CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The three-dimensional image being projected onto the stage in front of the audience looked solid enough to touch. It was an image of a torus, about six feet in diameter and somewhat less than a foot thick. Its inner side, facing the center, seemed to be made from black-slatted Venetian blinds while the outer side was a uniform, featureless aluminum gray. Six equi-spaced spokes, each about two inches thick, converged from the torus into the thirteen-inch-diameter sphere at the center.
The spokes passed through a second, inner ring of mirror-clear reflecting plates surrounding the sphere at a radius of a foot and a half. This second ring was in the form of a hollow truncated cone with its surface intersecting the plane of the spokes at an angle of forty-five degrees. A confusion of metal latticework and assorted engineering structures occupied most of the space between the inner ring and the central sphere.
A long tubular construction appeared to pass right through the sphere perpendicular to the torus, projecting a short distance at the top and over four feet at the bottom to give the whole structure a vague resemblance to a wheel connected to its axle with the other wheel missing. Two more spheres, each the same size as the central one were located at the middle and near the lower end of the axle. Each of these spheres carried a six-inch-diameter parabolic dish mounted on a pylon of tubes and lattices, both aligned in the same direction, which was to the left as viewed from the auditorium. The middle one of the three spheres was connected also to a two-feet-square sheet, which looked like a black-on-gray waffle iron and projected to the right to extend downward like an enormous flag.
Completing the picture, a second object floated detached about two feet above the torus, well beyond the shorter projecting end of the axle. It was a disk-shaped mirror nearly as large as the torus, hanging in the air above with its plane inclined to the torus’s central axis.
Were it not for the hole through its center, the mirror might have suggested the opened lid of a can that had somehow become detached.
Captain Malloy, U.S. Air Force, stood to one side while the image rotated slowly to allow everybody to study it from all angles, and then moved back towards the front of the stage to resume his lecture.
“Here is a model of it all to sum up the things we’ve been talking about,” he said. He was a broad, square-built man with tangled eyebrows that met in the middle and a solid bulldog jaw. He stood firmly, his feet slightly apart, and addressed his listeners in a loud, clipped military monotone.
“This is where we’ll be going just under three months from now—Microplanet Janus, formerly intended to be the Icarus C colony and solar station. Let’s recap again on some of the major details. Outside diameter of Rim? Davies.”
“Eight thousand feet,” a voice from the back responded promptly.
“In miles?”
“One point five-one-five.”
“Correct. Inside diameter of Rim? McClusky.”
“Six thousand, one hundred feet. Ah . . . one point one-five miles.”
“Correct.” Malloy nodded curtly. “Rim rotational speed? Seeton,”
“Zero point eight-two revs per minute,” Chris called out from where he was sitting beside Dyer. “Or if you like, just under a tenth of a radian per second.”
A flicker of surprise rippled across Malloy’s face and changed abruptly to a stony, narrow-eyed stare. He looked at Chris for a few seconds and then replied in a grating voice. “Cor-rect.”
On Dyer’s other side Kim put her hand to her mouth and caught her breath sharply as she fought to suppress a laugh. He turned his head and grinned. She still managed to look sexy, even in the drill fatigues that they had all taken to wearing as standard since coming to Fort Vokes six weeks earlier. On the stage, Captain Malloy pointed at the mirror floating above the torus and continued with his summing-up.
“The main solar reflector. Sunlight is deflected downward onto the secondary reflectors . . .” he indicated the inner ring, made up of the conical strip of reflecting panels inclined at forty-five degrees to the main axis “. . . and from there outward to the inner face—the roof—of the Rim. The panels of the secondary reflector can be tilted independently to illuminate portions of the Rim selectively, thus affording variable day-night circles as required. The roof comprises the tertiary reflecting grid, variable thickness scatter-layer and Inner Shield. Any questions?”
