She shrugged in a noncommittal way. “All right. But now you have me intrigued. What do you think you know about us that’s so surprising? We’re a publicly funded agency. Our records are open information.”
“True. But that means you are restricted in the budget available to you. Just today, for example, you have learned of additional budget cuts because of the crisis in U.N. finances.”
Her expression showed her astonishment. “How in the name of Morpheus can you possibly know that? I only found out a couple of hours ago, and I was told the decision had just been made.”
“Let me postpone answering that, if you don’t mind, until we’ve covered a couple of other things. I know you’ve had money problems. Worse still, there are restrictions — ones you find hard to accept — on the experiments that you are permitted to perform.”
The lower lip pushed forward a little, and her expression became guarded. “Now I don’t think I follow you. Care to be more specific?”
“With your permission I’ll defer discussing that, too, for the moment. I hope you’ll first permit me a few minutes on another subject. It may seem unrelated to budgets and experimental freedom, but I promise you it is relevant. Take a quick look at this, then I’ll explain exactly why I’m here.”
He passed a flat black cylinder across to her. “Look into the end of it. It’s a video recorder — don’t worry about focus, the hologram phases are adjusted for a perceived focal plane six feet from the eye. Just let your eyes relax.” She wrinkled her brow questioningly, put her unbroken bread roll back on her plate, and lifted the cylinder to her right eye. “How do I work it?” “Press the button on the left side. It takes a couple of seconds before the picture comes.”
He sat silent, waiting as a waitress in a green uniform placed bowls of murky brown soup in front of each of them.
“I don’t see anything at all,” Judith Niles said after a few seconds. “There’s nothing I can focus on — oh, wait a minute.…”
The jet-black curtain before her took on faint detail as her eyes adjusted to the low light level. There was a backdrop of stars, with a long, spindly structure in the foreground lit by reflected sunlight. At first she had no sense of scale, but as the field of view slowly shifted out along the spider-net of girders other scene elements began to provide clues. A space tug lay along one of the beams, its stubby body half hidden by the metal. Farther down, she could see a life-capsule, clamped like a tiny mushroom button in the corner of a massive cross-tie. The construction was big, stretching hundreds of kilometers away to a distant end-boom.
The camera swung on down, until the limb of the sunlit Earth appeared in the field of view.
“You’re seeing the view from one of the standard monitors,” said Hans Gibbs. “There are twenty of them on the Station. They operate twenty-four hours a day, with routine surveys of everything that goes on. That camera concentrates mostly on the new construction on the lower boom. You know that we’re making a seven-hundred-kilometer experimental cantilever on PSS-One? Salter Station, most people down here apparently call it, though Salter Wherry likes to point out that it was the first of many, so PSS-One is a better name. Anyway, we don’t need that extension cantilever for the present arcologies, but we’re sure we’ll use it someday soon.”
“Uh-uh.” Judith did not move her eyes from the viewing socket. The camera was zooming in, closing steadily on an area at the very end of the boom where two small dots had become visible. She realized that she was seeing a high-magnification close-up from a small part of the camera field. As the dots grew in size, the image had begun to develop a slight graininess as the limit of useful resolution was reached. She could make out the limbs on each of the space suits, and the lines that secured the suits to the thin girders.
“Installing one of the experimental antennas,” Hans Gibbs said. He obviously knew exactly what point the display in front of her had reached. “Those two are a long way from the center of mass of the Station — four hundred kilometers below it. Salter Station is in six hour orbit, ten thousand kilometers up. Orbital velocity at that altitude is forty-eight-eighty meters a second, but the end of the boom is travelling at only forty-seven-sixty meters a second. See the slight tension in those lines? Those two aren’t quite in freefall. They feel about a hundredth of a gee. Not much, but enough to make a difference.”
Judith Niles drew in a deep breath but did not speak.
“Watch the one on the left,” said Hans Gibbs quietly.
There was enough detail in the image to see exactly what was happening. The lines that secured one of the two suited figures had been released, so that a new position on the girder could be achieved. A thin aerial had opened up, stretching far out past the end of the boom. The left-most figure began to drift slowly along the length of the aerial, a securing bracket held in its right glove. It was obvious that there would be another tether point within reach along the girder, where the securing line could be attached. The suit moved very slowly, rotating a little as it went. The second figure was crouched over another part of the metal network, attaching a second brace for the aerial. “In thirty seconds, you drift away by nearly fifty meters,” said Hans Gibbs quietly. His companion sat as still as a statue.
The realization grew by tiny fractions, so that there was never one moment where the senses could suddenly say, “Trouble.” The figure was within reach of the tether point. It was still moving, inching along, certainly close enough for an outstretched arm to make the connection. Five seconds more, and that contact had been missed. Now it would be necessary to use the suit controls, to apply the small thrust needed to move back to contact range. Judith Niles suddenly found herself willing the suit thrusters to come on, willing the second figure to look up, to see what she was seeing. The gap grew. A few feet, thirty meters, the length of the thin aerial. The suit had begun to turn around more rapidly on its axis. It was passing the last point of contact with the structure. “Oh, no.” The words were a murmur of complaint. Judith Niles was breathing heavily. After a few more seconds of silence she gave another little murmur and jerked her body rigidly upright. “Oh, no. Why doesn’t he do something? Why doesn’t he grab the aerial?”
Hans Gibbs reached forward and gently took the cylinder away from her eye. “I think you’ve seen enough. You saw the beginning of the fall?”
“Yes. Was it a simulation?”
“I’m afraid not. It was real. What do you think that you saw?”
“Construction for the boom on Salter Station — on PSS-One. And they were two of the workers, rigging an antenna section.”
“Right. What else?”
“The one farther out on the boom just let go his hold, without waiting to see that he had a line secured. He didn’t even look. He drifted away. By the time the other one saw, he was too far away to reach.”
“Too far away for anything to reach. Do you realize what would happen next?” Neither of them took any interest in the food before them. Judith Niles nodded slowly. “Re-entry? If you couldn’t reach him he’d start re-entry?” Hans Gibbs looked at her in surprise, then laughed. “Well, that might happen — if we waited for a few million years. But Salter Station is in a pretty high orbit, re-entry’s not what we worry about. Those suits have only enough air for six hours. If we have no ship ready, anybody who loses contact with the station and can’t get back with the limited reaction mass in the suit thrusters dies — asphyxiates. It was a woman in that suit, by the way, not a man. She was lucky. The camera was on her, so we could compute an exact trajectory and pick her up with an hour to spare. But she’ll probably never be psychologically ready to work outside again. And others haven’t been so lucky. We’ve lost thirty people in three months.”