Michael Flynn - Falling Stars

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Also by Michael Flynn
In the Country of the Blind
The Nanotech Chronicles
Fallen Angels(with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle)
Firestar*
The Forest of Time and Other Stories*
Lodestar*
Rogue Star*
Falling Stars*
* denotes a Tor book
John Dunning,
for one heck of a novel-writing class too many years ago to mention in polite company
Characters
The van Huytens
Mariesa van Huyten, chairman-emeritus of Van Huyten Industries.
Barry Fast, Mariesa’s ex-husband.
Armando Herrera, butler at Silverpond.
Trish Niederman, Mariesa’s valet.
Christiaan van Huyten V, chairman of Van Huyten Industries and Mariesa’s older cousin.
Adam Jaeger van Huyten, Chris’s son, ex-president of Argonaut Labs.
Norbert Wainwright van Huyten, Mariesa’s second cousin.
The Coughlins
Chase Coughlin, Plank pilot with Pegasus Aerospace Lines.
Karen Coughlin, his wife, a teeping accountant.
Chase Coughlin, Jr., their son.
The Silver Apples
Jacinta Rosario, cadet.
Mother Linda Fernandez-Jacoby, director of the Torrance Refuge.
Lilly Katilla, Ginger, Tina, Visitacion — sisters at Torrance.
Darlene, a duenna.
The Pooles
S. James (“Jimmy”) Poole, computer security consultant.
Tanuja (“Tani”) Pandya, his wife, a novelist.
Steven James Poole, Jr., “Little Stevie,” their son.
Stassy, the cook.
Rada, the nurse.
The Carsons
Roberta (“Styx”) Carson, a poet and progressive.
Carson Albright, the future’s hope.
The Otters
Gar Rustov, copilot aboard LTVBuzz Aldrin .
Choo-choo Honnycott, copilot aboard SSTOHubert Latham .
Richard Sung-yi, flight engineer aboard LTVBuzz Aldrin and SSTOHubert Latham .
Lakhmid Singh, pilot.
Kenji Yoshimura, flight engineer aboard SSTOBobbi Trout .
Movers and Shakers
Nathan Rothschild.
Louis Dreyfuss.
Estéban Ortega.
Heinrich Schlossmann.
Prince al-Walid.
Ed Wilson, an entrepreneur, president of Wilson Enterprises.
Van Huyten Industries
Hamilton Pye, president of Ossa & Pelion Heavy Construction.
Correy Wilcox, president of Gaea Biotech.
Wallace Coyle, president of Aurora Ballistic Transport.
Marcel Reynaud, troubleshooter, turnaround expert.
João Pessoa, president of Daedalus Aerospace, Brazil.
Other Players
Chino Martinez and Ed TiQuba, a couple of dogs.
Marie, Wendy, and Victoria, pilot coordinators at Pegasus.
Yungduk Morrisey, cadet.
Blaise Rutell, president of the U.S.
Terrance McRobb, congressman from Illinois, head of the American Party.
Forrest Calhoun, superintendent of Glenn Spaceflight Academy.
Solomon Dark, presidential advisor, North American Planetary Defense Committee.
Ellis Harwood, a muscular progressive, head of The People’s Crusade.
13th Deep Space Wing, Experimental
Colonel Bob Eatinger, USAF-SO, commanding.
Leland (“Hobie”) Hobart, superconductor chemist for Argonaut.
Ladawan Chulalongkon, a scientist at Argonaut Labs.
Morris (“Meat”) Tucker, ZG rigger.
Billie Whistle, a cheesehead.
Dr. Robert Zubrin, program manager.
Operation Intercept
DSV Jackie Cochran
Captain Alexandra Feathershaft, mission commander.
Alonzo Sulbertson, engineer/copilot.
Bai Deng (“Peterson”) Ku, doctor/biologist.
“Bird” Winfrey, NDT technician.
DSV Billie Mitchell
Captain Chase Coughlin, command pilot.
Jacinta Rosario, engineer/copilot.
Flaco Mercado, technician.
DSV Igor Sikorsky
Captain Yvgeny Zaranovsky, command pilot.
Total Meredith, engineer/copilot.
Alois Frechet, geologist/physicist.
The Fingers
Norris Bosworth (“SuperNerd”).
Chen Wahsi (in Guangzhou, Guangdong Republic).
Pete Rodriguez (“Pedro the Jouster”).
Acknowledgments
One of the problems with writing “near future” SF is that the future has a pesky habit of creeping up on
you, unexpected-like. Induction caps for controlling computers with “brain waves,” for example, made at
least two appearances on TV news shows beforeLodestar was even finished. Aerogel manufacture in
ziggy was tried on STS-95 (while all the cameras were pointed at John Glenn). Digital cameras were
coming onto the market whileRogue Star with its “digital optical input devices” was in first draft. And
private companies were being contracted to manage public schools even asFirestar was in production.
“Neo-encephalitis” was named “West Nile,” instead.
