by Hogan, James
something they'd already have told me if they wanted me to know?" He hooked his
thumbs in his belt and stood back. "Anyhow, we've almost got everyone aboard
now. Soon they'll all be talking, and then the questions will start getting
asked. I'm not much of a clairvoyant meself, you understand, but I've a sneaky
feeling it won't be much longer before we get the answers too."
"Wow! Two hydrogen bombs every second? You're really not joking?" Thelma stared
wide-eyed across the table at the young NASO captain smartly attired in his
flight-officer's uniform. Around them, with only two days to go before the
Orion's departure, the atmosphere in the crowded bar on the Recreation Deck of
Globe IV was getting quite partylike.
Larry Campbell, proud of his recent promotion to the staff of General Vantz,
commander of the Orion, sipped his gin and tonic and grinned reassuringly.
"Well, they're really only small ones, and completely under control. There's
nothing to be concerned about. We'll take good care of you."
"But it sounds so scary. I mean, how can anybody understand how to control
something like that? You must be very clever. What sign were you born under?"
Beneath the table, Thelma had pushed Campbell's briefcase back along the wall
and within reach of the fingertips of one arm, which was draped casually over
the chair next to her. She shifted slightly and lifted her glass to taste her
martini while surreptitiously nudging the briefcase under the back of the booth
behind her.
Campbell frowned at his glass for a second, then sighed and smiled
condescendingly. "Well, let's put it this way—my training in understanding the
physics of thermonuclear processes doesn't have anything to do with when I was
born, I'm afraid. You don't get these—" he gestured at the captain's tracks on
his epaulets "—for knowing about birth-signs, you know."
"You don't?" Thelma said wonderingly. "But you have to know which way to steer
the ship. How can you do that without knowing all about stars and planets?" At
the booth behind, Drew West finished his drink, got up, and sauntered out of the
bar, carrying his jacket loosely over his arm to conceal the briefcase he was
holding.
Campbell bit his lip awkwardly. "Look, I, er . . . I don't want to sound like a
schoolteacher or anything, but astrology and astronomy aren't really the same
thing."
"No, of course they're not—everyone knows that," Thelma agreed brightly.
"Astronomy is restricted to what you can see through telescopes, but astrology
covers a lot more because it's revealed directly to the mind, right? I read all
about it in Thinking Woman's Monthly Digest."
"Er, not quite ... If you want, I'll tell you what the differences really are.
But I should warn you, you may find you have to change some ideas you might have
grown pretty fond of."
"Oh, would you, Larry! Just imagine—a real starship officer taking all this
trouble just for me! My sister will be so mad when I tell her."
In the men's room outside the bar, Drew West had picked the lock of the
briefcase and begun selecting interesting papers which he passed over the
partition for Joe Fellburg to photograph in the next cubicle. Five minutes
later, when Fellburg entered the bar carrying Campbell's briefcase inside a
false-bottomed leather portmanteau, the booth at which West had been sitting was
taken. So Fellburg edged his way through the throng and stopped partway to the
bar to count change from his pocket for the cigarette machine, in the process
putting down the portmanteau next to Thelma's seat. The briefcase stayed behind
as Fellburg moved on, but the movement of his foot to slide it behind the chair
toward Thelma's waiting hand was so smooth that Campbell, on the far side of the
table, didn't even register anyone's being nearby as he extolled the wonders of
the heavens and expounded on their mysteries.
Clarissa Eidstadt rapped the end of her pen sharply on the top of Herman
Thoring's desk in the administrative section of Globe I to emphasize her point.
"Look, mister, I've got my job to do too. I'm the team's publicity manager,
okay? That means I need to get information to the public. How am I supposed to
get information out without proper communications? So do something about it."
Thoring held up his hands protectively. "Okay, Clarissa, I hear what you're
telling me, and I'll do what I can. But you have to understand I've got a lot of
other responsibilities and obligations to think about. This mission is important
to all kinds of other people too." Thoring looked like a person born to carry
responsibilities and bear obligations. The tanned dome of his head reflected the
light inside a semicircle of black, frizzy hair, and his eyes looked like
poached eggs behind thick, heavy-rimmed spectacles wedged above his fleshy nose.
He was in shirt-sleeves with cuffs rolled back, vest unbuttoned, and tie-knot
slipped a couple of inches below his opened collar.
Clarissa tossed up a hand in a curt gesture of finality. "Well, if you don't
have the authority to change anything, I'm wasting my time. I thought you were
in charge around here. Who do I talk to?"
As it was supposed to, the remark hit a sensitive spot. Thoring's knuckles
whitened and a vein stood out on his temple. "You're already in the right
office," he managed indignantly. "I'm the Senior Program Director from Global
Communications Networking and have full responsibility for media liaison. It's a
very important position, and I've told you I'll do everything I can."
