The Honeycomb Comet: Tales of the Hx

By Roger Bourke White Jr.

Brace yourself for something new!
A mysterious moon-size alien is filled with civilization changing treasures.
And we get to watch this discovery change civilization!
This is a tale of the future, a future that is really possible.
This is technofiction, science fiction where science matters as much as characters.
Welcome to a Tales of Technofiction book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456762278

Roger Bourke White Jr.

Roger White is a careful observer of life and people, and hes done so from many interesting perspectives. He was a soldier in Vietnam in the 60s, an engineering student at MIT in the 70s, a computer networking pioneer in the 80s, and a teacher in Korea in the 90s.

Book preview

Book One The Comet is Discovered

Book One The Comet is Discovered

Chapter One

The middle-aged man and the young lady sat at a table in the Luck of Jonas Café in Belt Transfer Station 24. The man studied the hard-copy letter she had just handed him. He was pale white, grossly overweight by Earth standards, and dressed in what seemed to be some of the oldest clothes in the Solar System, but they were clean. The lady was young, neat, lightly tanned, and dressed in a fashionable workday casual outfit. She watched calmly as he studied the letter.

22 Aug 2137

Dear Mr. Bomorov:

You may not remember me, but we met at the Space Supply 26 convention on Ceres.

This is to introduce my daughter, Kim Ying-tai. She has expressed to me a strong desire to become a deep spacer. I have sent her to you as one of the most dependable deep spacers I know.

Please give her any assistance you can in getting her career started.

Thanking you in advance,

and hoping we get a chance to meet again, I am

Sincerely yours,

Kim Nian-zu

The man read it and grunted. He held the letter up against the light. Nice bit of work, Miss Kim.

Just call me Ying-tai.

Just call me Bull.

John Bull Bomorov smiled slightly at the girl and she returned it big, beauty-queen style. He pulled his computer out of a pocket and spoke to it. Honey, give me a quick bio on Kim Ying-tai.

The girl’s expression didn’t change as Bull scanned the virtual screen and remarked, Very impressive, Ying-tai.

Then he asked, Honey, how old is this data?

The girl’s eyes widened briefly as she saw Bull read the answer.

As I was saying, Miss Kim—

Ying-tai, you can call me Ying-tai.

Yes. This is a nice piece of work, Ying-tai. A hard-copy letter on good Earth-origin paper and multiple data files. Must have taken a fair amount of research and manipulation. You’re resourceful.

Thank you.

But not perfect. The dates on some of your files are too recent to be believable. But the biggest red flag is that no parent ever recommends his child to become a deep spacer, and certainly not a father like you’ve described here. How many people have you offered this to?

You’re the first, she said.

I can believe that. Now, this next part is important. Why did you pick me first?

Ying-tai looked at him thoughtfully and finally asked, The whole story?

The whole story.

I came up here to be a deep spacer. I’m an analyst on Earth. No one gives a damn about me, no one will give me a break. I want to be more, a lot more, but that’s going to take money.

The man leaned back in mock amazement. Oh my gosh! It’s a four-eyed analyst with ambition. Welcome to the party, girl—

I don’t wear glasses, she snapped quietly. That wasn’t who I wanted to fit in with. But Bull wasn’t listening.

But then again, you’re here and the rest of the four-eyed ambitious analysts are still down there, aren’t they? So, why are you here?

She shrugged. I’ve got bigger dreams, and less to lose, I guess.

Now we’re getting somewhere. How did you pick me?

Easy, I did my research. There are only three veteran, and still active, deep spacers in station right now. You, Van Cleeve, and Kasravi.

Yes, yes, yes. We go way back. How about Pierre Menendez over there? He’s been out ten times.

Last time was a year ago.

Good. Continue.

It’s not on his résumé, but it’s sure all around this station that Van Cleeve is not someone you share a room with.

Bull stirred his drink while he thought. Good, you don’t believe the whole world is on the computer screen. Continue.

The rest is hunch. I looked at who’s coming in, the next sixty days, and no one looks better than you. She smiled a more relaxed and natural looking smile, not the beauty queen smile.

How about Kasravi?

She would do, and I’ll go to her next.

Not with this same story, I hope.

Why not?

This is a small community up here, Ying-tai. Your escapade here with me will be all over it by the time we say good bye.

She glared at him. He raised his hands as if she was holding a gun on him. "I won’t have to say a thing! You see Ivan over there tending bar, Pierre over there. These people aren’t strangers. If Kasravi chooses to ask, she’ll know everything except what we’ve specifically said.

If she asks me, she’ll know everything that’s relevant to her. I work with Kasravi, I don’t work with you … yet.

