Energized

by Edward M. Lerner

  “So while you TLAs think your grand thoughts, here is what’s on my mind. With Irv out of commission, I’m responsible for the sixteen people stationed here and the four inspectors. It’s not official, but I also feel responsible for fifty-six evacuees from The Space Place. And while I could fret about how soon we’ll run out of food, what really scares me is getting stranded. Once you blow PS-1 to hell—and for all our yakking, I don’t see what choice anyone has—ships won’t come up here, maybe ever.”

  That had to be, ultimately, Yakov’s plan: the destruction of PS-1. It would sell Russian oil. It would set back American attempts to use less oil. And yet …

  Yakov’s goal and Thad’s had converged. Once PS-1 was gone, the killing stopped. Once orbital debris rendered Phoebe unusable, he became of no value to Yakov.

  What do you suggest?

  “Evacuate! Get away while we have the chance!” he snapped back.

  “We don’t have enough escape pods,” Dino said. “We have five four-passenger pods for the staff, plus a spare unit. That’s nowhere near what we’d need.”

  No one suggested leaving anyone behind. Not yet.

  Thad said, “That’s four people per pod in deceleration couches. How many people can we shoehorn in”—or stack, like cordwood, in layers—“if we remove the couches? And maybe there is more nonessential equipment we can rip out.”

  “Without couches, people would get mashed,” Dino said.

  “You’d prefer starving to death?” Thad countered.

  Oxyggn for extra people?

  “We have counterpressure suits,” Thad said. “If needed, we’ll bring aboard oh-two tanks. Ellen, NASA has the pod specs. Can you research that for us? And any tweaking the reentry software might need to correct for unplanned mass in the pods?”

  SHe saidd yes.

  Marcus cleared his throat. “While you’re looking, Ellen … I know it’s a long shot, but see if we can modify the pods to use locally.”

  Solid fule. Can’t starrt and stop.

  “Right,” Marcus said. “Sorry. It’s been a long few days.”

  Herre too.

  “Back to practicality,” Thad said. “Pretty damn soon, someone will launch missiles. Don’t bother denying it—we’re not stupid. We’re fifty miles from what’s about to become a two-million-pound shit storm of shrapnel. How many escape pods will we lose if we wait till then to evacuate?

  “I’m going to get people started stripping out the couches. Can you give me twenty-four hours? Or a few minutes warning?”

  If poxsible.

  That meant no. The TLAs would not trust this kludged comm channel enough to transmit a warning. And almost certainly, that a launch was imminent.

  “Then let’s get to work,” Thad said.

  * * *

  Stankiewicz had it right, Tyler decided. The acting station chief should be focused on saving seventy-six innocent bystanders. Taking back PS-1 by a sneak attack from Phoebe was counterproductive daydreaming.

  Tyler said, “Does anyone see a reason not to let these people get to work on getting down?”

  No one did.

  Ellen shoved back her chair and stood. “I’ve got my assignment. Keep the link open for when I have something to report.”

  Meeting’s ovrr, Valerie typed. Someone stay pn the line.

  “I’ll hang around,” Marcus Judson volunteered from Phoebe base. “Val, would you stick around, too?”

  Sure.

  “Everyone else, take five,” Tyler announced. “Then we talk strategy.”

  People filed from the room, here and—according to the big display—on Phoebe. Valerie had not budged; she looked too drained to move.

  Tyler felt the same but did not dare give in to it. From the first empty office he found, he called his partner. She had choppered to Langley to call in favors among Agency data-mining gnomes. It was a short flight, and PS-1 was below the horizon for a few hours. “Give me something I can use.”

  Like maybe a magic carpet. At this point, nothing less than magic would avoid stranding a bunch of good folks in space. Or more hours of presidential dithering.

  From his cell phone, Charmaine Powell grinned. “Oh, I have something. Are you sitting?”

  “I’m tough. What have you got?”

  “E-ZPass records. Care to guess the when and where of Dillon Russo’s last road trip?”

  “This isn’t the best day for playing twenty questions, Char.”

