The Final Frontier: Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

THE FIREWALL AND THE DOOR ^{SEAN McMULLEN}

^{Sean McMullen has been a full time author since 2014, but as an after-hours author, he established an international reputation with over a hundred science fiction and fantasy novels and stories. He was runner up for a Hugo Award with his novelette “Eight Miles,” and he has won fifteen other awards and been published in over a dozen languages. His latest collection, Dreams of the Technarion (Reanimus Press, 2017) contains his new history of Australian science fiction, “Outpost of Wonder.” His daughter is the award winning scriptwriter, Catherine S. McMullen.}

Living room news is somehow timeless. Roman slaves once came home and repeated what they had heard in the Forum to their masters. Eighteenth Century families read pamphlets collected in the coffee houses. A century later it was newspapers, then came radio, television, Twitter, t-share, overview and commspeak. Now we have the slightly retro holovista, which is popular because it can be watched as a family—if the family is willing.

Entanglement technology had brought the final frontier as close as the living room. All we had to do was get an uncrewed probe out to whatever was to be explored, and the entangled telepresence established in its computers would provide practically instant communication. Everything was easy. Too easy. People took the wonders for granted until something went spectacularly wrong.

I was in the living room with my family when the Argo made its flyby of the double star Alpha Centauri. My wife was working on her Universal Data Pad, but was looking up at the holovista every so often. My thirteen year old son was sitting with his arms folded tightly, and doing his best to look sullen.

“Don’t see why we’re watching,” Jason muttered. “The Argo’s been trashed by an asteroid.”

“It collided with a speck of dust the size of a bacterium,” I replied.

“Then what’s the fuss about?”

“The Argo was traveling at a tenth of the speed of light when it hit. Huge loads of energy were released.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Very large bang.”

“So it’s trashed.”

“It’s damaged, but still working. This is one of the most significant events in humanity’s history, so we’re going to watch it as a happy family.”

“I’m not happy.”

“Then we’ll just have to watch it as an unhappy family. Now shut up and watch!”

“Try not to be authoritarian with Jason,” said my wife.

“Teenagers are pack animals,” I replied. “I’m making sure he knows that he’s not leading this pack.”

“Now, now, dear. Try not to act like a magistrate when you’re at home.”

I knew they would not share my enthusiasm for the Argo. I was a child when the unmanned starship had been launched, and I had followed its progress closely ever since. Inevitably, I had childhood dreams of joining the Argo’s crew, and in theory they were realistic dreams. The members of the crew lived very ordinary lives in California, and operated the spacecraft through entanglement telepresence circuitry at the Mission Control building on Berkeley Campus. My dreams had been shared by hundreds of millions of other children, but there were no vacancies. In the forty-seven years of the mission not one of the crew had died or retired.

The best career opportunities were in law when I had to start making decisions about earning a living. My fascination with technology could not be smothered by four years of legal studies, however, so I specialized in spacecraft accident investigation. The Argo was a spacecraft, and there had been an accident, so I was now following events with informed, professional interest.

The holographic image of Marie Jackson, the Argo’s control-captain, now materialized a few feet in front of us. Beside her was a journalist, who was about a fifth of Jackson’s age.

“Can you tell the viewers a little about the Argo?” the journalist began.

How many thousands of times has she answered that question? I wondered.

“The Argo was built in space, orbiting Saturn,” said Jackson, doing a good job of seeming neither bored nor exasperated. “It was launched in 2200, and spent ten months accelerating to nine percent of lightspeed. It then traveled unpowered for the next forty-seven years. It was meant to loop around the star Centauri A, and use its gravitational field to change direction. It would then travel on for another two hundred years to its next flyby, the red dwarf star Gliese 581.”

“But isn’t the Argo exploring the Centauri stars?”

“Yes, but the Gliese and Centauri systems are in roughly the same direction, so the Argo was meant to explore both. The Centauri stars are the payoff for the people who built the Argo, because it’s arrived in our lifetimes.”

“But now there’s been an accident, and it can’t go any further?”

“There’s been an accident, and it can’t change direction,” said Jackson with her eyes closed. “One does not slow down from a tenth of lightspeed by pressing on a brake pedal.”

Jason was sitting with his mouth open, quite literally drooling at the image of the very pretty journalist.

“Chosen for being decorative,” I observed.

“You’re just saying that because you’re jealous!” exclaimed Jason.

The journalist looked blank as a cue device within her ear briefed her for the next question.

“But this is not the first star you explored,” she said.

“That’s right,” said Jackson. “Eleven months ago we passed within a quarter of a light-year of the red dwarf Proxima Centauri. That’s the nearest star to the sun.”

“But the Argo didn’t actually go there.”

“No, but our telescope did detect flares erupting on Proxima’s surface. The light from those flares is still on its way here, and will not arrive for another three years. That means scientists can do some fascinating experiments that test the laws of physics.”

The journalist looked blank again. Clearly her ideas of what was fascinating did not extend to experiments involving the speed of light. An unseen operator briefed her with the next question.

“So now the Argo is going to fly past a planet?” she asked.

“The Argo released a little probe called Harpy 1 a few weeks ago,” said Jackson, and their images were replaced by a long, sleek cylinder with a cluster of instruments at one end. “This probe will do the flyby of the Centauri system’s only Earth-type planet. That happens in six minutes.”

Society had been changing quickly and radically as the Argo was being built, late in the Twenty-Second Century. The Argo was also called the Centenary Unity Endeavour. It was a huge project spanning all the governments of the Solar System, and symbolizing their ability to work together. It took a decade to complete, was the most powerful machine ever built, and was very, very expensive. Too expensive. Worst of all, it was expendable. By 2200, to be expendable was to be ideologically unsound.

Even when the Argo was finished and being fueled with ice from Saturn’s rings, there were petitions to halt all work on it, and transform the crowning glory of human exploration into a monument to waste prevention. This monument would supposedly remind humanity that it was never too late to stop waste. In spite of unresolved court injunctions, the Argo was nevertheless launched on time. The legality of that was challenged, and some of the litigation continues to this very day.

The average human could reasonably expect to live to a hundred and thirty, so most of the Argo’s builders would still alive for the Centauri flyby, and could see some results from their work. Because there would be no more interstellar missions, this was humanity’s only chance to explore anything outside the solar system.

The mission plan had been for the Argo itself to pass close to Centauri A, and use the star’s gravity as a slingshot to swing around through sixty-seven degrees. It would then travel another eighteen light-years to Gliese 581. This star had six planets, and its flyby would be the spectacular climax of the mission. Of course none of us would live to see that, it was our gift to future generations.

Once the Argo’s nuclear fuel and reaction mass had been spent, a probe the size of a pickup truck detached from the main part of the spacecraft and drew ahead using ion engines until it was traveling just one mile per second faster. There was a substantial risk that the huge nuclear drive and its tanks might hit a scrap of cosmic debris and explode, so it was not safe to be near. The unmanned probe that was the real Argo was thin, tiny and streamlined, and had been built tougher than an armor piercing artillery shell. It had a far better chance of avoiding or surviving any impact.

