Titan

by Bova, Ben

  She couldn’t help but smile back at him. “I click.”

  “I really want to build a fair and generous government here,” Eberly said with great seriousness. “I really do.”

  “I guess.”

  “And I need your help, Holly. I can’t do it by myself.”

  “My help?”

  “As director of human resources you hold a key responsibility. I want to make certain that we’re on the same team.”

  “Of course we are. What else?”

  Eberly walked on for a few paces before answering. Holly matched him, stride for stride. She was slightly taller than he, her legs longer.

  “You know our reelection campaign will start in a few weeks,” he said at last.

  “The election isn’t for another six months, Malcolm.”

  “I know, but the deadline for registering as a candidate is January fifteenth. And once the candidates are registered, the campaigning has to begin. We can’t just sit around and expect people to go out and vote for us without a campaign to stir them up.”

  “Not us,” Holly said. “You. You’re the only one who has to get elected. The rest of us are appointed.”

  “Yes, that’s true, but I think of us as a team. You, me, the other department heads. We’re the ones who have to make this government work. We’re the ones who have to serve the people.”

  “Not that the people care that much, one way or the other,” Holly said. “Most of ’em won’t even bother to vote, betcha.”

  “We’ve got to make them care. It’s their government, their lives.”

  Holly looked into his face. He seems so blinking serious, she thought. Maybe he really believes what he’s saying.

  “Malcolm, all they really want is to be left alone. The less they see or hear of the government, the better they like it.”

  He fell silent again for a few paces. Then, “You may be right.”

  “Just leave them alone. That’s all they really want.”

  “You may be right,” he repeated.

  “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?” Holly asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re worried that my sister might ask for citizenship and then run against you. That’s why you want to start the campaigning so early, to preempt her.”

  Eberly’s pale smile returned. “You’re a very perceptive woman, Holly.”

  “No prob,” she said. “Pancho’s retired. She doesn’t want to do anything, let alone run for chief administrator. She says she’s finished with sitting behind a desk.”

  He thought that over for a heartbeat or two. “That may be what she says now—”

  “Pancho says what she means and means what she says. She’s not running for your job, Malcolm. Jeeps, she’s not even sure she’s going to stay here for more’n a few months.”

  “I’m relieved.”

  “I bet.”

  “Not for the reason you think,” Eberly said. “It’s not because I’m glad she won’t oppose me. I’m relieved because you won’t be caught in the middle, between us. I’m relieved because you can work with me with a clear conscience, and no family ties getting in your way.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I click. Me too, I guess.”

  Eberly refrained from smiling. Show her you’re serious, he told himself. Show her you care about her feelings. But inwardly he exulted. I won’t have to worry about Pancho Lane! And I’ve got Holly’s undivided allegiance. Now to get my campaign rolling.

  “Well,” he said slowly, “I’d better be getting back to my office. There’s no end of work for me to see to.”

  Holly nodded. “Think I’ll finish walking around the lake, then go back.”

  “All right.” He turned and started back toward the village.

  “Oh, hey, Malcolm,” Holly called.

  He turned, a questioning look on his chiseled features.

  “In case I don’t see you—Happy New Year.”

  “Oh! Yes, of course. Happy New Year to you, too, Holly.”

  Nadia Wunderly waited for Kris Cardenas in the corridor outside the nanotech lab. The warning light on the heavy steel hatch began flashing red, indicating that the inner door had been opened. Impatiently, Wunderly watched the light panel cycle through yellow and green before the corridor hatch swung slowly inward. Cardenas stepped through, looking chipper and bright in butter-yellow coveralls.

  “Hi, Nadia.”

  “Hello, Kris. Is Raoul coming, too?”

  “Soon as he gets through the airlock,” Cardenas said, gesturing at the light panel.

  Once I get down to the weight I want to be, Wunderly thought, I’ll have to get Kris to flush the nanos out of my body. The authorities won’t allow me back on Earth if I have nanos inside me. I’m not going to stay in this habitat forever, she told herself. I’ve got to go back home someday.