"Yeah? Phooey. Important? Who says so? What's 'media liaison' anyway? I wanna
talk to the captain."
"What captain?"
"Vent? Vant? . . . whatever. What's the driver called?"
"You mean General Vantz?" Thoring looked appalled.
"That's him. Where do I go?"
Thoring shook his head and moaned despairingly. "Look, Clarissa, believe me—you
can't go raising something like this with General Vantz. He wouldn't know
anything about it anyway. This would come under the mission's Communications
Director, and I report directly to him. Okay?"
"Then I wanna talk to the Communications Director."
Thoring raised a hand to his brow, closed his eyes and fiddled with the bridge
of his spectacles for a few seconds, then shook his head again and looked back
at Clarissa. Before he could say anything, one of the women from the secretarial
pool in the outer office called, "I'm through to New York, Mr. Thoring. They're
sorry, but Hepperstein is in conference at the moment. Can he call you
tomorrow?"
Thoring sighed, stood, and walked round the desk to the open doorway. "No, it
can't wait until tomorrow," he said, sounding agitated. "He has to get back to
me today. Make sure they get a message to him, and that he knows it's from me
personally."
"Okay."
"Who are you trying to kid?" Clarissa asked as Thoring came back to his desk and
sat down. At the same time she allowed a hint of doubt into her voice, and
marshaled an expression that was a shade more respectful. "I bet you don't even
know who the Communications Director is. Why would your job in
volve dealing with
someone like that?"
Thoring lifted his chin and allowed himself a quick smirk of satisfaction.
"Well, you'd be surprised, lady. For your information, my level of
responsibility on this mission requires a working familiarity with all kinds of
confidential material that you don't know about. That's why you have to trust me
when I say I'll do as much to help your interests as I can. But that's all I can
say. Just accept for now that I have a lot more to worry about than you think."
Clarissa's belligerence evaporated. She leaned forward, glanced furtively across
at the open doorway, and hissed in a conspiratorial whisper. "What?"
Thoring's voice lowered itself instinctively. "Come on, Clarissa—you know better
than that," he muttered, tapping the side of his nose.
"But I wanna know," Clarissa insisted, her eyes wide with excitement. "Is it
gonna be a group-sex experiment in space? Or maybe we're going into another
dimension. You can tell me. Do I look like somebody who'd go spreading things
around—especially something said in confidence by a Media Liaison Director."
Thoring frowned, bunched his lips perplexedly for a second, and then whispered,
"I can't do that ... but if I told you it's big, would you stay off my back and
let me get on with my job?"
"But of course. I wouldn't wanna interfere with something that might endanger
the national interests or something."
"Well, you're pretty close to the mark," Thoring said, nodding somberly. "That's
just what it is. You could help us a lot by backing off a little."
"How big is it?" Clarissa asked, covering the side of her face with a hand and
murmuring out of the corner other mouth. "Have they found cosmic energy pyramids
on Mars? Are we gonna fight the KGB for them?"
"Nothing like that. But I'll tell you this—the Mission Director is Daniel
Leaherney, deputy head of the U.S. National Security Council. His
second-in-command will be Charles Giraud, who's connected with the French
government. They and their senior staff are on board now, shuttled up yesterday
without any publicity. That should tell you enough."
"Never heard of them, but they sound important," Clarissa said. "This is
exciting. What else?"
Thoring sat back in his chair suddenly and shook his head. "That's more than I
should have mentioned. I can't say any more, Clarissa . . . but will you stay
outta my hair from now on, please?"
"I never realized . . . You must have a lot on your mind."
"That's what I'm trying to tell you."
"Okay, I get it. Don't worry—the secret is safe. You can count on me. You know,
I always wanted to be an espionage agent with the CIA or something. I figure I'd
be good at it. Do you, er . . . do you have people like that working for you?"
Clarissa looked at Thoring hopefully.
"Uh? Oh no, I'm afraid not."
"Too bad. Oh well, maybe if you want a secret message taken to the
Communications Director, or something like that, you could let me know."
"What? Oh yes, sure. If anything like that comes up, I'll give you a call."
"Okay, well, I guess I'd better let you get on." Clarissa got up and crept
furtively over to the door. She opened it a fraction, peered out, and then
looked back over her shoulder at Thoring. "I'm sorry I bothered you over
something so trivial."
"Oh, think nothing of it. We get it all the time ... but we have to keep up our
cover, you understand."
"That's what I thought." Clarissa nodded a final, solemn reassurance, made an O
in the air with her thumb and forefinger, and disappeared. Thoring stared
disbelievingly at the door for a long time after she had gone. Then he blinked
himself back to reality, shook his head, and returned his attention to the
papers on his desk.