As for privately built SSTOs … Gary Hudson (Rotary Rocket), Michael Kelly (Kelly Aerospace), Buzz
Aldrin (Starcraft Boosters), and others are currently vying to be the first civilian company to reach orbit and
The Artemis Project (a registered trademark of the Lunar Resources Company) plans a lunar mine.
“Artemis Mines” is mentioned in the text with their approval.
The world may not be quite ready for nanotechnology, but microtechnology is rolling along very well, thank
you. Dr. Stephen O’Neil, vice president of research at Micromotion, Inc., was kind enough to explain some
of the near-future potentials for micro-electromechanical devices (MEMS), such as the surgical
procedures andin vivo monitoring devices mentioned in this novel (and which, naturally, appeared on the
evening news before I got the copyedited manuscript back!). Craig Purdy, of NASA’s Goddard Space
Flight Center/Wallops Island, provided information and background on material extraction and microgravity
manufacturing, including on-site oxygen production from ilmenite. Dr. Robert Zubrin, of Mars Direct,
described the construction and operation of magnetic sails. My apologies to him for not going directly to
Mars.
Others helped out with various details. Stan Schmidt graciously determined the apparent size of Earth as
seen from the Bean: Kathleen Wong, Abdou Noor, and others provided bits of translation. David Hartwell,
editor of this series, gave helpful advice on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Most of all, to Marge Flynn,
who didn’t have to do anything to earn my eternal gratitude, but did anyway.
“It is by incremental steps that we enter into strangeness. We plant each stride on familiar ground little
different from yesterday. Only years later, looking back, do we see what a long way we have come.”
— Tanuja Pandya,Taj Mahal
FALLING STARS
2017-2023
PROLOGUE: Black Winter, 2017-2018
Musconetcong Mountain had barely abandoned its cloak of rust and orange when harsh, icy, northeast
winds ushered in a winter of unusual brutality. Sullen, black clouds rolled down again and again from the
northlands and the wind howled sleet and ice. The sky grew a perpetual, sullen slate and gave everything
a close, hemmed-in feel, as if a lid had been pressed over all the world. The Interstate vanished under a
shroud of snow and ice. It was not a gentle snow — not the hummocky, fluffy sort that filled with
sleighbells and roasting chestnuts and laughing children — but a gritty, ice-filled abrasive that stung
exposed cheeks and blasted them raw. You could cut your hands building snowmen.
All summer long and into the fall, Mariesa van Huyten had watched the dominoes topple with fascinated
horror. The economy dried and curled with the leaves; and fell with them, too, in the first, harsh knife
winds. Investors dropped Orbital Management and Klon-Am Holdings following revelations that OMC had
deceived telepresent operators and researchers with a virtual reality simulation and leased the same
volume several times over on Leo Station. They began dumping Pegasus when word leaked of CEO
Dolores Pitchlynn’s collusion with Klon-Am in fraudulent stock transactions. Then, as if fearing contagion,
they began selling Boeing and Matsushita, and other partners in the LEO Consortium. Bids on volume in
Leo Station dropped, sucking prices down all across Low Earth Orbit. Goddard, Tsiolkovsky, and the other
stations began cutting back. By October, Earthside toolmakers were hurting for directionally solidified
metals and chip-makers for gallium bismide. Supplies of Permovium began to dry up, leading to an
upsurge in neo-encephalitis.
The Dow fell below 12,000.
By the time the first bite of winter set in, unemployment topped ten percent, and men and women who
might otherwise have been blowing smoke, pharming genes, or hacking cheese were now hustling lunch
money. The Dip, they called it, hoping by name-magic to lessen its severity. Riots broke out in Cleveland,
the Bronx, and elsewhere — in January, in the bitter cold and knee-deep snow. Crowds bundled in down
jackets and moon boots set buildings afire — though perhaps only for the heat. The magtrain line that
wound through the valley below Musconetcong Mountain cut back to two trains a day, then ran
sporadically, then stopped entirely.
It was foolish to ponder individual blame. Adam Van Huyten often chastised himself for causing the Dip:
but his revelation of the fraud on Leo was only one factor among many. The Social Security crisis. Roberta
Carson’s announcement on the web of the oncoming asteroid. The federal shutdown of the orbital trade —
as if the answer to high blood pressure was to stop the heart. Even had Mariesa known of her cousin’s
plans and foreseen their consequences and forestalled his actions, the trigger would only have been
something else.
In itself, the Dip of ’17 was no great thing; not in the same league as 1893, let alone 1929 or 1873. It was
the timing more than the magnitude that mattered. For during all that long, cold, lonely winter the asteroid
called “the Bean” spiraled closer and closer to Earth.
Sleet curled across the flank of First Watchung Mountain outside the broad windows of the chairman’s
office at Van Huyten Industries. Mariesa van Huyten waited patiently and studied the eddies and whorls
while her cousin, Chris, dealt with yet another interruption. She did not envy the man on the screen, who
was, after all, only doing his job. Mariesa drank her tea. There was a woman reflected in the window: an
old woman with lines around her eyes, soberly dressed in dark winter worsted. She did not know who it
was.
