Uranus

by Ben Bova

  “You don’t have a copy of the footage?”

  “Apparently not,” Jacobi answered, straight-faced.

  “I see,” said Umber. “Could you kindly notify me when it’s available for me to see it?”

  “Yes, certainly,” said Jacobi.

  Umber got to his feet. Jacobi rose also.

  “This is all very distressing,” said Umber.

  Nodding, Jacobi said, “We haven’t had a beating this serious since the habitat was opened to immigration.”

  Frowning slightly, Umber asked, “But there have been other … incidents?”

  With a small shrug, Jacobi replied, “Petty stuff. Kids roughhousing, arguments that got out of hand—that sort of thing.”

  “But this was a vicious attack. Deliberate.”

  Jacobi stood behind his desk, perfectly motionless.

  The silence between the two men stretched painfully. At last Umber said, “Please let me know as soon as you can.”

  “Of course,” said Jacobi. Coldly.

  * * *

  As he walked slowly along the passageway back toward his office complex, Reverend Umber thought, There’s something out of place about this. A vicious attack on Dr. Gomez. The security people appear to be at a loss in their investigation. That Sergeant Jacobi doesn’t seem very upset about the incident. He acts as if it’s strictly routine, as far as he’s concerned.

  But what if this incident is just the start of a new phase of our habitat’s development? What if we’re going to see more attacks? More violence? That could bring everything I’ve worked for crashing down around my shoulders.

  * * *

  The following morning, Raven was surprised to see a man enter the boutique. Alone. A few boyfriends and the rare husband had been dragged into the shop by their women, but a lone man was a surprise.

  He was compactly built: good shoulders and a flat midsection. Swarthy face and dark wavy hair that curled down almost to the collar of his one-piece zipsuit. He maneuvered through the women pawing through the shop’s merchandise and came straight to Raven, standing behind the counter.

  “Are you Raven Marchesi?”

  Blinking with surprise, Raven answered, “Yes, I am. And you are…?”

  “Vincente Zworkyn. Tómas Gomez and I work together.”

  “Oh! Yes, Tómas has mentioned your name many times.”

  Zworkyn said, “I went to visit him this morning, but the nurse told me he was in a therapy session and couldn’t see visitors until it was finished.”

  Raven nodded. “Yes, he’s able to walk now. The nanomachines are repairing his leg.”

  “I thought I’d come over and say hello to you. Tómas is quite taken with you.”

  Raven heard herself say, “It’s mutual.”

  “That’s good.”

  Glancing swiftly at Alicia, talking to a trio of potential customers on the other side of the shop, Raven turned back to Zworkyn and asked, “Do you have any idea of who attacked Tómas?”

  With a shake of his head, Zworkyn replied, “I’m afraid I don’t. But I hope the security department finds them and pushes them out an airlock.”

  Raven decided she liked this man.

  After a few moments of embarrassed silence, Zworkyn asked, “May I take you to dinner tonight?”

  Raven hesitated, then replied, “My partner and I usually have dinner together. At home.”

  “May I take you both to dinner?”

  With a smile, Raven said, “Let’s see what Alicia thinks of that.”

  Zworkyn smiled back, looking somewhere between embarrassed and hopeful.

  Raven said, “I believe Tómas told me that you are married.”

  Zworkyn’s smile evaporated. “My wife is back on Earth. Filing for a divorce.”

  “Divorce?”

  Looking uncomfortable, Zworkyn explained, “It’s my fault, I suppose. I’m away from home most of the time. Leaving her alone. It’s not a happy situation.”

  “She doesn’t travel with you?”

  “I’ve asked her to. But she’d rather stay at home. She has lots of friends there.”

  “Where is your home?”

  “Denmark. Copenhagen.”

  From the pain that showed clearly on his face, Raven realized she was treading on a sensitive subject. “I’m sorry,” she said, in a low voice.

  “Not your fault,” said Zworkyn. “Nobody’s fault but my own.”

