Chronospace (5 page)

The
Hindenburg
expedition was dangerous. Franc didn’t dispute that. He was about to ask why this made any difference to their relationship when something scuttled across the ceiling past his shoulder. A tail gently flicked the side of his side, then a shrill voice shrieked next to his ear:

“Come now, come now, Franc Lu come to Paolo! Hurry! Come now!”

Franc quickly looked around, saw a blue-skinned lizard clinging to the ceiling rail. About fifteen centimeters in length, it regarded him through doll-like black eyes. When it spoke again, a long red tongue vibrated within its elongated mouth: “Come now! Now! Paolo wants you! Now!”

“Marcel!” Lea had anticipated seeing the little mimosaur again. Before she had boarded the shuttle at Mare Imbrium, she had taken a moment to purchase some cashews from a spaceport vendor. She pulled the bag out of her pocket and ripped open the cellophane. “Here,” she said, pushing off from the wall and gliding beneath Franc. “Brought these especially for you.”

“
Nuts!
Nuts nuts nuts nuts!” Marcel leaped from the handrail onto Lea’s shoulder. She laughed delightedly as the lizard curled its long tail around her neck, then she let the mimosaur thrust its mouth into the bag, gently stroking the fin on the back of its head.

“That’s one way of shutting him up,” Franc murmured. Personally, he found Marcel a trifle annoying. “He’ll make a fine pair of shoes one day.”

Mimosaurs were among the more interesting inhabitants of Gliese 876-B, an Earth-like satellite orbiting a gas giant fifteen light-years from Earth. Discovered during one of humankind’s first interstellar expeditions, they possessed the ability to learn simple words or phrases and recite them at will, along with an excellent memory for faces and names. Although they weren’t much more intelligent than the average house cat, they were far more adaptable to microgravity, which made them the favored pets of deep-space explorers. Paolo Sanchez had brought Marcel home from his last voyage as captain of the
Olaf Stapledon
before taking his present position as CRC’s Chief Commissioner. Now the mimosaur served as Sanchez’s messenger, running errands for him within Chronos Station.

Lea cast him a hostile glare. “Better be nice, or I’ll have him wake you up tomorrow morning.” She smiled at Marcel as she fed him the rest of his favorite treat. “Sousa. Do you remember Sousa, Marcel? Dah-dah-dah . . . dum-de-dah-dah-dum-de-dah . . . ?”

On cue, Marcel lifted his head from the bag and began to whistle “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” just as Lea had taught him several months ago. That was as much as Franc could stomach. He had a low tolerance for cuteness.

“I get the point.” He turned and pushed himself toward Arm 6. “Let’s go see what Paolo has to say.”

S
ixteen letters awaited Murphy when he checked his morning email. This wasn’t unusual; given a choice between picking up the phone or writing a memo, NASA people tended to opt for the latter. Sometimes his email came from people in the same building, even just down the hall. It was more convenient this way, to be sure, especially since it allowed the sender to attach files without having to use paper that inevitably would have to be recycled.

Nonetheless, there were times when he wondered whether email wasn’t the largest drawback of the computer revolution. At least three times a day he had to check for new messages, and every one of them had to be answered, if only by a short line: “Got it. Thanks. DZM.” Government work used to be a never-ending paper chase; now it was an electron derby.

Murphy pulled off his snow boots, slipped on a pair of felt loafers he kept beneath his desk, then settled the keyboard on his lap as he put his feet up on the desktop. Most of the stuff in queue was fairly routine. A note from one of his contacts at JPL in Pasadena, answering a couple of questions he had about Galileo data. Another message from
another JPL scientist, with an attached GIF from Mars Pathfinder. A half dozen news releases from the press office, updates on the next shuttle mission and the current status of the Space Station program. A letter from a friend at Goddard Space Flight Center out in Greenbelt, telling him that he was coming into D.C. on Thursday and asking if he would be free for lunch. A Dilbert strip from last week which he had already read and forgotten, sent via listserv by a pal at Interior who apparently believed the comic strip was the font of all human wisdom; another jester relayed Letterman’s Top-Ten list of the come-on lines President Clinton might have tried on Paula Jones, which Murphy deleted without reading.

