Allen Steele - Orbital Decay

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ORBITAL DECAY

Allen M. Steele

The excerpt from The Space Enterprise by G. Harry Stine. copyright þ

1982 by G. Harry Stine, has been used by permission of the Scott

Meredith Literary Agency.

Permission has been granted by Ice Nine Publishing Company, Inc. for

use of lyrics from the following songs:

"U.S. Blues" Words by Robert Hunter, music by Jerry Garcia, copyright þ

1974 by Ice Nine Publishing Company, Inc. "Truckin' " Words by Robert

Hunter, music by Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Philip Lesh, copyright (þ)

1971 by Ice Nine Publishing Company, Inc. "The Wheel" Words by Robert

Hunter, music by Jerome Garcia and William Kreutmann, copyright (þ)

1971 by Ice Nine Publishing Company, Inc. "Cumberland Blues" Words by

Robert Hunter, music by Jerry Garcia and Philip Lesh, copyright (þ)

1970 by Ice Nine Publishing Company, Inc. "Brokedown Palace" Words by

Robert Hunter, music by Jerry Garcia, copyright (þ) 1971 by Ice Nine

Publishing Company, Inc. ORBITAL DECAY An Ace Book/published by

arrangement with the author PRINTING HISTORY Ace edition / November

1989

Cover art by Romas.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or

any other means, without permission.

For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison

Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

ISBN: 041-49851-5

Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison

Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

The name "ACE" and the "A" logo are trademarks belonging to Charter

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Communications, Inc. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 10 9 8

6 5 4 3 2 1

This ones for Linda because of all the right reasons And for her

favorite band, The Grateful Dead

Acknowledgements The author extends

his deepest gratitude to the people who helped make this novel

possible: Rick Dunning, who designed Olympus Station and aided in the

design of Vulcan Station, and otherwise acted as an unofficial science

adviser in the creation of the backgrounds and technology; Jin Ball of

NASA's Public Affairs Office at the Kennedy Space Center, who gave me a

first-class tour of the facilities and answered many questions about

flight operations at the Cape; David Magi, also of the Kennedy Space

Center, who lent me an enlightening half-hour of his time; Jove

Patterson and Roy Fisher of the University of Missouri School of

Journalism, for enabling me to take off on a couple of off-campus trips

to the Cape and Washington, D.C which allowed me to gather material

while conducting postgraduate research at the same time; Ken Moore,

John Holus, and Dan Caldwell of the Nashville Science Fiction Club, who

supplied me with invaluable insights, criticism, and magazine articles

during the genesis of the book (and to Ken's cats--Avco, Big Black,

Pinhead, and Token-for educating me in feline psychology); Ginjer

Buchanan, who rescued this novel from the slush pile and gave me

encouragement when it was needed the most; ian Ralph, who volunteered

to be the novel's first reader and survived the experience to give me a

critique; and, definitely not the least, Linda, for back rubs,

patience, beer runs, and all the other big and little things.

September, 1983-October, 1986; Columbia, Missouri; Nashville,

Tennessee; Washington, D.C.; Worcester, Massachusetts

"Just as the

oceans opened up a new world for clipper ships and Yankee traders,

space holds enormous potential for commerce today. The market for

space transportation could surpass our capacity to develop it.

Companies interested in putting payloads into space must have ready

access to private sector launch services ... We will soon implement a

number of executive initiatives, develop proposals to ease regulatory

constraints, and, with NASA's help, promote private sector investment

in space.

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--President Ronald Reagan State of the Union address January 25, 1984

''. . . In recent years there has been an increasing amount of

interest and speculation in the area of space colonization and space

habitation.... It is only fair to point out, however, that far too much

space colonization work has been pure utopian dreaming; historically,

there is nothing wrong with this if you keep fact and fiction

delineated. Similar utopian dreaming heralded the opening of the new

frontiers of the past. Cathay was once a magical kingdom with great

wizards and magic that were really advanced technology beyond the

comprehension of visitors. Far Araby was a place of jinns, flying

carpets and odalisques ready to do your every bidding.

America was a land of milk and honey where the streets were paved with

gold and even if they tossed you in jail it was in golden chains.

California was a land of perpetual sunshine where it never rained. And

the space colony offers us a pastoral existence with trees, grass,

grazing livestock, happy farmers and dancing children eating goat

cheese.... But opening a frontier is a deadly, difficult gut-tearing

job that requires the best people that the human race can produce and

demands its toll in lives and property."' --G. Harry Stine The Space

Enterprise

''Sure, we had trouble building Space Station One--but the trouble was

people."

--Robert A. Heinlein "Delilah and the Space Rigger"

PART ONE A Hard Day in the Clarke Orbit Some day soon--perhaps

tomorrow, perhaps a week or a month, maybe as long as a year from now

if they're really lazy about it--they're going to find this crevasse.

