gravity well, and they don’t decelerate. So tell me, am I going to get teased for this?”
“I don’t think so,” said Victor.
“I should forget about it?”
“Edimar, I think we’re looking at a spacecraft.”
“Nothing goes that fast.”
“Nothing made by humans.”
At his words, Edimar visibly relaxed and a silly grin came to her face. “So I’m not crazy to think we’ve got us an alien starship? A near-lightspeed ship coming into our system and slowing down?”
“Either it’s a lightspeed ship or somebody repealed a whole bunch of laws of physics. And either it’s alien or some corporation or government is experimenting with a technology so advanced it will make them masters of the universe.”
“So I should call a grown-up.”
“You should call the Council. Or I will. This isn’t just important, it’s so important that they’ve got to make decisions about it right away.”
“What’s the hurry?”
“Because it might very well be headed for Earth.”
CHAPTER 2
Lem
The Makarhu wasn’t built to be a science vessel, and it certainly wasn’t built for war. It was a mining ship, property of Juke Limited, the largest space-mining corporation in the solar system. But Lem Jukes-mercifully short for Lemminkainen Joukahainen, heir to the Juke Limited fortune and captain of the ship-was prepared to use the Makarhu for any purpose if it meant turning a failing mission into what the Board of Directors would consider a success.
It was an hour after sleep-shift had ended, and Lem was floating weightless in the observation room, waiting for an asteroid to explode. The asteroid was a small thing, a “pebble” no bigger than Lem himself, lazily moving through space half a kilometer from the ship. If not for the ship’s laser lights dotting the asteroid’s surface and illuminating it, it would have been completely invisible against the backdrop of space, even with the help of the special scope glasses Lem was wearing.
Lem lowered the glasses and looked out the window to his right. The cargo bay doors were open, and the gravity laser was in position, pointing out into space at the pebble in the sky. Lem couldn’t see the engineers from his position, but he knew they were down in the lab adjacent to the cargo bay, prepping the laser for the test.
According to the Juke research team that developed it, the gravity laser-or glaser as they had come to call it-was supposed to be the future of the space-mining industry, a revolutionary way to break surface rock and dig deep through the toughest asteroids. It was designed to shape gravity in much the same way a laser shaped light, though since gravity was not reflective, it worked on very different principles; understanding them was way below Lem’s pay grade. The company had spent billions of credits to build this prototype, and quite a bit more to keep it a secret. Lem’s job was simply to oversee the field tests. A cakewalk of a mission.
That is, if the gravity laser would ever turn on. It was the first deep-space trial, so Lem expected the delays born of extreme caution. But it was beginning to seem as if something was actually seriously wrong with the device and everyone was afraid to tell him.
“I’m waiting, Dr. Dublin,” Lem said, keeping his voice pleasant.
A man’s voice sounded in Lem’s earpiece. “Just a few moments, Mr. Jukes. We’re nearly ready to begin.”
“You were nearly ready to begin ten minutes ago,” said Lem. “Didn’t anyone print the word ‘on’ beside the right button?”
“Yes, Mr. Jukes. Sorry for the delay. It shouldn’t be long now.”
Lem rubbed his forehead just above his eyes, fighting back the beginnings of a migraine. The ship had been in the Kuiper Belt for six weeks now, where failure would have no witnesses and there would be no massive object to be torn apart if the reaction got out of hand. But the engineers, who were supposedly ready before this flight even launched, had produced nothing but delays. Their explanations might have been completely legitimate, or they might have been sesquipedalian bushwa. Because of the huge time lag in sending and receiving messages to the Board of Directors back on Luna, Lem had no idea what the Board-or his father-were thinking, though he was fairly certain it wasn’t unbridled joy. If Lem wanted to preserve his reputation and return to Luna with any sense of dignity, he needed to shake things up and produce results fast. The longer the wait, the greater the suspense, and the bigger the disappointment if the glaser failed.
Lem sighed. Dublin was the problem. He was a brilliant engineer but a terrible chief engineer. He couldn’t stand the idea of being blamed for any mistake, so he aborted tests at the slightest sign of malfunction. Dublin was so worried about damaging an expensive prototype or pushing it beyond its capacity-and therefore costing the company its investment-that the man was paralyzed with fear.
No, Dublin had to go. He was too cautious, too slow to take risks. At some point you had to make the leap, and Dublin didn’t know how to detect that moment. Lem needed to send positive results to the Board now. Today, if possible. It didn’t have to be much. Just some data that suggested the gravity laser did something like what it was designed to do. That’s all the Board wanted to hear. If it needed further development before it could be used commercially, fine. At least that gave the impression that Lem and the crew were doing something. That isn’t asking too much, Dr. Dublin. Just give me one semisuccessful test. The gravity laser worked in the lab back on Luna, for crying out loud. We didn’t come all the way out here without testing it first. The damn thing worked before we left!
Lem tapped a command into his wrist pad and ordered the drink dispenser to mix him something. He needed a boost, a fruit concoction laced with something to drive off the headache and get his energy up.
He sipped the drink and considered Dublin. Lem couldn’t fire the man. They were in space. You can’t send a man packing when he has nowhere to go-though the idea of jettisoning Dublin into space did put a smile on Lem’s face. No, Lem needed to take less drastic measures. Get a little creative.
Lem tapped his wrist pad again, and the wall to his right lit up. Icons and folders appeared on the wall- screen, and Lem blinked his way through a series of folders, diving deeper into the ship’s files until he found the documents he was looking for. A photo of a Nigerian woman in her late fifties appeared, along with a lengthy dossier. Dr. Noloa Benyawe was one of the engineers on board and had been with Juke Limited for thirty years, or as long as Lem had been alive, which meant she had endured Lem’s father Ukko Jukes, president and CEO, for as long as Lem had. It was like meeting someone who had survived the same grueling military campaign, a sister in suffering.
No, that was too harsh perhaps. Lem didn’t despise his father. Father had done great things, achieved great wealth and power by relentlessly pushing those around him to innovate, excel, and squash any obstacle in their way. Unfortunately, Father had run his family in much the same way.
Is this another of your tests, Father? Did you give me an engineering team led by a butterfly-hearted ditherer to see if I could handle the situation and get a more deserving and reliable person in place? It was just the kind of thing Father would do, laying snares along Lem’s path, creating obstacles for him to overcome. Father had always worked that way, even when Lem was a boy. Not to be cruel, Father would say. “But to teach you, Lem. To toughen, you. To remind you that as a child of privilege, no one is your friend. They will claim to be your friend, they will laugh at your jokes and invite you to their parties, but they do not like you. They like your power, they like what you will become someday.” That was child rearing to Father. Parents shouldn’t coddle their children when bullies pester them at school, for example. Real parents like Father pay a bully to torment their child. That teaches a child the harsh truth of life. That teaches a child how to use subterfuge, how to build allies, how to strike back at those stronger than themselves, not with violence necessarily, but with all the other weapons at a child’s disposal: public humiliation, fear, the scorn of one’s peers, social isolation, everything that cracks a bully and pushes him to tears.
Lem wiped the thought away. Father wasn’t testing him. There was too much at stake for that. No, Lem
