"Maneuver completed. Switching to hook-rendezvous program."
"Yo," Teresa acknowledged. She toggled the Ku band downlink. "MCC Colorado Springs, this is Pleiades. We've finished siphoning External Tank residuals to recovery cells and jettisoned the ET. Circularization completed. Request update for approach to Ere--" Teresa stopped, recalling she was talking to Air Force. "-- for approach to Reagan Station."
The controller's tinny voice filled her earphones.
"Roger, Pleiades. Target range check, ninety-one kilometers... mark."
"Yes?" Randall interrupted with a weak smirk. It was a stale joke which, fortunately, control didn't hear.
"Doppler twenty-one meters per second... mark. Tangential v, five point two mps... mark."
Teresa did a quick scan. "Verified, control. We agree."
"An' thar she blows," said Mark, peering through the overhead window. "Erehwon, right on schedule."
"Ixnay, Mark. Open mike."
Randall hand signed so-what indifference.
"Roger, Pleiades," said the voice from Colorado Springs. "Switching you over to Reagan Station control. MCC out."
"Reagan, shmeagan," Mark muttered when the line was clear. "Call it peeper heaven."
Teresa pretended not to hear. On the panel by her right knee she punched the PROG button, then tapped 319 EXEC. "Rendezvous and retrieval program activated," she said.
Between their consoles there appeared a holographic image of Pleiades itself -- a squat dart, black on the bottom and white on top, her gaping cargo bay radiators exposed to the cooling darkness of space. Filling the greater part of the bay was a closed canister of powder blue. The peepers' precious spy-stuff. Col. Glenn Spivey's treasure. And heaven help anyone who laid even a smudge on its wrapper.
Behind the cargo several white spheres held tons of supercold propellants, recovered from the towering External Tank after it had fueled the shuttle through liftoff. Dumping the two million liter tank into the Indian Ocean had been their preoccupation early in orbital insertion -- a routine waste that used to outrage Teresa, but she no longer even thought about anymore. At least they were rescuing the residuals these days. All that leftover hydrogen and oxygen had countless uses in space.
While Mark talked to Erehwon control, Teresa caused the snare mechanism to rise from the rim of the cargo bay. The stubby arm -- sturdier than the remote manipulator used for deploying cargos -- extended a telescoping tip ending in an open hook.
"Erehwon confirms telemetry," Mark told her. "Approach nominal."
"We've got a few minutes then. I'll go look in on the passengers."
"Yeah, do that." Of course Mark knew she had another reason for getting up. But this time he judiciously kept silent.
Unbuckling, then swiveling to use the seat back as a springboard, Teresa cast off toward the rear of the flight deck. Before automation, a mission specialist used to watch over the cargo from there. Now only a window remained. Through it she surveyed the peepers' package, and beyond, the cryo-canisters. If the coming hook-snatch maneuver worked, they'd save half the hydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide back there, as well -- another valuable bonus to offload. Otherwise most of the reserve would be used up matching orbits.
She brought her head near the chill window to peer at the snare arm, rising from the starboard platform. It was locked, just as the computer said. Just checking, Teresa thought, unrepentant of her need to verify in person.
She twisted and dove through a circular opening in the "floor." Five Air Force officers in blue launch suits looked up as she swam into the spacious cabin known as mid-deck. Two of the passengers looked sick, averting their eyes as Teresa floated by. At least there were no windows here, so they were spared the added misery of horizon disorientation. A third of all first-timers had to adapt several days before their fluttering stomachs allowed them to appreciate scenery, anyway.
"That was a smooth launch, Captain," the elder sickly one enunciated carefully. He wore two drug-release patches behind one ear, but still looked pretty shaky. Teresa knew the man from other flights, and he'd been ill on those too.
Must be pretty damned irreplaceable if they keep sending him up. As Mark Randall colorfully put it, guys like this never had to prove they had guts.
"Thank you," she replied. "We aim to please. I just wanted to see how you all were doing, and to say we'll be meeting the Nearpoint snare in about twenty minutes. Station personnel will need an hour to offload cargo and salvaged residuals. Then it'll be your turn to ride the elevator to Central."
"That's if you manage to hook the snare, Ms. Tikhana. What if you miss?"
