Categories
Narrative

Remembered Days

The Science Department conference room felt ridiculously enormous for just two men to meet. However, Ken Redmond appreciated the choice of venue. Not just the fact that it was more spacious than either his or Reggie’s office, but the fact that it was neutral ground, so it didn’t have the emotional weight of meeting in either of their offices.

On the whole Reggie was a pretty laid-back commanding officer, especially for a Shep. Ken had heard plenty of stories about Alan Shepard’s management style as Chief Astronaut, even if those days had been long before his time. But when you went up to Reggie’s office, even to deliver a report rather than to answer for some fault in your department, there was always a sense of unease, of being on the spot. And when he came to your office, you always felt like your entire department was under the microscope.

Of course the real reason for them meeting here was the sophisticated 3-D A/V equipment Science had here. Equipment he needed for making his presentation on the innovative technique that might be able to produce replacement low-temperature bearings for the various cryo-pumps the settlement used.

Sure, he could’ve used the computer and monitor on his desk, maybe even offered the boss a pair of spex, but it wasn’t quite the same as having the images floating there on the tabletop, so real you’d think you could reach out and touch them. And right now, when he was asking for the boss to OK a huge departure from normal procedure, one that would involve changes in normal flight-certification procedures, he wanted the most persuasive presentation he could manage. Because he was really, really asking the boss to stick his neck out here.

Reggie arrived just as Ken was finishing his final checks on the equipment, making sure everything would show without any glitches. “So what are we looking at that’s so important we need the holoprojector system up here?”

Ken explained about the bearings. “Ever since NASA terminated the contract with McHenery and switched to Salwell, they’ve been wearing out about three times as fast, and we’ve been having no end of trouble maintaining our supply of spares.”

“Salwell? Wasn’t that part of North American Aviation?”

“North American bought them out during the build-up to the Space Shuttle program, and it got spun off again after Boeing bought out North American.”

That got a nod from Reggie. “I remember that now. Probably because they had more of the corporate culture problems than the guys from Seattle wanted to beat out of a new acquisition.”

“North American always had corporate culture problems. It goes way back to Apollo, and I’ve got it on good authority that you could scare them straight for a while after a bad accident, but it never solved the root problem, so it was always a matter of time before they’d start getting lax about the technical stuff. I honestly don’t understand why NASA kept going back to them when you couldn’t rely on them.”

“Because NASA’s a government agency, and therefore beholden to the bidding process.” Reggie leaned back in his chair, looking so much like Alan Shepard that Ken could completely understand how Wally Schirra could take a double-take at encountering him. “So North American underbids everyone else, gets the contract, and then ends up going over budget because half their work’s substandard. But the bean-counters only look at the up-front numbers, so NASA’s pretty much stuck. Get a bad enough accident and you might be able to shake things loose for a while, but then bureaucratic systems reassert themselves.”

A memory came back to Ken. He’d gone over to his ur-brother’s place to return some equipment, and was surprised to discover that Admiral Chaffee had come down to visit with his old boss. It would’ve had to have been some time in ’97, because President Dole had already nominated him as NASA Administrator but it hadn’t been officially confirmed by the Senate. However, he was already digging into the moonbase disaster, because he had brought a briefcase of papers with him and had them scattered about the table for Gus to examine.

Ken still remembered the admiral holding a sheaf of papers in one hand and whacking at them with the other as he made a point about unreliable contractors and nothing ever changing. It had been an awkward moment for a much younger man to have stumbled into such serious business — and Ken had not wanted to say or do anything that would have implied a criticism of Betty Grissom for sending him back here. So he’d stood there, making himself one with the wall as best he could, and got a ringside seat on the sorry story of the failures behind the disaster.

But was it really his story to tell here and now? He still remembered cringing at that horrible tell-all biography that had come out right after the admiral’s death.

No, telling that story added nothing to what he had to say. And they really needed to concentrate on his presentation now. Best to slide the conversation that way so he could lower the light level in here and get those holoprojectors running.

Categories
Advertising

Paying the Bills

What if V-E Day didn’t end World War II in Europe? What if, instead, the Allies had to face a potent, even fanatical, postwar Nazi resistance? Such a movement, based in the fabled Alpine Redoubt, was in fact a real threat, ultimately neutralized by Germany’s flagging resources and squabbling officials. But had SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the notorious Man with the Iron Heart, not been assassinated in 1942, fate might have taken a different turn. We might likely have seen a German guerrilla war launched against the conquerors, presaging by more than half a century the protracted conflict with an unrelenting enemy that now engulfs the United States and its allies in Iraq. How might today’s clash of troops versus terrorists have played out in 1945?

