The Tranquillity Alternative

by Allen Steele

  Aldridge (laughing): Well, Mike, we watch that show up here, too, and to borrow a favorite phrase used by one of the characters, Dr. Spock, “It just ain’t logical, Cap’n …”

  Cronkite (chuckling): At risk of supporting a rival network …

  Aldridge: Didn’t mean to do that, Walter. The Space Force doesn’t want to play favorites. Anyway, Mike, I’ll show you something they can’t do in Hollywood. Here’s a pitcher of water, you see, and here’s a glass on the table. Now, if I were to pour water into the glass down on Earth, it would fall straight into the glass, right? But up here, we’ve got something the scientists call a Coriolis effect, which involves the physical properties of objects within a rotating environment, like the Wheel.

  Cronkite: Bring the camera in a little closer, Bill …

  Aldridge: That means everything inside Space Station One is spinning, but since objects close to the floor are spinning a little bit faster than objects higher up, it means nothing is moving at quite the same rate. So, if I raise the pitcher just a little bit higher above the table and pour a little bit of water toward the glass …

  Cronkite: Whoa! Watch out there!

  Aldridge: Sorry, Walter, didn’t mean to splash you … so you see, Mike, the water goes kind of sideways and misses the glass entirely …

  Cronkite: And lands in my lap instead. Thank you for the demonstration, General.

  Aldridge: My pleasure, Walter … sorry to make a mess.

  Cronkite: We’ll return for a tour of Space Station One after station identification….

  FOUR

  2/16/95 • 0414 EST

  THERE WERE TWO men named Paul Aaron Dooley.

  One of them was a young man born in Austin, Texas, in 1962, whose life coincided with the rise and fall of the Space Age and the coming of the Digital Age. Something of a prodigy, at least by his own reckoning, he was sixteen when his father gave him an Apple I as a high-school graduation present; he was twenty when he graduated from the University of Texas with a B.S. in computer science and had made a modest reputation for himself within the fledgling hacker subculture on the Internet, where he had established himself as Thor200.

  Several years later, while he was working on his doctorate at MIT’s artificial intelligence lab, Paul Dooley was one of a handful of darkside hackers who were investigated by the Secret Service in connection with a series of break-ins on Milnet, the Department of Defense computer network. He had only been peripherally involved with the Milnet intrusion, but Thor200 was a well-known logon in the hacker subculture and Dooley was therefore easy to trace; when the Secret Service began making raids, his was one of several doors broken down by federal agents. Although he was questioned for several hours at the agency’s Boston office, he was never charged with anything—mainly because, in exchange for legal immunity, he narked on the real perpetrators of the Milnet break-in. Several self-styled cyberpunks went to jail as a result, but Paul Dooley remained free, although Thor200 maintained a much lower profile on the net after that.

  Following that close shave with the law, Dooley concentrated on his true interests, the development of advanced AI programs for semiautonomous teleoperated robots. It was Dooley’s contention that many of the jobs on the Moon currently performed by astronauts could be accomplished, with greater safety and at less expense, by robots guided by Earth-based operators using virtual-reality technology.

  Dooley’s work gained the attention of the German aerospace corporation Koenig Selenen GmbH. The Germans were interested in using lunar resources for the construction of solar-power satellites, an idea first proposed by American scientists but largely ignored by U.S. government and industry, which were backing away from space exploration in the wake of the Challenger disaster and the gradual dissolution of the American civil space program.

  For Dooley, at least, this was just as well. By the time he was getting ready to receive his doctorate from MIT, his prospects for future employment were limited to designing computer games for consumption by a generation whose idea of adventure was booting up a new Sega cartridge … or, perhaps, teaching a new group of hacker wannabes the technical skills that would make them employable by a European or Japanese company. On the other hand, Koenig Selenen offered him an opportunity to develop his theories to their full advantage. The young cyberneticist was on the Koenig Selenen payroll as soon as he received his doctorate; the company allowed him to remain in the United States, working as an “independent consultant,” although, in fact, he was one of its leading researchers. Several years later, when the company successfully negotiated with the U.S. government for the sale of Tranquillity Base, the person it turned to for upgrading the moon base’s obsolete computer systems was Paul Dooley.

