Kate Rauner's Blog, page 96

Better Contraception Will Improve Lives

I am reading Think Like A Freak, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner of Freakonomics fame. They challenge preconceptions and accepted wisdom about the world, offering compelling arguments to show that what I think I know may not be so. I love their work because, as Carl Sagan wrote, “Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.” Besides, reality always wins.

The book reiterates their earlier conclusion about crime and abortion in America. Crime rates have been dropping steadily in the US since the early 1990s, and while more police and longer prison sentences account for some of the drop, Levitt and Dubner conclude that legalization of abortion (in the early 1970s) was the major factor. Over a million fewer unwanted children are born each year, children who would have likely been raised in difficult circumstances, notably poverty, that increase the chance they’d become criminals.

This is a jarring theory for Americans to ponder, since abortion and certain forms of contraception remain emotionally charged topics, hotly debated and far from settled legally. If we adopt policies that increase the number of unwanted children, we must decide if society (that is, taxpayers) owes them something extra, either morally or through enlightened self-interest.

The agonizing debate puts too much energy into the divisive symptom and not enough into unifying prevention. We need contraceptive methods that are easier to use and more effective “in the field” where real people live.

Now there is another step, hopefully, towards better contraceptives.

It’s worth a lengthy quote:

“A remote-controlled contraceptive computer chip which would be implanted under the skin has been developed with the backing of Bill Gates. The chip, which would last for 16 years, would release levonorgestral daily, a hormone which is used to prevent pregnancy.

However with the new implant, a woman could choose when to deactivate or reactivate the chip using a wireless control. It is designed to be implanted under the skin of the buttocks, upper arm, or abdomen. The implant provides a long-term solution to birth control and would mean no more trips to the clinic or a procedure to remove the implant… The creators believe it will be more convenient and if it passes safety tests, it could be on the market as early as 2018. They said it would be ‘competitively priced’.”

Note that levonorgestral prevents ovulation, so it avoids the divisive argument over when fertilization occurs and when the fertilized egg deserves legal protection. For those who feel the threat of pregnancy is needed to inhibit pre-marital sex (a weak argument to my mind, but important to others), the threat of sexually transmitted diseases can still be invoked.

Sixteen years is long enough to get through the impulsive adolescent/early adult years. A young woman would only have to get to a doctor or clinic once; she’d only have to make that mature and responsible choice once, only have to overcome obstacles to travel or access once. We already make a big deal out of turning thirty; I envision “chick check your chip” party favors for the Big-Three-Oh.

Of course, this will raise other issues; for example, should a woman who is found (through proper legal channels) to be an unfit mother be required or coerced into accepting the chip? The question makes me shudder when I recall early 20th century eugenics. And there will be individuals who make poor choices. Nothing is perfect, but on balance, I think this chip could be a huge advance for individual women and for society. As a taxpayer, I’d be happy to finance a contraceptive chip for anyone who wants one for free. Every baby should have a bright future.

Salty Waters – a poem by Kate Rauner

Artist’s concept of Cassini studying Titan

Salt preserves a water’s flow,

Suppresses freezing in the cold.

Cassini’s gravity data show

There is salt water down below

Titan’s outer crust of ice,

And liquid water does entice.

Salt on Mars may also say

That water flows there some days.

Ten times the salt of earthly seas

But for a very few of these.

The Dead Sea harbors microbes small

That only thrive when rain drops fall.

Alga, fungi, biofilms

Find fresh water most welcome.

Yet methane found on Titan, Mars,

Cannot survive the sunlight scars.

Here’s where NASA’s Phoenix landed

On Earth we’d say that life is there

Releasing methane in the glare.

So is there life on Saturn’s moon?

Did Martian soils ever bloom?

Now we’re poised to learn more,

To fly the missions, and explore.

There are many places to read about the solar system. Try one of these.

Salty Waters

Artist’s concept of Cassini studying Titan

Salt preserves a water’s flow,

Suppresses freezing in the cold.

Cassini’s gravity data show

There is salt water down below

Titan’s outer crust of ice,

And liquid water does entice.

Salt on Mars may also say

That water flows there some days.

Ten times the salt of earthly seas

But for a very few of these.

The Dead Sea harbors microbes small

That only thrive when rain drops fall.

Alga, fungi, biofilms

Find fresh water most welcome.

Yet methane found on Titan, Mars,

Cannot survive the sunlight scars.

Here’s where NASA’s Phoenix landed

On Earth we’d say that life is there

Releasing methane in the glare.

So is there life on Saturn’s moon?

Did Martian soils ever bloom?

Now we’re poised to learn more,

To fly the missions, and explore.

There are many places to read about the solar system. Try one of these.

Writers and Wannabe Writers – Here’s a Resource

I have found fellow authors on the internet to critique my work. Since I live in a rural area, and well outside the nearest town, an internet group is great for me. The best part, especially when I feel sensitive or insecure, is that they offer a civil environment with advice on how to give and use critiques. It’s a safe way to get the feedback I  need from a much wider group than I’d find in a DIY workshop. I can say Critters (the science fiction group) has been good for me.

Recently, the site Captain announced a new workshop, and said “I’d appreciate it if you could help announce it on your blogs.” So here’s the pitch from the site for your consideration:

Critique.org is for serious authors, artists, and creators in any field who wish to improve their craft — those who seek to gain professional stature within their field or increase it. Critique.org workshops focus on in-depth critiques of your works, a process which helps both the recipient and the reviewer to grow. In addition to depth of analysis, much of critique.org’s secret is our emphasis on respectful and diplomatic critiques.

Authors and artists of all skill levels are welcome (with special incentives for professionals), so sign yourself up.

We have workshops for just about everything. (Well, we WILL have them, but we’re in Beta Test mode right now, adding new workshops as we shake them down.) What workshop would you like to join?—

Critters — SF/Fantasy/Horror Writing

Mainstream and Literary Fiction

Mystery, Thriller, and Adventure Writing

Non-Fiction Writing

Script, Screenplay, and Stageplay Writing

Kids Books

Comics, Graphic novels, Manga, etc.

Western Fiction Writing

Romance Writing

Adult Fiction

Video and Film

Music and Audio

Photography

Art, Painting, Drawing, etc.

Apps and Software

Website Design

Testing and Experimenting

Microbe Massacre – a poem by Kate Rauner

Lystrosarus

The Great Permian Dying,

A quarter billion years ago,

Ended life’s early phase

And opened up Meso.

Nine in ten forms were gone

Earth almost lost her soul.

Not land or sea protected them;

Life slipped from her foothold.

Attacks by hostile aliens?

Or pounded by bolides?

Did flares upon the Sun explode

Or cosmic rays collide?

The villain was a microbe that

Lived peacefully for years

Till fertilized by Vulcan’s dust,

As sediments make clear.

A mindless little bug,

Meth-ano-sar-ci-na,

Bloomed down a strange

And new metabolic pathway.

So if you think you rule the world,

Have dominion over all,

Consider other kingdoms

That have survived The Fall.

Earth almost lost her skin of life

When nickel from volcanoes

Fertilized the oceans

For methane belching microbes.

Earth’s biosphere then faltered

After such a hopeful start.

Four billion years evolving

Near destroyed by bugs that fart.

My New Book Venture Now Available

Woo hoo! I’ve taken the plunge and published my new book as both an ebook and a print-on-demand paperback. I had to learn a lot about several software programs to accomplish this, but since I don’t do cross-word puzzles, my brain needed the exercise.

Look for electronic editions of my books on Amazon for Kindle, Barnes & Noble for Nook, Smashwords for all major electronic formats; and on Apple, Kobo, Flipkart, Inktera, and Versent. If you don’t see one of my books at your favorite site, please check on Smashwords.

Venture is available in paperback today on CreateSpace, on Amazon within a week or so, and other outlets in the Create Space network in another month.

Join an international crew as they ferry their commercial space station to an enigmatic anomaly in Mars’ orbit. Here our solar system touches the Helios star system, a portal that was discovered decades ago and may be lost.

Harry joined the mission to escape loneliness on Earth and to indulge his obsession for gardening in space. He finds relationships grow like gardens, though not always as expected.

Along their journey, they mine a dangerous comet and visit the small colony on Mars. Tensions flare among the crew, threatening their mission. Things don’t go as planned and the crew must act to save their mission and their lives.

A story combining adventure with life aboard a space station.

Read an excerpt now.

Chapter 1 : Into Space

Dozens of flags circled the edge of the plaza, snapping in the ocean breeze, as Harry Gordon waited to leave Earth. Somalia provided the perfect location on the equator, so her star on a sky-blue field flew over the plaza, but it took Qatari money to build the space elevator, so white and maroon flags flew next to the blue.

Harry frowned at the high walls surrounding the plaza, hiding the town beyond. The space elevator brought prosperity had come to this African shore with, and Harry had seen patches of well-tended greenery from the plane window as he’d flown in to join his crewmates. After a year of training and PR appearances for the Institute, today their journey into space began.

If there had been time, Harry would have visited the local Somali gardens. A walk through a well-designed landscape would have calmed his nervous stomach. He was about to seal himself away with a small group of people he barely knew, who were key to his success or to his failure.

Harry and the rest of the international crew were about to fly a new commercial space station to her permanent position, deploying client projects as they went. At the end of their journey was a decades-old mystery from the First Space Age. Finally the world was prosperous enough to launch a New Space Age, and that included rediscovering the space glitch that led to Helios.

While the possibility of great discoveries motivated their clients, Harry had more myopic concerns. His official title might be “Life Support Specialist”, but Harry was dedicated to the onboard garden. The crew needed air and water to survive, and Harry was trained to maintain those systems, but his real interest was gardening. For a small group thrown together for several years in tight quarters, food should be as fresh, varied, and comforting as possible. It might sound unlikely to visionaries with their eyes on the heavens, but psychology showed that a limited, monotonous diet would eventually leave any crew obsessing over food. In addition to life support systems, Harry was in charge of growing produce onboard and he had won most of his arguments with Institute experts over what to grow. In the course of this mission, he was determined to prove he was right.

Their departure was an event and the Institute media team was scurrying around, setting up a video recording. For the past year, unmanned launches had blasted the station up to construction teams in pieces. Today the fragile human crew would take a gentle elevator ride into space.

Even in the early morning, Somalia was hot. Harry rolled his shoulders uncomfortably inside his blue uniform. The leather creaked as he shifted his weight, and Harry silently cursed the design firm who had decided on leather. His crewmates looked handsome in their uniforms with sponsor patches across the back and down the arms like race-car drivers. Harry, on the other hand, just felt silly. He creaked again.