"The figures for on-board fuel-pellet manufacturing capacity, emergency reserves
of chemical propellants, and the range corrections factored into the radar
calibration procedures all point to a distance much greater than that of Mars,"
Theuna said to the rest of the team, who were holding a cramped afterdinner
conference in the cabin that Zam-bendorf shared with Abaquaan, West, and
Fellburg. She gestured at the photo prints lying among other papers on the bunk
beside her. "And the flight-profile from Campbell's duty roster gives a voyage
of something nearer three months than fifty days."
"I still think the Asteroids is a possibility," Drew West said, lounging on one
of the upper bunks. "There's been a lot of talk in recent years about our
vulnerability in strategic minerals—in fact, right back to the last century.
There's no end of just about everything out there."
Silence reigned for a few seconds. Joe Fellburg made a face. "Too many things
don't fit," he said. "Why all the secrecy? Why the military?"
"Protecting our eternal interests," Abaquaan answered, sitting on the floor with
his back to the door.
"Who from?"
"Well, it could only be the Soviets," West said.
"Out at the Asteroids?" Clarissa looked inquiringly at Theuna and Fellburg. "Do
they have anything that could match the Orion at that range?"
Fellburg shook his head. "Not yet. They've been concentrating on near-Earth
applications. The Japanese are more interested in Venus and Mercury."
"The Soviets did develop a series of fusion drives as part of their Mars-base
program," Theuna said. "But if they'd gone a long way in scaling them up to
anything like the Orion, we'd know about it."
Clarissa nodded as if that confirmed what she already thought. "And besides,
Leaherney and Giraud don't fit into that either," she said. Leaherney used to be
chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Economic Affairs and is a onetime
U.S. ambassador in Brussels; Giraud was a member of the French cabinet. You
wouldn't pick guys like that to head up a prospecting expedition."
The cabin fell quiet again for a while. Everybody looked at everybody else.
There were no new suggestions. At last Zambendorf stood up, stepped over
Abaquaan's legs to get to the coffee pot by the washbasin, and poured himself a
fresh cup. He stirred in a spoon of sugar and turned to face the others again.
"Then it has to be as I've been saying," he told them. "No other hypothesis
explains all of the facts nearly as well. A low-gravity, low-temperature, icy
environment ... It has to be a moon of the outer planets."
"With not only an atmosphere, but a high-pressure one at that," Thelma agreed,
nodding.
Fellburg rubbed his nose between thumb and forefinger for a few seconds, and at
last nodded slowly. "I can't fault it ... And you know something?—the European
probe that arrived there two years ago and sent down those surface landers that
were all supposed to have failed soon after they reached the surface—that story
has always sounded strange to me too."
Abaquaan looked up and turned his head from side to side. "So what are we
saying, then—it has to be Titan? We're agreed?"
"It appears extremely probable at least," Zambendorf said. "But the more
interesting question, by far, is why."
Why would the Western powers equip an elaborate mis
sion, heavy with scientists
from every discipline and experts from many fields, to such a destination,
provide it with military protection, and go to great pains to conceal its true
purpose from—as in all probability it had to be —the Soviets? Why would they
place such a mission in the charge of senior political figures experienced in
international negotiation and diplomacy? And why—perhaps most significant of
all—were there linguists and so many psychologists among the professionals being
taken along, specialists at understanding and communicating with thinking
intelligences? In short, just what had the landers from the European probe found
under the murky, impenetrable cloud canopy of Titan, Saturn's mysterious moon,
equal in size to the planet Mercury?
And, of particular interest to the people gathered in Zambendorf's cabin, why
was it considered highly desirable for someone like Zambendorf to be there?
10
IN THE HEART OF THE ORION'S COMMAND GLOBE OVERLOOKING the Central Control
Deck—the ship's control and operational nerve center—Don Connel, the senior
reporter on the GCN news team assigned to accompany the mission, watched on his
monitor the view being transmitted live into Earth's communications net from
camera 1. The camera panned slowly across the activity at the crew stations, the
colors and formats of the data displays changing and flashing to report
condition changes and status updates, and the computers silently marching
regiments of bits through their registers, and then came to rest on the image of
Earth being presented on the main display screen above the floor. Connel nodded
to acknowledge his "ready" cue from the director on the far side of the raised
tier of consoles from which General Vantz and a trio of senior officers were
monitoring the final-phase countdown operations, and turned to face camera 2. A
moment later its light came on to indicate that he was on the air again.
"Well, you've just been looking at the view of Earth that we're getting here on
the Orion, and seeing what you look like from ten thousand miles up, right at
this moment," he resumed. "You know, even I have to admit it's a real problem
finding the right words to tell you folks just what it feels like to be up here
at a moment like this. Personally I'm still having trouble convincing myself
