Farside (2 page)

Now the task was to get visual images of the planet, to photograph its surface and measure the constituents of its atmosphere—if it had an atmosphere. No telescope on Earth could produce such imagery at a distance of nearly eighty-four trillion kilometers.

Not even the telescopes in space could reveal much more than a blurry speck of a disc. But calculations showed that a set of very large telescopes, working together as an optical interferometer, might be able to resolve surface features on Sirius C. The telescopes would have to be in space, clear of the Earth’s murky, turbulent atmosphere.

Owing to the driving ambition of Anita Halleck, the International Astronautical Authority decided to build such an interferometer in solar orbit. Its segmented mirrors would be placed at opposite locations along the Earth’s orbit, producing an instrument with a baseline of two astronomical units: nearly two hundred million kilometers.

The lunar nation of Selene was already constructing a radio telescope facility on the far side of the Moon, where it would be insulated from all the radio chatter of Earth by more than three thousand kilometers of rock. Farside, the side of the Moon that is permanently pointed away from Earth, was the quietest place in the solar system for sensitive radio searches for intelligent life.

The radio telescope, dubbed Cyclops, was to consist of a thousand dish-shaped antennas, each one a hundred meters across, covering a total area ten kilometers wide.

When the IAA announced its plans for the space-based optical interferometer, one of Selene University’s distinguished astronomers, Professor Jason Uhlrich, proposed building a more modest optical instrument on the Moon’s far side. After all, the surface of the airless Moon was effectively in space. The vacuum at the lunar surface was actually a thousand times thinner than the vacuum in Earth orbit. Lunar materials could be used to build the telescopes, and the Moon offered a firm platform for them.

So the Farside Observatory became the site for an optical interferometer consisting of three interlinked telescopes, each with a main mirror of one hundred meters, slightly larger than an American football field, more than twice the size of any telescope mirror built on Earth. They were to be erected in three giant craters: the longest distance between them would be about eighteen hundred kilometers.

And in the midst of the optical instruments, the Cyclops radio telescope was being erected. Professor Uhlrich was named to head Farside Observatory. He enthusiastically proclaimed that the observatory would be the finest and most important astronomical facility in the solar system.

Yet, even in the gentle gravity of the Moon, building such large and complex structures was a challenge to the skill and knowledge of the men and women who came to Farside.

More than anything else, it was a test of their perseverance and their heart, a challenge that brought out the best in some of them.

In some of them it brought out the worst.

FARSIDE OBSERVATORY

“Farside Observatory coming up,” announced the cheerful voice of the lobber’s pilot. “We’ll be down in Mare Moscoviense in five minutes.”

Trudy thought that “down” could mean a crash as well as a landing, but she tried to keep the worry off her face as she tightened the straps of her safety harness.

“The Sea of Moscow,” McClintock said knowingly. “It’s actually just a big crater. Korolev is bigger. So is Mendeleev. Not like the Mare Nubium or Mare Imbrium on the nearside.”

“When a crater’s that big,” Trudy replied, “it’s called a ringed plain, not a crater.” There, she thought, let him know I’m not a total ignoramus.

Unperturbed, McClintock went on, “Lots of features on the farside are named after Russians, you know. One of their early spacecraft was the first to observe the farside.”

Trudy nodded as she stared at the display screen above her head. She saw a curving range of worn-looking rounded mountains, then a flat plain pockmarked with small craters. It looked dusty, bare, utterly barren.

And then, “Look! The Cyclops array!”

Hundreds of round radio dish antennas stood lined up across the floor of the huge crater. The scene reminded Trudy of the segmented eye of an insect. And it looked as if the ship was hurtling down, straight at it.

She glanced across the aisle at McClintock; his handsome features were set in a tight grimace, as if he were trying to steer the ship himself by grim determination. His hands were gripping the seat’s armrests tightly.

I’m not the only one who’s nervous, she realized.

“Retro burn in thirty seconds,” the pilot announced, sounding much more serious than before.

The ground was rushing up to hit them. The array of radio telescopes slid out of the screen’s view; there was nothing out there now but empty, barren ground, strewn with boulders and pitted with craterlets. It looked very hard.

