Orbital Decay

by Allen Steele

  There had been a lot of little accidents, and some of them had been caused by a lot of the beamjacks smoking pot. Things like that inside Olympus could be controlled. Stoned crewmen loosing their balance and falling down, and various other little incidents that happened when two or three guys were jammed together in a curtained bunk with a smokeless pipe, exhaling into a towel that had been liberally sprayed with deodorant—those things didn’t matter much. It was even funny when you would see somebody in the mess deck giggling uncontrollably at the food on his plate (or, better, someone who had always complained about the food, wolfing down his meal and mumbling with a mouthful about how great the slop seemed to taste), or a bunch of guys in the rec deck transfixed by a Star Trek or Twilight Zone rerun which they must have already seen a dozen times.

  But it was a sign that the situation was getting out of hand when accidents started occurring during the work shifts out on SPS-1. Just before going on shift a couple of guys would hole up in a john with one of the little water pipes Hamilton had at first obligingly whipped up from the chemistry apparatus in his lab. Then they would ride the ferry out to Vulcan. Julian Price would have his hands full in the whiteroom, catching the careless mistakes these jokers would make while suiting up—the disconnected hoses or partially pressurized tanks or the unsealed suit seams. We were lucky we didn’t lose any guys that way. We were doubly lucky that no fatalities resulted from numerous other pot-induced errors: Beamjacks firing their MMU’s in the wrong direction and colliding with the satellite or each other, tethers improperly fastened. Once, a laser torch was fired in the wrong direction and damn near put a hole through the faceplate of the beamjack’s helmet. Oh, man, we were just lucky no one got killed!

  If there was anything that Jack Hamilton’s experiment with cultivating marijuana in space proved, it was that dope doesn’t belong in space. Hamilton knew it, so he stopped passing out loose pot and his homemade brownies to the beamjacks. He told them that he had run out—a lie which no one could prove, since he carefully hid his remaining pound of cured pot somewhere in the hydroponics bay—and that he wasn’t going to grow any more, which was the truth after Doc’s visit. Fortunately, Doc didn’t get suspicious enough to start making spot checks of the crew’s blood and urine. He chalked up the rumors of drug use to the number of painkillers he had formerly handed out, figuring that some of the crew had been hoarding the pills, and started prescribing aspirin instead. After a little while, the accidents began to ease off in frequency and crewmen stopped laughing at their food.

  But the long-term effect, far more benign, was that the morale of the people aboard Skycan had improved. It was a synthesis of pot use by the minority, the contact-high which the nonsmoking majority had gotten from them, and the absence of Cap’n Wallace’s brooding presence that raised spirits a little on the station. Since Hamilton had accumulated a small hunk of money from his short career as a reluctant dealer, he used that cash to have a few luxury items shipped up to Skycan, things that had been officially forbidden by Wallace until he had become a modern version of Captain Ahab. Through his friendship with Lisa Barnhart, one of the shuttle pilots who made runs to LEO from the Cape, Hamilton got us a few cassette decks, tapes, video cassettes that weren’t G-rated, Frisbees—little stuff that was taken for granted down on Earth but had been made unwelcome on Skycan by Wallace’s vision of a perfect space crew. They went a long way toward making people feel better. You could walk down the catwalk and see off-duty crewmen tossing the friz to each other, hear the Byrds coming from this bunkhouse, the Talking Heads from the next, Miles Davis or Stanley Clarke coming from the next. People stopped being uptight about sex as well. A few of Virgin Bruce’s bunkhouse mates were surprised when Joni Lowenstein started crawling in and out of Bruce’s bunk, but Command didn’t raise any objections. Wallace would have been upset to see all this going on, but Wallace seldom emerged from Module 24 anymore; he was completely self-immersed in his own private world which no one except Doc Felapolous was allowed to enter, and Doc wasn’t telling anyone what was going on inside Cap’n Wallace’s head.

  No one cared. SPS-1 was still being built on schedule; the crew was happy, Skycorp was happy, the stockholders were reasonably satisfied. Things were good there, for a while.

  And Jack still had a secret cache of marijuana to which he once in a while treated himself and a half-dozen carefully chosen friends. In the long run, it was fortunate he had not obeyed his first instinct, which was to chuck the rest of that stuff out an airlock after Doc Felapolous’ surprise visit. We would not have been able to learn about the Big Ear if there had not been pot available aboard Olympus.

