John Ringo - Von Neumann’s War

Out the back of the cabin was another grown-up area and it took a few swings of the machete to get through the back door. A few feet away from the back steps the underbrush stopped and rocks took over. The well pump for the house was in a small concrete block housing about ten feet from the cabin. Richard pulled off the cover of the housing and looked inside. The pump was gone and there was only an old handpump attached to the cap of the well.

“What the hell.” He gave the pump a few strokes. On the seventh stroke clear, very cold water gushed out of the spigot. Richard cupped his hand under it and tasted the water but was careful not to swallow any of it. The water tasted clean and good, but he would check it out for alkalinity, microbes, and other pollutants later. He spat the water out and rubbed his mouth dry on his sleeve.

There were several trees surrounding the cabin, most of which were hardwoods. But there was a small grove of trees that looked a little out of place. They were evenly spaced and obviously had been planted by a previous owner at least two or three decades before. There were three pecan trees, a persimmon tree, two plum trees, a pair of apple trees, and a pear tree, all of which appeared to be thriving and healthy. The trees were a plus — a naturally replenishing source of food. The realtors had said nothing about the small orchard. Richard didn’t plan on telling them when he made his offer either.

“Not bad.” He looked around at the cabin and the little orchard from the outside. He pulled a persimmon from one of the trees and bit into it. The tangy tart sweet fruit squirted in his mouth, making him pucker from the taste. He spit the fruit out. “Still a little green. Too early I guess. This will do nicely. Helena will love it.”

Roger Reynolds, Alan Davis, and Tom Powell sat at their usual table for their Tuesday after-work meeting. This time they were joined by John Fisher, Alice Pike, Major Shane Gries, and one of Gries’s noncoms, Master Sergeant Thomas Cady. When Shane had been told he could “have anything or anyone he wanted” to help with the program, the first thing he asked for was Cady. Traci was sitting in as well, this time letting herself be served instead of serving — for Traci, that took some getting used to.

“I can’t believe I’m sitting in a Hooters in Huntsville, Alabama, discussing the end of the world,” Alice said, shaking her head and picking at her salad.

“Can you think of a better place?” the master sergeant asked, taking a sip of beer.

“Spazos?” Alice asked. “Marsel’s in Paris? The French Riviera?”

Roger did his wing trick and dipped the meat in ranch dressing.

“Been there,” Gries grunted. “Nothing there you can’t get here and with more friendly service.”

“ Poulet au vin et herbs ?” Alice insisted.

“Garcia’ll fry you up some chicken breast in wine in a flash,” Traci said primly. “I mean, it’ll be Sutter Home White Zinfandel, but it adds a touch of extra caramelizing to the onions, anyway.”

Alice just sighed in desperation.

“So the data that Traci is telling us about does two things for us,” Roger said, stuffing the deboned chicken meat into his mouth.

“Yeah, what’s that?” Alice asked.

Roger held his hand to his mouth to say that she should let him finish chewing. He washed the wing down with some beer, then replied.

“We’ve got this shiny tubule impacting the Moon that she captured with the Hubble. There is no dust plume at the surface. This means whatever this tubule is, it’s slowing down and landing softly without creating any sort of plume. That means they definitely have reactionless drive systems. No plume, no rockets. The other thing it tells us is that these things have finished with Mars and moved to the Moon.”

“That second one isn’t certain,” Alan said, seriously for a change. “Maybe they have enough in numbers at Mars so as not to matter if they send a few to the Moon.”

“No way,” Traci said, flipping her hair behind an ear. “Look at the diameter of this tubule. It has to be at least fifty meters in diameter. And the damned thing stretches out about a hundred kilometers from the surface. What the hell is it?”

“Well, I’d say its pretty goddamned obvious that it’s a lunar invasion force,” Gries grunted into his beer glass.

“No shit, Sherlock!” Traci smiled and hit him on the back, making him slosh beer all over his uniform. “I mean, how or what are the things making up this tube. Is it solid? Is it a chain of sub-vehicles? The Hubble just doesn’t have the aperture to resolve what this thing is made of. All we see is a long, shiny, tube. And why does it only stick out a hundred kilometers. I mean, why not all the way to Mars? They’ve got more than enough mass converted there, based on our calculations. They could just throw a solid tube from one location to the other.”

“You were right, Rog,” Alan said with a grin. “We should’ve hired her a long time ago.”

“Well, Alan, when you’re right, you’re right,” Roger admitted. “And Traci, I have no idea. I could see it as being a relative motion thing, but they still have enough mass to compensate.”

“It’s a launch window or something,” John said, setting down his untouched beer and picking up a wing. “Maybe it’s some sort of air traffic control corridor. This has to be a bunch of things in formation. There is no way that is a solid object sticking out of the Moon like that.”

Dr. Powell set his beer down and started scribbling on a napkin. It was obvious to Roger and Alan that they needed to ignore him for a while and he would come up with something brilliant. The others had learned to ignore him most of the time anyway.

“I have a question,” Sergeant Cady asked. “If this tube sticking out of the Moon is so big, why can’t we see it?’ Cady, having seen the wing trick, reproduced it perfectly his first try and stuffed the chicken into his mouth. Tom was too busy to notice what he had done.

“That’s a good question, Master Sergeant,” Alice replied. “I was thinking the same thing. But I’m not an optics person, I deal with atoms, substrates, junctions, gates, and hole pairs.”

“What?” Shane asked.

“Itsy bitsy things down at the atomic level,” Roger translated absentmindedly.

“It’s simple telescope optics, y’all,” Traci stated. “The Hubble has a primary aperture diameter of 2.4 meters. That’s a powerful telescope, but it can only resolve about 150 meters at the distance from the Earth to the Moon. The tube is maybe fifty meters, max, in diameter. The tube is just too small in diameter for the telescope to see clearly. Now you might see a little bump in the long dimension. I’m not sure why we don’t on that one.”

Alan rubbed his chin. “Yeah Rog, why is that?”

“Traci.” Roger adjusted his Roll Tide cap and turned it around backwards. “Why can’t you see the light from a planet around a distant star real easy?” Roger waited a few seconds for the light bulb to go on over Traci’s head. He could see in her eyes that she figured it out.

“Of, course! You clever bastard, you,” she said. “The Moon is reflecting way more light than the little tube. So it’s just washed out.”

“Atta girl!” Roger swigged at his beer, proud of himself and his new pupil.

“Is there a way to get a closer look at this thing?” Cady asked. “I mean, it’d be a lot easier to figure out how to blow ’em up if we knew what the hell they are.”

Gries nodded approvingly to the sergeant. “Yeah, Doc, how’s about it?”

Before Roger could respond Tom slapped the table, “Gravity!”