The Trikon Deception

17 AUGUST 1998 SPACE SHUTTLE CONSTELLATION

Hugh O’Donnell felt his teeth loosening, his spine coming apart, the breath leaving his chest in a rush of involuntary grunts. God, don’t let me piss myself. Don’t let me…

The thunder of Constellation’s lift-off obliterated his thoughts. He fought to raise his eyes toward the digital clock on the bulkhead above the middeck storage lockers. His neck slapped back against the headrest after a single, stroboscopic glance. Mission time was T plus forty seconds. Eight minutes of this. That was what the instructor had said. Eight minutes of sheer hell before serenity.

The thunder suddenly stopped. Shit goddammit engine failure. We’re falling I’m gonna die. Still he felt as if a gang of giants were pressing down on him. He wrenched his head to the right. Next to him, Lance Muncie still bucked crazily in his seat, hands plastered to the armrests, his face twisted as if he were peering into the mouth of hell. O’Donnell managed another glance at the clock. T plus fifty seconds. That’s right. That’s why the silence. The shuttle had gone past Mach 1.

“Main engines at sixty-five percent.” The voice of Commander Williams crackled over the loudspeaker as flat and calm as a scorekeeper’s at a tennis match. O’Donnell and the other eleven passengers bound for posts on Trikon Station were stacked in the middeck of the converted old NASA orbiter. Constellation had completed more than thirty missions before being purchased by Trikon International in 1994. It was an ungainly-looking vehicle compared to the Europeans’ spiffy little Hermes, or the six sleek aerospace planes developed jointly by NASA, Rockwell, and Boeing. But the space shuttle could haul more payload than the space plane, and Hermes was just beginning its flight test program. Reliable old Constellation’s generous cargo capacity was essential to the maintenance of Trikon Station.

“Roger,” said the ground. By popular vote, the passengers had requested a feed of the voice transmission between the flight deck and mission control.

Calmer now, O’Donnell imagined a picture he had seen countless times on television screens: Constellation arcing over the Atlantic Ocean in its “heads down” altitude, the burns of the two SRBs and the three SSMEs spewing out a combined pillar of fire, shrinking to a dollop of orange, and finally disappearing in the darkening blue of the sky. He was on top of that flame, his hands gripping armrests and a three-hundred-pound cinder block pressing squarely on his chest and those giants still shaking and pummeling him.

He turned his head enough to see the portside monitor. The shuttle was some thirty miles above the Atlantic. The bright Florida sky had deepened to a fuzzy blue-black.

Looks like I’m going to Trikon Station, O’Donnell thought optimistically. From sunny Cal to a metal booby hatch in low Earth orbit. He trembled inwardly, whether from anxiety or anticipation he could not tell.

The g-forces abated appreciably. Williams spoke directly to the passengers on the middeck: “We are now in a low elliptical orbit. In approximately thirty-three minutes, we will have a second OMS burn to boost us into the same orbit as Trikon Station.”

“Whoooweee!” Freddy Aviles howled.

O’Donnell realized that his hands were floating free. He forced them back to his lap and curled his fingers under the strap of his safety harness. His head felt funny, stuffed, as if his sinuses were jammed full of cotton wadding.

“Hey, Lance, this is something, ain’t it?” called Freddy. He sat immediately to O’Donnell’s left, but his voice sounded muffled through the congestion in O’Donnell’s head.

Muncie groaned in response.

“He doesn’t look so good,” said O’Donnell.

“Lance? Nah. He the only one didn’ get sick on the Vomit Comet,” Freddy said. Nearly everybody had upchucked during the long series of parabolic maneuvers aboard the KC-135. The plane would dive and then nose up, giving the collection of fledgling space workers a few gut-wrenching moments of weightlessness before it dove again toward the lush green mat of central Florida.

Freddy craned his neck to take a look at Muncie. “Hey, man, you okay?”

“No. Terrible.”

“Tha’s crazy, man. You got the strongest stomach I know, except for my cousin Felix. And tha’s because his wife can’t cook.”

“Maybe it’s the excitement of being here for real,” O’Donnell suggested.

Muncie started to shake his head. His face turned greenish.

“Tha’s it,” Freddy agreed cheerfully. “Okay, Lance, I leave you alone.”

