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5

mission control—washington, d.c.


Major General Pritchard looked fascinated and horrified at the same time. Celeste McConnell glanced at him, then back to the main window displaying the remote analysis of the Daedalus sample. They had expected to detect some kind of anomaly on the regolith—thermo-shocked granules, a change in the crystalline structure, perhaps even traces of exotic chemical residue. But nothing like this. The fizzing sample reminded him of the telepresent hopper that had disintegrated as they watched.

On a separate image, the Columbus control center buzzed with activity. “Are you sure it’s contained?” they could hear Dvorak say as he looked at the image of the goo-covered sample.

On Earth, General Pritchard muttered to Celeste, “Of course it’s contained. Nothing outside could have survived that sterilization dose, and the sample is behind four-inch lead shielding.”

“But what if the contamination can break out?” Celeste said.

She turned to Albert Fukumitsu; all of his techs were staring at the moonbase transmissions. Even the Japanese guards at the doorway had turned to watch. “Albert, are we still on? I want to transmit something.”

Fukumitsu tossed long hair out of his eyes and indicated one of the techs as Celeste stepped into the transmission zone. “You’re on,” he said.

“Jason?” She paused long enough for him to look up. With the transmission lag she tried to plan two seconds ahead of his reactions.

Dvorak turned toward her. “Ms. Director, I don’t have a clue what’s going on, so please don’t ask just yet.” His voice was sharp and tired.

“I just want you to consider some drastic actions, in case this turns out for the worst. I want all of your people to be prepared to evacuate Columbus if it becomes necessary.”

Two seconds later—”How are we going to implement something like that? Take us up to L-l?” Dvorak sounded weary, defeated. “The Collins could never hold this many people, and there’s no way the supply shuttles have the capacity to pull off a rapid evacuation. We’re stuck.”

Celeste tightened her lips. Dvorak had a point. What good would an emergency evacuation do? He had turned his attention to her now.

“Look, Ms. McConnell, we appreciate your concern, but the people on my base are accustomed to day-to-day threats. Everything’s dangerous out here. We’re used to dealing with it.”

“I hear you, Jason,” she said. Have I just been trying to look good for the newsnets? she wondered. Celeste had never worried about that before—especially now, with no need to impress anyone. As Agency director, she ostensibly reported to a few international oversight committees and the president of the U.S., but effectively she was her own boss. Over and over, the newsnets had lambasted her for those sweeping damn-the-consequences types of decisions, even though they almost always proved successful.

“Okay, then let’s figure out what this thing is and we won’t have to worry about it. I’ve got a hunch I’d like your team to try.”

When he nodded, she said, “Whatever’s happening there is taking place on a much smaller scale than we can see right now.” Celeste drummed her fingers on her chair. “Use higher magnification. I mean very high. You might need to try x-ray spectroscopy, but use the TEM first.”

Dvorak blinked. “We’re still trying to finish the testing protocol. There’s a strict sequence of procedures we have to follow—”

“Super high magnification,” she said again. “I think I know what this might be. There’s a chance you’ve stumbled onto something we’ve been investigating down here—”

“Investigating?” Dvorak looked up sharply. She could see the angry boy behind his features. “What do you mean? Is this something the Agency has done? Are you testing something at Daedalus that I don’t know about?”

“No, but we’re working on some concepts in Antarctica, as part of the Mars project. This might be something similar.”

Pritchard looked at her with a puzzled expression. She motioned to him to wait. All he knew about was the simulated Mars base camp in Antarctica.

“And just what is that, Director McConnell?” Dvorak said after the two-second light delay.

“Nanotechnology.”

Pritchard straightened. Most of the people in Mission Control didn’t seem to know what she meant. Neither did Jason Dvorak.

“Whatever you say,” Dvorak answered. He motioned to Newellen, still running his telepresent analysis. In the main window showing the close-up of the regolith sample, the view spun inward, defocused, then resolved through a different sensor to show the view from a Transmission Electron Microscope.

Suddenly the crystalline structure of the regolith sample looked like an enormous city during rush hour. Tiny objects bustled across the screen, swarming and chewing, dismantling the rock, building copies of themselves. Little machines like busy microscopic bulldozers, racing their way up and down tiny structures in the regolith.

A murmur swept through Mission Control, half a second before a similar transmitted undertone reached them from the moonbase.

“Is it a virus?” Pritchard asked, moving closer to the screen. “An infestation, like a plague? Microorganisms—”

“No, not a disease,” Celeste said, cutting him off. “They are . . . mechanical. Tiny, tiny machines.”

The microscopic shapes were fuzzy, boxlike, with tiny lumps that could be arms and levers, crystalline cores that must hold some kind of controls. There seemed to be half a dozen different designs, modifications in the number of flagella, the size of the core. Larger substations were scattered throughout the structure, like control centers.

Celeste pulled up a chair and rocked forward, gripping the arms. “Jason, you need to destroy that sample. Before it gets loose.”

“It’s inside a lead-lined vault.” Dvorak looked puzzled.

“Now!” she said. “Lead won’t stop them. Once they finish taking apart the regolith sample and the debris from the recovery canister, they’ll start dismantling the inside of the shielding wall, atom by atom, to keep reproducing.”

As Dvorak hesitated, General Pritchard stepped into the transmission area and raised his voice. Good, she saw that Pritchard at least had grasped the nature of the threat immediately. “Dvorak, you saw what happened to your hopper and to those three people—and if these things can dissolve an entire spacecraft, they can sure as hell eat through a lead wall.”

Celeste made her voice placating. “Jason, we can’t lose Sim-Mars. We need to alter our plan of attack. You can get another sample later—once we’ve sent you some help. Now at least I know what type of expertise you need. And I know exactly where to get it.”

It took longer than the two-second light delay for Dvorak to show his approval. “Okay,” Dvorak said. He directed Newellen to flood the interior of the shielded vault with a decontamination burst.

General Pritchard turned to her. “I can see it, but I still don’t understand it. How did you recognize this? What are we looking at?”

“Nanotechnology,” she said to him again, but she knew Dvorak and the entire moonbase crew were listening as well. “Tiny self-replicating robots that can build or take apart just about anything, one molecule at a time. They’re assembling that enormous construction at Daedalus.”

Her voice felt cold in her throat. “And these aren’t anything we developed. Nothing from Earth.”


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