Assemblers of Infinity Read online

  Celeste put her hands on her hips. She stood several inches shorter than the major general. "If you can convince anyone to be worried about the threat in the first place."

  "The probability of an impact is actually quite high," Pritchard said.

  "Right now, a kiloton of rock hits the atmosphere each year -- and that's just a lot of small stuff. Icarus is on its way, after all. Watch."

  The screen refreshed, showing an unaltered view of Icarus, still hurtling toward Earth. Celeste watched as the computer-generated views showed the asteroid tumbling end over end. It flared into brilliance like the Sun as it plowed into Earth's atmosphere, boiling steam from the air so that she couldn't see even the vaguest outlines of continents. It vanished into blood-red and orange as the model tried to show the impact.

  "A couple of gigatons," said Pritchard. "Just like what hit the dinosaurs. We'd all be extinct, wiped out from the shock, from the earthquakes and tidal waves, or at the very least smothered over the long term by massive climatic disruption."

  His gaze seemed to bore into her. Celeste felt uncomfortable, but she paid attention. Something about Pritchard's technique might be useful when she needed to convince members of Congress to support a pet project of her own.

  Celeste folded her hands. She appreciated seeing this in a simulation room instead of enduring some boring lecture that had to be tailored to wide audiences and endless interruptions by aides and pagers.

  With a jerk of her narrow chin, Celeste indicated the holography. All of the pictures had gone blank except for one, showing the globe smothered in gray clouds beneath which orange glows could be seen. "Is this a useful simulation, General?"

  He raised his eyebrows, thought for a moment, then chose his answer.

  "Icarus swings close to us every nineteen years. The error bars of its 2025

  orbit are almost overlapping our path. An impact will happen -- if not Icarus, then another one. We've squeaked by over and over again. I guess it just depends on how lucky six billion people feel. Are we prepared if it does happen? Most emphatically no."

  Then Pritchard used a tactic she did not resent, though most other people would have been too frightened to bring it up. He said softly, "You of all people, Director McConnell, should not be comforted by the supposedly insignificant odds."

  Celeste fixed him with a cold stare. She caught the slightest quaver in one eyelid. If she pushed, he would probably back down and apologize. But Celeste didn't want to do that.

  The Grissom station had been wiped out by one such unexpected impact, by "space debris." Two people had died, one of them her husband Clark. Celeste herself and five others had been saved only through her quick thinking and what everyone else had called plain dumb luck. The incident had ruined her life, made her an international heroine, and, after rising up through the bureaucracy, had eventually led to her appointment as Director of the United Space Agency. Few people were willing to mention that part of her past; Pritchard, though, pulled no punches.

  "I admire what you're doing, General. I really do. And in me, you have a sympathetic ear. I especially appreciate your candor. I have to put up with enough bull in twelve committee meetings a week.

  "But now I must be honest with you. Regardless of the Icarus threat, whether perceived or real, your SpaceGuard defense system is not something I can sell to Congress. Nobody wants to hear about space-deployed missiles.

  Nobody wants to even think about them -- even if we need it."

  The general set his mouth. "I didn't calculate the probabilities that we'd be hit, Ms. McConnell. It was your people that approached us for a solution."

  Celeste reached across the table, palms up. "I realize that. But in the current political climate, even if the Icarus impact were an undisputed fact, it still wouldn't do any good. Nobody wants to hear about a threat from space.

  No matter how bad it is."

  She beamed a smile at him. "Forget about Icarus, General. According to mythology, Icarus was a fool who lost his wings and crashed into the sea.

  Daedalus, though, was the interesting one who created dazzling new technologies. Come with me -- let me show you exactly how interesting Daedalus has become."

  Celeste took Pritchard past the two stone-faced guards into the Agency's Mission Control. The two guards, a young Japanese man and woman, scrutinized Celeste's badge, though they had seen her a thousand times before.

  But recent terrorist threats by an EARTH FIRST! group had forced increased security. Before either guard could object about the general's presence, Celeste raised her hand. "It's all right. I'll vouch for him."