  That was one Paul Dooley: an arrogant, trash-mouthed, self-proclaimed boy genius who had no known pals or girlfriends except for a few dalliances on Le Matrix, whose only hobby was collecting comic books, and who had entered astronaut training for the Tranquillity Base lunar mission with considerable reluctance.

  That Paul Dooley was now being held prisoner in the cement basement of a rented house outside Orlando, Florida.

  He had been stripped naked, tied to a wooden chair, and placed under hot lights by a handful of men who been methodically torturing him for several hours now. The 500 milligrams of Ketamine that had rendered him unconscious earlier that night had now produced, as anticipated, a nightmarish series of hallucinations; at times he believed he had died and was now in the depths of Hell, being tormented by demons straight out of an old EC comic. The illusion was reinforced by his captors, who were steadfastly depriving him of both water and sleep while playing, at high volume, radio sound-effects tapes of gunshots, human screams, car crashes, and wild animal noises.

  A sharp tongue laden with sarcasm and bluster may be intimidating to fellow intellectuals, but it doesn’t mean a thing to people who prefer to use fists, pliers, and rubber hoses, and Paul Dooley was not a strong person. It didn’t take long before agony, drugs, humiliation, confusion, and outright terror took their toll. One by one, he answered their shouted questions, sometimes telling his captors far more than they needed to know in exchange for the smallest sip of water or, at the very least, temporary surcease from pain. It had taken several hours, but once he started talking, there was little he didn’t tell them.

  Though his face was now a bloody, swollen wreck and there were few inches of his body that were not covered with purple welts, he still held onto the dim hope that he would soon be set free, unwitting to the fact that, in the end, the only mercy he would receive from these faceless men would be the bullet one of them would eventually fire into the back of his skull.

  Even as he spilled his guts about everything he knew regarding his mission, there was one final secret that he hadn’t disclosed, if only because his captors had neglected to ask him….

  And then there was the other Paul Dooley, who, except for a surgically altered appearance, hundreds of hours in careful study of basic mannerisms and speech patterns, and vast expertise in computers, shared nothing in common with the man whose identity he had assumed.

  At the same moment that one Paul Dooley howled in agony as an eight-inch length of garden hose was repeatedly slammed against his stomach, another Paul Dooley pretended to stifle a yawn behind his hand as he listened to Ray Harvey begin the final mission briefing.

  The mission director stood in front of a blackboard, shuffling papers on a clipboard in his hand and trying not to look at the camcorder pointed in his direction. The blackboard was marked with a neat timetable of the main mission events; it was redundant with the printouts in everyone’s notebooks, and the briefing itself was a formality that could have easily been dispensed with, were it not for the presence of the TV camera.

  Dooley found himself smiling at the pretentiousness of the ceremony. How far NASA had fallen, to be catering like this to the fickle wishes of the news media.

  “Following liftoff,” Harvey continued, “Constellation will rendezvous
with Space Station One, where the crew will transfer to the Wheel. At about the same time …”

  He paused to glance at his notes. “Uh, 1300 Greenwich … the German shuttle Walter Dornberger will launch from the Kourou space center in French Guiana. The Dornberger will ascend to equatorial orbit and meet you at approximately the same time, pending no difficulties. The remaining members of the outbound crew, from Koenig Selenen GmbH …”

  Harvey took another peek at his notes. “Mr. James Leamore, Mr. Uwe Aachener, and Mr. Markus Talsbach … uh, will join you aboard the Wheel.” He consulted his clipboard. “At 2200 GMT, you are scheduled for a live TV transmission from the Wheel. Ms. Rhodes will be officiating, naturally.”

  The camera swung to zoom in on Berkley Rhodes, who was wearing a pair of reading glasses and pretending to look deeply interested. “The transmission will last approximately ten minutes. Commander Parnell, Captain Ryer, during this time you’ll be interviewed for the ATS Evening News.”

