Delta-v, page 17
“Even so, depending on what you intend to do in space, there are the COSPAR procedures for preventing biological contamination that must be observed. The UN’s International Council for Science assigns a risk score for all missions, and if you intend to bring material back to Earth—”
“We will not be bringing material back to Earth.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.” Joyce chuckled. “Lukas, I appreciate you looking out for me, but we’ve got that all under control.”
“Nathan, I do not understand why you filed paperwork with the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg at all, if you intended to ignore their regulations.”
“Because not filing for space permits would have drawn attention. We needed those components cleared for flight, and that meant they needed to have a business purpose in space. We provided the boring description everyone expected. Everyone except you, Lukas.”
Rochat was embarrassed how much the praise pleased him. “The Division of Space Affairs is investigating your shell companies. The truth will come out sooner or later.”
“We need to make sure it’s later. What I need you to do, Lukas, is make a complete and accurate filing of my spacecraft and its real purpose.”
Rochat was now confused. “But I thought you said—”
“But file it as a proposed ship—like I’ve been saying in the news. Unbuilt. Unfunded. That way, everyone at the ministry and in the press will roll their eyes because no one believes a word I say. Which is exactly why I’m saying it.”
“I am confused.”
“Good. That’s the point. File my plan with the ministry and keep filing revisions to keep them occupied.”
“Well, I . . .” Was that ethical? Then again, why wouldn’t Rochat want to have his name on something so historic? Surely that rated some consideration. “I can do that, yes.” A thought occurred to him. “But creating such an application and filing for amendments—this will come at considerable cost. The filing fees alone could be half a million euros. And I’ll need manpower.”
“Don’t worry about that. Hire the people you need. Develop your contacts at the Ministry of the Economy. Find out how much they know, what they’re up to. Do you understand?”
Rochat nodded but said, “I should warn you that getting new permits approved once Luxembourg officials discover they’ve been deceived—well, that will be impossible. They’ll invalidate every permit you have, since you’re not pursuing what your permits claim.” Rochat paused. “What is the ship meant for? Why the big engines? Why the artificial gravity? Those are features required for a long voyage. Where is your ship headed?”
Joyce stopped and turned to face Rochat. “Where do you think it’s headed, Lukas?”
A sudden realization swept over Rochat, and he laughed. “Mars. You’re going to Mars, aren’t you?”
Joyce’s genial expression morphed, and with alarming speed he grabbed the young lawyer by the suit lapels and threw him against the chain-link fence—pressing his intimidating face right up into Rochat’s. “Goddamnit! Does everyone on this fucking planet have Mars fever? That’s all I ever hear about is ‘Mars, Mars, Mars!’ Mars is a goddamned trap! It’s a gravity well that will suck in mankind’s future. At best it’s a research location or an interesting vacation spot for your grandkids—but it’s not a place for humanity to live. Never you goddamn mind where my ship is headed. All you need to do is keep the grand duchy and everyone else off my back for as long as possible. The longer you do that, the more money you’ll make. And I do mean a lot of money, Lukas. Change-your-life money. Are we clear?” He released Rochat’s lapels and backed away.
Rochat took a breath and straightened his coat. “Yes. Perfectly clear.”
“I don’t want to hear another goddamned word out of you about Mars. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Joyce extended his hand. “We in business, then?”
Surprised by the sudden shift, Rochat shook Joyce’s hand firmly, looking him in the eye, just like the business books said.
Joyce maintained his grip on Rochat’s hand. “I admire your ambition, Lukas. You remind me of myself at your age. Lots of unearned confidence.”
“I will not let you down.”
“As for the EU, the grand duchy, and the FAA—I’m not going to ask permission. Here on Earth you lawyers say that possession is nine-tenths of the law. Well, Lukas, in space I think possession is going to be more like 99.99999 percent of the law. Space is a goddamned frontier. What’s the use of going to a frontier if it has rules?”
