Worlds in Chaos

by James P. Hogan

  “I love stars,” she said.

  Keene looked away and turned his head upward. “Polli told me we don’t have any,” he replied. It was a clear night, not bad by Washington standards. The angle of the walls faced roughly north, making just a wisp of Athena’s tail visible behind the building to their left. It only occurred to Keene then that until the last couple of days, Sariena’s only recollections of seeing a sky had probably been from inside some kind of enclosure or a helmet.

  “Paltry,” she agreed. “But you know that, Lan. You’ve been out there too. . . . But what you’ve never seen is Saturn from one of its moons. This sky has nothing to compare with it. Pictures don’t come close—any more than they can show sunshine. It’s like . . .” She turned her face up again. “All the rainbows you’ve ever seen stirred together into a glowing ball ten times as big as the Moon. And you’re looking at it across the rings seen edge-on. It seems to be floating in a golden ocean that extends away into the sky. If you’re on one of the moons that has a tilted orbit, the ocean seems to be rising and falling.” Sariena looked back at him. “Did you know that there are many legends from the distant past—before the beginnings of our literate age, like those people that Catherine was talking about—that make Saturn the greatest god in the sky and describe it as rising out of an ocean? Isn’t that strange? It’s almost as if they’d seen it too.” Keene frowned at the city lights, searching for a way of turning the subject back to more immediate matters. “Can you pick out Saturn in the sky?” Sariena asked him.

  “Er, no. . . . I guess not. It isn’t really one of my things.”

  “Not many people can—nor any of the other planets. And isn’t that strange too? They’re such insignificant pinpoints that most people can’t even find them. And yet in just about every system of religion and myth from times gone by, they filled people with awe and terror and were associated with gods fighting titanic battles in the sky—mightier even than the Sun and Moon. Why would that be?” Sariena went on before Keene could respond, “Because the planets moved in different orbits then, that brought them much closer.”

  She hadn’t strayed off the subject, he realized. It was just a roundabout way of addressing the issue he had raised.

  She went on, “They saw Venus being ejected by Jupiter. To the Greeks it was Pallas Athene springing from the brow of Zeus. The Hindus have Vishnu being born of Shiva. The Egyptians, Horus. All names for the same planets, associated with events in the sky that are described the same way everywhere, over and over. Now tell me that Athena isn’t the same thing happening again.”

  “You don’t have to convince me,” Keene said. “I’m already on your side, remember? But the scientists who’ll determine what our governments decide aren’t interested in old myths and legends. They’re going to want to see facts and evidence and numbers before they’ll budge, and none of them wants to budge because they’re happy with the ideas they’ve got and things the way they are.”

  Sariena looked at Keene dubiously. “Is that really all that matters here?” she asked. “Comfortable livings and safe jobs? Prestige and promotions? Don’t things like where we’re all heading in the longer term, and wanting to know the truth count?”

  “Maybe they did once—I don’t know; you hear these things. But people have always thought things were better in the past. Today, the creed is ‘Make what you can now and grab as much as you can get.’ There might not be a tomorrow.”

  “One day, that could turn out to be a gruesome self-fulfilling prophesy,” Sariena observed. “I don’t understand how a system can function that seems to be based on nothing but antagonism.”

  Keene smiled humorlessly. “Most people here can’t understand how your system can, that isn’t.”

  “We couldn’t afford anything else out there,” Sariena said. “Everyone’s survival is at stake. We have to work together. And look what it’s achieving.” She paused, waiting, but Keene had nothing to add just then. After a short silence, she said, “Of course we have more than just ancient myths and records. They’re just the beginning. We have as much fact and evidence as anyone could reasonably need. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”

  “I know about the mass-extinctions and geological upheavals,” Keene agreed. “But there are plenty of other theories going around as to what could have caused all that. How do you positively connect it all with Venus?”

