Battle Station

by Ben Bova

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “You’re sure? You’re absolutely certain this is what you want?”

  I nodded. “I can’t go back, Sam,” I pleaded. “I just can’t.”

  The faintest hint of a grin twitched at the corners of his mouth. “Okay, pal. How’d you like to go into the hotel business with me?”

  You see, Sam had already been working for some time on his own ideas about space tourism. If Global Tech wouldn’t go for a hotel facility over on Alpha, complete with zero-gee honeymoon suites, then Sam figured he could get somebody else interested in the idea. The people who like to bad-mouth Sam say that he hired me to cover his ass so he could spend his time working on his tourist hotel idea while he was still collecting a salary from Global. That isn’t the way it happened at all; it was really the other way around.

  Sam hired me as a consultant and paid me out of his own pocket. To this day I don’t know where he got the money. I suspect it was from some of the financial people he was always talking to, but you never knew, with Sam. He had an inexhaustible fund of rabbits up his sleeves. Whenever I asked him about it, he just grinned at me and told me not to ask questions. I was never an employee of Global Technologies. And Sam worked full-time for them, eight hours a day, six days a week, and then some. They got his salary’s worth out of him. More. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t spend nights, Sundays, and the odd holiday here and there wooing financiers and lawyers who might come up with the risk capital he needed for his hotel. Sure, sometimes he did his own thing during Global’s regular office hours. But he worked plenty of overtime hours for Global, too. They got their money’s worth out of Sam.

  Of course, once I was no longer a patient whose bills were paid by the government, Global sent word up from corporate headquarters that I was to be shipped back Earthside as soon as possible. Sam interpreted that to mean when he was good and ready. Weeks stretched into months. Sam fought a valiant delaying action, matching every query of theirs with a detailed memorandum and references to obscure government health and safety regulations. It would take Global’s lawyers a month to figure out what the hell Sam was talking about, and then frame an answer.

  In the meantime, he moved me from the old isolation ward into a private room—a coffin-sized cubbyhole—and insisted that I start paying for my rent and food. Since Sam was paying me a monthly consultant’s stipend, he was collecting my rent and food money out of the money he was giving me as his consultant. It was all done with the Shack’s computer system, no cash ever changed hands. I had the feeling that there were some mighty weird subroutines running around inside that computer, all of them programmed by Sam.

  While all this was going on, the Shack was visited by a rather notorious U.S. Senator, one of the most powerful men in the government. He was a wizened, shriveled old man who had been in the Senate almost half a century. I thought little of it; we were getting a constant trickle of VIPs in those days. The bigwigs usually went to Alpha, so much so that we began calling it the Big Wheel’s Big Wheel. Most of them avoided the Shack; I guess they were scared of getting contaminated from our isolation ward patients. But a few of the VIPs made their way to the Shack now and then. Sam took personal charge of the Senator and his entourage, and showed him more attention and courtesy than I had ever seen him lavish upon a visitor before. Or since, for that matter. Sam, kowtowing to an authority figure? It astounded me at the time, but I laughed it off and forgot all about it soon enough.

  Then, some six months after the Senator’s visit, when it looked as if Sam had run out of time and excuses to keep me in the Shack and I would have to pack my meager bag and head down the gravity well to spend the rest of my miserable days in some overcrowded ghetto city, Sam came prancing weightlessly into my microminiaturized living quarters, waving a flimsy sheet of paper.

  “What’s that?” I knew it was a straight line, but he wasn’t going to tell me unless I asked.

  “A new law.” He was smirking, canary feathers all over his chin.

  “First time I ever seen you happy about some new regulation.”

  “Not a regulation,” he corrected me. “A law. A federal law, duly passed by the U.S. Congress and just signed today by the President.”

  I wanted to play it cool, but he had me too curious. “What’s it say? Why’s it so important?”