Ying-tai stood up.

"Sit down! I said I don’t work with you yet." She sat down.

Bull leaned forward and said quietly, Girl—

Woman, or lady if you must, but I like Ying-tai, she insisted.

Ying-tai, we do keep some secrets around here, but not many. My next expedition is one that could use a helping hand, but none of these space dogs here are interested.

Why not?

It’s a long story that I’ll tell you over dinner, should you decide to accept.

You’re offering? Her face filled with excitement.

I’m offering.

I’m accepting! She held out her hand for Bull to shake. It was a strong hand, and there was a roughness to it that said she did a lot more than push electrons around. He felt better.

He said, Whoa, that’s just for dinner! You haven’t heard about where or why we’re going. That could make a difference. But let’s talk about it over dinner in, say, an hour?

Chapter Two

In the hour before dinner, Bull had changed to a more presentable in-station outfit. He found Ying-tai looking even better, too. She’d taken time to enhance her makeup and hair and put on evening clothes. They made her look like a tourist, but Bull accepted that; she was a greenhorn, after all. They ate in the restaurant-bar of the hotel.

Deep spacers all have their hobbies, Bull said. "Some are pretty strange, but almost all are tolerated because they keep us going out here.

Legend has it that more than one deep spacer is a serial killer, but if he or she is a million miles from another person, who cares? We spend years in space, we spend days on a transfer satellite like this one, then we spend years in space again. That is, if we come back. Deep spacing may be the dullest thing mankind does, but it’s not the safest. Those of us who are old deep spacers get treated pretty well, as long as it’s clear we’re going back out again soon, or that we’ve saved up a big bankroll. Bull leaned forward and said quietly, But there’s nothing sorrier than a deep spacer who’s lost his nerve and his bankroll.

Ying-tai nodded and kept enjoying her meal. Bull straightened and took a bite before continuing.

Anyway, one of my hobbies is finding the Honeycomb Comet. And what is the Honeycomb Comet, you may ask?

I’ll ask, she said between sips of wine.

Well, it’s what I call the mother of those rare honeycomb meteors that have been found a few times now.

Honeycomb meteoroids? Never heard of them.

If you’re going to be a deep spacer, Bull smiled, "you’re allowed to call them ‘meteors’ even before they burn up. We leave ‘meteoroids’ to the astronomers and the tourists.

"Anyway. There aren’t many, and they’re considered a minor curiosity by everyone else who knows about them. Most people think of meteors as solid rock or solid metal—throughout history mankind has known that’s what they are. Well … that’s not completely true. Now that we can catch them before they hit the Earth’s atmosphere, we’re finding more variety, and that makes them good prospecting tools.

"Meteors are chips off of something bigger. If you find a meteor with lots of lithium, for instance, it came from a lithium-rich asteroid. Backtrack its orbit to the point it was blasted away from the asteroid, then run time forward with your best guess at the asteroid’s trajectory, and you find the asteroid. Jonas 4 was found that way. Elias Jonas was one hot prospector, and lucky too … but then any deep spacer who’s rich and alive is lucky.

Now to do this hot-prospect-asteroid finding right, you need to find a couple fragments that came flying from the same asteroid and that got blasted off at the same time—preferably recently. You track their orbits carefully, mix in a whole lot of computing power provided by Trajectory Central for a price, and voila! A location and vector for the mother asteroid comes out.

It’s as easy as that?

Well, the location is a probability spheroid, and if your data is fuzzy, or the collision is old, or something deflected one of the meteors, or they came from different collisions, the spheroid can extend from Jupiter to Mars. And you’ve spent a lot of computer power and cash for not much help.

Bummer.

"Looking too long for answers from TC has bankrupted more than one deep spacer. We all keep our fingers crossed, and we keep close tabs on how well it’s going, so we know when to cut bait.

However, I feel real good about what I’ve got. There have been three recorded honeycomb meteors—very lightweight meteors made of something a bit like pumice. Those exomineralogists who’ve bothered to look at one are interested in it, but not excited about it. I look at the honeycomb and I see a cheap, lightweight construction material. If these meteors are coming from a honeycomb planetoid, it would be a mountain of the cheapest, strongest construction material available in deep space. Any of the Belter construction companies would be very interested in the find.

Bull leaned forward again. But even more important to me, I’ve looked at the honeycomb carefully. It’s more like bone than foam, Ying-tai. Besides, how are you going to get rock to foam without gas being rapidly depressurized? And depressuring gas means gravity, planetary-size gravity, not asteroid-size. No, the Honeycomb is a genuine mystery, and I aim to solve it.

