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).
2. Left solar system 1987. First man-made thing to leave solar system.
3. 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.
4. 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.
A. The stars are small “black dwarfs.”
B. They are going round each other once every 40 seconds, and take 350,000 years to go around the Sun.
C. 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).
D. The stars have a big magnetic field. Radiation comes from stuff spinning off the stars and trying to get through the field.
E. 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).
5. 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.
6. The woman who discovered the stars wants to call them Scylla (skill-a) and Charybdis (ku-rib-dus).
7. 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.”