  “Be that way. On August twelfth, that’s a Saturday, if you wondered, Dillon Russo’s BMW jaunted from New York to McLean and back.”

  “McLean, as in Virginia?” McLean, as in just down the road from CIA headquarters? Because if Russo was another CIA source who, in fact, was a double agent, Tyler might scream.

  “The very same. And there’s more.”

  Something about that date nagged at him. Seven weeks ago. “Hold on for a moment.” He paged through the calendar on his phone. For August twelfth he found a neighborhood barbecue—and a reminder to write up a contact report.

  He returned to the call. “Russo came to see Yakov Brodsky, didn’t he?”

  “I can’t prove it, but yeah. E-ZPass brings the car to the outskirts of your neighborhood. From the exit ramp, traffic cameras show him entering and leaving the neighborhood. Late afternoon.”

  Right after the party, for chrissakes. “And soon after, Russo buys four tickets to The Space Place and gads off to Houston for training.”

  “I thought you would find that trip interesting. As for Brodsky himself, he has only been back and forth between home and the embassy since Russo and friends ran amok.”

  Tyler said, “Let’s put surveillance on Yakov. But obvious tails.” Because if the NSA could listen in at Yakov’s house or the embassy, they would be doing it anyway. “Maybe we’ll rattle him. And have your data gnomes dig up what they can about his diplomatic and FSB career.”

  “You don’t much care for your neighbor, do you?”

  “I’m from Texas. How could I possibly like someone who burns my burgers and refuses to distinguish between barbecue and grilling?”

  * * *

  Valerie had the conference room to herself. Oh, how she wanted to talk to Marcus—but not like this.

  On the big display, Marcus had settled into a chair. He said, “Val, are you still there? And are you all right?”

  I’m finne, she typed. Why add to his worries?

  “No, you’re not,” Marcus said.

  I’m fine, she typed, this time getting it right.

  “I know you better than that.”

  Typing slowly and deliberately, proofreading and correcting before she hit RETURN, she managed to get out, Okay. You caught me. I’m worried about you.

  He ran splayed fingers through his hair. (She knew him pretty well, too, and that was one of his nervous mannerisms.) “When the GBT collapse came up, you began typing as if with ten left thumbs. What aren’t you telling me?”

  I’m just tirred. The typo went out before she noticed it. Come down and we’ll discuss it.

  A troubled look flashed across his face. Questioning whether he would survive to make it down? “Is your family okay?”

  It was all she could do to send yes. If the microwave beam directed at the GBT had veered only a couple of miles, it could have hit the town. It could have hit—

  What had Patrick been thinking?

  “You know and I know something is on your mind,” Marcus said.

  He had too much going on already, and this could wait, but somehow she was typing again. Patrick is dead.

  “The attack on the observatory? I’m so sorry, Val.” He frowned. “His ‘SETI’ transmitter, wasn’t it?”

  I assume so. And again, her fingers ignored her better judgment. He left me a message.

  “I’m so sorry, Val. I truly am.” Pause. “If it will help, tell me about it.”

  Repeating foolishness could not help. But her hands were once again moving, and no longer making mistakes. He wrote,
“I’m doing my best to undo my last big mistake. It’s the best way I know to honor my promise to look after your family.”

  It made no sense. No sense at all.

  “Patrick’s last big mistake,” Marcus said. “Losing the Verne probe? I don’t understand what he meant. Do you?”

  Get down here and we’ll figure it out together. Or, at least, get down here.

  Saturday evening, September 30

  The least popular spot in Phoebe base, no doubt for the awful memories it evoked, was the radiation shelter. Marcus shared those memories, but he could not sleep and he needed an empty area to pace.

  Why even try to sleep? In two hours, he would be back in an escape pod, taking another turn at dismembering deceleration couches with a cutting torch. The couches were not designed to come out.

  And so, his thoughts churning, Marcus trudged back and forth along a Velcro floor strip. It seemed impossible that a week ago he and Val had been together. Or that within that week, PS-1 had changed from his life’s work to a WMD, and that thousands had died. Or that among the dead, his final words an enigma, was a close friend of Valerie’s.

