Ben Bova - Jupiter

“Uh, well … it seemed odd to me, sir, having an extension hanging on one side of the wheel and nothing to balance it.”

“Oh, so you are a design engineer, are you?” The man’s voice made Grant want to wince. It seemed so harsh that it had to be painful to speak that way.

“Nosir, but it does make me wonder.”

Wo huffed impatiently. “Better men than you have designed that extension, brightboy. And when you get an access-denied message on your screen you should take your curiosity elsewhere. Understand me?”

“Yessir. If I may, though, I want to—”

“You set off all kinds of alarms, trying to pry into sensitive information.”

“I didn’t realize there was anything that sensitive being done here,” Grant said. Even as he said it, Grant realized it was a lie. He’d been sent here because of the scientists’ secrecy.

“You didn’t realize …? Didn’t you sign a secrecy agreement?”

“Yes, but I thought—”

“You thought it was just a bit of paperwork, did you?” Wo hunched forward, both hands balled into fists atop the desk. His hands looked powerful, thick wrists and heavy forearms that bulged in his tunic sleeves. “Another pointless piece of red tape from the bureaucrats running this station.”

“Nosir. But about my assignment here—”

“You have been assigned to this station. Under my direction. You will follow the terms of the secrecy agreement you signed. That is mandatory. No exceptions.”

“I …” Grant swallowed hard. “I didn’t associate the secrecy agreement with the access-denied message on my screen. As you said, sir, my curiosity got the better of me.”

Wo stared coldly at Grant for several long moments. At last he said, “Very well. I will take you at your word. But my security people are buzzed up about you.”

Grant knew when to behave meekly. “I’m sorry if I’ve caused any trouble, but, you see, I’m actually an astrophysicist and I don’t understand why I’m here.”

“The trouble is on your shoulders, brightboy. Report to the security chief immediately for an extended briefing on proper handling of sensitive materials.”

“But I—”

“Immediately, I said! Don’t just sit there! Get to the security chiefs office. Understand me?”

Grant scrambled to his feet and headed for the door.

“You’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, Archer,” the director called from his desk.

Turning, Grant saw that he had swung his chair away from the desk slightly. It was a powered wheelchair. Beneath his full-length tunic the director was wearing ridiculous-looking green plaid shorts, and Grant could see that Wo’s legs were pitifully thin, emaciated, scarred and twisted, dangling uselessly from his chair. He looked like a gnome or a troll from childhood tales.

If Dr. Wo was bothered by Grant’s shocked stare, he gave no hint of it.

“Get on the right track and stay on it,” he snapped. “Or else.”

“Yessir,” Grant said. “I will, sir.”

Once outside in the blessed cool of the corridor again, Grant realized that Wo gave him no chance to ask for a reassignment to Farside. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Feeling wretched, he wondered where the cursed security office might be. He knew it had to be along the corridor somewhere, there was only this one main passageway that went through the entire wheelshaped station, if he remembered the schematics correctly. But the station was so big, Grant realized he could be walking for an hour or more.

The corridor was still empty and silent; no one in sight to ask for directions. Then he spotted a videophone on the wall up ahead. He used it to pull up the station layout and found the office of the security chief, someone named Lane O’Hara.

The office was actually only a few dozen meters up the corridor. Grant hustled to it and rapped on the door, which bore O’Hara’s name.

“Come in.”

It was a much smaller room than the director’s. Grant saw that it must be an anteroom; nothing but a small desk and a single straightbacked chair in front of it. A pert young woman sat at the desk. An assistant, no doubt. There was an unmarked door on the far wall. That must be O’Hara’s office, he said to himself.

“I’m Grant Archer. The director sent me here to see Mr. O’Hara.”

“Miss O’Hara,” she corrected. “That’s me.” Rising from her chair, she extended her hand over the desk. She was at least two centimeters taller than Grant.

Surprised, Grant shook her hand as he blurted, “You’re the security chief?”

“Lane O’Hara … Elaine, if you look up my baptismal record.”

“Oh,” said Grant.

Lane O’Hara was no more than Grant’s own age, slim as a willow, her boyish figure clad in a loose slate-gray turtle-neck pullover and odd-looking shiny black leather leggings lined with rows of dull gray metal studs along the outside seams. Her face was elfin, with high cheekbones, a tilted nose, a slightly sharpish chin, and delicate lips that were curved into a pleasant smile. Her eyes were bright green, and they were smiling, too. She wore her chestnut hair tied into a tight bun at the back of her head.

“What were you expecting?” she asked. “Some great brute of a policeman, maybe?” There was a lilt in her voice that Grant had never heard before: charming, musical.

“I guess I was,” he said, smiling back at her as he followed her gesture and took the chair in front of her desk.

“Oh, we have them, too,” she said as she sat back in her little swivel chair. “On a station this size you need a few thumpers here and there, now and then.”

Grant pictured some of the stern-faced beefy security guards he d seen at school.

“Now then,” O’Hara said lightly, “the director’s all fussed about your prying into the station schematics, looking to find out what he’s got in the annex.”

“I was curious…”

“Of course you were. Everybody is. But the director is just a wee bit paranoid about the annex. It’s his special project, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” Grant said.

“How could you, seeing that you just arrived an hour or so ago?” She shrugged her slim shoulders. “Well, I’m required to put you through the standard security briefing and there’s nothing to it. I’ll try to run through it quickly enough so we can get finished with it before the cafeteria closes for the night.”

Grant asked, “What time is it here?”

O’Hara shook her head sorrowfully. “They didn’t even give you a chance to adjust your clock, did they?”

Grant realized he liked this security chief. In fact, he thought he was going to enjoy the briefing.

He didn’t. Once she got started on the station’s security regulations, O’Hara became strictly business. She called up on her wallscreen a bewildering set of rules and restrictions, then quizzed Grant about them mercilessly for what seemed like hours.

At last, with a reluctant, “I suppose that will have to do.” She dismissed Grant—but only after telling him that the cafeteria would stop serving dinner in fifteen minutes.

“I don’t know where the cafeteria is,” Grant bleated.

“Turn right outside my door and follow your nose,” O’Hara said.

Grant got up from the chair, aching slightly from having sat in it for so long.

“Better dash,” O’Hara said.

“What about you? Aren’t you going to eat?”

She sighed heavily. “I hope so. But I’ve got a bit of work to finish first. Scamper, now!”

Grant headed straight for the cafeteria, stopping only to use one of the wall phones to find its exact location.

He could have followed his ears, he realized as he approached the busy, crowded, clanging, clattering noisy cafeteria. For the first time since he’d left Earth, Grant found himself in a familiar environment. The odors of food, real cooked food instead of the microwaved packaged meals he’d had aboard Roberts, almost brought tears of joy to his eyes.