Assemblers of Infinity Page 4

  Their programming would be simple, with no mission other than to liberate oxygen molecules in the rocks and to shut down when the partial pressure reached a pre-set level. Satellites transmitting an ABORT code could stop the oxygen production at any time, if human command-and-control made that decision.

  Given the speed at which the oxygen nanominers could reproduce, Mars could theoretically have a breathable atmosphere in a week. A week! Parvu knew that there was another lab, nearly identical to this, waiting on the surface of the Moon if they were successful here ... but it would be another two years until that became operational.

  "Those two astronauts seem like nice young men, Erika," he said. "Kent Woodward seems especially interested in you."

  She looked at him with an expression of such disbelief that it made Parvu feel like a child. "He's just looking at me because he's been in isolation for months."

  Before Parvu could chide her for her cynicism, the teleconference screen chimed and an image of Maia Compton-Reasor appeared. She was a squat Afro-American with sleepy eyes and hair cropped so close to her head it looked like felt. "Dr. Parvu? Dr. Parvu are you there?"

  Erika had disengaged the SEND half of the loop, and Parvu toggled it on. "We're here. We've just received the samples. Sorry to wake you."

  She dismissed the comment with a wave. "I can sleep anytime. Are you ready?"

  "Nearly so. We are still awaiting Dr. Taylor's response."

  Compton-Reasor snorted. "We always have to wait for him."

  Erika fidgeted in the lab space. Parvu noticed she had slid to the side, out of the screen's field of view. She never wanted to take the credit due her. He would have to insist that she begin acting like his partner instead of an assistant. She deserved that, whether she wanted it or not. He had already put her name as first author on a handful of journal articles, without telling her.

  "I think you'll find these are the most promising nanomachines yet,"

  Compton-Reasor said. "If this pans out, it opens a whole new line of development."

  For decades, researchers had been investigating techniques with scanning tunneling microscopes to build nanoframeworks, ballistic electron emission microscopy to etch templates for even smaller circuits, collimated neutron beams to chisel out gears and rods less than a millionth of a meter across. Other researchers worked with protein engineering, trying to program organic machines.

  In addition to the Stanford and MIT work, recognized research efforts at Cambridge, Tokyo, and a European consortium in Belgium bought time in the NIL facilities. Parvu often felt himself in the position of the caretaker of a world-class telescope while visiting astronomers squabbled over observing time.

  The Stanford team had designed a new organic and mechanical prototype, assembled in part with protein engineering and in part with micromechanical parts. In tandem, Taylor's team had developed software that could make these machines function as miraculous analytical tools. Ideally, they would be able to take apart a sample, analyze it, then broadcast data detailed to the molecular level back to receiving computers.

  With the new prototypes in hand, Parvu dreaded the thought of an hour of aimless chit-chat with Compton-Reasor while waiting for Taylor to show up.

  But before they could attempt to make small talk, Taylor responded. The receiving screen divided the imaging area in two and displayed Maurice Taylor's flushed face looking more like that of a football player than an award-winning researcher. He wasted no time.

  "Sorry I'm late. We had no idea when the package would arrive." He fumbled at a keyboard off the boundary of the screen. "Well Erika, nice to see you again. Jordan. Are you ready? I can transmit now."

  Compton-Reasor began a sharp response, but Parvu muted her half of the screen and nodded politely. "Yes, if you please. Everything else is prepared."

  Erika went over to the nanocore. Parvu waited until Taylor had sent his portion of the activation code. An embedded green light, previously hidden, glowed on the smooth side of the black canister.

  "Very well, I will now open the environment to the nanocore." He entered the encrypted key sequence to the self-destruct seals. The canister gave a dull click. Parvu knew that inside, the dormant machines had been flushed into the absolute isolation of the core. He resealed the lock and removed the empty canister. It would be bathed in x rays and then slagged.

  "Secure. Now, Dr. Compton-Reasor, would you do the honors please? The second half of the activation code."