“Of course, I understand, Chris,” the man on the pee-phone said. “We all face unexpected shortfalls; that’s
what a line of credit is for. To even out those little bumps. Though I guess what Dolores Pitchlynn gave
you was more like a pothole …”
Chris van Huyten never showed anger. He was never known to raise his voice or to pound the table.
When his frustration with fools and villains grew overwhelming, it showed only in a slightly stiffer bearing
and a tendency to esoteric sarcasm. Generally, he relied on an iron sense of fairness and an even more
iron sense of honesty. As those who worked most closely with him said, you might not like where you
stood with him, but at least there was no mistaking where that was.
“Pitchlynn, I can handle,” Chris said. “Strap on a parachute and shove her out the plane. On second
thought, no parachute. And she pays her own SEC fine. Bring Marcel Reynaud over from Ruger AG to
clean shop. Pegasus rides out a bumpy year, but she keeps flying. It’s the bureaucrats that’ve blindsided
me, Ira.”
Ira spread his hands. “They had to do something.”
“Did they? Okay, I can see the safety inspection on the station — Bullock may have cut more corners than
we know of — but, be honest, Ira: Who would do a more thorough job? The Orbital Safety Commission, or
the tenants and consortium partners, whose livelihoods — whoselives — depend on proper
maintenance?”
“It’s like the kids say, Chris. ‘No flubber on that one.’”
A moment of silence followed. Then Chris’s voice went flat. “You’re not going to fulfill your end of the
contract.”
Ira stopped smiling. “The bank’s in a liquidity crisis. Rutell’s Social Security bond issue is sucking the
capital pool dry.”
“Wonderful. On the one hand, they screw with the interest rates, like they did in ’29, and turn a market
crash into a full-blown depression. Meanwhile, with the other hand, they grab up all the spare change in
sight. It must be a rule: Secure all livery portals, subsequent to equine egress.”
“Chris, no offense, but you and I don’t have to worry about retirement. When the economy downshifted,
Congress lost a year’s lead time on the Social Security Reform Bill. Rutell had to act fast.”
“That’s what King Louis thought at Crécy. Congress should have had a bill years ago; but somehow
Boomer retirement still managed to take them by surprise.”
Afterward, Chris rejoined Mariesa by the window. “I guess you heard,” he said. He sounded, if not
cheerful, resigned. “There went our line of credit.”
But VHI’s operating budget was the last thing on Mariesa’s mind. “Solomon Dark told me that Rutell
sequestered the funding for the North American Planetary Defense Committee. He’s grabbing money
wherever he can find it and stuffing it into the Social Security mattress. ‘Just for the next quarter, until
revenues straighten out.’ But Solomon and I both think that’s optimistic.”
“How does the saying go? ‘When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s hard to stay focused on swamp
drainage.’ Six years is a lot smaller on the radar screen than the next election — or the quarterly P&Ls.”
“Dear Lord!” Mariesa’s hands balled into fists and she turned sharply to face him. “They would let the
planet be destroyed rather than lose an election?”
Chris took her by both arms. “Calmly, coz. The Bean isn’t a planet-killer; and most of them don’t really
believe it will hit us at all. They’ve been down that road before, and it’s always been false alarms.”
Mariesa broke loose from his grip. She ran a hand through her hair. “I have spoken to Solomon about it.
He says that Roberta’s Net-wide announcement about the asteroid probably turned the economic
‘adjustment’ into a panic …”
“Recession,” said Chris. “We don’t call them ‘panics’ anymore.”
“… but I don’t believe that. The market dip startedbefore Roberta made her speech. It must have been
something else.”
Her cousin spread his hands. “Water under the bridge in either case.”
“Chris …” She spoke hesitantly and faced the window while she did. “The reason why I came — your
pledge to SkyWatch — is it still good?”
“SkyWatch!” She heard the surprise in his voice. “But, you’ve found your ‘rogue star.’”
She turned to him. “We foundone. ”
He stared at her a moment and his right hand rose slowly to tug at his lower lip. He began to nod. “I see.
And if some of SkyWatch’s money winds up funding Planetary Defense programs, why it’s all one and the
same, right?”
“We cannot afford to lose who-knows-how-many months of planning just because the economy went into
an unexpected funk.”
A faint smile played around Chris’s lips. “Resurrect the old Prometheus team?” he said playfully.
She had not thought of that until this very moment and gave her cousin a sharp look, wondering how
seriously he had meant it. “We could do worse, you know.” There had been people on Prometheus who
knew the value of planning. And who might, given the new urgency, donate their time.
“Ah, well,” Chris said, “that pledge of mine was small change, anyway. It wouldn’t help VHI’s balance
sheet to take it back, and it might do some good where it is.”
“Thank you, Chris.” It did not matter how much she squinted. The reflection in the window would never be
that of the brash, neurotic, thirtyish girl who had once kick-started the future. It was someone else, now.
