It was going to be yes! Nell felt her anxieties wash away.
But Hilda Brandt was continuing. "However, since a readily available vessel will initially be used, and since no serious exploration can be done with that vessel, your experience on the Spindrift is not relevant. Dr. Perry requested that Wilsa Sheer go with him, instead of you, on the first trip to Europa. And since after her concert she now has celebrity status with the General Assembly, in the interests of public relations I did not object. I'm sorry. I can't think why Dr. Perry didn't tell you this before he left."
* * *
Don't kill the messenger. It was the oldest rule for dealing with bad news, but the hardest to apply. Nell felt shock and anger. Hilda Brandt was not the cause, but she was there. Nell had an urge to pick a fight with the woman.
And Hilda Brandt knew it. Her expression of concern made things worse.
"I'm sorry," she said again. "I thought that you and he would already have discussed all this. Never mind. When the Spindrift is shipped to Europa, and the real exploration begins—"
Nell wasn't sure of how she was going to reply. Not politely, that was certain. Fortunately she was saved by the unexpected and noisy arrival of Tristan Morgan, clattering into the dining area—unexpected to Nell, for it would be a little while before she realized that people did not "accidentally" drop in on meetings in the private suites of the General Assembly.
Tristan looked as bad as Nell felt. He gave her a troubled nod. "Hilda—"he began. And then, "Miss Cotter! Do you know what's happened?"
"I do now."
"Did he mention anything about this to you?"
"I haven't even seen him since last night. Did she tell you?"
"No. I thought I'd be seeing her this afternoon, but she just left a message for me to say that she was going. She sounded excited, bubbling over at the idea of visiting another world. She wants to compare it with deep-cruising Jupiter."
Maybe Jon had left a message for Nell. She hadn't thought to look. Maybe there was even another explanation. Maybe she had not simply been dumped as a clinging nuisance in favor of Wilsa Sheer.
Maybe.
She and Tristan stared at each other, recognizing fellow victims, until Hilda Brandt said at last, "They'll be gone for only a couple of days. Then we'll sort this out. Tristan, you're all the time looking for more publicity for Starseed. Nell Cotter is a reporter, you know, and I hear she's a first-rate one. If you have the afternoon free—"
"I do now."
"—then you ought to show your work to Miss Cotter. I'm sure she has cameras with her."
Always, and everywhere. Nell lifted her work bag and showed them the multiple recorders. The subvocal mike was in position, too, but Nell never advertised that. And she didn't admit the presence of the micro-video concealed in the brooch on her blouse.
Tristan, from the look of him, wanted nothing less than Nell's company. But he had already admitted that his afternoon was free. Finally he nodded at her. "Last night you said that Starseed will use a helium-3/deuterium drive rather than a Moby. So you're not starting from scratch. How much do you know?"
Confession time. "I edited a documentary on your project three or four years ago. That—what I remember of it—is all I know."
"Fine. Let's go teach you something substantial." Tristan Morgan sighed, but his old energetic manner was beginning to creep back. "Get your skates on—we'll be moving fast."
Run away, run away. Away from rejection. Nell nodded, while Hilda Brandt looked on benevolently.
"Don't let him rush you," she said to Nell. "He considers that anything he knows must be easy, so he goes twice as fast as he ought to. Next time I see you, I hope you have a useful program in the bag. Be nice to her, Tristan."
She said bag, thought Nell as they left. But she was staring at my brooch. I don't think I'd like to get into an argument with Hilda Brandt.
* * *
To run all the way out to the Jovian system, then to return weeks later with nothing more than a documentary about Project Starseed; Glyn Sefaris would skin her alive. Worse yet, he would be amused. She could hear him now: "How are the mighty fallen!"
Nell couldn't stand that. No matter how much Tristan loved his pet project, there had to be something more newsworthy than Starseed somewhere in the Jovian system. She would have to keep her eyes open.
