Boundary

  There was nothing unusual about Gupta's appearance—dark skin, black hair, symmetrical and well-molded face with a hooked nose over a brilliant smile, and he always dressed as though attending a formal dinner. Nothing unique at all, unless you counted the sharpness of those black eyes. It was Satya Gupta's voice that caught one's attention.

  Everyone remarked on it, sooner or later. When A.J. Baker had met Gupta, he'd said: "So that's what Saruman is supposed to sound like."

  Being A.J., he'd said it right in front of Gupta, too. Fortunately, the Indian engineer had a good sense of humor and hadn't been offended.

  "So you never worried about something going wrong?"

  Gupta gave an elaborate shrug. "It is always possible for there to be a failure, of course. Why else do we engineers always try to allow for all possibilities—and then add more reinforcements, just in case? On the other hand, a machine that is designed correctly should work. It will work. On this premise, Ms. Secord, our entire civilization depends."

  Jackie almost laughed. Coming from anyone else, Gupta's little speeches and saws would just sound pompous; coming from him, they were simply right.

  "Still—a nuclear rocket, Dr. Gupta! We just fired the first nuclear rocket since NERVA shut down!"

  "Speaking for myself," Dr. Philip Moynihan said from his chair near the observation port, "I knew perfectly well it would work, and I still feel the same way Jackie does." The very elderly researcher was the only living man in the room who had participated in the original NERVA tests in the 1960s. "It's wonderful to see the new rocket fired for the first time."

  Steven Schiffer, as was his way, added a cautionary note. "If the scrubbers don't make the outside air as clean as it was before the firing, it may be the last firing, too. The licensing hassles to permit this were something hellish. If one of the counters outside the range so much as hiccups, they'll probably come in and seal the whole complex." Gloomily: "With us in it, under a million tons of cement."

  "And if they do that," Dr. Rankine said from his position at one of the analysis stations, "We'll just fire Zeus up again and blow a hole in the cement. Peak thrust of four and a half million newtons—call it just over a million pounds."

  "Sweet! That'll give us something to fly from here to Mars on!"

  "I still prefer 'Old Bang-Bang,'" grumbled Dr. Hiroshi Kanzaki.

  Jackie rolled her eyes. The Japanese engineer's attachment to the old Orion design had always struck her as just barely short of obsessive.

  "Oh, sure," she jibed. "That would be a lot easier to get authorized. 'Hi, we're going to take this huge honkin' plate of steel, put our ship on top, and then light off a chain of nuclear bombs under our asses to get us moving. In your back yard.'"

  Kanzaki was never one to take a jibe without a rejoinder. "Well, you can't argue that us going for the nuclear rocket hasn't taken the heat off your boyfriend."

  "A.J. is not my boyfriend!" Jackie replied automatically, for what was probably the three thousandth time.

  The rest of what Kanzaki had said was true enough. The Ares Project also needed nuclear reactors to pull off some of the projected stunts, like generating new fuel on Mars for the return trip. If the government hadn't already been planning to make extensive use of nuclear technology in space for its own projects, A.J. and his fellow Nuts would have had hell's own time trying to convince anyone to let them fire off something loaded with fissionable materials into the sky.

  "No doubt. I'm sure they're all grateful for that minor favor. Still, it means we get the real drive system while they're playing with bottle rockets."

  That was greeted with another euphoric roar of agreement. Ever since they began, the space programs of the world had been stuck using chemical fuels to catapult loads into space. While that was perfectly acceptable for simple small orbital work, the fact remained that to explore the rest of the solar system demanded some other method of propelling a spaceship.

  Many alternatives had been proposed, but they all had one of two disadvantages. Either, like solar sails or electric drive systems— sometimes called "ion" drives—they provided miniscule amounts of thrust. Or, they required a power source of such magnitude that only something like a nuclear reactor could provide the oomph needed.

  In the case of Orion—"Old Bang-Bang," in their parlance— the design cut out the middleman entirely and detonated nuclear explosives like firecrackers under a tin can to kick a truly impressive payload upwards. However, with the paranoia against all things nuclear—even controlled reactions like NERVA—no such design had ever really been given a chance to get off the ground, so to speak.

  But with the impetus to get to Mars suddenly in overdrive, it was clear that some superior drive system would be needed for the projected spaceship that NASA intended to send to Phobos and, thence, to Mars. With that demand, the NERVA program—Nuclear Energy for Rocket Vehicle Applications—had been reborn. Even in its prototype stages two-thirds of a century before, NERVA had demonstrated the immense thrust of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The specific impulse, which meant the amount of time that one pound of propellant could be used to produce a thrust of one pound of force, had been over eight hundred seconds—far greater than that which could be obtained from chemical sources.

