Zero-G

by William Shatner

  In the next moment, his rage toward Hark and Sheng, and the sudden, searing pain in his flesh, all vanished in the elation of hypoxia.

  The moment after that, Dr. Lung joined the shimmering cloud of particulate matter that wreathed the station.

  FOURTEEN

  ADSILA IS FINE, Sam.”

  Sam Lord had settled comfortably into his seat, acclimated easily into the Earth-normal gravity and uncommon downtime. He was just beginning to look over the interior of the Grissom and read about the shuttle on his IC when Dr. Carter contacted him. After briefing Lord on what had transpired with Adsila Waters, that was the medic’s economical diagnosis.

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “You’re welcome. By the way, Director Lord: you exceeded your command.”

  “Doctor?”

  “You still have the charter handy?”

  “It’s exactly where I left it the last time you asked,” Lord said.

  “Obviously. You see section 32-15? The text that requires you to report to a doctor for clearance before leaving Empyrean for any reason?”

  With the shuttle nearing the moon, there was already a brief time differential in their communication. That gave Lord an instant to consider his response.

  “I see it,” Lord replied. He cast a quick look at Saranya May, who was typing into her IC. “And I am with a doctor.”

  Carter took longer than the delay to answer. “Who? The roster for the Empyrean says that everyone who is supposed to be on board is on board—except you.”

  “The identity of my traveling companion is classified,” Lord replied. “You’ll have to get that information from Al-Kazaz.”

  The silence that followed was even longer. “I will.”

  “But I’m more interested in these nanites than in my housebreaking,” Lord went on.

  “No doubt,” Carter replied, surrendering to the more pressing matter. “As it happens, they appear to be something I’m capable of understanding. At least, now that I’ve had a chance to study them.”

  “Explain.”

  “I didn’t—the FBI didn’t—think that anyone had managed to produce working nanites,” Carter said. “Now I realize how the Israelis did it. They cheated. They’re not independent SimAI biological units. They’re a sensor, transmitter, crawling mechanism, and logic system. Nothing else. No biological content that allows them to camouflage themselves in a body.”

  Lord appreciated that extra information. Obviously, that was the eyes-only project Carter was working on for Al-Kazaz. This was his oblique way of letting Lord know.

  “So they’re just internal audio bugs, hearing and broadcasting what someone hears and says,” Lord said.

  “That’s right. And they’re also bigger than any other prototypes I’ve seen or read about. They’re so large that I’m worried that they damaged a few smaller blood vessels on the way to Adsila’s skull. I don’t think they would have caused an embolism, they just hovered on the periphery of the brain itself, grabbing electrical impulses.”

  “Damned ugly business,” Lord said. He meant it.

  “Very. But I might run a couple tests in case.”

  “I understand,” Lord said. “You say you got them all?”

  “Each one individually extracted using magnetized acupuncture needles to create new pathways and draw them out.”

  “Ingenious,” Lord said admiringly.

  “Thank you.”

  “But won’t Ziv be expecting data?”

  “Indeed, and he’ll get it,” Carter assured him. “Now those nanites are all in a petri dish relaying any songs that happen to get stuck in Adsila’s head.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. All Adsila’s FBI conversations will go through a separate secure channel in the comm. AEAD Grainger is setting that up.”

  “Ziv will be expecting some kind of information to pass between us about my current mission,” Lord warned.

  “Of course,” Carter said. “Adsila is aware of that and working on it. As soon as I release him, he’ll be in touch.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “It’s my job, but you’re welcome,” Carter replied, a small, fine edge to his voice as he checked an IC ping.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Lord, who was used to intuiting moods over radios.

  “Sam—you push me, dammit.”

  “I already explained about my departure—”

  “Not that,” Carter snapped. “I just heard from the prime director. That doctor you’re with—she’s an astrophysicist, not a physician!”

  “A good thing too,” he replied automatically. “Happens to be just what I need.”

  The exasperation in Carter’s voice was profound. The man had just been caught in a lie and wasn’t fazed.

  “You know,” Carter said, “this department could be exceptionally productive if we worked together . . . or at least communicated without prevarications and half-truths.”

  “I agree,” Lord said affably. “Tell me more about the nanites I saw in the petri dish on your wall.”

  Carter hesitated.

  “Doctor?”

  Lord heard Carter exhale. “All right, Sam. All right. I concede, and touché. How about this? When all this stuff is done, how about we go to the Scrub, get a table in the corner, and have a nice chat?”

  “Agreed, and dinner’s on me,” Lord said. “Until then—that was nice work with Adsila. How is your other patient, Ms. Cavanaugh?”

  “Mild systemic reverberations from decompression and hypothermia, but well recovered. I can release her tomorrow.”

  Carter signed off and Lord lay back, trying to figure out what Ziv hoped to gain by spying on Adsila—and in that way. There was an intimidation angle, of course; that was Ziv’s modus operandi. The CHAI famously used his cyborg body to cow men and dominate women. If that failed, he could be charming. If that failed, there was blackmail or bribery. But Ziv had also been very friendly with Colonel Franco on the Empyrean. Was this a team effort? Franco was uncommonly skittish at the reception and especially after. All that concern about Kristine Cavanaugh was just acting out. He felt it then, was sure of it now.

