Martin H. Greenberg - Space Stations

STEPPING STONES TO THE STARS....

For forty-seven years humankind has been reaching for the stars, with

satellites, rockets, space shuttles, and, of course, orbital space stations. It

seems obvious that to make our way to the other planets in our own solar

system, and ultimately to distant stars, we will need to establish permanent

manned space habitats. But what form will such space stations take, and

what fates will await travelers to these stations as well as those who live and

work in them?

The fourteen tales included in this volume offer an extraordinary range of

possibilities, including:

"Mikeys"—Don and Sas were the advance team, their mission to land on

Deimos, and construct a space station so the next team could actually touch

down on Mars and do the real exploring. No one could have foreseen just

how important the Deimos station would become....

"The Franchise"—They had come to Hamilton Station to help rebuild, but

it was soon obvious that Hamilton was determined to keep enemies and

friends alike from getting in....

"Follow the Sky"—As a young child, she dreamed of flying to the Wheel,

and from there to other worlds. But it was only by losing everything that she

might make her dream come true....

More Imagination-Expanding Anthologies Brought to You by DAW:

MICROCOSMS Edited by Gregory Benford. Thirteen original tales of

worlds within worlds by Stephen Baxter, Pamela Sargent, Robert J. Sawyer,

Robert Sheckley, George Zebrowski, and other masters of miniaturization.

From the tale of four physicists who created their own universe... to a

microcosm inhabited by sentient atomic particles... to a future where all the

people of Earth—with the exception of a tribe in Africa—have become one

communal mind... open the portals into unforgettable universes that exist on

the innermost frontiers of the imagination.

STARS: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian Edited by Janis

Ian and Mike Resnick. Twenty-nine stories by a stellar constellation of

authors, including Tad Williams, Joe Haldeman, John Varley, Mercedes

Lackey, Gregory Benford, Robert J. Sawyer, Spider Robinson, Harry

Turtledove, Orson Scott Card, and more. This is a unique volume of stories

inspired by the songs of Janis Ian, and the contributors are the top writers in

the field today.

SPACE, INC. Edited by Julie E. Czerneda. From such visionary authors

as Josepha Sherman, S. M. Stirling, Robert J. Sawyer, and Tanya Huff, here

are fourteen tales of the challenges, perils, and responsibilities that workers

of the future may have to face—from a librarian who could determine the

fate of an alien race... to a pair of space mechanics assigned a repair job for

a species that despises humankind... to a ballet instructor who must find a

way to tailor human dance forms for multilimbed sentient beings....

SPACE STATIONS

Edited by

Martin H. Greenberg and John Heifers

DAW BOOKS, INC.

DONALD A. WOLLHE1M, FOUNDER

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ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM

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DAW Book Collectors No. 1288.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to

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First Printing, March 2004

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

by John Heifers

THE BATTLE OF SPACE FORT JEFFERSON

by Timothy Zahn

REDUNDANCY

by Alan Dean Foster

DANCERS OF THE GATE

by James Cobb

MIKEYS

by Robert J. Sawyer

THE FRANCHISE

by Julie E. Czerneda

FOLLOW THE SKY

by Pamela Sargent

AURIGA'S STREETCAR

by Jean Rabe

FALLING STAR

by Brendan DuBois

COUNTDOWN

by Russell Davis

SERPENT ON THE STATION

by Michael A. Stackpole

FIRST CONTACT CAFE

by Irene Radford

ORBITAL BASE FEAR

by Eric Kotani

BLACK HOLE STATION

by Jack Williamson

STATION SPACES

by Gregory Benford

INTRODUCTION

by John Heifers

It's amazing what the human race can accomplish when we put our

collective minds to something. Whether it's exploration, fighting disease,

inventing new technology, or changing society, mankind can be an awesome

power when it chooses to be.

Consider space exploration, for example. While scientists have been

studying the stars for centuries, getting a man to walk among them has been

quite a different matter. As the study of our universe goes, it is one of the

most recent fields of scientific endeavor, primarily because of the advances

in technology that have made it feasible. Since the launch of the first

satellite by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, the United States and the

rest of the world have been looking to the skies, and the universe beyond, as

the ultimate last frontier.

And what an incredible forty-seven years it's been. Since the first space

race between Russia and the United States, the world has seen men land on

the Moon, the first unmanned exploration of the surface of Mars, China join

the other space faring nations, and a renewed interest in the vast galaxy

beyond our own planet.

Along with this activity comes new ways to study and explore space.

