The Sam Gunn Omnibus

by Ben Bova

  As everybody rose to their feet, Sam looked at the three judges and groaned. “Buddha on ice-skates, it’s the Toad.”

  His name was J. Everest Weatherwax, and he was so famous that even I recognized him. Multi-trillionaire, captain of industry, statesman, public servant, philanthropist, Weatherwax was a legend in his own time. He had helped to found DULL and funded unstintingly the universities that joined the consortium. He was on the board of directors of so many corporations nobody knew the exact number. He was also one the board of governors of the IAA. His power was truly interplanetary in reach, but he had never been known to use that power except for other people’s good.

  Yet Sam clearly loathed him.

  “The Toad?” I whispered to Sam as we sat down and the chief judge— a comely gray-haired woman with steely eyes—began to read the charges against Sam.

  “He’s a snake,” Sam hissed under his breath. “An octopus. He controls people. He owns them.”

  “Mr. Weatherwax?” I was stunned. I had never heard a harsh word said against him before. His good deeds and public unselfishness were known throughout the solar system.

  “Just look at him,” Sam whispered back, his voice dripping disgust.

  I had to admit that Weatherwax did look rather toad-like, sitting up there, looming over us. He was very old, of course, well past the century mark. His face was fleshy, flabby, his skin was gray and splotchy, his shoulders slumped bonelessly beneath his black robe. His eyes bulged and kept blinking slowly; his mouth was a wide almost lipless slash that hung slightly open.

  “God help any fly that comes near him,” Sam muttered. “Zap! with his tongue.”

  Weatherwax’s money had founded DULL. He had saved the ongoing Martian exploration company when that nonprofit gaggle of scientists had run out of funding. He had made his money originally in biotechnology, almost a century ago, then diversified into agro-business and medicine before getting into space exploration and scientific research in a major way. He had received the Nobel Peace Prize for settling the war between India and China. Rumor had it that if he would only convert to Catholicism, the Pope would make him a saint.

  As soon as the chief judge finished reading the charges, Sam shot to his feet.

  “I protest,” he said. “One of the judges is prejudiced against me.”

  “Mr. Gunn,” said the chief judge, glaring at Sam, “you are represented by legal counsel. If you have any protests to make, they must be made by him.”

  Sam turned to me and made a nudging move with both hands.

  I got to my feet slowly, thinking as fast as I could. “Your honor, my client feels that the panel might be less than unbiased, since one of the judges is a founder of the organization that has brought these charges against the defendant.”

  Weatherwax just smiled down at us, drooling ever so slightly from the corner of his toadish mouth.

  The chief judge closed her eyes briefly, then replied to me, “Justice Weatherwax has been duly appointed by the International Astronautical Authority to serve on this panel. His credentials as a jurist are impeccable.”

  “Since when is he a judge?” Sam stage-whispered at me.

  “The defense was not aware that Mr. Weatherwax had received an appointment to the bench, your honor,” I said as diplomatically as I could.

  “Justice. Weatherwax received his appointment last week,” she answered frostily, “on the basis of his long and distinguished record of service in international disputes.”

  “I see,” I said meekly. “Thank you, your honor.” There was nothing else I could do.

  “Settling international disputes,” Sam grumbled. “Like the China-India War. Once he stopped selling bio-weapons to both sides they had to stop fighting.”

  “However,” the chief judge said, turning to Weatherwax, “if the justice would prefer to withdraw in the face of the defendant’s concern ...”

  Weatherwax stirred and seemed to come to life like a large mound of protoplasm touched by a spark of electricity.

  “I assure you, Justice Ostero, that I can judge this case with perfect equanimity.” His voice was a deep groan, like the rumble of a distant bullfrog.

  The chief justice nodded once, curtly. “So be it,” she said. “Let’s get on with these proceedings.”

  It was exactly at the point that the Beryllium Blonde entered the courtroom.

  IT WAS AS if the entire courtroom stopped breathing; like the castle in Sleeping Beauty, everything and everybody seemed to stop in their tracks, just to look at her.

  Lunar cities were pretty austere in those days; the big, racy casinos over at Hell Crater hadn’t even been started yet. Selene City was the largest of the Moon’s communities, but even so it wasn’t much more than a few kilometers of rock-walled tunnels. Even the so-called Grand Plaza was just a big open space with a dome sealing it in. Okay, so most of the ground inside the plaza was green with grass and shrubs. After two days, who cared? You could rent wings and go flying on your own muscle power, but there wasn’t much in the way of scenery.

