I guess that’s a reasonable concern given my track record.
“Ms. Collins, let me be perfectly clear, I know of absolutely no threat being made to this space station. My job here is purely research.” Both are technically true.
“I don’t know if you’re a genuine hero or just a shithead in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“My money is on the latter.”
“Maybe so. I just don’t know which scares me more. You’ve seen what we’re working on here. It’s bigger than any of us or any nation. This is where humanity figures out how we go to the stars.”
“I understand.”
“I’m not sure you do. Ever heard of Theoptra cave?”
“No…”
“It’s in Greece. Neanderthals lived there for a hundred thousand years, then homo sapiens moved in twenty-thousand years ago. They built a wall to block the cold wind. It’s the oldest man-made structure in the world and the first example we have of humanity altering his environment to adapt to changing conditions.”
“That’s fascinating.”
“You don’t get it. What’s my point?”
She and Jessup should get together and write a damn book about peeing cats and Neanderthals.
“I have no idea.”
“We’re here and Neanderthals aren’t because someone had a bold idea to put a lot of effort into making it possible to live where it was inhospitable. That’s the kind of thinking that made it possible for us to survive. That’s what this place is. It’s not playground for whatever geopolitical bullshit that you’re up to. It’s about making sure we don’t turn into a dead end species.”
Jesus, this isn’t a captain looking out for her ship. She treats this place like it’s Noah’s Ark and the one true hope for humanity. This is a religion.
I try to find a point of shared sincerity. “We’re on the same page. We want the same thing. I took this job because it was my best chance of getting back up here.”
She watches me for a second. I think I’m getting to her.
“Bullshit.”
Or maybe not…
She continues, “But I think part of you wants that to be true. I don’t know who your bosses are or what you’re doing, but let them know that I’ll be watching you real close.”
I wonder how much pull Penumbra has? Could they have her replaced? That might cause a lot of headaches and I really don’t want that to happen. But I’m not quite sure if she knows what kind of forces are at work here.
Or maybe she does, and that’s what scares her?
“Alright, let me show you to your lab. Where you can do whatever it is you’re pretending to do,” she says sarcastically.
Just like that, she’s back to being the friendly tour guide. I don’t know if it’s a personality quirk or an acquired trait from working in a close environment with people constantly breathing down your neck.
We go to the end of the section on the opposite side of the station.
The entrance to my module is through a secured door at the back of the section.
Tamara hovers in front of the glass door. “This is the American secure section. It’s your lab and three DARPA modules. You and them are the only ones allowed in here, besides me. And I can only enter the labs escorted or in the event of an emergency.”
“You’re welcome to see mine,” I reply, hoping that assuages some of her suspicion.
“I already have.”
I put a thumb on the lock and nothing happens. “Am I in the system?”
She pulls a tablet from her pocket and checks something. “Looks like that ID system is acting up again. We’ll just have you create a number password.”
I just nod, and pretend this security screwup isn’t a major red flag.
Thirty
The Lab
My lab is a round cylinder ten feet wide and thirty feet long. It was the upper stage of an iCosmos rocket launched into orbit and attached to the Sagan for about the same price as a corporate jet.
Cabinets line one wall with various parts, materials and tools. On the other side is a workbench designed for microgravity and a large 3D printer that can work with just about any material you can feed it.
Rather than sending up a prototype on whatever ship is available and waiting, the engineers down below can transmit the plans of whatever they want tested and have results back in hours instead of weeks of months.
At the far end of the lab is an airlock where most of the testing can take place. Within that chamber I can test the effects of zero-g and vacuum.
For more intense testing, I can exit the other end of the airlock and go into actual space to see how something stands up in the temperature extremes of full sunlight and complete darkness.
To minimize the amount of danger I’m exposed to, there’s one other occupant in the lab; Danger Debbie, a very life-like crash test dummy filled with sensors and simple ranges of motion.
She’s not as sophisticated as the robots you see walking around Google campuses, but in the dark…she might do just fine.
Only five years ago a space lab like this would have been a billion-dollar investment. Now it’s merely a hundred million dollar project. In fact, as evidenced by the Tiki bar liquor section and the onboard chef, it’s become quite fashionable for corporations to conduct research in space or even have their own modules. The actual owner of this one is a government contractor working for the military developing next generation space suits and tools.
I’ve heard that the US/iCosmos station already has enough leases to be profitable. Rumor has it that Vin is thinking about building something an order of magnitude even larger. Crazy times.
Besides the equipment and shapely test-dummy, the other important feature of the lab is the secure communication system.
While I can carry on video conferencing from my space-closet hotel suite, there’s no way to know who might be listening in. Someone wouldn’t even have to tap the network. They could just put a glass to the wall and hear me talk.
This module is designed to government specs and has radio wave blocking insulation as well as a special white noise generator that keeps someone from bouncing a laser off the hull and picking up a conversation — something we’ve been doing to the Russians and the Chinese.
I strap myself into the work station and open up a video feed with Ops.
Baylor’s face appears on the screen. “So you’re all checked in?”
“Yep. Exactly what you said it would be.”
“Have you met the DARPA folks yet?”
“No. They’re across the hall. I expect I’ll run into them shortly. I’ve met some of the others. It’s an interesting assortment.”
“I’m sure you fit right in.”
“Actually, that’s the reason I’m calling. Tell Jessup that I got a pretty good grilling from Tamara Collins. She’s very suspicious of me.”
“We’re not too surprised. She’s a bit anti-military.”
“How anti is she to the part of her paycheck they pay for?”
“Did you tell her anything?”
“Of course not. I just played dumb.”
“She probably runs that routine on everyone when they come up. Anything else?”
“Yeah, security in this section is terrible. The thumbprint scanners don’t work, so our DARPA folks have been using number codes to get into this wing. I’ll find out if that’s the case for their individual modules.”
“Curious.” She types into her computer. “They didn’t report this.”
“Probably because it’ll mean a mile of paperwork and a hold on their work in the lab.”
“Jessup will watch this video, but I’ll make sure to make a note of that and see if we can find out when that happened.”