Ben Bova & Bill Pogue - The Trikon Deception

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THE

TRIKON

DECEPTION

Ben Bova and Bill Pogue

TOR

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely

coincidental.

THE TRIKON DECEPTION

This book has been printed on acid-free paper.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

49 West 24th Street

New York, N.Y. 10010

TOR® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bova, Ben, 1932-

The trikon deception / Ben Bova and Bill Pogue. p. cm.

"A Tom Doherty Associates Book." ISBN 0-312-85024-7

I. Pogue, John Wilbur, 1909- II. Title.

PS3552.O84T75 1992

813'.54—dc20 91-37281

CIP First Edition: February 1992

Printed in the United States of America 0987654321

TO BARBARA AND JEAN, AND ESPECIALLY TO KEVIN.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Permission to quote from the

Science

magazine issue of 28 September 1990 (vol. 249,

p. 1503) was graciously given by the American Association for the Advancement of

Science and by the author of the article, Leslie Roberts.

The lyrics quoted are from "Space Oddity," words and music by David Bowie, copyright

York, owns all publication rights for the USA and Canada. Used by permission.

"Ashes to Ashes," by David Bowie, permission granted by Isolar, New York.

International, Inc.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Dimensions aboard Trikon Station are frequently expressed in the metric system. For

those not familiar with this European system of measurement: One millimeter is about

twice the width of the lead in a mechanical pencil. One centimeter is roughly the

thickness of a piece of sliced bread. One meter is about three inches longer than a yard.

One kilometer is almost two-thirds of a mile. One kilogram equals 2.205 pounds.

4 SEPTEMBER 1998 TRIKON STATION

To the human eye, space is serene. From three hundred miles above its surface, our

Earth appears as a vast, smoothly curved panorama of deep blue oceans and brown

wrinkled landmasses decked with parades of gleaming white clouds, ever changing,

eternally beckoning. Our world shines with warmth, with beauty, with life.

Floating in the emptiness of space three hundred miles above the luminous curving

glory of Earth is a glittering jewel, a diamond set against the infinite darkness of the

cold void.

From a distance, hanging against that black infinity, it seems delicate, fragile, a child's

toy construction of gossamer and dreams. It is not until you approach that you realize

how large it really is.

Nearly three football fields across, its skeleton is a giant diamond of gleaming alloy

girders. Ten sparkling white aluminum cylinders form a raft fixed to its central truss;

three of them bear the painted flags of nations: on one cylinder are the twenty-two

flags of United Europe; on another is the rising sun of Japan; a third displays the Stars

and Stripes of the United States and the Maple Leaf emblem of Canada.

At two corners of the huge diamond are attached two bulbous, blimp-like structures,

burnt orange in color and far larger than the white cylinders. Once they were external

tanks for space shuttles; now they are extensions of this island in space, moored to the

diamond-shaped structure like giant balloons.

The gently tapering nose of one of the ETs points directly forward, the oilier directly

aft, us the diamond knifes through the calm emptiness of orbital space. The trailing ET

hears the curious circle-and-arrow symbol of the planet Mars.

Robots slide back and forth across the station's main truss, silent in the airless

vacuum, their metal wheels clasping the special guide rails, their spindly arms ending in

gripping pincers strong enough to hold hardware that would weigh tons back on Earth.

From the topmost corner of the diamond, bristling batteries of instruments aim outward

at the stars while others, at the nadir corner, peer down at the dazzling blue sphere of

Earth with its white swirls of clouds. On the station's trailing edge, broad wings of deep-

violet solar panels drink in sunlight while smaller, darker companions radiate away the

heat generated within the station.

For there are men and women living and working at this outpost in space. This is

Trikon Station, the first industrial research laboratory to be built in orbit.

Trikon.

To the human eye, space should be serene. Trikon station floated in its orbit on the

sunlit side of the Earth, passing across the radiantly intense blue of the wide Pacific,

adorned with clouds of brilliant, purest white.

