Uranus

by Ben Bova

  “What’s that you say? Steel?”

  “Steel!” Gomez shouted. “A scrap of steel at the bottom of the sea!”

  “Steel,” Waxman repeated, his sculpted features looking puzzled.

  “Steel doesn’t exist in nature,” Gomez babbled. “It’s artificial. It was created by intelligent creatures!”

  “Are you sure…?”

  “Yes! Yes! It had to be made by intelligent natives of Uranus.”

  “But Uranus is barren. Dead.”

  “It wasn’t always that way! It was alive! It was populated by intelligent people who manufactured steel.”

  Waxman seemed uncertain. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes!” Gomez replied, beaming. “The sample is at the docking port. The submarine dredged it up, together with a ton or so of other stuff.”

  “Steel.”

  “It’s not natural. It can’t be natural!”

  “Maybe it’s from one of the earlier vehicles that our scientists put into the ocean,” Waxman reasoned.

  “No, no, no!” Gomez countered. “It’s native to the planet. It has to be.”

  Waxman looked unconvinced. “That’s a big claim, Dr. Gomez. A huge claim.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. And I know Sagan’s old line, ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ But there it is! We scooped it up from the sea bottom. Steel!”

  “Come over to my quarters, please,” Waxman said. “We’ve got to proceed very carefully about this.”

  “I’ll be there in three minutes!” Gomez replied.

  * * *

  Steel, Waxman thought as Gomez’s fevered image winked out on his living room’s wall screen. This could change everything.

  As he got up from his compact little desk, he thought, If that damned Latino is right, it will mean a horde of scientists descending on us. It will turn Umber’s haven for refugees into a mecca for scientific research.

  He stood uncertainly in his living room, silently imagining: This habitat will be crawling with scientists. And engineers. Rocket people. Submarine people.

  And news people! Waxman’s handsome face pulled into a scowl. News people will come roaring out here, poking their quirky little noses into every corner of the habitat.

  That could ruin our Rust trade. Make it impossible to carry out business as usual.

  This “discovery” that Gomez has made has got to be stopped, discredited, buried.

  Then he thought: Or maybe not. Maybe this could make an ideal cover for the trade. While the scientists are flocking here, I could be doing business as usual—with a few new wrinkles here and there.

  By the time Gomez appeared at his door, Waxman was actually smiling.

  Business as usual, he was telling himself as he opened his front door and graciously invited the young astronomer into his apartment.

  MAIN CAFETERIA

  Alicia saw Raven enter the cafeteria and look around for her. She got to her feet and waved. Raven spotted her and made a beeline for her table.

  As Raven slipped into the chair opposite her, Alicia leaned toward her and said quietly, “Evan sent me to your place to sprinkle some Rust in your refrigerator.”

  Raven’s eyes went wide with shock. “What!”

  “Don’t worry,” Alicia went on. “I dumped the crap down your disposal.”

  Raven let out a breath of relief. But then, “He’ll expect…”

  “He’ll expect you to be under the influence, I know. And me too, I guess.”

  “He’ll want to party.”

  Alicia’s gaunt features turned grim. “That’s why we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do.”

  “I’m not going to party!” Raven snapped. “I’ve had enough of that. I’m through with it.”

  “Me too,” Alicia said.

  Raven looked at Alicia’s ice-blue eyes. She seems to mean it, she thought. She’s not fronting for Evan, she’s telling me the truth.

  “So what are we going to do?” Alicia asked.

  With a shake of her head, Raven replied, “I wish I knew.”

  “He won’t let us go, you know.”

  “It’s a shame you flushed the Rust. We could’ve used it on him.”

  Alicia said, “He wears those damned nose filters all the time he’s in the office, I’m pretty sure.”

  “Oh.”

  The two women sat in mutual discontent, silent, unhappy, wondering and worrying about the future.

  After several moments, Raven asked, “Could you get your hands on more Rust?”

