Uranus

by Ben Bova

  * * *

  Evan Waxman, meanwhile, was still at his desk, fuming at the image on his wall screen. Hundreds of men and women were sitting in front of the Chemlab Building, relaxed and chatting with one another, eating and drinking as if they were participating in a mammoth picnic.

  The security guards were nowhere in sight. Most of them were still inside the building, cringing like sheep, while the crowd outside showed no signs of dispersing. A few of the guards had picked their way through the protestors and disappeared from view. Cowards, Waxman thought. Miserable weaklings who shrank from doing their sworn duty.

  And there sat Kyle Umber, in the midst of the demonstrators, speaking intently, earnestly to those nearest him.

  Waxman recognized Alicia Polanyi sitting next to the minister, and Raven Marchesi next to her. They’ll pay for this, he told himself. I’ll make both of them wish they’d never been born.

  His phone buzzed. The screen showed that it was the security chief calling him. A glance at the clock on the screen’s face showed it was eleven thirty. Almost time to put the plan into action.

  Without preamble, Waxman asked, “Is everything arranged?”

  The chief nodded solemnly. “The guards inside the building are armed and ready. Six mobile units are assembling on the edges of the park area.”

  “Good,” said Waxman. “Tell them to be ready.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Waxman killed the chief’s image and then reached out and touched the button that activated the habitat’s public address system.

  “Good evening,” he began. “This is Evan Waxman, chief administrator of Haven. Those of you now loitering before the Chemlab Building have until midnight to leave the area and return to your homes. At midnight the security guards will forcibly eject anyone remaining in the area in front of the Chemlab Building.”

  MIDNIGHT

  “We have until midnight,” said Alicia.

  “Don’t move,” Umber told her, his amplified voice carrying across the little park. “We must all stay where we are.”

  Pointing to a handful of people who had gotten to their feet and were leaving the plaza, Raven muttered, “Tell them.”

  Umber made a philosophical shrug. “The weak are always among us. Let them go in peace.”

  A tense silence descended across the plaza. Raven saw that most of the protestors were still in place, sprawled across the grass and the walkway. A few had risen to their feet.

  Raven glanced at her wrist. Almost twelve o’clock. Several police cruisers glided to a stop on the outskirts of the plaza.

  Midnight.

  The Chemlab Building’s glass doors banged open and a phalanx of guards marched out, helmets on their heads, truncheons in their hands.

  “Time’s up!” shouted their leader. “Up and out. Now!”

  Umber sat with his arms around his knees. No one got to their feet. The few who had been standing dropped to the ground. Raven saw that the crowd of protestors outnumbered the security guards by about five to one.

  “Stay where you are,” Umber told them, his amplified voice booming across the plaza. “Don’t move. Don’t resist.”

  The leader of the guards came up to Umber. “On your feet, Reverend.”

  Umber looked up and smiled at him. But did not move.

  “Haul him up!” the guard leader commanded. Two of the guards hefted Umber by his armpits to a standing position, but as soon as they let go of his arms the minister sank to the ground again.

  “Up!” the guard leader shouted, his face reddening. “And get him the hell out of here.”

  The guards dragged Umber’s limp form off toward the edge of the crowd.

  “And the rest of ’em,” shouted their leader.

  A pair of guards grabbed Raven by her arms and hauled her to her feet. She winced at their gruff handling but said nothing. She saw Alicia being hefted too. Side by side, the two of them were dragged toward the edge of the crowd.

  One of the guards whispered to Raven, “Hey, you wanna have dinner with me tomorrow night?”

  She didn’t even turn her head to look at him.

  Raven saw that Reverend Umber was dropped like a sack of cement onto the paved walkway that circled the outer edge of the plaza. As the guards who had carried him there walked back into the still-seated crowd, Umber got to his feet and walked back behind them.

  Once the guards deposited her on the outer walkway, Raven also got to her feet and headed back toward the Chemlab Building’s entrance. Alicia did the same. So did the other demonstrators that the guards had carried away.

