Day 23 of 30

NanoWriMo2005
J E D Cline
Title: “The Ark of 1984’s Future”

Day 23 of 30

At SpaceDock1 in GEO, Artesiana was making her personal inspection and tour of all the facilities there, continuing to get to know all the crews and jobs being done there under the more specific direction of specialists. She found that a new port launch work site was being started in the area where Tanfl had its offices, an odd place to put a spacedock, she thought. Her usual cheery walk through of facilities was not seemingly appreciated by the Tanfl people there, this time. She was told it was just a handy dock for the construction and port facilities to service a new Tanfl patrol craft, but couldn’t get much of an answer as to why there was a need for a patrol craft up here in GEO. It was clear to her that they were doing the job quite hastily, however. And to her mind, she had found that “haste makes waste”, and is especially risky up here in this environment so new to people.

Visiting the Tanfl crew recreation facilities, however, she was impressed by the huge windows facing the Earth. She had the place to herself at the moment, and took time to meditate awhile there. Meditation was not usually her thing, but she had learned it as part of being more balanced in her coping resources. Sitting meditatively cross-legged on some of the cushy pillows provided for the Tanfl RichElite, she contemplated the mostly blue and white sphere out there, hugely filling the window view. Sri Lanka, India, and Indonesia were the closest land areas, the vast expanse of ocean filling in directly below and all around those land masses. It was all peaceful, the hum and distant rumbles of machinery being masked by the playing of ocean surf audio, which actually was coming from the Ecuadorian coast down on the opposite side of the planet, where the space carousel escalator had its Earthsurface terminal. Gently, Pachebel music was merged into the surf sounds. Yes, these Tanfl people knew how to make the good life. Yet, they did not seem to be here enjoying it, why?

Suddenly a group of people came in, one was chattering loudly to the others. She listened in, having blended into the room as if belonging there. “Here is the kind of experience you will be offering your guests, if you build hotel and recreation facilities up here. Sure, it will be a high place to seduce, yet also the view from here is unsurpassed anywhere on the ground. So let’s all take ten minutes to quietly contemplate this experience, deciding if it will bring up your wealthy tourists.”

“Tanfl Light Rail will be building a major in-orbit rail commute system from the carousel port here, and eventually will extend all around the orbit, making access to all areas of GEO easy. First, it will extend in the African continent direction, and is where we suggest both Hilton and Holiday Inn Corporations build their first hotels for their RichElite guests. And just beyond them, we will need built much more modest, long term occupancy hotel facilities, for the people who want to get a head start living up here while the first cities are being built, which will have condominium size homes for 10,000 people in each city. But it will take awhile as production facilities are ramped up for building the major structure of cities number 3 and higher, only two cities will be built from materials all brought directly from the ground, since the carousel transportation capacity, though huge and continuously operating cheaply, has many other things it needs to bring up here, beside construction materials for those huge city-wheels. So we expect many people will choose to live in lower rate hotel facilities for perhaps many months before moving on.”

“Looking in the Indonesian direction, you can see the prototype light rail commute system. Note that it is built off to the side, actually a pair of rail lying along GEOrbit, 300 meters apart. The first ring of city wheels will need to rotate in the earth’s equatorial plane being giant gyroscopes in a way, and the spacing of the rails sets the limits to their wheel girth along with their non-rotating passive shielding thickness, inside which each wheel-city rotates to provide earth-normal gravitational function inside itself. So the size of your hotels will also need to fit easily within that 300 meter width.”

“This wonderful view we have here of the planet, is not a direct view, remember. It is seen through a huge periscope which has its earthward mirror rotating at he same rate as our station wheel here, and is rolling around a circular track along what appears to be our wall here. Remember, we are in a slowly rotating wheel-station that rotates in the earth’s equatorial plane, too, much as the wheel-cities and your hotels will rotate. You will need to build in similar view facilities for your better hotels.”

