Jupiter (5 page)

'On-screen, please,' he repeated.

To his surprise, the screen showed the twin seals of the International Astronautical Authority and the New Morality Censorship Board. Before Grant could react, it flicked off, to be replaced by a lengthy document headed with the words SECRECY AGREEMENT.

Grant saw that Tavalera's eyes were bulging.

'I'd better go to my bunk and read this on my handheld,' Grant said.

'I guess you better,' Tavalera said, in a small voice.

As Grant brushed past him to step out into the passageway, Tavalera said, 'I never figured you for an NM agent.'

'I'm not,' Grant blurted out, wishing it were true.

'Yeah. Sure.'

Grant headed for the claustrophobic compartment he shared with Tavalera, while the young engineer went the other way, toward the observation blister. Once alone in his cramped bunk, Grant read the secrecy agreement very carefully. Twice. Three times. He was being ordered to sign it. The document did not leave him any choice. If he failed to sign, the New Morality could cancel his Public Service contract and have him returned to Earth 'at the convenience of the IAA personnel on-station.' That meant all the time in transit to Jupiter would have been totally wasted. And all the time spent waiting for transport back to Earth, and the transit time itself, would also be wasted.

Worse yet, Grant got the distinct feeling that once back home he would be assigned the lowliest, meanest, dirtiest Public Service job that the authorities could find for him. They dealt harshly with dissenters and objectors.

So he signed the secrecy agreement. In essence, it was a simple document. It stated that any and all information, data, knowledge and facts that he acquired while serving his Public Service obligation were classified Secret, and were not to be divulged to any person, agency, or computer network. Under punishment of law.

Grant felt whipsawed. The New Morality wanted him to report on what the scientists were doing; the IAA wanted to swear him to secrecy. Then a new understanding dawned within him. They don't trust each other! The IAA and the New Morality may share the responsibility for running Station
Gold
, but they don't trust each other. They don't even like each other. And they've put me in the middle. Whatever I do, I'm going to be in trouble, he realized.

Wishing both sides would just leave him alone, wondering exactly what was going on among the researchers at
Gold
that had to be kept so secret, Grant signed the document and — as directed by the automated legal program — held his palm-sized computer to, first, his right eye and then his left, so that whoever was registering his agreement could record both his retinal prints.

All these precautions left Grant feeling baffled, worried, and more than a little angry. They had one good effect, however. Once
Roberts
established its co-orbital rendezvous with the space station and Grant toted his one travelbag down to the airlock hatch, Tavalera said goodbye to him with newfound respect in his eyes.

It's almost funny, Grant thought. For most of the trip out here I was halfway convinced that Raoul was a New Morality informer. Now he's certain that I'm one.

He almost laughed as he shook Tavalera's hand in a final goodbye.

Almost. Then he realized that he actually was a New Morality informer. At least, that's what the NM expected him to be.

Grant at last got a look at the orbiting research station, a glimpse, nothing more, as he ducked through the transfer tube that had been set up to connect the station's docking hub with
Roberts'
airlock.

That brief glimpse disturbed him even more.

He was silently offering a prayer of thanksgiving at his safe arrival, and a supplication to 'make me worthy, O Lord, of the task You have given me.'

As he looked up through the transfer tube's overhead window, the curving surface of the station looked huge, mammoth, a gigantic looming structure that filled the observation port like a colossal arch of gray metal, dulled and pitted from long years of exposure to radiation and infalling cosmic dust.

A childhood memory flashed through Grant's mind: the time his parents had taken him to San Francisco and they had somehow gotten themselves lost in a seedy, dangerous part of the city near the enormous dirt-encrusted supporting buttresses of the Bay Bridge. Grant's breath had caught in his throat; for a moment he had imagined the entire weight of that immense bridge crashing down on him, crushing him and his parents in their flimsy open-topped automobile in a thundering tangle of steel girders and ponderous blocks of stone.

