Titan

by Bova, Ben

  What can I do to stop her? Eberly asked himself, as he walked through the morning sunlight to his office and the light breakfast his aide would have waiting for him. How can I get rid of Pancho Lane?

  He lightly touched the spot on his jaw where Pancho had hit him. How can I make her pay for that humiliation?

  Urbain, meanwhile, was having breakfast with his wife in his own apartment.

  “He will bribe the voters with visions of vast wealth,” he grumbled, as he sipped at his stinging hot coffee. Jeanmarie was the only woman in the world who knew how to make coffee strong enough to be palatable. He had missed her coffee during the years of their separation.

  “But the ICU is on record as being against mining Saturn’s rings,” Jeanmarie said from across their narrow kitchen table.

  “It means nothing,” Urbain scoffed. “What can they do? How can they enforce their position? Send an army of bureaucrats here?”

  Jeanmarie almost smiled at the thought of a horde of university file surfers descending on the habitat.

  “Eberly could refuse them permission to dock,” Urbain went on. “He could send them packing back to Earth.”

  His wife brought her cup to her lips. She preferred tea, with lemon. “But couldn’t the ICU ask the International Astronautical Authority to enforce their decision? The IAA is not to be trifled with.”

  Urbain gave his wife a condescending look. “My dear, it has been little more than a year since the Second Asteroid War was ended. Do you believe that the IAA or anyone on Earth will be willing to start another war?”

  “A war?” Jeanmarie looked stricken. “Do you really think that Eberly would use force against the IAA?”

  “I believe the man will do whatever he feels necessary to maintain his position as leader of this habitat.”

  “But war?”

  He shrugged. “Spacecraft are very fragile. A laser shot could disable an IAA ship as it approaches us. Perhaps even destroy it.”

  Jeanmarie shook her head. “He wouldn’t dare.”

  “Selene declared its independence and then fought off an attempt by the old United Nations to subdue them. The miners at Ceres have established their independence. Why not habitat Goddard? After all, we are much farther away than any other human habitation. What do the people of Earth care about what we do?”

  “They care about mining Saturn’s rings, do they not?”

  “Yes, some of them. But the people living on the Moon and among the asteroids would be in favor of having an abundant supply of water made available to them.”

  “For a price,” Jeanmarie pointed out.

  Urbain stared at her. Then he countered, “Eberly is very clever, wily. He will keep the price low enough for them to want to buy, and still high enough to bring wealth to Goddard.”

  She started to reply but he got up from their tiny kitchen table, clearly signaling that their conversation was at an end. Jeanmarie sat there clasping her delicate cup of cooling tea in both hands. It had been her mother’s tea set. No, she remembered, her grandmother’s.

  Urbain came back to the kitchen, fumbling with the ascot he had slid around his neck. Jeanmarie knew he expected her to knot it for him, yet she did not get up from her chair.

  “Is this business of mining the rings so important?” she asked. “Will it do irreparable harm to the rings?”

  “In time,” Urbain said, looking into the mirror behind his wife as he worked on tying the ascot. “The real problem is that he will not lift a finger to help me unless I support his proposal of mining the ice.”

  She saw the expression on his face: utter distaste and, beneath it all, the fear of failure. His probe of Titan has gone rogue and he cannot even locate it, she thought. Now Eberly refuses to help him and he fears that his career will collapse around his ears. My poor darling! To come this far and then fail. He’s had a taste of success and now his fall will be deeper and more humiliating because of it.

  She pushed her chair back, brushed his hands away from the poorly knotted ascot, and retied it for him. Urbain pecked her on the cheek by way of thanks and left for his office and another day of frustration, of edging closer to the brink of disaster.

  Jeanmarie stood there in her kitchen for a long time, alone, wondering what she could do to help her husband.

  Holly intercepted Eberly as he walked toward the administration building at the crest of the low hill on which the village of Athens had been built. He knew it was no accidental meeting.