  Pritchard started looking around before the reflectorized booth door closed behind him. Celeste saw his eyes widen. The local Mission Control was drastically reduced compared with the old Mission Control centers from the days of the Shuttle missions. Because of advances in neural networks, distributed processing, and sheer computing power, the United Space Agency did not need a room the size of a giant auditorium staffed by a small army of personnel to run the various missions -- a handful of people in a large meeting room sufficed.

  While Pritchard gawked, Albert Fukumitsu, the duty manager, waved her over. "Director McConnell, we've been trying to track you down!" He wiped sweat off his forehead. He had shaggy black hair tucked behind a headband.

  "Jason Dvorak keeps calling from Moonbase Columbus."

  "I had my pager shut off," Celeste said. She had enjoyed her few moments of peace enough to make the headaches of being out of touch worthwhile. "Jason needs to stop panicking and handle a little more himself."

  Fukumitsu looked at her with a wry, skeptical expression. "This is a somewhat unusual circumstance."

  "Agreed. Did he launch the telepresence probe on schedule?"

  "Yes, an hour ago." He waved his hand toward the screens on the wall.

  One of the technicians, eavesdropping, called up a file that showed the sequence of the hopper rising up in a puff of methane. "ETA at the Daedalus site in about ten minutes."

  "Long enough to get Jason on-line." Celeste pulled up one of the chairs vacated by an off-duty tech and sat down beside Fukumitsu. "He's probably fidgeting like a new father in the hospital waiting room."

  She still smiled at how unlikely being in charge must seem to Dvorak, and she certainly couldn't explain to him the reasons behind her unexpected decision to place him in command.

  Dvorak was an award-winning, innovative architect; he had grown bored with the mundane work on Earth after having designed the impossible a dozen times over. Then he had used his connections to get himself an audience with the director of the United Space Agency. When he sat down across the desk from her, Celeste had had no idea at all why he wanted to see her. But when he began to spill his idea about revamping the entire moonbase, getting it ready for the explosion of inhabitants that would arrive as soon as the Mars mission was a success, Dvorak had won her over. "They are our pioneers," he had said.

  "Right now they're living in flimsy tents. Let me give them log cabins at least."

  She had approved his training and his assignment, and after nearly a year on the moonbase, scoping possibilities, reconfiguring some of the living quarters, Jason Dvorak had already made his mark on daily life up there.

  Without giving him any preparation time, she had rotated the former moonbase commander, Bernard Chu, up to the Collins waystation at L-2, while sending Collins's former commander, Eileen Dannon, back Earthside, where her frequent disagreements with Celeste could be covered up much easier.

  At first, Dvorak had reveled in his dream-come-true assignment, but at times like this he was proving to be too much of a nice guy to make tough decisions under stress. Maybe Bernard Chu would be better off back down on the Moon, at least for the interim ... ever since the Grissom disaster eleven years before, he had supported her in everything she asked.

  But no, Jason Dvorak had only been in full command for two weeks now.

  He deserved more of a chance.

  "L
et me see Waite's pictures," she said. Fukumitsu nodded to one of the techs, who worked on pulling up the images.

  General Pritchard came up beside her, relaxed in his Air Force uniform.

  "Daedalus -- that's where some of your astronomy equipment is stationed on the lunar Farside."

  "That's right."

  The image of the crater as seen from Trevor Waite's viewpoint appeared.

  "Zoom in," Fukumitsu said.

  The images of the Daedalus anomaly resolved themselves on a large window that blossomed in the center of the wall. Unlike the general's computer-generated graphics, though, these images were real. She felt her skin crawl with an eerie foretaste of what would be in store for the world as soon as they understood what was really happening on the Moon. She had had nightmares about this.

  "We're still analyzing the situation," Celeste said to Pritchard, "but I hope we know something new in a few minutes."

