Boundary

  "This is one of the cabins—the one we are assigning you, Helen, in fact. Or the two of you, if you want to share it. No paparazzi to pester you here, after all." His wide smile was replaced by a caricatured frown of disapproval. "Not that that stopped you, I noticed— harrumph—from living in sin back on Earth."

  The "cabin" was actually a two-story apartment, with the bedroom and study upstairs, and living room and small dining room/kitchen downstairs. Multiple fastening loops, velcro pads, and other provisions were made for using the apartment in microgravity. But the construction was based on the fact that, most of the time, the ring would be providing one-third gravity, with "down" towards the outside of the ring.

  "The furnishings can be moved around, partitions put in, and so on. The shapes aren't very variable—we only have two types of chairs, for instance—but we've tried to provide lots of options for layout. Basically, it's like very fancy Lego building blocks. You can turn and lock the units into standardized fasteners below, and there are utility hookups laid out in a standard grid pattern that you can take advantage of."

  "Me?" Helen shook her head. "Not likely. I'm a paleontologist, not a plumber."

  "Well, okay, one of the ship's engineers. You wouldn't want to try doing any of this without training—you hear that, A.J.?—and even with training you wouldn't do it alone. But within some pretty broad limits, you can have a custom living space. Before too long, I don't expect any two cabins to be the same. The engineers even set up mechanisms to make sure balance is maintained, if by some odd chance everyone on one side of the ring likes apartments crowded with lots of furnishings and everyone on the other side likes wide-open spaces."

  Again, Helen ignored the fact that Ken was lecturing them on stuff they already knew. She just shook his head and murmured: "It's . . . huge. I never imagined it would seem this big. I mean, abstractly I knew the designs—but they didn't convey the sheer impact of the thing."

  A.J. turned away from examining the kitchen setup. "We aren't Napoleonic-era sailors and we're not going to work well cramped into tiny living quarters for a year or more. We need space. And fortunately, space they could give us, since the ship had to be big anyway."

  "Can we see the labs?" Helen asked.

  Hathaway chuckled. "Have no fear, Dr. Sutter. About half the ring is living space. The other half is for working. We have everything on the ring from full networked information systems to paleontological, biological, chemical, nuclear, and engineering laboratories. Data is stored redundantly in another system in the main body, and we can send backups of critical data to Earth if we need to. We have integrated microfabrication setups for prototyping, tool design and repair, and so on."

  Since Ken was clearly not going to be diverted from his determination to reiterate what they already knew, Helen decided it would be polite to indulge him.

  "Main control is in the central body, right?"

  "The bridge," Hathaway corrected her, clearly preferring the classic terminology. "Yes, it is indeed located in the forward section of Nike's central body. We'll be visiting there too. Shall we go on?"

  "Wow."

  A.J. was simply staring around, grinning so widely that it looked like his face might split in two. "This is so cool."

  Ken tried to look professionally proud, but that comment broke through the feeble attempt. He grinned back like a kid finding his dad had built him a three-story treehouse. "Yeah, isn't it?"

  Nike's bridge was arranged in a manner strongly reminiscent of many a fictional space vessel's. It was a long, egg-shaped compartment, with duty stations spaced around the perimeter, and a central dais with a command and control console and chair—a captain's chair, clearly—which could swivel to survey any of the duty stations.

  Dominating the bridge, however, was the tremendous viewport, covering most of the "ceiling" area. A span of pure velvet blackness showed through in the dimmed interior lighting, sprinkled with stars and crisscrossed with the argent webwork of the dry dock facilities around Nike.

  "That's . . . a hell of a window," Helen said finally. She realized she wasn't as familiar with this part of the ship's design. "Isn't that a weak point in the structure? At least for radiation shielding?"

  "Not really. It looks like clear glass, but that's actually transparent composite. It's coated with artificial diamond, and insulated with a foot and a half of optical aerogel with a high radiation shielding coefficient. The back section is similar but coated with an active-crystal matrix which can black it out—makes it reflective on the outside. And of course can be used to enhance anything you see through the port, or override it as a display, like a viewscreen. You actually have similar windows in your cabins; they just aren't open right now, so to speak. Because of the heating effects and the potential danger of people blinding themselves looking at the sun, we're keeping the window controls mostly to ourselves. We'll leave them open in the cabins whenever it's safe, once we're under way. You can always shut them off, though."

  Helen waved her hand around the spacious bridge. "Let me guess. More political and publicity design compromises."

