Orbital Decay (39 page)

Jack nodded slowly. “That’s right. There’s some fiction in what I said to you guys the other day. I didn’t think anyone would catch on, but that was because I didn’t expect anyone to attempt to confirm the story.” He let out his breath and looked down at his hands. “I guess that was a mistake, and I’m sorry I had to deceive you guys, but I had to put some credibility behind the source.”

“Then the whole thing about the Ear,” Sam said. “Is that a lie, too?”

“No, that part is not a lie. Hell, you saw the file yourself. You should know better than that. No, Popeye’s right. Dave smoked pot with me down here, but even though I did try to squeeze some info out of him, I didn’t get anywhere. He didn’t say a word about it. I got my information from another source.” He looked up at Popeye. “Hooker, I’m real sorry. But when I tell you just how I found out about the Ear, maybe you’ll understand.”

“Go ahead,” Hooker said stiffly. “But you’ll have to understand me if I say I might not trust you this time, either.”

Hamilton stood up from his chair and sauntered over to a vegetable tank, reaching up to absently fondle a plastic feeder tube between his fingers as he spoke. “Have either of you ever heard of the Gaia Institute?” he asked. “No? It’s located on Cape Hatteras in North Carolina and it’s… well, it’s somewhere between a school and an independently funded think-tank. It mainly functions as a place for biotech research, which is how it originally got its start back in the 1990s, but since then, it’s branched off into several different directions.” He paused. “Some of them not very public.”

“I don’t understand,” Hooker said. “What’s this got to do with…?”

“GI is where I got my real start in hydroponics,” Hamilton continued, ignoring the interruption. “I went there to do a two-year postdoc program and ended up staying for about five years. The reason I stayed for so long is that I got involved in some of the Institute’s less well-known projects. One of those is something called Globe Watch.”

He pulled a ripe tomato off a vine and juggled it thoughtfully from hand to hand. “Did you ever wonder where all the old radicals who were around in the last part of the twentieth century disappeared to? Yeah, right, some of them became reactionary conservatives or reactionary liberals, and some of them sank from view, and a lot of them have gone out mumbling of discarded values and cursing the generations which succeeded them. But a few of them, whose ideals outlived fashions and trends, have ended up in important positions in government and industry, still dedicated to certain goals, still networked with each other. They make up the core of Globe Watch. They’re nerve ends, lying dormant, hearing things, seeing things, and secretly conveying their reports to its nexus, the Gaia Institute, which over the years had recruited them. The objective over the years has been simple: to watch and record the decisions that others make, evaluate their impact on contemporary society and, if necessary, act in secret to either accelerate or forestall the circumstances.”

“Globe Watch found out about the Big Ear,” Sloane supplied.

Hamilton nodded. “We found out about the Ear, first through rumor, then through documents located by a highly placed source at NASA. When we were certain that the project was a reality and not just another paranoid rumor, we turned the information over to a GI think-tank. I was one of the people involved, and we made the decision that the Ear had to be stopped if free society was to be preserved.”

“Then why didn’t you just come to us?” Popeye asked, his anger diminished but not entirely gone. “We would have believed you.”

Jack shook his head. “No. Even if you had believed me—and I’m not entirely certain you believe me now—it’s Globe Watch’s policy to keep its existence secret. Telling you would have blown my cover. Believe me, we considered that option when we were thinking about how to handle this.”

Sam’s eyebrows knitted together. “Then there’s another reason why you came aboard Skycan to be the chief hydroponics engineer.”

Hamilton laughed. “The
only
reason I came up here was to do something about the Ear. We had the whole timetable for the implementation of the project, all the details of how it would operate, everything. The tricky part was getting me up here in time once our contact in NASA helped slide my application through the proper channels at Skycorp. Fortunately the last hydroponicist up here, McHenry, went crazy, so I was able to get up here in enough time to get the ball rolling.” He turned around to gaze at the others. “To win your hearts and minds, as it were.”

Sam and Popeye gave him blank expressions in return, and Jack snorted. “C’mon,” he said. “Did you really think it was a coincidence that the guy who brought marijuana seeds aboard was also the guy who happened to discover the Ear and got a handful of people who just happened to have been smoking pot to agree to a mutiny?”

