Critical Mass, page 27
No reply came. Tighe did not wait, however, and he unbuckled his robot’s harness, pushing away from the seat to float toward the secondary IDSS standard docking port in the side of the transit craft. This hatch was much smaller than the square hatch at the bow, but it was the only port that matched the Chinese craft.
Tighe’s robot gripped a stationary handle with one hand while moving the hatch lever with the other. In a moment, he pulled the hatch inward, revealing the exterior of a second, sealed hatch. After what seemed like an eternity, there were sounds on the other side, and then the Chinese hatch pushed inward, revealing a forty-something taikonaut whom Tighe recognized. A cosmonaut, also seemingly in his forties, leaned in to look as well.
Both men stared in confusion, and Tighe suddenly remembered he was a robot and not a human—at least from their perspective. It was a testament to Alan Goff’s robotic engineers that he’d forgotten. Tighe gestured to himself, and the Talos robot mimicked his movements. “Good evening, Colonels. This is a telepresence robot. I’m here to search you and your bags before you board our transit craft.”
They turned to each other, speaking hurriedly in Mandarin. After a moment the taikonaut said, “We will not submit to a search. We are diplomats.”
Tighe replied, “You’re observers, not diplomats, and that’s not the agreement. The Americans got searched and so will you.”
The Russian colonel frowned. “We refuse.”
“Then have a nice trip back home.” Tighe grabbed the hatch and started to close it again.
The men both shouted and pushed against the hatch. “You have no right to search us.”
“You’re not getting on this transit craft or Clarke Station until I search you and your bags, and by the way: you owe me a spaceship, Fei.”
Jin’s voice spoke sharply in Mandarin next to Tighe back at the station and moments later his voice sounded on the radio in the Chinese craft. The taikonaut, Colonel Fei, stiffened, but released the hatch.
Tighe said, “You guys coming or not?”
The men spoke briefly to each other, then nodded.
Tighe motioned. “Pass the bags first. One at a time.”
The taikonaut exhaled in irritation at the indignity, then grabbed a pack and passed it through the hatchway. He spoke in English. “You will face consequences for this violation of our sovereignty.”
“Listen, pal, I traveled to the far side of the Sun in a spacecraft that looked like it was built by IKEA. Does it sound like I worry about consequences?” Tighe’s robot took the cloth pack and opened its zippers.
After thirty minutes of searching through their bags and then searching them personally (to their even greater indignation), Tighe declared them clean—or at least not carrying any obvious weapons. Instead, he found numerous electronic devices, all of which he sealed in a Faraday bag that Ramón Marín had given him. The complaints continued, but he assured them the devices would be returned once they were determined safe.
Only then did Tighe let the colonels board the transit craft, and as soon as they were buckled in, the vessel undocked from the capsule and started its return journey to Clarke Station.
The visitors examined the interior of the much roomier transit craft with interest, but Tighe sat inscrutable, as only a robot could be.
In a few minutes they eased into the huge station docking bay and the two colonels spoke excitedly in Mandarin with each other, clearly fascinated by the proceedings as the automated collars moved the transit craft about. When they docked, Tighe unfastened his safety harness and floated to open the hatch. “Thank you for flying Catalyst Spacelines.”
Tighe and the colonels emerged into Clarke Station’s gate area, and their amazement at the structure was cut short by the presence of Jin, Yak, Chindarkar, and both of the Space Force observers—all of whom floated at the entrance. The majors and the colonels exchanged courtesy salutes—the first time Tighe had seen this in microgravity and which he found amusing for some reason.
Then Colonel Fei nodded toward Jin. “Again I meet you on an unregistered spacecraft.”
“Colonel Fei. Colonel Voloshin. Welcome to Clarke Station.”
“Jin Han, your decision to construct this vessel was regrettable, and now you have created a potential dispute in deep space between China, the United States, and Russia.” He gestured between Lawler and Cadot, Voloshin, and himself.
