Jupiter (6 page)

'You must be somebody special,' Karlstad said, standing out in the corridor. 'Dr Wo wants to see you.'

'Dr Wo?' Grant asked.

'As in woe unto thee, rash mortal,' said Karlstad. 'He's the director of the station. El supremo.'

'He wants to see me? Why?'

Karlstad brushed a hand through his silver hair. 'Beats me. He doesn't take me into his confidences very often. But when he rings the bell, you'd better salivate.'

Grant stepped out into the corridor and closed his door behind him. 'Salivate?'

'Pavlov's dogs,' said Karlstad, starting down the hallway. 'Conditioned reflex and all that.'

'Oh, I remember… in biology class, back in high school.'

'I'm a biophysicist, you know.'

'Really? What're you doing here? Aren't all the biology people at the Galilean moons?'

Karlstad waved hello to a couple of women coming toward them before he replied, 'All the work on the moons is headquartered here. People can't stay out there for more than a few weeks at a time: radiation buildup, you know.' 'We're shielded here?' Grant asked.

'Hell, yes. Superconducting magnets, just like the storm cellars aboard spacecraft, only bigger. And we're orbiting close enough to Jupiter so that we're inside the van Allen belts, below the heaviest radiation fields.'

'That's good.'

'Understatement of the year!'

They walked along the corridor for what seemed like kilometers. Karlstad appeared almost to glide along, pale and slim and seemingly just about weightless. Like a ghost, Grant thought. A pallid, insubstantial phantom. Most of the doors they passed were closed, although they went through an open area that was obviously a galley or cafeteria. People were lining up and getting trays, piling food on them, moving to tables and sitting down. Hearty aromas of hot food and spices wafted through the area, making Grant truly salivate. 'Is it lunchtime?' Grant asked.

'Dinner,' Karlstad answered. 'Your clock is off by seven or eight hours.'

Grant hadn't realized that the old
Roberts
ran on a different clock. He had assumed that all space vehicles kept the same time.

They passed through more open areas, workshops and exercise gyms, then a long span with doors spaced close together. The carpeting here seemed newer, thicker, even though it was the same bland gray as elsewhere. 'Executive territory,' Karlstad murmured. Each door bore a nameplate.

At last they stopped at a door that said:

'Here you are,' said Karlstad.

'You're not going in with me?' Grant asked.

Karlstad raised his hands in mock horror. 'He wants to see you, not me. I'm just the delivery boy. Besides,' he hesitated a heartbeat,'the less I see of the Old Man, the better.'

Karlstad walked away, leaving Grant standing alone before the closed door of the director's office. Feeling a little nervous, Grant balled his fist to knock on the door, then hesitated.

There's nothing to be afraid of, he told himself. You haven't done anything wrong. Besides, this is a chance to talk to the top man; you can tell him you're an astrophysicist and bringing you here was a mistake, maybe get him to send you back to Earth or at least to the Moon.

Summoning up his courage, he tapped lightly on the door.

No response.

He glanced up and down the corridor. No one in sight. Karlstad had melted away. It was as if no one wanted to be anywhere near here.

Taking a deep breath, Grant rapped on the door again, harder.

Again no response. He wondered what to do. Then a muffled voice from inside the office said, 'Enter.'

Grant slid the door open and stepped in. The room was overly warm, sticky with humidity, like a hothouse. Grant felt perspiration break out on his upper lip, yet the director wore a high-collared tunic buttoned all the way up to the throat as he sat behind his desk.

Director Wo's office was austere, rather than imposing. The room was about the same size as his own quarters, Grant guessed, furnished with a large curved desk of gleaming metal, its surface completely clear except for a small computer screen and an incongruous vase of delicate red and white chrysanthemums. There was a chair of tubular stainless steel padded with fawn-colored cushions in front of the desk, and a small oval conference table with four stiff plastic chairs in the far corner. The wallscreen behind the desk showed a stark desert: empty sand stretching to the horizon beneath a blazing sun. It made Grant feel even more uncomfortably hot. The other walls were utterly bare: the only decoration in the room was that paradoxical vase of flowers on the director's desk.

