Analog SFF, June 2011 (10 page)

"You and your cronies gave me something to think about. And the thing is . . . you're right. There might be a problem."

The well-stretched cord would reach well into the dining room. She went; Simon followed; she shooed him back. “Your assignment,” she mouthed. “Go on, Marcus."

"It's not like I think we should stop work on the powersat, but there could be complications. There might be problematical failure modes we need to work around.” When he started explaining phased arrays to her, she interrupted. “Remember who
I
work for?"

"Touché.” He coughed. “I meant to ask, Valerie. How's your son feeling?"

"Thanks for asking. Simon has progressed to the malingering stage.” And unless he is bleeding from the ears in the morning, he's going back to school.

"Okay, here's the thing. We never had our one-on-one discussion, and I'd also like to collect input from specialists there to fold into a failure-mode simulation. What if I come back out, say, Friday the twenty-eighth?"

"That would work.” But there was something else in his voice. A hesitance. He wouldn't. Would he? “Was there something else?"

"Yeah . . . I wondered if I could take you out to dinner afterward."

Crap, he would. She hadn't dated but once or twice since Keith died. For the longest time, she hadn't been ready. After, Simon and work consumed her time. Anyway, she was content with things the way they were. Or was it resigned?

Had she wanted to, who was there
to
date, anyway? Coworkers? Uh-uh.

If she told Marcus no, then what? A sudden loss of interest in radio astronomy? He did not seem like the punitive type. Hell,
she
had sandbagged
him
. Maybe he meant only a dinner of colleagues.

As her thoughts churned, the silence stretched.

"Or not,” Marcus said. “I thought we might hit it off, but maybe you're seeing someone. Or whatever. Forget I asked. It has no bearing on my returning to Green Bank. I do need to talk with the experts."

"No,” Valerie said, surprising herself, “asking is fine.” Reassuring which of them? “And dinner does sound like fun."

Friday, April 28

Astronomers, engineers, and programmers wandered in and out of the Green Bank social lounge, where the atmosphere was more like an after-hours bull session than an inquiry. For long-scheduled observing time or to handle other commitments, Marcus told himself every time someone left. But despite the informality—or, perhaps, because of it—the notes file on his datasheet grew voluminous. His fingers ached from so much typing on its virtual keyboard. One thing this gathering was not: a DC-style, stultifying
meeting
.

Phil Majeski's simulation team would have its hands full in the coming weeks.

Valerie Clayburn was among the nomads, leaving Marcus to wonder how they would synch up for dinner. Whenever she popped in he treated her like anyone else—this was work, not a date, and her coworkers were all around, too—while second-guessing himself whether he was being too distant.

Why, but for a getting-back-on-the-horse-that-threw-you theory, had he asked her out?

Because Lindsey—the horse who
had
thrown him—was three months gone. Because life went on. Because Valerie was smart, intriguingly intense, and, despite her apparent efforts not to show it,
hot
.

". . . until they're in the way."

They?
Marcus had let his mind wander. Again. “Say that again?"

"Are we going too fast?” Tamara Miller asked. “Moving targets. How will we know where they are until they're in our way?"

Going too fast
would serve as an excuse. Marcus opened a datasheet window for the auto-transcription function. With everyone chiming in at will, the voice-recognition output was half gibberish, but half was more than he had processed over the past few seconds. He skimmed. Aha.
Migration.

All powersats, not just PS-1, would be built near Phoebe and its mines and factories. After completion and checkout, the powersats would be boosted—slowly, because they were so massive—to their final destinations. In geosynchronous Earth orbit, GEO, they would be all but stationary overhead.

"So your concern,” Marcus inferred, “is the trek to GEO, with the powersat's orbit spiraling out till it arrives."

Tamara nodded. “Yeah. How will I know when and where it's going to get in my way? Or maybe
they
, if there may be more than one powersat migrating at once."

"Not just us,” Valerie said, back again. “Optical astronomer, too. And pity the poor Earth-based infrared astronomers. A structure that's miles square soaks up a lot of sunlight."