There were no questions. An ISA engineer had already explained the function of the tertiary reflectors. The roof was composed of countless reflecting slats of right-angle cross section assembled in a complex interlocking fashion to beam sunlight down into the torus not directly but via millions of parallel dog-leg paths, through the cosmic-ray absorption shield. The arrangement took advantage of the fact that radiation of optical wavelengths was reflected by mirrors while the much shorter cosmic-ray wavelengths went straight on through into the material of the shield. On emerging from the underside of the shield, the light passed through a layer of crystal laminates which produced a scattering effect comparable to that of Earth’s atmosphere but which could be thinned down where required to produce an acceptably localized solar image. Looking up, the inhabitants of Janus would see a passable representation of the Sun and a real blue sky.
Malloy gestured toward the cylindrical protrusion at the top of the upper sphere and went on, “Docking ports for conventional ships are located here at the north end of the Hub. Below it, the Hub. Question: Hub diameter? Wilson, D.”
“Fifteen hundred feet.”
“Correct. Six spokes connect the Hub to the Rim, passing through the secondary reflectors on the way. The spokes are each two hundred feet in diameter and they are equally spaced at sixty degrees, intersecting the Rim at intervals of four thousand and eighty-four feet at ground level, which is zero point seven-seven of a mile.
“Below the Hub is the Spin Decoupler system which connects the Hub to the Main Spindle. The Main Spindle does not rotate. Located on the Main Spindle in order from the Hub are the Fabrication Facility and the Extraction Facility. The Fabrication Facility and the Extraction Facility are each equipped with independent solar receivers and generate their power direct from the Sun, Explain briefly the function of the Fabrication Facility. Stokes.”
Ron responded from the seat on the far side of Chris.
“Totally automated manufacture of electrical, electronic, mechanical and other devices, and also of structural preassembled modules. A general assembly plant.”
“Anything else?” Malloy asked.
“Er . . . It also contains the power-distribution system for the whole station and houses the standby fusion reactor.”
“That’s correct. Yon might have mentioned also that it controls dissipation of the station’s excess energy as heat via the Radiator Assembly.” Malloy pointed at the waffle iron. “What is the function of the Extraction Facility? Bowers.”
“Processing of metals from lunar materials for supply to the Fabrication Facility, primarily aluminum, titanium and iron,” an Army lieutenant replied from the row in front of Dyer. “Also processing for other substances, including hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine and sulfur. Also contains recycling plant for water, carbon dioxide, and domestic, organic and manufacturing wastes.”
“Very good,” Malloy conceded with a trace of reluctance. He turned to face the image again and indicated the bottom extremity of the spindle, protruding below the Extraction Facility.
“Docking ports for the catcher ships that bring raw material in from lunar orbit are located here. By the convention described earlier, this is the southernmost point of the Janus structure. The Southern Docking Facility will from now on be referred to in its abbreviated form as Southport.” Malloy raised his arm to point in turn at the two spheres enveloping the Spindle between Southport and the Hub.
“The Extraction Facility will be referred to as Pittsburgh and the Manufacturing Facility as Detroit. Is that clear? Are there any questions?”
“Does that mean that the docking ports at the other end will be called Northport?” someone inquired.
“Correct. Anything else?” There was nothing else. The unerring logic of the military mind left nothing to guesswork. “Good.” Malloy signaled to the projectionist with a nod of his head and the image began to rotate again, the Spindle lifting up and away from the audience to bring the Rim round to face them as a full circle.
“The internal details of Pittsburgh and Detroit will be described tomorrow,” Malloy said. “This morning we will take a preliminary look inside the Rim.” A mutter of interest rippled through the auditorium and seats creaked here and there as bodies shifted their weight into new postures. This was something that was not a recap of material covered earlier.
“At this moment you are looking at the outer surface of the lower and upper shields,” Malloy informed them. “The upper shield, which forms the roof of the Rim, was described earlier. The lower shield forms the tread and the lower part of the walls of the tire. It consists simply of a layer of ordinary powdered moonrock four feet thick constrained by an aluminum outer shell—the surface of the tread. It we remove the shield, we expose the inner shell. This is the bottom surface of the Rim proper.”