After six years in the wilderness, she wasn’t sure who it was who had emerged.
1.
Prometheus, Bound
As Lunar Transfer Vessel-02,Buzz Aldrin, passed above the dark expanse of the Sea of Fecundity,
Command Pilot Chase Coughlin eyeballed his progress against the landscape below. He watched the
Foaming Sea fall behind and the ship coast over the abrupt, bright highlands around Banachiewicz Crater.
On the money, he decided. A moment later, Gar Rustov, his copilot, confirmed their orbit against the
groundside navigation beacons.
Chase studied the twisted, colorless, alien surface, a country of lights and shadows: all blacks and whites
and grays. As the ship crossed the ridge between the Marginal and Smythe Seas, the white and gray
surrendered entirely and the terminator shrouded the Moon in an unrelenting night. A single gleam broke
the darkness where Artemis Mines nestled on the edge of the Smythe Sea.
At apogee, Chase hit the kick motor and theBuzzer entered Low Lunar Orbit. Used to be, back in Apollo
days, that the insertion took place out of contact with Mission Control and the world held its collective
breath until the ship came out from behind the Moon. Miss an insertion burn and you’d keep on going and
never, ever come back. Even back in ’09, when he and Ned DuBois had “moonstormed” in the oldGlenn
Curtiss , they had been out of contact at the critical times. Now Space Traffic Control had relays all over
Farside.
“We have entered LoLO,” Gar confirmed.
“Acknowledged.” Of course, what did “contact” mean? Only that now, if someone ever did miss a burn, the
world would know about it sooner rather than later.
“Artemis reports bucket is down rails,” said Rustov. Chase glanced at the clock. The catapult launch was
late by a few seconds, but not enough to affect closing distance or relative velocity. Chase had snagged
enough pods in his time to know when he had to tickle his orbit. Still, younever depended on gut instinct —
especially in ziggy, where your guts sometimes twisted inside out. He queried the navcomp and the
Artificial Stupid agreed that the rendezvous would indeed fall within the envelope.
Too bad. There were times when Chase wished for something a little more exciting than catching pop
flies. Something that would pump the old adrenaline; something that would take him out to the edge and
test his mojo.
“Docking collar D-as-in-dog-Three is prepped,” announced the flight engineer. Rick Sung-yi sat at right
angles and “above” the two pilots; but in ziggy, who cared? The teep helmet enclosing his head made him
look like The Human Fly. Telepresent, he could prep docking collars using remote-control waldos.
TheBuzzer was an ungainly craft — fully loaded, it looked like a bunch of grapes held together with
Tinkertoys — but it got the job done.
“How’s the balance?” Chase asked, not because he thought Rick would neglect TheBuzzer ’s center of
mass, but because Chase always checked everything. Tedious, but it wasn’t like he had something else
he had to do; and three times in the past anal-retentiveness had saved his butt. Not very dramatic, but he
was alive; so there were no complaints coming.
“Pod orbit is … in groove,” announced Rustov. He leaned back in his seat. “Close approach in twenty
minutes.” Chase set the countdown clock and the crew relaxed. Nothing to do now but wait.
“So.” Rustov turned his seat to face inboard. “Are you having sold your Pegasus stock?”
Chase shook his head. “Nah. I figure to hold on until the smoke clears.”
Rick Sung-yi flipped the goggles from his teep helmet. “Me, I’d sell.”
“Nothing wrong with the Old Gray Mare.” Chase patted the winged stallion logo on his scarlet coveralls.
“Pitchlynn ran a tight ship. Too bad she was seduced by the Dark Side.”
“That won’t impress the turkey herd,” Sung-yi answered. “They spook easy. How much has the stock
dropped in the last week?”
“Don’t matter none. It’s still higher than when I bought it.” Chase hadn’t bought it, exactly: it had been part
of his comp package. But, still …
Below, dawn was a knife edge west of Riccioli. Off to the south, a gleaming line thrust two hundred meters
from the ringwall into Grimaldi Flats. “Is new catapult,” Rustov told them. On the telescope viewscreen
robots and waldos slid a coil module onto the quenchgun’s inner tube. “Superconducting coils,” Rustov
explained. “Coil ahead of payload attracts, and one behind repels. Bing, bing down tube —” His two fists
moved in tandem left to right. “Is how they move maglev trains.”
“I know the guy who made that possible,” Chase said. “Leland Hobart — Hobie, we always called him.
Back in school, we thought he was dumb as bricks, but he was only thinking deep, you know.”
“Never heard of him,” said Rick.
Rustov turned and looked at Chase. “You mean ‘Hobie, the Master of Cool’? You were in school with
him?”
Chase Coughlin, Hot Pilot, did not impress Gar — who was, after all, something of a hot pilot himself. But
Chase Coughlin, Classmate of Leland Hobart, was another story. Chase grinned. He’d have to tell Hobie,
next time they crossed orbits.