It won't be very difficult, because the tire tracks from my tractor

will remain indelibly printed in the gray lunar soil. There are no

winds on the Moon to shift dust over the tracks, no erosion save for

the impact of stray micrometeorites. My trail will remain fresh even

if they delay the search for a decade, and it will lead across the

Descartes Highlands east of the Abulfeda Crater until it ends, quite

abruptly, at the lip of this crevasse within sight of Argelander

Peak.

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When they shine a spotlight down here, they'll discover the wreckage of

my tractor, looking like one of the junked cars one sees from the

highways in Pennsylvania. When they lower a couple of men down by

cable, they'll find my footprints in the dust at the bottom of the

crevasse. They'll follow those lonely footprints as they lead for a

mile and a half northwest, the steep walls of the crevasse rising to

either side like enormous hedgerows of ancient volcanic rock.

It's dark down here, even during the high noon of the two-week lunar

day. Their helmet lanterns will cast ghostly circles of light along

the walls and in the deep impressions of my footprints. They will feel

the cold lonesomeness which is destined, in these last hours of my

life, to be my dying impression.

Actually, I understand that oxygen asphyxiation is not a bad way to go,

relatively speaking. There's worse ways to die in space. In the end

I'll probably babble my head off, gleefully

talking about moon worms

as my lungs fill with carbon dioxide. I'll go out crazy as a shithouse

rat, but at least I'll be happy. I think.

When they come to the end of my tracks, they'll find me sitting on my

rump with my back propped against a boulder, quite dead. They will

also find the greatest discovery ever made. I'm serious. It's down

here in this crevasse with me, and the search party would have to be

blind to miss it.

I only wish I could be around for the moment. I wouldn't be able to

see the expressions on their faces through the reflective coating on

their helmet visors, but I can imagine what words will pass through

their comlink.

Although, now to think of it, even hearing what they had to say would

be impossible. If my suit radio, or the radio in my poor wrecked

tractor was still working, I wouldn't be sitting here now, waiting to

die.

Life is just full of little ironies, ain't it?

I wonder which will go out first: the oxygen supply, the batteries in

my life-support system, which keep me from freezing to death, or the

microcassette into which I'm dictating these last thoughts.

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Theoretically I shouldn't be wasting precious air in speaking; I should

be conserving it in hopes that a search party from Descartes Station

will find me in time.

Rescued in the nick of time, la. Sorry, that stuff only happens in

science fiction stories. I know damn well that the guys back at the

base, inert bastards that they are, won't even think about looking for

me until I'm several hours overdue. These two-week days tend to

distort time like that.

I'll be long dead by the time someone peers over his Marvel comic book

and says, ''Hey, what happened to Sam?" It'll be another hour before

someone else says, "Hey, y'know, I think Sam's overdue from his trip

out." And it'll be another hour after that before someone finally says

"Well, gee whiz, maybe we ought to take another track out and go find

ol' Sam; he might be in trouble or something."

You sons of bitches. I'm gonna get you for this.

At least there's the consolation, the posthumous booby prize, that

someone may eventually transcribe these taped recollections and publish

them as an article about the man who made the greatest discovery.

After all these years, after all those reject slips, I'll finally get

something of mine in print. The last words of a failed science fiction

writer; maybe it'll even get in Analog or Omni, one of the mags that

turned down all the other stuff I wrote. It may even spur some

publisher to print Ragnarok Night, the SF novel that no one would touch

while I was alive.

I can always daydream, can't I?

Yeah, life is just full of them crazy little ironies. Death is too, I

suppose.

So, to pass the time until my oxygen or suit batteries peter out, I'll

tell you a story, you who will someday separate this tape from my suit

recorder. A spaceman's memoirs, if you will. How Samuel K. Sloane,

who got a job with Skycorp so he could go to space to get authentic

background for his science fiction novel, ended up making the Great

Discovery.

Of course, that isn't all there is to it. There was also the stuff

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that happened on Skycan and Vulcan, like Doc Felapolous and his cats or

the run-in between Virgin Bruce and Cap'n Wallace, and Jack Hamilton

and orbital decadence, and the day we messed with the plans of the

National Security Agency and stuck a banana in the Big Ear, so to

speak. That all came first . . . which of course means that I had

best start at the beginning, like you do with all good stories.

First, you have to understand that outer space isn't all that it's cut

out to be....

Homesick

The days began the same way after a while: adventure made mediocre

through repetition, the vastness of space a stale background against

which their tedious lives were played.

