Farside (3 page)

“Don’t you understand that we’re in a race? A race against time! And you’ve ruined two years’ work! Two years’ work!”

In a race? Trudy asked herself. Then she remembered that the IAA was building a humongous interferometer in space. Professor Uhlrich wants to beat them, she realized. He wants to get the Farside Observatory running before the IAA can complete its project. Holy spit, no wonder he’s blazing.

Uhlrich slumped back into his chair, then stared at the screen with undisguised contempt. “You built that road, Mr. Simpson. You vouched for it, you told me the mirror could be transported across the ringwall safely. You—”

“Professor, I built the road to the specifications that Nate Oberman set out and you okayed. I told Oberman that we ought to make the grading easier, all those switchbacks were a risk. But you ordered Nate to push it through as fast as possible. You told us you were willing to take the risks. So now you’re paying the price.”

“Oberman assured me that the road would be perfectly safe!”

“Professor, I warned you it would be a crapshoot.”

“I don’t remember such a warning,” Uhlrich said stubbornly.

“Transporting that mirror isn’t like taking a walk in the frigging park, what with those switchbacks and all. If we’d had more time to build the road better—”

“Oberman assured me!”

“And I tried to tell you both we needed more time to make the road better. But neither of you listened to me.”

With a shake of his head, Uhlrich moaned, “We’ll have to start all over again.”

“For what it’s worth,” said the man on the screen, his voice more conciliatory, “I’m sorry about it.”

“Bring it back,” Uhlrich told him. “We’ll have to remelt the glass and spin it all over again.”

The face on the screen nodded tightly.

“And report to me the instant you get back here,” Uhlrich added. “I want you and Oberman in my office as soon as you return. The very instant!”

“Yessir,” the younger man said. Then his image winked off.

“Two years’ work,” Uhlrich muttered again, shaking his head in misery.

McClintock spoke up. “Maybe we can repair the mirror.”

Uhlrich gave him a withering look. “Repair? The telescope’s main mirror? It’s ruined! Ruined!”

Smiling easily at the professor, McClintock said, “I understand that the mirror’s got to have very exact tolerances, but mightn’t it be possible to repair it using nanotechnology?”

“Nanomachines?” Uhlrich gasped.

McClintock replied patiently, “I know nanotech is banned on Earth. But here on the Moon it’s used every day. The world’s leading nanotechnology expert, Dr. Kristine Cardenas, is over at Selene.”

“Nanomachines,” Uhlrich repeated. From the dark tone of his voice, Trudy half expected the professor to cross himself or pull out a silver crucifix.

“I could at least meet with Dr. Cardenas and see what she thinks of the possibilities,” McClintock urged.

“Nanomachines can be dangerous,” Uhlrich murmured. “They have been used to assassinate people.”

“That’s why they’re banned on Earth, of course,” McClintock said easily. “But here on the Moon you don’t have ten or twelve billion crackpots running loose. Everybody here has been tested, examined for mental stability and technical talent, haven’t they? The population of Selene is selected for intelligence and social compatibility. There are no murderers on the Moon, no fanatics or terrorists.”

Trudy wondered if that was true. She certainly hoped so.

Uhlrich stared at McClintock in grim silence.

“I really think we should at least look at the possibilities,” McClintock repeated.

“Do you?” Uhlrich muttered.

“Yes, I do. I strongly recommend it.”

Trudy felt puzzled. There was something going on between the two of them, something more than the words they were uttering.

At last Uhlrich sighed and said, “Very well, Mr. McClintock, go ahead and see what Dr. Cardenas has to say about this problem. I don’t suppose it would hurt anything to talk to her.”

McClintock rose to his feet, all smiles. “Good. I’ll call her right away.”

The professor turned back to Trudy. She could see that he was sizzling, angry. But his eyes were strange; he was looking in her direction, but not directly at her. He made a bitter smile.

“Dr. Yost, I’m afraid I don’t feel up to giving you the orientation presentation I had planned.”

“I understand, sir,” said Trudy. “Maybe somebody else could do it?”

