Tigrette was one by-product of such genetic engineering—to all appearances, she was a perfect example of her species, but would weigh only thirty kilograms even when full grown. Her disposition—also carefully engineered—was that of any affectionate, playful cat. Singh never tired of watching her stalking the little cleaning robots, which she obviously regarded as animals who must be investigated very cautiously, because their scent-patterns could not be found in her ancestral memories. For their part, the robots did not know what to make of her; sometimes, when she was sleeping, they mistook her for a rug and tried to vacuum-clean her, with hilarious results.
This opportunity did not often arise, because the minitiger usually slept in Toby’s bed. Freyda had objected to this for hygienic reasons, until she observed how much more time the minitiger spent grooming herself than Toby devoted to his brief contacts with soap and water. Any contamination would not be in the direction she feared.
Tigrette was slightly smaller than a full-grown domestic cat when she entered the household, and quickly took it over. Robert soon complained, only half seriously, that Toby no longer noticed when his father was away in space.
Perhaps it was Tigrette’s arrival that prompted another change. Freyda had always felt an attraction for the continent of her ancestors, and cherished a tattered copy of Alex Haley’s Roots that had been in her family for generations. “Besides,” she said, “there have never been tigers in Africa. It’s time there were.”
On the whole, they were happy in their new location, despite occasional reminders of its hideous past—such as when Toby, digging on the beach, uncovered the skeleton of a child, still clutching a doll. For many nights thereafter he woke up screaming, and not even Tigrette’s presence could comfort him.
By Toby’s tenth birthday—celebrated by the arrival of three real aunts and uncles and several dozen honorary ones—both Robert and Freyda realized that the first phase of their relationship was over. Its novelty, not to mention its passion, had long since worn off; they were becoming no more than good friends who took each other’s company for granted. Both of them had acquired other lovers, with a minimum of jealousy. Several times they had experimented with threesomes, and once with a foursome. Despite the best will on all sides, the results had always been comic rather than erotic.
The final break had nothing to do with any human relationships. Why, Robert Singh often wondered, did we give our hearts to friends whose life spans are so much shorter than our own?
Long ago the jungle tide would have obliterated the metal plate bearing the inscription
TIGRETTE
HERE LIE FOREVER BEAUTY, LOYALTY,
STRENGTH
Though it now seemed in another lifetime, Robert Singh would never forget how Toby’s boyhood had ended, as he held Tigrette in his arms while the light slowly faded from her loving eyes.
It was time to leave.
12
THE SANDS OF MARS
THOUGH HE HAD ALWAYS BEEN DETERMINED TO GO THERE eventually, Robert Singh left for Mars rather late in his life’s agenda: he was already fifty-five when, once again, Chance decided when and how.
Tourists from Mars were rare on the Moon, and, owing to the very effective quarantine established by its gravity, virtually unknown on the home planet. Many pretended that they didn’t really mind: everyone knew that Earth was noisy, smelly, polluted, and horribly overcrowded—almost three billion people! Not to mention dangerous, with its hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes…
Charmayne Jorgen, however, was looking wistfully Earthward in the Arri Tech observation lounge when Robert Singh first encountered her. The twenty-meter-wide dome, a masterpiece of engineering, was so transparent that there seemed to be nothing holding back the vacuum of space; some nervous visitors could endure the experience for only a few minutes.
During his busy student days, Robert Singh had scarcely ever been there, but he was now showing one of his shipmates around his old alma mater, and this was an obligatory stop. As they walked through the three sets of automatic doors, he commented:
“If the dome blows, the outer pair closes in one second. Then the third set operates after a fifteen-second delay, to give anyone inside time to reach safety.”
“Unless they’re sucked out. When was it last tested?”
“Let’s see—here’s the certification. It’s dated—ah—two months ago.”
“I don’t mean that; any dumb circuit can slam doors. Has there ever been a real test?”
“Like cracking the dome? Silly question. Do you know what it cost?”
At this point, the good-natured bantering ceased abruptly as the two visitors realized that they were not alone.
The silence went on and on. Finally Robert Singh’s companion said:
“If you haven’t lost your tongue, Bob, at least you might introduce us.”
He was still on excellent terms with Freyda, but they saw each other less and less often now that she had moved back to Arizona and Toby had won a Moscow Conservatory scholarship—to the delighted surprise of his parents, neither of whom had ever shown the slightest musical talent. So it seemed perfectly natural that when Charmayne Jorgen returned to Mars, Robert Singh followed just as quickly as it could be arranged. With his qualifications—and the still-lingering echoes of his modest fame, which he had no scruples exploiting when necessary—this was not difficult. Soon after his fifty-sixth birthday he landed at Port Lowell. He was a New Martian—and always would be, since he had been born off-world.
“I don’t mind them calling me a New Martian,” he told Charmayne, “as long as they smile when they say it.”
“They will, darling,” she answered. “With your Earth muscles, you’re a lot stronger than most people around here.”
That was true, but he did not know for how long. Unless he exercised more rigorously than he suspected he would, he would soon become Mars-adapted.
