Earth

That was an advantage of “national security” as a priority. The calamity wouldn’t be allowed to paralyze all space activity, as happened after the Challenger disaster or that horrible Lamberton fiasco. On the other hand, other programs were being stripped for this. Civilian space was going to suffer for a long time to come.

Out in the blackness, Teresa watched figures systematically dismantle a giant cargo lifter — opening the great rocket like an unfolding flower. Space Jacks, like butchers in an oldtime abattoir, bragged they could find a use for “everything but the squeal.” It was a far cry from back when NASA had first tried to assemble an entire working space station, unbelievably, out of nothing but tiny capsules and gridwork, every bit hauled to orbit inside shuttles.

Unhappy over the hurried pace, this construction squad had unanimously chosen her to be Mother, to watch over them from Pleiades’ control deck. Management dared not buck the drivers’ and spi

The irony was, for the first time in her career she found herself preoccupied in other ways. She did her job, of course. Because the other ’nauts were counting on her, she meticulously took telemetry readings, making doubly sure her “chicks” were all right. Still, Teresa kept turning around to glance through the rear window at the Earth. It wasn’t the planet’s beauty that distracted her, but a nervous sense of expectation.

The NASA psychologist had warned there were always difficulties, first time up again after a trouble mission. But that wasn’t it. Teresa knew it was important to get back in the saddle. She had confidence in her skills.

No, her gaze kept drifting Earthward because that was where she’d seen the first symptoms. Those weird optical effects the psychers had largely dismissed as stress hallucinations, but which had given her an instant’s warning last time.

Stop being so nervous, she told herself. If Manella’s right, it can’t happen again. He thinks Erehwon was torn apart when some stupid malf released a micro black hole up at Farpoint lab. Whatever Frankenstein device they were playing with must have blown its energy all at once.

By that reasoning it was a single exploding singularity that had, by some unknown means, carried the first men — or what was left of them — to the stars.

For the fortieth time, she tried to figure out how they might have done it. How could anybody build and conceal a black hole, for heaven’s sake — even a micro black hole — in space without word getting out? The smallest hole with a temperature low enough to be contained would need the mass of a midget mountain. You don’t go hauling that kind of material into low earth orbit without someone noticing. No, the thing would have been built by cavitronics — that new science of quantum absurdities, of forces nobody had even heard of forty years ago, which let foolish men create space-warped sinkholes out of the raw stuff of vacuum itself.

Cavitronics. In spite of reading popular accounts, Teresa knew next to nothing about the field. Who did?

Well, Jason, apparently. She had thought him incapable of ever lying to her. Which showed just how little she knew about people after all.

What amazed Teresa most was that Spivey and his co-conspirators could actually hide such a massive thing up here, in Earth’s crowded exosphere. True, Farpoint had been isolated. Getting there required two consecutive twenty-kilometer elevator rides.

Still, how does one hide a gigaton object in Low Earth Orbit? Even compressed to a pinpoint, its presence would have perturbed the trajectory of the whole complex. She’d have been able to tell every time she piloted a mission to Erehwon, from subtle differences in her readings. No. Manella had to be wrong!

Then she remembered how those DOD men in powder blue uniforms had sequestered the recordings, as soon as Pleiades returned from that horribly extended mission. Teresa had assumed it was for accident analysis. But somehow the data never were made public.

She mentally catalogued ways a pilot could really tell the mass of the upper tip, assuming all shuttles docked far below. The list was shockingly small.

What if… she pondered. What if, each trip to Erehwon, the shuttle’s operating parameters were adjusted, its inertial guidance units altered beforehand?

It wouldn’t take much, she decided. Worse than dishonest, it would be horribly unprincipled to lie to a pilot about her navigation systems, to purposely make them give false readings.

But it could be done. After all, she’d only see what she expected to see.

The thought was appalling. This wasn’t the sort of thing one took to the union steward!

Over the next hour Teresa answered calls from the work party, computed some corrections for them, and shepherded one woman and her robot back on course from a five-degree deviation. She double-checked the modification and watched till the astronaut and her cargo were back on station. Meanwhile though, her head churned with arguments both for and against the scenario.

“They simply couldn’t have gotten away with it!” she cried out at one point.

“Beg pardon, Mama?”

It was Mark again, calling from the site where he was unreeling great spools of ultra-strong spectra fiber.

“Pleiades here. Um, never mind.”

“I distinctly heard you say—”

“I’m — practicing for the Space Day talent show. We’re doing Hound of the Baskervilles.”

“Cheery play. Remind me to lose my ticket.”

Teresa sighed. At least Spivey hadn’t cut in. He must have been preoccupied.

“They couldn’t have gotten away with it,” she muttered again after turning her mike completely off. “Even if they could have finagled Pleiades to give false readings…”

She stopped, suddenly too paranoid to continue aloud.

Even if they could fool Pleiades, and me, into ignoring gigatons of excess mass, they couldn’t have disguised it from the real observers… the other space powers! They all keep watch on every U.S. satellite, as we watch every-

one else up here. They would have spotted any anomaly as big as Manella talks about.

Teresa felt relieved… and silly for not having thought of this sooner. Manella’s story was absurd. Spivey couldn’t have hidden a singularity on Farpoint. Not unless…

Teresa felt a sudden resurgent chill. Not unless all the space powers were in on it.

Pieces fell into place. Such as the bland, perfunctory way the Russians had accused America of weapons testing, then let the matter drop. Or the gentlemen’s agreement about not making orbital parameters public beyond three significant figures.

“Everyone is cheating on the treaty!” she whispered, in awe.

Now she understood why Manella was so insistent on acquiring her help. There might be more of the damned things up here! Half the stations between LEO and the moon might contain singularities, for all she knew! The data in her little recorder might be the key to tracking them down.

The enormity of her situation was dawning on her. Much as she resented the science tribunals for blocking some space technologies, Teresa nevertheless wondered what the world might have been like by now without them. Probably a ruin. Did she then dare help cause a scandal that could bring the entire system crashing down?

After all, she thought, it’s not as if Spivey’s people ignored the ban completely. They put their beast out here, where…

Again she slammed her thigh.

… where it killed friends, her husband… and put the space program back years!

Teresa’s eyes filmed. Her balled fist struck over and over until the hurt turned into a dull, throbbing numbness. “Bastards!” she repeated. “You gor-sucking bastards.”