The first thing he did after exiting the docking area was to buy a ticket for the next shuttle to Central. It was six hours until it would board, but it should be an easier wait than on ISSII. He'd gotten a good nap on the shuttle, it being a longer trip, translunar, than the lift from Earth. Until he had his ticket paid for he had an almost irrational dread of spending anything, lest by some miscalculation he'd end up a few cents short of having the price of his ticket to report to Central. With that safely in hand he felt free to go have a decent meal and not skimp. That would leave plenty of time to go by the clinic.
The shuttle docked on the south end of M3. He didn't have any desire to go clear to the north end to go to the usual cafeteria the beam dogs used. Also he wasn't ready to face the rough humor he expected them to hit him with for coming back. The cafeteria on the business corridor was closer, and he didn't have any need of alcohol. In fact breakfast sounded good.
* * *
Ruby was out at the serving counter. She usually took a turn at it after the morning rush. It allowed the two prep cooks to get lunch under control without being interrupted by breakfast stragglers. Besides, she needed a break too, away from the small windowless office and staring at a screen. If you holed up there and just dealt with the operation by numbers you missed a lot of the clues about the operation you got looking over the counter. Numbers didn't tell you what kind of people were ordering different things, and if they looked happy or were frowning. It wasn't hard to tell from a distance if they were frowning over some personal issue or their food. Especially if you saw they took a good deal of it to the waste bin when they finished, you knew there was a problem.
The fellow who came in alone didn't hesitate at the entry and look around like somebody who'd never been in before, but he looked subtly wrong. Ruby had to look at him closely and think to figure it out. She was sure she'd seen the face before, not often and not recently, but he wasn't new unless he had a twin. Then it clicked what was different, his hair was too long.
"Haven't seen you in awhile," the cafeteria lady said, but she was clearly friendly. Her name tag said Ruby and she had a smaller line below saying 'food service manager'. "You must have a new job."
"Yeah, I do," Kurt said, embarrassed she knew him and he didn't remember her. She was striking, chocolate brown and thin, with long delicate features he automatically saw as aristocratic. Looking at her his brain flashed on a bust of Nefertiti that had been in a comparative culture course. But the work badge said manager, so maybe she wasn't out here with the public that often, he grasped at that to excuse himself for not remembering her.
"Do you have beam dog friends to know their inside gossip, or am I bigger news than I imagined?" Kurt joked.
"Your hair," Ruby explained. "You had it buzzed off short for the helmet work when you were in here before. They're not going to let you out the lock with what you're wearing now."
"Oh, yeah." Kurt reached up and ran his hand across his head. "I guess I better have it cut before I catch a shuttle later. I'm headed for the moon, but they aren't going to want it this long for suit work there either. I'm just passing through, after I've been back on Earth a few months."
"Got laid off after the ring was finished?" Ruby asked.
"Yeah, and I had some foolish idea I'd go back and help my sister and do Earth iron for awhile."
"My husband is a scooter jockey," Ruby said. "He'd have been laid off but he's got seniority out the wazoo. He teaches material handling so he isn't likely to be cut."
"What's his name?" Kurt asked. There weren't a lot of married beam dogs, nor older ones.
"You'd know him as Easy," Ruby said.
"Oh man, yeah. I know his voice. They joke he was floating there, waiting impatiently, when the first Mitsubishi shuttle arrived with a beam folding machine to start making the construction shack."
"Just about," Ruby agreed. "He was here before the central hub was formed. You walked right past the hot bar. Can I get you something special?"
Kurt looked back over his shoulder. The small buffet was somewhat depleted but only had one tray actually empty. There was still plenty. "How much is just the hot bar?" Kurt asked. No sense splurging if he could keep a little in his pocket. "And coffee," he added because he wasn't sure that was included.
"You don't have a subscription anymore do you?" Ruby asked.
"No, I'm not officially employed by anybody. I'm headed to the moon and hope to be hired by Jeff Singh. I quit and had to pay my own lift ticket back up," Kurt said. The slight grimace he added wasn't theatrics. He genuinely regretted being a dumb ass and almost stranding himself on Earth.
"Take your fill off the bar," Ruby said, with a wave of her long fingered hand. "Anything on it this late has to be recycled to crumbs or filler or dumped to carbon recycling. I should make it policy to offer it free after 1030, I just never thought of it before. There's always a few folks who can't afford a cafeteria card, and it's better than wasting it. It all gets recycled in the end anyhow. I will quietly have the right folks who help others told that's the new policy. Putting a sign out would keep some from using it from pride. Folks that need it...they'll either be back on their feet or on the dirt ball soon enough anyway."
"Home actually has poor people?" Kurt asked in surprise. He was sincerely interested, seeing how close he'd come to being broke.
"Not for long," Ruby said. "But there are always a few who lost their job or have a medical problem. There are always some who haven't got the sense to save or have insurance. They may get by for awhile working a service job and sleeping in a hot slot or private bunk room. If you don't have any savings or good insurance it's terrifically expensive to live until you can retrain or get well. We have a couple people who do charity work for those or the few who have untreatable mental illness. But it's mostly a stop-gap."