As he made his solitary way through the slightly flexible transfer tube, he got that same sudden feeling: this enormous thick wheel of a station was going to come crashing down upon him any moment now. Again, his breath caught and for just a heartbeat of an instant he felt very small, very vulnerable, very close to death.

The instant passed. Grant finished his prayer as he strode on alone through the tube; he was the only person transferring from the freighter to the research station. The flooring felt soft and spongy beneath his boots, especially after so many months of the freighter's steel decks. Everything's fine, he told himself. He remembered that the instant he stepped through the hatch at the far end of the tube he was officially engaged in his Public Service duty; every second would count toward his four-year commitment. Every second would bring him closer to Marjorie, to home, to the life he wanted.

But he had seen something in that brief glimpse of the station, something that should not have been there. Grant had memorized the station's layout after months of studying it during the long trip out to Jupiter. Research Station
Gold
was a massive, fat doughnut of a structure, more than five kilometers in diameter. It rotated once every two minutes to give its interior a spin-induced artificial gravity of almost exactly one
g
, so that its inhabitants would feel a comfortable Earth gravity inside the station.

Grant had seen an additional structure sticking out from the doughnut shape, a metallic lenticular section, round and flattened like a discus, connected to the station by a single slender tube, literally poking out from the main body of the station like a sore thumb. It should not have been there. Grant knew the schematics of Station
Gold
by heart; he had pored over its design details and operations manuals for months. There was no extra section hanging out on one side of the doughnut. There couldn't be. It would unbalance the station's spin and inevitably destabilize it so badly that it would shake the structure apart.

It could not be there, Grant knew. Yet he had seen it. He was certain of that.

He felt puzzled, almost worried, as he took the few steps that brought him to the end of the transfer tunnel. Grant had to duck slightly to get through the hatch that connected with the station itself. As he stepped through, he found himself in a small, bare chamber. Its metal walls were scuffed, dull; its flooring was metal gridwork. Once it had been painted, Grant saw, but there was nothing left of the paint except a few grayish chips clinging here and there.

A tall, slim man in light gray casual slacks and soft blue velour shirt was standing there, waiting for him, with a listless, bored expression on his angular, ascetic face. Grant had never seen such a pallid complexion; the man looked almost ghostly. His hair was very light, almost white, thin and straight and hanging down to his shoulders. Despite the silvery hair, Grant guessed that the man was only slightly older than himself.

'Grant Archer?' the man asked needlessly, extending his right hand.

Grant nodded as he shifted his travelbag and took the offered hand.

'I'm Egon Karlstad,' the man said. His grip seemed measured: not too strong, not too soft.

'Good to meet you,' said Grant. He heard the hatch behind him slide shut, then a quick series of clicks and thumps as the transfer tube disconnected.

Karlstad grinned sardonically. 'Welcome to Research Station
Gold
,' he said. 'Welcome to the gulag.'

Puzzled, Grant asked, 'What's a gulag?'

'You'll find out,' Karlstad said resignedly as he turned to lead Grant through a second hatch and into a long, wide passageway.

Gold
seemed even bigger inside than it had looked from the outside. The passageway that they trudged along was spacious and even carpeted, although the carpeting seemed threadbare, badly worn. Still, after all those months of tatty old
Roberts
Grant revelled in the feeling of spaciousness and freedom. Men and women passed them, nodding their greetings or saying hello to Karlstad. He did not introduce any of them, but kept up a constant chatter about what was behind each of the doors set into either side of the corridor: fluid dynamics lab, cryogenic facility, electronics maintenance shop, other titles Grant did not understand.

Grant thought of it as a corridor, not a passageway. He was not on a ship any longer. This was a research station. Even though he knew he was walking inside a big wheel-shaped hoop, it looked and felt to Grant as if the corridor were perfectly flat and straight, that's how big the station was. It was only off in the far distance that the corridor appeared to slope upward.

Well, he thought, at least I'll be in reasonably comfortable surroundings. And working with real scientists.

After what seemed like a half-hour, Karlstad stopped at an unmarked doorway. 'This is your compartment, Mr Archer.'