“Is almost no metal in catapult,” Rustov told Sung-yi, “because barrel coils induce wery high
circumferential currents. And ‘slinky’ springs between barrel and outer tube not only take recoil but also
make long heat path for dissipation.”
Chase caught the F/E’s eye. “Hey, Rick, I thoughtyou were the engineer here.”
Sung-yi shrugged. “Everyone has a hobby.”
“Yeah? Mine’s women.”
“Right. How many in your collection?”
“Well … okay, one. So far. But —”
Sung-yi laughed. “But Karen’s more than you can handle anyway.”
Rustov turned from the viewport as the catapult site fell behind and TheBuzzer soared out over the dark
soil of the Ocean of Storms. “Someday,” he said, “they move ships with quenchguns. Shooting iron pellets
behind at great velocity, ship moves forward. Action, reaction.”
“Until then, Gar,” said Chase, “we’ll set you in the afterlock with a peashooter.” Sung-yi laughed.
“Lobbing those canisters up onto L-1 will make pickups easier,” the flight engineer admitted. “We won’t
have to duck down here to LoLO to make the retrieval. Save two klicks delta-V, easy.” It was well known
that an F/E would sell his grandmother for half a klick.
“Ifthe cans don’t fall off the saddle,” Chase pointed out. “L-1 is unstable.”
“They will be using spin stabilization,” Rustov said, “and apolune kick motors. Cans will be reusable, too.”
“Reusable?” said Chase. “You mean we’ll get to lug the empties back to the Moon? Man, this job is a thrill
a minute.”
“Be glad it isn’t,” said Rick soberly.
They raised the Earth coming around the western limb of the Moon just as the countdown clock kicked in
and the Artificial Stupid announced the five-minute warning. Rick flipped his teep goggles back in place
and Chase and his crew swung back to their workstations.
TheBuzzer swung between the Earth and Moon and there, directly forward and framed between the two,
was red Mars.
There was an asteroid coming. Roberta Carson said so on her big web-cast. Impact in six years? Jesus,
no wonder the market had crashed. Chase had asked around and it seemed ol’ Styxy had the straight
skinny. A Planetary Defense Committee had been quietly meeting since April trying to put a plan in place
before breaking the news to the public. The asteroid was somewhere out around Mars for now, but there
would be a close approach in July of ’21 and a new FarTrip expedition would go out to meet it.
Yeah, thought Chase. Something new. Something different. Something out on the edge.
There was nothing Chase Coughlin loved so much as the punch of acceleration when a big bird lifted,
unless it was the euphoria of utter freedom that followed as the Earth relaxed its obstinate grip and he
floated free above the world. He was not given much to poetry — people sometimes said that he lacked
depth — yet the mixture of power and skill and delicate balance involved in orbital flight moved him in a
way he was utterly unable to describe. So perhaps it was only that he seldom spoke about such things
that led others to hasty judgment.
Yet, Earth held charms of its own, if of a different sort, and Chase approached his mandatory groundside
rotation with a surge of visceral anticipation. Karen and Little Chase met him at the pilot’s lounge at
Phoenix Sky Port, where Chase tossed his screeching son high in the air to simulate free fall. “Lift into
orbit!” he cried.
“De-orbit burn!” the five-year-old hollered coming down to a soft landing.
The three of them walked out together laughing, but the chuckles died as they passed the gate area.
Chase noted that Gates Five and Six seemed to be shut down entirely — at least there were no lift
announcements posted. Two men sat in the waiting lounge at Gate Six with the air of having sat there a
long time and, to judge by the belongings spread about, intent on staying for a good deal longer. Chase
didn’t think they were waiting for the next lift. He shook his head. He hadn’t seen that sort of thing since
he’d been a kid.
“Pegasus is cutting back again,” Karen said as they left the secured area. “I scread it on my daily
newsbot.”
Chase answered the question she hadn’t asked. “No change in my schedule.” Not yet, at any rate.
Seniority counted for something and Chase was glad of it, even though he felt bad for the poor sap who
got left on the ground because he was low man on the pyramid. “I’m still down for an orbital cruise next
month, after my R and R.”
“A month is a long time,” Karen said.
Chase looked at her eyes. “Worried, hon?”
“My firm lost two medium-big accounts …”
“They dropped your firm?”
“No, the client closed up shop. Went on the block.”
He put his arm across her shoulders and hugged her to him. “This Dip won’t last long,” he said. “That’s
what the experts are saying. There are all kinds of policies and stuff to deal with it.”
“And stuff,” she said, giving him a little shove. “Who’s the accountant here?”
Chase did a double take as they passed a newsprinter at the base of the escalator to the magrail. “Aw,
hell …” He left her and walked to the stand, where he hit <stop> then <scroll back> and reread the teaser
that had caught his eye. “They can’t do that!”
Karen and Little Chase joined him. “Can’t do what?” she asked.
