MIRROR, MIRROR
And there it is, Grant said to himself as he gazed down at the sample mirror. He was standing on a metal catwalk one floor above the mirror, leaning on his forearms over the railing to get a better look at it, Dr. Cardenas beside him.
It looks no different from the mirror we built at Farside, he thought. Wide as a football field, the mirror gleamed in the overhead lights. A pair of technicians were trundling a handcart around its perimeter. Grant could see the mirror’s underlying honeycomb structure as it sat in the frame he had sent from Farside to Selene.
The chamber they were in had originally been used to build components of the rocket vehicles that Selene used for transportation across the surface of the Moon: lobbers and hoppers. When Selene shifted its large manufacturing programs to outdoor facilities, to take advantage of the cleanliness of the vacuum environment, this spacious volume had been turned into a storage area. Cardenas had commandeered it for constructing the mirror—with the help of Douglas Stavenger’s influence on Selene’s governing council.
“So what do you think of it?” Kris Cardenas asked. She looked pleased, satisfied that her nanomachines had done their job, eager to hear his assessment of her work.
“It looks okay to me,” said Grant. “Now we’ll have to set up the measuring lasers and see how much polishing it needs.”
Cardenas nodded. “It’ll be interesting to see how close to your tolerances my little guys came.”
Straightening up, Grant said to her, “You take a personal interest in your little bugs, don’t you?”
“Of course. Don’t you take a personal interest in your work?”
With a shrug, Grant acknowledged, “Sure.”
“Besides,” Cardenas added, “it looks like the Nobel committee is serious about me.”
“That’s what Palmquist was here for!” Grant realized. “Not Uhlrich. You.”
“It looks that way.” Cardenas could not disguise her delight.
“You’ll be going to Stockholm then, for the ceremony.”
Her expression darkened. “Not likely. Sweden won’t accept a person who’s carrying nanomachines in her body. Neither will any other nation Earthside, just about.”
“But they’ll make an exception for the Nobel Prize, won’t they?”
“And have the ceremony bombed by some fanatic?” Cardenas shook her head.
“That’s bloody rotten,” said Grant.
“Yes, it is,” Cardenas agreed.
She started toward the door, Grant following her.
“The measuring equipment’s waiting out at the spaceport. I’ll need a tractor or something to carry it over here.”
“I’ve already told my technicians to bring your equipment over. That’s what they were doing downstairs with the cart.”
A little surprised, Grant said, “You’re a jump ahead of me.”
She made a thin smile.
As they stepped through the door and out into the corridor, Grant said, “My latest physical’s pretty good. Dr. Kapstein was surprised that my liver function’s improved.”
“You haven’t told her about the nanos?”
“I haven’t told anybody.”
“Good.”
Walking along the corridor beside her, Grant said, “So when can you give me the next set?”
Cardenas did not meet his eyes. Looking straight ahead as they walked, she said in a lowered voice, “Fixing your liver is one thing. Providing you with cell-rebuilding nanos is another.”
Startled at her response, Grant demanded, “What do you mean?”
She turned her head to look at him briefly, then said, “Come to the lab tonight. Pick me up there and we’ll have dinner together.”
“Okay.”
Grant spent the rest of the day helping Cardenas’s technicians to unpack the lasers and optical gear that would measure the mirror’s curvature down to a fraction of the six-hundred-nanometer wavelength of orange-colored light. Yet he couldn’t help worrying about Cardenas’s attitude toward giving him the nanomachines he needed to protect him against radiation.
Why’s that any different from the bugs she’s already given me? he wondered. She gave me the nanos for my liver easily enough. Now she’s balking? What’s wrong? What’s going on?
Although he felt physically tired by the time he and the technicians got the measuring equipment set up, Grant wanted to start the measurements as soon as the lasers were in place above the mirror and the optics equipment was checked out. But he saw the technicians glancing at their wristwatches and then at each other. It was well past 1900; he understood that their regular working hours were over and they wanted to leave for the day.
If I push them I’ll alienate them, he thought. They work for Kris, not me, and they’ll get sore. Besides, we’ll all work better tomorrow morning, when we’re fresh.
“Okay, guys,” he said. “And gals,” he added, nodding toward the two women among the half-dozen of them. “Let’s call it a day. See you here at eight tomorrow morning.”
They broke into satisfied grins and swiftly left the chamber.
Grant headed toward Dr. Cardenas’s office.
“I thought you were going to stand me up,” Cardenas called to him as Grant threaded his way through the workbenches of the nanotech lab.
“We just finished setting up the measuring equipment,” he replied. “Hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long.”
Getting up from her desk chair, Cardenas said, “No, I’m only moderately famished.”
She breezed past Grant, heading for the door.
“About those nanos…” Grant began.
“Let’s get some food first. Then we can talk.”