Von Neumann’s War

“I suppose I shouldn’t be pining on it,” Shane said. “I was just hoping I’d have mail. I was on the list. I thought I’d have my leaves by now.”

“As soon as you get your leaves you have to transfer out of the company,” the colonel pointed out.

“I’m aware, sir,” Gries said, smiling faintly. “And, yeah, I don’t want to do that, either. Tough call, huh?”

“Giving up your command for the shittiest rank on earth?” Markum said, grinning. “Yeah, it’s a tough call. Career or the only fun to be had in the Army, command?”

“Fun,” Shane said darkly. “I’ve got letters to write tonight. But, yeah, command is as good as it gets. I don’t know whether I should be hoping I get my major leaves or sorry if I do.”

“Well, you’re going to have to decide soon,” the colonel said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small cardboard rectangle with two sets of major’s leaves on it. “I got the mail, not you.”

“Crap,” Gries whispered, shaking his head. “What now?”

“You’ve got fifteen days to perform change of command,” the colonel said, smiling. “Then you’re on temporary orders to deploy back to rear det at Fort Stewart. The rest of your orders, I’m given to understand, are somewhere in somebody’s inbox awaiting ‘determination.’ ”

Shane frowned at that and glanced over at his commander.

“I’m up for CGSC, right?” Gries asked, referring to Command and General Staff College. The Army’s premier course for “middle managers,” CGSC was a prerequisite for promotion beyond major, just as War College was a prerequisite for flag rank. It could either be taken as a correspondence course or on-site, the “full” course, at Fort Leavenworth. The latter was much preferred, promotion-wise, to the former and Shane had been given to understand that as soon as he had his majority he was on the list. He’d been a very good boy in the Army, getting all the little merit badges he was supposed to get, the airborne wings, the Ranger tab, and never getting anything short of a “walks on water” review. With the star on his Combat Infantryman’s Badge, meaning he’d been to war, as an infantry officer, twice, he was a shoe-in for full bird at the very least, assuming he didn’t really screw up. Since he didn’t screw the wives of subordinates, the daughters of generals, or males, he figured he was golden. If he could get the “full” CGSC course.

“Got no idea,” the colonel replied. “All I know is you need to start clearing your company so you can boogie on back to Stewart and the world. Me, I’m stuck here for the next five months.”

“How do I get out of this Mickey Mouse organization?” Shane said, trying to smile.

“You can’t,” Markum admitted. “You’re also on stop-loss.”

* * *

“So, what’ve you got Mr. Hamilton?” Dr. Simms asked as he flipped through the three hundred pages of data Jack had just dumped on his desk.

“The data from the Hubble Telescope run we made last month on the Martian surface albedo doesn’t match the data we took last year,” Jack said, furrowing his brow. He had hopes of completing his dissertation with this run of data, but for some reason the albedo he measured this year with the aging space telescope was completely out of synch with last year’s data. Furthermore, it didn’t match in very odd ways. If he had tainted the data some way or if the Hubble was failing again, all his four years of research could be wasted — or at least delayed another year or two. And damnit, Jack was ready to graduate and start making money. As much as an astronomer ever made, anyway.

“Let’s not be rash, Jack.” Dr. Simms continued scanning the spectral graphs in the stack of printouts. “I know the Earth-based data won’t be as defined as this, but have you considered getting Sandi over at Flagstaff to make a measurement for you? At least then we would have something to compare the Hubble data to. You could implement that filtering technique of yours to clean it up some.”

“Well, I hadn’t thought of Sandi,” Jack admitted. “But I did try it with my sixteen-inch setup at home. There just isn’t enough aperture for the measurement. I’ll call Sandi and see if she can help me out.”

“Who knows, Jack, they may already have the data for some other measurement. Don’t give up yet.” Simms tapped one of the figures and chuckled, “But I don’t think this can be right. That is a lot of silicon. It looks like a computer factory.”

Time: Present minus eight months — first European Mars probe failure