The Trikon Deception

4 SEPTEMBER 1998 TRIKON STATION

To the human eye, space is serene. From three hundred miles above its surface, our Earth appears as a vast, smoothly curved panorama of deep blue oceans and brown wrinkled landmasses decked with parades of gleaming white clouds, ever changing, eternally beckoning. Our world shines with warmth, with beauty, with life.

Floating in the emptiness of space three hundred miles above the luminous curving glory of Earth is a glittering jewel, a diamond set against the infinite darkness of the cold void.

From a distance, hanging against that black infinity, it seems delicate, fragile, a child’s toy construction of gossamer and dreams. It is not until you approach that you realize how large it really is.

Nearly three football fields across, its skeleton is a giant diamond of gleaming alloy girders. Ten sparkling white aluminum cylinders form a raft fixed to its central truss; three of them bear the painted flags of nations: on one cylinder are the twenty-two flags of United Europe; on another is the rising sun of Japan; a third displays the Stars and Stripes of the United States and the Maple Leaf emblem of Canada.

At two corners of the huge diamond are attached two bulbous, blimp-like structures, burnt orange in color and far larger than the white cylinders. Once they were external tanks for space shuttles; now they are extensions of this island in space, moored to the diamond-shaped structure like giant balloons.

The gently tapering nose of one of the ETs points directly forward, the oilier directly aft, us the diamond knifes through the calm emptiness of orbital space. The trailing ET hears the curious circle-and-arrow symbol of the planet Mars.

Robots slide back and forth across the station’s main truss, silent in the airless vacuum, their metal wheels clasping the special guide rails, their spindly arms ending in gripping pincers strong enough to hold hardware that would weigh tons back on Earth. From the topmost corner of the diamond, bristling batteries of instruments aim outward at the stars while others, at the nadir corner, peer down at the dazzling blue sphere of Earth with its white swirls of clouds. On the station’s trailing edge, broad wings of deep-violet solar panels drink in sunlight while smaller, darker companions radiate away the heat generated within the station.

For there are men and women living and working at this outpost in space. This is Trikon Station, the first industrial research laboratory to be built in orbit.

Trikon.

To the human eye, space should be serene. Trikon station floated in its orbit on the sunlit side of the Earth, passing across the radiantly intense blue of the wide Pacific, adorned with clouds of brilliant, purest white.

The station shuddered. Like a giant sail suddenly caught in a crosswind. Like a man startled by danger.

Alarms screeched in every laboratory and living module, Klaxons hooted along the lengths of its passageways, and a computer-synthesized woman’s voice called from every intercom speaker in the station with maddening mechanical calm:

“Emergency. Emergency. Major malfunction. All personnel to CERV stations. All personnel to CERV stations. Prepare to abandon the station.”

No one cared. No one heeded the alarms. No one moved toward the Crew Emergency Reentry Vehicles.

From the astronomical observatory at the uppermost corner of Trikon Station two space-suited figures emerged, one of them encased in the “armchair” rig of a manned maneuvering unit, MMU.

Dan Tighe, commander of Trikon Station, fought back murderous fury and a terrible fear that clawed at his chest as he watched the space station begin to wobble and sway. Through the heavily tinted visor of his helmet he saw the bulbous burnt-orange structure of the Mars module detach itself from the station and begin to drift away, like a rudderless ship caught by an evil tide. The broad wings of the solar panels were swaying, undulating visibly. Dan knew they would break up within minutes.

We’re all going to die, said a voice inside his head. We’re going to die and it’s my fault. All my own goddamned stupid fault.