David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

He’d had the time to bone up on Halley’s Comet, something he had skipped when applying for this mission. It had seemed irrelevant: Halley was another iceball, bound for the outer system and zones of space nobody had ever seen. That was enough for an ambitious youngster of twenty-five.

He had been chagrined to find he was even pronouncing the name wrong. Astronomers and space workers called it Halley with a short a ; ground-huggers of his native North America used a long a, as if it were “Hailey.” But the discoverer had pronounced it with a w in the middle, so it should sound like “Hawley.” Carl imagined a haughty Englishman enunciating the name with one eyebrow arched, his lips turned into an amused, condescending smile.

They were riding the comet on its thirty-first passage since an ancient Chinese first recorded seeing the splash of shimmering light in the sky—a span that dwarfed the long years Carl had spent, and humbled the empires of Man. The fourth recorded apparition, in 11 B.C., came close to the birthdate of Jesus of Nazareth, and some said it must have been the Star of Bethlehem.

We could use some salvation now, Carl thought, and thumbed off the display. Andwhere’s that goddamn Jeffers?

As if called, the hatch creaked and Jeffers appeared, his long rusty beard flowing over his skinsuit neck yoke like a lurid moss. The man had argued that letting body hair grow was only sensible, providing much-needed natural insulation. Carl had countered that it got in the way of suit fixtures and fouled the helmet placements, but he knew why Jeffers liked it: the image of Methuselah, of wisdom, of the old hermit in the woods.

“How’d it go?” Jeffers asked. If anything, his southern drawl had thickened with the years. They were all trying to keep alive whatever links they had to distant, vibrant Earth.

Carl shrugged. “I sent the weekly transmission yesterday. Got the usual short response today, thirteen hours twelve minutes later.”

“Any shows?”

“Here.” Carl hit a key and an index scrolled forward. He stopped at a NEWS entry and shifted to realtime. “Feast your eyes.”

A woman announcer grinned at them, her torso paint aswirl with technicolor curves. Her nipple ornaments glittered as she took a deep breath and said enthusiastically. “Arrested on two counts of public foreplay today were Starlet Angela Xeno and Compassatino Rilke, line player for the Visigoths.” A 3D picture of a smiling couple, half-nude. “Insiders say the incident was publicity for the Visigoths’ upcoming tube match against the Wasters. Tuning to.”

Carl snapped it off. “There’re three new porno sestinas, too, if you want them.”

Jeffers made a face. “Naw, gettin’ so I can’t take that stuff anymore.”

“Me neither.” He never had, but it was a good idea not to disparage the tastes of people you had to work with; another small fact he had learned.

“When’s Malcolm comin’?”

“Any minute now.”

Central was one of two common meeting grounds between the factions. They all had to run into each other in the harvesting bins of Hydroponics, but Central was the obvious spot for real negotiations.

Jeffers slid into a webbing, stretching. “Just got back from the surface. A man can hardly move anything out there. Lotsa mechs are down for repairs and the rest drag around like they’s drugged.”

Carl nodded. Every month it got slightly worse. The persistent cold, the malfs, the difficulty of making new parts or repairs… “I wonder if there’ll be some of those titanium-cylinder manifolds in the Care Package.”

“Hope so.” Jeffers frowned. “I still wonder how they got all those parts and supplies into such a small package.”

“They’ve gotten better at high-boost, I suppose. It’s been over Thirty years, after all.”

Earth had undoubtedly made great progress in propulsion of high-quality loads for the Mars and asteroid bases. Still, it had been a surprise to be told, three years ago, that Control was sending a cargo of much-needed parts and supplies, boosting them out under enormous acceleration. They would arrive before aphelion, and could help crucially in the Nudge. Even with three decades of Earthside’s improvements, a package like that was expensive—but nothing, of course, compared with the investment already sunk into the Halley Mission.

“I ran that optical sighting through JonVon, got a measurement,” Jeffers said. “The Care Package is riding a fusion torch. Big orange plume behind it.”

“Already decelerating?”

“Yeah, but not much. Guess they’re going to slam on the brakes right at the end.”

With rendezvous two years away, the Care Package still had to shed four kilometers per second to come alongside Halley. News of it had been a real morale boost. Carl hoped its arrival would lift them all, bring back some of the spirit the mission had enjoyed in its first days.

“Major Clay—our new contact guy—said he had included a bottle of 1986 Malescot St. Exupery Margaux.”

“Hot damn! I can’t pronounce it, but I’ll sure as hell help drink it.”

“A bottle of the best from Halley’s twen-cen apparition, he…”

“Great. Just fine.”

Jeffers was plainly pleased at this fragment of news. Carl had saved details of the Care Package, dealt them out one at a time to keep enthusiasm up. An extravagant gesture, shipping old grape juice across the solar system—but Earth, despite its madnesses, did understand something of the psychology out here. It was a masterful touch.

One hell of an improvement over the hysteria under Ould-Harrad — one month I’m a hero, the next I’m a Percell freak. And under Criswell they didn’t answer at all. If it weren’t for Phobos Base relaying newslink on the sly, we couldn’t have proved Earth was even inhabited Sounds like things are settling down now though.

He rubbed his face, massaging some of the ache away. He tapped in instructions and the walls lit. Best to put on something pretty, calm, warm. Ah, here. Sunny day breaking over Hong Kong Free State.

The swarming masses of junks and flyers always pleased him. A baking sun had just lifted free of green, artificial hills to the east. A rainbow grinned, upside down beneath the vapor fall of a floating luxury home. Heat shimmer made the distant alabaster spires dance.

The hatch clanked again and Malcolm appeared. He was lean, and his face was set in a perpetual dark glower, black eyes peering out distrustfully. Without a word Malcolm settled into a webbing and nodded. “We want more from Hydro.”

Carl sighed. “You know the terms.”

“It’s not enough. We’re all losing body weight.”

For a nasty instant Carl was tempted to say, Try eating some of your kids. The ones you insisted you had a “right” to have. But he kept his face impassive and said, “We’re getting as much out of Hydro as we can, you know that. Look over the numbers.”

“But we’re growing, and the agreement doesn’t allow for that.”

“Those kids were your choice.”

“Look, we been over this,” Malcolm said evenly. “Normal people get sick easier. We got to keep a larger population in case there’s another plague.”

Jeffers, who had been chewing his lip all this time, burst out, “You just want to take over, is all. Couple decades, you’ll outnumber us Percells.”

Malcolm said stiffly, “The normal people will keep to our own zone.”

“We see you guys around in Three C—you movin’ m there? Jeffers asked.

“No.” Malcolm sniffed derisively. “We can’t stand the smell.”

“Delicate li’1 bastards, aren’t you?”

Carl said mildly, “Stop trading insults. We’ve got things to negotiate.”