Farside (8 page)

“Whattaya think of the Ulcer’s assistant?” Josie asked as she made her way slowly around the mirror’s perimeter.

“You mean McClintock?”

“Yeah. He’s good-looking, don’t you think?”

Sourly, Grant answered, “Another layer of management. The Ulcer’s enlarging his domain.”

“He’s supposed to be some kind of efficiency expert, isn’t he?”

“Management specialist, I think. He’s like a consultant. You know, a guy who doesn’t know anything more than you do, but he comes from more than fifty klicks away and carries a briefcase.”

She didn’t laugh. “Why’d the Ulcer hire him?”

“Somebody else to blame when we hit a problem,” Grant snapped. Then he relented a bit. “The Ulcer’s hell-bent on getting the first imagery from New Earth. He wants to beat the IAA and get a Nobel Prize.”

“You think?”

“What else?”

“Well, I hope the guy knows what he’s doing.”

“He talked the Ulcer into considering nanotechnology,” Grant admitted. “McClintock talked to him for five minutes and now we’re working with Cardenas and the nanotech lab.”

He heard Josie chuckle. “The Ulcer’s willing to take any shortcuts he can find, isn’t he?”

“Could be,” Grant agreed. “Could damned well be.”

The excursion controller’s voice sounded in his helmet speakers. “Grant, we have an urgent call for you. I’m patching it through. On freak two.”

Grant raised his left arm and tapped the keyboard on his wrist for frequency number two. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Josie doing the same. She wants to hear what’s going on, he realized.

McClintock’s voice snapped, “Grant, what are you doing out there?”

Cripes! Grant thought. Has he been listening to our chatter?

“We’re checking out the damaged mirror. Have to build a shield over it until we can get it back inside the lab.” He suppressed an impulse to add, “Sir.”

“Well, I need you to get over to Selene and confer with Dr. Cardenas. A resupply lobber’s on its way here and I want you on it when it heads back to Selene.”

“Okay. As soon as we’re finished here—”

“
Now,
Simpson. Now. That lobber will be landing in half an hour and it’s not going to wait for you.”

“But—”

“Get somebody else to finish your little excursion. You get yourself ready for a shot back to Selene.”

“Right,” said Grant.

SPACEPORT

Grant called Hurry-Up Harvey and told him to suit up and join Josie at the mirror. Then he ducked back inside and began to peel out of his space suit. Josie’ll be okay out there on her own for a half hour or so, he told himself. By the time he’d showered and changed into a fresh set of coveralls Henderson was suited up and entering the airlock.

The lobber was still offloading its cargo when Grant got to Farside’s one-pad spaceport, toting his soft-sided overnight bag. Through the glassteel viewing port, Grant saw the squat, conical spacecraft, its dark diamond structure glittering in the lights that surrounded the blast-blackened concrete landing pad.

To his surprise, the newbie was at the spaceport’s pocket-sized waiting area, standing at the viewing port, her nose practically pressed against the glassteel. What’s her name? Grant asked himself. Yost, he recalled. Trudy Yost.

“Hello,” he said.

She jumped as if somebody had swung an ax at her. Turning, she relaxed and replied, “Oh! Hello … Mr. Simpson.”

Grant thought he heard a slight stress on the
Mister.
He tried to smile at her. “I guess I was kind of abrupt when we met. I’m sorry.”

She immediately brightened. “That’s okay. You must have a lot of responsibilities.”

“Sort of,” he said.

A moment of awkward silence, and then they both said, “What are you doing here?”

Trudy broke into a giggle and Grant laughed with her. Before she could ask again, he hefted his bag and said, “I’m heading back to Selene, once the lobber finishes off-loading.”

“You’re leaving Farside?”

“Only for a day or so. I’ll be back.”

“Good,” said Trudy.

“And you?”

“Me?”

“Why’re you here?”

“Oh!” She seemed genuinely surprised at his question. “The lobber’s bringing a new batch of antennas for the Cyclops array. Professor Uhlrich asked me to make sure they get transported to the site okay.”

“Asked?” Grant questioned. “The Ulcer
asked
you to?”

Trudy admitted, “Well, it was really more like a command.”

“That sounds more like the Ulcer.”

“You really shouldn’t call him that,” she said.

“No, I suppose I shouldn’t.”

