Ark

by Stephen Baxter

  ′Ah. That′s all one can ask, isn′t it? Tell him I′ll see him as soon as I can.′

  ′I will.′

  ′So we′re all here,′ said Gordo Alonzo, rapping on the tabletop with a fat, old-fashioned fountain pen. Holle wondered vaguely where he got the ink. ′I have to face President Vasquez herself later today, and make my recommendations about the future of Project Nimrod. I suspect that in my heart of hearts I′d rather just can this bull session right now, and go do something more productive. Because, you know why? I think I already know what recommendation I′m going to make, no matter what is said today. That we pull the plug on this whole fucking shambles.′

  ′You don′t have the authority for that,′ Patrick said heatedly. ′In terms of the command and reporting structure—′

  Gordo laughed. ′Don′t you guys get it? Command structure! At this minute that′s me, pal. When your magnetic bottle went pop it took everything else down with it.′

  Kenzie said, ′There′s also the issue of hope, Colonel Alonzo. Of purpose. What would you have the administration do instead? Give the Homeland goons bigger sticks with which to beat back the refugees?′

  Gordo said, ′The sea is going to cover over us all in a few years or less whatever we do, buddy. I′m not sure if to give false hope is a worse sin than to give no hope at all.′ He turned to his charts and boards. ′Let′s get back to basics. Tell me how you think you′re going to fly this dumbass mission in the year 2040. Which, let me remind you, is just four years from now.′ He stared around. ′Who wants to lead off?′

  Edward Kenzie spoke up again. ′The basics are simple. We need to assemble a starship, with a crew of no less than eighty, in orbit.′ He got up stiffly. With age he was getting ever stouter, and according to Kelly he suffered badly from gout. He went to a flipchart and turned pages until he came to a construction schedule. ′From scratch, we built a space launch centre at Gunnison, Colorado.′ He tapped the whiteboard, and up came an image: a single launch gantry, blockhouses around it, mountains in the distance. He sat heavily in an empty seat by the board. ′Intended to fly Ares I and V booster stacks, the launch technology designed to take humans back to the moon and to Mars, which of course never happened. We had to procure transport facilities. Fuel manufacture and storage—′

  ′Yadda yadda,′ said Gordo. ′You flew one bird out of there so far, didn′t you? One stick, one Ares I, unmanned, to orbit. How many launches you think you′re going to need to assemble your ′′starship in orbit′′?′

  Liu Zheng answered that. He tapped a touch pad, and the whiteboard lit up with graphics. ′Fifteen launches, sir. Five of the heavy-lift Saturn V-class Ares V, unmanned, and ten of the human-rated Ares I sticks, each carrying eight or ten crew. The plan so far has been to reinhabit the abandoned ISS, the space station, and use that as a construction shack to—′

  Gordo waved him silent. ′Your deadline for completion of on-orbit assembly is still 2040. Right? You′ve managed one launch in the last four years. You imagine you′ll get through fifteen in the next four. Fifteen launches, and that′s without tests and failures, and you haven′t flown a single Ares V out of Gunnison yet. And you′re going to reoccupy the ISS, a station which has been mothballed for sixteen years. My God, at NASA we′d have looked at that alone as an activity that would likely take teams of trained astronauts years. It′s down here as a milestone on your chart - no resources assigned to it - nothing. Who′s gonna do that, the tooth fairy?′

  Patrick steepled his fingers. ′We′re at a point at which our schedule is expected to accelerate, as significant mission milestones—′

  ′Bull,′ said Gordo simply. ′This ain′t the first fucked-up project I′ve been involved with, Mr Groundwater, and I recognise all the symptoms, and I heard it all before. We screwed up, we missed all the milestones so far, but the future is bright! And you′ll notice I haven′t yet come to the issue of antimatter production. Remind me. How much antimatter are you going to need for your starship?′

  Liu Zheng said, ′We believe half a kilogram. That may not sound much but such is the energy density of the—′

  ′Yes, yes. Let′s take a look at your production facility.′ Gordo tapped the chart, and brought up live images of the ongoing disaster in the Denver suburb of Byers. The accelerator site was a crater from which protruded odd bits of wall or the skeletal tangle of reinforcing steel cables. Smoke snaked up from a dozen fires, and rescue workers crawled in their bright orange gear through mounds of rubble. In one place a refugee camp had been destroyed, canvas tents blown flat. On the fringe of the disaster zone, ragged protesters faced a line of cops and soldiers and Homeland goons.