O’Donnell didn’t feel so well himself. He attempted a few deep breaths, but found it impossible to fill his lungs. Loosening his harness did not help. He merely bobbed against the straps without any effect on his ability to breathe. Microgravity allowed his internal organs to shift upward, which seemed to restrict his lung capacity. He settled for concentrating on the clock, its LED digits moving in increasing speed from minutes to seconds to tenths of seconds to hundredths of seconds. In front of him, two Japanese technicians jabbered noisily. Behind him, an American technician and a Swedish scientist compared microgravity symptoms. The American complained of a severe headache and the Swede stated that she had trouble focusing on nearby objects.

Just after the forty-five-minute mark, the commander announced: “We are now about twelve miles in front and slightly above Trikon Station. You’ll feel a few bumps and nudges as we use the RCS thrusters to kill off the drift rates and close in on the station. Then we’ll make a low-z translation for berthing.”

O’Donnell remembered that the RCS engines were the reaction control system jets that were used to make small maneuvering corrections. But what a low-z translation might be was a mystery to him.

The shuttle flew through night. The passengers ooohed and aaahed at the star-like patterns of city lights displayed on the portside monitor. Then came the real show—sunrise. It began with a faint rosy glow throwing the rim of the Earth into silhouette. Like a film run at fast speed, the glow boiled over the horizon, then separated into bands of brilliant colors—blues, reds, yellows, oranges. Finally came the golden bloom of the sun.

“Approaching Trikon Station,” said Williams.

“There it is,” said Freddy. “Looks like a giant silver diamond.”

“Trikon Station,” Williams called. “This is Constellation. Preparing for berthing.”

“Roger, Constellation,” spoke a voice from the station. “Damn happy to see you, too. That old bird never looked so beautiful.”

The minutes inched by. The middeck passengers could hear Williams talking with the station, but it was all the clipped, incomprehensible jargon of professionals.

Finally Williams said, “Okay, folks. We are now station-keeping—hanging just outside Trikon’s main docking port. They’re cranking up their RMS to latch onto us and pull us up to the port. We’ll be berthed in a couple of minutes.”

O’Donnell pictured the spindly robot arm of the remote manipulator system reaching out to take the shuttle in its metal grip and slowly, gently bring it into contact with the airlock.

He felt a small thump.

“Bull’s-eye,” said the station voice.

Duncan, the second pilot of the shuttle, floated down from the flight deck and squeezed past the passengers to enter the airlock and complete the mating of the two ports.

Williams announced, “There will be a slight delay as we pressurize the connecting tunnel, check for leaks, and equalize pressure with Trikon. Might as well unstow your gear.”

The passengers released themselves from their seat harnesses. In the cramped quarters of the middeck there was much bumping and banging, but eventually everyone managed to pull their flight bags out of the lockers. The shoulder straps were useless and wriggled like snakes until Freddy suggested wrapping them around the bag and holding the bag under the arm. The slight delay was much longer than Williams had predicted.

“Like deplaning at LAX,” grumbled O’Donnell. He noticed that Muncie was still in his chair. Their eyes met momentarily. Muncie looked frightened, like a kid who had lost his mother in a crowded shopping mall. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, as if trying to summon up whatever inner reserves of courage he had. Then Muncie unhooked his harness and eased himself afloat. He groped toward the lockers and did not seem to remember which one held his flight bag. When he finally located the locker, he fumbled with the latch until Freddy reached over to help.

“Was stuck, eh?” said Freddy.

“Yeah. Thanks.” Muncie pulled out the flight bag and wrapped the strap as the others had done.

“Airlock is open,” said Freddy. He placed his hands on Muncie’s shoulders. “Man, you don’t look so good.”

“I still feel lousy.”

“Happens to the best of us.”

“But this is happening to me.”

“You’ll shake it.”

O’Donnell followed as Freddy guided Muncie through the ribbed plastic tunnel connecting the shuttle’s docking adapter to the station’s airlock hatch. Floating awkwardly, bumping into one another, they entered the instrument-crammed command module, where a Trikon crewman hustled them through and out into the station’s connecting passageway. O’Donnell felt the amused attitude of the Trikon technicians on duty in the command module, the typical knowing smirk of veterans eyeing newly arrived rookies.

The passageway was a confusion of greens, browns, blues, and whites, bathed in intense light. O’Donnell shaded his eyes. The blues gradually emerged from the background as three figures dressed in flight suits. The middle figure was a stocky man with a broken nose and a red face. O’Donnell recognized him from his pictures as Commander Dan Tighe. The other two were a woman and a black man.

