Forbidden the Stars Part 4

Ma.s.s: Estimated 1.44 terratons.

Apparent color: Translucent. There is a subtle disruption of light flowing through object.

Animation: None. Object is inert.

Distinguis.h.i.+ng Marks: Every curved surface of the nucleus is covered in glyphs, inscribed by unknown means. Extensive photo catalog included with appendix to report.

Observations: Obviously of alien origin. We've tried every test we can think of, but none have given us any more than cursory data. Until we can interpret the glyphs we have no idea who the architects are, or for what purpose they erected this monument. Ekwan Nipiwin believes the shape is meant to represent an element, though it is nothing like anything in our current table, or like anything we have ever encountered.

USA, Inc. Exploration Site : Mission Orcus 1 Orcus 1 : : Pluto :

"Captain." It was Helen. It was Helen.

In her command chair, Justine, lost in thought, blinked and turned her attention to the Canadian.

"Yes?"

All eight of them had been maintaining a silent vigil, waiting for a reply from Earth. Occasionally, someone would point out a reading or an image and make a comment, but in subdued tones. The enormity of their discovery sank in deeper as the day progressed.

To pa.s.s the time, Justine had composed a few messages to family and friends, and one or two colleagues. At a time when a single person's existence dwindled to near-insignificance compared the knowledge of over thirty thousand alien races out there, out there, Justine felt she needed to reaffirm the connection to the ones she loved and respected. Justine felt she needed to reaffirm the connection to the ones she loved and respected.

It made her feel better knowing she was a part of something that might reveal the awesome secrets of outer s.p.a.ce. Never in her wildest imagination had she believed the Orcus Mission would bear such cosmic fruit.

The others perked up as Helen spoke. "We've got a binary EPS from Mission Control. Huh." She glanced up, her eyes wide in disbelief. "And a confirmation of translation of glyphics on Dis Pater Dis Pater!"

There was a moment's hesitation. George Eastmain blinked rapidly.

Ekwan's mouth opened in a silent O.

Then Justine spluttered, "A what?"

"I repeat: A translation."

"That can't be!" Dale Powers stood up. "Those glyphs prove there is life out there, and they've visited here." He pointed to the ceiling, and his voice took on a note of incredulity. "But I know for a fact fact that that our our life has never been to Pluto!" life has never been to Pluto!"

Justine regarded him for moment, contemplating his tirade. "I tend to agree with you, Dale." She scanned the group. "But if Mission Control says they have a translation, we'd best hear it before discounting its validity."

"Helen?"

"I'll put it right through."

They all turned their attention to their workstation monitors.

Luna Station : Luna :

Chow Yin had spent every one of the last seventy-nine years of his life on Luna. If anyone was aware of that, it would certainly make headline news, and break records. That was the last thing Chow Yin wanted, however. had spent every one of the last seventy-nine years of his life on Luna. If anyone was aware of that, it would certainly make headline news, and break records. That was the last thing Chow Yin wanted, however.

At the age of three and a half, accompanying his parents on a posting to Luna Station, he had laughingly escaped the grasp of his mother one day and run off. As most accidents happen, he had run through a construction zone and fell under the tires of a terraloader. His legs had been crushed, his bones splintered into thousands of pieces.

Reconstructive surgery and extensive physiotherapy, combined with the easy Lunar gravity of the time, had given him back the ability to walk, but with a very p.r.o.nounced shuffle, and only with the aid of crutches: his awkward gait was far beyond a mere limp. Throughout elementary cla.s.ses on Luna, he had been called troll, troglodyte, Quasimodo, and a horde of other unwanted appositives.

He resented his peers, hated them.

Popularity was too far from his grasp to even be considered a dream. Acceptance was unattainable. He was a cast-out.

The physicians told him he could never travel to earth, the bones in his legs would shatter like toothpicks under the hard G's of a re-entry shuttle, and walking in gravity six times that of the moon was an impossibility.

For all purposes, he became the only orphan on Luna, since no one besides him was permitted to be stationed there for longer than a year for their own biological safety-his parents included. Yin had fended for himself reasonably well. His parents had visited once a year, but had granted the People's Republic of China legal guardians.h.i.+p of him.

Over the years, as he entered adulthood, his contact with his parents lessened to the point where Chow Yin no longer cared to accept their attempts at contact. To this day, he had no idea of their fate.

