Exile-and Glory

by Jerry Pournelle

  Jacob Norsedal came into the bar. "Hello," he said. He took a place across from Kevin. There was no real need to sit in Ceres' low gravity, but the habit dies hard; and it is convenient to anchor yourself in one place. "I've been computing the trajectory your moonlet will take back to Earth."

  "I'm still not sure this will work," Kevin said.

  Norsedal looked surprised. "Of course it will. Think of it as a fusion spacedrive. Plenty of energy in a megaton. One million tons of TNT, ten-to-the-twenty-second ergs . . ."

  "I wasn't thinking about the energy," Kevin said. "It's the navigation. We can't really locate the center of gravity all that well—too much guesswork."

  "Run it off," Norsedal said. He offered his belt computer. "Takes a lot of energy to get that much iron to rotate. So they're off a little—you've got little tamped-implosion kiloton bombs to correct that, and the rocket motors for fine adjustment."

  "Yeah, I've seen the numbers," Kevin said. "It looks silly as hell, mounting big rocket engines on the ground. Big things." The four Saturn-sized rocket engines were mounted in a cruciform pattern, pointing away from the center of the cross. They would be used to turn C-4 in the right direction. "But it's still using bombs," Kevin said.

  Norsedal shrugged. It was obvious that to him bombs were just another device to channel energy; it was doubtful that he thought of them as bombs at all, or even imagined the real devices. They were more input numbers into his equations, data to be fed into the computer. "Have you seen much of Ceres?" Jacob asked.

  "No. I was only here a few hours after Wayfarer landed, and this is my first trip down since."

  "Well, I know a good place to eat," Norsedal said. "The food in the Interplanet commissary is all right, but it's nothing to rave about. I can find some real steaks—"

  "Steaks? Terrific. We've been eating reconstituted stew. And textured vegetable proteins. And—"

  "Spare me those horrors," Norsedal said. He patted his ample belly. "If I had to eat that way, I'd waste to nothing. Come on, let's get a good dinner." He hustled Kevin out of the bar and off to one of the rock corridors.

  Ceres was honeycombed with passages. Some were still used as working mines. Others were abandoned mine shafts, now used as part of the living quarters. There were airlocks at intervals along the corridors.

  Jacob led the way through a maze of passages, and soon they were a long way from the inhabited parts of Ceres Station.

  "Where the hell are we going?" Kevin demanded.

  "Shortcut." Norsedal continued to scurry along. As he'd predicted when Kevin first met him, his weight and ungainly appearance were no handicaps in low gravity. They turned another corner and went upward. There was an airlock there.

  Jacob came very close to Kevin and spoke softly, almost a whisper. "We're going outside now. Please, just follow me, and don't use your suit radio whatever you do."

  "But—why?" Kevin kept his voice low to match Norsedal's.

  "Will you trust me? It's important."

  Kevin nodded. He'd known Norsedal through the whole trip out; whatever Jacob was doing, it wasn't dishonest. He put on his helmet.

  Norsedal opened the airlock and they went through the double doors. It was night outside on Ceres, but the overhead synchronous satellite mirror left the surface bathed in light. Down in the crevasse where the airlock opened they could see only by starlight, and Norsedal did not use a flash. He led the way, Kevin following closely.

  Then he turned into a cavern so deep that there was no light at all. He went on, downward, and turned a corner before he switched on a flash. Then he gestured, finger to lips, and went around another turn.

  There was an inflatable shelter there with its own airlock. The outer door stood open. Jacob gestured toward it, then followed Kevin in. There was the hiss of pumps and the airlock chamber pressurized, then the inner door opened.

  Ellen MacMillan was inside.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "I don't think anyone noticed us leaving," Norsedal said. "But I'll have to get back quickly. I have to go on duty in the computer center."

  Kevin hardly heard him. He was staring at Ellen. He thought she was lovely. "But—"

  "We'll explain," she said. "I wanted to keep you out of this, Kevin, but I can't. I need help. Will you help me?"

  "I'll try. But—"

  "Yes. It's such a long story, I don't know where to begin," she said. "Kevin, I didn't come here to work as an engineer. Or to be a prostitute, either."

  "I never thought that," Kevin said quickly.

  "That's sweet of you. But I hope everybody else does," she said. "I'm really not very good at the secret-agent business. Kevin, I—I work for some of the owners of Interplanet. For Hansen Enterprises. They have a contract for all the Arthurium mined in the Belt."

  Arthurium. One of the super-heavy elements. In the first quarter of the Twentieth Century scientists thought there were only ninety-two elements. Then the nuclear engineers discovered they could make plutonium, and californium, and a host of other elements heavier than uranium-92, but all the new elements were unstable. Finally a stable natural element, atomic number of 124, was discovered. In the years that followed, other super-heavy elements were found, but only in trace amounts. The super-heavies were in the cores of the planets, and planetary cores are hard to get to: thousands of miles underground.