The image hardly changed. The only difference that Dyer could see was the sudden appearance of a wavy black line running completely around the torus. At some places the line followed approximately the curve of where ground level would be inside; at others it wandered upward and down again, at one or two points managing to extend halfway around toward the roof. From what Malloy had said, the lower shield had been stripped away from the image. Therefore the wavy line was the boundary along which the upper and lower shields met.
Then the surface of the torus facing the audience suddenly disappeared to allow them to see inside. A chorus of murmuring broke out on all sides of the room.
“It’s incredible!” Kim said in Dyer’s ear. “I thought it would be like the inside of an ISA ship only bigger. That’s a real, natural planet!”
Dyer nodded.
“It was designed as a place for people to live in,” he said. “People formed some very fixed ideas about the kinds of places they like living in a long time ago.”
“Ground” was the strip running all the way around and facing upward toward the Hub—the inside surface of the tire’s tread. The edges of the strip curled upward to form two raised walls running all the way around and containing the central plain like an enormous circular U-shaped valley. The tops of the valley walls were not geometrically smooth circles, but rose and fell irregularly like the crestline of a natural mountain ridge. Dyer could see that the crests marked the line where the upper and lower shields met on the outside, thus explaining the waviness of the line that he had noted earlier. The effect to somebody standing on the valley floor would be one of an almost natural valley landscape, at least if he looked sideways across the valley and not along the inside of the Rim. In the latter case he would see himself as being at the low point of a long valley that curved away and upward in both directions, to disappear eventually in the somewhat disconcerting fashion of vanishing behind the sky.
Apart from its unorthodox geometry, the landscape was, as Kim had said, natural to an astonishing degree. There were neatly proportioned towns sporting pastel colors among abundant greenery, wooded hills, open areas of farmland, several lakes of odd shapes and sizes and even a few streams tumbling down from the steep rocky slopes that formed the high points of the valley walls. The total effect was colorful and pleasant.
“This is the world we’ll be living in,” Malloy resumed after the initial surge of voices had died away. “During the rest of the time that we’re here we’ll be studying the details until every one of you will be able to walk from any point on Janus to any other blindfolded. So let’s begin with a broad overview of the geography.” He paused for a second and took in the full circle of Janus with a sweep of his arm.
“At this moment you are looking down onto Northport, in other words southward along the line of the Main Spindle. By the normal convention the clockwise direction around the Rim is east and anticlockwise is west. Toward the Hub is up and away from the Hub is down. Any questions?
“Good. The Rim is divided into six sectors. Each sector is zero point seven-seven of a mile long, measured at ground level. The sector boundaries are located midway between the points where adjacent spokes intersect with ground level. Thus each of the six sectors has one of the six spokes at its center.
“Question. What constitutes the lower shield? Drayfer.”
“Four feet of powdered moonrock,” a black woman in Navy uniform answered from the front row.
“Anything else?”
“No . . . I don’t think so.”
“The Rim is rotating at zero point eight-two revolutions per minute. What’s to stop the moonrock flying off into space at Rim-speed, which is two fifty-four miles per hour?”
“Oh, I remember. There’s also an outer aluminum retaining shell.”
“Correct. The first sector at the top here is referred to as Downtown.” Malloy indicated what appeared to be a miniature city, with closely packed terraces and towering buildings surrounding the base of one of the spokes almost all the way up to the roof, nearly a thousand feet above ground level. “As you would expect, Downtown is the center of business, commerce and general entertainment. Moving eastward into the next sector, we come to the first of two residential areas modeled on contemporary suburban landscape gardening and architecture. This sector is called Paris. Moving on from Paris we come to Sunnyside, the agricultural area of Janus. The ecology will be balanced to permit high-intensity yields per acre and to afford an efficient cycle in which meat and dairy animals, vegetable and cereal crops and fish-foods all support each other mutually. In other words you’ll find you’ll be eating a fairly familiar diet, most of it fresh from the farm. Forget any fears you may have about colored pills for dinner and concentrated garbage from toothpaste tubes. Are there any questions so far?”