A roar and a pressure against her back, like someone slamming a two-by-four along her spine. Then it stopped as abruptly as it had started.

“We’re down,” said the pilot, cheerful again. “Welcome to the Farside Observatory.”

Trudy heard several sighs of relief, and realized that the loudest one was her own. Then everybody started to talk at once, unbuckle their seat harnesses, get to their feet.

We’re here, she thought. Now the work begins.

She stood up and reached for the overhead luggage bin. McClintock leaned across and opened the hatch for her, then pulled out her meager travelbag and handed it to her. He was tall as well as handsome: Trudy’s plain, lank hair barely rose to the level of his chin.

“Thank you,” Trudy said to him.

“You’re quite welcome,” he replied.

Then he grabbed his own bag and started up the aisle toward the passenger compartment’s airlock hatch without another glance at her. Trudy shuffled along after him, walking carefully in the light lunar gravity.

She was ordinary in every way, she knew. Average height for a Canadian woman, with a slim build and dull brown hair. No beauty, although she thought her light green eyes were kind of nice. Men rarely noticed her, especially tall, handsome guys like McClintock. He’s got no interest in me, Trudy thought glumly. He made conversation with me during the flight, that’s all.

*   *   *

The trouble with living on the Moon, Trudy quickly decided, was that you never saw the Moon. You were indoors all the time. Trudy stepped from the lobber rocket’s passenger compartment into an access tube that was sealed to its hatch, then along the spongy-floored, rib-walled tube into a reception area where a young man in a slightly ridiculous-looking pumpkin orange jumpsuit took her travelbag from her and handed it to a gleaming white robot that already had a half-dozen other pieces of luggage draped on its many arms. Then the young man led her through a maze of corridors lined with closed doors.

“Your luggage is being sent to your assigned living quarters,” he assured Trudy. “But Professor Uhlrich wanted to see you the instant you arrived.”

The kid was kind of cute, she thought. Curly blond hair, light eyes, kind of chubby, but his round face was smiling pleasantly at her. Probably a freshman, drafted from the university to work for the Farside Observatory. Students made a handy pool of slave labor, Trudy remembered from her own undergraduate days.

She glanced at the name tag pinned to his chest:
WINSTON
.

The observatory’s living and working areas were underground, of course, like all the human communities on the Moon, built into the side of the ringwall mountains that surrounded Mare Moscoviense. The lunar surface was airless, and subject to temperature swings from nearly three hundred degrees in sunlight to more than two hundred below zero in shadow. Hard radiation from the Sun and stars drenched the ground, together with a constant infall of dust-mote-sized micrometeorites. It was safer underground. Much safer.

But dismally drab, dreary. The corridors were tunnels, really, narrow, their low ceilings lined with pipes and electrical conduits. Trudy wondered if they would turn her into a claustrophobe.

“Be careful how you walk,” her young guide warned. “In one-sixth gravity it’s easy to go staggering around like a drunk rabbit.”

Trudy had paid strict attention to the orientation lectures back in the space station before she’d headed out to the Moon. She very deliberately scuffed the weighted boots she had bought during her brief stopover at Selene along the corridor’s plastic-tiled floor in a bent-kneed shuffle. It reminded her of videos she’d seen of chimpanzees trying to walk on their hind legs.

Her guide stopped at a door marked:

J. UHLRICH

DIRECTOR

ANGEL OBSERVATORY

“Angel Observatory?” she asked.

“That’s the observatory’s official name,” the guide explained. “Named after Roger Angel, an astronomer who built the largest telescopes on Earth, more’n half a century ago. The name makes for a lot of jokes, you know, about angels and all. We just call it Farside.”

He rapped on the door, very gently.

“Enter,” a voice called from the other side of the door.

Her guide slid it open and gestured Trudy through.

It was a small office, its ceiling of smoothed rock depressingly low, its four walls blank but glowing slightly. Wall-sized smart screens, Trudy recognized. A desk painted to look like wood stood across from the door, with a conference table joined to it like the stem of a T. Behind the desk sat Jason Uhlrich, director of Farside Observatory.

Professor Uhlrich rose to his feet as Trudy entered, his head cocked slightly. With a hesitant smile he gestured toward one of the conference table’s chairs.

