the penny to drop. It took an hour of calculations, punctuated by two quick peeks in on Simon, asleep amid a jumble of toys, to work out the geometry and confirm her suspicions.

  There had been interference, all right: The signal bleeping blocked, after a round trip of almost two billion miles. By Phoebe's sunshield.

  Of course the Moon, the first-and-real Moon, sometimes got in the radar telescope's way—but on its stately orbit Luna crossed the plane of the ecliptic, potentially blocking the line of sight to other targets in the solar system, only once every couple weeks. Phoebe and its sunshield whizzed around the Earth in less than six hours! Damnation, she knew that. Phoebe and its shield were small, but her luck was bound to run out.

  As it had.

  Valerie sighed. She could plan future observations around them, but what a nuisance. Long-term, the observatory needed to reprogram ASTRID—astronomer's integrated desktop—to keep Phoebe-compromised observations from ever getting scheduled. And—

  And it had not been a penny that had dropped before. Wrong metaphor. A shoe had dropped. No, a big honking boot. And now, so did the other one.

  Phoebe was not the big problem. The big problem was everything that Phoebe portended. . . .

  * * * *

  Marcus loitered in a vending room, sipping a cup of lousy coffee, savoring the break from an interminable meeting. Sunlight streamed through the room's window wall, which offered an otherwise uninspiring view of an interior courtyard.

  A predisposition to fog from off the Potomac had given this neighborhood its name, but diplomatic obfuscation was what preserved the label. To most of the world, Foggy Bottom meant the State Department, in whose blocky headquarters Marcus had unhappily spent his afternoon. Ellen had gotten a call just as the meeting started. She left, giving him only a you-know-how-it-is shrug for explanation.

  Today was nonetheless a change of pace, because this meeting involved international whining. As the demo powersat approached completion, more and more countries were objecting to powersats as weapons of mass destruction.

  And so Marcus had gotten to explain microwave downlinks to a roomful of Foreign Service Officers. Yes, the beam carried a lot of power. That was the project's purpose: bringing power to the ground. And of course the beam was concentrated, to minimize the dedicated collection area on the ground.

  Then it had been on to safety interlocks. Every collection station had a guide beacon that the power satellite used as its target. If a collection station detected the power beam slipping off-center, off went the beacon and the satellite ceased transmission.

  “Target?” an FSO had repeated.

  “A poor choice of words,” Marcus had answered. He wasn't a diplomat. Aimed would be no better. “Directed. The satellite directs the beam at the collection station.”

  “And beams only at collection stations?” another FSO had asked. “My online identity has been hijacked twice, and you wouldn't believe what a pain in the posterior that was. So you'll understand that I'm just a tad skeptical about how secure any system is.”

  “Yes, only at collection stations.” In his mind, Marcus had added an exclamation point. And speculated about birthdays and children's names used as passwords. “Downlink coordinates are hard-coded into the powersat. By design, we can only update coordinates physically, on PS-1 itself. To update the list of authorized collection stations, we'll dispatch a robot probe.”

  “Switchable on and off. The downlink point commanded from the ground.”

  Who wants a system that can't be turned off? “The idea,” Marcus had explained, “is to deliver power where it is most valuable, and that varies. It could be the DC area in summer, and maybe only in the hottest part of the day when the use of air conditioning peaks. It could be Fargo in winter, during a cold snap, when the demand surges for heat. Or filling in when some wind farm lacks wind. Or anywhere an equipment failure creates a power shortfall. And by beaming to the downlink station nearest the point of need, we reduce stress on the national grid.”

  “If I may summarize,” the first FSO had jumped back in. What the hell? Were they tag-teaming him? “A gigawatt of focused energy ‘directed’ at the ground. Steerable beams. It could be a weapon.”

  “And any satellite launch could become a ballistic missile aimed at the ground,” Marcus had snapped in frustration, only to be told he was not being helpful.

  To the degree Marcus had ever had control of the session, that was when he lost it. From then until the break, the FSOs had revisited, with painful circumlocution, perhaps every criticism anyone ever made about the U.S., back to those (idiots, in Marcus's opinion) who had objected to American unilateralism in the capture of Phoebe. Diverting a space object, let alone using a nuclear-powered thruster for the dormant comet's final orbital insertion, could be construed as a violation, at least in spirit, of the Outer Space Treaty. (Excuse me: the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies.)

  In what universe was doing nothing, and maybe having Phoebe hit Earth, the preferred course? The same universe, evidently, where one listened to members of the energy cartels, and the cartels’ most dependent and coercible customers, and Third World ankle biters who did not care how bad things got for them as long as they could get in a dig at the United States, and—

  Marcus stopped himself mid-mental rant. Reliving the experience accomplished nothing. Besides, his geopolitical opinions were doubtless as well-founded as the engineering opinions of a roomful of diplomats.

  “Hey, Judson.”

  Marcus turned around. One of the FSOs stood in the break-room entrance. Somebody Ryerson. No, Ryerson Smith. “Yes?”

