Ben Bova - Mercury

by Mercury(lit)

  Victor looked puzzled that his wife had flown out here, Alexios said to himself. Wait until she tells him about the messages she got from him. That'll drive him crazy, trying to figure it out. Who would be nutty enough to send love letters to Lara and fake his image, his voice, for them?

  It had been easy enough to do. Alexios had secretly recorded Molina's face and voice from his university dossier. It was simple to morph that imagery into the messages that Alexios composed. He had poured his heart into those messages, told her everything he wanted to say to her, everything he wanted her to know. Plagiarized from the best sources: Shakespeare, Browning, Rostand, Byron, and the rest.

  He told Lara how much he loved her, had always loved her, would always love her. But he said it with her husband's image, with Victor's voice. He didn't dare use his own. Not yet.

  Ian McFergusen was a burly man of delicate tastes. His fierce bushy beard and shaggy brows made him look like a Highland warrior of old, yet he had dedicated his career to the study of life. He was a biologist, not a claymore-swinging howling clansman.

  Still, he was a fighter. Throughout academia he was known as a tough, independent thinker. A maverick, a burr under the saddle, often an inconvenient pain in the ass. He seldom followed the accepted wisdom on any subject. He asked the awkward questions, the questions that most people wished to shove under the rug.

  McFergusen had studied all the data about the evidence for Mercurian biology that Molina had sent Earthward. Alone now in his compartment, as he sipped his usual nightcap of whisky, neat, he had to admit that the data were impressive. Molina may have made a real find here, McFergusen said to himself.

  But something nagged at him. As he drained the whisky and set the empty glass on his night table, he fidgeted uneasily, scratched at his beard, knitted his heavy brows. It's all too convenient, he told himself, too convenient by far. He began pacing across his narrow compartment. Molina gets an anonymous tip. He's given a clutch of rocks that the construction workers have found. All in the same location.

  The rocks contain PAHs and all the other biomarkers, that's sure enough. But it's all too easy. Too convenient. Nature doesn't hand you evidence on a platter.

  He shook his shaggy head and sat heavily on the bunk. Maybe I'm getting too old and cranky, he said to himself. Then a new thought struck him. Maybe I'm just jealous of the young squirt.

  GOETHE BASE

  "So far," Alexios was saying, "the scientists have not discovered any other sites that contain biomarkers."

  Yamagata had come down from Himawari to the surface base for this meeting, the first time he had been to Mercury's surface in more than a month. For nearly five weeks now the IAA scientists had been combing the planet's surface with automated tracked vehicles, searching for more rocks that contained signs of life.

  "Yet still they prevent us from expanding this base," Yamagata grumbled. He was too troubled to sit in the chair Alexios had offered him. Instead he stood, hands clasped behind his back, and stared at the display screen that took up one whole wall of Alexios's modest office. It showed the barren, rock-strewn surface outside the base: the Sun was up and the hard-baked ground looked hot enough to melt.

  The bleak landscape matched Yamagata's mood perfectly. If the scientists didn't lift their ban on industrial activities on Mercury's surface soon, Sunpower Foundation would go bankrupt. It angered Yamagata to be so frustrated. Despite all the teachings that the lamas had tried to instill in him, he found it impossible to accept what was happening, impossible to be patient. Yamagata wanted to round up McFergusen and his entire crew and send them packing back to Earth. Now. This day.

  Standing respectfully beside him, Alexios said quietly, "At least we're putting the time to some good use. The preliminary tests on the shielded powersat look quite good."

  Yamagata turned toward him. Alexios was slightly taller than he, a fact that added to his displeasure.

  "Just as you suspected, the power degradation is caused by the solar proton influx," Alexios went on calmly.

  "And the superconducting shields protect the cells?"

  Alexios called out, "Computer: show results of shielding test."

  The landscape disappeared from the wall screen, replaced by a set of graphs with curving lines in red, green, yellow, and blue. As Alexios explained them, Yamagata saw that the superconducting shields performed much as the Forward persona had predicted.

  "The high positive potential of the structure around the cells deflects the protons," Alexios said, "and the magnetic field created by the superconducting wire keeps the electrons off."

  "Otherwise the electrons would discharge the high positive potential," Yamagata muttered, showing his employee that he understood the physics involved.

  "Exactly." Alexios nodded. "So we can shield the powersats and get them up close to their nominal power output, if..." His voice trailed off.

  "If?" Yamagata snapped.

  "If we can afford enough superconducting wire."

  "It's expensive."

  "Very. But most of the elements needed to make superconducting wire exist in Mercury's soil."

  "You mean regolith," said Yamagata.

  Alexios bowed slightly. "Excuse me. Of course, regolith. Soil would imply living creatures in the ground, wouldn't it?"

  "We can manufacture the superconductors here, out of local materials?"

  "I believe so. If we use nanomachines it should be relatively inexpensive."