In this imagined world, Nazi forces resort to unconventional warfare, using the quick and dirty tactics of terrorism–booby traps, time bombs, mortar and rocket strikes in the night, assassinations, even kamikaze-style suicide attacks–to overturn what seemed to be a decisive Allied victory. In November 1945, a truck bomb blows up the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, where high-ranking Nazi officials are about to stand trial for war crimes. None of the accused are there when the bomb goes off, but their judges, all of them present and accounted for, are annihilated. Worse acts of terrorism follow all over Europe.

Suddenly the Allies–especially the United States–must battle an invisible enemy and sacrifice countless lives in a long, seemingly pointless, unwinnable conflict. On the home front, patriotism corrodes, political fortunes are made and lost in the face of an antiwar backlash, and a once-proud country wonders how the righteous fight for freedom overseas has collapsed into a hopeless quagmire. At once a novel of thrilling military suspense, intriguing alternate history, and profound insight into contemporary affairs, The Man with the Iron Heart is a tour de force by a storyteller of exceptional imaginative power.

Categories
Narrative

An Awkward Discussion

Although Lou Corlin didn’t really feel comfortable about what he was doing, he felt a level of obligation toward Brenda Redmond which wouldn’t let him give up after the easy routes were exhausted. All the same, the USB stick in his pocket had a weight far beyond its mass.

He wasn’t sure if the walk to Brenda’s apartment would’ve been easier or harder if the corridors had been busy. On one hand, being alone made it easier to dwell on his uneasiness. On the other, he didn’t have to worry about his discomfort being so obvious to everyone else that they wondered what he was up to.

When he got through the airlock into Brenda’s module, she was sitting by the far wall, supervising her children while doing something on a laptop. Lou paused, taking the measure of the situation.

Finally Brenda looked up, met his gaze. Yes, she could spare the time to speak to him.

Why did he feel the need to tiptoe across the module lounge? By conscious will he forced himself to walk normally, the light, bouncy stride of someone accustomed to lunar gravity and comfortable with it.

Brenda kept her voice low. “This is a surprise.”

“Sorry, but some of this stuff is rather sensitive. It’s not exactly the sort of thing you want to talk about in a phone call or a text.”

Yes, Brenda understood. “Give me a minute to get the kids to bed.”

Lou took a seat while Brenda led her children back to their apartment. He’d been here long enough to remember when Brenda was very much the teenage daughter of the Chief Engineer, still not very sure about the idea of being whisked away from her high-school friends in Houston for life up here on the High Frontier.

But then we’ve all done a lot of fast growing up these past few years. If things had gone normally, we’d just be starting to assume adult roles by now. And even when you’re taking an engineering degree and doing ROTC, college isn’t quite the same as actually being out in the working world.

And then Brenda was back, taking a seat close enough they could keep their voices low enough that the ventilation fans would mask their voices, but not so close that anyone running the video tapes would think they were cooking up a fling — and in a public area, anyone with suitable authority could access them. “So what is it?”

“You know what I mean when I talk about darkboards?”

Definite recognition in her expression, mixed with a little alarm. “Aren’t they dangerous?”

“They can be, if you’re not careful. Some of them are a good way to pick up a nasty virus on your computer. But they can also be a good place to find information the government doesn’t want people knowing. And IT does have the tools to sequester data while you’re making sure that it’s clean.”

He was glad he’d taken the opportunity to get the USB stick out of his pocket while he was waiting. There was a trick to pulling out something innocuous at the same time, then palming what you didn’t want seen. Now he just had to pass it to Brenda without being obvious.

She must’ve had classmates who passed notes in class, because she handled it with the deftness of an expert. Lou had never pegged her as someone who’d get into that sort of thing. Given her dour father, he would’ve expected her to be the sort of straight-arrow everyone always thought his geneset was.

Now that the hand-off was done, he couldn’t very well take off right away. Better to carry on a little small talk, keeping their voices down as if it were just out of consideration for the hour. Once they’d made this meeting completely unremarkable, he could head off to his own quarters for the night.