“One,” Chris called out. “What are you going to grow all this stuff in? You’re not going to ship millions of tons of soil up all the way from Earth, surely?”
“Correct,” Malloy replied. “There are two answers. Below ground level there will be high-yield hydroponic factories in certain areas. In the high-yield hydroponic factories the plants will be supported by Styrofoam sheets over troughs carrying liquid nutrients and force-grown by controlled irradiation. At ground level conventional soil growth will be used. It’s amazing how rich a growth moondust will support when you add water, fertilizer and bacteria to it. Anything else?”
“No. That’s fine, thanks,” Chris acknowledged.
Malloy returned his attention to the image of Janus, this time pointing to the portion of the Rim diametrically opposite Downtown.
“Vine Country,” he informed them. “A mixture of low-density residential dwellings and a lot of trees. This is the main fruit-growing area of Janus. Next, east of Vine County and moving back up toward Downtown, the second residential sector, which is very similar at first sight to Paris. This one is called Berlin.
“And finally to complete the circle, between Berlin and Downtown we have Rocky Valley. As you can see the valley walls rise to their highest points in this sector and take on a more broken and rugged appearance than elsewhere. The valley floor here is also hilly and broken, and there are several lakes, streams and uncultivated open and wooded areas. Rocky Valley is intended for rest, relaxation, open-air sports and for generally having somewhere to get away from it all. Questions?
“Good. There are two main forms of transportation for getting from one part of the Rim to another. First, you can take an elevator up the nearest spoke and change at the Hub. Second, a subway system similar to the autocab network runs all the way around the Rim below ground level and a branch runs under every building on Janus. So to get to work you won’t even have to go out the front door to catch a cab; all you’ll have to do is go downstairs. The autocab net is designed to handle freight as well as people and every building connects internally to its branch line via elevator. So if you decide to move house for example, you can shift your furniture from home to home by push-button command without even having to carry it out the door. An auxiliary distribution network using pneumatic tubes also serves all parts of Janus including every home. You can remote-order an item from the supermarket and have it delivered in minutes, not to your door but to your kitchen. Whatever’s in the cards to happen here on Earth tomorrow is the rule today on Janus. Any questions?”
Malloy waited for a few moments and surveyed the auditorium from side to side.
“No? Very good. Thank you for your attention. We’ll break now for lunch. Persons detailed for weapons training should report to the armory promptly at thirteen hundred hours. For everybody else this afternoon’s schedule will be as posted. We’ll reconvene here again at nineteen hundred hours tonight for an introduction to the construction of the secondary reflector ring and the inside of the Hub. That’s all.”
The sun was hot as they spilled out of C Block and broke up into loose groups that proceeded along the grass-flanked path that led toward the canteen. On one side of the path a group of Marine officers was receiving instruction in the use of the Mark IX Tactical Battle Computer while farther away on the other side the latest batch of new arrivals was unloading equipment from the rear doors of a medium-range Army VTOL transporter. The sounds of crashing feet and shouted commands came distantly from the parade ground somewhere out of sight.
“Well, I think it looks bloody good.” Chris fell into step by Dyer’s side, closely followed by Ron.
“What, Janus?” Dyer answered. “You’re satisfied with it, eh?”
“It’s a lot better than I expected, and that’s an understatement. You know, I’ve been thinking, Chief . . . Nature’s done it all the wrong way round.”
“Done what the wrong way round?”
“Planets,” Chris replied. “Nature builds planets all wrong. They ought to be the way Janus is.”
“How d’you mean—inside-out?”
