by Bova, Ben
His left arm was enclosed in a dark gray plastic sheath from shoulder to fingertips. And Kris Cardenas sat asleep in a chair at the foot of his bed, her head half-sunk in a thick pillow that was propped on her shoulder, her feet tucked under her. Even with her bright blue eyes closed and her golden hair tousled from sleep she looked beautiful.
I made it, Kris, he said silently to her. I came back to you. He smiled at her.
He yawned sleepily. Looking around, he saw that he was in a private room, bright pastel walls and even a window with sunshine streaming through. Nice, he thought. First-class treatment. Then he looked at Cardenas again. She looks like a kid, sleeping all curled up like that. A golden-haired angel. He sank back into sleep watching her.
Holly was sitting on the sofa in her living room beside Tavalera, running through the video images she intended to show at the final debate, scheduled for this election eve.
“I checked all the numbers with three different sets of astronomers on Earth and Selene,” Tavalera was saying. “Over the past hundred years an average of sixteen comets have come out of the Kuiper Belt each year. That’s comets bigger than five kilometers across.”
Studying the chart displayed on her smart wall, Holly said, “And they all enter the inner solar system?”
“Most do. Some get pulled in to Jupiter space, some to Saturn. Most swing through the inner system once and never come back—or at least their orbits are so long that they haven’t come back yet.”
“That’s a lot of water, though.”
“Billions of tons each year,” said Tavalera, almost smiling.
Holly closed her eyes briefly, then said, “So here’s my main points for tonight’s debate: One, the creatures in the rings are really nanomachines, built by aliens who-knows-when.”
“So we don’t dare start messing with them.”
Nodding, “Two, the power outages we’ve suffered were caused by electromagnetic surges from the nanocritters.”
“Maybe those surges are signals,” Tavalera coached. “Don’t forget that point.”
“F’sure. But who’re they signaling?”
“The aliens who planted ’em in the rings.”
“Or maybe they’re trying to get our attention?” Holly suggested.
Tavalera shrugged. “Either way, we can’t mine the rings. No way.”
“’Kay. Third point: We can still get rich by capturing comets and selling their water.”
“As long as they don’t have anything living in ’em,” Tavalera said, almost in a grumble.
“Astrobiologists have been studying comets for a century, almost,” Holly countered. “Lots of prebiotic chemicals, amino acids and stuff, but no living organisms.”
“So far.”
Holly tapped his chin with a forefinger. “We’ll examine each comet before we start chopping up its ice. If we find anything we’ll leave that one to the scientists. There’s plenty of others.”
He grasped her hand and looked into her eyes. “Holly, you’re gonna win this election, you know.”
“Maybe.”
“What happens to us when you do?”
She felt a lump in her throat. Swallowing hard, she replied, “I don’t know, Raoul. I guess what happens is up to you.”
When Gaeta opened his eyes again, he saw that Cardenas was standing at the foot of his bed smiling at him. A chubby, round-faced man in a white medical smock stood beside her; he was smiling, too.
“Good morning,” said the doctor. “I am Oswaldo Yañez, your attending physician.”
“Good morning,” Gaeta echoed. The gray plastic sheath still covered his arm, but he felt clear-headed, bright. No pain.
Cardenas stepped swiftly to the side of the bed, leaned over, and kissed him hard. Gaeta grasped her with his good arm and held her tightly.
“You’re going to be all right,” she said, half-whispering as she leaned against him. “I’ve got nanomachines repairing your arm. You’ll be fine in a few days.”
She pulled away from him at last as Yañez took a palm-sized remote from the pocket of his smock. An x-ray picture of Gaeta’s arm appeared on the wall to his right.
“The bone break is already healed,” the doctor said cheerfully, “with the help of Dr. Cardenas’s little devices. Repairing the damage caused by the freezing will take a while longer, however.”
“You saved my arm,” Gaeta said to her.
“I want you all in one piece, with all your parts working right.”
He grinned. “Me too.”
