Descending Road - VERNAM by Dana W. Paxson

VERNAM

2416 CE

Jetting his thruster, Doug dived for home, the rock, Hive Seventy: a black, geodesic polyhedron sectioned like a C60 buckyball, two hundred meters in diameter, where he and his fellow pens lived in Wenrock‘s armored hands. The Hive circled Oberon, outermost of the Uranian moons, where dozens of other Hives exactly like it housed the starship assembly crews; around each of the other major moons of Uranus circled a similar complex, each one building another starship. These were the sprawling Hau Ren shipyards.

The starship Tompuso occupied an orbit just beyond that of the Hives, so that the hives and their component assemblies moved slowly past it, letting each assembly come into its place as it was completed. The starship was nearly whole; all but its stern sections were complete, and much of its equipment was now in operational test.

Doug tucked his welder, reversed thrust, and bounced into the lockway, banging his helmet’s steel crest on a latch. He swung in, slammed and dogged the lock one-handed, started cycling air.

The ship construction crews came from Earth, convicted of physical crimes. They’d been offered a paid, well-fed and lethally-dangerous living out among the ice rocks nineteen times the Earth‘s distance from the Sun. About three-fourths of the convicts had refused, preferring to do the cancer dance among the toxdumps at home, combing oily waste for radioisotopes. Half of those who came to Uranus died in the first forty cycles, about thirty Earth days. Doug and Nye and Geordie, like few others, had made it through at least a thousand cycles each; now they called each other ‘screws'.

Air gushed; slow murmurs and clangs reached Doug as he hung in the lock, swallowed tears and waited. Come on, don’t give Wenrock the pleasure.

It had all been for a letter to his brother Robert, a letter the UNSA had netted in its global keyword sweep. A letter with one damning word in it: Vernam.

Vernam was the one unbreakable cipher, the one outlawed worldwide. Even mentioning it on the Fabric was illegal. He’d been careful, but they’d pinned him into five years in Chernobyl slurry. And there Turchenko tried to wife him; and he killed Turchenko, and that had put him in this rubber-stained twilit lock with his arm dying of black space.

Story List	SURPRISE ME	Author Page
USER SURVEY	PUZZLE ME	MAKE ELM MARK

HOVER Lucida Bright BARE	HOVER Lucida Bright FULL	HOVER Palatino Linotype BARE
HOVER Palatino Linotype FULL	HOVER Times New Roman BARE	HOVER Times New Roman FULL
PAD Arial BARE	PAD Arial FULL	PAD Lucida Bright BARE
PAD Lucida Bright FULL	PAD Times New Roman BARE	PAD Times New Roman FULL


	VERNAM 2416 CE Jetting his thruster, Doug dived for home, the rock, Hive Seventy: a black, geodesic polyhedron sectioned like a C60 buckyball, two hundred meters in diameter, where he and his fellow pens lived in Wenrock‘s armored hands. The Hive circled Oberon, outermost of the Uranian moons, where dozens of other Hives exactly like it housed the starship assembly crews; around each of the other major moons of Uranus circled a similar complex, each one building another starship. These were the sprawling Hau Ren shipyards. The starship Tompuso occupied an orbit just beyond that of the Hives, so that the hives and their component assemblies moved slowly past it, letting each assembly come into its place as it was completed. The starship was nearly whole; all but its stern sections were complete, and much of its equipment was now in operational test. Doug tucked his welder, reversed thrust, and bounced into the lockway, banging his helmet’s steel crest on a latch. He swung in, slammed and dogged the lock one-handed, started cycling air. The ship construction crews came from Earth, convicted of physical crimes. They’d been offered a paid, well-fed and lethally-dangerous living out among the ice rocks nineteen times the Earth‘s distance from the Sun. About three-fourths of the convicts had refused, preferring to do the cancer dance among the toxdumps at home, combing oily waste for radioisotopes. Half of those who came to Uranus died in the first forty cycles, about thirty Earth days. Doug and Nye and Geordie, like few others, had made it through at least a thousand cycles each; now they called each other ‘screws'. Air gushed; slow murmurs and clangs reached Doug as he hung in the lock, swallowed tears and waited. Come on, don’t give Wenrock the pleasure. It had all been for a letter to his brother Robert, a letter the UNSA had netted in its global keyword sweep. A letter with one damning word in it: Vernam. Vernam was the one unbreakable cipher, the one outlawed worldwide. Even mentioning it on the Fabric was illegal. He’d been careful, but they’d pinned him into five years in Chernobyl slurry. And there Turchenko tried to wife him; and he killed Turchenko, and that had put him in this rubber-stained twilit lock with his arm dying of black space.