The afternoon did not start well. Tristan rushed her over to a lab close to the Ganymede surface, sat her in front of a screen, and played a recording.
She endured it for ten minutes, while dozens of pictures of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Persephone, along with all of their moons, rolled by to the accompaniment of a woefully adenoidal voice-over.
"Tristan, I don't watch shows, I make shows. What's the point of all this?"
"Sorry. This is designed to point out that more than half of the useful resources of the solar system are beyond the orbit of Jupiter. We're not yet to the good stuff, but it's coming now."
They were beyond the known planets of the solar system, cruising from body to body in the Oort Cloud.
"Courtesy of DOS," said Tristan, overriding the spoken commentary. "A few weeks ago we didn't have anything like these pictures. Comets in the making, though I'm sure we'll get to most of them long before they start to fall into the solar system, and use them for something else. That one's about thirty kilometers across. According to the spectroscope, it's pure volatiles. DOS could spot something on its surface the size of a mouse. Of course, if there is life in the Cloud, it would be microscopic. And hidden away inside."
Useless for a program. Nell was adding comments automatically, although she was not recording any video. The only thing worth having on record is Tristan Morgan's intensity. That would come across—if he had anything worth hearing.
". . . and when we reach the edge of the Cloud, what then?" The adenoidal voice-over was back. "Well, then we are still less than a quarter of the way to our nearest stellar neighbors. So let us examine the nearer stars . . ."
Nell was reaching the limit of her tolerance. But so, apparently, was Tristan.
"I know, dull stuff." He switched off. "It's all very useful for a hundred years from now, but what you saw at the beginning is a lot more important to us. The Outer System, beyond Jupiter. That's where the action's going to be. The old Inner System—Earth, Mars, even the Belt worlds—that's all dead."
Just the words to include in a show that would have its largest audiences on Earth and Mars. But strange words, too, from a man whose life work was supposedly devoted to the unmanned probes that would explore the stars, the same stars that he had casually dismissed as dull stuff.
"Not everyone on Earth is mindless jelly, Tristan, even if we do have our fair share of deadheads." Nell had to follow her hunch. She quietly turned on her video recorder. "I wanted to ask you, how come you and Hilda Brandt seem to be such good friends?"
"What makes you think we are?" But there was a knowing gleam in his eyes.
"Well, for one thing, you said you were. Last night you said you were friends and allies. And the way you dropped in on her this morning during our meeting."
"Dropped in?" The caution was replaced by indignation. "I never did. You don't 'drop in' on Hilda's private meetings. Not if you want to come away with your head on your shoulders. She made an appointment with me—told me to be there at four-eighty. Come to think of it, I never did find out why. I was too wrapped up with Wilsa's running off to Europa."
But I know, thought Nell. You were scheduled to arrive just after I did, so Hilda Brandt could send us off to console each other. But I don't know why, either.
"You did say you were allies, though."
"Yes." Caution and evangelical zeal struggled on Tristan's face. Caution lost—easily. "We are allies, though most people wouldn't realize it. You just said that not everybody on Earth is the same. I accept that, and I apologize for the stupid remark. But I'm sure that if you say 'Jovian system' to people back on Earth, you'll find that they think we'r
e the same."
"I'm afraid you're right."
"Well, they're wrong. There are conservative stick-in-the-mudders here, the same as there are on every planet. They don't care that someday we'll run out of Jovian-system resources."
"But you're not one of them."
"Of course I'm not." Tristan was full of passionate conviction. "We have to keep pushing out, pushing on. We have to explore and develop the Outer System, all the way to the Cloud. If we don't, we'll find ourselves sitting on overpopulated worn-out worlds, like Earth was before the war took some of the pressure off you."
It was not the first time that Nell had heard the suggestion that the Great War had been good for Earth, because it had wiped out three-quarters of the people and given the planet a breathing space. If you said it fast, "nine billion dead" didn't sound as unthinkable as it was.
"I don't see how that ties you to Hilda Brandt. Isn't she committed to the exact opposite of what you want? To preventing the development of Europa?"
