Was it genuine? Or was it a face-saving ploy to let the Kronians extricate themselves from the affairs of Earth and depart? Keene didn’t know. His confidence was not bolstered when Gallian refused to throw the matter open for debate on the grounds that after seeing the reaction of Earth’s scientists to the Venus proposal, he wasn’t even going to try getting them to listen to something like this. The Kronians would go back and pursue the matter themselves, with their own scientists. They abandoned plans for any further serious discussion on Earth, and began making departure preparations accordingly.
So, what were they: true visionaries impelled by an ethic that would never be understood on Earth; or failures who had fooled even Keene for a year, pulling out under a contrived pretext when it became clear that their bid to enlist help from Earth had failed? And the Osiris: Was it really the exemplar of what freed science could accomplish, as he had believed, or just a one-time showpiece achieved by hurling everything into a single-purpose project? Had the Kronians known all along that their position was precarious, and that they could well end up with enraged authorities on Earth opposing their departure if things went wrong, and was that why the Osiris was armed? Keene still didn’t know what he believed when, a day later, with nothing more to be accomplished in Washington, he and the three lawyers boarded a plane at Reagan National Airport to head back to Texas.
22
The question nagged at Keene for days, allowing him to get little else done. Either the Kronians were guilty as charged and he had made one of the biggest misjudgments of his life, or one of the most stupefying scientific conjectures of all time was being missed because of politics and petty vanities. If the first, he was on the wrong side and it was time to redirect his life toward staking some claims in everything he had been missing out on. If the latter, then humankind’s way ahead lay with the different ethic of the Kronians, in which case Keene belonged out there and not here, and if they were already getting ready to leave he needed to make his mind up soon if he intended doing something about it.
It all hinged on the proposition that Earth had once been a moon of Saturn. If that were credible, then so were the Kronians. So how believable was it? Keene decided that he needed somebody suitably knowledgeable to help him untangle the questions clogging up his head. Most of the astronomers he knew—especially after the recent happenings in Washington—wouldn’t want to get within a mile of something like this. In the end, he called David Salio. At first, Salio was still embarrassed after what he felt had been a betrayal, but his manner eased when it became clear that Keene was calling about something entirely different. Keene’s opening sentences were enough to get him hooked, and they arranged a meeting for that same afternoon. Keene flew up to Houston on the midday flight and spent the afternoon and evening with Salio. Salio couldn’t guarantee to Keene that the latest Kronian proposition was not a line they had fabricated to extricate themselves; but neither did he dismiss it as impossible. Certainly, the suggestion that the motions of other planets too, not just Venus, might have been different in times gone by didn’t offend him in the way it had other astronomers Keene had talked to.
“There’s good reason for supposing that Mars moves differently from the way it used to,” he told Keene. “The Kronians think that after Venus’s close pass with Earth, it went into an orbit that brought it close again periodically—though never with anything like the devastation of the first encounter, of course. That was why just about every ancient culture watched it so closely, keeping charts to track its every movement and viewing its approaches in trepidation as a portent of destruction. Finally, somewhere around 700 b.c., it came close to Mars in an event once again recorded everywhere as a celestial combat of gods, altering Mars’s orbit and afterward settling down to the circularized orbit we see today.”
“Cooled down from the plasma state, with the electrical effects dissipated,” Keene remarked.
Salio shrugged. “We don’t know enough about that yet to say. But if something as recent as that is at least plausible, who’s to say what the situation might have been in this more distant era that the Kronians are talking about? Without knowing the truth about those artifacts, I can’t tell you that the Kronians didn’t make it up. That’s for your lawyers to figure out. But it’s certainly not grounds for writing them off, either.”
Keene caught the last flight back to Corpus Christi, where Vicki met him at the airport—he had lent her his car that day since hers was in the shop. She looked trim and classy in a cool summer dress and greeted him with a hug that felt nice after a long, hectic day. “We could redeem one of the outstanding rain checks at the Bandana,” she said as they walked out past Baggage Claim. “Robin’s overnighting with a friend, and I can live it up—the life I’ve always dreamed about.”