  I’m doing my best to undo my last big mistake. It’s the best way I know to honor my promise to look after your family.

  Marcus stopped, turned, and began pacing in the opposite direction. He had not done well by his promises, either. He had promised roomfuls, thousands, of people that powersats were safe and good. He had promised Valerie that he would be safe going to Phoebe and PS-1, that he would be home before she knew it.

  So much for good intentions.

  Was that how Patrick felt? That his good intentions had all gone bad?

  From everything Marcus knew, Patrick had spent years trying to find the Verne probe. Whether noble or nuts, what did Patrick’s quixotic attack on PS-1 have to do with undoing his last big mistake?

  Marcus skidded to a halt—or tried to. The abrupt motion tore him free of the Velcro floor strip and sent him airborne. He scarcely noticed. Suppose the Verne probe was not Patrick’s big mistake.

  Suppose Verne was never lost at all.

  * * *

  “What about Phoebe drives everyone nuts?” Marcus asked. As far as he knew, he spoke to an empty room. Minutes earlier he had awakened someone left to baby-sit the Mount Weather end of the jury-rigged comm link. Their parting shot: Getting your people. “Totally crazy.”

  Marcus, it’s me. Ellen’s here, too. What’s crazy?

  “Sorry to wake you,” he said. At least he hoped he had. By Phoebe and Eastern time alike, it was closing in on midnight.

  As if.

  “What about Phoebe drives you nuts, Val? Professionally.”

  That it gets in my way. A pause. You wouldn’t have tracked me down to ask that. A longer pause. Where it came from.

  “That’s the one. If it had always been in the orbit where NASA discovered it, it should have sublimated long before people knew to look for it.” Before there were people to look.

  Until recently, what became Phoebe must have orbited out past the ice line. Something perturbed its orbit.

  “Just as something perturbed its Earth-threatening new orbit so that we could capture it?”

  Another long pause. He wished he could see them: talking it over. Yawning. Just for who they were, and how important they both were to him.

  Not the same. My money is on Jupiter.

  “Why not the same?” Marcus persisted.

  Ellen here. A gravity tractor is a spacecraft. It hovers over an asteroid, or whatever. Gravity pulls the rock and the probe toward each other. As the spacecraft moves, that attraction tows the rock. The force between the two is tiny. To shift a rock’s orbit noticeably can take years and a spacecraft carrying fuel for years.

  “Who is to say it didn’t?”

  The gravity tractor wasn’t launched until Phoebe was discovered by NASA.

  “Understood. But the Verne probe was.”

  * * *

  In a remote corner of the twenty-four-hour cafeteria, over desperately needed coffee, Valerie explained things as clearly as she could. This was important, damn it.

  No matter that the implications terrified her.

  Either she was too fried to explain or Pope was not buying, because he said, “This is not the time to commit astronomy. Everyone on Phoebe needs to focus on getting down. Before…”

  Before the missiles launch. No one would tell her how soon that would happen. Neither she nor Ellen had any security clearance, let alone clearances at that level. Her impression was that once some international coordination finished—a missile salvo could so easily be misconstrued—the missiles would launch.

  “It’s not astronomy, damn it,” Valerie said. “It’s … an option.”

  Pope sighed. “Okay, try it again. With fewer, smaller words, please.”

  “Forget astronomy and think history,” Ellen said. “In 2014, the Crudetastrophe. In 2018, Phoebe is captured, a permanent base established on it, and the PS-1 project begins. A busy four years, no?

  “Back to October 2014 and the Crudetastrophe. All we knew at first was: We’re screwed. But a year later, an ongoing NASA survey, watching for space rocks that could endanger Earth, spots something that ought not to exist, not in that orbit. However tough things have become, suddenly there’s hope.

  “Then, in round numbers: a year, at crash priority, to build a gravity tractor; a year to fly the intercept mission; and a year of infinitesimally weak gravitational nudging. End to end, from the Crudetastrophe to the reconfiguring of Phoebe’s orbit, four years.”