  “It says,” he made a flourish that sent him drifting slowly toward the ceiling as he read, “‘No person residing aboard a space facility owned by the United States or by a corporation or other legal entity licensed by the United States may be compelled to leave said facility without due process of law.’”

  My reply was something profound, like, “Huh?”

  His scrungy little face beaming, Sam said, “It means that Global can’t force you back Earthside! As long as you can pay the rent, Omar, they can’t evict you.”

  “You joking?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “No joke. I helped write this masterpiece, kiddo,” he told me. “Remember when old Senator Winnebago was up here last year?”

  The Senator was from Wisconsin, but his name was not Winnebago. He had been a powerful enemy of the space program—until his doctors told him that degenerative arthritis was going to make him a painracked cripple unless he could live in a low-gee environment. All of a sudden he became a big space freak. His visit to the Shack had proved what his doctors had told him: in zero gee the pains that hobbled him disappeared and he felt twenty years younger. That’s when Sam convinced him to sponsor the “pay your own way” law, which provided that neither the government nor a private company operating a space facility could force a resident out as long as he or she was able to pay the going rate for accommodations.

  “Hell, they’ve got laws that protect tenants from eviction in New York and every other city,” Sam said. “Why not here?”

  I was damned glad of it. Overjoyed, in fact. It meant that I could stay, that I wouldn’t be forced to go back Earthside and drag myself around at my full weight. What I didn’t realize at the time, of course, was that Sam would eventually have to use that law for himself. Obviously, he had seen ahead far enough to know that he would need such protection, sooner or later. Did he get the law written for his own selfish purposes? Sure he did. But it served my purpose, too, and Sam knew that when he was bending the Senator’s tin ear. That was good enough for me. Still is.

  For the better part of another year I served as Sam’s legman—a job I found interesting and amusingly ironic. I shuttled back and forth from the Shack to Alpha, generally to meet big-shot business persons visiting the Big Wheel. When Sam was officially on duty for Global, which was most of the time, he’d send me over to Alpha to meet the visitors, settle them down, and talk to them about the money that a tourist facility would make. I would just try to keep them happy until Sam could shake loose and come over to meet them himself. Then he would weave a golden web of words, describing how fantastic an orbital tourist facility would be, bobbing weightlessly around the room in his enthusiasm, pulling numbers out of the air to show how indecently huge would be the profit that investors would make.

  “And the biggest investors will get their own suites, all for themselves,” Sam promised, “complete with every luxury—and every service that the staff can provide.” He would wink hard enough to dislocate an eyelid at that point, to make certain the prospective investor knew what he meant.

  I met some pretty interesting people that way: Texas millionaires, Wall Street financiers, Hollywood sharks, a couple of bullnecked types I thought might be Mafia but turned out to be in the book and magazine distribution business, even a few very nice young ladies who were looking for “good causes” in which to invest. Sam did not spare them his “every service that the staff can provide” line, together with the wink. They giggled and blushed.

  “It’s gonna happen!” Sam kept saying. Each time we met a prospective backer his enthusiasm rose to a new pitch. No matter how many times the prospect eventually turned sour, no matter how often we wer
e disappointed, Sam never lost his faith in the idea or in the inevitability of its fruition.

  “It’s gonna happen, Omar. We’re going to create the first tourist hotel in space. And you’re going to have a share of it, pal. Mark my words.”

  When we finally got a tentative approval from a consortium of Greek and Italian shipping people, Sam nearly rocked the old Shack out of orbit. He whooped and hollered and zoomed around the place like a crazy billiard ball. He threw a monumental party for everybody in the Shack, doctors, nurses, patients, technicians, administrative staff, security guards, visitors, and even the one consultant who lived there: me. Where he got the caviar and fresh Brie and other stuff, I still don’t know. But it was a party none of us will ever forget. The Shack damned near rocked out of orbit. It started Saturday at five P.M., the close of the official workweek. It ended, officially, Monday at eight A.M. There are those who believe, though, that it’s still going on over there at the Shack.