As he scrolled down the screen, Murphy picked up the chipped Star Wars mug Steven had given him for his birthday a couple of years ago, sipped the lukewarm coffee he had taken from the break room down the hall. Yet even as he skimmed through the email, his mind was elsewhere.

Why would an article in
Analog
garner so much attention from an associate administrator? After all, January was the beginning of the Washington budget season. As always, NASA would not only have to put together a proposal for the White House to take before Congress, but the Office of Space Science would also have to publicly defend its programs from critics on the Hill. So why would Roger Ordmann take an hour from his schedule—indeed, be willing to make himself late for a House subcommittee hearing—just to talk to some junior staffer who had written a piece about UFOs for a science fiction magazine?

And wasn’t there something rather unconstitutional about Ordmann’s insistence that he submit all future articles to Public Affairs Office? NASA was a civilian agency; although it still maintained ties to the Department of Defense, it had been several years since the last time a military payload had been sent into orbit aboard a shuttle, and now that the Air Force had its own space program, Murphy never heard of any classified projects being undertaken by
NASA. Had Kent Morris, a former Pentagon PAO, simply been overeager? And if so, why would Ordmann mandate a review of any future articles Murphy might write?

Murphy rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger as he glanced out the window. White flakes of snow flurried outside, obscuring the low rooftops that stretched out toward the Potomac. Although he was fortunate enough to have a window office, he didn’t rate high enough for a view of the Capitol. He gazed up at the narrow shelf above his desk: loose-leaf report binders, reference texts on astronautics and space physics, a few recent pop-science books about planetary exploration, guarded by the Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker action figures he bought for himself once when he had taken Steven to Toys “R” Us.

“Trust the Force, Luke,” he murmured. Yeah, right. And you know what Darth Vader would have said.
The Force is strong with you . . . but you’re not a Jedi yet. . . .

The phone rang, startling him from his reverie. Murphy dropped his feet from the desk, reached forward to pick up the receiver.

“Space Science, Murphy,” he said.

For a moment, he heard nothing, making him wonder if someone in the building had dialed the wrong extension. It happened all the time. Then, a male voice:

“Is this Za . . . I mean, David Z. Murphy?”

“Speaking.”

“The same David Z. Murphy who writes for
Analog?
”

“Sometimes, yeah.” He glanced at the button pad, noted that the call was coming in from the outside line. “Who’s calling, please?”

“Dr. Murphy, this is Gregory Benford. I’m a professor of physics at the University of California-Irvine. I also write science fiction on occasion.”

Murphy’s mouth dropped open. “Yes, of course I’ve heard of you.” He sat up straight in his chair. “I’m a big fan of your work.”

Which was the unvarnished truth. One of the SF authors
whom he admired the most was Gregory Benford; not only did he have a superb imagination, but he was also one of the small handful of writers whose novels and stories possessed a high degree of scientific plausibility. When Murphy began writing, one of the authors whose style he had consciously attempted to emulate was Benford’s, albeit unsuccessfully.

A dry chuckle from the other end of the line. “Call me Greg, please. And I rather like your stuff, too.”

“But I haven’t written any . . .” Then he realized Benford wasn’t talking about science fiction. “Oh, you mean my
Analog
articles.”

“You mean you’ve been published elsewhere? I haven’t seen your by-line except in . . .”

“No, no,” Murphy said hastily. “The things I’ve done for
Analog
are all . . . I mean, y’know, I’ve tried to write fiction, but they didn’t . . . I mean, it just didn’t work out.”

“That’s too bad. Anyway, Dr. Murphy . . .”

“David.”

“Sure. Anyway, as I was saying, the reason why I’m calling is that I’ve just read that article about time travel . . .”

“Really?” Murphy absently picked up a paper clip, tumbled it between his fingers. “Hope you liked it. I mean, I was really out in left field . . .”

