Energized

by Edward M. Lerner

  Marcus stared at the most recent deep-radar survey. It stared back, hinting at something he was too tired or obtuse to see. Taunting him. A not-round, not-at-all-uniform rubble pile.

  A nasty suspicion struck him. “Savannah Morgan,” he paged on the base intercom. “Come to the command center.”

  Savvy showed up after a couple of minutes. She had dark bags under her eyes and darker smudges on her jumpsuit. “What’s up?”

  “I need a software engineer’s insight.” He gestured at the Phoebe holo. “Autopilot for a gravity tractor. Easy or hard to program?”

  “Balancing act, right?”

  “Yeah. Thrusters offsetting gravitational attraction between the two bodies.”

  “So the closer to Phoebe’s surface the tractor hovers, the stronger the attraction. You would want to keep the probe in close.”

  “As I understand it.”

  Tipping her head this way and that, she examined the holo. “That being one of the bodies?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tumbling?”

  Like its much bigger sister moon, Phoebe had one face tidally locked to Earth. But in the depths of space, remote from any large mass, why wouldn’t Phoebe have tumbled? “I assume so.”

  She said, “Then, yes, a big deal. Because Phoebe was tumbling and is irregularly shaped, the force of gravity between it and the tractor would have varied continuously. Ditto because Phoebe’s mass distribution is far from uniform. Obvious example: whether the Grand Chasm is near or far from the tractor.”

  “So how—?”

  “How would I program such an autopilot? Adaptively. Using lidar or radar—Verne has one of those, right?—to monitor real-time separation. Constantly fine-tuning thrust to maintain separation within a narrow range. And if I want the tractor to hover just over the surface to maximize attraction? That means very little time to react when some inhomogeneity pulls in the probe.

  “Or maybe I’d put the tractor into orbit around Phoebe. Any thrust from the spacecraft insufficient to break orbit would nudge the bound system of both objects. I figure a close orbit in that case, rather than a close hover, so I could apply more thrust. The probe’s orbit would be changing constantly, both from the engine thrusting and Phoebe’s inhomogeneity. Again, very little time to react whenever real life trumps maneuver calculations.”

  She took a deep breath. “For many reasons, that’s far from the type of software I would care to write on the fly, let alone have to sneak into an unauthorized upload and splice into code designed for another purpose.”

  “A complex balancing act, then. And yet, it worked.”

  “Yeah.” Savvy examined the holo some more. “Dollars to doughnuts, at some point it ended like most balancing acts.”

  “In a crash?”

  She nodded. “Just don’t ask me where.”

  * * *

  It took two hours for another mystery to insinuate its way into Marcus’s conscious ruminations.

  “Someone awake down there?” he called over the surreptitious downlink.

  Define awake.

  “I need someone to dig through the rental records for tourist bots.”

  I’ll get Dr. Clayburn. One minute.

  “Sure,” Marcus said.

  Valerie here. There was a pause Marcus read as, “You look terrible, but it won’t help for me to point that out.” What do you need?

  “Suppose Patrick didn’t just happen to develop a hobby driving Phoebe robots?”

  Why would I suppose that?

  “If Verne is on Phoebe, Patrick wouldn’t want anyone to find the wreckage. Not after he had kept its hijacking secret all these years. He would want to hide Verne. Physically bury it.”

  Yeah. I had wondered about that. Out of Body rental files show check-in and checkout times. Nothing about where a bot happens to wander.

  “It was a thought.” He drummed fingers on the console counter. “Say, Val? Could you check the files for lost and stranded bots?” Because if you failed to return your bot to the corral before its batteries ran dry, you paid for its retrieval.

  Just a sec. After a minute, she wrote, Good call. Patrick got billed to replace several bots. But the records don’t indicate locations.

  “Replace, not retrieve?”

  Yeah. Why?

  “Remember seeing any lost bots? On a very unorthodox first date?”

  In landslides. In the Grand Chasm. A long pause. Could it be?

  “Well, we know that something hit Phoebe.”

