Maelstrom (24 page)

Van Kessel broke in. He liked to talk better than he liked to listen. “Basically we’re dealing with laser beams and active track elements–those pistons, you can see them on the supports, that continually push the track this way and that if the beam starts to wander off target. Acceleration is actively controlled by the capsule itself, broadcasting accelerometer readings to the power-control units on the upcoming section of track.”

“What’s the reason for the fine-tuning?”

 

“Aim,” said Penney.

“Right,” Van Kessel shouted. “If a load leaves the launcher a centimeter to one side of its true path, or a centimeter per second too fast, it’s going to be hundreds of meters wide by the time it reaches apogee. It could miss the spider web at L-1 altogether. We’re talking dead loads, of course. The capsules can adjust their flight path after they leave the launcher.”

“If the first thirty kilometers of track accelerate the load, what’re the last ten for?” Sparta asked.

“Drift track,” said Penney. “The load is already at escape velocity–that is, it’s supposed to be–and it just glides along without friction while we make final adjustments in aim. At the end the track curves gently away beneath, following the curve of the moon, and the load keeps going straight over the mountains into space, neat as you please.”

Just then Van Kessel jerked the buggy’s yoke to one side and they skidded to a stop. “We’re here. This section is where the phase reversal occurred. Let’s seal up.”

 

They sealed their helmets. Van Kessel hit the pumps to suck the cockpit air into storage tanks. The buggy’s bubble popped up and they climbed out onto the dark gray rubble that covered the crater floor.

 

Van Kessel scrambled up one of the squat, saw-horse-like legs that supported the accelerating track. “Watch your step.” Sparta followed him, and Penney came after her.

Sparta stood on the track with the two men. It was lunar morning, and the gleaming, uneroded, unoxidized metal of the quiescent launcher pointed directly at the sun. The loops of the guide magnets circled the three of them. The gleaming loops receded on both sides, seemingly to infinity, constricting until they seemed to become a solid bright tube of metal, finally vanishing in a bright point. It was like looking through a newly cleaned rifle barrel. When she turned and looked in the opposite direction, the sensation was the same.

Torrents of electric current flowed through the accelerating track when it was operating, but for the moment they could walk the track without fear.

 

“We’ve been over this piece damned carefully,” said Van Kessel. “I don’t think you’ll find much.”

 

Sparta didn’t answer, only nodded. Then she said, “Wait here, please.” She left the men standing and paced the length of the section, half a kilometer long.

The launcher was a linear induction accelerator–in effect an electric motor unrolled lengthwise. The moving capsule played the role of rotor, while the track played the role of stator. As the capsule, levitated on strong fields generated by its own superconducting magnets, passed from one section of track to the next, the track’s electric fields switched phase behind it and in front of it, pulling it forward ever faster, just as in an electric motor the rotor spins faster as current to the stator is alternated faster.

But if the alternation reverses phase, the rotor can be dragged to a violent halt. Before Sparta visited the control room she examined recordings of the near-fatal launch sequence; they confirmed Van Kessel’s report that the phase had been reversed in these several sections of track during Cliff Leyland’s launch, slowing his capsule so that it failed to achieve escape velocity.

It had taken the trackside monitors a split second to note the failure and switch the track off altogether, preserving the capsule’s momentum. Another fraction of a second passed, and the fields came back on, restoring acceleration to the capsule–but it was too little and too late to boost the capsule to escape velocity.

As Sparta walked the track, inspecting it with senses that would have astonished the two engineers, Sparta could see no sign of damage or tampering. She paused at the accident site and stood quietly a minute. She was about to turn back when suddenly she felt a queer sensation, a kind of queasiness accompanied by an inaudible chittering in her head. She looked around but could see nothing unusual. The sensation passed as quickly as it had come.

Slowly Sparta walked back to where the engineers waited.

 

“That’s the power-control station for this section?” she asked, nodding to a black box on a post beside the track, bristling with antennas.

 

“Yes. It’s functioning perfectly. We checked.”

“Bear with me while I make sure I’ve got this straight: as it accelerates, the capsule–or the bucket, for dead loads–transmits coded information about its exact position and rate of acceleration to these power-control stations, telling them what phase and field strength and when to turn the track sections on?”

