Timemaster Page 6

  "It's amazing how fast Hiroshi and the rest of your techs solved the engineering problems of coping with negmatter," said Randy.

  "Since the negmatter is electrically charged, it turned out to be easy," said Philippe. "You use radio fields to make the balls vibrate. If you vibrate them at just the right frequency, you can make them break into two, three, or four pieces, or even spit out little droplets."

  "Glop those small pieces together and you can make any-sized ball you want," said Randy. "I still think it's amazing. There's going to be a big bonus coming to everyone on the base."

  "Make sure Hiroshi's is a large one."

  "You make out the list, and I'll approve it," said Randy. "Minimum is a half-year's salary ... No maximum."

  The airlock door opened and Randy cycled through. Hiroshi and Bob were at their control consoles, waiting for him.

  "Ready to go home, gentlemen?" asked Randy, sitting down in the copilot seat.

  "All in readiness, sir," replied Hiroshi.

  "Can't wait to see my honeys," Bob added.

  Randy held the silver joyball between his fingers and slowly pushed it forward. The acceleration level rose to one gee and they were forced heavily into their seat backs. Suddenly Randy felt the joyball being pushed back.

  "Not that way, jet-jockey!" hollered Bob.

  Randy looked over to see that Bob had a copy of the negmatter controller in his armrest and was countermanding his control. Somewhat irritated, yet conceding that Bob might know more than he did about piloting spacecraft. Randy removed his hand from his control and let him take over. Bob rotated the silver joyball, and the negmatter torque drive rotated the ship until the top of the spacecraft was pointing at Earth. Then Bob lifted the joyball up in the controller and the acceleration started again, only this time directed downward toward the floor. Bob locked the control at one-gee acceleration, got heavily out of his seat, and clumped across the deck to the toilet.

  "My first worry-free shit in nearly a year," he said as he closed the restroom door.

  ONE GEE for two days is one AU, but Hygiea was unfortunately on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth. They had to take a dogleg around the Sun to keep from getting fried, so it took them a whole week to get home. During the deceleration period the bottom of the ship was facing the Earth so the control deck would be "down". Hiroshi rigged up a video camera held by one of the grapple arms so they could see where they were going.

  "Seven days at one gee is certainly a lot more comfortable than sixteen minutes at thirty gees," said Randy as the Earth-Moon system started to fill the screen. They were coming at the Earth and Moon from the direction of the Sun, so both globes were fully illuminated. The polar Lunavator was just about to touch down at the lunar south pole. As he watched it, Randy recalled his first visit to the Moon, way back during the "tumble-in" of the first Lunavator, nearly five years ago.

  HIS SPACESHIP from Earth had docked him at the central hub of the newly built Reinhold Lunar Rotovator. After being shown around the Central Station a little, he was taken to the cable capsule that supplied transportation along the length of the Lunavator. Randy clumsily climbed his way into the capsule. Having left Earth for the first time only a week ago, he was still a little awkward in free-fall. The pilot turned, grabbed him by the arm, and held him until Randy got himself properly positioned in the seat and buckled up.

  "Thanks, Captain Anderson," said Randy.

  "Just call me Sue," said the pilot. "This hunk of junk is nothing more than a glorified cable car, so it isn't like I'm the pilot of anything—more like an elevator operator." She paused to shift her gum in her mouth. "Ready?"

  "Yep," said Randy, peering eagerly out the windows fore and aft on the simple cylindrical vehicle. The cable car was situated in the center of a hexagonal array of six thin, diamond-fiber cables stretching off into the distance in both directions. The car reached out with six pairs of electromagnetic shoes to push against the six diamond cables plated with superconducting metal. The coating not only levitated the cable car, but brought electricity down from the central power station to power the car. At intervals the cables were cross-linked with diamond-cable strands that would take up the strain if any of the main cables happened to be cut by space debris. Through the open web of the diamond-cable lattice surrounding them, Randy could see the Moon filling the sky almost dead ahead of them.

  "Up or down?" Sue asked.

