James P. Hogan - Endgame Enigma

ENDGAME ENIGMA

by JAMES P. HOGAN (1987)

[VERSION 1.1 (Sep 04 04). If you find and correct errors in the text, please

update the version number by 0.1 and redistribute.]

To EDWARD JOSEPH, my third son in a row,

who, after three daughters in a row,

restored my faith in mathematics by proving

that the law of averages does work in the end,

provided one gives it long enough.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to the following people for their

help and advice in writing this book:

Brent Warner of NASA's Goddard Space Center, Maryland, who spent many

hours thinking about pendulums, gyroscopes, vortexes, and rotating geometries,

and gallantly placed his sanity at risk by sharing for a while the weird kind

of world that s. f. writers inhabit. Jim Waligora of NASA's Johnson Space

Center, Houston, for information on the physiology of low pressures and

spacesuit design. Steve Fairchild of Moaning Cavern, Murphys, California, for

thoughts on just about everything and his invaluable penchant for devil's

advocacy. Lynx Crowe of Berkeley, California, for suggestions on security

methods. David Robb of Applied Perception Technologies, Minneapolis, for lots

of data on space colonies. Cheryl Robinson, who helped hatch Lewis and his

companions from a pile of barren notes. Owen Lock of Ballantine Books, for

sharing some of his immense knowledge of the world of military intelligence.

Kathy Sobansky, for her assistance with Russian language translations. And

Takumi Shibano, for his guidance in penetrating Oriental inscrutability.

And then there was Jackie, who doubled as electrician, plumber, handyman,

auto mechanic, gardener, chauffeur, and carpenter, as well as being a mother

to three small, rowdy boys -- and never once complained about the hours a

writer works. She made the book possible; they made it necessary.

PROLOGUE

The MIG-55E fighter-bomber, code-named "Grouse" in Western military

parlance, was rugged, easy to maintain, and equipped for a variety of

ground-attack roles, making it popular for counterinsurgency operations among

rulers of the Third World's teetering Marxist regimes. Western military

intelligence was interested in it, too, because it carried the first

production version of the Soviet OC-27/K target-designating and -tracking

computer, which the counter-measures experts were anxious to learn more about.

Like most Soviet aircraft, ships, and ground units, the MIG carried a

black box that could compute its position accurate to a few feet anywhere on

the Earth's surface with respect to an electronic navigation grid laid down by

Soviet satellites. What Pilot Officer Abel Mungabo didn't know when he took

off on a training flight from Ziganda, one of the two Madagascar states into

which the former Malagasy Republic had fragmented, was that aboard the

Australian destroyer cruising fifty miles offshore was a group of professional

mischiefmakers with some highly classified equipment, which in conjunction

with transmissions from the USAF high-altitude bomber that just happened to be

passing over at the time, was causing Mungabo's black box to come up with

wrong numbers. He turned back after becoming hopelessly lost over the ocean,

but missed the tip of Madagascar completely and ended up off the coast of the

South African mainland. There he ran out of fuel and bailed out.

What happened after that was never cleared up officially. Mungabo swore

upon his return that he saw the plane go down in the sea. The South Africans

said he must have been mistaken: the plane crashed on the shore and exploded.

They even produced pieces of twisted wreckage to prove it. But the Soviet

engineers who arrived in Ziganda to examine the remains were suspicious. The

damage, they said, was more consistent with demolition by explosives than with

a crash. And it seemed strange that not one piece of the more sensitive

electronics devices aboard the aircraft had been recovered. The South Africans

shrugged and said that was the way it was, and the ensuing diplomatic

accusations and denials continued for a while longer.

But by that time, specialists in several Western military laboratories

were already acquiring some interesting new toys to occupy them. The OC-27/K

target-designating and -tracking computer found its way to the US Air Force

Systems Command's Cambridge Research Labs at Hanscom Field, near Bedford,

Massachusetts.