The Institute’s media team arranged the crew artfully on the steps of the tower’s main entrance. In a moment they would start the live stream, and then the crew could enter White Pearl Tower and escape the tropical sun.

On the highest step stood the Chief Officers of the Institute, beaming into the robotic cameras. Pilot Rolf Hagne stood beside Chief Physician Lia Cooper on the step below them. Where Harry stoically tolerated the PR trips, both Rolf and Lia enjoyed the attention. The Scandinavian pilot was tall and blond. He would have been at home, Harry imagined, on one of the Viking ships of his ancestors. Lia was also tall, her hair fashionably short and spiky, and athletic; her Institute profile said she played tennis.

Mission Commander Matt Taylor stood on the next step down. It seemed odd to Harry that the Commander wasn’t on the top step, but at least he had a step to himself. Finally, the rest of the crew stood in a line below Matt; Harry next to the station engineer, then two lab specialists, and the Brazilian mining engineer, Vera Lago. Harry leaned forward to steal a glance at her smooth brown skin and dark eyes. He quickly straightened up, catching his breath, when she glanced his way.

At the media team’s signal, Harry smiled and waved to the fans watching over the global link. Like his crewmates, he had earned a place as a candidate with his technical skills and, also like his crewmates, had won a fan vote to be on the first crew with his public appeal. A quirky appeal in his case, Harry thought.

Harry had been an awkward kid, but working at the market booth for his family’s urban farm gave him a chance to study people and how they interacted. He became skilled at public appearances. Luckily, delays in his reactions, as he figured out the proper response to a question, were seen as thoughtful, and occasional loss of eye-contact as modest.

Candidate competition had been a stressful process. The Institute appealed to the public to bridged funding gaps between client payments, and the public was fascinated by the crew. Only the mission commander had been chosen entirely by the Institute’s officers. Crew candidates were chosen by the Institute, but fan subscriptions to the final selection process had been sold worldwide.

After the media team was satisfied with the vid on the tower stairs, they all stepped inside the air-conditioned lobby. Harry shivered. Now the leather uniform felt clammy.

The Institute group by-passed a hundred floors of up-scale shopping, hotels, and businesses, and took a glass elevator with spectacular views of the Indian Ocean straight to the roof-top White Pearl Sky Lift Spaceport. For decades, people argued over how to rate tall buildings: did antennas count? Or just inhabited floors? What about observation decks? Sky Lift broke the record no matter how it was judged. It climbed beyond the edge of Earth’s atmosphere to Zenith Station, sixty thousand kilometers high, and the counterweight that balanced the whole structure was higher still.

A party had been arranged in the Sky Lift’s main lounge and the Institute’s Chief Officers hurried towards the delegation from Spaceport Brazil. Harry watched them greet the Brazilians with enthusiasm.

The space station’s first mission had been predicted to lose money until a wayward comet saved the day. The sad little rock was too dim to interest the public, but after swinging past the Sun, it would parallel the space station’s planned trajectory and so, fortunately, be within reach. The station would carry a Brazilian spacecraft to mine the comet, but timing was a problem. The station would leave Earth orbit months ahead of the original schedule to reach the comet and there was a big penalty clause in the contract if they failed to make that rendezvous. Harry had heard rumors that some of the command candidates withdrew in protest at the accelerated schedule, but construction had kept pace with the new timetable.

A server pressed a flute of champagne into Harry’s hand. He sidled over to the bar to exchange the champagne for orange juice. A model of the Institute space station hung above the bar, a gleaming white tube. Photon collectors that would provide their power surrounded one end like shimmering fans. Harry paused for a moment below the model, staring out the windows before wandering into the crowd to dutifully mingle.

This early in the morning, the control rooms and passenger lounges that ringed the White Pearl Sky Lift cast shadows across the launch pad. In the center sat the capsule, which was shaped like a donut rather than a pearl.

The lift pad was tiled in an elaborate mosaic of looping designs. Three laser stations were concealed in faux-stone carvings like fountains and their corresponding receiver arrays hung below the capsule, hidden from view in a hollow below the pad. Ground-based lasers powered the lift early in its ascent, then, once clear of the atmosphere, dedicated orbiting power stations would beam microwave energy.

A twisted ribbon of nanotubes extended from the lift pad through the capsule’s center; a baroque column spiraling up and disappearing into the sky. Somali stevedores wearing round embroidered caps were hurrying to fill the capsule’s tiny cargo compartment for the ascent to Zenith Station.

“It is very thick to be called a ribbon.” Kesa Lagrand, the mission biology specialist had walked up behind Harry. Red, blue, and yellow stripes ran from her forehead to the nape of her close-cropped, tightly curled hair. He glanced away quickly, afraid to be caught staring. She laughed and ran a hand over her head.

“I could not resist taking a detour to visit my home on Reunion Island for the Festival of Colors.” Like most Africans, she spoke English with meticulous precision. “We creoles celebrate everyone’s holidays. You are a bit of a creole, too, are you not?”

Harry had trouble reading faces, so he paused for a moment. But Kesa didn’t seem to be teasing him; her smile was open and sincere. He mirrored that smile back to her.

“I’m American; Scottish on my father’s side and Japanese on my mother’s.” The combination worked to Harry’s advantage. Everywhere the Institute had sent him on the PR tour, Harry’s features were viewed as pleasantly exotic. People expected the exotic face to contain a hypnotic personality. They expected it, so even his occasionally uncertain efforts came across as striking.

“Well, excuse me, Harry. I should return to the party.”

Kesa strolled over to a small group around the mission’s physics specialist, Ryan Boyle, and easily joined their conversation. The crew had only been chosen a year ago and, with all the individual PR trips, Harry didn’t feel like he knew his crewmates yet. Most of their training had been in virtual space, which worked well for training but not for getting acquainted.

Weather conditions favored an early departure, so no one was surprised when the Director pointedly wished them a safe journey. They walked out onto the lift pad and up the ramp.

Without further ceremony, the door closed and the capsule climbed, revolving leisurely as it followed the twist of the ribbon. It was anti-climatic. The capsule left the pad so slowly that Harry didn’t feel any movement under his feet. Fifteen minutes later, when the Institute officers stepped onto the pad, the crew easily waved to them from the capsule windows.

Harry stayed at the windows to watch the White Pearl Tower shrink and the ground steadily recede. He could hear a gentle flow of air from the vents above him, but if the climbers made any sound, it didn’t penetrate the hull. He laid a hand against the window, which still felt hot in the equatorial sun. A power cable from the ground fell away; they were on laser power now and would gradually gain speed.

The capsule was the size of a snug coffee house, and had been furnished with small sofas and cafe tables. Harry peeked around the large central pillar that surrounded the lift’s ribbon and found a row of recliners with seat belts, to deal with the changes in apparent gravity they’d encounter, and a spiral staircase down to the utility level.

Seong was standing nearby. She pulled out her link and opened a message flashing “urgent”.

“Our ground support team has finished their evaluation of the preliminary acceptance tests.” She held the link against a wall, projecting the report for Matt to see.

“All of them?”

“Yes, Commander. All fifty-six thousand.” She swept a fingertip through the projection, scrolling down the complicated tables.

“Here’s good news. They already turned most systems over to the station’s intelligent controls. Ambient lighting… ventilation… internal station communications.

“Here’s a chart of problems the construction team is still working. And the acceptance tests we need to witness.”

Seong’s charts were color coded and there was a lot of red.

“Hey guys,” Matt called to the crew. “Our immediate goal is to certify the station as ready to break orbit, and we don’t have any slack time. You’re all assigned systems and you’ll have to hit the ground running. Let’s not waste this three-day ride. I want a crew meeting each morning to review status from the construction teams you’ll supervise. Get familiar with this latest report, eh?”

“I’ve been talking with my team,” Rolf said, waving his link in the air while still watching the ground slip away. “I’m good.”

Matt frowned at his back for a moment. Rolf never simply did as he was asked. He had the swagger expected from bold pilots.

“The last shipment of control circuitry is delayed,” Seong said. “The Chinese scramjets are supposed to sling it up into space before the week’s out.”

Harry couldn’t see Matt’s face, but Seong looked worried.

Chapter 2 : Collins Dock

The Sky Lift capsule arrived at Zenith Transfer Station at the end of a sleep period. Harry pushed out of his recliner, swung his personal duffle bag onto his shoulder, and fell over as the bag careened past his head. He bounced off the floor and tumbled up the wall before regaining control.

“Whoa. Take it easy.” Lia, their Chief Physician, was strapped in the recliner next to Harry. “Dizzy?”

“No, I’m fine. I…” Harry was now floating back towards his recliner, still towing the duffle in one hand. He grabbed at the arm rest to anchor himself and hid his embarrassment by fumbling with his bag. “I guess, overnight, we stopped accelerating up the ribbon.”

“We’ve stopped altogether.” Lia chuckled, more amused than concerned by Harry’s topple.

“Hey, everyone, look at the view; the Earth is beautiful from here,” Kesa said. She was floating at the windows.

“I think I can make out Madagascar, but Reunion Island is too small.” She hugged herself. “I have worked hard to join this crew, but I will miss my home.”

Ryan, the physics specialist, drifted over to Kesa and said something that made her laugh. Ryan was a thick-set man with hair going gray, but his plump face looked fresh with enthusiasm.

The Sky Lift had carried them out of Earth’s gravity well, but they were only a third of the way to their destination. Instead of exploring Zenith Station, they glided directly to the tug that waited to take them to the space dock.

The tug consisted mostly of engines and fuel tanks with a small cabin with acceleration couches packed together in rows behind the pilot. Harry’s nose practically touched the back of the couch in front of him. Only one person at a time could fit in the tiny galley behind them, and they all politely ignored any sounds from the john at the far end. Fortunately, the tug was fast and delivered them to the Collins Dock the next day.

The Collins Lagrangian Space Dock was positioned where gravity from the Earth and Moon balanced. Anything left near that point, including spacecraft, tends to stay put. With its construction platform supported by a lunar base, the Collins Dock was a key part of the emerging New Space Age.

Lia extracted herself from her couch and peeked around the pilot’s chair, out the forward window. The Institute station hung in space, a gleaming white tube with smaller tubes bundled against it.

“That thing’s too small to generate much centripetal force when it spins, which is a shame, cause gravity is good for us. When I first heard we were building a space station, I was hoping for a donut ring a kilometer across.”

