Chapter 1
The ruddy orb of Mars covered one full quadrant of star-flecked sky and flooded the transparent dome with a ruby light. As beautiful as the sight was, Victoria Bronson had eyes only for the pyramid shaped collection of fuel tanks and piping silhouetted against the planet. After twenty years of planning and three years of construction, Starhopper was nearly ready. Soon tankers would pump a hundred thousand tons of liquid hydrogen into the craft’s capacious fuel tanks. Ten days later, assuming no glitches were found during the complex countdown, humanity’s first visitor to another star would be hurled outbound on its long journey into the deep black.
People had dreamed of travel to the stars for almost as long as they had known the tiny points of light were distant suns. While poets wrote paeans to starflight, engineers bemoaned the prodigious energies involved. Writers of escapist fiction dreamed up fantastic schemes for flitting between stellar systems, while physicists attacked the problem with no less imagination. Scientists speculated that wormholes, extra spatial dimensions, or warped space-time might prove to be chinks in the armor of the Einstein barrier. Unfortunately, the efforts of the scientists proved no more effective than those of the poets and writers. Despite everything, the stars remained uncomfortably beyond the outstretched grasp of humanity.
That is, until the year 2257. In that year, a young Martian physicist named Dardan Pierce suggested that the time had come to begin explorations of the nearer stars. In a paper published in the System Journal for Astrophysics, Pierce laid out the parameters for a successful interstellar crossing. Pierce’s starship was no fanciful faster-than-light speedster, but rather a craft requiring most of a human lifetime to make the journey. At the end of his paper, he exhorted his colleagues to build an instrumented probe as a demonstration project and to send that device to explore the worlds known to circle Alpha Centauri, Sol’s closest neighbor in the firmament.
The engines that would drive humanity’s first interstellar probe would be powered by antimatter; a technology first developed in the middle of the twenty first century. The earliest antimatter powered spacecraft had used micrograms of the volatile stuff to heat hydrogen, which was then expelled through conventional rocket nozzles. Modern craft consumed kilograms of antiprotons, converting hydrogen to relativistic plasma before channeling it rearward through a series of magnetic nozzles.
The Starhopper booster would accelerate the instrument package to one-tenth light speed. As each tank was drained of reaction mass, it would be jettisoned. At the end of the boost phase, the giant engines would grow cold and Starhopper would coast outbound toward Alpha Centauri, having left a trail of debris extending all the way back to Mars in its wake. Nearly half-a-century after launch, the instrument package would command the booster to turn end for end and begin decelerating. Again, fuel tanks and their supporting structure would be jettisoned as they were emptied. Even the engines would be discarded once they finished their task of slowing the instrument package to intrasystem velocity.
The Starhopper that entered the Centauri system would bear little resemblance to the one that left Mars. The instrument package represented only 0.1 percent of the original vehicle mass. Even so, at 110 tons, it was as large as a small spaceship. The instrument section contained maneuvering engines, antimatter, reaction mass, a power reactor, communications gear, and instruments able to wrest the secrets from the half dozen alien worlds known to orbit the Centauri suns.
Tory Bronson lay on her back on the carpeted deck of a Phobos surface dome and gazed up to where the interstellar booster maintained station on the larger of the two Martian moons. She thought of all the problems and crises that had been bested since the program’s conception. At times, Dard Pierce had often told her, it seemed as though the probe would never be built. Even now, the coalition of governments, universities, and corporations that supported Starhopper were grudging in their largesse.
Tory had been three years old when Pierce published his original paper. By the time he had gathered up enough backers to begin planning in earnest, Tory had entered the University of Olympus on Mars. It had been her intention to become a lawyer. She first heard about the project at one of Pierce’s lectures, which she attended because she needed the extra credit for a science class. That might have been her only exposure to Starhopper had not her career plans changed at the beginning of her sophomore year. The change came about when she was fitted with her first computer implant.
