Saturn

by Ben Bova

  "I agree," Wunderly said. "You should wait a day or two, give everything a chance to settle down."

  "Won't hurt to wait a little," Berkowitz agreed. "But not more than a day or two. We want to go while people are still focused on Saturn and the rings."

  Gaeta looked at Fritz, who was intently studying the three-dimensional image hanging before them.

  "What do you think, Fritz?"

  "It would be dangerous, but I think within our capabilities. The suit should hold up sufficiently. And it would give us spectacular foot-age."

  Wunderly said, "I don't think—"

  "Wouldn't it be a help to you," Gaeta interrupted her, "to get realtime footage of the capture from inside the ring itself?"

  "I can do that with a few remotes," she said. "You don't have to risk your neck for the sake of science."

  "Still..."

  "No, Manny," said Cardenas, quite firmly. "You do what Nadia tells you. Nobody wants to see you get killed over this. Waiting a day or two won't make the stunt any less spectacular."

  Fritz agreed with a glum, "I suppose they are right."

  "You really want to wait?" Gaeta asked his chief technician.

  "No sense destroying the suit."

  Gaeta grinned at him, then shrugged. Looking squarely at Cardenas, he said, "Okay, we'll wait until the next day."

  "Will that be time enough for the ring to settle down?" Cardenas asked.

  Wunderly said, "Two days would be safer."

  "One day would be better," said Berkowitz, "publicity-wise."

  "The next day," Gaeta said, thinking, I can't let Kris run this stunt. I can't let her worries control my work.

  "The next day, then," Cardenas agreed reluctantly. She got up from her chair. "I'm going to the big rally. Anybody else want to see the fireworks?"

  "I've got too much work to do," said Wunderly.

  Gaeta stayed in his seat as he said gently, "Nadia, if you're finished with the pointer, would you mind turning it off?"

  Only after she did so did Gaeta get up and head for the door with Cardenas.

  Gaeta walked with Cardenas up the village street.

  "Are you sure you're not taking too big a chance by going the day after the new moon's captured?" she asked.

  He saw the concern on her face. "Kris, I don't take risks I can't handle."

  "That's how you broke your nose."

  "The ice sled hit a rock and I banged my beak on the helmet faceplate," he said, with a grin. "Could've happened in my bathroom, for God's sake."

  "Your bathroom is on Mars?"

  His grin faded. "You know what I mean."

  "And you know what I mean," she replied, utterly serious.

  "I'll be okay, Kris. I'll be fine. Fritz won't let me take chances with the suit."

  She fell silent, while Gaeta thought, Jezoo, I can't be thinking about her and her fears while I'm out there. I've gotta concentrate on getting the job done, not worry about what she's thinking. Surest way to get yourself killed is to let your attention drift away from the job at hand.

  They walked up the gently rising street in silence toward the apartment building where both their quarters were. Through the spaces between the buildings on their left, Gaeta could see a crowd already starting to gather by the lakeside, where the big election-eve rally was scheduled to take place. Eberly expects me there, he remembered.

  "Maybe we oughtta get a quick bite in the cafeteria," he said to Cardenas, "before we go to the rally."

  "I've got some snacks in the freezer. You can nuke them while I change."

  Gaeta nodded and smiled. Women have to change their clothes for every occasion. Then he thought about his own pullover shirt and form-fitting denims. I'm gonna be on the platform with Eberly, he realized. What the hell, this is good enough. I'm a stunt guy, not a vid star.

  Raoul Tavalera was sitting on the doorstep of their apartment building, head hanging low, looking more morose than usual. He rose slowly to his feet as he saw Cardenas and Gaeta coming up the walk toward him. Gaeta thought he saw the younger man wince with pain.

  "Raoul," Cardenas said, surprised. "What are you doing here?"

  "They closed down the lab," he said.

  "What?"

  "About an hour ago. Four big goons from Security came in with their damned batons and told me to shut down everything. Then they locked everything up. Two of 'em are still there, guarding the door."

  Cardenas felt a flush of rage race through her. "Closed the lab! Why? Under whose authority?"

