Alan R. Barclay - Schroedinger's Mousetrap

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Schroedinger's Mousetrap

by Alan R. Barclay

_(Schoerdinger's Mousetrap won the Writer's of the Future Grand Prize for 1993, and was published in

Writers of the Future Anthology, Volume X, from Bridge Publications.)_

The door into the asteroid was ten meters high and ten million years old. The pattern of triangles and

rectangles engraved on the door had been seen only once before -- on an artifact older than the human

species. Hube Chaney compared the image on his head-up display to the engraving one last time before

allowing himself to believe his incredible luck. "Looks like the genuine article, Mary!" he said.

The crisp, feminine voice of his suit's Artificial Intelligence responded, "That's good, Hube."

"Get Dith and clear the head-up."

"Sure thing, Hube." The image disappeared and was replaced by a chronometer, oxygen gauge, and an

inertial locator display all in a band across the top of his visor.

"Hube," Dithyram Kingston called over the radio, "is it real?" Hube's partner spoke in an almost-British

accent, spiced with a hint of Caribbean dialect. He came from an impossibly small island nation on Earth

called Saint Kitts and Nevis.

"It's real," Hube said.

Dith let out a whoop of triumph. "Yes!"

Hube spun slowly to face away from the asteroid, careful to let his tether harness pay out slack. The

door was at the precise rotational axis of the cylindrical asteroid. Only two lines, fixed to magnetic

grapples on either side of the huge door, prevented him from drifting with the centripetal force.

With his back to the asteroid, he waved at their small prospecting ship, the _Gold Rush_. The ship hung

twenty meters in front of him, rolling slowly as Hube turned about the asteroid's axis. He gave the

thumbs-up sign and swallowed a lump of exultation. Unlike Dith, Hube was a belter: born and raised in

Sol's asteroid belt. His natural caution suppressed emotional display.

Before he could turn back, the Southern Cross caught his attention. Somewhere out among those stars,

the Second Interstellar Colony was three years under weigh. Without Hube.

He had spent most of his youth preparing for it: physics and engineering degrees, technical and physical

training. The Colony had favored married couples, so he had married. Then, at the last minute, Olga had

changed her mind about the stars. Now he would never leave the solar system. Damn her!

He turned away from the stars and back to the ancient door. If he could not go to the stars, at least he

had found a consolation prize.

Every spacer knew of the alien artifact John Terule had discovered eight years ago: a hollow cylinder of

nickel-iron almost a kilometer long. It had been humanity's first encounter with evidence of non-human

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intelligence. It had also been a disappointment.

Terule's asteroid was an empty shell, gutted of every scrap of machinery and any other artifact except

the carbon polymer that coated the inside walls. The only clue to the Terullian people were fifteen

patches of writing: columns of paired rectangles and triangles which linguists had no way to decipher.

They had little hope of ever finding a Terullian to teach them the language; the molecular decay of the

polymer dated the artifact at somewhere between nine and twelve million years old.

The Solar Authority had paid Terule a million SA dollars just for the empty hulk. Ever since, belters had

added the search for alien artifacts to their prospecting. Hube and Dith had been lucky; they had made

the second find.

His partner's breath crackled over the radio. "Hey, I'm gonna call in the claim. You want to come in?"

"No, I don't think I'll believe it if it's not right here in front of me. I'm going to set up the laser drill."

"Okay," Dith said. "Check in before you start punching holes. I want to be watching when you let the cat

out of the box." The channel clicked off.

Hube smiled. He had told Dith the story of Schroedinger's Cat near the beginning of their partnership.

Dith had adopted the Cat as his icon for the unknown. He even had a little pendant, a platinum chain with

a small box hanging from it, which he always kept with him.

Minutes later, as Hube fitted the laser into its tripod, Mary called his name.

"What is it, Mary?" He clicked the pivots into the body of the laser.

"Wouldn't it be better to leave the alien artifact intact for the Solar Authority?"

Hube paused, about to test the laser's capacitors. He routinely left Mary's conversation mode inactive,

so something must have triggered an advice routine. "Why?" he asked. "I want to see what's inside."

"You and Dith are far from any help. What if something inside is dangerous?"