  While other theoretical systems, such as VASIMR, offered superior overall performance, they remained theoretical. All of them required major technological breakthroughs, such as controlled commercial fusion—still eternally twenty years away—or specialized materials design. NERVA was in fact the simplest overall concept available. It used nuclear power to heat reaction mass to tremendous temperatures and pressures, and then let it squirt out. Simple, but with proper design reasonably efficient and vastly powerful.

  "What was our specific impulse?" she asked.

  "Eight hundred ninety-two seconds," Rankine answered smugly. "Pushing the calculated limits already. I'll bet with tuning we can crack the nine hundred second barrier!"

  Jackie's phone pinged. "Yes?"

  A.J.'s image appeared in front of her, courtesy of her VRD. "Congratulations, Jackie! Looks like you hit a million pounds of thrust there!"

  "How the hell do you know that? You didn't play Tinkerbell with me, did you?"

  A.J. gave an exaggerated look of wounded pride. "How could you even consider such a thing, Jackie?"

  "Because it's just the kind of thing you'd do!"

  He waved a finger in the manner of a prissy teacher. "Certainly not. Planting unapproved sensors inside that complex would be illegal, and the last thing I want is to get hauled up before the law."

  He paused a moment, obviously fighting a grin. "Now, monitoring it from outside and performing my own unique analyses on the data, that's a different matter."

  A.J. made a theatrical frowning glance to the side, as though consulting some very complex and important display out of her range of vision. "And it looks like you can tell your friends not to worry about having your tests cancelled. According to my data, the air you're venting is actually coming out below ambient rad levels."

  "Showoff."

  "Well, true. Let me make it up to you—meet Joe and me in Alamogordo and we'll buy you dinner. We both have something to celebrate!"

  "You too?"

  "Yep. Ted's Steak and Lobster, how's that? Meet you there at eight? Great. See you!"

  "Hey, wait! What—" But A.J. had cut off. "Oooh, he is so . . ."

  "Your boyfriend annoying you again?"

  "He is not my boyfriend!"

  Chapter 8

  "I'm not?" A.J. pulled an exaggerated sad face.

  "No, you're not," stated Jackie firmly, as she slid into the booth seat opposite A.J. and Joe. "And stop pouting. You look cuter when you smile."

  The sensor specialist brightened. "I'm cute!"

  Joe shook his head. "She said you're cut-er. All that means is that you're less annoying when you smile than when you sulk. She's the precisionist type, don't forget."

  "So," Jackie said, igno
ring their byplay. "Obviously everyone knows what I'm celebrating. What about you guys?"

  After A.J. filled her in on the latest news, Jackie jumped up and hugged him, nearly spilling water all over Joe. "Congratulations! That's wonderful news!"

  "Dammit, Jackie, watch out." Joe blotted up the spill with a handful of napkins. "Or you'll get in trouble for consorting with the enemy."

  She resumed her seat. "Yeah, right. Like they don't already believe I'm consorting. Do you know how often I have to repeat the fact that A.J. and I are not dating?" Jackie studied the menu and her eyes widened. "Holy sheep, as my dad used to say. Celebrations shouldn't leave people broke!"

  "Don't worry, I'm paying." A.J. spoke before Joe could even respond.

  "Oh, A.J., you don't have to—"

  "It's no biggie, guys. Seriously."

  Joe raised an eyebrow. "Paying for Jackie, I can understand, but I doubt I'm that good to look at."

  "No, you're ugly. I'm paying for you out of pity."

  "You are funny, A.J. That is why I'll kill you last."

  There was a break in the banter as the trio considered the many options on the menu. The ordering process was delayed as Joe interrogated the waiter sternly on the precise methods of cooking employed, the spices, and a number of other issues. Jackie saw A.J. roll his eyes.

  Joe was a gourmet; and, quite possibly, the most ungodly picky eater either of them knew. Apparently, however, the waiter's answers satisfied him, because he finally leaned back and selected stuffed portobello mushrooms with lobster and king crab for an appetizer, with grilled swordfish marinated in red wine sauce for his main course.

  A.J. had taken all of three seconds to make his choice of calamari followed by a broiled lobster. Jackie wasn't quite that fast, but she'd still managed to order her grilled vegetables with dipping sauce and surf-and-turf combo in far less time than Joe took.

  "I can see why you said you don't go out to eat with Joe very often."

  Joe gave a tolerant smile. "Oh, you complain now, Jackie, but that's because you aren't in Ares."

  She looked quizzically at A.J. "Just what does Joe's mania for cuisine have to do with the Project?"

