Launch Pad Read online

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  The Man in the Mirror

  The Last Probe

  Are We Alone?

  The Space Gypsies and the Ronin Planet

  The Stars Do Not Lie

  The Caretaker

  The Old Equations

  Think Only This of Me

  Sylvia Ascending

  Glitches

  Doppler Shift

  Spectromancy

  About the Authors

  Book Description

  Mankind is finally coming up against

  the limits of the physical world.

  But the Imaginations of the writers within these pages reach far beyond those boundaries. The Launch Pad Astronomy Seminar aims to bring more hard science into science fiction. Here are twelve stories that look into our future and find humor, pathos, grand determination and genuine courage, by some of the most creative writers in science fiction today, all veterans of the Launch Pad program.

  ***

  Smashwords Edition –2014

  WordFire Press

  wordfirepress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61475-267-7

  Copyright © 2013 Jody Lynn Nye and Michael Brotherton, Ph.D

  Originally published by DarkStar Books/Event Horizon Publishing Group, 2013

  Introduction copyright © 2013 by Kevin Grazier, Ph.D

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover painting by Don Maitz

  Cover design by Janet McDonald

  Art Director Kevin J. Anderson

  Cover artwork images by Dollar Photo Club

  Book Design by RuneWright, LLC

  www.RuneWright.com

  Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

  Published by

  WordFire Press, an imprint of

  WordFire, Inc.

  PO Box 1840

  Monument, CO 80132

  ***

  Additional Copyright Info

  Introduction copyright © 2013 by Kevin Grazier, PhD

  “The Man in the Mirror” copyright © 2008, 2013 by Geoffrey A. Landis, originally published in Analog Jan/Feb 2008

  “The Last Probe” copyright © 2013 by Matthew Kressel

  “We Are Alone” copyright © 2013 by Mike Brotherton, PhD

  “The Space Gypsies and the Ronin Planet” copyright © 2013 by Mary A. Turzillo

  “The Stars Do Not Lie” copyright © 2012, 2013 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr., originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine Oct/Nov 2012

  “Caretaker” copyright © 2013 by Tiffany Trent

  “The Old Equations” copyright © 2012, 2013 by Jake Kerr, originally published in Lightspeed magazine, 2012

  “Think Only This of Me” copyright © 1973, 2013 by Michael Kurland, originally published in Galaxy, November 1973

  “Sylvia Ascending” copyright © 2013 by Sandra McDonald

  “Glitches” copyright © 2013 by Doug Farren

  “Doppler Shift” copyright © 2013 by Matthew S. Rotundo

  “Spectromancy” copyright © 2013 by Jody Lynn Nye

  ***

  Introduction

  Kevin R. Grazier, PhD.

  Ask ten science fiction writers for their definition of “science fiction,” and you’re likely to get nine different answers—and two agree only because one cited the other. Ask the same writers to weigh in on the most important benefit of science fiction, and you’ll get fifteen replies, because several could not limit themselves to a single response. Science fiction can say things and do things and take us on journeys that no other genre can.

  Science fiction takes us on flights of inspiration: it inspires the birth of new technologies, and it inspires people to choose careers in science and engineering. It’s well-known that first flip phone, the Motorola StarTac, was inspired by television’s Star Trek. Although that technology is obsolete well in advance of the 23rd Century, scientists and engineers labor today to develop and perfect practical tricorders and biobeds. Science fiction has inspired the creation or development of space exploration technologies, robots, the Internet, virtual reality, even the waterbed. The list is lengthy.

  Walk through the corridors, or between the cubicles, at any NASA center, any government laboratory, any aerospace firm, and you will find a staggering amount of science-fiction-themed posters, action figures, games, and toys displayed prominently on the walls and on the shelves. These are tributes, altars in some cases, to the influences that motivated people into choosing careers in science and engineering. They are those for whom the future, and the lure of alien worlds, promised in works of science fiction can’t come soon enough, so they have dedicated their lives to making it arrive more quickly.

  Science fiction takes us on journeys into the imagination. Remember when the motto for the Sci-Fi Channel (pre-SyFy) was “What if?” The “What if …” thought experiment has spawned many, perhaps even most, works of science fiction. How many inventions, technologies, and social trends have been predicted by science fiction? “What if we could go to the Moon?” “What if satellites could enable instantaneous worldwide communications?” “What if government surveillance was constant and ubiquitous?”

  It is a simple outcome of statistics that the sheer amount of material produced yearly means that some science fiction projections will ring true. Still, good science fiction writers can perform these kinds of projections well and repeatedly, and because they’ve mentally explored scenarios that few outside of think tanks like The RAND Corporation have ever considered, most people are unaware that science fiction novelists are routinely consulted by corporations and governments regarding issues ranging from technology trends, to bioterror, to technological ethics. According to science fiction novelist David Brin, “Science fiction is strongly associated with creativity, and a willingness to explore both good and bad outcomes of change. I believe that a culture’s strength and resilience is measured, in some degree, of the health and vigor and enthusiasm of its science fiction.”