  The Beryllium Blonde was scenery. She stepped into the courtroom and lit up the place, like her golden hair was casting reflections off the bare stone walls. The panel of three judges—two women and the Toad— just stared at her as she walked demurely down the courtroom’s central aisle and stopped at the railing that separated the lawyers and their clients from the spectators.

  We were all spectators, of course. She was absolutely gorgeous: tall and shapely beyond the dreams of a teenaged cartoonist. A face that could launch a thousand rockets—among other things.

  She looked so sweet, with those wide blue eyes and that perfect face. Her glittery silver suit was actually quite modest, with a high buttoned Chinese collar and trousers that looped beneath her delicate little feet. Of course, the suit was form-fitting: it clung to her as if it’d been sprayed onto her body, and there wasn’t a man in the courtroom who didn’t envy the fabric.

  Even Sam could do nothing more than stare at her, dumbfounded. It wasn’t until much later that I learned why he called her the Beryllium Blonde: beryllium, a steel-gray metal, quite brittle at room temperature, with a very high melting point; used mostly as a hardening agent.

  How true.

  “Am I interrupting?” she asked, in a breathy innocent voice.

  The chief judge had to swallow visibly before she found her voice. “No, we were just getting started. What can I do for you?” This from the woman who was known, back in Australia, as the Scourge of Queensland.

  “I am here to help represent the prosecution, on a pro bono basis.”

  All four of the prosecution’s expensive lawyers shot to their feet and welcomed her to their midst.

  Sam just moaned.

  “It goes back a long way,” Sam told me after the preliminaries had ended and the court had adjourned for lunch. We had scooted back to the hotel suite we were renting, the two of us desperately trying to hold the company together despite the trial and embargo and everything else.

  “She tried to screw me out of my zero-gee hotel, way back when,” he said.

  I wondered how literally Sam meant his words. He had the solar system’s worst reputation as an insensitive womanizing chauvinist boor. Yet somehow Sam never lacked for female companionship. I’ve seen ardent feminists succumb to Sam’s charm. Once in a while.

  “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” Sam said, sighing mightily at his memories. “Of course, we spent a pretty intense time together before the doo-doo hit the fan.” He sighed again. “All she was after was the rights to my hotel.”

  “While you were truly and deeply in love,” I wisecracked.

  Sam looked shocked. “I think I was,” he said, sounding hurt. “At least, while it lasted.”

  “So she has a personal bias against you. Maybe I can get her thrown off the case—”

  “Don’t you dare!” Sam shrieked, nearly jumping over the coffee table.

  “But—”

  He gave me his
Huck Finn grin. “If I’ve got to be raped, pillaged and burnt at the stake,” he said happily, “I couldn’t think of anybody I’d prefer to have holding the matches.”

  Had Sam given up?

  I DON’T KNOW about Sam, but after the first two days of testimony I was ready to give up.

  Fourteen witnesses—a baker’s dozen plus one—all solemnly testified that Sam had deliberately, with malice aforethought and all that stuff, wiped out the harmless lichenoid colony that dwelled under Europa’s ice mantle. And had even bashed one of the DULL scientists on the head with an oxygen tank when the man had tried to stop him.

  The spectators on the other side of the courtroom rail sobbed and sighed through the testimony, hissed at Sam and groaned piteously when the last of the witnesses showed a series of computer graphics picturing the little green lichenoids before Sam and the empty cavity under the ice where the lichenoids had been but were no longer—because of Sam.

  “What need have we of further witnesses?” bellowed a heavyset woman from the back of the courtroom.

  I turned and saw that she was on her feet, brandishing an old-fashioned rope already knotted into a hangman’s noose.

  The chief judge frowned at her, rather mildly, and asked her to sit down.

  For the first time since his profession of impartiality Weatherwax spoke up. “We want to give the accused a fair trial,” he rumbled, again sounding rather like a bullfrog. “Then we’ll hang him.”

  He made a crooked smile to show that he was only joking. Maybe.

  The chief judge smiled, too. “Although we haven’t yet decided how a sentence of capital punishment would be carried out,” she said, looking straight-faced at Sam, “I’m sure it won’t be by hanging. In this low-gravity environment that might constitute cruel and unusual punishment.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Sam muttered.

  THEN THE CHIEF judge turned to me. “Cross-examination?”