  "Well, everyone in the Project has to wear more than one hat. It so happens that Joe is in charge of the consumable supplies aboard the ships."

  "Ah. Light dawns."

  "Which," A.J. added, "is one of the reasons I pay for his meals. He's going to be picking mine when we go."

  "So you're actually going?" Jackie couldn't keep her voice from rising on the last part, nor exclude the envy.

  "About ninety-five percent chance. I'm in training already."

  "Not that he really needs much," Joe said. "A.J.'s always been in good shape. I'm the one who has to really work."

  "Don't tell me you're going, too!"

  "Not all that likely. But possible. I'm a candidate, but nowhere near the front of the pack like A.J." Joe shook his head. "Basically, for me to go up, some of the others have to either get disqualified or quit. Or else something new has to turn up that gives me some special qualifications that other people don't have."

  He eyed Jackie sympathetically. "What about you? The Nike is going to be big. We've heard it'll have a crew as large as ten people. Maybe even more."

  Jackie knew she didn't look very optimistic. She didn't feel optimistic, either.

  "Maybe. There's hellish competition. I'm going to be starting training next week, but I don't think they'll want more than one drive systems engineer aboard, and Dr. Gupta isn't about to step down. If the crew size was maybe half again larger—leaving enough room for an assistant drive engineer—then I'd have a real chance."

  "You're a good electrical and micro-electro mechanical systems engineer, too."

  "Thanks, but they've got qualified specialists for that. Again, the problem is the crew size. I'm everybody's favorite second banana, but with a crew of only ten there's just no room for any second bananas. If the Nike were twice the size—" She shrugged. "But it isn't. So all I can do is hope."

  "Well," said A.J. brightly, "if both of you stay back, you can at least keep busy cheering me on."

  It was Joe's turn to roll his eyes. "A.J., sometimes you are really a . . . "

  "Self-centered jerk?"

  "I wasn't going to say it," Joe muttered, still staring at the ceiling.

  "I was," Jackie hissed.

  Joe brought his eyes back down and changed the subject. "So, Jackie, today's test—any hitches at all?

  "Not a one, so far. We may—wonder of wonders—actually finish a project ahead of time."

  "Isn't that, like, completely against government regulations?"

  "Normally, sure. But as we are currently under what amounts to an order to kick your sorry civilian asses, we've actually got permission to do things at real speed."

  "The ass-kicking is going to happen in the other direction," A.J. jeered.

  Jackie just smiled. "Possibly. But we've got a big fat government butt to absorb the punishment, where all you've got is skin and bones. Besides, if we can actually get close enough to launch this mission, I don't think it will matter. Especially if we can get everything done we've got projected."

  "Well, I'll do my best to make it easy," A.J. said. "I'm really looking forward to doing this one. I'll actually get to play in both sandboxes at once. I stay on Ares' payroll and get to design all their cool stuff, but when the Faeries actually get down to business, since that data's going to belong to NASA, I'll be working in Mission Control with the big boys. Does it get any better than this?"

  Joe laughed. "Probably not. I suppose I'm a little jealous, but hell, if it's adding that much to the department budget I can't really complain." He looked back at Jackie. "So how's the Nike design going?"

  "Mostly hush-hush, but I can tell you she's going to be really big. More than one main engine to shove this lady along."

  "I'll admit NASA did one thing right," said A.J. "At least they gave her the right name for the job."

  He raised his glass over the arriving appetizers. "It may be disloyal, but here's to the winged Goddess of Victory, Nike!"

  The others clinked their glasses with his, Jackie managing to control her irritation. Jackie had plenty of criticisms of NASA herself, but as time went on, she found A.J.'s incessant jibes were getting more and more annoying. As she'd often found with hardcore libertarians like A.J., if not with someone like Joe, the man could be insufferably smug—and amazingly blind to the contradictions in his own attitudes.

  In this instance, she'd admit, Jackie happened to agree with A.J. She wasn't sure who, in the vast bureaucracy of NASA, had first come up with the name, but it was appropriate in so many ways. The Greek/Roman pantheon had, of course, been the source of the planetary names, and Mars—Ares to the Greeks—was the God of War. However, the Greek pantheon had another deity of war: Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare. Athena was symbolic of the necessity of war waged with rationality and control, while Mars/Ares was the symbol of its destructive savagery. NASA's first goal, however, was Phobos, one of the two moons of Mars, named after Ares' companions Phobos and Deimos: Fear and Terror. But Athena had her own companion, Nike. Thus the ship was named, and the motto of the Phobos Expedition was born.

  She raised her glass and repeated it. "'Conquer Fear.'"

  They drank again. When she lowered her glass, Jackie found that she was still irritated enough to do a little needling of her own.