"What could be dangerous after ten million years?"

"Do you want a list?" This was only a request for confirmation.

"No. I think the chances of finding anything dangerous are next to impossible."

"If you think so, Hube."

"Mary, you're being a pest."

"Yes, Hube." Mary's personality template did not include petulance, but Hube sometimes wondered if

pouting had somehow slipped into her heuristic net.

He had powered the laser up and called Dith. "Ready to go," he said. "I'll start by punching a hole."

"Okay, Hube. I've got the camera trained on you."

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Hube aimed the laser drill almost straight down at the door, and began vaporizing a hole a centimeter at

a shot. Just after five centimeters, the depth gauge jumped to two thousand and vapor puffed out of the

hole. He had punched through into whatever space was behind the door.

"You see the vapor?" Dith asked, excited.

"It's just from the drill."

"No, man, it didn't just disperse. It sprayed out. Check it!"

Hube snapped on the drill's safety and pulled a suit patch from the emergency pouch above his knee. As

he brought the flexible patch close to the pencil-thin hole, it fluttered, then slipped from his gloved fingers

and launched itself into space. "Atmosphere!"

Hube felt elated. Terule's asteroid had contained vacuum. If their find held atmosphere, it might contain

other things. Images of alien technological treasures danced before Hube's eyes.

"Hey, Hube. You better plug that up!"

Hube shook off his amazement and felt guilty for acting like a groundhog. Among belters, bleeding

another person's atmosphere was grounds for justifiable homicide. He fumbled for a larger patch and

slapped it down.

"Well, we've kicked in their door," he said. "I hope nobody's home."

Thirty minutes later, he had erected an inflatable airlock over the laser drill and sealed it to the surface of

the alien door. He started to cut a manhole-sized circle in the ancient metal. The geodesic dome of the

airlock tightened as it filled with the alien atmosphere. When most of the circle was cut, Hube placed a

magnetic clamp across the gap. He activated the laser drill again, cut the final arc, pulled the circle of

metal aside and secured it to the surface of the huge door.

The opening was a black, gaping hole.

"Okay," Hube said, "I'm going inside."

"You be careful, Hube," Dith said from the ship, "All that metal is going to block radio."

"Yeah. I've got some beacon relays. I'll put one right at the entrance." He pressed the adhesive surface

of the fist-sized relay against the door. "Okay, I'm going in. Mary, give me some slack."

"Okay, Hube."

He pulled himself head-first through the hole, his automatic reels paying out both lines. "External light."

His helmet light flooded the darkness. Hube hung near the center of a drum-shaped chamber, twelve

meters in diameter, its walls coated with a dull, plastic-like substance. The inner head of the drum held

another ten-meter-high door.

"An airlock. Just like Terule's Asteroid," Hube said. "I'll have to cut through the internal door, too."

"Hube," Dith called over the radio. "What's the atmosphere?"

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Was Dith's signal just a little weaker, despite the relay?

"How about it, Mary?" Hube asked.

"Zero point zero eight three atmospheres. No toxins. Mostly nitrogen. Trace of oxygen."

"Oxygen!" Dith said. "If there's some oxygen now, there was a lot more ten million years ago!"

"They breathed oxygen!" Hube said. The aliens seemed a little less alien.

"It could be just a byproduct, or an incidental like nitrogen is for us."

Hube went out to disassemble the laser and bring it inside. "No. Oxygen is too corrosive. It had to be

part of their life cycle. I wish we had a better analyzer; it might tell us more than Mary's detector."

Transferring and reassembling the laser parts took ten minutes. Hube also moved his tethers and their

grapples inside to control his tendency to drift away from the asteroid's axis of spin. Once he was ready

at the inner door, he said, "Here we go again."

Hube punched a hole in the inner door and waited. The air pressure equalized to about one tenth of an

atmosphere. Then he finished cutting and pulled the disk of metal out of the way. He shone his helmet

light through the gap. "Looks pretty much like Terule's find," he said.