Jin stared hard. “Colonel Fei, regardless of your personal opinion, while you are here, do not forget that I am captain of this station.” Jin gestured to Tighe’s robot and to Chindarkar. “Dr. Chindarkar and Mr. Tighe are its first officers. You two are observers only and here at our discretion.”
Fei glared. “This station is illegal and was built with materials stolen from—”
“If you continue in that line, I will send you back to Earth immediately.”
“You would not dare. There would be grave consequences.”
“Perhaps for me, but most definitely for you. We both know you have never had a black mark on your record. So perhaps you are unaware of how they work; if I send you back to Earth, all that will be remembered is that you failed your mission. Is that what you want?”
Fei remained silent.
“Very good. Then let us not have this conversation again.” He motioned. “Now come below. My crew and I have work to do.”
CHAPTER 22
Distraction
CLARKE STATION POPULATION: 12
DAYS TO RYUGU DEPARTURE: 1,166
Several weeks later, life aboard Clarke Station had become downright medieval, with the crew forced to circumvent the plumbing system entirely. Instead, they resorted to using chamber pots in the habs. These pots were emptied into a printed, resealable polymer drum, a wholly disagreeable process, and drained on a regular basis into the central water-treatment system at the core of the ship. This entailed wheeling the drum of sewage onto the elevator and transferring the contents in microgravity through sealed hose lines.
So completely had the plumbing system failed that daily ablutions had to be performed with bottled water carried in from the central supply tanks, using plastic basins with hand towels, otherwise the station drain lines would back up at unpredictable intervals. As inconvenient and demoralizing as these procedures were, it at least eliminated the odors and health risks that had plagued the habs up until now.
Weeks earlier, mission control had still been working with Sevastian Yakovlev on a proposed plumbing fix, but he’d injured himself when the blade of a metal cutter shattered in microgravity, piercing the ulnar artery in his left arm. One-handed, he managed to apply an ad hoc tourniquet, but had lost a good bit of blood before Dr. Josephson got to him. As a certified EMT, Tighe assisted in the North Hab med bay as she sutured Yak’s artery, then sterilized the wound with a cold plasma wand—a device whose spear-shaped blue flame terrified the cosmonaut.
“Don’t be such a baby, Yak! It’s excited electrons, not a real flame.” She waved her finger across it, even though it resembled a blowtorch. After sterilizing his wound, she sealed the gash with medical glue and placed Yak on bed rest for a week.
In response, mission control put a moratorium on all plumbing work, and that’s where it stood. Tighe, meanwhile, found globules of dried blood floating in the pump room for weeks afterward.
Difficulties of life on the station were beginning to accumulate. Tighe suspected the encrypted intel reports sent back to Earth by the station’s four international observers were scathing in their criticisms, and such opinions often surfaced during evening meals, which had become a forum where the American majors and the Chinese and Russian colonels debated among themselves everything from station mismanagement to the sovereignty of cislunar space.
However, the observers didn’t know half of what was going wrong. Tighe often worked with the station’s supervisory control and data acquisition (or SCADA) system, doing maintenance, and it held hundreds of fault or “MIL” codes on a dozen subsystems, from electrical to life support to thermal. And unlike the Konstantin’s early system failures, these faults were real. Worse still, the station was developing an imperceptible, though significant, wobble in its rotation, quite possibly related to the plumbing and water distribution problems. It was a well-kept secret for now, but wouldn’t be if it got worse—in which case they’d have to spin-down the station and figure it out in microgravity, with all the attendant health risks and operational complications that would cause.
Fortunately, the Rosette lunar cycler swung through L2 on its monthly orbit, bringing Catalyst’s Red Team, the second crew sent up by mission control. Red Team consisted of five people: Hoshiko Sato, a former electronics engineer for the Japanese space agency (JAXA), here to build superconducting coils for the mass-driver; Marco Lemetti, an Italian carbonyl chemist sent up to supervise construction of the station’s regolith refinery; Nicolau Ivorra, a metallurgist (and sculptor) from Spain, here to assist both Sato and Lemetti; comms specialist Chelsie Birk, a second Australian, here to maintain communications gear; and finally Dr. Jaqueline Ohana, a former NASA flight surgeon—meaning there would now be two medical doctors on station. The new arrivals brought the crew count up to seventeen—thirteen civilians with four international observers.