“No. I’ll meet with you first thing tomorrow morning. Make it eight
A.M.
No—seven thirty.”

“Seven thirty sharp. Here in your office?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Right.”

“In the meantime,” Uhlrich said, “I’ll get someone from the staff to show you around this facility. So that your day won’t be totally wasted.”

“That’ll be fine,” Trudy replied.

She rose and headed for the door, which McClintock was already sliding open.

Turning, Trudy saw Uhlrich sink his head in his hands. He looked as if he were going to cry.

DOSSIER: TRUDY JOCELYN YOST

Her father was a lawyer and a successful politician in Canada’s capital city who married late in life and was already well past fifty when his only daughter was born. He expected Trudy to be a lawyer, too, since he was certain that she had a fine mind and a strong personality. Like himself, he thought.

Her mother died when Trudy was five years old, leaving her feeling lost and alone in a world of loud, uncaring adults who loomed over her and often made her feel small and frightened. But she remembered her mother’s oft-repeated advice: “A sunny smile and a positive attitude will carry you far in this world.”

Her father, on the other hand, always told her sternly, “Face your challenges, never run away from them. Never back down from your challenges.”

So she learned to face her anxieties and by the time she started grammar school she had overcome her fear of her father’s overbearing friends. She faced them with a sunny smile and they thought she was precocious, and very clever.

By then, her father had retired from politics and had accepted the chairmanship of the board of Ottawa’s Museum of Science and Technology, a board composed mostly of fellow well-heeled citizens.

When Trudy got the best marks in her first-grade class, her father rewarded her by taking her to the museum, grandly explaining the exhibits in words she could not fully understand. He quickly grew tired of her questions.

“Now you’re in for a treat,” he said as they walked past a big round ball that Trudy recognized as the Earth.

“Where’s Canada, Daddy?” she asked.

He paused and turned toward the globe. “Right here, honey. All this region here, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. The third largest nation on Earth. See? There’s the Great Lakes and—”

“Where’s Ottawa, Daddy? Where’s our house?”

Frowning slightly, her father said, “Never mind that. I’m taking you to a very special place.”

Her hand in his, Trudy dutifully went with her father past a long line of people who were standing and waiting for something. They looked impatient and unhappy.

Her father marched right up to a closed door where a young woman in a smart uniform recognized him immediately.

“Your seats are on the wall, Counselor Yost, right beneath the sign that says North,” the attendant whispered as she opened the door for them.

It was a round room with thick carpeting and a big gray dome overhead that glowed faintly. The rows of chairs were arranged in a big circle, and it was very quiet, as if the walls absorbed sound. Trudy and her father were the only people in the place. He led her to their seats, which were marked
RESERVED.
The chairs were comfortably padded and even tilted backwards a little. Trudy leaned as far back as she could, giggling, until her father silenced her with a dour look.

“This is a planetarium, young lady, not a playground.”

Just then all the doors opened and the other people started to stream in and fill every seat. Soft music began to play. Then slowly, slowly the room got darker and darker and darker. Trudy couldn’t see the dome, or even her father sitting next to her. She felt a little afraid, but she reached for her father’s warm hand and that made her feel better. After a few moments, though, her father pulled his hand away.

Then the music stopped, and a man’s deep, powerful voice intoned:

“When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,

“The moon and the stars which Thou set in place,

“What is man that Thou should be mindful of him?

“And the son of man, that Thou should care for him?”

At that moment, the darkness was suddenly pierced by stars, thousands of stars, millions of stars. The audience gasped. Trudy felt as if she were falling
up
, up into that cold, remorseless infinite wilderness. She groped for her father’s hand but in the darkness she couldn’t find it. The stars were like a million million unblinking eyes staring at her, probing into her, making her very, very frightened.

She burst into loud, bawling tears. Her father, embarrassed beyond words, had to take his squalling seven-year-old daughter out of her seat and stumble his way out of the planetarium.

Trudy never forgot that moment, the instant when she first saw the stars as they truly were. Not the soft skies of summer, with clouds drifting by on warm winds. Not the sharp, crystalline dark skies of winter. Even then the stars twinkled at you, distant but friendly. Even then the Moon was generally up there, smiling lopsidedly at her.