The last of the shuttle passengers floated into the passageway. Then the twelve newcomers bunched up around Tighe and the two others. O’Donnell noticed that all three of them had their stockinged feet firmly attached to loops set into the flooring.

“I want to welcome all of you aboard Trikon Station,” said Tighe. “I’m Dan Tighe, station commander. To my right is Dr. Lorraine Renoir. She’s the station medical officer, so I’m sure all of you will get to know her.”

Freddy nudged Lance in the shoulder. Lance choked back a belch.

“To my left is Crewman William Jeffries. You probably won’t get to know him because, unfortunately, he is due to leave with the shuttle. Unless you want to stay, Jeff.”

Jeffries smiled benignly.

“You will all be assigned sleeping compartments in Habitation Module Two. Hab Two is aft, behind me, through hatch H-Two, second hatch on the port side. That’s your right side as yon move aft, if your head is toward the ceiling. If you get confused about orientation there are big arrows on the walls of the tunnels at five-meter intervals. The red arrows point forward and the blue arrows point to the ceiling. And they glow in the dark.”

Tighe hesitated a moment. When he saw that there were no questions, he went on, “I want you to stow your personal articles in the rumpus room until the departing people finish packing. The rumpus room is located at the far end of the connecting tunnel. You can secure your flight bags to the walls with clips or bungee cords. You may see some funny-looking plants floating around in there at the ends of tethers. They are bonsai plants. Anyone who touches them will be summarily executed.”

Tighe smiled crookedly. A titter coursed through the new arrivals. Muncie did not laugh. Beads of sweat oozed across his brow. He struggled to loosen the collar of his flight suit.

“You all right?” whispered O’Donnell.

“I’m—” Lance Muncie’s stomach contracted with the force of a small cannon. His mouth snapped open and, with a loud retch, out shot breakfast. It looked like a large, greenish yellow worm, expanding and contracting as it flew on a perfectly straight track toward Dr. Renoir. She spun out of the way. The vomit worm continued past, wriggling until it finally disappeared into the pastel recesses at the far end of the tunnel.

“Any other comments?” said Tighe.

The new arrivals laughed.

“I never get sick,” Lance Muncie mumbled around the thermometer stuck in his mouth. Dr. Renoir’s infirmary was cramped, but his addled senses welcomed the tighter perspective.

“Please don’t speak, Mr. Muncie.” Dr. Renoir pumped air into the collar of the blood-pressure gauge.

“What if I think I’m going to puke?”

Dr. Renoir closed his fingers around the plastic bag she had given him. One of the station’s robots had vacuumed up the mess Muncie had spewed into the corridor and sprayed pungent disinfectant around the area. But the robot was too bulky to work effectively in this cubbyhole of an infirmary.

“Please be still and continue staring at that picture on the wall,” she said. “Occupy your mind with pleasant thoughts.”

There was kindness in her voice, thought Lance. An accent, too. German, maybe. No, French. Renoir was a French name. There was an artist named Renoir. He painted ballerinas. The picture on the wall was a small painting of a vase filled with flowers. Really pretty.

“Breathe deeply,” she said.

The stethoscope was cold on his chest. He forced a breath and felt his stomach start to churn. Instinctively, his body tightened.

“Pleasant thoughts,” trilled Dr. Renoir.

He tried, but his thoughts kept trailing back to his stomach. Thinking of the farm evoked the image of his father gunning his pickup toward a rise in the road to town. “Here we go, Lance, here we go. Your tummy. Wheeee!” Becky reminded him of a trip to Kansas City and the roller coaster that had delighted him and terrified her.

Dr. Renoir removed the thermometer. Lance gagged and hastily stuck his mouth in the plastic bag. Nothing came out, and after a moment he relaxed. Dr. Renoir instructed him to continue staring at the picture until the examination was complete.

“Haven’t been sick in more than twenty years,” he said.

“Is that so,” said Dr. Renoir.

“I had a stomach virus when I was only a tyke. Couldn’t keep anything down. I kept losing weight and losing weight. My ma and pa thought I was going to die. Then they heard about this faith healer that was going to be at a revival up near Alliance, Nebraska. Dr. J. Edward Moorhouse was his name. Pa drove all through the night to get there, with me tucked in the back seat and a throw-up pan on the floorboards.”

