She read the list. “Superconductor coils . . . wire . . . tungsten?”
“Linear accelerators,” Snappdove said. “Not for mass-driving, not for research. Antimatter production.”
Yolande blinked. “Is it possible?” she said. “I thought . . . wasn’t there an accident, a whiles back?”
“TechSec facility in the Urals.” Eric nodded. “Equivalent of a megatonne sunbomb. Discouraged us no end. Engineerin’ problems in laser coolin’ and magnetic confinement, but antimatter is an old discovery on a laboratory scale, back as far as the 1930s. Mo’ sensible to do it in space, though. Question is, why so secret?”
“Weapons?” she thought aloud.
“What point? We’ve already got weapons mo’ powerful than we dare use here on Earth. Oh, yes, tactically useful in deep space. Even better as a propulsion system, if’n it can be managed, the ultimate rocket, yes. Still, it’s puzzlin’. This has to be a long-term project, an’ expensive as hell. The maximum security approach makes it even mo’ expensive an’ slow. Fifteen years even to start on large-scale production. Probably mo’; it’s doable but all sorts of problems. They’d put it in the Belt, certainly.” The Alliance was encouraging “homesteading” there by every means possible. “We’re goin’ to deuterium-tritium fusion pellets fo’ pulsedrives soon, then deuterium-boron 11. That’s almost as efficient, all charged particles. They can’t be goin’ to this much trouble just to build a better pulsedrive fo’ warships.”
Snappdove snorted. “We have a pilot project, at the Mercury-Shield Platform.” That was a research settlement orbiting in the innermost planet’s shadow. “Developing a plan to mass-produce solar power farms for near-sun use. Easily adaptable to powering antimatter production, perhaps early next century. We do the usual, wait for the Yankees to solve the tricky problems, steal their development, rejig it for our needs. They get a little ahead but not much.”
“So it can’t be just what it seems,” Eric said grimly. “Not just a power source for Belt settlement, not just a try fo’ better drives. There’s a big secret here. The sort that I have nightmares about, knowin’ some of our big secrets.”
“Well . . . yes, Uncle Eric, but what’s my part in it? Thought the High Command was sendin’ me to grab a rock?”
“Aha,” Eric said, with a mirthless laugh. “A rock comin’ from fairly close to where a lot of Alliance personnel have been goin’. And not comin’ back, never. Now, we have information on a launch . . . ”
Chapter Thirteen
EARTH ORBIT
PLATFORM FRONTIER FIVE
ALLIANCE SPACE FORCE
MAY 6, 1982
Earth turned beyond the dome like a giant blue shield streaked with the white of clouds, glowing softly with an intense pale light. The western coast of North America was on the edge of vision, turning toward night, and the sunlight glittered on the ocean through a scattering of cirrus. There were scattered spots of light across the surface, above the last azure haze of atmosphere, moving or drifting in orbit. Spidery cages of aluminum beam extended in every direction in a latticework that linked powersails, broadcast rectennae, machinery of less obvious purpose. Further out were docking arms of tubing connected to the main pressure modules behind them; two held passenger scramjets, long melted-looking delta aircraft, featureless save for the big squarish ramjet intakes under the rear of their lifting-body shapes.
It was an old story to Frederick Lefarge. He twisted in the air to watch his wife’s face instead. How did I ever luck out like this? he thought. The pale chill-blue light washed across the hazel-green of her eyes, the mahogany hair and olive-bronze skin. Tears glistened at the corners of her eyes.
“Listen,” she said softly. Her voice had an accent that was a blend of her mother’s South Carolina drawl and her father’s Spanish-Mayan; soft and lilting at the same time. “You can hear it.”
“What?” he said.
“The music of the spheres,” she answered, then scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes.
A bell pinged. “All passengers, flight Hermes 17A, forty minutes to final call. Forty minutes to final call.”
“Damn, I wish you’d change your mind,” he said fiercely.
“Honey,” she replied, smiling. “How many times have we been over this? I wouldn’t be anything but a burden for the next month; need-to-know, remember?”
She nodded to the scattering of people on the floor and sides of the domed lounge. Lefarge felt the familiar vertigo-inducing twist of perception, and now he was looking down with the great curve of Earth above his head. A ground ape’s fear of falling passed through him unnoticed, and he studied the others. Several dozen. You could tell the Space Forcers and old stationjacks, and not just by their clothing; to them a floor was just another wall, and they used the ripstick pads on feet and knees and elbows to negotiate their way with innocent disregard for orientation. You never saw them drifting free without a handhold, either, like that hapless woman wearing a sari of all things, thrashing in midair until a crewman anchored a line from the reel at his belt and leaped out to her.
Most of the rest were those who would be leaving on the Pathfinder. Forty of the eighty, come for a last look at the home that none would see again for years, many never again. The majority were young, more than half men, technical workers of every type. He saw tears, laughter, raucous good humor, nervous excitement among the handful of children. There was a scattering of older folk, married couples solemn with the thought of what this meant. His own two daughters were already aboard the Pathfinder, sleeping in their cocoon-cribs in Cindy’s cabin. His stomach twisted at the thought.
“You’d be aboard a warship, if you waited,” he said.
Cindy sighed. “Honey, it’s important I get to know some of the project people without . . . well, without you around.” There were a dozen recruits for the New America project aboard, the rest were leaving at Ceres. But only one who has any inkling of the real project, he thought. In time, in time. Patience.
His wife was continuing: “Free people don’t like living under War Emergency Regulations, Fred. For things to work right, they’ve got to want them to work right, and for that they’ve got to see you as a human being, not some all-powerful bureaucrat. What better way than to get to know your wife and children, on a three-month voyage? There’s only a few thousand people in the whole Belt, darling, and a few hundred on the Project. We’re going to be a real small town for a long while.” Quietly. “Let me do my part for this too, Fred.”
Cindy was cleared for the third-level version of the Project, but he suspected she had guessed more.
“It isn’t safe,” he said.
“Darling, it’s safer than coming out on the cruiser. It’s been years since there was a clash in the Belt, isn’t it? And the only incidents have been between warships.”
He ran a hand through his hair, sighed. “Okay, okay, you convinced me before. The only thing the Snakes have scheduled is an expedition out to Jupiter, anyway.” Pulsedrive warships were still not common, and mostly very fully occupied.
“And we will get to Ceres about the same time,” she continued with gentle ruthlessness. His ship would be leaving much later, but the Ethan Allen was a new-launched pulsedrive cruiser, vastly more powerful. This would be her shakedown trip, in fact.