  On the screens, they saw closeups of Daedalus, its flat crater floor dominated by pieces of the VLF array and the smooth-walled pit covered with a translucent framework of the main structure. The white lines looked like an architectural sketch, a 3-D blueprint that had somehow appeared but had left no debris, no seismic signatures, no obvious clues as to its origin.

  The general seemed to comprehend that this was something far more bizarre than he had expected. "What is this? Where did it come from?"

  At that moment, the main portion of the videowall was supplanted by a too-close image of Jason Dvorak. His brown eyes were bright with fatigue, his dark curly hair mussed, but his lips had a persistent upturn that always made him look about to break into a grin. He stepped back into better focus.

  "Director McConnell, I was beginning to wonder if you'd be here to witness the probe."

  Celeste smoothed her trim business suit and stood into prime focus. She was petite, but carried a powerful presence. Her eyes were dark enough to look like black lacquer. Newsnet profiles insisted on calling her the Ice Lady. She spoke softly, letting her voice carry a chiding tone, but not enough to jeopardize her working relationship with Dvorak.

  "Jason, I agreed to be here, but I didn't promise to be early." After a half-beat of silence, she continued. "This is Major General Simon Pritchard.

  He's here to add his thoughts. Perhaps together we can figure this thing out."

  Pritchard nodded with surprise, but he recovered quickly. Holding a conversation from the Earth to the Moon with its resultant transmission lag was a bit like a drunkard's walk, two steps forward, then a pause to catch bearings, and then another two steps forward again.

  Dvorak looked off screen. He nodded, then said, "Switching to the cameras on the hopper." The view expanded to take in a group of people clustered around him.

  A large man next to Dvorak called up a holographic control panel that hung in the air in front of his hands. Other technicians in his cramped control center called out numbers and sent readings down to Earth. The window showing Dvorak's image receded to the upper left corner, while new windows opened to display telemetry, a CAD animation showing the attitude of the hopper, and a rotating globe of the Moon displaying trajectories with a targeting cross over Daedalus crater on the nightside. The largest window on the viewing wall opened up, showing Daedalus as it grew larger each second.

  Already they could make out the mysterious gossamer structure of the anomaly.

  As the hopper flew over, Dvorak refrained from commenting, which Celeste appreciated. Nobody knew what was going on here anyway.

  Pritchard drew in a breath as the hopper's medium-resolution camera showed the arcs rising from the dust, the framework of a huge bowl, impossible lacy girders that seemed to have no support whatsoever. It looked as if some gigantic being had played cat's cradle in the middle of a crater.

  "Okay, getting some readings now," Dvorak said. "X-ray backscatter shows the materials are extremely hard and light, not very dense. Like an aerogel, except made out of diamond fibers. Maybe it's like the diamond foam they're trying to fabricate in the orbiting labs."

  Celeste nodded. Dvorak's voice took on a trace of alarm. "I'm detecting no sign of my crew. Nothing. There should be a rover and a hopper. Not to mention three bodies, three suits. Where the hell are they?"

  "What is he talking about?" Pritchard asked. Speaking in a rushed whisper out of the corner of her mouth, Celeste filled him in on the details about Waite, Lasserman, and Snow.

  "But how did it get there?" Pritchard said without taking his eyes from the display. "Look at that pit -- to excavate that would have required a few megatons of energy!"

  Celeste had forgotten about Pritchard's background as a scientist. "I know. But we detected nothing. I can show you all the traces. The Moon is a million times less active than Earth, and we should have at least seen something. But no seismic activity near Daedalus."

  The hopper flew over the wide pit. Was this some surreptitious lunar mining operation? Ore pirates? The thought was so ridiculous Celeste was glad she had not said anything aloud. Even under the dim nightside illumination, the depths of the pit looked as black as tar. If anybody was still working down there, they used no lights.

  "Could they -- " the general paused, emphasizing the word they as if afraid to suggest what he might be thinking; Celeste had already begun arguing with herself about the same thing. " -- I mean, could your seismic network have been scrambled somehow? The traces erased?"