  Several couples sort of disappeared during the party. The Shack isn’t so big that people can get lost in it, but they just seemed to vanish. Most of them showed up, looking tired and sheepish, by Monday morning. Three of those couples eventually got married. One pair of them was stopped by a security guard when they tried to go out an air lock while stark naked.

  Sam himself engaged in a bit of EVA with one of the nurses, a tiny little elf of fragile beauty and uncommon bravery. She snuggled into a pressure suit with Sam, and the two of them made several orbits around the Shack, outside, propelled by nothing more than their own frenetic pulsations and Newton’s Third Law of Motion.

  Two days after the party, however, the Beryllium Blonde showed up.

  Her real name was Jennifer Marlow, and she was as splendidly beautiful as a woman can be. A figure right out of a high school boy’s wettest dreams. A perfect face, with eyes of china blue and thickly glorious hair like a crown of shining gold. She staggered every male who saw her, she stunned even me, and she sent Sam into a complete tailspin.

  To top things off, she was Global Technology’s ace troubleshooter. Her official title was Administrative Assistant (Special Projects) to the President. The word we got from Earthside was that she had a mind like a steel trap, and a vagina much the same.

  The official reason for her visit was to discuss Sam’s letter of resignation with him.

  “You stay right beside me,” Sam insisted as we drifted down the Shack’s central corridor, toward the old conference room. “I won’t be able to control myself if I’m in there alone with her.”

  His face was as white as the Moon’s. He looked like a man in shock.

  “Will you be able to control yourself with me in there?” I wondered.

  “If I can’t, rap me on the head. Knock me out. Give me a Vulcan nerve pinch. Anything! Just don’t let me go zonkers over her.”

  I smiled.

  “I’m not kidding, Omar!” Sam insisted. “Why do you think they sent her up here, instead of some flunky? They know I’m susceptible. God knows how many scalps she’s got nailed to her teepee.”

  I grabbed his shoulder and dug my cleats into the corridor’s floor grid. We skidded to a stop.

  “Look,” I said, “maybe you want to avoid meeting with her altogether. I can represent you. I’m not … uh, susceptible.”

  His eyes went so wide I could see white all around the pupils. “Are you nuts? Miss a chance to be in the same room with her? I want to be protected, Omar, but not that much!”

  What could I do with him? He was torn in half. He knew the Beryllium Blonde was here to talk him out of resigning, but he couldn’t resist the opportunity of letting her try her wiles on him any more than Odysseus could resist listening to the Sirens.

  Like a couple of schoolboys dragging ourselves down to the principal’s office, we made our way slowly along the corridor and pushed through the door to the conference room. She was already seated at the head of the table, wearing a Chinese-red jumpsuit that fit her like skin. I gulped down a lump in my throat at the sight of her. She smiled a dazzling smile and Sam gave a little moan and rose right off the floor.

  He would have launched himself at her like a missile if I hadn’t grabbed his belt and yanked him down into the nearest chair. Wishing there were safety harnesses on the seats, I sat down next to Sam, keeping the full length of the polished imitation-wood table between us and the Blonde.

  “I think you know why I’m here,” she said. Her voice was music.

  Sam nodded dumbly, his jaw hanging open. I thought I saw a bit of saliva bubbling at the corner of his mouth.

  “Why do you want to leave us, Sam? Don’t you like us anymore?”

  It took three tries before Sam could make his voice work. “It’s … not that. I … I … I want to go into business for myself.”

  “But your employment contract has almost two full years more to run.”

  “I can’t wait two years,” he said in a tiny voice. “This opportunity won’t keep …”

  “Sam, you’re a very valued employee of Global Technologies, Incorporated. We want you to stay with us. I want you to stay with us.”

  “I … can’t.”

  “But you signed a contract with us, Sam. You gave us your word.”

  I stuck in my dime’s worth. “The contract doesn’t prohibit Sam from quitting. He can leave whenever he wants to.”