  “Are you coming with us tonight?” Cardenas asked. “I reserved a table for ten at the pavilion.”

  Wunderly felt her cheeks flush. “You bet I am. With our chief computer engineer. His name’s Da‘ud Habib. A real hunk.” That wasn’t entirely true, she knew, but Da’ud was a good-looking guy in a quiet, intense way.

  “Good,” Cardenas said absently.

  Tavalera came through the airlock, carefully closing the heavy steel hatch into its rubberized frame. Wunderly could feel a sigh of air pass by her.

  Raoul Tavalera’s normal expression was a worried, suspicious scowl. He had been plucked from his home in New Jersey by the New Morality as soon as he graduated from engineering college and sent to the research station orbiting Jupiter for his mandatory two years of public service, complaining every centimeter of the way. When the habitat Goddard passed Jupiter on its two-year journey to Saturn, it took on a load of hydrogen and helium isotopes scooped from Jupiter’s upper atmosphere to fuel the habitat’s fusion propulsion engines. Tavalera had been hurt in an accident during the refueling procedure and would have gone drifting to his death if Manny Gaeta hadn’t saved him in a daring impromptu rescue.

  But that resulted in Tavalera being brought into Goddard, an unwilling passenger heading for Saturn. He bitterly resented that, all the more so because he could hardly complain that the habitat had saved his life. Then he met Holly Lane and gradually, almost grudgingly, fell in love with her. He impulsively decided to remain in Goddard to be with her. He even applied for citizenship. Yet two uncertainties plagued his mind with doubt: He was not truly convinced that he wanted to remain in Goddard forever and never return home; and he was not truly sure that Holly loved him deeply enough to return to Earth with him should he decide to leave.

  So, as he walked with Wunderly and Cardenas, his boss, to the bustling, clanging cafeteria, his face remained set in that troubled, distrusting scowl.

  Wunderly felt nervous as she moved along the cafeteria counter, filling her tray. Her resolution to stick to fruits and salad always melted away once the aroma of real food reached her. Today it was roast beef, sliced thin and accompanied by mouth-watering sauces. Wunderly knew that the protein had never been within a billion kilometers of a cow; it was all synthetic, but it still smelled too delicious for her to pass up. A glance at Cardenas, though, firmed her resolve. I’m going to make a New Year’s resolution, she told herself. I’ll lose another ten kilos; I’ll look great then. Then Kris can flush the nanos out of me. Nobly she ignored the dessert table on her way to joining Cardenas and Tavalera at a table by the window. But she couldn’t help noticing that they had three different types of cobblers on display. Fruit, she thought. That’s not fattening.

  “All right.” Cardenas said, once Wunderly had sat down and arranged her dishes on the table. “What are you wearing to tonight’s party, Nadia?”

  Wunderly took in a breath, then said swiftly, “Never mind that. I’ve decided to go into the rings myself.”

  “What?”

  “I know it’s too much to ask Manny to do it, so I’ve decided to do it myself.”

  “You’ll get yourself kill
ed,” Tavalera said.

  Ignoring him and focusing on Cardenas, Wunderly said urgently, “Manny can show me how to use his suit, and he can run the operation from here. Just like that German guy who was Manny’s chief technician.”

  “Fritz,” Cardenas murmured. “He was Austrian.”

  “Whatever.” Turning to Tavalera, she went on, “And I thought that you, Raoul, could pilot the ferry ship that takes me in and brings me back after I’ve gone—”

  “Me?” Tavalera yelped. “Fly a transfer vehicle into the rings? You gotta be kidding!”

  “Not into the rings,” Wunderly countered. “Just close enough for me to go in.”

  “And then I’ve gotta fish you out again?”

  Cardenas interrupted them. “Nadia, Manny almost got killed when he went through the rings. The ice particles attacked him, for god’s sake.”

  Wunderly shook her head impatiently. “They didn’t attack him. They coated his suit—”

  “And blocked his communications antenna, covered his helmet visor, nearly froze him to death.”