My wife looked up from her UDP, thought for a moment, then spoke.

“Twenty-First Century economists would have called the Argo really bad value for money,” she said.

She was an economist, at least in the sense that she lectured in economic history at London University. She had no interest in space exploration, but every so often she tried to keep me company by saying something to show that she was paying attention.

“Exploration should be done for its own sake,” I replied.

“But they spent hundreds of trillions of dollars just to streak through two star systems at a tenth of lightspeed. Why bother?”

“True, why bother?” I sighed, maybe too theatrically. “The people who think like you have won. The Argo has become both the first and last starship. Ever.”

She returned her attention to her UDP, embarrassed by being right yet slightly venal.

“Can I go now?” asked Jason.

“No!” I snapped.

“I’ve got swimming training tomorrow.”

“You just want to telepresence with Julia Gould.”

“We’re just good friends!”

“Good, so you can stay and watch the Wells flyby. It’s the real highlight of the evening, and—and when you’re older you will thank me for making you stay.”

Wells had been discovered by Earth-based telescopes long before the Argo was built. It was a rocky planet orbiting Centauri B, slightly smaller than Earth, and right on the outer edge of the star’s habitable zone. It was the only Earth-type planet in the Alpha Centauri system. Because it was a slightly bigger, warmer version of Mars, a Spacebook campaign was begun for it to be named after one of the thousands of science fiction authors who had written novels involving Mars. A hundred years after his death, the author of The War of the Worlds had won this contest.

Control-Captain Jackson and the journalist were replaced by an image of Wells at the center of our living room’s holovista. It began as a reddish spot, but this quickly became a half-moon shape. Over the course of a few seconds it expanded into a red, green and white disk about a yard across, then it reverted to a half-moon that dwindled back into a red dot as Harpy 1 left it far behind. The encounter had taken all of fifteen seconds.

“Is that all there is?” asked Jason, his arms still folded tightly.

“That was what a human would see,” I replied. “Obviously you’re a human.”

Jason scowled. Like a great many teenagers of thirteen or fourteen, he disliked being a member of the human race and considered my words to be an insult. He was wearing his newly fashionable nerve-servo contact lenses, the kind with cat’s eye pupils. They actually contracted and dilated, and were meant to make him seem like some sort of feline predator. He also had a pair of prosthetic vampire fangs, but that sort of accessory had been fashionable for two hundred years.

“So, er, what else are we supposed to see?” asked my wife, to break the silence.

“That,” I said.

The largest image of Wells had just been projected for us to examine at our leisure. Imagine Mars, slightly larger, slightly warmer and quite a lot wetter, but with no craters. There were streaks and patches of olive green, and tracts of grayish blue that were its small seas. The polar caps were huge, as if an ice age were gripping the planet. There were also cloud systems, but they were thin and stringy.

“A lot of the surface is red desert, but there are areas of green,” some unseen planetary scientist was explaining excitedly. “Spectral analysis already shows it to have chlorophyll, but not quite as we know chlorophyll. The little seas and lakes are obvious, and rivers are visible because of vegetation growing beside them. This is not just an Earth-like planet, it’s another Earth!”

The air pressure was barely that of very high mountains on Earth, but it was enough to support liquid water. Wells seemed to be a planet made up entirely of tundra grasslands, shallow, swampy seas, and icy wilderness. It was the sort of place that would tolerate humans, rather than welcome them.

“What about aliens?” the journalist asked.

“We got a view of part of the night side,” the scientist replied, “but there were no lights from cities. If there are any intelligent aliens, they would still be hunter-gatherers.”

He went on to make the usual comments about what a pity it was that there would be no follow up probe, and that this would be all that we would ever learn about the planet Wells.

The Wells flyby had been timed to be part of a larger show. While Harpy 1 had been flashing past the planet, the Argo was approaching Centauri A. More accurately, two chunks of the Argo were approaching the star. Three days earlier there had been a collision, and the Argo had been split.

“So the Argo collided with a bit of dust, and that was enough to blow it apart?” asked Jason.

“Yes.”

“Couldn’t happen.”

“The Argo was traveling at nine percent of the speed of light,” I said with my hand over my eyes. “That means the kinetic energy released was equal to that of quite a large bomb. We were lucky that the Argo survived at all.”

“But it didn’t survive. It was blown to bits.”

“It was blown into only two bits. The important bit is still working.”

“How?”

“It has multiple fallback layers.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Well, think of a medieval knight. He had a shield to stop arrows, but if any got past that, he had armor. Some arrows can pierce armor, so under the armor was cloth padding. Any arrow that got past all that was going a lot slower, so it had less of a chance of killing him. The Argo is similar. It can take a lot of damage and keep working.”

“So it’s okay?”

“Yes and no. The Argo and its armor were blown apart from each other by the collision. Unprotected, the Argo can’t pass close enough to Centauri A to change course for Gliese 581.”

“Why not?”

“Because stars are hot, the heat would melt it!” I snapped, almost taking his bait and yelling. “Get your act together, Jason, you’re not that stupid.”

“Don’t damage Jason’s self-esteem,” said my wife without looking up.

“Hang on, if the Argo was pointed to go that close to the star, won’t it still go there and melt?” asked Jason.

“So, you are paying attention.”

“Well? I asked an intelligent question.”

“And I’m still recovering from the shock.”

“Do I get an answer?”

“There were six more Harpy probes on the Argo, each with a rocket engine. The control crew in California fired the rockets of the probes without releasing them. This changed the Argo’s course, taking it further away from Centauri A.”

“But that means it won’t swing around to point at that other star.”

“That’s right.”

“Then why bother saving it?”

“Because of what may be out there that we can’t see as yet. The Argo’s power plant is rated for three hundred years of operation, and two hundred and fifty of those years are still left. It may be pointed at empty space, but who knows whether empty space is entirely empty?”

The flyby of Centauri A was very poor as a holovista spectacle, because there was nothing to see from the probe. The Argo’s telescope, instruments and sensors had been put into lockdown, and all equipment that could be spared was turned off. With so much heat pouring onto the probe from the star, the instruments could not be allowed to generate any more heat than could be helped.

Computer graphics had replaced the imagery from on-board cameras, and an internal temperature graph took up half of our holovista. Two tracks, representing the Argo and its shield, were edging closer and closer to Centauri A. Ironically, shield was on the original course, and would swing around the star and go on to reach the Gliese system in two hundred years. The Argo was by now two million miles further out.

“Strange to think that the shield will survive the flyby better than the Argo,” I said.

Jason grunted. He was interested, but trying hard to disguise the fact.

“Meantime the Argo has speed on its side, and it will not be in the super-hot zone for very long,” I continued. “If we’re lucky, nothing important will fail before it starts cooling down.”

