Solar Express

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “And we’re stockpiling Hel3 just in case?”

  The colonel smiled pleasantly. “How did you come up with that idea?”

  “That’s an estimate based on the price … and various rumors about burner power conservation.” None of which Tavoian would have known if Keiser hadn’t mentioned it.

  “The other aspect of the problem is that the UAAS has approached India about the possibility of developing an orbital tethered power system.”

  “As a way to get their own elevator or partial elevator?”

  “That’s a possibility. All of this could lead to a situation where military superiority definitely shifts from a reliance on both Earth and space-based weapons to one where space-based weapons will predominate.” The colonel cleared his throat. “That leads to why you’re here at this particular time. There are reasons why DOEA has insisted that all fusionjet pilots are also commissioned Space Command officers, and why we’ve resisted commercialization of space travel. It’s not merely a matter of parochial control, not that we mind having that control. It’s more fundamental than that. Very much more fundamental than that. The aim of business is to make money. Lots of it. However those sainted business leaders can do it. The aim of military leaders is to protect those they serve. All of those they serve. That’s the honest senior officers. The dishonest ones want to protect people in order to rule them. That puts even a dishonest general above an honest businessman. Give business total access to fusionjets, and we’ll be under Sinese control in a generation. Or maybe Indian control.”

  Tavoian understood what the general was saying. He had doubts about some of it.

  “… every DOEA fusionjet was designed and built for rapid conversion into a warcraft. Currently, four fusionjets, five including the one you piloted here, are being converted as a precautionary measure. You, and a number of other pilots, will be trained to operate those combat craft.”

  “Might I ask to what end, sir?”

  “To the end that we hope you’ll never have to fire a weapon in combat. We want to present a new and powerful weapon to keep either the Sinese or the Indians from attacking each other. Or us.”

  And to make it clear that Noram is still a power to be respected. Tavoian didn’t have to say that. He knew that was really what the colonel had in mind.

  12

  DAEDALUS BASE

  8 APRIL 2114

  Alayna had been able to gather over almost eighty hours’ worth of observational solar data over the first nine Earth days of the long lunar “day” … and still she was finding nothing new among the scores and scores of multi-fractal mini-granulations. And you’re confining your observations to a narrow band of solar latitude. Still … that doesn’t mean something’s not there. With that thought, she shook her head. Lack of discovery could well mean that there was nothing. Except that no one has yet been able to probe beneath the upper surface of the photosphere, and there’s a lot beneath that.

  While she hadn’t found anything yet, she did have Marcel set aside a special file of the single-element overlays he had created for her. There has to be something. Except she was well aware that there didn’t have to be. All too many scientists throughout history had felt there had to be “something,” and more often than not, they didn’t find it. Most of science was disproving, not proving or finding something new, a fact overlooked by most people, and especially by the media and politicians.

  She’d put off answering Chris’s latest message for several reasons, including the fact that she’d been preoccupied with her own research, poring over the data and observations, looking for the smallest hint of something besides the patterns of granulation and mini-granulation that had been studied and restudied for more than a century and a half. But it seemed that nothing was there. Nothing was there …

  For some reason an old rhyme came into her head.

  Yesterday, upon the stair,

  I met a man who wasn’t there.

  He wasn’t there again today.

  I wish, I wish he’d go away.

  Like it or not, one way or another, the data, the observational hints she was seeking, the clues, the whatever … she and the solar array weren’t finding them … or not recognizing them, and she was having trouble dealing with that. She reminded herself that Percival Lowell had looked for Pluto for more than ten years, and after Lowell’s death Clyde Tombaugh had searched more than a year. And then seventy-six years after Tombaugh found it, and almost ten years after his death, the IAU decided he hadn’t found a planet at all but just another KBO.

  With a wry smile, she pushed the thoughts about her project away. She needed to do something else for at least a little while, and she did owe Chris a reply. Owe? She did owe him, but she’d found that she liked messaging him, and she also liked that she could think about what she said before sending those thoughts off. It also didn’t hurt that he’d given her hints about the Noram inspectors, either.

  Chris—

  I hope this reaches you without too much delay, and that your new assignment is something you’ll be looking forward to. If it’s not, you do have my condolences, and even a trace of sympathy.

  She wasn’t about to say what else she thought, that he’d likely have a job with the Space Service or DOEA as long as he wanted it, unlike her. Alayna was well aware that finding a job in her field, even after a stint at COFAR, was going to be extraordinarily difficult, even if she had discovered a comet, if it even turned out to be one. More likely it was an ancient burned-out relic. That might explain the silicon. But what about the silver?

  She shook her head. In an infinite universe there had to be a cometary nucleus with silver traces. And finding something slightly odd wouldn’t distinguish her that much from the hundreds of others who made cometary discoveries, many of whom were dedicated amateurs. Professional-level jobs were difficult to find and even harder to hold, and the last thing she wanted was to have to go into some form of personal service, no matter how dignified the title or remunerative the pay, although most personal service didn’t pay that much.

