by Mercury(lit)
Decidedly unhappy, McFergusen said, "I've called a meeting for tomorrow morning at ten. I intend to review all the evidence that we've uncovered."
"We've gone over the evidence time and again."
"There's something new," McFergusen said. "Something that's changed the entire situation here."
"What is it?" Lara asked.
"I prefer to wait until the entire committee is assembled," said McFergusen.
"Then why did you ask us to join you here this evening?"
Looking squarely at Molina, the professor said grimly, "I wanted to give you a chance to think about what you've done and consider its implications."
Molina's brow wrinkled in puzzlement. "I don't understand what you're talking about."
"All to the good, then," said McFergusen. "If you're telling the truth."
"Telling the truth! What the hell do you mean?"
Raising his hands almost defensively, McFergusen said, "Now, now, there's no sense losing your temper."
"Is somebody calling me a liar? Are any of those academic drones saying my evidence isn't valid?"
"Tomorrow," McFergusen said. "We'll thrash all this out tomorrow, when everyone's present." He gulped down the rest of his whisky and got to his feet.
Molina and his wife stood up, too.
"I don't understand any of this," Lara said.
McFergusen realized she was just as tall as he was. "Perhaps I shouldn't have met with you this evening. I merely wanted to give you a fair warning about what to expect tomorrow."
Molina's face was red with anger. His wife clutched at his arm and he choked back whatever he was going to say.
"I'll see you tomorrow at ten, in the conference room," McFergusen said, clearly embarrassed. "Good evening."
He hurried out of the lounge and ducked through the hatch into the ship's central passageway.
Lara turned to her husband. "At least he didn't have the effrontery to wish us pleasant dreams."
Molina was too furious to smile at her attempted humor.
TRIBUNAL
Molina could see from the expressions on their faces that this was going to be bad. McFergusen sat at the head of the conference table, his team of scientists along its sides. What bothered Molina most was that Danvers and his two young acolytes were also present, seated together toward the end of the table. The only empty chair, waiting for Molina, was at the absolute foot of the table.
They all looked up as Molina entered the conference room at precisely ten o'clock. A few of them smiled at him, but it was perfunctory, pasted on, phony. Obviously McFergusen had ordered them to come in earlier, most likely because he wanted to go over their testimony with them. Testimony.Molina grimaced at the word he had automatically used. This was going to be a trial, he knew. Like a court martial. Like a kangaroo court.
The conference room fell into complete silence as soon as he opened the door from the passageway and entered. In silence Molina took his chair and slipped his data chip into the slot built into the faux mahogany table.
"Dr. Molina," said McFergusen, "I presume you know everyone here."
Molina nodded. He had met most of the scientists and knew of their reputations. Danvers was an old friend, at least an old acquaintance. The two other ministers with him were nonentities, as far as Molina was concerned, but that didn't matter.
The conference room was stark. The narrow table that lined one of its walls was bare; no refreshments, not even an urn of coffee or a pitcher of water. The wall screens were blank. The room felt uncomfortably warm, stuffy, but Molina was ice-cold inside. This is going to be a battle, he told himself. They're all against me, for some reason. Why? Jealousy? Disbelief? Refusal to accept the facts? It doesn't matter. I have the evidence. They can't take that away from me. I've already published my findings on the nets. Maybe that's it. Maybe they're pissed off because I didn't send my findings through the regular academic channels to be refereed before putting them out for all the world to see.
McFergusen ostentatiously pressed the keypad on the board built into the head of the table. "I hereby call this meeting to order. It is being recorded, as is the usual practice."
Molina cleared his throat and spoke up. "I wish to submit my findings as proof that evidence of biological activity has been discovered on Mercury."
McFergusen nodded. "Your evidence is entered into the record of this meeting."
"Good."
"Any comments?"
A plump, grandmotherly woman with graying hair neatly pulled back off her roundish face spoke up. "I have a comment."
"Dr. Paula Kantrowitz," said McFergusen, for the benefit of the recording. "Geobiologist, Cornell University."
You're overdue for a regeneration treatment, Molina sneered silently at Dr. Kantrowitz. And a month or two in an exercise center.
She tapped at the keypad before her and Molina's data sprang up on the wall screens on both sides of the room.
"The evidence that Dr. Molina has found is incontrovertible," she said. "It clearly shows a range of signatures that are indicative of biological activity."
Molina felt his entire body relax. Maybe this isn't going to be so bad after all, he thought.
"There is no question that the rocks Dr. Molina tested bear high levels of biomarkers."
A few nods around the table.
"The question is," Kantrowitz went on, "did those rocks originate on Mercury?"
"What do you mean?" Molina snapped.
Avoiding his suddenly angry eyes, Kantrowitz went on, "When I tested the rock samples that Dr. Molina so kindly lent to us, I was bothered by the results I saw. They reminded me of something I had seen elsewhere."