  Sunday morning, October 1

  Finding Verne, knowing where to look, could have been easy. Peer into the Grand Chasm with a high-sensitivity IR sensor: the spacecraft’s radioisotope thermoelectric generator, powered by the slow and steady radioactive decay of plutonium, would still be warm. Or survey the chasm from above, towing a metal detector behind a hopper.

  If only the terrorists had left them with IR sensors or hoppers. Or if there had been some reason to stock metal detectors on a world devoid of metal.

  Instead Marcus made do with the nine volunteers game to join him in the chasm—and twenty less adventuresome types willing to man safety tethers to pull people out as they got stuck. Everyone entering the chasm carried a quick-and-dirty homemade metal detector, little more than an ac oscillator, a couple wire coils, and a voltmeter. Each volunteer had a stretch of canyon about two hundred feet long to search.

  Straightened out, the chasm would have run about a third of a mile—beyond grand for a world not quite four miles in circumference. The rift varied in spots from a few feet in width to almost a hundred feet.

  Marcus stepped into the abyss, his rate of descent at first scarcely perceptible. Weighing less than a pound, he easily arrested his fall with his gas pistol. Lateral motion was trickier; practicing, he almost crashed twice. The second time, his boot scraped a furrow along a shallow slope, setting off a slow-motion avalanche.

  Verne’s arrival might have been like that: a slow, glancing, bouncing blow. He pictured rock and dust collapsing into subsurface voids. And he pictured something his boot could not imitate: plasma exhaust from Verne’s thrusters flashing ice to steam. Newly coaxed sunward, much of Phoebe’s subsurface ice would have been primed, cometlike, to explode.

  Maybe the spacecraft had cartwheeled from one end to the other of what would become the Grand Chasm, triggering steam eruptions and setting off majestic collapses. A blast of steam might have blown Verne away. Or Verne might lie buried deep beneath the chasm floor, crushed and inaccessible. Or the long-lost spacecraft might be just below the surface, unharmed by the slow-motion rain of dust.

  And in just such a shallow hiding place, one of the volunteers found it.

  * * *

  Six men carried the Verne spacecraft into the abandoned hopper garage. Three men on a side. Like pallbearers. The remainder of the work party, like mourners, lagged behind.

  “We’re looking at history,” Marcus said. But was the probe any more than a relic?

  The probe’s big dish antenna, once twenty feet across, had crumpled on impact like a paper cocktail umbrella. And like bumper and fenders collapsing on a car, the antenna had absorbed much of the kinetic energy of the crash, protecting what was behind. Once they removed the crushed ruin of a dish, the rest of the spacecraft looked more or less whole.

  True, the sensor cluster was battered. Behind it, the flight-computer canister was dented. But at the rear of the spacecraft, the thruster, similar in operation and configuration to the thrusters on PS-1, appeared intact. And between …

  PS-1 generated enormous amounts of electrical power from sunlight, but Verne relied for its power on a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. A spacecraft-scaled solar panel could not begin to drive a magnetoplasmadynamic thruster—not in Earth orbit, let alone in the outer belt, where the sunlight was much dimmer. Marcus was relieved, but not surprised, to find Verne’s RTG intact. NASA built every RTG to stay together—and contain its load of plutonium—even if the rocket that carried it expl
oded on the launchpad.

  “Digging out this probe may have been the last mining anyone ever does on this world,” someone lamented.

  “None of that,” Savvy said. “Let’s check it over.”

  “I think I’ll see how efforts are faring on the escape pods,” someone else offered.

  Others agreed, and the funeral processional became a recessional. Soon Marcus, Savvy, and a base mechanic named Jarred Finnegan had the garage to themselves. They switched off their radio transmitters and jacked their helmets together with fiber-optic cables.

  The RTG still provided electrical power. Three argon tanks had split—but that left one fuel tank intact. The main thruster worked, magnetic fields accelerating ionized argon to very high velocities. Most of the little compressed-gas attitude jets worked, too. Power, engine, attitude control, and fuel: they had the basics.

  At full thrust, had they not strapped Verne to a bolted-down workbench, their testing would have blasted the old probe into a garage wall. On Earth, the low-thrust, long-duration engine could not have lifted one-tenth the probe’s weight. The exhaust of ionized argon glowed faintly, an eerie white-pink.

