The Storm Fishers and Other Stories Read online

his head.

  “Those crates are airtight, insulated energy modules. They power everything from the power plants fueling Faraday Station, and your parents’ farm, to medical ships, to the exploration vessels shooting past the Kuiper belt. How marvelous the sight. And it’s our job to account for every joule of energy passing through this ship. We’re like a relay between the rock planets and the gas giants.”

  The platform descended to just above the ASRs ‘heads’ giving Quark a closer view of the opening to space. He couldn’t catch his breath to produce a full though. Instead a whisper like air escaping a hose said, “How-Ah-”

  “It’s marvelous isn’t it?” The platform whisked them to the edge of the hanger. “You can touch it but do not penetrate the field.”

  Quark drew a smiley face with his finger and laughed as it washed away with crimson and violet waves like the sea covering a heart in the sand.

  “How-ah, I’ve-what?”

  “It draws on the background radiation to repel the void. I don’t understand the rest.”

  “Of course,” he replied, his tone confusing Argie. Did Quark show his appreciation for the wonder of science, or surprise the accountant did not understand the science. Argie cleared his throat and said, “I also know you applied to the core. We were not even a choice on your intern form.”

  A pause with no response.

  “But let me show you something I think you’ll love.”

  Buried among the massive crates of energy were small personal baggage, and sitting atop a pyramid of baggage was a narrow silver case marked “Quill, Quark; ‘The Black Bird’ via Faraday U; care of Quill Family Orchard, 2885 Armstrong Road, Faraday Station, Mars.”

  “It arrived three days ago. There was an old fashioned letter accompanying. I tucked it in my jacket to keep it safe. I didn’t read it.”

  -Quark,

  Son, we’re real sorry we didn’t see ya off. But we’re also real proud you made it that far. I know you’ll make core. Give all our best to Brine and all your new friends. We’ll be waiting for you when you return. Not to be too sentimental, but we’ve been cheerin’ ya on since you was a boy, even if you didn’t know it. There are no words for how much we believe in you.

  All our love for you and your dreams,

  -Mom and Dad

  The letter went into Quark’s coat pocket as soon as he finished reading it. He rubbed his hands along the box and waited until his throat cleared to ask for a crowbar.

  “You can open it with the key here. Put your thumbprint on the pad and it’ll open. Of course it would thought Quark. He sighed, thumbed the pad and no sooner than he removed his thumb the red lights turned yellow then green. The air pressure hissed as it escaped. A golden flash of light shot through the case’s door. He waited, thinking of the letter in his pocket and deciding where in his room he could store it.

  Encased in black bracing foam was a bronze telescope made in the style of the sixteenth century astronomers. The ground glass lens projected a rainbow of color on the case door. Quark chewed his fingernail. His brow furrowed. He held back a tear for the second time in the last minute. He reached out but did not touch the bronze. He could not think of touching the edges, marking the perfectly polished tubing with oily fingerprints. Their gift shone like their pride. They must have saved since before he left home to afford this gift. Perhaps it was intended as a graduation present, yet became an apology. What it was intended for no longer mattered. His heart pounded stronger and louder than it had on his first day of school, when he stuck his head into a crowded classroom and asked whether he had found remedial chemistry.

  By placing his hand on the telescope, by dirtying their gift, he was claiming a place in the core. Redbrast moved next to his apprentice, hands locked behind his back, smiling and rocking back and forth on his heels. He hesitated again, closed his eyes and felt by accepting this gift he was telling a lie. He imagined the disappointment on his mother’s face when he returned the next year. He could see the silent shame from his father’s sigh as the man learned of his son’s failure.

  Quark looked at his mentor then at the gift and chose to reach out, his will resisting his desire one last time, and brush the bronze as if he was stroking his beloved.

  The next instant he recoiled like a child touching a stove for the first time. His steadied his legs and breathed, meditating to relieve the moment. He stood the telescope’s tripod on the deck, positioned the scope towards Saturn’s rings and took his first look. He felt like Galileo, no Copernicus. Copernicus had been his favorite astronomer since he could look to the stars.