Bull leaned even closer. There are two unrecorded finds of honeycomb. I found them! That’s my secret, and I got good trajectories on them. The way I figure it, anyone lucky enough to find two honeycombs is lucky enough to find the Honeycomb Comet. I call it a comet because my preliminary extrapolations put it out in the Kuiper Belt. And that’s why I’m going there.

The Kuiper Belt? Beyond Neptune?

Way beyond Neptune.

That’ll be a long trip.

Not that long, six years, I’ve got constant acceleration on my ship, but then you probably know that, don’t you?

Yeah, point-one G from solar wind … all the way there and back. Ummm, it’s the hottest thing out here in the Belt. … But you’ve got only two trajectories?

Three. A friend of mine who knows about this hobby of mine just found another. He didn’t bother to collect it, but he sent me some careful measurements.

So now you’re burning up the nanoseconds on Trajectory Central?

I’m in the queue even as we speak.

A shadow came over Ying-tai’s face. So you’re asking me to sign up for a six-year voyage to the Kuiper Belt to help you with your hobby? Which is to find a strange comet that may or may not exist?

Six or seven years, yeah. This is no space tanker run, Ying-tai, this is real deep spacing. It may be for you, it may not.

How come you’re telling me about this … secret comet?

Bull looked confused for a second. "Secret comet? Oh … the Honeycomb! Remember, I said this was a small community. Everyone here knows about my hobby. It’s no secret, they’re just not interested. Everyone has their hobbies. Van Cleeve is into watching girl-girl wrestling, and he sincerely believes there are Dark Ones waiting for us beyond Pluto. That’s one reason I can’t take him on this expedition. He’s a good deep spacer, but he does have his peculiarities.

"Kasravi loves horses, and she’s trying to bring back Voyager 10. Van Cleeve thinks that’s a great idea so the Dark Ones can’t find us. But Kasravi knows Van Cleeve is playing with a short deck, so she won’t ask him for help.

"Hobbies are tolerated, but nobody thinks much will come of anybody else’s. I’m back from my seventh run. I’ve been modest in my station spending and lucky in my prospecting. Searching for the Honeycomb is a hobby I can now afford. Everyone knows that and everyone knows I’m outfitting for it. In fact, I’ve invested heavily in getting this constant acceleration drive technology developed so that getting to the Kuiper Belt becomes feasible. The drive supports my hobby, and the company developing it should be a good investment in the long run. People know what I’m doing on this.

No, I’m not trusting you with any deep secrets yet. We work together awhile before that happens, if ever.

If ever?

Bill looked at Ying-tai. "We don’t have many secrets up here, Ying-tai, but those we do have are dearly kept. We may trade some at some later date, we may never feel that close. We’ll see.

In the meantime, that’s about all there is to say about this Honeycomb expedition. We’ll be out there searching, and we may come back by way of Pluto. Does this still sound like your cup of tea?

Pluto?

Yeah, there hasn’t been a manned expedition there in twenty years. I should get a fair chunk of change from the government for providing one. This may be a hobby, but that doesn’t keep it from being a paying hobby.

Isn’t it out of the way?

That, my dear, will depend on what Trajectory Central comes up with. But when you’re that far out, the gravity well is essentially flat and orbits are really slow, so it’s simply a matter of point-to-point distance. There’s nothing complicated about the math. If it’s on the way, we stop by, if not, we don’t.

When do we find out anything?

TC will have a first pass tomorrow morning. In the meantime, would you like a tour of the ship?

Sounds good.

It was a short walk to Bull’s ship, the Blue Yonder. There he began by introducing Honey, the ship’s computer, that Ying-tai had heard him addressing. Then they toured the control room, the workshops, and the labs. They peered into the cargo area though they didn’t suit up to enter it. But back in the control room Bull called up screens that showed the various unmanned probes, the legged crew-carrying walkers for exploring a planetoid or meteor’s surface, and the jetted rovers that shuttled the walkers from the ship and back.

"This is no space yacht, Ying-tai, but it is designed to be comfortable for long journeys. It’s a prototype. The company I’ve invested in is making more of these constant-acceleration ships for commercial application. The Blue Yonder has been shaken out breaking several speed records between places here in the Belt, so it’s not going to surprise us with an unexpected breakdown on a journey well beyond mankind’s usual stomping grounds. I don’t need surprises out there… not from my ship, anyway. Do I, Honey?"

No you don’t, agreed Honey from one of the speakers in the control room.

Finally, he showed Ying-tai the galley and the exercise room with its cleaning booth and his virtual reality exercise suit.

We’ll fit your gear in here, if you’ve got any. If not, you pick, I’ll buy, my treat.

Bull’s smile disappeared and he faced Ying-tai. When he had her full attention, he asked, So, are you in?