Joyce didn’t let Rochat’s hand go, but instead pulled him in close. “You’ll be making lifelong enemies in the next few months.”
“Enemies?”
“Enemies in government. At major aerospace companies. Especially among the other Titans.”
That all sounded like an unmitigated disaster to his legal practice. Rochat felt weak in the knees.
“Don’t worry. I’ll make it worth your while. Personally, I find the respect of enemies to be sweeter than friendship. And certainly more honest—nobody ever lies about hating you.”
Joyce let Rochat’s hand go, and then he continued down the street. “Go back to Luxembourg, Lukas. My people will send you instructions on how we’re to communicate.”
Still reeling, Rochat nodded and walked away without daring to look back.
CHAPTER 16
Concordia Station
MAY 5, 2033
Klaxons wailed and LED strobes pierced the darkness as James Tighe bolted upright in his bed. Overhead lights rose to illuminate the circular radiation-shielded crew quarters he shared with Michael Harris, a bearded geologist from Spokane. Tighe shot a look across to Harris, who was sitting up in his own bed nearby.
A calm female voice said, “Warning: imminent structural failure, Arm 2. Commencing emergency spin-down. Repeat: commencing emergency spin-down. Prepare for microgravity.”
The deafening alarms whooped.
Harris shouted over the din, “That’s a new one!”
They both reached for biphasic crystal work glasses mounted on chargers in the built-in nightstand. Resembling high-end safety glasses, the devices served as a virtual window into the ship’s systems. The crew had taken to calling them simply crystals.
Harris shouted, “Rosey, mute all alarms!”
The Klaxons became barely audible.
Tighe slipped his crystal on and an augmented-reality UI appeared before his eyes. It showed critical alarms projected over the 3D model of a spacecraft. The ship resembled a construction crane gone figure skating, spinning on its axis. It had three radial arms at its waist, and at the end of each was an inflatable flat-bottomed crew habitat—or hab—rotating at just under three rotations per minute to simulate one Earth gravity for the occupants. Tighe knew this generated considerable centrifugal load on the composite box trusses linking the habs to the ship’s spine.
The female voice announced, “Warning: asymmetrical thrust pattern detected. Spin-down aborted. Repeat: spin-down aborted.” Then almost immediately, “Imminent structural failure, Arm 2 . . .”
Harris looked up at the speakers. “What the hell is going on?”
“We need to stop our spin, and something’s preventing it.”
Tighe drilled into the 3D model and highlighted the source of the alarm: one of the ship’s rotating radial arms. At the end of that arm was Hab 2, a 42-ton habitat occupied by four of his fellow crewmen: Nicole Clarke, Yating Yu, Robbie Allway, and Paul Hagopian. Tighe was stationed in Hab 1 with Harris, Dr. Elizabeth Josephson, and Chelsea Black, while the third hab was an unoccupied workshop known as the Fab Hab.
Black, one of their upstairs hab mates, spoke over the ship’s comm link. “Hab 2’s comms are down. I can’t raise them.”
Harris got to his feet. “We should suit up.”
Tighe and Harris raced to their lockers and pulled on bright-blue flight suits. They flipped up the integral visor hood, zipping it closed at the throat, then grabbed emergency life support packs.
They clipped the hoses into the inputs and outputs of their suits, then activated oxygen.
Tighe checked his display. “Earth transmission delay is six minutes twenty-three seconds. We’re on our own for the next thirteen minutes.” He opened a long-distance channel. “Mission control, mission control, we have an imminent structural failure warning and an emergency spin-down abort. Please advise.”
The sound of people moving in the quarters above could be heard through the polymer decking.
“Let’s strap in.”
Tighe and Harris both spun the wheel of the crew quarters pressure door and pulled it open. They raced out into the inflatable hab, which resembled the inside of a giant white propane tank. It was a squat circular tower 11 meters in diameter and 8.5 meters tall, its height divided into two levels by static-free decking. The hab walls were fashioned from a 50-centimeter-thick laminate of Kevlar, Nextel, Nomex, Viton, polyethylene foam, and insulation, designed to withstand the impact of micrometeorites.