"And what is that?" McFergusen asked, like the straight man in a well-rehearsed routine.
Kantrowitz touched another keypad and a new set of data curves sprang up on the wall screens alongside Molina's data. They looked so similar they were almost identical.
"This second data set is from Mars," she said. "Dr. Molina's rocks bear biomarkers that are indistinguishable from the Martian samples."
"What of it?" Molina challenged. "So the earliest biological activity on Mercury produces signatures similar to the earliest biological activity on Mars. That in itself is an important discovery."
"It would be," Kantrowitz replied, still not looking at Molina, "if your samples actually came from Mercury."
"Actually came from Mercury?" Molina was too stunned to be angry. "What do you mean?"
Kantrowitz looked sad, as if disappointed with the behavior of a child.
"Once I realized the similarity to Martian rocks, I tested the morphology of Dr. Molina's samples."
The data sets on the walls winked off, replaced by a new set of curves.
"The upper curves, in red, are from well-established data on Martian rocks. The lower curves, in yellow, are from Dr. Molina's samples. As you can see, they are so parallel as to be virtually identical."
Molina stared at the wall screen. No, he said to himself. Something is wrong here.
"The third set of curves, in red at the bottom, is from random samples of rocks I personally picked up from the surface of Mercury. They are very different in mineral content and in isotope ratios from the acknowledged Martian rocks. And from Dr. Molina's samples."
Molina sagged back in his chair, speechless.
Relentlessly, Kantrowitz went on, "I then used the tunneling microscope to search for inclusions in the samples."
Another graph appeared on the wall screen.
"I found several, which held gasses trapped within the rock. The ratio of noble gases in the inclusions match the composition of the Martian atmosphere, down to the limits of the measurement capabilities. If these samples had been on the surface of Mercury for any reasonable length of time, the gases would have been baked out of the rock by the planet's high daytime temperatures."
"Are you saying," McFergusen asked, "that Dr. Molina's samples are actually rocks from Mars?"
"They're n
ot from Mercury at all?" Danvers asked, unable to hide a delighted smile.
"That's right," Kantrowitz replied, nodding somberly. At last she turned to look directly at Molina. "I'm very sorry, Dr. Molina, but your samples are Martian in origin."
"But I found them here," Molina said, his voice a timid whine. "On Mercury."
McFergusen said coolly, "That raises the question of how they got to Mercury."
A deadly silence fell across the conference table. After several moments, one of the younger men sitting across from Kantrowitz, raised his hand. An Asian of some sort, Molina saw. Or perhaps an Asian-American.
"Dr. Abel Lee," pronounced McFergusen. "Astronomy department, Melbourne University."
Lee got to his feet. Molina was surprised to see that he was quite tall. "It's well known that some meteorites found on Earth originated from Mars. They were blasted off the planet by the impact of a much more energetic meteor, achieved escape velocity, and wandered through interplanetary space until they fell into Earth's gravity well."
"In fact," McFergusen added, "the first evidence that life existed on Mars was found in a meteorite that had landed in Antarctica-although the evidence was hotly debated for many years."
Lee made a little bow toward the professor, then continued, "So it is possible that a rock that originated on or even beneath the surface of Mars can be blasted free of the planet and eventually impact on another planet."
Molina nodded vigorously.
"But is it likely that such a rock would land on Mercury?" asked one of the other scientists. "After all, Mercury's gravity well is considerably smaller than Earth's."
"And with its being so close to the Sun," said another, "wouldn't the chances be overwhelming that the rock would fall into the Sun, instead?"
Lee replied, "I'd have to do the statistics, but I think both points are valid. The chances of a Martian rock landing on Mercury are vanishingly small, I would think."
"There's more to it than that," said McFergusen, his bearded face looking grim.
Molina felt as if he were the accused at a trial being run by Torquemada.
"First," said McFergusen, raising a long callused finger, "Dr. Molina did not find merely one Martian rock, but a total of eight, all at the same site."
"It might have been a single meteor that broke up when it hit the ground," Molina said.
McFergusen's frown showed what he thought of that possibility. "Second," he went on, "is the fact that although we have searched an admittedly small area of the planet's surface, no other such samples have been found."
"But you've only scratched the surface of the problem!" Molina cried, feeling more and more desperate.
McFergusen nodded like a judge about to pronounce a death sentence. "I agree that we have searched only a small fraction of the planet's surface. Still..." he sighed, then, staring squarely down the table at Molina, he went on, "There is such a thing as Occam's razor. When faced with several possible answers to a question, the simplest answer is generally the correct one."
"What do you mean?" Molina whispered, although he knew what the answer would be.
"The simplest answer," McFergusen said, his voice a low deadly rumble, "is that the site at which you discovered those rocks was deliberately seeded with samples brought to that location from Mars."