  It was almost farcical. The guards were hauling away the demonstrators, who got to their feet as soon as they were dropped off and headed back to where they’d been picked up.

  Umber smiled and nodded encouragement to the demonstrators. Passive resistance, thought Raven, with a smile. We could keep this going indefinitely.

  But it ended suddenly. One of the guards, his face twisted with frustration and rage, smashed Reverend Umber on the side of his head with his truncheon. The minister dropped to the ground, moaning.

  For an instant everything stopped. Then the demonstrators who were still sitting scrambled to their feet with an animal roar.

  “They’ve killed him!” a woman’s voice screamed.

  The unarmed demonstrators leaped at the security guards. Truncheons flashed through the air, striking flesh and bone, but the demonstrators far outnumbered the guards and swarmed over them. The plaza became littered with fallen bodies. Women as well as men attacked the guards with fists and teeth and wild, maniacal fury.

  Raven leaped onto the back of the guard nearest her, reaching across his face to scratch at his eyes. Alicia kicked a guard in the groin and smashed both her knees against his back as he fell. Another guard cracked his truncheon into the back of her head and she slumped to the ground, unconscious.

  Time lost all meaning. The plaza had turned into a battleground as the demonstrators pummeled the guards, grabbing their truncheons and swinging them against the unifomed men.

  Raven struggled to her feet, ducked under a guard’s panicked swing, and crawled to Reverend Umber’s fallen form. His face was split open from temple to jaw, his eyes glassy, unfocused. But he was breathing. He was alive.

  With the guards disarmed, one of the men picked up a discarded truncheon and pointed at the entrance to the Chemlab Building.

  “Tear it down!” he shouted.

  Howling their fury, the angry mob followed him, surging through the entrance and into the building.

  Raven saw Alicia sprawled on the grass, unmoving. She screamed into her wrist phone, “Medics! Medical help needed at the Chemlab Building. Immediately!”

  Most of the crowd was pouring through the building’s entrance. Raven went to Alicia and lifted up her head slightly. No reaction. Umber was groaning, his legs moving slightly, slowly, his eyes fluttering.

  Raven knelt on the grass between Alicia and Umber. She heard sounds of shouting and breaking glass from inside the Chemlab Building. The plaza was littered with fallen bodies. Ambulances were gliding to a stop, white-coated medics scrambling out of them.

  This is what a riot looks like, Raven said to herself. Utter confusion. Mayhem. Hell on Earth.

  AFTERMATH

  It seemed to take hours. The medics bent over the injured slumped across the plaza’s grass and walkways. Men and women tottered out of the Chemlab Building, many glassy-eyed, staggering. Only a handful of security guards were still on their feet, disarmed, dazed by the ferocity of the protestors’ attack.

  Slowly, slowly order was restored. Most of the protestors stumbled through the carnage and staggered toward their homes. Ambulances carried away the injured, then came back for more.

  Reverend Umber had sunk into unconsciousness as the medics lifted him carefully, tenderly, onto a stretcher and bore him to the nearest ambulance.

  Raven sat next to Alicia, who hadn’t moved at all. She lay on the grass, eyes closed. Raven c
ould not tell whether she was breathing.

  A tendril of smoke was twisting out of one of the Chemlab Building’s shattered upper windows. Raven looked up at it with bloodshot eyes. Her back felt stiff, sore. Somebody must have hit me there, she thought dully.

  Looking across the plaza at the medics carrying the injured to the waiting ambulances, Raven muttered to herself, “I guess we won. I guess we shut down the Rust production.”

  * * *

  The still unfinished Haven II habitat orbited around Uranus’s huge blue ball alongside the original Haven. In its completed section, where the scientists from Earth were housed, Tómas Gomez was roused from a blissfully deep sleep by his phone announcing, “Big Eye imagery has arrived.”

  His eyes snapped open and he sat up in the desk chair he’d been using.

  “On screen, please,” he commanded.

