Space Stations

The ISS has fired the imaginations of people around the world, and science fiction authors are no different. Fourteen of today's best writers have given us their ideas of what the next generation of space stations will look like. From Timothy Zahn comes a story of a station that everyone thought was past its prime, until the time came for it to take part in a most unusual battle. Alan Dean Foster explores a space station that takes care of even its smallest inhabitant in a very special way. Brendan DuBois takes us to a future Earth where the dream of space stations took a detour that grounded humanity forever. And Gregory Benford reveals a completely different view of a space station in our final story.

Fourteen visions of the future created by the finest authors of speculative fiction. So turn the page and prepare for adventures beyond your wildest imagination on these space stations of tomorrow.

THE BATTLE OF SPACE FORT JEFFERSON by Timothy Zahn

Timothy Zahn was born in 1951 in Chicago and spent his first forty years in the Midwest. Somewhere along the way toward a Ph.D. in physics, he got sidetracked into writing science fiction and has been at it ever since. He is the author of over seventy short stories and twenty novels, of which his most well-known are his five Star Wars books: The Thrawn trilogy and Hand of Thrawn duology. His most recent book is the Star Wars novel Survivor's Quest, published in 2004. Though most of his time is now spent writing novels, he still enjoys tackling the occasional short story. This is one of them. The Zahn family lives on the Oregon coast.

“EIGHTEENTH April, 2230,” Ranger Bob Epstein said into his log microphone.

“Morning report. Three more days to President Ukukho's visit.”

He gazed with satisfaction at the sentence on the screen as he picked up his slightly stale bagel covered thinly with cream cheese. A little lox would have been nice, but lox was hard to come by on United Colonies Space Fort Jefferson.

Actually, pretty much everything was hard to come by on Space Fort Jefferson. Tourist-free tourist attractions, as he'd often been told over the past seven years, rated very low on the Park Service's priority list.

He scowled as he set the bagel back onto its plate. It wasn't a fair assessment, as he'd argued back for most of those same seven years. Granted, for much of its four-point-three-year orbit Space Fort Jefferson was largely deserted, with only its five-ranger crew here to keep the decks and empty weapons emplacements company.

But for the four months when its elliptical path carried it near the asteroid belt's Anchorline Archipelago, there was quite a bit of activity on the old fort. Granted, it wasn't Disney Ceres, but it was still busy enough to keep the rangers hopping. And even during the long down-time, there was always a trickle of visitors willing to endure the long and boring trip to set foot on a piece of genuine, if obscure, history.

But that was going to change now. Earth President Ukukho himself was on his way; and for the first time in a hundred years, someone in actual governmental authority was going to visit the station.

And since the public lapped up everything Ukukho said or did, that meant that billions of people who'd never even heard of Space Fort Jefferson were going to be brought face-to-face with it.

And what billions of people saw, millions of people went touristing to. Or so went the theory. Bob took another bite from his bagel, visualizing the list of improvements and renovations he would be submitting to the Park Service as soon as the crowds started arriving. At the top of the list would be to finally finish the renovation of Decks Three to Six that had been started two years ago and never completed. The mess made the fort's original gunnery control area nearly impossible for even the rangers to get to, and visitors always liked seeing control rooms.

There was a gunshot-crackle from the intercom. “Bob?” Kelsey's voice came distantly.

Bob reached over and flicked the switch. “Yes?”

“Bob?”

Muttering under his breath, Bob flipped the switch off, gave the side of the box a sharp rap with his knuckles, and flipped the switch back on. On second thought, maybe it would be the intercom that would head the replacement list. “Yes?”

“Got a ship coming in to dock,” Kelsey reported.