The station shuddered. Like a giant sail suddenly caught in a crosswind. Like a man

startled by danger.

Alarms screeched in every laboratory and living module, Klaxons hooted along the

lengths of its passageways, and a computer-synthesized woman's voice called from

every intercom speaker in the station with maddening mechanical calm:

"Emergency. Emergency. Major malfunction. All personnel to CERV stations. All

personnel to CERV stations. Prepare to abandon the station."

No one cared. No one heeded the alarms. No one moved toward the Crew Emergency

Reentry Vehicles.

From the astronomical observatory at the uppermost corner of Trikon Station two

space-suited figures emerged, one of them encased in the "armchair" rig of a manned

maneuvering unit, MMU.

Dan Tighe, commander of Trikon Station, fought back murderous fury and a terrible

fear that clawed at his chest as he watched the space station begin to wobble and sway.

Through the heavily tinted visor of his helmet he saw the bulbous burnt-orange

structure of the Mars module detach itself from the station and begin to drift away, like

a rudderless ship caught by an evil tide. The broad wings of the solar panels were

swaying, undulating visibly. Dan knew they would break up within minutes.

We're all going to die, said a voice inside his head. We're going to die and it's my fault.

All my own goddamned stupid fault.

15 AUGUST 1998 TRIKON STATION

Names are important. When we hammered together this consortium of major

industrial corporations I insisted upon a name that would reflect its spirit of international

cooperation, a name that would not offend any of the sensitive egos among the various

boards of directors, or in the governments to whom they paid taxes. The corporations

were based in Europe, North America, and Japan. Three continents: Trikon.

The original spelling proposed was Tricon; however, my public relations consultants

suggested that this might cause confusion over the hard or soft pronunciation of the

letter c. The letter

connotes strength and provides an echo of classical Greece.

So they said.

—From

the diary of Fabio Bianco, CEO, Trikon International

The station had been in operation for more than a year on the day when the trouble

began.

David Nutt still encountered that moment of vertigo, that feeling that his insides were

adrift and he was falling into a strange pastel-colored abyss. Everything was shifting,

swirling like a kaleidoscope.

Clutching at the metal edge of the entry hatch, Dave took a deep breath and lined

himself up with the strip of black tape stuck onto the bottom of its lip.

"This side down, stupid," he muttered to himself.

The pastels tumbled into perspective. A long cylinder with a pale blue-floor and yellow

ceiling. Silver and white equipment in racks along the walls. Ovens, centrifuge,

microscopes all where they should be, and right-side-up. But it didn't help that the

damned technician was floating almost on his head at the far end of the lab.

The American scientific laboratory module had been nicknamed The Bakery by an

earlier rotation of researchers. The pastel colors were the brainchildren of a team of

psychologists who had never left the ground. Nutt was grateful for their help. After six

months aboard Trikon Station, he still had trouble orienting himself whenever he moved

from one module to another. In the microgravity world of the space station, with

everything weightless, he had trouble telling up from down without help. If he pulled

himself through the hatch at any angle except true vertical The Bakery became a

distorted alien world and his guts would start churning. Nutt was a confirmed

"flatlander." He felt queasy unless he had his feet on a solid floor, even in the almost-

zero gravity of the space station.

Fifteen meters away, at the far end of the cylinder, Stu Roberts was loading tempered

glassware into the two huge microwave ovens that had inspired the lab's nickname. His

thick mop of brick-red hair was puffed up into a wild, waving nest of weightless

microgravity snakes. The mesh hairnet he was supposed to be wearing was nowhere in

sight. His white coveralls looked grimy and spattered. Thin-faced, lean, and loose-

jointed as a scarecrow, Roberts was making this rotation the longest six months of

Nutt's life.

Roberts fancied himself a creative soul. Simple tasks such as sterilizing glassware and

monitoring experiments were too easy for him, so he constantly poked himself into

Nutt's research. He invented shortcuts, misused organic material, and analyzed data in

ways that only he could interpret, all with an irrepressible cheerfulness that irritated

Nutt beyond measure.

