“We can set most of the varieties loose on the surface and let the winds carry them to the four corners of the globe like little tumbleweeds. They spread out themselves, without any help from us. Within a few decades, there should be enough oxygen in the atmosphere for humans to breath unaided. With a thick cloak of atmosphere to provide radiation shielding, it may be safe to live on the surface, rather than underground. It’ll still be awfully cold, but the atmosphere will absorb heat, and if we can pump enough greenhouse gasses into the air, eventually the planet will become quite toasty.” He paused. “Well, maybe not Miami Beach or Rio toasty, but certainly livable. And we owe it all to you.”
James shook his head. “I can’t take credit for this. You folks have worked too long and too hard for that. You deserve all the credit, not me. All I did was get overeager and crash a Cat into a canyon wall. That’s hardly a major achievement.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, James. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin mold by accident. So what? It didn’t make the discovery any less important. Sometimes it’s better to be in the right place at the right time than to spend your life in an ivory tower with your head stuck in the clouds looking for answers.”
“Maybe so, but it didn’t seem like all that big a deal on my part at the time.”
Sennheiser smiled. “Listen, do you two have to rush right off, or do you have some time?”
James checked his wrist chrono. “We’ve got over an hour until we have to board the elevator. Frankly I don’t fancy sitting in the departure area waiting for the car while the newsies descend on us like buzzards over roadkill. Why, what do you have in mind?”
“I thought you might like to take a tour of the facilities.”
“I was hoping you’d offer.” He looked over at Janice. “If you don’t mind.”
She smiled. “Hey, I’m a scientist too, remember? Lead on, Jerry.”
Sennheiser beamed. “Excellent! This way, then.” He stood and swept the others toward the side door in his office.
The next forty minutes were some of the most interesting that James had spent in years.
“Tell you what, Jerry. While I’m on Earth, I’ll play up your project and see if I can persuade the right people to increase your funding. What’s the good of all this fame if I can’t use it for something important? The sooner we get Mars terraformed, the sooner we can start colonizing in earnest. All the time we’ve been here and the number of humans living on Mars can still be measured only in the thousands.”
Sennheiser beamed. “That would be wonderful!”
“Listen, Janice and I have to run to catch the elevator, but I really enjoyed our talk today. I’ll try to stop by for a longer visit when we get back from Earth.”
“Thanks. I look forward to it. It was great having you both here.”
Janice held out her hand. “It was so nice meeting you, Jerry.”
“The pleasure was all mine, Janice. Truly.” He and James shook hands. “Have a pleasant trip, you two.
James and Janice again had to force their way through the knot of newsies blocking their path, and then endure the short chase to the elevator terminal.
* * * *
Once aboard the car, the two locked themselves in their double cabin for the duration of the trip up to Barsoom. It was either that or face being bombarded with questions the entire way. The sad fact of life was that sometimes the price of fame was self-imposed isolation.
Still, what if the alternative was a life of obscurity? Would I prefer that? He thought for a moment, weighing the possibilities. Fame, fortune and media glare versus peaceful obscurity?
He pondered a bit longer before smiling. I didn’t come all the way out here for peace and quiet, now did I? I wanted to have an immediate impact on a global imperative: locating the natural resources that Earth so badly needs. He smiled at the mental reminder of the ‘im-crowd’.
I think I’ve done pretty well over the years in that regard, if I do say so myself.
Speaking of imperatives, maybe it’s time to start that family we’ve been talking about.
James looked over at Janice, who lay beside him reading on the bed in their cabin, blonde hair framing her face. Her low-cut nightgown showed quite a bit of cleavage.
After a moment, she sensed his attention and glanced up. “What? Why are you looking at me with that silly grin?”
- End -
AFTERWORD
The space elevator described in this novel may not be in the realm of science fiction much longer. “Celestial towers,” “beanstalks,” “sky hooks,” and others similar concepts have been discussed and refined for decades: from Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1895 though Yuri Artsutanov in 1960, Jerome Pearson in the mid-1970s, Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s novel (The Fountains of Paradise) and Dr. Charles Sheffield’s The Web Between the Worlds, both in 1979, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars trilogy in the ‘90s, and a study commissioned by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) and authored by Dr. Bradley Edwards in 2000-2002.[1] Various possible solutions to some obstacles have been proposed along the way, but others require future science to provide the answers.
Until recently, the biggest obstacle was finding a material that was far stronger and yet lighter than steel, to use as the cable material. Kevlar was the first step in this direction; yet it, too, fell well short of the necessary strength-to-weight ratio.
Finally, in 1991 electron microscopist Sumio Iijima discovered carbon nanotubes (CNTs). CNTs offered the strength-to-weight ratio necessary to make space elevators a practical consideration. Other types of nanotubes have been discovered in the years since.