“Welcome, Dr. Yost,” he said in a nasal, reedy voice. “Please to make yourself comfortable.”

Uhlrich was a small man, a bit shorter than Trudy and very slight in build. His face had the prominent cheekbones and high forehead of an ascetic, although his skin looked waxy, almost artificial. His hair was cropped short, as was his trim beard. Both were a soft gray, almost silver. Narrow shoulders, tiny delicate hands. He was wearing a dark blue cardigan jacket over a white turtleneck, neat and precise. Trudy felt shabby in her dull old shirt and baggy jeans.

It was Uhlrich’s eyes that caught Trudy’s attention. They were as dark as two chips of obsidian. But they seemed blank, unfocused.

She stuck out her hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, sir.”

Uhlrich’s smile turned slightly warmer, yet he ignored her proffered hand. “Thank you. I hope we can work well together.”

He gestured toward the chair again and sat down behind his desk. Trudy took the chair; it swiveled so that it was easy for her to face Professor Uhlrich.

He turned to the computer screen on his desk and brushed his fingertips across it, frowning slightly. “We should be joined by Mr. McClintock … He should be here by now.”

Trudy’s pulse thumped. He’ll be here! I’ll see him again. Great!

With a disappointed little sigh, Uhlrich said, “Well, I might as well begin. No sense waiting until—”

A rap on the door stopped him. It slid open and Carter McClintock stepped in, all smiles.

“Professor,” said McClintock as he strode toward the desk. Pulling out the chair across the table from Trudy, he added, “It’s good to see you again, Trudy.”

“I expected you five minutes ago,” Uhlrich said. He neither rose from his desk chair nor offered McClintock his hand.

Looking just the tiniest bit embarrassed, McClintock said, “I, uh, I had to answer a call of nature on the way here. Sorry, but it couldn’t be helped.”

“I see.” Uhlrich’s tone was frosty. The director swung his gaze from McClintock to Trudy, then said in a resigned tone, “Very well, then, let me describe our observatory and its goals to you, Dr. Yost. Mr. McClintock will fill you in on the observatory’s organization and management.”

The walls lit up with views of four different lunar craters. Trudy recognized the Cyclops radio telescope assembly, under construction up above them on the surface of the Sea of Moscow.

Uhlrich began, “We are building three one-hundred-meter telescopes at Crater Mendeleev, Crater Korolev, and Crater Gagarin.” The frame around each screen lit briefly as the professor mentioned it.

Trudy saw that construction was under way at each crater.

“The hundred-meter main mirrors for each of these sites are being built here, at Moscow. The first of them has been completed, and is now being transported to Mendeleev, where it will be installed—”

The buzz of a phone interrupted him. Frowning at his desktop console annoyedly, Uhlrich said, “Pardon me. That is the emergency line.”

He called out, “Answer,” and the wall screen in front of Trudy showed the face of a young man, looking grim, troubled. His hair was a thick dark mop, so was his ragged dark beard. He had the saddest eyes Trudy had ever seen, dark and downcast. He looked as if he were carrying the troubles of the world on his shoulders. She saw that he was in a space suit, but he had removed its helmet.

“Professor,” he began, then his voice broke.

“What is the emergency? What is it?” Uhlrich demanded.

“The mirror,” said the harried-looking man. “Halfway up the ringwall … it … it slid off the carrier and cracked.”

THE LARGE AND THE SMALL

Uhlrich shot to his feet. “Cracked?” he shrieked.

The man on the screen looked as if he’d rather be roasting on a spit. “Yessir. Halfway up the slope the rig slewed off the road and … and the mirror slid off and cracked. Too much torsional strain, even in the frame that was holding it.”

For an instant Trudy thought that Professor Uhlrich was going to have a stroke. His face went red, then chalk white. His fists clenched at his sides.

“How could it slip off the road?” he demanded. “How could you allow such a stupid, criminal thing to happen? You’ve ruined everything!”

The man on the screen looked weary, spent. His bearded face was sheened with perspiration, his dark hair matted, plastered over his forehead. But his expression hardened as Uhlrich berated him.

“Look, Professor, I tried to warn you about the risks.
You
try lugging a hundred-meter-wide chunk of glass across those mountains. I
told
you it’d be chancy.”