Why did you pick me, Bull? she responded

Bull grinned again. Easy. Like you, I did some research. You’re the best available crewmate who might take the challenge. Everyone else here has a place in the planetary system. We’re about to take a step beyond, to the edge of the Solar System itself. That calls for someone new. Is it you?

Ying-tai didn’t think long before she shook her head. It’s not me. It’s too far. It’s too long. I’ve known you for less than three hours. But thank you very much for honoring me with this offer.

Suit yourself, said Bull. He escorted her out of the ship.

As they walked back to the hotel, he told her quietly, Ying-tai, what I said about secrets is not quite true. People know I’m going, they know what I’m buying, but they don’t know how much information I’m sending to TC. You can talk all you want about our evening, and I’ll try to help you get on with Kasravi, but please don’t mention my unrecorded Honeycombs, OK?

OK. She smiled. Those are our secret. They finished their walk with nothing of substance to say.

After she left, Bull headed into the Luck of Jonas Café. Without a word, Ivan poured him a fine Australian Muscat.

I take it she never heard about my second hobby? said Bull.

Not from me, she didn’t, said Ivan.

Smart, resourceful girl. Too smart for deep spacing. She’ll be back on Earth in a couple weeks.

Well, there’s lots of fish in the sea.

Which is a long way from here. No, it’s just another deep spacer fantasy—having an attractive partner on a long voyage.

Keep trying, you’ll get lucky one of these days. Personally, I really thought she might have been the one.

Yeah … Bull finished his drink. Well, there’s an expedition to plan. Catcha later, Ivan.

And thus it was that Bull Bomorov did not have a codiscoverer of the Honeycomb Comet.

Chapter Three

The cargo hold looked cavernous in the starlight, and more than one deep spacer hadn’t lived through a hold accident. But puttering around in the starlit, airless volume got Bull out to alleviate his cabin fever and so he took the slight risk involved in doing it solo.

He carefully toured the hold, inspecting the small amount of equipment left in it. Pluto had been on the way out so he’d stopped there first, two years ago, and the government had paid him handsomely to deliver a hefty load to the outpost. So what remained was a deep spacer’s dream. He had all the tools, he’d endured the trip out, and now all he had to do was get lucky, real lucky.

The Kuiper Belt is big … no, giant, compared to the asteroid belt. TC had given him a cheap answer quickly, but the probability sphere maximum offered only a 12% chance of being correct and the spheroid was big. TC had advised that doubling the computing time would improve that only to 14%. Even with his good trajectories, he was looking for a needle in a haystack. Before now, those odds would have made the trip pointless, but he had constant acceleration. He could see a whole lot of territory very quickly, and he could follow up on any new find in an eye blink … comparatively speaking. Yes, constant acceleration was a game changer, but it was a hideously expensive one and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Push-on Propulsion, the company working on this that he was investing in, figured their market consisted of outfitting space yachts for the hyper-ostentatious rich and emergency medical courier services for Belt stations, and that was it.

Now he was on the edge of his search area and it was time to look. He’d set the parameters for what he considered interesting meteors and other space stuff and the ship would let him know when it found something. He was like an old-time California prospector panning for gold in a stream, searching for the mother lode by looking for more fragments.

If nothing panned out, well, the Kuiper Belt was largely uncharted, and he could bring back some charts.

Suited up in the hold, Bull responded immediately to the interesting-stuff alert beep by putting the display through his helmet. Hot dang, I’m getting lucky! he muttered to himself. Honeycomb already? There was room for error, as Bull had discovered shortly after passing Neptune’s orbit. It had turned out his density parameter for honeycomb included a lot of little snowball proto-comets that had never come near the inner Solar System and so hadn’t melted or consolidated at all, so they were as fluffy as a collection of snowflakes. Interesting, and Bull was surveying them, but they weren’t worthy of alerts. He’d spent a week working on an algorithm that could distinguish snowflakes from honeycomb, so there was a better chance that this was paydirt, but it still might be an out of spec snowball.

He examined the readings closely. It sure looked like paydirt. Track this for a week and ready a catcher to be sent out, Honey. And see if you can reserve some time on TC in … what, a month? Will we have that specimen back here in a month?

If we send a catcher in a week, the ship’s system answered, the specimen will be back in twenty-four days. Optimal time to send the catcher for quick retrieval is ten days. We’ll have it back in twenty-two days.

OK, do it in ten.

Back in the control room, Bull spent a while on other business.

