Between the Strokes of Night

by Charles Sheffield

  “No, not yet. But I might. I have to go up there and see for myself — Hans Gibbs will make the arrangements this weekend.” As Jan de Vries became more and more doubtful, Judith looked more relaxed.

  “And since I’ll be gone, Jan,” she went on, “somebody else has to look at the initial list of key staff members, just in case we decide to do it. I know my own choices for the top people, but I’m not close enough to all the support staff — and we’d need some of them, too. Who are the best ones, and who is willing to go to Salter Station?”

  “You sound as though you have made up your mind already.”

  “No. I just want to think ahead in case it does happen.” She went across to her desk and picked up a handwritten page. “Here’s my first selection. Sit down again, and we’ll go over it together.”

  “But — “

  “Get Charlene to help you on this while I’m away.”

  “Charlene? Look, I know she’s good, but can she be objective? She’s a mass of insecurity.”

  “I know. She’s too modest. That’s why I want her to know she was on my preferred list from the start. While you’re at it, take a look at this.” She handed him a couple of pages of printout. “I just ran it out of the historical data banks. It’s the statement that Salter Wherry made to the United Nations when he started his industrial space activity, thirty years ago. We need to understand the psychological make-up of the man, and this is a good clue to it.” “Judith, slow down. You’re pushing me. I’m not at all sure that I want to — “ “Nor am I. Jan, we may be forced to do this, even if some of us don’t like the decision. Things have been absolutely falling apart around here in the past few months, bit by bit.”

  “I know times are hard — “

  “They’ll get worse. The way the Institute is getting screwed around, we can’t afford to do nothing. If we’re being raped we have to fight any way we can; even if it means risking Salter Wherry trying to screw us too.”

  He took the sheets from her hand, sighing. “All right, all right. If you insist, I’ll blunder ahead. Let’s all become experts on Salter Wherry and his enterprises. But Judith, must you be so crude? I prefer to avoid these unpleasant suggestions of rape. Why can’t we regard this overture as the first touch of Salter Wherry’s perfumed hand in our genteel seduction?” He smirked happily. “That makes it all positively appealing; in seduction, my dear, there’s so much more scope for negotiation.”

  * * *

  From the invited address of Salter Wherry to the United Nations General Assembly, following establishment of Salter Station in a stable six-hour orbit around the Earth, and shortly before Wherry withdrew from contact with the general public:

  Nature abhors a vacuum. If there is an open ecological niche, some organism will move to fill it. That’s what evolution is all about. Twenty years ago there was a clear emerging crisis in mineral resource supply. Everybody knew that we were heading for shortages of at least twelve key metals. And almost everybody knew that we wouldn’t find them in any easily accessible place on Earth. We would be mining fifteen miles down, or at the ocean bottom. I decided it was more logical to mine five thousand miles up. Some of the asteroids are ninety percent metals; what we needed to do was bring them into Earth orbit.

  I approached the U.S. Government first with my proposal for asteroid capture and mining. I had full estimates of costs and probable return on investment, and I would have settled for a five percent contract fee.

  I was told that it was too controversial, that I would run into questions of international ownership of mineral rights. Other countries would want to be included in the project.

  Very well. I came here to the United Nations, and made full disclosure of all my ideas to this group. But after four years of constant debate, and many thousands of hours of my time preparing and presenting additional data, not one line of useful response had been drafted to my proposal. You formed study committees, and committees to study those committees, and that was all you did. You talked.

  Life is short. I happened to have one advantage denied to most people. From the 1950s through the 1990s, my father invested his money in computer stocks. I was already very wealthy, and I was frustrated enough to risk it all. You are beginning to see some of the results, in the shape of PSS-One — what the Press seems to prefer to call Salter Station. It will serve as the home for two hundred people, with ease.

