Flare

by Roger Zelazny

  But, still, all that trouble, and the boring, repetitious actions… Holdstrup wouldn't do it just for the money. He actually entered these competitions for love.

  For love of a good design intelligently executed. For love of tight, mirrored surfaces reflecting the subtle pressures of sunlight and starlight as they traversed a graceful, parabolic orbit. For love of the recognition, admiration, and respect that always came to the winner.

  That was what really drove him, working on into the night, as the rubber mouthpiece of the breathing apparatus chapped his lips, as the glare of sodium vapor off aluminum film burned his eyes, as his upper arms trembled with the strain of hefting the weight and holding it just so....

  He did it for the glory.

  Blow

  Spin

  Insert

  Lock

  Whitney Center, Tulare County, California, March 16

  As operations director, Naomi Rao was responsible for keeping the schedule. So she was fuming now as she watched the technicians in the main payload assembly hall blow foam into a ceramic cargo shell and hinge it together with explosive bolts. The foam was designed to absorb the shocks of a launch acceleration in excess of five hundred gees.

  Next, the crew spun the projectile in a particle spray to give it a smooth aluminum coating, against which the plasma-induction field would work in the launch tube, dragging the ceramic shell and its contents forward along the line of braided electromagnets.

  Then, the work team pushed the projectile and its cradle into the tube's breech where, once the cycle was completed, an electric arc in the megawatt range would flash-heat the aluminum powder into a plasma cloud.

  Finally, they closed the airlock door behind the projectile and sealed it.

  Rao clicked her stopwatch, glared at it. The crew had taken all of twenty-two minutes to make ready for launch.

  Damn! That was just not good enough! It would never make for the firing rate which the front office wanted to maintain. But then, Rao consoled herself, there were limiting factors all over the place.

  For one thing, all of this activity was going on more than three kilometers below sea level, under a shitload of granite mountain, at the end of an eleven-kilometer-long tube that surfaced through the eastern face of Mount Whitney. Eighty years ago, when the magnetic catapult was still a new idea, they had needed the thin air at Whitney's elevation of 4,420 meters to reduce atmospheric resistance as the high-speed payloads emerged from the tube. The designers had also wanted the remoteness of a barren mountain range to isolate the megabooms of the launch cycles, because all this was before the development of effective sonic suppressors.

  Whitney Center was an old facility, designed for the payloads of the last century, when the move to orbital space was just beginning. The cargo handlers of the day took a more relaxed attitude about launch schedules and load bulk. They were firing nonstandard shapes then, so they had the time to make each shell and its molded-foam padding into a hand-finished work of art. They were dealing with small satellites and discrete loads of what then passed for high-technology instrumentation. So, everything in those days could be polite, refined, and studious. Now, of course, the center was shooting out larger, more complicated modules and structures.

  If Naomi Rao were going to redesign Whitney Center for today's needs, she would have the shells be packed, blown, bolted, and coated offsite, at the factory of origin. Then the projectiles could be stockpiled ahead of the launch schedule, brought to the center on trucks, and fired off efficiently.

  Except… except the main elevator shaft that brought Rao's loads down to the working end of the catapult was something like two meters too small for today's average finished load. The front office had studied all sorts of contortions for moving pre-packed shells through this constriction—sideways, butt-first, packed-in-halves—then re-orienting them for insertion in the breech of the launch tube. But always the handling space at the base of the elevator stage was just too narrow, too right-angled, too something. The designers of the last century had done a beautiful piece of work here under the mountain, but they hadn't planned ahead for the success, with its added demands, that their system was destined to achieve.

  So that was the first limiting factor, Rao recognized: the size and depth of the payload assembly chamber.

  Next, if the original builders had only carved out a bigger chamber, giving her more room to work with, Rao could set up a second assembly line and put together more cargo shells per shift. She could even hope to stockpile them at the breech, and that way she could get ahead on the launch schedule. But then, her operation would still end up in a hole.

  The builders of almost a century ago didn't have access to current fusion technology. They powered the induction rails with electric generators turning at the ends of steel shafts spun by old-fashioned steam or falling water. So they had no way of cheaply generating the two-second pulse of eighteen megawatt-hours needed to drive their loads up to orbital velocity. Instead, to get the energy burst they needed, they charged up huge banks of capacitors that lined the eleven-kilometer tunnel. And that charging took time—eight minutes, twenty-two seconds to be exact. The bottom line was that, even if Naomi Rao could stockpile her payloads, she still couldn't shoot them any faster.

  Of course, the front office had explored several technological alternatives. A new fusion complex sited at the shaft head in Junction Meadow, with direct coupling through klystrons, thus bypassing the antiquated capacitor banks and induction rails.

  But making all of these additions and changes would cost time and money. To widen the elevator shaft and chambers, they would have to close down the complex, cut out thirty thousand cubic meters of native rock, and rebuild the elevator, assembly hall, and airlock. To rework the launch tube's mechanism, they would have to strip out fifty kilometers of steel rails and braided magnets, rebuild the induction line, and probably upgrade the pressure lens at the ejector gate. And in neither case could they ever hope to see the front end of today's harried launch schedule during Rao's lifetime.