Like antimatter propulsion, the implants were an old technology that had been steadily improved over a century of use. The first implants had been simple aural devices, little more than fancy hearing aids that allowed the user to subvocalize a command, and then receive the computer’s response directly to the inner ear. In those days, implants had been status symbols for the rich, subminiature cellular phones for conducting business while pretending to do something else. Not until a method for directly stimulating the brain was developed did the modern computer implant become possible. The heart of an implant was its molecular computer and direct stimulus/response microcircuitry. Once implanted behind the left ear (the right ear for left-handed people), it sensed the complex electrical rhythm of the brain and translated conscious thoughts into electrical impulses that were then transmitted to a remote computer. The computer’s response was then translated back into brain waves, and the required patterns induced in the sensory centers of the brain.
There were limitations, of course. The wearer had to learn to think in such a manner that the implant interpreted that mental activity as a command, and not as the background noise that was normal thought. It was a little like learning to wiggle one’s ears. No one could precisely describe how to accomplish it, but once the skill was mastered, it was never forgotten. The implants did nothing to make the wearer more intelligent. What they did do was provide a phenomenal memory, to the point where one could “remember” things they had never known.
There were other practical limitations on implant use. Most people quickly reached a point where additional data merely confused them. The problem, long known to students, was known as “avalanche effect” because it felt as though one was being buried under an avalanche of data. The symptoms were that anyone who tried to delve too far into a subject ended up disoriented and muddled.
Curiously, a few people seemed immune to the problem. No matter how complex the task, these rare minds were able to keep the goal in view without becoming mired down in detail. Such clear-headedness was an inborn talent. It could not be taught or learned. Those so blessed found themselves in demand as managers, organizers of complex projects, and most especially, as high level computer synergists.
A synergist was not a computer programmer since the computers had long ago been given the ability to program themselves. Rather, synergists watched over the flow of the automated software generating programs, and nudged them in the proper direction. For like the vast majority of human beings, computers, too, tended to become bogged down in the details.
Upon learning that she was immune to avalanche effect, Tory Bronson switched from the College of Law to Synergistic Science. There she met Ben Tallen. He was another Synergism candidate. After dating for most of their sophomore year, they agreed to move in together. As time went on, they began to talk about landing high paying jobs with some Earth-based megacorp, and though the subject rarely arose, Tory, at least, had visions of marriage.
A month before graduation, Tory was accessing the list of companies who would be interviewing at the university placement center and discovered the Starhopper Project. She remembered the lecture she had attended years earlier and decided to check it out. What she was not prepared for was Ben’s reaction when she told him about it that night at dinner.
“What the hell are you interviewing with them for?” he asked around a crust of pizza.
“I’ve got a free period and it sounds interesting.”
“Don’t be a frump!”
“Who are you calling a frump, skinker?”
“You, if you interview with that damned black sky project. You know who is behind it, don’t you? Old Centauri Pierce over in Astrophysics! It is his hobby. He’s gotten a bit of funding from the local yokels and is now trying to scam Earth into lofting the rest.”
“So where’s the harm in listening?”
“The harm, my dear demented love, is the damage you may do to your chances of getting on with an EarthCorp. If they hear you’ve been talking to nuts, they might decide you aren’t the proper material for them.”
Ben’s crack about “local yokels” irritated her. Like most Martians, Tory had a deep inferiority complex when it came to anything concerning Earth. She was especially aware that the University of Olympus was considered by some to be a cow college. Ben, on the other hand, was a terrestrial exchange student who never tired of telling everyone he could have gone to New Yale or Harvard. When asked why he had not, he always said something to the effect that he had wanted to improve the curve at Olympus U. instead.
Tory still remembered the hot flash of anger that had surged through her at Ben’s crack. “Well I’m going to interview with them and if the high and mighty corporations from Earth don’t like it, tough!”
She would have forgotten all about it if Ben had not decided to taunt her one final time.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”
To her surprise, Tory found herself attracted to the idea of being part of humanity’s first attempt to reach the stars. The more she thought about it, the more attracted she became. Her interest, coupled with Ben’s clumsy attempts to dissuade her, drove her to accept the offer — at less than half the going pay scale for newly minted synergists. She told Ben of her decision a week before graduation. The resulting argument led to their breakup.
Two weeks later, they sat together in the lounge of Olympus spaceport, waiting for the ferry that would take Ben up to the interplanetary liner docked at Deimos. They made small talk and promised to write every week though both knew the promises were empty. Tory remembered how awkward it had been to kiss Ben goodbye and the feeling of relief as his lanky form disappeared into the embarkation tube.