  “That won’t be easy,” Alicia responded.

  Raven felt her lips curling slightly.

  “Is something funny?” Alicia asked.

  “Not funny,” Raven replied. “I was just thinking of something I read in my history sessions. It’s from the American Revolution, if I remember it right.”

  Alicia’s eyebrows rose a few millimeters.

  “‘Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,’” Raven quoted.

  “That’s comforting.”

  “I forget the rest of it.”

  “Who said it?”

  Raven shrugged her shoulders.

  Alicia’s expression soured. “Well, we’re pretty much in hell, true enough.”

  “And facing tyranny, for sure.”

  “But what can we do about it?” Alicia challenged.

  “I wish I knew.”

  Raven’s wrist phone vibrated. She looked down at it and her eyes widened. “It’s Evan!”

  Alicia glanced up at the ceiling. “He can see us together!”

  “Don’t get excited.” Raven held her wrist close to her mouth and said, “Connect.”

  Waxman’s face took shape on the phone’s minuscule screen. “Raven. Sorry to bother you so late in the day. Could you come over to my quarters, please?”

  Raven glanced at Alicia’s fear-stricken face. “Now?” she asked.

  “If you don’t mind. Dr. Gomez is here. He’s made what appears to be an important discovery.”

  “Oh. Yes. I can be there in a few minutes.”

  “Good.” The wristwatch’s screen went blank.

  “He didn’t see me, did he?” Alicia asked, almost breathless.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Raven got to her feet. “How difficult would it be for you to get a sample of Rust?”

  Alicia pushed her chair back and stood up also. “Without Evan knowing about it?”

  “Preferably.”

  “I think I can swing it. Maybe.”

  “Good enough,” said Raven. “I’m going to Evan’s place. I’ll call you when I get back home.”

  Uneasily, Alicia said, “Okay.”

  Leaving Alicia standing by the table, Raven walked quickly toward the cafeteria’s exit, thinking, She’s terrified of Evan. Maybe I should be, too.

  * * *

  Waxman was all smiles. He let Tómas explain to Raven what he’d found, as he poured snifters of brandy for the three of them.

  “If this discovery is valid,” Waxman said as he handed the drinks to Raven and Gomez, “we have a world-shaking event on our hands.” Then he amended, “Worlds-shaking.”

  Sitting on the sofa next to Raven, Gomez took a perfunctory sip of the brandy, coughed, then laid his snifter on Waxman’s coffee table.

  “Mr. Waxman is being very cautious,” he wheezed. But he smiled as he spoke.

  As he eased himself down onto the sling chair opposite the coffee table, Waxman replied, “I’m sure the Astronomical Association back on Earth will be equally cautious, Tómas. After all, extravagant claims require extravagant evidence.”

  Raven could not suppress a grin. “That’s a quote I’ve heard before, somewhere.”

  “Carl Sagan,” Gomez said. “Twentieth-century astronomer.”

  “Ah,” said Waxman.

  “So where do we go from here?” Raven asked.

  “Good question,” said Waxman. “We must do everything we can to eliminate the possibility that th
e scrap of steel that Tómas has discovered was inadvertently dropped onto the ocean bed by one of the earlier exploratory vessels our own scientists put into Uranus’s ocean.”

  “One of our own vessels?” Raven echoed.

  “Our scientists put dozens of submersibles into that ocean, back when we first reached Uranus,” Waxman explained. “It took them a long time to admit that the planet was sterile.”

  “And they were wrong,” Gomez snapped.

  “It’s sterile now,” Waxman said.

  Gomez countered, “But it wasn’t always.”

  “Maybe,” Waxman said. “But we’ve got to do everything we can to rule out the possibility that your sample of steel was left by one of our own exploratory vessels, years ago.”

  “How in the world can we do that?” Raven asked.

  Waxman focused on her. “You, my dear, are going to have to scan through the logs of every mission our people sent into that ocean. You’re to look for any mention of releasing metal into the water.”