"She is. But she's a clever woman. She sees that the best way to make sure that Europa remains unspoiled is to offer other worlds for the developers. New worlds, Saturn's moons and beyond. And that puts the two of us on the same side of the argument." He glanced around the room, although there was no way that anyone could possibly have entered. He lowered his voice. "We're both members of Outward Bound!"
How old was he? Thirty-three, maybe. Older than Nell. But she looked into Tristan's bright eyes, bubbling over with naive enthusiasm, and felt the weight of centuries upon her. I'd hate to have him as my co-conspirator. He speaks as though Outward Bound is a big secret, when it's one of the best-known organizations in the solar system.
"You've heard of it?" he was asking.
"Many times. There are Bounders, even on Earth."
"But not the way there are here." Tristan hesitated. "Actually, there's a meeting tonight. Hilda Brandt won't be able to make it, but if you'd like to go . . . you wouldn't be allowed to take those cameras in, of course." He gestured to her work bag.
"Of course." Not these cameras. Hasn't he ever heard of micros? Such innocence, he should be a priest. But there's something underneath all this, I swear it, if only I can find a way to dig down far enough. Don't laugh at me yet, Glyn Sefaris.
"I'd love to attend, Tristan. Just tell me when and where."
* * *
In agreeing to go to the Outward Bound meeting, Nell had no particular end in mind. She was simply following the first rule of video reporting: Go take a look.
But Tristan was making a big deal of it. He wound them through a maze of darkened and little-used corridors, in which Nell became totally lost, and came at last to a paneled door. He gave her a little lapel pin that identified her as a nonmember but an approved guest, and showed her the special way to attach it. Finally he rapped a syncopated sequence on the panel.
Nell wanted to laugh. Shouldn't there be an eye-level slot that slid to one side and a husky voice growling, "Okay, gimme de passwoid?"
But instead, the door was opened by a fresh-faced twenty-year-old who gave Nell one quick look, then said breathlessly, "Tristan, you're late. D'you have your stuff ready? You're on first. Let's go!"
He whipped Tristan away to the far end of the long hall, leaving Nell to her own devices. So much for maximum security. She was carrying three cameras, two of them designed to elude any normal body scan, but here a search was not even attempted.
Not that she was much inclined to switch on a camera.
Nell inspected the meeting room. There were forty to fifty people present, a few of them sitting in the first two rows of seats, but most still standing in the aisles. All but four of them were males. She edged her way to the periphery of a group of eight containing two of the four women.
"Less than one half of one percent of the budget." A gangling beanstalk of a youth who sported an unsuccessful attempt at a beard on the very tip of his chin was speaking in a loud voice. "That's the problem. The rest is squandered on social programs—and when did a social program ever solve anything?"
"But it's always been that way, right through history," said a stocky, fair-haired man on Nell's right. "Research never gets enough funding. It's no different now than it ever was. We have to take that as a fact and find a way to live with it."
" 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,' " said one of the women. "That's what Santayana said, and he was right. People like us have managed to get things done in the past, and always without enough funding."
"That's all very well." The skinny, unkempt man who had spoken first gave her a superior look. "But I can improve on Santayana: 'Those who remember the past too well will never learn to do anything new.' That's what's wrong with our General Assembly. They say, humans have managed very well without star travel. Why do we need it, they say, when we have problems still to solve right here on Ganymede? They don't realize that star travel is the tool—the only tool—that can solve those problems."
He smirked at Nell, inviting her admiration for his insight, while others around the group chimed in with their opinions. She automatically smiled back at him, busy with her own thoughts.
They're all not so much listening as waiting for their turn to speak. And they're all so young—not necessarily in age but in outlook. Even the man at the front there with Tristan, trying to bring the meeting to order. He has to be at least ten years older than I am, but look at him. He's as awkward and self-conscious as an eight-year-old. And nobody's taking any notice of him.
"I don't think we've met."
