Read Online The Sails of Tau Ceti by Michael McCollum - Free Book Online

You?”
    “No.”
    “Boyfriend?”
    “No one steady since I graduated from college.” Tory averted her gaze. “You must think me old fashioned.”
    “Not at all. I am aware that Martian mores are different from those of Earth. No need to apologize for them.” He looked down at his glass, which was empty. “I need a refill. How about you?”
    “Yes, please.”
    She watched him as him made his way through the crowd toward the bar. After three years on Phobos, her thoughts were of more than the mission.
    #
    Tory Bronson stared bleary eyed at her work screen and wondered what it was that she had been about to do. She had returned to Phobos ten days earlier to a nearly insurmountable problem. In theory, dismounting the Starhopper instrument package from the stack and adding a fleet corvette in its place was little more than a recalculation of vehicle mass and balance. In practice, it meant a major overhaul to the vehicle’s control software.
    Nor was there anyone else to do the work. Once she decided what was to be done with each of about ten thousand different subroutines, the small army of programmers she had been promised would guide the computers in their work. Determining what had to be done in the first place was a job that required a single brain and a single vision. At the moment, that brain ached from overload.
    The biggest headaches were the subroutines that checked the instrument package’s health from millisecond to millisecond. All were carefully designed to keep the interstellar probe functioning for the half a century of unattended flight required to get to Alpha Centauri. Every subroutine would interpret the removal of the instrument package as a major system failure, and would attempt to route around the failed component. When that failed, God only knew what they would do. Most of the health monitoring routines could simply be deactivated, of course. Most, but not all. Some were vital to the proper operation of the booster. Figuring out which category each routine belonged in was the difficult part of the job.
    Since her return to Phobos, Tory had been at her workstation from breakfast until long after the corridor lights went blue. She never really caught up, but the extra hours kept her from falling farther behind. She had forgotten what it was like not to feel tired. Fatigue caused her work to suffer, which made her less productive, which required longer hours, which increased her fatigue. She had no difficulty in recognizing the vicious cycle for what it was. Recognizing it and being able to do something about it were two different things.
    Her only respite from the tyranny of the computer came during meals hurriedly gulped down at her workstation and the two hours each day she spent answering Garth Van Zandt’s questions. He, too, was working long hours as he struggled to learn everything he could about his new command. She did not envy him his task. Even after three years of watching Starhopper go together beam by beam, she was still trying to master the tiniest details of the booster’s construction. Van Zandt had less than six weeks to cram three years of knowledge into his brain, and was handicapped by not even having a simple computer implant. Nor did he have time to learn to use an implant even if he decided that he needed one.
    Tory rubbed her eyes and turned her attention back to the workscreen. A schematic diagram of the Starhopper booster was displayed in its three dimensional depth. To the untutored, the diagram appeared a hopeless clutter of multicolored lines. To Tory, this was the least complex schematic that would allow her to follow the simulation she was running. It helped that the project computer was keeping track of the thousands of parameters affected by the modification she had just made to the control software. Even for one certified immune to avalanche effect, it was enough to give a person a headache.
    After fifteen minutes of following a millisecond-by-millisecond