Read Online WE by John Dickinson - Free Book Online Page A

the extent of the corruption, the firing patterns of the main and auxiliary radio transmitters, and the transmitter specifications. Some ten per cent of radio-to-Earth transmissions in his sample had been affected. Sometimes just a few groups had been lost, sometimes it was as much as fifty per cent of the transmission. He could find no radio messages from Earth that had been corrupted. But then Earth only used the radio for the automatic acknowledgements of radio messages from the station.
    The corruptions peaked at approximately six-day intervals. The last had been about five days ago, shortly before his waking.
    He prepared a test message to Earth.
    TR1: 24:03:0802 Test. From Telmex. Repeat following groups by radio. UINK 2298 RPER 5159 TXRE 0198 …
    He sent it, noted the time group and called up the log of energy use in the station – the transmitters, pressurizers, heating units, computers, sanitary units and kitchens. Helogged the state of the reactor. He did not try to guess whether any of the activity levels were unusual. He would repeat the exercise every eight hours. When Earth reported a corruption he would go back through his records and see if there was a spike from any of the station energy sources that might have caused the interference.
    For completeness he logged the exterior temperature of the station. Thirty-six Kelvin. He did not think about what that meant.
    He logged the atmospheric pressure (negligible).
    Then he called up the magnetic field readings, meaning to project them in a line graph. The graph axes displayed themselves promptly. But there were no readings.
    No readings?
    He muttered to himself and clicked the manual control.
Back
. And
Graph
and
Planetary Readings, Current
again.
    Nothing was showing – nothing at all.
    It was on, all right. But it was displaying nothing.
    Then something flicked in the top right-hand corner of the screen area. A yellow line, down and up.
    A fault?
    Or a reading of something much higher than the default was set to record?
    Right up there? A
low
point on the reading?
    He called up the numbers that underlay the graphics. When he saw them he grunted aloud.
    They were high. They were far higher than he had expected – or wanted – to see. He stared at them helplessly. The numbers reeled away in impossible quantities.
    Impossible?
    Consult!
    Lewis was on watch. He called up Lewis’s chamber.
    â€˜Lewis!’
    â€˜Paul?’ said Lewis’s voice. ‘Yes, what is it?’
    â€˜The field readings!’
    â€˜What about them?’
    â€˜They are … too big.’
    â€˜Let’s see what you’re looking at.’ There was a short silence as Lewis adjusted his workstation to let him see what was on Paul’s.
    â€˜I have changed the scale,’ said Paul. ‘But …’
    â€˜You should change it again,’ said Lewis. ‘I find one point eight to minus one point two captures most of it.’
    â€˜This is normal?’
    â€˜We’re traversing the tail of the planetary field. We observe these fluctuations every time. So yes, it’s normal. But it’s also unique. You don’t get this structure anywhere else in the solar system – not stable, like this. Impressive, isn’t it?’
    The reading dropped sharply. It plunged past the horizontal axis and carried on down.
    â€˜That flow has … changed!’
    â€˜Reversed. Yes, it does. Keep watching and it will reverse again.’
    â€˜It is harmful?’
    â€˜Harmful?’ Lewis seemed to think for a moment. ‘Eventually, yes. The field traps particles from the solar wind. It whips them up to high levels of energy, as you see. Prolonged exposure to that would certainly be harmful. It came as a shock to Earth when it finally understood just what levels we could experience in this region. Early observations of the tail had made it seem pretty quiet.’
    â€˜If it was harmful, they would have