  “Venus is a young planet,” Sariena answered. “It hasn’t been there for billions of years. The evidence has been piling up for decades. A lot of scientists on Earth that we know of are aware of it.”

  “I’ll be meeting one of them on my way back,” Keene said. “But even if you’re right, that doesn’t mean it nearly sideswiped Earth. That’s the biggest single problem you’re going to have to deal with: how an orbit that could take it from Jupiter to an Earth-encounter could circularize to what we see today. All of conventional theory says it couldn’t happen. That’s why people here are saying that Athena is something different. No mechanism known to science could reduce its eccentricity to almost zero in under four thousand years. That’s what they’re going to tell you. How are you planning on answering it?”

  Sariena studied him for a moment. “Do you know about the electromagnetic changes that have been occurring all over the Solar System since Athena was ejected?” she asked curiously.

  Keene looked at her uncertainly. “Electromagnetic changes to what?”

  “The space environment itself. Its properties are being altered.”

  Keene was still frowning, but with a new interest. “No . . .” He told her. “I don’t think I do. Suppose you tell me.”

  “I don’t think it’s something that most scientists here are informed about,” Sariena answered. “Earth hasn’t been putting enough deep-space probes out to get the picture. We have. We must be getting a better perspective.”

  “What’s been happening?” Keene asked.

  Sariena motioned upward with an arm to indicate the night sky. “This white-hot mass, hurtling in from Jupiter for the last ten months, pouring out a tail of highly ionized particles that extends for millions of miles, orders of magnitude denser than that of any comet ever known . . . It’s turning space in the inner Solar System into an electrically active medium—at least, temporarily. Now move an incandescent body in a plasma state through that medium at high velocity. . . .” She left the suggestion unfinished.

  The expression on Keene’s face told her there was no need to say any more. A charged body moving through an electrically active medium would be subject to forces that in those conditions could conceivably rival or even exceed gravity. Forces that conventional astronomic theory, based on the assumption of a pre-Athena, electrically quiescent Solar System, had never taken into account.

  Sariena nodded, seeing that Keene had made the connection. “Our scientists in Kronia have been running some calculations. The preliminary results came in to the Osiris just before we came down to the surface. They’re being rechecked before we present anything here officially. But perhaps you could arrange for them to be duplicated independently here on Earth as well—the more confirmation we get, the better. We’ll give you the codes to access the files of original data from our probes. I think you’ll find the results interesting.”

  11

  Next morning, the over-breakfast continuation of the interview with the science journalist went well, and Keene was happy that the treatment would be accurate. Afterward, he went back up to his room and called Marvin Curtiss as promised. Although Texas was an hour behind Eastern Time, he found Curtiss already in his office. Apparently, Halloran, Lomack, and most of the other engineering and project managers were at work already over in the Kingsville plant too, working out figures for a proposal that Harry Halloran had come up with for getting the Montemorelos site operational sooner, as Curtiss had wanted.

  Instead of the conventional above-ground pads as used at San Saucillo, where final testing and any last-minute servicing had to be conducted out in t
he elements, the Montemorelos facility used an experimental design of silo in which all preparations and launch would be effected in one blastproofed location. Equipment installation was virtually complete, and the next phase called for a live test of the launch systems. A live test meant actually launching something. For something to be launched, it would first have to be there. The existing plan called for a regular (chemical powered) vehicle to be moved in sections by road from Kingsville and assembled in one of the silos. However, a separate surface-to-orbit trial was also due to be conducted in the near future from Saucillo, involving a minishuttle fitted with a modified hybrid engine using solid propellant and a liquid oxidizer. Halloran had proposed combining the two programs by landing the minishuttle at Montemorelos after its orbital trials, where it would then be available for the launch test without anything needing to be shipped by road. The planning committee would be meeting that morning to consider it.