  No mention of himself, Dooley noted, which was just as well; the less time he spent in front of a camera, the better. The plastic surgery which had changed his face was good enough to get him past the security checkpoints, and so far no one in the room had voiced any doubts; still, he had been cautioned to shy away from the cameras. Dooley’s mother was dead and his father was a senile old man in a Houston nursing home, yet there was always an off-chance that someone back home might detect a subtle difference.

  Harvey cleared his throat. “Conestoga is scheduled for launch at 0800 GMT tomorrow morning, pending final checkout of the craft. It will be a two-day flight to the Moon, with touchdown at Tranquillity Base posted for Sunday, February 19, at approximately 0700 GMT. Following successful landing, the crew will enter the base, where Commander Parnell and Lieutenant Lewitt will reactivate the base’s CLLSS … ah, closed-loop life-support systems. If no difficulties are encountered with the base’s reactivation …”

  “It wouldn’t dare,” Parnell murmured. Several people at the table chuckled as Harvey, caught off-guard, feigned amusement. Dooley felt a twinge of pity for the man; NASA should have put a public affairs officer in charge of the briefing.

  Harvey once again consulted his clipboard. “If there are no difficulties, shortly afterward … uh, 1100 GMT … the crew will board tractors and travel to the Teal Falcon bunker, where Mr. Dooley will assist the flight team in reactivating the launch control systems.”

  Harvey coughed nervously. “This is, of course, the most delicate part of the mission, and although Ms. Rhodes and Mr. Bromleigh will be recording the procedure, no live TV transmissions will be allowed until the arms control inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency standing by at Von Braun Center are assured that Teal Falcon is under local control.”

  The mission director stopped and put the clipboard under his arm. “Mr. Bromleigh, turn off your camera and put it away now, please.”

  Alex Bromleigh reluctantly unshouldered his camcorder and placed it on a table. When Harvey was satisfied that the camera was off, he nodded to the security guard standing near the door. The guard opened the door and gave a quick, silent nod to someone standing in the corridor.

  The civilian who had been waiting outside stepped into the ready room. A leather attaché case was handcuffed to his wrist. He strode across the room to Ray Harvey and held up the attaché case. Harvey carefully dialed the combination lock and opened the case; inside were two sealed manila envelopes along with a pair of small red keys, each bound by a loop of stainless-steel chain.

  Withdrawing the envelopes and keys, Harvey silently walked to the table, where he gave one key and an envelope to Gene Parnell. Parnell glanced at the envelope, then tucked it into a pocket of his notebook without opening it; he then unzipped the front of his jumpsuit, looped the key chain around his neck, and dropped the key out of sight. He looked back at Harvey and nodded once.

  “Thanks, Gene,” Harvey said. He held out his hand, and Parnell grasped it without a word.

  Cristine Ryer looked up at Harvey expectantly, but he appeared to be deliberately ignoring her. Instead, he walked around to the other side of the table, passing Dooley until he stopped behind Jay Lewitt’s chair.

  Lewitt raised his eyebrows in apparent surprise as the flight director extended the other envelope and key to him. “Lieutenant,” Harvey said softly, “I know this is unexpected, but if you’ll take possession of the second key, your country will consider it a great favor.”

  Dooley heard Cris Ryer’s sharp intake of breath. Glancing at her from across the table, he saw her face turn bright red. She opened her mouth as if to object, but then shut up, as Dooley caught a glimpse of Parnell’s hand snaking beneath the table to tightly clasp her wrist.

  He carefully kept his own reaction under control. This was an unexpected turn of events. His masters would have to be informed of what had just happened.

  If they didn’t know about it already, of course. He was aware that he was only one card in the deck, and much of the game had yet to be revealed to him.