From the Hubble space telescope to the Voyager and Galileo deep space

probes, we have pushed farther and farther past the boundaries of what we

once knew.

One of the best ways to do this is right in our own backyard, so to speak.

No matter how sophisticated the technology, satellites and machines cannot

replace man when it comes to exploration, at least, not completely. Space

stations, platforms where men and women can study the galaxy around the

clock, have become the best way to gain practical results from space,

whether it is manufacturing new medicines and materials in the weightless

conditions, or exploring the heavens and planning to use the space station as

a jumping off point fop trips beyond.

There have been several permanently manned space stations during the

history of space exploration. The Russians beat America into space again

with the launch of the first orbiting station, Salyut, in 1971. A Russian crew

was the first to live in space for approximately twenty-four days, but

tragically died upon returning to Earth. The U.S.'s first space outpost,

Skylab, was launched in 1973. It was not intended to be a permanent station,

but was used to study long-term effects of space and weightlessness on

humans and animals. The longest-running manned space station, the Russian

Mir station, managed to stay aloft for fifteen years despite being used for

years after its proposed duration and suffering several accidents that at times

severely hampered its capabilities. In 2001 Mir was guided back into Earth's

atmosphere, where it was destroyed.

The most exciting development in the field of manned space exploration

today is the International Space Station, a joint project that began

construction in 1998. Funded and supplied by sixteen countries around the

world, its purpose is to create a permanent station to take the world's space

program into the next century and millennium. When the station is

completed in 2006, we will have the best platform to begin the next stage of

exploration, leading back to the Moon, perhaps to Mars, and beyond.

The ISS has fired the imaginations of people around the world, and

science fiction authors are no different. Fourteen of today's best writers

have given us their ideas of what the next generation of space stations will

look like. From Timothy Zahn comes a story of a station that everyone

thought was past its prime, until the time came for it to take part in a most

unusual battle. Alan Dean Foster explores a space station that takes care of

even its smallest inhabitant in a very special way. Brendan DuBois takes us

to a future Earth where the dream of space stations took a detour that

grounded humanity forever. And Gregory Benford reveals a completely

different view of a space station in our final story.

Fourteen visions of the future created by the finest authors of speculative

fiction. So turn the page and prepare for adventures beyond your wildest

imagination on these space stations of tomorrow.

THE BATTLE OF SPACE FORT JEFFERSON

by Timothy Zahn

Timothy Zahn was born in 1951 in Chicago and spent his first forty years in the

Midwest. Somewhere along the way toward a Ph.D. in physics, he got sidetracked into

writing science fiction and has been at it ever since. He is the author of over seventy

short stories and twenty novels, of which his most well-known are his five Star Wars

books: The Thrawn trilogy and Hand of Thrawn duology. His most recent book is the

Star Wars novel Survivor's Quest, published in 2004. Though most of his time is now

spent writing novels, he still enjoys tackling the occasional short story. This is one of

them. The Zahn family lives on the Oregon coast.

"EIGHTEENTH April, 2230," Ranger Bob Epstein said into his log

microphone. "Morning report. Three more days to President Ukukho's

visit."

He gazed with satisfaction at the sentence on the screen as he picked up

his slightly stale bagel covered thinly with cream cheese. A little lox would

have been nice, but lox was hard to come by on United Colonies Space Fort

Jefferson.

Actually, pretty much everything was hard to come by on Space Fort

Jefferson. Tourist-free tourist attractions, as he'd often been told over the

past seven years, rated very low on the Park Service's priority list.

He scowled as he set the bagel back onto its plate. It wasn't a fair

assessment, as he'd argued back for most of those same seven years.

Granted, for much of its four-point-three-year orbit Space Fort Jefferson

was largely deserted, with only its five-ranger crew here to keep the decks

and empty weapons emplacements company.

But for the four months when its elliptical path carried it near the asteroid

belt's Anchorline Archipelago, there was quite a bit of activity on the old

fort. Granted, it wasn't Disney Ceres, but it was still busy enough to keep

the rangers hopping. And even during the long down-time, there was always

a trickle of visitors willing to endure the long and boring trip to set foot on

a piece of genuine, if obscure, history.

But that was going to change now. Earth President Ukukho himself was

on his way; and for the first time in a hundred years, someone in actual

governmental authority was going to visit the station.

And since the public lapped up everything Ukukho said or did, that meant

that billions of people who'd never even heard of Space Fort Jefferson were

going to be brought face-to-face with it.

And what billions of people saw, millions of people went touristing to.

