Hogan, James P - Leapfrog

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2024-11-19 2 0 96.08KB 13 页 5.9玖币

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Fail had come to the northern hemisphere of Mars. At the north

pole, the mean temperature had fallen to — 125° C—cold enough to freeze

carbon dioxide out of the thin Martian atmosphere and begin forming the

annual covering that would lay over the permanent cap of water-ice

until spring. In the southern polar regions, where winter had ended,

the carbon dioxide was evaporating. Along the edge of the retreating

fields of dry ice, strong winds were starting to raise dust. During the

short but hot southern summer, with Mars making its closest approach to

the sun, the resulting storms could envelop the planet.

Edmund Halloran watched the surface details creep across the

large wallscreen at one end of the mess area of Yellow Section, Deck B,

of the interplanetary transfer vessel Mikhail Gorbachev, wheeling in

orbit at the end of its six-month voyage from Earth to bring the third

manned mission to the Red Planet. The other new arrivals sitting around

him at the scratched and stained green-topped aluminum tables—where

they had eaten their meals, played innumerable hands of cards, and

talked, laughed, and exchanged reminiscences through the long voyage

out—were also strangely quiet as they took in the view. Unlike the

other views of Mars that they had studied and memorized, this was not

being replayed from transmissions sent back from somewhere on the other

side of millions of miles of space. This time it was really on the

outside of the thin metal shell around them. Very soon, now, they would

be leaving the snug cocoon with its reassuring routine and its company

of familiar faces that they had come to know as home, to go down there.

They had arrived.

The structure had lifted out from lunar orbit as a flotilla of

three separate, identical craft, independently powered, each fabricated

the general form of a T, but with the bar curved as part of the arc of

a circle, rather than straight. On entering the unpowered free-fall

phase that would endure for most of the voyage, the three ships had

maneuvered together and joined at their bases to become the equispaced

spokes of a rotating Y, creating comfortable living conditions in the

three inhabited zones at the extremities. The triplicated design meant

that in the event of a major failure in any of the modules, everybody

could get home again in the remaining two—~or at a push, with a lot of

overcrowding and at the cost of jettisoning everything not essential to

survival, even in a remaining one. The sections accommodated a total of

600 people, which represented a huge expansion of the existing

population of 230 accrued from the previous two missions. Some of the

existing population had been distributed between a main base on Lunae

Planum and a few outlying installations. The majority, however, were

still up in MARSIANSKAYA MEZHDUN-ARODNAYA ORBITAL ‘NAYA STANTSIYA, or

“Mars International Orbiting Station,” awaiting permanent accommodation

on the surface. In the Russian Cyrillic alphabet this was shortened to

MAPCMOC, yielding the satisfyingly descriptive transliteration MARSMOS

in English, which was accepted as the standard international language.

The region coming into view now was an area roughly twenty

degrees north of the equator. Halloran recognized the heavily cratered

area of Lunae Planum and the irregular escarpment at its eastern edge,

bounding the smoother volcanic plain of Chryse Planitia. Although he

knew where to look, he could see no indication of the main base down

there. He picked out the channels emerging from the escarpment, where

volcanic heating had melted some of the underground ice that had

existed in an earlier age, causing torrential floods to pour out across

the expanse of Chryse, which lay about a kilometer lower.

An announcement from the overhead speakers broke his mood of

reverie. “Attention please. The shuttle to MARSMOS is now ready for

boarding. Arrivals holding disembarkation cards ninety-three through

one hundred twenty should proceed through to the docking area. Ninety-

three through one hundred twenty, to the docking port now.,,

Halloran rose and picked up his briefcase and a bag containing

other items that he wanted to keep with him until the personal baggage

caught up with them later. As he shuffled forward to join the flow of

people converging toward the door, a voice spoke close behind him. “It

looks as if we’re on the same trip across, Ed.” He looked

around. Ibrahim and Anna, a young Egyptian couple, were next in line.

“I guess so,” Halloran grunted. Ibrahim was an electronics

technician, his wife a plant geneticist. They were both impatient to

begin their new lives. Why two young people like these should be so

eager and excited about coming to a four-thousand-mile ball of frozen

deserts, Halloran couldn’t imagine. Or maybe he couldn’t remember.