  DINNER

  Zworkyn sat patiently—and silently—with Raven until Alicia brought the two shoppers to the counter. Both had several colorful skirts and blouses draped over their arms. They eyed Zworkyn with unabashed curiosity as Raven introduced the engineer to Alicia and her customers. Alicia rang up the sales while Raven wrapped their purchases and escorted the women to the boutique’s door.

  “You work with Tómas?” Alicia asked as Raven bid a cheerful goodbye to the departing women.

  “Yes,” said Zworkyn. He hesitated for a moment, then said, “I’ve invited your partner and you to dinner tonight. Will you join us?”

  Alicia smiled. “It’s my turn to cook tonight. Why don’t you come to my quarters?”

  Zworkyn smiled back. “I thought dinner at the restaurant would be a pleasant change for you.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

  “Will you join us?” he repeated.

  “Has Raven agreed?”

  “Yes,” he said, stretching reality a bit.

  “All right, then. But we’ll have to change into something more fitting for the restaurant.”

  “Why? You both look fine.”

  “We’ll look better,” said Alicia.

  * * *

  As she was pulling on a colorful blouse, Raven heard Alicia ask from the adjoining dressing room, “Who is he?”

  “He’s a mining engineer. He’s working with Tómas … that is, he was, until Tómas got hurt.”

  Raven’s tone of voice changed slightly as she said, “He told me his wife is divorcing him, back on Earth.”

  “Oh? I didn’t know. I wonder if that’s true, or it’s just a line he uses on susceptible women.”

  Raven felt surprised. Susceptible? Alicia? It’s going to be an interesting dinner.

  * * *

  Tómas, meanwhile, was stretched out on his hospital bed. His leg ached from the walking that the nurses had made him do in the hospital’s recuperation ward. But I’m walking, he told himself. A few more days and I’ll be as good as new.

  His narrow compartment had been turned down to sleep mode, dark and quiet. Tómas slid his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. No pain, he realized happily.

  Suddenly his eyes popped open and he propped himself up on his elbows.

  I don’t have to track the moons that were bumped out of orbit around Uranus! he realized. If they were forced out only a couple of million years ago, I should be able to spot one of them with a Schmidt!

  Pushing himself up to a sitting position, Tómas ran the problem through in his mind. If the moons were forced away from Uranus a couple of million years ago, one of the wide-field Schmidt telescopes at the Farside Observatory ought to be able to see them. I don’t need Big Eye, not until we pick up one of the escaped moonlets and want to get a close-up of it to verify what it is!

  He was so excited he started to pull off the bedsheet covering him and swing his legs off the bed. But he hesitated in mid-motion. Try to stand up and fall on your face; set your recuperation back a week or more.

  He swung his cast-covered leg back onto the bed and turned to the telephone on the night table.

  “Vincente Zworkyn,” he commanded the phone.

  Almost immediately he heard Zworkyn’s recorded voice. “I’m not available at the moment. Please leave your name and I’ll get back—”

  Tómas snapped, “Phone, locate Mr. Zworkyn. Wherever he is, find him. Emergency! Top priority!”

  * * *

  The robot waiter trundled up to their table with three desserts on its flat to
p. As it began to place them on the table where Raven, Alicia and Zworkyn were sitting, Zworkyn’s phone vibrated in his pocket.

  Frowning, the engineer muttered, “I instructed the phone not to interrupt us.”

  The phone buzzed again, softly but insistently.

  “Damn,” Zworkyn muttered, tugging the phone from his pocket.

  He could see the excitement on Tómas’s face even in the phone’s tiny screen.

  Before Zworkyn could say a word, Tómas gushed, “We can do it! We can find one of Uranus’s runaway moons! Maybe more than one!”

  With a glance at his two dinner companions, Zworkyn said, “I’m in the middle of dinner—”

  “We use the Schmidts at Farside,” Tómas went on, undeterred. “We figure out the moonlets’ exit velocities and search at the distance they’d be after a couple of million years!”

  “That’s a needle in a haystack approach.”

