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

  Of course, you’re thinking, if you haven’t already heard about this, neither one actually felt like uphill when you walked it—due to centrifugal force distributing its pseudogravity equally at all points, it should be like walking a flat floor.

  Wrong. If you walk west, it’s “uphill”; east is “downhill.” That’s what I started out to explain.

  The reason is that angular velocity I mentioned. That’s due to the amount of spin involved. When you are walking west, you are walking against the spin, against the angular velocity. It’s not a lot, but it’s there. It’s the same thing that would push you against the side of one of those yellow shafts we were warned about. You can feel it when you’re walking a north-south corridor, too, inching you over against one wall.

  I once had a chance to ask Dr. Cramer about it—why didn’t they angle the corridors a little, to compensate? Like banking a road on a turn?

  He very kindly explained to me the engineering problems that would cause, the additional construction problems, the difficulties in lining up room entrances and corridors, and all the rest. When he was finished, my ears were burning, and I resolved to think things through all the way for myself the next time.

  So life on the Station had its peculiarities, as I’ve said. It took a lot of getting used to. It meant training my eyes to see things as they were, rather than the way they should be, down on Mother Earth. It meant learning to lean a little to the east, when on a north-south route—and when going around to the other side of whatever level I was on, taking the easy way, “downhill,” to the east. It meant developing a whole new set of senses which discriminated very subtle changes in the pseudogravity.

  I had a chance to put my training to a test, too.

  It was our second week, and we were still in General Instruction while we were getting our “space legs,” as they put it. I’d made the mistake of asking our instructor, Charlie Wilimczyk, how much longer we were going to dawdle around before pulling down work assignments.

  “You know, Williams,” he said; " there’s one like you in every bunch—the wise-guy know-it-all.”

  “I heard about your little escapade leaving the capsule.

  I know your type: the tried and true spaceman, who just can’t wait to show his stuff.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “I’m speaking, Williams. What were you doing?”

  “Interrupting, sir. You’ve—”

  “That’s right, Williams. Don’t interrupt. Now, as I was saying...

  “There’s always one of you wise guys in every bunch: The born spaceman who can’t wait to get out there and conquer space for Mother and Old Glory. Eh? You never can see why we want to train you properly first. Always impatient.

  “Well, we have a little test for guys who ask your question.”

  “What is it, sir?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough. It’s very simple. You’ll report to me at the end of this class. Which will be, ummm, in fourteen minutes. In the meantime, you’ll pay attention to our topic.”

  The topic was Welding in Different Air Densities. It was dull, and it was all stuff we’d gone over before. I could see that, and so could everybody else in the class. Just who did Wilimczyk think he was conning?

  “This is the officers’ elevator, Williams,” Wilimczyk said. “It is off limits to cadets and normal crewmen, except at times like this. As you can see”—he waved his hand through the door—“it is quite small. It will normally accommodate only four people. Step in.”

  The interior was painted a cheerful canary.

  “I—I thought yellow was reserved for warning areas.’ *

  “It is. This is a warning to you not to be caught in here unauthorized. " There was an alphabetical bank of buttons by the door. Wilimczyk pushed one, and the door closed. He shifted his body until it hid the buttons.

  “It’s a very simple test, Williams. You will face the wall, away from the door. I will send the car to different levels. You will tell me which level we are on, or your best guess.’ * His voice grew heavy on the last part, and I knew he expected me to guess wildly.

  Would I? I wasn’t sure. I’d done a lot,of exploring on my free time, climbing up and down the levels, going all the way up to the lowest of the tan levels—a climb of some thirteen stories from the bottom, S, level. I’d tried to teach myself the differences in each level. But this wouldn’t be the same, I knew. I’d never used an elevator before. I’d always gone from one level to the next, a level at a time, knowing where I was. This would be different.

  A weight pressed against my knees, and we were rising. I wondered how fast the elevator was going. If the acceleration was any guide, fairly fast. I tried to count off the seconds, and imagine how many levels we would have passed in that time.

  The car stopped, and behind me I heard the door swish open.

  “May I, umm, bend my knees a little?” I asked. “To test it, I mean?”

  I knew while I was asking the question that we’d come up a fair ways this time. The stop had lifted me on my feet more than it would’ve in a gravity close to that of the lowest levels.

  “Sure; go ahead.”

  I lifted myself on my toes, then let myself down on my knees a little, trying to get the feel of the gravity. It felt close to a half-g. It felt like the middle of the blue levels.

  “Uhh, Level J?” I guessed.

  He said nothing, but the door closed. The car started down. He wasn’t going to tell me how close I was. If there was an error in my figuring, it might increase with each stop, especially if I was trying to guess by the intervals between stops. I decided the elevator did not have variable speed controls. That would’ve been Too Much.

  We stopped again. I flexed my legs again. “Around Level Q," I said.

  “Around?"

  “O.K.—Level Q!’’

  The doors closed again. We went up.

  We went up. We went down. We went down again. We went up.