Dr. Renoir turned to her desktop computer and pecked out a few numbers.

“I remember a huge tent way off in the middle of a prairie and people singing hymns as we drove up. My ma carried me down past all the people and up onto the stage. I was crying like crazy. And Dr. J. Edward Moorhouse wore this thin black skullcap with a point that came down the middle of his forehead. He had crooked teeth when he smiled. My stomach was rumbling and heaving, like there was a jackrabbit inside that wanted to get out. But Dr. J. Edward Moorhouse laid his hands on my stomach and I became as cool and as calm as I ever was. That was the last time I got sick before today.”

“Sometimes we all need a little faith.”

“You think so? I sure do.”

“Psychosomatic healing,” said Dr. Renoir. “The mind/body interface…”

“Those are all fancy words for faith, aren’t they?” Muncie said.

“Perhaps.”

“Well, I haven’t been sick since then. I keep myself fit. I don’t put anything in my body I think will cause me harm. Taking care of your body is doing God’s work, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” Dr. Renoir replied gently.

Lance heard the ripping sound of Velcro parting. Then he felt something moist pressing against the ball of bone behind his right ear.

“What’s that?” he said.

“Time-release motion-sickness medication.”

“But Trikon doesn’t want us using pads.”

“You are under my care, not Trikon’s. This pad is designed to release diminishing amounts of medication. By the time it is exhausted, you will be completely acclimated to space. And it won’t harm your body.” Dr. Renoir tore the blood-pressure collar from his arm. “You may stop staring at the wall now.”

Lance turned his head and fixed his eyes on her. For the first time since reaching the station, his head did not continue spinning after his neck stopped.

A voice boomed over the loudspeaker:

“Attention. All new arrivals are to report to the connecting tunnel for sleep compartment assignments.”

“You’d better go along now,” said Dr. Renoir. “But don’t rush. Take it easy for the time being.”

Lance grinned at her. She’s sure pretty, he thought. For a foreigner.

Habitation Modules 1 and 2 were located directly across the tunnels from The Bakery and Jasmine. Each habitation module housed twenty individual living compartments, four waste-management-system compartments (called Whits, after their inventor, Henry Whitmore), four full-body showers, and two enclosed hand basins. The compact living compartments were designed primarily for sleeping, but also were equipped for waking relaxation. Crammed into each one were storage cabinets, a toiletry kit, a foldaway desktop, reading lamp, and power outlets for portable computers, VCRs, and other small appliances. Screens set into the back walls served as “electronic windows” to minimize claustrophobia. Many employees brought tapes of scenery so they could look out at the cool green hills of Earth or a beautiful sunset over a tranquil sandy beach.

The “bed” was a mesh sleeping bag hung against one wall of the compartment. It could be zippered up, and there was a restraint band for the head. In microgravity the pressure of blood surging through the carotid arteries produced a gentle but persistent head nod when a person fell asleep. It awakened most people, nauseated some.

“Three and two-thirds cubic meters of living space,” announced Jeffries as he peeled back the accordion door of an empty compartment. “That’s one hundred twenty-eight cubic feet for the Americans in the group. Sounds like a lot, huh? The typical telephone booth is only a little over one cubic meter; forty cubic feet. Well, sometimes it feels like a lot and sometimes it feels smaller than a phone booth. Depends on your mood.”

The newcomers hovered in the narrow aisle. Jeffries demonstrated the light switches, the power outlets, the sleep restraints, and how to prevent small objects from spewing out of the compartments when you opened the doors.

“Velcro, Velcro, Velcro,” he said. “By the time you return to Earth, I guarantee you that you will never want to see another strip of Velcro again. And if you do happen to lose anything, check the nearest ventilator intake grid. They’re located just above the floor along each wall. Everything ends up there sooner or later.”

Jeffries then turned a dial on the back wall. The image on the screen changed from waves breaking at Waikiki to wheat fields waving in a summer breeze to an aerial view of snow-capped Mount Rainier.

“Any pictures of the Bronx?” asked Freddy.

“Not in this sequence. If you want it, we can arrange it,” said Jeffries. “That ends the grand tour. I assume all of you learned how to operate the Whit and the showers back on Earth.”

“I didn’t,” said O’Donnell.