  But this is no more than a beginning. Although Nature may abhor a vacuum, modern technology loves one; that, and the microgravity environment. I intend to use them to the full. I will construct a succession of large, permanently occupied space stations using asteroidal materials. If any nation here today desires to rent space or facilities from me, or buy my products manufactured in space, I will be happy to consider this — at commercial rates. I also invite people from all nations on Earth to join me in those facilities. We are ready to take all the steps necessary for the human race to begin its exploration of our Universe.

  * * *

  It was past midnight by the time that Jan de Vries had read the full statement twice, then skipped again to the comment with which Salter Wherry had concluded his address. They were words that had become permanently linked to his name, and they had earned him the impotent enmity of every nation on earth: “The conquest of space is too important an enterprise to be entrusted to governments.” De Vries shook his head. Salter Wherry was a formidable man, ready to take on world governments — and win. Did Judith have the equipment to play in Wherry’s league?

  He closed the folder, his chubby face completely serious. A move to Salter Station. It would be fascinating. But the government outrage and hypocrisy over Wherry’s actions still continued, undiminished (perhaps increased) by success. The popularity of the arcologies, and the flood of applicants to embark on them, only added fuel to the official anger. If the Institute moved, everyone there would have to understand that the decision to join the Wherry empire would add to the outcry. They would all be branded as “traitors” by the U.N. official press.

  And once they went out, what then? For many of them there would never be a return home. Earth would be lost to them forever.

  The building hummed quietly with the subdued murmur of a thousand experiments, going on through the night. Jan de Vries sat in his easy chair for a long time, musing, peering out of the window into the humid night but seeing only the cloudy vision of his own future. Where was it likely to lead? Would he be in space himself, ten years from now? What would it be like out there? The ideas were difficult to grasp, drifting away from the periphery of his tired brain. He yawned, and rose slowly to his feet. Ten years — it was too far to see. Better think of near-term things: Judith Niles’ list, the budget, the still-unfinished trip report. Ten years was infinity, something beyond his span. Jan de Vries could not possibly have known it, but he had his crystal ball wrongly focused. He should have been looking much farther ahead.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Either I meet with him personally, or there will be no agreement. It’s as simple as that, Hans.”

  “I’m telling you, that’s not possible. He doesn’t hold face-to-face conferences any more; not here, or down on Earth.”

  “You see him often enough.”

  “Well, damn it, Judith, I am his assistant. Even he has to see a few people. But I have full legal authority to sign for him, if that’s a worry. Check with Zurich for any questions on financing. And if you want to look at anything else on the Station, tell me and I’ll arrange it.”

  Hans Gibbs sounded almost pleading. They were sitting in an eighth-gee chamber halfway out from the hub of Salter Station, watching the mining operations on Elmo, a hundred kilometers above them. Electric arcs sparkled and sputtered in random sequence on the surface of the Earth-orbiting asteroid, and loaded cargo buckets were drifting lazily down along the umbilical. From this distance it was a glittering filament of silver, coiling its length down to the station refining center.

  Judith Niles pulled her ga
ze back from the hypnotic sight of the endless bucket chain. She shook her head, and smiled at the man seated across from her. “Hans, this isn’t just me being awkward. And I’m sure that you and I could conclude the deal. It’s not something I want for myself, it’s for my team down at the Institute. I’m asking them to give up the security of government jobs and take a flier to a private industry group in an orbital facility.” “Security?” Hans Gibbs glared at her. “Judith, that’s pure crap. You know it’s crap. A job with Salter Wherry is safer than any government position. Your whole group could be wiped out tomorrow if some jackass in the U.N. decided to throw his weight around. And they have plenty of jackasses. And don’t give me any nonsense about your budget — Salter Wherry has better and earlier information about that than you do.”

  “I believe it.” She sighed. “I told you, you don’t have to convince me. You’re preaching to the choir. I’ve seen our programs twisted and cut and maimed, year after year. But I need to bring twenty key scientists up here with me and I’m telling you how some of them feel. I go back to the Institute and they say to me, ‘Did Salter Wherry agree to this?’ And I say, ‘Well, no. I signed a long-term contract — but I didn’t actually see him.’ Know what they’ll say? They’ll say that this project is pretty low on Salter Wherry’s list of priorities, and maybe we should think again.”