CHAPTER ONE

Dr. Paula Bryce brushed a curl of blond hair from her forehead and

studied the waveforms on one of the display screens surrounding her desk. She

tapped a code into a touchpad, noted the changes in one of the pulse patterns

and the numbers that appeared alongside it, and commanded a reconfiguration of

the circuit diagram showing on another screen. "That's better," she said.

"D-three has to be the synch. E-six is coupled capacitively to the

second-stage gate."

On a bench a few feet away, the Russian computer had been stripped down

into an assortment of frames and subassemblies that were now lying spread out

amid tangles of interconnecting wires and test leads. Ed Sutton, another Air

Force communications scientist, peered through a microscope at a detail of one

of the boards and repositioned a miniature probe clipped to it, "That's it

again with the input on both," he said. "Anything now?"

Paula looked at the waveforms again. "Aha!"

"Bingo?"

"It's triggering.... Threshold's about point two of a volt."

"So it is differential?"

"Come and look."

"But not for noise rejection?"

"Uh-uh. That wouldn't figure."

Sutton straightened up from the microscope and sat down on the stool

behind him. He pivoted himself to look across in Paula's direction. "It's

starting to look the way you guessed," he said. "Initialization for a smart

missile with its own inertial reference, updating from the aircraft's

grid-fix."

Paula nodded. "Air-to-ground fire-and-forget."

"That was a pretty good hunch you had."

"Not really. It's a modification of something I've seen before. This

version would permit tighter evasive maneuvers while attacking." Paula shifted

her gaze to a screen displaying text, and began updating her notes. As she

tapped deftly at the pad, glancing intermittently at the display of the

reconstructed circuit and the data alongside, she was aware of Sutton staring

over the cubicle between them. Almost thirty, she was slimly built -- bony

almost -- beneath her lab coat and jersey, with fair, wavy hair, which

although cut to neck-length and battened down with a clip, broke free into

unruly wisps wherever it got the chance. Her features were clear, but somewhat

sharp with a prominent bone structure, and her nose a shade too large and her

chin too jutting to qualify her as glamorous. Nevertheless, men found her

candid, light-gray eyes and the pert set of her mouth attractive in a way that

derived from her poise and the self-assurance that it radiated, rather than

from looks. "Challenging" was how many of them said they found her. She didn't

find that especially complimentary. If they meant formidable as an object of

conquest, it wasn't exactly flattering, while if it referred to something

ego-related in themselves that they saw her as potentially instrumental in

resolving, well, that wasn't her mission in life or reason for existing. The

real challenge was to recognize that the challenge was to avoid being placed

in either of those categories. It was too subtle to be articulated, for the

whole purpose of the game was to divine its rules, but the few who could pass

-- those were the really interesting ones.

"Good reason to celebrate, maybe," Sutton ventured after a while.

"Really?" Paula continued entering her notes. Typically, he was waiting

for her to put the proposition. Just for once, why couldn't he simply say

straight out what was on his mind?

He skidded off along the tangent, "Cher's away this week -- gone to the

Catskills. We've got relatives and a vacation lodge up there, you know. Good

skiing area in winter. Ever get up that way?"

"No, I never did," Paula sighed inwardly with exasperation. The stupid

thing was that Sutton wasn't too bad a guy. His being the man had nothing to

do with her refusing to help him out, or with any hangup about who was

supposed to make a first move to whom. It was simply that the matter seemed

important to him, while it wasn't especially important to her. Therefore the

game required him to do something about it. That was what the challenge was

all about.

"Did you ever try skiing?" he asked. Before Paula could reply, a

call-tone sounded from the flatscreen terminal on the desk. She touched a key

to accept, and as she swung the unit toward her, a picture appeared of a

pinkish, heavy-jawed face with crinkly yellow hair combed back from its

forehead. It was Colonel Raymond, who headed the section. He was framed

against a background that included part of a picture hanging in a conference

room two floors up from the lab.

"Paula, I'm with some people here in G-eighteen. We've, ah, got something

we'd like you in on. Can you get up here right away?"

"Sure thing.... Oh, will you want the latest on Squid?" "Squid" was the

code word for the OC-27/K computer.

"No, it's nothing to do with that. But how's it going?"

"We're progressing."