  Erika leaned close, peering into the curved transparent wall of the nanocore. Parvu could tell by the stabilization readings that the microwaldoes were drifting in a slight current caused by the introduction of the new samples.

  "It's sent," Compton-Reasor said. "Everything's underway."

  It was all very anticlimactic. The new samples -- so small that tens of millions of them could line up and still not cross a centimeter mark -- could not be seen inside the resource solution. After days had passed, he and Erika might be able to discern a cloudiness in the fluid caused by so many tiny bodies.

  "Congratulations, all around," Compton-Reasor said. "I hope you and Ms.

  Trace have some champagne with you."

  "We'll make do," Parvu said, smiling.

  "I'll monitor the progress," Erika said.

  "Then I'm going back to bed," Compton-Reasor said. She waved a dark hand and signed off.

  "Let us know if anything happens," Taylor said, then his image winked off.

  The Nanotech Isolation Lab remained totally silent. Parvu thought he could hear Erika breathing. They were both smiling. Something about these new prototypes seemed promising. He had high hopes for the project, and for the terraforming of Mars.

  Inside the nanocore, the tiny prototypes, newly awakened, began to self-replicate, using raw materials from the solution around them. Soon they would go about their work.

  --------

  CHAPTER 4

  MOONBASE COLUMBUS

  The nightside of the Moon was so cold that the extra seven degrees of heat around Daedalus showed up like a spotlight in infrared. The IR trace was a perfect circle glowing scarlet in false-color intensity.

  Centered exactly on the gaping pit, the residual heat in the ground extended about three kilometers out. On the holoscreen, black data points showed where Lasserman had landed his hopper, where Waite had driven his rover, where the telepresent hopper had landed. All of them fell right in the middle of the red circle.

  "We need a sample of regolith from inside that hot zone, but anything we sent there gets eaten up," Jason said. He raised his eyes to the other people in the control center. "Suggestions anyone?"

  He glanced over at Big Daddy Newellen. The man shook his meaty head; behind him, Salito stared into the holotank. Nobody met Jason's eyes. "Come on, people!"

  "Well," Newellen said, twisting his lower lip with two fingers, "that all depends on the answer to another question. What's really going on? Is there a disintegrator ray out there, zapping anything that happens to trespass on the construction site? Or, is the regolith itself impregnated with acid or infested with some kind of bug that's taking our stuff apart? Either way, how do we get hold of a specimen to look at?"

  "How do you pick up a universal solvent?" Cyndi Salito asked.

  Jason raised his hand. "Okay, we went over the readings from both hoppers already. No sign of any kind of energy surge at all. No zap ray."

  "At least nothing we could detect," said Salito.

  "We need a regolith sample, just like McConnell told us." Newellen's eyes got a faraway look. "What about storing it in a magnetic bottle? That way the sample wouldn't touch anything."

  "Dirt?" said Salito. "You gotta be kidding. Regolith isn't affected by magnetic fields."

  "But iron is," said Big Daddy Newellen, "and regolith contains ilmenite, which has iron in it. If we had a high enough B field, we might be able to isolate a sample of regolith. We could put a magnetic bottle on the container. The core-sample javelins penetrate into the dirt,
grab a chunk, then launch the container back to the pickup point, leaving their outer shell behind. If we move fast and get a small sample, maybe we can hold a specimen long enough to get it into Sim-Mars, use the isolation lab there."

  Jason felt enormous relief at finally hearing something that sounded reasonable. Built over the past three years, "Sim-Mars" was intended to serve as a simulated Mars base for the final dress rehearsal of the Mars mission.

  The outpost was 50 kilometers away from Columbus Base, far enough so that when manned, the Mars mission members would have their semblance of isolation --

  yet close enough that the astronauts could be helped in an emergency. The self-contained labs at Sim-Mars would be the perfect place to remotely investigate the Farside regolith.

  "Sounds like a plan," he said.

  In the stuffy closeness of the control room, Jason closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing. The javelin probe seemed to take forever to reach the other side of the Moon and shoot back. Right now he wanted to take an hour around the Columbus exercise track, where he often did his best thinking.

