The Ring of Charon the-1 Read online

  “All set, Larry,” she said.

  Larry nodded and pressed the button again. Venus. There were dreams of terraforming the planet—indeed, that idea was VISOR’s reason for being there in the first place.

  Now there was a project that could benefit from artificial gravity on a large scale. Orbit a Virtual Black Hole around the planet and let it suck away ninety percent of the atmosphere. Use lateral-pull gravity control to speed up the planet’s spin. Pipe dreams. Wonderful pipe dreams.

  Those were for tomorrow. Right now a millisecond burst of a tenth gee was victory enough. By now the computer had the hang of the graser control. It likewise seemed to be handling the point-source regeneration without much need for guidance. The ten minutes targeted on Venus passed quickly.

  Earth was next. Earth. Not just JPL, but half the major science centers in the system were still there.

  Larry watched eagerly as Sondra set up the revised targeting data. Thirty seconds ahead of time, she nodded at him. The new coordinates were locked in. Over their heads, the Ring had adjusted itself, in effect setting up a lens to focus the point source at Earth, the home planet.

  Larry grinned eagerly and pressed home the fire button.

  Eleven hours, he thought. Five and a half for the beam to get there, and another five and a half for us to hear the results. Then we ‘II know what Earth thinks of this little surprise.

  Eleven hours.

  With a whimper, not a bang, with a three-in-the-morning sense of anticlimax, the run ended. It was over, but it hadn’t started yet. Larry turned to Sondra and smiled. “Ready for the excitement tomorrow?”

  She shook her head and stretched, struggling to stifle a yawn. “I haven’t really thought about it yet. But all hell is going to break loose when Raphael sees what we’ve done.”

  Larry winced. “Yeah. That’s going to be the tough part. If he hates me now, tomorrow he’ll want to throw me out the nearest hatch without a suit.”

  Sondra looked at Larry’s face, watching the expressions play over it. Fear, apprehension—guilt. Like a son who knows he’s about to disappoint his father again.

  She thought for a moment, and then spoke in a gentle voice. “I think it might be best if I do the talking with Raphael.”

  Larry looked up at her, surprised. “No,” he said. “This is between me and him.”

  “No it isn’t,” Sondra said, “and that’s just the point.” She patted the control console, waved her hand to indicate the whole station. “This is science and politics. It’s not just two people having a private argument. And if we treat it that way, as if you two having a spat was the only issue, we’re going to lose what really matters. We’ll lose our focus on what you and I have done tonight.”

  He closed his eyes and leaned back. A boy, no, a man, trying to clear his mind, think when his brain was soaked with exhaustion. “Okay. Okay. I see what you’re saying. But you remind me of another question. And not just what buttons we’ve pushed. For the whole future: what, exactly, have we done tonight? I mean, gravity control.” Larry opened his eyes, and leaned forward. Even at the end of this sleepless night, Sondra could feel the excitement in him, feel it catching at her.

  “Think to the future,” he said. “And think about what we’ve set loose.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Results

  Certainty. The strange signal came from a relay,a mutant or modified relay, distantly related to the Observer’s own line and design. Normal contact had collapsed. The relay had traveled here across the depths of normal space, searching for an Observer, to tell it the time had come to Link.

  Certainty. It was a mere hypothesis, and a badly flawed one at that. Any number of observations contradicted the Observer’s explanation. But the Observer was sure it was the answer, the solution.

  It barely mattered that the Observer was utterly wrong. For it could not ignore a stimulus, no matter what its source. No matter what conclusion it reached, it would respond to the stimulus of powerful modulated gravity waves.

  And now the alien Ring, the spurious relay, was sending massive amounts of power, obviously directed at the other worlds in this star system, beaming power first at one, then another. Even though the beam was not directed at the Observer, the beam leaked atrociously. Furthermore, the gravity patterns of the target worlds refracted the beam in subtle but distinct ways. Thus the Observer detected the beams and their targets easily.

  The Observer considered the targeting pattern and projected it inward: the alien was scanning in toward the Inner System, one world after another.