  Science fiction takes us on flights into darkness. Although Michael Crichton’s works have earned him the monikers of “anti-science” and “anti-scientist” those critiques are somewhat vapid and superficial when, in fact, his works merely continued the tradition of telling cautionary stories that result when reasonable conclusions from the “What if” scenario turn dark. Works like 1984 and Brave New World were motivated by fears, and cautioned of the risks, of totalitarianism. On the Beach addressed the outcomes of nuclear war. Even Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was a warning about rapid technological advancement and scientific hubris. Science fiction has a long history of stories in the “What if this trend continues unchecked?” variety.

  Science fiction takes us on journeys of self-examination. The debate over who is the “Father of Science Fiction” is an ongoing one. Is it Jules Verne? Is Mary Shelley, in fact, the “Mother of Science Fiction?” While that debate will not be settled soon (or ever), the clear “Father of Science Fiction as Social Commentary” is H.G. Wells. His concerns about British imperialism gave us The War of the World
s; his observations about social class division gave us The Time Machine. Wells’ work paved the way for modern morality plays like Star Trek, and works of social introspection like the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Science fiction author and historian Brian W. Aldiss believes, “I prefer to see SF as a mirror to the present. Set up that mirror 50 years into the future and today’s confusions become clearer.”

  Science fiction takes us on educational expeditions. From the fundamental tenets of scientific disciplines to the fine-scale technical details, a good work of science fiction leaves the consumer more informed. From my own history, the first science fiction novel I read as a lad, and one of the few I’ve read more than once, was Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama. In order to understand the details of that book, I had to look up terms like Doppler shift and coriolis force. To be honest, I still didn’t understand what the coriolis force was after looking it up in the dictionary, but I made sure I asked for clarification in my first high school physics class. I’ve lost count of the number of times in the intervening years where my first exposure to a scientific term or concept was due to a work of science fiction.

  Science fiction can do all of these things, take us on all these journeys, but it does none of them if it isn’t read.

  As with any work of fiction the reader needs to be hooked, and remain engaged and along for the ride. A storyteller may have the most interesting concept, the most novel take on an idea, the most insightful projection of current social or tech trends, but if these are not interwoven with an interesting, compelling narrative, the consumer of that fiction is lost, and onto the next story. When science enters the fiction, the bar is set still higher. Science fiction may have the power to address topics, or address topics in ways, that other genres cannot, but that power brings added scrutiny. Put simply, the kind of people who read science fiction are put off by bad science. A creator of science fiction must worship at both the altars of Story and Science.

  When an author wants to explore a topic, and when story comes into conflict with science, story wins every time. In fact many a story is born when the result of the “What if” scenario is a modification to known physical laws (traversable wormholes, for instance), or a case when technology is stretched beyond reasonable extremes (faster than light travel). There is a sort of unwritten contract between the creators of science fiction and the consumers. The writer says, “Go with me on this journey, buy into this premise, and I’ll keep the number of times I stretch science as small as I possibly can.” This is just as true for Hollywood productions as it is for novels and short stories, but the number of “gimmes” in literary science fiction has always been far smaller than for television or film. In fact, many readers are lost if there is more than one “gimme,” where a television show can easily have four or five.

  If there is an outlandish or easily preventable mistake in the science, that number goes instantly to zero. An unnecessary or easily avoided technical gaffe will forcibly eject some consumers out of the story and into the real world, transforming them from being immersed in the writer’s creative vision, to sitting in a room in the 21st century feeling cheated.

  The authors of the stories within this anthology all have a dedication to keeping their science as accurate as possible that goes well above and beyond. All were either attendees or instructors at the Launch Pad Workshop. Every summer established writers from all over the United States, in fact all over the world, come to beautiful Laramie—to the University of Wyoming—to attend Launch Pad. Between classroom lectures and telescope observations, Launch Pad gives attendees a “crash course” in physics and astronomy. Attendees have ranged from novelists, to editors, to television writers, even a science comedian. Launch Pad exists to ensure that, no matter how far into the Universe the attendees’ stories take us, they are always grounded in real science.

  Each year a scientist comes aboard as a guest instructor, and I had the honor of being the Launch Pad guest instructor in 2011. I found that the writers in attendance were far beyond science fans—these people were science groupies! In the time-honored tradition of science fiction, after formal instruction ended, conversations and debates continued well into the wee hours of the morning. The attendees and instructors stay in contact, still sharing web links to fascinating new research, and still continuing those debates.

  I hope you enjoy this anthology, filled with voyages of the imagination where science doesn’t take a back seat to the story: it’s in the pilot’s seat, taking the story on its flight, and the “scientific ejection seat” has been disabled.

  ***

  The Man in the Mirror

  By Geoffrey A. Landis

  It was pure luck that Lynn Rockross was there. Pure bad luck.

  Or maybe not luck at all. Out in the dark, you made your own luck. If the luck of Lynn Rockross was bad, it was luck he’d forged for himself.