Roberts closed the oven door, then floated upside down over to the keyboard that

controlled the ovens and other equipment and deftly tapped out a combination. He

clamped a pair of earphones over his wild hair and immediately started to convulse, feet

kicking wildly and arms flailing at tiny spheres of color that bubbled up around his head.

A stranger might have thought that Roberts was being electrocuted or zapped by lethal

microwaves. Dave knew better.

Heaving a sigh, Nutt pulled himself through the hatch. Properly oriented, he could

maneuver through the narrow confines of The Bakery fairly well. It was almost like

swimming in air instead of water. The microscope and centrifuge workstations slid

quickly past before he grabbed a handhold and steadied himself at the refrigeration

section. Roberts's convulsions had slowed down. He was moving in time to rock music

from a portable compact-disc player Velcroed to the ceiling between the strips of

fluorescent lights. Nutt could hear its thin wail and the thump of a heavy bass beat. The

kid must have the earphones up to max, he thought. He'll be deaf before he's thirty.

The colored spheres floating around Roberts's red mane were globules of water shot

through with dyes used for experiments, the kid's version of psychedelic lighting effects.

Roberts's back was still to him, twitching in time to the music. Nutt pushed himself

past the module's computer terminal, reached the CD player, and cut off the music.

"Circus time is over," he said.

Roberts abruptly turned his head. His body automatically twisted in the opposite

direction; his flailing arms made the colored spheres scatter. He caught himself and for

a moment hung in midair, a lean youthful scarecrow in dirty white laboratory coveralls

hovering a scant few inches in front of the bearded, puffy-faced "old man" of nearly

forty who was his boss. Nutt was slightly pudgy and potbellied back on Earth; in the

weightlessness of the station his body fluids had shifted to make him look even rounder.

"Aw, Dave," Roberts whined as he yanked off the earphones, "you never let me have

any fun."

"Fun is for the ex/rec room. Find your hairnet and do something about those spheres.

If one of them gets into a specimen you'll have ruined six months' work."

Roberts hung up the earphones and then shepherded the spheres into a group and

pressed them against the door of a small freezer. They adhered to the cold surface and

formed perfect hemispheres. Soon they would evaporate and leave smudges of food

coloring that could be wiped off with a damp cloth.

"Did you unzip the wrong end of your sleep restraint?" asked Roberts. One of the most

annoying things about the kid was that he constantly tried to adapt Earthbound cliches

to the realities of life on a space station. Few translated well. "I thought you were happy

about going home."

"I'm damn happy about going home. But there's this little matter of a report I have to

write in order to justify all the money we're being paid."

Nutt shoved himself backwards to the computer terminal and slipped his stockinged

feet into a pair of loops attached to the floor. Chairs were useless in microgravity; it

took more work to force the body into a sitting position than to stay on one's feet. All

the work surfaces were breast high because under the weightless conditions one's arms

tended to float up almost to shoulder level.

Standing at the chest-high desk, his body hunched slightly in a zero-gee crouch, Nutt

began pecking at the computer keyboard. After the obligatory beeps and grunts, the

display screen lit up in bright blue and spelled out in cheery yellow letters: GOOD

MORNING! TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!

Another of Roberts's little cutenesses. Nutt cast the technician a sour look.

He entered his password, received clearance, and typed in the preliminary set of

instructions he had written with the help of a programmer back on Earth. The computer

responded with the date and the time that each file had lust been accessed.

Nutt felt his heart spasm in his chest.

"Were you in here last night?"

"When?" asked Roberts.

"Two A.M."

"You're kidding, right?"

"What about Wilson and the other techs?"

"Beats me," said Roberts.

"The computer says my files were last accessed at two A.M.," said Nutt. He typed in

another command; the computer responded with another message. "Holy shit! There's

been a download!"

"What?"