“Well, my man,” Jeffries grinned, “you are going to be in rough shape pretty fast without a lesson. Anybody else?”

The others answered that they were completely familiar with the personal hygiene facilities. Jeffries assigned each person a compartment, then led O’Donnell to the Whit.

“How does somebody come up here without learning this?” he said.

“I was a late addition,” said O’Donnell.

“What the hell does that mean? Did you wander onto the shuttle just before lift-off?”

“You might say that.”

“Damn. Things sure have changed since I started to fly. Time was they wouldn’t let anyone onto a shuttle without teaching you more things than you ever needed to know. Now they send people up who can’t take a shit when they got to. Pull yourself in here.” Jeffries opened the door of the Whit. The interior was a confusing array of tubes, levers, and siphons that looked like a piece of farm machinery designed at MIT. “We’re going to start with number one. You remember number one from grammar school?”

O’Donnell entered the Whit and inserted his booted feet into the loops on the floor. Jeffries closed the door all but a crack.

“You’re a Trikon scientist, right?”

“Right,” said O’Donnell.

“Now unzip your flight suit. You know what happened a few days ago?”

“I heard.”

“I thought with you being a late addition, maybe Trikon sent you up to keep an eye on these scientists.”

“Not me.”

“They can use a transfusion of common sense, the whole damn bunch of them.” Jeffries saw that O’Donnell was out of his pants and closed the door completely.

“Okay,” he called through the door. “You see that funnel right in front of yon? Pull a urinal cover out of the dispenser on top of it and put it on the end of the funnel.”

“Uh-huh,” came O’Donnell’s voice.

“Now turn that yellow switch on to start the fan and the centrifuge. Otherwise you’ll end up with a pint-sized ball of piss on your crotch. Now stick your pecker into the funnel…”

“You sure this is safe?” O’Donnell asked over the whir of the fan.

“Are you Jewish?”

“No, and I don’t want to be.”

Jeffries laughed. “You’ll be okay. We haven’t lost anybody yet.”

Feeling more than a little wary, O’Donnell did as Jeffries instructed. He relieved himself and felt the urine being whisked away by the airflow from the vacuum fan.

“Now I know how a cow feels in a milking barn,” he said.

“Wait till we move on to number two,” said Jeffries with a laugh that was nearly malicious. O’Donnell saw that there was a safety belt on the seat.

Dan Tighe watched the progress of the logistics-module transfer from the command center’s viewports. Standing beside him at the RMS console, a crewman operating the remotely controlled arm had already deftly detached the expended log module, stuck it on a temporary berthing mast, and was preparing to remove the replacement module from Constellation’s payload bay. Two other crewmen hovered outside in MMUs, manned maneuvering units, fondly nicknamed flying armchairs, ready to assist if the going got too tricky for the robot arm.

New food in, old garbage out, thought Tighe. Wryly he remembered some old soldier’s maxim: The army is like the alimentary canal. No matter what goes in one end, nothing comes out the other end but crap.

Tighe had flown slot in the Thunderbirds, the Air Force’s precision flying team. He had test-piloted jet fighters. He had commanded half a dozen shuttle missions for NASA. Now his flying days were over. Sure, he was still sailing clear around the world every ninety minutes. But as commander he didn’t fly the station; nobody did. The station sailed around the world on its own, a diamond-shaped man-made moon. Tighe would never pilot a plane or a spacecraft again. He was fighting just to stay on as commander of this station.

This job was babysitting, not flying. There was a contingency plan for manually operating the complex system of translation and attitude thrusters in the event of a major gyroscope malfunction. He had trained for over a hundred hours with the hand controller that would override the automatic system in the event of such an emergency. But that had been on a simulator. Tighe doubted that the station could actually be “flown” the way its designers claimed.

What a laugh that would be, he thought bitterly, They won’t let me fly because of my goddamned blood pressure, but maybe I could take control of this contraption and zoom her around for a while. Wouldn’t that be sweet?

He pictured the look on Henderson’s face and the frenzy at Mission Control if he suddenly started maneuvering the space station. It’d be like trying to fly a house. This station isn’t going anywhere; just rolling around the Earth, time after time, day after day. Neither of us is going anywhere, are we?