The saleswoman continued chattering as she led the group on to their next destination, and her voice faded out of the room. Artesiana pondered that the purpose of this facility was perhaps more a sales gimmick than a gift to Tanfl employees for their break time. She had not heard of the synchronously swiveling periscope mechanism before, but it makes sense as she pictured the rotating structures in her mind. She made a note to see what Tanfl would charge to build such a facility for the 3Musketeers recreational center, as it seemed to her to be a psychologically healthy thing, not mere extravagance. She indulged herself another 10 minutes contemplating the Earth’s roundness, wholeness, majestic beauty; although now it was a bit different, realizing she was looking at a reflective surface, instead of looking at the Earth directly. Part of the sphere was shading to dark, as night took over that part of the Earth. She made a note to come back here some day when it would be almost total nighttime down there, to have the sun shine directly into here at the edge of the periscope, past the African continent edge of the world, to fill this room with Earth's atmospheric haze tinted light of sunset.

Returning to her office, she passed again by the area where was to be built and stationed a “patrol” spacecraft. What exactly was that, and what was it for? There were no space aliens from Mars or anywhere that could be found upon a century of straining to see them. So that left only humans to be the quarry of a patrol craft. 3Musketeers only had the lunar-GEO transfer spacecraft and its lunar decender shuttle in its bay. A rather cumbersome huge thing, needing streamlining only insofar as its center of gravity, certainly not a speeder to be given a ticket or a warcraft. Maybe the Tanfl people just had to have police vehicles that roam wherever they live, as a matter of tradition, to feel in control.

Back at her office, she pulled up the bill of shipping materials being sent to that office area which was also to be a spaceport for a curious vehicle. Separating out the office supplies from the list, she found some things probably to be devoted to the spacedock and spacecraft itself. Yes, among its supplies were a few machine guns, standard Tanfl sector police issue. But more interesting was a police grenade rocket launcher complete with its remote directing laser guidance system; it was one of the types that use lateral thruster jets to steer rather than air vane steering. That irritated Artesiana, any idiot blowing up a grenade explosive inside her station was a total idiot. But then, one does not need laser remote long range laser guidance to shoot at anything inside the station. Who would they want to be ready to shoot at here, with such a thing? A grenade going off anywhere in GEO facilities would have its shrapnel causing all kinds of havoc, such as the huge photovoltaic panels of the solar power plants, not to mention the habituated facilities or anyone happening to be out in a space suit doing some job. Tanfl facilities and people would get killed, too. It made no sense.

She had better keep an eye on that project. It would have to be done unobviously as possible. Yet no doubt Tanfl was even now snooping about her snooping regarding the patrol craft. And she was aware that Tanfl had pulled some caper regarding Idealiana, and that had required a quick transfer of Idealiana to their lunar station; but no one was talking about all that. Clearly Tanfl was capable of doing something that 3Musketeers would not like. Although a patrol spacecraft in GEO could be built and operated for an insignificant fraction of the worth of Tanfl, it would cost something, and Tanfl spent not a dime extra for anything, no more than they gave anything to someone else without a pay back expected. They did live up to their name, TANFL was the acronym of “There Ain’t No Free Lunch” she wryly remembered. They were not crazier than anyone else. Therefore they likely had a specific purpose for that patrol spaceship.

She ran volume calculations for the patrol fuel tanks, compared with its other structural masses, and was amazed at how the thing must need to operate autonomously for years of cruises puttering around in GEO without refueling. Yet the crew supplies were only for a few days mission. So it was intended for a high delta vee purpose. And the only way to expend that energy was either to drop to somewhere down along the carousel, or to go to the Moon and back.

The Moon. Oh oh. Idealiana was in trouble, she suspected. She went to her Holovision nook, found Idealiana in hers on the Moon, and they conversed about these things. What would happen if a standard issue police rocket grenade hit the lunar station somewhere? “Bad scene”, Idealiana answered. Among other problems, it is very hard to breathe when all the air has suddenly gone out a big hole into the surrounding vacuum. Even their precious genetic stock in the pet farm would all die in moments. Who would play so dirty, and why?