  In the old joke, Naomi Rao asks the front office, "Why do we have to keep digging away at this hole with our little teaspoon? Why don't we use a shovel?" And the front office snaps back, "You don't have time to go looking for a shovel. You've got a schedule to maintain."

  So the preferred alternative was just to keep on trucking. Make each payload as a one-off item, hand-crafted and spun down here. Charge up the antiquated capacitor banks, which apparently had a design life of forever. And fire off the projectiles in the old-fashioned way. Because the schedule, which was driven by economic necessity and the clamor of money, was written in stone. The schedule was everything. Alpha and omega. Whirl without end.

  Fifteen seconds after the airlock doors had shut, Rao watched her dials as the vacuum pumps cycled. Then the electrodes arced, and the line of induction magnets drew the plasma cloud with its buried egg of foam and cargo forward along the rails. Two-point-five seconds later, Mount Whitney made another offering of steel shapes or silicon circuitry or medical supplies or water canisters or bottles of rare gases to the gods of the upper atmosphere.

  Just like a well-oiled clock. Mechanical, predictable, and always running slow.

  CH4… 20-1/8

  CH4… 19-3/4

  CH4… 19-1/8

  CH4… 18-1/2

  Western Board of Trade, Chicago, March 17

  Lexander Bartels watched the quote on natural gas, per cubic meter for October delivery, go into virtual freefoll. The letters and numbers that, two minutes ago, had been sliding across his left visual cortex now tipped and cascaded out of the dark space above his eyebrow, taking on real velocity. The numbers' pale blue glow blurred white and fragmented as the speed of the fell increased.

  "Shit!"

  Even without the neural graphics, Bartels could tell he was in deep trouble. He had learned to read and assimilate raw numbers long before the mechanics of virtual reality got into the financial communications business.
>
  Lexander Bartels could have told the big boys in the Titan Cartel that theirstupid, gloating press releases would have this effect, would drive the price right down. Because, of course, the methane supply from Titan's thick and nearly pure hydrocarbon atmosphere was literally inexhaustible. And that was more than anyone could say for even the deep gas wells in Colorado, Texas, and Alberta, let alone the capped landfills that lay on the fringes of every major American city. So, there went the scarcity value of the Cartel's product

  Yesterday the October high had been somewhere north of thirty-five points a thousand cubic meters. Today the slump was on and gaining momentum. At this rate, by tomorrow the price wouldn't even support development of a lake of liquid methane located right outside Chicago—let alone automated cramships and unmanned sunjammers sailing elliptical orbits down from the vicinity of Saturn.

  Bartels had to do something about this, and fast.

  Could he put the genie back in the bottle? Get the Cartel to retract the release?

  No, because no one would believe it. And the price would keep right on falling.

  Well, could they announce a delay? Some kind of technical problem? Maybe a barge crash or a leaky holding tank or something, anything, so long as it happened out beyond where anyone could see it and know what was really going on… That would certainly end the panic and force the price of gas back up.

  But then, the governors of the Board of trade would want to conduct an inquiry and gather hard evidence. That, or file indictments against Bartels and company for market manipulation. Traders had tried to engineer a swing like this before, in an attempt to corner some commodity. And a new supply source, located far from the regulating agencies, unavailable for reliable observation, and depending on interlocking echelons of new development technologies, made a dandy vehicle for such a scheme.

  Still, if nothing brought the price of gas back up, the economic underpinnings of the entire Titan Project would collapse before the Cartel could snag and decant its first shipload of product. And wouldn't the big boys be a laughingstock then?

  Lexander Bartels had to think of something.

  But what?

  Tumble

  Tumble

  Tumble

  Tumble

  Phobos, March 18

  Khyffer I, Grand Duke of Syrtis Major and Hereditary Lord of Phobos, looked out toward the horizons of his domain and then down, past them, to the gray and ocher and white expanses of Mars.

  On Earth, the greatest of all emperors in history had known a natural limit to their power. Even if all the territory within the circle of a man's eye might belong to him personally, still he could not help but know that somewhere, perhaps far over the distant horizon, was land where his words were not law. Or, worse, beyond his closest shore would be the mighty ocean, where man was still only a visitor, trespassing at the whim of Neptune.

  The Earth defeated man and made a mockery of his rule.

  But on Phobos, things were different. Khyffer I—who was born James E Bren of Missoula, Montana—shared his domain with neither men nor gods. He could walk its Long Circumference of twenty-seven kilometers in just half an hour at his usual brisk and bounding pace. It took him even less time if he flew the circumference on one of the station's scooters. Phobos had no oceans and only one major depression, the crater Hall, whose depths Khyffer I could check out anytime he chose to look over the rim.

  Of course, there was always the question of what was happening on the backside of the planetoid. A man's eyes couldn't be everywhere at once, even if he was an absolute monarch, even if he set up the video monitors and pattern analyzers to keep watch for him. Still, someone might have landed back there, materializing in phase with the blink of an eye, and begun stirring up rebellion! Someone over that near horizon might be hatching plots!