Categories
Document

When the World Starts Running Down

With supply lines disrupted by the pandemic, it was inevitable that the lunar settlements would eventually run out of supplies of something that was difficult or impossible to fabricate locally. Even after nearly two decades of building in-situ resource utilization programs, there were still a number of vital items for which they remained dependent upon supplies from Earth. Generally, these were items that required specialized technologies to produce, or which were not used in sufficient numbers to justify development of lunar manufacturing capabilities.

The normal procedure was to maintain a stockpile of spares, particularly of items for vital equipment, that was considered sufficient for typical usage patterns. As spares were used, they would be replaced by shipments from Earth, but their presence in the settlements would provide a buffer for emergencies.

However, this system presupposed that resupply from Earth could be undertaken well before the spares in stock would be used. That is, it could cover a small disruption in spacelift, such as bad weather at the launch site that might prevent a cargo spacecraft from being launched until the next launch window.

The diablovirus pandemic was a disruption at an unprecedented level. Although launches never were completely suspended, supply lines from the manufacturers to the launch complexes were disrupted at multiple levels. Many companies shut down assembly lines or even entire factories, whether their industries were viewed as “non-essential” by government bean-counters or diablovirus-related absenteeism reached such levels as they simply could not maintain the staffing necessary to do the work.

Even if the items in question were being produced, there was still the problem of getting them from factory to launch site. With so many truckers out from the diablovirus, transportation companies were prioritizing food, medicine and other obvious essentials for cargo space in their vehicles, which meant such items as low-temperature bearings for cryo-pumps or high-temperature rocket engine parts often got left at the end of the line.

There were several cases in which small but critical items were picked up by NASA personnel at the factory and then driven by personal car to Kennedy Space Center, sometimes arriving only hours before the launch window closed and being carried aboard the spacecraft by an astronaut rather than loaded as cargo.

As the pandemic proceeded, even these makeshift methods began to break down. As a result, it became necessary for the various settlements to develop their own ability to make these items, even if only in small quantities and with far less efficient methods than the normal techniques. Given that the alternative was apt to be the slow degradation of vital technologies to the point their settlements became unable to sustain life, they could no longer afford to let the perfect become the enemy of the good enough.

Shepardsport, which had been innovating in stretching equipment far beyond its intended use lifetime, was the first to take these measures….

—- S. K. Wyszynski, “Improvisation and Survival on the High Frontier,” Building for Resilience. Grissom City: St. Selene Digital Press, 2074.

Categories
Narrative

The First Cracks

It was a good thing Ken Redmond was used to being able to concentrate in noisy environments, because his office here in Engineering was anything but quiet. Not surprising when it had been constructed of the lunar equivalent of wallboard, fastened to a frame of lunar aluminum.

In a city where pressurized volume was at a premium, noisy machinery was never far away. Not so close as to require hearing protection, but still an ever-changing background din, just enough to draw one’s attention, to disrupt one’s focus on the task at hand. And given that he was looking over specs for a new installation, he needed his attention on his work.

Which was why he did not appreciate having his phone pick that moment to start ringing. Glowering, he grabbed it and growled, “Engineering, Redmond speaking.”

“This is Carter Branning down at Flight Ops. One of my crews just pulled a cryo-pump on one of the landers, and we’ve got a major problem. You know those low-temperature bearings we’ve been having no end of trouble with? They’re going out on this one too, and NASA’s had our spares backordered since before this mess started.”

A chill brought gooseflesh to Ken’s skin, even in the ever-present heat of Engineering. Without working cryo-pumps to move cryogenic fuels and oxidizers, spacecraft couldn’t fly. Although it would be possible to pull a working cryo-pump from a lander with a different problem, you couldn’t do it indefinitely. Eventually you had to either have a new supply of spares or you were sidelining so many that your fleet was understrength.

“Have you asked over at Slayton Field or Coopersvile whether they have any extras?”

“First thing I tried, and they’re under minimum to be able to lend us any. Even called Edo Settlement, since JAXA uses a lot of our equipment, but that’s one item they didn’t adopt. Everyone knows those things are garbage, and it was a political decision to switch away from McHenery Aerospace to the bozos who made them.”

Ken had plenty of recriminations of his own, but they didn’t get equipment repaired. “I’ll talk to Zack, see if he knows of anything compatible we’re using for other applications. Otherwise, we’re going to have to fabricate something, and those low-temperature applications are the devil.”