“You must read minds too,” Keene said. “Sure, I could use a beer. Planes and peanuts always make me dry.”
“So how did it go with Salio?” she asked as they began crossing the parking lot. “What did he have to say?”
“He was fascinated. Said it was the most exciting thing he’d heard for years. He even came up with some thoughts of his own about it that could answer a number of puzzles that have been going around for a long time. For example, Saturn could have provided a more benign environment for life to have gotten started in than here, close to the Sun. No fierce ultraviolet to break up early, fragile molecules before there was ozone.”
“He didn’t think it would be too cold out at that distance? That was one of the things that bothered me.”
“Not necessarily. If Saturn was a protostar at one time that didn’t make it to fusion ignition, it might still have radiated enough to warm its satellites.”
“What about when Earth escaped?”
Keene shrugged. “Maybe there’s your Ice Age. . . . In any case, with all the other things going on that we’ve been talking about, Saturn might not have been at the same distance then. I can see why Gallian thinks there’s enough new science to keep them busy for fifty years.”
Vicki glanced at him silently as they walked. Her expression still held a touch of skepticism. “Could it really have been that recently?” she queried. “Enough for humans to have seen it?”
“Well, it’s beginning to look as if things could change a lot quicker than has always been thought. Salio thinks the whole geological and astronomic time frame is screwed up.”
“Don’t tell me 4,004 b.c. is true after all.”
“No. But he’s pretty certain that the conventional figures are going to have to be drastically revised downward, all the same.”
“So does he buy the idea of a one-time satellite of Saturn?” Vicki asked.
“Until we know for sure one way or the other about the artifacts, he can’t say,” Keefe replied. “It could be a scam; it could be straight. That’s where Murray and the lawyers ought to have been pitching in. Where we go next, I’m not sure.”
Vicki handed him the keys. He opened the passenger door for her and saw her in, then walked around and got in the driver’s side.
“I’m surprised they didn’t stay on in Washington longer,” Vicki said as they moved out. “I can see why you and Jerry would be out of it now. But doesn’t the legal mess up there need attention?”
“There wouldn’t be any point,” Keene said. “The Kronians aren’t interested. They’re going back—either to work on their theory or figure out how else they’re going to save their colony. I don’t know which. It depends on whether they’re genuine or not. The last I heard, Idorf was bringing the Osiris up to flight readiness.”
“Ouch. I didn’t realize it was so soon. It’s really that hopeless?”
Keene sighed. “Well, if you and I have trouble buying it, the establishment isn’t even going to want to hear. If they really are genuine, then Gallian is probably right in thinking that getting tangled up in legalities would just be a waste of time. He told Murray that no law firm would take Kronians on anyway. After Voler’s act, they’d be too worried
about the bill being paid in faked money.”
Vicki smiled and snorted, but remained serious, staring out into the night in silence for a while. Then she said, “You know, there’s a lot more at stake here than I realized before. If the whole thing is a scam, the only thing that makes sense as to why the Kronians should have gone to such lengths is to get a share of the real power structure instead of being just an outpost on the fringes. Because if they’d gotten Earth behind them in this program they came here to sell, that’s what it would have meant. It does makes a crazy kind of sense.”
Keene shook his head. “It’s not crazy at all. That’s the jackpot question, Vicki. If it was a scam, and we bought it but the people we thought we were so much smarter than didn’t, Kronia is finished. But if it’s straight . . .” he sought for a phrase, “then they could be the next leap in the social evolution of the human species.”
Vicki fell silent again while she thought about it. “You don’t really believe them, though, do you, Lan?” she said finally. “The Kronians. Deep down, you’re not convinced.”
Keene looked across at her, surprised. “I said I don’t know what to believe. What makes you say that?”
