The Jovian Run: Sol Space Book One (8 page)

              Templeton nodded at him, faced turned his way, and he began. “I used to work for a telecom company: Global Telecom Systems,” Yegor began in his lightly accented voice, his elbows on the table and his hands folded in front of him. “I was part of a team of people who did satellite maintenance and repair. We used these one-person, short-range space skiffs to gain orbit and clamp onto our satellites. Sometimes we had to install hardware upgrades, sometimes replace antennae or solar panels, sometimes even do reactor maintenance. It was an okay job, sometimes tedious.

“Well, I used to work with this man named Felix. He was a small, kind of rat-like man. Greasy dark hair, beady eyes,” he squinted for effect, “even bucked teeth a little bit. And he always complained about the jobs. ‘Too much work,’ he said. ‘Not enough money,’ he said. ‘No promotions,’ he said. And he was mostly right. Occasionally people got promoted, but only if they were really good at their job. ‘Why not me?’ he was always asking.

“So one day, Felix gets this idea in his head. He thinks
what if I pull off a big heroic adventure?
” As he said the word adventure, Yegor tipped a wink at his captain, but didn’t miss a beat of his story. “
Then
I
would get promoted
, he thinks. We are basically repair men. Adventures for us… are not that common. So he decides to make one. This is what he does.

“Felix spends two weeks learning how to reprogram a satellite to do exactly what he wants. Next time he services satellite B66, he uploads his program. Next week, when he is up near B66 doing maintenance on another satellite, B66 suddenly, marvelously, tragically, starts to fall out of orbit. Felix is ready for this, of course. He flies his space skiff away from other satellite and starts to chase B66, yelling into radio the whole way, telling about how the satellite will ‘crash into city and kill millions of people if he can’t stop it,’ and ‘don’t worry, he will put his own life at risk to save the poor defenseless people.’” A smattering of laughter flowed up and down the table. Gwen’s eyelids were in danger of meeting each other in the middle.

“So there he is, rocketing into lower orbit to catch deadly B66. He extends his capture claws, steers in close, eases right up to the satellite…” Yegor had leaned forward as he spoke, and here he paused for dramatic effect. “And he catches it, perfectly. So, now all he has to do is thrust out of atmosphere and he is a big hero, he figures. So, he pulls up on the stick and…” Another pause. “Nothing happens. He checks his engines. Nothing. He tries to restart. Nothing.” The table was rapt, and Yegor was threading out the story expertly.

“The weight of satellite overloads the engines, and they are malfunctioning. He is good as dead, he thinks. So now he gets on radio again, only this time it is ‘Help!  Help!  Mayday!’  Fortunately for him, there is another space skiff doing maintenance near him. Mine. So I push burn all the way and head for him. He is in low orbit now and starting to heat up. Five minutes later, I get to him and he still has hold of this stupid satellite. I tell him ‘Felix, let go of this satellite! I can’t pull you both up.’  But he won’t. He has worked so hard on this programming, and he wants to be a hero very badly. Finally I tell him ‘Felix, if you don’t let go of satellite, I will leave you here!’” Yegor nearly yelled, and Gwen’s eyes opened wide for a moment before slowly closing again. Every other pair of eyes was on the storyteller. “So… he lets go of the satellite.

“I grab his skiff with my capture claws and I push for higher orbit. Poor Felix watches this multi-million dollar satellite and his one chance at promotion and riches fall away to Earth below. We manage to get into stable orbit, I bring him aboard my ship, and we radio for a tug to get his skiff.”

Yegor paused to take several swallows of his lemonade. In the pause that followed, Charis asked, “Did it actually hurt anyone?”

Yegor shook his head, his ponytail swaying back and forth. “
Nyet
. It landed in the ocean, in shallow water. Solar panels and antennae burn away in reentry, but it is well made. GTS retrieves it and does an investigation. They find Felix’s program and instead of big promotion and big raise, he gets fired. But me,” Yegor smiled and puffed out his chest, “I get promotion and raise for saving Felix!” Laughter and cheering rippled up and down the table, and there was scattered applause.