“Right. It’s a much better way to build a planet when you think about it. I mean, take Earth for instance. A ball of rock eight thousand miles across, which is a hell of a lot of mass, and yet what does all that mass do for you . . . as far as anything useful goes, anyway?”
“You tell me,” Dyer invited.
Chris threw his empty hands up in front of his face. “It makes gravity,” he said simply. “And all the gravity is good for is keeping air and people down. But what a bloody inefficient way to do it! Janus does the same thing with much less mass because it’s enclosed and it spins . . . Much better way of going about it.”
“That’s a neat way of thinking about it,” Ron agreed. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“Another thing too,” Chris told them. “All that mass is a problem when you want to get away from it and go somewhere else. But Janus’s gravity is all inside; there isn’t any at all outside that’s worth talking about. So traveling about between Januses is easy. Natural planets are crazy. Why spend all that energy getting yourself up out of one gravity pit and then go straight down another one? It’s like everybody living at the bottom of coal mines. Doesn’t make sense.”
They caught up with Kim, who was talking to Dr. Fred Hayes, one of the specialists selected by Dyer for the computer team. Hayes was from Bell Labs and an expert on symbolic logic and the analysis of complex switching matrixes. He was a tall, lean graying individual in his late forties and he walked with a loose easygoing stride that contrasted sharply with Kim’s characteristic brisk and purposeful pace.
“How’s it going, Fred?” Dyer called, raising his voice to attract Hayes’s attention, “Has the captain convinced you that what I’ve got you into might not turn out to be so bad after all?”
Hayes half-turned and cast a wry grin back over his shoulder. “Well, it could have been worse, I suppose,” he conceded. “Knowing you, I was prepared for anything.” They had known each other casually for the seven years that had elapsed since Dyer’s time at M.I.T. Hayes had been with the University of Maryland then, and had collaborated with Dyer on mapping out the basic logic of the HESPER prototypes.
“So when do we hear all about these funny machines you’ve been working on, Fred?” Ron asked, “I’m still waiting to find out what we’re expected to fight those computers with. Aren’t you even gonna give us any clues?”
“Oh, you won’t have long to wait,” Fred answered. “In fact there’ll be a demonstration of them first thing tomorrow. That’s right, isn’t it Ray—first thing tomorrow?”
“Correct,” Dyer said, mimicking Malloy’s tone. He stretched out an arm and clapped Ron playfully on the shoulder. “And in the meantime, my friend, you have weapons training to look forward to. Did you ever fire an M25?”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard,” Ron grumbled, ignoring the question. “What the hell use do they expect guns to be against computers? Is a computer supposed to grow arms and legs or something? And I sure hope they’re right when they say that there won’t be any undue hazard from low-velocity ammunition on Janus. I’d sure hate to be living inside a balloon that becomes perforated.”
According to the figures that had been given, there was no risk of Janus decompressing explosively in the event its skin was punctured by small holes. All that would happen would be slow leakage; even with a hole three feet across, it would take almost twenty hours for half the microplanet’s air to escape. As far as the use of firearms went, the experts said, the risk of a bullet penetrating the shields was low, and, even if a few did, the consequences would be far from serious. So what were firearms needed for? Nobody really knew. Military people were just loath to go anywhere without them. In view of the uncertainty surrounding the whole experiment, a regulation had been decreed which required every person destined for Janus to undergo appropriate training.
“Well, it’s something different, isn’t it,” Chris remarked cheerfully. “And you never know, you might need it. I suppose there’s always the chance that something could crop up that Fred’s gadgets aren’t designed to handle. Anyhow, they’ve got enough brains in on this. I reckon they ought to know what they’re doing.”
Ron reflected on the statement for a moment.
“That’s what you Limeys said about the Titanic,” he replied.