Again a silence settled between them. Feeling uncomfortable, Grant said, “I didn’t realize you’re a radio astronomer.”

“I’m not,” Trudy said. “My specialty is optical … and infrared.” Before he could ask she explained, “I’m just supervising the antenna delivery because the professor asked me…” She broke into a halfhearted grin. “Told me to,” she amended.

Grant nodded and turned back to the window. The lobber’s crew seemed finished with their offloading. Both of Farside’s tractors were piled high with cargo containers. The first one of them started trundling slowly away from the launchpad.

In a small voice, Trudy asked, “Does he really give people ulcers?”

“No,” said Grant. “Migraines.”

“Oh, come on,” Trudy objected. “What’s he really like? Really.”

“You’ll find out.”

Trudy frowned slightly. “He … he’s sort of weird, in a way, isn’t he?”

“What do you mean?”

Obviously ill at ease, Trudy said, “The way he looks at a person. Staring the way he does. Like he’s looking right through me.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“He’s blind. Totally blind.”

Trudy looked shocked.

“Some accident back Earthside. Burned out his retinas. He can’t see at all.”

“But he does see!” Trudy insisted. Then she added, “Doesn’t he?”

“In a way,” said Grant. “They did some fancy brain surgery on him, linked the regions in his brain that handle sound and touch to his visual cortex. He sees through his ears and his fingers.”

It was clear from the expression on her face that Trudy didn’t understand.

“Look,” Grant explained. “His visual cortex—the part of the brain that forms visual images—it wasn’t damaged. Only his eyes. So the surgeons rewired his brain so that what he hears, and what he touches, form visual images in his brain.”

“Couldn’t they grow new retinas for his eyes?” she asked. “You know, with stem cells?”

Grant shook his head. “From what I heard, they tried but it didn’t work. That’s when they went to the surgery and rewired his brain.”

“My gosh.”

“Maybe he just got himself into the clutches of a neurosurgeon who needed a guinea pig,” Grant said. “It happens.”

“The poor man,” said Trudy softly. Then she added, “But he does see … kind of.”

“Whatever he touches or hears forms a visual image for him,” Grant said. “I don’t think he sees the same image of you, for example, that I see. But he sees something. He sees well enough to function and get around pretty well. But as far as his eyes are concerned, he’s blind as a bat.”

SELENE

It was a shocked and thoughtful Trudy Yost who left the spaceport waiting area and headed toward the control center, where she could monitor the crew that was unloading the latest batch of antennas for the Cyclops radio telescope site.

Grant wondered if he’d been too brutally frank with her about Uhlrich’s condition. What the hell, he told himself, she’d find out about it one way or the other. The sooner the better. Help her to deal with the Ulcer.

The lobber was being refueled with powdered aluminum and liquid oxygen propellants, both elements gleaned from the lunar regolith at Selene by specialized nanomachines. Within half an hour Grant was cleared to board the rocket for its return flight to Selene.

*   *   *

After so many months at Farside, Selene felt like a metropolis. There was an automated tractor to whisk passengers through the tunnel that connected the Armstrong spaceport, out on the floor of the giant Crater Alphonsus, to Selene proper, more than a kilometer away.

As soon as he cleared the debarkation desk—manned by a smiling young woman in a coral red uniform—Grant phoned Dr. Cardenas to tell her he’d arrived.

“Good,” she said. In the pocketphone’s minuscule screen her face looked somber, almost grim. “Come on over to my lab.” And she abruptly clicked off.

Leaving his travelbag at the debarkation center, Grant used his pocketphone to find his way through Selene’s maze of corridors, although there were maps on voice-activated wall screens at every intersection. Dr. Cardenas’s nanotechnology laboratory was on the topmost of Selene’s four levels of living and working spaces, at the end of a winding side corridor. The corridor walls were blank, bare rock, and the low ceiling was lined with long strips of lights that seemed to be turned off.

Then he saw a sign on the wall up ahead:

WARNING. THIS AREA MAY BE EXPOSED TO HIGH-INTENSITY ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT. LEAVE THE AREA IMMEDIATELY WHEN THE RED WARNING LIGHTS ARE FLASHING.

A precaution against nanomachines that might escape from the lab, Grant realized. Even here in Selene they’re scared of nanomachines. Down at the end of the corridor he saw a closed door that bore the title
NANOTECHNOLOGY LABORATORY
.