  Rubbing his side, Tavalera answered, "I asked but they didn't answer. Just whacked me in the ribs and muscled me out into the hall. Big guys. Four of 'em."

  Pushing through the building's front door, Cardenas whipped out her handheld as she started up the stairs. "Professor Wilmot," she snapped at the phone.

  Gaeta and Tavalera followed her up the stairs and into the sitting room of her apartment. Tavalera looked gloomy. Gaeta thought idly that he could change his clothes in Kris's bedroom; he had almost as much of his wardrobe in her closet as he had in his own.

  Cardenas projected Wilmot's gray-haired face against the far wall of the sitting room.

  "Professor," she said, without a greeting, "someone from Security has shut down my laboratory."

  Wilmot looked startled. "They have?"

  "I want to know why, and why this was done without consulting me first."

  Brushing his moustache with one finger, Wilmot looked pained, embarrassed. "Um, I suggest you ask the deputy director about that."

  "The deputy director?"

  "Dr. Eberly."

  "Since when does he have the authority to shut down my laboratory?"

  "You'll have to ask him, I'm afraid. Actually, I know nothing about it. Nothing at all."

  "But you can tell him to let me reopen my lab!" Cardenas fairly shouted. "You can tell him to call off his dogs."

  His face slowly turning red, Wilmot said, "I really think you should talk to him directly."

  "But-"

  "It's his show. There's nothing I can do about it."

  Wilmot's image abruptly winked out. Cardenas stared at the empty air, openmouthed. "He hung up on me!"

  Gaeta said, "I guess you'll have to call Eberly."

  Fuming, Cardenas told the phone to contact Eberly. Ruth Morgenthau's image appeared, instead.

  "Dr. Eberly is busy preparing his statement for this evening's rally," she said smoothly. "Is there something I can help you with?"

  "You can call off the security officers posted at my laboratory and let me get back to my work," Cardenas barked. "Right now. This minute."

  "I'm afraid that can't be done," Morgenthau said, completely unflustered. "We have a dangerous situation on our hands. There's a fugitive loose, and we have reason to believe she might try to break into your laboratory and release nanobugs that could be very dangerous to everyone in the habitat."

  "A fugitive? You mean Holly?"

  "She's psychotic. We have reason to believe she murdered a man. We know she attacked Colonel Kananga."

  "Holly? She attacked somebody?"

  Gaeta said, "Holly's never been violent before. What the hell's going on?"

  Morgenthau's face took on a sad expression. "Apparently Miss Lane has stopped taking her medication, for some reason. She is decidedly unbalanced. I can send you her dossier, if you want proof of her condition."

  "Do that," Cardenas snapped.

  "I will."

  "But I don't see what this has to do with my lab," Cardenas said.

  Morgenthau sighed like a teacher trying to enlighten a backward child. "We know that she's been friendly with you, Dr. Cardenas. We can't take the chance that she might get into your lab and release dangerous nanobugs. That would be—"

  "There aren't any dangerous nanobugs in my lab!" Cardenas exploded. "And even if there were, all you have to do is expose them to ultraviolet light and they'd be deactivated."

  "I know that's how it seems to you," said Morgenthau
patiently. "But to the rest of us nanomaehines are a dangerous threat that could wipe out everyone in this habitat. Naturally, we must be extremely careful in dealing with them."

  Seething, Cardenas started to say, "But don't you understand that—"

  "I'm sorry," Morgenthau said sternly. "The issue is decided. Your laboratory will remain closed until Holly Lane is taken into custody."

  SATURN ARRIVAL Minus 3 Days, 6 Hours, 17 Minutes

  Gaeta could see that Cardenas was livid, furious. Even Tavalera, who usually seemed passively glum, was glaring at the empty space where Morgenthau's image had been.

  "Holly's not a nutcase," Tavalera muttered.

  "I don't think so either," said Cardenas.

  "But Morgenthau does," Gaeta pointed out. "And so does Eberly and the rest of the top brass, I guess."

  Cardenas shook her head angrily. "And Wilmot won't do a damned thing about it."

  Gaeta said, "This is serious, Kris. They're saying Holly might've killed somebody."

  "Who?" asked Tavalera.