Deep spacing is highly individualistic. Some deep spacers pretty much go into a haze during the transit time. Others pursue hobbies, from art history to microgravity fishkeeping, with feverish intensity. Those who plan on returning soon to Earth or Mars are exercise fanatics. They spend half their day in the exercise room, and some will spin their ship and sleep in the outer parts to build up their bone calcium again.

Bull did property development. He’d done commodities on Earth in an earlier life, but being minutes to hours behind the action was a giant handicap to that. But a lot of development deals were leisurely enough that the communications delay was no real disadvantage. So he stayed busy reading up on current events, dabbling in non-volatile stocks, and swinging interplanetary development deals. His specialty was buying up property in strife-torn cities and holding until normalcy returned. Property development supported his pursuit of the Comet, and would give him something productive to do when he decided to return to Earth. Thanks to his properties, even if he came back empty handed this expedition would not break him, though he might not be able to afford living in a Greenland condo, either—a Belter’s standard retirement dream. And he could continue to invest in Push-on Propulsion.

When he’d finished analysis on his property database and done the upkeep, Bull muttered to himself, Damn, I’m hot tonight! and headed to the exercise room to give himself a real treat, working on the second hobby he didn’t talk much about: Tweaking virtual reality simulations so they were better suited for Belters. He didn’t write original code, but he messed with parameters of existing offerings so the simulations worked better for low-G players in general and sometimes himself in particular. This tweaking was illegal on Earth, and much of the stuff was pornographic, but like serial killers, who in the Belt cared? And with only ten thousand Belters total, it wasn’t a market that Earth or Mars cared much about either.

As he suited up he made his selection. Murmuring I’ve earned you tonight, Suzanne, Bull donned the VR suit and found her waiting.

I haven’t seen you in quite a while, darling, Suzanne cooed. She was a tall, athletic 20-year-old whose long red hair fell in enticing waves over her shoulders, dressed in a tennis skirt. She had a racket in hand. She stood in the kitchen of a suburban LA bungalow, adapted from one in the classic Knots Landing first aired in the 1970s. When he was with her Bull felt like Professor Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady, turning her into his kind of lady. When he first found Suzanne, she was a ninja in an action VR. He’d done a lot of tweaking her parameters since then, and he was pretty happy with the results.

True, but I’m hot tonight, and that’s why you’re my sweetheart tonight. Bull walked up to her, took the racket, and put it on the counter. Suzanne moved into his arms and reached up, slightly, to kiss him. Bull returned the kiss and backed her into the counter to press her hips hard with his as his hands ran up and down her back and wove through her hair. As she sighed and pressed a little harder into his chest, he tickled her sides. She grabbed for his hands, but he caught her wrists instead and twisted her arms behind her. His left hand held them there while his right ranged from breast to thigh, rubbing, stroking, feeling the texture of her body. Suzanne’s breathing deepened. Bull’s hips thrust hard as he kissed her on the lips, cheeks, and neck.

Then he backed off and simply held her hands. Hmm, it must have been a special day, Bull, she said. She was smiling at him with admiration and respect as her breathing returned to normal. Tennis first? she asked as she moved to him again and slid her arms from his chest around to his back to hold him gently.

Bull kissed her. Tennis first. This is going to be a full evening, he announced. She smiled and kissed him again as if that was the best news of the week.

Your racket’s in the closet, she said as she went for her purse and the keys. Her 240Z was just outside.

Hours later Bull pulled off the simulator suit.

What a night, he muttered. He was working kinks out of his muscles as he put his gear in the cleaner, then put himself in.

I’ve got to spend more time keeping in shape, he resolved once again. I’m not getting out of this setup what I should.

But that was a scheduling problem he still hadn’t satisfactorily resolved, and his mind was now on to other issues. After he slept, there would be property to analyze and a report on the snowflake mini-comets to finish. Bull was back on his normal routine.

Chapter Four

Bull, hope this finds you well. Bull, something’s come up. Bull, here’s the bottom line: Give up this Honeycomb business. You’ve made your money in the Kuiper Belt, it’s time to get back home where we can talk real-time and start on the next project.

The face in the message was Jack Blunt, one of Bull’s best managers back on Mars. He was medium height, letting his hair thin naturally on top, but he kept his weight down and dressed well—pretty standard looking for a suit-type. As best Bull could tell, he’d never revealed an original idea in his life, but few people were faster at grasping someone else’s and polishing it up to present as a shining gem. Bull needed someone on-site to be his eyes and ears, and Jack did a wonderful job of that for him on Mars.

I wonder where Jack got this idea? Who put him up to it? Even as he muttered to himself, Bull realized he was being unfair. Jack had simply thought about his own pocketbook, and he was fully capable of doing that on his own. Bull was selling steadily to pay for this expedition and his investment in Push-on, and