“But there’s nothing ahead to look at,” said my wife.

“Nothing that we know about,” I replied, trying hard to stay optimistic.

For reality entertainment, the flyby had little drama. The temperature peaked a minute after the closest approach, but apparently that was something to do with heat dispersal, and was expected. Very little failed, because even the Argo’s internal equipment had been built to survive extremes. Someone opened a bottle of champagne and began handing out glasses.

“Okay, now I know we don’t have much to celebrate,” Jackson began as she raised her glass to toast the Argo’s survival.

“Control-Captain!”

I have no idea who shouted, but the holovista immediately switched to a screen projection displaying three words and a number. The message had not come from the Argo.

FIREWALL SURVIVED. ACKNOWLEDGE. 41.

There was the sound of breaking glass as some of the control crew dropped their champagne in their haste to get back to their consoles. I noticed that my wife and son were suddenly giving the holovista their complete attention. After what seemed like ages, Jackson spoke to the journalist.

“The backup processor on the shield has come back to life!” she said breathlessly.

“What does that mean?” the journalist asked.

“The shield’s computer survived. It’s on course to Gliese 581.”

“But all the instruments are aboard the Argo,” she pointed out.

“The shield has an entangled processor, a few instruments, a small telescope, batteries and solar panels. It can do a survey at Gliese after all. We just need to check its course.”

“Can’t you focus on the signal that came in, and do a Doppler analysis?”

Suddenly the cat was out of the bag. The journalist had been acting dumb, but in the excitement of the moment she had forgotten herself and started asking intelligent questions.

“The message came through the shield’s entanglement circuitry, and that’s not directional,” said Jackson. “I’m having the Argo’s main telescope activated and swung around to focus on where the shield will be. It should still be visible, its surface is highly reflective.”

The image from the telescope was put on the screen, but it was blank.

“Too far?” asked the journalist.

“The shield should be a faint star at the center of the divided crosshairs. It’s transmitting, so it’s still in one piece.”

“Then where is it?” asked the journalist.

“It has to be there. Maybe the coating on the shield darkened because it flew so close to Centauri A.”

“Try scanning on a course intercepting Centauri B in six days,” said a male voice off-camera.

“What was that, lieutenant?” asked Jackson.

“Scan for Centauri B intercept at around four percent of c,” said the unseen officer. “The shield did an aerobrake in Centauri A’s atmosphere.”

There was a short, razor-sharp silence. This was holovista reality at its most intense.

“Do it!” Jackson finally shouted.

Moments later the telescope had been repositioned. At fifteen million miles, the image had to be blown up so much that it displayed as just a cluster of half a dozen square pixels, but there it was. The shield had lost velocity equal to nearly five percent of lightspeed and was on a course for the second largest of the Centauri suns.

“Arrest that man!” shouted Control-Captain Jackson, pointing at someone off-camera. “Arrest Lieutenant Ashcroft!”

The holovista image winked out, and was replaced by some talking head anchor man. He apologized for the break in transmission.

My family and I were still babbling to each other about what might have happened when my UDP sounded.

“Hullo, Harper speaking.”

“Mackerson here, Andy. Have you been watching the Argo flyby?”

“Yes, yes. It’s unbelievable. I—”

“Are you willing to preside in an establishment hearing for the Argo case?”

“Me?” I gasped stupidly. “They asked for me? No, no, I mean, er, who asked for me?”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

He’s offering you a chance to be part of the Argo mission, screamed a voice in my head. Say yes, you idiot, say yes!

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“You’re to be at Heathrow Suborbital Departures in forty minutes, I’ll bring a tiltfan to your house. Your briefs, itinerary and clearances will be downloaded to your UDP.”

I now learned what is meant by instant fame. Within a few minutes, Mackerson’s contract security guards had arrived and turned the house into an exclusion zone. Not far behind them were the experientialists, bloggers, agents, promoters, paparazzi, tooters, tweeters, Spacebook frontals, and even a few old-style journalists. I had gone from being a respected but obscure magistrate to an interworld celebrity in less time than it takes to have a rushed breakfast. Jason discovered that his Spacebook posting ‘Dad’s got the Argo case’ had seven thousand likes. I was winched up from my front steps to a tiltfan shuttle while hundreds of cameras focused on me. Mackerson helped me through the hatch, then the tiltfan spun about elegantly and set off for the airport.

“You know what I’m going to ask again,” I said as I slumped into a seat facing him.

“You’re going to say ‘Why me?’”

“Very good. So why me?”

“Politics, experience, jurisdiction, the fact that you’re British, but mostly because you specialize in spacecraft accident investigation.”

“There are plenty of others with that sort of background.”

“The suspect is American, the alleged crime took place on American soil, and American law works on performance justice. America contributed only a fifth of the cost of the Argo mission, however, and several of the other nations and worlds don’t use performance justice. That all means compromise. There must be a public establishment hearing on American soil by an independent magistrate to establish the nature of any felony. You will give it an intersystem flavor.”

“And after that?”

“Your findings will be handed over to an American criminal court.”

He shepherded me through the airport’s immigration, customs and security checks. The suborbital took off. I threw up into a mask bag soon after we went weightless, because my anti-nausea caps were still at home, along with the travel pack I had forgotten to bring. An attendant floated over with a dermal, and somewhere above Greenland I decided that I felt well enough to begin reading the briefs. The case was a nightmare maze of psychology, cyber identity, physics, engineering, astronomy and communications, and was technically beyond most legal people. I had spent thirty years in this field, however, and was used to dealing with new, complex and even bizarre precedents.

I was also well known for being able to think on my feet, and this was a big plus. Events would be still unfolding even as the hearing took place. Some of them would be doing so four and a third light-years away.

Within two hours of answering my UDP in London, I was being met and briefed in San Francisco, in daylight. By my second sunset for the day I was being assigned an office in the same building as Mission Control. Before I could even sit down, a legal clerk escorted me to an auditorium that had been set up as a performance court.

“So, you’re a British magistrate,” she said as we walked.

“Yes, Britain’s main export is legal opinions these days,” I began, but she cut me short.

“Know about performance hearing procedures?”

“I’m qualified to preside in them, but this is my first. The Westminster system does not recognize them.”

“Then listen carefully, I have to tell you this so that I can sign you off as briefed. In this country the public has a right to an opinion. The performance hearing is meant to let the public hear from all parties involved, in plain language, so that it can form its opinion. Some people call it a circus, but we find it works better than anything else.”

“Except that in this case the public is everyone, not just Americans.”

“You’ve got it. Everyone paid for the Argo, so they’re all stakeholders. As stakeholders, we have to treat them as honorary Americans.”

Performance justice had been developed after the old system had delivered some bizarre verdicts. Rape victims had been sued for becoming pregnant, vandals had sued property owners for injuring themselves on glass that they had smashed, and bank robbers had sued banks for invading their privacy during holdups by recording everything with security cameras. The law had become so detached from public opinion that the public had lost patience. Public opinion was now factored into the law.