“Tell me about it. We’ve got a complete machine shop down here at Flight Ops, but even it doesn’t have the equipment to work on low-temperature fittings for cryo-pumps. Things start acting weird when you’re talking single digits in Kelvin.”

Ken had too much to do right now to waste time grousing about the situation. “I’ll let you know as soon as I know what we’re going to be looking at.”

Now to get Zack on the horn and get that kid to work on the problem. Then Ken could finally get back to what he was supposed to be doing, that actually needed his authority.

Categories
Advertising

Paying the Bills

New York Times bestselling author Harry Turtledove’s thought-provoking forays into the past have produced such intriguing “what-if” novels as Ruled Britannia, Days of Infamy, and Opening Atlantis. Now “the maven of alternate history” (The San Diego Union-Tribune) envisions the election of a United States President whose political power will redefine what the nation is—and what it means to be American….
 
President Herbert Hoover has failed America. The Great Depression that rose from the ashes of the 1929 stock market crash still casts its dark shadow over the country. Despairing and desperate, the American people hope one of the potential Democratic candidates—New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt and California congressman Joe Steele—can get the nation on the road to recovery.
 
But fate snatches away one hope when a mansion fire claims the life of Roosevelt, leaving the Democratic party little choice but to nominate Steele, son of a Russian immigrant laborer who identifies more with the common man than with Washington D.C.’s wealthy power brokers.
 
Achieving a landslide victory, President Joe Steele wastes no time pushing through Congress reforms that put citizens back to work. Anyone who gets in his way is getting in the way of America, and that includes the highest in the land. Joe Steele’s critics may believe the government is gaining too much control, but they tend to find themselves in work camps if they make too much noise about it. And most people welcome strong leadership, full employment, and an absence of complaining from the newspapers—especially as Hitler and Trotsky begin the kind of posturing that seems sure to drag America into war. 

Categories
Narrative

Hints

Spruance Del Curtin had not intended to spy on Dr. Doorne’s communications. In fact, he was planning to just slip in and get some extra work done, and maybe get ahead of the game for a change.

But this batch of data was more boring than usual, and the longer he worked at it, the more his mind began to wander. Nearby voices became more interesting than the rows and columns on the screen in front of him.

Something about sigmoid functions and limits to growth. Dr. Doorne had talked about sigmoid functions in class a couple of sessions ago, and had used several examples, including one from biology, of a new species colonizing a new habitat its population and initially showing an exponential growth curve before hitting the limits of the environment and leveling off to a stable population.

Except that didn’t sound like what she was talking about now. For that matter, it didn’t exactly sound like she was talking to one of her students. No, that sounded more like she was talking to someone closer to her own level.

Even as he wondered just what she was talking about, he realized he was listening in on a conversation in which he had no part. A major breach of courtesy, although as long as he wasn’t obvious about it, calling attention to it would be an equally grave matter.

Which meant that if he wanted to find out what she was talking about, he would have to be extremely discreet about it. Which was not easy when he had only caught part of her conversation, and didn’t have a whole lot of context to work with.

In the meantime, he’d better get his mind back on the work that he was supposed to be doing. The last thing he needed right now was for her to walk in and find him clearly not paying attention to his work.

Categories
Narrative

A Follow-Up

For the last several days Drew’s e-mails and texts had been brief to the point of curtness. Brenda had resolved not to take their shortness as a personal slight. Given the situation, he probably had a lot more stuff on his plate than she did, and right now she had a heck of a lot.

So she was surprised when her phone chimed incoming text, and not only was it from Drew, but it was also long enough that only the first two lines were displayed on the lock screen. Just wondering whether you’d had a chance to find out anything about….

Which was just enough that she had to swipe to open, and everything else could just wait.

Just wondering whether you’d had a chance to find out anything about what’s going on down at Schirrasburg. We’re getting a new round of rumors around here.

Brenda moistened her lip, considered whether to tell her husband about her and Lou’s abortive efforts. Might as well give him the gist, but leave out some of the awkward details. A friend and I took a look at Schirrasburg’s Internet activity. We were hoping we might be able to find out something, but everything’s encrypted super-tight. The only thing we do know is that the patterns of data transfer are atypical for them.

Not surprising. These days, most everything goes over encrypted connections, even if it’s not actually confidential material, just to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.