A dozen men floated in the narrow cylindrical compartment all facing in

the same direction like automatons waiting to be activated. Even in

weightlessness their aluminum space armor and enormous MMU backpacks

seemed to hang on them like heavy burdens; they slouched under their

packs, their shoulders bent, their helmeted heads hanging low, their

hands moving slowly as they replenished their oxygen tanks from hoses

dangling from the wall.

The compartment was filled with the sound of hissing air and the thin

crackle of suit radios being tested, of muttered comments and

complaints and the clink of tools nestling together in the cargo

pockets of their overgarments. Behind them a technician, wearing a

T-shirt with a rock band's name stenciled on the front, floated from

man to man, checking suit joint seals, turning intake valves they

couldn't reach, rescuing runaway gloves and power tools from midair.

There were no windows. CRT screens overhead displayed job assignments

for the day, and TV monitors showed scenes inside the construction

shack's main bay and outside, where the work was going on. No one paid

attention to the monitors; everyone knew what it looked like out there

and didn't want to be reminded.

They were all in there on that shift. Virgin Bruce, singing an old

Grateful Dead song, his raucous laughter ringing through the

whiteroom.

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Mike Webb, smiling at Bruce's jokes, trying for the umpteenth time to

get the suiting procedure right, always having to get Julian, the

technician, to help him. Al Hernandez, moving efficiently, telling

another interminable story about his family in Miami, his brother in

the FBI, his son who wanted to join the Marines, his wife who kept

asking when he was coming home ù (everyone, hearing these things,

nodding, silently asking, what's new, Al?). Hank Luton, who would be

in the command center and not have to wear a suit for the next four

hours, bugging everyone about little details--a joint in one section

that needed to be rewelded, a bend in a truss which meant the beam had

to be replaced, all the stuff the computers had picked up since the

last shift--and being rewarded with surly grunts and mum bled

apologies. And the rest of the handful of space grunts who called

themselves beamjacks--because it sounded like ''lumber jack"--who for

some reason were thought of as pioneers instead of everyday Joes trying

to make it through another dogass day.

One by one, they managed to make it out of the whiteroom, through the

hatch at the end of the compartment into the next inflated plastic

cylinder, moving in a ragged single file toward the airlock. Now and

then someone had to go back because a suit sensor detected a slow leak

or a weak battery. The airlock was a big metal chamber which they were

herded into by another technician. When he sealed the hatch they stood

for another few minutes, their feet gripped to the floor by magnetic

overshoes, everything colored candy-apple red by the fluorescents in

the ceiling. No sound now, except the whisper of air inside one's

helmet and conversations overlapping in the comlink, received through

their snoopy helmets' earphones.

The opposite hatch of the airlock slid open, and Vulcan Station's main

construction bay lay before them like an airless basketball court,

paper-thin aluminum walls offering scant protection from the void.

They shuffled out onto the deck, some heading for the beam-builders,

some for the construction pods docked nearby, some for the hatch

leading outside the shack.

Those who went outside, one by one, gripped their MMUs' hand controls,

pushing them forward and letting the little jets push them away from

Vulcan. Once this had been exciting; now it was just the first part of

the job, getting out to the powersat. It lay before them like a vast

metal grid, a flat rectangle bigger than the towns some of them had

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been born in, larger than anything that had ever been built on Earth.

They floated away from Vulcan, little white stick-men against the

overwhelming darkness, the shack's blue and red lights outlining them

as silhouettes. Earth was a blue, white, and green crescent beyond the

powersat. They tried not to look at it, because it never did any good;

if you thought about it too much, you got depressed, like Popeye. Just

do your job; punch the clock and hope you make it through the shift

alive.

Once or twice a week, when he had a few minutes to spare at the end of

his lunch break, the beamjack the others called Popeye would float down

to Meteorology for a look at Earth. Not that it was impossible to see

Earth any time he wished; he saw the planet every time he went on

shift. From 22,300 miles away, it was an inescapable part of life,

always there, always to be there. It was something no one could ever

forget. Yet sometimes Popeye Hooker did find himself forgetting.

There came times--while on the job, while lying awake in his bunk,

while climbing into his suit for another work shift--when he tried to

recall what standing on real ground was like, how fresh air tasted, and

found himself unable to remember.

Sometimes he could not remember Laura's face. Part of him didn't want

to remember what she looked like, and it might have been for the better

if he could not; yet Popeye had to remember Laura, for reasons he could

not comprehend. It was those instances when her face disappeared from

his mind's eye which scared him the worst. So, when he could, he would

head for the weather station to borrow a few minutes on the big optical

telescope.

Once or twice a week, although if he could have, he would have visited

Meteorology every day. But his being allowed to use the telescope at

all was a personal favor extended by the bogus meteorologists and he

didn't want to risk overstaying his welcome. The weather station was

at the south polar end of Olympus Station's hub. To reach it from the

rim, Hooker had to leave the four adjacent modules comprising the mess

deck and walk down the catwalk until he reached the gangway leading

down into the western terminus. On this particular day he had fifteen

minutes before the beginning of his second shift, so he had to hurry.