  "Once we are allowed to work on the surface again," Yamagata muttered.

  Alexios stifled the satisfied little smile that began to form on his lips. Forcing his face into a sorrowful mask, he agreed, "Yes, we must get permission from the IAA before we can even begin to do anything."

  Yamagata fumed. Instead of a mantra, he silently cursed the International Astronautical Authority, the International Consortium of Universities, all their members past and present, and all their members' mothers back to five generations.

  Ian McFergusen looked around at the barren, sun-blasted rocky ground and shook his head. Nothing. Every site we've investigated has turned up nothing. Only that one site next to the base Yamagata's people have built.

  Thanks to the virtual reality equipment that the ICU team had brought with them, McFergusen could sit in the laboratory they had set up aboard Brudnoy and still experience precisely what the tracked robot vehicle was doing down on the surface of Mercury. The first time he had used VR equipment, back when he was part of the third Mars expedition, it had seemed little less than a miracle to him. He could see, feel, hear what the robot machines were experiencing thousands of kilometers away, all while sitting in the comfort of a secure base. Now, so many years later, virtual reality was just another tool, no more wondrous than the fusion engines that propelled interplanetary torch ships or the tunneling microscopes that revealed individual atoms.

  Sitting on a lab stool, his head and lower arms encased in the VR helmet and gloves, McFergusen picked up a rock in his clawlike pincers and brought it close to his sensors. A perfectly ordinary piece of volcanic ejecta, he thought. With the strength of the robot he broke the rock apart, then brought the broken edges to his sensor set and scanned their exposed interiors for several minutes.

  Nothing. No PAHs, no sulfides, no iron nodules. If I bring it up to the ship's tunneling microscope, McFergusen thought, I won't find any nanometer-sized structures, either. He tossed the broken fragments of the rock back to the ground in disgust.

  For long moments he simply sat there, his body aboard the torch ship Brudnoy, his eyes and hands and mind on the blazing hot surface of Mercury.

  How can there be such rich specimens at one site and nothing anywhere else? Of course, he reminded himself, we have an entire planet to consider. In these few weeks we've barely tested a few dozen possible sites. Perhaps we're looking in the wrong places.

  Yet, he reasoned, we concentrated our searches on sites that are similar to the one where Molina found his specimens. We should have found so
mething by now.

  Unless...

  McFergusen did not want to consider the possibility that had arisen in his mind. We've got to widen our net, he told himself, search different kinds of sites.

  That won't be easy, he knew. Not with Yamagata breathing down our necks. Lord, he's been sending messages to IAA headquarters daily, demanding to know when we'll allow him to start digging up the regolith again.

  None of it is easy, McFergusen said to himself. It never is. Then that nagging suspicion surfaced in his mind again. How could Molina have been so lucky?

  Luck plays its role in science, he knew. It's always better to be lucky than to be smart. But so damnably lucky? Is it possible?

  Victor Molina was in his lab, flicking through the tunneling microscope's images of the latest rock samples brought up from the surface. Nothing. These samples were as dead and inert as rocks from the Moon. No hydrates, no organic molecules, no long-chain molecules of any sort. Baked dry and dead.

  He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes wearily. How can this be? Even the samples of dirt scraped off the ground showed no biomarkers of any kind.

  Sitting up straight again, he reminded himself that the dirt samples from the surface of Mars tested by the old Viking landers a century ago showed no signs of biological activity, either. Not even a trace of organic molecules in the soil. And Mars not only bears life today but once bore intelligent life, before it was wiped out in an extinction-level meteor impact.

  He turned and looked at the set of rocks he himself had tested when he'd first arrived at Mercury. They were carefully sealed in airtight transparent plastic containers. McFergusen wants me to let him send them back to Earth for further testing. Never! I'm not letting them out of my sight. They'll go back to Earth when I do, and they'll be tested by third parties only when I'm present.

  Molina felt a fierce proprietary passion about those rocks. They were his key to a future of respect and accomplishment, his ticket to Stockholm and the Nobel Prize.

  It took a few moments for him to realize that someone was knocking at his laboratory door, rapping hard enough to make the door shake. With some irritation he called out, "Enter."

  Bishop Danvers slid the door back and stepped into the lab, a look of stern determination on his fleshy face. The door automatically slid shut.

  "Hello, Elliott," Molina said evenly. "I'm pretty busy right now." It was a lie, but Molina was in no mood for his old friend's platitudes.

  "This is an official visit," Danvers said, standing a bare two paces inside the doorway.

  "Official?" Molina snapped. "What do you mean?"

  Without moving from where he stood, Danvers said, "I'm here in my capacity as a bishop in the New Morality Church."

  Despite himself, Molina grinned. "What are you going to do, Elliott, baptize me? Or maybe bless my rocks?"

  "No," said Danvers, his cheeks flushing slightly. "I'm here to interrogate you."