The hab’s upper level, where Josephson and Black’s crew quarters were located, contained the ship’s galley, medical bay, and living area, while the lower level held four crew workstations, a shower, a bathroom, and life support systems. The aluminum-walled, water-lined core contained the crew quarters and formed the center of the circular hab.
As they reached their workstations, Tighe and Harris strapped in to their seats. Josephson and Black slid down the gangway from the second-floor crew quarters and raced to their own workstations on the far side of the hab.
Black called out, “How’s it looking?”
Harris answered, “Not great.”
Tighe activated his workstation. The bridge of their spaceship wasn’t at all like what he’d imagined from countless sci-fi movies and TV shows. Instead it consisted of Spartan office cubicles, the chairs bolted to the deck and equipped with seat belts and shoulder harnesses. There wasn’t a control board, window, or porthole in sight. Lidar scanners at the corners of Tighe’s otherwise empty work desk captured his hand gestures as he instantiated a virtual UI. Holograms of software-defined light flickered into existence in front of him.
The entirety of the ship’s UI was virtual—projected onto Tighe’s crystal and also onto the crystals of his crewmates. This eliminated the need to boost tons of display screens, dials, buttons, wiring, and switches into orbit—not to mention replacement parts. Instead, their spacecraft was equipped with dozens of extra pairs of lightweight, rad-hardened viewing crystals and a bank of redundant computer servers. Bridge virtualization made it possible to control the ship from just about anywhere on it, and it also gave mission controllers back on Earth the ability to remotely fix problems and to push improved versions of the ship’s UI and OS out to the crew.
Harris’s desk faced Tighe’s, and they gazed in horror at a shared hallucination of their stricken ship—a detailed hologram of which floated between them, with rows of red alert codes scrolling to either side.
Harris tapped at a virtual console. “Lockout doors sealed. Emergency power systems on standby.”
Tighe glanced at an emergency procedures checklist that appeared out of thin air to his left. “Life support set to—”
The ship’s voice cut in. “Spin-down abort overridden. Emergency spin-down commencing. Repeat: emergency spin-down commencing. Prepare for microgravity.”
Tighe called across the hab, “Who overrode the abort?”
Something beyond the walls rumbled as dozens of CO2 thrusters on the ship’s radial arms fired to slow its spin. The hab shuddered, and a rocking motion began.
Suddenly dozens more critical alerts popped up on the displays. More alarms sounded. The hologram in front of Tighe grew intensely red as stress increased on Radial Arm 2.
The ship’s voice said calmly, “Warning: asymmetrical thrust pattern detected.”
Harris called out, “Truss 2 is deforming!”
Tighe shouted, “Rosey, halt emergency spin-down!”
“Two crew members required for override.”
“Rosey, belay that order!” Josephson shouted back. “J.T., if we don’t slow our spin, we’ll break apart.”
“The ship aborted the spin-down for a reason. We need to figure this out.”
“There’s no time.”
Harris clicked through different CCTV monitors providing exterior views of the ship. “Broken gas lines. Arm 2 thrusters are off-line.”
Tighe shouted, “If we fire thrusters on the other arms, Arm 2 might shear off.”
“And if we don’t fire thrusters it will tear off anyway.”
Harris shook his head. “I officially have no idea what to do in this situation.”
The hab shuddered once more as the lateral thrusters continued to fire.
Radial Arm 2 on the holographic model turned a deeper shade of red. A louder rumbling sound reached them through the superstructure. Harris and Tighe looked up at the ceiling. The creak and then groan of strained metal echoed somewhere above.
“That does not sound good.”
Black’s voice came through the ship channel again. “Thirty-two more seconds . . .”
Suddenly there was a loud boom, and then the floor jolted—the entire hab shook. Watching the 3D model, Tighe saw the girders of Radial Arm 2 bend, then break off from the ship. The arm spun off into space, and the rest of the ship began to wobble like a woozy top.
