by Ben Bova
“Exactly.” Alexios nodded. “So we can shield the powersats and get them up close to their nominal power output, if…” His voice trailed off.
“If?” Yamagata snapped.
“If we can afford enough superconducting wire.”
“It’s expensive.”
“Very. But most of the elements needed to make superconducting wire exist in Mercury’s soil.”
“You mean regolith,” said Yamagata.
Alexios bowed slightly. “Excuse me. Of course, regolith. Soil would imply living creatures in the ground, wouldn’t it?”
“We can manufacture the superconductors here, out of local materials?”
“I believe so. If we use nanomachines it should be relatively inexpensive.”
“Once we are allowed to work on the surface again,” Yamagata muttered.
Alexios stifled the satisfied little smile that began to form on his lips. Forcing his face into a sorrowful mask, he agreed, “Yes, we must get permission from the IAA before we can even begin to do anything.”
Yamagata fumed. Instead of a mantra, he silently cursed the International Astronautical Authority, the International Consortium of Universities, all their members past and present, and all their members’ mothers back to five generations.
Ian McFergusen looked around at the barren, sun-blasted rocky ground and shook his head. Nothing. Every site we’ve investigated has turned up nothing. Only that one site next to the base Yamagata’s people have built.
Thanks to the virtual reality equipment that the ICU team had brought with them, McFergusen could sit in the laboratory they had set up aboard Brudnoy and still experience precisely what the tracked robot vehicle was doing down on the surface of Mercury. The first time he had used VR equipment, back when he was part of the third Mars expedition, it had seemed little less than a miracle to him. He could see, feel, hear what the robot machines were experiencing thousands of kilometers away, all while sitting in the comfort of a secure base. Now, so many years later, virtual reality was just another tool, no more wondrous than the fusion engines that propelled interplanetary torch ships or the tunneling microscopes that revealed individual atoms.
Sitting on a lab stool, his head and lower arms encased in the VR helmet and gloves, McFergusen picked up a rock in his clawlike pincers and brought it close to his sensors. A perfectly ordinary piece of volcanic ejecta, he thought. With the strength of the robot he broke the rock apart, then brought the broken edges to his sensor set and scanned their exposed interiors for several minutes.
Nothing. No PAHs, no sulfides, no iron nodules. If I bring it up to the ship’s tunneling microscope, McFergusen thought, I won’t find any nanometer-sized structures, either. He tossed the broken fragments of the rock back to the ground in disgust.
For long moments he simply sat there, his body aboard the torch ship Brudnoy, his eyes and hands and mind on the blazing hot surface of Mercury.
How can there be such rich specimens at one site and nothing anywhere else? Of course, he reminded himself, we have an entire planet to consider. In these few weeks we’ve barely tested a few dozen possible sites. Perhaps we’re looking in the wrong places.
Yet, he reasoned, we concentrated our searches on sites that are similar to the one where Molina found his specimens. We should have found something by now.
Unless…
McFergusen did not want to consider the possibility that had arisen in his mind. We’ve got to widen our net, he told himself, search different kinds of sites.
That won’t be easy, he knew. Not with Yamagata breathing down our necks. Lord, he’s been sending messages to IAA headquarters daily, demanding to know when we’ll allow him to start digging up the regolith again.
None of it is easy, McFergusen said to himself. It never is. Then that nagging suspicion surfaced in his mind again. How could Molina have been so lucky?
Luck plays its role in science, he knew. It’s always better to be lucky than to be smart. But so damnably lucky? Is it possible?
Victor Molina was in his lab, flicking through the tunneling microscope’s images of the latest rock samples brought up from the surface. Nothing. These samples were as dead and inert as rocks from the Moon. No hydrates, no organic molecules, no long-chain molecules of any sort. Baked dry and dead.
He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes wearily. How can this be? Even the samples of dirt scraped off the ground showed no biomarkers of any kind.
