Critical Mass, page 39
The more Jin searched, the more he found. There were video clips from the Konstantin mission as well, with all the other crew members replaced by deepfakes of taikonauts. It occurred to Jin that the propaganda department might have all the onboard video from the Konstantin—obtained from Joyce’s creditors.
And then Jin found deepfake interviews with his own doppelgänger on state media, where he praised the Party’s vision and leadership in space. Jin was being celebrated as a great hero back in China—captain of Nónglì gōngdiàn, a project being carried out by the CCP to save the world.
Much of the other international coverage of Clarke Station, though sensationalized, at least got the basic facts right: that a group of international commercial space pioneers were out beyond the Moon and had built a space station there and a mass-driver on the lunar surface. Where it got hazy was who initially financed the project and under whose authorization it was all built, with each major nation claiming a decisive role—along with some minor ones like Luxembourg (which, to be fair, actually did play a role early on).
Yak shook his head as he read through the media blitz. “They say success has many fathers—while failure is an orphan.”
Shortly thereafter all their inboxes filled with interview requests forwarded by Lukas Rochat.
There was no denying, however, that the existence of Clarke Station going public back on Earth stirred tremendous enthusiasm among the crew. They were all making history now and the excitement was palpable.
Entire profiles were written on Chindarkar, Tighe, Yakovlev, and Jin. Yet, the Konstantin spacecraft and the Ryugu expedition appeared to have been lost or forgotten by the Western media—dark territory without a mention.
Jin, Tighe, Yak, and Chindarkar sat at the conference table in South Hab, mulling over the implications of these developments.
Now that Clarke Station was no longer isolated from Earth, experts and CRISPR gene-editing tech had finally arrived via Macy’s Galleon cycler. Tighe was once more undergoing the specialized treatment, and he already looked much improved, sitting with them as usual. He looked up from reading an article. “It seems like the powers that be want Joyce’s secrets to die with him.”
Yak turned to Jin. “You are apparently great hero, Captain Jin.” He chuckled.
Jin rolled his eyes. “I had nothing to do with that propaganda.”
Chindarkar was reading through major websites in India—every one of which had a photo of her with her ISRO badge on its main page. She shook her head in disbelief. “It’s so strange that I’m famous now. I wonder what my family will think of this.”
Tighe sighed. “This is going to be a huge distraction to our work.” He glanced around at other crew members talking excitedly. “One we can’t afford. We were just beginning to make headway, and now the attention of the whole damn world is going to come down on us like a ton of bricks. I say we refuse all media interviews and just keep working.”
“What about Jin? Shouldn’t he deny those deepfake interviews?”
“Why? Nobody is going to convince anyone of anything down there. You do remember how Earth is, right? Let’s just stay focused on the challenges out here. At least they’re real.”
Yak was reading. “Hm. Lukas held another press conference on Cislunar Commodity Exchange. He is promoting lūna cryptocurrency—and carbon sequestration smart contracts.” He looked up. “CCE will apparently pay in lūna for each ton of CO2 pulled from Earth’s atmosphere.”
Tighe scowled. “Pay? With what? Jesus Christ . . . Lukas is probably the one who orchestrated this media blitz.”
Chindarkar looked at him. “So even after all he’s done for us, you still don’t trust Lukas?”
Yak added, “Lukas helped make Clarke Station possible. He did get us here.”
Tighe shook his head. “I don’t think he did that to help us. He and Erika Lisowski have their own priorities.”
Chindarkar looked dismayed. “That doesn’t mean they can’t be trusted.”
Jin stood. “Whether we trust them or not does not change our mission. We have work to do, and this media attention will soon blow over—when the world gets bored of us.”
Jin’s prediction proved incorrect, when a week later Dr. Fatima Patel, British geologist, former ESA scientist, and one of the three surviving members of Yellow Team on board Clarke Station, announced that she was pregnant. That she had, in fact, conceived the first human life in space.
CHAPTER 34
Conception
CLARKE STATION POPULATION: 34
DAYS TO RYUGU DEPARTURE: 788
RESOURCES LAUNCHED TO L2: 25,500 TONS
The Earth media frenzy over Fatima Patel’s pregnancy and the identity of the father—Nicolau Ivorra, a handsome Spanish metallurgist and sculptor who had returned to Earth with Red Team the month before—reached a fever pitch in the coming weeks. Fanning the flames was the charismatic Ivorra, father of the “star child,” who had been doing interviews all over, expounding on the profound implications of human life expanding into space. The pregnancy was main-page news worldwide, with millions upon millions of opinions bouncing around social media, for or against human development of space.
De-growth activists protested what they called the “plunder of the Moon” by billionaires and claimed that humanity would only despoil it like they had Earth—declaring that the only viable path for humans was to relinquish aspirations in space, reduce our population, and live in harmony with the planet we have.
Yak scoffed at this idea. “Who decides who gets to live and who does not in this ‘de-growth’ fantasy? History suggests such things are decided at gunpoint.”
Tighe suggested, “If these de-growth people want to reduce population, they should volunteer to be first.”
