by Ben Bova
I found myself instinctively disliking both of the bloated engineers until I thought of the globulous little Venus figures that prehistoric peoples had carved out of hand-sized round rocks. Then they did not seem so bad.
The third crewman was the payload specialist, a lanky dark taciturn biologist. Young and rather handsome, in a smoldering sullen way. Although he was slim, he had some meat on his bones. I found that this was his first space mission, and he was determined to make it his last.
“What is your cargo?” I asked.
Before the biologist could reply, Sam answered, “Worms.”
I nearly dropped my fork. Suddenly the spaghetti I had laboriously wound around it seemed to be squirming, alive.
“Worms?” I echoed.
Nodding brightly, Sam said, “You know the Moralist Sect that’s building an O’Neill habitat?”
I shook my head, realizing I had been badly out of touch with the rest of the human race for three years.
“Religious group,” Sam explained. “They decided Earth is too sinful for them, so they’re building their own paradise, a self-contained, self-sufficient artificial world in a Sun-circling orbit, just like your asteroid.”
“And they want worms?” I asked.
“For the soil,” said the biologist.
Before I could ask another question Sam said, “They’re bringing in megatons of soil from the Moon, mostly for radiation shielding. Don’t want to be conceiving two-head Moralists, y’know. So they figured that as long as they’ve got so much dirt they might as well use it for farming, too.”
“But lunar soil is sterile,” the biologist said.
“Right. It’s got plenty of nutrients in it, all those chemicals that crops need. But no earthworms, no beetles, none of the bugs and slugs and other slimy little things that make the soil alive”
“And they need that?”
“Yep. Sure do, if they’re gonna farm that lunar soil. Otherwise they’ve gotta go to hydroponics, and that’s against their religion.”
I turned from Sam to the biologist. He nodded to confirm what Sam had said. The two engineers were ignoring our conversation, busily shoveling food into their mouths.
“Not many cargo haulers capable of taking ten tons of worms and their friends halfway around the Earth’s orbit,” Sam said proudly. “I got the contract from the Moralists with hardly any competition at all. Damned profitable, too, as long as the worms stay healthy.”
“They are,” the biologist assured him.
“This is the first of six flights for them,” said Sam, returning his attention to his veal and pasta. “All worms.”
I felt myself smiling. “Do you always make deliveries in person?”
“Oh no.” Twirling the spaghetti on his fork beneath the plastic cover of his dish. “I just figured that since this is the first flight, I ought to come along and see it through. I’m a qualified astronaut, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Yeah. Besides, it lets me get away from the hotel and the office. My buddy Omar can run the hotel while I’m gone. Hell, he runs it while I’m there!”
“Then what do you do?”
He grinned at me. “I look for new business opportunities. I seek out new worlds, new civilizations. I boldly go where no man has gone before.”
The biologist muttered from behind a forkful of veal, “He chases women.” From his dead-serious face I could not tell if he was making a joke or not.
“And you deliver ten tons of worms,” I said.
“Right. And the mail.”
“Ah. My letter.”
Sam smiled broadly. “It’s in my cabin, up by the bridge.”
I refused to smile back at him. If he thought he was going to get me into his cabin, and his zero-gee hammock, he was terribly mistaken. So I told myself. I had only taken a couple of sips of the wine; after three years of living like a hermit, I was careful not to make a fool of myself. I wanted to be invulnerable, untouchable.
Actually, Sam was an almost perfect gentleman. After dinner we coasted from the wardroom along a low-ceilinged corridor that opened into the command module. I had to bend over slightly to get through the corridor, but Sam sailed along blithely, talking every millimeter of the way about worms, Moralists and their artificial heaven, habitats expanding throughout the inner solar system and how he was going to make billions from hauling specialized cargos.
His cabin was nothing more than a tiny booth with a sleeping hammock fastened to one wall, actually just an alcove built into the command module. Through the windows of the bridge I could see my asteroid, hovering out there with the Sun starting to rise above it. Sam ducked into his cubbyhole without making any suggestive remarks at all, and came out a moment later with a heavy, stiff, expensive-looking white envelope.