  Molina's brows shot up. "Interrogate? You mean like the Inquisition?"

  Danvers's face darkened, his heavy hands knotted into fists. But he quickly regained control of himself and forced a thin smile.

  "Victor, the New Morality has placed a heavy burden on my shoulders. I've been tasked with the responsibility of disproving your claim of finding life on Mercury."

  Molina smiled and relaxed. "Oh, is that all."

  "It's very serious!"

  Nodding, Molina said, "I understand, Elliott." He gestured to the only other chair in the room. "Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable."

  The plastic seat of the tubular metal chair squeaked as Danvers settled his bulk into it. The bishop looked tense, wary.

  "Elliott, how long have we known each other?" Molina asked.

  Danvers thought a moment. "I first met you in Ecuador, more than twelve years ago."

  "It's closer to fourteen years, actually."

  "To be sure. But I haven't seen you since the trial at Quito, and that was about ten years ago."

  Nodding again, Molina said, "But we were friends back in Ecuador. There's no reason why we shouldn't still be friends."

  Danvers gestured to the analytical equipment lining the laboratory's walls. "We live in two different worlds, Victor."

  "Different, maybe, but not entirely separate. There's no reason for us to be adversaries."

  "I have my responsibilities," Danvers countered, somewhat stiffly. "My orders come straight from Atlanta, from the archbishop himself."

  Molina let out a little sigh, then said, "All right, just what do they want you to do?"

  "As I told you: they want me to disprove your claim that life exists on Mercury."

  "I've never claimed that."

  "Or once existed, ages ago," Danvers added.

  "That seems irrefutable, Elliott."

  "Because of the chemicals you've found in those rocks?" Danvers pointed to the clear plastic containers.

  "That's right. The evidence is unmistakable."

  "But as I understand it, McFergusen and his team haven't found any corroborating evidence."

  "Corroborating evidence!" Molina smirked. "You're learning how to talk like a scientist, Elliott."

  Danvers grimaced slightly. "Your fellow scientists seem terribly puzzled that they haven't been able to find anything similar to what you've discovered."

  With a shrug, Molina replied, "Mercury may be a small planet, Elliott, but it's still a planet. A whole world. Its surface area must be similar to the continent of Eurasia, back on Earth. How thoroughly do you think a handful of scientists could explore all of Eurasia, from the coast of Portugal to the China Sea? In a few weeks, no less."

  "Yet you found your rocks the first day you set foot on Mercury."

  "So I did. I was lucky." Suddenly Molina came up with a new thought. "Perhaps, in your terms, God guided me to those rocks."

  Danvers rocked back in his chair. "Don't make a joke of God. That's blasphemy."

  "I didn't mean to offend you, Elliott," Molina said softly. "I was simply trying to put my good fortune in terms you'd understand."

  "You should try praying, instead," said Danvers. "As far as your fellow scientists are concerned, they don't believe in your luck. Or God's grace."

  TORCH SHIP BRUDNOY

  "I want it clearly understood," McFergusen said, in his gravelly Highland brogue, "that this is strictly an informal meeting."

  Informal, Molina repeated silently. Like a coroner's inquest or a session of the Spanish Inquisition.

  The Scottish physicist sat at the head of the table, Molina at its foot. Along the table were ranked the other scientists that the IAA had sent, together with Bishop Danvers, who sat at Molina's right. They were using the captain's conference room; it felt crowded, tight, and stuffy. Too many people for a compartment this size, Molina thought.

  "Although the ship's computer is taking a verbatim record of what we say," McFergusen went on, "no report of this meeting will be sent back to IAA headquarters until each person here has had a chance to read the record and add any comments he or she wishes to make. Is that clear?"

  Heads nodded up and down the table.

  McFergusen hesitated a moment, then plunged in. "Now then, our major problem is that we have been unable to find any specimens bearing biomarkers."

  "Except for the ones I found," Molina added.

  "Indeed."

  "How do you account for that?" asked the woman on Molina's left.

  He shrugged elaborately. "How do you account for the fact that, during some war back in the twentieth century, the first cannon shell fired into the city of Leningrad killed the zoo's only elephant?"

  Everyone chuckled.

  Except McFergusen. "We have been scouring the planet for some six weeks now-"

  "Six weeks for a whole planet?" Molina countered. "Do you really believe you've covered everything?"

  "No, of course not. But you found your specimens on your first day, didn't you?"

  Feeling anger simmering inside him
, Molina said, "You forget that I came here because of a tip from one of the construction workers. I didn't just blindly stumble onto those rocks."

  "A tip from whom?" asked one of the younger men.

  "I don't know. It was an anonymous message. I've questioned the workers down there on the surface and none of them admits to sending me the message."

  "An anonymous tip that no one admits to sending," grumbled McFergusen. "It strains credulity a bit, doesn't it?"