  To guard against the possibility, Khyffer I regularly suited up and toured his domain. For an absolute ruler, he was not afraid to make his face known in his dominions.

  And, as a mark of special grace and favor to his many subjects below, as a service to all humankind, Khyffer I had long ago agreed to maintain the wideband communications repeater that was established at his seat on Phobos. This device coordinated signals with the Mother Empire on Earth during those twelve-point-three hours of the Martian day when the darkness of Old Night turned Syrtis Major away from the sun. Thus Khyffer I held the vital link connecting his subjects on Mars with the bulk of humanity.

  For this act of majesté oblige, among many others, Khyffer I was known as a just and popular ruler. Indeed, he was a certified public benefactor. A prince of a fellow!… If he could only be sure that no one on the other side of his domain was fomenting revolution. Staring at the horizon and checking out the monitors were not enough. He simply had to go see for himself.

  So, for the sixth time that day, Khyffer I pulled on his pressure suit and crawled into the repeater station's main airlock. The Grand Duke was just going for another little walk. He was sure he could get back before anyone down on the planet might notice.

  Trickle

  Trickle

  Siphon

  Sump

  Stonybrook Farm at L3, March 19

  General Manager Alois Davenport tried to stare down Peter Kamen, the farming colony's engineering specialist, but the younger man held his ground. Davenport was the first to shift his gaze. He looked out the window of his office, toward rows of pale green cabbages in black dirt.

  "I don't agree with your analysis," Davenport said finally.

  "It's not something that cares whether you agree or not… sir." Kamen pointed at the filtration curves on the screen inset into Davenport's desktop. "We're losing pressure on the siphon. That means we've got a blockage. Likely a whole series of them. Ice is the probable culprit."

  "That's just your interpretation."

  "What else could it be?" Kamen demanded.

  "Precipitates, interrupting the natural percolation." Davenport shrugged. "It could be from that new course of fertilizers West Sixty has been using. The blockages are also compatible with that scenario."

  "Some of the blockages could be in the percolation mats, perhaps. But widespread icing in the pipes fits the data better."

  "Ice…" Davenport gave the proposition serious thought for the first time—for just one minute. "This would be before the water runs into the heat exchangers, you're thinking? Because we're still tapping to heat spec out of the sprinkler heads, aren't we?"

  "Yes," Kamen agreed. "It has to be forming in the down-feeds."

  Thermal modulation by cross-connecting the irrigation water accounted for most of the colony's internal heat distribution—that and a convection current of warm air across the central axis. Natural, self-regulating patterns pushed wind and water throughout the cylinder, driven by gravity balances and hot pockets. No cybers were called on to diddle with the system, so there was no chance of a software glitch taking them through ever-widening loops to destruction. It had happened decades ago in the earliest forming colonies, which had loved such technology a little too much.

  But if there was some natural imbalance at Stonybrook, like a buildup of salt scale in the mats, or ice…

  "Anyway, how do you propose to get ice on the outside of a rotating cylinder?" the general manager objected finally. "Our spin is constant—because if it weren't, you and I'd be flying all around inside here. So, every forty-two minutes, each one of those exchange units still has to be getting its dose of hard sunlight. What's going to freeze up in that time?"

  "You've got an awful lot of little tubes beyond that wall, Alois." Kamen pointed straight down at the floor. "Bet that some of them are getting shaded more than others as this Lagrange point works its way around through the lunar cycles. But we won't know which ones and how much until we suit up a team and take them outside on inspection. Then we'll just have to bang on the irrigation system and see what falls off."

  "I can't spare you that kind of manpower!" Davenport said, alarmed. "After all, we
have a crop to harvest. Contracts to fulfill. Payments to make."

  "When that water stops," the engineer predicted, "your crop is going to shrivel in the ground."

  "Now that isn't what your curves show at all." The general manager tapped the screen. "We've still got eighty-five percent flow through the system. And if you go around telling people some kind of disaster is imminent, you'll only make a fool of yourself."

  "Haven't you heard about an ounce of prevention being—"

  "We'll have time to worry about your preventive measures after we get the cabbage in. In the meantime, I'll have the Fertilizer Department thin the mix and formulate a descaler compound. Then you'll see those blockages clear up soon enough."

  "But that won't—!"

  "It'll hold the system together while we get on about our business," Davenport said.

  "Then I'm making a formal request to raise the whole issue at the next Town Meeting. Our people should—“

  "The people want to gather their produce and keep paying offon our mortgage. You want to strip the interior down and rework the whole substructure. I've seen your plans, Mr. Kamen, and your cost estimates. If you had your way, we'd tinker and fiddle all the livelong day, and never get any work done. And everyone in this colony knows it, too.”

  Peter Kamen scowled and stuck out his lower lip. "It's going to be on your head, then."

  "That's my job," Davenport said softly. "And always has been."

  Zing!

  Zing!

  Zing!

  Zing!

  Murray Hill Laboratories, Inc., Jerseyboro, GNYC, March 20

  Harvey Sommerstein watched the needles flick as the cascaded calls went out on the sky's random-access lattice.