Adams’ Apples
1 The Maytag Repairman
Introduction
I’M THE ONE who broke the story, so I guess I’m the one who gets to write the book. I’ll call it a perk of being a newspaper man. Heaven knows there aren’t many. Late nights, tight deadlines, hangovers, and the news never cooperates by happening when it’s convenient to get it in the paper. But it’s my life. Or it was.
I wasn’t present for everything that I’ll tell you here, but I’ll tell the story with the authority of having listened carefully to the people who were there and made the news happen. Which is where this story starts.
Byline: I’m Ramsey Smith, reporter. Orlando and the world are my beat.
Time: 15 or 20 Years from Now
It was a lonely job but he supposed someone had to do it. Jack Adams looked at his tiny viewscreen at the world below. He had to admit it was beautiful. Of course, he’d seen the same view of Earth every day. He crossed another one off his digital calendar that told him no matter how many times he saw the sun rise, he’d still only been out for a hundred twenty days according to the calendar.
For the 300,290th time, he started humming the tune to the old Glen Campbell song, “Wichita Lineman.” In thirty minutes, he’d intercept the next satellite that needed maintenance. Oh, NASA, Roscosmos, and CNSA had been so clever in the race to get satellites into space, ever since Sputnik I launched in 1957. (And burned up on re-entry in 1958.) They ran communications, GPS, surveillance, and television. But the big powers had forgotten all about maintenance. The stupid buzzards had figured that when a satellite failed, they’d just ship another one.
Only space flight had become expensive and all the major powers had cut their space programs back to near zero. They hadn’t bothered with maintenance of satellites until cellular communications started to fail and people’s ever-present smartphones started coming up blank. It was obvious someone needed to do something. Jack’s company was ready. RESCUE solicited funds from each of the organizations and with leased rockets from companies who thought they’d be selling tourist trips into space, they launched RESCUE I, the manned space capsule shuttle which could keep satellites flying.
It was pretty simple, really. Giving Jack a toolbox and a space suit with a rocket booster was a lot cheaper than launching new satellites. And the company wasn’t really American, even though Jack was. RESCUE, like most tech support, was based in India. The country’s standard of living was increasing daily at the same rate that the big three were decreasing. Big dreams. NASA was still banking everything on a manned mission to Mars. If they could just find someone stupid enough to go.
Jack was pretty content. He’d never been comfortable around most people. Floating around for four months hadn’t distorted his view on life a bit. Even his sex life wasn’t that different. He talked to Evelyn each time his circuit of the world brought him across Des Moines, Iowa during daylight hours. On Saturdays they had space phone sex.
Collision avoidance alerts suddenly sounded in Jack’s capsule, a kind of mini space shuttle. It wasn’t the first time in four months. There was a surprising amount of space junk floating around at 200 to 1200 miles above Earth. Even the old space station, currently maintained by a crew of three women who continued to carry out various experiments as contracted by different corporations, had encountered and been damaged by junk.
Jack let his automated guidance take over. He could see nothing out his window but radar was definitely showing him closing on something fast. He set the guidance system to maneuver him in close to whatever it was.
As soon as he was above the object, he could see it as it occluded a part of Earth below it. Otherwise he would never have seen the matte black satellite against the depth of outer space. He turned on floodlights to illuminate the bird and called up his charts to search for any satellite that should be in this area. Finding nothing, Jack turned to the graphic database of satellites, finally locating a spec sheet for a black satellite that looked a bit like this one.
The mission guidelines instructed Jack to locate all low earth orbit (LEO) satellites, examine them for damage, and ensure their stability in orbit. Anything deteriorating that he couldn’t stabilize was to be towed to the ISS where a freighter would pick up any junk at the end of Jack’s mission. That was supposed to be at Day 180. He still had two months on duty until he would be retrieved and a replacement sent up. He carefully attached a grappling line to the unusual bird and prepared for EVA so he could examine and assess the satellite.
What he found was the remnants of a military satellite, probably sent up before the turn of the century, not long before launching things into space became prohibitively expensive for nations who had other pressing needs. This unit looked remarkably like the Soviet Polyus satellite which was reported to have failed.
Jack looked the satellite over and opened the hatch to examine the antique circuit boards that kept the satellite in orbit. These satellites were supposed to be marked by a beacon so they could be spotted and avoided by other craft. It had no identifiable weaponry aboard. The original purpose for these satellites was deployment of orbital nuclear arms and other anti-missile defenses, but they were prohibited by the SALT II treaty back in 1979. But the treaty, signed by Carter and Brezhnev, was never ratified by either country. Instead they began working on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties. All subsequent launches of military satellites had been referred to as ‘observation and communications’ platforms. As a result, Jack had no difficulty justifying turning on the beacon and adjusting the orbital thrust of the satellite, including refueling its failing power cell.
Satisfied the bird was in stable orbit once again, Jack returned to his shuttle, logged the repairs with the manufacturer’s serial number, and moved away from the repaired satellite. He turned navigation over to the autopilot to accelerate into a higher orbit to check his next target.
A hundred miles above and a thousand miles beyond the black satellite, Jack watched as the atmosphere was lit up from a hundred locations around the globe. It looked like Jack Adams had started World War III.
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