Sectret of The Marauder Satellite (v1.0) Read online

  —Hmm. Bix, who is reading this over my shoulder, points out that I am exaggerating the dangers of an imbalance and the real chances for setting up a wobble. He’s right. We humans aboard the Station don’t represent a very sizable percentage of the total mass. The inertial effects of the mass of the structure itself are rather like that of a flywheel, evening out minor imbalances. Nonetheless, the situation bothered enough people that we’ve got the ballasting system we do, and of course it has to compensate for shifts in equipment and things like that, as well. And I’ve heard NASA crewmembers quietly cursing the military boys, who apparently spend most of their time moving their missiles around.

  Anyway, I think my point is still a good one. There’s a lot more to keeping this Station spinning than meets the eye.

  Our C capsule slid smoothly into the docking collar. It was so smooth that I hardly felt a jar.

  “Hey—what’s going on up there?” Krassner demanded. “Tell us what you can see.”

  “Can’t see anything now,” Carr’s voice answered.

  " We slid in past the collar, and everything’s dark.—Wait a minute!

  “Yeah, the lights just came on. We’re sticking into a big chamber—a big, circular chamber. There’s a big round port directly facing us, and.. .yeah, it’s starting to open."

  Carr paused, and Krassner asked, “Yeah, yeah—now what?” Sometimes I had to appreciate the guy. I was as curious as he was.

  “Some guys are coming through—they’re floating, pushing themselves off the walls. One of them is right oyer the viewport^’ ’

  We could all hear the metallic sounds as the hatch was undogged.

  Then a new voice spoke.

  “Hello, there. You’re docked; ease on out.”

  I heard the top two guys—one of them was Carr, I guess—unsnapping their seat belts.

  “Easy, now. Keep a hold on something. There’s a line fastened outside for you to follow, and somebody to help you. Just stick to your disembarking routine— Right..... easy there ...”

  Then they were climbing out of the seats over us, and a few moments later the seats flew up against the walls, and I could see.

  A crewmember who looked maybe twenty-three, but at the same time infinitely older and more experienced than I felt, was grinning at us. He was wearing a blue jump suit—they look almost like long johns, but that’s what everybody wears on the Station—and he leaned out over us, hanging almost—from my point of view—upside down, his feet hooked into the laddered handholds.

  “Well, there: a young lady! How do you do, Miss? Right this way ... that’s right.”

  Mary unbuckled and reached tentatively up for his hand. He took it, and pulled her smoothly up, in an almost liquid motion.

  " Remember, ” he said, “you’ 11 keep going in whatever direction you’re aimed at, without losing speed. Take it slow and easy at first; it saves a lot on sprained wrists and broken arms. You next, fella.” Mary had wriggled her way through the port and her slender legs were just disappearing from sight.

  Bix was next and he executed the whole maneuver smoothly and easily, slipping through the port like an eel.

  The man had a firm grip, and I found myself being catapulted in slow motion, up out of my couch toward the nose of the capsule and the port.

  And then I was falling.

  Suddenly the nose and the port were no longer^. They were down, and I was falling straight down!

  I panicked for a moment, and windmilled my arms and legs, trying to get a grip on the air, grab a handhold— anything!—anything to slow me down, check my fall.

  What I did was to spin my body around, so that my feet were the first to touch the rim of the port.

  I caught hold of myself then, and remembered my training. The most important thing was not to push out with my legs to check my " fall. ’' I remembered the filmed footage an instructor had shown us of a man deliberately faking a panic reaction in free fall. Every time he grabbed for something, he went ricocheting off on a new course, sometimes at a fairly good speed. “Remember,”my instructor had said, ‘ ‘you may be weightless, but you'll have as much mass and inertia as ever. You can still smash yourself up, plowing into a wall, unchecked, even when you're as light as a feather.''

  I let my knees collapse, as my legs absorbed the gentle impact, and I doubled over until my hands had a good grip on the port rim. Then, being careful to keep a good handhold, I pulled myself through.

