Saturn

by Ben Bova

  Of course, he thought, none of them knows the real purpose of this mission. No one even guesses that it exists. And I must keep it that way. If anyone got the slightest hint of it, that would skew the experiment terribly. I'll have to be very careful in phrasing my report back to Atlanta. It wouldn't do to have some snoop in the communications department find out what's really going on here.

  He got up from his chair, surprised at how stiff he felt, and headed for his bedroom. I'll play it strictly by the book, he decided. The agreed-upon protocols will be followed at all times. That should offer enough resistance to Eberly to force his next move. I wonder what it will be?

  Eberly finally got rid of his admirers and made his way to his own quarters, flanked only by Morgenthau, Vyborg, and Kananga.

  Once inside his spartan apartment, he said excitedly, "They loved me! Did you see the way they reacted to me? I had them in the palm of my hand!"

  "It was brilliant," said Vyborg quickly.

  Morgenthau was less enthusiastic. "It was a good beginning, but only a beginning."

  "What do you mean?" Eberly asked, disappointment showing clearly on his face.

  Morgenthau sat heavily on the room's only couch. "It wasn't much of a crowd. Fewer than three hundred."

  Vyborg immediately agreed. "Less than three percent of the total population."

  "But they were with me," Eberly said. "I could feel it."

  Looking up at him, Morgenthau said, "Three percent might not be all that bad."

  "What about the other ninety-seven percent?" Kananga asked.

  She shrugged. "It's as Malcolm said in his speech. They're too lazy, too indifferent to care. If we can capture and hold an active minority, we can lead the majority around by its collective nose."

  "What will Wilmot's reaction be?" Vyborg asked.

  "We'll know soon enough," said Eberly.

  A crafty expression came over Morgenthau's fleshy face. "Suppose he simply ignores us?"

  "That's impossible," Vyborg snapped. "We've made a direct challenge to his authority."

  "But suppose he feels so secure in his authority that he simply ignores us?" Morgenthau insisted.

  Eberly said, "Then we will raise the stakes until it's impossible for him to ignore me." He smacked his fist into the open palm of his other hand.

  Kananga said nothing, but a wisp of a smile curled his lips slightly.

  Holly, Cardenas, and Manuel Gaeta were the last customers in the Bistro. The human hostess had gone home, leaving only the simple-minded robots to stand impassively by the kitchen door, waiting for the people to leave so they could clean the last remaining table and the floor around it.

  "...your basic problem is contamination?" Cardenas was asking the stuntman.

  Gaeta glanced at the dessert tray the hostess had left on their table: nothing but crumbs. They had finished the coffee long ago.

  "Contamination, right," Gaeta said, suppressing a yawn. "Wilmot and the geek boys are scared I'll hurt the bugs down there on the surface."

  "That's an important consideration," Holly said.

  "Yeah, right."

  Cardenas said, "I can solve your problem, I'm pretty sure."

  Gaeta's eyes widened. "How?"

  "I could program nanomachines to break down any residues of perspiration or whatever organic materials you leave on the outside of your suit. They'll clean it up for you, break down the organics into carbon dioxide and water vapor. No sweat."

  "Literally!" Holly accented the pun.

  Gaeta did not smile. "These nanomachines... they the type that're called gobblers?"

  "Some people call them that, yes," Cardenas replied, stiffly.

  "They can kill you, can't they?"

  Holly swiveled her attention from Gaeta's swarthy, wary face to Cardenas, who was suddenly tight-lipped.

  For a long moment Cardenas did not reply. At last she said, "Gobblers can be programmed to attack proteins, yes. Or any carbon-chain organics."

  "That's pretty risky, then, isn't it?" he asked.

  Holly saw that Cardenas was struggling to keep her voice calm. "Once you're sealed inside the suit, the nanobugs can be sprayed over its outer surface. We can calculate how long it would take them to destroy any organics on the suit. Double or triple that time, then we douse the whole assembly in soft UV. That will deactivate the nanobugs."

  "Deactivate?" Gaeta asked. "You mean, like, kill them?"