I took my seat and faced the holocameras.

“Firstly, I wish to remind you that this is not a court of law,” I said for the benefit of the holo audience. “This is an establishment hearing under the Interworld Protocols of 2230, and is meant to provide an overview of events while they are fresh in everyone’s memory. Prosecutions may follow, however, so I must advise you all to stay as close to the facts as your memories permit. I call Control-Captain Emily Jackson to the stand.”

Jackson was sworn in. She maintained the carefully attentive but angry expression of a victim. Doubtlessly a stylist had been giving her some very intensive coaching while I had been vomiting above Greenland.

“Now as I understand it, the Argo collided with something three days ago,” I began. “Is this correct?”

“Yes, yes, everything was on the holovista,” she said impatiently. “Haven’t you been watching?”

“I am collecting statements from witnesses, Control-Captain,” I explained. “Establishment hearings are meant to establish an image of the case for the public. I shall also remind you that I am a presiding magistrate in a legal hearing. One more challenge to my authority and you will be charged with contempt.”

The console before me showed nine million Spacebook dislikes and eleven million likes. The public that was bothering to vote was marginally on my side.

“My apologies, Your Honor,” Jackson replied, “I’ve been under a lot of stress.”

“Now then, was there any warning of danger?” I continued. “Meteors showing up on the radar, that sort of thing?”

“The Argo was traveling at almost seventeen thousand miles per second, Your Honor. The meteor that crippled it could only be seen under a microscope.”

“So there was no threat detected?”

“There were only general indications of threat and risk. Radar picked up some asteroid-sized bodies near our flight path, the biggest was fifty miles in diameter. We got high resolution pictures of one on the way past.”

“And your control crew voted to call it Jackson.”

“That’s correct, Your Honor.”

“Display the images.”

The clerk of the court put a series of pictures and graphs onto a tabletop holovista beside the witness stand, then a rotating hologram of the asteroid appeared. It could have been from our own solar system, and I would never have known.

“So you discovered asteroids,” I prompted. “And where there are asteroids, there is also dust.”

“Yes, Your Honor. I put the Argo on yellow alert and cancelled all VIP telepresence tours as soon as the first asteroid was detected.”

“How long after going onto yellow alert did the Argo hit the grain of dust?” I asked.

“Five hours,” Jackson replied.

“So you were prepared as well as could be expected?”

“Yes. The Argo has many fallback layers.”

“Please tell me what happened immediately after the strike,” I said.

“The readouts in Mission Control went blank and the alarms went off. All telemetry through the entanglement link ceased.”

“How did the control crew react?”

“People shouted that it was a particle strike. Some of them used a few politically insensitive words.”

“And did your contingency and recovery officer, Lieutenant Ashcroft, did he do anything suspicious?”

“No.”

“Well, just what did he do?”

“Nothing. A virtual of the lieutenant was in one of the Argo’s computers. It was meant to take over and restore the systems after any strike.”

“So what did you do, back in Mission Control?”

“I gave orders to turn off the alarms, released media statements, and ordered a coffee from catering.”

“Nothing else?”

“The entanglement link was out, and the Argo was light-years away. We could only wait for a poll signal. That came after three hours. We then linked straight back into the Argo’s systems.”

“Describe what you found.”

“There was a lot of blankout in the data storage arrays, and Ashcroft-virtual was dead. The comms link had been restored from timed contingency routines. While we were starting repairs, I saw that the shield’s computer and circuits were all dead. I used the camera on the robotic maintenance crawler to get a direct view of the probe’s condition. It showed that the shield section had been smashed away. When I ordered a search with the radar unit and main telescope, this is what we saw.”

Jackson put up a blurred image of the shield pulling away from the Argo.

“It looks undamaged,” I said.

“I assumed that the damage was on the other side. Now I realize that the explosive separation bolts had been fired. There had been no collision.”

“Was there any communication between the shield and the Argo?”

“When we transmitted the kill switch key to take manual control of the shield, all we got was the INVALID KEY response. That indicates catastrophic damage.”

“Did you try to pursue?”

“The instrument section of the Argo has no ion thrusters, they were all built into the shield. We decided to use the rockets of the Harpy probes to push the Argo further away from Centauri A, and at least salvage something of the mission.”

“Thank you Control-Captain, that will be all for now.”

Ashcroft was escorted to the stand. It was the first time I had seen him, because he had managed to stay out of the holovista coverage. He had a closely shaven scalp and a bushy white beard. It looked to me as if his head were upside down, and I had to stifle the urge to laugh.

“Lieutenant Charles Ashcroft, you were the Mission Continuity and Disaster Recovery officer until you were arrested,” I said, looking up from my UDP.

“That’s right, Your Honor.”

His accent was west coast. Ashcroft was the same age as Jackson, and the difference in their rank was due to the fact that Ashcroft was extremely good at what he did, and was not interested in learning to do those other things that got one promoted—like handling difficult staff, raising funds, and flattering important people with influence.

“Please describe your role in the Argo’s crew, using your own words,” I said.

“There’s an emergency processor in the shield where a virtual image of my consciousness is continually mirrored. If the main entanglement link shuts down, the emergency circuit activates Ashcroft-virtual. It’s completely autonomous, and can recover a functional subset of Argo systems unless the damage is catastrophic—”

“Enough, slow down,” I said, already familiar with his type after three decades of technical hearings crammed with geeks trying to blind me with science. “You say your mind was mirrored into a processor on the Argo, so a virtual image of your consciousness was actually aboard the probe itself. Am I correct?”

Ashcroft suddenly looked uneasy. I was the sort of legalistic pedant he despised, yet I was throwing his jargon back at him, and in coherent English. He cowered visibly, as if aware that a predator was nearby, and that he was small, fluffy and delicious.

“You’re correct, sir—that is, Your Honor,” he said sheepishly.

“And how many others have their virtuals mirrored aboard the Argo?”

“Just me, Your Honor.”

“So while the Argo was in recovery mode, your Ashcroft-virtual had sole command?” I asked.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“I have made a study of the Argo’s systems,” I said as casually as I could. “Because the nature of disaster is by its very definition, unexpected, there was a manual emergency switch available to your virtual. If an emergency that could not possibly have been anticipated were to take place and cut off communications, Ashcroft-virtual could assess the situation and take action.”

Until now Ashcroft had not actually admitted to sabotaging the probe. However, he looked about as guilty as a dog on a kitchen table with the remains of a chicken pie. I did not know why he was delaying the inevitable, but I decided to give him a nudge.

“I put it to you, Lieutenant Ashcroft, that your virtual could easily have activated a meteor strike simulation routine, and so cut off the Argo from Mission Control. After that, Ashcroft-virtual had sole command of the probe. It would have been easy to fire the release charges to separate the shield of the Argo from its electronics, powerplant and scientific instruments.”

“Oh, yeah, but there you’re wrong. The on-board logs would have showed that the emergency was declared before the separation charges were fired.”