A larger drum-shaped chamber filled the space behind the second door. Six tunnels, equally distributed

around the rim of the drum, led into the long body of the asteroid. In John Terule's asteroid, similar

tunnels spiraled around the asteroid's core without connecting until all six met again at the opposite end of

the asteroid in another drum-shaped hub. Each helical tunnel had been lined with huge bays which could

have held anything, but now held only vacuum. Within the embracing six tunnels, Terule's asteroid had

also held a long, empty core. The walls of the core had been very slightly radioactive, and researchers

supposed it had once contained a power source. Some even speculated that the asteroid had held a

reactionless drive and that the asteroid was a spacecraft rather than a

space station.

Hube hoped he would find something inside this asteroid. Even a single alien molecular circuit could

make Dith and himself rich.

He thrust his wrist into the hole and asked Mary for the Geiger counter display. "Rads look normal," he

said. "I'm going in."

He pulled himself into the inner chamber and looked around. It was at least forty meters in diameter, but

featureless except for the tunnels in the opposite wall. "I'm going to move out to the rim. I think there's

enough diameter for decent gravity."

He played out his lines, letting his body fall with the centripetal force of the rotating asteroid until his feet

touched the curved floor of the hub-shaped chamber.

"I'm going to release my harness," he said.

"Your signal's weaker," Dith said, his own signal noticeably reduced. "Are you sure you want to go any

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farther?"

"Hey, I want to know what we're selling when the time comes! If things get really bad, I'll set up another

relay." Hube paused a moment and realized he had a burning need to see the alien artifact with his own

eyes. Curiosity. The one flaw in his cautious Belter character. If he had any sense, he would leave now

and let someone else take the risk.

He couldn't.

He unbuckled the harness with its tether and reel mechanisms and left it hanging against the wall, then he

walked toward the nearest tunnel. His helmet light probed the dark, curving tunnel. In Terule's Asteroid

these had been lined with empty bays. What alien devices might fill the bays off this tunnel?

Hube stepped into the tunnel and started down the slope toward the asteroid's outer skin. The tunnel

leveled off and curved to the left. "Pseudograv feels like Ceres' Inner Ring," he said. "Maybe a quarter

gee. I think I see a bay ahead!"

His heart began to pound as he shuffled forward. He had to fight the urge to run. As he grew closer, his

helmet light revealed more and more of the bay, a vast space large enough to hold three ships the size of

_Gold Rush_. It looked empty. He quickened his pace and rounded the corner. His heart sank. "Damn!"

he muttered.

Dith's voice crackled, asking for a repeat.

"Empty bay," said Hube. "I'm going to look around."

Round finger-sized holes and half-meter slots pocked one wall. The polymer coating over the iron of the

asteroid was scratched and scuffed in many places, as if heavy equipment had been removed.

Damn! thought Hube. If the Terullians had to move out, couldn't they at least leave the stove and the

fridge?

"I'm continuing."

He followed the curving tunnel to the next bay, this time on his left. It was empty, too. He trudged on,

passing empty bays alternating on the right and left. The excitement he had felt on passing through the

alien door was quickly dwindling to disappointment. There was nothing here!

The few words he sent to his partner were terse and mechanical, prompted more by habit than

conscious thought or observation of his surroundings. Once, something shifted in his peripheral vision. He

turned to look, thinking he might have passed something without noticing, and his suit light swept over an

empty expanse of floor. It was just the edge of the circle of light jiggling in the corner of his eye.

By the time his inertial tracker said he had almost traveled the length of the asteroid, the floor of the

tunnel began to climb upward toward the axis of rotation. In Terule's asteroid a tunnel like this one had

led to another hub-shaped room which opened into the hollowed core of the asteroid. Hube tried to

expect nothing more, but could not hold back little hopeful visions that popped into his mind.

He climbed the gentle slope against the decreasing pseudogravity, and found the hub-shaped chamber

he expected. It contained something else he had not expected.

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Schroedinger'sMousetrapbyAlanR.Barclay_(Schoerdinger'sMousetrapwontheWriter'softheFutureGrandPrizefor1993,andwaspublishedinWritersoftheFutureAnthology,VolumeX,fromBridgePublications.)_Thedoorintotheasteroidwastenmetershighandtenmillionyearsold.Thepatternoftrianglesandrectanglesengravedonthedoorhadbe...

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Alan R. Barclay - Schroedinger's Mousetrap

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