  "They're machines, Manny," she said. "They're not alive. You can't kill them."

  "But would they come back later and start chewing on organics again?"

  "No, we'll wash them all off. And once they're deactivated, they don't revive. It's like breaking a motor or a child's toy. The pieces don't come back together again spontaneously."

  Gaeta nodded. But Holly thought he didn't look convinced.

  THE MORNING AFTER

  "What did you think of his speech last night?"

  Ilya Timoshenko looked up from his console in Goddard's navigation and control pod. There was very little actual work for them to do; the habitat was sailing through the solar system on a course that Isaac Newton could have calculated to a fine accuracy. The fusion engines were purring along smoothly, miniature man-made suns converting hydrogen ions into helium and driving the habitat along on the energy released. Bored as usual with the utterly routine nature of his duty shift, Timoshenko had been daydreaming about the possibilities of designing a fusion engine that converted helium into carbon and oxygen. After all, that's what the stars do when they run low on hydrogen; they burn the helium they've accumulated. The carbon and oxygen from helium fusion would be valuable resources in themselves, he realized.

  But Farabi, the pipsqueak navigator, wants to get me involved in politics, Timoshenko thought sourly.

  "What speech?" he muttered. The two men were alone on the bridge. Captain Nicholson had decided that there should be two of them in the control center at all times, despite the fact that the computer actually ran everything. We humans are redundant here, Timoshenko often told himself. Yet the captain insisted, and her three underlings obeyed.

  "Eberly's speech," Farabi said. "Last night in the cafeteria. I thought I saw you there."

  "Not me," said Timoshenko. "You must have seen somebody else and thought it was me."

  "It was you. I saw you."

  Timoshenko glared at the man. Farabi claimed that he was an Arab from one of those desert lands that had once supplied the world with oil. He was small and wiry, his skin nut brown, his nose decidedly hooked. Timoshenko thought he was more likely a Jew from the ruins of Israel hiding from the real Arabs. Timoshenko himself was as Russian as can be, only slightly taller than Farabi, but thick-bodied, muscular, with a heavy thatch of unruly auburn hair.

  It was politics that had gotten him exiled to this newfangled Siberia. His career in engineering, his coming marriage, his family ties that went all the way back to Heroes of the Soviet Union—all wiped out because he couldn't keep his mouth shut once he started drinking. So they set him up with this woman who accused him of rape and now he was on his way to Saturn, courtesy of the government and those pissant psalm-singers who ran it.

  "I wasn't there," he insisted, even though it was a lie. "I have no interest in politics."

  Farabi gave him a disbelieving look. "Have it your own way, then," he said softly.

  Timoshenko focused his attention on the glowing icons spread across the top of his console. Why can't people behave as predictably as machines? he asked himself. Why can't people just do their jobs and leave me alone?

  "I just thought," said Farabi, sitting at the next console, "that Eberly raised some good points. We should get involved in the management of the habitat. After all, it's our home, isn't it?"

  Wiping sweat from his forehead, Timoshenko bit back the reply that sprang to his lips. He wanted to say, This isn't a home, it's a prison. No matter how comfortable it is, it's a prison and I'm going to be locked inside it for the rest of my life, while you'll b
e free to go back to Earth after we reach Saturn.

  Instead, he said only, "I have no interest in politics."

  "Maybe you should become interested."

  "Politicians." He spat the word. "They're all alike. They want to be the boss and make you jump to their tune. I want nothing to do with them."

  Nadia Wunderly was one of the few people in the habitat who had followed Eberly's suggestion and changed her name. Her parents, staid New Hampshire dairy farmers, had christened her Jane, but she had always thought the name was too ordinary to suit the adventure in her soul. All through her school years she had been plagued with the "Plain Jane" tag; she hated it, even though she had to admit when she looked into a mirror that she was indeed rather plain: her figure tended toward the rotund unless she exercised mercilessly and dieted like a penitent monk; her face was also round, although she thought her big gray eyes were attractive. Owl eyes, she thought, remembering that the goddess Athena was owl-eyed, too.