“Correct.”

 

“Could the capsule transmit erroneous information? Could it have sent a signal reversing the phase of this section of track?”

 

“That’s supposed to be impossible. Before the signals are sent, three onboard processors make independent judgments based on the accelerometer readings. Then they vote.”

 

“So if the capsule sent an erroneous signal,” Sparta said, “either all three processors went crazy in the same way at precisely the same instant, or somebody programmed them to lie.”

 

Van Kessel nodded solemnly.

 

Sparta gave him a spare smile. “Mr. Van Kessel, you’re not a reticent man. But you haven’t once mentioned the word sabotage.”

 

He grinned broadly. “I figured you’d reach that conclusion on your own.”

 

“I didn’t have to come all the way to the moon to reach that conclusion. Sabotage was apparent from the facts.”

 

“Oh?” Frank Penney chirped. “You were ahead of us, then.”

 

“I doubt that. It wasn’t that the launch
failed
,” she said. “It was the way it failed.”

“Strange, wasn’t it?” Van Kessel said, nodding again. “An adjustment in launch velocity so precise that Leyland’s orbit would bring him right back down where he started. The odds against it are almost impossibly large.”

“And the failure occurred right where you could do nothing to prevent it–not enough track left to accelerate the capsule to launch velocity, and not enough left to stop it without crushing Leyland.”

 

“Right,” Penney said with relish. “If we’d tried to decelerate him in the drift section, he would have been all over the inside of that thing like a bug on a windshield.”

 

“I did think it was sabotage,” Van Kessel said, “but old engineers are superstitious. We know that sooner or later anything that can go wrong
will
go wrong. Murphy’s Law.”

“Yes, and it’s sound statistical thinking. It’s why I wanted to see the hardware for myself.” Sparta was silent a moment, staring in the direction of what everyone was already calling Crater Leyland, far away on the slopes of Mount Tereshkova. She turned. “Can we have a look at the loading shed?”

They climbed down from the launcher and packed themselves into the vehicle. Van Kessel shoved the throttle forward and the big-wheeled buggy wheeled around and galloped off across the moon.

A few minutes later Sparta and Van Kessel were peering through a thick glass window at the interior of the loading shed. The graceless steel barn, lit by rows of bare blue light tubes, stretched for almost half a kilometer beside the launcher track at ground level; a forest of steel posts supported its flat roof.

Penney had gone on to the control room, but the loquacious Van Kessel was delighted to continue squiring Sparta around. “You should see the place when it’s working,” he said. “All those tracks are full of capsules shunting along like cars on a carnival ride.”

The floor of the huge shed was a switching yard, a spaghetti platter of magnetic tracks, laid out so that empty capsules and buckets for dead loads could be loaded at the far side of the shed and shunted forward gradually, one at a time, steered to their designated places in line. As the capsules approached the launcher they were grabbed by stronger fields and shoved into its breech.

“The launcher can handle up to one capsule or bucket a second,” Van Kessel said. “Since the track is built in sections, each load is independently accelerated even if thirty loads are all traveling down it at once.”

Dead loads and inert freight capsules were handled by robot trucks and overhead cranes, but for human passengers and other fragile cargo a pressurized room with docking tubes was provided at one end of the shed. Sparta and Van Kessel were in it now, standing before its big window, still suited, their helmets unlatched. Waiting capsules were lined up at platform’s edge. The place had all the charm of a subway platform.

Out in the shed nothing moved accept dancing shadows cast by a lone robot’s welding torch. Sparta turned away from the window. She ducked through one of the docking tubes and squeezed through the hatch into an empty capsule.

She spent a moment confirming that the interior layout was identical to that of the capsule she’d ridden to the Moon–control panel, acceleration couches, baggage nets, emergency supplies and all. “How long do you give passengers to get aboard?” she called to Van Kessel.

“We like them here an hour early, but people who travel a lot can usually get themselves strapped in and do a system check pretty quickly–ten minutes or so.” Van Kessel extended his hand to help her as she climbed back out of the docking tube. “We have manned-launch attendants here to assist.”