  And then there was the other reception—the one for Dr. Saranya May. Why did Ziv and Franco do that? What did they know, or suspect? Lord glanced over at the woman. More important, what did she know . . . and not tell them?

  Or me?

  Lord sent Adsila a few details about his mission that might satisfy Ziv: he said he was going to the moon to safeguard Dr. May there and to secure her research, though he insisted he knew nothing more than that. Which was largely true. Then he wrote to Agent Abernathy to request background data, including financial reports, on all the personnel on Armstrong Base, including the Grissom crew, Dr. May, and Dr. Diego. That was standard operating procedure. While debt seemed an unlikely reason to compel one of two—or one and two—scientists to commit professional suicide and kill hundreds of thousands, it might point them to a theoretical middle person.

  That done, Lord took some time to look at the schematics over the Armstrong Base, especially the module where the science labs of Drs. May and Diego were located. According to the original construction specs and security updates, they were as secure as Fort Knox in its heyday, before Greece’s Paracelsus Project made gold and artificial gold indistinguishable and therefore useless.

  Dr. May was still typing in the air but noticed his expression. She stopped and managed a look of concern.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  “No,” he answered honestly. “It appears that when Colonel Franco and Ziv Levy failed to get answers from you, they tried to get them from one of my people. They used a rather crude and invasive form of technology.”

  “Is your agent all right?”

  “Fortunately,” Lord said. He leaned over the
armrest, closer to her. “Dr. May, I must know what they asked you on the shuttle.”

  She diverted her gaze. Her eyes flitted to the right as she frowned.

  “Saranya—”

  “I’m not being evasive, Sam, I promise,” she said. “This is hardly the time for that.”

  “I’m glad you agree.”

  “I’m just trying to remember—the conversation was short and almost entirely predictable. The colonel was clearly anxious, but trying to hide it with big smiles and solen.”

  “Sorry? That was—what?”

  She was confused, then understood. “Solicitous energy—they say it on the moon. Isolation in space makes some people so stressed they work very hard to be your friend.”

  “I see.”

  “He was asking how I was, what I felt about Japan, how horrible it was about Japan, wasn’t it too much for me to run from the moon to Earth in a single day, wouldn’t I like to stay on the Empyrean . . . It was nonstop.”

  “And Ziv?”

  “He stayed back and seemed uninterested, but I could see that he was getting every word.”

  “Did Franco say anything that was unexpected, even for someone going—‘solen’?”

  She thought. “He said it was an honor to meet me, complimented me on my work in very general terms, about how everyone knew I was the best in the field of neutrino research, and then Ziv was offering me a drink.”

  Lord nodded. “What did he ask as you were docking?”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “You’d remember,” he assured her. “That’s the Hail Mary, the last shot an interrogator gets as the subject is being hauled away. It’s the one thing he really wants to know.”

  She glanced away. Lord waited until Dr. May finally looked back at him. “He asked if I knew the people who died in the JORO research center where the ‘strike’ against the Japanese was first recorded.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Dr. Makoto Ogawa was a colleague—we met at several symposia over the years. As I was leaving my seat, Ziv asked if we ever worked together. I said we had not.” She looked cautiously into Lord’s eyes. “Why would that matter?”

  “For Ziv? I’m sure he wants to know more of what your research is about, and that’s another way in, through sources in Tokyo.”

  “I see.” She shook her head slowly. “I’m accustomed to academic politics but nothing like this.”

  “In that case, my next question will probably seem as fresh as paint. What day and time did you notice your findings were compromised?”

  She appeared confused—again. “I don’t recall. It was . . . two days ago, around lunchtime . . . maybe a little later?”

  “Interesting,” Lord said.

  “How so?”

  “If you took a break, you might not have noticed an electronic break-in,” he said. “Are your habits in the lab regular?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I work from the minute I get there to the minute I leave, at my station. Anyway, there is no electronic ‘way in.’ ”

  He was about to answer that there’d never been a lock that couldn’t be picked when his IC was full of Janet Grainger. “Sir, there’s an emergency on board the Jade Star.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Feeding images from the Arrius 2.”

  Lord looked at the visuals recorded by the satellite NASA was using to try to revive research into the feasibility of hydrogen ramjet propulsion. It was also—as most everything in space nowadays—part of the Ring of Security sensors that watched everything the Chinese and Russians did above the atmosphere.

  The image was distant but undeniable. He saw a burst near the end of the long, spearlike space station and then watched it snap like a dragon’s tail, the shields rolling like breaking waves. He saw what appeared to be glittering gems scatter around the station like exploding perspiration—finally realizing that those gems were bodies, and body parts, shimmering in the vacuum of space.

  And then there was a signal from the cockpit of the Grissom.

