The Medusa Chronicles by Stephen Baxter Read Free Book Online Page B

she slipped her hand in his once more.
    Ham 2057a reared up to face Conseil. “Yes. Machine, thinking for itself. A new kind of being in your world.”
    Falcon looked down at him. “As simps were.”
    Ham grunted. “You understand us now, at least. You gave us home. You declared us Legal Persons (Non-human). How will you treat these fellows?”
    Hope Dhoni smiled at the robot. “Well, it’s your day, Conseil. You savedour lives! I suppose that since you were—activated—all you’ve heard has been orders from humans. No more orders for you, I guess. So what now?”
    And the machine hesitated.
    Falcon expected the usual programmed reply: May I serve you?
    He was stunned when Conseil said softly, “I am not quite sure what to do next. But I will think of something.”

INTERLUDE:
    APRIL 1967
    The camera angle had panned down, taking in an expanse of blocky white buildings, laid out campus-like amid neat areas of lawn and roadway. The point of view zoomed in to show squared-off cars, men in suits, and then narrowed to one building, then one window of that building. And then with one dizzying swoop through the glass, into an air-conditioned office. Lots of photographs and flags, cabinets and framed documents, a desk with a calendar and a briefcase . . .
    â€œThe Apollo Moon programme is cancelled,” the man behind the desk was saying. “But the good news is you two good old boys are gonna get the chance to save the world.” George Lee Sheridan smiled hugely.
    The two astronauts just stared at this man, a big, bold, brassy southerner. All Seth Springer knew about Sheridan was that he was some kind of functionary based at NASA HQ in Washington, DC, a monument to bureaucracy that the astronauts studiously stayed away from. Now here he was in Houston, in the very office of Bob Gilruth, head of the Manned Spaceflight Center. And with this perplexing, bewildering news.
    Mo Berry leaned over to Seth. Mo was short, calm, with an economy of motion: classic test pilot. Now he murmured, “Told you. Chief’s office on Sunday—bandit country, Tonto.”
    Seth didn’t feel like laughing. He glanced out of the window at a deep blue Texas sky, over the green lawns and blocky black-and-white buildings. Only a couple of hours ago, he and Pat had been planning to pile their two boys into the car and go sailing on Clear Lake, one of their first expeditions of the year. Now this.
    And Seth Springer had come a hell of a long way to be told he had lost his chance at the Moon, just like that.
    Seth was thirty-seven years old, and had committed his life to NASA. He’d been born into a service family, and his own first port of call had been the Army, passing through West Point. But with a love of flying that had come to him from who knew where, he’d soon gone across to the Air Force. He’d seen duty in France, making flights over green river valleys that were rehearsals for Cold War combat. But an itch to excel had driven him to a posting at the USAF’s test pilot school, at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, all Joshua trees and rattlesnakes and rocket planes.
    But even that hadn’t proven enough when NASA had started recruiting astronauts. Too young for the initial cadre that flew Mercury, Seth had scraped into NASA’s third recruitment round in June 1963.
    Before the disaster of the Apollo cabin fire in January, Seth believed he had got himself into a good place here. He had become an expert in guidance and navigation systems. He’d backed up one Gemini flight—the one flown by Mo Berry—and he didn’t begrudge that. Mo was a little older than Seth, a Navy man who had seen combat in Korea, and had made an earlier NASA recruitment round. Despite his lack of seniority, Seth was already in the crew rotation schedule drawn up by Deke Slayton, head of the astronaut office, and if all went well he would at least get to