“Says here they’re closing down the Space Academy for the rest of the semester. It’s funded by the lift
taxes, and with traffic cut back so much …” He swiped his key card through the reader to print the rest of
the article. Scuttlebutt you could get for free on the web, but copyright you had to pay. The scuttlebutt was
accurate more often than not, but this newsgroupie, Aleta Jackson, had a reputation for the inside skinny.
One more omen, he thought as he read the article on the maglev back to the Park ’n’ Ride. He read it a
second time, but the news hadn’t changed at all.
Three weeks later, Pegasus called a staff meeting at their Phoenix Operations Center. Technically, Chase
was on vacation, but the skinny said that to miss the meeting would be unwise, and Chase had never
made an issue of watching the clock, anyway.
He zipped up the red coveralls with the flying stallion logo and checked the hang in the bedroom mirror
with satisfaction. Still slim; still flat at thirty-four. He ran his hands down both sides of his head and felt the
stubble growing out. Time for another trim. He wore his hair longish in the center, but shaved on either
side. Rummaging in his jewelry box, he located a Jolly Roger ear stud, which he affixed in his right lobe;
then he pulled the red baseball “gimme” cap over his head, tilted it at a cocky angle, and smiled at his
reflection.
Someone had told him years ago that seeing a smile first thing in the morning helped you get through the
day, so you might as well look happy when you checked your reflection because chances were you’d get
damn-few smiles from anyone else.
That wasn’t true for him, of course, as Karen proved when he came into the kitchen. Teeth flashed bright
against a tan that a lifetime in Phoenix seemed to have made permanent, and a kiss too long to be the
perfunctory, old-married kind almost convinced him to ditch the meeting and spend the day in bed. Karen,
after all, telecommuted for an accounting firm and normally logged her time at home. How would the
partners know what she was banging in between banging the keyboard?
“My assets will be wasting all day,” he told her, releasing her at last.
“We’ll calculate your ROA tonight,” she promised.
Chase grinned. “My market share is rising already.”
Playfully, she swatted his arm. “Don’t get too jolly with it and invest it somewhere else.”
“Direct deposit,” he vowed, “I only do at home.”
It was an old routine between them. Sometimes they used the language of space flight, more often that of
accounting to talk of sex. So much so that Karen sometimes complained that she could no longer read a
corporate report without becoming aroused. Whereupon Chase had acquired several annual reports and
presented them to her in plain brown wrappers …
Little Chase was still asleep, so Chase left the house after no more than a lingering look into his son’s
bedroom. Outside, the sun was rising into a cloudless sky. His red Ford Panther started with the roar of a
predator. Long and sleek, it had more power than some Third World dictators, but Chase kept his speed
moderate as he negotiated the curving streets of his subdivision. You didn’t find power in brute strength or
speed, but in subtlety and control; and his ’chine was always perfectly under his command — responsive,
quick, precise. Besides, Little Chase played on these streets and neighbors ought to show a sense of
community.
By the time he reached the flight ops center of Pegasus Spacelines, his good mood had evaporated
somewhat. He recognized way-too-many of the cars slotted in the pilots’ lot. Big schedule shuffle coming
up, he guessed. They were only flying three out of five lifts from the original schedule as it was; how many
more flights could they cut? He waved to Lakhmid Singh and Reeney Cue as he cruised for a parking
place. Definitely too many pilots on the ground. He was ninety percent sure that Reeney had been booked
for today’s Prague-to-Europa lift.
There were no open spaces in the pilots’ lot, so he had to park among the commoners. As he walked
toward the building, jiggling his keys in his hand, he noticed cars with New Mexico plates in the spaces
reserved for the big hats. Bosses over from Albuquerque. Not a good sign.
In the meeting room, he hung out in the back with Singh and Choo-choo Honnycott, drinking bad coffee
from a row of urns set up on a table there. Plates held the usual assortment of bagels and croissants, but
few of the pilots touched them. “Desk jockey feed,” they called it. Chase noticed that the chairs were set
up auditorium-style. No tables, no notepads. Which meant whatever the big hats had to say, it would be
short and simple. Chase scowled and drained his coffee.
He tried to remember who was booked to be up this week. What with cutbacks and cancellations, the lift
schedule had been changed more often than a newborn’s diaper, so it was hard to keep straight. Felicity
Corazón, he thought. Maybe Gerhardt Brunnemacher. “Who has the lunar run this month?” he asked the
others. He spotted Felicity’s shaved head over near the windows, so either he had misremembered the
schedule, or her lift had been canceled, too.
“I am thinking the schedule is to be revised again,” Singh suggested with a fatalistic gust of breath.
Chase shook his head, but said nothing. Alexandra Feathershaft, Pegasus’s chief pilot, had taken a seat
in the front of the room and was bumping heads with a dark-haired man whom Chase failed to recognize.
New CEO? he wondered. But you didn’t need a general meeting to announce a new snout at the top
trough; and Sandy was lookingvery unhappy. Chase handed his empty coffee cup to Choo-choo and
walked up the center aisle of the room to where some of the office staff had already taken seats.