  "Take me to the end that will touch down on the Moon first," said Randy;

  "That's up," said Sue. She swiveled in her chair until the Moon was at her back. She pushed some buttons and the car started moving down the tunnel of cables. As the acceleration built up, Randy's chair swiveled automatically toward the front and he lost his view of the masts and cylinders that made up the central station that surrounded the main cable at the middle of the long Lunar Rotovator.

  "We're in no hurry, so I'll set the cruise speed at two kiloklicks," said Sue. Randy felt himself under Earth gravity again, but this time it was directed toward his back instead of his seat. After not quite a minute, the acceleration fell off and they were back in free-fall. The cross-connections between the six cables had blurred into invisibility.

  "Two kiloklicks," repeated Randy, calculating. "That's two thousand kilometers an hour, isn't it?"

  "Yep," said Sue, looking up from her paperback. She switched her wad of permachew to her cheek. "Faster than a speeding bullet," she continued proudly, then turned her attention back to her paperback while Randy swiveled back and forth, admiring the view. As their twenty-minute journey drew to a close, Randy could see the asteroid at the end of the cable grow in visibility. It was a carbonaceous chondrite, a portion of which had been used as the carbon supply for the diamond cable. There was a similar asteroid at the other end of the cable, and a few smaller ones set up at strategic intervals along the cable.

  Sue parked her permachew under her armrest, tucked the paperback into a pocket in front of her, and brought the high-speed car to a halt at the small terminal station. Behind the station, like a granite knob lost from some national park, loomed the thirty-meter-wide asteroid, blocking half the view of the sky. It had been blasted into a hundred pieces, each piece wrapped in a diamond cable net, then reassembled again into a roughly spherical bag of rocks.

  Sue, without being asked, efficiently unstrapped Randy, pushed her small boss unceremoniously out the hatch, climbed out after him, and disappeared down a corridor. Randy was met by the station supervisor, Bradley Harrowgate.

  "I would have thought you would prefer to be at the control center in Central Station for the tumble-in, Mr. Hunter," said Bradley.

  "Why?" said Randy. "All the action is out here."

  "You are certainly correct about that," said Bradley, stroking his short, greying schoolmaster beard as he reevaluated his opinion of his eccentric young boss.

  "When does tumble-in commence?" asked Randy eagerly.

  "We've already started the first phases," said Bradley. "Your ride out through the cable will be the last one until the Rotovator is in place and the cable has stopped twanging."

  "We've already started?" asked Randy with some puzzlement.

  "You haven't been in space long enough to notice," said Bradley. "But to those who've been in free-fall for the past three months, it's obvious." He looked down at the floor and pointed at his feet. "See?" he said. "My feet are on the floor."

  Suddenly Randy noticed that, indeed, instead of floating around, everyone in the room was oriented in the same direction, feet firmly on the floor in the low gravity.

  "Although Central Station is in free-fall, we aren't," said Bradley. "Same with Terminal Station A at the other end."

  "Of course ... the tides from the Moon," said Randy.

  "Right now it is mostly tides," said Bradley. "The asteroid at the other end is closer to the Moon than Central Station, so it is pulled harder by the Moon, and wants to speed on ahead, but the cable holds it back, creating artificial gravity there t
hat's pointed toward the Moon. We, way out here, are further away from the Moon and so are pulled less, but the cable drags us along, creating an artificial gravity that points away from the Moon. Later, after we and our asteroids tumble in and the cable starts rotating, most of the artificial gravity on the terminal stations will be due to rotation, and pointed outward from Central Station."

  An engineer who had been hovering in the background looked at the time on her cuff-comp, then spoke up softly.

  "We'll be dropping off the first of the rock baskets soon, Dr. Harrowgate," she said.

  "Good," said Bradley. "If you'll come this way, Mr. Hunter, we can see the first drop-off from this viewing port."

  They gathered at a viewing port that gave them a good view of the pile of net-covered rocks "below" them.

  "Now!" said the engineer, and almost instantly they all felt a slight increase in the pressure on the bottom of their feet.