"Kind of the idea,” Marcus said, getting laughs. “But I see your point. You need a way to plan around the powersats even before they settle into geosynch. I can recommend an Internet application anyone can access for tracking and orbital predictions. And real-time position, too, as determined by GPS. Okay?"

"What about flight plans?” Tamara countered. “Shouldn't powersats be in FAA files?"

Marcus took notes. “Probably a good idea.” And around Phoebe and The Space Place, essential for safety too.

"Real-time access,” Ernesto Perez added, “so we can input the powersat orbital predictions into our scheduling software."

When Valerie disappeared again, around four p.m., Marcus thought maybe she had left to change clothes. (He planned to change, but after his first visit he had known to leave coat and tie in the car.) When she reappeared half an hour later, though, she still wore the same blue jeans and tan sweater. Even in sneakers, she was almost his height. He guessed she was about five foot ten.

She could wear a flour sack and be gorgeous. As for his coat and tie, they could stay where they were.

Five-ish, Aaron Friedman left with a parting shot of, “See you later, Valerie."

Marcus waited for her to correct her colleague. She did not. He thought he had asked Valerie out. On a date. Had “can I take you out to dinner?” somehow changed meanings during his time with Lindsey?

Shit, he was not ready for this.

The two of them finally had the lounge to themselves. “Ready for dinner?” he asked.

She smiled awkwardly. “Sure. That'll be nice."

"I'll need you to suggest someplace to eat."

"Not hard.” She smiled again, and this time it came across more sincere. “We don't have many to choose among."

They headed in his car for Durbin, only slightly less tiny than Green Bank. Instead of making get-acquainted chat (not that he seemed to remember how), he focused on the narrow, twisty roads. The ten-mile, thirty- minute drive took most of his attention.

Unless dimness counted as décor, the family restaurant and bar had none. Several people he recognized from today's meeting, including Aaron Friedman, occupied stools at the bar. Banter with the bartender suggested they were regulars. That was one mystery solved, anyway. As for Valerie's expectations for the evening? Time would tell.

Compared to the afternoon's free-for-all, the conversation once he and Valerie were seated felt stiff. His scars were too fresh. Her scars, whatever they were, seemed to run deeper. He called it a toss-up who felt more ill at ease.

Ruling out shoptalk might have been a mistake. What
did
people talk about on first dates? He couldn't remember. The short menus, when the waitress brought them by, offered few possibilities to eat
or
discuss.

"How old is your son?” he asked as they waited for their appetizers. “Simon?"

Getting the name right got him another of those too-rare natural smiles. “Simon. He's nine. Precocious guy, in a mischievous kind of way. Reminds me . . ."

Of his father
, Marcus filled in the blank. It felt too soon to ask. All he came up with, gracelessly, when enough time had passed was, “What have you read recently for fun?"

She named two novels he had never heard of, but he asked about them anyway. The waitress arrived with their entrées and the conversation trailed off again. This evening was a
disaster
.

Valerie told herself she should be home with her son. Only she knew that for a lie: Simon did just fine with babysitters, had more or less adopted Brianna as his big sister.
Lying to yourself is never a good sign.

Her head was not in the game.

She found little to say when Marcus asked about favorite movies and music, or volunteered his own. When he launched into gadgets—about which, as an engineer, he was predictably enthusiastic—she shot that down too. Sorry even as she said it, she disgorged some inanity about devices that would not function in the quiet zone or were a pain tethered to an ethernet cable.

And when he unintentionally brought Keith to mind, she shut down even more.

She should have asked around about first-date topics. Clearly, she would not need to ask about second dates. “Will you excuse me? I should check on Simon,” she said.

"Sure.” Reflexively reaching for his cell, Marcus laughed at himself. (She liked that in a guy. Too bad she was such a failure at this.) “I guess the restaurant has landlines you can use."

"For regulars, the house phone. It's behind the bar.” She stood. “I'll be right back."

She found Patrick Burkhalter holding down a barstool. The rest of the Green Bank regulars appeared to have left.