That had been three years ago. Since then, Tory had held a variety of jobs with the interstellar project. Her latest made her responsible for the software that would fly the interstellar probe on its decades-long journey. Since software was at the heart of any modern system, her position placed her in de facto command of construction on Phobos. There were others more senior, but no one with a clearer picture of the state of the project at any given moment.
She was startled out of her contemplative mood by a silent voice that suddenly emanated from her computer implant.
“Are you awake up there?”
The voice belonged to Vance Newburgh. Vance, like Tory, was a synergist hired directly out of college. His speech was marked by a strong Australasian accent, a hint of which made it through the implant.
“I’m awake,” she thought. “What’s up?”
Her custom of coming up to the surface once each week to view Starhopper’s progress was well known. It was, she told the curious, her way of keeping one foot planted firmly in reality. An occupational hazard for those who dealt with direct computer-to-mind interfaces was that they sometimes became unsure of what comprised reality. More than one had fallen to his death because he had forgotten that there is nothing theoretical about the concept of gravity.
“Message from the university. Professor Pierce requests your presence at an emergency meeting of the governing board.”
“When?”
“Tonight. Zero eight hundred hours, Conference Room 100, Lowell Hall.”
“I’ll attend via screen.”
“Negative. The message says, ‘in person.’”
“But that’s silly. Doesn’t he know how much work we’ve got to do before next month’s launch?”
“I presume he’s been reading our progress reports.”
“Then he should know that software certification is a week behind schedule and still slipping.”
“No argument there, partner.”
Tory let her anger cool a moment. “Does he say what this meeting is about?”
“No. Shall I tell him you can’t make it?”
Tory shook her head. The habit of a lifetime was hard to break though Vance was a kilometer distant and the conversation was taking place inside her skull. “Negative. You know how fragile the coalition is. How long before the afternoon shuttle leaves for Olympus?”
“Twenty seven minutes.”
“Get me a seat. Tell them to hold until I get there.”
* * *
The ground steward who helped passengers aboard the Phobos-to-Olympus shuttle let his gaze linger on Tory Bronson as she made her way up the embarkation tube. He saw an attractive woman of some 25 standard years. Like many Martians she was tall and lithe, her alabaster skin unmarked by the sun. Her green eyes possessed a barely discernable slant and her hair was so black that it shown with a blue luster. She wore it in a hair net to keep it out of her face in Phobos’ minuscule gravity field. He noted her pert nose set above a wide mouth, the lines of which fell most naturally into a smile. She was not smiling now. She had that absentminded look common to people deep in thought or those actively accessing a computer implant.
Tory swarmed through the embarkation tube by pulling herself hand over hand, ignoring the small moon’s two-tenths-percent of a standard gee. She found an empty seat near a port and strapped down. Tory failed to notice the stares of the other passengers as the steward went immediately into his pre-launch briefing. She stared at her own dull reflection in the viewport and considered what could possibly have triggered an emergency meeting of the project governing board. Whatever had happened, one thing was certain. It could not be good news.
Almost as complex as the design of Starhopper were the politics that went to sustain it. The University of Olympus managed the project for a consortium of institutions of higher learning. Funding was provided by several private foundations and the governments of Mars, Lagrange 3 and 4, and several asteroid colonies. Several Earth megacorps had contributed to the project in the hope of being chosen to provide materials and services. Some had, some had not.
It was an arrangement guaranteed to spark arguments. The prime function of the governing board was to arbitrate disputes and to apportion costs equitably. They also delved too much into decisions that, in Tory’s opinion, at least, should have been left to the engineers.
Tory hoped she could divine the reason for the unexpected summons by reviewing the minutes of the last several board meetings. She had hurriedly run through them all the way to the spaceport. Her haste was necessitated by the fact that her implant would not work once the ferry departed Phobos. The broadband communications link would lose synchronization once the ferry passed beyond effective transmitter range. Tory had gone through loss-of-sync once in training. It was an experience she did not care to repeat.
She had often tried to describe what it was like to wear an implant to people who lacked the experience. It was like trying to explain sex to a six-year-old. Besides an eidetic memory, implants gave their users an extra set of eyes with which to see. When Tory gazed at the Starhopper booster, she saw more than its physical form. In her mind, she could visualize the vehicle’s complex plumbing as it snaked through the first stage booster. She could visualize the temperature variations that would play across the vehicle during launch. To her Starhopper was less a machine than a living creature straining to enter its natural environment, the cold black of interstellar space.