The three pilot coordinators were sitting together, as they usually did at these meetings. Heads close,
chatting; but no smiles — whichwas unusual. If anyone knew who was up, it was this trio. Virginia saw him
coming and nudged her companions and they fell silent at his approach. “Why, hello, Chase,” sang Marie
with broad enthusiasm. She was a certified Italian grandmother, gray of hair and short of frame. She
seemed as frail as a bird, but was as tough and resilient as spring steel. Not only did she know who was
flying which birds, but also which hotel or orbital station they were flopping at and — more important —
who had birthdays and anniversaries coming up. Somehow she made sure that you were never on the far
side of the Moon when you were supposed to be celebrating with your significant other. The pilots all
called her “Mom.”
“Big meeting,” Chase said, letting his head indicate the crowded auditorium.
Marie’s smile wavered just a bit. “The biggest ever, I guess.” And was there just a touch of wistfulness in
her voice?
“Is there anyone who’snot here?”
The coordinator exchanged a glance with Wendy. If Marie was everyone’s mother, Wendy was everyone’s
big sister. She swept back her brown, shoulder-length hair. “We’re not supposed to release that
information.”
Chase digested that. Theoretically, the pilot schedule was public information, and while some
confidentiality safeguards had been installed after the bomb scare back in ’11, no one inside Pegasus had
ever had any trouble locating friends and colleagues before.
“Oh, why not tell him?” asked Victoria. The third coordinator was tall, slim, and dark-chocolate. “Won’t
make any difference an hour from now. Will it?”
The three again exchanged mutual glances and somehow achieved consensus without words. Marie
spoke for them. “Captain Brunnemacher, Antonov, and Scott are bringingGagarin back from the
Moon.Artie Smith andBobbi Trout are docked at Goddard;Chkalov II at Tsiolkovsky; andHenri Farman
andNeta Snook at Europa. But their crews are attending the meeting by telepresence. Wendy, do you
have the crew lists for the orbitals?”
Chase said, “Don’t go to any bother. I was just curious.” They traded a few more pleasantries, then Chase
worked his way to the back of the room. He repeated for Singh and Honnycott what the coordinators had
told him. Lakhmid scowled. “Only five vessels up?” he said. “That does not sound very good.”
“Six, counting the LTV,” Chase reminded him. “And all but the LTV in dock.”
“Where are all the other ships?” Honnycott asked.
Chase twisted the spigot on a coffee urn and filled another cup. He gazed at the foul black brew, suddenly
wishing it was something stronger. “Groundside,” he said before gulping a swallow.
“It oughta be tea,” said Honnycott. Chase looked at him.
“What?”
The other pilot gestured toward the cup. “Tea leaves,” he said. “Read the future.”
Chase downed the rest of the coffee. “I don’t need no freaking tea leaves.” On the slowest commercial day
in the history of Pegasus Space-lines, there had never been a day with only six ships in the air. Five
docked. Loading, unloading? Or just docked?Gagarin would have been docked, too, he suddenly realized,
if it hadn’t been on an irreversible lunar orbit.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “There’s this asteroid coming, right? And they’re shutting down the biggest orbital
carrier in the world and putting its pilots on the beach.”
“You don’t know they’re shutting down,” Singh temporized. Chase could hear the anxiety and denial in the
other’s voice. “Maybe it’s just another schedule change.” Bad news is never real until someone official
says it out loud. But the way Sandy Feathershaft looked, up there in the front of the room, the news must
be pretty damn bad, and Chase wasn’t any too sure he wanted to hear it. He tried to catch Sandy’s eye,
but she wasn’t pitching any looks. Chase felt his stomach knot up.
“Asteroid’s not for six years,” Honnycott said. “Plenty of time to put the pieces back together.” He nodded
toward the front of the room. “Give the new CEO a chance.”
Chase shook his head. “Ballistics,” was all he said; but the other two knew what he meant. You couldn’t
wait until the last minute. There would be only a few launch windows where they could shoot missiles at
the thing — what had Roberta called it in that press conference? The Jenuine Bean. Shoot missiles, or go
there bonebag and blow the sumbitch up. Only a few windows, and who knew when those windows would
open and shut?
There was no point in racing the bad news home. Karen followed the financial news closely and her
spyder had probably downloaded the skinny as soon as the shutdown and layoffs were posted on the Net.
So all he’d find when he got there would be sympathy and understanding, and Chase wasn’t quite up for
that.
Impulse pulled him off Interstate 10 and onto the surface streets — past traffic lights, car dealerships,
restaurants, strip malls, and body shops. There were a few people about, though not many, and all of
them in cars. Pedestrians in the Arizona desert were as rare as the dodo, and for much the same
reason — too stupid to live. Daytime Phoenix was never actuallycool . Even now, in the butt end of winter,
the temperature hovered in the high seventies. The Sierra Estrellita gleamed in the distance. The sun was
approaching noon and Chase decided he was hungry — but perversely, once he started looking, all the
eateries seemed to have vanished.