The largest remaining technical hurdles appear to be finding ways to produce mass quantities of nanotubes and link them together into cables tens of thousands of kilometers long, and how to keep all the space junk orbiting Earth from colliding with the elevator. Beyond that is the larger issue of finding the funding and the will to undertake a task that would make the International Space Station program pale by comparison. Still, the NIAC study suggests that a feasible design could be constructed within the next fifty years. By the late twenty-second century, when this novel is set, the technical, financial, and sociological hurdles should have been resolved.
Many of the space elevator concepts used in this story come from the authors cited. Any errors in interpretation or extrapolation are mine.
Mark Terence Chapman,
January 2005
The Tesserene Imperative
(Book Two of the Imperative Chronicles)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
About the Author
PART I
CHAPTER 1
History of Space Exploration: Tesserene—Before mankind can escape the shackles of Planet Earth and expand into the cosmos, it must locate an abundant source of TESSERENE.
Tesserene is the most potent power source ever discovered by mankind, capable of warping space and enabling starflight. A few kilos are enough to power a starship for months. However, tesserene’s power is matched only by its rarity. Even after decades of searching, little tesserene has been found in the SOL system and not much more in nearby star systems. It is in such short supply that most of the known reserves are us
ed in the search for more tesserene.
— Excerpt from Encyclopedia Solaris, 2194
* * * *
I reached down to secure my safety tether to the guy wire anchored to the rock, when something struck me from the side and threw me off-balance. My boot slipped on the thin layer of asteroid dust, and I missed the wire.
I froze.
I was an old hand at this; I should have just relaxed and tried again. Instead, I overreacted and scrabbled for purchase in the microgravity. I grabbed for the wire, but my wild lunge did nothing but push me in the opposite direction.
Within seconds, I was meters from the rock and drifting away.
Stifling a fast-growing sense of dread, I triggered my suit’s maneuvering thrusters.
Nothing—the thrusters were dead.
Shit!
“Sparks!” I hollered into my radio. He was only a few meters to my left, facing the other way.
“Sparks!” I hollered again. No reaction. Why didn’t he hear me?
“Sparks!” Again nothing.
I checked my radio. It should have been working, so why no response from Sparks?
All the while, I continued to drift ever farther from safety. I started to panic. The only thing standing between me and the primary of this system was 134 million kilometers of cold, dead, stark, nothing.
“Sparks! Cap! Tom! Guido! Anyone!” Still no response.
It dawned on me that whatever fleck of high-speed space debris had smashed into my backpack and knocked me off my feet must have wrecked both the radio and the thrusters. I checked the gear in my EVA suit pouches, but there was nothing that would help me get back to the asteroid. Nor was there any way to fix the radio on my back.
I knew I was taking a chance, but I pulled a wrench from a pouch and threw it at Sparks, hoping he’d see it and look back.
I willed the wrench to fly true. “Come on, come on!”
No joy.
The wrench glanced off the rock, well to Sparks’ right. Out of line-of-sight, and in a vacuum, he couldn’t see, hear, or feel it strike. Worse, my throw had sent me tumbling.
“Sparks!” Why didn’t he turn around? Couldn’t he sense me behind him?
Sparks and the asteroid flashed in front of me, over and over as I tumbled, like some flickery old black-and-white silent film. I continued to drift farther and farther from the asteroid and any hope of survival.
“Sparks, goddamn it! Turn around. SPARKS!”
It wasn’t long before the asteroid dwindled to fist-sized, and then marble-sized. Finally, it merged with the other remains of a planet that existed once, but no longer.
I cursed my fate until the hiss of oxygen in my EVA suit sputtered and died. Then I cursed the friends who didn’t come for me.
“SPA-A-A-RKS!”
* * * *
I sat up abruptly in my bunk aboard ship, wild-eyed and heart pounding. Sweat beads meandered down my chest. My sheets were soaking wet—yet again. It was the same nightmare. Always the same.
And it wasn’t true. In reality, Guido had spotted me starting to drift away from aboard Shamu and called Sparks. Double-tethered to the safety lines anchored to the asteroid’s surface, Sparks jumped and caught me before I had gone more than a dozen meters. Then it was a simple matter of reeling us both back in. Sure, it was scary at the time, but only for a minute.
I sighed. Maybe I’d been at this game too long. Maybe it was time to get out.
And do what? I’d been a spacer for sixteen years. It was all I knew how to do. I was good at my job and made a decent living. But I’d begun to wonder whether the money was worth the risks.
The ever-present threat of death is something every spacer has to come to grips with. It’s either that or find another line of work.
I shrugged off such negative thoughts. I had work to do.
It took only minutes to shower, dress, and head to the galley for a quick cup of synthcaf with the rest of the crew.
Then we exited the boarding ramp outside Shamu’s airlock on ODF Odyssey. We spent the next few hours inspecting the work the refit crew had done on her. The old girl had gotten pretty dinged up on our last trip. Even small, drifting debris can do a number on a ship. But now she looked to be in tip-top shape.