  Almost another week [Earth measure] has gone by. I’ve got lots more observations and data, but nothing yet along the lines I’m looking for. That’s often the nature of observational astrophysics. I wouldn’t call it a “truth,” especially after your last quotation. I do think there’s a great deal of accuracy in those words, though. In terms of the havoc that proclamations of truth cause, is there any great difference between politicians, religious fanatics, and pathological liars, especially when they say things like, “The truth of the matter is…” and then go on to spout some nonsense? Scientists aren’t immune from believing in nonsense, of course, but most nonsense from scientists occurs when they venture outside their field. In time, any nonsense we spout within our field is usually discovered quickly. Usually, anyway.

  In the spirit of trading thought-provoking quotations, I’ve enclosed something a bit different.

  She called up the more lengthy selection she’d attached. Lengthy compared to what you sent before, but you don’t want him thinking he’s the only one who can find longer meaningful passages. Even as she thought that, she wondered why she cared so much about what he thought. It wasn’t as though they’d likely even see each other again. Her eyes dropped to the excerpt.

  Scientists too often accept the criticism that they don’t get excited. We do get excited. We just don’t get as excited in print or publication. Nor do we get excited about the everyday. Too many people get too passionate about too little, and not as excited about what matters. Who cares who won what event in the Olympics? Millions! Who got really excited and concerned about the carbon levels in the Earth’s atmosphere? Thousands, and they were all scientists. But everyone forgot who won what medal in two weeks, and the entire world was left coping with the disasters caused by the greenhouse effect fueled by increased carbon levels. People remember the great comets they have seen their entire life, or a spectacular view of the aurora borealis …

  She smil
ed, then ended the excerpt and went back to finishing the message.

  When she finished, she sent if off and called up her father’s latest message, with the formal address of R. James Grant—although his full name was Royster James Grant, and he only answered to James. She began to reread his message, if quickly, before sending a reply. She had time, for the moment, and she might not later.

  Dearest Alayna,

  I was beginning to worry about you when I hadn’t heard from you, but your latest reassured me, although I cannot say that I’m exactly sanguine about having an astrophysicist daughter all alone in a station in the middle of an isolated crater on the far side of the Moon, particularly when tensions appear to be rising between the Sinese Federation and everyone else. There’s more talk about Noram and the Sinese Federation militarizing space, and it strikes me that you might be rather vulnerable …

  Militarizing space? She hadn’t seen anything about that, even in the news summaries … except … hadn’t there been something on one of the sensationalist vidloids? HotNews! maybe. What would be the point of militarizing space? All that would do would be to raise taxes and put the whole world at greater risk. But then, her father was always worrying, always overreacting. She smiled faintly and shook her head.

  I did appreciate your description of the repairs you made to the radio telescope antenna, and I cannot tell you how proud you have made me and how much your mother would have given to know of your accomplishments …

  Alayna swallowed. She couldn’t help it. Her mother had died when Alayna had just finished defending her doctoral thesis at Princeton. She’d visited Alayna and then gone to Boston, or what was left of it, to visit Alayna’s cousin Willie. Willie and Wilhemina, except they were both Wilhemina, had died when Hurricane Ernesto had merged with a nor’easter. So many had died that neither Alayna nor her father had ever discovered the exact circumstances. That was understandable, intellectually, given that more than twenty thousand had perished in the extreme winds and flooding, but Alayna’s father had pressed for answers ever since. Only in the last weeks had his messages ever referred to her mother.

  … I can only hope in some vain and impossible way that she must know, unpredictable and unfair as I have come to believe this universe is and has always been.

  I also hope that you will have success in your research, and that, even if you do not immediately achieve that success, you will take such satisfaction in your work that eventually you will be rewarded, for, because we are seldom granted recognition for our accomplishments, we should take satisfaction in them, regardless of either recognition or lack of recognition …

  Alayna smiled at yet another phrasing of the words she had heard since childhood.

  We have another important case coming before the Noram Court of Appeals, this one dealing with residual groundwater rights in the Ogallala Aquifer, although there is little enough groundwater there after the water mining wars of a half century ago …

  She nodded and began her reply.

  13

  DONOVAN BASE

  16 APRIL 2114

  Sweat oozed across Tavoian’s forehead. He blotted it with the forearm of his shipsuit, just to keep it from drifting into his eyes, trying to focus on the combat screens arrayed before him, half wishing that he had a functioning AI or even a commlink.

  He could see that he hadn’t corrected enough for the spaceward drift caused by a less than perfectly balanced course shift. He gave a five-second blast to the rear port thrusters to point the burner’s nose more to port, trying to gauge what an AI could have done instantly.

  He checked his target—zero seven one, negative fifteen, with four minutes to torp release.

