Solar Express (26 page)

Major, NSC

NSS-21/Recon Three

Request immediate update on status and position of target when acquired. Also request you report when Sinese longliner appears in vicinity of Recon three.

At any sign of hostile action by any Sinese vessel, you are authorized to use requisite force as necessary.

Requisite force? Two torps?
Tavoian supposed two torps were better than nothing.

Astronomical data suggests possible artifact may be of great age. Recommend initial survey with care.

So that you don't damage anything that might be useful, especially technology, as if anything there is going to be laid out for the taking … if it even is an alien creation.

Report all events immediate real-time once on station.

Tavoian did not bother with an immediate acknowledgment message, since he was not on station and the acquisition of the target was at such distance that he could not report on its status. Somewhat surprisingly, there was a second official message, except it wasn't addressed to him specifically, but to all Noram Space Service installations and spacecraft. The text was simple:

At 0200 UTC, 7 November 2014, the Sinese Federation closed all Sinese borders with India, Bhutan, Nepal, and Myanmar, and ordered the mobilization of all Sinese Federation reserve forces. The mobilization order was described as strictly precautionary, in response to threats to Sinese security. The nature of such threats was not disclosed in the mobilization order.

In response, all Noram installations are hereby placed on Security Threat Level 3 [SecThreat3].

No Sinese vessels or personnel are to be granted access to any WestHem or Noram space elevator or space installations or vessels. Exceptions may be made only in emergency conditions and only by an installation commander or higher authority.

Tavoian hadn't seen anything about the Sinese action in the last news summary; so he immediately looked to see if the latest Space Service news summary was included in his message dump. It was, and he began to read.

Sinese Head of State Jiang placed all Sinese forces on high alert and closed China's southern borders. Subsequent statements from the Ministry of Defense stated that “Indian-affiliated” insurgents had infiltrated the Sinese Federation with weapons of “targeted and mass destruction.” A ministry spokesman warned India that the Federation would retaliate with necessary force against any violence …

The rest of the summary wasn't any better. Tavoian couldn't see that there was much evidence of all the Indian hostility toward the Sinese … and that there hadn't been all along. Was it all a pretext to force the Indians to back down on completing their space elevator? Or was the uncompleted installation in orbit truly the particle beam weapon that the colonel had implied?

At times, he did wish that he could receive the vidloids, even the lurid ones like
HotNews!
and
InsideOut.
Sometimes, if infrequently, they revealed more hard news that the so-called reputable news sources, and definitely more than the Space Service news summaries.

The third message was from Kit.

Dear Chris,

Is everyone crazy? Does it really matter whether the Indians complete their space elevator? What do terrorists inside the Sinese Federation have to do with that? Or much of anything else.

Tavoian nodded. Logically speaking, Kit was right. But it wasn't about that. The other obvious difficulty was that the Sinese hadn't asked the Indians to do anything that they could do or were likely to do. And if the Indians couldn't or wouldn't … the Sinese would lose face if they didn't do
something
 … and likely something that the rest of Earth would find disturbing … and possibly requiring a response.

Mom and Dad appreciated your last messages. All your messages, in fact. They think you've always been good about that. Amazing how much guilt can be instilled before you leave home. Maybe it didn't hit you quite so hard, but if more than a few days go by …

An involuntary chuckle escaped Tavoian.
Obviously, we got the same treatment.

Mom's getting frailer by the day, but so far she's not in any pain …

By the time he finished the message, he was shaking his head.
If Kit's right, there's no way I'll see Mom again.
And about those sorts of things, his sister was seldom wrong. And there was nothing he could do about it … now. If he hadn't agreed to the mission …

He shook his head. First, while he'd worried, he hadn't known. Second, under the current circumstances, even if he'd declined the mission, he still wouldn't have been able to go Earthside until the standoff between the great powers had been resolved one way or the other.

Still …
He shook his head again.
Thinking like that will drive you mad.