  “Good morning,” he said cheerfully.

  “Aren’t they all,” Holly replied, as she fell into step alongside him.

  “Yes. I suppose we tend to take our perfect weather for granted.”

  Holly reached out and tugged at the sleeve of his tunic, stopping him. “Look around, Malcolm. Look at this place. I mean, really look at it.”

  Puzzled, Eberly swept his gaze across the carefully landscaped scenery, green and lush and flowering. The clean white buildings. The glittering lake. “It’s really wonderful, isn’t it,” he murmured.

  “What’s missing?” Holly asked.

  From the set of her square jaw, Eberly could see that Holly had a specific point to make. “What’s missing, Malcolm?” she asked again.

  “Rain,” he replied lightly. “Snow. Fog, sleet …”

  “Don’t try to make a joke of it,” she insisted.

  “All right. You tell me what’s missing from this demiparadise, this other Eden, this—”

  “Kids!” Holly snapped. “Children. We have no children here.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yes, that,” said Holly. “You’ve got to face up to it, Malcolm. You’ve got to do something about the ZPG rule.”

  “I’m thinking about it,” he muttered grudgingly.

  “Think harder, then. And faster. The deadline for registering candidates is next Monday. ZPG could be a major issue.”

  “Only if someone makes an issue out of it,” Eberly answered testily.

  “Somebody’s bound to.”

  “They would need a petition signed by two-thirds of the citizens to repeal the zero-growth protocol,” he pointed out.

  Holly’s lips curved into a knowing smile. “You looked up the regulations, huh? So did I.”

  “I doubt that anyone in this habitat has the inclination to mount a petition drive. They’re all too apathetic.”

  With a slight shake of her head, Holly replied, “Don’t underestimate the people, Malcolm. ‘Specially the women.”

  Feeling uncomfortable, Eberly decided to shift the focus of their conversation. “Speaking of issues, how do you feel about mining ice from the rings of Saturn?”

  Holly made a small shrug. “Nadia Wunderly’s dead set against it and so are the rest of the scientists.”

  “But they’re less than a tenth of this community’s population.”

  “If you make an issue of it, the scientists’ll put up a candidate to run against you. Wouldn’t you prefer to run unopposed?”

  Unopposed? The idea hadn’t occurred to Eberly. He’d assumed that someone would come up to run against him, maybe more than one candidate. He actually preferred to have several candidates running; that would split the votes against him, while as the incumbent he could count on a solid bloc—especially if he started to put the ice-mining plan into operation.

  “Naturally I’d prefer to run unopposed, but I doubt that things will work out that way.”

  “’Smatter of fact,” Holly said, a slow grin creeping across her face, “the constitution requires an opposition candidate. I checked.”

  He looked at her with newfound appreciation. “You’ve been checking a lot of things, haven’t you?”

  “Part of my job,” Holly said. “If nobody volunteers to run against you, a candidate has to be selected at random by the personnel computer.”

  “Which is run by your human resources department,” Eberly said.

  “Right.”

  “Which means that you, Holly, can select my oppon
ent.”

  “Not me. The computer.”

  “You,” Eberly said, pointing an index finger at her like a pistol.

  “Then I’ll have to find somebody who’ll bring up the ZPG issue.”

  Eberly scowled darkly at her.

  8 JANUARY 2096: NOON

  Nadia Wunderly sealed the outer hatch of the nanolab’s airlock entrance and fidgeted impatiently for the few seconds that it took for the inner door to pop open. When it did, Raoul Tavalera swung the heavy hatch open for her.

  “Why, thank you, Raoul,” she said, a smile dimpling her face. “Have you been standing there long, waiting for me?”

  Puzzled by her attempt at humor, Tavalera replied, “I’m heading out for lunch.” Then he added, “With Holly,” and his face brightened a little.

  He went into the airlock as Wunderly stepped into the lab. “Kris is talking with that Russian from maintenance, Timoshenko,” Tavalera said, as he pulled the airlock hatch shut.