This time it was the man seated forward on the left, a stocky fellow with eyes shaded by heavy brows, and bright colonel's eagles on one shoulder. White sideburns offset his roughened skin -- a patchy complexion that came from repeated treatments to slough off pre-cancerous layers. Unlike Ra Boys or other ground-side fetishists, Glenn Spivey hadn't acquired his blotchy pigmentation on any beach. He had won the dubious badge of honor the same way Jason had -- high over Uruguay, protected by just the fabric of his suit as he fought to save a top-secret experiment. But then, what were a dozen or so rads to a patriot?
They obviously hadn't mattered to Jason. Or so her husband implied from his recovery bed after his own encounter with the South Atlantic Radiation Zone.
"Hey look, hon. This doesn't change our plans. There are sperm banks. Or, when you're ready, we can make some other arrangement. Some of our friends must have some of damn high quality... Hey, babe, now what's the matter?"
The infuriating density of the man! As if that had been foremost on her mind while he lay in a hospital with tubes in his arms! Later, the subject of children did contribute to the widening gulf between them. But at the time her only thought was, "Idiot, you might have died!"
With professional coolness, Teresa answered Col. Spivey. "What if the station can't hook Pleiades mid-pass? In that case we'll do another burn to match orbits the old fashioned way. That'll take time though. And there'll be no residual propellant to offload after docking."
"Time and hydrazine." Spivey pursed his lips. "Valuable commodities, Ms. Tikhana. Good luck."
Twice, since she had come down here, the colonel had glanced at his watch -- as if nature's laws could be hurried like junior officers, with a severe look. Teresa tried to be understanding, since it did take all kinds. If it weren't for vigilant, paranoid spy-types like Spivey, always poking and peeping to see to it the provisions of the Rio Treaties were kept, would peace have lasted as long as it had? Ever since the Helvetian War?
"Safety first, Colonel. You wouldn't want to see us wrapped in twenty kilometers of spectra-fiber tether material, would you?"
One of the younger peepers shivered. But Spivey met her eyes in shared understanding. They each had priorities. It was far more important they respect than like each other.
Back at her console, she watched the bottom portion of the station come into view -- a cluster of bulbous tanks and plumbing hanging from a silvery line. Far above, other station components glittered like jewels strung far apart on a very long necklace. Most distant, and invisible except by radar, lay Farpoint Cluster, where Jason worked on things she still knew next to nothing about.
They were passing over the Alps now, a battered, crumpled range, whose bomb craters were only now emerging from winter's coating of snow. It was an awesome juxtaposition, showing what both natural and man-made forces could do, when angry.
But Teresa had no time for sightseeing. Her attention focused on Nearpoint -- hanging like a pendulum bob, closest to the Earth.
Just below the fluid-pumping station hung a boom which flexed and stretched as its operator played out line like a fisherman, casting for the big one.
Teresa's eyes roamed over her instruments, the station, the stars, absorbing them all. Moments like this made all the hard work worthwhile. Every part of her felt unified, from the hands lightly flexing Pleiades' vernier controls to the twin hemispheres of her brain. Engineer and dancer were one.
For the present all anxieties, all worries, vanished. Of the countless jobs one could have, on or off the world, this one gave her what she needed.
"We're coming in," she whispered.
Teresa knew exactly where she was.
"Once upon a time, the great hero, Rangi-rua, lost his beautiful Hine-marama. She died, and her spirit went to Rarohenga, the land of the dead.
"Rangi-rua was beset with grief. Inconsolable, he declared that he would follow his wife into the underworld and fetch her back again to Ao-marama, the world of light.
"With Kaeo, his ever faithful companion, Rangi-rua came to the swirling waters guarding the entrance to Rarohenga. There, he and Kaeo dove into the mouth of hell, down where the heartbeat of Manata sends shivers through the earth. Against this power they swam and swam until, at last, they reached the other bank, where the spirit of Rangi-rua's lovely wife awaited him.
"Now, to be fair it must be said that Rangi-rua and Kaeo may not have been the only mortals to accomplish this feat. For the pakeha tell a similar story of one called Orpheus, who did the very same thing for the sake of his lover -- and it is said he even managed the crossing on his own.
"But Rangi-rua outdid Orpheus in the most important thing. For when Rangi-rua emerged again into the light of father sun, both his friend and his lover were at his side.
"But Orpheus failed because, like all pakeha, he just couldn't keep his mind on one thing at a time."
• Core (chapter 5)
Sitting in front of his holographic display -- sole illumination in the deserted lab -- Alex recalled George Hutton's performance at the celebration, earlier in the evening, reciting Maori legends to the tired but happy engineers by firelight. Especially appropriate had been the Tale of Rangi, speaking as it did of fresh hope, snatched from the very gates of Hell.