“We’ll be going straight down from the station.” Ibrahim gestured

toward Anna; she smiled a little shyly. “The doctors want her to adapt

to surface conditions as soon as possible.”

Anna’s pregnancy had been confirmed early in the voyage. Although

the baby wouldn’t be the first to be born on Mars, it would be one of a

very select few. The knowledge added considerably to Ibrahim’s already

exuberant pride of first fatherhood.

“It may be a while before I see you again, then, eh?” Halloran

said. “But I wouldn’t worry about not bumping into each other again.

It’s not as if there are that many places to get lost in down there

yet.”

“I hope it won’t be too long,” Ibrahim said. “It was good getting

to know you. I enjoyed listening to your stories. Good luck with your

job here.”

“You too. And take good care of Anna there, d’you hear.”

They moved out through the mess doorway, into a gray-walled

corridor of doors separated by stretches of metal ribbing. Byacheslav,

one of the Russian construction engineers, moved over to walk beside

Halloran as they came to the stairway leading up to the next deck,

where the antechamber to the docking port was located. He was one of

the relatively few older members of the group—around Halloran’s age.

“Well, Ed . . . it would be two years at least before you saw

Earth again, even if you changed your mind today.”

“I wasn’t planning on changing my mind.”

“It’s a big slice out of what’s left of life when you get to our

end of it. No second thoughts?”

“Oh, things get easier once you’re over the hump. What happens

when you get over the top of any hill and start going down the other

side? You pick up speed, right? The tough part’s over. People just look

at it the wrong way.”

Byacheslav smiled. “Never thought about it that way. Maybe you’re

right.”

“How about you?”

“Me? I’m going to be too busy to worry much about things like

that. We’re scheduled to begin excavating the steel plant within a

month. Oh, and there was something else. . . .“ Byacheslav reached

inside his jacket, took a billfold from the inside pocket, and peeled

out Unodollar tens and ones. “That’s to settle our poker account—before

I blow it all in the mess bar down at Mainbase.”

Halloran took the money and stuffed it in his hip pocket. “Thanks. You

know, By, there was a time when I wouldn’t have trusted a

Russian as far as I could throw one of your earthmovers. It came with

the trade.”

“Well, you’re in a different business now.”

“I guess we all are.”

They entered the antechamber, with its suiting-up room and two

EVA airlocks on one side, and passed through the open doors of the

docking port into the body of the shuttle. To align with the direction

of the Mikhail Gorbachev’s simulated gravity, the shuttle had docked

with its roof entry-hatch mating to the port, which meant they had to

enter down a ladder into the compartment forward of the passenger

cabin. The seats were small and cramped, and Halloran and Byacheslay

wedged themselves in about halfway to the back, next to a young

Indonesian who was keeping up a Continuous chatter with someone in the

row behind.

“Do you know where you’re going yet, Ed?” Byacheslav asked as

they buckled themselves in.

“Probably a couple of weeks more up in orbit, until the new admin

facility is ready down below,” Halloran replied. “The director I’ll be

working for from MCM is supposed to be meeting me at MARSMOS. I should

find out for sure then. I guess it depends on you construction people.”

“Don’t worry. We won’t leave you stuck up here. . . .“ Byacheslav

looked at Halloran and raised his eyebrows. “So, one of the directors

is meeting you personally, eh? And will they have a red Carpet? If

that’s the kind of reception an administrator gets, I think I’m

starting to worry already. I can see how the whole place will end up

being run. That was what I came all this distance to get away from. Hmm

maybe I’ve changed my mind. Perhaps we will leave you up here.”

Halloran’s rugged, pink-hued face creased into a grin. “I

wouldn’t get too carried away if I were you. He’s based up at MARSMOS

most of the time, anyway. I’m just here to take care of resource-

allocation schedules. Nothing special. They used to call it being a

clerk.”

“Now I think you’re being too modest. There’s a lot more to it

than scratching in ledgers with pens these days. You have to know corn-

puter systems. And in a situation like this, the function is crucial.

You can’t tell me you’re not good.”