It bore my name and several smudged stamps that I presume had been affixed to it by various post offices on its way to me. In the corner was the name and address of a legal firm: Skinner, Flaymen, Killum and Score, of Des Moines, Iowa, USA, Earth.
Wondering why they couldn’t have sent their message electronically, like everyone else, I struggled to open the envelope.
“Let me,” Sam said, taking one corner of it in two fingers and deftly slitting it with the minuscule blade of the tiniest pocket knife I had ever seen.
I pulled out a single sheet of heavy white parchment, so stiff that its edges could slice flesh.
It was a letter for me. It began, “Please be advised ...”
For several minutes I puzzled over the legal wordings while Sam went over to the control console and busied himself checking out the instruments. Slowly the letter’s meaning became clear to me. My breath gagged in my throat. A searing, blazing knot of pain sprang up in my chest.
“What’s wrong?” Sam was at my side in a shot. “Cripes, you look like you’re gonna explode! You’re red as a fire engine.”
I was so furious I could hardly see. I handed the letter to Sam and managed to choke out, “Does this mean what I think it means?”
He scanned the letter quickly, then read it more slowly, his eyes going wider with each word of it.
“Jesus Christ on a crutch!” he shouted. “They’re throwing you off the asteroid!”
I could not believe what the letter said. We both read it half a dozen times more. The words did not change their meaning. I wanted to scream. I wanted to kill. The vision came to my mind of lawyers stripped naked and staked out over a slow fire, screaming for mercy while I laughed and burned their letter in the fire that was roasting their flesh. I looked around the command module wildly, looking for something to throw, something to break, anything to release the terrible, terrible fury that was building inside me.
“Those sons of bitches!” Sam raged. “Those slimy do-gooder bastards!”
The lawyers represented the Moralist Sect of The One True God, Inc. The letter was to inform me that the Moralists had notified the International Astronautical Authority that they intended to capture asteroid Aten 2004 EA and use it as structural material for the habitat they were building.
“They can’t do that!” Sam bellowed, bouncing around the bridge like a weightless Ping-Pong ball. “You were there first. They can’t throw you out like a landlord evicting a tenant!”
“The white man has taken the Indian’s lands whenever he chose to,” I said, seething.
He mistook my deathly quiet tone for acquiescence. “Not anymore! Not today. This is one white man who’s on the side of the redskins.”
He was so upset, so outraged, so vociferous that I felt my own fury cooling, calming. It was as if Sam was doing all my screaming for me.
“This letter,” I hissed, “says I have no choice.”
“Hell no, you won’t go,” Sam snapped. “I’ve got lawyers too, lady. Nobody’s going to push you around.”
“Why should you want to involve yourself?”
He shot me an unfathomable glance. “I’m involved. I’m involved. You think I can sit back a
nd watch those Moralist bastards steal your rock? I hate it when some big outfit tries to muscle us little guys.”
It occurred to me that at least part of Sam’s motivation might have been to worm his way into my affection. And my pants. He would act the brave protector of the weak, and I would act the grateful weakling who would reward him with my somewhat emaciated body. From the few words that the taciturn biologist had said at dinner, and from my observation of Sam’s own behavior, it seemed to me that he had a Casanova complex: he wanted every woman he saw.
And yet—his outrage seemed genuine enough. And yet—the instant he saw me he said I was beautiful, even though clearly I was not.
“Don’t you worry,” Sam said, his round little face grim and determined. “I’m on your side and we’ll figure out some way to stick this letter up those lawyers’ large intestines.”
“But the Moralist Sect is very powerful.”
“So what? You’ve got me, kiddo. All those poor praying sonsofbitches have on their side is God.”
I was still angry and confused as Sam and I climbed back into our space suits and he returned me to my pod on my—no, the asteroid. I felt a burning fury blazing within me, bitter rage at the idea of stealing my asteroid away from me. They were going to break it up and use it as raw material for their habitat!