  Gomez objected, “That’s more than fifty years of missions! You can’t expect—”

  “We’ve got to do it,” Waxman said firmly. “We’ve got to eliminate any possibility of a mistake.”

  “Mistake,” Gomez grumbled.

  Pointing a finger at the astronomer, Waxman said, “You don’t want to announce your discovery and then have it turn out that you simply misidentified a scrap of our own material. That would ruin your reputation, Tómas.”

  Reluctantly, Gomez nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”

  But Raven objected, “How can we go through all the expeditions that our scientists sent into the ocean? It’ll take years!”

  Waxman smiled at her. “No it won’t. Computers can scan the logs of each expedition in microseconds. It will be a big job, I know, but I doubt that it will take more than a week or two.”

  “I’ve already sent the announcement to the University of Valparaiso,” Gomez said.

  “That’s all right,” Waxman replied calmly. “It’s fine. Just contact them and tell them your announcement was preliminary, not for public release until we confirm it.”

  Raven saw that Tómas was not happy, but he didn’t object to Waxman’s decision.

  DOGWORK

  Raven spent the next week and a half staring at the desktop computer screen in Tómas’s living room. She had asked the computer to review the logs of all the missions sent into Uranus’s ocean and highlight any mention of jettisoning anything from one of the subs.

  Nothing. As far as the computer records showed, each submarine mission into the ocean refrained from throwing anything overboard. Even the waste gases from the propulsion systems were kept inside each submarine until it surfaced and rejoined the orbiting spacecraft it had been launched from.

  As far as the submarines’ logs were concerned, Uranus’s ocean was as pristine and unbefouled as it had been the day humans from Earth first reached the planet.

  Gomez sat beside Raven for long hours, but instead of staring endlessly at the computer screen as Raven did, he spent most of his time holding his personal computer to his lips and whispering into the machine.

  Late one afternoon, Raven pushed herself back from the desk they were using and got slowly to her feet. She could feel tendons popping along her spine as she stretched.

  “I feel like I’m turning to stone,” she muttered.

  Gomez, sitting beside her chair, didn’t respond. He was intent on his PDA, whispering to the computer like a lover murmuring into his darling’s ear.

  Raven shook her head at his intense concentration.

  Leaning slightly toward him, she said loudly, “I’m going to the cafeteria for a few minutes, Tómas. Can I bring you something?”

  He jerked erect and looked up at her. “Huh? Oh, nothing. I’m okay.”

  Curiosity getting the better of her, Raven asked, “What are you doing?”

  He held his PDA in one upraised hand. “Checking on the varieties of steel each of the submersibles was made of.”

  “Each submersible?”

  “All those that were sent into the ocean. And their consumables, too.”

  “Must be a long list.”

  “Yeah. But so far, none of the steels they carried had the exact same composition as our sample.”

  Raven sat down again, next to him. “None of them?”

  “That scrap of steel we found didn’t come from any of our submarines,” Gomez said firmly. “It’s a local product, made by inhabitants of Uranus.”

  * * *

  Evan Waxman was sitting before Reverend Umber’s handsome desk.

  “They’re going to send a shipload of investigators here, Kyle,” Waxman said.

  Umber’s brows knit slightly. “Investigators?”

  “Scientists.”

  “Oh.”

  “Gomez’s discovery has stirred up the scientific establishment back on Earth.”

  “I see. Understandable. If Uranus was once populated by intelligent creatures, naturally our scientists would be interested. Aren’t you?”

  Waxman hesitated a moment before answering, “I’m just concerned about how it might affect our operations here.”

  “I’m sure we could continue as we have been. How many people are they sending?”

  “A couple of dozen, I believe, to start with. If Gomez’s suppositions turn out to be correct, there’ll be hundreds more.”

  “Could we house them on Haven II?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps we could. Or we could ask them to remain on the ship that’s carrying them here. Keep them completely separated from our people.”

