A Hole In Space

Karin thought about that. Presently she gave her considered opinion. "Idiots."

"'No. They're just like all of us: they want something for nothing. Have you ever solved a problem without finding another problem just behind it?"

"Sure. My husband... well, no, I was pretty lonely after we split up. But I didn't sit down and cry about it. When someone hands me a problem, I solve it. Jansen, we're going at this wrong. I feel it."

"Okay, so we're doing it wrong. What's the right way?"

"I don't know. We've got better ships than anyone dreamed of in 2004. That's fact."

"Define ship."

"Ship! Vehicle! Never mind, I see the point. Don't push it."

So he didn't ask her what a 747 circling the sinking Titanic could have done to help, or whether a Greyhound bus could have crossed the continent in 1849. He said, "We know how to rescue Lazarus. What's the big decision? We do or we don't."

"Well?"

"I don't know. We watch the opinion polls. I think ... I think we'll wind up neutral. Present the project as best we can finagle it up. Tell 'em the easiest way to do it, tell 'em what it'll cost, and leave it at that."

The opinion polls were a sophisticated way to read mass minds. Over the years sampling techniques had improved enormously, raising their accuracy and 1owering their cost. Public thinking generally came in blocks:

JumpShift's news release provoked no immediate waves. But one block of thinking began to surface. A significant segment of humanity was old enough to have watched teevee coverage of the launching of Lazarus. A smaller, still significant segment had helped to pay for it with their taxes.

It had been the most expensive space project of all time. Lazarus had been loved. Nothing but love could have pushed the taxpayer into paying such a price. Even those who had fought the program thirty-one years ago now remembered Lazarus with love.

The reaction came mainly from older men and women, but it was worldwide. Save Lazarus.

Likewise there were those dedicated to saving the ecology from the intrusion of Man. For them the battle was never-ending. True, industrial wastes were no longer dumped into the air and water the worst of these were flicked through a drop ship in close orbit around Venus, to disappear into the atmosphere of that otherwise useless world. But the ultimate garbage-maker was himself the most dangerous of threats. Hardly a wilderness was left on Earth that was not being settled by men with JumpShift booths.

They would have fought JumpShift on any level. JumpShift proposed to leave three men and three women falling across the sky forever. To hell with their profit margin: save Lazarus.

There were groups who would vote against anything done in space. The returns from space exploration had been great, admittedly, but they all derived from satellites in close orbit around Earth: observatories, weather satellites, teevee transmitters, solar power plants. These were dirt cheap these days, and their utility had surely been obvious to any moron since Neanderthal times.

But what use were the worlds of other stars? Even the worlds of the solar system had given no benefit to Man, except for Venus, which made an excellent garbage dump. Better to spend the money on Earth. Abandon Lazarus.

But most of the public voted a straight Insufficient Data. And of course they were right.

Robin Whyte was nervous. He was trying not to show it, but he paced too much and he smiled too much and he kept clasping his hands behind his back. "Sit down, for Christ's sake," said Jerryberry. "Relax. They can't throw tomatoes through their teevee screens."

Whyte laughed. "We're working on that in the research division. Are you almost ready?"

"An hour to broadcast. I've already done the interview with Doctor Sagan. It's on tape." "Let's see what you've got."

What CBA had for this broadcast was a fully detailed rescue project, complete with artist's conceptions. Jerryberry spread the paintings along a wall. "Using your artists, whom we hired for a week with JumpShift's kind permission. Aren't they beautiful? We also have a definite price tag. Two billion three hundred million new dollars."

Whyte's laugh was still shaky. "That's right on the borderline. Barely feasible." He was looking at an artist's conception of the launching of the rescue mission: a stream of spherical fuel tanks and larger, shark-shaped Phoenix hulls pouring up through the ringed tower of the Corliss accelerator. More components rested on flat rock at~ the launch end. "So Gem thought of it first. I must be getting old."

"You don't expect to think of everything, do you? You once told me that your secretary thought of the fresh-water tower gimmick during a drunken office party."

"True, too. I paid her salary for thirty years, hoping she'd do it again, but she never did ... Do you think they'll buy it?"

"No."

"I guess not." 'Whyte seemed to shake himself. "'Well, maybe we'll use it some other time. It's a useful technique, shipping fuel in Phoenix hulls. We'll probably need it to explore, say, Barnard's Star, which is moving pretty censored fast with respect to Sol."

"We don't have to tell them they can't do it. Just tell 'em the price tag and let them make up their own minds."

"Listen, I had a hand in launching Lazarus. The launching boosters were fueled by JumpShift units."

"I know."

Whyte, prowling restlessly, was back in front of the launching scene. "I always thought they should have drilled right through the asteroid. Leave the Corliss accelerator open at both ends."

Activity in the sound studio had diminished. Against a white wall men had placed a small table and two chairs, and a battery of teevee cameras and lights were aiming their muzzles into the scene.

Jerryberry touched Whyte's arm. "Let's go sit down over there." Whyte might freeze up if confronted by the cameras too suddenly. Give him a chance to get used to it.

Whyte didn't move. His head was cocked to one side, and his lips moved silently.

"What's the matter?"

Whyte made a shushing motion.

Jerryberry waited.

Presently Whyte looked up. "You'll have to scrap this. How much time have we got?"

"But- An hour. Less. What do you mean, scrap it?"

Whyte smiled. "I just thought of something. Get me to a telephone, will you? Has Gem still got the schematics of the Corliss accelerator?"

An hour to broadcast time, and Jerryberry began to shake.

"Robin, are we going to have a broadcast or not?"

Whyte patted him on the arm. "Count on it."

Gen Jones's big white-on-blue schematic had been thumbtacked to the white wall over the table and chairs. Below it, Jerryberry Jansen leaned back, seemingly relaxed, watching Whyte move about with a piece of chalk.

A thumbtacked blueprint and a piece of chalk. It was slipshod by professional standards. Robin Whyte had not appeared on teevee in a couple of decades. He made professional mistakes: he turned his back on the audience, he covered what he was drawing with the chalk. But he didn't look nervous. He gri

"The heart of it is the Corliss accelerator," he said, and with the chalk he drew an arc underneath the tower's launch cradle, through the rock itself. "We excavate here, carve out a space to get the room. Then-" He drew it in.

A JumpShift drop ship receiver cage.

"The rescue ship is self-transmitting, of course. As it leaves the accelerator it transmits back to the launch end. What we have then is an electromagnetic ca