Normally I would have been screaming and throwing things, but I sat quietly on the two-person scooter as we left the airlock of Sam’s ship. He was babbling away with a mixture of bravado, jokes, obscene descriptions of lawyers in general and Moralists in particular. He made me laugh. Despite my fears and my fury, Sam made me laugh and realize that there was nothing I could do about the Moralists and their lawyers at the moment, so why should I tie myself into knots over them? Besides, I had a more immediate problem to deal with.
Sam. Was he going to attempt to seduce me once we were back at my quarters? And if he did, what would my reaction be? I was shocked at my uncertainty. Three years is a long time, but to even think of allowing this man ...
“You got a lawyer?” His voice came through the earphones of my helmet.
“No. I suppose the university will represent me. Legally, I’m their employee.”
“Maybe, but you...” His voice choked off. I heard him take in his breath, like a man who has just seen something that overpowered him.
“Is that it?” Sam asked in an awed voice.
The Sun was shining obliquely on The Rememberer, so that the figures I had carved were shown in high relief.
“It’s not finished,” I said. “It’s hardly even begun.”
Sam swerved the little scooter so that we moved slowly along the length of the carvings. I saw all the problems, the places that had to be fixed, improved. The feathered serpent needed more work. The Mama Kilya, the Moon Mother, was especially rough. But I had to place her there because the vein of silver in the asteroid came up to the surface only at that point and I needed to use the silver as the tears of the Moon.
Even while I picked out the weak places in my figures I could hear Sam’s breathing over the suit radio. I feared he would hyperventilate. For nearly half an hour we cruised slowly back and forth across the face of the asteroid, then spiraled around to the other side. -
The one enormous advantage of space sculpture, of course, is the absence of gravity. There is no need for a base, a stand, a vertical line. Sculpture can be truly three-dimensional in space, as it was meant to be. I had intended to carve the entire surface of the asteroid.
“It’s fantastic,” Sam said at last, his voice strangely muted. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I’ll be hung by the cojones before I’ll let those double-talking bastards steal this away from you!”
At that moment I began to love Sam Gunn.
TRUE TO HIS word, Sam got his own lawyers to represent me. A few days after Adam Smith disappeared from my view, on its way to the Moralists’ construction site, I was contacted by the firm of Whalen and Krill, of Port Canaveral, Florida, USA, Earth.
The woman who appeared on my comm screen was a junior partner in the firm. I was not important enough for either of the two senior men. Still, that was better than my university had done: their legal counsel had told me bleakly that I had no recourse at all and I should abandon my asteroid forthwith.
“We’ve gotten the IAA arbitration board to agree to take up the dispute,” said Ms. Mindy Rourke, Esq. She seemed very young to me to be a lawyer. I was especially fascinated by her long hair falling luxuriantly past her shoulders. She could only wear it like that on Earth. In a low-gee environment it would have spread out like a chestnut-colored explosion.
“I’ll have my day in court, then.”
“You won’t have to be physically present,” Ms. Rourke said. Then she added, with a doubtful little frown, “But I’m afraid the board usually bases its decisions on the maximum good for the maximum number of people. The Moralists will house ten thousand people in their habitat. All you’ve got is you.”
What she meant was that Art counted for nothing compared to the utilitarian purpose of grinding up my asteroid, smelting it, and using its metals as structural materials for an artificial world to house ten thousand religious zealots who want to leave Earth forever.
Sam stayed in touch with me electronically, and hardly a day passed that he did not call and spend an hour or more chatting with me. Our talk was never romantic, but each call made me love him more. He spoke endlessly about his childhood in Nebraska, or was it Baltimore? Sometimes his childhood tales were based in the rainy hillsides of the Pacific Northwest. Either he moved around ceaselessly as a child or he was amalgamating tales from many other people and adopting them as his own. I never tried to find out. If Sam thought of the stories as his own childhood, what did it matter?
