Prisoners of Tomorrow (45 page)

This had caused a lot of headaches among the Western analysts whose job was to come up with credible ways to attack the platform, should the need ever arise—the military had contingency plans filed away for just about every eventuality conceivable. True enough, a single nuclear warhead would have sufficed to destroy it totally, but missiles of any kind were ruled out. With the target at almost-lunar distance—ten times that to geosynchronous orbit—surprise would be out of the question: in the long climb from near-Earth space an attacking wave of missiles would have no hope of surviving. Yes, the West did have beam weapons of its own deployed in near-Earth orbits. But this was where
Tereshkova
’s size made the telling difference. For the West’s weapons were comparatively small, special-purpose types designed to attack pinpointable targets such as missiles and satellites at shorter ranges. Hence they couldn’t hope to knock out the hidden weapons on something like
Tereshkova
in a surprise attack. Counterfire from
Tereshkova,
on the other hand, would be instantly devastating to clearly defined targets sitting in space. The answer, of course, would have been to build something comparable in size at the proper time, but it was a little late to catch that boat now, and the political arguing was still going on.

Also significant was
Tereshkova
’s capacity to accommodate a variety of weapons. The essence of directed-beam strategy was to be able to deliver a wide range of wave-lengths from the electromagnetic and particle energy spectra, generated by a series of devices differently “tuned” to exploit the weaknesses of a given target type. Typically, hardening or protecting a target against one of the spectrum would render it more vulnerable in another part. For example, crudely focused, intense bursts of microwave energy would act by becoming trapped and concentrated, waveguide-fashion, in the structural cavities of the target, causing intense internal currents to circulate as if the target had been struck by lightning. Effective shielding against such a microwave attack could be achieved by cladding the target with an insulated metal skin. But this would make it more susceptible to pulsed diffuse X-rays, which when deposited upon an insulated metal layer induce strong electro-magnetic emissions inside the shield, fatal to electronic equipment. Heavy ions carried kinetic energy deep into solids faster than it could dissipate, causing materials to explode. Muons made lightning with two hundred times the mass of electron beams. Neutrons induced premature fission in warheads, degrading them to uselessness.

Symphony for full orchestra.

One of the suspected weapons that Foleda had communicated details of to McCain was a tunable, high-power, free-electron laser. That meant that the laser beam drew its energy from accelerated electrons that could be made to vibrate at any of a range of frequencies by a variable magnetic field. This contrasts with methods employing an excited solid, liquid, or gas medium, where the frequency is fixed and depends on the medium used. The system in question, it was claimed, operated across the optical spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet, and was aimed by the optical-mirror system located around the hub. According to the information received, it existed beneath the confused pile of buildings, tanks, conveyer ramps, and elevator machinery known as Agricultural Station 3, at the base of the minor spoke between Turgenev and Novyi Kazan.

McCain was far from certain what a tunable, high-power, free-electron laser installation ought to look like. In fact, he hadn’t a clue. But as long as he was able to describe accurately what lay in there, the experts could worry about interpreting what it meant. Moreover, he had reasoned, if it existed it would be securely contained and guarded. So even if it proved impossible to actually get inside, the existence of obstacles too formidable to penetrate would say enough about the kind of place it was. And if the obstacles turned out to be no more than would allow them to simply test and withdraw? . . . Well, as Foleda had so thoughtfully reminded him, that was part of the job.

He felt the car slowing down in the darkness. Then it clattered over a series of switches before stopping for a few seconds, lurched a short distance forward, and then stopped again. From a point beside him, Scanlon’s flashlight beam came on to reveal another stationary car filling the tunnel ahead, and a narrow maintenance walkway on one side, behind a handrail. It meant they were joining the line of waiting cars that often formed at the approach to the loading point below Agricultural Station 3. They had come out of the regular transit tube, and the roof here was somewhat higher.

“This will do us as good as anywhere,” Scanlon’s voice said from the darkness.

“Sure. Let’s go.”