“Seong and I followed the station’s on-ground construction phase.” Matt pulled himself to the window when Lia pushed away. “We audited the fabrication of the modules whenever we could take a side trip from the PR tour.

“I could walk across one of those modules in a dozen steps as it sat upright in Earth’s gravity,” Matt said. “But in space we’ll run around the inside curve of the cylinder; just like you saw in training.”

“No matter how good the simulations, they’re never quite like reality.”

“Well, there she is for real.” Matt’s smile reflected in the tug window. “The Inner Solar System Commercial Space Station.”

“Yeah, we call her Izzie,” the tug pilot said over her shoulder. “For ‘ISS-SS’, you know. Anyone else want a look before I decelerate?”

“Swap seats with me, will you?” Rolf asked Seong. “I want to watch the docking.” He eagerly strapped in next to the tug pilot.

“Not much to see; it’s all automated.”

“But you can take the controls if you want. And you’ve got these cabin windows.” Rolf reached out and touched the window. “The Institute didn’t put windows in our station. It’s all imagers and screens.”

“There’s a window in the Labs space drawer,” Ryan reminded him.

Rolf snorted in disgust. “Not a proper window.”

“The construction platform is the shape I’d imagine for a proper space station,” Lia said as she fastened her harness. The Collins Dock platform was attached to the station’s aft end during construction; a dozen cylinders arranged around a central spine housing power stations, shops, and quarters for the construction team.

“We’re clear to approach the platform docking port,” the tug pilot said. “So if everyone is strapped in…” She maneuvered the tug so the hatch above their heads faced the port and executed the controlled collision with a reverberating thud. The seal hissed as the door slid open.

“Welcome to Collins Dock and your new space station. Straight ahead and then forward,” she said, handing a pair of down-boots to each of them as they disembarked.

Rolf was the first one out the tug hatch. He glided down a tunnel no wider than the hatch, kicked off to his right with a flip, and into the station’s Launch Bay.

The bay was nearly empty with just a few tool boxes still strapped to the deck. Two dozen members of the construction team were waiting, ready to split up and accompany the Institute crew for the final phase of construction: acceptance testing.

“Hi guys.” Rolf called to his team as he slipped on the boots. “Let’s go forward to Command.”

If the module had been on Earth, lying on its side, Rolf would have walked from one end to the other in a dozen steps. In space, he simply kicked off towards the main passageway and rocketed across the bay. He paused to open the airlock’s blue door, grabbed both sides of the hatch, and launched himself through. His Collins team followed him, grinning appreciatively.

Matt’s team was hanging on grips in the bay’s forward bulkhead, and their chief gave him a wave.

“I’ll be on Command, too” Matt said. Irritated at Rolf’s showy departure ahead of him, Matt shot across the bay and through the open hatch.

With a whoop of delight, Lia kicked off from the tug and tumbled down the center of the bay in a series of off-kilter somersaults. One of the Collins team, who was tethered half-way down the bay, caught her.

“Wow. Thanks,” she said. “It’s so good to be out of that little tug.”

Harry stopped at the hatch, holding firmly onto the frame. The bay was divided into four quadrants, each enameled a different color. Harry plunked his new boots against the blue quad and walked slowly down to the blue deck, pausing as each step thunked securely against the bulkhead. The others followed, walking down the bulkhead or drifting from grip to grip like slow-motion monkeys. The Collins team watched indulgently. Newcomers needed some time to play in zero gravity before any work would get done.

Finally everyone moved forward to the Cargo Bay, where the passageway became a tunnel through equipment crammed into the bay. Vera stopped to inspect her mining craft, but Harry was happy to continue through the next airlock to Engineering.

On one side of the passageway, tanks and racks followed the curve of the deck to loom over his head. The other side was fairly open, and a utility chase, which ran down the axial center of each module from Engineering forward, gave the comforting impression of a ceiling as Harry stood with his down-boots firmly planted on the deck.

Seong hopped to a set of control consoles that circled the module. Consoles offered high definition displays and manual over-rides, so they were the best place to run tests. Harry knew there was another, elaborate set of consoles in the Command module at the station’s forward end. But the station’s systems were fully distributed; anyone could easily operate the station by voice command from the crew lounge. They had a pilot and a commander, but Harry knew that he could probably fly the station by himself, at least if nothing unusual happened.

Despite that, psychologically it seemed right to have command centers.

Ryan Boyle, the physics specialist, came into Engineering behind Harry and glided across the module to the additive fabricator, which would print parts for use onboard. He had a series of test shapes to print here before he headed forward to the Labs module.

The next module would become Harry’s Kitchen Garden. It was a repurposed fuel tank from the heavy-lift engines that carried the modules to the Collins Dock, but now was empty of everything except the overhead utilities. Harry continued forward; his immediate task was acceptance testing in Life Support. He and his Collins team would be working there, cycling every valve, running every pump, and sending test-signals to every sensor.

At first impression, Life Support was chaotic. Layers of tubes and cables surrounded tanks, ducts, pumps and fans. Despite a vibration canceling system, the air seemed to hum. Harry laid his hand on a nearby duct and could feel the throbbing. Combined with the dense array of equipment, the throb gave him a feeling of sensory overload. The lingering smell of oil didn’t help.

“Lia and I will be certifying the food printer.” Kesa’s voice sounded flat against the hum of the equipment. “Hand me your personal bag and I will take it to Quarters.” Harry passed the duffle to her and she continued through the next airlock.

One of the Collins team handed him a universal link. The uni-link was mounted on a crew cap so the components didn’t float away in zero-g: a display visor, audio transceiver, and supplemental lights for the camera.

Harry felt for the comforting shape of his stick-link in a sleeve pocket. He preferred working on a stick-link, a practical electronic dowel about the length of his hand. One edge clung to surfaces electrostatically, so he could slap it on almost anything. Like any link, it had a speaker, mic, and camera, but Harry appreciated the virtual keyboard and screen it projected. While clearest against a white background, both looked pretty good floating in midair. Harry used the keyboard when he could; he found talking, even to himself, distracting.

But today he had to talk to the Institute’s Mission Control, and record videos of the tests. He set his jaw, ready for a long, tiring shift. Harry pulled on the uni-link cap, felt for the dangling transceiver, hooked it over his ear, and adjusted the mic. Then he flipped the visor down from under the cap’s bill until it snapped into place.

“Uni-link, on. Mission Control, are you receiving okay?”

The transmission lag was short, hardly long enough to draw a breath.

“We’re receiving. Ready when you are.”

Chapter 3 : Izzie

At the end of the shift, Harry walked forward to Quarters. The Institute crew would sleep onboard while their teams slept on the construction platform and the Collins second shift worked on problems testing had uncovered.

Harry watched his crewmates glide in. Vera popped through the airlock last. They sat around a dining table adjacent to the lounge, held in place by their down-boots against the red deck or twisting their feet around the chair legs.

“I’ll need everyone’s shift reports before tomorrow morning,” Matt said.

“Is the Earthnet link up?” Kesa asked. “I want to check in with my family.”

“Yes; except for the transmission lag, it’s just like home.”

“Are we ready for supper?” Lia placed a box on the steel tabletop, securing the handle straps to the legs with carabineers.

“The kitchen won’t be available for a couple weeks, so we’ll be picnicking for a while. Supper tonight will be protein bars and squeeze bottles of water. I call dibs on the cookie-dough bar.”

“I’m less worried about the kitchen than I am about the plumbing. Is the flush operational, Harry?” Matt asked. Harry nodded; showers, sinks, and toilets were all located in his Life Support module for efficient recycling.

Lia passed out supper and moved the picnic box so Matt could project their schedule on the tabletop.

“She needs a name,” Rolf said, running a finger across the long title above the schedule. “And not an Institute tongue-twister. International English isn’t everyone’s first language.”

“The tug pilot said they call her Izzie. I like that; sounds friendly.” Lia tipped her chin quizzically.

“What do you say, Matt?” Ryan asked politely.

“Izzie; fine. Now let’s get on to tomorrow’s plan.”

“Hello, Izzie,” Rolf called out, interrupting Matt. “Okay if we call you Izzie?”

“You may call me Izzie.” The station replied in a neutral, vaguely female voice, transmitted over the module’s audio link. “She doesn’t sound very happy to meet me,” Rolf said with a joking grin.

Matt cleared his throat.

“Okay, let’s focus. We’re on a tight schedule. If the Institute has to send any of the back-up crew to help us certify this station, you can bet we won’t be the crew that takes her out of orbit.”

Lia frowned. “I thought we were all set, a qualified crew endorsed by a fan vote.”

“If we can’t make the schedule, that won’t count for beans.”

“Geeze. I wonder what Mission Control will say to this?” Ryan opened a pocket and pulled out a shape from his printing tests.

Lia reached for the spanner wrench. “What? Oh.” It was only half a wrench thick. She held it out to Matt, but he waved it away and tapped some notes into his schedule.

“Don’t look so worried.” She handed the half-wrench back to Ryan. “You’ve got all of twelve weeks to fix it.”

After Matt’s meeting, they were scheduled to sleep. Bunks were mounted along Quarters’ central axis, three sets of five tubes surrounding the cables and ducts in the central utility chase, enough bunks for an eventual crew of fifteen.

“We’ve got extra room,” Matt said. “Let’s leave the center group of bunks empty. Once we’re in space we’ll split into two shifts, so it makes sense for those of us in the command crew to take one group of bunks.” He pointed forward. “Science crew, you guys take the aft group. See you in the morning; promptly at oh-six-hundred.” Matt popped his down-boots off the deck and pushed out of his chair with his arms, and floated up to the bunks.

“Yah, sure, we need someone to tell us which bunks to use,” Rolf grumbled, but he pushed off after Matt with his personal bag in tow.

 

***

Harry was awake, but still strapped tightly into the sleeping web in his bunk. As he waited for the wake-up call, he fiddled with the cuffs of the coveralls that replaced his leather uniform; they were remarkably breathable for self-cleaning, hydrophobic cloth. Despite the vibration canceling systems on Izzie, a soft hum permeated the bunk and he was drifting back to sleep when something changed.

Harry loosened his web and pushed away from the bunk wall. It wasn’t a sound as much as a new vibration; then he felt a bump.

“Izzie, what’s going on?”

“The dock crew is installing fuel tanks for my vector thrusters,” the smooth voice replied. “The tug pilot reports a problem.”

“Put the tug channel on audio.” Harry was trying to brace himself so he could pull on his down-boots.

“Dammit.” The tug pilot grunted. “Oh, hell.”