  Wunderly was always trying new hairdos; nothing seemed to help her straight, mouse-brown hair. When she came aboard the habitat as part of the science team, she immediately dyed her hair brick red, gave herself the goal of losing ten kilos by the time they reached Saturn, and changed her name to the smoky, exotic-sounding Nadia.

  As she watched the morning news vid replay of Eberly's speech, she wondered what the man was driving at. We have a government, don't we? she asked herself while spooning up her breakfast cereal and soy milk. And we all know why we're going to Saturn: to study the planet and its moons and life forms and most of all its rings. Those glorious, beautiful rings. This is a science mission. Doesn't Eberly understand that?

  She dressed in the approved tunic and slacks and took one of the electrobikes standing in the racks at the entrance of her apartment building. Running late, she realized, so she let the bike's quiet little electric motor speed her along the winding path to the science offices up at the top of the hill. I'll pedal home, she told herself, all the way. That'll recharge the battery and burn off some calories.

  Nadia said hello to everyone she passed as she hurried through the corridors to her workspace, which was nothing more than a cubicle barely large enough to house a desk, chair, and some filing shelves. She saw Dr. Urbain hurrying by; he passed too quickly for her to catch his eye. Later, she thought. After I've finished the proposal and it's ready to show to him.

  She started working on the proposal. Urbain demanded a fully documented plan of research from each scientist on the staff. All the others were avid to study Titan and the organisms living there. They were competing with one another like grad students trying to finagle a fellowship. Which was fine, as far as Nadia was concerned. She was interested in those blessed rings. And she had them all to herself. The rest of the staff were all slobbering over Titan, leaving the rings to her alone.

  I can't miss, Nadia thought. I'm the only one. I've got them all to myself.

  She pulled up the latest telescopic views of the rings and soon became completely engrossed in watching their mysterious, tantalizing dynamics. How can they weave those strands? she asked herself. What makes those spokes appear and disappear like that?

  Above all, why does Saturn have such a glorious set of rings, in the first place? They can't be very old, their particles will fall into the planet in a matter of a few million years. How come they're sitting out there for us to see? How come we're so lucky? How come Jupiter and the other gas giants have teeny little dark rings that you can hardly see, while Saturn has this gorgeous set hanging around it? What makes Saturn so special?

  Hours went by as she watched the rings in their convoluted, hypnotic ballet. She forgot about the other scientists competing for Urbain's favor. She forgot about the proposal she needed to finish. She forgot about Eberly and his speech and everything in her endless fascination with Saturn's glowing, beckoning rings.

  Oswaldo Yañez could think of nothing except Eberly's speech. He buttonholed other doctors in the infirmary, he stopped nurses on their rounds to ask their opinions, he chattered about the speech with each of the patients he saw that morning.

  As he tapped the chest of a construction mechanic who came in complaining of a strained back, Yañez spoke glowingly of Eberly's ideas.

  "The man is absolutely right," he insisted. "He's a genius. It takes real genius to cut through all the details and get to the heart of the situation."

  His patient, wincing slightly as he sat up on the edge of the examination table, replied, "Just gimme a shot, Doc, and let me get back to work."

  All through the morning Yañez prattled on in his animated, rapid Spanish-accented English to anyone and everyone who came within earshot. He was a round little man with a round, cheerful leprechaun's face that was very animated, especially when he was as excited about a subject as he was about Eberly's speech.

  Yañez was not a political exile, nor a rebel, nor a convicted criminal. He was an idealist. He had run afoul of the medical orthodoxy of Buenos Aires because he believed that their ban against therapeutic cloning was based on outmoded religious beliefs rather than the clear evidence of medical gain to be had by regenerating tissues damaged by disease or trauma. The medical board had given him his choice: he could go on the Saturn mission or he could remain in Buenos Aires and be stripped of his license to practice medicine. Yañez made up his mind immediately: a new, clean world was preferable to the slow death of the spirit that would inevitably destroy him if he remained. He asked only that his wife be allowed to accompany him. She was quite surprised when he broke the news to her.