Despite the primitive conditions, morale was still high among the Blue and Red Teams; glitches notwithstanding, they were serving on the most advanced space station ever built and executing an ambitious plan at the edge of Earth’s gravity well.
Sato had her work cut out for her; Robert Ecklund’s mass-driver design called for thousands of superconducting coils to be manufactured to exacting tolerances, then wrapped in yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) high-temp superconducting tape, a supply of which had been shipped up on the cycler. According to the schedule, Sato and her team had only ten months to complete the work.
Meanwhile, Birk, the comm specialist, sought out the reclusive Ramón Marín and thereafter the two of them were usually seen reviewing schematics or working on communications equipment. Except one time when Tighe encountered Birk moving alone through South Hab holding some sort of electronic device that warbled and whooped at intervals.
Like all the crew, Birk was physically fit—in fact, exceptionally so—and attractive, though aloof in her demeanor. Despite her standoffishness, Tighe needed to understand what she was up to. So he pointed to the device. “What is that, Chelsie?”
She glanced up and spoke with a more pronounced Aussie accent than Balter. “This is my cobber. Detects wireless transmitters. Microphones. Cameras. Things like that.”
“So a bug detector.”
“You might say that.” Then she reached into her pocket and placed in Tighe’s hand several dime-sized devices with follicle-like wires extending from them. “Good thing, too. Turns out Clarke Station has a bit of a pest problem.”
Tighe examined the items. “These are listening devices?”
“Cameras. Stealthy. They upload their video in bursts in the wee hours. Usually.”
The devices were unmarked. “Where did you find these?”
“Outside the data center. Lavatory. Conference table.”
“Can you figure out who placed them?”
“Unlikely. I could buy these things by the dozen over the Internet. We’ll just need to be more careful searching new arrivals in the future.”
Tighe felt angry—mostly at the international observers. But then, he didn’t know which ones or if they were even the culprits. “Do Captain Jin and Priya Chindarkar know about this?”
“Not yet. Perhaps you could tell them.” Birk took the devices back. “In the meantime, I’ll hold on to these. Ramón will wanna have a peek.”
Tighe nodded. “I’ll make sure they know.”
“Beauty, thanks. Now, if it’s no bother, I’ve got heaps to do.” With that she continued scanning.
Tighe watched her go and realized they should have been doing this months ago. There might even be several people planting the devices. What could they do even if they identified the culprits—send them back to Earth? Maybe it was better to just improve security procedures and have Birk keep scanning for anything that got through.
Despite such serious issues, Tighe, Jin, and Chindarkar were often pulled away from mission-critical elements like the refinery or lunar base components. Instead they found themselves doing urgent but basic tasks: installing fire/safety sensors and emergency breathing apparatus stations in the habs. This equipment, too, had come up on the cycler, and was critical to the safety of the entire crew. Nobody else had time and Yak was still recuperating.
One day, while Chindarkar and Tighe installed smoke and CO2 detectors, Yak approached them, his forearm still wrapped in bandages, and displayed a news item from Earth, passing a virtual screen on their shared augmented-reality layer. “Look at this . . .”
Tighe glanced at what looked to be a blurry, distant black-and-white photo of Clarke Station displayed on some website; the headline above it blared “Top Secret Space Station Beyond the Moon!” “I’ll be damned. So word’s out.”
Chindarkar started reading through the article. “They even know the name.” Then she looked up with disappointment. “But they say it’s named after Arthur C. Clarke. Not Nicole.”
“We can correct that, but the news going public is going to turn up the heat on us, for sure.”
Yak raised an eyebrow. “Do not be so certain. Just because something is said does not mean is known.”