  But then again, maybe he should have heaved that junk when he had the opportunity, for it was partially responsible for ending the good times for us all, just as it had been partially responsible for starting those good times.

  22

  Ear Ache

  THE UGΑRIΑN STAR-DESTROYER CAME out of warspace in a dazzling explosion of color. It was followed closely by a handful of smaller explosions, signaling the arrival of its sister attack ships. For an instant they shimmered in space with the aftereffects of their pangalactic jump, then resolved into hard, menacing reality.

  On the decks of the warships, Ugarian warriors in exoskeleton armor raced to their battle stations. On the bridge, final computations commenced for the sneak attack on the human-colonized planet before them. Within a dome on the highest point of the star-destroyer, T’Hhark in his black armor raised his arms as if to embrace the blue-green world which swam before him.

  “Let the assault begin,” he whispered, his voice carrying to all levels of each ship. “Take no prisoners.”

  Sam Sloane heard a knock on the hatch behind him and hissed under his breath before he realized who it was that could be knocking. “Yeah, come in,” he called irritably, and typed a command on his keyboard, which saved Chapter 15 of Ragnarok Night. Not until he had swiveled around in his chair and seen the connecting hatch to Module 5 swinging open, did he realize that this was an interruption of the welcome variety. Jack Hamilton didn’t drop by very often, although his Hydroponics modules were adjacent to the Data Processing bay; when he did, it was usually an amiable visit.

  Hamilton stepped through the hatch and carefully closed it behind him. Walking into the compartment, he stopped and quickly looked around. “Are you alone?” he asked in a soft voice, looking over Sam’s shoulder at the open hatch leading into Module 7, the other half of the computer deck.

  Sloane nodded. Hamilton quickly stepped over to the ladder and peered up at the overhead hatch leading to the catwalk. As usual, that hatch was closed. Like Hydroponics, the computer bay’s hatches were usually kept sealed due to necessary environmental considerations. Just as Hamilton’s plants had to be kept under hothouse conditions, the mainframes of Skycan’s computer systems had to be kept in a lower-than-normal temperature. In fact, Sloane’s working section was one of the few compartments on the space station in which privacy could be assured. The overhead hatches could be locked, and could be unlocked only with a coded key-card. Data Processing was the nerve center of Olympus, and Skycorp had not taken any chances with possible sabotage when it had worked out the fine details of Skycan’s design.

  Still, Hamilton climbed halfway up the ladder to reach up and yank the locking handle, making sure the hatch was secure. Sloane watched him with surprised amusement. “Worried about air guns, Holmes?” he asked casually.

  “Huh?” Hamilton hopped off of the ladder, which was an unfortunate move. The Coriolis effect, combined with one-third normal gravity, caught him off-balance when he landed, and he staggered slightly. Sloane snickered behind his hand. Even after a couple of months, Jack Hamilton had not managed to coordinate himself to space. On Earth he was undoubtedly athletic and even catlike, but up here his clodlike blundering was a standing joke among the crew. Even the station’s resident cats were better adapted than the Chief Hydroponics Engineer.

  Hamilton grinned sheepishly
. “What was that about air guns?” he asked.

  Sloane waved it off. “Literary reference,” he said. “Never mind.” Then he frowned. “Look, um, if you want to smoke something, why don’t we do it over in Hydroponics? Smoke doesn’t agree with the equipment here.”

  Hamilton shook his head, and walked to the chair next to Sam’s. “Not here to smoke,” he said, his face lapsing back into the serious expression he was wearing when he had entered the compartment. “Am I bothering you?” he asked quickly.

  Sloane shrugged. “Not really. Can’t get my shit together behind my novel anyway, so the only thing you’re interrupting is a badly written scene.” He stared thoughtfully at the blinking cursor above the main menu displayed on the terminal’s screen. “Goddamn,” he murmured thoughtfully, “no matter how hard I try, these friggin’ aliens end up sounding like every bad-guy alien invented since the Boskone, and their captain just sounds like Darth Vader with…”

  He stopped when he noticed how Hamilton had practically fallen into his chair. If the chair had not been fixed to the deck, he would have toppled over backwards. As it was, the hydroponicist slumped into the padded metal seat like a dead weight. When he looked up at Sloane with a dazed expression, the computer chief noticed that his eyes were mildly bloodshot.