  The wide-angle views from Farside Observatory’s Schmidt cameras had picked up three objects that might be former moons of Uranus, driven out of their orbits around the planet and hurled into the depths of interstellar space. Now the Big Eye telescope’s much more detailed view came up on the bedroom’s wall screen.

  Sitting bolt upright in the desk chair, Gomez stared at the imagery.

  Centered in the picture was an irregular, misshapen chunk of rock. The figures on the bottom of the screen showed it was just short of two hundred seventy kilometers across.

  Tómas stared at it, goggle-eyed. That’s one of them! he shouted silently. That’s one of the moons of Uranus that was bounced out of its original orbit and is now coasting through interstellar space!

  Glancing around the darkened living room, Tómas asked himself, Where’s Vincente? Then he saw that the apartment’s bedroom door was shut. He’s asleep. In bed, sleeping.

  Tómas went to the bedroom door and pounded on it. “Vincente!” he shouted.

  Mumbles and grumbles from the other side of the door. A thump and a string of what was obviously swearing.

  Then the bedroom door slid open.

  Zworkyn’s bleary-eyed face stared at Tómas.

  “We’ve got one!” the younger man exclaimed.

  Vincente’s eyes widened, and he croaked, “You’re sure?”

  Tómas’s excitement evaporated. Very steadily, he replied, “Pretty sure. We’ve got to get its trajectory parameters and see if they lead back to Uranus.”

  “Right,” said Zworkyn. “Let’s get to work.”

  * * *

  Raven sat in the hospital corridor outside Reverend Umber’s door. The hospital staff had given the minister an entire room to himself. The rest of the hospital was filled to bursting with demonstrators and security guards who had been beaten senseless or breathed in Rust or other narcotic vapors once they started shattering the Chemlab Building’s processing glassware.

  Doctors and nurses and orderlies were hurrying past Raven’s sitting form. Bodies of men and women—unconscious, raving, struggling, or blank-eyed and docile—paraded past her. But all Raven could see was Alicia’s dead body, the back of her skull crushed by a truncheon’s blow, bits of bone and brain dotting her blood-stained dress.

  She’s dead, Raven kept repeating silently. Alicia is dead. Killed. Murdered.

  * * *

  As the habitat’s lighting system brightened to its full daytime level, Gordon Abbott studied the starry image on his office wall screen, and the alphanumerical symbols running across the screen’s bottom.

  “The data seem rather convincing,” he said into his desktop phone. “That chunk of rock probably did originate in orbit around Uranus.”

  Tómas Gomez’s voice sounded more tired than triumphant. “Mr. Zworkyn and I agree,” he said. “The numbers point to that conclusion.”

  “This is extraordinary,” Abbott said, consciously resisting the urge to tug at his moustache.

  “It is,” Zworkyn’s voice concurred. He sounded much more buoyant than Gomez.

  “Two million years ago,” Abbott muttered.

  “That’s when the latest ice age started on Earth,” said Gomez.

  “Incredible.”

  * * *

  In the makeshift analytical laboratory that had originally been Zworkyn’s living room, the engineer beamed happily at Tómas. “You’ve done it, lad. You’ve proved that the Uranus system was shattered and sterilized two million years ago.”

  “But how? By natural causes? Or alien invaders?”

  Zworkyn smiled. “That’s going to keep this entire generation of cosmologists busy for the rest of their lifetimes. And probably their children’s, too.”

  “It’s a helluva way to find extraterrestrial intelligence,” Tómas muttered.

  The engineer’s smile faded. “If this wasn’t a natural event … if it was caused by intelligent creatures…”

  His voice died away.

  “If it was caused by aliens,” Tómas finished the thought, “they might return some day and do the same to us.”

  Zworkyn simply stared at Tómas, wide-eyed, suddenly frightened.

  CONSEQUENCES

  Tómas shuddered, like a man trying to forget a nightmare. Looking at the clock numerals in the corner of the computer’s screen, he saw that it was well past 7:00 A.M.