  Before this, his career on Earth had been easy -- designing exotic structures using the new alloys and fibers made possible through microgravity engineering, playing around with CAD systems and pushing the new material properties to their limits.

  He could still hear Margaret's voice as he left Earth, telling him that this job was more than he could handle, that he should just stay home with her. What more do you want? she had asked. We already have more money than we can possibly spend.

  Margaret had never understood him at all.

  Jason wet his lips. The manufactured air was so dry here that he frequently suffered from a nagging cough and chapped lips. He swiveled his chair back to the group in the control center, his people. Red and green lights from the panels reflected on the sheen of sweat on their faces. The control center was heavy with the smell of close-packed bodies.

  They all waited for the core-sample javelin to do its work. It had already landed, grabbed a minuscule sample in the magnetic bottle, then rocketed the container back toward Sim-Mars, fifty kilometers away from Columbus.

  "A real flags-and-footprint mission," Big Daddy had said, waiting for something to do at his controls.

  They just had to see if it would remain intact long enough to reach its target, or if the chunk of regolith would eat the container from the inside out.

  "Big Daddy, get a teleop rover over to Sim-Mars," Jason said after clearing his throat. "We'll use it to manipulate the sample into the automated lab."

  "That'll take one away from Disneyland, Jase. Think of the kids crying."

  Jason kept forgetting about so many things, so many details. How had Bernard Chu kept track of it all when he had been the base commander? "I think this is a bit more important," he said.

  "Big meanie."

  Jason ignored the comment. Looking up, he glanced at the digital clocks flashing the time from points on Earth: WASHINGTON DC, JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, STAR CITY, PARIS, TOKYO, HONG KONG. No matter what the various times showed, it hadn't been more than twenty-four hours since the remote hopper had dissolved at Daedalus, two days since the alien construction had been discovered ... since three of his people had died.

  "Heads up," Newellen said. "Sample's coming in." He grinned. "And it's intact."

  Cyndi Salito called up another image in the crowded holotank. It showed a dim, cramped room filled with lab equipment that looked too clean, too new.

  She brought up the lights. "Sim-Mars is on line," she said. "Remote ops."

  Newellen hunched over the virtual controls, driving the teleoperated rover vehicle. Reaching the expected impact point, the rover's camera swiveled back and forth, its stereochip scanning for the incoming javelin package.

  The telerobot waited, ready to hurry to the javelin and remove the shielded sample as soon as it landed. Back at Sim-Mars, another 3-D receiver also kept watch for the projectile.

  Jason wet his lips again. He would have to request some lip balm in the next shipment from Earth.

  A splash of dust appeared at the corner of the viewing cube, and the telerobot's camera lurched over to fix the position. Since the Moon had no atmosphere like Earth, incoming projectiles did not streak across the sky.

  "Got it," Newellen said. He worked the virtual controls in front of him, as if he himself were in the driver's seat, rolling across the lunar terrain to fetch the package.

  He followed the long furrow in the regolith until he came upon the heavily shielded canister surrounded by ejecta. Using robotic manipulator arms, he reached into the impact site.

  "Bingo!" Big Daddy held up the specimen canister with the rover's arms.

  Three-D high-definition television gave viewers back at Columbus the sense that they were actually present.

  "Off to Sim-Mars," Jason said.

  As the telepresent rover approached the isolated training habitat, a quad-armed robot detached itself from the expedition module of Sim-Mars and rolled out to receive the sample. Specially designed by Hitachi-Spudis for conducting detailed geological surveys, the quad-armed robot extracted and deposited its shielded core of regolith into a delivery station, then rolled back toward Sim-Mars.

  Newellen peeled off with the telepresent rover, roaring away from the lab. "I'm going to Disneyland!" he shouted.

  "Cyndi," Jason said, "let him get twenty klicks away from Sim-Mars, then give control back to the kids." He looked at Newellen, grinning. "The other kids, I mean."