"That's good," The screen blanked out.

Paula closed the log on the other screen, got up from her chair, and

tidied together the papers she had been using. "I've updated the log for

Charley and Bob when they get back from lunch," she called back from the door

as she left. "And yes, skiing's okay."

Sutton shook his head and looked back at the disemboweled Soviet

computer. He wasn't sure why he persisted in making a fool of himself from

time to time like this. It made him uncomfortable, and he was always secretly

relieved inside when she turned him down or the subject changed. But somehow

he felt better for going through the motions of having tried. God alone knew

what he'd do if she ever took him up on it.

The picture showing on the large wallscreen facing one end of the

conference table was of a prototype habitat designed to test ideas and

technologies for living in space. It housed over twelve thousand people, in an

immense torus more than a mile in diameter. Six spokes -- three thick, major

ones alternating with three thinner ones -- connected the torus to a central

hub structure. Part of the image was shown in cutaway to reveal miniature

cityscapes and residential areas alternating with multilevel agricultural

sectors and parks. At intervals around its exterior, the colony carried the

Red Star emblem of the Soviet Union. The Soviets had named it Valentina

Tereshkova -- after the first woman to go into space, more than fifty years

previously. They claimed that it symbolized the peaceful goals of their space

program and would stand as a showpiece to the world of what a Marxist economic

system could achieve. Completion of "Mermaid," as the structure was code-named

by the Western intelligence community, was targeted for the following year, to

coincide with the centenary celebration of the Russian Revolution.

Gerald Kehrn, from the staff of the assistant secretary of defense for

international security, was more concerned about the colony's suspected hidden

function, however. He was an intense, restless man with a bald head and a

heavy black mustache, who radiated nervous energy and paced agitatedly below

the screen as he spoke. "Then, about a year ago, an East German defector

appeared in Austria, who claimed to have worked on construction of Tereshkova

from 2013 to 2014. He was brought back to the States, and in the course of

further interrogations described some of the hardware that he'd seen, and in

some cases helped install."

Dr. Jonathan Watts, a civilian adviser with the decade-old US Space

Force, who had come with Kehrn from the Pentagon, interjected for Paula's

benefit, "Big-mother X-ray lasers. Nuclear-driven microwave pulses strong

enough to melt metal. A giant accelerator track buried inside the main ring --

what you'd use to feed batteries of matter-zappers." He tossed up his hands

and shrugged. His face was constantly mobile in a rubbery kind of way,

changing expression constantly behind black, heavy-rimmed spectacles. "Other

parts of the place seemed to be for launching ejectable modules, probably

fission-pumped egg-buster lasers. And according to other reports, certain key

parts of the structure are double-shelled and hardened against incoming

beams."

"Yet nobody else has seen a hint of all this," Paula remarked. "Enough

visitors have been through the place, haven't they?"

"Just on the standard tour," Colonel Raymond said from his seat opposite

Watts. "They only see what they're allowed to see. The place is over three

miles around, not counting the hub. There'd be enough room backstage to hide

the kinds of things we're talking about."

Paula nodded and looked again at the image on the screen. Except for its

inner surface -- the "roof" facing the hub -- the main torus was not visible

directly; it moved inside a tire-like outer shield of sintered lunar rock

which, to avoid needless structural loading, didn't rotate with the rest of

the colony. The shield was to exclude cosmic rays. Supposedly. Or was that

another part of the defensive hardening? The question had doubtless occurred

to other people too, so she didn't bother raising it.

In the center of the group, informally chairing the proceedings, was a

broad-framed, craggy-featured man with a dark chin, moody eyes, and gray,

wiry, short-cropped hair. He was Bernard Foleda, deputy director of the

Pentagon's Unified Defense Intelligence Agency, and had arranged the meeting.

The UDIA was essentially an expanded version of the former Defense

Intelligence Agency, now serving the intelligence needs of the Space Force in

addition to those of the traditional services. He had said little since

Paula's arrival, tending instead to sit back for most of the time, watching

and listening impassively. At this point, however, he leaned forward to take

charge of the proceedings again.