His days were monotonous. He monitored the constant stream of data generated by the station’s subsystems. He dispatched his crew to perform necessary tasks. He listened for alarms he prayed he never would hear. He refereed disputes between competing Trikon researchers. And all the while he struggled against being seduced by boredom. That was the greatest danger; not a meteoroid hit, not debris, not some weird chemical created in the labs. Simple boredom, a simple relaxation of vigilance.

Tighe frowned as he watched the two astronauts cavort in their MMUs. He missed the exhilaration of EVA. The media still called them space walks, and for once Tighe preferred the more romantic name. When he had first come to Trikon Station during the early shake-out phase, he would occasionally clamp himself into an MMU and jet outside the station. Strictly speaking he was not even supposed to do that much “flying,” but if Dr. Renoir knew about it she at least chose not to make an issue of it.

One time he had parked himself beneath the station’s nadir, where he could see nothing of the station, not the girders, not the modules, not even the shuttle that had transported him and his men to this outpost in the sky. He was completely alone and over Texas. Luminescent clouds scudded across the plains, tumbling before the wind, then curling into fishhooks where the Ozarks reared their craggy heads. He had a wife and a son down there, somewhere beneath those fishhooks. Three hundred miles away. Might as well be three hundred million.

He had made mistakes. Dammit, he had made mistakes. He thought he was being a good husband. When Cindy wanted to go back to school, after Bill was born, he made no objection. He was proud of her when she graduated, even if he was in the middle of a shuttle mission and couldn’t attend the ceremonies. Sure, she was upset. She had a right to be. But when NASA grounded him over this stupid hypertension business Cindy had been tremendously supportive. He saw a whole new life starting for the two of them. Three of them; Bill was finishing high school, ready for college.

College costs money. The only firm that would consider a grounded astronaut had been Trikon International. It meant going back into space. Not as a pilot, but still Tighe accepted the offer without an instant’s hesitation. When he phoned Cindy with the good news she went coldly silent. By the time he got back home she informed him that she had started procedures for a divorce. It hit him like a sniper’s bullet.

But he was reasonable about it. He had to face the fact that he and Cindy had become a pair of virtual strangers. He had to struggle hard to salvage what was left of his career. Cindy wanted to move to Dallas, where she could start her new life and her own career. He was willing to let her sell their house, willing to pay all Bill’s college expenses. There was no reason for them to fight, to snarl at each other, to drag themselves through an expensive and emotionally ruinous court battle. No reason at all. Except custody of their son.

“Commander Tighe?”

Dan’s insides lurched with surprise. He snapped his attention to the here and now.

The two new crewmen hovered between the command center and the utilities section. Lance Muncie clenched a handhold with his massive fist and unconsciously bit his lower lip. His skin was several shades of green lighter than it had been when he blew breakfast down the length of the connecting tunnel. Tighe knew that Lorraine had fitted Muncie with a motion-sickness pad. This was in direct contravention of Trikon’s policy that its people endure a few days of space sickness rather than become dependent on medication. But Trikon preferred a lot of things that just weren’t practical in space, and Lorraine was judicious in her use of medication.

Freddy Aviles rocked gently from his center of gravity, which in his case was located near the solar plexus. His massive arm and chest muscles twitched as if only a supreme effort of self-denial prevented him from launching into a spin.

Tighe had selected them from a number of resumes Trikon had sent him. It was a damn fool way of manning a space station, but Trikon was the boss and constantly assured him that all candidates were top-notch space-worker material. Tighe doubted that anyone, especially Trikon’s personnel department, could predict how a person would react in orbit, but he had to play the hand he was dealt. That same personnel section was on the verge of taking what was left of his career away from him.

His newest two recruits were very personal choices. Freddy Aviles had been born in the South Bronx and enlisted in the Navy after high school. As an electronics specialist he rose to the rank of petty officer, second class, on an Aegis destroyer before losing both legs when a missile broke loose from its mounting and crushed them while the ship rode out a typhoon. After discharge, he went to college for computer science and was working as a Pentagon analyst when he suddenly applied to Trikon for employment. Tighe had always believed that a legless person was well suited for life in micro-gee. The problem was that no space agency ever had recruited one. He was glad that Trikon had the vision, or the balls, to try.

There was nothing special to recommend Lance Muncie, other than that he was a fellow midwesterner. But one fact of personal importance had caught Tighe’s eye: Muncie was a recent graduate of the University of Kansas.