But to see the universe as it truly is, vast, cold, infinite, and uncaring—that frightened young Trudy Yost down to the marrow of her bones.

Face your challenges. Never run away from them.

Trudy began to read about astronomy. The unblinking immensity of the universe frightened her at some primal level, so she set out to conquer her fear. She studied the stars
because
they frightened her. When she started college—prelaw—she took a course in introductory astronomy. She was going to learn about that coldly aloof immensity. Knowledge would overcome fear.

Her father thought it a waste of her time. “Remember, you’re going to law school,” he insisted.

Instead she smiled at her Daddy and switched from prelaw to the astronomy curriculum: a slight, undistinguished young woman with an elfin figure, short-cropped plain brown hair and light green eyes—and a sharp, quick intelligence coupled with a dogged determination.

Trudy persevered with astronomy even over her father’s bellowing complaints. Something about the stars lured her, challenged her. The more she learned about them the more fascinated she became, the more she realized that there was still so much to discover. Despite her father’s exasperated thundering, she became an astronomer.

Her first sexual encounter came during her sophomore year, with a bearded, slouching assistant professor who smoked a pipe and taught the Introduction to Planetary Astronomy course. He invited Trudy to his apartment off-campus after they had had dinner together, dropped a popular pill into the glass of wine he offered her, and carried her slim semiconscious body to his bed. In the morning she awoke, alone in the bloodstained sheets. He had left a note explaining that he had an early class to teach and she could let herself out.

At first she was devastated, but remembering her mother’s advice about a positive attitude, she said to herself, At least
that’s
over.

And then the realization hit her: He was afraid I’d say no! The poor dumb jackass drugged me because he was worried that I might turn him down!

She never saw him again. And she didn’t care.

She did her graduate studies in California, and then, much to her delighted surprise, was offered a postdoc position by Selene University to work at the new Farside Observatory.

“On the Moon?” her father howled. “No, it’s impossible! I won’t hear of it.”

But Trudy went anyway, leaving her father at the spaceport in Toronto with tears streaming down his cheeks.

For the first time in her life, Trudy realized that her father actually did love her.

MIRROR LAB

Trudy slid Professor Uhlrich’s door shut quietly. A few paces down the corridor, McClintock was already speaking into his pocketphone.

“Yes, Dr. Cardenas. I appreciate your cooperation. I’ll call you back as soon as I get to my quarters here at Farside and we can discuss this problem in detail.”

He clicked the phone shut and turned to Trudy. “I’ve got to run. See you later.”

And he actually started to sprint down the corridor, only to bounce and soar in the light lunar gravity. He thumped against a wall, skidded to a halt, and then—throwing an embarrassed grin in Trudy’s direction—he started along the corridor again, slower this time, more carefully. Trudy was left alone.

She hadn’t the faintest idea of which way to turn. No one else was in sight. Everybody’s busy working, she thought. Well, this rabbit’s warren can’t be all that big. I’ll find my way. First thing is to figure out where my quarters are.

Then she saw the same cute blond guy who had met her at the landing site hustling down the corridor toward her in his pumpkin-colored coveralls.

“Professor Uhlrich says I’m supposed to show you around the place,” he said, puffing slightly.

“Great,” said Trudy. “Maybe you could show me my quarters first.”

“Sure.”

As Trudy suspected, the underground facility wasn’t very large. One main corridor, with three side corridors branching from it. Trudy’s living quarters consisted of a single room, sparsely furnished with a bed, a desk, two chairs—one a recliner that looked like it had been salvaged from a Clipper rocket—and a wide display screen mounted on the wall above the desk. A compact kitchenette took up one corner. Accordion-fold doors opened onto a closet and a lavatory.

She saw that her soft-sided garment carrier and travelbag had been deposited on the bed, which looked big enough for two people.

“All the living spaces are small,” her guide explained, almost apologetically.

“This’ll do fine,” Trudy said. “It’ll be like living in a dorm again.”