  Tavoian gave a burst to the orientation thrusters, then followed by adding power to the burner. He kept checking the gee-meter, more properly an accelerometer, making certain that the acceleration remained below three gees. He held the acceleration for less than three minutes, checking the closure rates, his eyes scanning the displays of other craft, as well as the outlying Sinese upper orbit station, none of which were anywhere close to visual range.

  Abruptly, all but two of the displays blanked with a flare.

  Forward sensors disabled. The warning flashed below the remaining displays.

  Now what? The flare suggested he’d been hit with a concentrated laser flash, and that meant it was likely it had been managed from a distance. You hope. At least lasers couldn’t do much more than blind sensors except at extremely close range.

  There was little else he could do, not without aborting the mission, except sit tight, because he needed to maintain course and acceleration in order to boost the release velocity of the torp before firing, and then beginning his own return to base. Even if he’d looked through the emergency porthole, he wouldn’t have seen the target, not when the release point was more than ten thousand kays from the impact point—a distance covered in less than three minutes from time of release.

  He concentrated on the system indicators, especially the hydraulics. Could he even release a torp? The systems remained green or amber.

  At the precomputed time, he fired, manually, hoping that he’d be as precise as the AI, or that the tracking computer on the torp could correct enough.

  Immediately after that, using the thrusters, he put the burner through partial turnover, in order to shift his course vector, then began to increase the power to the drive, building a separation, knowing that if he merely slowed the burner on his previous course, he’d end up passing practically in front of the target and any weapons systems they had deployed and surviving around the orbit installation. Once he had separation he could begin to kill some of the built-up speed that was still carrying away from his own base.

  After another five minutes, with the distance between him and the target increasing, as indicated by the surviving rear sensors, he repositioned the burner and held the drive at two gees until he could finally determine that he had killed his approach to the Sinese installations and was beginning to pull away. Finally, he dropped the power to maintain one gee. Even so, he’d need to cut the drive before long and then wait more than an hour before he would be able to begin decel to return to base.

  “That’s enough.” The colonel’s voice came through his earpiece. “Shut it down.”

  Tavoian slowly ran through the checklist manually, necessary because the AI was disabled, then finished the shutdown procedures. Only then did he unstrap himself from the combat couch of the simulator. Simulation or not, he was soaked with sweat, partly because there was minimal ventilation in the simulator, identical in all respects, including weightlessness, except for gee forces, to the control deck of a combat burner.

  He made his way to the hatch, opened it, and pulled himself through, then used the handrail to guide him to the hatch out of the simulator, located in Donovan Base’s docking ring, and into the simulator control center where the colonel waited, loosely belted into the seat in front of the array that controlled the simulator.

  The senior officer half turned and tossed a folded towel at Tavoian. “You look like you need this.”

  “Yes, sir.” Tavoian caught the towel and blotted his face before making his way toward the debriefing chair, where he also belted himself in.

  Colonel Anson looked at Tavoian for a long moment. “Not bad. Not great, but not bad. You should have cut the power a minute earlier on the attack. You can’t afford to waste Hel3, and it would have put you that much closer to the target after the torp release. You ended up having to spend more fuel on deceleration in order to return to base.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you think about just altering heading and doing an elliptical around Earth?”

  “Only for a moment.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would have required more fuel to change course and the velocity added by the course change would have required more fuel for decel.”

  “Why did you do a series of change-overs rather than a turn?”

&n
bsp; “Because, without forward sensors, I had no idea what I might be turning into or away from. Also, that used far less Hel3 than a turn.” Also there was the fact that, without an operational AI, trying to compute every bit of motion in any direction, any acceleration, got more and more complex with each maneuver, and trying to work that out without sensors would have been an even bigger nightmare. Then, too, without either gravity or air resistance, directional control was a beast. Tavoian knew that from experience, but piloting a burner on a transport run, except in emergencies, was like driving railed maglev. You powered up, and then you reversed power to decelerate.

  That didn’t even take into account the stresses on the drives and magnetic nozzles. Standard fusionjets—the ones he’d been piloting for the past six years—were designed to provide a constant one-gee acceleration for up to two hours straight without overheating, three perhaps under optimal conditions. The reconfigured combat fusionjet could take three to five gees, but the length of time the drives could operate without overheating or actually melting down dropped in proportion to the time at continuous acceleration. More than an hour at two gees, and the drive system was on the verge of meltdown. Half an hour at three gees was pushing the system. Fifteen minutes at four was likely to inflict maximum structural failure on the drives … and incidentally on the entire burner and its pilot.

  “What if the sensors had just been overloaded?”

  “I thought of that, but there wasn’t any way to check that from the control deck. I did cycle the power, but there wasn’t any response. Those panels are accessed from the forward bulkhead on the passenger deck. It also didn’t seem wise to leave the controls at that moment.”

  The colonel looked skeptical. “Have you ever checked the sensor panel of a fusionjet, Captain?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I suppose you know the location of all of the maintenance panels, too?”