  “But can you steer this thing?” Finnegan asked.

  Savvy patted the dented electronics canister at the spacecraft’s midsection. “With this? I won’t even try. But to navigate the short hop to PS-1? If I can’t code that on a datasheet in twenty minutes, I deserve to get lost.”

  “You mean you’re volunteering?” Marcus asked.

  “I was sent to look after PS-1 security, wasn’t I?”

  * * *

  The same damned command center. The same four people crammed in. The same insecure link to the ground. But a whole new level of insanity, Thad thought.

  “We have to do this,” Marcus said.

  Cn you trrust it? the ground asked.

  To judge from the typing, Thad guessed Marcus’s girlfriend again had the groundside keyboard. And that she was no fan of Marcus’s proposed adventure.

  Not that anyone on Phoebe had shared with anyone on the ground what Marcus proposed, lest someone else overhear. What if, Thad considered, I “accidentally” blurt out some details? But that could expose me with no guarantee Yakov and company would get the message. So, no.

  “A walk in the park,” Marcus said.

  With lionns and tigrs and berrs.

  “Some parks are more interesting than others,” Marcus conceded.

  “As I recall this park, the bears are armed,” Thad said. And I provided the guns. He wanted to curl up and die, but that was not an option.

  “The idea is to avoid and outwit the bears, not confront them,” Savvy said.

  “With luck,” Dino added, “they won’t see us coming. Or see us there: it’s a big park.”

  Because Dino had also volunteered. Best guess, four people could hang on to what remained of the probe for its final flight. Marcus’s plan called for four people.

  What if, against all odds, they made it to PS-1? Everything Thad knew about the powersat said they had a chance to disable it.

  “Another two hours, and we’ll be ready to bail,” Thad said. “All of us. That’s been the plan, remember?”

  Still is.

  “For most people,” Marcus countered, stubbornly.

  TLA sort-of agrees, Marcus. Do you have a fourth?

  Doubtless, someone among the base crew would volunteer. And if they succeeded? Then he would remain Yakov’s puppet. Or “Cousin Jonas” and the others might be taken alive and expose Thad’s role in this catastrophe. This insane attempt had to fail. Whatever it took.

  For Robin.

  Thad took a deep breath. “Station chief’s prerogative. If we’re doing this, then I’m number four.”

  * * *

  It came down, Tyler decided, to trust. Did he trust Marcus Judson, a man he had never met, to execute a plan that he dare not describe? If yes, the crisis might yet end without blowing up PS-1, without denying America access to Phoebe and its resources. If yes, Tyler should do whatever it took to get the White House to postpone the missile strike for a little longer.

  Even as the slaughter and the destruction continued.

  Maybe nothing could convince the White House. The pressure to act must be enormous. PS-1’s latest strike on the Trans-Mediterranean Power Co-op distribution system (the fourth such attack? The fifth? Tyler had lost count) had just severed Spain from the vast North African solar farms. A hundred gigawatts lost in an instant … it had blacked out Spain and Portugal and sent brownouts rolling across France and into Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.

  Did he trust Judson?

  “What’s your opinion?” Tyler asked Ellen Tanaka.

  “Hardly anyone knows PS-1 as well as Marcus. It’s clear that he believes there’s a vulnerability he can exploit. If he believes it, I believe him.” Ellen smiled sadly. “I’m proud of him and terrified for him at the same time.”

  “And what do you think?” Tyler asked Valerie.

  “Beyond wanting everyone on Phoebe safely on the ground?” She brushed back a tear. “That people don’t come more tenacious than Marcus. And that if we don’t tell them to try, we’ll wonder for the rest of our lives: What if?”

  “What about you?” Tyler asked General Rodgers.

  The general fixed him with a hard stare. “Think about what? We have no idea what they intend to try. I’m just waiting for a launch order.”

  On the room’s main display, Marcus asked, “Hello? Are we still online?”

  “Tell him, yes,” Tyler said.

  “Yes, we’re still here?” Valerie asked.