  "Either that," she said, "or they found some way to excavate that pit and erect those frameworks without causing a a jitter."

  "Impossible, isn't it?"

  "General, the entire thing is impossible!"

  Dvorak interrupted. The CAD viewing window showed the hopper flying away from the pit. They had opted to use all of the vehicle's fuel to survey the site completely and to forego a return flight. "Maneuvering fuel is getting low. That's about all the overhead reconnaissance we can manage if we want to guarantee a safe landing."

  "Set the hopper down," Celeste said.

  "Go to one of those tower structures," Pritchard suggested.

  As the hopper settled down on a flat tract of regolith, Celeste could see the sharp-edged tread marks of one of the lunar construction rovers that had erected the VLF array three years before. The base of a ghostly tower rose seamlessly out of the soil, cutting in half the footprint some worker had left behind. Dust from the hopper's landing clouded the black sky.

  Spotlights shone up into the weblike arches. In the upper-left corner of the viewing wall, Lon Newellen played with the telepresence panel. The probe deployed its instruments.

  "I'm getting no motion anywhere. Not a tremor, not a heartbeat, just a few jitters left over from landing. This place is as still as a fossil."

  Somehow the image reminded Celeste of the great Egyptian pyramids, or the sphinx, or some long-abandoned temple erected at the dawn of time. But this was not old. She kept reminding herself of that.

  Data from electromagnetic sounders, mapping spectrometers, chemistry, mineralogy, topography and gravitational sensors scrolled down their own windows at the bottom of the viewing wall, but Dvorak interpreted them. "Not seeing any radiation, no detectable energy surges, but the area temperature is about seven degrees hotter than we can account for. I keep getting ultra-transient blips on the gamma-ray detectors. Too brief to contain any information. I would try to explain them away as glitches, but they're confined to a very discrete energy range. That doesn't make sense."

  The image on the screen jerked with a blast of static, then refocused.

  The static returned, worse this time, and the picture did not wholly recover.

  The image skewed, with video distortion and graininess. Then the camera swung sideways, as if someone had bumped the entire probe.

  "I'm not doing that!" Newellen said, holding his hands up as if to display his innocence.

  Several of the probe instruments blared error messages. Two went blank.

  "Turn the camera to look at the ground," Celeste sai
d.

  Newellen's own answer overlapped hers in the transmission lag.

  "Something's screwing with the electronics. Failures are showing up everywhere." The image jerked, as if some piece had just snapped off the supports. But Newellen managed to swivel the camera around, zooming in on the spiderlike leg of the probe.

  The gleaming gold surface showed grainy pitting. As she watched, Celeste saw it fizzing like foam.

  "The whole thing is disintegrating!" Dvorak said.

  The hopper canted, then toppled over on its side. The image swung wildly to display the silent, gossamer towers stretching toward the stars.

  Then all the windows on the viewing wall filled with a thunderstorm of static before Fukumitsu closed them, bringing Dvorak's image back into the primary position.

  "I don't know what else we can do," Dvorak said. "No radiation bursts, no energy surges. I didn't detect anything that could have caused this!"

  "All right," Celeste tried to sound soothing to cover his alarm. "I want you to try again. If it's radiating in the infrared, I want an IR

  flyover. Put a new sensor package into those javelin probes you've been deploying to take remote core samples for the geologists. Next time, arrange for a sample-return mission."

  "We need a closer look," the general said.

  "I'm not going to send a person out there. I've already lost three people, and now this probe," said Jason.

  She paused to ponder her options. "No, we can do it remotely. Something in the area itself seems to be disintegrating our machines. We've got to grab a chunk of that regolith, then return. But I don't want to risk contaminating Columbus if it's something in the dirt. You can set up an isolated laboratory in the Sim-Mars module -- that should be far enough away from the moonbase to keep you safe."

  Dvorak spoke again, sounding formal now, "I don't think I have the facilities here to do much, Director McConnell. We aren't a full-fledged research station, you know."

  She sighed. "I'm going to gather a team of experts to help you out.