  Wunderly passed benches loaded with silent equipment as she walked deeper into the laboratory. She heard Cardenas’s voice and the gruff lower tones of the Russian engineer. She was still losing weight, and now that New Year’s had come and gone, she was wondering when she should have Cardenas flush the nanomachines out of her body.

  Cardenas was perched on her tall stool, as usual, with a starched white smock over her dress. Timoshenko stood next to her, a stubby thickset figure in gray coveralls, several centimeters shorter than the seated Cardenas.

  “We could do more than armor the superconducting wires,” she was saying. “We could develop nanomachines to automatically repair any damage done to them.”

  “That’s not as easy as you might suppose,” Timoshenko said. “Very powerful electrical currents flow through those wires.”

  Cardenas nodded. “Well, if you can give me the specifics, I can try to work out a program for self-repair. Then we can test it here in the lab on short samples of superconductor before we install any nanos on the shielding wires themselves.”

  Timoshenko started to reply, then noticed Wunderly standing off at some distance. “Ah,” he said to Cardenas, “you have company.”

  “Come on over, Nadia,” Cardenas called to Wunderly. Turning back to Timoshenko she explained, “Nadia and I have a lunch date. Care to join us? We can continue our discussion in the cafeteria.”

  Timoshenko dipped his chin in agreement while Wunderly thought to herself, He’s the guy who piloted the transfer craft that carried Gaeta to the rings and then picked him up afterward. If he did that for Manny he can do it for me. Maybe.

  All through lunch in the busy, clattering cafeteria Timoshenko and Cardenas talked about using nanomachines to protect and even repair the superconducting wires that provided the magnetic field which protected the habitat from radiation. Wunderly had no chance to ask Cardenas about flushing the nanos inside her. She listened to their conversation with only a fraction of her attention. Her mind focused on flying out to the rings again, this time to pick up samples and prove to those doubting Earthworm flatlanders back home that the ring harbored living psychrophiles, organisms that lived within the ice particles of Saturn’s rings.

  How can they not believe it? Wunderly asked herself, as she munched on a fruit salad, straight from the habitat’s orchards. They know that amino acids and other complex polypeptides form naturally in amorphous ice particles. They’ve seen it in comets for damned near a century. Why shouldn’t the next step be believable? Amino acids self-assemble into proteins, and proteins evolve into living organisms. It’s happened in liquid water on half a dozen worlds that we know of. And in liquid sulfur on Venus, for chrissakes.

  It just goes slower at freezing temperatures. Amorphous ice allows chemicals to flow as if they were in a liquid, but it all happens at a slower pace. Unless you’ve got some catalyst present, like an antifreeze. I wonder if that’s what happens in the ring particles. Plenty of energy available from Saturn’s magnetic field and the electrical flux of the rings themselves.

  “Nadia, did you hear me?”

  She abruptly realized that Cardenas was talking to her, the expression on her face somewhere between worried and annoyed.

  “I’m sorry, Kris. My mind wandered.”

  “Back to the rings, I suppose,” Cardenas said, an understanding smile curving her lips.

  “Where else?” Wunderly replied.

  Timoshenko asked, “Do you really believe that those particles are truly alive?”

  “Yes! Of course. How else do you explain the fact that Saturn’s rings are so big and bright? Those creatures maintain the rings for their own survival, just as living organisms maintain Earth’s environment for their own survival.”

  “Gaia,” murmured Cardenas.

  Timoshenko picked up his glass of tea. “If the Earth’s biosphere actively works to maintain the planet’s environment, how do you account for the greenhouse cliff? Or the ice ages of the past?”

  “Minor fluctuations,” Wunderly answered, with a wave of her hand.

  “Not minor to the people who lost their homes to the floods,” muttered Timoshenko.

  “Gaia works on a planetary scale,” Cardenas said. “The Earth’s biosphere maintains the planetary environment for the survival of life itself, not for the benefit of any particular species.”