  Keene agreed the suggestion made sense, but it was an internal Amspace affair and not something that concerned him directly. He went on to summarize his impressions after meeting the Kronians. The most important thing to come out of it was Sariena’s disclosure of the changes the Kronian scientists had detected in the solar environment and the need to verify their calculations of what it implied. “I was hoping Jerry could set it up somewhere on one of the big computers you’ve got access to,” Keene concluded. Jerry Allender was the head of research at Amspace. “If he needs some help from a specialist in celestial mechanics, I could probably put him in touch with a couple of people I know.”

  “How soon do we need this?” Curtiss asked, not looking enthralled. “We’re going to be swamped here with this Montemorelos business as things are.”

  “I think it’s absolutely crucial to have the results confirmed or otherwise by the time the Kronians get back from their tour,” Keene pressed. “That means we ought to get moving now. I could get Vicki to take care of liaising with the Kronians and getting the files and material together. Judith could even help with running it and tackling a specialist—she’s pretty hot. All Jerry would need to do would be to set things up.”

  “What results did the Kronians get?” Curtiss asked. “Do we know?”

  “No, they’ve just offered to let us have their raw data. That’s the way it should be done. Sariena just said she thought we’d find them interesting.”

  Curtiss drew a long breath, then nodded. “Okay, we’ll see what we can do,” he promised. “Talk to Harry. I’ll tell him to expect to hear from you. Now I have to rush. We’ve obviously got one of those days ahead of us, and I’ve a commitment in the city tonight.”

  “What’s on?” Keene asked. “Business dinner? Press Club? Some kind of civic function?”

  “My stepdaughter Anna is playing the cello. It’s her first appearance in public, and it would be more than my life’s worth not to be there.” Curtiss looked pleased that Keene had asked. He seemed quite proud. Keene liked it when tycoons showed a human touch. It meant there was hope for the race yet.

  He called Vicki immediately afterward and caught her at the house just as she was about to leave for the office. “Something came up at the Kronian party last night that could be important,” he told her. “Can you pull Judith off that Japanese project and ask her to take a look at it—maybe give her a hand. I want you to access the Kronian research files and find some data they’ve been collecting on changes in the electromagnetic properties of the space environment during the past ten months. You can get it from the databank in the Osiris—no need for all the delays in dealing with Saturn. I’ll send details and access codes to you at the office.”

  “Changes?” Vicki repeated, looking surprised.

  “Yes. It seems that all that stuff that Athena’s spewing out has been altering the inner-system free-space permeability and permittivity—for a while, anyway, until the solar wind blows it away. But in the meantime we’re in a more electrically active neighborhood. I want to compute the forces that would act on a hot, massively charged body and how they would affect its orbital characteristics.”

  “You want us to do this . . . ?”

  “No, no—not all on your own, there, anyway. I’ve just talked to Marvin. He’s going to have Jerry Allender set it up in his department over there. But they’re all in a panic this morning over something else that’s going on. I just want us to do the go-betweening with the Kronians for them. You might need to involve a specialist too. I can think of a couple of names you could try. I’ll send them with the other stuff.”

  Vicki stared at him for a few seconds, thinking rapidly. “Are we talking about Venus?” she asked at last.

  “Could be,” Keene answered noncommittally.

  “Are you saying that our scientists here don’t know about this already?”

  Keene shrugged. “All too busy writing begging letters to Congress or getting themselves into the Washington black-tie cocktail-party circuit.”

  The significance was slowly sinking in. Vicki shook her head, looking disbelieving. “Lan . . . do you realize that what you’re talking about could upset half of astronomy all the way back to Newton? I mean, you just call on the phone when I’m leaving for work and mention it as casually as if it were a bookshelf you want ordered. . . .”

  “Yes, I know, but I haven’t got time to go into raptures over the philosophy of it right now. There’s probably a cab waiting for me downstairs already.”

  Just then, a blurred voice called something in the background behind Vicki. She looked away. “I said on the table in the kitchen,” she directed to somewhere off-screen.

  “Robin getting ready for school?” Keene said.