  Hathaway nodded. "Not so much compromises as just overkill again. You could really run Nike from a single enclosed room, if you had to, with nobody at the controls. We don't really need a crew to fly this ship, although having one certainly acts as a failsafe. But . . . well, it just looks better this way. The public feels like they're getting their money's worth, and they ponied up a lot of it.

  "The design is completely functional, too. You could in fact fly this ship on manual from the bridge, not that I'd ever want to see anyone try it. A.J., your station is right there." He pointed to a console area in the front and to the right.

  As A.J. floated himself over to the indicated area, Hathaway added: "The equipment isn't a waste, either. Like almost everything else in the ship, it can either be used right where it sits or unshipped and brought down to Phobos."

  "Hey, this thing already ties right in with my VRD!"

  "Of course it does, A.J. They took the coding straight from your personal station at NASA."

  "Neat! I don't even have to tweak it!"

  Helen took another slow, admiring turn to examine the whole bridge. "I agree with you, Ken. It might be silly theatrical overkill in some ways—but this really is a ship. You can feel it."

  "Yes, you can." Hathaway's gaze was focused out the huge viewport. "And she's about ready to fly."

  Chapter 29

  Nicholas Glendale stood out on the landing field where, almost two years earlier, Chinook had crashed while trying to land. He wasn't here for a landing, however. He was gazing upward to see a launch.

  It was chilly on the flat desert plain, now that the sun had gone down. All the more so because they were well into autumn. Glendale pulled his coat a bit tighter. The garment was cut thin and sharply angled, which was nice from a cosmetic viewpoint, since it emphasized his slender figure. But he missed the reassuring puffy bulk of the coats he remembered from his younger years, even if the aerogel insulation of his current one made it just as warm.

  Back at NASA Control, the countdown had begun. He could hear the murmur of traffic between the ground and Nike in his ear, and if he wished, his VRD would display any of a dozen views of the great ship or the control center. But for now he looked only with eyes. At an altitude of about two hundred miles, the fourteen-hundred-foot- long Nike stretched over 4.5 arc minutes—nearly a sixth of the width of the full moon. It was easy to spot coming over the horizon, if you knew where to look. Once it was up in the sky, of course, nobody could miss it.

  Glendale knew where to look. He came out here often to watch her fly overhead.

  He had never been interested in space travel, particularly. His own field fascinated him, and had since he was a teenager—the interaction of its personalities as much as the unearthing of ancient biological history. For whatever reason, paleontology had always seemed to attract some of the most colorful personalities ever to populate the halls of acad
emia. Still did, for that matter.

  Perhaps that very fact—having had no youthful fascination with space—had led to his current obsession.

  "I was never inoculated against this," Glendale heard himself murmur. When a connection had finally been shown between Helen Sutter's problematica, Bemmius secordii, and Phobos, Glendale had been forced to really look at this utterly different field . . . and the space bug had bitten, hard.

  It had not been easy, especially in the first few months after he'd realized he really was interested—intensely, passionately interested—in following the mystery of Bemmius to Phobos. For the first time in his life, Nicholas Glendale had found himself suffering—violently—from the hideous throes of professional jealousy.

  Helen Sutter was, as he himself had said, the only correct choice for the mission. Not only did she already know far more about Bemmius than anyone else on Earth, but she was considerably younger than he was, at least as photogenic, and more athletic. Add to that the sudden romantic tie between her and the handsome young genius who had discovered the Phobos base—the tabloids had picked that up almost immediately—and only a complete idiot would try to bar her from the mission. The publicity alone would be worth millions in justifying the program to the public.

  The fact had remained that Nicholas Glendale wasn't that old, he was well-known, respected, trusted—and, somewhat to his own surprise, he'd even passed the physical and psychological exams for space travel. Not with nearly as good a score as Helen or many of the other candidates, true, with regard to the physical tests. After all, he was sixty years old.

  Still, physically, there was nothing to prevent him from going. Indeed, one of the members of the crew—the linguist, Rich Skibow— was sixty-three years old. Glendale had been astounded, and more than a little repelled, to find that he was actually entertaining thoughts of using his reputation and public leverage to force his way onto the crew. He had always detested scientists who tried to advance their personal goals over the needs of science, or over the metaphorical bodies of others. It was one of the reasons he had taken immense pleasure in dissecting that self-centered ass Pinchuk. Yet there he had been, thinking very similar selfish thoughts which would have, if indulged, resulted in shoving aside an undoubtedly more needed somebody off Nike just so he could joyride around the Solar System.

  Coming up on visibility . . .

  He glanced to the west, where Nike would soon appear, her orbital direction giving her an apparent retrograde motion against the stars.

  Not quite yet. A few more moments.