  I judged we never went higher than Level F or G. I called it F. It felt a little lighter than G had, when I’d climbed up to it. We made twenty stops. Many were to the same levels * I was convinced. It was part of the plan to confuse me. If I’d been trying to cheat in any way, I’d have been confused. But I wasn’t. It worked the other way around. I stopped paying attention to how long it took between levels. I waited until the doors opened, then took a step backward or forward, or just did a kneebend, and made my decision. And I became surer, less confused. The more data; the more certain I became.

  Finally, we stopped again, and I said, “Level R." That was the level the instruction rooms were on.

  “O.K.," Wilimczyk’s voice held a different note. “That’s it. All out.’’

  It was Level R, of course.

  They took me down to see Commander Davidson on Level S, three hours later.

  He stared at a magic slate that was sitting before him on his desk. The desk was a metal top that folded down from the wall. His office was little bigger than my bunk room.

  “H’mmm.. .Cadet Williams, yes?" He rose and shook my hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Williams. Yes, very pleased. It’s not often we get a cadet of your caliber. Sit down. ’ ’

  There was one other seat in the tiny office; it too folded out from the wall. I perched myself on it and waited. Wilimczyk had put the slate on his desk. It would have my score on it. I couldn’t read it from where I sat; the black lines on gray were lost in the reflection of the desk lamp on the acetate overlay sheet.

  “Nineteen out of twenty,” the commander said quietly. “You were wrong about the second one.”

  “It was actually Level P,” I said. I’d become certain of it later.

  “It was.”

  He looked up at me, and stared closely. I returned his stare. It didn’t tell me much. I can’t read expressions hidden by beards. ,

  “You have an abnormally sensitive body,” he said finally. “How are you on spatial relationships? Judging relative speeds, collision course, an
d near misses, that sort of thing.”

  “Very good, sir,” I said. “I was a good automobile driver, and I took small-plane training on my own.”

  “You grasp three-dimensional movements, then.” It was not quite a question.

  “Yes, sir. I’ve played three-dimensional tick-tack-toe, and 3-D chess—although I’m not a big chess buff.”

  “Too impatient, I bet.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “H’mnrni...” He seemed lost in thought. I wondered what was on his mind. This was obviously leading up to something.

  “How would you like to begin training for space work?”

  “Sir?”

  “Outside the Station.”

  “Space work? Outside the Station? I—I didn’t know there was any such work, sir.”

  He told me about it.

  He told me about a whole kind of space work that I’d never known existed. And he told me I could be part of it.

  Chapter 7

  BIX WAS WAITING for me at the mess hall. I drew my quota of rations, and joined him in his booth. I hadn't even settled down, when Mark Atwood drifted over.

  “Hey, Williams, what happened? You get tromped by Wilimczyk?”

  Most of the food served on the Station is homegrown now; it comes out of the hydroponics section, which is also responsible for renewing our air. I munched a forkful of salad before replying.

  “Nope,” I said slowly. “It was just a little test.”

  “Yeah? And...?”

  “I passed.”

  “Well, hey! Congratulations!” Somehow he was embarrassing me. I shrugged, and Bix and I exchanged looks.

  “What kind of test?” Bix asked.

  “Basically, sensitivity to different gravities.”

  “How’d he do that?” Mark asked before Bix could reply.

  “An elevator—the officers' elevator; off limits to us’ns. He took me up and down and had me guess what level I was on.” I didn't want to explain. I felt proud of what I'd done, but I didn't want to brag. I let him pull it out of me.

  “Yeah? And you did it? Hey, wow! What’d you do? Figure out the intervals between levels?"

  Suddenly I felt an active dislike for Mark Atwood— and not only Atwood, but all the other bright-eyed and bushy-tailed eager-beaver cadets who promoted their way through school, through jobs, through life. Always looking for the angle—for their angle—never trying to do what was actually wanted. Sharpies. If my life ever depended on a Mark Atwood, I might as well forget about it.

  “Yeah,” I told him. “I have a razor-sharp mind." I was putting him on. He didn’t get it.

  “Yeah? Well, that’s great, Paul. That’s really great!" I expected him to pound me on my back, but I guess the booth back prevented that.

  “See you around," I said a little pointedly.

  “Uhh, yeah, Paul. O.K." He nodded to Bix. “You too, Beiderbecke. Take it easy.’’

  Take it easy. That was the Atwood Motto. Mark wasn’t stupid—none of us were. But he was going to take it easy. Never volunteer. Let the other guy get the dirty work. Put in your time, and get out. He’d retire to a plushy job Earthside after his space service, and keep right on promoting the good things for Mark Atwood.

  He left a bad taste in my mouth.

  “That’s not how you did it, of course," Bix said after Atwood had left. “Not after all the training you’ve been doing. How’d you score?”

  “Pretty good. Nineteen out of twenty. I goofed the second one—I let Wilimczyk rattle me a little at first.” “Pretty good,” Bix nodded. “So where’sit get you?” “I’m glad you asked me that, Dr. Beiderbecke.”

  He smiled and leaned back, steepling his hands on the table top in front of him. “Ah, so. Pliz to continue.” So I told him all about my interview with Commander Davidson.

  “It seems we’ve been accumulating junk, up here in space, over the last twenty, thirty years. Old boosters, dead relay satellites, all that sort of thing. Official count has it there are over two thousand pieces of hardware floating around—and that’s* not counting what is known to have fallen back down. Of course we don’t know how many the Russians have put up, either, but that must add a goodly number.”