After it had calmed down, Templeton asked, “What ever happened to Felix?”

Yegor grinned, his big teeth showing. “He got hired by a satellite programming company. He makes more money than ever now!” This was followed by an even bigger chorus of laughs and applause.

“Excellent story.” The captain stated. “Thank you, Mr. Durin. And I believe that concludes dinner.”

“Yeah, don’t you all have jobs to do?” Templeton asked.

Chapter 5

Six days later,
Gringolet
was berthed at Tranquility space port on Mars. Planet fall had been routine, and now the crew had three days to resupply and pick up their charges before beginning the long part of the journey: the trip to Saturn. The spaceport had berths for over two dozen vessels, and more were being added all the time. Tourism was a large part of the burgeoning city’s business, and so public works made every effort to make visitors welcome. Vacationers could take rovers out to explore the planet’s surface, climb around, up, or camp on Olympus Mons, or engage in other more questionable activities. The Martian cities had all been founded in joint ventures by Earth governments, but as time passed they began to desire self-governance. There had been a bloodless rebellion fought in congress and through broadcasts and netlink, and the various countries such as the US, China, Brazil, and Europa that had helped to fund and populate the colonies had agreed to relinquish governmental control. Now the cities, ostensibly democratic, had their own governors and small senates. There was even an elected Martian parliament, but the constitution the cities had ratified left them so powerless as to be mostly decorative. The difficulties of travel between the cities combined with the limited available living space tended to make each city insular. There was an intercity rail network connecting the various cities, and a small intercity tourism industry had cropped up, but interaction between the cities was cumbersome and limited.

The draw of visiting the red planet aside, many of the Martian cities also encouraged tourism though their lax legal system. By adopting soft laws on some of the most controversial issues of the day, the Martian cities could attract those looking for illegal genetic modification, advanced Artificial Intelligence research, questionable cloning practices, and a variety of other services that were illegal or heavily regulated on Earth and the Moon. The laws governing these were system-wide and beyond the power of individual cities to set aside, but enforcement was a grey area, and punishments were less severe as a matter of course on Mars. Tranquility also served as a rest stop, providing fuel, food, and parts to ships heading out to or returning from Jovian space. It was a port where, provided one had the money, one could hire new crew members, buy and sell exotic goods, or simply indulge in hedonism. It was in fact the ideal stop for the job that the crew of the Gringolet now had before them.

Once the ship was settled on its landing gear and the receiving tube was attached to allow the crew to enter and depart without the need for EVA suits, various members of the crew departed for errands both personal and professional. The receiving area, which extended tubing to seven ships currently berthed, provided a variety of delights. The concourse was filled with data shops featuring movies and books, boutiques with authentic Martian clothing made from imported materials, massage parlors for weary space travelers, restaurants promising authentic Martian cuisine, bars with robotic bartenders, and mini casinos with generous one-armed bandits. Holographic advertisements glowed and rotated over storefronts. Robotic automatons roughly approximating the human form gave directions, suggested places of interest, and otherwise answered questions as needed. Well-dressed men and women offered to introduce space-faring travelers to someone who might ease their long periods of loneliness, though they steered clear of families. Keeping up appearances for the tourist trade was in everyone’s best interest.

              Templeton navigated this bustle with the determination of a man on a mission. He passed the barkers, the more subtle offers of companionship, and looked for a relatively honest and hungry looking rickshaw driver. The majority of main tubes that connected the various parts of Tranquility were pedestrian only, and while most citizens could afford the hydrogen cell trikes that were street legal on the few tubeways large enough to allow for motorized transport, few bothered. Parking was outrageously expensive, and movement from one quadrant of the city to another was easily achieved through a small underground light rail system.