  The crewman was looking up at me when I glanced back over my shoulder, and the expression on his face was close to a sneer. “Just can’t resist showing off, eh?”

  I choked back the reply 1 was going to make. If he wanted to take my moment of panic for a show-off maneuver, who was I to disillusion him? Besides, I was holding things up as it was.

  While another crewman watched, I started docilely hand over hand down the knotted rope to the open port up ahead.

  Behind me I heard a sudden shrill squeal of pain. Krassner had done it again.

  Once through the port, I found myself in a large air lock, a chamber bigger than the docking chamber. As I pulled myself through, still following the rope with its knots spaced easily every foot, I tried to see as much as I could without throwing off the body rhythm that was moving me so smoothly along. I had glimpses of spidery skeletal frameworks, with spheres and cylinders fastened to them, the latter looking like naked rocket engines. Then I was through the open port on the opposite wall.

  Ahead of me was a long straight tube, with people clinging to its sides. As I hung, momentarily, before them, they spun around me in a counterclockwise motion.

  Another man in blue reached out and grabbed me, swinging me around and toward the wall.

  The next moment I was crouched against the wall, my arms through handholds, and a feather-light gravity gently urging me to stay where I was.

  I looked up, over my shoulder, and saw, only ten feet away, Ralph Ward, looking down, over his shoulder at me. We were clinging to the wall of the tube directly opposite each other.

  But we weren’t spinning anymore.

  Or rather I could no longer feel the tube spinning. Everything seemed stationary, except for the port at the end of the tube: the body just emerging from it was being twisted about, counterclockwise.

  “Yeesh!” he said. “Oh, my aching stomach!” It was Krassner, of course. The crewmen laughed good-naturedly. “Come on in, Cadet,” said the one who’d grabbed me. “Get your toes wet.”

  Once we were all together, we were led to a shaft, and the crewman in charge of us pointed down the shaft, saying, “Think of that as an elevator shaft. You could fall down that shaft and die.”

  I was still disoriented. I hadn’t quite established “down” yet, but at the same time, I was no longer quite weightless. This shaft, painted a light yellow like the tube we were in, looked like just another corridor, its only real difference being that it was a square shaft instead of tubular.

  “This is a shaft that leads to the rim,” the crewman said. “If you fell down that shaft, you’d pick up quite a lot of speed before you hit the bottom—and gravity is about Earth-normal down there. That’s a 180-foot shaft—that’s around eighteen or twenty stories. Think of it that way.”

  “Uhh, sir?” It was Mark Atwood.

  “Yes?”

  “Why would you fall? I mean, maybe it’s one-G down there, but it sure isn’t up here.”

  “No, it isn’t. But let’s say you went scooting down that shaft, thinking it was a horizontal corridor, instead. Well, the Station is spinning. And this shaft is one of the spokes the Station is spinning on. It’s moving, you know, and moving around the axis of the area we’re in now. What might start out as a weightless jump would pretty soon fetch you up against the west wall. And then, unless you had a fast handhold, you’d be rolling and sliding right down to the bottom.”

  “Well, sir, it looks to me as though the handholds are all on the side you’d come up against, so what’s the problem?”

  �
��Very observant. Not only that, the exit at each level is on the same wall of the shaft, for the same reason. But you’re forgetting something. Up here you’re going to have to learn a whole new set of reflexes, and not just one set, either. You’re going to have to learn to handle yourself in null-g—complete weightlessness—and in every variation up to full g, down at S Level. Every level you’ll be on will have a slightly different weight. A simple step on Level S would carry you across a good-sized room on Level G—got it? You’re going to have to watch yourselves closely.

  “For your convenience—and ours—we’ve color-coded the different areas. You! What color is the area we’re in now?” His finger was jabbing at me.

  ‘‘Umm, yellow, sir.”

  “Very good. What do you suppose that means?”