“Don’t believe a word of it. It’s just Uncle Sam’s way of

retiring off old spy chiefs in a world that doesn’t need so many spies

anymore.”

Halloran sat back and gazed around the cabin. All of the

passengers were aboard and seated, and the crew were securing the

doors. The metaphoric umbilical back to Earth was about to be broken.

It had been over thirty years ago when he joined the Agency. Who would

have thought, then, that two months after turning fifty-five, he’d have

found himself at a place like this, starting with a new outfit all over

again?

And of all outfits to have ended up with, one with a name like

Moscow-Chase-Manhattan Investments, Inc., which controlled a

development consortium headed by the Aeroflot Corporation, the Volga-

Hilton Hotels group, and Nippon Trans-Pacific Enterprises. Similar

combinations of interests had opened up the Moon to the point where its

materials-processing and manufacturing industries were mushrooming,

with regular transportation links in operation and constantly being

expanded, and tourism was starting to catch on~ If the U.S. space

effort hadn’t fallen apart in the seventies and eighties, America could

have had all of it, decades ahead of the Soviets. As it was, America

was lucky to have come out of it, along with Europe and some of the

other more developed nations, as junior partners. The Second Russian

Revolution, they called it. Back to capitalism. Many people thought it

was better that way.

In the case of Mars, of course, the big obstacle to its similar

development was the planet’s greater distance from Earth, with

correspondingly longer flight times. But that problem would go away—

and usher in a new era of manned exploration of the outer Solar System—

when the race to develop a dependable, high-performance, pulsed nuclear

propulsion system was won, which would bring the typical Mars round-

trip down to somewhere around ten days. Although some unforeseen

difficulties had been encountered, which had delayed development of

such a drive well beyond the dates optimistically predicted in years

gone by, the various groups working feverishly around the world were

generally agreed that the goal was now in sight. That was the bonanza

that MCM was betting on. Thirty years ago, Halloran would have declared

flatly that such a coordination of Soviet and Western interests under a

private initiative was impossible. Now he was part of it. Or about to

be. . .

He found himself wondering again if the Vusilov who would be

meeting him could be the same Vusilov from bygone years. Possibly

the KGB had its own retirement problems, too. But in any case, after

all the months of wondering, it would be only a matter of minutes now

before he found out.

The shuttle nudged itself away from the docking port, and

Halloran experienced a strange series of sensations as it fell away

from the Mikbail Gorbachev, shedding weight as it decoupled from the

ship’s rotational frame, and then accelerated into a curving trajectory

that would carry it across to the MARSMOS satellite.

“MARSMOS has increased tenfold in size in the last six months,”

Byacheslav commented. “You’ll probably have more places to discover

there in the next couple of weeks than I’ll have down on the surface.”

“There’ll need to be, with all these people showing up,” Halloran

said.

Even before the arrival of the two previous manned missions, a

series of unmanned flights had left all kinds of hardware parked in

orbit around Mars. In a frenzy of activity to prepare for the arrival

of the third mission, the construction teams from the first two had

expanded the initial station into a bewildering Rube-Goldberg creation

of spheres, cylinders, boxes, and domes, bristling with antennas, laser

tubes, and microwave dishes, all tied together by a floating web of

latticeworks and tethering cables. And the next ship from Earth, with

another six hundred people, was only two months behind.

There was a brief period of free-fall, and then more disorienting

feelings of unbalance came and went as the shuttle reversed and

decelerated to dock at MARSMOS. When Halloran unfastened his

restraining straps, he found himself weightless, which meant that they

were at the nonrotating section of the structure. Using handrails and

guidelines, the newcomers steered themselves out through an aft

sidedoor into an arrivals area where agents were waiting to give

directions and answer questions.

After receiving an information package on getting around in

MARSMOS, Halloran called Moscow-Chase-Manhattan’s number and asked for

Mr. Vusiloy.

“Da?”

“Mr. Vusilov?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Ed Halloran.”

“Ah, Mr. Halloran! Excellent!” The voice sounded genial and

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FailhadcometothenorthernhemisphereofMars.Atthenorthpole,themeantemperaturehadfallento—125°C—coldenou...

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Hogan, James P - Leapfrog

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