              Finally, Templeton found a young man who struck him the right way. He was not yelling for a fare, only standing quietly by his rickshaw. When he approached, the youth, probably only fifteen or sixteen, simply said, “Take you somewhere, mister?” He was thin and well muscled, short for his age, but he looked as if he could run for hours without becoming winded. He had dirty brown hair reaching to the collar of his ratty white tee shirt and running shorts covering half of his skinny legs. His sneakers, however, looked brand new. His features were sharp, and a slight fuzz shaded his upper lip and chin.

              “Shouldn’t you be in school?” Templeton inquired.

              “It’s Sunday, mister,” the youth replied.

              Templeton realized the boy was right. “Well, then. I need to go to Beeftown. How much?”

              “Fifty dollars,” he replied instantly. Evidently the request was not out of the ordinary.

              “Deal.” The older man produced his wallet, pulled out a creased fifty-dollar note, and handed it over. Then he climbed into the back of the rickshaw, the young man climbed onto the bicycle seat in front, and they were off, the bike moving easily in the light Martian gravity.

              The rickshaw took him on a familiar route, though there were more tubes branching off the main thoroughfares than Templeton remembered from his previous visit several years earlier. People strolled here and there through the tubing near the walls, the human forms punctuated by the occasional automaton on some errand for its owner, and the rickshaws used the middle, always keeping to the right. Several similar carriages passed him going the other way, a few drawn by two people and seating larger numbers of passengers with luggage. Twice the tubing let out into cavernous rooms with high ceilings that accommodated shops on either side, the Martian version of strip malls, and then the ceilings came back down and they were in the tubes again, always headed vaguely left as they circled near the outside rim of Tranquility. As they travelled away from the spaceport, Templeton noticed that the roads, such as they were, became dirtier and the shops seedier. After roughly ten minutes of steady travel, they entered Beeftown.

              Public works on Mars were a different animal. Because every house, every building, every street needed to be protected from the lifeless Martian atmosphere, it became necessary for the government body of each city to keep a steady stream of revenue in order to expand. This revenue came in part from income taxes, property taxes, and tourism, but it also came from import taxes. Vast covered hydroponics bays and even soil farms surrounded most cities, but livestock was still a problematic industry on a planet with no arable soil to provide sustenance. Thus, most meat was imported from Earth, which drove up the prices considerably. Any city, even one on Mars, produces both grey and black markets, and Tranquility’s permissive laws and lax enforcement only encouraged them. The section of town that Templeton was now entering had a mirror in most every major city throughout history. It was the place one could go to
get things
. One of those things was lower-priced beef, often of questionable quality. It was this industry that had given Beeftown its appellation, though the industries it housed had become far more varied over the years.

              Templeton’s driver applied the brakes and looked over his shoulder. “This good?” he asked. Templeton nodded and climbed out of the vehicle, handing over another five as a tip.

              “Thanks kid,” he said, and strode off, enjoying the ease of walking when he weighed thirty-five kilos or so. As he began his peregrination, he transferred his wallet to the inside pocket of his grey flight jacket and zipped it up. The ceiling rose perhaps seven meters above him, and fans, strategically placed in the ductwork that latticed the roof to provide fresh air to the denizens below, rotated slowly. The room was large, nearly a hundred yards in length, and there were people everywhere. Some stood and spoke, but most walked on some errand or another. There were fewer of the expensive privately owned automatons here; they tended to disappear, victims of the Martian equivalent of chop shops. On his right, a line of butchers hocked their meat, either attempting to accost passers-by or haggling with buyers in front of them. On his left, a vivid holographic neon sign advertised live girls and boys, available for dancing and, Templeton suspected, other rhythm-based activities. He strolled down the center of the room, eyeing the stores, turning sideways here and there to slide by some individual or a group of people.

