Ill Wind

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Rita answered without checking her watch, still striding along. “Alpha One is due in forty minutes. It’s got a dwell time of five minutes, with Alpha Two and the rest of them right on its heels. It’ll be another twenty-four hours before the Seven Dwarfs are in place again.”

  The “Seven Dwarfs,” a cluster of small solar-collection satellites, circled Earth more than 300 miles up, equally spaced over a segment of orbit like cars on a freight train. Spencer marveled at the simple concept. He couldn’t claim total credit for coming up with the idea, but he had been instrumental in getting the project off the ground.

  The satellites converted raw solar energy into microwaves. Once the first satellite popped over the horizon, it would beam focused energy down onto the field of antennas, not unlike the millions of telephone conversations comsats already beamed to Earth. The key was to use a lot of little, low-orbiting satellites instead of a single big one.

  Spencer had spent years fighting for his project, trying to convince uninterested politicians or military types the best way to tap the power of the sun. Low-efficiency passive solar arrays on Earth could generate only minimal power, enough to run a few local farms. Only by deploying enormous solar panels in space, then beaming the power through the atmosphere, would solar energy pay off in a way big enough to make a difference.

  But other technical experts hawked their own ideas to the same committees; since the decision makers knew little or nothing about the subject, they were swayed by razzle-dazzle presentations and good public speakers rather than solid technical content.

  Spencer’s test had finally come down to the wire, and today was the day he would blow the other guys out of the water. He hoped his smallsat program would be as simple in practice as he made it sound in his sales pitches.

  Rita slammed the door of the old gray pickup, then roared across the rutted temporary roads. The infrequent New Mexican rain fell two inches at a time, then dried the ground hard as cement. Spencer tried to keep his head from hitting the roof of the truck as they bounced toward the cluster of buildings. He tried to talk, but his teeth clicked together as the truck jounced. He kept quiet until they reached the command center.

  He brushed aside his usual revulsion at the substandard quarters the government had allotted his project. Maybe the TV reporters wouldn’t shoot too much footage of the facility itself. The “blockhouse” was a bank of three revamped 1960s-vintage trailers that had been used for various experiments at White Sands. A mesh of chickenwire completely surrounded the trailers, making the blockhouse into a giant Faraday cage, safe from stray microwave beams if the satellites missed their mark.

  The rattling hum of portable air conditioners buzzed outside the white aluminum-siding walls. A fist of twisted fiber-optic wires ran from the distant microwave farm to a switchboard inside.

  “Get your badge on, Spence,” Rita said. “Look nice for the newsies.”

  He pulled his laminated badge out of his pocket and clipped it to his collar. Awful I.D. photograph, on par with his driver’s license. Brown hair that wouldn’t stay combed, blue eyes open a little too wide, prominent sunburn, and a thin face wearing an expression like he had just swallowed a grape whole. Spencer wondered if it was a requirement that photo identification had to be embarrassing.

  The cool, musty-smelling blockhouse felt good after baking out on the desert. The only light inside the trailer seeped through closed miniblinds or shone from computer screens. The overhead flourescents had been switched off. A jukebox purchased from an old cafe in nearby Alamogordo sat dormant in the corner.

  The news crew from Albuquerque had their equipment set up in a small alcove walled off by portable room dividers. Spencer had hoped for a bit more media, but the big San Francisco oil spill monopolized most of the prime-time broadcasts.

  Spencer’s people chattered in a staccato but precise drone, verifying readings from the antenna farm, calibrating the solar smallsat. “DOE’s on the line, Spence. They told us to call them when you got here.”

  Spencer dismissed it with a wave. He had more important things to do than to chat with Department of Energy paper-pushers. “Tell them I’m tied up. What’s our time?”

  Rita Fellenstein glanced up from a computer monitor. Colors from the CRT display reflected off the sheen on her thin face. “Twenty-three minutes until Alpha One comes into range. Go ahead and kiss up to DOE—they have a psychological need to give you a pep talk. That way they can take credit for our success.”

  Spencer ignored the suggestion. “Any air traffic?”