When Luna Station installed magnagravs for artificial gravity, only Chow Yin went without the lead-lined outfits. The pressure would be too much for his crippled body.

A lesser man would have let it get the better of him; perhaps even ended it all.

Not Yin.

He had turned his disadvantage to an advantage. The one thing he noticed about everybody who looked at him, especially once he reached his late teens and early twenties, was that their looks of horror and pity and revulsion were their central fixation. If he happened to be lifting their credit flecks from the folds of their coats, they did not notice, for his crippled and pathetic self was their only focus.

At twenty-three, he had been no longer satisfied with the pickings of transients and tourists credit flecks; those sums were enough to get him by, but what he really longed for was wealth: enough wealth that people would look at him with reverence instead of revulsion.

As the only permanent resident of Luna, Yin was more familiar with the station than anyone else was. He had converted a low-G storage bay on the bottom-most level of the station to his private quarters. With the help of a young and bored computer whiz whose parents had been stationed on Luna for a year, he erased traces of the storage bay in the main computer, changed security logs, created new access codes to keep out undesirables, and altered the entire computer system of the sector to suit Yin's needs and desires.

From this base, he ventured forth among the teen population of Luna. Most of them were bored and disenchanted with life on the moon, and Yin recruited them to his cause, especially targeting those with skill in computers and technology.

Set up as a launch site to destinations beyond Earth, Luna Station, by its charter, was a cooperative venture of thirty-two country corporations. As such, no single government had absolute jurisdiction. The main computer was programmed as an administrative governor, and would enforce the policy voted upon by the station's board of directors on Earth.

It was only a matter of time before Yin and his cybergang cracked the computer's defenses.

Yin's young proteges created a dummy file to accept instructions from Earth, run simulation reports on those initiatives, and send those dummy reports back, keeping the Earth council ignorant and happy.

As far as things went, by the time Yin was twenty-eight he owned the moon in all but name. The wealth and power he had gathered to him rivaled that of the country corporations themselves. Every pleasure was his; every luxury was his with barely a thought.

Nothing happened on Luna Station without Chow Yin's fingers in the pot, and the only people that knew it were those that worked for him.

Lord of his little empire, Yin watched over the comings and goings of all transients at Luna Station, had his finger on the pulse of the country-corporations who docked their shuttles and temporarily installed their people on Luna.

If Yin wanted, he could have the Luna Computer ground all outgoing flights, or restrict any incoming shuttles from any country or private corporation that displeased him. He could hold all of outer s.p.a.ce ransom, if he chose to do so.

He did not do that, however. Discretion, he had learned from experience, was the better part of increasing one's personal wealth.

... And information was the most powerful tool in the pursuit of that goal. He used the information he gleaned in productive ways; revenge and petty tyranny was not his business. Besides, abusing his power would only get him noticed, and he preferred to operate and luxuriate in anonymity.

The only people he let get close to him were the teens, whom he had continued to personally recruit over the past forty-odd years.

As part of his campaign to dominate Luna Station, when the last Chinese station director had rotated back to China, Yin had the computers manufacture an ident.i.ty for the director's replacement and bounce it into the Hong Kong data base. A non-person had been transferred to the moon, and the big bureaucratic machine that was the PRC did not even notice, so wrapped up in their petty politics and closed-door communistic efforts. It was a coup d'etat, as far as Yin was concerned, though yet an unpublished one.

The entire Chinese Sector was firmly under his control, and the rest of the station was at his mercy.

Cla.s.sified government doc.u.ments were his to peruse and use as he wished, and he did so with impunity. He had corrupted the shuttle port governor, diverted tariffs and fees to his own private bank accounts, and appropriated nearly the entire budget allocated to the Chinese Sector from the PRC. So far, he had gathered a net worth that numbered in the trillions. He had invested heavily in many of the Earth nation's private corporations; and with a little manipulation, managed to secure a healthy return on his employed capital, as well as letting him keep his thumb on the pulse of Earth industry.

As part of his daily routine, while slowly consuming breakfast, he enjoyed reading some of the top-secret government communiques his young techowizards intercepted.

When he read one such missive directed from Earth to Pluto, he nearly choked on his orange juice.

Immediately, he rang his secretary and told him, "Call a meeting of all our top snoops. We have a new priority."