  Tears swelled and he could not contain himself again. He knelt on one knee steading himself with his hands, like the telescope. He had consented to a lie. It was the most cowardly moment in his life. In an act of defiance he stood surveyed the hangar, the ASR’s hummed past oblivious to the moment, and thought of the core.

  Perhaps his lie could become truth.

  Any amateur astronomer knows the view is always better in the dark. Over lunch Quark had set up the telescope in his living room so he could watch Io disappear as ‘The Black Bird’ changed headings, setting course for the gas giants. Few students made it past the asteroid belt during their intern year. Any scientist worth his programming skills would jump with laughter around the lab upon hearing the ship was to intercept the storm fishers.

  But Quark went to Poly and asked, “What are the storm fishers?”

  She blinked, paused a moment and brought up the display, shrinking her face into the corner. “Storm fishers is the slang term for solar wind based energy harvesters; they’re not fishermen at all.”

  “Oh I thought maybe it had to do with Neptune.”

  Poly laughed, “No not at all. The cargo you’ve been tracking are crates set up by storm fishers to collect the electro static charges from ‘fishing’ the storms on Jupiter and Saturn. Watch,” the display, a static photograph of Jupiter taken from Io came to life.

  “I can’t see what you’re talking about,” though he was squinting. He even put on his glasses and pressed the + key three times and drew a rectangle around the storm.

  “Let me do it,” and a compact-dimension projection emerged just above the keyboard. Poly zoomed in a hundred thousand times until a silver sail emerged from behind Io. Quark grabbed the image and spun the projection around until three more sails appeared trailing the first.

  “Is this what you mean?”

  “Yes, look closely. They’re just below geosynchronous orbit. That means their velocity is slightly faster than the planet’s rotation. They are not actually moving on a curve either. Look at this,” Poly turned the projection herself giving Quark a closer view of the surface of the storm, “do you see those cables connecting the sails?”

  “Yes. Why are they hanging from the ship with the sails?”

  “That ship isn’t a ship at all. It’s more like a skiff or a barge capable of storing billions of volts of emf harvested from the storm.”

  “Faraday’s law,” Quark said with an awestruck whisper.

  “That’s right. Hidden beneath the surface is a magnetic coil strung with the cables connecting to energy cells on the skiff.”

  The projection would go no further. Poly flattened the rendering into two dimensions and illuminated the ceiling with a view closer to the giant planet than he ever dreamed he would see. And in a few short half-lifes he would pass the surface himself.

  “See here is the parent ship for those skiffs.” Poly shifted view from the planet to the shadows behind Io. A corsair, thin and sleek like he had seen in the hangar, captured the solar sail and reeled in the fishing boat, first sail, then the containers, the cables and finally the massive induction coil, nearly too narrow to see and almost the length of the corsair itself.

  “That’s where the energy cells that power the core come from. Clean, efficient and as far as anyone can tell, infinite.”

  “Poly, do you enjoy our work in the hangar?”

  “I love
getting to know all the interesting AI’s that come in from the ships. It’s wonderful.”

  “What would you say to an experiment.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Maxwell-Faraday equation. Induction. Not of storms but of gravity.”

  Three Martian weeks had passed.

  Quark spent his free time working with Poly on an application of induction to gravity. She was skeptical which frustrated him each night before bed. He did not think Volt or Maria would understand; whether he kept to himself or whether they ostracized him was hard to tell. He thought each night, looking out his telescope at the asteroids passing by or being smashed by the ship’s deflection field. It won’t matter who doesn’t like you around here. You’ll be having a homebrew, (perlait or raisonberry, both made him smile) and a laugh with Brine, Nugget and Andromeda. Wouldn’t it be fun, getting chewed out with friends.

  There came a knock on his door and Maria’s voice saying, “We left some dinner in the fridge if you’re hungry. You know, you’re welcome to eat with us. We don’t bite.”

  “Thanks. I’m a little busy with Poly.”

  “You’ll have to tell me about her sometime. Argie brags and brags about you two.”

  Quark climbed into bed without another word and stared into space. For a moment he wondered what he would say if he opened the door. Nothing. He wouldn’t be around long enough to befriend the business students anyway.

  Walkways