  “Sky’s clear, verified by El Paso control.”

  “Data link?”

  “Echo checks are error free.”

  A decade ago the operation would have taken ten times the people and a thousand times the budget. Spencer looked around in quiet satisfaction, content that his project had succeeded against “conventional” DOE wisdom. The bureaucracy of Big Science added thousands of unnecessary corners that could be cut if you weren’t brainwashed into believing they were necessary.

  He raised his voice over the murmur in the blockhouse. “Okay, you guys, all green on the diagnostics. Everyone knows the drill—any reason to call for a hold takes precedence. Problems?”

  The trailer remained silent except for the background hum of equipment and air conditioners. The reporters stood around, shuffling their feet, adjusting their pin-mikes, not understanding the details but sensing something important about to happen.

  “All right, signal DOE we’re going hot,” Spencer said.

  Activity filled the dim trailer. Excitement raced through Spencer’s veins, anticipation to see his project come on-line at last. A voice interrupted him, sounding as if it had taken years to perfect its nasal resonance. Spencer’s stomach dropped.

  “I don’t like your ‘negative response only’ policy, Dr. Lockwood. Statistics prove that a checklist methodology eliciting positive acknowledgments has an appreciably higher percentage of success. DOE would feel more comfortable if you adopted this procedure, as the rest of the civilized world does.”

  Lance Nedermyer’s fleshy torso filled most of the walking space in the crowded trailer. Though the blockhouse was cool, beads of perspiration dotted Nedermyer’s flushed forehead. At the moment, he was probably the only man on the entire White Sands installation wearing a suit and a tie. Spencer wanted to say: My people know their jobs, Lance! Teamwork sometimes proves more effective than checklists. But, much as he wanted to, Spencer could not afford to embarrass or ignore the man. “Thanks for your input, Lance. I’ll be sure to include your suggestion in our post-test assessment comments.”

  “I’d be more pleased if you’d make them part of your operating procedures, post-haste.”

  “Thanks, Lance.” But Spencer had already hunched down in front of a communications workstation operated by Juan Romero. Romero, with his long black hair and drooping mustache, looked like a bandit from a cheap Western—and Romero intentionally played the part to the hilt.

  Romero expanded a portion of his screen to show a televised view of the antenna farm, taken from the top of a hundred-foot tower outside the blockhouse. The image of the metallic receivers wavered in the heat, making them look like thousands of fingers reaching up to grasp the invisible radiation.

  “Sixty seconds,” said Rita Fellenstein.

  Spencer wet his lips; the desert dryness seemed particularly piercing now. “Jukebox plugged in?” he whispered.

  “That was the first thing on the checklist,” Romero raised his voice loud enough for Nedermyer to hear, then he grinned broadly out of sight.

  Spencer felt Nedermyer’s eyes on him. The news crew hushed. TV cameras pointed at the techs constantly updating the system status.

  “Folks,” Spencer said, raising his voice, “we’re about to catch the first solar energy ever beamed directly from space. Keep your fingers crossed.”

  At the top left corner of the workstation in front of him, numerals flashed the countdown. Spencer wondered if he
should voice the numbers out loud for the benefit of the DOE bureaucrats in D.C. He joined the faint whispering as everyone counted down to first light. “Three… two… one… bingo!”

  The televised view from the desert didn’t change. Romero and Spencer stared at the screen. They saw no indication that millions of joules of energy rained down from space into the waiting arms of a thousand microwave antennas.

  The news crews probably wanted to see a dazzling green death beam streak down from orbit. The trailer fell silent as everyone held their breath. Nothing.

  Click!

  Bright light filled the trailer, then a whirring hum. The sound of the Beach Boys singing in harmony swept through the air. Spencer smiled as the strains of “The Warmth of the Sun” drifted from the jukebox. Everyone laughed and started clapping. Spencer broke into a wider grin; Romero slapped him on the back.

  Nedermyer scowled at the jukebox. The music grew louder until it blared out of the speakers.

  Spencer reached left and right to shake hands. His crew congratulated him, pounding him on the back. “Hey, somebody notify DOE!”