Tighe acknowledged the two crewmen’s salutes with a casual wave of his hand. He presented each of them with a set of thick laminated cards bound together by a plastic spiral.

“These outline your basic responsibilities. I’m sure you already know every word,” he said. “Now for the unofficial stuff.”

Lance Muncie’s expression hardened into a frown. Freddy Aviles grinned as if expecting the punch line of an inside joke. His gold canine twinkled.

“There’s been trouble among the scientists. I’m not going to bullshit you. It’s getting worse. The official line is that they’re working together on a project with environmental ramifications. The truth is that each one would slit the throats of the others in order to be the first to develop whatever it is they’re trying to develop. I don’t concern myself with the specifics, and neither should you. Our job is to see that the station remains in one piece and doesn’t fall out of the sky.

“Now, some of these scientists may see you as possible allies in their games. Others may see you as enforcers. Others might not take any notice of you at all. You’ll get a sense of it pretty damn fast. I want you to remember that you are not a policeman, a judge, or a jury. If you see anything that strikes you as odd, don’t take any action. Report it to me.”

“Odd like what, sir?” asked Lance Muncie.

“Odd like a Japanese scientist roaming through the American lab module late at night. Or vice versa. Or any permutation of scientists or their technicians in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll get the idea pretty quickly, men. After a few days, you’ll see who’s staring daggers at who.” Tighe paused long enough to look each crewman in the eye. “I’m sure you noticed that there are several women on board. Some are Trikon scientists or technicians, others are part of the Mars Project, and a few are members of the crew. There are no rules against fraternization, but I hope you’ll use your common sense. This is a closed system. Emotions can run high even on the best of days, and there are damn few outlets for blowing off steam. I don’t care how you conduct yourselves in your spare time. But if I see your performance suffering or the safety of this station compromised, remember one thing. I’m your commanding officer, not your father. I don’t get paid for wisdom and understanding.”

The two crewmen muttered in assent, although Muncie looked plainly disturbed.

“Aviles, I understand you are a computer whiz.”

“I have a master’s in computer science from Columbia. The Navy paid my way after the accident. Wanted me to be a useful citizen.”

“The station has an emergency configuration for its computer system that makes sense only to people on the ground,” said Tighe. “We can’t shut off the mainframe without going to auxiliary power. If I get you the specs, can you reconfigure it?”

“I’m not on the ground, sir.”

“Fine. Any questions?”

Muncie’s brows knit slightly. “Sir—half the people up here are doctors, aren’t they? Are we supposed to call them that? Or what?”

Smiling, Tighe answered, “It’s all pretty informal. We call the medical officer ‘Doctor.’ Everybody else is ‘mister’ or ‘ms.’ Except the head of the Martians. He likes to be called Professor Jaeckle.”

Muncie nodded, still frowning uncertainly.

“All right. That will be all,” said Tighe.

Freddy flicked his wrists against the wall and bored like a torpedo toward the entrance to the connecting tunnel. Lance groped his way from handhold to handhold. The two new crewmen: a dour farm boy and a jive-ass Puerto Rican who had no ass.

“Muncie,” called Tighe.

Muncie stopped himself and covered the pad behind his right ear with his hand.

“Sir, if it’s about—”

“Forget it, son. I know about the pad and I know Trikon’s policy. Dr. Renoir is a good doctor. You do what she says, okay?”

Lance dragged his lip beneath his teeth and nodded.

“You graduated from the University of Kansas, right? Ever run into someone named Bill Tighe?”

Lance knit his brow as if rummaging through his memory for a face to connect with the name.

“He would have been a freshman when you were a senior,” prodded Tighe.

“No. Can’t say I did. UK’s a big place, sir.”

“Yeah. I guess it is.”

After mastering the use of the personal hygiene facilities, O’Donnell closed himself in his compartment and began to unpack. He was traveling light, even by space flight standards: socks, toothbrush, comb, and razor. No picture of a girl back home to attach to his compartment wall. No gold crucifix to drift out of his collar and dangle at the end of a thick chain. No blank minicassettes for video letters to home. Everything he needed was in his head—work, memories, dreams, and an invisible line he could not cross.

O’Donnell finished stowing his belongings and checked the time. It was early afternoon. His scientific gear was in the new logistics module and would not be accessible until the next day. He adjusted the sleep restraint, played with the reading lamp, and flipped through the selection of scenes on the viewscreen. He looked at his watch again. Four minutes had passed. The Cape began to look like paradise.