Hooker grabbed one of the two ladders in the terminus and began to

climb up through the overhead hatch into the western spoke. As he

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ascended, he passed fluorescent light fixtures, fire control stations

and color-coded service panels set in the cool, curving metal walls.

Along the inside of the spoke were taped-up notices of one kind or

another: the announcement of the Saturday movie in the rec room,

reminders of deadlines for filing W-2 forms and absentee voter

registration, announcements for union meetings, and ever present

"Think--Safety First!" signs. The second ladder ran directly behind

him; another crewman passed him, heading down to the torus, his soles

clanging on the ladder rungs, echoing in the utilitarian cool. Soft

music from an occasional speaker set in the walls accompanied his

journey to the hub, the Muzak that was piped through Skycan. Hooker

gritted his teeth as, for perhaps the tenth time that day--he had lost

count, if he had ever kept it--he heard ''If I Had A Hammer'' segueing

into a syrupy version of "Yesterday." Elevator music for a place that

didn't have elevators; it was another sign of his lapsed mental

condition that he couldn't laugh at this irony. By the time he had

climbed halfway up the spoke, most of the one-third normal gravity

experienced on the rim of the station was gone, and he was not climbing

the ladder so much as pulling himself forward.

"Down" as a direction became meaningless; the spoke's shaft took a

horizontal rather than a vertical perspective. By the time Hooker

reached the hatch leading into the hub he was clinging lightly to the

ladder, experiencing zero gee. It was a sign of how long he had been

on Skycan--how long, too, he had trouble recalling--that he became

almost instantly acclimated, with only the slightest feeling of

queasiness. The spoke ended at the entrance to the hub, in a central

passageway running perpendicular to the rim. Another hatch opposite to

the one he emerged from led to the east spoke leading back down to the

other half of the torus. In one direction, the passageway led to

Command/Communications and the airlocks.

In the other, toward the south pole, were Power Control and

Meteorology.

The soft hiss of air from the vents was drowned out by ''Yesterday,"

reverberating off the metal walls. By the time he reached the weather

station at the end of the hub, passing the yellow radioactivity warning

signs on the hatches leading into Power Control, the Muzak had segued

into "Close To You'' and Hooker was feeling closer to the edge than

before. The hatch at the end of the corridor was marked

"METEORoLoGY--Authorized Personnel Only." Popeye grasped a handrail

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and pressed the button on the intercom by the hatch and waited, trying

to shut out the saccharine violins and chorus.

Impending insanity was

soundtracked by the Carpenters; there had to be better ways to lose

one's mind. The intercom crackled and he heard the voice of one of the

bogus meteorologists. This one called himself Dave, but no one knew

their real names.

"Yeah? Whoizzit?" ''Claude Hooker,'' Popeye said. "Hey, is the

telescope free now? For a few minutes?" The intercom was silent for a

moment. Popeye imagined Dave consulting with the other two men in the

crowded compartment beyond the hatch. Popeye's out there. Wants to

use the telescope. Any incoming transmissions ? He hoped things were

quiet in Cuba and Nicaragua today.

The intercom crackled again. "Yeah, okay, Popeye, for a few minutes.

Give us a chance to straighten up in here first, okay?"

Hooker nodded, forgetting that Dave could not see him. The "straighten

up" line was a tired old shuck. In microgravity there was no place for

carelessly misplaced items; a compartment in Skycan's hub always had to

be kept shipshape. Dave and his companions were doubtless putting away

long-range telephotos of Soviet silos and submarine bays and troop

movements, transcripts of messages from Washington and Langley and

Cheyenne Mountain. In a sense, the three men in the weather station

did serve as meteorologists. If asked, they could confidently explain

current weather patterns in the Western Hemisphere, tell a listener a

high pressure system hanging over the American Midwest was causing St.

Louis to feel like an anteroom of Hell or why a front coming in from

the Pacific was dumping rain over northern California and Oregon. But

everyone in Olympus Station's hundred-person complement, except for the

occasional greenhorn who happened to ask why the three meteorologists

generally kept to themselves, knew that Dave and his companions Bob and

John were National Security Agency analysts. They were weathermen of

the world's geopolitical climate, rather than the natural. Their

meteorologist roles were rather weak covers for their spending long

hours in a compartment crammed with telescopes and radio equipment.

Their cover story had never been very solid. The phony weathermen knew

that the rest of the crew knew their real purpose aboard Skycan, and

the crew knew that they knew that as well. No one made an issue of it,

though, or at least as long as little favors were extended by the NSA

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Allen Steele - Orbital Decay

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