McCain raised himself out of the hollow in the car’s load of kidney beans that he had been lying in, and shone his own light while Scanlon hauled himself over the side and onto the walkway. Then McCain joined him. Even when they were heading for a destination farther on around the ring, they had learned from experience to get off the transit system here, work around the loading area on foot, and catch another car on the far side. On an earlier expedition that McCain had made with Mungabo, the load of corn they were riding had been switched up a ramp and emptied into a silo by physically inverting the car, almost suffocating both of them. McCain was beginning to feel like an unnatural denizen of some strange subterranean world of pipes, girders, ducting, and metal, whose proper inhabitants were not creatures of flesh and blood at all, but the ubiquitous, tireless machines.

An opening off the walkway brought them into an upward-sloping passage that bent through an angle to join a large compartment containing motors and winches, with cables disappearing up into the space overhead. The flashlights picked out more passages going off in other directions and walls meeting in strange combinations of angles. As with the oddly-flung-together jumbles of constructions surrounding the spoke-bases on the surface, there didn’t seem to be a straight edge or surface anywhere that ran direct from one side of the torus to the other—like a bulkhead in a ship. Even Rashazzi, for all his sightings and measurements, had confessed to getting confused in the process of passing through the spoke zones, and frequently found himself coming out of them in a direction he hadn’t expected. The others who had reconnoitered long-distance around
Tereshkova
had all reported similar difficulties.

They stopped here to exchange the coveralls that they had taken to wearing when riding the tubes for standard light-blue smocks and white caps, as worn by the agricultural technicians, which Koh had stolen on a work assignment. The coveralls hadn’t been really necessary this time, as it turned out, but on other occasions they had dropped into cars full of the earth still coming down the spokes from transporters unloading at the hub and come out looking like mud-wrestlers. The smocks carried their two general-clearance badges, enabling them to move around. Having only two badges exacerbated the problem of limited time, and Istamel was working on a scheme for acquiring more.

McCain unfolded a sheaf of papers containing extracts from Foleda’s instructions and sketches from previous reconnaissances. “Section of bulkhead to the east. Inspection ladder leading to catwalk below cable bank,” he read.

Scanlon aimed his light upward and swung it from side to side. “Well, there’s what some people might call a bulkhead, and that’s a ladder. It’s close to east, I’d say, but how can a man be sure?”

“That has to be the way. Are you all set?”

“To be sure, hasn’t it been me that’s been waiting for the last five minutes? So let’s be off.”

McCain’s group had established that one of the colony’s waste-reduction and water-recycling plants was situated in that direction, as indeed was shown in the public information released by the Soviets. Beyond it, the official plans showed a long space, radial to the main axis—thus pointing, interestingly, at the mirror system surrounding the hub—which was described vaguely as “Materials Storage.” That, according to the information that Foleda had assembled, was where the laser emplacement was supposed to be located.

The area they entered higher up was illuminated by pilot lights, and on an earlier visit Sargent and another from the escape committee had observed technicians working there. The choice was either to move carefully and try to stay under cover, or simply walk through brazenly and trust in their appearance to avoid drawing attention. Since it seemed probable that the vicinity of a high-security installation would be under observation, acting furtively was as likely as not to do more harm than good. Therefore they had decided on the impertinent approach.

The surroundings they passed through were reminiscent of parts of an oil refinery or chemical plant, with large domed vessels wreathed in piping and supports, pumps, compressors, and tubes zigzagging their way through heat exchangers. They passed two figures working on equipment inside a hatch they had opened on a railed platform overlooking the through-walkway. One of them raised a hand casually as McCain and Scanlon passed below. Scanlon waved back.