  Ramblin’ Wreck had come out from the inner solar system on a long, constant-thrust interplanetary trajectory. After eight months in space, on their slow approach to Sedna the crew had nearly missed seeing the anomalous landform. It was a perfect circle of pure black. Ramblin’ Wreck’s crew weren’t being paid to look for unusual things, and really, a twenty-two kilometer circle wasn’t even that unusual. Across the solar system, circles pockmarked the surface of every body, large or small, circles and networks of circles and chains and doodles of circles, craters of every size.

  But this one was not just a circle, it was a perfect circle. And on a distant iceball, a world covered everywhere with a thick layer of reddish-brown snow, it was perfectly black.

  Who would have expected an alien artifact on Sedna?

  Sedna was one of the largest of the objects in the trans-Neptunian belt, a small world nearly the size of Pluto, but in a wildly eccentric orbit, so far away from the sun as to be forever frozen.

  It was the topic of discussion on the Ramblin’ Wreck for about a week as they braked into orbit, between poker games, but the crew chief, Kellerman—a hard-nosed miner with the soul of an accountant—told them that investigating alien enigmas was not the job that the crew of the Ramblin’ Wreck had come all this way to do, and he was not about to take good time away from the paying job to go look at it. They were miners, not scientists. Sedna was a rich source of organics. Organics could be shipped to any the colony worlds in the inner solar system. If they could find ammonia as well, they’d have pay dirt. Ammonia was a source of nitrogen, valuable nitrogen, far more valuable than gold or platinum in the built worlds where every volatile molecule had to be imported. Prospecting Sedna was an economic gamble; it was so far from the sun that only a huge strike would make it worth paying the amazing shipping costs to send resources inward. But the built worlds were an ever-expanding market, and if they could show that Sedna had deposits rich enough to justify the travel time, Sedna would be a little money mine for the corporation, a slow but steady source of income.

  Braking into elliptical orbit around Sedna, they photographed the strange circular anomaly as they scouted for resources, and they sent back to the inner system all the data they happened to gather on its location and approximate size. In return, they were ordered to stay away from it. It was not a natural artifact, they were told, and it most certainly wasn’t something humans had built, since they were the first people ever to reach Sedna. It was alien. They weren’t qualified to investigate. Back in the inner system somebody worried that a bunch of union-slacker rock jockeys scratching around an artifact of incalculable value would be far more likely to destroy something than they would be to find something valuable.

  From their orbital reconnaissance, they had mapped a rich ammonia deposit, a frozen lake of ammonia larger than most asteroids. That, along with the organic tholins frozen into the ice, looked like a good place to start operations.

  The mining ship landed on Sedna more than five hundred kilometers around the planet from the artifact, at the ammonia site. Somebody else would be out to investigate the artifact, some
slow and careful scientific team, with all the tools and backup from Earth needed. Ramblin Wreck was there to mine.

  “That’s crazy,” said Rockross. “All this way, and we stop a lousy five hundred kilometers from the one tourist attraction on the planet?”

  His buddy, Dinky Zimmer, gave him a quizzical look. “We’re here to do some mining,” he said. “Who cares about a black circle, if it doesn’t have ammonia?”

  Adrian Penn, the third on his three-man crew, said, “If we hit pay ice, with the bonus we’re due, we can see all the tourist attractions we want. You want to check my seals?”

  Rockross checked Dinky’s suit seals, and then Adrian’s, and gave them both a thumb’s up; and then Dinky checked his. The suits were the close-fitting style that the crew called nudie-suits; everybody checked their own seals, of course, but then for safety they each checked each other as well, the checklist required that every step be verified with a buddy. After seal checks, he verified his suit battery charge, and then checked Dinky and Adrian’s charges while they verified his charge. They were suiting up for their first eight-hour shift, taking ice cores and setting up the thermal radiators that would be needed for mining. Someday—if the nitrogen strike was good enough—the equipment they were setting up would be the head of an interplanetary pipeline, where induction motors would toss two-ton bricks of frozen ices into trajectories that would, over the course of years, coast downhill to markets in the inner solar system. That would be all automated, of course. But for now, humans were needed to scout and set up equipment.

  But Lynn Rockross—known as “Lee” to both friends and rivals—wasn’t thinking about his work, although he was paying enough attention to avoid making errors. He wasn’t done with the artifact. He had other ideas.

  Lee was a shift leader on the Ramblin’ Wreck’s mining operation, responsible for a crew of three. He was qualified on every piece of equipment used in low-gravity and low-temperature extraterrestrial mining operations. He’d been mining and prospecting ever since leaving his home in the domed cities of Vesta, something he had done at fifteen, the age of emancipation in the middle belt. He’d gone first to the ice-moon Callisto, and after a little time in a low-paying job on a melt-line, had joined the crew on a mining ship. In five years he had worked on four different mining and prospecting ships, earning his Union card, working his way up from unskilled labor to shift leader. When he could, he liked to spend his time with wildcat surveys, where he would be dropped off on a likely body with nothing but an augmented suit, a laser drill, and a mass spectrometer. For weeks at a time, he’d be alone to characterize mineral composition in the hopes of a finding a rare strike of usable material. Lee was perfectly comfortable alone in a suit, out of contact with the rest of the universe.