That couldn’t be good, Harry thought as he tugged on his uni-link cap.

A piercing wail sounded through Quarters.

“Pressure drop, isolation protocol,” Izzie announced in her soothing voice. Harry shoved himself out of his bunk tube, aiming his down-boots for the deck. Izzie was slamming the airlock doors shut.

Matt was already on deck.

“Izzie, mute alarm.” He held up his stick-link, a diagram of Izzie shimmering in the air, all her modules colored green. “Our airlocks are closed and pressure is normal. Everyone know their module assignment? Okay, start checking for leaks and report on the internal crew channel; leave the Collins channel for emergency coms only. Go.” Rolf kicked off for the forward airlock; Kesa and Ryan followed him, leaving Lia to survey Quarters.

Harry followed Matt and the others to the aft airlock. As he watched Matt double check the pressure and manually open the door, Harry felt his chest tightening and his vision narrowing down.

There were two Collins workers from the second shift in Life Support, where Harry stopped as the others continued aft.

“What happened?”

“The tug was installing a hydrogen fuel tank. It got away from them and a bracket pierced the tank. Rocketed off and hit our platform.”

“Anyone hurt?” Harry asked as he pulled squeeze-bulbs from a maintenance cabinet.

“Don’t know.” Their voices were tightly controlled.

“Izzie, shut down the module’s ventilation,” Harry said. He could feel the hum in the air change as the fans stopped. “We show Izzie’s pressure holding, but let’s look for signs of a leak. With none of the robots active, we’ll have to do this by-hand.” He passed out the squeeze bulbs. “I’ll take the green quad.” The Collins guys nodded and split up.

Harry puffed out a cloud of fine powder from the bulb, sweeping his arm as he did. With the ventilation shut down, even a small leak would suck the powder out and he’d see it. Starting to work loosened the tightness he felt inside.

They scanned to the Collins channels as they worked; silent except when the Collins lead called role and the two workers with Harry tersely replied. Talk on the channel was a confusion of short reports and calls for equipment.

“Matt to crew, here’s an update.” Matt’s voice was crisp. “A loose tank hit the Collins platform at the shop module. The impact must have torqued the whole platform; the seal to Izzie popped. Our Launch Bay decompressed along with the platform’s spine, but only scrapes and bruises reported so far. How’s Izzie? Rolf, you report first.”

One by one, Izzie’s crew reported no signs of damage.

“Finish up your leak surveys, then stand-down the emergency.”

Harry returned to Quarters with his two Collins workers; a dozen people floated there, listening to the chatter on their uni-links. Everyone turned towards Matt when he popped through the aft airlock.

“It could have been worse,” he said. “There’s some damage to the Collins shop, but the only hull breach was the seal between Izzie and the platform. No significant injuries.”

“You guys did a great job,” Matt said, nodding to his crew. “Letter-perfect response. The Collins team is repairing the seal now, and they’ve already ordered a replacement tank. This will only cost us a few days.”

“Surely an accident like this requires a full structural analysis,” Ryan said, his blue eyes widening.

“We’ll restart acceptance testing from the top; that’ll cover everything.”

Ryan looked uncomfortable, but nodded.

 

***

 

The seal was repaired before the shift ended and testing resumed. Systematically the crew went through Izzie’s systems: air and water recycling, power and signal cables, temperature control and kitchen operations. The days flew by. They worked long hours and deferred unpacking the station’s internal equipment, and met the aggressive schedule.

There was only one significant problem when they sat down for Matt’s last acceptance-test meeting.

“The controls for the aft thruster ring are still giving intermittent readings,” Seong reported, scowling.

“What’s the issue?”

“When I send the test signal, occasionally I get different readings back. We’ve replaced all the quantum tunneling relays from Command aft to the Life Support.”

“Well, we have plenty of spare relays,” Matt said. “Replace the rest of them, eh? We’ve got to break orbit in two days to make the comet rendezvous.”

“But there shouldn’t be a problem at all,” Seong said, still frowning. “I might believe one or two relays were bad. But every relay in the chain? I don’t like details being rushed. Each one is a possible failure point.”

“Look Seong.” Matt spoke with exaggerated patience. “The aft thrusters are a secondary system, anyway. We weren’t planning to activate it on this mission until the comet mining popped up. If the comet doesn’t yield any fuel, we just continue our cruise past Mars to the Helios anomaly using the vector thrusters.”

“That would turn Izzie into one slow boat.” Rolf shook his head glumly.

“I have to slow Izzie down and match the comet’s path to support the mining mission. If the aft system doesn’t provide a velocity boost when I leave the comet, the trip will take our entire tour onboard.”

“That would still meet all our required mission goals.” Matt folded his arms across his chest. “The next crew can worry about the aft system if it doesn’t work.” Matt ground his teeth together. He could leave the aft system for the crew that would relieve them in thirty months, but he’d score more points with the Director if he got the thrusters running on comet fuel. And that was only possible if they achieved the comet rendezvous. He had to make the best of it.

Rolf huffed out an exasperated breath, but said nothing.

“You’ve got the problem handled anyway, eh Seong? You’re checking each relay, right? Replace the bad ones and let’s go.”

“This is the relay,” Seong continued quietly, as if she were talking to herself. She laid her stick-link in the center of the table to display a holograph. It showed an exploded diagram with layers of stacked chips, each the size of a fingernail, installed between two flayed fiber bundles. Harry poked the image and it rotated, one fiber bundle snaking upwards, the other fading into the tabletop.

“I’ve worked with a lot of quantum relays,” Harry said. “My family uses fly-bots to monitor the reforestation projects we manage, and I’ve used them at the Institute, too. These connections… something is wrong. Like the relay’s wrong for the fiber bundle.”

“What?” Matt sounded impatient. “Experts on quantum relays designed these.”

“I notice things. Something’s wrong,” Harry said. He poked the holograph again. “I notice details.”

“The relay is correct,” Seong said. “Here is that same relay in the simulation we trained on.” She tapped her link controls and a second image popped up next to the original. They were identical.

“Just replace the relays,” Matt said. “If we don’t break orbit on time, we’ll miss a rendezvous with that comet. If we’re not close enough to deploy the damned Brazilian mine…” Matt interrupted himself. “Not that we’re not pleased to have the mine along.”

Vera, the Brazilian engineer, seldom said anything in Matt’s meetings and he’d forgotten she was there.

“You don’t offend me,” Vera said in her soft Portuguese accent. “Is just business.”

“Well, the contract says if we don’t deploy the mine at Comet Hobbs, the Institute is on the hook for a financial penalty.”

“Why’d the Institute agree to a penalty, anyway?” Seong pressed her lips together tightly in frustration.

“Because without Brazil there’s not a chance they’ll break even. And if they don’t break even, it’ll delay construction of our relief ship.”

“Surely, the Institute would not leave us stranded so far from home?” Kesa looked alarmed.

“Well, no. No, of course not.” Matt shook his head.

“Seong; how about the vector thrusters? That’s the primary system and we can run the whole mission with them. Did they check out okay?”

“No problems there; they check out one hundred percent.”

“Then the aft system is just a bonus. Will you sign off on it?”

“Not until tomorrow. Not until the relays are replaced.” She was still unhappy.

“Good. You’re good, Seong. I have confidence in you.” Matt was smiling now. “I’ll tell Mission Control to have their sign-off ready, too.

“Now, let’s get some rest everyone,” he said firmly, ending the meeting. “Tomorrow the Institute will formally accept delivery of Izzie by the Collins Dock and she’ll be ours.”

Harry sat at the table after the others had left, fiddling with his water bottle. Then he noticed Vera was still standing behind him.

“You were right to speak up,” she said. “The commander should not be dismissive.”

“Thank you, Dr Lago.”

“Please call me Vera.” She pushed her stick-link onto the table and opened the station’s design prints.

“My job is mining, but I’m also a member of this crew.

“That is the right part number, Mr Gordon,” she said after scrolling through the specifications.

“Everyone calls me Harry. And thanks for checking the relay. Vera.” She had checked the specs, so she must not think he was stupid, but Seong had the right relay after all. Harry felt his face flush warm and fiddled with his water bottle again.

Vera slipped her link back into a sleeve pocket. “I’m going to my bunk now. Good night, Harry.” She pushed off from the table straight to her bunk overhead.

Harry preferred to pull himself up the ladder, hand over hand.

 

***

 

In Izzie’s last two days in Dock, the Collins team pulled a cradle with three engines up against Izzie’s aft module and Rolf adjusted attitude so Izzie was aimed for departure. On their final morning in orbit around Earth, Izzie’s crew made their way forward to Command. The acceleration would not be strong enough to require special couches, but they would feel the push. The padded bulkhead in Command made a fine place to strap in for the ride.

While Rolf and Matt selected their favorite keyboards on the control consoles’ desk-like tops, everyone else fastened themselves into a restraining harness. Matt pulled up flat projections of Izzie’s key systems on the console’s back panel, but Rolf preferred holographs floating above his entry board. He had several holos going at once, moving them with a touch here and there as he worked.

Harry scanned the module curiously as he waited, comparing it to his mental image from training.

Command was cavernous compared to most of Izzie’s modules. There were no utilities hung in its center to block Harry’s view; here utilities emerged from the deck to run up the backs of the consoles: ventilation, power, and lights that aimed straight up to illuminate the opposite side of the module. Consoles were laid out in three rings with wide aisles between them.

Matt sat at the first console off the passageway. He slipped his shoulders into the two straps that hung from the chair back and twisted his boots into the ring that circled the chair’s pedestal support. He checked that the rest of the crew was strapped to the bulkhead.

“Okay Rolf. The crew is secure,” Matt said. He glanced to his left. Rolf had chosen a console in the center of the red quad, which put him above Matt’s eye level. From Matt’s perspective, his head jutted out and hung lower than his feet. Izzie’s curved deck created some weird illusions. Of course, Rolf sat as comfortably as Matt did, strapped to his chair with his down-boots flat against the deck.

“This is Collins Dock Tug Baker. Are you ready, Izzie?” A tug would accompany them through the engine burn, and then gently pull the engine cradle off to tow it back to the dock.

“Pilot ready,” Rolf replied, pulling his uni-link cap down snuggly on his head and flipping the visor into place with a click.

“Releasing dock power tether.”

“Izzie’s now on internal power. Ready for engine ignition.”

“Activating the forward imagers.”

The displays were breathtaking. The entire front half of Command was covered in screens; it was like the cupola had disappeared and the module opened to space. Rolf hadn’t switched the holographic projectors on. When activated, a holo would fill the cupola and tower over anyone who stood on the deck.