"Obviously this was something we had to check out." Foleda spoke in a

low-pitched, throaty voice that carried without having to be raised. "We put a

lot of people on it. To cut a long story short, we succeeded in recruiting one

of the people who worked on Tereshkova -- a Russian, who was code-named

'Magician.'"

Paula's eyebrows lifted. "As a source? You mean you actually got

yourselves an inside man up there?"

Foleda nodded. "Luck played a part in it. He was someone we'd had

connections with for a while. The details don't matter. Magician was an

electrical maintenance supervisor, which meant he moved about a lot -- exactly

what we wanted. He worked there for almost six months. But as you can imagine,

somewhere like that wasn't the easiest place to get information back from. The

snippets he did get out to us were tantalizing. He indicated that he'd

collected a whole package together, but he couldn't get it down to us. The

security checks on everybody who came back for leave or whatever were too

strict. He wouldn't risk it. But what he said he had up there sounded like

dynamite. We christened it the 'Tangerine' file."

"Dynamite," Jonathan Watts repeated, tossing up his hands again. "Weapon

specs, pictures, firepowers, ranges, configuration data, parts lists,

blueprints, test data, installation dates... the works."

Foleda resumed, "Then somebody had an idea." He stopped and then looked

at Colonel Raymond. "It might be better if you explain the technicalities," he

suggested.

Raymond turned his head toward Paula. "It involved the packet-header and

checksum protocols used in the Soviet communications link down from Mermaid."

Paula nodded. The terms related to data-communications networks.

In many ways, communications networks are like road systems: their

purpose is to move traffic quickly from one place to another with minimum

congestion. They therefore present similar problems to their designers. Speed

is important, of course, and so is safety, which means essentially the same in

communications as it does on highways: what arrives at a destination should

bear as close a resemblance as possible to whatever left the departure point.

Also important in both fields is using system resources efficiently,

which means avoiding situations in which some channels become choked while

others are not being used at all. Thus, morning commuters seek out alternative

routes for getting to work, which spreads traffic out over all the available

roads, to come together at a common destination. A standard technique for

sending large files of information from one computer to another through a

communications network works the same way. The sending computer breaks the

file up into data "packets," which follow different routes through the network

to the destination, with different computers along the way deciding from

moment to moment which way to route any given packet, depending on the

conditions at the time.

To guard against errors due to interference, equipment faults, or other

causes, the computer at the sending end uses the data content of a packet to

compute a mathematical function known as a "checksum," which it sends along

with the message. The receiving computer performs the same calculation on what

should be the same data and compares its checksum with the one that has been

sent. If they match, then the message is clear; or more precisely, the chances

against it are astronomically remote.

Raymond went on, "We figured out a way to transmit Magician's Tangerine

file down, using the Russians' own Earthlink. Basically the idea was very

simple: rig the packets to carry a bad checksum, which means that the

receiving Soviet ground-station throws them out as garbage. But NSA is

watch-listing the mismatches. Get it?"

Paula was already nodding and smiling faintly. It was neat. When the

checksums failed to match, the receiving computer would simply assume that the

message it had assembled was corrupted, disregard it, and signal for a repeat

transmission. What Colonel Raymond was saying was that the checksums for the

packets containing the Tangerine file would be deliberately miscalculated.

Therefore they would, in effect, be invisible to the message-processing

computers at the Soviet ground-station. But the computers in the US National

Security Agency's receiving posts in Japan, Australia, Britain, and elsewhere,

which eavesdropped on the Soviets' communications all the time -- and just

about everyone else's, too, for that matter -- would be programmed to look for

just those mismatches. Thus they would be able to intercept the information

that the Soviet system ignored. (It went without saying that it would be a

simple matter to abort the retransmission attempts for each packet after a

couple of tries, to avoid getting the system into a loop that would otherwise

go on forever.)

"Tricky, though," Paula said. "Magician would have to get inside the

communications center up there."

"He was a maintenance supervisor," Raymond reminded her. "That part was

okay."

"Yes, but it would involve actually getting into the system software

somehow, and tampering with it. Was that really Magician's field?"

