To The Stars

“Please, Jan, do not apologize. As long as I stay out of spaceships they say I will live forever. It is enough that you will go and will make a much better job of it. When can you leave?”

“I must finish the circuit that I’m in the middle of now, the multi-resonant repeater. A week, ten days at the outside.”

Sonia was sifting through the papers on her desk and extracted a gray UNOSA folder which she flipped through. “Yes, here it is. A shuttle for Satellite Station leaving on March twentieth. I’ll book you a place on it now.”

“Very good.” Very good indeed. This was the shuttle Sara had told him to be sure to be on, so that the schedules would mesh correctly.

Jan was whistling when he went back to work, a bit of “Sheep May Safely Graze.” He became aware of the irony of the title and his present condition. He wasn’t going to graze safely anymore — and he was glad of it. Ever since the beginning of surveillance he had been over-careful, walking on eggs. But no more of that. Seeing Sara, loving Sara, had put an end to that period of formless fear. He would not stop what he was doing just because they were watching him closely. It would make the work more difficult but it would not stop it. Not only would he work with the resistance, but he would do a little resisting on his own. As a specialist in microcircuits he was very interested in seeing just what sort of devices surveillance had come up with.

So far he had been unsuccessful. He had bought a new notebook to replace the one he had sawn open, then obtained a replacement ID card for the one inadvertently destroyed. Today it was the turn of his pen, the gold pen Liz had given him for Christmas. A good place for a bug since he usually had it with him. It was up his sleeve now, slipped there when he was pretty sure no optic pickups were on him. Now he would try a little skilled dissection.

A quick circuit check showed that the instrumentation on his bench was still bug free. When he had first started this unapproved research problem he had found out that his multimeter electron microscope and all of his electronic instruments were tapped and reporting to a small transmitter. After that he used the optical microscope, and saw to it that a short circuit of 4,000 volts went through the transmitter. It had vanished and not been replaced.

The pen disassembled easily enough and he examined each part carefully under the low power microscope. Nothing. And the drawn metal case looked too thin to hold any components; he put a few volts through it as well as a quick blast of radiation for the printed circuitry just in case lie was wrong. He was about to reassemble it when he realized that he had not looked inside the ink refill.

It was messy but rewarding. He rolled the little cylinder about with the tip of one ink-stained finger. As thick as a grain of rice and perhaps twice as long. Using the micromanipulators he dissected it and marveled at the circuitry and electronics. Half of the bug was powerpack, but considering the minimal current drain, it should run six months at least without recharging. A pressure microphone that used all of the surface of the ink supply as a sound pickup, very ingenious. Discrimination circuits to ignore random noise and put the device in the recording mode only for sounds of the human voice. Molecule-level recorder. Transponder circuit that, when hit with the right frequency signal, would broadcast the stored memory at high speed. A lot of work had gone into this, just to eavesdrop on him. Misapplied technology, which was the history of so much of technology. Jan wondered if the pen had been bugged before Liz had given it to him. Thurgood-Smythe might have arranged it easily enough. She had given him the same kind of pen for Christmas and he could have exchanged one for the other.

At this point the wonderful idea struck Jan. It might be a bit of bravado, a bit of hitting back — but he was going to do it no matter what. He bent to dissect the bug, carefully excising out the Read Only Memory section of the transponder. This was something he enjoyed doing. When it was finished to his satisfaction he straightened up and rubbed the knots from his back. Then called his sister.

“Liz — I have the greatest news. I’m going to the moon!”

“I rather thought you were calling to thank me for having that lovely little Irish girl to dinner.”

“Yes, that too, very kind. I’ll tell you all about her when I see you. But weren’t you listening? I said the moon.”

“I heard you. But, Jan, really, aren’t people going there all of the time?”

“Of course. But haven’t you ever wanted to go yourself?”

“Not particularly. It would be rather cold, I imagine.”

“Yes, it would be. Particularly without a spacesuit. In any case it’s not the moon I’m going to, but a satellite. And I think it’s important, and so might Smitty, and I want to tell you all about it. I’ll take you out for a celebratory dinner tonight.”

“How thoughtful! But impossible. We have been invited to a reception.”