  Rita waved an arm and held up a portable telephone. “Spence, the Assistant Secretary wants to talk with you.”

  “Tell her I’m monitoring the test.” A champagne cork popped, and Spencer was doused. Breaking free of the revelry, he made his way toward the reporters. Now he didn’t mind talking to them. Over the din, he could hear voices shouting performance figures.

  “We’re showing a thirty-five percent conversion efficiency! With this baseline, we’ve already exceeded the design specs!”

  Nedermyer stood with his arms crossed, lips drawn into a tight line. Nedermyer’s foot tapped, but it didn’t seem to be moving to the beat of the song. The ruddy color that crept into the bureaucrat’s cheeks was far darker than a sunburn.

  Spencer motioned with his head to the jukebox. “Well? Are you satisfied, Lance?”

  “At what? This… stunt?”

  “We could have used anything for a load. We thought this would be a bit more… memorable than an oscilloscope.”

  “There’s a purpose for all the diagnostics equipment your group has purchased, Dr. Lockwood. They convey much more information for competent analysis than this boombox of yours.”

  Spencer lowered his voice. “What is your problem, Lance? Can’t you see it worked? Give us a little credit.”

  Nedermyer’s whisper had the edge of a bayonet. “I spend all year long trying to crowbar money out of the trenches for your pet projects, and you screwballs turn it into a comedy routine! We had to can a dozen other equally worthy proposals to get your funding, Dr. Lockwood, and look what kind of impression you’ve just made. Imagine the headlines: Government Wastes Millions of Dollars to Turn on Jukebox from Space! Are you too young to remember how the public howled when the Apollo astronauts were having too much fun on the Moon? You’re supposed to act respectable in situations like this. Can’t you grow up for a few minutes, golden boy?”

  The jukebox song changed to “I Get Around.” Chuckles rippled through the trailer. Rita’s voice boomed over the background noise. “Quiet! Switchover in one minute. Alpha Two coming up.”

  Spencer turned to Nedermyer, trying to back to neutral ground. “Ready for the next satellite. Care for a closer look?”

  Nedermyer kept his arms folded. “I can see—and hear—from where I’m standing.”

  Spencer kept a straight face as he went over to Rita’s area. Three telephones and two laptop computers lay jumbled next to her workstation. Even sitting, the gangly scientist was nearly as tall as the reporter hovering over her shoulder. Rita pointed to a graphic on the screen for the reporter’s benefit. “Alpha One is about to go over the horizon. We’ll lose contact soon.”

  The reporter pulled his microphone back and spoke into it. “I thought these satellites stayed overhead the whole time.”

  “To do that, we’d have to put the satellites up so high that their beam would spread out too much by the time it got down to Earth. Our beam from low-orbiting satellites stays tight enough for us to milk it. But the downside is that each satellite is overhead for only five minutes.”

  “Does that mean your antenna farm will only generate electricity for a few minutes a day?”

  Spencer rolled his eyes and wondered if the reporter hadn’t done his homework, or if he was just playing dumb to clarify things for his viewers.

  “No, we’ve got seven satellites in four different planar orbits for broader coverage,” said Rita.

  “The Seven Dwarfs,” the reporter said, grinning.

  “Right. We were fairly certain we could lock the microwave beam from the first satellite. The real trick is to see if we can turn on the next satellite when it comes into view without interrupting the power. If there’s enough overlap between the beams, the electrical network won’t even notice the difference.”

  A shout erupted from the front. “Two, one… transition! Alpha Two is locked on!”

  Spencer noticed no dimming of the lights, no jitter in the jukebox. The party started all over again.

  Rita kept talking, giving the canned speech every member of the project knew by heart. “At least one of the Seven Dwarfs is within view of White Sands 46 percent of the time. But they may be at too low an angle to do any good. Eventually we hope to get a continuous ring of satellites over the Earth so we never lose touch—at least in daylight. We also need to build more antenna farms along the path so that as soon as a satellite loses sight of one farm it can switch to another.”