  “Yes, go for it,” Tyler said. “And then I have to go.” Because he was almost certain no one would order a launch within two hours of evacuating Phoebe base. In thirty minutes by chopper, he could be at Langley. Where he would learn if the director would trust the opinion of an intel analyst he scarcely knew to trust the unknown plan of an engineer Tyler did not know.

  And whether he had just sent four brave people to ground zero.

  Sunday, early afternoon, October 1

  Thad, Marcus, Dino, and Savvy emerged from the hopper garage, each tethered to a ground-staked guide cable and to Verne. With one hand grasping the spacecraft and another on the cable, they dragged themselves away from the base.

  All the while, Thad’s mind churned. It would be so simple to drop his end of the probe—but it would not help. Objects on Phoebe fell so glacially that the others would catch it. And after raging against this mission, wouldn’t it raise suspicions if he were the one to drop it? Just as he could not “accidentally” break their little group’s radio silence without raising suspicions.

  Bright light spilled from the garage entrance and an array of post lamps on the surface. To his right the last few people queued up for the escape pods. On the common radio channel, people spoke in hushed tones, nervous, relieved, and afraid all at once. Their misery—after a harrowing ride—might soon end.

  Grunting with effort, dragging their boot tips, the four of them managed to stop just before the cable’s first piton. Like them, Verne weighed next to nothing. Unlike them, it massed six thousand pounds; with the corresponding inertia, it resisted starting and stopping. One by one, very carefully, they got to their feet, settled into a crouch, and unclipped their carabiners from the guide cable.

  Thad and Dino held Verne’s aft end, Marcus and Savannah the bow. Thad watched Marcus and Savannah touch helmets. They talked about something for a good thirty seconds, but unable to see their faces, Thad had no idea what. They finished their tête-à-tête and turned toward Thad and Dino.

  “Ready?” Marcus mouthed.

  Or, for all Thad knew, Marcus had shouted it. Their mikes were off lest they be overheard. Later, when they were in position, they would jack their helmets together with fiber-optic cables.

  “Ready,” Thad mouthed back.

  The other two nodded.

  About fifty feet away, four people scooted along another guide c
able, two to the side. They held aloft, rather than a spaceflight relic, a fifth person. Thad did not want to think about forcing Irv’s wounded leg into his counterpressure suit. Or about the gee forces of reentry squashing that leg. There were not enough drugs in the world.

  Mostly, Thad wanted not to think about the gun that had shot Irv. Or who had built it.

  Minutes later, the final escape-pod hatch closed.

  “Talk about a ringside seat,” Marcus said. And then—

  An unseen ejector flung the first escape pod into space. Even as the pod receded from the surface lights, unseen puffs of gas from its attitude jets were orienting it. Within seconds it had traveled too far to be seen by the base lighting. And then—

  The retrorocket blazed.

  One after another, escape pods set off. Three. Four. Five.

  Light erupted from Phoebe’s surface. “Mother of God,” Dino whispered.

  Anyone observing Phoebe would have seen five pods launch and one explode. But the blast came from mining explosives, not the sixth and final escape pod. A bit of misdirection. And, just possibly, disguising a way down to Earth if the four of them survived the next couple of hours. Not that Thad foresaw that happening.

  “On zero,” Marcus mouthed. “Three, two…”

  On zero, they leapt.

  * * *

  As Marcus jumped—once again fighting Verne’s inertia—every muscle and joint screamed in protest. Still, spacecraft, crew, and their bit of gear together weighed almost nothing. They sailed into space.

  And, floating, he turned his head to watch Phoebe recede.

  Verne’s thruster had more than enough oomph to have lifted them from the tiny moon, only there had been no safe way to stand the probe upright to climb aboard. And if they had had the time to build some kind of launch stand, what might the backsplash of plasma from the surface have done to the passengers? No matter that his back ached, jumping free had been the safe choice.

  Setting aside how ridiculous an adjective safe was for any aspect of this joyride.

  Jostling one another, they reoriented themselves parallel to the long axis of the probe. Marcus jammed his boots into two of the cloth loops, improvised stirrups, they had attached.