Foleda gave a heavy sigh. "You've hit it, right on the nail."

Paula glanced around quickly. "I take it from the way we're talking that

this didn't work out."

"We worked with what we had," Foleda said. "Magician wasn't an expert on

Soviet software. But we got the job down to what seemed like a straightforward

procedure, and he was confident he could hack it.... But something went wrong.

He got caught. The last we heard he was back in Moscow -- in the Lubyanka

jail."

"The Tangerine file wasn't transmitted?" Paula said.

Foleda shook his head. "Nothing ever came through."

"Presumably they got him first," Kehrn said, still below the wallscreen.

He came back to the table and sat down at last.

Paula looked away and gazed at the image of Valentina Tereshkova again

while she thought over what had been said. So, if it was a disguised battle

platform, in combination with the other weaponry that the Soviets were known

to have deployed in space, it would outgun everything the West had been

putting up for the past decade. But why did that call for the meeting in

progress now, and in particular her presence at it? Then it came to her

suddenly what the meeting was all about. She jerked her head away from the

screen to look at Raymond and Foleda. "That file is still up there," she said.

"Right on the nail, again," Foleda confirmed. "Magician managed to get a

message through to us after he was arrested -- it doesn't matter how -- saying

that as a precaution, he created a backup copy of the file. Apparently the

Soviets never found out about it." Foleda gestured at the screen. "It's up

there right now, inside a section of Mermaid's databank, stored invisibly

under a special access code. We have that code. What we don't have is somebody

up there who would know how to break into a Russian computer system and use

it."

Paula stared hard at him as the meaning of it all became clear. They had

risked using a non-specialist, and the gamble had failed. But by a small

miracle, the prize was still waiting to be claimed. This time they wanted an

expert.

She swallowed and shifted her gaze from one to another of the faces

staring back at her questioningly. "Now wait a minute..." she began.

CHAPTER TWO

"Now wait a minute," Paula had repeated in the privacy of Colonel

Raymond's office an hour after the meeting ended. "My degrees are in

electronics and computer communications. I'm a scientist. If I wanted to get

mixed up in this kind of business I'd have joined Foleda's outfit or the CIA,

not the Air Force."

"But this job needs your kind of expertise," Raymond had said. "And the

way they've got it figured out, it wouldn't really be that risky."

"Tell that to the last guy who tried. He's in Lubyanka prison."

"This approach would be different. You wouldn't have to get inside the

computer center -- or anywhere that'd be all that difficult."

"Except a Soviet space station nearly two hundred thousand miles out."

"Kehrn explained how that could be arranged.... Paula, just promise that

you'll take a few minutes to think over how important this is, would you,

please? It's not only the potential military value of getting detailed

intelligence on those weapons. The political implications are monumental. The

unaligned great powers that we've seen emerging in this century -- Japan,

China, Brazil, the Southeast Asian alliance -- have tended to regard both us

and the Russians as equally crooked in the long run, and played us off against

each other. But this would prove to the world, irrefutably and finally, that

all the assurances we've been hearing about how the Soviets have changed but

nobody understands them are just as much horseshit as everything else they've

told us over the years. It would show that we are not victims of paranoia...

that our suspicions all along have been grounded in reality, and their aim is

still to spread their system worldwide, by force or otherwise, as much as it

ever was. But against the lineup of global power that this could mean, they'd

be powerless -- ruined politically. This 'Pedestal' operation that Foleda's

people are talking about could be it, Paula, the end of the line for them --

kaputski. That's what this job could mean."

That was when she had made her first mistake, she decided: she'd agreed

to think about it.

A male voice that incongruously blended an American twang with a guttural

Russian accent spoke from a loudspeaker somewhere overhead and interrupted her

reverie. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are now approaching Valentina Tereshkova

and should be docking in approximately twenty minutes. Arrival formalities

will be minimal, and there will be refreshments while we hear a short address

in the hub reception lounge before commencing our tour. The Soviet Ministry of

Space Sciences hopes that despite the limited space aboard the transporter

craft, your journey has been comfortable. Thank you."