"No!" Molina shouted. "That's not true!"
"You worked on Mars, did you not?"
"Four years ago!"
"You had ample opportunity to collect rocks from Mars and eventually bring them to Mercury."
"No, they were already here! Some of the construction people found them! They sent a message to me!"
"That could all have been prearranged," McFergusen said.
"But it wasn't! I didn't-"
McFergusen sighed again, even more heavily. "This committee will make no judgment on how your samples arrived on Mercury, Dr. Molina. Nor will we accuse you or anyone else of wrongdoing. But we must conclude that the samples you claimed as evidence of biological activity on Mercury originated on Mars."
Molina wanted to cry. I'm ruined, he thought. My career as a scientist is finished. Ended. Absolutely ruined.
SCAPEGOAT
Bishop Danvers felt almost gleeful as he composed a message of triumph for New Morality headquarters in Atlanta.
The scientists themselves had disproved Molina's claim of finding life on Mercury! That was a victory for Believers everywhere. The entire thing was a sham, a hoax. It just shows how far these godless secularists will go in their efforts to destroy people's faith, Danvers said to himself.
He was saddened to see Molina's credibility shattered. Victor was a friend, an acquaintance of long standing. He could be boorish and overbearing at times, but now he was a broken man. He brought it on himself, though, Danvers thought. The sin of pride. Now he's going to pay the price for it.
Yet Danvers felt sorry for the man. They had known each other for almost a decade and a half, and although they were far removed from one another for most of that time, still he felt a bond with Victor Molina. Danvers had even performed the ceremony when Victor married Lara Tierney. It's wrong for me to rejoice in his mistake, he thought.
Deeper still, Danvers knew that the real bond between them had been forged in the destruction of another man, Mance Bracknell. Danvers and Victor had both played their part in the aftermath of that terrible tragedy in Ecuador. They had both helped to send Bracknell into exile. Well, Danvers said to himself, it could have been worse. After all, we saved the man from being torn apart by an angry mob.
With a heavy sigh, Danvers pushed those memories out of the forefront of his mind. Concentrate on the task at hand, he told himself. Send your report to Atlanta. The archbishop and his staff will be delighted to hear the good news. They can trumpet this tale as proof of how scientists try to undermine our faith in God. I'll probably be promoted higher up the hierarchy.
He finished dictating his report, then read it carefully as it scrolled on the wall screen in his quarters aboard the Himawari, adding a line here, changing an emphasis there, polishing his prose until it was fit to be seen by the archbishop. Yamagata must be pleased, he realized as he edited his words. He can resume his construction work, or whatever it is the engineers are supposed to be doing down on the planet's surface.
Nanomachines, he remembered. They want to begin using nanomachines on Mercury. What can I do to prevent that? If I could stop them, this mission to Mercury would become a double triumph for me.
When he was finally satisfied with his report, Danvers transmitted it to Earth. As an afterthought he sent courtesy copies to the two young ministers that Atlanta had sent to assist him. They'll be heading back to Earth now, he thought. He got to his feet and rubbed his tired eyes. In all probability I'll be heading back to Earth myself soon. He smiled at the prospects of a promotion and a better assignment as a reward for his work here. His smile turned wry. I hardly had to lift a finger, he thought. The scientists did all the work for me.
Then his thoughts returned to Molina. Poor Victor. He must be beside himself with grief. And anger, too, I suppose. Knowing Victor, the anger must be there. Perhaps suppressed right now, he's feeling so low. But sooner or later the anger will come out.
Bishop Danvers knew what he had to do. Squaring his shoulders, he left his quarters and marched down the ship's passageway toward the compartment that housed Victor Molina and his wife.
Molina was close to tears, Lara realized. He had burst into their compartment like a drunken man, staggering, wild-eyed. He frightened her, those first few moments.
Then he blubbered, "They think I falsified it! They think I'm a cheat, a liar!" And he nearly collapsed into her arms.
More than an hour had passed. Lara still held her husband in her arms as they sat on the couch. He was still shuddering, his face buried in her breast, his arms wrapped around her, mumbling incoherently. Lara patted his disheveled hair soothingly. Haltingly, little by little, he had told her what had transpired at the
meeting with McFergusen and the other scientists. She had murmured consoling words, but she knew that nothing she could say would help her husband. He had been accused of cheating, and even if he eventually proved he hadn't, the stigma would remain with him all his life.
"I'm ruined," he whimpered. "Destroyed."
"No, it's not that bad," she cooed.
"Yes it is."
"It will pass," she said, trying to ease his pain.
Abruptly, he pushed away from her. "You don't understand! You just don't understand!" His eyes were red, his hair wild and matted with perspiration. "I'm done! Finished! They've destroyed me. It would've been kinder if they'd blown my brains out."