“Such people seldom do.”
However, the majority back on Earth praised the recent rapid progress in space, given the continuing droughts, floods, migrations, pandemics, and resource depletion from ongoing—and accelerating—climate change. It was a welcome contrast to the usual news, which had been almost uniformly bad.
Thus, endless articles were written about Patel’s background, education, political leanings. About the future prospects for child-rearing in space. The challenges. The implications for society.
By comparison, scant attention was paid to the death on station of a recently arrived member of Orange Team, an American engineer who was electrocuted in an accident while working on expansions to the station’s thermal power generation plant. Instead, his body was placed in the station’s ad hoc morgue in preparation for return to Earth (at the request of his family), and standard operating procedures were updated to avoid a recurrence.
Given that few crew members were well acquainted with the new arrival, his memorial service was lightly attended. Selective empathy seemed a side effect of the danger all around them, with the rite of passage being months of shared sacrifice.
Thus, attention quickly turned to more positive news—that, for example, funds were being raised back on Earth to lift healthy whole food to the far side of the Moon so Patel would not have to subsist on rehydrated processed meals for the term of her pregnancy.
Likewise, since the secret of Clarke Station was now out, the crew was growing impatient with having their comms back to Earth filtered and censored by mission control. They wanted direct two-way links back to Earth and to the Internet.
Tighe was against the idea. “We already have enough distractions with crew members reading and discussing the news about themselves. We don’t want them spending all their time posting on social media and taking interviews. Nothing will get done up here.”
Turning to Jin and Chindarkar, he said, “We should return Fatima to Earth. She and Ivorra could go on tour. Let the media frenzy continue down there.”
Chindarkar said, “She’s seven weeks pregnant, J.T. The g-forces of reentry would be too dangerous.”
Jin nodded. “Priya’s right.”
“We’re not seriously contemplating having Fatima come full-term and deliver a child on this space station, are we?”
Jin said, “What choice do we have?”
Tighe gestured to their unfinished, Spartan surroundings. “This is a frontier outpost, not a day care center. It’s filled with dangers even to full-grown adults. One was killed not three days ago.”
“Presumably infants won’t be wiring power junctions.”
Tighe leaned forward, speaking softly. “I think it’s the temptation of becoming a historic figure—of wanting to conceive and deliver the first baby in space.”
Jin raised an eyebrow. “You think she did this intentionally?”
Chindarkar said, “Birth control isn’t perfect.”
Tighe shrugged. “That won’t lessen the effect of galactic cosmic rays during the gestation period.”
Yak hmphed. “Radiation is like death—best not to be exposed to too much at a young age.”
Tighe: “Exactly. I mean, Priya, how am I the bad guy for not wanting a baby in the middle of all this? This station is meant for explorers. Babies must wait until true settlements are built in space.”
Chindarkar said, “Fatima’s pregnancy is a positive message for the world. People are hopeful about what it represents. That actually helps support what we’re doing up here, J.T.” She pointed. “In fact, her conception should go up on the wall.”
“The flight surgeons are monitoring every minute of the pregnancy like it’s some kind of experiment.”
“Pregnancies are always monitored. That doesn’t make this an experiment.”
Yak looked to her. “Isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s too late to send her back to Earth.”
“We should make sure it doesn’t happen again here on station.”
Yak looked alarmed. “Surely you are not suggesting celibacy?”
“No, but maybe the male recruits should have vasectomies.”
“J.T.! That doesn’t sound like any frontier I’ve ever heard of.”
He threw up his hands. “I don’t know. It’s just that this is a huge distraction to our purpose here, and while we might have resources coming in now, we’ve still got a huge number of obstacles to overcome if we’re going to make a 2042 rendezvous with Ryugu.” He then walked off.
* * *
—
A day later, Jin announced that Clarke Station would be “spun-down” for the first time in over a year so that telepresence robots could affix two of Julian Kerner’s robotic chemical vapor deposition mills at opposite poles of the station—onto the naked girders of East and West Habs. The spin-down would last just a few hours, but attaching the CVD mills would make possible the long-awaited completion of the station hull.
Kerner’s CVD mills were like large-format printers, except that their frames had been made to match the cross section of Clarke Station. They would be sealed around the girders and begin a process by which pure iron would depose into a slowly accumulating film of precisely formed hull plating, seamlessly encasing the station ring. As the metal deposed in the reaction chamber, the computer-controlled mill would slowly, imperceptibly advance, rolling along the newly finished hull, printing the station as it went.
More important, since the two CVD mills were symmetrical in mass, once they were clamped in place and started, Clarke Station could again be spun-up, and artificial gravity returned even as the construction continued.
CHAPTER 35
A Modest Proposal
CLARKE STATION POPULATION: 37
DAYS TO RYUGU DEPARTURE: 735
RESOURCES LAUNCHED TO L2: 35,000 TONS
James Tighe sat at a desk in his cramped quarters in South Hab, watching a virtual TV with Priya Chindarkar.