Sitting up straight again, he reminded himself that the dirt samples from the surface of Mars tested by the old Viking landers a century ago showed no signs of biological activity, either. Not even a trace of organic molecules in the soil. And Mars not only bears life today but once bore intelligent life, before it was wiped out in an extinction-level meteor impact.
He turned and looked at the set of rocks he himself had tested when he’d first arrived at Mercury. They were carefully sealed in airtight transparent plastic containers. McFergusen wants me to let him send them back to Earth for further testing. Never! I’m not letting them out of my sight. They’ll go back to Earth when I do, and they’ll be tested by third parties only when I’m present.
Molina felt a fierce proprietary passion about those rocks. They were his key to a future of respect and accomplishment, his ticket to Stockholm and the Nobel Prize.
It took a few moments for him to realize that someone was knocking at his laboratory door, rapping hard enough to make the door shake. With some irritation he called out, “Enter.”
Bishop Danvers slid the door back and stepped into the lab, a look of stern determination on his fleshy face. The door automatically slid shut.
“Hello, Elliott,” Molina said evenly. “I’m pretty busy right now.” It was a lie, but Molina was in no mood for his old friend’s platitudes.
“This is an official visit,” Danvers said, standing a bare two paces inside the doorway.
“Official?” Molina snapped. “What do you mean?”
Without moving from where he stood, Danvers said, “I’m here in my capacity as a bishop in the New Morality Church.”
Despite himself, Molina grinned. “What are you going to do, Elliott, baptize me? Or maybe bless my rocks?”
“No,” said Danvers, his cheeks flushing slightly. “I’m here to interrogate you.”
Molina’s brows shot up. “Interrogate? You mean like the Inquisition?”
Danvers’s face darkened, his heavy hands knotted into fists. But he quickly regained control of himself and forced a thin smile.
“Victor, the New Morality has placed a heavy burden on my shoulders. I’ve been tasked with the responsibility of disproving your claim of finding life on Mercury.”
Molina smiled and relaxed. “Oh, is that all.”
“It’s very serious!”
Nodding, Molina said, “I understand, Elliott.” He gestured to the only other chair in the room. “Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”
The plastic seat of the tubular metal chair squeaked as Danvers settled his bulk into it. The bishop looked tense, wary.
“Elliott, how long have we known each other?” Molina asked.
Danvers thought a moment. “I first met you in Ecuador, more than twelve years ago.”
“It’s closer to fourteen years, actually.”
“To be sure. But I haven’t seen you since the trial at Quito, and that was about ten years ago.”
Nodding again, Molina said, “But we were friends back in Ecuador. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t still be friends.”
Danvers gestured to the analytical equipment lining the laboratory’s walls. “We live in two different worlds, Victor.”
“Different, maybe, but not entirely separate. There’s no reason for us to be adversaries.”
“I have my responsibilities,” Danvers countered, somewhat stiffly. “My orders come straight from Atlanta, from the archbishop himself.”
Molina let out a little sigh, then said, “All right, just wha
t do they want you to do?”
“As I told you: they want me to disprove your claim that life exists on Mercury.”
“I’ve never claimed that.”
“Or once existed, ages ago,” Danvers added.
“That seems irrefutable, Elliott.”
“Because of the chemicals you’ve found in those rocks?” Danvers pointed to the clear plastic containers.
“That’s right. The evidence is unmistakable.”
“But as I understand it, McFergusen and his team haven’t found any corroborating evidence.”
“Corroborating evidence!” Molina smirked. “You’re learning how to talk like a scientist, Elliott.”
Danvers grimaced slightly. “Your fellow scientists seem terribly puzzled that they haven’t been able to find anything similar to what you’ve discovered.”
With a shrug, Molina replied, “Mercury may be a small planet, Elliott, but it’s still a planet. A whole world. Its surface area must be similar to the continent of Eurasia, back on Earth. How thoroughly do you think a handful of scientists could explore all of Eurasia, from the coast of Portugal to the China Sea? In a few weeks, no less.”