  A razor sharp shadow extended in front of the quad-armed robot as it returned to the Sim-Mars bay. Fine dust covered the robot as ejecta from the rover's tires fell back to the surface.

  The robot rolled around to the service-module entrance and worked the controls to gain access. Through high-definition eyes, they viewed the entry room as it passed through the double doors. Newellen switched over to teleoperating the quad-armed robot just as it finished its preprogrammed sample-recovery procedure.

  "We're recording all this, right?" Jason asked.

  "Yes," Salito answered. "Agency Mission Control is probably piping it through the newsnets, too."

  "Would you guys be quiet?" Newellen said. "I'm trying to concentrate here."

  Fifty kilometers away at Moonbase Columbus, Newellen worked with the quad-armed robot. Gingerly lifting the canister recovered from the Daedalus hot zone, the robot placed it inside a thick lead vault. After the vault was sealed, the robot turned to the center of the room, powered down and stood dormant as it waited for further orders.

  "Ready for external decontamination," Newellen said.

  "I'm running it," Salito called from the back of the control room.

  At the center of the Sim-Mars isolation chamber, a meter-thick tube ran from floor to ceiling. In vacuum, low-inductance capacitors made no sound as they charged to thirty million volts. An instant later, a milligram ring of xenon in the tube boiled into a plasma and accelerated to the ceiling. When the plasma ring impacted the high-Z plate on the roof, megajoules of x rays sprayed through the entire lab room, sterilizing any organism that might have been on the outside of the sample container.

  A minute passed. Satisfied that nothing could have survived outside the lead-shielded vault, Newellen powered up the telepresent robot again. Only the sample in the lead-lined chamber remained untouched.

  Its own circuits heavily shielded against cosmic-ray bursts and hard solar radiation, the quad-armed robot approached the sample. "Time to open our package," Newellen said.

  Jason swallowed a nervous lump in his throat. Daedalus crater seemed a long distance away, but Sim-Mars was right in their back yard. What if they were about to open Pandora's Box?

  Lon Newellen shook his head. Sweat dripped from his forehead, soaking his dark hair. Damn! Manipulating the waldos took getting used to, but he had never been this clumsy before.

  "Want me to take over, Big Daddy?" Salito asked.

  "Shut up."

  Newellen flexed
his telepresent waldoes and tried to "touch" the contained sample again. The term "butterfingers" popped into his mind for the fifth time.

  "You sure Director McConnell is watching all this?" he asked.

  "Yes I am." Her own voice responded in two seconds.

  "I won't make any mistakes then."

  Newellen pushed his hand forward and tried to use the fields to pinch the largest chunk of rock in the sample, but it slipped from his grasp again.

  Double damn! Beside it, the opened outer shell of the sample container lay in two pieces.

  He ran a sweaty hand across his forehead again, then squinted at the rock. The thing seemed to be growing smaller. And how could it possibly be slippery? The metal walls of the javelin's sample container also seemed to be melting.

  "Hey, the temperature's rising inside the vault," Salito said. "A lot more than I can account for by the x-ray burst."

  Newellen grunted. "Just let me get my hands on this sucker." He had already completed a third of the standard Extraterrestrial Examination Procedure. So far, except for this problem holding onto the rock, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  He dropped the rock a third time. Too many people were crowding around him.

  Cyndi Salito leaned into the high-definition hologram, blurring its edges. "Say, what did you spill on the sample?"

  "Nothing." Newellen debated unscrewing Cyndi's head from her body, but Jason might get upset.

  "No, really. Take a look." Cyndi dodged Newellen's elbow and stuck a finger into the hologram. "Here. It looks like some kind of goo."

  "Goo? Move your head, dammit!" Newellen couldn't see with all the people in the way. "Well I'll be dipped. There is something on that rock. Let me play that back, get a closer look." He pulled back from the waldos and punched up the recorder. The holotank blinked, then showed in reverse-motion Newellen's analysis effort. In backwards time, the goo disappeared and the rock grew larger again.

  Newellen stopped the playback. The surface of the sample foamed and seethed. "I think we've brought back something very nasty."