Ben Bova - The Trikon Deception

All the members of the club were haunted by these creatures that hovered at the periphery of their vision. Some creepy-crawlies resembled insects; others resembled rodents. A few belonged to phyla no biologist would ever dream existed. O’Donnell seemed to have a penchant for spiders.

The creepy-crawlies were a bad sign. They meant that the protective shell he had built up during the past three years was in danger of cracking. With Hurricane Caroline delaying the launch for as long as five days, O’Donnell faced an eternity with no work to keep him occupied and uptight Lance Muncie bent on male bonding. In between girlfriends. Shit. A girlfriend was the least of his problems.

O’Donnell took a long look at the swastika before leaving the men’s room. He thought he saw the ends wiggle, but he couldn’t be sure. If the phones are back in operation tonight, I’ll call in at the motorcycle club meeting. A chat with my bike buddies will do me some good.

Back at the bar, the television screen was blank.

“Show over?” asked O’Donnell.

“Don’t know,” said the bartender. “We lost the picture. Jaeckle yelled and Carla Sue screamed. And then we lost the sound.”

When placed in orbit, a long skinny object exhibits a peculiar property due to the basic physics of orbital mechanics. Once aligned so that its long axis points toward the center of the Earth, it tends to maintain this attitude. The bottom end (nadir) remains at the bottom and the top end (zenith) remains at the top as the object orbits around the Earth. The forces that cause this phenomenon are called gravity-gradient torques and the object is said to be gravity-gradient stabilized.

As applied to Trikon Station, this means that the modules will always be oriented so that the Earth is “down,” or “below” the station in relation to its internal architecture.

Trikon Station orbits about 480 kilometers (300 miles) above the Earth’s surface. Space is not entirely a vacuum at this altitude; there is a faint, thin atmosphere composed principally of atomic oxygen. This highly reactive gas can erode the station’s components. To minimize this erosion and the orbital decay resulting from the slight but real aerodynamic drag, the station’s normal orbital orientation is to fly “edge on,” like the blade of a broad knife flying edge-first.

However, Trikon Station’s natural tendency to remain gravity gradient stabilized is not enough to keep it properly functioning. The solar panels must always be oriented toward the sun to collect energy. The radiators must be aimed away from the sun to discharge waste heat. As the station orbits the Earth, the positions of the solar panels and radiators must be constantly adjusted for the most efficient orientations.

The station’s computerized inertial measurement unit (IMU) constantly monitors orientation and the attitude control system (ACS) automatically corrects any instability. Although the station carries gas jet thrusters to make gross changes in its position and to reboost itself to higher orbit when necessary, thrusters are an imprecise and costly method of “fine timing” attitude.

Trikon Station therefore employs a sophisticated system of control moment gyroscopes (CMGs) to correct and maintain proper orientation. These gyroscopes are mounted in the external truss of the station’s skeleton.

“We’ll start with the European module,” Tighe said to Jeffries. They were in the connecting tunnel, a slender tube that ran within the station’s central truss and between the rows of modules. The tunnel looked eerie in the half-light of the emergency lamps. Normally bright green and shadowless, the tunnel was now murky and splotched with dark recesses created by rows of storage lockers. Tighe felt like a crab scuttling along the bottom of the ocean.

Under normal conditions, the station gathered its energy with huge “sails” of solar cells while it flew on the sun side of the Earth. Half of the energy was delivered to the power distribution system for immediate use and half was stored in nickel-cadmium batteries to support the station when it slipped into the Earth’s shadow. The auxiliary power configuration employed by Tighe disconnected all the individual computer terminals from the mainframe, but also had the undesirable side effect of disengaging the station’s utilities from the solar arrays. The NiCad batteries were capable of providing full power for one complete orbit. The emergency configuration lowered the demand to one-sixteenth of full power, which theoretically allowed the crew sixteen orbits—barely a day—to correct whatever problem existed. Tighe hoped the search would not take that long.

The Trikon laboratory section of the station was composed of The Bakery, the European Lab Module (ELM), and the Japanese Applications and Science Module (“Jasmine”). The three modules were situated adjacent to each other, with ELM in the center. Viewed from space, they were identical except for the markings painted on their white skins. Their internal designs and color schemes were adapted to suit the tastes of the individual nationalities.

Tighe and Jeffries arrived at ELM to find a technician floating near the entry hatch and shouting in German at someone in Habitation Module 2, at the other end of the connecting tunnel. The tech fell silent at the sight of the commander, but a babel of voices quickly rose within Hab 2. Some demanded to be informed of the problem; others shouted advice for whatever that problem might be. Tighe acknowledged none of them. He pulled himself into ELM.

The lab was even murkier than the connecting tunnel. The gray floor and salmon ceiling blended into a single, dismal blah. Tighe moved through the shadows cast by the equipment. He passed two technicians, a stocky blonde Swede and a silent dark Spaniard. Each nodded solemnly. Tighe floated toward the end of the module, heading for the bulky figure waiting for him there.

“What is the meaning of this, Commander Tighe?” The reedy tenor voice floated clearly in the thin air.

Tighe stopped himself with a handhold. Looming in front of him, in fact blotting out several of the emergency lamps, was the corpulent figure of the chief scientist of the European contingent: Dr. Chakra Ramsanjawi. Unlike the others, who wore regulation coveralls and lab smocks, Ramsanjawi insisted upon wearing a saffron-colored kurta that billowed out from his body, making him resemble a hot-air balloon.

“Good morning, Doctor,” Tighe said tightly.

“I repeat, what is the meaning of this power-down, Commander?” said Ramsanjawi. He spoke with an upper-class British accent and just a faint hint of Hindu singsong. His skin was the dead-gray color of ashes. At first it had seemed odd to Tighe that an Indian had been placed in charge of the European lab, but Ramsanjawi was an employee of a Swiss firm, one of the corporations that made up Trikon’s European arm. And despite his personal appearance, Ramsanjawi was more English than Big Ben. Or tried to be.

“The power-down is necessary,” said Tighe.

“For whom?”

Ramsanjawi pulled himself toward a cabinet so that he no longer blocked the light from Tighe. Unconsciously Tighe backed away slightly. The Indian exuded a faintly acrid body odor, subtle but unpleasant, that he tried to cover up with cloying cologne. Tighe mentally pictured a cloud of mingled vapors hovering weightlessly around Ramsanjawi’s bloated body and thought, If only he’d stay in one place long enough he might strangle on his own stink.

“Someone downloaded files from the terminal in the American module,” Tighe said.