  He had managed to get his new obsession under control, finally, and he didn't think anyone else had really noticed anything. Once he had forced himself to accept that he would not be going, at least on this first mission, he had thrown his new fascination some bones. Reading voluminously on space travel—he realized suddenly that he hadn't even glanced at a paleontological journal in three months— and slightly abusing his position and reputation to get himself some actual orbital time and a visit to Nike.

  NASA had given themselves, and Glendale, one other special treat, however.

  There she was! A glimmer, growing into a brighter light, as Nike continued her orbit. The countdown was now nearing its end. If all went well—if nothing happened to delay or stop the countdown, now in its last seconds—Nike would begin her departure from Earth by firing her engines just about precisely above Glendale's head.

  She would not, of course, be driving straight towards Mars. Instead, she would be using multiple short burns to take a more economical route by exploiting the power of the Earth's gravity well, firing subsequently as she approached perigee and building velocity in a slingshot maneuver before heading on a transfer orbit to where Mars would be in about three months. She was going to be showing off what she could do upon arrival, however. The current plans were for her to do what amounted to a brute-force braking maneuver that would park her near Phobos with a single long burn.

  Nicholas Glendale would not be on board Nike. But he would watch her leave.

  "I see you, Helen!"

  Near orbit and increased bandwidth allowed some personal channels. "All go so far," Helen responded. "Jesus, Nicholas, I'm nervous."

  "No reason to be nervous. Excited, though, that's just fine."

  "That, too. I wish you were coming with us, you know."

  "Not as much as I do. Perhaps next trip."

  "Goodbye, Nicholas."

  "Goodbye—and good luck, Helen."

  The voice of Ground Control echoed on another channel. "Thirty seconds to ignition."

  "Main engines all show green. We are go for launch."

  "Ignition in twenty seconds from . . . mark."

  Glendale blinked hard and stared upward. The sparkling not-quite-dot was almost directly overhead now.

  "Ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One . . ."

  Nike suddenly blazed brighter, six NERVA engines hurling superheated gases outward at a rate of tons per second. Nicholas knew that human eyes couldn't possibly see the effect of less than a quarter-g of acceleration on something already at orbital speeds, but his hindbrain insisted that the distant spacecraft had lunged forward eagerly and was already heading towards the horizon at an ever-increasing pace. He kept his eyes fixed on Nike as she silently accelerated on her journey to another world.

  He couldn't say exactly at what point he could no longer quite see her. But when he finally admitted to himself that she was truly gone, he became aware of the tears streaming down his face.

  Some of them were from keeping his eyes open too long.

  Chapter 30

  "Gee," A.J. said, fighting to keep his face straight. "That's tough."

  "I appreciate your attempt at diplomacy, A.J." Dr. Wu took another deep breath. The paleness of his skin didn't decrease, but the sheen of sweat seemed to be fading. "Even though the attempt is feeble and ineffective."

  "It is kinda funny, though. After everything we went through, and now we're on our way and you—the doctor—are getting spacesick?"

  Wen Hsien Wu grimaced, holding down his lunch apparently by force of pride. "I suppose if I were in your position I might find it amusing. As it is, I have a very hard time taking it that way."

  "Seriously, anything I can do for you? I mean, this is really just a scratch, I'll take care of it myself."

  "A bit more than a scratch, judging by the bleeding. Yes, get me one of the blue pills from the container on the top right, marked 'Stabilese.'"

  A.J. glanced in the indicated direction and floated himself over to the cabinet. "That's the antinausea drug?"

  "One of them. This one works after the fact, unlike most. If I can keep it down for a few minutes."

  A.J. got one of the pills out and handed it to the doctor. "Here you go. Look on the bright side. In a few more hours we'll be going to rotation mode. After that, we'll have about one-third gravity to work with."

  "Yes." Wu swallowed the pill, seemed to turn slightly paler. Sweat broke out across his face again. Grimly he closed his eyes, then opened them quickly again to stare into the distance. A.J. said nothing, but handed the doctor one of the catcher bags in case his stomach won out.

  Several more minutes went by. Slowly, color crept back into Wu's face, and he sighed with relief. "Well, I believe it is working. I still feel terrible, but not as badly as I did." He reached out. "Let me see that cut. Good lord, A.J., how did you manage to do that?"

  "My reflexes are still on Earth. I was moving some of the equipment around in micrograv, got distracted, realized something was getting away from me, grabbed it, and lever action sorta whipped me around. Caught my arm on a bracket."

  Wu shook his head. His hands shook slightly, too, but the instrument they held was still steady. "I think I can glue it together. I'd rather not have to go with stitches."