Idealiana felt despair that her presence here could be cause of the station’s destruction. Tanfl could rebuild an equivalent facility for processing lunar ore for construction uses in GEO, without thought of the cost, they were so wealthy. So even if the missile were to destroy everything, it would be of no matter to Tanfl Political Corporation. There seemed nothing that could be done to fortify the facility, and she could not leave it to be a target elsewhere.

The rocket grenade’s impact kinetic energy would be worse than its explosive charge. It could be a rock of equal mass and if it hit a vulnerable place, the station would be holed and airless in seconds. The metal composition and internal grenade explosives would just add to the mess it would cause.

However, most of the habitated section was dug in for protection from cosmic rays and even the improbable meteor hit. The half-meter thick cast basalt blocks which formed the major part of the buried living and office areas, were welded together with melted lunar glass. Shock fractures might render it quite leaky, even if not holed directly by the missile. There were vulnerable areas, however, and it seemed likely there were where a guided missile would be directed.

The four of them got together and discussed the situation. They had limited resources for modifying the station. Even if they survived in some small area, a “rescue” landing party armed with police machine guns would not be something they could survive. The genetic preserves of their pet farm were more important to them even than their own lives, but to Tanfl’s views, the animals would be merely put quickly into the station’s digestion vat. Along with the lunar station crew’s bodies. None of it sounded good to them. They had worked so hard to create this first lunar station, and get its ore processing experiments going. Their hopes for being able to repopulate the earth with something that could be a balanced ecosystem again, would be hard hit if their pet farm died. If they sent a warning message to Tanfl, it merely would alert Tanfl that they needed to be more sneaky about the operation, and hush communications up from the lunar base from then on.

The construction of the patrol spacecraft was expected to take about 2 months more, and that was assuming they continued their present rather hasty, but not panicked, rate of activity. For now, it was likely they thought their operation was unexpected by 3Musketeers. They probably could request another supply mission earlier than scheduled, have the 3Musketeers’ lunar orbital transfer craft return to lunar orbit, so their surface to orbit transfer shuttle could access it. Probably Rationallo would not insist in riding along, since he already knows Idealiana is hiding at the Lunar StationBase1, with nowhere she could safely go from there. What could they requisition for supplies that would save the situation?

Meanwhile, at GEOSpaceDock1, Artesiana was casually continuing her visits to all facilities. When getting near the offices leading to the patrol spacecraft berth, she found a massive security lock down, and polite suggestions to keep on walking. It was Tanfl policy to protect their investments, she was told. None of her business, it was just Tanfl standard procedure.

Artesiana replied that as the SpaceDock’s director, she would find it highly useful to ride along on the initial flight of the patrol spacecraft, to get a firsthand look at all their facilities, it would be a wonderful opportunity to observe progress from the outside of the ever growing complex. Wasn’t a patrol spacecraft supposed to be used to observe order and compliance with directives? As the station’s director, she declared it was her position to ride along on that journey, and also ride along routinely every month or so. Who did she have to submit her request for this, who was in charge of the patrol spacecraft’s missions? Send your request to Rationallo himself, they told her.

That was bad news for Artesiana. She was one of Rationallo’s “wives-at-large” per the long-ago agreement, when the 3Musketeers headquarters manufacturing plant was to be rebuilt to make the critical sliding armature segments for the carousel escalator’s motor. She was still a wife, legally. And Tanfl wives were very subordinate, most being locked away in Haremspace enclosures. Artesiana’s position was very precarious; she did not want to wake up some morning to find herself in a Haremspace enclosure for the rest of her life, making his babies. Legally, Rationallo could make that happen. Nope, she liked her freedom here in the GEOSpaceDock, much more room for her to roam, for one thing. A ride on that patrol craft was likely to be her last taste of freedom. Was she willing to pay that price for one chance to do something that would just be set aside until a subsequent cruise by the patrol craft?

Even now, Rationallo would be notified that the patrol spacecraft was getting too much attention from 3Musketeers personnel. She needed to back off, way back.