"A download." Nutt typed furiously, his stomach wrenching with each response that

played across the monitor screen. "The genetic files. Goddammit! Some sonofabitch

copied all my genetic files!"

"Dave, there's no problem."

"No problem? Six fucking months of work stolen and you say no problem?"

"If you'll let me explain..."

"Explain what? The computer's already explained everything. Somebody slipped in

here at two this morning and downloaded all the genetic files!"

"There's nothing to worry about," said Roberts.

"Nothing to worry about!" Nutt shouted. "I'm not talking about a glitch in an

experiment! I'm talking about a career at stake. My career!"

Nutt unlooped his feet and pushed away from the computer and its terrible string of

messages so hard that he sailed across the width of the lab and banged his head

against a cabinet on the opposite wall. The pain stunned him momentarily. He tumbled

slowly, running his fingers through his hair and checking for blood. Roberts grabbed his

arm to steady his movement, but the touch only angered him.

"I've got to tell Tighe." Nutt yanked away from Roberts's grip, spinning himself halfway

toward the hatch.

"Dave, don't!"

But Nutt swam away toward the hatch, his shouted curses fading to echoes.

"Well, if you want to make an asshole of yourself, be my guest," said Roberts to the

empty lab. He patted the hip pocket of his coveralls.

Mission control for Trikon Station was at Houston. Many of the consortium's European

members had objected, but it made more sense to lease time and equipment from

NASA's existing Manned Space Center than to build an entirely new complex somewhere

else.

So it was at 0753 hours central daylight time that Commander Dan Tighe closed the

light-blue plastic accordion-fold door of the cramped cubbyhole that served as his office.

It was no larger than a telephone booth wedged into a forward corner of the command

module.

His regular morning call to Mission Control was scheduled for 0800, as usual. And after

that he was supposed to see the station doctor for his weekly exam. Like most fliers,

Dan Tighe did not trust doctors, not even attractive female doctors. He rummaged

through the small cabinet built into the corner of his office where the curving shell of

the module met the forward bulkhead. His face, red and chafed, was set in a grim scowl

of determination.

It was a face built of contradictions: finely sculpted cheekbones and a hawk's nose

that had been broken long ago when he had crash-landed a crippled jet fighter. Strong

stubborn jaw with a mouth that seemed almost too small for it, lips as thin and sensitive

as a poet's. He kept his dark brown hair short enough to meet the old military

regulations, but combed it forward to conceal his receding hairline. The gray at his

temples bothered him, even though women called it distinguished.

And the eyes: electric blue, vital, brilliant. The eyes of an eagle, a flier, probing

incessantly, never still, never satisfied. But now they were wary, guarded, the eyes of a

man who had been defeated and banished. The eyes of a man who wanted to be alone

in the cockpit of a nimble supersonic jet, but found himself smothered in the

responsibilities of commanding a glorified schoolhouse that plodded along a fixed and

calculated orbit—and in danger of losing even that.

A small bonsai bush trimmed into the shape of a bird floated at the end of a tether

attached to the wall of his cramped office. Tighe whispered to it, "Sorry, no time for you

this morning," and gently pushed it out of his way as he searched through the Velcro-

lined shelves of the narrow cabinet.

At last he found what he was looking for: the blood-pressure cuff. With a grunt of

satisfaction he rolled up the left sleeve of his coveralls and wrapped the plastic around

his biceps. Taking a deep breath that was supposed to calm him, he inflated the cuff

and then read off the glowing digital numbers on its tiny electronic display: 163 over

101. The readout was adjusted for the effects of microgravity. Not bad, he thought. But

not good enough.

The command module was the smallest of all the sections that made up the Trikon

space station, and the most densely packed. While the laboratory and habitat modules

were each fifteen meters long, the command module's cylinder was half that length. It

was jammed with computer systems that tracked everything and everyone aboard the

station, communications gear that kept Tighe and his crew in constant touch with Earth,

and a command and control center that maintained the station's life-support systems

and external equipment. Dan's office and the infirmary were wedged into opposite ends

of the cramped module. Next to the cubbyhole infirmary was the sick bay: three sleep

restraints fastened against the only bare spot on any of the walls. As if to compensate

for the crowding, it was the only module with a view: a trio of small flused-silica viewing

ports were built into the bulkhead at the command and control station.