Macklin's Rock : SMD Mine Number 568 : Sol System : Asteroid Belt :

Taking a break at noon for a bite to eat, Alex slipped off the thought-link patch and ocular caps, blinking his eyes as he focused on the small TAHU. Adults always tried to tell him that too much VR would make him go blind, but if that were true, Alex had never seen any evidence of it. at noon for a bite to eat, Alex slipped off the thought-link patch and ocular caps, blinking his eyes as he focused on the small TAHU. Adults always tried to tell him that too much VR would make him go blind, but if that were true, Alex had never seen any evidence of it.

"Hucs," he addressed the computer. Now that the thought-link patch was off, he had to vocalize his request. "Fries and cola, please."

Alex grumbled to himself. His parents were concerned that he was not eating well enough. He felt all right, but had no choice in the matter; he had not yet figured out how to overwrite the log matrix on Hucs, so that he could override its priority codes with impunity. He decided he would have to work on that problem in the afternoon, or risk severe penalties when his parents found out he had been playing hooky again.

"Yeah, that's fine." When he entered the dining cubicle, his sandwich and milk were waiting for him in the booth, the replicator pre-programmed with the differing personal preferences of each of the three inhabitants. Alex liked chopped celery and onion with no extra mayonnaise, but his parents preferred lettuce as their only addition. He sat down and ate quickly, his mind not on the food, but on the problem of the log matrix.

If he wrote a sub-program slaved to the file named "Alex's Daily Activities and Progress Chart," then whenever his mother or father tapped in an inquiry on him, the dummy file would come up on screen over top of the legitimate file. He could then doctor the dummy file in any manner he so chose.

The problem with that was- The TAHU alert klaxon sounded, making Alex jump in the booth.

Hucs reported. Hucs reported. Without delay, Alex tapped the 2D min-monitor in the booth, signaling his parents.

"Mom! Dad!" he yelled, but the monitor showed nothing but white static.

"Look out! I think it's an asteroid!"

Leaping out of the booth, Alex raced for his cubicle. The emergency drills his parents had forced him to repeat to no end came to him like second nature.

Jumping into the security receptacle, he closed his eyes as the restraints locked around him, securing him from hitting any walls when whatever it was outside hit him.

He had the briefest of moments to speculate what was coming at him. His first though had been an asteroid, but that would not be traveling so fast. A solar flare? Unlikely, at this distance.

Sweat leaped from his forehead as panic set in.

His parents were outside, unprotected.

<...second...> Unable to control himself, he screamed.

<...until...>

St. Lawrence Charity Hall : Ottawa : Canada Corp.:

As Michael Sanderson and Alliras Rainier began their first round of maneuvering tactics to corner Ian Pocatello into granting them an extra billion dollars in funding, a servochine interposed itself between the two. and Alliras Rainier began their first round of maneuvering tactics to corner Ian Pocatello into granting them an extra billion dollars in funding, a servochine interposed itself between the two.

The Al had been designed in the shape of a humanoid, but instead of legs, it used six rubber wheels to glide across surfaces. The wheels were attached to a rectangular box that could be customized as a refrigeration unit, a file cabinet, a tool chest, or any other kind of container required by the servochine's programmed capacity. As a waiter, the servochine's compartment was used to carry bottles of alcohol and spirits.

To Michael's slight surprise, the servochine was holding a silver tray on top of which was a white plastic envelope addressed to him.

"How quaint," the Minister of Finance commented. "A couriered message. I don't think I've ever been on the receiving end of one of those, little say sending one."

Running interference, Alliras replied, "Don't know why we ever stopped. Couriers and fax machines were wonderful. Now, we send everything over the EarthMesh. Quite frankly, I'm not comfortable with all the techno hackers in the world having access to the digitally transmitted love letters I send to my wife from work." Both Ian and Stall chuckled appreciatively.

Glancing at the servochine's CPU mount as if the AI would explain its presence, Michael took the envelope, opened it and, muttering a quick "Excuse me" to the three gentlemen looking on with interest, read the lased memo on the plastic slip he found within.

Michael, I'm sorry to have to send this message to you considering your current circ.u.mstances, but an emergency has arisen that demands your immediate attention.

There has been a catastrophe that could undermine the entire program. The media is not yet aware of the incident, but it is only a matter of time. We need you, Michael!

-Calbert *

Michael looked up at Alliras, blinked, and then forced an equable smile on his face.

"Something has come up."

"Everything all right?" Stall asked, fis.h.i.+ng for information.

"Of course. You know SOPs: every time there's a blip on the astrographs, they have to have it signed off."

"A find?" Stall pressed.