  ′There′s your antimatter factory,′ Gordo said. ′A hole in the ground, which it would have been a lot cheaper to produce by dropping a fucking nuke. Let me tell you something. No matter what else comes out of this disaster, I don′t believe it′s going to be acceptable to President Vasquez to go back to manufacturing this stuff in the middle of Colorado.′

  ′Then we′re screwed,′ said Jerzy Glemp, his damaged body twitching under his blanket. ′Screwed. The whole point of the design is the warp bubble, Colonel. We can′t fly without that. And we can′t create a warp bubble without antimatter.′

  ′I′m aware of that,′ Gordo snapped. ′And I′m also aware of the shortcuts you took to get your precious atom-smasher up and running, Doctor Glemp.′

  Glemp grew more agitated. ′I don′t know what you mean.′

  ′Like hell you don′t. I′ve seen the documentation trail. The asscoverers in your organisation kept a record of every time you leaned on them to cut a test, disregard a safety precaution, push a design without a back-up. If this was a court of law I′d have a case to prosecute you.′

  ′It is rich for you to berate us for schedule delays then accuse me of negligence for my attempts to meet targets.′

  ′It was always out of your reach,′ Gordo said. ′This dream of star flight. That′s the truth, isn′t it, Doctor Glemp? You always saw that more clearly than these others, and yet you pushed ahead anyhow, as far and as fast as you could, regardless of the risks—′

  Edward Kenzie stood up again. ′Colonel, it′s four years since President Vasquez made her Nimrod speech, her Kennedy moment. You were involved then, and you′re sure as hell involved now. But none of the problems we′ve faced since have anything to do with you - is that what you′re telling us?′ He pointed a fat finger at Gordo. ′Is that the game, Colonel? Blame?′

  Jerzy struggled. ′I want to say - oh, let me speak—′ His voice broke up into a coughing jag that left him shaking.

  Edward tried to speak again, and Patrick, and others joined in, and Gordo tried to shout them down. It was a room full of old people shouting at each other.

  Holle tuned out. She felt stunned, emptied out. She hadn′t suspected that the project was so far behind schedule, or that such risks were being taken to accelerate it. And all for me.

  Something in Gordo′s continual emphasis on the dates was working in her head. To her the flood had always been remote, something that happened to other people. Now she felt as if the world was closing in on her. In four years, when the flood waters would be lapping in this very room, she would be just twenty-one. Suddenly it wasn′t some abstracted future version of herself who would have to cope with all this. It was her who would have to face the future, and if the Ark failed it was her who would have to deal with the ultimate nightmare, the washing away of the very ground under her feet. A deep fear bit into her belly, like a fear of falling. She glanced across at her father, wishing she was nearer to him.

  Kelly was watching her. ′Hey. It′s OK. We′ll get through this. We′ll fly yet.′ And she turned back to listen to the arguments, serene, confident, strong. Just for a moment, rivalries put aside, Holle could see why she was so popular with the public who watched the Candidates′ progress, their daily lives.

  Gordo folded his arms, and silenced the room. ′Then this is the crux. The
way you have been progressing this project has led to delay and ultimately disaster. There′s no way I′m going to endorse the kind of launch schedule you put together here. It was always a fucking joke, and it′s certainly unachievable now. Unless you can come up with some new way forward, now, then the Ark don′t fly. So who speaks next?′

  ′Holle Groundwater,′ said Liu Zheng.