  “We're ready to resume,” Smith said.

  Yay! “Okay. I'll be right—”

  When Marcus's cell rang, the caller was not in his directory. He did not recognize the number that came up instead of a name. Not even the area code. “I should get this,” he said.

  “You know where to find us.” Smith headed down the corridor.

  Taking the call, Marcus did not recognize the face projected from the cell display. She wasn't someone he would forget, not with those high cheekbones, chiseled features, hazel eyes, and full lips. Her hair, a rich brown, worn shoulder length, nicely framed her face. Forty-ish: about his age. And she looked mad.

  Mad about what? he wondered. He said, cautiously, “Hello.”

  “Marcus Judson?”

  He nodded.

  “Valerie Clayburn. I'm calling about the powersat.”

  Whi
le she spoke he had queried her area code. West Virginia? “Did you see me on the 3-V news?” he guessed. Damn town meetings.

  “Hardly,” she snipped. A bit of glower added, aren't we full of ourselves. “I Googled ‘powersat NASA program manager’ and got your boss. She gave me this number.”

  “I'm due back in a meeting, Ms. Clayburn. May I ask what this is about?”

  “It's Dr. Clayburn, and I'm calling to schedule a meeting.”

  Doctor of what? But Ellen had vetted the woman, supposedly, and he had a flexible day coming up. “I have some time open next Monday morning. Will fifteen minutes suffice? Telecon, or will you be coming to my office in Maryland?”

  “Fifteen minutes?” She laughed. “Not even close, and anyway, you need to come out here. But Monday works.”

  “Why there—and where is that, by the way?”

  “Here is the Green Bank Observatory. And why here? Trust me, it'll make sense when you see the place.”

  Could she be any stingier with information? He had neither the time nor the inclination to play twenty questions. “I've got to go,” he told her. “I'll get back to you.”

  “I'll be here,” she said, and broke the connection.

  * * * *

  His datasheet folded in quarters because that took less effort than clearing the table, eating (and trying not to taste) a nuked frozen dinner, Marcus sampled the news. In one window headlines scrolled, an all-too-familiar litany of scattered blackouts, spot gasoline shortages, and layoffs. The Russian-led cartel had announced a production cut, sending oil futures up ten dollars a barrel. A credit-rating service and a large hospital chain were the latest to disclose that hackers had compromised their customer files. Across the Middle East and Central Asia, more terrorist bombings and sectarian slaughter. In a streaming-video window—for the third day, but still telegenic—squadrons of Resetter activists disrupted construction of a new offshore liquefied-natural-gas terminal near Newark.

  Enough, he decided. A few sharp taps on the periphery of the datasheet banished the depressing news and put a virtual keyboard in their place. He started to surf.

  The Green Bank Observatory was in Green Bank, West Virginia, which was in the middle of nowhere. Deeper into the middle of nowhere, nonsensical as that was, than he had guessed. Run by the National Science Foundation.

  And Valerie Clayburn, Ph.D.? He found her, too. More than enough to beg the question what an up-and-coming astronomer wanted with him. Presumably not for any insight he might offer into distant galaxies or dark energy, or whatever was the hot topic in radio astronomy these days.

  Marcus went for a walk to clear his head. The evening breeze was pleasantly cool. Lawn sprinklers muffled the drone of traffic. In most front yards, the cherry trees were in bloom, just past their peak. Even in the many yards with for sale and foreclosure signs. And overhead . . .

  Urban glow and the crescent moon had all but washed the stars from the sky. Phoebe was too dark to see even during the rolling blackouts. Phoebe's sunshield was for the moment essentially edge-on to him, and so also invisible. But The Space Place sparkled, the brightest “star” in the sky; it put even Venus to shame. The orbiting hotel complex, its surface silvered for cooling, was its own best advertisement.

  When he won, say, two lotteries, or struck oil in his backyard, he would be sure to book a stay.

  As for the nearly completed powersat, Marcus searched in vain. Alas. He would have welcomed some evidence that his life entailed more than meetings and talk.

  When he had called Ellen from his car to ask about her curious referral—and to vent about that afternoon's waste of time at State—his boss, in very few words, speaking more in sorrow than in anger, had shocked Marcus into silence. Hours later, her rebuke still stung: “Have you considered the possibility that someone else might know something?”

  Yeah, he had. Only cynic that he had become, it had been a while. Since Lindsey.

  By the dim glow of a neighbor's post lamp he texted the enigmatic Dr. Clayburn. CU Monday a.m. around 11.

  * * * *

  Monday, April 17

  The road trip to Green Bank began painlessly enough, the morning warm and sunny. The observatory banned electric vehicles because they might cause interference, so Marcus had a government motor-pool car and full tank of gas. The car's data link kept dropping out. After twenty miles he gave up on his e-mail.