Or so went the theory. Bob took another bite from his bagel, visualizing the

list of improvements and renovations he would be submitting to the Park

Service as soon as the crowds started arriving. At the top of the list would

be to finally finish the renovation of Decks Three to Six that had been

started two years ago and never completed. The mess made the fort's

original gunnery control area nearly impossible for even the rangers to get

to, and visitors always liked seeing control rooms.

There was a gunshot-crackle from the intercom. "Bob?" Kelsey's voice

came distantly.

Bob reached over and flicked the switch. "Yes?"

"Bob?"

Muttering under his breath, Bob flipped the switch off, gave the side of

the box a sharp rap with his knuckles, and flipped the switch back on. On

second thought, maybe it would be the intercom that would head the

replacement list. "Yes?"

"Got a ship coming in to dock," Kelsey reported.

"The GenTronic Twelve?" Bob asked, frowning. The yacht had been on

their scopes for the past thirty-two hours, bringing in the latest batch of

off-season tourists. But last he'd checked, it shouldn't be here nearly this

soon.

"No, they're still three and a half hours out," Kelsey confirmed. "This is a

Fafnir Four."

Bob felt his eyebrows lifting. "A Fafnir Four?"

"Yep," Kelsey said. "Government issue, fully stealthed—Hix didn't even

spot it until it hailed."

"Yes, but a Four?" Bob repeated. With the President on his way, the

Secret Service would naturally be stopping by to check things out, and

Fafnirs were the ship of choice for most government agencies.

Problem was, a Fafnir Four only held two people, not nearly enough for a

Presidential advance team. The advance team for the advance team, maybe?

"It's a Four, all right," Kelsey insisted. "I'm in Dock Obs, looking straight

at it."

Reaching to his recorder, Bob flipped the switch from "standby" to "off."

He'd finish the log entry later. "I'll be right up."

The two visitors were already in the entryway reception room by the time

he arrived. The older man, about Bob's own youngish forty-five, was

studying one of the information plaques lining the wall. The other, twenty

years younger, was standing at a sort of stiff at-ease, his eyes shifting

between the door and a nervous-looking Hix. Apparently, he didn't have the

time or the interest for anything as job-unrelated as mere history.

"Good day, gentlemen," Bob greeted them cheerfully as he stepped into

the room. "I'm Ranger Bob Epstein—Ranger Bob to our visitors. What can I

do for you?"

"We're not visitors, Ranger Epstein," the younger man said, his voice as

stiff and government-issue as his posture. "We're here on official

business—"

"At ease, Drexler," the older man said dryly, straightening up from the

plaque he'd been looking at and giving Bob a slight smile. "I'm Secret

Service Agent Cummings, Ranger Epstein; this is Agent Drexler. We're here

to check things out for the President's flyby."

Something seemed to catch in Bob's throat. "His flyby?" he asked

carefully. "We thought—"

"That he would be visiting the station," Drexler said briskly. "I'm afraid

that's been changed. The organizers realized that a stop would take up too

much time and fuel, so Space Force One will merely be flying past."

"I see," Bob said, trying hard to hide his disappointment. Hix wasn't

nearly so good at it; his face was a map of crushed hopes and expectations.

"May I ask when this decision was made?"

"That's none of your concern—"

"A week ago," Cummings spoke up. "I know this must be something of a

disappointment for you."

Bob took a deep breath. A week. Seven days. They could have told him.

"We'll get over it," he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

"I'm sorry we couldn't give you any kind of heads-up," Cummings went

on. "But the President's itinerary isn't the sort of thing you broadcast across

the Solar System."

"I understand," Bob said, glancing over at Hix. The big man still looked

like he wanted to cry, but he was starting to pull himself together again. "It's

not like Space Fort Jefferson is an indispensable part of a historic

Presidential tour."

"Or of history itself, for that matter," Drexler added.

Bob felt his face settle into familiar lines. "That's hardly fair, Agent

Drexler," he said. "Space Fort Jefferson has had a long and hardly

insignificant history."

"Really?" Drexler said, regarding Bob coolly. "Which part do you

consider to have been significant? The thirty glorious years it spent as a

prison for the Archipelago? The fifteen it did duty as a jabriosis quarantine

center? Or the twenty-two it's now spent as a tourist attraction?"

Bob took a deep breath, his mental argument center loading Defense

Pattern Alpha—

"All right, Drexler, you've made your point," Cummings put in quietly.

"It's not Ranger Epstein's fault that Space Fort Jefferson never got to serve

in its primary capacity. Not really Space Fort Jefferson's fault either."

