Orbital Decay (36 page)

In a way, it was not right that it should have been us. It should have been someone else who had to wage the good fight. Maybe an earlier generation should have recognized the threat, and done something about it before the eleventh hour. But they didn’t, and we did; we got stuck with the dirty end of the stick.

Someone had to do it, and that’s why we did it. Looking back, I would have done it just the same way again, if I had been given the chance. But with one difference: I would have found some way to prevent Popeye Hooker from getting killed.

L
ATER ON, WHEN HE
got a chance to think about it more, Popeye decided that it was unfair that the first good day he had been given in a long time—how long, he couldn’t remember—should be kicked out from under him.

It wasn’t fair, that was all there was to it. For once, he had gone through a day without thinking about Laura. For once, he had actually gone on shift without having his mind elsewhere. For once, he had been able to look at Earth without having feelings of remorse. For once, damn it, for
once
, he had gotten through the day without wondering if he was losing his mind.

More than that, he had actually enjoyed his work, and that had never happened before. He got away from the edginess he had always felt while on
EVA
out on the powersat; he had jetted from section to section, stopping to weld beams here and there on direction from Vulcan Command, feeling like an agile kid playing on the biggest monkey bar in all the universe. He caught himself humming at one point, and at another time he actually had to restrain himself from untethering and doing somersaults with his MMU just for the hell of it. Popeye had no explanation for how he felt that day, except that perhaps he had gone for so long feeling miserable that his mind had finally overloaded and given him—yes,
given
was the operative word—a day to feel good about himself and things in general.

Popeye supposed it was Hamilton’s advice, to yank himself by his bootstraps out of his self-perpetuating misery, which had finally sunk in and had made sense. Or maybe it was just a set of cerebral circuit breakers snapping in, saying,
Okay
,
time out
!
Enough self-searching pity
,
Hooker
,
it’s time to party
! Whatever it was, he didn’t try to analyze it too closely, for fear that the good feeling of feeling good would vanish as mysteriously as it had appeared.

But if it had been Hamilton’s advice, freely given on that day when he and Virgin Bruce had gone for a joy ride in the pod, which had helped turn things around for Popeye’s disposition, then it was ironically unfair that it should be Hamilton who should appear to ruin it.

The hydroponics engineer caught up with Hooker as he was coming off the second shift, in the west terminus module while Popeye was depositing his work gear in his locker. The rest of the second-shift beamjacks were banging their lockers shut and talking about the upcoming Series playoffs, when Jack Hamilton slid up beside Hooker and murmured, “Hey, Popeye, do you got a few minutes?”

“Sure,” Popeye replied. “Why not? What’s up?”

“There’s a few people getting together in the hydroponics bay, Module One.” Hamilton’s voice was very low, almost a whisper. “It’s very important, and I think I’d like to have you there.”

Popeye grinned. “Sure. I could use a little R and R right now.” He gave Jack a wink.

But Jack didn’t return the smile or the wink. His solemn demeanor was Popeye’s first indication that things were going to get sour again. “I’m afraid it’s not like that,” Hamilton said softly. “Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s kind of important. Um, I hope this won’t mean that you’re not going to be there, ’cause it’s something we can only trust a few people with and we really need your help in particular.”

Popeye blinked. It was completely unexpected, and he was already beginning to have misgivings… but Jack did trust him, and Popeye realized that a key part of getting over his misery was to stop alienating himself from his crewmates. “Sure. Sure. When are we going to meet?”

“We’re doing it right now. Module One. You’ll be there?” Hooker nodded, and Jack gave him a slap on the shoulder. “See you there…. Hey, and don’t let anyone know you’re coming,” he added.

Popeye watched Hamilton as he walked up the gangway leading to the catwalk, heading toward Module One. He noticed Jack pausing for an instant to say something to Virgin Bruce, who was also coming off shift. As Hamilton disappeared onto the catwalk, Virgin Bruce looked at Hooker and nodded in a knowing way. Intrigued now, Popeye nodded back, then closed and locked his locker.