  “No, it’s the way to find the escaped moons,” Tómas insisted. “It’ll work, I know it will!”

  Zworkyn looked up at Alicia and Raven again as he said, “All right. All right. Calm down. I’ll come over and see you first thing in the morning.”

  “I’ll start in on the math. We can estimate the exit velocity of the moons pretty well.…”

  “Get some sleep, Tómas. I want you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes. Sure. Of course.”

  “Goodnight, partner.”

  “Goodnight, Vincente.”

  Zworkyn clicked the phone off. “Scientists,” he muttered. “They’re all a little crazy.”

  Alicia smiled at him. Raven did not.

  ABBOTT

  Gordon Abbott could feel his brows knitting into a frown as he asked the image on his office’s wall screen, “Use the Schmidt telescopes?”

  “Yes!” replied Tómas Gomez eagerly. “The wide-field Schmidts. They can cover the whole sky in a couple of sweeps!”

  “Not Big Eye.”

  Gomez shook his head. “We won’t need Big Eye until we’ve located one of the escaped moons.”

  Abbott couldn’t help noticing that Gomez didn’t wince at all when he shook his head. The lad’s recuperation is progressing nicely, he thought.

  Practically quivering with excitement, Gomez said, “We don’t need to have tracking data for the runaway moons. We just estimate how far they’ve traveled since they left Uranus orbit and scan the sky until we find one!”

  “Ingenious,” Abbott muttered.

  “Can you get us time on the Schmidts at Farside?”

  Nodding unconsciously, Abbott replied, “I believe that’s possible. In fact, you can scan the sweeps they’ve already made at that distance. You might find what you’re looking for that way.”

  “Wonderful! How soon—”

  Breaking into a reluctant grin, Abbott interrupted, “I’ll call Farside today. The director there is an old friend of mine.”

  “Great!”

  Abbott’s wall screen went blank. He stared at it for several long moments, thinking that it had been a long time since he’d felt as excited as Gomez about a sky survey. Ah youth, he said to himself. I just hope he actually finds the damned moon. It’d be a major breakthrough. Fine feather in the lad’s cap.

  * * *

  The Reverend Kyle Umber was far from joyful as he sat alone in his sumptuous office.

  I’m a figurehead, he told himself for the hundredth time. A bloated, pompous, self-important figurehead; all display and no real power. Evan Waxman controls this habitat and he’s turned it into a center for narcotics and lord knows what else.

  And I let him do it! I sat back and let him handle the habitat’s day-to-day administration. He’s taken control of everything. Everything I’ve worked for, hoped for, prayed for—it’s all in his hands now.

  He looked out from his desk, slowly scanning the trappings of authority and command that surrounded him. All make-believe, he told himself. A narcotic to keep me quietly sedated while Evan turns Haven into a drug manufacturing center and God knows what else.

  His eyes focused on a faded picture in an old wooden frame hanging on the wall to one side of his desk. It showed a soldier carrying a wounded comrade across his shoulders, slogging painfully through jungle underbrush.

  He heard the words of a long-dead political leader: “… no matter how long, or hard, or painful the journey may be…”

  He whispered to himself, “Every journey begins with a single step.”

  Slowly, Kyle Umber pushed himself to his feet. “The journey begins now,” he told himself.

  But as he stood there behind his handsome desk, he realized that he had no idea of what his next step would be.

  Then he remembered that Sergeant Jacobi had promised to send the surveillance camera footage of the attack on Tómas Gomez to him. He leaned over and told the phone to contact Jacobi.

  * * *

  The security chief sat rigidly in his desk chair as he watched Sergeant Jacobi’s lean, pinched face on the wall screen.

  “He’s pushing for something,” Jacobi was saying. “He keeps asking me for the footage of the attack on Dr. Gomez.”

  The chief felt puzzled. “You’ve gone over the footage of the attack. Is there anything in it that can identify the attackers?”

  “Nope. I personally reviewed every millimeter of the footage. It’s clean.”