  22

  Holle said, ′What?′

  Liu seemed quite calm. He even smiled. ′Ms Groundwater. Once, in my class, we were ruminating on a design problem that at the time seemed insuperable.′

  ′I—′

  ′The size of the warp bubble.′

  ′Yes. I remember.′

  ′On that occasion, you raised a question. Not a solution, but it provoked a chain of thought that ultimately led to a solution. It was a good question. Perhaps that is your particular talent.′ His smile widened, encouraging. ′Now would be a good time to ask that question again.′

  Patrick said, ′What the hell are you doing, Liu? What kind of pressure is that to put on a seventeen-year-old kid?′

  ′It′s OK, Dad,′ Holle said, though it wasn′t OK, not at all. They were all staring at her, her father with anxiety and pride, Liu with intensity, Edward Kenzie with bafflement - Kelly with frank envy. She could feel her heart hammer, the blood sing in her ears. She thought she might faint. What a situation. Speak. Say the right thing. Or else in five years you′ll either be dead, or starving on a raft made of plastic trash. ′It′s just something my father always said. If the answer′s not the one you want, maybe you′re asking the wrong question.′

  Liu Zheng closed his eyes and spoke rapidly. ′Yes. OK. Now we have two apparently insuperable obstacles. First, the antimatter. We can′t make what we need. Then what′s the alternative to making it?′

  Jerzy growled, ′If you can′t make it, go find it. Mine it from somewhere.′

  ′Yes,′ Liu said, nodding. ′The question is, where and how? And second, the multiple launches. We don′t have the time to launch the Ark in fifteen pieces. Surely you are right about that, Colonel. Therefore we will have to send up a single package, a single launch, the whole Ark. Eighty people with everything to sustain them, and all the aspects of the ship′s propulsion system. All to be launched at once. How do you launch so much to orbit, in one shot?′ He opened his eyes and started to hammer at the keypad in the tabletop before him.

  Jerzy was smiling, a twisted gesture under his covered eye. ′I see what you mean. Those are good questions. And I think I know where you can mine antimatter.′

  Gordo had to grin. ′Is this a set-up? You old showboater.′

  ′I am younger than you, Colonel.′

  ′Where?′

  And Jerzy said, ′Jupiter and Io.′

  Jupiter, a monstrous world with the mass of three hundred Earths, so huge it was almost a star. And Io, moon of Jupiter, circling so close to its bloated parent that tidal forces kneaded it into continual volcanism. As Io circled through Jupiter′s powerful magnetic field it created a ′flux tube′, an electric current connecting Io to Jupiter′s upper atmosphere, a current that gathered up charged particles and caused them to slam into the Jovian air.

  Kelly, racing through material retrieved to the screen before her, saw the point quickly. ′The flux tube is a natural particle collider.′

  Jerzy said, ′And as such it is a natural source of antimatter particles. Of course in nature such particles will annihilate with matter very quickly, but it is believed that some finish up in belts around Jupiter, analogous to Earth′s Van Allen belts. And if they could be harvested—′

  ′How?′ Gordo snapped.

  ′With some kind of superconducting magnetic scoop, possibly,′ Liu said. ′A ship with magnetic sails that could waft through the flux tube and filter out antiprotons. The amount of antimatter is small - only three or four tonnes of antimatter per hour are created by such processes across the solar system - but the amount we will need to harness is small too …′

  And the discussion spun on as the scientists, running with the idea, explored the resources available through their computers. Even Kelly and Mel joined in, exhilarated to be released from the closure and intensity of the post-accident discussion.

  Holle just sat back, bewildered. She tried to follow the swirling discussion, the bare outlines of a new mission strategy emerging from the heated speculation. Jupiter′s environment, saturated with radiation, was pretty lethal for humans. That plucky ramjet, swooping in around Io to filter out antiprotons, would have to be unmanned. But it might be controlled by a manned craft in a slow, remote orbit around Jupiter. So you would spend years in orbit, living in a tank, years in a place of huge, lethal energies where the sun was reduced to dimness, years waiting just to collect the antimatter needed to begin the mission proper. It seemed horrible to her, repellent, utterly inhuman. And yet, as the scientists talked, as Gordo let the discussion run on, this was the consensus that was emerging.

  But how would you get to Jupiter in the first place?

  For answer, Liu Zheng produced a video clip which he projected onto the big whiteboard at the front of the room. It was only half a minute long, and looped over and over. Scratchy, blurred, ghosted from having been copied across many formats, it showed an old man sitting in a rocking chair. He cradled some kind of model. It looked like an artillery shell, maybe a metre long, a third of a metre wide. The old man displayed the features of the gadget. That bullet-like cowl was made of fibreglass, and was pocked with holes where, it seemed, some kind of sensors had once been placed. At the base was a curved plate of aluminium, like a pie dish, or maybe an antenna. The dish was connected to the main body by a system of springs, a kind of suspension.