  And yet …

  “Thank you, sir.” Lewitt accepted the second key and looped the chain around his neck, then placed the sealed envelope inside his notebook. As Harvey turned his back to the astronauts, Lewitt looked straight at Ryer and gave a small shrug. Ryer glanced away, visibly trying to control her temper.

  “Mr. Bromleigh, Ms. Rhodes, that was off the record,” Harvey said as he returned to the front of the room. “In your reports, you’ll note that the keys to the Teal Falcon bunker safe were assigned to two unspecified members of the Conestoga flight team, and their identities will not be revealed for reasons of national security. Understand?”

  The two ATS correspondents traded a look. “Yes sir, we do,” Bromleigh said. Rhodes hesitated, apparently wanting to ask the obvious question—Why was the mission’s second-in-command passed over?—but she seemed to think twice and kept her mouth shut, quietly nodding instead. “Very well,” Harvey said. “Mr. Bromleigh, you may continue filming.”

  As Bromleigh hoisted his camcorder once more, the mission director checked his clipboard. “At 1200 GMT, personnel at the Teal Falcon bunker will stand by for a televised address from the White House, when the President will deliver a speech to the American public regarding final disposal of Teal Falcon. These remarks will be relayed via NASA’s Deep Space Tracking Network. Once this phase of the mission has been completed, the members of the news media will be allowed to transmit their reportage.”

  He took a deep breath; his eyes darted toward the camera. “By this time, authentication codes will have been transmitted from NORAD, and the keyholders will have opened the safe and removed the fire-control keys. On signal from the White House, they will then launch the Teal Falcon missiles on the solar trajectory which Mr. Dooley will have programmed into the master guidance system.”

  Harvey lowered the clipboard. “Following launch, the crew will return to the base, where Mr. Dooley and Mr. Leamore will continue their work in handing over control of Tranquillity Base to Koenig Selenen GmbH. If all goes well, the final phase of the mission will end at 1800 hours GMT the following day … um, Monday, February 20 … when the American flag will be struck from the base and Conestoga will launch for return to Space Station One.”

  He hesitated. There was a strained silence in the room, made more uncomfortable by the heat of Cristine Ryer’s barely suppressed rage. “Gentlemen, ladies,” he said slowly, for the first time exposing some shred of unrehearsed emotion, “I know this is a difficult mission for all of us. I’ve been with the lunar program for twenty years now, and no one wishes to see it end any less than I do….”

  “We’ve noticed,” Parnell muttered from behind his hand.

  If Harvey heard the remark, he didn’t acknowledge it with anything more than a quick glance in Parnell’s direction. “For the record, though, I expect you to serve your country as capably on this final mission as you have throughout your careers, and on behalf of the launch team I wish
you godspeed and good luck.”

  If he was expecting any applause, he didn’t receive it. The mission director was another NASA bureaucrat spouting patriotic homilies for public consumption; everyone knew it, including Harvey himself. He coughed uncomfortably and shuffled away from the blackboard as Bromleigh lowered his camcorder and Rhodes checked her notes. Parnell stood up and sauntered to the buffet table while Lewitt reopened his notebook, deliberately ignoring Ryer’s hot gaze. The two shuttle jockeys murmured between themselves. There were a few minutes left to kill before walk-out, just enough time for another cup of coffee before they hit the road.

  Watching them, the other Paul Dooley once again realized how easy it was to play traitor. Although his employers had their own agenda, he was in it strictly for the money. There was a time, in a former life, when he would have claimed revolution as his ultimate objective; now his motives were purely mercenary and apolitical. Five million dollars and a comfortable life in another country was fair exchange for wearing another man’s face for ten days, and fuck the dogma he had once espoused.

  And yet, he reflected, his task was made easier by the knowledge that he was taking advantage of a country that had grown apathetic toward its own achievements and former aspirations. It wasn’t terrorism so much as it was mugging an old codger hobbling down a dark alley on his way to a VFW meeting….

  He was startled out of his reverie by a steaming mug of coffee being placed in front of him. Dooley looked up to see Gene Parnell at his elbow. “Ready for your moment of glory, son?” he asked.