Yet his mood was still buoyant as he strode down the catwalk. For the first time in weeks, he found himself noticing things that he must have heard and seen previously but simply ignored while immersed in his personal blue funk. Crewmen passing each other on the catwalk as they either headed for work on the third shift or returned to the bunkhouses before heading for the mess deck, saying things as they dodged around each other: “Take it easy out there, pal” “What’re they serving down there today, Ike?” “Watch the feed from the number two Grumman, man, it’s putting out some warped sections today” “Hey, Hildebrant! You use up all the hot water again or what?” From the open hatches leading down into the habitation modules he could hear music from the tape decks that had suddenly proliferated through the space station, the twentieth-century rock music that was suddenly enjoying a revival among the crew: the Band’s “Rag, Mama, Rag” coming from Module 33, “California Girls” by the Beach Boys from Module 34, the grating thump of the James Gang’s “Funk #49” from Module 35, the tender sigh of the Youngbloods’ “Darkness, Darkness” from Module 36. He saw the notices taped up on the catwalk’s tubular walls: “Wanted: Led Zep tapes. Buy or trade. Rockin’ Joe, Module 12, East” and “Dungeons and Dragons! James Bond! Traveller! Need fresh blood for new games! Roll your own characters and put them thru my tomato-pulpers! DM Dick, Module 31. No wimps!” and “Movie Saturday night. Two Stallone classics:
First Blood
and
Rambo.
2000 and 2200, East Rec.” He passed the rec room, hearing the metallic clanging of the exercise machines being worked out and the buzz of conversation from below.

Things had changed on the space station in the past months. People were much more relaxed, now that Cap’n Wallace had gone into hiding. They were beginning to
enjoy
themselves. I wonder why no one thought of locking away that pompous bastard before, Popeye thought. Would have saved everyone a lot of grief, especially me. He smiled at the recollection of his encounter with Wallace on the day Jack Hamilton had arrived on Skycan. In an odd way, he felt he could credit himself, at least in part, for Wallace’s self-alienation from the rest of the personnel. It had probably been the first time in his career that Wallace had ever had anyone tell him off.

He strode past the first three Hydroponics modules with their brown color-coded signs and stopped above the sealed hatch of Module 1. He kneeled and twisted the locking wheel to lift open the hatch. Conversation in the module paused as he climbed down the ladder, shutting the hatch behind him. As Popeye stepped off the ladder and turned around, he took a quick accounting of the bunch gathered in the compartment.

Everyone was familiar to him, of course; Joni Lowenstein, the communications officer, leaning against a rack of seed trays with her arms resting on the shoulders of her new-found lover, Virgin Bruce, who was seated in front of her; Dave Chang, the Docks operations chief, standing next to a bulkhead with his arms crossed-over his stomach; next to him, sitting at a lab bench, Sam Sloane, the Data Processing chief; and, of course, Hamilton himself. All of them nodded or murmured greetings to Popeye. Six people in a compartment already filled with plant beds, consoles, benches, and furniture made the module small indeed, so Popeye rested his butt on the bottom rung of the ladder. Looking around, he noticed at once that the lateral hatches connecting to Module 42 and 2 were sealed and locked, adding to the mysterious nature of the meeting.

“Thanks for sealing the hatch, Popeye,” Hamilton said. “You’re the last one who’s been invited, so if you’d do us a favor and climb up and lock it, we’ll get started.”

Popeye did so as the hydroponicist cleared his throat formally, ending the small talk which had resumed once Popeye had entered the compartment. “As the saying goes, I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve called you here today,” he began.

“To smoke dope and have an orgy,” Chang said. As the others laughed, he noticed Joni turning red. “Sorry,” he said, genuinely apologetic. “Didn’t mean to imply anything about the lady’s character.”

“Better not, bubba,” Virgin Bruce replied, wearing an expression of good-natured menace.

Even Joni laughed at that. However, Popeye noticed that neither Jack nor Sam had laughed. Hamilton shook his head. “Sorry, folks. This isn’t going to be a smoking session.” He paused. “It hadn’t occurred to me that it might occur to you, when I invited each of you here, that this might be the reason. Each of you was picked to be here for a particular reason, and each of you are needed. However… well, if smoking pot is all you have on your mind, if that’s all you want to do, you might consider going someplace else. That’s not what we’re here to do.”