              The store coming up on his left was called
Imagina
, and it was one of several shops in Tranquility to offer quasi-legal or, for the right price, illegal body modifications. Plastic surgery was of course legal, and one could alter one’s appearance as one chose quite legally on Mars or anywhere else in the solar system. There were some modifications, however, that remained illegal and were frowned upon by most of polite society. Most of these concerned turning the human body into a weapon. Templeton had known someone who had known someone, allegedly, who had poison sacs surgically installed in his cheeks. The man could, if Templeton’s source could be believed, spit corrosive acid that would blind and paralyze another person, possibly worse, at a range of ten feet. Other examples included brain implants that secreted outlawed mind altering drugs and retractable sub dermal blades or projectiles. The blades or projectiles themselves weren’t the problem; those were ordinarily legal, but if the person in question had them attached surgically, they could never be effectively disarmed without invasive surgery. The police unions had done their best to ensure that modifications of that kind remained illegal.

              On his right, past another thinly veiled brothel, was a shop purporting to sell real, Turing Compliant AIs. This Templeton seriously doubted. The programmers ensconced in the shop no doubt created impressive simulacra, perhaps even halfway decent robotic servants, but not true sentience. Artificial Intelligence research had come a long way since electronic computers had eclipsed their analog antecedents nearly two hundred years before, but there was currently a system-wide ban on Turing Compliant machines. That law even Tranquility upheld. Ever since Mary Shelley’s
magnum opus
of 1823, literature had been filled with tales of man’s inventions coming back to haunt him. The genre had done its work well, and though it was still a hotly contested issue, the majority of people believed that the benefits of truly sentient AIs were not worth the risks involved. He walked on.

              Near the end of the street, Gringolet’s first mate found the shop he wanted right where it had been on his last visit. It was called
Ping’s Garage
. The storefront showed any number of electrical and mechanical parts in its windows. The bell over the door rang as Templeton entered, and the man behind the far desk looked up. Everywhere around him hung metal racking supporting lengths of wire, machine parts, tools, and other assorted mechanical parts. The store was close, dark, and smelled of grease and metal. The man was of medium build and wore a greasy blue Hawaiian shirt that was in the process of moving from a deep ultramarine to a lighter sky blue patterned with similarly faded flowers. A small pot-belly pushed against the counter in front of him. He had sharp Asiatic features and laugh lines were scored deep into his tanned skin. His short hair was graying, and he was clean shaven.

              For a moment he squinted at the new arrival, and then his face brightened. “Don!  How are you?” He came around the corner, holding his arms out for an embrace and waving Templeton towards it with his hands.

              “Fine, fine. Good to see you!” Templeton strode forward as he answered and embraced the man. They withdrew and looked at each other. “How’s your wife?”

              “Mm. The same. Hates me, loves our grandkids.” He smiled good-naturedly and shrugged.

              “I sure hope so,” he replied, “seems a shame to move to another planet for grandkids you hate.”

              “Oh, she loves them. Spoils them rotten, I say.” He moved back around the counter and Templeton approached from the other side. “Wait until they become teenagers and turn into little demons, I say. Hah!  We’ll see then.”

              “Oh, those are fun years, let me tell ya,” Templeton said, nodding gravely.

              “Yeah, how are your kids? Talk to them much?” the man inquired, putting away some open notebooks and pushing an unidentified engine piece off to the side.

              He smiled grimly. “Not too much, I’m afraid. I don’t think they really blame me for leaving Karen, but she’s still angry, and that makes it hard for them. She’s just so involved in their lives, and I’m not around much, you know, so I think it’s just easier for them to keep me at arm’s length. They’re good though, they’re real good. Roger’s working at the bank still. Up for a promotion, I think. And Martin is teaching fifth and sixth grade science. Yeah, they’re good.”

              “Good, good,” Ping offered. After the exchange ended, an awkward moment passed, and then Ping added, “You just in town for a few days, or…”

              “Yeah, just for a few days.” Templeton sighed, pushing through the moment and examining some of the hardware hanging on a rack beside him. “Listen, I came across something out past the green line and I stopped to pick it up.” He deliberately used the first person to avoid implicating any of his crew. “It’s a satellite, a damaged Yoo-lin mark VII. The coms suite has been stripped, but the rest of it is more or less intact, and I’m looking to unload it. Never found a better man for giving me a fair deal on salvage than you, Ping.”