  The alien Ring was searching for something.

  And that something could only be the Observer. It would find the Observer, stimulate it—force the Observer to act, to reveal itself, to perform the task it had been waiting to perform for millions of years.

  The Observer knew it would have no choice but to respond, react to that beam if it struck this place.

  Something like excitement, like fear, coursed through it.

  Seismographs all over the Moon recorded its spasm of feeling.

  But it wanted to believe. It wanted to respond. It was lonely, eager to renew contact with the outside Universe, eager to begin a new phase of its own existence. It began to prepare for the beam, activating subsystems that had long been dormant. It drew down power from its reserves, determined to be ready the moment the beam touched.

  * * *

  Wolf Bernhardt breathed in the cool California air and told himself it was right that there was a Berliner involved. Berlin was the ancestral home of physics, after all. All this grand work would never have happened if not for the great minds that had labored in that city so long ago.

  And it required at least a quick, agile mind to respond to this situation quickly. He had listened to the pre-experiment broadcast from Pluto, and that had been enough. Others would have hesitated, he congratulated himself. Not Herr Doktor Bernhardt.

  The first word that the effect was real, that powerful, controllable artificial gravity had been detected had arrived only a quarter hour ago, from Titan Station. Wolf checked his watch. He had to go on the air in another five minutes. Plenty of time. Lucky indeed that his quarters were close to the main control station.

  He smoothed his shirt down and examined himself in the bathroom mirror. Herr Doktor Wolf Bernhardt, age thirty, ambitious and determined, looked back out at him, blue eyes gleaming, blond hair combed back off the high forehead, angular jaw jutted just slightly forward. His suit immaculate, the fabric a pale powder blue that set off his slightly ruddy complexion. His smooth skin glowed with health and the warmth of the shower he had just had. He ran a hand over his jaw. Yes, perfectly shaved. No one could suspect he had been in rumpled clothing dozing by the duty-scientist panel fifteen minutes ago. Now he was ready for the world.

  He looked again at the mirror. Yes, it was a face appropriate to history. It was 1:25 in the morning, local time, but he was fresh, sharp. And that was important. Tonight, now, he would be talking to only the scientists on Pluto, with perhaps a relay to the other off-planet stations. But tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, Earth would see the recordings of those messages over the newsnets. And the reporters—they would need a spokesman to talk to, someone who could answer their questions from here, not from the other side of an event radius light-hours across.

  And he, Wolf Bernhardt, would be there, ready to talk, all the figures and results at his fingertips.

  Quite literally at his fingertips—for he would be relying on the computer to educate him on the topic of gravity research. He would need to work the databases hard to get up to speed quickly.

  But he would be there, he would learn, he would be ready. This was the moment he had waited for. His moment in the sun.

  He turned and left his room, hurrying a bit, as if fame and history were impatient for him to arrive.

  * * *

  Sondra stumbled through the cafeteria the next morning. After a bare four hours’ sleep, her thought proce
sses were not as sharp as they should have been. She looked around the room and spotted Webling, indecently awake and cheerful, tucking into her fruit salad.

  Webling, Sondra thought. With the damage already done, maybe now was the time to turn a potential enemy around. Time to admit what we’ve done, Sondra thought. Webling was a woman of sudden enthusiasms. If Sondra could get her excited about the amplified graser before word leaked out, then perhaps she would help blunt any attack Raphael might make. The next step, Sondra decided, was to suck Webling into the game.

  She collected her own breakfast and a large cup of coffee, then shuffled wearily over to the older scientist’s table, struggling to calculate the time dynamics in her head. Titan’s initial response message ought to arrive back at Pluto in about twenty minutes. Larry was probably already in the observatory bubble, the traditional place to await messages from the Inner System.

  The main comm board was patched through to the bubble, so that any public message that arrived at the station would automatically be echoed there. The early-morning shift in the computer center would have seen the overnight science and experimentation reports already.