The blank expressions became those of utter surprise.

“That’s right,” Hamilton said. “I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy myself, either, but the whole game was planned from the start. The idea was to cultivate a small cluster of people, lower their guards a little with the pot, select a handful who seemed trustworthy and whose skills fitted in with the general plan of how to plug the Ear, then spring the plot on them. We figured we had about a one-in-ten chance of succeeding.” He shook his head. “Up to this point, that is. Having Dave stumble down here looking for a good time was a lucky break which I had hoped to use to my advantage. I guess I screwed up there, because I didn’t consider the possibility that someone might actually talk to Dave about it.”

“You didn’t consider the possibility,” Popeye repeated. He looked first at Sloane, then at Hamilton. “Did you hear that?” he asked Sam. “This goddamn son of a bitch has been manipulating us every step of the way. He gets us all into using drugs to soften our minds, he lies to us about a government project and talks us into doing the dirty work for a bunch of crazy old granola freaks, and then he
apologizes
because one of us managed to find out it was all a scam….”

“Now, wait, I wouldn’t call this a…”

“
That could get us all killed
!” Suddenly Popeye launched himself at Hamilton. He grabbed the hydroponicist’s shirt with both hands and rammed his back against a tank. Water sloshed out of the tank and splashed across the metal floor; a tomato fell out and splattered on the floor in a red pulpy stain. “
I should fucking
kill
you
,
you know that
?” Popeye howled into Jack’s face, shaking him back and forth.

Sloane rushed Popeye and grabbed him in a half nelson, wrenching him off the hydroponicist. “Cut it out, goddammit!” he said hoarsely. He looked over Popeye’s shoulder. “Is this true?” he demanded of Hamilton. “Is that what this is all about?”

Hamilton weakly pushed himself off the side of the rack, the back of his shirt damp from where he had half-fallen into the tank. “Yes. No. Somewhere in between.” He shook his head and absent-mindedly straightened his shirt. He motioned for Sloane to let Popeye go. “If you think you ought to kill me, Claude, you should go ahead,” he said to Hooker. “If I really cheated you like that, I guess you’re right to do so. But I swear to you, that wasn’t the intent.”

Hooker took a few deep breaths, and his shoulders and arms relaxed. Sam released his grip reluctantly, but kept his arms up and ready to grab the beamjack again. “Then what was the idea, Jack?” he demanded. “Was it to brainwash us or what?”

Hamilton shook his head vigorously. “No. No, that wasn’t the idea at all. Bringing aboard the pot and growing that stuff down here was an afterthought, as… like offering a bribe, that’s all. You can’t get a stoned person to do something he doesn’t want to do, any more than you can talk someone who wants to live into committing suicide. We weren’t trying to soften your minds or anything like that.”

He looked down remorsefully at the ruined tomato on the floor, then kneeled to pick it up. “Anyone want a tomato?” he said. When neither Sam nor Popeye laughed, he slowly walked to a nearby disposal chute and dropped it in. A push of a button and the quiet
whoosh
of compressed air sent the vegetable on its way to Reclamation. “Ashes to ashes, tomatoes to compost,” he mumbled.

“I want to hear your answer too, Jack,” Sloane said.

Hamilton continued to stare at the chute. “The pot was only because we knew that the people aboard Skycan were bored,” he said. “We thought that if the person from Globe Watch who came up here were to bring something which would distract them from that boredom, perhaps he would win a degree of acceptance they wouldn’t otherwise have given him. We would have brought up bottles of whiskey and gin, if the chances of discovery hadn’t been so great. As it was, because of my availability as a hydroponicist, marijuana was selected as the… well, forgive the pun, but the ideal peace pipe.

“Nor was the intention to deceive anyone, or make someone else do the dirty work,” he continued. He turned away from the disposal chute and leaned against the adjacent bulkhead, thrusting his clenched fists into the pockets of his shorts. “But we were afraid that, if the group I chose to approach about the Ear were to know that a secret organization was behind this—a twenty-first century Masons or Hellfire Club, or a bunch of old hippies if you want—then the chances of being rejected would be greater, because people still remember all the trouble that groups like the Heritage Foundation and the LaRouchians got us into years ago. If the Skycan people made up their minds for themselves, the think-tank reasoned, then the chances for succeeding would be increased.”