Earth jutted out from under the deck in one quadrant and the Moon in another. But most of the cupola was filled with the black space ahead of them; the glare of Earth and the Moon washed out the stars. It was like floating naked in space.

Harry shivered and tightened his harness straps.

“Countdown underway,” Matt said. He didn’t bother with his uni-link visor; all the read-outs were visible on his console. Precisely on zero the engines fired. Since Izzie was already in orbit, they didn’t need the acceleration required to blast off from Earth’s surface, but after so long in zero gravity, even the gentle acceleration felt uncomfortable. Everyone stayed quiet, listening to Rolf and the tug pilot exchange reading.

“Everything’s fine,” Rolf said at last, relaxing back in his seat. “We’re on our way.”

Two hours and forty three minutes later, exactly as planned, the engines shut down. The tug pulled back on the engine lugs and Izzie slipped gently out of the cradle.

“Good journey, Izzie,” the tug pilot said as she pivoted for the trip back to the Collins Dock. “You’re on your own now.”

“There go my only proper engines,” Rolf said with a sigh.

“Thrusters are all we need,” Matt muttered. “Izzie’s a commercial platform, not a spaceship.”

Süleyman’s Heart – a poem by Kate Rauner

Süleyman the Magnificent,

of Ottoman’s golden age,

The warrior poet, centuries dead,

may write another page.

His army’s westward march was stopped

in rural Hungary.

There they paused and set up camp

for a castle’s bloody siege.

Five desperate weeks the castle held

against the Turkish men,

Yet as it fell, death arrived

for the grand sultan.

A buggy marsh is not the place

to lay a corpse in state.

Against Islam, he was embalmed,

lest his son arrive too late.

His body then was carried home,

his tomb revered today,

But legend tells of something left behind,

that stayed.

Stories say, beneath his tent,

his noble heart was buried;

But as to where that tent had stood,

all the tales varied.

Archeologists, they say

the buried heart’s a myth,

But the town of Turbek;

there’s evidence for this.

Evidence that a thriving town

served pilgrims to a shrine,

Though mosque and inn and public baths

have disappeared with time.

Searched mountains of old documents,

letters, maps that say

The sultan’s tent could view the siege

an hour’s walk away.

Charted where the crops were grown:

vineyards, fruits, and grain,

With computer models, figured where

he might have lain.

Soil samples, test digs;

now their data tell

Of Persian tiles, Turkish bricks;

there is no parallel.

A treasure cask, a buried heart,

a myth from folklore told.

But tourists, they will come again today, and bring

their gold.

Inspired by the archeological digs of Norbert Pap, a professor of political geography at the nearby University of Pécs. “I started doing this simply because I was looking for a challenge,” Pap says. nationalgeographic.com

Glitch – novel by Kate Rauner – discovery in a futurist world

To celebrate the first anniversary of my science fiction ebook, Glitch, I’ve re-issued the book with a new cover. Available from Amazon for Kindle for 99¢; or download a FREE copy from Smashwords in any of the major electronic formats and at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, Flipkart, Inktera, and Versent.

At Spaceport America in the desert southwest, Rob Shay is a mission controller for Xplore, the world’s premiere space exploration company. During routine calibrations on a client’s spacecraft, Rob and his mission crew make an incredible discovery: a glitch in space that opens an impossible path to a star and its planets.

Serendipity led to the discovery and serendipity may prevent its exploration. All Rob wants is to be part of exploring the Helios system, but problems keep getting in his way. The Board of Directors believes Rob found a glitch in the instruments rather than a glitch in space. The control crew must convince them the glitch is real. Only then will international spacecraft explore the Helios system.

Original retro-style cover

Support and opposition come from unexpected sources. Although the Helios mission is sustained by many subscribers to the universities’ missions, not everyone in the world wants to see humanity travel beyond Earth. Space exploration is a private industry, but governments try to claim control. Xplore is in the business of exploration and business concerns come first. Rob struggles in a world he can’t control, trying to stay with his mission while bigger problems rock the nation. At least Rob finds some sympathy from his once-girlfriend who runs a telescope-for-hire business in Australia.

Rob lives in near-future Spaceport America, a real place just beginning operations in New Mexico. With its distinctive, geeky futurism, Glitch presents a world where you might one day live.

Read an excerpt now:

Chapter 1 Spaceport America

“Welcome to Spaceport America Industrial Park”. A soft, reddish light was mounted above the sign and the words stood out clearly in the darkness.

Even after five years, Rob Shay still got a bit of a thrill riding past that sign. The Spaceport terminal’s distinctive curve against a clear sky was a familiar sight to residents and tourists alike in New Mexico, everyone wanted to see the Spaceport even if they couldn’t afford an expensive joyride to space. Tourists never came to the tidy, prosperous industrial park, but this was where to find the real business of space, where Rob had worked since he dropped out of the University of Arizona in favor of some hands-on space exploration.

Rob could see the main terminal in the distance, laid out like a huge butterfly half buried in the level sands that stretched between White Sands National Monument and the Elephant Butte Reservoir. The building’s rim was outlined in lights, tinted red to preserve views of the dark, starry sky. Dry, barren mountains rose against the horizon behind the Spaceport terminal, though they were hidden in the darkness.

The Smart Cab dropped Rob off in front of Xplore’s building. Xplore specialized in space missions. Design, assembly, and mission control functions were housed here, along with the business offices. It was near the center of the block where the most prosperous companies were housed. Behind them stretched the Spaceport’s launch facilities. A few gantries for vertical launches were visible, outlined in red lights.

Architects for the smaller buildings that lined the street had generally abandoned the southwest style, favoring sleek, uncluttered facades of glass, metal, and stone. Less impressive cinder block buildings, divided into small shops and offices, were found on streets to the south.

Xplore’s employees generally worked a standard business-week, but mission control was a round-the-clock task and Rob worked midnight to noon. The building was dark as he approached; its floor-to-ceiling lobby windows reflecting the subdued exterior lighting along the walkway. Rob walked briskly to the doors of the deserted lobby lugging a cooler. He rarely left the building during his shift, so he carried his dinner and snacks.

Rob shivered a bit. The September night was chilly and felt slightly damp from the last of the summer rains. At the entrance, Rob tapped the access pad and pushed open the door into the lobby. Lights came on automatically at their night-time setting so the ceiling and walls remained draped in shadows.

The lobby was two stories high, an extravagance meant to impress arriving clients. There were sofas and upholstered chairs arranged in comfortable discussion groups, and a row of study carrels along one wall where visitors could work with some privacy. The building was laid out in a big square and doors directly across from the entry, behind the empty welcome desk, led to a private courtyard with picnic tables and a desert garden.

The rest of the building was more practical. The wing to the right housed labs and shops, and stairs led to offices and conference rooms on the second floor. Rob turned left, however, through the double doors that opened to the mission control wing. The hall here was brightly lit and full of people preparing for shift change.

Through an archway on the left was a common room and, from there, the locker rooms. About a dozen people were already inside, chatting in small groups. Rob looked around and quickly spotted his crew mates Lee and Trisha.

“Hi guys,” Rob greeted them. It was the first day of their work week, so they took a few minutes to catch up.

Today was Thursday and it was 11:00 pm, which was the start of Xplore’s Second Morning Shift. Mission control for craft in space was staffed twenty-four hours a day, every day. Each mission control crew worked three 13-hour days as week.

Rob didn’t mind the odd hours. He thought he had the best job in the world. Xplore was the leading private space exploration company in the world. Sure, there were competitors, but Xplore could handle anything from launching a client’s prefabricated satellite to the total design, assembly, and operation of missions to the farthest reaches of the solar system. At Xplore, Rob was part of major research projects like the one he was reporting to tonight. Even though the mission was currently in a long quiet period, coasting through the vast empty distances between planets, he was working with his two best friends on this shift, so he couldn’t ask for a better assignment. And tonight would be more interesting, with a series of calibrations to be performed.

“Who’s Thing One and Thing Two this week?” Rob asked. Every few weeks their mission had different personnel from the client’s post-doctoral program assigned to mission control. Talking to the post-docs was a good way to keep up with gossip from their universities. The post-docs, being part of the client’s staff, could work whatever days and hours they wanted and often started in the middle of one shift, crossing into the next.

“Deb Vowell and Carl Levi,” Lee answered, scanning his pocket pad.

“Oh, yeah,” Rob said with a nod. “I remember them. They’re modeling Europa’s oceans.”

“They’ve been here several times. They’re good guys, and you really should be more tactful,” Lee advised.

“Oh, Rob’s just joking,” Trisha said. “He wouldn’t call them ‘things’ to their faces.”

“I’ll be the epitome of tact in the control room,” Rob said, inclining his head and smiling. “But the post-docs come and go so quickly, it’s hard to keep all the names straight.” He understood why post-docs wanted to be on-location at Xplore. Even though they could monitor their missions from their university, it was a good experience to see Xplore’s labs and control rooms in action.

‘Such good experience,’ Rob thought to himself, ‘that some grad students decide to drop their studies and get a real job instead. Like me.’

Trisha was pushing hangers along the uniform rack, chuckling to herself at their banter. The rack held uniforms specifically chosen for the mission control crews. Xplore prided itself on providing full-service space missions, right down to uniforms. Someone, somewhere upstairs, did research on the best outfits to project whatever image the client wanted. For some missions they prescribed coveralls; for others, jackets and ties. Universities usually wanted a casual-but-competent look. Tonight only a shirt was specified.

Trisha found the right hangers, each with a name on the attached tag. She pulled off her own shirt and passed Rob’s to him. Lee reached around her and lifted his hanger carefully off the rack. Their uniform was a long sleeved, cardinal-red, button-down oxford shirt with the Xplore logo embroidered across the back yoke. On the front were two circles of Velcro. Rob pulled mission patches out of his jacket pocket. He slapped the Arizona Group logo above the left pocket, and the mission logo above the right.

“Meet you back here in a minute,” Trisha said as she headed for the women’s locker room.

Rob carried his shirt into the men’s locker room, and pulled it on over his tee-shirt, then appraised himself in the mirror. Rob was a tall, lanky man with a smooth complexion that made him look like he was still in his twenties. His light brown hair was so curly he had to keep it trimmed short or it would run wild. He tucked his shirt in and straighten the mission patches.

‘Oops,’ he thought, noticing a bump under the shirt.