Late that afternoon Chris was lying prone with the stubby black cylinder of the sighter resting loosely on top of the low parapet of sandbags in front of him. He pushed a wisp of hair away from his eyes and up under the rim of his steel helmet, and returned his gaze to the red flag that marked the target, over four thousand feet away at the end of the shallow valley that stretched out from the foot of the slope below him. The flag was just a pinpoint dancing in the haze of black smoke that still hung in the air from earlier bursts.
“Okay. One to go. Let’s make it good.” The voice of Sergeant Mat Solinsky came from behind him and to his left. Chris raised the sighter to bring its stock comfortably against his shoulder and lowered the side of his face against the cool metal. As he moved his head behind the binocular eyepiece, the distant end of the valley jumped forward to resolve itself into a detailed close-up that revealed every pebble and blade of grass. He searched until the flag moved into the field of view, gently centered the cross hairs on the oil drum that formed its base, brought it into sharp focus and locked the range into the fire-control microprocessor.
“Just like the last one,” Solinsky told him. “Nice and steady, squeeze slowly, and maintain aim until after impact. Ready . . . Fire!”
The Gremlin streaked out of an eighteen-inch-long lightweight tube positioned over a hundred feet away farther down the slope. The tiny missile flamed away in a wide curve that brought it into alignment with the target, traced a slight zigzag as it overcorrected and then compensated, and a few seconds later struck a couple of feet off target to vaporize the oil drum in a flash that would have consumed a medium-sized house.
“That’s a good ’un,” Solinsky shouted. Ron murmured approval from where he was standing a few paces back with the rest of the squad. “Let’s have a look at it,” Solinsky said as Chris climbed to his feet. He plugged a lead from his hand-held field computer into the sighter that Chris was still holding and activated the screen. Chris, Ron and the rest of the squad crowded around to watch the slow-motion replay of the view recorded through the sighter’s eyepiece camera.
“You weren’t holding absolutely steady,” Solinsky commented. “There’s a slight drift toward the left . . . look, you can see it there. With a static target it wasn’t enough to matter much, but if you’d been tracking you might have blown it there. Anyhow, not bad.”
The range had gone quiet. At the far end of the valley the remote-controlled midget tractors were positioning more targets. On the slopes around them other figures were rising and forming into groups while fresh six-man squads stood by with their attendant instructors, waiting their turn to move into the firing pits.
“Okay, guys,” Solinsky said. “That was good. I guess we’re done. Let’s move out.” They collected the gear lying on the sand dunes around them and began making their way up the slope toward the track that led to the fort. Solinsky moved up to walk beside Chris and Ron.
“How does this compare with that World War II stuff on the computers that you were telling me about? Bit more lifelike, huh?”
“I can see why tanks went out of fashion,” Chris said.
Solinsky laughed. “One four-man fireteam could wipe out a whole brigade of those things before they even knew where the stuff was coming from,” he said. “And with maybe fifty tubes scattered around the place, it wouldn’t help ’em much if they did know. They’d still have to find the guys.”
“What’s the point of this anyhow?” Ron asked. “I can’t see them issuing Gremlins on Janus. Why learn about ’em?”
Solinsky shrugged. “Rules and regulations. If they’re included in the course that’s stipulated in the orders, then that’s what we teach. We just do what it says.”
“Sounds as if you might be out of a job when we get there,” Chris commented.
“Aw, I won’t be doing any of this stuff there,” Solinsky answered. “I’m being assigned to outside maintenance . . . buzzing around in those little four-man bugs. Sounds like fun, huh?”
“I wouldn’t say no to a ride in one of them sometime,” Ron said. “Any chance of you fixing it?”
Solinsky brought his hand up from his belt to rub his chin. “Well now, let’s see . . . I’d have to wait until I know what the score is there. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll be located in Section 17D of the Hub—Maintenance & Spares Unit. Why don’t you two give me a call when we get there. I’ll let you know for sure then.”
“We might just take you up on that,” Ron warned him.
“Do that,” Solinsky urged. “We’ve taught you how to fire a Gremlin. Who knows, maybe we can show you how to pilot a spaceship too.”