  “It’s top priority. Even down on Earth, most people know that he doesn’t hold face-to-face meetings.”

  “I know.” She smiled sweetly. “That’s why it will be so impressive to my staff when they hear that I did meet with him. Think about it for a minute.” Judith Niles leaned back and recalled the last conversation with Jan de Vries and Charlene Bloom before she left. Negotiate hard. It had been the point they all agreed on. And if it didn’t work out? Well, they would live through it. The Institute would continue somehow, even with government cuts in funding. Across from her, Hans Gibbs groaned and eased to his feet. In the two days that they had spent together he had been forming his own impressions of the Institute director, adding to the odd perspective that had come from his cousin at the Institute.

  “She’s weird, I mean, like she’s not shaped yet,” Wolfgang had said. “She’s pretty old, right?”

  Hans glared at him. “Watch it, sonny. She’s thirty-seven. Guess that’s old if you’re still wet behind the ears.”

  “Right. So she’s thirty-seven, and she has a world-wide reputation. But she’s like a little kid in some ways.” Wolfgang waved his beer glass in a circle in the air. “I mean, you tell me I act like a retard, but she’s the one you should talk to. I can’t figure her at all. I think maybe when she was younger all her energy went into science and sex. She’s just getting around to learning the rest of the world.”

  “Sex?” Hans raised his eyebrows. “I was right, then. Wolf, if you say she’s sex-mad, she must be something. Been trying to sleep your way to the top, eh? And I thought she was all fixed up with that little man I met yesterday.” “You mean Jan de Vries?” Wolfgang spluttered his laughter through a mouthful of beer. “Cousin boy, you are all screwed up on that one. No chance of an affair between him and JN, not if you locked ‘em up together and fed ‘em Spanish Fly for a year. I like Jan, he’s a great guy, but he’s got his own ideas on sex. He makes friends easily with women, but for his love life he only looks at men.” “But you’re sure about her?”

  “I’m sure. Not from personal experience, though. She’s not like me. JN’s discreet, she never plays bedroom games around the Institute. But she disappears for nights and weekends.”

  “She could be working.”

  “Bullshit. It takes one to know one. She’s horny as I am.”

  Hans shrugged. His own impressions had been formed back when he first saw her photograph. “All right, so she’s horny as you are. God help her. But if she’s not shaped and still changing, what will she be like when she is shaped?” Wolfgang Gibbs’ face took on a different expression. He was silent for a moment. “She could be anything,” he said at last. “Absolutely anything. Even the cocky ones at the Institute admit it, she’s way above them on technical matters.” “Even you, cousin? Since when? I thought the mirror on the wall said you were smartest of them all.”

  Wolfgang placed his beer glass down on the window sill. He looked very serious. “Even me, cousin. Remember what one of France’s old generals said when he came out of his first meeting with Napoleon? ‘I knew at once that I had met my master.’ That’s how I felt after my first one-on-one with JN. She’s a powerhouse. And when she wants something, she’s hard to stop.”

  “I’ve met more than one like that. But where does she get her kicks? If we’re going to have a deal, I need to understand her motives.”

  But at that point Wolfgang Gibbs had only shaken his head and picked up his beer again. And now, thought Hans, looking at Judith’s unreadable face, we’re one-on-one and I’m experiencing the push for myself. An audience with Salter, she says, or no deal. He began to move slowly toward the exit.

  “Okay, Judith. I’ll try. Salter Wherry is here on the Station, and I have to see him anyway about some other stuff. Give me half an hour — if I can’t do anything in that time, I can’t do it at all. Wait here, and dial Central Services if you need anything while I’m gone. But don’t get your hopes up. The only thing I can tell you is that he wants the Institute up here so bad he can taste it — he says the narcolepsy problem is top priority. Maybe it will make him break his own rule.”