Tighe anchored his slippered feet in the loops at the base of the chest-high desk that

held his personal computer and tapped out the instructions that patched it into the

station's communications network. He plugged in the headset and clamped it on,

adjusting the pin-sized microphone in front of his mouth. Make it fast, he told himself.

Give yourself a few minutes to trim the bonsai and relax before you let

her

take your

blood pressure.

The daily transmission from Earth began precisely on time.

"Houston to Trikon Station," scratched a voice. The display screen unscrambled to

reveal the bullet head of Tom Henderson, ceiling lights gleaming on his bald dome.

"This is Trikon. I read you, Houston," replied Tighe.

"Hello, Dan. How you doin', boy? You look redder'n a beet."

"I ran out of razor blades and had to use the wind-up. Beats the hell out of your face."

"Looks like you'll have to make do without blades for a few days more. Hurricane

Caroline is stalled in the Atlantic, so the shuttle's being delayed."

"How long?"

"Three days, maybe five. Depends on when Caroline clears out."

"Christ," said Tighe. "I have a frazzled crew, a bunch of immature scientists, and now

this."

"Can't do anything about Mother Nature," said Henderson. "And you forgot the

Martians."

"I'm trying to forget about them."

The two men ran through their daily housekeeping chores—analyzing the amount of

food, water, air, and fuel remaining on board, plotting the orbital path, coordinating the

photographs that would be taken by the camera array on the station's nadir platform.

Meteorologists were especially anxious to get all the photos of Caroline that they could

provide. One task originally scheduled for today's communication—fixing the rendezvous

with the shuttle—would have to wait.

"One more thing," said Henderson. "Trikon has added another scientist to the next

rotation. His name is Hugh O'Donnell. American biochemist. I don't have his file yet, but

I see that he has standing orders to report to your medical officer on a daily basis."

"Health risk?"

"Looks it." Henderson arched his eyebrows. "I'll shoot you his file as soon as I receive

it."

"Keep me posted on the shuttle."

"Roger that," said Henderson. "Out,"

Tighe removed the headset and clipped it to its receptacle on the wall. It was

important to fasten down everything in microgravity. Otherwise they somehow floated

away, lost until they turned up stuck to an intake ventilator grid. Tighe remembered

waking up in the middle of the night on his first shuttle flight to find a green snake

gliding toward him. It took him a couple of panicked heartbeats to realize that it was the

garden hose that one of the mission specialists had brought aboard for a botany

experiment. The jerk hadn't tied it down properly and it was undulating like a cobra

across the mid-deck section where the crew slept.

Then he remembered his last shuttle flight, and felt his pulse quickening with anger.

The bonsai bird hovered near his shoulder. He nuzzled its beak. Calm me down, pal, he

said to the green bird. Calm me down before they throw me out of this job, too.

Somebody rapped on the bulkhead. Before Tighe could answer, the accordion door

squealed back and Dave Nutt pushed through. He was gasping for air. His T-shirt had

come untucked from his nylon pants and rode up over his paunchy stomach.

"What's wrong, Dave?" Tighe liked Nutt; otherwise he would have snapped at him for

barging into his office. Nutt was dedicated and sober, not at all like the other cases of

arrested development Trikon called scientists. But now he was wild-eyed, panting, his

hair and beard beaded with perspiration.

"My computer!" heaved Nutt. "Someone's tampered with it!"

"What? How?"

"Downloaded my research files."

The scientists were always complaining to Tighe about people tampering with their

work. Although the corporations that made up the Trikon consortium were supposed to

be working cooperatively, industrial espionage seemed to be the major industry aboard

the station. Most of the accusations were false alarms bred by overactive imaginations

or personal animosities among the scientists. Or at least they could not be proved to

Tighe's satisfaction.