Tory was none the wiser when she finished her review of the meeting minutes. Satisfied that there was nothing she herself had done (or failed to do) to trigger a crisis, she willed her implant into silence, leaned back, and resolved to enjoy the flight.
The shuttle lifted away from Phobosport with a burst of attitude control jets. Once clear of Phobos’s inner traffic zone, the pilot turned the ship until its nose pointed back along the orbit it shared with the moon. Seconds later, the engines came alight and Tory felt a gentle hand pressing against her. When the initial burst of retrofire was finished, the pilot turned the ship to give his passengers a panoramic view of Mars.
Despite being only half Earth’s diameter, the red planet was huge. Phobos had once been a free flying asteroid. Following its capture by Mars — an event the astronomers still argued about — the small moon had stabilized in an orbit 6000 kilometers above the rust colored sands.
It had been two centuries since the first humans had set foot on Mars and died there, a century-and-a-half since the establishment of the first Martian colony. Humankind still had a considerable way to go before the planet would begin to grow crowded. For despite its diminutive size, Mars’s lack of an ocean gave it a land area nearly as great as Earth’s. The red planet supported 250 million souls, compared to the 10 billion who inhabited Earth.
Twenty minutes after leaving Phobos, Tory noticed a circular shadow detach itself from the sunrise terminator and strike out across the Tharsis highlands. She frowned. Phobos was close enough to cast a shadow on Mars, but in the wrong position. Deimos, on the other hand, was too small and distant to have any hope of shading the Martian landscape.
Having eliminated the only two possibilities, Tory felt the thrill that comes from a suddenly recognized mystery. She watched the shadow for several seconds before a spark of reflected sunlight caught her attention. Understanding burst upon her like the static discharges that illuminate the Martian sky during summer dust storms. The reflection had come from sunlight bouncing off a light sail in a lower orbit than the ferry. It had been the sail’s shadow that she had been watching cross the Martian desert.
Light sails used the pressure of reflected sunlight to propel their nonperishable cargoes across the Solar System. They were slow, but less expensive than even a ship in a Hohmann transfer orbit. This sail was probably towing a load of ice from Saturn’s rings and using Mars’s gravity to shape its approach to the inner moon. The Phobos distillery was the main reason they were building Starhopper there. The hydrogen cracking facility was to be the source of the interstellar probe’s reaction mass.
As the shuttle dropped, the light sail grew larger beyond the viewport. The sail, Tory knew, was a large circular sheet of metalized plastic only a few angstroms thick. It and its brethren were the largest constructs every built by man, and the flimsiest. The largest sail ever constructed measured a full 100 kilometers across, yet massed only a few hundred tons.
Tory searched for the cargo pod, but could not see it. Within a few minutes, the giant apparition floated across her field of view and was gone. She noted with approval that the shuttle’s pilot was giving the sail a wide berth. While the monomolecular “sail cloth” was as light as the scientists could make it, it could do serious damage to even a warship if encountered at velocity differentials of several kilometers per second.
The shuttle dropped lower. Minutes later their destination came into view over the sharply defined horizon line. Olympus Mons was the largest volcano in the Solar System; so large that it could be seen as a speck in Earth-based telescopes. It was one of the dots that Percival Lowell’s subconscious had strung together to produce the most famous optical illusion in the history of science, the famous canals of Mars.
Most Earth dwellers expressed surprise when they learned that the capital of Mars was located in the caldera of a volcano. Olympus had been a spectacular volcano in its day. Luckily, its day was several billion years in the past. The modern Olympus Mons spewed forth nothing more lethal than water vapor saturated with carbon dioxide. These milder eruptions were the reason the Olympus colony had been founded in the first place. For nothing is more precious on dry Mars than water. Olympus Mons was a primary source of water on the planet.
The ferry dropped precipitously toward the spaceport tail first, oblivious to the tug of the rarified atmosphere against its non-aerodynamic shape. A thousand meters above the spaceport, the ferry’s engines came alive. Seconds later, it grounded on a tail of plasma fire without a bump.