  Striding toward the kitchen, Cardenas said, "The only person who's died recently was Diego Romero. Drowned."

  "And they're sayin' Holly did it?" Tavalera said.

  Cardenas didn't answer. She went behind the kitchen counter and started yanking packages from the freezer.

  Gaeta noticed the message light blinking on her desktop unit. "You got incoming, Kris."

  "Take it for me, will you?"

  It was Holly's dossier. The three of them studied it, displayed against the sitting room wall.

  "She's bipolar; manic-depressive," Gaeta said.

  "But that doesn't mean she'd become violent," said Cardenas.

  Tavalera made a sour face. "I don't believe it. She's not like that."

  Cardenas looked at him for a long moment, then said, "Neither do I."

  "Could somebody have faked her dossier?" Gaeta asked. "Framed her?"

  "There's one way to find out," said Cardenas. She commanded the phone to locate Holly's dossier in the files of the New Morality headquarters in Atlanta.

  "This is gonna take an hour or more," said Gaeta.

  "Let's grab a bite to eat while we wait," Cardenas suggested.

  "Are we going to the rally?" Gaeta asked.

  "After we have Holly's Earthside dossier in our hands," Cardenas replied.

  Holly was waiting for the evening news report while eating a dinner composed of fresh fruits taken from the orchard and a package of cookies from the underground warehouse that cached the specialty foods brought from Earth.

  She sat cross-legged on the floor of the utility tunnel that ran beneath the orchard. She planned to go later out to the endcap and sleep in the open, beneath the trees, safely hidden by the flowering bushes that grew in profusion there. Don Diego would've loved the area, she thought, its unorganized roughness, a little bit of wilderness in all this planned-out ecology.

  The phone screen on the wall opposite her showed an educational vid beamed from Earth: something about dinosaurs and the comet-borne microbes that wiped them out. Holly thought that it was safe enough to watch the program; no one could trace a passive use of the phone. It was only if she made an outgoing call that they could track her location.

  The ed program ended as she munched on the cookies. A three-note chime announced the evening news.

  Holly's eyes went wide when the newscaster announced that she was not only a hunted fugitive, but a dangerously unbalanced mental case, wanted in connection with the drowning of Don Diego, who might try to unleash a nanoplague on the habitat.

  "You bastards!" Holly shouted, jumping to her feet.

  Then the newscast showed a prerecorded interview with Malcolm Eberly, who was identified as the deputy director of the habitat. With convincing sorrow, Eberly said:

  "Yes, Miss Lane worked in the Human Resources Department when I served as its chief. She seemed perfectly normal then, but apparently once she goes off her medication she becomes... well, violent."

  "You're flaming right I'm violent!" Holly screeched. "Wait till I get my hands on your lying face!"

  Dressed in a sky-blue blouse and slacks, Cardenas came back into the sitting room where Gaeta and Tavalera were talking together.

  "Has her dossier come in from Atlanta yet?" Cardenas asked.

  Gaeta shook his head. "Your message is probably just reaching them Earthside by now. We're a long way from home, Kris."

  Tavalera got to his feet. "The rally's due to start in half an hour."

  "Sit down, Raoul," said Cardenas. "I want to see Holly's dossier before we go."

  "We'll miss-"

  "The candidates won't be making their final statements for another hour, at least," Gaeta said. "All we'll miss is a lot of noise: the marching bands and all that crap."

  Sitting back on the sofa, Tavalera said, "I'm worried about Holly. Those goons from Security can be rough."

  "Where could she be?" Cardenas wondered aloud, going to the sofa and sitting beside Tavalera.

  Gaeta, in the armchair across the coffee table from the sofa, suddenly lit up. "I bet I know."

  "Where?"

  "The tunnels. She liked to explore the tunnels that run under the ground."

  "Tunnels?"

  "There must be a hundred kilometers of 'em. More. They'd never be able to find her down there. And she knows every centimeter of them; has it all memorized."

  "Then how could we find her?" Cardenas asked.

  "I'll look for her," said Tavalera, getting up again.

  Gaeta reached out and grasped his wrist. "Raoul, there's just too much of the tunnels to search. You'll never find her. Especially if she doesn't want to get found."