  "Something happened," said Randy quizzically. "But I don't see what caused it."

  "The first basket of rocks was dropped from the backside of the asteroid," said Bradley. "It will take a few moments to come into view ... There it is!" He pointed. "As the asteroids approach the Moon and the tides get stronger, the cable stretches. The asteroids weigh more than the cable can support, so we have to drop off more and more mass as we get closer to keep the cable from breaking. Each time we drop some of the mass off the ends of the cable, it has less weight pulling on it, so the cable shortens up slightly. If we do everything just right, however, the cable will end up in low orbit around the Moon, rotating at just the right speed to touch down on the lunar surface six times an orbit. Meanwhile, all the chunks of asteroid will be flying off into space or onto safe places on the Moon, taking away the energy and angular momentum from our tumble-in that we want to get rid of."

  As the hours passed in their headlong plunge to the Moon, the giant orb became larger and slowly moved off to one side. The long, curved arrow of the Rotovator now pointed to the horizon over the shadowed side of the Moon, spreading a spray of netted rocks out into space as it fell. The leading terminal station dipped down to within a few kilometers of the lunar north pole. Those on the station felt a strong increase in the artificial gravity pulling down on their feet as the stretched diamond cable pulled the station ponderously back as the remaining load of asteroidal rock was dumped into the middle of the rocket-booster safety range below. The same thing was happening to Randy and the others in the opposite terminal station.

  "There they go!" said Bradley Harrowgate. "We're now in orbit and rotating." The acceleration on Randy's feet jumped; then a few moments later he could see the widening gap between the mountain of rock and the station. Randy turned to look at Bradley.

  "Where's the landing capsule?" he asked. "I want to be in it and ready."

  "The capsules are at the bottom floor down that circular staircase over there," said Bradley, pointing. "But there's plenty of time. The first touchdown is still twenty minutes away."

  "Hold on to the railing!" said the engineer, looking at her cuff-comp. "Here comes the first of the twangs." As she spoke the room began to tilt, and soon Randy found himself almost hanging from the railing as the wall temporarily turned into a ceiling, then a few moments later into a floor, as the end of the giant cable whipped about violently from the residual forces left from their dramatic arrival at the Moon.

  "That was pretty bad!" said Randy seriously.

  "That's the worst it will get," the engineer assured him. "As the pulse moves along the cable we dissipate its energy by making it throw off the last few baskets of rocks spaced along its length. When it gets back here the next time, you won't even notice it."

  "Now the cable has quieted down, it's safe to use the staircase," said Bradley, leading the way in the moderately strong artificial gravity produced by the rotation of the cable.

  The circular staircase took them to the center of a circular room at the bottom of Terminal Station B. It looked like an airport loading area, with four numbered doors spaced around the periphery leading outward, and consoles between the staircase and the doors. The room was decorated in the pink-and-green Reinhold Astroengineering Company colors—leaf-green carpeted floors and walls, and pink doors with leaf-green lettering. A smiling young man in a leaf-green uniform with pink trim looked over at them from behind a computer terminal screen.

  "Our first passenger!" he said brightly. "Welcome to Reinhold Rotovators—'We whisk you on your way.' "

  As they approached the center console, the young man flicked his fingers expertly over the screen.

  "No ticket needed for you, Mr. Hunter." He pushed sideways at an icon on the screen and a door to one side of them whooshed open. "Flight 101 is now boarding at Gate One," he said, pointing to the open door.

  Two capsule attendants were waiting on the other side of the door. The capsule interior continued the green-and-pink color scheme, with leaf-green carpeted floors and wall, and leaf-green seats with pink headrests.

  Bradley Harrowgate lead Randy to a seat, then waited while the capsule attendants made sure Randy was properly fastened in and the various seat buttons explained to him.

  "I'd better go now," Bradley said. "Have a lot of things to clear up on the station so we'll be ready for paying customers."

  "That's the right attitude," said Randy. "Meanwhile, I'll just take a little vacation trip to the Moon." As Bradley left, the pilot of the capsule came down a ladder from above and walked down the aisle.