On Earth, the atmosphere, soil, and oceans provide huge reservoirs in which the breakdown of dead matter and wastes, the return of gases into the air, and the removal of moisture by rainfall can all proceed at a relatively leisurely pace—even slow, inefficient processes operating on a planetary scale add up at the end of a day to a lot of materials processed. But
Valentina Tereshkova
had nothing of comparable capacity. Instead, the colony relied on mechanical condensers to dehumidify the atmosphere, and the extracted water resupplied drinking, irrigation, and industrial needs. Most of the moisture came from plant and animal respiration, which was why the dehumidifiers were located by the agricultural zones. Bulk condensation of water releases large amounts of energy, and the condensation process operated in conjunction with heat exchangers which carried the excess away to be radiated into space. Wastes were broken down through a wet-oxidation process, carbon dioxide returning to the atmosphere and solid nutrients being filtered out and shipped away for incorporation into animal feed and fertilizers. The Soviets had expressed pride in the accomplishment of their designers in devising a complete recycling process that eliminated the need to transport anything away from the habitat, thereby avoiding its expensive replacement from Earth. But that had been before more recent events, of course. McCain had no idea what they were telling everyone now.

On the far side of the recycling plant they came to a sturdy-looking wall, extending up beyond the level they were in, which looked as if it was part of the main supporting structure. It emerged on one side from behind a confusion of platforms and pipes, crossed squarely across in front of them for a distance, and then angled back on a different tack through a girderwork maze. McCain and Scanlon stopped and exchanged quick glances. The line was just about where, according to the official plans, the side of the “Materials Storage” compartment ought to be.

But McCain grew puzzled as he surveyed the scene. There was nothing resembling a guardpost, no observation ports anywhere that he could detect—no warning signs, even. They moved over to a cluster of valves on some pipes coming up from below and pretended to be inspecting them. While McCain studied the wall in detail, Scanlon made notes of their route and the things they had observed, to add to their maps when they returned.

It seemed to be, for all that McCain could make of it, just a wall. Its only feature was a single, small, insignificant-looking door with the numeral “15” stenciled on it. Camouflage, McCain decided. The real installation was on the other side. He looked at Scanlon and motioned with his head to indicate approaching the door.

“It was your boss that told you to go sticking your fool neck out, not mine,” Scanlon said.

“Come on, you Irish asshole.”

They crossed the floor and came to the door. It looked ordinary enough, with no sign of anything suspicious close-up. Scanlon moved a pace forward and tried it. It opened. The sound of voices came from beyond, and instinctively McCain and Scanlon flattened themselves out of sight on either side. But then they realized that the voices were raised and coming from a distance. After a few seconds McCain eased himself forward and peered around the edge of the doorway. Scanlon did the same on the other side. They stared, then looked at each other perplexedly. McCain stepped out and went through. Scanlon followed. They looked around and found themselves standing in . . . a Materials Storage warehouse.

It was certainly spacious, and reminded McCain of a walk-around contractors’-supplies yard back in the States. They had come in through a side door. Arrayed along wide aisles were stacks of all the standard structural modules used to build the apartments, public buildings, factories, and office units found all over
Tereshkova:
wallboards, floor strips, roof frames, ceiling panels; windows, doors, stairs, partitions. There were plumbing sections, electrical sections, kitchen-equipment sections, decorating sections . . . “Holy Mother of God, wouldn’t Razz be in his element here!” Scanlon breathed.

A forklift truck passed, carrying a pile of metal sheeting. The voice they had heard belonged to a man with a clipboard, who was standing about ten yards away and reading a list of items to two others: “We’ll need ten of those, ten of those, and twenty two-point-seven flanges . . . Now, not that kind . . . Right, those.” None of them took any notice of the two newcomers.

McCain and Scanlon walked slowly on through. There were ceramic bricks, blocks, tiles, and slabs; metal strips, rods, bars, and sheets; piles of sand, grit, chips, and gravel; wire in coils; paint in drums. None of it suggested a high-power, tunable, free-electron laser.

“Are you two looking for something?” a voice asked.

They turned and found a broad, bearded man in a brown workcoat standing at an intersection of two of the aisles.

“Er, just looking around,” Scanlon said.

“Which unit are you with?”

McCain remembered what Paula had told him about new arrivals, and gambled on a bluff. “We’re not, yet. We’ve only just shipped up from Earth. Trying to get our bearings. It’s very confusing.”