  Umber’s round face puckered into a frown. “That wouldn’t be very hospitable, would it?”

  “No, I suppose not. But do you really want them mingling with our people?”

  “Why not?”

  Waxman suppressed an annoyed sigh. Patiently, he explained, “Kyle, most of our people are very lower class—”

  “We have no class distinctions here!”

  “I know, but, well—our people are mostly uneducated, lower class. They’re refugees, for God’s sake!”

  “We’re educating them,” Umber insisted. “We’re training them. We’re creating a new society for them.”

  “Yes, I know. But how would they mix with a group of astronomers … scientists, PhDs, highly educated men and women.”

  Strangely, Umber’s roundish face eased into a quizzical little smile. “Think of this as a test, Evan. It will be interesting to see how your educated scientists interact with our unwashed masses.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “God works in mysterious ways.”

  Waxman shook his head slowly. “This is going to cause problems, Kyle.”

  “Of course,” Umber replied, his smile unwavering. “And problems arise to be solved.”

  Pigheaded idiot! Waxman said to himself. But as he said it, he made a smile for Reverend Umber and got up from his chair.

  “I think it’s a mistake, Kyle. But if this is what you want…” He shrugged and turned toward the door.

  Umber watched him leave, then turned to the small frame hanging on the wall behind his desk. He had to squint to make out the faded words printed over the photo of the statue:

  “Give me your tired, your poor,

  “Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

  “The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

  “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

  “I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

  His eyes misted over as Umber whispered to himself, “I lift my lamp beside the golden door. That’s a calling worth a man’s life.”

  RECEPTION CENTER

  Tómas Gomez stood in Haven’s main reception center, his innards twisting and throbbing uncontrollably. In a few minutes, he knew, he would be greeting the team of astronomers arriving from Earth.

  He had spent the night in his darkened bedroom studying their resumé
s on his handheld computer. Fourteen men and women with impressive curricula vitae; not the top people in their fields, but eager young up-and-comers who had flown to Uranus to evaluate Gomez’s discovery.

  To pick it apart, Tómas told himself. To tell me I’m wrong, I’m dreaming, I’m trying to make a mountain out of less than a molehill.

  We’ll see, he said to himself as he stood waiting in the reception center, unconsciously drawing himself up to his full height and squaring his shoulders like a soldier facing a firing squad. I’ve got the evidence, let them try to deny that!

  Tómas’s eyes were fixed on the hatch where the new arrivals would enter the habitat. Fourteen of them. And their leader, Professor Gordon Abbott, chairman of the Astronomical Association’s planetary studies committee. Big brass. His fourteen associates might be small potatoes, but Abbott is a major force in the Association. He’s the one I’ve got to convince, Gomez told himself.

  At last the hatch swung inward and the team of astronomers entered the reception center, Gordon Abbott at their head. The team members were youngish, not much more than Tómas’s own age, he figured. Their heads swiveled as they took their first look at the habitat’s interior.

  Gordon Abbott did not waste his time ogling.

  My god! Gomez said to himself. He looks like a general out of some old army campaign.

  Abbott was a big man, close to two meters tall, broad in the shoulders and thick in the waist. The creases on his light tan trousers and loose-hanging safari shirt looked razor sharp. Silver-gray hair shaved down to a buzz cut. Bushy moustache drooping past the corners of his mouth. He strode into the reception area as if he were marching at the head of a parade. Gomez thought, all he needs is a swagger stick.

  Sucking up his courage, Gomez walked up to Abbott and put out his hand, suppressing an urge to snap off a military salute.

  “Professor Abbott,” he said, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “I am Tómas Gomez.”

  Abbott grasped Gomez’s proffered hand in a crushing grip.

  “Ah! Dr. Gomez! The man who’s raised all this fuss.”

  Wringing his throbbing hand, Tómas replied, “Yes, I discovered the relic—”