  “But we know about that now. We can keep the suit’s exterior too hot for the ring organisms to attach themselves.”

  They argued all through lunch. Wunderly never did get dessert. The best she got was a reluctant agreement from Cardenas to discuss the idea with Manny. Tavalera said very little, but he was thinking that if Gaeta agrees to this he can fly the fricking transfer ship himself. I’m not going out into the rings. Mother Tavalera didn’t raise her son to be a hero. Or an idiot.

  NEW YEAR’S EVE

  About the party tonight,” Cardenas said to Gaeta. They were both in the compact kitchen of the apartment they shared.

  “Yeah?”

  “Be sure to compliment Nadia on her figure. She’s been working hard to lose weight.”

  Gaeta gave her a sidelong glance as he set dishes on the foldout table. “You been helping her?”

  “She thinks so. She asked for nanos to take the fat off. I gave her an appetite suppressant, a diuretic, and a pep talk about exercise and diet.”

  Gaeta laughed. “So she thinks it’s nanomagic when it’s really her own effort.”

  “And the pills.” Cardenas rummaged through the silverware drawer and came out with two sets of forks and knives. In the same tone of voice, she added, “And she wants to fly through the rings herself, using your suit.”

  “What?” Gaeta snapped.

  “She’s decided she’ll fly through the rings herself. With your help.”

  Gaeta laughed bitterly. “They all think it’s easy,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “Just seal yourself inside the suit and that makes you Superman.”

  It was Cardenas’s turn to make dinner. She stood in front of the open freezer in the kitchen, trying to decide which package to shove into the microwave. Manny enjoyed cooking and was good at it; Cardenas’s idea of home cooking was to spend as little time as possible in the kitchen. Something light, she thought; we’ll be eating and drinking at the party later.

  “She knows it’s dangerous,” she said as she pulled out a pair of precooked fish fillet dinners. “It’s just that she’s so crazy to get some samples from the rings that she’s willing to risk her own life.”

  Gaeta was at the counter by the sink, opening a bottle of wine. “No, she’s not,” he said. “She’s just trying to shame me into going for her.”

  “No! Nadia’s not that devious. She’s not devious at all. She’s just a scientist who’s desperate to get her research done.”

  The plastic stopper came out of the wine bottle with a pop.

  “Look, chiquita,” Gaeta said, tapping his forehead lightly, “Nadia might not realize it up in the top of her head, but what she’s really doing is trying her damnedest to get me to say, ‘No, it’s too dangerous for you, kid. I’ll do it.’”

  Cardenas gave him a crooked grin as she read the heating instructions on the packages. “That’s machismo bullshit, Manny.”

  “You think so? I’m supposed to sit here and let her fly in my old suit and most likely get herself killed out there?”

  “She wants to do it.”

  “Why can’t they rig a robot probe to take samples from the rings? That ought to be easy enough.”

  “She’d need Urbain’s okay for that and he’s so wrapped up with his missing probe that he won’t even give her the time of day.”

  “She could just appropriate one, then. While Urbain’s not looking.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Cardenas argued. “There’s only a dozen or so of the generic probes in storage and Urbain’s keeping them under lock and key. Besides, Nadia would need some of Urbain’s engineering people to modify the probe so it can collect samples.”

  Shaking his head like a man surrounded by conspirators, Gaeta poured a dash of wine into one of the tumblers he’d pulled from the cabinet. He sipped.

  “Not bad,” he said with some surprise. “Local vintage. Straight from the vineyards down by the endcap.”

  “That’s why there’s no label,” Cardenas said.

  “Not yet. I just got one of their first bottles from a guy who works at the winepress.”

  He poured a glass for Cardenas and she sampled it. With a frown that furrowed her brow, she said, “Fizzy.”

  “Give it some time to breathe.”

  “I didn’t know you were a wine expert,” she teased.

  “Hey, there’s still some things you don’t know about me.”

  Cardenas slid the two packaged meals into the microwave and then set the timer. Turning back to Gaeta, she said, utterly serious, “Nadia’s really desperate.”