Later, though, Alex found himself drawn back to the underground laboratory. All the machinery, so busy earlier in the day, now lay dark and dormant save under this pool of light, which spilled long shadows onto the nearby limestone walls.
Rangi's legend had touched Alex, all right. It might apply to his present state of mind.
Don't look back. Pay attention to what's in front of you.
Right now what lay before him was a depiction of the planet, in cutaway view. A globe sliced like an apple, revealing peel and pulp, stem and core.
And seeds, Alex thought, completing the metaphor.
The eye couldn't make out Earth's slight deviations from a sphere. Mountain ranges and ocean trenches -- exaggerated on commercial globes -- were mere dewy ripples on this true-scale representation. So thin was the film of water and air compared to the vast interior.
Inside that membrane, concentric shells of brown and red and pink denoted countless subterranean temperatures and compositions. With a word, or by touching the holo's controls, Alex could zoom through mantle and core, following rocky striations and myriad charted rivers of magma.
Okay George, he thought. Here's a Pakeha allegory for you. We'll start by cutting a hole straight through the Earth.
From the surface of the globe, he caused a narrow line to stab inward, through the colored layers. Drill a tunnel, straight as a laser, with mirror-smooth walls. Cover both ends and drop a ball inside.
It was an exercise known to generations of physics students, illustrating certain points about gravity and momentum. But Alex played the scenario in earnest.
Assuming inertial and gravitational mass balance, as they tend to do, anything dropped at Earth's surface accelerates 9.8 meters per second, each second.
His fingers stroked knobs, releasing a blue dot from the outer rim. It fell slowly at first, even with the time rate magnified. A millimeter here stood for an awful lot of territory in the real world.
But after the ball falls a good distance, acceleration has changed.
In 1687, Isaac Newton took several score pages to prove what smug sophomores now demonstrated on a single sheet -- ah, but Newton did it first! -- that only the spherical portion "below" a falling object continues to apply net gravity, until acceleration stops altogether as the ball hurtles through the center at a whizzing ten kilometers per second.
It can't fall any farther than that. Now it's streaking upward.
(Answer a riddle -- where is it you can continue in a straight line, yet change directions at the same time?)
Now more and more mass accumulates "below" the rising ball. Gravity clings, draining kinetic energy. Speed slackens til at last -- neglecting friction, coriolis effects, and a thousand other things -- our ball lightly bumps the door at the other end.
Then it falls again, hurtling once more past sluggish, plasti-crystal mantle layers, past the molten dynamo of the core, plummeting then climbing til finally it arrives "home" once more, where it began.
Numbers and charts floated near the giant globe, telling Alex the round trip would take a little over eighty minutes. Not quite the schoolboy perfect answer, but then schoolboys don't have to compensate for a real planet's varying density.
Next came the neat trick. The same was true of a tunnel cut through the Earth at any angle! Say, forty-five degrees. Or one drilled from Los Angeles to New York, barely skimming the magma. Each round trip took about eighty minutes -- the period of a pendulum with the same span as the Earth.
It's also the period of a circular orbit, skimming just above the clouds.
Alex soon had the cutaway pulsing with blue dots, each falling at a different angle, swiftly along the longer paths, slowly along short ones. Besides straight lines there were also ellipses, and many-petaled flower trajectories. Still, to a regular rhythm, they all recombined at the same point on the surface, labeled Peru.
Of course, things change when you include Earth's rotation... and the pseudo-friction of a hot object pushing against material around it...
Alex was procrastinating. These simulations were from his first days in New Zealand. There were better ones.
His hands hesitated. The palms were still blotchy from skin grafts after that helium explosion debacle. Ironically, they hadn't trembled half as much, then, as after today's astonishing news.
Alex wiped away all the whirling dots and called another orbit from memory cache. This figure -- traced in bright purple -- was smaller than the others -- a truncated ellipse subtly twisted from Euclidean perfection by irregularities in the densely-packed core. It didn't approach Peru anymore.
This was no theoretical simulation. When their first gravity scans had shown the thing's awful shadow, horror had mixed with terrible pride.
It didn't evaporate immediately, he had realised. I was right about that.
It was awful news. And yet, who in his position wouldn't feel heady emotions, seeing his own handiwork still throbbing, thousands of miles below the fragile crust?
It lived. He had found his monster.
But then it surprised him yet again.
Continue reading sample 7, 8, 9 and 10, or purchase Earth.
The Real Culture War