Drexler snorted in a sedate, government-issue sort of way. "Maybe if the

designers had had the foresight to build particle shielding into the hull,

they'd have gotten some actual use out of it."

Bob sighed. He got so tired of going over this same territory with people

who'd never bothered to check their history. "Particle weapons hadn't even

been developed when they started building the station," he said.

"He's right," Cummings agreed, tapping the plaque he'd been studying.

"Construction began in 2082. The first successful test of a particle weapon

wasn't until 2089."

"The shielding they put in was more than enough to handle anything

known at the time," Bob added. "If Xhong hadn't made his technical

breakthrough when he did, Space Fort Jefferson would have been a perfect

defender of the Ceres-to-Earth shipping route."

"Perhaps," Drexler said. "But part of a designer's job is to anticipate

future trends and incorporate them into his plans."

"But we didn't come here to discuss history," Cummings interrupted

diplomatically. "We need to give the station a quick once-over for any

possible danger to Space Force One and its escort. Just routine, of course."

"After all, we wouldn't want a section of hull to fall off and float into

their path," Drexler said under his breath.

Cummings sent him a strained look. "For what it's worth, I understand the

commentators will be giving some of the station's history during the

approach," he said. "I know it's not a Presidential visit, but at least it's

something for your trouble."

"Yes, sir," Bob said, nodding. "I'm sure we all appreciate it."

Cummings nodded in return. "Now, if you'll take us to the main control

complex...?"

"Of course," Bob said, swallowing his annoyance and gesturing through

the door. "This way, please."

A full self-guided tour of the station, including a reading of all the

information plaques, was timed to take about five hours. Adding in a lunch

break—carry-on bubblepack or back aboard your own ship; the visitors'

cafeteria hadn't been open for ten years—the whole thing was a pleasant

day's touristing.

Cummings and Drexler didn't bother with the plaques, and they weren't

interested in lunch. But unlike standard tourists, they also insisted on seeing

the rangers' living quarters, workshops, and storerooms.

It was nearly four hours before Cummings pronounced himself satisfied

that Space Fort Jefferson was safe enough for President Ukukho to come

within five miles of. What Drexler thought he kept to himself.

"We'll need to stay aboard until after Space Force One has passed out of

magscope range," Cummings told Bob as they headed back toward the

entryway. "We'd like to set up as near the main control area as possible."

"Certainly," Bob said. Ahead, he could hear a murmuring of unfamiliar

voices from the reception room. Apparently, the GenTronic Twelve had

arrived, and Bob tossed up a quick prayer that there wouldn't be any bored

teenagers or inquisitive toddlers in the group. "The station was originally

designed for a crew of fifteen hundred, you know. There's a duty dayroom

just off the control complex you can use."

They came around the corner into the reception room, and Bob breathed a

quiet sigh of relief. No toddlers; no teenagers; just nine youngish,

pleasant-looking men in upscale bulkyjackets spread out around the room

reading the plaques. Probably rich enough to be sued if they broke anything,

which meant they would be careful not to. Hix was hovering nearby,

looking like a combination proud mother and nervous curator, all traces of

his earlier depression gone from his face. Hix loved showing off his station

to visitors even more than Bob did.

"Ah—here's Ranger Bob now," Hix said as Bob and the agents stepped

into the room. "I was just telling Herr Forste here what a good job you've

done keeping Space Fort Jefferson running."

"Nice to meet you, Ranger Bob," Forste said, smiling. His English had a

pleasant North European accent to it. "And who are your friends?"

Bob looked at Cummings, wondering what exactly he was supposed to

say here. Cummings moved smoothly into the gap. "My name's Alan," he

said. "This is my friend Thomas. You and your friends come from Ceres?"

"Not exactly," Forste said. "We're from Free Norway."

Free Norway? Frowning, Bob turned back to him—

And caught his breath. From beneath their bulkyjackets, all nine men had

suddenly produced small but nasty-looking handguns. "You will all please

put up your hands," Forste said.

He smiled genially. "Especially you, Secret Service Agents Cummings

and Drexler."

They picked up Kelsey as he filled out duty logs in Dock Obs, Renfred as

he polished plaques in the Number One Fire Control Center, and Bronsoni

as he sneaked an unauthorized nap in the Number Thirteen-D torpedo

launch tube.

"Which leaves only Gifford Wimbley," Forste said with satisfaction as he

and four of the other gunmen herded the prisoners into the Number Three

Martin H. Greenberg - Space Stations

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