  Ceres was only a couple of hundred miles in radius, but had once been the core of a much larger planet: there were super-heavy elements in abundance. Abundance is a relative term, of course: the supers are still very rare, found only in fractions-of-a-percent concentration; but they were available, and the most valuable of all was Arthurium, a member of the Tin-Niobium family, with the property of being superconductive at temperatures far higher than any other known superconductors.

  "And somebody is stealing the Arthurium," Jacob Norsedal said. "I'm sure of it."

  "That's what I came out to look into," Ellen said. "When the manager here reported only a few kilograms of Arthurium had been extracted, we wondered. Understand, it might have been true. Arthurium is very rare. But from the original assay figures, we thought there should be hundreds of kilograms of Arthurium, and we—Hansen Enterprises—need it. Hansen scientists think they can solve the fusion problem if they have enough!"

  Kevin found a place to sit. The shelter wasn't well furnished; in fact it wasn't furnished at all; but there were several boxes of gear stacked at one end next to the pumps and air supply, and Kevin found a perch on them. He tried to digest the information he'd been given. Fusion power would be priceless. And Arthurium, the little that was known to exist, sold for over a hundred thousand francs per kilogram. Hundreds of millions of francs, perhaps billions, were at stake here.

  "What do you want with me?" he asked. His voice was harsh.

  "Why are you angry?" Ellen asked.

  He didn't say anything.

  "Dykes," Jacob Norsedal prompted.

  "Oh." Ellen smiled. "Kevin, Bill Dykes has known my father for—since long before I was born. He worked for Hansen Enterprises on the Moon. When I needed a place to stay, I had to ask him, because I was afraid someone here might suspect me, and I didn't want anyone else to get hurt. They killed George Lange, don't forget. I have no right to ask your help, but I don't know where else to go."

  "You mean—" Kevin's grin was broad and sheepish. "And I almost drove myself crazy thinking about you and—"

  "I'm sorry."

  "I have to get back," Norsedal said. "If anyone asks, I'll say you didn't want steak after all and went to find a cat house. I doubt that anyone is interested in you, Kevin, but they might be and it's best to have a story."

  "I must be stupid," Kevin said. "I don't know where you fit into this, Jacob."

  "He's an honest man," Ellen said.

  "I was hired by the Zurich office," Norsedal said. "And I'm supposed to report directly to them if I find anything wrong. Not that Zurich is suspicious of the management here, but with all that money at stake, the
y wanted an independent check—to make certain."

  "Just as we did," Ellen said. "Only we were suspicious."

  "And you found something?" Kevin asked.

  "Yes." Norsedal nodded vigorously. "There are whole memory areas in the computer banks that I can't access. And the programs run too long. That means the computer is following instructions that don't appear in the flow diagrams. I haven't found out what's going on yet, but I think I will. I managed to get a print-out of the computer's core, all the instructions. They're in binary of course, so it takes time to analyze what I have, but I'm sure there are operations going on that don't appear in the log. Mining operations, for example."

  "And in the refinery," Ellen said. "It wouldn't take much to cover up a few hundred kilograms missing among all the thousands of tons of rock they process, tons of gold they've extracted—"

  "And the refinery is nearly automatic," Norsedal added. "I can use the computer to find out just who might be involved by analyzing the work schedules, but I've been afraid to do that until I know just who's been using it and for what. It might be programmed to tell whenever people ask that kind of question." Norsedal went to the airlock and squeezed through the narrow inner door. "Good luck." He closed the lock and started the pumps.

  "How does he—why are you two working together?" Kevin asked. "Are you sure you can trust him?"

  "Yes. Henri Stoire, the manager, sent for dossiers on all the passengers aboard Wayfarer. They came twenty hours ago, and Jacob had to pass them along—but he figured out who I am from my resume sheets."

  "If he could, so can Stoire—"

  "I know," Ellen said. She sounded worried. "That's why I'm here. I don't know what to do. Ever since Stoire got the dossiers, there's been no communication from Ceres to Earth. The equipment has malfunctioned, Stoire says—but Jacob says it hasn't."

  "And who are you?" Kevin demanded.

  "Do you really want to know—no. Please, Kevin. I don't want to tell you."

  "All right." He went to her and held out his arms. After a moment she crossed the tiny distance that remained and kissed him.

  "Not very passionate in these pressure suits," Ellen laughed.

  "We could—" She looked at him sharply. "Oh, hell," he said. "You wanted my help. I won't complicate things by—Ellen, I think I've been in love with you for a long time. Damn it, I know I am. Why else would it have bothered me so much when I thought you were living with Bill Dykes, maybe being—"

  She cut him off with another kiss. "We can talk about this later. And we will. We really will. But now—"

  "What is it you need?"

  "I have to set up communications to reach off Ceres," she said. "Everything happened so fast. I was here for weeks, and I didn't really learn anything. Bill Dykes thought there was something strange happening at the refinery, but he couldn't be sure. They're very careful who they let work there. I didn't really have anything to report, nothing solid to be suspicious about, until Jacob came to tell me about discrepancies he found in the computer log. Now I've got to get a message to the Moon."