Her starflight drive on idle, a subtle energy permeated the docking area. It always seemed to me before a mission that she was positively vibrating with excitement, straining at her docking clamps to get going. Silly, I know. She’s just a collection of inanimate parts, like any other ship. Maybe it was just my own excitement coloring my perception.
In fact, the five of us were all in high spirits—certain, as ever, that this mission was The One…the one where we strike it rich and retire to a life of luxury.
Yeah, it was only a dream. But without dreams what’s the point?
* * * *
“Are we all secure below, Swede?” Cap inquired. His clipped British enunciation tended to make even his queries sound like orders.
“All secure, Cap,” I replied. “Ready when you are.”
My name is Jan Johansen, but between my name and my Nordic white-blond hair and pale complexion, almost no one calls me that. Among the ranks of spacers, I’m known as Swede. The fact that I’m from Denver is irrelevant.
“Odyssey Control, SI ship Shamu requests a departure slot.”
Sparks spoke without emotion, a professional who has done something so many times he no longer has to think about it. His voice emanated from the intercom in Engineering, where I was strapped in for the initial stages of the trip.
Jeremy Clinkscales was our Communications and Sensor Officer, or CSO. He hated the name Jeremy, so we all called him Sparks, following the hallowed tradition of radio officers.
A moment later, the husky contralto of Orbital Docking Facility Odyssey’s traffic controller replied, “It’ll just be a few minutes, Shamu, until we get a ship docked.”
“Acknowledged, Odyssey; Shamu standing by.”
Four minutes later, Odyssey’s traffic controller reported, “You’re cleared for departure, Shamu. Good hunting!”
“Thanks, Odyssey. See you in a few months.” Sparks’ professional mien gave way to playfulness. “When I get back, Marilyn, what say we go away together somewhere for a few days and get to know each other better.”
Flirting with Marilyn was de rigueur for all departing CSOs when she was on duty—even though everyone knew she was married and a grandmother. It was all part of the routine.
“You wish!” she retorted, chuckling, and thereby completed the ritual.
Hers was the last female voice we would hear for many weeks. We had nothing against women in space; but hard experience had shown what could happen when you put a mixed crew in tight quarters for months on end. The bloody lesson of the Spry Wanderer twenty-three years earlier was one that no one needed to see repeated. As a result, deepspace vessels always carried same-sex crews, including more than a dozen ships crewed by women.
Cap released the docking clamps and used the maneuvering thrusters to gently ease Shamu’s bulk away from the immense docking facility and into position to engage the starflight drive. It would be an embarrassment to the Company and a professional stain on Cap’s record if he damaged his ship before even leaving Earth orbit. But Cap was every bit the professional that Sparks was, and in his many years at the helm, nothing like that had ever happened. Captain Tyrone Gilroy, our mission commander and pilot, was the Company’s senior captain, and not one to make careless errors.
As the Refinery and Cargo Officer, or RCO, it was my job to watch over whatever supplies we were carrying: mostly food, medical stuff, and other consumables, plus spare parts for some of the essential equipment onboard. I was also in charge of processing whatever crude ore we might find into as much refined minerals as we could squeeze into the cargo holds. I was part chemist, part metallurgist, part mining foreman, and part engineer.
The rest of the time I was chief cook and bottle washer. I spent most of my time clea
ning up, making minor repairs, keeping the other guys fed, and doing whatever else needed to get done to make sure the rest of the crew wasn’t disturbed from their labors. Someone had to act as mother hen for the crew, and that someone was me.
After a few minutes of thrust we were in position.
“Get ready, lads,” Cap announced as he engaged the starflight drive. “Next stop, Richelieu. Make yourselves comfortable. It’s gonna be a long trip!”
CHAPTER 2
Mining Space: Tesserene—Tesserene can be detected by the presence of gravitic distortion, but it certainly isn’t the only cause of gravitational anomalies in the galaxy. Prospecting ships need another way to weed out the false alarms and narrow the scope of the search. Fortunately, there is a secondary indicator on which to focus, once a ship is near a potential source: Tesserene emits low-frequency THETA-BAND (TB) RADIATION. But tesserene is always found in small quantities, which means the amount of radiation given off is minimal, and the signal is easily lost amid the noise of normal background COSMIC RADIATION.
— Excerpt from Encyclopedia Solaris, 2194
* * * *
“Great meal, Swede. You’ve outdone yourself!” A satisfied belch followed Tom’s praise.
“Hear, hear!” agreed Cap. The rest of the crew chimed in as well.
I good-naturedly took credit for preparing the meal, even though I had done little more than reheat the individually wrapped packages and add some seasonings.
The Imperative Chronicles, Books One and Two: The Mars Imperative & The Tesserene Imperative Page 34