A knock on the doorframe relieved his boredom.

“Who is it?” O’Donnell pulled free of the sleep restraint and pushed toward the door, expecting either Freddy or Lance Muncie.

“Dr. Renoir.”

He slid the door open.

“The medical officer,” she added. She hung in the doorway, stockinged feet barely touching the floor, one hand on a grip set into the wall: good-looking, not quite beautiful, strong alert features, ample figure filling out her blue flight suit nicely.

“I remember,” O’Donnell said, making himself smile at her. “From Commander Tighe’s welcoming speech. You dodge projectile vomit very well.”

“It comes with medical training,” she said. She glanced down at the computer in her other hand. “You are required to report to me every day. Trikon’s orders.”

“I know. Does today count as a day?”

“It does.”

He noticed her looking past him, taking in the entire compartment in one sweeping glance. He was accustomed to the probing eyes, the seemingly innocuous questions, the tricks. Was this visit a coincidence? Or had she come here as soon as Jeffries reported him safely in his compartment.

“We can talk here or you can come to the infirmary. It has slightly more room.”

“I think I’ll be seeing enough of this place.”

“Fine. The infirmary is in the command module.” She quickly turned and pushed through the hatch into the connecting tunnel.

Dr. Renoir’s infirmary was larger than O’Donnell’s compartment, but just barely. With the door closed, the only way for them to fit comfortably was for her to hover near the ceiling and for him to hook an arm through a foot loop on the floor. The positions were disorienting at first, but O’Donnell quickly adjusted his perceptions. Her legs, foreshortened from his angle, were tightly pressed together and crossed at the ankles. Excessively prim and proper. More like prudish, since she wore a trousered jumpsuit just like everybody else. He considered suggesting that she unwind, then thought better of it. There was a severity in her broad, blunt features. Her lips, pressed tightly together, seemed to be made of stone. Her brown eyes were narrowed in concentration and her dark eyebrows were shaped like the horns of a ram. She was too well scrubbed for O’Donnell’s taste. In fact, her neatly wrapped French braid reminded him of a University of Oregon sorority sister he had tried unsuccessfully to bed. Then he laughed to himself. She’ll look like Miss Universe in a couple of weeks, he predicted silently.

“Do you know why you are here?” she asked. Her voice was a rich mezzo, almost sultry despite the severity of her looks.

“On Trikon Station?”

“No.”

“Seeing you? You want to make sure I won’t get sick like Lance Muncie.”

“Don’t be flip, Mr. O’Donnell. You have already failed your first test by not admitting it.” Dr. Renoir tapped on her hand computer. “July, 1995, you were arrested for possession of cocaine during a police sweep of a drug neighborhood in East L.A. Your car was confiscated but your case was dismissed on condition that you seek treatment for substance abuse. August, 1995, you checked into a private clinic in Encino, California. You were discharged in February of the following year and continued attending outpatient meetings for six months.”

“That’s when I started riding my motorcycle again.”

Dr. Renoir furrowed her brows so that her ram’s horns almost touched over the bridge of her nose.

“You and someone named Bob Rodriguez formed a chapter of a national motorcycle club for ex-addicts.” Her tone was deprecating.

“You don’t sound as though you approve.”

“I don’t think that a motorcycle club is the proper forum for treating drug abuse.”

“It’s worked for us, including the three physicians who begged to join.”

Dr. Renoir ignored his comment. “You went to work for a Trikon subsidiary in August, 1996.”

“I’ve been clean for three years.”

She stared at him.

“I’ve been clean for three years. Does your report include that?”

Dr. Renoir stuck the hand computer behind a bungee cord. “Mr. O’Donnell.”

“Hugh.”

“Mr. O’Donnell,” she repeated with emphasis. “I don’t know why Trikon sent you here and I don’t care to know. But I have my orders. You will report to me each day at oh-eight-thirty hours. If that time conflicts with your schedule for any reason, we will set a new time. You will be randomly tested for drugs once during each calendar month you are on the station. If any of the results are positive, I will immediately report you to your superiors on Earth. And if, despite negative results, I have reason to suspect that you might be using controlled substances, I will ask the commander to order a thorough search of your compartment and workstation. Do I make myself clear?”