We’ve talked about that at the station. Especially with the political situation, it’s completely plausible that someone would create a fake radio station and redirect traffic to them.

When Drew didn’t respond, she wondered if he was trying to decide how to respond without casting shade on the Commander-in-Chief. Maybe better shift the conversation away from the awkward area.

So what are you hearing over there? Or can you tell me?

Don’t spread it around, but we’re hearing that it was diablovirus, and it went through the whole settlement in spite of their going on strict lockdown. Everybody confined to quarters, everything delivered by robot, no interpersonal contact at all.

Brenda considered that information. Of course if it was just a rumor, it might not indicate anything at all. But if there were facts under it…

How well is the air filtered over there? If there are straight-line connections between rooms in the HVAC ducts, confining everyone to quarters wouldn’t make any difference, especially if the virus is airborne. The life-support systems would just blow it right from one room to another.

You’d have to ask Engineering, and right now communications are official channels only. But from the times I’ve visited there, they have the standard modularized design, so it’s not like they’ve got the air blowing through the whole settlement. But if there’s not filters at every room, I could see how a virus could blow from one apartment to another in a residential module. Which does not bode well if the rumor is true that nothing would stop it until it burned itself out.

Brenda shivered as if caught in a sudden breeze. It took a moment to get her hands to stop trembling so she could type.

No wonder they’re keeping such a firm lid on it. No way do you want to have that kind of thing circulating.

She started to write more, then thought better of it and backspaced, then started again. Maybe we’d better wind this conversation up.

Probably. I still have a report I need to write, and it’s not getting any earlier. Take care, and keep your eyes and ears open.

Will do. Brenda closed her messenger app, intending to get back to the work she was supposed to be doing. Five minutes later she realized she was still sitting and stewing.

By conscious effort of will she put away her phone and turned her attention back to her laptop.

Categories
Advertising

Paying the Bills

On a planet with six suns, night is about to fall for the first time in two thousand years . . . 

The planet Kalgash is on the brink of chaos—but only a handful of people realize it. Kalgash knows only the perpetual light of day; for more than two millennia, some combination of its six suns has lit up the sky. But twilight is now gathering. Soon the suns will set all at one—and the terrifying splendor of Nightfall will call forth a madness that signals the end of civilization

Isaac Asimov’s short story “Nightfall” first appeared in 1941. It has since become recognized as a classic, its author a legend. But the short story isn’t the whole story. Now, Dr. Asimov has teamed with multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner Robert Silverberg to explore and expand one of the most awe-inspiring concepts in the history of science fiction.

In this novel, you will witness Nightfall—and much more.

You will learn what happens at Daybreak.

Categories
Narrative

Devastation

Ursula Doorne had just gotten her son tucked into bed and was getting ready to turn in for the night when the phone rang. Not wanting to have Rusty coming running out to see what was going on, she answered on the first ring, not even looking at the Caller ID.

As it turned out, it was Tanner. Beyond the initial ‘hi,” he didn’t even bother with opening pleasantries, just launched straight into what he had to say. “Ursey baby, I’ve got some stuff to tell you, but don’t go spreading it around.”

“Understood. Strict information embargo until you say otherwise.”

“Good, because I can get in a hell of a lot of trouble if this gets around and they think I’m spreading it. Things are finally turning around at Schirrasburg, and it’s not a good situation. Yes, the guy did have the diablovirus, and we were damned lucky they discovered it before anyone else left and spread it to the whole lunar population. As it was, it pretty much went through the entire settlement. Maybe a tenth of the population is naturally immune, and another tenth were able to throw it off with mild symptoms.”

Ursula wasn’t an epidemiologist, but numbers and statistical analysis were such an important part of modern astronomy that she had some familiarity with their use in a wide variety of fields. As her husband gave her percentages for various severe forms and complications, she realized this was way out of the ordinary, even for a virgin-field epidemic.

“Of course we have to consider that a lot of the dead may well have been saved if they’d been in a location with a larger medical facility. From what I’ve heard, a number of people died because certain medical resources simply ran out before they became ill.”

“Understood.” Ursula was aware of the protocols for dealing with such situations. Harsh as they might seem to people accustomed to large Earthside medical centers, they had been carefully developed to ensure that resources would be allocated responsibly and ethically. “So what did finally stop it?”

“Basically, it just ran out of susceptible people to infect. Although that’s a hell of a way to put a stop to a pandemic on a global scale.”