Nell turned in surprise to find that the lanky, straggle-beard youth had moved to her side and was grinning down at her. It took her a second or so to identify his expression—and to control her own.
She was being propositioned, for God's sake. And as ineptly as she had ever seen it done.
"Do you come here often?" His smile was almost condescending.
Never in the mating season. But she didn't have the heart to slaughter the innocent. She gestured at her pin. "No. It's actually my first time. I'm just a visitor."
"Oh . . ." He peered at her lapel with the squinting concentration of the purblind. "Well. Maybe after the meeting is over—"
". . . for the third time." The man at the front had finally found out how to work the sound system, and it boomed through the hall loud enough to make other speech impossible. "So if those in the aisles will please take their seats. We have a lot of important business tonight."
Saved by the chair. Nell gave the scarecrow a vague noncommittal nod and moved to take the last available seat in a row. As the man on the podium rambled on, she studied the audience. In less than five minutes she had formed her impression of the Ganymedean Outward Bound. These people were a perfect example of what Glyn Sefaris described as "single-issue voters," driven by one overpowering interest.
Except that it would also be a mistake to dismiss this group. Nell took another look around the room. Single-issue advocates they certainly were. But they had youth, they had intelligence, and they had endless focused energy. Single-issue voters, and single-issue workers. "Fanatics" might be a better word for them. How many other cells of Outward Bound were meeting today, all through the solar system? Anyone who did remember history would recall that it was people just like this who changed the universe; who started revolutions, bloody or intellectual; who died on the battlegrounds, stormed the Bastille, or turned accepted scientific wisdom on its head.
"Starseed." Tristan's voice brought Nell's attention back to the platform. He was standing at the microphone.
"Let's start with the propulsion system. That's where the remaining problems are. First graphic, if you please." He began a whirlwind progress report, flashing up a too-rapid sequence of spacecraft schematics and talking just as fast. If Nell was not lost, it was only because she had seen much of the design when she was editing the documentary. It was a bulb-nosed, plunger-tailed rocket whose midsection was girdled by two clusters of sphere
s. The only difference she could see from the earlier design was that now the nose of the rocket was a lot bigger. She turned on her hidden camera and added subvocally a simplified commentary.
Those rings of spheres held the fuel. A thin stream of a helium-3/deuterium mixture was fed from them to the cup-shaped tail, where it was fused at stellar temperatures to create three fusion byproducts: charged particles, radiation, and neutrinos. The particles were gripped by a magnetic field and steered by the Lorentz force to emerge from the back of the rocket as a precisely collimated beam. Radiation was reflected from the inner face of the cup with equal efficiency and precision, and exited just as well collimated. The neutrinos alone could not be harnessed by any available technology. Spreading out at light-speed in a ghostly sphere, they provided in front of the rocket the evanescent and only evidence that Starseed was approaching.
"We could hold the exhaust beam tight for light-years," Tristan was saying. "We don't do that, because we don't want to fry any interstellar neighbors by accident. Let me wrap this up with a few words about the current schedule. The propulsion system is twenty-eight months from completion. The communication and navigation systems, a year and a half. Propellant will be no problem; we already have ample helium-3 and deuterium in storage. We have enough mirror matter for a dozen missions. So the big item before Starseed is finished will be systems integration. And then . . . "he paused. "... and then we make the big decision. Questions?"
"We'll take them in a little while," said the chairman. "Before that, we have some urgent new business. Cyrus Mobarak." There was hissing from the audience. "I don't have to tell you what he means to Outward Bound. We've worried about him for the past two years, but now we—in this room—have more direct reason to worry. He's here—on Ganymede. And that's bad news. He says he's here to push for the big Europan fusion project, but he won't stop at that. He'll try to push the Mobies into every project in the whole Jovian system. You know how much money he has, and how much influence. So this is the word for tonight: Cyrus Mobarak is the enemy. We have to work to learn what he is doing and then stop him. Who has suggestions?"
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