  The first half of his drive, more than a hundred miles, was Interstate, and autodrive did all the work. Leaving behind the DC-area sprawl the scenery was gorgeous, especially as he crested the Blue Ridge, the Shenandoah Valley, lush and green, stretching before him. The sky was a beautiful clear blue. Radio blasting, he drummed on the dashboard to the beat of the music, trying to ignore the many tasks he could, and perhaps should, be attending to at the office. He wondered what he would do when he arrived early.

  He got off the Interstate near Harrisonburg. Almost at once he encountered the billboard: not digital, but an old-style, ink-and-paper signboard, sun-faded.

  —

  The sky, the Tower,

  We lust for power.

  The Flood, the Burn,

  We never learn.

  Reset.

  Repent.

  —

  “The Burn” was not bad—poetically speaking—for the Crudetastrophe. Marcus could not come up with a biblical-sounding term for powersat, either. “We never learn” rang all too true, although his take on the lessons to be learned and the poet's clearly differed.

  US 33-W narrowed to two lanes, soon ran out of embedded sensors for autodrive, and lost its shoulders to narrow some more. Sturdy trees crowded right up to the pavement. He slowed way down, and his fretting changed to showing up late. The “towns” along the “highway” became smaller and smaller, and the houses scattered between towns ever shabbier.

  Until there were no towns. He guessed he had missed the West Virginia border. By then he was well into the Appalachians, deep within the George Washington National Forest. Negotiating switchbacks. Up and down steep grades, many of them miles long. As were—whenever gaps opened among the trees—the luxuriant wooded vistas. Stunning. Fantastic.

  The Blue Ridge? By comparison (at least where he had crested it), that was a speed bump.

  And despite Marcus's best intentions, he thought, Lindsey would have loved this drive.

  * * * *

  For a long time, he and Lindsey had been great together.

  Almost always they had fun. Even when they didn't, when the world made one of them sputter, the other would find the silver lining, or the amusing absurdity of it all, or a way to put matters into perspective. They both liked scenic drives and country inns. They liked hiking and canoeing, classical music and experimenting with exotic cuisines. They learned together to scuba. They mocked the same bad movies.

  More than anything, she always knew the right thing to say.

  “I know your brother is a slacker,” she had once said, driving home from a miserable dinner out with his parents.

  Had Marcus not already loved Lindsey, those few words would have done the trick.

  It was nothing against Sean. His older brother was who he was. Sliding through life on charm and modest ambitions somehow worked for him.

  But growing up, “It's not what you know, it's who you know,” had suited Marcus about as well as, “Why can't you be more like your brother?”

  As a kid, Marcus could never understand why their parents tolerated Sean's mediocre grades and goofing off. The folks did not much like their jobs, but they were far from lazy. Dad was a lawyer and the Washington lobbyist for a national association of rural electrical utilities. Mom was a realtor and had an MBA. Not until well into high school had Marcus seen the bigger picture. Wheedling legislative favors, unloading money pits onto unsuspecting buyers, and coasting through school had something in common. All were ways to game the system. And that apparently was what impressed his parents.

  Marcus could never bring himself to see things
their way. He wanted to learn, not just make good grades. To make a difference, not a living. To change the world, not game it.

  Sean put in four years in general studies at a party college. He went on to become the one-man HR Department at a small company—gloating, to parental approval, that the position lacked quantifiable responsibilities.

  Marcus earned a math degree at the University of Virginia and a Master's degree in systems engineering from MIT. He went on to do contract work at NASA where, with luck and if he did things right, maybe he could change more than one world.

  What he could not change was his parents’ attitude. Their only feedback on Marcus's choices was that he worked too hard, that he let Space Systems Science and NASA take advantage of him. Sean said the same, only more bluntly: “You're a sucker, bro.”

  But Lindsey got him. He thought he got her.

  Ready to move in together, the big question had been: where? His apartment was in Greenbelt, Maryland, near Goddard. Hers was in the City of Fairfax, Virginia, near the insurance company where she worked (and not far, as it happened, from the house where he had grown up). Neither apartment was big enough for two, not unless at least one of them shed a lot of possessions. Nowhere in the middle appealed to either of them.

  He suggested they find a place near her work, and she countered with moving near his. She was so solicitous about what his commute might become, so sympathetic, that it drove him to insist on northern Virginia. Together they found the townhouse in Reston, a beautiful place with a private dock on Lake Anne. He bought a canoe. It was going to be her moving-in present.

  Reston would mean an easy twenty-minute commute for Lindsey, and he was thrilled for her. “To return the favor” she insisted that he buy the townhouse solo. The equity growth would all be his—the slow, grinding decline in house prices had to end someday—and she would spare him the complications of entwining their finances. Though he did not follow her logic—there was no hurry, but marriage was the obvious next step—he went along. That Marcus own the place was obviously important to her.

  Because for Lindsey, moving in together had become Plan B. Because she was in the running to open and manage a new regional office, in Seattle. She kept that possibility to herself until, two days after closing on the townhouse, her promotion came through. By the end of that week she was off to the Left Coast, for the opportunity she “couldn't not take.”