  Vicki turned back again. “You guessed. How do you do it, Lan?”

  “And how is he? Anything new with the dinosaurs?”

  “It’s led into mammoths. But don’t ask me right now; I’ll mail you a note if you’re interested.”

  “Sure, I’m interested.”

  “You want to say hi to him?”

  “Sure.”

  “Robin, it’s Landen on the line. Like to say hello for a second?”

  A few seconds went by, and then Robin moved into the view alongside the image of Vicki. “Hi, Lan. How’s Washington? Did you get to meet the Kronians?”

  “Sure did. I’ll tell you all about them next time I stop by.”

  “Is that it?” Vicki asked Robin, gesturing at a blue folder that he was holding.

  “Yes. I was sure it was upstairs.”

  “What’s in it?” Keene inquired.

  “Oh, a project we’re doing at school, in the science class. We have to write an essay on the Joktanians and the kinds of things that have been turning up in the places they’re digging at.”

  “That’s the old civilization from around Arabia and Ethiopia that was only discovered in the last few years,” Vicki supplied for Keene’s benefit. “So give the school system some credit—they’re keeping up to date.”

  “Ah yes,” Keene was able to reply airily. “Named after Noah’s grandson. Legend says the earliest peoples of southern Arabia were descended from him. The Arab word is Qahtan.”

  Vicki stared hard and blinked. “I didn’t think you’d know that.”

  Keene managed to keep a straight face and replied nonchalantly, while inside enjoying every moment of it. “Why not? I thought everyone did.”

  She shook her head. “Lan, you never cease to amaze me.”

  “Just call it talented. Got to go. Check your mail when you get in. I’ll probably stay in town tomorrow too. See you Thursday.”

  The final thing Keene did before leaving the hotel to begin his schedule for that day was call David Salio. Salio was surprised to hear back from him so soon, but pleased. Yes, it turned out that he was flexible that week and could be available. Keene arranged to see him on Thursday and changed his flight arrangements to stop off in Houston on his way back to Corpus Christi. Things seemed to be moving along.

  12

  The Aerospace
Sciences Institute was both a research and educational establishment, set up jointly by a consortium of contractors and allied interests. It was funded privately and made no appeals to the public purse, the goal being to ensure an adequate supply of competent specialists in the fields essential to the industry, without complications arising from any yielding of standards to political agendas. NASA layoffs and the ensuing contraction of the Johnson Center had provided much of the initial recruitment and been one of the reasons for choosing Houston as the location.

  Keene was no stranger there, although he had not dealt previously with the Planetary Studies section, which was where David Salio worked. The principal interests of the founder corporations were commercial and defense-related, leading them to focus essentially on launch and Earth-orbit activities, with some involvement in lunar pilot schemes and the scientific endeavor on Mars, the latter of which was a small-scale operation in any case. But putting some effort into theoretical studies of longer-term possibilities bolstered the image of exploration and adventure that excited the public, gratified stockholders, and worked wonders for recruiting ads. And besides, despite their stereotype to the contrary, many of the executives responsible for policy were genuinely curious.

  The Institute was run in a spirit that conformed to the open-door tradition of regular universities, more sensitive and secretive work being conducted elsewhere. Accordingly, a little over ten minutes ahead of the appointed time, Keene sauntered in from where the airport cab had dropped him in front of the Glenn Building, verified from the lobby directory that Salio’s office was on the fifth floor, and went on up without need of signature, badge, or security check. The elevator delivered him to a carpeted area with plants, padded leather seating arranged around a glass-topped table, and a wall of picture windows looking out over one of the Houston freeway interchanges. A sign directed him past a vending area into a corridor of similar-looking numbered doors and occasional bulletin boards, where eventually he arrived at 521, with a nameplate alongside indicating it to be the office of David R. Salio. Keene tapped, waited for a moment, and then eased the door open. A voice from inside called out, “Dr. Keene? Yes, do come on in. I won’t be a second.”