  “I still don’t see—”

  Valerie cut him off. “In October 2014, Verne had just reached the outer asteroid belt. Right where objects like Phoebe belong. A month after the Crudetastrophe, Verne went missing. A year before NASA spotted Phoebe on its inexplicable Earth-threatening orbit. Do the math, Tyler.”

  Pope rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Long enough—by analogy, anyway—for Verne to have changed Phoebe’s orbit. You’re saying that Burkhalter threw Phoebe at Earth?”

  Valerie’s eyes misted up. “I’m saying Patrick threw us a lifeline.”

  “Give me a second.” Pope’s eyes narrowed with concentration. “Burkhalter’s note referred to his ‘last mistake.’ You’re guessing that mistake was bringing Phoebe, and so the construction of PS-1, and so making possible the attacks from PS-1. That whatever he was doing with the Green Bank Telescope was trying to somehow make things right.”

  “It fits, doesn’t it?” Ellen said.

  Pope said, “When he spotted Phoebe, why didn’t he just tell JPL or NASA—”

  While Verne continued on its planned course deeper into the asteroid belt. While Phoebe and Earth diverged on their very different orbits. While an energy-starved civilization fell into pieces, and committees—and nations?—debated.

  While the laws of physics dictated now or never.

  Patrick would not have waited. Marcus wouldn’t, either.

  But Pope wanted it short. Valerie said, “Patrick saw the opportunity and he took it, because that was who he was. After that, would you want anyone to know?”

  “I suppose not.” Pope glanced at his wristwatch. “But how can this matter now?”

  “I’m getting to that.” Valerie swallowed hard. “This part is so sensitive none of us dared speak openly on the link. Suppose we’re right. Then the big question becomes, where is the Verne probe now?”

  “Why would I care?” Pope asked. He glanced again at his watch.

  Valerie said, “Because there is a good chance Verne is on Phoebe. Able—if we can find it, if it’s in decent condition—to ferry a few people to PS-1. If, by then, there is still a PS-1 to reach.”

  Pope grabbed for his phone.

  Sunday, predawn, October 1

  A synthesized representation of Phoebe, slowly spinning, floated above the base command center’s main console.

  If Marcus squinted hard enough to perceive Phoebe as a sphere, its radius was lit
tle more than a half mile. A true sphere of that radius had a surface area approaching five square miles. Double the area to account for hills and valleys? Ten square miles seemed far beyond what he could search in a few hours. But did the entire area require searching? This little moon had been inhabited continuously for five years.

  If Verne was on Phoebe, why hadn’t someone, or some bot, spotted it?

  He pondered the globe. He added overlays highlighting the little world’s mines, factories, and various surveys. Any terrain NASA and its contractors and their bots had not crossed a million times, tourist bots must have explored.

  What about beneath the surface? He retrieved surveys done with ground-penetrating radar. They only reminded him that Phoebe was not a world so much as a rubble pile, a loosely bound community of rocks, agglomerations of dust and hydrocarbons, seams of ice, and vacuum gaps. The Grand Chasm was impossible to ignore, but nothing else leapt out at him.

  Three possibilities, Marcus enumerated, yawning, struggling to organize his thoughts. One: Verne is nowhere on Phoebe. It can’t be found. Two: Verne is here, but Patrick hid it. Or three: It’s here because Patrick lost control and it crashed.

  Only Patrick could not have lost control. He didn’t have direct control at the end, lacking access to a big radio transmitter. Presumably, Patrick had uploaded new commands to Verne via the Deep Space Network while he retained access as Verne’s principal investigator. He erased the upload from the comm buffers to cover his tracks, not because he panicked. After that, the Verne probe, repurposed, had to watch out for itself.

  “What did you do, Patrick?” Marcus asked a holo.

  The holo volunteered no more than Patrick ever had.

  Marcus leaned back in his seat, hands behind his head, fingers interlaced. Patrick had no control. The spacecraft was on its own.

  Verne pulled Phoebe, just as Phoebe pulled Verne, the gravitational attraction between two bodies simple to calculate. By maintaining a constant separation, Verne transferred the miniscule force of its thrusters to moving Phoebe. No impact or hard shoving to risk scattering the rubble. No landing to hazard.