He finally turned back to the message queue. The last message was from Alayna. As he read it, it was more than clear that she understood what he was doing, but that she wasn't about to make it too obvious for anyone who might intercept the message, and that was fine with him. He smiled briefly … and then again near the end when she described just how close the target was going to come to the sun. Although the colonel had instructed Tavoian not to go much inside the orbit of Mercury, Tavoian was warmed by Alayna's effort to make the danger clear to the colonel as well.

Since he wasn't sleepy at the moment, he decided to answer all his messages and send one to his parents, although keeping that upbeat and cheerful without sounding totally false would take a great deal of time and care. The time he had. He began by drafting a position report on the target for Donovan Base, followed by the messages to Kit and his parents, and ending with the one to Alayna. Once all his messages were ready, he sent them.

Then he studied more AI documentation, just long enough to feel sleepy, when he dimmed the cabin lights, flattened the control couch, and stretched out. He had the feeling he wouldn't be getting that much sleep in the hours after Recon three reached the target.

At 2146, decel ended, and Tavoian woke up with the loss of decel-pseudo-gravity. At 2152, the AI announced,
THE TARGET IS THREE HUNDRED SEVENTY-SIX THOUSAND KAYS OUT-SYSTEM OF RECON THREE.

About as far from you as the Moon is from Earth.
That distance was necessary because the drive couldn't be used again for two hours after decel, and during that time the asteroid or artifact would close that gap by a quarter of a million kays. If the AI's calculations were correct, and they usually were, that is, if the data supplied by Donovan Base and updated daily happened to be accurate enough, by the time Recon three was traveling at the same in-system speed as the target, they would be close enough for fine maneuvering.
A few hundred kays would be acceptable, less than that even better.

“What's the status of the booster?”

ESTIMATED FUEL REMAINING IN BOOSTER IS FOURTEEN MINUTES.

Tavoian nodded. It could have been worse.

Because it would be almost another two hours before the drives could be used and close to forty minutes after that before Recon three was anywhere close to the asteroid/alien object, Tavoian dimmed the control area lights once again and closed his eyes, hoping he could sleep or at least doze for some of that time.

The resumption of acceleration immediately woke Tavoian. Except it didn't last for more than two or three minutes. His eyes went to the status board. It was blank.

“Interrogative status!” he snapped.

BOOSTER FAILED. FUEL EXHAUSTED. BEGINNING SEPARATION.
With the words from the AI, the monitors all reappeared.

Belatedly, Tavoian realized that everything had gone blank for the time it had taken for the AI to switch from booster power to the Recon three system.
But there shouldn't have been that great a lag.
“Report on separation.”

AUTOMATIC SEPARATION FAILED. EXPLOSIVE BOLTS TRIGGERED. RECON THREE IS NOW CLEAR OF BOOSTER. MINIMAL DRIVE OPERATION REQUIRED UNTIL SAFETY CLEARANCE ACHIEVED.

Tavoian watched the monitors and the readouts as Recon three crept—that was the way it seemed to him—away from the spent FusEx booster. He understood the need for that minimal acceleration, since there was a definite, if small, possibility that higher power on the drives might reflect from the booster back onto Recon three. Small as that probability was, he couldn't risk it, not where he was, especially if the result damaged the drive.

Finally, the AI announced,
CLEARANCE ACHIEVED. COMMENCING ACCELERATION. CURRENT ACCELERATION WILL RESULT IN TARGET OVERTAKING US BEFORE WE REACH VELOCITY SUFFICIENT FOR MAINTAINING STATION.

Had the manual separation taken that long? He checked the time. Twenty-five minutes since the booster had failed. That delay couldn't have caused that much of a discrepancy, could it? It could, he realized. Twenty-five minutes at the target's inbound speed of thirty-six kps meant it had covered almost fifty-five thousand kays. That wasn't an insoluble problem, but it would mean having to accelerate above the target's speed in order to catch up, and then decelerate to match speeds and rendezvous. And all that took extra fuel.
You should have ditched the booster after decel. But how were you to know that the fuel calculations were wrong and that the uncoupling would take so long?
He also had another thought.
How accurate are the fuel calculations for Recon three?
“Distance to target?”