He’d left his ComCore, a smooth oval about the size of his thumb, joint clipped to his tee shirt. His Command Core was. Most people wore their ComCores like jewelry and Rob’s looked like a stone of brown-veined turquoise. Tonight, Rob had his Core mounted on a pocket clip.

Rob had the ComCore set to interface with his personal pocket-sized smart pad and identify him to the various machines he used in daily life. Liking a sense of control more than most people, Rob usually left his ComCore set to require a touch against an interface pad rather than just a wave in its direction. Whether paying at a store or opening his apartment door, Rob tapped the interface circle on whatever pad he needed to access. Rob clipped the ComCore safely inside one of his oxford shirt pockets and slipped his personal smart pad into the other pocket.

He walked back to the common room and surveyed his crew, all neatly dressed in their crisp matching shirts. Lee was dark haired and round faced, with rounded shoulders, and a bit round in the middle too. Trisha was shorter than the average lady, with a perky nose and ready smile. She wore her long light brown hair pulled back into a pony tail. They were good crew mates and good friends.

The three turned down the hall and continued to Mission Control Room 3 for their command-change meeting.

Six mission control rooms ranged along the hall on the left; a wall of windows on the right looked out into the central courtyard with its picnic tables and xeriscaped garden. A large break room occupied the far corner, open to the halls. Along one wall of the break room was a row of pin-ball machines, replicas of antiques that actually worked, and there was a bucket of slugs to feed into their coin slots. Between the break room, locker rooms, and courtyard, you could spend days at Xplore without leaving the building and occasionally people did when there was a big push for some mission.

Rob and his friends worked on one of the largest missions Xplore was running at the time, “Mapping Europa”. The client, the Arizona Group, used a spacecraft design that had become popular for planetary missions, a “Groupo” which carried several telerobotic satellites around a single core craft. For Mapping Europa, Xplore had launched two spacecraft that were identical twins; Groupo One and Groupo Two; MEG1 and MEG2 for short.

Each of the twin craft carried six satellites bound for the Jupiter system, specifically for the moon Europa. The satellites create a network of instrumentation to image and analyze Europa’s ice-covered oceans and, with luck, the ocean floor below. Rob’s crew handled MEG1 in MC3; the crew handling MEG2 was next door in MC4.

While the military space-race had petered out, the competition among universities had heated up. An ambitious space mission was hard for a university to accomplish alone, so research missions were accomplished by consortia of universities and non-profits, with as many corporate sponsors and individual subscribers as they could attract.

The Europa mapping mission and its twin spacecraft belonged to the University Network of Outer Solar System Exploration. The consortium involved several American and European universities which provided imaging on wavelengths from radio frequencies through infrared to ultraviolet and gamma ray, with spectroscopy provided by UPMC in France. They shared the data to support hundreds of faculty and student research projects. The principal investigator for the consortium was at the University of Arizona, a long time Xplore client, so at Xplore they tended to think of MEG as Arizona’s mission.

Last April, Xplore had completed assembly of the mission’s instrumentation modules and launched the twins from Xplore’s pad on the east side of the Spaceport. Now Xplore managed the flight dynamics and the data storage, and fussed with course corrections. “Driving the bus”, they called it. Most of the instrumentation was operated directly by University of Arizona and UPMC scientists in their own control rooms on their distant campuses.

Planetary science was trending. Arizona sold subscriptions to the MEG mission to people all over the world. Standard subscribers could interact with the researchers, receive special programs about the mission, or just enjoy watching events unfold on Arizona’s Internet site. Premium subscribers could use mission data for their own research and businesses, and had access to unedited, real-time feeds. Rob waved to the Internet-cameras as he entered the MEG1 control room. Being a controller for an on-line, subscriber-based mission meant learning not to swear or scratch yourself in embarrassing places, since the front half of the control room was fully covered by net-cams.

The large launch crew was long-gone and the MEGs were controlled by three-person Bus-Driver crews. These crews tended the spacecraft as they coasted along towards the Jupiter system and would, in turn, relinquish them to orbital insertion crews later in the mission. Xplore’s excellent mission planning meant the flights had been satisfyingly routine.

Tonight’s schedule called for exercising various systems on MEG1. MEG2, which had launched about a month behind MEG1, would repeat the exercise in a few weeks. Although the Arizona and French controllers would be performing most of the work, Xplore’s crews would position MEG1 for them and check various attitude dynamics. The previous shift has started the work, and Rob was anxious to find out how things were going.

As he hung his jacket by the door, he paused to look around the room. MC3 was large and windowless. A small conference table was pushed against the front wall, below the large wall screens. Three long, curved benches faced the screens. The room could accommodate much larger crews, but only a half-dozen work stations were set up. Along the back wall of the room were some comfy chairs and small tables, and a coffee pot by a little sink.

Rob headed for the coffee and slid his cooler under a table. The back of the room was behind the net-cams and provided a bit of privacy to relax during the shift without leaving the control room. Two post-docs from the university were already there, pouring coffee and pulling smart pads from their backpacks. With a hurried nod to Rob, they walked back to the conference table in front of the room.

Xplore prided itself on its cyber security, and the features were discreetly unobtrusive. The room seemed to be papered in a muted beige grass cloth, but a network of fine metallic strands woven into the covering shielded them from outside attempts to scan or access the electronics. As an added protection, uploads could only be sent from the first row of control stations, which had security chips unique to the mission embedded in the hardware. The net-cams that streamed the mission to subscribers were physically isolated from all other electronics in the room. Telemetry arriving from MEG1 was also physically isolated. A lazy-Susan data-management unit about three feet across hung in the ceiling. While the telemetry was archived directly in Xplore’s proprietary system, memory units rotated every hundredth of a second to transfer data to the subscriber Internet site. The physical gap maintained between mission control and the Internet provided a comforting sense of protection to clients that no amount of cyber security could achieve.

Trisha, Lee, and the outgoing control crew gathered around the conference table below the wall screens. Their lead, Alyssa Sanchez, carried a lap-sized tablet clipped into a caddy, the configuration most people preferred for serious input work. Her shift report was displayed on the center wall screen.

“It’s been a pretty nominal day,” Sanchez began without preamble as Rob sat down. “MEG1 crossed Mars’ orbit before you walked in, and Arizona got this great image in visible light. She tapped her caddy’s controls and a wall screen filled with an orangey, egg-shaped image of Mars more than half-illuminated by the sun. “We’ve done the calibrations in the visible light frequencies on the A, B, and C satellites. Arizona had trouble getting the infrared operating. They may try it again on your shift, and you’ll need to adjust MEG1′s attitude for that.”

Sanchez brought up several telemetry tables. “Here are the data we’ve been concentrating on.”

Trisha and Lee talked with their counterparts, the post-docs chatted in a corner, and in short order Rob’s Second Morning Shift was ready to assume command.

“Morning shift takes command,” he said formally to Sanchez. This was a little ceremony for the net-cams.

“Have a good shift,” she responded.

“See you tomorrow,” Rob waved to the departing crew as he pulled on a headset.

***

The crew greeted their counterparts in Arizona and France as they set up their work stations. Each work station tablet was clipped into a caddy that projected a control board on the bench in front of the user. Since individuals could choose from a variety of sizes and configurations, it took a few minutes for the crew to arrange a work station to their own preferences. Lee carefully folded his shirt cuffs up inside his sleeves and was sitting forward in his chair. The slouched look he had outside the control rooms, like an over-grown puppy, was replaced with a sharp, crisp style as he settled into his work station.

“MEG1 must be right in the middle of the Trojans,” Lee said, looking up at the wall screen now displaying a computer animation of the craft’s position in the solar system.

“I thought the Trojan asteroids were in Jupiter’s orbit,” Trisha said.

“Jupiter’s Trojans are better known, but every planet has asteroids called Trojans in its orbit” Lee said. “Jupiter has over a million of them, if you count everything larger than a kilometer in size.

“I did my thesis on the chemical composition of the Martian Trojans,” he continued, tapping his controls to zoom in on the animation. “There are only three large Martian Trojans, but there must be at least ten times that many smaller ones, trapped in their positions relative to the planet, essentially forever.”

“Trapped?” Rob didn’t like the sound of that.

“Nothing to worry about,” Lee said. “MEG1 can’t become trapped in the Trojan node. She’s moving outward from the sun, across Mars’ orbit.

“I wonder if we’ll get an image of an uncataloged asteroid.” Lee turned back to his work station and overlaid the known Trojan asteroids on MEG1′s path.

“So that’s what you studied? These Trojan asteroids?”

“Actually, I did my thesis on the Trojans in the trailing node,” Lee said. “There are a total of five nodes for each planet, gravitational sweet spots between the planet and the sun. Their orbits are stable. MEG1 is passing through Mars’ leading node right now, the L4 node.”

“Why ‘L4′?” Rob asked. He was squinting at an image from one of MEG1′s satellites, trying to spot a Trojan asteroid.

“It happens to be numbered as the fourth node, and ‘L’ is for ‘Lagrange’, the French astronomer who first worked out the math in the 1700s. The first asteroids found were named after characters from the Trojan War; you know, the war with the Trojan Horse? So ‘Trojans’ is the conventional term.

“It’s like,” Lee swiveled in his chair, tented his fingers, and pushed his hands out towards Rob like a swimmer cutting through the water. “It’s like the L4 Trojan asteroids are riding a gravitational bow wave from Mars, but they never get pushed to the side, so they ride forever.”

“So where are nodes one, two, and three?”

“I’ll show you a diagram,” Lee said, “but it doesn’t affect MEG1. All that really matters to her is that there’s a lot of empty space between asteroids, even Trojan asteroids in the L4 node,” he said, turning again to his work station. “We aren’t likely to see any of them by chance.”

“Why depend on chance?” Trisha asked. “Let’s go searching for asteroids, shall we?” She pulled up her command menu.

“I need some targets to check MEG1′s radar system,” she said with a wink. “That’s part of navigation and that’s my job. Nothing out here to use but asteroids, anyway.”

Rob chuckled. Trisha was a sweetheart; she’d find an asteroid for Lee.

The calibration routines initiated by the previous shift went well. Arizona decided to delay their infrared diagnostics for a day, so Rob didn’t even have to deal with the one glitch that had turned up in MEG1′s instruments so far.

“We can perform the saturation calibration for spectroscopy next,” Trisha said. “I’ll adjust MEG1′s attitude to aim the first satellite’s imagers at the sun.”

Rob opened his mic to the shared channel and told the French controllers at UPMC that they were sending the command to MEG1 for their first saturation calibration.