Yañez coughed politely. “Do you feel strong enough for visitors? There are several people outside.”
“Sure,” said Gaeta. “Send ’em in.”
Pancho and Jake Wanamaker trooped in, together with a darker-skinned guy with a trim little beard fringing his jawline.
“This is Da’ud Habib,” Pancho said, without any preliminaries. “He’s the one you were talkin’ with when you were down on Titan.”
“I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for bringing Alpha back to life for us,” Habib said. Gaeta saw that the man’s eyes were glistening; he was on the verge of tears.
“I guess Urbain is pretty damned happy, huh?”
Habib stiffened slightly. “Dr. Urbain is dead.”
“Dead?”
“He suffered a massive coronary attack while you were working on the surface. By the time we found him in his office it was too late to do anything to help him.”
“Holy shit,” Gaeta said fervently.
“But you brought Alpha back to life,” Habib said. “The probe is under our control and sending streams of data. For that we owe you our eternal thanks.”
Impulsively Habib grabbed Gaeta’s right hand and pumped it. Then, as if embarrassed by his burst of emotion, he dropped Gaeta’s hand and stepped back from the bed.
Before anyone could think of something to say, Fritz von Helmholtz stepped into the little room, impeccably attired in a navy blue blazer over a golden yellow turtleneck.
“Hi, Fritz,” Gaeta said. “Join the party.”
Fritz smiled tightly and offered, “Apparently you are well on the road to recovery.”
“That’s what they tell me,” said Gaeta.
“Your mission to Titan was a great success financially. We will clear slightly more than fourteen million, even factoring in medical expenses.”
Gaeta laughed. “You frozen Popsicle. You were worried about me, admit it.”
“I knew you would survive,” Fritz said, unruffled. “And Dr. Cardenas’s nanomachines will repair your arm, no?”
Cardenas said, “Damned right.”
“So,” Fritz said. “The mission was a great success.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Pancho.
Still focusing on Gaeta, Fritz went on, “Requests are pouring in. We are doing preliminary studies of a trek across Mercury at perihelion.”
“Not me,” Gaeta said. “I’m retired.”
“I’ve heard that before,” said Fritz, a tiny smile twitching his lips.
“For keeps,” said Gaeta, reaching for Cardenas with his good arm. “When you and the crew head back to Earth, take the suit with you. I’m finished with it.”
Cardenas squeezed his hand so hard Gaeta was surprised at the strength in her.
30 MAY 2096: THE THIRD DEBATE
From his seat in the rear of the jam-packed auditorium, Tavalera thought that Yolanda Negroponte looked like a blonde Amazon, standing tall and determined in the midst of the crowd. Eberly was at the lectern, trying to keep from scowling at her. Behind him sat Holly and Professor Wilmot.
Wilmot had thrown the debate open to questions from the floor immediately after the candidates’ brief opening statements. Holly hadn’t had a chance to show the graphs and imagery that Tavalera had helped her to put together. He didn’t even give her a chance to tell them about mining comets, Tavalera thought fretfully.
Several of Eberly’s flaks had asked about mining the rings in the face of the IAA’s o
rder, received that morning, banning any commercial activity in Saturn’s rings until the presence of nanomachines there could be thoroughly investigated.
Eberly had insisted that he would start mining operations anyway, and negotiate with the “Earthbound bureaucrats” to permit mining and scientific studies at the same time. “They’re a billion kilometers away,” he’d said. “How dare they try to tell us what to do?”
That’s when Negroponte shot to her feet.
“There’s more involved here than a jurisdictional conflict with the IAA. Those nanomachines were put into the rings by somebody. An intelligent species. We don’t know when and we don’t know why.”
Eberly forced a condescending smile. “It was probably millions of years ago. Whoever seeded the rings with those machines is probably long gone, maybe extinct.”