On-screen, Tighe’s brother-in-law, Ted Vinter, was being interviewed on a major American cable news show. An inset photo of Tighe on a caving expedition appeared alongside the man.
Vinter, as always, spoke authoritatively. “We always knew Jim was destined to do great things. Not everyone could see it, but I had a sense he was a visionary. I was the first person to invest in his ideas.”
Chindarkar sighed in exasperation. “Is he for real?” She turned to Tighe. “He thought you went to prison, not to Ryugu. He didn’t invest in you—he loaned you money. Your family is really something, James.”
Just then, Jin Han and Sevastian Yakovlev walked past, Yak motioning. “Come! It is time for you to see.”
“See what?”
“Come.”
Tighe dismissed the virtual TV window, and he and Chindarkar followed.
Yak led them to the elevator, where they rode to the station’s core. The four of them floated around the central gate compartment as he brought them not to the familiar North elevator, but to the West elevator—which ever since their arrival back in 2039 had been blocked off by steel panels, stir-welded to an airtight seal.
But now they could see elevator doors and a physical call button.
Yak beamed. “It is time!” He tapped the button.
After a moment an elevator arrived—with a ding. Everyone “oohed.” Then the West elevator doors opened.
Chindarkar said, “I can’t believe this is finally happening.”
Yak gestured for them all to get inside.
They floated into the elevator car. Tighe breathed in the odor of newly installed polymer fabric panels. Yak tapped the H4 button. The doors closed, and the elevator descended smoothly into the station’s spin-gravity well. In less than thirty seconds, the sensation of gravity returned, and they stood once more on the deck.
Yak boomed, “Welcome to our new home!”
The doors opened to reveal a wide steel-paneled floor, curving upward and away from them, with overhead LED lighting, bundles of wires, and mounting holes at intervals. There were no partition walls to break up the floor plan. It was all wide open.
They exited the elevator and moved out into the long upward-curving, echoey room.
Tighe shouted, “Hey!”
“Hey . . . Hey . . . Hey . . . Hey” returned.
Chindarkar turned around to see the room extending behind them, since the elevator column pierced the center of the floor. “It’s nice to have so much room!”
“Six hundred square meters. Forty long. Fifteen wide. Each floor.”
She sniffed the air. “And it doesn’t smell funky like South Hab—after a year of plumbing and HVAC problems.”
Jin asked, “East Hab has life support, too?”
“Yes—although East elevator is not yet operational.”
Tighe peered down a nearby spiral staircase. “The floors below are decked?”
“Let us go.” Yak motioned once more toward the elevator. They followed him inside.
Chindarkar looked to him quizzically, her hand near the buttons. “Where to?”
Yak said, “We are going to H2.”
She tapped the button.
Jin asked, “What is on H2?”
“You will see.”
The elevator descended for a moment, stopped, and the doors opened. As Yak led them out into the floor, they found themselves in what appeared to be a corporate lobby, replete with carpet and decorative paneling. The letters “CCE” as a stylized logo were stenciled on one wall, along with smaller letters spelling out “Cislunar Commodity Exchange.”
Tighe just stared. “You have got to be kidding.”
Yak spread his arms outward. “Official headquarters.”
“So this is what Ramón has been working on?”
“Along with Lukas’s designers back on Earth, yes. Is meant to project image of solidity.”
“Well, hell . . . for a spaceship it sure does. But I thought we were going to get some personal space.”
Yak gave him a look. “This entire hab is for us, J.T. For CCE, for Catalyst. For us to plan rescue mission. In privacy.”
The others exchanged looks.
Tighe said, “Okay, now we’re talking.”
Yak walked toward twin doors, opening them to reveal a conference room containing a dozen cushioned chairs, arranged around a boardroom table. “For private discussions. With so much interest in our activities back on Earth, it will be useful to not be in South Hab.”
Tighe and the others entered. Through their crystals they could see a wide virtual window in the conference room wall that looked out on a live exterior camera view of the Moon, Earth, and the bustling supply yard. “Very, very nice . . .” He sat down in a cushioned chair. “I could get used to this.”
Chindarkar and Jin did the same.
“Who made the chairs?”
“Chemists are making polyurethane foams now. Chem lab will expand in South Hab once other compartments are complete.”
Tighe looked up in alarm. “So we’re going to finish all the compartments?” He turned to Jin. “We could be using these resources to build the rescue ship.”
Chindarkar said, “J.T., we need more room to house the experts we’ll need.”
Yak sat down. “She is right, and metal resources are no longer our constraint. We have 4,000 tons of steel. Twenty-five hundred tons of aluminum. A thousand tons of titanium. These amounts will increase, and we have two years of time to design and build this ship. This will allow us to do much—you will see.”
Chindarkar added, “We’ll need scores more experts up here for the construction. This isn’t a last-ditch lifeboat we’re building this time. This vessel has to support us there and back, along with Isabel and Ade—and they might need medical attention.”
Yak interacted with virtual UIs. “And this is task I have been working on with Lunargistics and Julian Kerner’s team.”