Which was not without its advantages. The Martians claimed that their world, not Venus, should have been called the planet of love. Earth’s one-gravity was ridiculous—if not dangerous. Weight-induced broken ribs, cramps, and interrupted blood circulation were merely some of the hazards that terrestrial lovers had to face. The Moon’s one-sixth gravity was a great improvement, but experts considered that it was not quite enough for good contact.
And as for the much-touted zero gee of space—after the initial novelty had worn off, it became something of a bore. One had to spend too much time worrying about rendezvous and docking problems.
The one-third gee of Mars was just about right.
Like all new immigrants, Robert Singh spent his first few weeks doing the Martian Grand Tour—Olympus Mons, Mariner Valley, the South Polar Ice Cliffs, the Hellas Lowlands…. Hellas was currently popular among adventurous youngsters, who liked to show off by seeing how long they could survive without breathing gear. Atmospheric pressure was now just sufficient for such feats, though the oxygen content was still too low to sustain life. The misleadingly named “Open Air” record now stood at just over ten minutes.
Singh’s initial reaction to Mars was one of slight disappointment. He had made so many virtual journeys over the Martian landscape, often at exhilarating velocities and with image enhancement, that the real thing was sometimes an anticlimax. The problem with the planet’s most famous features was their sheer size—they were so enormous that they could be appreciated only from space, not when you were actually standing on them.
Olympus Mons was the best example. Martians were fond of saying that it was three times the height of any mountain on Earth—but the Himalayas or the Rockies were far more impressive because they were so much steeper. With a base six hundred kilometers across, Olympus was more like a huge blister on the face of Mars than a mountain. Ninety percent of it was nothing more than a gently sloping plain.
And Mariner Valley, except at its narrower sections, also failed to live up to the tourist promotion. It was so wide that from its center both walls were below the
horizon: if that had not been just the sort of tactlessness that was always getting New Martians into trouble, Singh might have made disparaging comparisons with the far smaller Grand Canyon.
After a few weeks, however, he began to appreciate subtleties and beauties that explained the colonists’ (that was another word he must be careful never to use) passionate devotion to their planet. And although he knew perfectly well that the land area of Mars was almost the same as Earth’s, owing to the absence of oceans, he was continually surprised by its scale. Forget the fact that it was only half the diameter of Earth; it was a big world….
And it was changing, though still very slowly. Mutated lichens and fungi were breaking down the oxidized rocks, and reversing the death-by-rust that had overtaken the planet eons ago. Perhaps the most successful invader from Earth was a modification of the “window cactus”—a tough-skinned plant that looked as if Nature had set out to design a spacesuit. Attempts to introduce it on the Moon had failed, but it was flourishing in the Martian lowlands.
Everyone on Mars had to work for a living, and though Robert Singh had made a substantial credit transfer from his healthy account on Earth, he was no exception to the rule. Nor did he wish to be: he still had decades of active life ahead of him, and wished to use it to the full—as long as he could spend as much time as possible with his new family.
That was another reason for coming to Mars; it was still an empty world, and he would be allowed two children here. His first daughter, Mirelle, was born within a year of landing; Martin came three years later. It was another five years before Captain Robert Singh felt the slightest desire to “breathe space”—or at least deep space; he was too content with his family and his work.
Of course, he made frequent trips up to Phobos and Deimos, usually in connection with his highly responsible (and well rewarded) duties as a ship surveyor for Lloyds of Earth. There was not much to do on Phobos, the inner and larger satellite, except to inspect the Space Apprentices’ Training School, where he was regarded with considerable awe by the cadets. For his part, he enjoyed meeting them: it made him feel thirty—well, twenty—years younger, and also kept him in touch with the latest developments in space technology.
At one time Phobos had been regarded as an invaluable source of raw materials for space-construction projects, but Martian conservationists—perhaps feeling guilty about the steady terraforming of their own planet—had managed to prevent this. Though the tiny coal-black satellite was so inconspicuous in the night sky that few people ever noticed it, “Don’t strip-mine Phobos!” had been an effective slogan.
Fortunately, the smaller and more distant Deimos was in some ways an even better alternative. Although it averaged little more than a dozen kilometers across, it could supply the local dockyards with most of the metals they needed for centuries, and no one really cared if the tiny moon slowly disappeared over the next thousand years. Moreover, its gravitational field was so feeble that only a good push was needed to launch its products on their way.
Like all busy harbors since the beginning of time, Port Deimos was an untidy mess. The first time Robert Singh ever set eyes on Goliath was in Deimos Yard 3, when it was undergoing a five-yearly inspection and refit. At first sight there was nothing unusual about the ship; it was no uglier than most deep-spacecraft. With an empty mass of ten thousand tons and an overall length of one hundred and fifty meters, it was not particularly large and its most important characteristic was invisible. Goliath’s hot fusion rocket engines, normally using hydrogen as working fluid but able to operate with water if necessary, were far more powerful than needed for a vessel of its size. Except for tests lasting only a few seconds, they had never been run at full thrust.
The next time Robert Singh saw Goliath she was once again at Deimos, after another uneventful five years on station. And her captain was about to retire….