“Ready when you are,” the French crew lead replied. “We’ll tag our command to initiate ze spectrum analyses after your attitude change iz complete.”

Rob tapped open his link to Arizona. “Leave your visible-light imager on, please. We’ll use it to confirm our attitude.”

“Copy. Visible-light command sent… now,” came back the reply. It would take 4 minutes, 20.94 seconds for the command to reach MEG1.

Trisha doubled checked MEG1′s current attitude telemetry and sent her commands.

“About five minutes for the transmission, then roughly twenty minutes for MEG1 to execute,” Trisha said, examining a bell-shaped curve of MEG response times from the designers’ simulation runs. The time it took for MEG1 to respond depended, in part, on where she was in her internal programs when the transmission arrived. The mission designers ran countless simulations to build a curve that included all possible response scenarios and their probabilities. “Then another five minutes to get back to us.” She relaxed back into her seat.

“I’m going to grab a cup of coffee,” Rob said.

Chapter 2 Glitch

As he sat with his coffee cradled in one hand, Rob tapped his virtual keyboard and displayed an animation of MEG1 on the center wall screen, built from telemetry being received. MEG1 rotated the satellite Trisha had selected towards the sun. With another tap, Rob sent the satellite’s visible-light image to the left wall screen. Mars slid slowly across the left screen as MEG1 rotated into position and the sun moved into view in its place.

For someone standing on Mars, the sun would look about half the size it does from Earth, and no brighter than the sun might appear on a cloudy Earth day. But floating in black space, with nothing for comparison, MEG1′s image of the sun was brilliant. The sun was so bright it swamped out the view of any background stars and dominated the screen. The sun sat right in the center of the screen once MEG1 completed her rotation, and Rob relaxed back into his chair. His work was done, barring trouble, and now he could watch the data stream in as the researchers at Arizona and UPMC exercised their instruments.

Light imagers, spectrometers, and a topography-measuring laser altimeter were among the gadgets MEG1′s satellites carried. Not all could be tested in open space. She needed an object below her to measure topography, for example. Arizona’s visible-light image was more easily evaluated. Arizona was fiddling with something and the image quality improved. Filters were being adjusted, Rob noted, glancing at his work station screen.

A blank spectroscopy chart popped up on the right-most wall screen, ready to display the French university’s data. Rob glanced at the storage status displayed at his work station. No problems.

The spectroscopists were located at UPMC in France, the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, at the university’s laboratory of planetary science.

Rob understood the lab was right along the Seine River. ‘Sounds like a nice place to work,’ he thought idly as the universities ran their calibrations.

MEG1′s telemetry indicated the spectroscopy instruments were warming up, the observation port was fully open, and a spectrum began to fill in the chart on the wall screen. Since the sun’s composition is thoroughly known, it made an excellent calibration standard. The sun is mostly hydrogen with some helium, a little oxygen, and traces of carbon, iron, sulfur, nitrogen, silicon, and neon. Colors and lines formed and brightened as the spectrum formed.

The French crew checked various functions; Rob had their chat appearing as text crawling across the bottom of his work station. He checked the crawl from time to time in case they discovered problems he should be solving. But generally, Rob watched the view of the sun on the wall screen. His mind began to drift as he stared at the bright disk.

‘The sun is rising right now outside,’ he thought, glancing at the local time. He could only tell by the clock, since the light levels in the windowless control room never varied.

Then something caught his eye. Abruptly, Rob sat up straight.

“What’s that?” he said out loud. “Is something changing?” Turning on the voice connection to Arizona, he spoke into his headset mic, “Arizona, are you losing your imager?”

“No. Everything is good here. Why?”

“Why is the sun getting squished?”

Sure enough, the sun was no longer a perfect bright disk. One side was slightly flattened.

“Hey, you’re right Xplore. We show the brightness down three percent. Stand by.”

Lee scowled at the wall screen. “The spectrum is showing less intensity, too, I think. Yes, UPMC confirms a three percent drop.” Lee tapped his controls. There was no doubt about the flattening now. It was definitely visible along one edge of the sun’s disk.

“Does that look like an eclipse starting to move across to the sun?” Lee asked.

‘Dammit, dammit, dammit’ Rob thought as he pulled up various charts. They all told him the same thing as the visible-light image on the wall screen.

“Are we behind an asteroid?” he asked out loud.

“That would be an incredible piece of bad luck,” Lee said. “We’re not near any of the large asteroids. For something to look that big against the sun, MEG1 would have to be right on top of it.”

“No, no, no!” Rob said through his teeth, hoping to banish the possibility. “If we steered MEG1 close to an asteroid, she could be thrown off-course.”

“Trisha! Ping that blob. How close is it? And how big?”

Trisha tapped at her controls, selected a packet from a command menu, and hit ‘send’. They’d have to wait for the transmission going out and coming back, plus however long it took for MEG1 to send a signal and receive its reflection back.

“I’ve sent commands to emit a radar pulse and record the bounce-back. If that blob is close, we’ll have an answer inside…” Trisha looked at her work station screen, “fifteen minutes.”

Rob pulled out his personal pocket pad and dropped it into his lap, out of sight of the net-cams. He opened his message center, and tapped out a line.

‘r u ther?’

Rachel Davis was an old friend; an old girl friend. They had been graduate students together at Arizona. Rob had figured out he really liked the nuts and bolts of space flight, rather than the big questions of the PhD program. He’d left with a Masters degree, which was viewed as a booby prize by the rest of the grad students, to work at Xplore, but Rachel had finished her PhD. Now she and two business partners owned “Southern Skies”, a telescopes-for-hire company. They had some awesome instruments set up in the Red Center of Australia. Where it was night, right now. Where MEG1 was visible, in the constellation of Taurus. Where, maybe, a rogue asteroid could be spotted.

‘Hi Rob.’ Her answer came back right away. For privacy, Rob kept his personal pocket pad set to text-only at work.

‘crisis here image 4 me?’

Rob pulled up some navigation tables on his work station and carefully tapped in MEG1′s right ascension and declination.

‘RA 21 40 41 Dec -23 11 01′

Rachel came back.

‘This is a business you know. I’m imaging for a paying customer now.’ She must have her messages set to complete sentences, or maybe she was talking into a headset.

‘crashing N2 asteroid. Plz,‘ Rob sent. He was in no mood for banter.

‘I already entered the coordinates. You realize I can’t see your piddling little space craft?’

‘look 4 asteroid.’

‘Okay. The scope is moving now. It’ll take some time to collect enough light for a decent image. I’ll call when it’s done.’

‘thx gotta go’

‘I really should leave this thing on auto-complete,’ he thought, changing the option on the pad. ‘My messages look stupid otherwise.’

Rob slid his pad back into his shirt pocket and looked up at the wall screens. There was now a clear, flat edge of black along one side of the sun’s disk.

‘I can count on Rachel,’ Rob thought, trying to calm his trembling fingers with a deep breath, but he had no more time to think about her. Chatter from Arizona and France was crawling across the bottom of his screen. Everything was functioning perfectly, but the sun was slipping away on the screen.

“Trisha! Do you have your ping-back? Ping anything around MEG1 in any direction. I want to know exactly where she is. Are any gravity sources pulling on us? Has our trajectory changed?”

“Lee!” he called. “Turn on the topography laser. Can we detect anything solid?”

“Already on it.” Lee had a menu of commands on his work station.

“There. Sent.” Lee leaned back in his chair. “MEG1 will look for a surface. Now we have to wait.”

The time lag had never seemed longer. But MEG1 was half way to her destination around Jupiter, and even light took an annoying amount of time to travel that far. Rob used the time to send alerts.

‘We have encountered an anomaly,’ he sent to Terri Yuan, Xplore’s project manager for MEG; Dr. Gary Rivera, MEG’s principal investigator at Arizona; and the rest of a short list of key personnel. ‘See this link.’

They would all be able to view the same frames the crew had on the control room wall screens. It was still early in the morning, but Rob flagged the message as urgent; most people would have their ComCores set to wake them for urgent messages. Questions would start flooding in shortly. The Internet site would be lighting up, too, since somewhere in the world, subscribers were watching while MEG’s principal investigator slept.

Rob looked up at the wall screens. A significant section of the sun was sliced off now, and the blackness had a slight convex curve.

“I’m getting zilch from topography,” Lee said. “There’s nothing there.”

“And so far, zero trajectory deviation,” Trisha reported.

Rob ran a hand across his tight, short curls, and then leaned forward with his elbows on the bench and his chin propped on folded knuckles.

“Then what the devil…” he whispered, mostly to himself, “are we looking at?”

Chapter 3 Helios

Trisha leaned forward in her chair, concentrating; elbows on the desk with her jaw resting in the splayed-out fingers of one hand. “I’ve been sending a series of pings in all directions, and I’m getting pings back,” she said.

“I’ve got one ping counterclockwise of MEG1, relative to Mars’ orbit. That’ll be an asteroid preceding MEG1, but still in the L4 node. Wait. Two. I’ve got two pings; two small asteroids.” She paused, staring intently at the screen.

Everyone sat quietly, barely breathing, waiting for more data.

“Here’s a third ping, clockwise from MEG1 now. An asteroid trailing our position.” Another pause.

“MEG1 should have received a ping back from the blob in front of the sun by now. Even if it’s too far for topography. We have all the large Trojans plotted, and our…” Lee waved towards the wall screen. “Our blob is none of them. It’s got to be small, so it’s got to be close.”

“But there’s nothing there,” he said with finality. Trisha nodded her agreement.

Rob looked over at Lee. He lifted the mic away from his mouth and spread his hands out, empty, for emphasis.

“What?” Rob said, pointing to the screen. “We see it. There’s got to be something there.”

“Nope. Nothing. At least, nothing solid.”

“Even a dust cloud would give some kind of echo,” Trisha said, looking over her shoulder at them.

Rob was about to ask the Arizona crew, yet again, if their imagers were operating properly, when something else changed.

“Our problem is getting worse,” Lee said as he turned back towards the front of the room. “Look at the visible-light image.”

Rob jerked his eyes up to the left wall screen. Half the sun’s disk was now scooped away. But Lee was right that something was changing. At the left side of the screen, opposite the remains of the sun, a bright point of light had appeared. Rob quickly pulled the image to his work station and replayed the last few seconds. A tiny point of light appeared and began to grow. He looked back up at the wall screen. The point of light was a bit brighter. The spectrum display on the right-hand screen was changing too. The intensity had been dropping as the sun was blotted out by whatever was happening. Now the intensity was slowly increasing.