  “Like the dinosaurs,” Wunderly said. “Major impact event wiped them out, along with half the other species on Earth, yet within a few million years Gaia was restocking the planet with new species.”

  “Including us,” said Timoshenko.

  “Until we messed up the atmosphere with greenhouse gases,” Cardenas said. “Gaia slapped us pretty hard then.”

  “It was avoidable,” Wunderly agreed. “Or correctable.”

  Timoshenko shrugged heavily. “Just because humans are intelligent doesn’t mean they’re smart.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Cardenas mused. “The greenhouse disaster forced us into space in a major way. We wouldn’t be here if the climate hadn’t collapsed on us.”

  Timoshenko started to reply but apparently thought better of it. He simply shook his head.

  “I’ve got to prove that there are living organisms in the rings,” Wunderly said. “It’s important.”

  “Important to you,” said Timoshenko.

  “Important for scientific knowledge,” Wunderly countered. “Important for our understanding of the universe.”

  “And it should be important for the creatures themselves, if they exist,” Cardenas pointed out. “Eberly wanted to mine ice from the rings, remember?”

  “That idea got shot down,” said Wunderly.

  “Did it? Or has he just shelved it temporarily?”

  “You think … ?”

  Cardenas pointed out, “A lot of people voted for Eberly because he said he’d make us all rich by selling water mined from the rings.”

  “But the IAA would never allow that,” Timoshenko said.

  “I wonder,” Cardenas said. “Elections are coming up again in a few months. How much do you want to bet that Eberly brings up the ice-mining idea again?”

  “But he can’t!” Wunderly blurted. “He mustn’t!”

  “You think so, Nadia. And I think so. But most of the voters might like the idea of making money off ice mining.”

  “Money talks,” Timoshenko agreed sourly.

  Wunderly looked at each of them in turn, her mind churning. Then she said, “So it’s more important than ever that I prove there are living creatures in the rings. The IAA would flatly deny permission for mining the rings if there’s proof that there’s an extant biosphere in them.”

  Cardenas nodded agreement. Timoshenko looked wary, as if he knew what was coming next.

  Wunderly turned her chair to face him. “I’m planning to go to the rings and collect samples. I’ve asked Manny Gaeta to be my mission controller and teach me how to use his excursion suit. I need someone to pilot the transfer craft that’ll take me to the rings and b
ack out again.”

  “Not me,” Timoshenko said flatly.

  “You did it for Manny.”

  “Once was enough. More than enough. I’m no hero.”

  “But I need your help.”

  “Ask Tavalera,” Timoshenko said. “He piloted transfer craft while he was at the Jupiter station, didn’t he?”

  “Raoul?” Cardenas asked, surprised.

  “Him. Or anybody else,” said Timoshenko. “But not me.”

  8 JANUARY 2096: AFTERNOON

  Holly left her office early and walked to the apartment building where Professor Wilmot resided. When this mission to Saturn had begun, Wilmot was in charge, appointed by the International Consortium of Universities to direct the habitat’s ten thousand inhabitants until they reached Saturn orbit and formulated a government of their own choosing.

  Something had happened along the way, however. Eberly and the little clique of thugs surrounding him had pushed Wilmot out of power and formed the government. They allowed the people to vote for a new constitution, but the voting was little more than a popularity contest. Holly understood that now, although back then she had worked faithfully for Malcolm Eberly under the impression that he was a hero worth following. Time and events forced a painful recognition upon Holly. Eberly was little more than a tool in the hands of fundamentalist zealots.

  The zealots had been banished back to Earth, but Eberly remained as the elected head of the community’s government. Holly didn’t trust him. She berated herself for ever having been so starstruck that she’d thought she was in love with the man.

  She knew better now. Eberly could never love anyone except himself. He had the power of the habitat’s government in his hands and he would do anything to hold onto that power and prestige, to get himself reelected, to have the proof that the people of this habitat still admired him.