  Now he was exhilarated by Eberly's bold words. "We should take charge of this habitat," he repeated all day long. "We should form our own government and build this new world the way it should be built. And Eberly is clearly the man to lead us."

  DEPARTURE Plus 284 Days

  Professor Wilmot leaned back in his desk chair, enjoying the familiar comfort of the padded leather upholstery. The holowindow to his left showed a three-dimensional view of the rocky coast where the River Bann empties into the cold and restless North Channel. It was like looking through a window in the old family estate. Strange, he thought, the only time I miss the old country is when I look at scenes like this. Distance lends enchantment, I suppose.

  The phone buzzed and announced, "Dr. Eberly to see you, sir." Wilmot sighed heavily and blanked the view of his ancestral homeland. Back to the business at hand, he told himself as he ordered the office computer to open the door from the anteroom.

  Malcolm Eberly stepped in, with one of his young assistants, a leggy, tawny-skinned young woman wearing a hip-length tunic of pale green that showed her slim legs to good advantage. No decorations of any kind, except her name badge. She's being an obedient little underling for him. Wilmot almost smiled. If you think you can distract me with her, my boy, you have another thing coming.

  Wilmot smiled genially and said, "Come in! Sit down. It was good of you to come on such a short notice."

  Eberly was in a sky-blue tunic and blue-gray slacks. The shoulders looked padded to Wilmot's critical eye.

  "When the chief administrator calls," Eberly said good-naturedly, "it's best to come at once."

  Nodding graciously, Wilmot said, "It's good to see you again, Miss Lane."

  She looked surprised for a moment, then smiled, pleased that the chief administrator remembered her name, forgetting that it was spelled out on the tag above her left breast.

  "I saw the speech you made last night," Wilmot said to Eberly. "Very impressive."

  Eberly clasped his hands together as if praying. "I'm pleased that you think so."

  "You realize, of course, that we will not be able to make any changes in our governing regulations until we establish ourselves in Saturn orbit."

  With a slight shake of his head, Eberly said, "I see no reason to delay."

  "Obviously," said Wilmot. "But the regulations are in force and we all agreed to follow them." Before Eberly could reply, Wilmot asked, "Tell me, why are y
ou in such a rush to change things? Are there problems that I'm not aware of?"

  Eberly pursed his lips and tapped his prayerful fingertips against them. Stalling for time to think, Wilmot reckoned.

  At last, Eberly answered, "The regulations are too stifling. They allow the people no flexibility. They were written by administrators and academics—"

  "Like myself," Wilmot interjected, with a good-natured smile.

  "I was going to say, administrators and academics who remained back on Earth; political theoreticians who've never been off the Earth. Nor ever plan to be."

  Wilmot edged forward in his chair and glanced at the young woman. "Miss Lane, do you feel that our existing protocols are stifling you?"

  Her eyes went wide, startled, then she looked at Eberly.

  "Miss Lane?" Wilmot repeated. "Are we stifling you?"

  "I've never been on Earth," Holly replied slowly, hesitantly. "At least, I don't remember my life there. As far as I can recall, I've spent my whole life in Selene. And now here in the habitat, of course. Living in Selene was..." she struggled briefly for a word, "well, easier, in some ways. I mean, if you ran into a problem you could always go to one of the governing boards and appeal. Like, for your monthly water allotment, or to increase the size of your quarters."

  "And we have no such boards of appeals here," Wilmot said softly.

  "No, we don't," Holly replied. "Everything's set in cement. There are the rules and nothing else. End of story."

  Wilmot brushed his fingertips against his moustache thoughtfully.

  "The real problem," Eberly burst out, "is that these regulations were written by people who live in a world that must be tightly controlled. They all share the same basic, underlying view that society must be hierarchical and controlled from the top."

  Wilmot felt pleased that the discussion was moving into his field of interest. "Aren't all societies controlled from the top? Even the so-called democracies are ruled by a small elite group; the only difference is that a democracy can shift its elite without bloodshed and give the general populace the illusion that they have made a telling change."