Analog SFF, October 2011 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Dell Magazines

Novella: ENERGIZED: CONCLUSION: PART IV OF IV by Edward M. Lerner

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llustrated by Vincent Di Fate

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If something is potentially very dangerous, should it be banned?

Synopsis

Earth's newly captured second moon—a dangerously aimed rock-and-ice mass that had come hurtling out of the Asteroid Belt—is a treacherous rubble pile. Robots surveying Phoebe's surface regularly get stuck. When that happens, astronauts must find and free the trapped bot.

THADDEUS Stankiewicz, intent on a clandestine project in the Phoebe Base machine shop, is startled by fellow explorer GABE CAMPBELL. Once again a bot needs rescue, and the two men are on call. Thad hurriedly sweeps up his mess of pipes, metal rods, and wire coils, and the men suit up. As they cross Phoebe on their way to the trapped bot, Gabe shows too much interest in what Thad had been making. Thad kills Gabe and makes the death appear to be suicide.

Three years pass. . . .

The year is 2023, and the Great Stagflation grips the world. Nine years earlier, a geopolitical miscalculation had sufficed to taint several Middle Eastern oil fields with radioactivity and plunge the region into chaos. The oil that remains usable is more prized than ever. But the Crudetastrophe had not touched Russia's vast oil and gas reserves. Russia emerged from the crisis as a petro-superpower, controlling unprecedented wealth, snapping up American treasury bonds at fire-sale prices, and vying for global economic hegemony.

Solar power satellites beaming power (as microwaves) to the ground offer America its last best chance to avoid servitude and economic ruin. And so, NASA's interest in Phoebe is less scientific than practical: Phoebe is a vast reservoir of oxygen, water, and raw materials already in orbit. As though constructing miles-across structures in space isn't a sufficient challenge, special interests—everyone from technophobes to eco-extremists to radio astronomers—want to stop the project. The “Reset” movement opposes new energy infrastructure, however eco-friendly, as only repeating past environmental insults.

NASA contractor MARCUS JUDSON supports the Powersat One (PS-1) demonstration project. He finds it harder and harder not to despair at opposition he finds so misguided. His cynicism takes a hit when ELLEN TANAKA (program manager for PS-1 and Marcus's boss) sends him to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. The astronomers make a strong case that microwave transmitters on PS-1 (and the many powersats perhaps to follow) can disrupt their research.

Marcus starts dating radio astronomer VALERIE CLAYBURN. They live hours apart and end up seeing more of one another online—often remotely controlling rental bots in a tourist preserve on Phoebe—than in person. On one visit, Marcus meets Valerie's friend and coworker PATRICK BURKHALTER, disgraced former principal investigator of the Jules Verne asteroid probe. Patrick trains visiting astronomers to use the observatory's telescopes, and his coworkers are certain he uses class exercises as a way to hunt for the lost-in-space probe. Patrick claims interest in SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence), but everyone presumes the high-powered transmitter he has built for retrofitting into the Green Bank telescope is just in case—against all odds—he ever does locate the missing probe.

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