Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [38]
The third deck, with its life-support system, was an untidy mashed tangle of fat ventilation and hydraulics tubes, some so old that their insulation had burst and hung in puffy free-fall streamers. "Don't worry, we don't use those," Rep 3 said conversationally.
The four jointed solar panels spread laterally from the fourth deck, a gleaming cross of black silicon cut by copper gridwork. The nasty muzzle of the particle beam gun was just visible around the curve of the hull.
"Little star nation under the Sun's eye," the Rep said. He swung the drone around so that, briefly, Lindsay saw the drone's own tether line. Then its cameras focused on the rigging of the spacecraft's solar sail. In the bow was a storage chamber of accordioned fabric, but it was empty now; the nineteen tons of metallic film were spread for light pressure in a silver arc two kilometers across. The camera zoomed in and Lindsay saw as the sail expanded that it too was old: creased a bit here and there, and peppered with micrometeor holes.
"Prez says, next time, if we can afford it, we get a monolayer sprayer, stencil a big mother-burner skull and crossed lightnings on the outside of that," the Rep offered.
"Good idea," Lindsay said. He was off steroids now, and feeling a lot more tolerant.
"I'll take it out," the Rep said. Lindsay heard more clicks, and suddenly the drone unreeled its way into deep space at frightening speed. In seconds, the Red Consensus shrank to thimble-size beside the tabletop smear of its sail. Lindsay was seized with a gut-wrenching vertigo and clutched blindly at the console. He closed his eyes tightly within the goggles, then opened them onto the cosmic panorama of deep space.
"Milky Way," the Rep said. An enormous arc of white spread itself across half of reality. Lindsay lost control of perspective: he felt for a moment that the billion white pinpoints of the galactic ridge were pressing pitilessly down onto his eyeballs. He closed his eyes again, deeply thankful that he was not actually out there.
"That's where the aliens will come from," the Rep informed him. Lindsay opened his eyes. It was just a bubble, he told himself, with white specks spattered on it: a bubble with himself at its center—there, now he had it stabilized. "What aliens?"
"The aliens, State." The Rep was genuinely puzzled. "You know they're out there."
"Sure," Lindsay said.
"Wanna watch the Sun a while? Maybe it'll tell us something."
"How about Mars?" Lindsay suggested.
"No good, it's in opposition. We can try asteroids, though. Check out the ecliptic." There was a moment's silence, filled by the low-key music of the control room, as the stars wheeled. Lindsay used haragei and felt the drone's turning as a smooth movement around his own center of gravity. The constant training paid off; he felt solid, secure, confident. He breathed from the pit of his stomach.
"There's one," the Rep said. A distant pinpoint of light centered itself in his field of vision and swelled into a smudge. When it seemed about finger-sized, its edges fuzzed out and lost definition. The Rep kicked in the computer resolution