Rob turned his mic on.

“Hey UPMC,” he said. “What does your spectroscopy show?”

“We must be getting internal reflections. Zat must be sunlight. But de intensity ratios are off,” the French lead’s voice responded in Rob’s headset.

‘No, it’s not reflections,‘ Rob thought to himself. The tightness in his chest began to shift to a tingling in his stomach. His peripheral vision was blacking out as he stared at the wall screen. Rob took a deep, calming breath and exhaled slowly.

“UPMC! Can you subtract your previous spectrum of the sun from what’s on the screen now?”

“Stand by… Iz here now.” On the screen, a second chart sprung up out of the original.

“Zah sun on the bottom, zah new spectrum on top.”

Rob stared at the new spectrum. Hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon. But with more helium and carbon than there should be. He glanced back and forth between the charts, comparing them by eye. The ratios of the trace elements looked different, too.

“This is real,” he said out loud, to no one in particular.

“It’s a reflection of some kind,” one of the post-docs in the back of the room piped up. Rob had forgotten he was there. Levi was staring at the wall screen as he spoke, walking forward along the room’s wall as if to get a better view. “It’s got to be. Or you’ve let MEG1 over-rotate, and that,” he pointed at the screen, “is some other star.”

“MEG1 is moving through the Trojans precisely on the trajectory planned,” Trisha said, shaking her head at the suggestion. “I set MEG1 to send out pings every fifteen minutes. I can plot her course against the asteroids we’ve identified.”

“As for rotating…” Trisha looked down at her work station, tapping through a series of telemetry tables. “The attitude dynamics are spot-on. I see no indication of over-rotation. MEG1 is turning to keep the satellite aimed straight at the sun, exactly as she should on her current trajectory. There is something between her and the sun. There has to be.”

“It makes sense to look for malfunctions, though,” Rob said thoughtfully. Having something useful to do would help him stay calm. “UPMC, see if your data files are superimposed somehow, maybe overwriting in places….” He paused. “Trisha…”

“Already double-checking the attitude dynamics.”

Rob muted his headset. Automatically, all the chatter changed to text. He watched the messages crawl across the bottom of the screen, faster now than he could follow. From time to time he slowed the crawl to catch some words.

“Power systems are all operating within specs,” Lee said, verifying his parameters. “I checked the core craft and the six satellites she carries. Propulsion systems also stable. No sign of any fuel leaks or anything else that might affect attitude or interfere with the signal.”

“MEG1′s attitude is stable,” Trisha confirmed again with an emphatic nod. “She’s aimed exactly at the sun.”

This was real. MEG1 was pointed straight into the center of the solar system, straight at the sun. Rob’s tingling gut told him she was moving behind something real that was between her and the sun. It wasn’t an asteroid. If you couldn’t believe the pings, you could certainly believe there are no points of light on the night-sides of asteroids.

The point of light continued to grow slowly, expanding to a streak. The intensity in the new spectrum chart was also growing, just like the size and brightness of the visible-light image. This new light was growing as bright as the sun, a segment of a somewhat orangey disk rather than a pin-point. Rob had no idea how that could be so.

He felt a grin tickling the corners of his mouth. His stomach was tingling more than ever and his hands felt cold. This was a discovery. A bizarre discovery. They had to eliminate every possible malfunction, investigate every known object this could conceivably be. That was the only way everyone would know what his stomach was telling him. This was real.

***

Responses to Rob’s message to key mission personnel began to come in. He spent the next hour sending ‘we don’t know’ and ‘we tried that’ answers to a slew of questions. The Arizona and French research teams reiterated over and over that all their instruments were functioning properly, as they checked one possible malfunction after another.

Rob watched the crawl of messages. Most of the questions were directed to the university controllers, and before long there were very few questions for him to answer. Arizona and France were checking ever more unlikely suggestions for malfunctions. Terri Yuan, Xplore’s project manager for the MEG mission, was setting up an on-line meeting with Dr. Rivera in Arizona and the UPMC researchers in France. They were still focused on malfunctions, telling everyone not to worry; MEG1 was only halfway to Europa and there was plenty of time to sort out these strange images.

Arizona was also dealing with one of the disadvantages of subscriber financing. Or maybe it was an advantage, even if it was distracting. Everything Rob was seeing was out there on the Internet subscriber site, available in real-time. Comments were pouring in.

The Arizona Group had to ensure their primacy of discovery quickly, even before they were sure what they’d discovered. Once malfunctions were eliminated, they’d hurry to post an announcement on the Public Library of Science’s Public Registry. The mission managers were in the middle of preparing that PLoS posting by now, Rob thought, and he didn’t mind letting them handle the task. He’d rather be in mission control.

On the wall screen, the last sliver of the sun had disappeared and the new star had grown to a complete disk, its apparent size every bit as large as the sun’s had been. Maybe a little larger. He was looking at something that no one had ever seen before, that no one had ever guessed might exist.

But there was no time to ponder the screens. Rob had a job to do and a command-change report to prepare for the next shift.

“Hey guys,” he called to Lee and Trisha. “I’m writing the shift report. What are we going to call this blob thing?”

“We don’t even know what sort of ‘thing’ it is,” Trisha reminded him. “What we’re seeing can’t be so. It must be a glitch in the equipment.”

“Or a glitch in space,” Lee said. “That’s precisely what it is.”

“Perfect!” Rob said, typing on the work station key board. “Whatever it is, it’s a glitch. Now, what about this star thing?”

“Helios,” Lee said, with conviction.

“Helios?” Rob asked.

“Sure. It’s a star, we can all see that. Its spectrum is like the sun’s spectrum. Our sun is ‘Sol’, from the ancient Romans. So this is ‘Helios’ which is the ancient Greek version of ‘Sol’.”

“How do you know about ancient Greeks?” Trisha asked.

“Chris and I went on a vacation with his archeological society once. We got to work on an archeological dig. There were lectures every night. I learned a lot about classical Greece.”

“You take the best vacations,” Trisha said with a sigh.

“All right,” Rob said, tapping at the keys projected in front of him. “Helios it is.”

“The International Astronomical Union isn’t going to like you usurping their naming standards,” Trisha teased.

“Tough. We’ve got to call it something for now,” Rob teased back.

The control room door swung open; the next control crew was arriving much earlier than usual. They sat at empty work stations instead of lounging around the conference table. Rob hurriedly sent his report images to the center wall screen.

“I’ll get the coffee pot,” Lee whispered as he walked past Rob towards the back of the room. It was the outgoing shift’s job to start a new pot. This was the strangest combination of routine and unique events that Rob had ever encountered. His stomach was still tingling, but his confidence in the images wavered as he thought about briefing the next crew. What if he had made some stupid mistake that the next crew would spot in an instant?

Quickly and thoroughly, Rob and his crew ran through their discovery, their reactions, and the results. The new crew set to work immediately. They talked about rotating MEG1 to keep Helios centered in view for as long as possible while she continued on her trajectory to Europa. There was nothing left for Rob’s crew to do but walk out into the hall and head for home.

Rob was halfway to the lobby when the smart pad in his shirt pocket buzzed with a personal message. He stopped in the middle of the hall and pulled out his pad.

“Something special?” Trisha asked, noticing the anticipation on his face as he opened the message.

“Rachel, from Australia,” Rob said.

Falling behind Lee and Trisha as they walked up the hall, Rob turned on the visual display.

“I dumped a paying client for this image, you know,” Rachel said. Her tone was mock-serious, but she was smiling when her face appeared on the pad’s screen. Her dark hair was tied back, but escaped locks hung around her wide face and tumbled into her shining eyes. She was sitting in a dimly lit room with the light from her screen glinting off earrings half-hidden among her curls.

“Send me the bill,” Rob replied returning her smile. “I think I can even get you paid.”

“Good. We need the business. Maybe Xplore will want to give us a retainer? Anyway, I’m sending a link to your image. I gave it two good hours, but you’ll have to look close. You’ll see two short streaks in the image.”

Those streaks would be two of Lee’s Trojan asteroids, Rob knew. He also knew exactly what Rachel would say next.

“But the coordinates you gave me, they are dead center in this image. There’s nothing there. Nothing I can image in a couple hours anyway. Still going to pay the bill?”

“Rachel dear, I could kiss you. That empty image is worth every penny.” Rob hurried up the hall to tell the others.

Anxiety – a poem by Kate Rauner

Look Up, Look Down, Look All Around

Sweating, trembling, short of breath;

Choking, nausea, near to death;

Racing heart when danger’s nigh

Leads to fear you’ll lose your mind.

Is this response a human one?

Or would every creature run?

The little crayfish does respond,

Anxiety can fill its pond.

Exactly what the crawfish did

Without an ego, self, or id.

Put serotonin in its brain

And it will hide in dark again.

It’s not pathological;

Its fear comes from the practical.

It’s afraid it will be eaten,

While you’re afraid of public speaking.

From aaas.org and others, we learn how old, in terms of evolution, anxiety is: it must be good for something!

Roads Paved with Power

Solar parking lot, courtesy of http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml

 

One of the negatives of solar power stations is the land they chew up. Acres of desert will be shaded and access roads between panels will be compacted and denuded of vegetation, creating problems with water run-off and habitat destruction. But America already has thousands of acres of hard, compacted surface with easy access for maintenance: roads. What if roads were paved with solar cells? Roads go everywhere; could they replace expensive and vulnerable electrical distribution systems? If power were generated everywhere, would we be safe from outages due to storms or terrorism? Would roadways heat themselves and eliminate the need for snow plows and salt? It all sounds like science fiction, and yet…

Solar Roadways claims they have a technology that works and that they’re ready to start production. You can contribute through crowdsourcing.

Nothing is free: the panels must be manufactured, installed, and maintained; they must survive the constant pounding of traffic; the power must to be tied to the existing grid. As I look at the pot holes and crumbling shoulders of many roads, I wonder if our roads are even a suitable base for panels.

But it’s way too interesting to ignore. People once said the streets in America were paved in gold. It would be even more valuable if they were paved in power.

PS: I’ve read that George Takei, of Star Trek TOS, has tweeted favorably about solar roads. But if you’re curious about the likely problems, Jason Torchinsky has assembled a formidable list, from cost to hackers to durability, and he didn’t even mention dirt obscuring the embedded panels. He favors roof-top installations, including structures built over parking lots. I believe there are solar panels built alongside roads in Germany, on the right-of-way the state already owns. Even if I never drive on a solar road, I expect the effort will teach us something about generating solar power.