  “We are accelerating to maximum thrust,” the pilot informed his passengers. “We just received word from Armstrong Base that something is headed toward us, something vast and very, very fast—”

  Lord was out of his seat and at the cockpit door. It was not locked.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded. “I want to know everything.”

  “Sir!” the pilot shouted. “Please return—”

  “What kind of ‘something’ is coming our way?” Lord insisted.

  Preoccupation quickly trumped the pilot’s concern over the collapse of his authority. “Empyrean control does not have that information!”

  “They’d have said if it were a meteoroid swarm or satellite debris field!” Lord said. “They must have some information or they wouldn’t have sent an alert!”

  “That’s just it, sir,” the pilot told him. “They only know there’s a directional aberration of some kind because everything in its path is disappearing!”

  “Look at this.” The copilot pointed to a drop-down display.

  “Put it on visual,” Lord said. Then added, “Please.”

  The crew complied. There were numbers, with one column rising fast.

  “Gamma spike,” the pilot said. “And it’s not coming from the sun.”

  Overhearing, Dr. May had also left her seat and was pulling herself forward on the overhead handholds. “Where is it coming from?” she asked.

  “Origin unclear, but it’s going to sweep right across our trajectory,” the pilot said.

  “How is that possible?” she inquired.

  “Dr. May, what’s the black dot on this Residual Map plot here?” Lord asked.

  She leaned past him, studied the data flux. “That’s the gamma spectrum . . . Majorana annihilation of neutrinos—”

  She stopped and stiffened suddenly. Lord noticed it.

  “What is it, Doctor?”

  “I saw those exact numbers earlier today,” she replied.

  “Where?”

  She answered, with effort, “They were recorded by Dr. Ogawa’s team at the JORO station off the coast of Japan.”

  The quiet in the spacecraft was like the moments after a car crash, an absurd mix of utter stillness and hell.

  “How does your research explain the visual anomalies?” Lord asked, turning toward Dr. May, grabbing the cockpit entrance for stability. “The reports from Japan today,” he said quickly. “There was something about the sky above the water disappearing.”

  “Must be a scattering or lensing effect—I wish I could tell you: I haven’t seen a neutrino stream condensed quite so much before, to get this kind of annihilation rate.”

  “So the same thing could be happening here, now,” Lord went on. He cocked a thumb aft. “Back there. In space.”

  Dr. May’s expression grew dark. “What’s back there, Director Lord?”

  “The Jade Star,” he said. “Or at least, it was. The explosion or whatever it was took a section of the station with it before rolling our way.”

  “The Chinese have the SAMI?”

  “Have it, had it—the physical device, anyway, or what’s left of it,” Lord said. “Control of it is another matter.”

  “You’re saying it’s still on?” Saranya clarified.

  “We don’t know,” Lord admitted with a short, angry shrug. “You tell me!”

  She looked back at the figures in the cockpit. They were continuing to rise. “This confirms it. SAMI is still operative. God, that would be calamitous . . . if the Chinese cannot control it.”

  “Specifics, Doctor? It’s good that it’s apparently facing away from Earth now, isn’t it?”

  “For the moment. We don’t know where the device is facing out here—the Empyrean could be at risk. The moon. Us. There’
s no way to be sure.”

  “What about moving to a more secure location at the station or on Armstrong—”

  “There is no secure location,” she said. “The JORO station was at the bottom of the sea. It was the first location to be hit. Moving anywhere might actually put people in danger, especially if there is panic.”

  On his secure drop-down, Lord informed Stanton and Armstrong commander Blake Tengan of Dr. May’s HYPA—Hold Your Position Assessment. Both acknowledged.

  “That Chinese station is modular, isn’t it?” Dr. May asked.

  “Yes.”

  “If an entire section has been separated, it may try to reconnect . . . there are automated systems that do that on the Jade Star, if they’re functioning. Who knows where SAMI will be facing then.”

  Lord continued to take it all in. He was trying to keep up: inside, he was trying to connect all the moving parts.

  “Give me the worst-case scenarios,” he went on.

  “There’s just one, really,” Saranya said. “The incident that hit Japan, now this, were most likely accidents because of the faulty data but at least they were choices. Bad ones, but a human made them. If it’s still operating, but intermittently and randomly, due to damage —”

  “It’s essentially got a will of its own now.”

  Saranya nodded. “Rudimentary SimAI, most likely. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Chinese built in some degree of ‘dead hand’ intelligence. That device will be looking to fulfill its mission.”

  “Who would give a machine like that control of its own fate?” Lord asked, even though he knew the answer before he finished asking the question. Saranya confirmed it.

  “What good is a doomsday device if it shuts down when the crew dies?”

  Lord eased a little closer, regarded her pointedly. “How do you know so much about the subject, Saranya?”

  “From colleagues,” she replied. “From meetings . . . conferences.” And then her voice grew quiet. “That’s what the United States government wanted my work for.”

  Lord wasn’t surprised. “But you refused.”

  “Repeatedly and stubbornly, though the pressure was growing,” she admitted. “Funding cuts were threatened. Dr. Diego said that he was already planning how to use my lab space.”