Vicki shrugged lightly. “You’re here, back in Texas. You didn’t stay around to see them off. What does that tell you?”
They pulled into the parking lot in front of the Bandana and parked next to a pickup, where a group of a half dozen to a dozen youths and girls were standing around talking in the flickering glow from the neon signs. The sound of heavy-beat country music from inside greeted them as they climbed out of the car. The air was warm and close after Washington, but with a fresher scent coming in with the breeze off the coastal plain. Keene stretched his arms and looked up at the sky. All that could be seen of Athena now was a pale glow over the western horizon. Even though the time was approaching midnight, a matter of days ago it would have been a bright column climbing halfway up the sky. It meant that the tail was foreshortening as Athena came around from perihelion, swinging around like a lighthouse beam to sweep past Earth before Athena crossed Earth’s orbit in just a few weeks time. Between now and then it would become the most spectacular object to fill the sky ever in human history—unless, of course, the Kronians were right about the Venus encounter.
“How ya doin’?” one of the youths inquired genially as Keene walked around the car to join Vicki. He was tall and lean, wearing jeans with a plain shirt and vest, and had a white ten-gallon tipped to the back of his head.
“Doing okay,” Keene replied. “How about you guys?”
“Oh, just fine. It’s busy in there tonight, I’m tellin’ ya.”
“We’ll risk it.”
“Take care, now.”
Keene followed Vicki up a few steps up to the entry porch. “I think I’ll get a hat and some boots,” he said as he stepped ahead to hold the door. “The prettiest girls always seem to hang around with the cowboys.”
“Those could be your granddaughters,” Vicki told him. The noise intensified suddenly as they went through.
“Even better. . . . Which reminds me, have we heard anything more about what Karen’s doing?”
“Yes, she’s definitely moving to Dallas. It might be a bit sooner than she thought, though.”
“Um.” Keene stood looking around. The dance floor was filled, and a mostly male crowd was clustered in the vicinity of the bar. It wasn’t going to be easy to get a booth or a table in the front lounge. Keene looked across to the far side. “Maybe we could go through into the restaurant,” he said. “They look as if they’ve got more room in there. I never thought to ask, have you eaten?”
“I did earlier—but I could use something with a drink, sure.”
They made their way through the bar and dance area to the restaurant and grabbed a corner table just as another couple were vacating it. A waitress came to clear the dishes and give them menus, announced that she was Julie, and took an order for drinks. Keene decided he wasn’t up to a full meal or in the mood for a burger. The steak sandwich sounded good. Or maybe something lighter, like a salad. . . . “I suppose we get the recitation about the specials when she gets back,” he said, scanning the Mexican section. “Have you ever noticed? They don’t listen. ‘I’m Julie, your server. How are you today?’ And if you say, ‘Suicidal,’ it’s, ‘That’s nice. Our specials are . . .’ I’ll show you when she gets back. . . . But I guess it’s not really surprising when they have to say it probably a hundred times a day.” There was no response. He looked up and realized that Vicki wasn’t listening either, but was staring past him with a strange, fixated look on her face. “Hello?” he said. “Anyone home?”
Vicki answered after several seconds, seemingly from a million miles away. “Dinosaurs. . . .”
“What?” Keene waited, but that was all he got. He turned to see what she was staring at. On the wall behind him was an old movie poster from the nineties or thereabouts advertising something called Jurassic Park. It showed a tyrannosaurus, various characters and a truck, and a pack of smaller dinosaurs bounding across a grassy landscape. “What about them?” he asked, turning back.
Vicki remained distant, speaking almost to herself. “They couldn’t have existed unless conditions then were very different. Gravity had to have been smaller. The whole scale of the engineering was wrong. . . .” She focused back on Keene slowly. “Lan, how easy is it to figure an estimate of this in your head. Suppose Earth were orbiting a giant primary like Saturn just outside its Roche limit, with one side phase-locked toward it. How far out would that be? And at that distance, how much would the primary’s gravity reduce Earth’s surface gravity by on that side? Could it be enough to allow things like that to live and move around? And if Earth escaped, the gravity would increase. Could that explain why all of the giant forms died out, and the things that replaced them were smaller?”