New and more urgent alarms began to shriek. Red lights flashed.
“Warning: structural failure. Warning: Hab 2 life support failure. Warning: ship off station. Warning: unstable spin state.”
Josephson shouted, “Evacuate to the Central Hab!”
Harris sighed. “Hab 2 lost.”
Tighe unclipped his harness and stood. “C’mon, Mike. Let’s get to the airlock.”
“Christ . . .” Harris leaned forward and rubbed his face. “I’m so fucking tired.”
The lights suddenly dimmed, then went out—but the holographic displays remained. Emergency lights came on in the background. The sounds of twisting metal sounded all around them. Tighe and Harris watched in dismay as the rest of the ship’s 3D model came apart—pieces sailing in different directions.
Harris threw up his hands dramatically. “Game over, man. Game over!”
The emergency lights turned off and the overhead lights came up. The virtual model of their ship was suddenly replaced by the dour face of mission control manager Gabriel Lacroix. His French accent was thicker than usual as he said, “Mission failure. Ship lost with all hands. Ze cause?” The holographic head loomed larger as he leaned forward. “Yooman arror.”
Tighe sat back down. “Gabriel, would it be possible for us yoomans to catch a few winks before the hotwash?”
“It is called a ‘hotwash’ because we do it while the experience is still hot. In space you will not have the luxury of catching a ‘few winks’ if the ship is coming apart. That goes double for you, Harris.”
“Yeah, yeah . . .”
* * *
—
Tighe and Harris carried trays of rehydrated rations across a small windowless dining hall. They joined a table with Abarca, Morra, Clarke, Chindarkar, and Amy Tsukada, a Japanese American from Seattle whom Tighe had met on his first day of candidate selection. Everyone wore blue utility jumpsuits.
Morra gazed down the table as Tighe sat down. “You destroy the ship again?”
Tighe picked up his fork. “It was more of a group effort this time.”
Chindarkar pointed to Harris’s tray. “What’d you get, Michael?”
“Turkey and noodles. Anyone’s guess which is which.”
“Wanna trade desserts?”
“For cobbler? Forget it.”
Clarke leaned forward. “Amy, I like your ink.”
“Oh, thanks.” Tsukada sported large tattoos of Japanese calligraphy and anime characters on her neck and chest.
“Isabel says you’re a chemist back in the world. What sort of work do you do?”
“I’m in carbonyl metallurgy.”
She received blank looks.
“It’s a process for refining metal.”
Tighe said, “That can’t be the only reason they chose you. You a BASE jumper or stunt pilot or something?”
“Nothing as exciting as that.” Tsukada poked at her food. “It’s just that I really need to get into space. To find some relief.”
“Relief? From what?”
“From a noise I hear. I’ve heard it since I was a little girl. A constant, droning hum. In fact, that’s what it’s called, ‘the Hum.’ I hear it right now, and I hate it.”
“The Hum.” Abarca asked, “What is it . . . an ear disorder?”
“Doctors told my parents it was neurological—‘spontaneous otoacoustic emissions.’ They prescribed medications, but the Hum never went away. In fact, it’s only gotten worse—especially in remote places like this.”
Chindarkar looked horrified. “How awful.”
Clarke pondered something. “I’ve read about this, but I’ve never met anyone who’s actually heard the Hum.” She turned to the others. “Free oscillation of the Earth’s tectonic plates. It creates an ultralow-frequency resonance.”
Tsukada nodded. “That’s right.”
“They aren’t sure why some people can hear it—or feel it—but some people unfortunately do.”
Tsukada added, “A few commit suicide. The rest suffer. But I have other plans.” She pointed up.
Tighe said, “You think space will bring you relief.”
“I distract myself with music whenever possible. But a few years ago, I suited up to go into a vacuum chamber at work, and the Hum disappeared.”
Abarca said, “The vacuum.”