Patrick must not have shaved that day. She thought he had worn the same pants and shirt the day before. He was heavier every time she saw him, his clothes tighter, his gut bulging over his belt. The mound of buffalo wings in front of him would do nothing to reverse the trend. And he drank alone far too often. Poor guy: No one to go home to.

"How's the big date going?” Patrick asked her.

"Just colleagues,” she said. After the fact, if not by original intent. “Hand me the phone?"

To judge by the giggling in the background when Brianna answered, Simon was doing fine.

Patrick was nursing a beer with one hand, prodding his datasheet with the other. An ethernet cable snaked behind the bar from the datasheet. Something about Patrick tickled at the back of her mind.

Damn! Maybe she had gadgets to share after all. And they were wireless in a
big
way.

Black, sterile landscape hung in a shallow arc before Marcus. Up close, churned ground. In the left distance, a range of low hills. Straight ahead, receding into the distance, a pockmarked plain. In the right distance, rippled terrain that blended into more hills.

Phoebe, as he had never experienced it.

He and Valerie sat side by side on her living-room couch, an ordinary game controller in front of each of them on the coffee table. “What do you think?"

Marcus hardly minded being invited inside after dinner—but he was more than a little surprised. She had insisted she had something to show him. What was this about? “Interesting,” he offered neutrally.

"Give it a shot,” she said.

He glanced down at his game controller. Landscape shifted as his head moved. Infrared laser beams shining into his eyes and sensors tracking eye motions from the reflections. He looked up and the landscape shifted again. “The hills to my extreme left and right look alike."

"Identical, in fact. The bot's full-circle view is compressed into ninety degrees, because you, unlike the bot, can't see three-sixty. To your far left and far right, about ten degrees of landscape overlap for continuity. You get used to it."

Marcus had never seen the attraction of the Phoebe tourist bots. Moon bots, maybe. Over the years robotic lunar landers had deployed those to far-flung and quite varied terrain. The catch was cost: Lunar bots were
expensive
. Once an armchair explorer sent a lunar rent-a-bot over a cliff or into a crevasse—that was that. And because of the comm delay to/from the moon, accidents did happen. And so, time on lunar bots did not come cheap.

Lose a bot on tiny, nearby Phoebe—much less likely, anyway, given the shorter comm delays—and often someone could retrieve it. Recoverability made armchair exploration of Phoebe affordable.

But Marcus “saw” PS-1 and Phoebe almost daily, with clearance to operate the surface-camera systems. (Not bots, though. For security purposes, work bots could only be accessed with much higher clearance than he had, and then only from local terminals.) He had come to think of the rent-a-bots creeping about parts of Phoebe's surface—when, from time to time, they strayed outside the tourist zone—as so much optical clutter.

Still . . .

He swept a hand across his controller. Gesture-sensing logic read the motion—more clever processing of infrared reflections. With an all but imperceptible delay the landscape slid to his right as the bot turned. Motion somehow emphasized the duplicated scenery at the extremes of the holo.

If he recalled correctly, and the fast response suggested he did, Phoebe was all but overhead at the moment. He swept his hand back—and nothing happened.

"Hold your fingers together,” Valerie said, “so you don't clutter the IR reflections. Fingers don't control individual tentacles."

Walking by gesture would be a great user interface. If his hand had eight opposable fingers. If the round-trip delay, ping-ponged through comsats, though far more manageable than in the lunar case, did not sometimes approach a full second. “Walking” involved a joystick and then only indicated a general direction. The bot's onboard nav software figured how to locomote across the landscape.

He swept his hand again, keeping his fingers straight, still, and together. This time, the landscape shifted as he expected. “I don't get it. Exploring Phoebe seems like the last thing that would interest you."

"Patrick, a guy I work with, was into these bots right after Phoebe rentals came online.” She seemed about to say more, and to reconsider. “I tried to interest Simon in remote-controlled exploration. Any kid his age is going to spend time in VR, and this seemed much more civilized than the usual shoot-'em-ups."

"How'd that go over?"

"About as well as you'd expect."

Marcus kept gesturing, the landscape swaying in response. “Am I ready to take a step?"