The Best of Joe Haldeman (14 page)

“Is that a riddle?”

“No, look. You know the power doesn’t really come from the Death Valley grid; it’s just a way station and accumulator. Power comes from the orbital—”

“I know all that, Charlie. I’ve got a Science Certificate.”

“Sure. So what we’ve got is a big microwave laser in orbit, that shoots down a tight beam of power. Enough to keep North America running. Enough—”

“That’s what I mean. You can’t just—”

“So we turn it around and shoot it at a power grid on the Moon. Relay the power around to the big radio dish at Farside. Turn it into radio waves and point it at 61 Cygni. Give ‘em a blast that’ll fry their fillings.”

“Doesn’t sound neighborly.”

“It wouldn’t actually be that powerful — but it would be a hell of a lot more powerful than any natural 21 centimeter source.”

“I don’t know, boy.” He rubbed his eyes and grimaced. “I could maybe do it on the sly, only tell a few people what’s on. But that’d only work for a few minutes… what do you need twelve hours for, anyway?”

“Well, the thing won’t aim itself at the Moon automatically, the way it does at Death Valley. Figure as much as an hour to get the thing turned around and aimed.

“Then, we don’t want to just send a blast of radio waves at them. We’ve got a five-hour program, that first builds up a mutual language, then tells them about us, and finally asks them some questions. We want to send it twice.”

Connors refilled both glasses. “How old were you in ‘47, Charlie?”

“I was born in ‘45.”

“You don’t remember the Blackout. Ten thousand people died… and you want me to suggest—”

“Come on, Bo, it’s not the same thing. We know the accumulators work now besides, the ones who died, most of them had faulty failsafes on their cars. If we warn them the power’s going to drop, they’ll check their failsafes or damn well stay out of the air.”

“And the media? They’d have to take turns broadcasting. Are you going to tell the People what they can watch?”

“Fuzz the media. They’ll be getting the biggest story since the Crucifixion.”

“Maybe.” Connors took a cigarette and pushed the box toward Charlie. “You don’t remember what happened to the Senators from California in ‘47, do you?”

“Nothing good, I suppose.”

“No, indeed. They were impeached. Lucky they weren’t lynched. Even though the real trouble was ‘way up in orbit.”

“Like you say: people pay a grid tax to California. They think the power comes from California. If something fuzzes up, they get pissed at California. I’m the Lib Senator from California, Charlie; ask me for the Moon, maybe I can do something. Don’t ask me to fuzz around with Death Valley.”

“All right, all right. It’s not like I was asking you to wire it for me, Bo. Just get it on the ballot. We’ll do everything we can to educate—”

“Won’t work. You barely got the Scylla probe voted in — and that was no skin off nobody, not with L-5 picking up the tab.”

“Just get it on the ballot.”

“We’ll see. I’ve got a quota, you know that. And the Tricentennial coming up, hell, everybody wants on the ballot.”

“Please, Bo. This is bigger than that. This is bigger than anything. Get it on the ballot.”

“Maybe as a rider. No promises.”

~ * ~

From Fax & Pix, 12 March 1992:

ANTIQUE SPACEPROBE

ZAPPED BY NEW STARS

1. Pioneer 10 sent first Jupiter pix Earthward in 1973 (see pix upleft, upright).
   

1. Left solar system 1987. First man-made thing to leave solar system.
   

1. Yesterday, reports NASA, Pioneer 10 begins AM to pick up heavy radiation. Gets more and more to max about 3 PM. Then goes back down. Radiation has to come from outside solar system.
   

1. NASA and Hawaii scientists say Pioneer 10 went through disk of synchrotron (sin-kro-tron) radiation that comes from two stars we didn’t know about before.
   

1. The stars are small “black dwarfs.”
   

1. They are going round each other once every 40 seconds, and take 350,000 years to go around the Sun.
   

1. One of the stars is made of
   antimatter
   . This is stuff that blows up if it touches real matter. What the Hawaii scientists saw was a dim circle of invisible (infrared) light, that blinks on and off every twenty seconds. This light comes from where the atmospheres of the two stars touch (see pic downleft).
   

1. The stars have a big magnetic field. Radiation comes from stuff spinning off the stars and trying to get through the field.
   

1. The stars are about 5000 times as far away from the Sun as we are. They sit at the wrong angle, compared to the rest of the solar system (see pic downright).
   

1. NASA says we aren’t in any danger from the stars. They’re too far away, and besides, nothing in the solar system ever goes through the radiation.
   

1. The woman who discovered the stars wants to call them Scylla (
   skill
   -a) and Charybdis (ku-
   rib
   -dus).
   

1. Scientists say they don’t know where the hell those two stars came from. Everything else in the solar system makes sense.
   

~ * ~

When the docking phase started, Charlie thought, that was when it was easy to tell the scientists from the baggage. The scientists were the ones who looked nervous.

Superficially, it seemed very tranquil — nothing like the bone hurting skin stretching acceleration when the shuttle lifted off. The glittering transparent cylinder of L-5 simply grew larger, slowly, then wheeled around to point at them.

The problem was that a space colony big enough to hold 4000 people has more inertia than God. If the shuttle hit the mating dimple too fast, it would fold up like an accordion. A spaceship is made to take stress in the
other
direction.

Charlie hadn’t paid first class, but they let him up into the observation dome anyhow, professional courtesy. There were only two other people there, standing on the Velcro rug, strapped to one bar and hanging on to another.

They were a young man and woman, probably new colonists. The man was talking excitedly. The woman stared straight ahead, not listening. Her knuckles were white on the bar and her teeth were clenched. Charlie wanted to say something in sympathy, but it’s hard to talk while you’re holding your breath.