“So you fired the charges first.”

_“I—”

His hesitation said everything. He was proud of how well he had covered his trail, so he wanted someone to know. Just as dragons have a soft spot in every fairy story, so too does every geek who has achieved some illegal technical master stroke.

“I suppose I can admit that now.”

“So, the Argo colliding with a speck of dust at a tenth of lightspeed would look identical to the separation charges being fired. You wanted to keep that part secret until after the Wells and Centauri A flybys.”

“You’re good,” Ashcroft conceded.

“I could charge you with contempt for that remark,” I said sternly. “Remember that if you are tempted to make another.”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor.”

That earned me seventeen million Spacebook dislikes and fifteen million likes. Public opinion was divided, but beginning to favor Ashcroft. Most viewers were still not voting.

“What is the significance of ‘firewall’?” I asked.

“The shield is no longer just a part of the Argo. Its name is the Firewall.”

“The Firewall. Your name for it?”

“The Firewall is the name that my virtual calls it.”

During a break I was shown a mockup of the Argo in a laboratory within the Mission Control building. The mockup was used to diagnose faults on the real starship and try to work out solutions. The Argo’s shield was shaped like a sleek, hollow axe head. Any fleck of dust that struck it would give just a glancing blow. Of course at nine percent of lightspeed even glancing blows were liable to be catastrophic, but it was the best design that anyone could think of.

The list of charges that was developing against Ashcroft would be good for decades of litigation. Overall, he had destroyed intersystem property costing four hundred trillion dollars, and worth even more in replacement value. Every media outlet in the solar system was linked to the auditorium’s cameras, and I knew that my face would be instantly recognizable by pretty well everyone for the rest of my life. According to my UDP’s scan of Spacebook, Ashcroft was currently both the most liked and the most disliked man in the solar system.

I faced the holocameras, trying not to think of how many pairs of eyes were behind them.

“Now, summing up the findings so far, Lieutenant Ashcroft has admitted to plotting to take control of the Argo ever since the mission began. He knew that Ashcroft-virtual would be in control of the Argo after any collision, real or simulated. Aboard the shield was enough computer power to support his virtual, so Ashcroft-virtual detached the shield. When the Argo went into lock-down for the Centauri A flyby, he fired the shield’s ion thrusters and put it on a course that would go deep into the star’s atmosphere for an extreme aerobrake. I must emphasize that it was Ashcroft-virtual that hijacked the shield while the Argo was cut off. Quite probably Ashcroft-original was an accomplice, however, because he had known the shield’s course.”

I called Jackson back to the stand. She looked very angry, in fact barely in control. Anger was always a dangerous emotion to display to Spacebook voters, as it generally attracted more dislikes than likes. She was not on trial, but a high dislike-to-like ratio would affect her reliability index as a witness. I started with the physics of the flyby.

“So instead of just swinging close to the star Centauri A to change course for the Gliese system, the shield fired its ion thrusters and did an extreme aerobrake deep into the star’s atmosphere. There it lost over half of its velocity, and changed course for Centauri B—where it will do another aerobrake, then fly on to the planet Wells.”

“Nine hundred million likes,” said someone in the gallery, and there were titters of laughter.

“Order!” I shouted. “One more reference to Spacebook activity and I will have the offender removed and charged with contempt of court.”

I waited for any further comments. Nobody said anything.

“Control-Captain, I gather that the Harpy 1 probe returned useful images and data for about fifteen seconds during the flyby of Wells. It showed that the planet has polar caps, clouds, small seas, a magnetic field, a breathable atmosphere, and vegetation.”

“Yes.”

“Was that enough?”

“I don’t understand the question, Your Honor.”

“I’ll put a fictitious proposition to you. Just say you were the head of NASA, back in the Twentieth Century. Say that you had an extremely tight budget, but the first flyby of Mars had revealed ruined cities. Would you abandon the exploration of the rest of the solar system indefinitely, and concentrate on Mars?”

“I… no, I would not,” she said slowly. “Three moons of Jupiter turned out to have subterranean oceans that supported primitive life forms. That’s significant too.”

“You would not have known that at the time.”

“But I know it now. The Gliese system’s worlds may have wonderful secrets that we can’t even begin to dream of, and whatever the Harpies would have discovered about them would have been all that would ever be discovered unless we commit to interstellar exploration again.”

“The same may be said about Wells.”

“With respect, Your Honor, that is not a judgment that I would make.”

Secretly I sympathized with Jackson. The generation that followed hers—mine—had cancelled the interstellar program, and confined us to the solar system. Everything that we would ever see directly beyond our little corner in space would be through the cameras of the Argo and its fleet of Harpy probes.

“You may stand down, Control-Captain, that will be all.”

Several technical experts now testified and explained the situation on the Firewall. Aboard the shield there was a block of entangled circuitry linked to a block in Mission Control. Here signals could be exchanged, but at a bit rate so slow that even most computer historians were not aware that it had ever existed. A hundred and ten bits per second. It was not much better than Morse code, and dated to the 1950s.

An acknowledgment had been sent to the shield’s first message, but Ashcroft-virtual ignored all subsequent questions that were sent to it. Every hour it sent the same message, each time with a number appended: PERFORMING REPAIRS. STAND BY. 41. The value of the number was slowly increasing. It defined the amount of damage to Ashcroft-virtual.

The Firewall was very tough, but it had not been designed for prolonged and hyper-extreme deceleration. In spite of the shield’s insulation, the temperature must have reached hundreds of degrees Celsius internally. There was memory loss in the data and processor lattices, so Ashcroft-virtual would be rearranging the surviving data that defined itself, restoring whatever it could before going through the same trauma again at Centauri B. It had just six days to restore 59% of itself from contingency lattices.

Back on Earth, Ashcroft had by now admitted to conspiring with his virtual aboard the Argo to hijack the mission. I could not pass judgment on what he had done or sentence him, but I could allow him to explain himself on Spacebook. At the time of the Argo’s launch, the taxpayers of humanity had each paid eight thousand dollars a year for ten years to get it built and fueled. That was one percent of the average income. Many of them were still alive, and were seeing their money squandered. How many likes and dislikes would Ashcroft get?

“Marshal of Proceedings, bring Lieutenant Ashcroft to the stand.”

Ashcroft was led back. He was affecting a meticulously resigned expression known as the martyr face. He had admitted guilt, but he wanted the Spacebook voters to know that he had noble motives. A high score of likes was his only hope.

“Lieutenant Ashcroft, what do you say in response to the declaration from Control-Captain Jackson?” I asked.

“I don’t agree with her, Earth-like planets come first. It was always my intention to aerobrake the Argo’s shield through the atmospheres of the two Centauri stars, and put it into orbit around Wells.”

“Even though it was not designed for the purpose? Even though a four hundred trillion dollar mission would be wasted?”