Gradually, as the weeks slipped into months, I found myself speaking about my own younger years. The half-deserted mountain village where I had been born. The struggle to get my father to allow me to go to the university instead of marrying, “as a decent girl should.” The professor who broke my heart. The pain that sent me fleeing to this asteroid and the life of a hermit.
Sam cheered me up. He made me smile, even laugh. He provided me with a blow-by-blow description of his own activities as an entrepreneur. Not content with owning and operating the Earth View Hotel and running a freight-hauling business that ranged from low Earth orbit to the Moon and out as far as the new habitats being built in Sun-circling orbits, Sam was also getting involved in building tourist facilities at Moonbase as well.
“And then there’s this advertising scheme that these two guys have come up with. It’s kinda crazy, but it might work.”
The “scheme” was to paint enormous advertisement pictures in the ionosphere, some fifty miles or so above the Earth’s surface, using electron guns to make the gases up at that altitude glow like the aurora borealis. The men that Sam was speaking with claimed that they could make actual pictures that could be seen across whole continents.
“When the conditions are right,” Sam added. “Like, it’s gotta be either at dusk or at dawn, when the sky looks dark from the ground but there’s still sunlight up at the right altitude.”
“Not many people are up at dawn,” I said.
It took almost a full minute between my statement and his answer, I was so distant from his base in Earth orbit.
“Yeah,” he responded at last. “So it’s gotta be around dusk.” Sam grinned lopsidedly. “Can you imagine the reaction from the environmentalists if we start painting advertisements across the sky?”
“They’ll fade away within a few minutes, won’t they?”
The seconds stretched, and then he answered, “Yeah, sure. But can you picture the look on their faces? They’ll hate it! Might be worth doing just to give ‘em ulcers!”
All during those long weeks and months I could hardly work up the energy to continue my carving. What good would it be? The whole asteroid was going to be taken away from me, ground into powder, d
estroyed forever. I knew what the International Astronautical Authority’s arbitrators would say: Moralists, ten thousand; Art, one.
For days on end I would stand at my console, idly fingering the keyboard, sketching in the next set of figures that the lasers would etch into the stone. In the display screen the figures would look weak, misshapen, distorted. Sometimes they glared at me accusingly, as if I was the one killing them.
Time and again I ended up sketching Sam’s funny, freckled, dear face.
I found reasons to pull on my space suit and go outside. Check the lasers. Adjust the power settings. Recalibrate the feedback sensors. Anything but actual work. I ran my gloved fingers across the faces of the hauqui, the guardian spirits I had carved into this metallic stone. It was a bitter joke. The hauqui needed someone to guard them from evil.
Instead of working, I cried. All my anger and hate was leaching away in the acid of frustration and waiting, waiting, endless months of waiting for the inevitable doom.
And then Sam showed up again, just as unexpectedly as the first time.
My asteroid, with me attached to it, had moved far along on its yearly orbit. I could see Earth only through the low-power telescope that I had brought with me, back in those first days when I had fooled myself into believing I would spend my free time in space studying the stars. Even in the telescope the world of my birth was nothing more than a blurry fat crescent, shining royal-blue.
My first inkling that Sam was approaching was a message I found typed on my comm screen. I had been outside, uselessly fingering my carvings. When I came in and took off my helmet I saw on the screen:
HAVE NO FEAR, SAM IS HERE.
WILL RENDEZVOUS WITH YOU IN ONE HOUR.
My eyes flicked to the digital clock reading. He would be here in a matter of minutes! At least this time I was wearing clothes, but still I looked a mess.
By the time his transport was hovering in a matching orbit and the pumps in my airlock were chugging, I was decently dressed in a set of beige coveralls he had not seen before, my hair was combed and neatly netted, and I had applied a bit of makeup to my face. My expression in the mirror had surprised me: smiling, nearly simpering, almost as giddy as a schoolgirl. Even my heart was skipping along merrily.