  “We’ve worked the night through,” Zworkyn said, then yawned. “I need to get back to sleep.”

  “Do you think you can sleep?” Tómas asked.

  With a shrug, Zworkyn replied, “I’m sure as hell going to try.”

  Tómas nodded as he pulled his pocket phone from his trousers. “I should call Raven.”

  Zworkyn made a bitter smile. “Ah! True love.”

  “You should try it some time.”

  “I did. Wasn’t so great.”

  Raven’s face appeared on the phone’s screen. Tómas saw the bustling commotion of the hospital in the background.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Where are you?”

  “In the hospital,” Raven said.

  “The hospital?”

  “We had a demonstration in front of the Chemlab Building. It turned into a riot. Reverend Umber was beaten unconscious. Alicia…” Raven struggled to hold back tears. “… Alicia was killed.”

  She broke into sobs.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes. But Alicia … she’s dead.”

  Tómas forgot everything else. “I’ll be there as soon as I can get a shuttle. I’ll be there, Raven!”

  * * *

  Evan Waxman had turned off his wall screen hours earlier. He sat in his silent office as the habitat’s outdoor lights slowly turned up to their morning level.

  It’s gone, he kept repeating to himself. They’ve smashed everything. I’m ruined.

  I can’t stay here on Haven, he told himself. Umber will organize a group of citizens and boot me out. Then, with a shudder of comprehension, he realized, But I can’t go back to Earth! They’ll kill me! I owe them deliveries of Rust that I can’t make good! Dacco and his bosses will want me dead!

  * * *

  The hospital had quieted down. Its corridors were crowded with people on stretchers—bandaged, battered, sedated—nurses and orderlies bending over them, administering medications.

  But where is Raven? Tómas wondered as he searched through the crowded hallways.

  A beefy orderly loomed before him. “I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t go roaming through the corridors. We have a lot of work to do—”

  “I’m looking for my fiancée,” Tómas replied. “Raven Marchesi.”

  “Is she among the injured?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know!”

  The orderly fished his pocket phone from his rumpled white trousers. “Ms. Raven Marchesi. You have a visitor—”

  Past the orderly’s burly shoulder, Tómas saw Raven walking up the corridor toward him, her hair disheveled, her dress spotted with blood, her face tired but still beautiful.

  She saw Tómas and broke into a run. He pushed past the orderly and opened his arms to he
r.

  They enfolded each other.

  “You’re all right?” he asked. “Not hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” she gasped. “Now.”

  The orderly broke into a grin. “All right. Will the two of you please clear out of here and let us do our work?”

  * * *

  Arm in arm, Raven and Tómas walked to her quarters. The habitat’s passageways seemed strangely empty; the usual clusters of pedestrians were few and far between.

  “Everybody’s gone home,” Raven said softly. “There’s been enough excitement. Too much.”

  Tómas asked, “Alicia?”

  Raven had to take in a breath before she could reply, “One … one of the guards smashed her head in. It was gruesome. Terrible.”

  He fell silent for several paces, then asked, “But you’re all right?”

  Reaching to rub her back, “I’ve got a pain back here, but otherwise I’m okay.”

  “You could’ve been killed.”

  “But I wasn’t.”

  “Thank God.”

  She blinked at him. “I thought you were an atheist.”

  “I am,” he said with a boyish grin. “But every now and then I wonder if I might be wrong.”

  Raven smiled and twined her arms around his neck. They kissed passionately, there in the middle of the empty passageway.

  Nearly empty. A teenaged boy came skimming by on a pair of jetskates and made a 180-degree turn as he zipped past them, grinning hugely.

  Tómas frowned. “Are they allowed to run on jets in the passageways?”

  “Who cares?” said Raven.

  QUESTIONS

  Reverend Umber was sitting up on his hospital bed, one side of his face covered by a bandage from his temple to his chin.

  Evan Waxman stood at the foot of the bed, his head hung low, both his hands clutching the bed’s railing as if it were a safety buoy in the midst of a churning, frothing sea.