“No, no, it was really quite interesting. The premise is a bit radical, to be sure, but you managed to support it quite well. I’m quite intrigued by the idea. In fact, I was hoping we could discuss it further. I have questions I’d like to ask you.”

“Certainly. My pleasure.” Murphy craned his neck to glance at the wall clock near the door. “I’ve got a department meeting in about a half hour, but I’ve got time before then. What do you want to know?”

“Actually, I sort of hoped we could get together for lunch.”

Murphy’s eyebrows rose. “For lunch? Today?”

“Sure, if it’s not too much trouble. I’m in town right
now . . . there was a physics conference in Baltimore last weekend, and I stayed over to visit some friends in the area. I’m catching a flight back to L.A. this afternoon, but I’ve got some time to kill before then. Since I knew you worked at NASA, I thought I’d give you a buzz and see if you were available for lunch.”

Odd. Murphy hadn’t heard of any physics conferences being held in Baltimore, and his colleagues at Goddard were usually pretty good about keeping him informed of these things. Yet such conferences were commonplace; this one probably slipped his mind. “No . . . I mean, yes. By all means, I’d love to get together with you. Where are you staying? I’ll . . .”

“I was at the Hyatt, but I’ve already checked out,” Benford said. “Actually, I was thinking about dropping by the Air and Space Museum. It’s close to you, and I don’t want to take up your whole lunch hour, so why don’t we meet there?”

“Well . . . sure,” Murphy said, a little more reluctantly than he meant to sound. There was a restaurant on the museum’s fourth floor, but it wasn’t anything special: a cafeteria for tourists, offering little more than cheeseburgers and pizza. If he was going to have lunch with Gregory Benford, he would have preferred a more upscale bistro. There were a half dozen good cafés on Capitol Hill where they could meet. Yet Benford was probably in a hurry; after all, he had a plane to catch later today. “The Air and Space it is. How about twelve noon?”

“That’s good for me. I’ll meet you . . . how about on the ground floor, in front of the lunar lander? At twelve o’clock?”

“Fine by me. Twelve noon, then.”

“Very good, David. I’ll see you then.”

“It’ll be a pleasure, Dr. . . . Greg, I mean.”

Another warm chuckle. “The pleasure’s all mine. See you at noon. Bye.”

Murphy put down the phone, took a deep breath, slowly
let it out as he leaned back in his chair. How strange life could be sometimes. You start the morning getting carpeted by an associate administrator for something you’ve written, then less than an hour later you receive a call from one of the world’s leading SF authors, complimenting you for the same material and requesting your company for lunch.

“Maybe he’s right,” he muttered. “I ought to be a science fiction writer.”

T
he Chief Commissioner’s suite was located on Deck 6A, at the top of Arm 6. Like nearly half of Chronos Station’s personnel, Paolo Sanchez had been born and raised on the Moon, and therefore preferred the decks closer to the hub, where the centripedal force was one-sixth Earth-normal. Unlike most other selenians, though, Sanchez had never visited Earth. As a former starship captain who had spent most of his ninety-seven Gregorians aboard ships and orbitals, it was likely that a trip to his ancestral home in Mexico City would be lethal. If high gravity didn’t crush his bones or bring about a coronary seizure, then he would soon become fatally ill from any one of thousands of airborne microorganisms against which his body did not have any natural defenses.

Franc and Lea entered Sanchez’s office through an antechamber that briefly subjected them to intense UV radiation. They shut their eyes and covered their faces with their hands until the humming ceased and a bell chimed, then the door slid open. The mimosaur, who had buried its face within Lea’s collar during the decontamination procedure,
immediately leaped from her shoulder and bounded across the broad, semicircular room.

“Franc here, Lea here!” Marcel’s voice was an excited squeal. “Lea give Marcel nuts! Franc say . . .” Its voice changed to a pitch-perfect imitation of Franc’s: “That’s one way of shutting him up. He’ll make a fine pair of shoes one day.”