“What Jack is saying,” Sloane added, “is that we’ve got some important business to discuss, and that there’s a reason why all of you—Bruce, Joni, Dave, and you, Popeye—were asked to be here. You’re crucial, but… well, if smoking pot is all…”

“We get what you mean, Sam,” Virgin Bruce interrupted. He held up his hands. “Hey, I’m probably the biggest junkie of the bunch, but I know when it’s time to get serious. Whatever it is, I’m sticking around.”

He looked at the others meaningfully, and they either shrugged or nodded their heads. “But it does have to do with pot, doesn’t it?” Bruce continued. “Let me figure it out. Cap’n Wallace and Mr. Big have finally wised up, and we’re all in deep shit.”

“Oh, hell,” said Chang. “Does it mean we have to
eat
the rest of that stuff now?”

That cracked everyone up, even the taciturn Jack and Sam. “No, no, no,” Sloane said. “Pot has something to do with it, but only peripherally. What it is, is…”

He stopped, and looked at Hamilton. “Well, Jack told me about this yesterday, so it’s probably best that he explain things himself. Jack?”

Hamilton crossed his arms. “All right,” he began. “Yesterday at about 1500 I was down here when I got a call over the intercom…”

As Hamilton was wrapping up his story, Hooker was beginning to feel grim again, despite being intrigued with the disclosure of what “Dave” the phony meteorologist had leaked to Hamilton, and how Sloane had managed to crack the rest of the secret through the station computer. He wondered privately how much had been just under his nose during those visits he had made over the months to Meteorology to peer through the telescope at Earth. Perhaps if he had only listened harder, knowing—as everyone on Skycan did—that John, Dave, and Bob were attached to the National Security Agency. Thinking how much his own obsessive behavior had blinded him to the truth only served to make him feel worse, if he wasn’t already disturbed by what Hamilton had just said.

“Okay, all right,” Virgin Bruce said, bending forward in his chair. “I’ve been following along, but I’m a little slow to pick up on all this spy stuff, so tell me in simple language what this Big Ear thing is all about.”

“Well, better yet, I can show you.” Sam Sloane turned about in his chair to the computer terminal on the lab bench. “I did this up last night just to show you, Bruce, so I hope you appreciate it.” He tapped in commands, and after reaching a file in his own directory he punched it up.

A graphic simulation of the Big Ear appeared on the screen. With Earth as the nucleus, it resembled a model of a heavy-element atom. A network of circular orbits surrounded the planet, arcing on, above, and below the equatorial plane, sometimes bisecting one another. As the earth rotated in the simulation, so did the orbits. “This, of course, is the Ear,” Sloane said. “It’s twenty communications satellites established in geostationary orbit in the Clarke Belt, a couple of them not relatively far from Skycan’s location.”

He typed in another command, and a series of black dots with red lines connecting them appeared in the orbits. “The satellites can cover practically every inch of the globe,” Sloane continued. “That is to say, through uplinks and downlinks with Earth stations now based in virtually all corners of the globe, they can send and receive messages to and from every continent. But as well, they can communicate with each other, so that a signal sent from, say, Zaire, can be ‘bounced’ from comsat to comsat until it reaches its destination in, for example, San Francisco. Each satellite is capable of handling several thousand phone calls, television signals, computer messages, and radio transmissions simultaneously, so there is practically no ceiling on the network’s communications capability.”

Sloane typed in another command, and another orbit appeared on the screen, this one closer to Earth than the orbits of the Ear satellites. “Now, that much is public information which the Ear’s primary builder, Skycorp, has released. The deep, dark secret is that the NSA, through Skycorp’s cooperation and that of no telling how many friendly governments, has established a way of tapping into the Ear. You see, the comsats are also capable of transmitting their messages to the Freedom space station in low-Earth orbit. We found out that a new module has just been added to Freedom, which acts as a sort of orbital ‘switchboard,’ or funnel if you want to call it that, for all those tens of thousands of simultaneous signals being bounced around the Ear.”

Sloane turned around in his chair to face the group. “In short, that module is the biggest telephone bug ever conceived, except that it can also tap TV and radio communications and patch into stuff being sent computer-to-computer through modem. Through another series of Earth stations—these ones based worldwide and operated by the NSA—those signals can be relayed to the agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. What happens then is interesting. The signals are fed through the agency’s computers, which are programmed to translate or decode the messages. The computers are also programmed to pick out certain key words or phrases.”