  “Think of all the dead dogs,” Bix added.

  “Yeah. Well, not just dogs, either. We’ve recovered at least one manned satellite as well, or so I’m told. Ummm, formerly manned, that is.”

  “That’s a bit grisly.”

  “The commander says that the Russians made at least five one-way manned shots into orbit back in the late fifties and early sixties.”

  “H’mmm. Maybe that explains the Russian observation group we’ve got up here.”

  “Really? Russians up here on the Station?”

  “I bumped into them the other day. Four of them; two men and two women. Your Mend, Dr. Cramer, was with them.”

  “I didn’t know that.* Well, anyway.. .It seems that all this space junk is just going to waste out there in orbit— especially since most of the orbits are slowly decaying, and eventually it will all end up falling into the atmosphere ...”

  “Where it will be transformed into falling stars,’* Bix said dreamily.

  “Unless we recover it,” I added.

  “Thus thwarting poets and lovers the world over.”

  “Well, yes. But it would be nice from our point of view. Those things are all metal, and metal is what we need most on this Station.”

  It was very simple, really. We needed building materials to finish off the Station and for future construction jobs—like, for all I know, a starship: anything they want to build in orbit. O.K., most of this would have to be boosted up from Earth. There is a fair chance that we’ll have working smelters on the Moon one of these days— there’s an experimental station there now—but in the meantime, it is mostly to shoot that raw mass up to us.

  But some usable stuff was already up here, in orbit, its own function completed, scrap metal and ours for the taking. There were satellites the size of large basketballs, and booster sections forty feet long. It was all grist for our mills. It was all valuable.

  Somebody had to go out and get it. Somebody had to ride a space tug out to each sighted piece of scrap, hook on to it, and tow it back.

  Me. That would be my job.

  “Your courses will be computed in advance, of course,” the commander had told me. “And you’ll have an onboard computer to handle course deviations and such details. Your job will be to ride out, make the hookup, and ride back. It’s not a very glamorous or exciting job. But it is a job that requires specialized skills. And those seem to be skills you have.”

  It would mean working out in open space. That’s what grabbed me. It would mean getting out of the Tin Can occasionally, and frankly, it would be a whole lot closer to my early dreams, as a kid, of being a Real Spaceman.

  “I wonder if you see some of the implications in this job,” Bix said thoughtfully.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t really like most of the guys up here, do you?”

  “What kind of question is that?” I retorted.

  “Look at the way Atwood bugged you. And he likes you, Paul—inasmuch as you’ll let anyone like you. And you don’t get along much better with the crewmen, either. Wilimczyk was just looking for a way to shut you up and put you in your place.”

  “Look, Bix, I didn’t come up here to have one big party. I came up here to do a job, to be something. If there’s something about me that rubs people the wrong way, well... they can just keep their distance from me. It won’t bug me.”

  “Or—you’ll keep your distance from them?” “How’s that?”

  “In space, I mean. You’re not likely to trip over Atwood or Wilimczyk out there.’’

  “Oh, come on, Bix. There’s a limit to this sort of analysis. Do you think I got this job to avoid people?” “No, of course not. But I think you’re pleased with it because it allows you to do just that. It takes the pressure off. You can funct
ion on your own, without worrying about the next guy and what he’s thinking or feeling.” “Bix, I think you’ve got it backward. I don’t dislike people as people. There are people on this Station for whom I have great admiration. On the other hand, there are those I’d be just as pleased to avoid. I don’t think it’s my responsibility to make friends with every goof-off up here. I was shipped up here because NASA has invested five years of time, effort, and money in me, and I am expected to pay off—to make good. And I am going to do exactly that. The less interference, the better.

  “Which raises one other point. Look, Bix, I like you. You are not one of the goof-offs, and I think I’d have a fair amount of respect for you, no matter what the situation was. But you made me a pitch, back down on Earth. You said you were looking for someone you could loosen up with. You picked me.

  “O.K. I went along with that. But here’s the rub: You are putting me up tight. Maybe it* s jollies for you to spend your free time running me through your little black box, but it most definitely does not unlax me. It has to cut both ways, Bix. Shake loose; stay loose. I need it too.” “Listen to yourself, Paul,” Bix said. “Play that last bit back through your inner ear. Is that Paul Williams talking? Or is it a tough punk warning a rival off his turf?

  “O.K., I’ll level with you: I’ve been pushing you too hard. That’s my fault. You’re probably right—I see neat little psychological equations, and I tend to fit you into them. But let’s not evade reality. You are a disturbed person, Paul. The more time I spend with you, the more I realize it. There is one whole aspect of your character that you are doing your level best to tromp on. Why?

  “It preoccupies me, and you should take that as a compliment. Because I don’t waste my time on people I don’t have a lot of liking for either.

  “But you know, the more I look back on those psych records of yours that I read, the less respect I have for Dr. Spittal. I don’t think he had the vaguest idea of your real problems. He took all the measurements, and he fitted a neatly classified box around you, but he never really looked inside you. I have.’’