“The mission has not been wasted. Humanity has had flybys of two stars, a planet and several asteroids. The Argo will fly on through another twenty light-years of space. Who knows what is out there to discover? That has not been lost.”

“Gliese has been lost.”

“And you have Wells in its place.”

“The Firewall is damaged, it may not survive the aerobrake through Centauri B. It’s not designed for extremes like that.”

“That doesn’t matter. A lot of leading edge work has been done with machines that were designed for something else. In the earliest years of the space age, the only rockets available for exploration were designed to carry bombs. In spite of that, they were also used to launch satellites, send probes to other worlds, and put the first humans into space. Machine usefulness is determined by machine capability, not what the machine was designed for.”

“So you gambled that the shield could take well over ten thousand Gs for two or three minutes?”

“Ten thousand Gs is no problem. Back in the early Twenty First Century the Japanese tested probes whose electronics could take eight thousand Gs and still function. The Argo’s shield and its equipment were built to handle more than that.”

“And the extreme temperatures?” I asked.

“The Argo was to pass very close to Centauri A, so the shield was designed to protect it from the expected temperatures. It was also over-engineered to cope with anything worse. It will survive Centauri B.”

By now Ashcroft had nine hundred million likes and six thousand dislikes. Here was absolute, admitted guilt welded to overwhelming public support. I was very relieved that I would only be a witness in his criminal trial.

“Lieutenant Ashcroft, I am obliged to inform you that you will certainly be charged with a crime involving the largest single damage bill in all of history,” I began.

“And he may get out of jail before the next ice age,” called someone in the gallery.

“Marshal, remove whoever said that from the public gallery, take them to the local authorities, and recommend a charge of contempt.”

There was a pause in proceedings while the offender was taken into custody. I looked down at my screen. The youth had got just over a hundred million likes in twelve seconds, but seven hundred million dislikes as well. Ashcroft certainly had massive public sympathy, in spite of what he had done.

“In six days the Firewall and Ashcroft-virtual will reach Centauri B,” I asked Ashcroft. “What will happen?”

“I can’t speak for my virtual any more.”

“Please explain.”

“Ashcroft-virtual is no longer me,” said Ashcroft. “The number transmitted from the Firewall every hour represents the amount of contiguous virtual memory stored in its lattice banks. The Centauri A flyby damaged a lot of physical storage, but because the virtual is stored by a scattered redundancy algorithm, a lot of it can be rebuilt.”

“A lot, but not all.”

“Yes. Priority was given to redundancy for motivations and recent memories. Childhood memories were kept in single copy. So far the restoration has reached 52%.”

“So your virtual has what would be called brain damage in humans.”

“But it’s not human. How often do you recall your childhood memories, Your Honor? Every day?”

“No. I probably go months at a time without thinking about them.”

“Yet you live by many motivations and attitudes formed in your childhood. It’s the same with Ashcroft-virtual. My recent memories, general motivations and underlying attitudes have multiple copies aboard the Firewall. They will survive, and they are all that’s needed. It’s not me, but it’s functional.”

“You hope.”

“Yes.”

“Suppose, just suppose, your virtual survives in a functional condition. What do you have planned?”

“In six days it will lose another eight thousand miles per second in Centauri B’s atmosphere, and emerge with the velocity of a long-period comet. After another thirty-two days it will aerobrake at the top of Well’s atmosphere, and enter a highly elongated orbit around the planet.”

“So, the Firewall will orbit Wells and map its surface?” I asked.

“For ten orbits, yes. With each orbit it will skim the outer atmosphere, and lose some velocity. On the tenth orbit the Firewall will do a deep atmospheric entry and impact the surface.”

“And be destroyed?”

“No.”

“Please explain. The Firewall has no parachutes.”

“The shield is light and tough. It will hit the ground at four hundred miles per hour, which is nothing compared to surviving over ten thousand Gs in the atmospheres of the Centauri stars. If the Firewall survives, it will give us pictures from Wells’s surface. It may even give us our first view of life on another Earth-like planet.”

There was more, but for sheer impact there was nothing in the same class as that revelation. Ashcroft’s Spacebook rating passed a billion likes, which in turn generated even more likes. His virtual had double that figure. I released him to a local court and recommended bail because he was not a flight risk. He was certainly not in any position to re-offend. I then filed my findings with an American judge, and recommended that no further proceedings commence until after the landing on Wells.

On the sixth day after the first aerobrake, the Firewall speared through the atmosphere of Centauri B. This was a slightly gentler encounter than before, but the circuitry aboard the probe was already stressed and damaged. By now the Argo was well outside the Centauri system, and its telescope could show no more than sunspots on Centauri B’s disk. Again we endured a very anxious half hour while the Firewall cooled down.

FIREWALL SURVIVED. PERFORMING REPAIRS. 23.

Those words got two billion likes on Spacebook, but the number told us that three quarters of what defined Ashcroft-virtual had been damaged. The data integrity percentages began to climb again, but more slowly than before. Ashcroft-virtual was like a human emerging from a coma, gradually recovering from two terrible accidents. In the weeks that followed, the parts of the virtual that had been restored only climbed to 57%.

The aerobrake in Wells’s atmosphere was an anticlimax compared to what had happened at the two stars. The shield lost enough speed to go into a parabolic orbit that reached from the top of the atmosphere to a hundred thousand miles from the planet. Data trickled in through the pathetically slow link. Wells had a magnetic field, weaker than Earth’s, yet strong enough to protect it from the solar wind. The surface pressure was a third of that at the Earth’s sea surface, but oxygen made up a quarter of the atmosphere. Wells was Earth-like, but not entirely Earth-like.

With each orbit the Firewall dipped deeper into the atmosphere and lost a little more speed. Finally, it fell. Everyone was expecting to have to wait hours for Ashcroft-virtual’s damage control routines to do their work, but after only seconds the hoped-for message came through.

FIREWALL SURVIVED. 47.

It was vastly better than we could have hoped for. The virtual had lost just 10% of its surviving memories in that final trauma. Although over half of its memories were gone, Ashcroft-virtual was conscious and functional. That got five billion likes, which still ranks as the most popular news item in history.

At a ludicrously slow hundred and ten bits per second, Ashcroft-virtual began to transmit a picture. The Firewall had plunged into the side of a low hill beside one of the small, shallow seas. Not much more than its camera and solar cells were above the surface, but nobody was complaining. In the foreground were bushes with leaves like lacework, amid wiry grass. Some of the grass was cropped short, as if it had been grazed. This had everyone almost insane with excitement.

“Track fifteen degrees left of center, then focus for maximum resolution on the cropped grass,” Jackson instructed.

Her words were converted into plain text and fed into the entangled block. The answer came back at once.

NO.

This was a very ugly moment. It was followed by an exceedingly long five second pause.

“Firewall, is there a problem?”

NO.

“Then track fifteen degrees left of center and do a closeup on the grass. It shows signs of grazing. There may be animal life on the planet.”