  “Jack,” he said, “you’re stoned.”

  “Clever deduction, Watson,” Hamilton replied. Then he chuckled. “The Final Problem. Moriarity’s air guns. I remember now. Very clever, very clever.” He waggled a finger at Sloane, grinning foxily.

  Sam sighed. “Jesus, you’re fried.” He glanced at his watch. “Look, you’ve got about an hour before dinner. I suggest you go back to your section and straighten up if you want to eat. You’d better not show up on the mess deck in the shape you’re in.”

  “No!” Once more Hamilton turned serious. He waved his hands in front of his face and shook his head. “No, I don’t need to straighten up… no, yeah, I admit, I’m stoned, but you’ve got to listen to this, it’s important!”

  “Sure it is.” Sloane stood up and gently took Jack’s arm. “Tell me about it while I get you…”

  “No, dammit!” Hamilton exclaimed. He shook off Sloane’s hands. “Sit down, Sam! I’m stoned, but this is important. This is real, and it’s important, and I’m not becoming paranoid and you need to listen to me. It’s because I’m stoned that this is important. I mean, if I wasn’t high, then this…” He took a long, deep breath. “Now just sit down and hear me out, okay?”

  “Okay.” Sloan sat down again. “But if I heard what you just said correctly, pal, what you’re about to tell me wouldn’t be important unless I was as high as you are. Since I’m not high, and you are, what’s there to make me think this isn’t bullshit?”

  Hamilton let out his breath and put his head in his hands for a second. After a moment he lined his face and looked Sloane square in the eyes. “Look, Sam,” he said slowly, “forget my present condition. Forget all that. Just listen to my story, okay?”

  Sloane started to tap a command into his terminal. “Why don’t you let me read you some of my novel instead?” he asked. “I guarantee that it’ll be…”

  “Dammit, Sam!”

  “Okay, okay!” Sam lifted his hands away from the keyboard. “Tell me your story, for crying out loud!”

  Hamilton let out his breath and settled back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling to collect his thoughts. “It happened about a couple of hours ago,” he said, “while I was working next door in my lab. Someone called me on the intercom and asked if he could come down to Hydroponics to see me. I didn’t recognize his voice and he wouldn’t be specific about why he wanted to see me, but I’ve been less finicky about letting people come down since I got rid of the pot crop, so I said, sure, c’mon down.

  “When the guy finally showed up and climbed down into the bay, I recognized who it was. It was Dave.”

  “Dave?” Sam shook his head. “Which Dave? There’s at least a dozen Daves on Skycan, Jack.”

  “Yeah, there are, but which of those Daves do you know the least about? I mean, which Dave do you even know his last name?” Impatient with the confused look on Sloane’s face, Hamilton hurried on. “Dave the phony meteorologist, dummy. Dave of Dave, Bob, and John, the spook trio.”

  This perked Sloane’s attention. “Dave, the NSA agent, came down to see you? C’mon, those guys don’t talk to anyone except themselves.”

  Hamilton nodded, smiling. “Right. They don’t even share the same commode with anyone for fear of risking national security. That’s why I was so surprised to see this guy coming down here.

  “He was really antsy about it, too. He secured the hatch behind him on the way down the ladder, and once he was there, he was nervous. Had his hands in his pockets, kept looking around to see if anyone else was in the bay, all the while keeping up this chitchat. Y’know, like ‘We’ve never met, decided to drop by—So this is Hydroponics, huh?—I certainly like the veggies you grow here. Are those beanstalks?’ and bullshit like that. I sat down in a chair and said yes and no and asked him how things were in Meteorology, all the while wondering what was going on.

  “It took him a few minutes to get down to brass tacks, and when he finally did, I was kinda surprised to hear him ask the same thing I’ve heard a couple of dozen of the beamjacks ask me over the past couple of months. He said, almost in a whisper”—Hamilton’s own voice dropped to a whisper—“‘Hey, I’ve heard that you’ve got some marijuana.’”