  "How?" Kevin demanded.

  "Bill and Jacob got this equipment," she said. "Bill knew about this shelter, and Jacob was able to cover the communications gear by listing it as lost in the computer inventory. So we have enough electronics and power supply to set up a high-gain antenna and get off our message, only there's too much for me to do by myself. Jacob isn't very good at outside work and he'd be missed if he didn't show up. And Bill thinks they've been watching him ever since he began asking questions. A few hours ago they gave him a special overtime assignment; that's not unusual, and if he didn't take it, they'd know something was wrong—so I couldn't think of anyone to help, and Jacob knew the scooter would be down from C-4 and he went to find you and I hoped you would help me—"

  "Shhh. Of course I'll help you." At that moment Kevin would have done anything for her, including digging a hole all the way through to the other side of Ceres. He decided that he liked being in love.

  The gear was heavy. Weight is not a very meaningful concept in gravity as low as Ceres's, but even in low gravity things have mass; large things are hard to start moving, and just as hard to stop. The surface of Ceres is rugged: the asteroid has been battered by collisions with other rocks for billions of years, and there is no atmosphere to smooth out the craters and crags the constant bombardment creates. Carrying several hundred pounds of equipment—even when it only "weighs" thirty pounds or so—is not easy.

  Ellen had gotten from Bill Dykes a map of the area around Ceres Station itself, and Dykes had selected a plateau three kilometers away as the best location for the transmitter. It was cut off from the Station by high peaks, but had a good visibility to space. They struggled across the crags and craters with their enormous loads, using their flashlights sparingly, and not talking at all.

  Despite the hard work, Kevin felt exuberant, filled with joy and love—and hatred for whomever was trying to thwart the development of fusion power. Kevin remembered the energy shortages in his childhood, and although he knew that what he had called poverty would have been fabulous wealth to much of the world, he could remember the hard times he had grown up in. Fusion could change much of that for the whole world, and it was in danger from selfish people who only wanted money.

  They reached the plateau. Kevin came close to Ellen and put his helmet to hers. "We can't get this done without communication," he said.

  "Yes. I guess we'll just have to risk using our suit radios at lowest power. I don't think anyone is looking for us. Why would they be?"

  "No reason," Kevin said, but he worried anyway. They opened the cases and took out a collapsible antenna. The elements bolted together to form a large parabolic dish which could be pointed toward Earth.

  The work was maddening. Each nut and bolt seemed a live thing, ready to slip from their heavy gloves and fall to vanish in the deep shadows. Connectors and parts that would have been simple to work with inside with plenty of light became complex puzzles, shapes not recognizable from the instruction diagrams.

  "Putting together Christmas toys," Ellen said as she searched for a large part that had somehow simply vanished in shadow although it couldn't be more than a meter away.

  Eventually they got it done, and began to set up the telescope and quadrant they would use to point the antenna toward Earth's Moon.

  "Earth's still below the horizon," Kevin said as they leveled the telescope platform. "I think we're going to make it. Ellen, tell me something."

  "Yes?"

  "You didn't grow up in any orphanage. They don't assemble Christmas toys in foster homes and orphanages."

  "Yes they—"

  "And you said the first day I met you that your father—'Daddy' you called him—made you study gymnastics."

  "Oh. I'd forgotten I told you that," she said. "We—I was distracted at the time." She laughed softly.

  "So who are you?" Kevin asked.

  "Oh come now, Mr. Senecal." The voice was a man's, cultured, and entirely strange to Kevin. Kevin jumped in a startled reaction and almost upset the telescope. "Haven't you guessed that yet? Allow me to introduce you to Miss Glenda Hansen-MacKenzie."

  There were two men on the plateau with them. One held a small rifle, the other a pistol. "Please keep your hands where I can see them," the smaller intruder said. "Sorry to interrupt you, but I really don't want you sending messages to Earth. I'm glad we found you in time."

  "Who the hell are you?" Kevin demanded.

  "It's Henri Stoire," Ellen said.

  "Good morning," Stoire said calmly. "Hal, get their tool belts, please."

  "Yes sir."

  "Hal Donnelly?" Kevin said.

  "Sad but true," the scooter pilot said. "Too bad you had to get mixed up in this, Kevin. And you owe me a drink, too." Donnelly moved expertly, his pistol held well out of reach, and took their tool belts.

  "What are you going to do with us?" Ellen demanded.

  "Well, now, that is a pro
blem," Stoire said. "There is a great deal of money at stake here. A very great deal. I can hardly allow you to get in my way."

  It's happening again, Kevin thought. It was exactly like the time in the alley when the muggers had taken his wallet. He felt violated, humiliated, helpless—and Ellen—no her name is Glenda, he thought irrelevantly—they'll kill her. He tensed, ready to jump at Donnelly. Maybe Glenda could get away if he tried—

  "On the other hand, you are worth a great deal of money," Stoire said. "What would your mother and father pay to have you back safe? Our scheme is almost perfect, but we all know there are no perfect plans. Right, Hal?"