“Do you know that for a fact?” Negroponte demanded. Before Eberly could reply she went on, “No, you don’t. No one does. But we know that the nanomachines put out surges of electromagnetic energy. That’s what caused the power outages we’ve had—”
“That problem has been fixed,” Eberly said quickly.
“But suppose those surges are actually signals?” Negroponte insisted. “Suppose those nanomachines are sending out a message to their creators, a message that says we are here, in Saturn’s vicinity?”
The crowded auditorium went absolutely silent.
“Suppose,” Negroponte added, “that whoever planted those nanomachines would be angry with anyone who disturbed them? What then?”
Eberly’s mouth twitched several times before he replied, “That’s … sheer speculation.”
“But do we dare take a chance? We’re facing some enormous unknowns here.”
Eberly tried to smile again. But Holly got up from her chair and asked Professor Wilmot, “May I respond to her question?” The pin mike clipped to her tunic amplified her voice so that the audience heard it clearly.
Wilmot also got to his feet. “If Mr. Eberly is finished,” he said.
Eberly backed away from the lectern, but remained standing.
Holly licked her lips as she gripped the lectern’s sides and said, “I know how we can get rich from selling water without touching the rings.”
The crowd stirred. Turning to Wilmot as she fished a palm-comp from her pocket, Holly said, “I have a few images to show.’ Kay?”
“Go right ahead,” said Wilmot.
Tavalera sat back and watched the imagery he had helped Holly to prepare flash onto the wall screen at the rear of the auditorium’s stage. Holly went through the presentation they had rehearsed in a methodical, orderly way: Use Goddard as a base of operations; locate comets sailing inward from the Kuiper Belt; mine them for their water; sell the water to the human settlements throughout the solar system.
“With the money we make from selling water,” she concluded, “we’ll be able to lift the zero-growth limit and expand our habitat, even build new ones when we have to. And we can do it without interfering with the nanobugs in the rings.”
“How do you know there aren’t nanomachines in the comets?” a man shouted. “Or living creatures?”
Tavalera knew that Holly was prepared for that one.
With an easy smile, she replied, “Astrobiologists have been studying comets for pretty near a century now. They’ve found organic chemicals in them, but no living organisms. And no nanomachines.”
“Yeah, but still—”
“If a comet bears life—or alien machines—we’ll leave it alone. There’s plenty of other comets to pick from.”
The questions slowly turned from hostile to friendly. Holly’s winning them over, Tavalera told himself. She’s doing it. She’s showing them how to get rich without hurting the rings.
For more than an hour the people in the audience fired questions at both candidates. Tavalera realized that more and more of the questions were addressed to Holly, fewer to Eberly.
When Wilmot finally called a halt and asked for final statements, the crowd got to its feet and applauded Holly. Eberly hung back like a wounded wolf, staring unbelievingly at what was happening. Negroponte charged forward toward the stage, followed by a dozen other women. They surged up onto the stage and lifted Holly onto their shoulders, then paraded her around the auditorium as everyone whooped and cheered while Wilmot and Eberly stood on the stage dumbfounded.
She’s done it, Tavalera told himself. She’s gonna win tomorrow’s election. She’ll never come back to Earth with me.
PROFESSOR WILMOT’S ORAL DIARY
Extraordinary. This lonely outpost at the edge of human civilization has become the center of the scientific world’s attention. Hordes of scientists are traveling all the way out here to examine the alien nanodevices that Wunderly and Negroponte discovered. The two women are in line for a Nobel Prize, and politicians on Earth and the Moon have been forced to admit that there has been an alien presence in the solar system. How long ago the extraterrestrials were here, whether or not they’re coming back, whether or not they are still here observing us—no one knows. The politicians and the media pundits are all in a lather over it.
I must admit that the question is fascinating, even a bit frightening. Who are they? What are their intentions toward us?
I’m not sure that I want to find out.
The irony is, of course, that Dr. Urbain died just before achieving the success that he had worked so hard for. In a sense, his Titan Alpha rover killed him. His widow has already left for Earth, where Urbain will at last receive the recognition and honors that had eluded him while he was alive.