On the viewscreen at the front of the cabin, Tereshkova was almost a full

circle, highlighted as two brilliant crescents slashed in the black background

by the Sun off to one side. Around Paula, the other passengers were stirring

and becoming talkative again, and those who had been asleep were stretching,

yawning, patting hair back into shape, and refastening ties and shirtcuffs.

There were a hundred or so altogether -- mainly political and military

figures, scientists, and reporters from Western and Asian nations -- invited

on a special visit to the colony to commemorate the Soviets' centennial May

Day. The voyage from the low-Earth-orbiting transfer platform where they had

boarded the transporter from surface shuttles had taken over fifteen hours.

Although this was probably the first spaceflight for most of them, the initial

excitement had lasted only so long, even with receding views of Earth coming

through on the screen periodically to relieve the unchanging starfield. Now

there was something new to see.

"Time to wake up," she murmured to the man sprawled in the seat next to

her, a still-open magazine resting loosely between his fingers. "We're here.

Welcome to Orbitskigrad."

The man whom she still knew only as Lewis Earnshaw stretched against his

restraining belt, held the pose for a few seconds while emitting a long-drawn

mixture of a yawn and a groan, and relaxed. Then he rubbed his eyes, sat up in

his seat, and looked around. "Home, home at Lagrange?" he murmured.

He was in his late thirties, solid but athletically built, and had

straight dark hair parted conventionally, brown eyes that were alert and

humorous most of the time but could be reflective when the occasion demanded,

and a clean-cut, square-jawed face with a tight, upturned mouth. This kind of

thing was his business. He was a civilian agent from a department that Bernard

Foleda ran somewhere in the murkier depths of the UDIA, known nebulously as

the "Operations Section." Like Paula, he was wearing a badge that identified

him as representing Pacific News Services of California, USA.

"Quite an experience, eh, General?" someone inquired in the row behind

them.

"More boring than driving across Texas," another voice drawled loudly in

reply.

"The people don't seem exactly wild with excitement," Earnshaw said,

closing the magazine and slipping it back in the pouch in front of him.

"That's what you get when a generation raised on electronics grows up. Gotta

have new stimulation all the time."

"Reality can be a good substitute," Paula answered dryly.

"So long as you don't get hooked on it."

She had met him before their first briefing together by some of Foleda's

spooks from the Pentagon underworld. After Colonel Raymond finally talked her

round, transfer orders had come through with amazing rapidity, assigning her

to temporary duty with the UDIA. She had moved from Massachusetts to

Washington within a week, and after a crash course in regulations and

procedures for off-planet duties, she found herself in orbit aboard a USSF

manned platform as one of a dozen trainees undergoing practical

familiarization with a space environment. Talk about personal backgrounds had

been discouraged, so she had learned little about her classmates, including

Earnshaw. At that time, before their cover identities had been invented, she

had known him only by his class pseudonym of "George," and had herself been

known to the rest simply as "Joyce." It only occurred to her later that the

entire class had probably consisted of final candidates for the same mission.

She wondered how many people that last dozen had been selected from. Foleda

certainly wasn't taking any chances this time.

Earnshaw had struck her as capable and self-assured, which she respected,

and the two of them had worked well together on group tasks, despite her

stubborn independent streak and his perennial skepticism and refusal or

inability to trust anyone, which at times exasperated her. On the other hand,

he didn't talk when he had nothing to say, and he wasn't especially bothered

about maintaining an image and having to be popular all the time. It was a

pity he was in a profession that bred such cynicism and suspicion, she

remembered thinking. He might have made a good scientist.

"What attracted me into science as a career?" she had answered once to a

question he'd asked her. It was something they'd talked about during time off

and breaks between classes aboard the space platform. "I guess because the

challenges were demanding intellectually. It doesn't leave room for

pretentiousness or self-delusion, as you get in a lot of other areas -- I've

never been able to stand phoniness. It deals in facts and truth, its

conclusions are unambiguous, and it tests them against reality."