“Wait a second,” Sloane said, stepping from behind Popeye’s back and pointing a finger at Hamilton. “You talked us into this.
You
were the one who convinced us to go after the Ear.”

Hamilton smiled and shook his head again. “I didn’t talk you into anything, Sam,” he said. “You can’t
talk
someone, or a bunch of people, into doing anything if they don’t want to do it. That’s what we were counting on. We were gambling that, if people aboard Skycan were simply made aware of the situation, and told what the circumstances of that situation were, then they would make up their own minds to do something about it for themselves.”

He walked toward them, his hands spread apart, pleading for their understanding. “Don’t you see? The people on Skycan, the group who agreed to go along with this thing,
me
for chrissakes… we’re the frontier, not the companies or NASA or Russia or Europeans! It’s the people who are out here who ultimately make the decision which way the chips are going to fall! You knew that in your heart of hearts when we agreed to go through with this. I could have had you guys blowing joints until your eyes were crossed and you wouldn’t have agreed, or at least until you had straightened up, to go along with this. You think you’re up here just to make some dough and that’s all, but the fact of the matter is that you’re the ones who decide where we go from here. I think that’s the reason why we’re doing this.”

He paused letting his hands drop to his sides. “If you still want to do it,” he finished. “You’ve got the whole truth now. No more lies. At this point, if you two guys want to bail out, then the whole operation’s finished because there’s no one else who can do the job. I’m sorry for the things I told you before, I truly am, so…” He stopped and swallowed. “Well, anyway, there it is. There’s your answers, Popeye, Sam. You’re right in that it’s dangerous as hell. Sam and I have just about completed writing the program, and Joni has already helped me contact my friend at the Cape. But if you guys decide that you’ve been brainwashed and that all this is bad craziness, then…”

His voice trailed off, and Jack stood there, awaiting their answer.

B
Y THE TIME THE
United States built Freedom Station in the late 1990s, it was not the first space station in low-Earth orbit, nor was it to be the last. By then, the Soviet Union’s Mir station had been permanently manned for several years and had been expanded with six pressurized modules. As well, Space Industries, Inc. had successfully orbited a two-module industrial space station, and Skycorp was planning Olympus Station to support future industrial activities. Yet Freedom, although it was not unique, did fulfill its main purpose—serving as the major springboard for Western activity in space.

Freedom started operation with three modules; by 2016, its pressurized capacity comprised thirteen modules, spread along the station’s twin aluminum-lattice keels and connected to each other by access tunnels. The photovoltaic-cell wings and solar dynamic generator dishes had increased in both size and number to accommodate the energy demands of McDonnell Douglas, Rockwell, Johnson & Johnson, Honda, Lily, BMW, and the other corporations which had bought or leased the modules, and the servicing hangars were connected by access tubes and refitted to permit pressurization in order to handle traffic from OTV’s.

What had begun as an underfunded attempt to produce a viable space station had in time become an orbiting industrial park. Although free-flying modules in parking orbits nearby did most of the mass production of chips, pharmaceuticals, alloys, abrasives, and novelty items, the companies who could afford R&D in space had taken advantage of a deregulated NASA space station. Members of Congress and a former President who had opposed the few billion dollars spent on the development of the space station during the 80’s and 90’s had either switched allegiances or had shut up by the time the year 2004 rolled around, when the
Wall Street Journal
reported that gross profits from space-based enterprises aboard Freedom had begun to rival those of some major companies on Earth, including a couple on the Fortune 500 list.

Eleven years after Freedom Station reached that landmark, the station had come to resemble a small city in space: a long frame of cylinders, girders, solar cell wings, and antennae circling Earth at an altitude of 300 miles, serviced by shuttles from the U.S., France, Great Britain, and Japan, with OTV’s being retrieved or dispatched by docking crews. Many prominent persons and groups—from the Prince of Wales to a U.S. Secretary of Commerce to a Japanese trade minister, from the Board Chairman of Honda to a research contingent from Data General to a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist—had been up to visit the station. Three hundred miles-up was no longer a formidable distance; even the insurance companies, who had shied away from underwriting manned space travel thirty years earlier, were reconsidering the tourist trade.