On a much more local issue, Holly Lane won a stunning upset victory over Malcolm Eberly in the election. Her proposal to mine comets for their water turned the tables on Eberly completely Of course, her championing of the women’s right to have babies was a major factor in her rather impressive rout of Eberly.
So Holly is being installed as our chief administrator and Eberly is out in the cold. At last. Can’t say I’m disappointed by that. Never liked the man. I wonder what he’ll try to do now that he’s out of power?
20 JUNE 2096: MORNING
Holly and Tavalera had to push against an incoming tide of three dozen scientists surging into the reception area from the fusion torch ship docked to the habitat’s main airlock. The arriving men and women looked eager, thrilled to be at Goddard after a six-week trip from Earth. Carrying a single travel bag, Tavalera looked gloomier than usual, downright depressed. Holly, due to be installed as the habitat’s new chief administrator later in the afternoon, seemed almost as sad.
The scientists rushed on past them, chattering excitedly with one another. Holly and Tavalera made their way to the airlock hatch, where a lone officer from the arriving torch ship stood in royal blue coveralls, a palmcomp in hand.
“So you’re really going?” Holly asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
Tavalera smiled wistfully. “You’re really staying?”
“I’ve got to,” she said, blinking at the tears forming in her eyes.
“Me too,” he replied. “I’ve got to go back home, Holly. I’d hate myself if I didn’t. I’d end up hating you for keeping me here.”
“I guess.”
His eyes were glistening, too. “I love you, Holly.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and rested her head against his chest. “I love you too, Raoul.”
“I’ll come back,” he said, folding his free arm around her. “I just hafta see Earth again, my family, my old friends. Then I’ll come back to you.”
“Just let me know when and I’ll hire a ship to bring you.” She looked up at him, tried to smile. “I’m a twirling VIP now … or I will be in a few hours.”
The ship’s officer coughed politely. “Our turnaround time is very tight, I’m afraid. You’ll have to board if we’re going to make rendezvous with the tanker they’ve laid on for us at Jupiter.”
Tavalera nodded. “I know something about tankers,” he said mildly.
Holly clutched at him, kissed him longingly. He held her just as tightly, but then broke the embrace.
“I … I’ll be back,” he promised, hefting his travel bag.
“I’ll be here,” she said.
He turned abruptly and walked swiftly past the officer to duck through the airlock hatch and disappear from her view.
Trying to fight down the feeling that she’d never see him again, Holly went slowly back through the now-empty reception area, her head low, her spirits even lower.
“Uh … Ms. Chief Administrator?”
She looked up and saw Ilya Timoshenko standing at the end of the short passageway that opened into the habitat proper. He was dressed in slacks and collarless jacket, his shirt buttoned to the neck.
“Mr. Timoshenko,” she said, surprised to see him.
“Ilya, please to call me Ilya.”
“Ilya. And you should call me Holly. Besides, I’m not chief administrator yet. Not for another—” she glanced at her wrist “—five hours.”
Timoshenko’s gray eyes sparkled. “Even so, we’re going to be working together for the next year. Maybe more, no?”
“Maybe,” Holly said, thinking, Or maybe I’ll go to Earth when my term in office is finished.
Timoshenko looked slightly flustered, almost embarrassed. “I know you’ll be surrounded with friends and well-wishers at the ceremony, so I came out here to see you before all that.”
“Is there something in particular … ?”
“No, nothing special. I just want to offer you my congratulations and assure you that the maintenance department will keep this bucket in tip-top shape for you.”
“For all the people,” Holly said.
“Yes, for everybody. Now that Eberly’s out of office, I can promise that with my whole heart.”
Despite herself, Holly grinned at him. “You don’t like Malcolm?”
Grinning back at her, Timoshenko answered, “I don’t like most people, but him I like least of all.”
Holly actually laughed. “Well, I hope you grow to like me, at least a little bit.” She started toward the hatch at the end of the passageway.