Keene looked at the poster again, turned slowly back toward Vicki, but already he wasn’t seeing her. In his mind he was picturing a world of gigantic beasts, with enormous plants and trees, and a huge, mysterious globe ever-present in the sky. Gradually, he became aware of a voice saying, “ . . . with our own, homemade, Bandana peppercorn sauce. . . . Gee, I don’t know why I bother. Nobody listens. Would you like me to give you another couple of minutes?”
“Er, yes . . . please, Julie. Sorry, we were away on something else.” Keene picked up his beer, which had arrived unnoticed. “My God,” he breathed when Julie had gone.
“They were right!” Vicki said in an awed voice. “Earth was out there when those artifacts were made. The Kronians were right. . . . It means they’re genuine, Lan. Oh, my God, and look how they’ve been treated here. Even you didn’t believe them in the end, and came back. And they’re right. . . . I’d be going back too. Their science might get to the bottom of this. Here, it wouldn’t even get a hearing.”
Keene pushed himself back from the table, all thoughts of eating suddenly gone. “We have to talk to them about this,” he said. “I can’t do any figuring or call them with this noise. We need to go back to the office.”
“You’re going to call them now? It’ll be nearly one a.m. in Washington.”
“This can’t wait. They could be shipping out in the morning for all I know. Come on, we have to leave.”
Vicki nodded and rose without protest. Keene took a ten from his billfold and put it on the table. They met a confused Julie coming the other way when they were halfway back across the bar area. “Oh, you’re leaving? Was there something wrong?” she asked them.
“No, nothing to do with you. We’ve taken care of you,” Keene told her. “We’ll be back another time. Just a rain check.”
“It’s the story of my life,” Vicki murmured to Julie as she followed Keene toward the door.
23
Keene didn’t want to wake up the entire Kronian mission at this hour by calling the general number. So, reversing his earlier decision of keeping to a more formal level of dealings, he called the direct personal
code that Sariena had given him. She answered sleepily in voice-only mode, obviously having already retired. Her first reaction was surprise. She clearly hadn’t been expecting to hear from Keene again—at least, not for a while.
“I’ll be honest,” Keene told her. He was in his office in the darkened Protonix building. Vicki sat listening in a chair pulled up to one end of the desk, which was littered with scrawled diagrams and calculations. “I left because I didn’t know what to believe. I had doubts; I admit it. It’s embarrassing to look back at, but it’s the way it was. What else can I say?”
“Well . . . I’m glad that you seem to be having second thoughts about us,” Sariena said. “And I don’t want to sound ungrateful that you called, or disinterested. But couldn’t it have waited until morning?”
“That could,” Keene agreed. “But there’s more that couldn’t. I’m with Vicki in the office in Corpus Christi.”
“In the office! At this time? . . .”
“I think she might have hit on something that clinches your case. It’s something she and I have talked about before, but there was never any reason to connect it with Saturn. The whole age of gigantism with the dinosaurs and everything—I don’t know if you’ve ever gone into the scaling implications, but nothing of those sizes could function in the conditions that exist on Earth today. The gravity is too strong. But suppose those conditions didn’t always exist. Suppose Earth were a phase-locked satellite, close-in to a giant primary. The primary’s attraction would reduce the value on the facing side. Combine that with what you’ve told us about Rhea. . . . It all fits.”
There was a long silence. Finally, Sariena said, “Let me put something on and get to a real phone. Stay on the line. I’ll be about a minute.”
“Seems like it got her attention,” Vicki murmured.
Keene looked across at her. “Boy, isn’t Robin going to be pleased.”
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