  Those reports were supposed to be strictly confidential, but the computer team was a noted den of gossips, masters of hinting at things they could not say directly. The rumors were probably flying already, at least in the station’s lower echelons, if not in the circles where Webling and Raphael were likely to hear anything. Sondra thought she noticed a face or two turned toward her, and wondered if it was just her imagination.

  Of course, the moment the Titan message came in, rumor would turn into fact and all hell would break loose. Everyone would know what Larry and she had done. After that, it would be too late to turn Webling around.

  The trick was to tell Webling about the revised experiment, and get her excited about the probable results, before the message came—and before Raphael found out.

  Anyway, it was worth a try. Sondra walked over to the table where the older woman was sitting. “Good morning, Dr. Webling!” she said, with as much false cheeriness as she could manage.

  “Why, good morning, Sondra. I didn’t expect to see you up and about so early,” Webling replied in her slightly reedy voice. “How did the experiment run go last night?”

  “Very well. Very well indeed,” Sondra said. “But I’m afraid I have a confession to make about it.”

  Webling, whose closest attention had been focused on a slice of grapefruit, looked up sharply at Sondra. “Go on,” she said in a careful voice.

  Sondra bit her lip and started talking, hoping that Larry would understand the need to downplay his part in the experiment just now. The truth needed a few coarse adjustments. “I got a little inspired last night. I made an adjustment to the graser settings. Nothing that would affect the primary experiment goals, of course. Even so, I suppose I should have awakened you before I made the adjustment. It’s just that the idea came to me so suddenly that there was barely time to set it up as it was. And with Ring time suddenly so limited, I didn’t want to take the risk of losing the run altogether. And it seems as if your experiment was a dazzling success.” She made a show of checking her watch and seeing what time it was. “We ought to be getting the first response back from Titan soon.”

  “Why a ‘dazzling’ success?” Webling asked. “It was a fairly routine experiment run.” She checked the time herself. “And why expect such an immediate response? If we get a message now, they would have had to have sent it the moment they received our graser beam. Why would they be so eager?”

  “Because if our—my—figures were right, then Titan should have received a series of one-millisecond push-pull gravity-wave pulses, sent from here at a strength of one-tenth gee.”

  Webling’s eyes widened. “One-tenth gee…”

  Sondra stood up from the table and Webling got up as well, automatically following the younger woman’s lead. “I left a record of your experiment’s output figures in the observation dome, Dr. Webling. Perhaps you’d be interested in seeing them while we wait to see what Titan has to say?”

  * * *

  The beam was moving again.

  First directed at the sixth planet, then shifted toward the fifth, now sweeping over the second planet. Soon now, soon, it would sweep this way, toward the third world, and the Observer and its hiding place.

  Close. The moment was close. After all the endless millennia, the wait was down to mere minutes, seconds.

  The Observer all but quivered with anticipation.

  * * *

  When Larry walked into the dome, he instantly noticed two things: one, a much larger number of people than usual “just happened” to be eating breakfast there, instead of in the cafeteria, and many were lingering over their coffee; and two, a murmur of conversation sprang up when he walked in—though no one had the nerve to go up and talk to him. When Sondra and Webling walked into the dome soon after, the murmur rose to a veritable buzz of excitement. Obviously, news traveled fast through the station, and rumor even faster. True to form, the computer center had leaked like a sieve when the Webling experiment had come through. Someone down there had seen and understood the significance of the readings—and that someone had a wagging tongue.

  Sondra crossed the room and sat down at the table across from Larry, Webling beside her. “Larry,” she said with forced casualness, “tell Dr. Webling about that experiment modification we worked up.”

  Webling stared hard at Larry and blinked once or twice. “You!” she said. “You’re the one who faked the gravity-field results!”

  Sondra winced. Ouch. Off on the wrong foot. “No, Dr. Webling,” she said gently. “He’s the one they’ve accused of faking the results. But that doesn’t make the figures less true. Go ahead, Larry. Tell the doctor how you did it. Convince her that it really happened.”