  The reporter recorded all the information, but Rita didn’t slow down. “Once we get them up there, all that energy is free. Since the cost of sending up smallsats is decreasing, it’ll become economical and a lot less polluting than any form of Earth-based power system. Twenty more satellites are sitting in sealed storage at the Jet Propulsion Lab right now. We’ll eventually need about 70 for a complete system, but the strategy is to first show they work. Solar satellites don’t wear out, you know, they just keep going and going and going—like that pink bunny.”

  Another cheer went through the trailer a few moments later. “Alpha Three overlap and switch-on is successful. Three down and four to go.” The celebration was more subdued this time. After the first milestone, every other event seemed less significant.

  “What about the Zoroaster spill?” the reporter asked.

  Spencer interrupted the interview; he had hoped for a question like that. Rita looked relieved. Spencer stepped too close to the microphone, then awkwardly backed away as he talked. “The pictures speak for themselves. Until we develop alternative energy sources like this one, we’re going to keep having accidents like that one.” He felt warm inside as he said it. The words came out like a perfect sound bite, and he had no doubt the broadcast would use it.

  Before long, the seventh satellite passed over the horizon. The lights dimmed and the jukebox stopped. Spencer was suddenly exhausted.

  Like an addict craving another hit, he looked around to keep the thrill going just a little longer. He spotted Lance Nedermyer standing in the corner, alone, talking into a telephone. Nedermyer loosened his tie, then turned his back on the party.

  Spencer set his mouth as he realized he had to do some damage control; he reached Nedermyer as the bureaucrat hung up the phone. “Looks like a total success, Lance,” he said. “We’re having a quick-look briefing in ten minutes to go over preliminary data.”

  Nedermyer smiled tightly. “I’ve seen all I need to for now.”

  “Too bad the Secretary couldn’t make it out.”

  “No need to, that’s why I’m here.” He turned for the exit. “If your test is over, I’ll be heading back to Albuquerque. It’s a three-hour drive.”

  Spencer followed the man out the door, growing angry as Nedermyer brushed off his accomplishment. Outside, the sunlight seemed to explode with brightness. With an effort, Spencer kept his voice friendly. “Albuquerque, already?”

  Nedermyer pulled off his
tie and strode toward his rental car. The ground crunched beneath his feet. “That’s what I said.”

  “Well, is there anything else I can show you?”

  “I said I’ve seen all I need to see—”

  Spencer’s patience snapped and he reached out to grab Nedermyer by the elbow. The man’s arm felt as fleshy as it looked. “Lance, you can’t deny that what happened here today marks a new era. When all the satellites are up—”

  Nedermyer shook off Spencer’s hand. Squinting in the harsh sunlight, he fumbled in his pocket for a pair of sunshades to clip onto his eyeglasses. Spencer saw himself reflected in the lenses. Nedermyer said, “You just don’t get it, do you, Lockwood?”

  Spencer stopped. “Get what?”

  Nedermyer waved a hand at the trailer, then toward the antenna farm. “All this is just a game to you. A stunt. You might have captured the public eye this afternoon, but I have to deal with the flack back inside the Beltway. What am I going to tell Congress when they ask why DOE is spending money playing surfin’ music?”

  Spencer narrowed his eyes. “Why are you doing this, Lance? You can’t be that dense.”

  “I was just on the phone to headquarters, Dr. Lockwood.” He started to walk toward his car, but he took off his sunglasses and pointed them at Spencer. “I’ve recommended that the National Academy of Sciences review your program before we spend any more money on your operation.”

  “That will take half a year! We’ve got smallsats waiting at JPL. They’re already built—”

  “I’ll be back in a month with the panel to see your full-scale test results. And there’d better be some good science out of it. Play by the rules, Spencer. Everybody else does.” He jammed his sunglasses back on his face and strode to the car.

  Spencer watched the cloud of dust dissipate as Nedermyer drove away. He didn’t know how long he stood there before the door to the trailer opened and Rita Fellenstein called. “Hey, Spence! The reporters want to talk to you again.”

  Still in shock, Spencer kept watching the road where Nedermyer’s car vanished into an unpleasant mirage.