  “Not having seen any other areas, I’d have to guess, sir. I’d guess yellow is for near-weightless areas and, maybe,”—I glanced down the shaft again; yes, it was the same shade—“maybe dangerous areas.”

  He smiled. “You score 100 percent, Cadet. That’s what it is: yellow means caution—take no chances.

  “As for the rest of the areas, red means real danger: Never enter a red area unless authorized. It may mean an area under construction, or an area where there’s a likely pressure drop, or something else. For you cadets, red means ‘stay out.’ Got that?

  “The rest of the levels are divided off into thirds. Levels B through G are tan; H through M are blue; N through S are green. Green means you can expect to be fairly safe with Earth-type reflexes. Since the largest part of the Station is in the green areas, that’s where you’ll be bunked, eat, and spend most of your time. But periodically you’ll be sent up into the other areas, and you’ll undergo training for those levels. O.K.? You got me? Let’s go.”

  Using his hands, he flipped his body up and around, in an impossible handstand, swinging his legs over into the shaft, and catching his feet on the rungs of the ladder. Then, with fluid movements, he began to swarm down the ladder for the levels below.

  For a moment we all hesitated; no one wanted to be first.

  “O.K., Cadets! Let’s snap to!” came the order from another crewman behind us.

  For a moment I resented him; I resented them all. Accustomed as they were to living and working up here on the Station, unencumbered with space suits as we were, they found it very easy to set examples they knew we’d find hard to follow.

  But I wasn’t going to let them get my goat. ‘ 4Unlax,” 1 told myself. And then I half bounced, half crawled to the lip of the shaft.

  It looked so easy, I thought. I could just crawl around the corner and in.

  ‘ "Watch it, Cadet! " came the irritated shout behind me. It was the crewman who’d unloaded us from the capsule. “Get your head outta there! You want to break your neck?”

  I swung around, and fished with my feet for the ladder rungs. Someone was snickering at me. I started a cautious descent.

  It sure wasn’t the way I’d expected it to be.

  Chapter 6

  THE NEXT COUPLE of hours were not particularly interesting. We were just a new crew of fledgling cadets as far as the crew was concerned. As soon as they’d hustled us through, they had the departure of the previous group of cadets, now seasoned by six months on the Station, to see to.

  As for us, we were put through a brief indoctrination and taken out toward the living-quarters area of the Station to settle in. Dr. Cramer, his associates, and Mary all split off from us before the indoctrination, and I wasn’t to see any of them again for some time.

  We’d been assembled in a large room—well, large for the Station, anyway. The Station is engineered as across between a submarine and a house trailer: everything is very compact and efficient; there’s no wasted space. Commander Davidson rose and addressed us. It was mostly a standard welcoming bit, but I was fascinated to see the commander in the flesh.

  Commander Davidson looks about as much unlike a spaceman as you can imagine. And yet he was the man who made the Station what it is today, and will probably make our Lunar colonies working propositions someday.

  He’s short, and at first he looks fat. But that’s really his beard. He wears a full beard, and his eyes twinkle. Bix says that exposure to direct sunlight naturally develops a squint in a man’s eyes, and that the friendly paternal image the commander projects is just good psychology. I think he’s a man who laughs a lot, and I like that. I don’t care what his reasons are.

  He is stout, though, and that, along with his shortness, and the full, rounded beard, gives him a sort of jolly look. He speaks very much like an old-fashioned gentleman. Of course, his speech, where he welcomed us to the Station and to space service, must be one he’s delivered plenty of times before—every six months, now that I think of it—but he managed to make it sound personal and real, as if we were the first. But what I’m really thinking of, when I think about him, is my later contact with him, and his curiously gentle voice, polite, quiet, and friendly—yet firm and commanding. It’s easy to understand how he got and held his job. I can’t think of anyone up here who dislikes him. And yet, no one puts anything over on him.

  After the brief indoctrination talk, we were taken to our quarters. These were on Level N, the topmost of the green levels.