“Think about it, Bob,” he said. “Easiest job in the Solar System. No navigation to worry about; you just sit there and admire the view. Only problem—the care and feeding of about twenty mad scientists.”
It was tempting; though he had filled many responsible posts, Robert Singh had never commanded a ship, and it was about time that he did so before he retired. True, he had only just passed his sixtieth birthday, but it was amazing how quickly the decades now seemed to be slipping by.
“I’ll talk it over with the family,” he said. “As long as I can shuttle back to Mars a couple of times a year….”
Yes—it was an attractive proposal. He would consider it carefully….
Robert Singh never gave more than a few moments’ thought to the purpose behind Goliath’s original construction. Indeed, he had almost forgotten why the ship was fitted with such a ridiculously powerful drive.
Of course, he would never have to use more than a small fraction of it; but it was nice to have it in reserve.
13
THE SARGASSO OF SPACE
“STAND ON THE SUN,” MENDOZA HAD ONCE TOLD A CLASS OF slightly bemused students soon after the announcement of his Nobel Prize, “and look straight at Jupiter, three quarters of a billion kilometers away. Then open your arms sixty degrees on either side…. Do you know what you’ll be pointing at?”
He did not expect an answer, and did not pause for one.
“You won’t be able to see anything there, but you’ll be pointing at two of the most fascinating places in the Solar System….
“In 1772 the great French mathematician Lagrange discovered that the gravitational fields of the sun and Jupiter could combine to produce a very interesting phenomenon. Lying on Jupiter’s orbit—sixty degrees ahead, and sixty degrees behind—are two stable points. A body placed at either will remain at the same distance from the sun and from Jupiter, the three forming a huge equilateral triangle.
“The existence of asteroids wasn’t known when Lagrange was alive, so he probably never guessed that one day there’d be a practical demonstration of his theory. It took more than a hundred years—one hundred thirty-four, to be exact—before Achilles was discovered, trailing sixty degrees behind Jupiter. A year later Patroclus was found not far away—and then Hector, but at the point sixty degrees ahead of Jupiter. Today we know more than ten thousand of these Trojan asteroids, so called because the first few dozen were named after the heroes of the Trojan War. Of course, that idea had to be given up years ago: now they simply have numbers. The last catalogue I saw had reached 11,500, and they’re still coming in, though very slowly. We believe the census is now ninety-five percent complete: any remaining Trojans can’t be more than a hundred meters across.
“Now I have to confess I’ve been lying to you. Virtually none of the Trojans are at the two Trojan points—they wander back and forth, and up and down, through thirty degrees or more. Saturn’s largely to blame for that; its gravitational field spoils the neat sun-Jupiter pattern. So think of the Trojan asteroids as forming two huge clouds, with their centers approximately sixty degrees on either side of Jupiter. For some reason that’s still unknown—anyone want a good Ph.D. thesis?—there are three times as many Trojans ahead of Jupiter as behind.
“Have you ever heard of the Sargasso Sea, back on old Earth? I thought not. Well, it’s an area of the Atlantic—that’s the ocean to the east of the CAS—in which drifting objects—weeds, abandoned ships—accumulate because of circulating currents. I like to think of the Trojan points as twin Sargassos of Space; they’re the most densely populated regions of the Solar System—though you wouldn’t realize it if you were actually there. If you were standing on one Trojan, you’d be very lucky if you could see another with the naked eye.
“Why are the Trojans important? I’m so glad you asked me that.
“Quite apart from their scientific interest, they’re major weapons in the armory of Jove. Every so often one of them gets pulled out of place by the united fields of Saturn and Uranus and Neptune, and goes wandering sunward. And occasionally one of them crashes into us—that’s how the Hellas Basin was made�
�or even the Earth.
“This sort of thing was happening all the time in the early days of the Solar System, when the debris left over from planet-building was still floating around. Most of it’s gone now, luckily for us—but there’s plenty left, not all of it in the Trojan Clouds. There are rogue asteroids that go all the way out to Neptune; any one could be a potential danger.
“Now, until this century there was nothing—absolutely nothing—that the human race could do about this danger, and most people—even if they knew about it—didn’t give a damn. They felt that there were more important problems to worry about, and of course they were right.
“But a wise man takes out insurance against even very unlikely events, as long as the premium isn’t too high. The SPACEGUARD survey has been running, on a very modest budget, for almost half a century. We now know that there’s a high probability of at least one catastrophic impact on Earth, Moon, or Mars during the next thousand years.
“Should we just sit and wait for it? Surely not! Now that we have the technology to protect ourselves, at least we can make plans that can be put into action if—no, when!—there’s an imminent danger. With any luck we should have several months of warning time.
“Now I’ve a good reason for going to Earth—that’s still top secret—I want to give them a big surprise! I’m proposing a long-range plan to deal with the problem. As a start I’m suggesting that SPACEGUARD be given an operational responsibility so that it can begin to live up to its name. I’d like to see a couple of fast, powerful ships on permanent patrol—and the Trojan points would be a good place to locate them. They could do valuable research while they were there—and they would be able to go anywhere in the Solar System at a moment’s notice.
The Hammer of God Page 5