The last few meters are the worst. You can’t see over the curve of the ship’s hull, and the steering jets make a constant stutter of little bumps: left, right, forward back. If the shuttle folded, would the dome shatter or just pop off?

It was all controlled by computers, of course. The pilot just sat up there in a mist of weightless sweat.

Then the low moan, almost subsonic shuddering as the shuttle’s smooth hull complained against the friction pads. Charlie waited for the ringing
spang
that would mean they were a little too fast: friable alloy plates, under the friction pads, crumbling to absorb the energy of their forward motion; last ditch stand.

If that didn’t stop them, they would hit a two-meter wall of solid steel, which would. It had happened once. But not this time.

“Please remain seated until pressure is equalized,” a recorded voice said. “It’s been a pleasure having you aboard.”

Charlie crawled down the pole, back to the passenger area. He walked rip, rip, rip back to his seat and obediently waited for his ears to pop. Then the side door opened and he went with the other passengers through the tube that led to the elevator. They stood on the ceiling. Someone had laboriously scratched a graffito on the metal wall:

Stuck on this lift for hours, perforce:
This lift that cost a million bucks.
There’s no such thing as centrifugal force:
L-5 sucks.

Thirty more weightless seconds as they slid to the ground. There were a couple of dozen people waiting on the loading platform.

Charlie stepped out into the smell of orange blossoms and newly mown grass. He was home.

“Charlie! Hey, over here.” Young man standing by a tandem bicycle. Charlie squeezed both his hands and then jumped on the back seat. “Drink.”

“Did you get—”

“Drink. Then talk.” They glided down the smooth macadam road toward town.

The bar was just a rain canopy over some tables and chairs, overlooking the lake in the center of town. No bartender: you went to the service table and punched in your credit number, then chose wine or fruit juice; with or without vacuum-distilled raw alcohol. They talked about shuttle nerves awhile, then:

“What you get from Connors?”

“Words, not much. I’ll give a full report at the meeting tonight. Looks like we won’t even get on the ballot, though.”

“Now isn’t that what we said was going to happen? We shoulda gone with Francois Petain’s idea.”

“Too risky.” Petain’s plan had been to tell Death Valley they had to shut down the laser for repairs. Not tell the groundhogs about the signal at all, just answer it. “If they found out they’d sue us down to our teeth.”

The man shook his head. “I’ll never understand groundhogs.”

“Not your job.” Charlie was an Earth-born, Earth trained psychologist. “Nobody born here ever could.”

“Maybe so.” He stood up. “Thanks for the drink; I’ve gotta get back to work. You know to call Dr. Bemis before the meeting?”

“Yeah. There was a message at the Cape.”

“She has a surprise for you.”

“Doesn’t she always? You clowns never do anything around here until I leave.”

~ * ~

All Abigail Bemis would say over the phone was that Charlie should come to her place for dinner; she’d prep him for the meeting.

“That was good, Ab. Can’t afford real food on Earth.”

She laughed and stacked the plates in the cleaner, then drew two cups of coffee. She laughed again when she sat down. Stocky, white-haired woman with bright eyes in a sea of wrinkles.

“You’re in a jolly mood tonight.”

“Yep. It’s expectation.”

“Johnny said you had a surprise.”

“Hooboy, he doesn’t know half. So you didn’t get anywhere with the Senator.”

“No. Even less than I expected. What’s the secret?”

“Connors is a nice-hearted boy. He’s done a lot for us.

“Come on, Ab. What is it?”

“He’s right. Shut off the groundhogs’ TV for twenty minutes and they’d have another Revolution on their hands.”

“Ab…”

“We’re going to send the message.”

“Sure. I figured we would. Using Farside at whatever wattage we’ve got. If we’re lucky—”

“Nope. Not enough power.”

Charlie stirred a half-spoon of sugar into his coffee. “You plan to… defy Connors?”

“Fuzz Connors. We’re not going to use radio at all.”

“Visible light? Infra?”

“We’re going to hand-carry it. In Daedalus.”

Charlie’s coffee cup was halfway to his mouth. He spilled a great deal.

“Here, have a napkin.”

~ * ~

From
A Short History Of the Old Order
(Freeman Press, 2040)

“… and if you think
that
was a waste, consider Project Daedalus.

“This was the first big space thing after L-5. Now L-5 worked out all right, because it was practical. But Daedalus (named from a Greek god who could fly)—that was a clear-cut case of throwing money down the rat-hole.

“These scientists in 2016 talked the bourgeoisie into paying for a trip to another
star
! It was going to take over a hundred years — but the scientists were going to have babies along the way, and train
them
to be scientists (whether they wanted to or not!).

“They were going to use all the old H-bombs for fuel — as if we might not need the fuel some day right here on Earth. What if L-5 decided they didn’t like us, and shut off the power beam?

“Daedalus was supposed to be a spaceship almost a kilometer long! Most of it was manufactured in space, from Moon stuff, but a lot of it — the most expensive part, you bet — had to be boosted from Earth.

“They almost got it built, but then came the Breakup and the People’s Revolution. No way in hell the People were going to let them have those H-bombs, not sitting right over our heads like that.

“So we left the H-bombs in Helsinki and, the space freaks went back to doing what they’re supposed to do. Every year they petition to get those H-bombs, but every year the Will of the People says no.

“That spaceship is still up there, a sky trillion dollar boondoggle. As a monument to bourgeoisie folly, it’s worse than the Pyramids!!”

~ * ~

“So the Scylla probe is just a ruse, to get the fuel—”

“Oh no, not really.” She slid a blue-covered folder to him. “We’re still going to Scylla. Scoop up a few megatons of degenerate antimatter. And a similar amount of degenerate matter from Charybdis.