TARGET IS FIFTY-NINE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED KAYS OUT-SYSTEM OF RECON THREE.

On and off, Tavoian watched the screens, concentrating on the plot showing the relative distances, with the actual separation in kays reading out at the bottom of the plot. It was fascinating, in a way, to see how the distance between the target and Recon three shrank, even as Recon three increased speed, although the rate of closure shrank with each passing moment.

Then, just about forty-five minutes after Recon three had commenced acceleration, the AI announced,
TARGET IS NOW IN-SYSTEM OF RECON THREE.

Tavoian had been watching the optical screens as well as the position plot and hadn't seen a thing on the optical view. “What was CPA?”

CLOSEST POINT OF APPROACH WAS FIFTEEN KAYS THIRTY-ONE SECONDS AGO.

Recon three's in-system speed was slightly over twenty kps and accelerating, while the target was steady at thirty-six kps. In less than a minute, the target that Tavoian had only seen as a dot on a screen was well over a hundred kays insystem of Recon three. Another twenty-four minutes passed before the AI had initiated turnover and a brief decel.

Almost an hour and a half of extra acceleration because you thought you could save Hel3.
Tavoian winced inwardly.

IN-SYSTEM VELOCITIES MATCHED. BEGINNING APPROACH MANEUVERING.

As Recon three neared the target, Tavoian concentrated on the visual screen. Even at ten kays, all he could see was a thin sliver of white. Abruptly, he realized that when he only saw darkness—and no stars on one side of the white line—he was looking at what appeared to be a dark circle viewed at an angle. He could also see that it was rotating slowly, which explained the variability in brightness mentioned in Alayna's reports.

The AI eased Recon three closer. Over the time of the gradual approach, Tavoian just stared at the enhanced image in the screen—from one angle it looked like a perfect circle that had been sliced from the side of a far larger sphere. From another, from what he would have called a side view, it looked flat on one side and slightly curved on the other. “What are its dimensions?”

ITS CIRCUMFERENCE IS A PERFECT CIRCLE WITH A DIAMETER OF 1,989 METERS. THE THICKNESS AT THE EDGES IS FIVE METERS. THE THICKNESS IN THE CENTER IS 359 METERS.

Almost two kays across or long, but only a fifth of a kay at its thickest point.
“Calculate the diameter of the sphere from which it came.”

ASSUMING THAT THE CURVATURE OF THE ORGINAL SPHERE WAS UNIFORM, THE SPHERE'S DIAMETER WOULD BE FIVE POINT FIVE KAYS.

Who or what could possibly have created a sphere that large? And if there had been a sphere that large, what had happened to it? Had it been destroyed … and by what? Or was it orbiting somewhere in the solar system … or had the artifact drifted in from out-system?

He turned his attention back to the artifact. Since the white side was likely merely a polished shield, the first part that Tavoian wanted detailed images of was the darker side. “Maneuver so that we can get images of both sides in full sunlight. Far enough out that we can get a complete image of the entire object.” After that and after Tavoian studied the images, he could move Recon three closer.

COMMENCING MANEUVERS.

“Is there any heat radiation besides reflected sunlight?”

NEGATIVE.

That confirmed that the object was either old or totally insulated.

Almost ten minutes passed before Recon three was in position sunward and slightly “below” the object. At a distance of five kays, it loomed over Recon three, as well it might, considering the difference in size. The object rotated, the curved side slowly turning toward the sun. In the light, the reflective side appeared to be a brilliant silver-white, with no visible marks, gouges, or impact markings.
After eleven thousand years, it's unmarked?
Tavoian found that hard to believe, yet the lack of heat and the orbit suggested great age. And if someone or something had created the object more recently and placed it in such an orbit—that was even less believable. He continued to study the image, knowing that there was something about it that nagged at him. “A composite image of the reflective side, with false color shading for anything different.”

Another screen appeared on the monitor wall, showing the entire domed circle, which shimmered, then shifted, revealing smaller circles spaced regularly across the two-kay expanse. Tavoian counted. There were thirty-two of the circles. “What is the diameter of those off-color circles?”