  With an exasperated sigh, the chief said, “Let him see it, then. He won’t be able to meddle with our investigation.”

  Jacobi nodded. “Yes, sir.” A split-second’s hesitation, then, “About my promotion…”

  “All in good time, Sergeant,” said the chief. “All in good time.”

  THE FORCE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

  When in trouble or in doubt, Kyle Umber recited silently to himself, run in circles, scream and shout.

  He smiled bitterly at the old bit of doggerel as he walked slowly along Haven’s central passageway. Doors lined both sides of the broad corridor, men and women strode purposefully along its plastic floor paneling.

  Well, I’m walking in circles all right, he said to himself. He had traversed the kilometers-long passageway more than once since he’d started pacing its circular length earlier in the morning.

  Everyone he met smiled and said hello to the founder of the community. Umber smiled back, with only his lips, and nodded benedictions to them.

  But his mind was far away from this refuge in space. As Haven glided smoothly in orbit around Uranus, Kyle Umber was thinking of his younger days back on Earth and how he got the inspiration for developing the habitat and offering it as a refuge for Earth’s forgotten, downtrodden people.

  Three thousand and some refugees, he thought. Hardly an imposing number. There are millions more back on Earth desperately seeking a way out of poverty and despair. But I won’t be able to help them, not unless I can wrest control of this habitat back out of Evan’s hands.

  How? he cried silently. How can one man stand against Waxman and his minions? He has the Council under his control. He’s reduced me to a figurehead. How can I fight against him? How can I win?

  Glancing about, Umber realized he had walked completely around the habitat’s passageway again; he was back where he had started earlier in the day.

  How symbolic, he told himself. Back where you began. You’ve accomplished nothing. All you’re doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

  But there was something tickling the back of his mind. A hazy thought, a vague idea was prodding him. Yet he could not form a clear picture of it.

  Lord, he prayed silently, show me the way.

  As he started on his next circumnavigation of the passageway, he listened for God’s wisdom.

  In vain.

  * * *

  Vincente Zworkyn looked up from his cluttered desk and saw Tómas Gomez standing at his door, grinning uncertainly as he leaned on a silvery cane.

  Bouncing up from his chair, Zworkyn beamed a smile at the younger man. “Tóma
s! They let you out!”

  Gomez stepped stiffly into the office/workshop, his free arm outstretched, a wide grin on his tan face. “I am officially released from the hospital.”

  “Wonderful!” said Zworkyn, ushering Tómas to his desk. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I’m a hundred and fifty years old. My leg’s not accustomed to walking long distances yet.”

  “You walked all the way here from the hospital?”

  “Yes,” said Tómas, as he eased himself into the chair in front of Zworkyn’s desk. “Ahh. It feels good to sit.”

  Zworkyn went back around the desk and sat himself down. “Abbott was as good as his word. I got a call from the Farside Observatory this morning. They’re sending the Schmidt data to us. Should be here by lunchtime.”

  “Good. Then we’ll have some work to do.”

  Zworkyn nodded happily.

  * * *

  Kyle Umber was halfway through his fourth trip around Haven’s central passageway when it hit him.

  Gandhi! he thought. Mohandas K. Gandhi. The liberator of India, back in the twentieth century.

  Umber stopped in his tracks and stood stock-still in the middle of the crowd of men and women walking through the passageway.

  “Gandhi,” he said aloud. “Nonviolence.”

  Gandhi was so revered that the Indian people dubbed him “Mahatma”: holy one. His campaign of nonviolent protest against the British forces that had occupied India for several hundred years eventually forced the Brits to leave India and allow the Indian people independence and the right to form their own government.

  Could it work here? Umber turned around and hurried toward his office, back in the habitat’s administrative tower. Gandhi, he kept repeating to himself. Nonviolence.

  Once he reached his office he slid into his desk chair and asked his computer to pull up everything it had on Gandhi.

  Well past the dinner hour, he was still at his desk, watching ancient newsreel films of the frail, wizened little man who freed his people from British domination.