  “But he’ll lose all his pension benefits and healthcare provisions.”

  “He knows that.”

  She turned those heartbreakingly blue eyes on Sam again. “It will be a big disappointment to us if you leave, Sam. It will be a personal disappointment to me.”

  To his credit, Sam found the strength within himself to hold his ground. “I’m awfully sorry … but I’ve worked very hard to create this opportunity and I can’t let it slip past me now.”

  She nodded once, as if she understood. Then she asked, “This opportunity you’re speaking about: does it have anything to do with the prospect of opening a tourist hotel on space station Alpha?”

  “That’s right. Not just a hotel, a complete tourist facility. Sports complex, entertainment center, zero-gravity honeymoon suites …” He stopped abruptly and his face turned red. Sam blushed! He actually blushed.

  Miss Beryllium smiled her dazzling smile at him. “But Sam, that idea is the proprietary property of Global Technologies. Global owns the idea, not you.”

  For a moment the little conference room was absolutely silent. I could hear nothing except the faint background hum of the air-circulation fans. Sam seemed to have stopped breathing.

  Then he squawked, “What?”

  With a sad little shake of her gorgeous head, the Blonde replied, “Sam, you developed that idea while an employee of Global Technologies. We own it.”

  “But you turned it down!”

  “That makes no difference, Sam. Read your employment contract. It’s ours.”

  “But I made all the contacts. I raised the funding. I worked everything out—on my own time, goddammit! On my own time!”

  She shook her head again. “No, Sam. You did it while you were a Global employee. It’s not your possession. It belongs to us.”

  Sam leaped from his chair and bounded to the ceiling. This time he was ready to make war, not love. “You can’t do this to me!”

  The Blonde looked completely unruffled by his display. She sat there patiently, a slightly disappointed little frown on her face, while I calmed Sam down and got him back into his chair.

  “Sam, dear, I know how you must feel,” she said. “I don’t want us to be enemies. We’d be happy to have you take part in the tourist hotel program—as a Global employee. There could even be a raise in it for you.”

  “It’s mine, dammit!” Sam screeched. “You can’t steal it from me! It’s mine!”

  She shrugged. “Well, I expect our lawyers will have to settle it with your lawyers. In the meantime, I suppose there’s nothing for us to do but accept your resignation. With reluctance. With my perso
nal and very sad reluctance.”

  That much I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears. I had to drag Sam out of the conference room and take him back to his own quarters. She had him whipsawed, telling him that he couldn’t claim possession of his own idea, and at the same time practically begging him to stay on with Global and run the tourist project for them.

  What happened next depends on whom you ask. There are as many different versions of the story as there are people who tell it. As near as I can piece it all together, though, it went this way:

  The Beryllium Blonde had figured that Sam’s financial partners would go along with Global Technologies once they realized that Global had muscled Sam out of the tourist business. But she probably wasn’t as sure of everything as she tried to make Sam think. After all, these backers had made their deal with the little guy; maybe they wouldn’t want to do business with a big multinational corporation. Worse still, she didn’t know exactly what kind of deal Sam had cut with his backers; if Sam had a legally binding contract with them that named him as their partner, they might scrap the whole project when they learned that Global had cut Sam out.

  So she showed up at Sam’s door that night. He told me that she was still wearing the same jumpsuit, with nothing underneath it except her own luscious body. She brought a bottle of incredibly rare and expensive wine with her. “To show there’s no hard feelings.”

  The Blonde’s game was to keep Sam with Global and get him to go through with the tourist hotel idea. Apparently, once Global’s management got word that Sam had actually closed a deal for building a tourist facility on Alpha, they figured they might as well go into the tourist business for themselves. Alpha was still underutilized; a tourist facility suddenly made sense to those jerkoffs.

  So instead of shuttling back to Phoenix, as we had thought she would, the Blonde knocked on Sam’s door that night. The next morning I saw him floating along the Shack’s central corridor. He looked kind of dazed.