  “Oh, no,” Sloane said softly, feeling the blood drain from his face. “How did this guy…?”

  “I asked him that. I said, ‘Now what makes you think that? Who told you something like that?’ He wouldn’t tell me any names, but said that he had just heard it through the grapevine that Jack Hamilton down in Hydroponics had some pot. Then he says… I couldn’t believe this… Dave says, ‘I want to smoke some.’”

  “What?” Sam nearly shouted. “He wanted to—!”

  “Shh! Dammit, Sam, keep your voice down.” Both men momentarily forgot that the modules were soundproof with the hatches shut. “Right. Oh, of course I was suspicious as hell as well as being surprised. After picking my jaw off the floor I decided to be straightforward with him. I said, ‘Well, assuming that I do have something like that, why should I tell you? I mean, let’s lay down our cards here, man. You’re no meteorologist any more than I’m George Washington. Everyone knows you’re with the National Security Agency. If I did happen to have some marijuana, how am I supposed to know that you’re not trying to set me up for a fall?’”

  “Good question,” said Sloane, “though I’m surprised that you didn’t just turn him down flat. I mean, you’ve been telling nearly everyone you’ve learned to trust that you’ve run out.”

  Hamilton looked down at the floor and shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I was intrigued with the whole thing. Low-life tokers, like you and I, are a nickel a gross, but you always hear these stories about Secret Service agents and sons of Presidents and Senators who smoke dope. I was wondering if this was one of these cases.”

  Sloane grinned. “Okay, sure, I can understand that. So go on.”

  “Well,” Hamilton continued, “Dave says real slowly, ‘I suppose there’s no way I can really make you trust me, no way I can prove to you that I’m not here to bust you except to say that pot isn’t one of those things which the NSA enforces. We’re an intelligence-gathering agency, not the FBI.’ Hell, Sam, he practically started to plead to me! ‘C’mon, if you’ve got some, I want to smoke it with you. No one else is going to know, I promise.’”

  Hamilton put up his hands. “So what could I say? It was like walking on broken glass, but I decided to go ahead and take the risk.”

  Sloane closed his eyes and shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe you did that,” he murmured. “For all you knew, he could have been working with Mr. Big to get the goods on you.”

  “The thought did cross my mind,” Hamilton admitted, “but somehow
my sixth sense, if you want to call it that, told me that this guy was on the level. Anyway, I escorted him over to Module 42—y’know, that part of the bay where I had blocked some of the vents off—and pulled out a bit of my stash and the little water pipe I’d made, and we hunched down behind one of the racks and lit up.

  “Okay, for one thing, this guy had unusually low tolerance to the stuff. Maybe it was because the Brown is a potent hybrid, or because like most other people I’ve smoked with on Skycan, he hadn’t smoked pot in a long time, or maybe it was because of my pet theory that the one-third environment gets you high more quickly because of the overall physiological impact. But in any case, Dave got ripped in a hurry. He was talking a mile a minute by his third hit. I mean, I thought it was a miracle that he had admitted to me that he was with the NSA when he had first come in, but we had hardly finished one bowlful of the stuff before he was telling me not to call him Dave and that because we were friends I could call him Jack.” Hamilton grinned. “Jack Jarrett, that’s his real name. He got a kick out of the fact that we both have the same first name. Also, his home state is New Hampshire and I used to live in Massachusetts, so he figured that we have a lot in common. Weekends at Hampton Beach, going to restaurants and nightclubs in Boston, swimming on Cape Cod, trips to the Berkshires and the Whites for the fall foliage season. We started to talk about a lot of that stuff.”

  “Uh-huh. Homecoming day for you two,” Sam said blandly. “So you smoked dope with a guy from the NSA. Boy, I haven’t heard of such daring since I sneaked a joint under the bleachers in high school. Is that the important stuff you wanted to tell me, Jack?” He glanced at his watch. “Almost time for dinner.”

  “No, no, no!” Hamilton waved his hands frantically. “You haven’t heard the rest of it, Sam! Just let me get to the end of the story!”

  “Do tell,” Sloane said. Novelty or not, stories about people getting stoned on Skycan were beginning to wear on Sam after a couple of months. The peculiar conditions and the precautions that had to be taken notwithstanding, the tales had long since begun to sound alike.