  Tavalera pulled free of his grip. "It beats sitting around here doin' nothing," he said.

  "If you do find her," Cardenas said, "bring her here. We'll keep her safe until this all gets sorted out."

  "Yeah. Okay."

  With nothing else to do after Tavalera left, Cardenas and Gaeta watched the news broadcast that showed the crowd building up at the rally site beside the lake. The speaker's platform was empty, but several small bands paraded through the gathering throng, blasting out marching tunes and working up the crowd. They noted that there were plenty of empty chairs spread out on the grass.

  "We won't have any trouble getting seats," Cardenas murmured.

  Gaeta got up from the armchair to sit beside Cardenas, on the sofa. They watched the video, close enough to touch. Despite everything else, Cardenas thought that within a week, two at most, Gaeta would be packing up and preparing to leave the habitat. His torch ship might be already on the way here, she said to herself. Should I go with him? Would he want me to?

  The phone chimed. Cardenas displayed the message. It was the dossier of Susan Lane, from the files of the New Morality headquarters in Atlanta.

  "They got the wrong Lane," Gaeta said.

  But then the file photo of Holly came up, unmistakable.

  "She must've changed her name," murmured Cardenas.

  "Is that a sign of instability?"

  They read the dossier, every word and statistic.

  "No mention of mental or emotional problems," Gaeta said.

  "Or of medications."

  "The sonsofbitches have faked her dossier. They're framing her."

  Cardenas recorded the entire file into her handheld. Then she popped to her feet.

  "Let's go to the rally and confront Eberly with this," she said.

  "Right," said Gaeta.

  But when he slid the front door open, four burly men and women in the dead black tunics of the security force were standing in the hallway, slim black batons hooked into their belts.

  "Colonel Kananga wants to talk to you," said one of the women, who seemed to be their leader. "After the rally. He asks that you stay here until he can get to you."

  Wordlessly, Cardenas slid the door shut and went back to the sofa.

  "They must know what we've done," Gaeta said.

&n
bsp; "They've bugged this apartment," said Cardenas, dropping back onto the sofa. "They can hear every word we say. And they know about Holly's dossier from Atlanta."

  Feeling dazed, helpless, Gaeta said, "Then they know that Tavalera's gone to the tunnels to find her."

  THE FINAL RALLY

  It was hard to talk with so many people pressing around them. Eberly and Morgenthau were walking side by side along the path that led down to the lakeside rally site. Vyborg was slightly behind them, Kananga and a pair of his biggest men up ahead, clearing a path through the thick crowd of people who lined the path, shouting and smiling and reaching for Eberly to shake his hand, touch him, get a smile from him.

  He wanted to shake their hands, smile at them, bask in the glow of their adulation. But instead he virtually ignored them as he talked with Morgenthau.

  "She's in the tunnels?" he shouted over the crowd's meaningless hubbub.

  Morgenthau nodded, puffing hard despite the fact that the press of the crowd slowed their pace to little more than a snail's pace.

  "Cardenas's assistant has entered the tunnels to search for her," she yelled into Eberly's ear.

  "I hope he has better success than Kananga's oafs."

  "What?"

  "Nothing," he said louder. "Never mind."

  "We've detained Cardenas and the stunt man. They have Holly's original dossier."

  A shock of alarm hit Eberly. "How did they get it?"

  "From Atlanta. The New Morality has dossiers on everyone aboard the habitat, apparently."

  Wringing his hands in frustration, Eberly said, "I should have doctored those files, too."

  "Too late for that."

  "This is getting out of hand. We can't keep Gaeta and Cardenas locked up. I've been pushing Gaeta's stunt as a campaign issue."

  "Vyborg thought it best to keep them quiet until after the election tomorrow."

  Eberly glanced over his shoulder. Vyborg. That sour little troll has been the cause of all this trouble, he told himself. Once I'm firmly in power, I'll get rid of him. But then he thought, The little snake knows too much about me. The only way to be rid of him is to silence him permanently.

  A brass band came blaring up to him, surrounded his little group and escorted them to the speaker's platform. They were amateur musicians, making up in enthusiasm what they lacked in talent. They blew so loudly that Eberly couldn't think.