  Gaeta looked into her bright blue eyes for a long moment. “You want me to go back to the rings for her?”

  “No!” Cardenas snapped. “But if she’s willing to do it, I think you ought to help her.”

  “She really can’t snitch a robot probe? You said there’s a dozen of’ em.”

  “Urbain’s hoarding them. He wants to send them into low orbits around Titan to search for his missing machine.”

  Gaeta made a sigh that was close to being a snort. “Damn scientists. They’re all crazy.”

  “Hey, watch it, Mr. Macho. I’m a scientist, remember?”

  “But you’re not crazy.”

  “Yes I am,” Cardenas said. “I’m crazy about you.”

  He wrapped his arms around her waist and she slid hers around his neck. The microwave oven chimed but neither of them paid the slightest attention.

  Eduoard Urbain stared disappointedly at the inventory of robotic spacecraft displayed on his office wall.

  “That is all?” he asked. “Only a dozen?”

  “That’s the entire inventory, sir.” His aide looked distinctly uncomfortable. It was New Year’s Eve and the big party down by the lake would be starting up soon.

  Urbain had no interest in the party. “There should be more,” he insisted.

  “We had to cannibalize several of them to build Titan Alpha. Don’t you remember, sir?”

  Leaning back in his swivel chair Urbain ran a hand over his weary eyes. “We could build more, I suppose.”

  “That would take time, sir. And we’d have to get approval from the logistics department to utilize the materials. We’d also need a team of technicians; the human resources department would have to approve their reassignment.”

  “Eberly,” murmured Urbain.

  “He’s the chief administrator. I’m sure he’d approve our requests.”

  Urbain gave his aide a withering look. The young man was a junior scientist who seemed just as anxious as Urbain himself to find the errant Titan Alpha and bring it back under human control. But the aide knew nothing about that politician Eberly. This stripling pays no attention to politics, Urbain said to himself, as he eyed the younger man. His only interest is in his own scientific research, his own career.

  At last he said, “I will speak to the chief administrator. In the meantime, I want all of those spacecraft modified
for orbital reconnaissance. We must be prepared to launch them as soon as humanly possible.”

  “All twelve of them, sir?”

  “All of them! That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”

  The aide swallowed visibly. “But, sir, that will leave us without any backups whatever.”

  “We will build new ones!” Urbain snapped. Then he added, “As soon as I get the chief administrator to grant us the necessary materials and personnel.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the aide in a low voice.

  “I want the probes placed in polar orbits, low enough to scan the complete surface of Titan continuously.”

  “I’ll get the orbital mechanics people working on it first thing tomorrow, sir.” The aide started backing toward the door, thinking, Everbody’ll be hung over tomorrow. It’s a holiday, anyway. Nobody’s going to be working. Except for the boss.

  “Good. And I will contact the chief administrator.”

  “Yes, sir.” Practically bowing, the aide scuttled through the door, leaving Urbain alone in his modest little office.

  He stared distastefully at the list still displayed on the smart wall, then his eyes turned to the phone console on his desk.

  Eberly, he thought. I will have to go groveling to that swine, that … that politician. Urbain hated the idea of it. More, he feared having to ask Malcolm Eberly for help. He knew that a snake of Eberly’s sort would never do a favor for anyone without extracting something in return.

  What will he ask of me? Urbain wondered. What am I prepared to offer him?

  The pavilion by the lake swarmed with partygoers. The maintenance department had even spread a thin honeycomb sheeting in front of the band shell to serve as a dance floor. People trooped in on foot or electrobike from the other villages, eager to welcome the new year with revelry. As the crowd swelled and the music grew louder and wilder, couples picnicked, drank, sang, and laughed together. Pancho and Wanamaker danced nonstop while Cardenas and Gaeta did an impromptu tango on the grass and Holly even got Tavalera to loosen up enough to dance with her. Wunderly arrived with her date; the two of them sat quietly together on the grass. Despite her rigid dieting of the past two weeks she was still a blocky, thickset figure. Her date, Habib, looked elegant in a black tunic and slacks.