"The rest of the world has a lot to learn, eh?" he'd said, in the way he

had of talking absolutely neutrally when he wanted to -- usually when they

drifted into something controversial -- with no discernible expression or

intonation, neither approving nor disapproving, agreeing nor disagreeing,

encouraging nor discouraging. Somehow it always had the effect of opening her

up more. She'd wondered if it was a result of gumshoe training.

"The rest of the world runs on deception and manipulation -- what else

can you say?" she'd answered. "It's what people perceive and believe that

matters. Whether or not the perceptions and beliefs happen to be true has

nothing to do with it. What matters is that everyone buys the product, votes

the right way, and behaves themselves. I don't know who I blame most --

cynical leaders, or the gullible people who listen to them. The irony of it

all is that I should end up here, working for this outfit." Yet, here she was.

On another occasion, while they were having lunch together in one of the

Pentagon's cafeterias during the three-week preparation period after they were

selected, she had said, "You see, the whole problem with the world is that

fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so

full of doubts."

"Who said that?" Earnshaw had asked.

"Bertrand Russell." She'd waited a moment while he thought it over. "A

philosopher."

"Philosopher, eh?"

"Sometime back in the last century."

"Just like that?"

"What do you mean, 'just like that'?"

"That's how he said it, just like that?"

"I guess so."

Earnshaw had eyed her skeptically, then asked, "How come he didn't put 'I

think' at the end of it?"

The pressure of the seat against her back increased as the transporter

came round and decelerated into its stern-first final approach. The image on

the screen had enlarged noticeably. Then the view cut to a close-up of the

central part of the hub structure with its array of communications antennas,

and the docking port's outer doors swinging open to admit the ship. The sight

of the bay inside loomed larger, ablaze with arc lamps, provoking a twinge of

nervousness inside her. Her second mistake, she decided, had been to go ahead

and think about it after she'd promised to.

A quarter of an hour later, the passengers collected their coats, bags,

and other belongings, and exited through the forward door, moving awkwardly

and using handrails for assistance in the low-gravity conditions near

Tereshkova's axis. They emerged onto a carpeted ramp, where smiling attendants

in gray uniforms were waiting to usher them through to the reception lounge.

CHAPTER THREE

"Dobro pozalovat u Valentinu Tereshkovu," the Russian official said when

they came to the front of the short line at one of the reception booths. There

had been a baggage check when they transferred from the surface shuttle in

Earth orbit. He peered at their badges and switched to English. "Welcome to

Valentina Tereshkova," Earnshaw handed him their two document holders. The

Russian extracted a plastic card from Paula's, passed it through a reader,

checked the information and picture that appeared on a screen in front of him,

and entered a code into a keyboard. Then he repeated the process with the

other folder. "Ms. Shelmer and Mr. Earnshaw, both from Pacific News Services,

Los Angeles, California." He studied the screen again for a moment. "Yes,

these are correct. What is the purpose of your visit?" His tone was one of

personal curiosity rather than of officialdom.

"Special coverage for a consortium of West Coast agencies," Paula

replied. "We've scheduled a number of special-feature items on this for the

next few weeks."

"I see. Well, we must be sure to take good care of you. Can't afford any

bad publicity, eh? I'm sure that Americans know all about that." The Russian

passed across two pre-prepared ID badges in red frames. "Wear these at all

times for your own convenience and safety, and remain within the designated

visitor zones, which are clearly indicated. The stewards wearing red armbands

are at your service if you have questions or need assistance." He indicated

the camera and other equipment that Earnshaw was holding. "Pictures are

permitted anywhere within the visitor zones. Thank you, and enjoy your stay

with us. Next, please."

Still loping in bounds more than walking -- because of their negligible

weight near the spin axis -- they followed a short ramp to a gate that led

from the arrival area into the reception lounge. Groups of people were already

forming around tables set, cocktail-party style, with assorted hors d'oeuvres,

breads, meats, and cheeses. Earnshaw's wrist unit, which looked like an

ordinary computer-communicator, beeped almost inaudibly as they passed through

the gate. He stopped a few feet into the lounge to press something on it and

consult the readout.