  * * *

  Judith Niles was left with her own thoughts. The words of Jan de Vries kept drifting back to her. “Salter Wherry is a manipulator, the best in the System.” And now she was hoping to manipulate the system he had created. Wherry didn’t know it, but she had little choice. She had her own urgencies. The experiments she wanted to do couldn’t be conducted down on Earth. If he were to suspect that…

  She looked again out of the concave viewing port. Salter Station was powerful evidence of the effectiveness of that manipulative power. From where she was sitting, Elmo was continuously visible. It was the first of the

  Earth-orbit-crossing asteroids to be steered into stable six-hour orbit around the Earth: but as Salter Wherry had promised the United Nations, the story had not ended there.

  Looking at the panorama of development above her, Judith Niles was forced to marvel. Wherry’s asteroid mining operations had provided the base metals to create and then expand Salter Station. But at the same time, as no more than a by-product, they also extracted enough platinum, gold, iridium, chromium, and nickel to make up almost half of the world’s supply. Bans against import of products from Salter Station into most countries had been totally useless. The shipments of metal were “laundered” through neutral spaceports in the Free Trade Zones, and at last arrived where they were needed — fifty percent more expensive than they would have been on direct purchase.

  Wherry’s operations were strong enough to withstand a challenge from any government, his defense systems rumored to be capable of meeting a combined Earth attack. The Institute could be moved here, safe from withering cuts and changes of direction. But would it be worth it? Only if she and the rest of the staff had real freedom to pursue their work. That was the promise that she must extract from Salter Wherry. And an ironbound legal contract had to go with it. When you dealt with a master manipulator, you couldn’t afford to leave loopholes.

  She lay back in her seat, staring upward. A faint glimmer of light caught her eye, drifting past her field of view. She realized that she was witnessing one of the infrequent transits of Eleanora, the sixth and most ambitious of the giant arcologies. It was in an orbit nearly a thousand kilometers higher, and it passed the station only once every three days. Initially dubbed as “Salter’s Folly” by the skeptical media, the first arcology had been started fourteen years ago and had grown steadily. Until the great space station was completed, Salter Wherry seemed content to let the original jeering name serve as the official one. Then he had finally renamed it
Amanda, assisted its population of four thousand to establish themselves there, and apparently lost all interest. His mind was focused on construction of the second arcology, then the third…

  Curious, Judith dialled into the Station’s central computer and requested a high-resolution image of Eleanora. The half-built arcology blinked into full-color display on the screen. The skeleton was finished now, a seven-hundred-meter spherical framework of metal girders. Wall panels were going in over half the structure, so that she could estimate the size of the rooms and the internal corridors that would exist in the final ship. Allowing for power, food, maintenance and recreational areas, the final Ark would comfortably house twelve thousand people — the biggest one yet. And it had more facilities and living-space per person than the average family enjoyed on Earth. Two more arcologies were starting construction in higher orbits, each supposedly even bigger than this one.

  Judith stared out of the port, seeing again her own office back at the Institute. The group’s move up here (if it happened; Hans Gibbs had been gone a long time) had seemed such a big thing when it was first proposed. Compared with what Salter Wherry was planning for the arcologies, it was nothing. They were designed to be self-sustaining over a period of centuries and more, free-ranging through the Solar System and beyond if they chose, independent even of sunlight. From a kilo or two of water, self-contained fusion plants would provide enough power for years. As a backup to the recycling systems, each arcology would tow along an asteroid several hundred meters across, to be mined as needed. Judith shook her head thoughtfully. She swung her chair to look out of the Earthside ports. It was daylight below, and she could see the great smudge that shrouded most of central Africa. Parts of the desiccated equatorial rain forest were still ablaze, casting a dark shadow across a third of the continent. The drought-ridden area stretched from the Mediterranean past the Equator, and no one could predict when it would end. It was hard to imagine what life must be like down there, as the climate changes made the old African life styles impossible. And across the Atlantic, the vast Amazon basin was steadily drying, too, becoming the tinder that would flame in just a few more months unless weather patterns changed.