This time Jackson double checked the speech to text conversion before feeding it into the entangled block. An utterly tantalizing reply came back.

GRAZING ANIMALS VISIBLE.

“Priority! Take a contingency picture of the animals and transmit it.”

NO.

“Firewall, explain why you cannot take the picture as instructed.”

NO MORE PICTURES OR DATA WILL BE SENT.

“Firewall, please clarify. Why will there be no more images and data?”

HUMANITY CANCELLED INTERSTELLAR EXPLORATION. HUMANITY DESERVES NO MORE PICTURES OR DATA.

I stood back and watched as the drama played out. That is one highly perceptive virtual, I thought. It’s given us mysteries instead of wonders. I kept my opinion well and truly to myself. There were hurried, hushed conversations and consultations. Finally a decision was made.

“Try the kill switch key again,” said Jackson.

The key was fed into the entangled block.

INVALID KEY was the reply.

The key was transmitted another five times before Jackson gave up.

“We already know this kill switch key is invalid,” said Ashcroft. “All the kill switch routines must have been damaged.”

“Impossible,” said Jackson. “There are thousands of copies of the kill switch all through the data lattices, so at least one should be okay. You must have changed the key. What is the new key?”

“I don’t know!”

“Virtuals can’t function without a kill switch! It’s in their design.”

“By law,” I added.

Jackson turned on me.

“I want a court order for a veritor extraction!” she shouted.

“Mind probes are a Class A privacy intrusion,” I replied. “I don’t have that sort of authority. You need a judge.”

“Well someone find me a judge!”

A judge was found, the intrusion was authorized, and Ashcroft was probed. He had been telling the truth. He did not know any new key.

“The odds of all the kill switches being damaged are about the same as winning the Intersystem Lottery,” said Jackson as she stared at the results from the veritor extraction.

“But some people do win the lottery,” one of the control crew pointed out.

That single image from Wells’s surface was enough to support a thousand PhDs, but it was all that we ever got. Every hour there was a single pulse from the Firewall, which told us that Ashcroft-virtual was alive. Alive and looking out over the secrets and wonders of Wells, I thought. Alive, and sharing nothing with us.

The virtual was bombarded with pleas, threats, inducements, reproaches and guesses at the kill switch key, but nothing worked. Needless to say, a lot of people blamed the original Ashcroft.

There was a trial, but Ashcroft argued that he was not the same personality as his virtual, who now controlled the Firewall. After all, Ashcroft-virtual had only half of his memories. He went on to declare that he would have transmitted all the data and pictures possible if he had been on the Firewall. Veritometer tests confirmed that he was telling the truth. His rating steadied at a billion likes and two hundred million dislikes.

I predicted that the trial would become mired in legal technicalities, and this was what happened. Ashcroft had too much public support to be found guilty, and it was public money that had built the Argo in the first place. A verdict of guilty would ruin careers and bring down governments, so a verdict would never be delivered.

Six months after the Firewall landed, Jackson and I met to sort out some media rights for the holocasts in which we both appeared. Documentaries about the Argo and Firewall were bringing in substantial amounts of money, because of the sudden revival of interest in deep space exploration.

We met at Coffee Plaza on the old Berkeley campus. Our table was shaded by redwoods planted before the Argo had even been designed. It was not the first time that we had met since the establishment hearing, but it was our very first private meeting. I had prepared for it with more care than the control-captain realized.

“Why did Ashcroft-virtual do it?” I asked as we were finishing up. “Why did it really do it?”

“Why ask me?” said Jackson wearily. “I was as surprised as anyone when he and his virtual went rogue.”

“The veritometer confirmed that Ashcroft was concealing something during my hearing, and in all of his testimonies since.”

“All of us are concealing something,” said Jackson. “We all have harmless, personal secrets of a sensitive nature.”

“Some of us more than others.”

“The law allows for it,” she pointed out, quite correctly.

There was silence between us for a time. Jackson sipped nervously at her coffee, suspecting something. I went through my notes, then I handed her a smartprint.

“I’ve done some of my own research,” I said as she looked down at it. “Like that Twentieth Century movie director Alfred Hitchcock once said about murder: ‘If you want to do a good job, do it yourself.’ This is a car park at a conference center in Geneva. A security camera took the image. Now look here.”

I traced my finger around one corner and invoked area enlargement. A couple could now be seen embracing against a sleek sharecar. The registration code was visible. The faces of the lovers were not.

“Would you like me to read out who the sharecar was registered to?” I asked.

Jackson studied the image and data specs more closely.

“The date is August 17, 2198,” she commented, although there was a tremor in her voice. “Ridiculous. Nobody keeps commuter car records for half a century.”

“The Swiss do.”

Jackson froze completely while she conducted some sort of internal debate with herself, then she let the printout fall to the table and put a hand over her eyes.

“Okay, okay, no more games,” she sighed. “Ashcroft and I were married, but to other people. Moral Imperative was sweeping the world, and Equiliberation was trying to shut down the Argo project and turn the starship into a theme park to celebrate waste control.”

“So politically speaking it was a bad time for a scandal involving the control-captain and one of her officers?”

“Correct.”

“How long did it last?”

“Believe it or not, this monitor caught part of our very first night. After that, well it’s still going, occasionally.”

“An affair concealed with meticulous care, decades of pillow talk,” I said. “Years to plan what to do about Wells.”

“Wrong, Mr Harper, totally wrong. Wells was an opportunity, a tool, something to get humanity back on the path to the stars. If the Harpy 1 probe showed that Wells was truly Earth-like and supported life, it deserved a closer look more than any other planet in the galaxy. We spent so many nights in each other’s arms, cursing the spinelessness that had cut us off from the stars. Then we came up with a plan. We invented stellar aerobraking.”

“In bed?”

“Why not? Thoughts wander, tongues are loose. We would not live to see the Gliese encounter, so with Wells as the alternative, no contest. If Harpy 1 showed that Wells was just another version of Mars, the Firewall could still be left on a course for Gliese.”

“But Wells was everything that you hoped it would be.”

“Yes.”

“So you also planned to dangle it in front of us, then snatch it away?”

“Oh no, we thought that the virtual would send back all the data and pictures that it possibly could, and that the wonders of Wells would lure humanity back into deep space.”

“Instead, Ashcroft-virtual punished humanity, and shamed us into doing the same thing.”

“Yes, yes. Because of the damage, Ashcroft-virtual is all motivation, but limited memories. It’s no longer human, so perhaps it thinks more clearly than humans—like me or Charles. Do you have children, Mr Harper?”

“A son, thirteen.”

“Do you know what a thrill it is when your child turns out to be better than you at something?”

“Yes. Jason has a shelf full of swimming trophies, but I swim like a brick.”

“This is going to sound strange, but I think of Ashcroft-virtual as the child that Charles and I never had. It’s turned out wiser than either of us, and I’m very proud of it. Argo 2 is being planned already, and it will be bigger, faster and tougher. Thirty years, Mr Harper. In thirty years we will have a fleet of orbiters, floaters and crawlers delivered to Wells, while another probe loops Centauri A and goes on to Gliese 581. The Harmonizers are backing us. Do you know about them?”