  ′This is how we may launch,′ Liu said.

  Jerzy Glemp cackled. ′In a Jules Verne spaceship?′

  ′It has nothing to do with Verne,′ said Liu. ′But it is a spaceship - or a demonstration model of one.′ He froze the image. ′It was driven by explosives. You set off a charge under your pusher plate, there. The plate is driven up into the suspension system, which in turn pushes the main body forward. And you set off another charge, and another.′ He mimed this with his hands, his curved left palm catching the imaginary detonations, the back of his hand pushing his right fist up in the air. ′Boom, boom, boom. With this model, the charges were the size of golf balls.′

  Gordo covered his face with his big hands. ′Oh, shit, I heard of this. My father showed me a scratchy old film, of this thing put-putting into the air … What was it called?′

  Edward Kenzie said, ′Are you suggesting this might be the way to launch our Ark? What kind of explosions would you need?′

  ′Thermonuclear,′ Liu said simply.

  ′Jesus Christ,′ Kenzie said, and he looked at his daughter, horrified. ′You′re seriously suggesting we load the last hope of mankind on top of a nuclear bomb?′

  ′Not just one bomb,′ Liu said, unperturbed. ′Several. A whole stream of them, thrown behind the pusher plate and detonated—′

  ′Project Orion,′ Gordo snapped.

  With that as the key, the others began digging into the electronic archives.

  Holle quickly found that Orion had been run from 1957 to 1965 by General Atomic, a division of a company that had also built nuclear submarines and Atlas ICBMs. It was a time of extravagant dreams driven by the new technology of thermonuclear detonations, the energies of the sun brought down to Earth. One ′dimensional analysis′, pushing the idea as far as possible, predicted that it would be possible to have sent humans to Saturn by 1970. She flashed the report to the whiteboard.

  ′This is serious stuff,′ Kelly said, wondering. ′They got support from Los Alamos, Livermore, Sandia. And look at all these technical papers: ′′A Survey of the Shock Absorber Problem′′. ′′Random Walk of Trajectory Due to Bomb Misplacement′′. Some of these are still classified!′

  Gordo said, ′So would this have worked?′

  ′Yo
u bet,′ Mel Belbruno said. ′I mean, you bet, sir. They never quite wrestled the technical details to the floor, as far as I can see. But the concept was surely sound. And they did fly a few demonstration models with conventional explosives.′

  ′So why weren′t we at Saturn by 1970?′ ′Because,′ Liu Zheng said, ′to get to Saturn, you must first leave the Earth.′

  Growing opposition to nuclear weapons through the 1960s caused the Orion concept to be viewed with suspicion. The final straw was an unwise presentation to President Kennedy of a model of a spaceborne Orion-technology battleship, bristling with nuclear missiles. Kennedy was disgusted.

  ′So the concept was mothballed. But it was never abandoned,′ Liu said. ′You will see that NASA later developed a successor design called ′′Extended Pulsed Plasma Propulsion′′, with a greater distance from weapons technology.′

  ′I guess it was always a good concept to have in the library,′ said Gordo. ′If you ever needed to get something big off of the Earth quickly.′ He rubbed his eyes. ′I think I remember a novel from when I was a kid. The aliens attack, and we use Orion to get at their mother ship. Footfall - something like that. Shame it isn′t a bunch of aliens we got to beat now. Xenobaths or newts or aquaphibians. By comparison, that would be easy.′

  ′There is, or was, a nuclear weapons plant close to Denver,′ Jerzy Glemp said. ′At Rocky Flats.′

  Gordo laughed. ′Why ain′t I surprised you know that? But if President Vasquez won′t back the idea of another antimatter factory in the middle of Denver, how do I get her to endorse building a whole fucking spaceship out of nuclear bombs?′

  ′And the fallout,′ Patrick said earnestly. ′If such a thing is launched anywhere in what′s left of the continental US - there is nowhere empty of people, certainly not in Colorado.′

  Jerzy said grimly, ′If we launch in 2040, or 2041, or 2042, that will no longer matter, Mr Groundwater. And nor, I am afraid, will those left behind.′