"I heard a lot of private complaining on Earth about the disability laws," Kurt remembered. "If you fit an official protected class a big company can be forced to hire and carry people who simply can't do the job. Janitors in wheel chairs or a blind person doing video editing."
"There's such a labor shortage here you can be hired for something as long as you aren't a stink or violent. I think we probably do better employing the different sorts of folks from necessity instead of charity. I know one guy who has an IT worker who wears a lacy gown and a tiara every day to work. He doesn't even mind calling her Princess Priscilla if that makes her happy, because she's a wiz with computers. She doesn't have to deal with the public so – who cares?" Ruby asked.
"We had a few different personalities in construction. Of course I'm not one of them," he hastened to add. "I'll take that breakfast, and thank you," he decided.
"Now see," Ruby said. "I wouldn't care if you had on a tin foil beanie. You're mannerly enough to say thanks for your breakfast." She turned and got busy with something, finished talking.
There were enough pancakes left to make a big stack and plenty of butter and syrup. The empty tray had enough traces left to see it had been scrambled eggs, but there were still some sausage patties left. Kurt took all five of them. He finished off the fruit salad and considered the hot cereal, but decided that would be gluttony. Nobody had told him to fast for his physical, but it probably wasn't a good idea to waddle in stuffed to the gills.
Ruby had been happy with a 'thank you', but Kurt added her and Easy to his mental list of people who he owed a favor. It was so good to be back. On Earth nobody would have spotted him breakfast. They'd be risking their job with all the rules and regulations Earthies loved. And nobody would give the leftovers to the poor because there were laws against it. Charity was licensed and not allowed to overlap with for profit business. The coffee was concentrate, but was still better than most of the fast food and fueling station coffee he'd been buying on Earth. Maybe he should have brought bean coffee instead of whiskey in his luggage, he thought...but too late now. Maybe investigate it for the future.
* * *
"What the devil is
that?" Greg Olson asked the other OED, pointing at a feathery image on the screen. It looked organic, like a droopy antenna or perhaps the frond of a fern. However the low intensity x-ray machine showed it as very dense. To the point it had to be gold or tungsten.
"Damned if I know," his partner Joe Brinks admitted. "You have similar dense structures here, and here," he pointed out on the screen. "Now these might be a sort of accelerometer, since they seem to align on the axis of the reentry sled. But I'm starting to think some of these structures are just inert forms included to make examining it as we are difficult and uncertain. What better way to do that then some random complex shapes? You also have this thing," Brinks said, pointing to a ghostly image with a cupped diaphragm against the inside of the shell. It looks to be a pressure switch, but there is no wire to it. Now if it had anything like a small chip in it I'd believe it was wireless, but I don't see anything dense enough. I think the devious bastard who built this wanted to make us afraid to crack it by adding elements that can't be understood, because they have no real purpose."
"The torus is too big to imagine it's just a decoy," Greg decided.
"You're probably right. But what does it do?" Brinks asked. "If it rotated you'd think it would be on a central shaft, but it's hollow in the middle. It looks layered in shells, but if the inner shell rotates, it must rotate at a ridiculous speed, because the outer layer is definitely thick metal. If it is high grade steel I think we're looking at a couple hundred thousand RPM on a gaseous bearing. It's about the size of an actual donut. It might still be rotating right now, and we'd have no way of sensing it if it is balanced well enough."
"But the inner ring, the torus, isn't hollow," Greg Olson objected. "It should be quite strong on its own. If it was some kind of fusion device it should be hollow. In fact it should be a vacuum vessel."
"Maybe, but look carefully at the edge. It seems to have a little shading there. I think it may be a tube filled with something. Either a liquid metal or a metal poured in liquid and allowed to harden. But why? And the shapes off each end...The density would suggest metallic augmented explosives, but it certainly isn't a classic implosion device. Neither are any of the parts anything like a nuclear kernel. We don't have anything like a reflective shape to compress fusion fuel with radiation either."
The two looked at each other with alarm. There was a faint sound...
Olsen reached up and laid a hand gently against the bomb. It vibrated faintly under his hand. He nodded at Brinks. This wasn't normal. It didn't fit any device either had heard of or could imagine.
"Here," Brinks said and handed him an amplifying stethoscope.
Olsen put the earphones on and touched the microphone gently against the bomb and listened.
"Hello, I am the owner of this device, Jeff Singh. If you are hearing this recording you have activated an artificial intelligence, which has compared a number of sensor readings and decided my device has been not simply been moved or misidentified as a piece of space junk, but is being actively examined with the goal of opening it, and of course ultimately reverse engineering it.
"There were certain stimuli that would have caused it to detonate in orbit, but now that it is being examined by x-ray and ultrasound I must warn you that the normal fail-safe parameters to detonate have been made much more sensitive. Trying to move it will not be as easy as before. Further radiation or mechanical intrusion will certainly detonate it. If you wish to have it removed safely you must call me at com code 1467 at the nation of Home. There will be fees assessed for its removal.
