Grand Tour 19 Farside by Ben Bova

Author:Ben Bova [Bova, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780765323873
Google: iGuvik5HRFYC
Amazon: 0765323877
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Published: 2013-02-12T08:00:00+00:00

EIGHT WEEKS LATER

You’ll be all right, Trudy told herself as she stepped out of the airlock and onto the open floor of the Sea of Moscow. Just don’t look up; keep your eyes straight ahead and don’t look at the stars.

She was following Winston Squared out to one of the spindly little hoppers standing near the blast pad where the bigger, more powerful lobbers landed and lifted off.

“The nanobots have finished the mirror at Mendeleev crater,” she said. She knew that Winston knew that, everybody at Farside knew it, but Trudy needed something to chatter about. “Now Grant’s getting them started on the mirror at Korolev. At this rate we’ll have all three telescopes working before the end of the year.”

“Yeah, that’s good,” Winston said. “And Cyclops is starting to get data from the antennas we’ve already put up. The prof’s a happy camper.”

“You’re looking for intelligent signals?” Trudy asked.

With a cynical little chuckle, Winston said, “The great and wonderful search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The more we look the less we find.”

“I thought SETI—”

“Trudy, radio telescopes have been searching for intelligent signals for more than a century. With nothing to show for it.”

“You’re not using Cyclops for SETI?”

“Oh, sure. We’re scanning for intelligent signals. But it’s strictly routine, nobody expects to find anything.”

“But you said you were getting data,” Trudy said, keeping her eyes focused on his space-suited back, a few paces ahead of her.

“We sure are,” he replied, brightening. “We’re looking at the afterglow from gamma-ray bursters. Exploded superstars, three, four megaparsecs out.”

“Hypernovas?” Trudy asked.

“You know about them?”

“Only a little,” she said.

The hopper was about a hundred paces ahead of them, a flimsy-looking craft, little more than a platform resting on spidery legs. Trudy knew that Crater Mendeleev was nearly eight hundred kilometers away, and Winston had been ordered by Professor Uhlrich to fly her there.

“Sounds like interesting work,” she said.

“Not as glamorous as talking to ETs,” Winston replied. “But it sure as hell interests me. And the rest of the Cyclops crew.”

She nodded inside her fishbowl helmet. The Cyclops assembly would be the biggest and most sensitive radio telescope facility in the solar system, she knew, capable of picking up intelligent radio signals from thousands of light-years’ distance.

If there are any intelligent signals out there, she added silently.

They reached the hopper and Winston put a booted foot on its frail-looking ladder, then stopped and turned toward her.

“Ladies first,” he said, with a stiff little bow.

Thinking that there were advantages to being one of the few women at this lonely outpost, Trudy grabbed a rung and started up the ladder. She felt the rung sag slightly as she put her weight on it but ignored that and clambered laboriously in her bulky space suit up to the open platform.

Following right behind her, Winston went to the control console, nothing more than a slender podium at one edge of the platform. She stood beside him and clutched the slim railing with both her gloved hands.

“Better slip your boots into the loops on the deck,” Winston told her.

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