He passed up a couple of bun-and-runs — he wanted a cool one as much as he wanted a burger — and
was just about to say the hell with it when he spotted the roadhouse.
It was a ramshackle affair with a gravel lot and a wriggling MEMS sign above it that named it The
Sidewinder. Some of the micro-electromechanical devices had failed, so the snake’s motions seemed a
little spastic. A battered pickup and an old SUV sat on the side of the building and three bikes, chopped,
stood out front. But the haze from the black stack had the tang of barbecue in it, and Chase decided to
check it out.
He pulled his Predator up beside the bikes and locked it. Three Harleys, he saw; battered, but kept in
good shape. Repaired with dealer aftermarket parts; no homemade junk. Before entering the bar, he
doffed his cap and held it over the sun while he looked at the sky. Yep. There was the Moon, all right: a
fingernail paring just west of the sun.Enjoy the trip, Gerhard, he thought. He recoiled from the notion that it
might be the last one. Somehow, the Moon seemed much farther away than usual, but maybe that was in
his head.
Inside, the bar was warm and smoky, but not hot for all that. A floor fan at the far end stirred the air as it
hunted back and forth. A long bar lined the back wall with a decently varied rack of bottles against the
mirror. Above the mirror an improbably long rattlesnake was mounted on a wooden board. The bartender,
a solid, dark-haired, happy-faced man, drank from a bottle of water while he chatted with the waitress.
Chase tried to guess which was the pickup and which the SUV. The bikers occupied a booth near the
door. They studied Chase as he slid onto a bar stool.
“Skull Mountain,” said Chase, dropping his cap to the bar. The barman looked at the cap, at Chase’s red
Pegasus coveralls, then reached under the bar and pulled up two long-neck Skulls and a glass. The glass
looked clean. Chase took one of the bottles and popped the cap. He didn’t use the glass. “Why two?” he
said, pointing to the second bottle.
“First one’s on the house,” the barman said.
Chase thought about that. “Which am I drinking?”
“Second one.”
Chase grinned. “I’m smelling some good ’cue. Can I get a plate of pulled pork?”
“Beans?”
“Why not? My wife’s put up with worse.”
The barman turned away. “Heard the news,” he said. “ ’Bout Pegasus shutting down. Damn shame. A lot
of the welders and assemblers from the maintenance shops stop in here.”
Chase grunted. He’d been so immersed in his own troubles he’d forgotten there were others, with jobs a
lot less glamorous than space pilot.
Sensing a presence beside him, Chase looked up into the broad, bearded face of one of the bikers. The
man was heavyset, though not fat, and wore a black T-shirt under his leather vest. Intricate tattoos of
eagles and hawks twined up both his arms. The T-shirt read: “No Fear? You Haven’t MetMe, Yet!” When
he bunched his muscles, the raptors stirred. “Your money’s no good here,” he said.
“I hope not,” Chase said mildly. He lifted his bottle of Skull Mountain, “This here’s my second bottle, so I
got to pay for it.”
“You hear me, Al?” the biker called after the barman, who was heaping pork on a plate. “I’m buying.” The
barman gave a sign and the biker slid onto the stool beside Chase. He stuck a hand out. “Bird Winfrey.
You’re Chase Coughlin, aren’t you?”
“Gotta be,” Chase told him. “No one else wants the job.” He gripped hands.
Winfrey’s laugh rumbled in his chest. “Thought I recognized you. I lifted with you a time or three back
when we were building Leo Station.”
Chase tilted his long-neck toward the other man. “Here’s to you, otter.”
“You want to join us over in the booth? Chino and Ed are two dogs — mechanics from Phoenix Yards. We
were on our way to meet our wives up in the White Tanks.”
Chase grabbed both his bottles and slid off the stool. “Your wives drive Harleys, too?”
“Yeah, I saw you checking the bikes out when you came in. Sure. When it comes to bikes, Yamaha makes
a great piano.”
Chase followed him to the booth and slid in beside a stocky Hispanic with oriental eyes. Winfrey
introduced him as Chino Martinez and the other as Ed Tiquba. “That’s ‘TiQuba,’” the black man said,
giving a click in place of the Q-sound Winfrey had used. It seemed to Chase’s ear like the sound that a
rider made with his cheek to giddyup his horse. He lifted his bottle. “Here’s to the big hats …”
“… And the swelled heads that wear ’em.” Winfrey and his buddies were drinking Dos Equis. “I was
making myself a nice piece of cash,” Winfrey went on. “Up Goddard, you know? Testing DSM for Straight
Arrow.” He shook his head. “When you guys started cutting back on your lift schedules, we had a hard
time lifting raws and dropping stuff ground-side. So Straight Arrow had to close up shop.”
“Wasn’t my idea,” Chase said. “Cutting back.”
“Yeah, otter, I hear you.” Winfrey fell silent. He exchanged looks with the dogs, but no one said anything
摘要：

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