"This message will repeat at five minute intervals for an hour, and then at hourly intervals. At a predetermined time the counter will detonate the device if you ignore it too long. I am of course not going to reveal that exact time limit to aid you. Best not to delay unnecessarily."
Olsen passed the stethoscope to Brinks and let him listen himself.
"No way. We have to crack this baby faster now," Olson insisted.
"I'm going to throw up," Brinks said closing his eyes. He looked like it too, face a ghastly shade.
"Not here," Olsen said, turning him gently by the shoulder and pushing him toward the lavatory.
Brinks walked off stiff legged and chin down. Olsen couldn't say too much. His own gut was twisted in knots. He'd thought he'd experienced just about everything possible, but he'd never had a bomb talk to him.
In the toilet stall Brinks pulled out a small cell phone and turned it on. He was pretty sure there wouldn't be an active service denial device around the bomb. He was also hoping eighty meters was far enough away to keep the phone from activating the device.
The phone showed four bars. Turning it on hadn't killed him so there was hope. They'd probably trace it and come for him, but he really didn't think it would matter. Olsen had rank on him, and the man was going to kill both of them, even if he was in the brig on base instead of helping him. This was out of their depth. He knew it, but Olsen had an ego, and more importantly, nobody above them would back down on this.
"Honey? Listen don't talk. I'm afraid I'm not going to survive this one. I want you to take Susan and head east to Panama City before you go north to your mom's. Don't take time to pack anything. Just take the bag from the top shelf of the safe and go. When you cross the bridge throw your phone out the window off the side and be careful not to get stopped for speeding. I love you and Susan. Will you just do exactly what I'm telling you? It's all I have left to give my life any meaning."
She agreed and wasted seconds telling him she loved him. He just said, "Me too. Thank you. Go." He turned the phone off and wondered how long it would take for them to come for him. He might as well go back and help Olsen until they came to arrest him.
Chapter 8
"There isn't much chance it wasn't a theft," Jeff said. "Chen says it disappeared during the only gap on optical coverage that happened in a month. That is too much of a coincidence to be a natural event, and Dave doesn't build crap, it didn't have an onboard failure that would send it up or down from orbit."
"What are you going to do?" April asked.
"I'm going to publicly announce it is stolen and offer to defuse and reclaim it."
"Do you think anybody would really admit taking it?" April scoffed.
"Not a chance. But I have to offer. If they ignore it then detonating it is on their own heads."
* * *
"Mr. Singh," the newsman from the UK said from the conference screen. "Are you aware that setting a man-trap to deter theft is not accepted under any national code of law?"
"We have no such law. If the Assembly of Home agrees this is morally offensive to them and wishes to censure me I'll accept their punishment. I don't care much for your legal traditions, nor your morals," Jeff added. "Property rights are the basis of all other rights. If you are not secure in what you own, you may be reduced at someone's will to a naked starving animal and die. I do not agree to expose myself to the whim of others as to what I may own and retain...and thus live. You may recall I have...contested with the Chinese over these very matters of ownership, and prevailed."
"Might you not have posted some warning or notice that this device was booby-trapped to deter someone from placing their personnel at risk?" The reporter from Poland asked.
Jeff looked at him amazed. "I have to ask. Do you by any chance own a ground car?"
"Yes, I have a little city run-about I keep for errands. What does that have to do with this?"
"Do you have a sign riveted to the fender telling your countrymen not to steal it?" Jeff asked.
"Of course not. That's absurd. Everybody knows that's a crime, but neither do I have explosive devices installed so that if it is stolen it kills the thief. Property is not worth protecting with lethal force."
"Ah, there we differ," Jeff admitted. "I recall once upon a time your countrymen felt they had to try to use force to stop the Germans from taking their property. Indeed the Germans intended to steal the whole country, and were opposed quite strongly
. I suppose you'd just invite them in now. Property not being worth violence and all. Or is there a threshold at which you will protect what is yours?"
"How can you expect people to deal with something booby-trapped?" the Pole demanded, ignoring the previous remark.
"Don't be a booby?" Jeff suggested. "Actually the device is designed to give verbal warning that it has entered a heightened security status when it is disturbed. I imagine it has done so already, but I have no positive way of knowing. It only gave status reports while in orbit. I can't contact it now."
"You made a talking bomb?" the French reporter asked, incredulous.
"Yes. If somebody foolishly disturbs it, then a warning is given that it will eventually detonate if I'm not contacted to defuse it. It doesn't say how long. There's little point in helping the thieves know exactly how long they have to crack it. So you see, nobody is opening this innocently or will be caught by surprise. They didn't find this washed up on a beach somewhere and wonder who owns it. So I see no reason to aid them in their timing, by knowing when to employ more desperate measures."
"So, no final warning? Just...boom?" The Frenchman asked.
"Are you really that cruel?" Jeff asked. "If detonation is imminent would you have it countdown the last seconds like a thriller video?"
"One could then at least run," the reporter said.
"You have no concept what scale of explosion we're talking about, do you?" Jeff asked. "You'd have to run for hours to be clear. I'm through with these kind of pointless questions. The ball is in somebody else's court now." He disconnected.
April 8: It's Always Something Page 9