"That Russian was quite civilized," Paula said as she stopped alongside

him. "Are you sure we're in the right place? I thought they were all supposed

to be monsters."

"Today, they're all on their best behavior," Earnshaw said. "Shop window

to the world. Come on, let's get a drink and eat." They began moving toward

the bar that had been set up by one wall. "Oh, incidentally" -- he made it

sound like an afterthought -- "you've just been X-rayed." Fortunately, the

special equipment they were carrying had been designed with that kind of

possibility in mind, and would have shown nothing unusual.

For the next half hour or so, the guests munched on snacks and stretched

their legs as guests of the Soviet press agency Novosti, while two speakers

delivered a double act that alternated welcoming remarks and a preview of the

coming tour with a lament for misunderstood Marxism. Then the party moved on

out of the reception lounge into a large, brightly lit gallery with corridors

leading off in all directions, railed catwalks above, machinery bays below,

doorways everywhere, and a confusing geometry in which verticals converged

overhead and the floor was visibly curved.

As they waited to board elevators for the half-mile "descent" to the rim,

Paula looked around to reconcile the surroundings with the published

construction plans that she and Earnshaw had spent hours memorizing. She

wondered if it was significant that the tour didn't take in any part of the

hub system. The same thought seemed to have occurred also to a woman behind

them, who was wearing a European Space Agency badge. "Excuse me," the ESA

woman said to the red-armbanded steward by the door as the group began

shuffling forward into the elevator.

"Madam?"

"Are we going straight down to the ring now? We're not going to see

anything up here first?"

"There is really nothing of special interest to see up here."

"Nothing? That's surprising. What's behind that far bulk-head, and the

pipes back there, for instance -- between here, where we're standing, and the

next spoke?"

"Only storage tanks -- fuel for the Earth and lunar transporters, various

agricultural and industrial chemicals, and water."

"You must store an enormous amount of everything. There's nothing else?"

"Just storage tanks, madam."

Earnshaw glanced at Paula and raised an eyebrow. That was where the

launchers for some of the ejectable modules that Jonathan Watts had talked

about were supposed to be located.

After the long flight up from Earth orbit, the return to normal

bodyweight as the elevator moved out to the rim felt like a debilitating

heaviness creeping through their bodies; but in another respect, it was

reassuring to emerge walking naturally again.

Valentina Tereshkova contained three built-up urban zones inside its main

torus, which in the official bureaucratese of the predistributed literature

were designated, mind-bogglingly, "high-density residential-occupational

social units." The bureaucrats didn't have to live there, however, and the

Russian guides who accompanied the visitors down from the hub referred to them

simply as "towns." Each was clustered around the base of one of the major

spokes, which formed a central tower disappearing through the roof to connect

to the hub. Alternating with the three major spokes were three slimmer ones,

which terminated in the middle of the agricultural zones between the towns at

built-up transportation and processing complexes known simply as Agricultural

Stations 1, 2, and 3.

The town that the party arrived in was called Turgenev, and constituted

the administrative and social center. The tour began with a stop high up on

the central tower above the main square, where the guides led the visitors

through from the elevators onto an outside terrace for a general view of the

colony. Paula judged the roof to be fifty to a hundred feet above where they

were standing. The cross-section of the rim was not circular as in a true

torus, but flattened like a wide automobile tire, with the roof stretching

away horizontally for a distance on either side before it curved over and down

to become the sides. Illumination came from two rows of what looked like

immense, golden-glowing, venetian-blind slats receding upward and out of sight

with the sweep of the roof -- louvered reflectors that admitted light from an

external mirror system. Power for the colony's industries came from nuclear

reactors located at the hub.

Below the terrace, a ribbonlike miniworld curved away and upward between

enclosing walls a little under a sixth of a mile apart. The nearer buildings

were higher, merging into a monolith of tiered plazas, ramps, pedestrian ways,

and bridges around the tower to form the town's center. Architectural styles

were varied and followed light, airy, clean designs incorporating plenty of

James P. Hogan - Endgame Enigma

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