He raised a fist to knock on the door, but a speaker grill set into the wall beside it said, “Come on in, Grant.” Cardenas’s voice. Then he noticed the tiny red eye of a minicamera set above the door.

The lab was surprisingly small, but then Grant told himself that machines the size of viruses don’t need a lot of room. He threaded his way through a set of workbenches, all of them bearing various pieces of apparatus. Most of the hardware was made of metal, a lot of stainless steel gleaming in the overhead lights, although Grant saw some intricate works of glass tubing, as well.

No one seemed to be in the lab. But then he saw Kris Cardenas sitting at a desk set against the back wall. A big gray tubular object stood man-tall beside the desk. A scanning force microscope, Grant figured. He nodded to himself: that microscope can visualize individual atoms.

“Welcome to the zoo,” Cardenas said, her voice flat and hard. She gestured to a sculpted plastic chair in front of the bulky microscope. “Have a seat.”

As he sat down, Grant saw a trio of irregularly shaped chunks of optical glass resting on the shelf of a bookcase to one side of the desk. He said, “Mr. McClintock told me to come over. I’m not quite sure—”

“Apparently you’re the resident expert on telescope mirrors,” Cardenas said, still looking bleak, almost angry. “I need to pick your brain.”

“Such as it is,” he joked.

Cardenas didn’t even crack a smile. Pointing to the glass samples, she said, “The glass factory sent these samples. Is this the raw material you use for the mirrors?”

Grant nodded. “Looks like it.”

“Not good enough, Grant. I need to be absolutely certain.” She turned and picked up one of the samples, then handed it to Grant.

He turned the lump of glass over in his hand. “Yeah, look at the label etched into it: the serial number starts with an O. O for optical.”

“Then this is the type of glass you use to make the mirrors.”

“Right.”

Cardenas took the sample from Grant and returned it to the bookshelf. “I’ll feed it to the disassemblers and get an atom-by-atom breakdown of its composition.”

“Good,” said Grant.

“I presume you can access all the files I’ll need about mirror construction,” she said.

“Sure.”

“Good. Then let’s get to work.”

Two hours later Grant felt as if he’d been through a semester’s worth of final exams, with a police interrogation thrown in. Cardenas was all business, unsmiling, as if she resented being pressed into this task of mirror manufacture. But she volunteered for the job, Grant remembered. When she talked to McClintock she looked pleased to help. Happy about it. Now, with me, she’s pissed as hell.

At last Cardenas seemed satisfied. Her eyes on the wall screen where Grant had forwarded all the data she’d asked for, she finally said, “That should do it, I think.”

“That’s everything you need?” Grant asked, wondering why McClintock had insisted on his coming to her laboratory. I could have done this from Farside, he thought.

“That’s the beginning,” she said. “The next step is to take apart the samples and get an exact analysis of their composition. Then I’ll have to program a set of assemblers to build you a mirror.”

Grant said, “Once you’ve got the raw materials.”

“Yes, there is that. I presume you can provide them for me.”

“The mirror’s supposed to be one hundred meters in diameter. You’ll need a place to build something that big.”

“That’s your department, Grant. You deal with Selene’s engineering department. Or maybe it’ll be the research department that gets involved in this.”

Grant pictured dealing with more bureaucracies. I’ll have to get Uhlrich involved in this. Nobody in Selene is going to stir themselves for me. I’ll need the Ulcer’s authority to get people here to move.

Cardenas broke into his thoughts. “It’s past seven
P.M.
Time to call it a day.”

She got to her feet and Grant stood up beside her. She was almost his own height, bright blond hair, good trim figure. But her sky-blue eyes seemed troubled, annoyed.

“I’ll see you here at eight tomorrow morning,” she said.

“Okay.” Then Grant realized he had no idea of where his quarters were. He’d left his travelbag with the young woman at the debarkation desk and hustled over to the nanolab before asking about where he was going to sleep.

“Eight o’clock, then,” Cardenas repeated. Grant realized he was being dismissed.

DINNER FOR TWO

Grant found his way back to the debarkation center. A different person was at the desk, an avuncular middle-aged man with a potbelly and an amiable smile. Grant’s travelbag was still there, sitting on the floor beside the desk, and the man looked up the location of the room that McClintock had reserved for him.