“So passengers don’t walk in and take any available capsule?”

“No, the capsule’s are designated in advance, usually the day before. We don’t like to send up any extra mass that has to come back down again, so we talk to L-1 and try to calculate the return trip fuel requirements at this end.”

“Whoever sabotaged the capsule could have known a day in advance that Cliff Leyland was going to be in it alone?”

 

“That’s right. Like now–we’ve got a dozen people waiting right now for us to clear the launcher. Every one of these capsules is earmarked in launch order.”

 

“Yet we’re free to climb in and out of them?”

 

“If we weren’t who we are, Inspector, I assure you we couldn’t have gotten into this area. It’s well guarded– by robot systems that don’t stop to ask questions.”

 

Sparta said nothing, but continued to watch Van Kessel.

 

Nervously he twisted a strand of his gray fringe. “Is something wrong?”

 

“Do you know who the manned-launch attendants in this area were on the day of Leyland’s mishap?”

 

“Penney will have that info. As I said, it was his shift.”

 

“Penney, Inspector Troy needs some information,” said Van Kessel.

 

“Inspector?” Frank Penney swiveled his chair toward her. He brushed his fingers lightly through his hair.

 

“I understand you have customers standing by for the launcher to resume operation.”

 

“That’s an understatement.” Penney smiled his charming smile. “You can see the manifest here–all on hold.” He gestured to a flatscreen packed with names and cargo numbers.

She glanced at it, and in that instant committed it to memory. “As you can tell, the economy of Farside Base hangs upon your whim, Inspector,” Penney said lightly. “We’re all waiting for you to let us get back to our jobs.”

Sparta looked around the room. All the controllers were watching her. She turned to Van Kessel. “We’ll handle that as soon as possible. One thing you can do for me.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“I’ll need the use of a moon buggy,” she said.

 

“I’ll be happy to drive you where . . .”

 

“That’s okay, I’ll drive myself. I’m checked out.”

 

It occurred to Van Kessel that a woman who could drivea Venus rover could drive a moon buggy. “Take the one we used before.”

 

“Thanks. By the way, Mr. Van Kessel, I noticed you’re set up so that anyone in the room can unilaterally execute an override instruction without corroboration from the robot systems.”

 

“Manual override? That’s an emergency measure. We’ve never used it.”

 

“We never had a failure before Leyland’s,” Penney put in. “Manual override wouldn’t have done us any good there anyway.”

 

“You might consider putting fail-safe locks on your directed override procedures,” Sparta suggested.

 

“Is that an official recommendation?”

 

“No, do what you think best, it’s your department. As far as the Board of Space Control is concerned, you can resume operations at your discretion. I’m satisfied you don’t have an equipment problem.”

 

“We’ll give the override matter some study.”

 

“Let me know what you decide.” She turned toward the door.

 

“Oh, Inspector,” said Van Kessel, “weren’t you going to ask Frank about . . . ?”

 

“About the launch attendants the day of the failure? No, Mr. Van Kessel, I already know their names. Pontus Istrati. Margo Kerth. Luisa Oddone. I asked if
you
knew who they were.”

 

Van Kessel watched Sparta leave the control room. His expression was unusually thoughtful. The normally cheerful Penney was staring morosely at his console.
XV

The night of his escape, Blake had spent hours haranguing the flowing waters of the Seine from the cobblestones of the Quai d’Orsay before his irresistible urge to talk finally faded into mutterings, and he was able to sink exhausted to the ground in sleep.

The coppery light of morning was reflecting from the ripples in the oily river before he thought he could trust his own mouth. At last he walked to a cafe and made an anonymous call to the police to report an “accident” in the basement of Editions Lequeu on the Rue Bonaparte.

In his present mood he would not have deeply mourned the death by chlorine gas of Lequeu and Pierre, but he knew too much about toxins and dosage to believe that the two men would suffer anything worse from the episode than lingering coughs. He had no doubt they had long since made good their escape; still, it wouldn’t hurt to let the police paw through whatever remnants of the Athanasian Society had been left behind.