“Yet you found your rocks the first day you set foot on Mercury.”
“So I did. I was lucky.” Suddenly Molina came up with a new thought. “Perhaps, in your terms, God guided me to those rocks.”
Danvers rocked back in his chair. “Don’t make a joke of God. That’s blasphemy.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you, Elliott,” Molina said softly. “I was simply trying to put my good fortune in terms you’d understand.”
“You should try praying, instead,” said Danvers. “As far as your fellow scientists are concerned, they don’t believe in your luck. Or God’s grace.”
TORCH SHIP BRUDNOY
“I want it clearly understood,” McFergusen said, in his gravelly Highland brogue, “that this is strictly an informal meeting.”
Informal, Molina repeated silently. Like a coroner’s inquest or a session of the Spanish Inquisition.
The Scottish physicist sat at the head of the table, Molina at its foot. Along the table were ranked the other scientists that the IAA had sent, together with Bishop Danvers, who sat at Molina’s right. They were using the captain’s conference room; it felt crowded, tight, and stuffy. Too many people for a compartment this size, Molina thought.
“Although the ship’s computer is taking a verbatim record of what we say,” McFergusen went on, “no report of this meeting will be sent back to IAA headquarters until each person here has had a chance to read the record and add any comments he or she wishes to make. Is that clear?”
Heads nodded up and down the table.
McFergusen hesitated a moment, then plunged in. “Now then, our major problem is that we have been unable to find any specimens bearing biomarkers.”
“Except for the ones I found,” Molina added.
“Indeed.”
“How do you account for that?” asked the woman on Molina’s left.
He shrugged elaborately. “How do you account for the fact that, during some war back in the twentieth century, the first cannon shell fired into the city of Leningrad killed the zoo’s only elephant?”
Everyone chuckled.
Except McFergusen. “We have been scouring the planet for some six weeks now—”
“Six weeks for a whole planet?” Molina countered. “Do you really believe you’ve covered everything?”
“No, of course not. But you found your specimens on your first day, didn’t you?”
Feeling anger simmering inside him, Molina said, “You forget that I came here because of a tip from one of the construction workers. I didn’t just blindly stumble onto those rocks.”
“A tip from whom?” asked one of the younger men.
“I don’t know. It was an anonymous message. I’ve questioned the workers down there on the surface and none of them admits to sending me the message.”
“An anonymous tip that no one admits to sending,” grumbled McFergusen. “It strains credulity a bit, doesn’t it?”
The woman on Molina’s left, young, slightly plump, very intense, asked, “Why you?”
“Why me what?”
“Why did he—or she—send that message to you? You’re not a major figure in planetary studies. Why not to Professor McFergusen,” she gestured toward the older man, “or the head of the IAA?”
“Yes,” picked up one of the others. “Why wasn’t the message sent to the head of the astrobiology department of a major university?”
“Why is the sky blue?” Molina snapped. “How the hell should I know?”
“We know why the sky is blue,” McFergusen murmured, a slight smile on his bearded face.
“Rayleigh scattering,” said the young woman on the other side of the table.
“The question remains,” McFergusen said, in a voice loud enough to silence the others, “that you received an anonymous message that led you directly to the specimens you discovered, and no one else has been able to find anything similar.”
“And no one else has tested your specimens,” said the woman on Molina’s left.
Seething, Molina hissed, “Are you suggesting that I faked my findings?”
“I am suggesting,” she said, unfazed by his red-faced anger, “that you allow us to independently test your specimens.”
“It’s possible to make an honest mistake,” Bishop Danvers said softly, laying a placating hand on Molina’s arm.
“Look at Percival Lowell, spending his life seeing canals on Mars that didn’t exist.”
“Or the first announcement of pulsar planets.”