  Larry swallowed hard and pulled out his notepack computer. “Well,” he said doubtfully, “the main idea was to use the Ring’s gravity power to focus and amplify an existing gravity field.”

  Webling’s eyes widened. “Amplify an existing field. How on earth did you…” Her voice trailed off as she looked at the math that was already on Larry’s notepack screen.

  Within half a minute, the old woman and the young man were completely immersed in a complex mathematical argument, rattling off hideously convoluted formulas into the notepack’s voiceport.

  Sondra tried to follow their arguments on the pack’s tiny screen, knowing that she was supposed to understand gravitic calculation and notation—but these two were just going too fast for her. Every time she thought she caught the sense of their discussion, they rocketed off onto a new topic before she had the chance to digest the last point.

  Her attention wandered and she happened to glance up. Someone must have made a whole series of intercom calls. Virtually the entire station staff was there, and not just the scientists. The tech and admin and maintenance people were all there too. By now no one was even pretending to have a good reason for being there. They were simply an audience waiting for the show to begin.

  If they were waiting for Raphael to show, they didn’t have long to wait. Not more than ten minutes after Sondra and Webling arrived, Raphael burst in.

  He stalked up to Larry, leaned over him, and glared malevolently down at him. “I should like to know the meaning of this,” he said, obviously struggling to keep his voice calm.

  Larry and Webling both looked up in surprise. “Meaning of what?” Larry asked, his voice nervous and subdued.

  “Don’t play me for the fool,” the director snapped. He waved an experiment procedure form at Larry. “This is the standard report generated by the operations computer after every experiment run, showing how the equipment was configured and used. It describes the work done by these two”—he gestured in annoyance at Webling and Sondra—“last night. This absurd ‘modification’ to Webling’s intended experiment stands out like a sore thumb. This was your work. You have acted in direct and deliberate contra
vention of my orders!” he sputtered. “You have completely violated my every instruction. Every dollar, every cent expended by this ridiculous ‘experiment’ is coming out of your pay. Every cent.”

  Larry stole a sidelong glance at Sondra. Now was the time for their plan from the night. Last night, he hadn’t much liked the idea of hiding behind Sondra’s skirts, no matter how sensible it was. Now, Sondra’s taking over was fine with him. Raphael practically had smoke coming out of his ears. Anyone who wanted to deal with him was welcome to the job. Larry glanced at Webling, and saw the sweat starting to pop out on her forehead, too. She wasn’t going to be much use as protective cover. No, if anyone was going to handle the director, it would have to be Sondra.

  “Violated orders? But that’s just not so, Dr. Raphael,” Sondra cut in smoothly, dredging up a low, winsome, southern-belle accent from somewhere. Larry dimly recalled that she was from the American South, but he had certainly never heard that tone of voice from her. “I’m sure there must be some slight misunderstanding.” Larry glanced around. Sondra was obviously playing to the crowd, using the public audience as a screen against Raphael’s anger.

  “Mr. Chao here was simply assisting Dr. Webling and myself in our graser system tests. I suppose he did help us augment our signal power, but I can’t see how that constitutes violating orders. For that matter, I don’t see how you could issue him orders as to what to work on in the first place. You are the administrative director, but that doesn’t give you any control over research operations. Mr. Chao is a full research fellow.

  “Last time I checked the station’s charter, research fellows have complete access to the Station’s facilities. In fact, according to the station charter, the administrator is specifically excluded from authorizing experiments. That’s supposed to be up to the chief scientist, Dr. Webling.”

  From the look on Webling’s face, it was apparent that even she had forgotten she was chief scientist. Raphael had gathered all the de facto power to himself so long ago that no one remembered the official de jure arrangements. Sondra saw Raphael’s quick glance toward Webling. That brief, nervous look told her she had won. She had found a vulnerable spot in Raphael’s armor. A bully who breaks the rules cannot use the rules to bully. “Unless, of course, I have it wrong. What, exactly, is your authority for controlling Mr. Chao’s work? Has Dr. Webling ceded the power of her office to you?”