“What are you, Yoda now?”
“Misinformation.” He gestured. “This story has been up for half a day, and picked up by many conspiracy sites. Yet no major news outlet repeats it.”
Chindarkar looked up from reading. “But the photo . . .”
“Is like photo of Bigfoot. Or Loch Ness Monster. Yes?”
Tighe squinted. “It is a bit blurry.”
“Many people online are calling this fake news.” He gestured toward a couple of the international observers, disagreeing over something at a distant table. “The psyops campaign to discredit us is already quite effective. Regardless of who is behind it.”
“So you’re saying this news doesn’t matter.”
“I am saying, in order to keep secret, someone may have released actual image and claim it is real—but only on conspiracy news sites.”
Chindarkar said, “Ah. Like Joyce did with the Konstantin.”
“Precisely. It inoculates story from being able to be known.”
Chindarkar thought about it. “So even if video footage later leaks of this place, the story will have already have been debunked—and so it gets ignored a bit longer.”
“Da.”
Tighe shrugged. “Man, Earth is a messed-up place, but at least it means we won’t have the media coming at us. We’ve got enough to worry about already.”
* * *
—
In mid-March, Jin and Tighe were on a rare in-person EVA, tethered just outside the station hangar bay as they replaced a defective autodocking transponder. The EVA was necessary, as all of the Talos and other telepresence robots were busy on refinery or other construction work.
Here on the shaded side of the station, the view of the Moon, distant Earth, the stars, and the Milky Way galaxy was stunning—though it also rotated as the station turned. This close to the station core, spin-gravity was negligible, but motion sickness from the moving scenery could be a risk. Fortunately Tighe and Jin had plenty of experience with that from their years on the Konstantin.
Examining the station’s seamless metal hull above the hangar bay, Tighe couldn’t help but admire the name “Clarke Station” in meter-high gray letters. Below this, the word “Luxembourg” was centered in a smaller font, along with its flag. Kerner’s team had also taken to painting rows of flags along the top of the docking bay to represent the nationalities of everyone aboard, and there were now American, Chinese, Russian, Indian, Canadian, Australian, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Egyptian, Venezuelan, and British flags as well. Clarke Station was becoming a burgeoning international outpost in deep space.
Looking over his shoulder, Tighe saw the chandelier-shaped framework of the partially built solar power satellite sparkling in the sunlight. It was being erected near the supply yard and was about 125 meters high by 75 meters in diameter at its widest point. Inchworm-like robots moved about its hexagonal latticework. Electron-beam welding tools flashed occasionally and teleoperated mules came and went carrying materials.
Chindarkar’s voice suddenly came in over their personal, encrypted channel. “I thought you both should know that at this moment the Amy Tsukada’s rocket engines should be firing out at Ryugu.”
Tighe replied, “That’s right. That was today, wasn’t it?”
She was referring to the third robot tug they had prepared out at Ryugu. It was bigger than both of the first two tugs combined—and those had supplied the resources with which they’d built all of Clarke Station and were now using to build the solar power satellite and the mass-driver sections. The Amy Tsukada had to wait for a low-energy transfer window to open prior to launching back toward cislunar space. This multiyear trajectory was not viable for crewed flight—and thus, not an option for Abarca and Adisa.
Jin sighed. “Let us hope all its engines ignite—and that nothing has happened since we built it. We could really use those extra resources.”
“We’ll need to send out an interceptor to retrieve it when it arrives. It’ll be going into a lunar DRO tens of thousands of kilometers from here.”
Chindarkar asked, “What if it doesn’t show up in 2041? What do we do then?”
Tighe frowned. “What do you mean, ‘What do we do’? It doesn’t change anything. We go to Ryugu.”
Jin turned toward Tighe. “Yes. We three are prepared to take risks, however . . .” He gestured to the space station. “. . . there are other people involved now. What if someone dies helping us do this? At what point are we being unethical in trying to save two people?”