McFergusen said gently, “No one is impugning your honesty, Dr. Molina. But we can’t be certain of your results until they are checked by a third party. Surely you understand that.”
Reluctantly, Molina nodded. “Yes. Of course. I’m sorry I got so excited.”
Everyone around the table seemed to relax, ease back in their chairs.
“But,” Molina added, pointing straight at McFergusen, “I want to be present when the tests are made.”
“Certainly,” McFergusen agreed. “I see no problem with that. Do any of you?”
No one objected.
“Very well, then. We can test the rocks tomorrow. Dr. Baines, here, is the best man for the job, don’t you agree?”
Molina nodded.
“I will attend the procedure myself,” McFergusen said, almost jovially. “With you, Dr. Molina.”
Molina nodded again and muttered, “Thank you,” through gritted teeth.
GOETHE BASE
“You’ve got to help me,” Victor Molina said, his voice trembling slightly. “You’ve got to!”
Dante Alexios sat stiffly in his straight-backed chair and struggled to keep any emotion from showing on his face. “I have to help you?”
“None of the others will. You’re the only one who can.”
The two men were in Alexios’s bare little office. Molina was on his feet, pacing like a caged animal back and forth. Alexios sat unmoving, except for his eyes, which tracked Molina’s movements like a predator sizing up its intended victim.
Molina paced to the wall, turned around, strode back to the opposite wall, turned again.
“I’ve got to find more samples!” he blurted. “They won’t believe me if I don’t. I’ve got to go out on the surface and find more rocks that contain biomarkers.”
As evenly as he could manage, Alexios said, “But the IAA team is looking for samples all over the planet, aren’t they? They’ve stopped us from doing any further activities—”
“The IAA team! McFergusen and his academics! A bunch of incompetent fools! They sit up there safe and comfortable in their ship and send teleoperated rovers to snoop around the surface for them.”
“Virtual reality is a powerful tool,” Alexios goaded. Standing in front of him, bending over so that their noses nearly touched, Molina cried, “They won’t allow me to
use their VR system! I let them examine my rocks but they won’t let me touch their equipment! It’s not fair!”
Alexios slowly rose to his feet, forcing Molina to back off a few steps. “And that’s why you’ve come to me.”
“You have tractors sitting here at the base doing nothing. Let me borrow one. I’ve got to get out there and find more specimens.”
Alexios’s oddly irregular face slowly curled into a lopsided smile. “It’s against safety regulations for anyone to go out on a tractor alone.”
Molina’s already-flushed face turned darker. Before he could say anything, though, Alexios added, “So I’ll go out with you.”
“You will?” Molina seemed about to jump for joy.
With a self-deprecating little shrug, Alexios said, “I have little else to do, thanks to the IAA.”
He could have said, Thanks to you, but Molina never thought of that possibility.
Instead he asked, “When? How soon?”
“As soon as you’re ready.”
“I’m ready now!”
In truth, it took more than a day for Molina to be ready. He shuttled back up to Himawari to gather the equipment he wanted, and by then it was time for dinner. So he spent the night aboard Yamagata’s torch ship with his wife. Alexios slept in his quarters alone, trying not to think of Molina in bed with Lara. He slept very little, and when he did his dreams were monstrous.
Molina arrived at the base early the next morning, with four crates of equipment. Alexios hid his amusement and walked him to the garage where the base’s tractors were housed. A baggage cart trundled behind them on spongy little wheels, faithfully following the miniature beacon Alexios had clipped to his belt.
The garage was empty and quiet. “Mr. Yamagata came in here just once since the IAA embargoed us,” Alexios said, his voice echoing off the steel ribs of the curving walls. “He wasn’t happy to see all this equipment sitting idle.”
Molina said nothing. The tractors were simple and rugged, with springy-looking oversized metal wheels and a glassteel bubble up front where the driver and passengers sat. The two men loaded Molina’s equipment into the cargo deck in back, then closed the heavy cermet hatch.