They can't be real, Grant thought. Nobody would waste the time and resources to grow flowers on this station. Yet they looked real enough. And the vase was a graceful Oriental work of art, like something from a museum.

Without looking up from his desktop screen, Dr Wo gestured brusquely to the padded chair in front of his desk. Grant obediently sat in it, thinking that the director was playing an old power-trip game: pretending to be so busy that he can't even say hello. Grant had run into this type before, at school and among the bureaucrats of the New Morality.

All right, he thought. As soon as he does look up I'll tell him that I'm an astrophysicist and I should be at Farside. Enough of this spying and secrecy agreements.

Feeling sweat dampening his scalp, Grant studied Dr Wo's face as he sat waiting for the director to take notice of him. It was a fleshy, broad-cheeked face, solid and heavy-featured, with small coal-black eyes set deeply beneath brows so slight that they were practically non-existent. Skin the color of old parchment. The man had a small moustache, little more than wisps of hair on his upper lip. His hair was cropped so close to his scalp that it was difficult to tell its true color: light gray, Grant thought. His hairline was receding noticeably. His head looked big, blocky, too heavy even for the powerful shoulders that strained the fabric of his tunic.

At last Director Wo looked up from the screen and fixed his eyes on Grant. They glowered like the embers of a smoldering fire.

'I heard you knock the first time,' he said. His voice was hoarse, strained, as if he were suffering from a throat infection.

Grant blinked with surprise. 'When no one answered I—thought—'

'You are an impatient man,' Wo accused. 'That is not good for someone who wants to become a scientist.'

'I… I didn't think you'd heard me,' Grant stammered.

'You are also too curious for your own good.' Wo jabbed a finger at the desktop screen, like a prosecuting attorney making a point. 'The extension to this station is off-limits to unauthorized personnel, yet the first thing you do when you arrive here is poke your brightboy nose into it. Why?'

'Uh, well… it seemed odd to me, sir, having an extension hanging on one side of the wheel and nothing to balance it.'

'Oh, so you are a design engineer, are you?' The man's voice made Grant want to wince. It seemed so harsh that it had to be painful to speak that way.

'Nosir, but it does make me wonder.'

Wo huffed impatiently. 'Better men than you have designed that extension, brightboy. And when you get an access-denied message on your screen you should take your curiosity elsewhere. Understand me?'

'Yessir. If I may, though, I want to—'

'You set off all kinds of alarms, trying to pry into sensitive information.'

'I didn't realize there was anything that sensitive being done here,' Grant said. Even as he said it, Grant realized it was a lie. He'd been sent here
because
of the scientists' secrecy.

'You didn't realize…? Didn't you sign a secrecy agreement?'

'Yes, but I thought—'

'You thought it was just a bit of paperwork, did you?' Wo hunched forward, both hands balled into fists atop the desk. His hands looked powerful, thick wrists and heavy forearms that bulged in his tunic sleeves. 'Another pointless piece of red tape from the bureaucrats running this station.'

'Nosir. But about my assignment here—'

'You have been assigned to this station. Under my direction.

You will follow the terms of the secrecy agreement you signed. That is mandatory. No exceptions.'

'I…' Grant swallowed hard. 'I didn't associate the secrecy agreement with the access-denied message on my screen. As you said, sir, my curiosity got the better of me.'

Wo stared coldly at Grant for several long moments. At last he said, 'Very well. I will take you at your word. But my security people are buzzed up about you.'

Grant knew when to behave meekly. 'I'm sorry if I've caused any trouble, but you see, I'm actually an astrophysicist and I don't understand why I'm here.'

'The trouble is on your shoulders, brightboy. Report to the security chief immediately for an extended briefing on proper handling of sensitive materials.'

'But I—'

'Immediately, I said! Don't just sit there! Get to the security chief's office. Understand me?'

Grant scrambled to his feet and headed for the door.

'You've gotten off on the wrong foot, Archer,' the director called from his desk.

Turning, Grant saw that he had swung his chair away from the desk slightly. It was a powered wheelchair. Beneath his full-length tunic the director was wearing ridiculous-looking green plaid shorts, and Grant could see that Wo's legs were pitifully thin, emaciated, scarred and twisted, dangling uselessly from his chair. He looked like a gnome or a troll from childhood tales.