'Grant,' said Grant. 'Please call me Grant.'

Karlstad made a polite little bow. 'Good. And I'm Egon. My quarters are just down the passageway, two doors.' He pointed.

Grant nodded as Karlstad tapped the security pad built into the door jamb. 'You can set your own code, of course,' he said. 'Just let the security office know what it is.'

The door slid open. Grant's compartment was roomy, with a real bed instead of a bunk, a desk, table, chairs, shelves, even a compact kitchenette with its own sink and microwave unit. It was all strictly utilitarian, like a college dormitory room, not fancy or luxurious in the least. Certainly, nothing in the compartment looked new or bright. Everything smelled faintly of disinfectant, even the thin gray carpeting.

'Two of the walls are smartscreens, of course,' Karlstad was saying. 'That door on the right is your lavatory, the other one's a closet.'

Grant stepped in and tossed his travelbag onto the bed. This is fine, he told himself. This is perfectly fine. I can be comfortable here.

Karlstad shut the door and left him alone in his new quarters before Grant could ask him about the strange structure jutting out from the station's perimeter. But as he bounced himself on the bed to test its springiness, Grant told himself to forget about it. The people running this station wouldn't build anything that would jeopardize their own safety, he thought. That would be crazy.

It didn't take long for Grant to unpack his meager belongings. His clothes hardly filled a tenth of the ample closet space and bureau drawers. He sat at the desk and linked his palmcomp with the wallscreen. The first thing he did was to compose a long, upbeat message to Marjorie, telling her that he had arrived safely at the station and showing her — by swivelling in his desk chair while holding the palm with its built-in video camera in his hand — how spacious and comfortable his new quarters were. Then he sent an almost identical message to his parents, back in Oregon.

But even as he did so, the memory of that odd appendage sticking out from the station's rim kept nagging at him. A flattened circular shape, like a fat discus. It was big, too: several hundred meters in diameter, at least. It bothered him. After sending off the message to his parents, Grant called up the station's schematics, as he had done countless times on the long journey to Jupiter. Nothing. No reference to such a structure anywhere in his palmcomp's files.

'Did I imagine seeing it?' Grant whispered to himself. Then he shook his head. He had seen it, he was certain of that.

He jacked into the station's own files and pulled up the schematics. Nothing there, either. Frowning with puzzled frustration, he scrolled through the station's files. Many of them were marked ACCESS LIMITED TO AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. At last he found what he wanted: real-time views of the station from other satellites in orbit around Jupiter. At first he was mesmerized by the satellite views of Jupiter itself, the ever-changing kaleidoscope of swirling, racing colors, endlessly fascinating. It took a real effort of will to concentrate on finding views of the station.

And there it was, the thick torus of dulled, pitted metal, looking small and fragile against the overwhelming background of Jupiter's gaudy, hurtling clouds. And there was that saucer-shaped thing hanging out from one side of the station's wheel, connected only by an impossibly slim tube.

Grant froze the image and framed the extension on the wallscreen, then asked, 'Computer, pull up the schematic for the indicated image.'

No response from the computer. His palmcomp merely hummed to itself; the picture on the screen did not change. Feeling nettled, Grant pulled out the keyboard that was built into the desk and connected it to his palmcomp, then typed out his command.

The screen went blank for a moment and Grant started to smile with a sense of victory. But then ACCESS DENIED appeared briefly and the screen went dead.

'Damn!' Grant snapped, immediately regretting his lack of self-control.

Grant rebooted his palmcomp and tried again. He lost track of time, but he was determined to get the better of the stupid computer system. No matter how he tried, though, every attempt ended in the same ACCESS DENIED message and automatic shutoff.

A knocking on his door finally pulled his attention away from his quest. With a disgusted grunt, Grant got up from his desk chair. He was surprised at how stiff he felt; he must have been hunched over the computer for hours.

Egon Karlstad stood at Grant's door, a quizzical little hint of a smile on his pale face.