  “Can you feel any difference in the gravity?” I asked Bix. We were settling into our room—or rather, our cubicle. It had a bunk bed on one wall that was exactly as long as the wall. Under the bottom bed was a built-in set of drawers, in which we’d keep our possessions. At the moment, this didn’t consist of much.

  The rest of the room was bare; the only features marring the three walls were the outside door and the door to the closet—if you can call something a foot deep that— where we hung our space suits.

  “Pseudogravity,” Bix corrected me. “You want the top bunk or the bottom?

  “Well, not really,” Bix went on to answer my question, “but I’ve been so keyed up that I don’t think I’m capable of fine discriminations.”

  I tried out both bunks. The bottom one had the top one

  just over it, which made me feel claustrophobic. The top one was the same distance from the ceiling, and no improvement. “You’re taller, you take the top,” I said. “We can switch around later if we want to.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” I continued. “But I’ve been trying to catalog my reactions .-You know, so I can start developing those different reflexes that fellow mentioned. ’ ’

  Why?”

  What do you mean, ‘why’?”

  Reflexes are an unconscious process. You’ll develop them by experience.”

  I sprawled on the lower bunk, stripped now to my jump suit. “Maybe. But you can speed the process up if you try. I intend to try.”

  “It’s important?” asked Bix.

  “Yeah.”

  The silence dragged. I knew he wanted to ask why, and I felt like making him ask. If he wanted to practice being an analyst, he’d have to work at it.

  “O.K.,” he said, as if in answer to my thoughts. “Why?”

  “Because this is more than a job—more than a training period for me,” I said quietly. Deliberately, I tried to unlax, ease the tenseness in my muscles. “This is space. This is my career. This is where I make good. Or... ” Or...?”

  Or I don’t.” I slammed my fist into the foam mattress. “So what’s it to you? I want to try—I want to succeed. This is a big deal?”

  “Is it?”

  “O.K.—enough. Cool it, Dr. Beiderbecke. My hour is over.”

  “What happens if you don’t make it?” Bix asked, his voice unperturbed, as though I’d said nothing.

  "It's not going to happen!" I said.

  “I’ve read your records, you know,” Bix said. “Your parents are alive and healthy. How come you never had any visits from them during the time you were at school? How come you never went home?”

  “Shut up!” I said. I squeezed my eyes so tightly shut that tears squeezed out. “Quit
your prying and leave me alone, willya? Just leave me alone.”

  “Sure, Paul,” he said quietly, from somewhere over my head.

  There are a lot of peculiarities in a station that is built like a barrel and that has a period of rotation of once every fifteen seconds. Although the pseudogravity of centrifugal force makes out appear down, there’s also the angular velocity of that revolution every fifteen seconds. That’s a fairly fast spin, and although down was the floor under my feet, there was a thrust from the direction of spin that had its own side effects. It made one direction uphill and the other downhill.

  That doesn’t sound just right; let me explain.

  The A Level is the core of the barrel: the axis. The S Level is the one closest to the outer skin of the barrel. Normally, you think of one level being directly under the next, in flat planes. But here each level is wrapped around the core, in concentric circles. This means that you can follow a corridor on one level all the way around the Station and arrive back at where you started.

  Very quickly we got used to using geographical terms in thinking of directions. The docking port was the north pole; the observatory at the opposite end of the Station the south pole. Those ends of the Station became the north and south. If you headed around the Station in the direction of the spin, you were heading east; against the spin was west.

  Just standing where two corridors—an east-west and a north-south—crossed was a strange experience at first. The north-south corridors were long and straight, and you could see from one end to the other. But when you turned to look east or west, that corridor curved up, away from you in both directions.

  No w, here ’ s the hardest part to get used to: The corridor curved up exactly to the same degree to the east as it did to the west—and being the same corridor all the way around the Station, both ends met overhead, directly opposite-rand the optical illusion was that if you went either way, you’d be walking uphill.