If Dr Wo was bothered by Grant's shocked stare, he gave no hint of it.

'Get on the right track and stay on it,' he snapped. 'Or else.'

'Yessir,' Grant said. 'I will, sir.'

Once outside in the blessed cool of the corridor again, Grant realized that Wo had given him no chance to ask for a reassignment to Farside. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Feeling wretched, he wondered where the cursed security office might be. He knew it had to be along the corridor somewhere, there was only this one main passageway that went through the entire wheel-shaped station, if he remembered the schematics correctly. But the station was so big, Grant realized he could be walking for an hour or more.

The corridor was still empty and silent; no one in sight to ask for directions. Then he spotted a videophone on the wall up ahead. He used it to pull up the station layout and found the office of the security chief, someone named Lane O'Hara.

The office was actually only a few dozen meters up the corridor. Grant hustled to it and rapped on the door, -which bore O'Hara's name.

'Come in.'

It was a much smaller room than the director's. Grant saw that it must be an anteroom; nothing but a small desk and a single straightbacked chair in front of it. A pert young woman sat at the desk. An assistant, no doubt. There was an unmarked door on the far wall. That must be O'Hara's office, he said to himself.

'I'm Grant Archer. The director sent me here to see Mr O'Hara.'

'Miss O'Hara,' she corrected. 'That's me.' Rising from her chair, she extended her hand over the desk. She was at least two centimeters taller than Grant.

Surprised, Grant shook her hand as he blurted, 'You're the security chief?'

'Lane O'Hara… Elaine, if you look up my baptismal record.'

'Oh,' said Grant.

Lane O'Hara was no more than Grant's own age, slim as a willow, her boyish figure clad in a loose slate-gray turdeneck pullover and odd-looking shiny black leather leggings lined with rows of dull gray metal studs along the outside seams. Her face was elfin, with high cheekbones, a tilted nose, a slightly sharpish chin and delicate lips that were curved into a pleasant smile. Her eyes were bright green, and they were smiling, too. She wore her chestnut hair tied into a tight bun at the back of her head.

'What were you expecting?' she asked. 'Some great brute of a policeman, maybe?' There was a lilt in her voice that Grant had never heard before: charming, musical.

'I guess I was,' he said, smiling back at her as he followed her gesture and took the chair in front of her desk.

'Oh, we have them, too,' she said as she sat back in her little swivel chair. 'On a station this size you need a few thumpers here and there, now and then.'

Grant pictured some of the stern-faced, beefy security guards he'd seen at school.

'Now then,' O'Hara said lightly,'the director's all fussed about your prying into the station schematics, looking to find out what he's got in the annex.'

'I was curious

'Of course you were. Everybody is. But the director is just a wee bit paranoid about the annex. It's his special project, you know.'

'I didn't know,' Grant said.

'How could you, seeing that you just arrived an hour or so ago?' She shrugged her slim shoulders. 'Well, I'm required to put you through the standard security briefing and there's nothing for it. I'll try to run through it quickly enough so we can get finished with it before the cafeteria closes for the night.'

Grant asked. 'What time is it here?'

O'Hara shook her head sorrowfully. 'They didn't even give you a chance to adjust your clock, did they?'

Grant realized he liked this security chief. In fact, he thought he was going to enjoy the briefing.

He didn't. Once she got started on the station's security regulations, O'Hara became strictly business. On her wallscreen she called up a bewildering set of rules and restrictions, then quizzed Grant about them mercilessly for what seemed like hours.

At last, with a reluctant, 'I suppose that will have to do,' she dismissed Grant - but only after telling him that the cafeteria would stop serving dinner in fifteen minutes.

'I don't know where the cafeteria is,' Grant bleated.

'Turn right outside my door and follow your nose,' O'Hara said.

Grant got up from the chair, aching slightly from having sat in it for so long.

'Better dash,' O'Hara said.

'What about you? Aren't you going to eat?'

She sighed heavily. 'I hope so. But I've got a bit of work to finish first. Scamper, now!'