"How do you know?" Tighe asked.

"I have a subprogram that logs every use. Somebody went into our module at two A.M.

and downloaded my goddamned files!"

"I'd better take a look," said Tighe, mentally postponing his date with the doctor.

Stu Roberts was still in The Bakery when Tighe and Nutt arrived. Now that Nutt had

taken the extreme step of actively involving the station commander, Roberts decided to

lie low and let the scientist embarrass himself. He hovered on the edge of audibility as

Nutt gave Tighe a fevered explanation of the messages appearing on the computer

monitor.

Tighe had only a general idea of the work being conducted in the three Trikon

laboratory modules. He knew that the project involved microbial genetics: the scientists

were trying to engineer a bug that would eat pollutants or toxic wastes or something

like that. His interest in the bug was purely practical. As station commander, he

constantly worried about containment of all the potentially toxic agents used by the

scientists in their research. Accidental release of bacteria, caustic chemicals, or

pollutants could wreak havoc in the delicately controlled environment of the station. In

space you cannot open a window for fresh air. One mistake with chemical or biological

materials could kill everyone aboard very swiftly.

Tighe had worked with many scientists during his years in the Air Force and with

NASA. He was accustomed to competing philosophies because scientists and the military

usually were at odds. But on Trikon Station there were cliques within cliques. The

Americans stayed with the Americans. The Japanese stayed with the Japanese. And the

Europeans, true to their history, fought among themselves as well as with all the others.

While the corporations that employed them trumpeted the benefits of cooperative

research in slick brochures and television specials, the scientists were more competitive

than Olympic athletes. They never traded information willingly and regarded each other

with the warmth of professional assassins. The situation was particularly tense just prior

to a rotation. Every ninety days a third of the scientific staff was replaced by new people

from Earth. That was when a successful industrial spy could take his loot back home.

"That's what happened," said Nutt, winding up his explanation.

Tighe leaned close to the keyboard as if scrutinizing it for fingerprints. He realized how

ridiculous he must have looked and pushed himself away.

"What do you want me to do about it?" he asked.

"Search everybody on the station! Force whoever downloaded the files to turn them

over."

"I'm not a policeman."

"This is very sensitive material! It's..."

"And I'm in a very sensitive position. I'm not just dealing with an international

contingent of scientists. There's a couple of dozen governments who view these

scientists as diplomats. If I start strong-arming people without good cause, the shit will

fall on my head, nobody else's."

"You're saying I should work for six months, have my results stolen, and do absolutely

nothing about it?"

"The files are still in your computer, right?" said Tighe. "They've been copied, not

stolen."

Nutt reluctantly nodded.

"Then consider yourself a benefactor of mankind."

"The hell I will!"

"You're supposed to be working cooperatively with all the others, aren't you? Why the

panic?"

want the credit!"

Nutt snarled through gritted teeth. "I did the work and I want the

credit for it. The work's got to be published in

name. A scientist's reputation

depends on his publications, his discoveries. Don't you understand that?"

Roberts decided it bad gone far enough. Gliding over toward his flustered boss and the

tight-lipped station commander, he interrupted, "Hey, there's really no problem."

Tighe looked at Roberts, then cocked his head toward Nutt. The scientist's bearded,

puffy face twisted into a grimace of exasperation.

"Explain yourself," Tighe said to Roberts.

"Dave put that security subprogram into his PC because he was worried about theft. I

had a suspicion that the subprogram could be fooled, so I played around with it. Sure

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摘要：

THETRIKONDECEPTIONBenBovaandBillPogueTORATOMDOHERTYASSOCIATESBOOKNEWYORKThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictitious,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleoreventsispurelycoincidental.THETRIKONDECEPTIONCopyright©1992byBenBovaandWilliamR.PogueAllrightsreserved,includingtherig...

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Ben Bova & Bill Pogue - The Trikon Deception

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