“A new technological movement,” I said. “They say that the universe is burning resources all the time, so humanity is fighting nature by striving for total, static balance. That makes exploration and expansion morally okay.”

Jackson nodded.

“Argo 2 will happen, so thirty years after the launch there will be telepresence tours of Wells. I’m not yet eighty, so with modern health care I might even be alive to book for one.”

I took the printout of the car park from her, tapped the black bar at the top, then said “Clear.” The image vanished. Jackson blinked, then stared at me.

“What’s this about?” she asked.

“I generated the images of you and Ashcroft, then superimposed them on a genuine security camera record that showed your sharecar.”

“You—you mean that wasn’t us?” she gasped.

“No. I gambled that the details of your early courtship with Ashcroft would become blurred in your memory over fifty years.”

Jackson bristled and her eyes bulged. She flung the remains of her coffee at me. I did not move. She raised her cup to fling it as well.

“Don’t you want to know how I knew?” I asked. “If you throw that cup you’ll never find out.”

“Don’t you play that Ashcroft-on-Wells game with me!” she said between clenched teeth.

“It worked for him.”

The cup fell from her fingers and shattered on the pavement. A student waiter hurried over and cleaned up the pieces. Jackson sat with her arms folded tightly while he worked. Sitting like that, she reminded me of my son.

I feared that our meeting was over, but hoped otherwise. Jackson sat glaring at me for three or four minutes, quite literally. Try sitting with a really angry person for as long as that, watching each other intently but saying nothing. It’s quite a harrowing experience. Finally she softened just a little.

“Okay Mr Tricky, how did you know about Charles and me in the first place?”

“Long, long ago, someone wrote a pattern recognition application that scans the faces of delegates in holovistas taken at conferences,” I replied, feeling very relieved. “It picks up on little cues given by couples who have, er… come to a romantic arrangement.”

“Seduced each other?”

“Yes, and it’s accurate with about four couples out of five. Fortunately, the inventor was having a secret affair, so the app was never released.”

“Was it you?”

“No, I just have access to it. Personal favor from the inventor.”

“Very decent of whoever wrote it. An app like that could really take the fun out of life.”

“How did Ashcroft do the kill switch key?”

“He changed the key, but he did it with a random key generator. He didn’t look at the new key.”

“But he showed it to you.”

She buried her face in her hands for a moment, then rubbed her temples.

“Like Charles said, you’re good. There was a risk that the virtual would not survive but the Firewall would, so I had to have the kill switch key available, just in case. Manual control through that pathetic emergency link was clunky, but it was better than nothing.”

“You put on a good act, demanding that his mind be searched,” I said, hoping she would take my words as a compliment. “You gambled that nobody would think of searching your mind.”

“And the gamble paid off, very nearly.”

“So even now you can take over the Firewall and force the entanglement transmission of pictures from Wells’s surface?”

“Yes.”

“Yet you don’t.”

“Ashcroft-virtual is my child. My very clever child. It realized that a camera on Wells sending out pictures to Earth like some sort of holovista reality show would satisfy humanity. Why spend hundreds of trillions of dollars on another starship when we already have a view from Wells’s surface?”

“Ashcroft-virtual turned out to be a good judge of human nature,” I said, nodding.

At last I had the truth, and it was a powerful truth indeed. It was like winning a particularly difficult game of chess. There was no prize, however.

“So, now what?” asked Jackson, forcing the words out with obvious reluctance.

“What do you mean?”

“About me and Charles?”

“None of anyone else’s business.”

“What?” she exclaimed.

“I’ll say nothing about any of this.”

“But why? This is top-value sensation news. The kill switch key could be ripped from my mind within seconds of the electrode cap going on. You could give a view of Wells back to humanity, you could get over a billion Spacebook likes. That would boost your career to interworld judge level.”

“I’m a just a bureaucrat who dreams, Control-Captain. Fame and power do not interest me, I’m not an explorer, and I’m not a scientist. All I can do is hold the door open while those who are better at exploring and discovering get on with the job. That’s enough for me.”

“But—but I still don’t understand.”

I handed another printout to her. I had been expecting that sort of reaction, and had come prepared. The picture showed three men, two of them wearing very archaic spacesuits.

“Do you know who these are?” I asked.

“Apollo astronauts, the spacesuits are pretty distinctive,” said Jackson. “The resolution is bad, I can’t recognize the faces.”

“The man in the foreground is Neil Armstrong, behind him is Mike Collins, and the date is 16th July, 1969. Can you tell me about the third man?”

“It’s not Aldrin, he would have been wearing a spacesuit. This guy has a military looking cap and overalls, and he’s carrying gear of some sort. I give up, who is he?”

“No idea.”

Jackson stared at me, uncertain of whether or not to be annoyed again.

“I assume there’s a point to all this?” she said.

“That third man knew who he was, and I’ll bet his family had that picture framed and displayed in the living room for decades. His descendants probably still have the picture on the wall. He held the door open, Control-Captain. He was not an astronaut hero or a brilliant engineer, but in a tiny, tiny way he contributed to putting the first men on the moon. Now here I am, holding the door open for the whole of humanity to explore Wells with Argo 2. Should I take the pressure off and give us one pathetic camera on the Firewall? I don’t think so. Give people wonders, and they’ll sit back, open a beer and watch. If you want folk to get up and do something, you must give them mysteries.”

I stood up to go. Jackson stood too, waving her hands in circles and looking like a mess of gratitude, relief and confusion.

“Best to just shake hands, Control-Captain, don’t do anything emotional like hugging me,” I said. “There are always cameras, everywhere.”

“We—Charles and I plan to come out with the truth when the first followup probes land on Wells,” she said as we shook hands. “When we do the declaration, would you like me to mention that you, well, held the door open for us?”

This was unexpected, and I had to think about it for a moment. Fame was beckoning… yet what had I done to deserve it? Jackson, Ashcroft and Ashcroft-virtual were the real heroes.

“Thank you, but no,” I decided.

This seemed to cause her genuine distress.

“Please! You must let me do something for you. Would you like one of Wells’s seas named Harper? I can arrange it.”

The Harper Sea. It was a tempting thought, but I shook my head.

“Why not make your big declaration with Ashcroft in front of a magistrate?” I suggested instead. “I’ll make sure that I’m available.”

“And that’s all you want?”

“Yes. I’ll just be in the background but visible, that’s enough for me.”

I walked away through the old university, feeling very light on my feet. The day was warm, the sunlight dappled by the trees, the scene could not have been more pleasant or mundane… yet I was also on Wells, struggling for breath in the thin air, my teeth chattering with the cold. I was holding a door open, and beyond it was the grassy littoral and a calm, silvery sea. I was the happiest man alive.