  "Welcome aboard the first drop of Flight 101, Mr. Hunter," said the pilot, extending his hand. "We leave in three minutes. Anything I can do for you?"

  "This window seat is very nice," said Randy. "But I'd sure see a lot more from a jump seat. I've always wanted to see what it was like to fly a spacecraft."

  "It would be an honor to have you, sir," said the pilot. "But once we start the drop, the passenger capsule and the cockpit capsule are separately sealed."

  "Oh! Of course," said Randy, remembering. "After you put the passenger capsule down, you take right off again."

  "Since you have a cuff-comp," said the pilot, noticing it peeking out of Randy's sleeve, "you can watch through our video monitor. It's on Channel 88."

  "Great!" said Randy, shooting out the cuff-comp and switching it to television mode. The pilot went back up the ladder to the cockpit and sealed the door behind him.

  Watching from the wide-angle video monitor camera behind the pilots, Randy could now see the control tower that hung below the boarding area at the bottom of the terminal station. Down below was the rapidly rising surface of the Moon, getting closer and closer as the long swing of the rotating diamond cable came down, bringing Terminal Station B with it.

  "You are clear for drop," said a voice from the control tower.

  "Clamps off," said the pilot, his left hand throwing a switch on the console while the fingers of his right hand held steady the silvery joyball in the controller box. There was a series of loud clanks that rattled through the hull overhead, and the capsule rocked slightly as its weight was picked up by eight thin diamond threads coming from the terminal station above. The pilot pushed down on the metal ball and they started their drop.

  Down ahead of them was Lunaris. Outside the partially buried city, on the other side of the main road leading to the Boeing-Lockheed rocket terminal, was their destination, the Reinhold Rotovator terminal. It was still under construction, with two terminals completed and two others still under way. The pilot guided the capsule rapidly down, the cable reels singing as they let out the almost invisible diamond threads. As the pilot moved the shiny control ball back and forth, the slight variations in speed of the reels pulled the capsule from one side to another just as a stunt parachutist controls his descent by pulling on the canopy shrouds.

  The timing was perfect. The passenger capsule for Flight 101 settled into the yellow rectangle designated for it, its reels now swallowing cable as fast as it fell from the sky. The pilot looked over his s
houlder at the video monitor.

  "Have a nice visit on the Moon, Mr. Hunter," he said. "I have to get my pickup capsule now."

  The copilot also looked back and grinned. "Thank you for riding Reinhold Rotovators," she said. "We hope you will travel with us again soon."

  The videoscreen blanked as the pilot cut the link. The cockpit capsule, reeling in cable even faster than before, swooped up and over to settle on an empty passenger capsule a short distance away. Randy peered out the window and looked up to see Terminal Station B dropping almost vertically down. It came to a halt about a half-kilometer above them, then started its elevatorlike rise back up into the sky, dragging the upgoing passenger capsule with it.

  As long as the mass let down to the lunar surface equaled or exceeded the amount lifted, the rotovator could operate forever. The dropping of Randy's minuscule extra mass to the lunar surface would, in part, make up for the small amount of friction energy lost by the stretching of the diamond cable during the operation.

  One of the flight attendants was talking over the capsule intercom. "We have arrived at Lunaris. The local time is ten-twelve Universal Time." Randy reset his cuff-comp.

  "We thank you for traveling on Reinhold Rotovators," she continued. "We hope you will use our services on your next trip on or off the Moon. Don't forget—we also offer interlunar hops between Orientale, Backside, West Base, and Lunaris, as well as interplanetary journeys to Earth, and soon to all the planets and moons out to Saturn. For complete details, please contact your travel agent or ask your cuff-computer for the toll-free connection to Reinhold Rotovator reservations ..."

  RANDY'S musings were interrupted by Hiroshi's voice. "There is a message coming in for you, sir. I'll switch it to your console screen."

  "Uh-oh!" Randy said when he saw the angry face of Rose on the screen. They were still far out past the orbit of the Moon, so the time delay was many seconds.