  The scientist who had shown the computer graphics was still sitting in the witness chair, to one side of the judges’ banc. I didn’t have any questions for him. In fact, I wanted him and his cute little pictures off the witness stand as quickly as possible.

  But just as I started to shake my head I heard Sam, beside me, speak up.

  “I have a few questions for this witness, your honors.”

  The three judges looked as startled as I felt.

  “Mr. Gunn,” said the chief judge, with a grim little smile, “I told you before that you are represented by counsel and should avail yourself of his expertise.”

  Sam glanced at me. We both knew my expertise consisted of a gaggle of computer programs and not much else.

  “There are aspects of this case that my, uh... counsel hasn’t had time to study. I was on the scene and I know the details better than he possibly could.”

  The three judges conferred briefly, whispering and nodding. At last the chief judge said, “Very well, Mr. Gunn, you may proceed.” Then she smiled coldly and added, “There is an old tradition in the legal profession that a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.”

  Sam got to his feet, grinning that naughty-little-boy grin of his. “And a fool for a lawyer, too, I guess.”

  All three judges nodded in unison.

  “Anyway,” Sam said, jamming his hands into the pockets of his baby-blue coveralls, “there are a couple of things I think the court should know in deeper detail.”

  I glanced over at the Beryllium Blonde while Sam sauntered up to the witness box. She was sitting back, smiling and relaxed, as if she was enjoying the show. Her four colleagues were watching her, not Sam.

  The witness was one of the DULL scientists who’d been on Europa, Dr. Clyde Erskine. He was a youngish fellow, with thinning sandy hair and the beginnings of a pot belly.

  Sam gave him his best disarming smile. “Dr. Erskine. Are you a biologist?”

  “Uh ... no, I’m not.”

  “A geologist?”

  “No.” Rather sullenly, I thought.

  “What is your professional specialty, then?” Sam asked, as amiably as he might ask a bartender for a drink on the house.

  Erskine replied warily. “I’m a professor of communications at the University of Texas. In Austin.”

  “Not a. biologist?”

  “No, I am not a biologist.”

  “Not a geologist or a botanist or zoologist or even a chemist, are you?”

  “I am a doctor of communications,” Erskine said testily.

  “Communications? Like, communicating with alien life forms? SETI, stuff like that?”

  “No,” Erskine said. “Communications between humans. My specialty is mass media.”

  Sam put on a look of shocked surprise. “Mass media? You mean you’re a public relations flack?” “I am a doctor of communications!”

  “But what you were doing on Europa was generating PR material for DULL, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “That was my job.”

  Sam nodded and took a few steps away from the witness, as if he were trying to digest Erskine’s admission.

  Turning back to the witness chair, Sam asked, “We’ve heard fourteen witnesses so far. Were any of them biologists?”

  Erskine frowned in thought for a moment. “No, I don’t believe any of them were.”

  “Were any of them scientists of any stripe?”

  “Most of them were communications specialists,” Erskine answered.

  “PR flacks, like yourself.”

  “I am not a flack!” Erskine snapped.

  “Yeah, sure,” said Sam. He hesitated a moment, then asked, “How many people were on Europa?”

  “Uh ... let me see,” Erskine muttered, screwing up his eyes to peer at

  the stone ceiling. “Must have been upwards of three dozen. . . No, more like forty, forty-five.”

  “How many of ‘em were scientists?” Sam asked.

  “We all were!”

  “I mean biologists, geologists—not PR flacks.”

  Erskine’s face was getting red. “Communications is a valid scientific field—”

  “Sure it is,” Sam cut him off. “How many biologists among the forty-five men and women stationed on Europa?”

  Erskine frowned in thought for a moment, then mumbled, “I’m not quite certain....”

  “Ten?” Sam prompted.

  “No.”

  “More than ten?”

  “Uh ... no.”

  “Five?”

  Silence.

  “More or less?” Sam insisted.

  “I think there were three biologists,” Erskine muttered, his voice so low that I could hardly hear him.

  “Yet none of them have testified at this trial,” Sam said, a hint of wonder in his voice. “Why is that, do you think?” “I don’t know,” Erskine replied sullenly. “I guess none of them was available.”

  “Not available.” Sam seemed to mull that over for a moment. “Then who prepared all the slides and graphs you and your cohorts have shown at this trial?”

  Erskine glanced up at the judges, then answered, “The communications department of the University of Texas.”

  “At Austin.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not the handful of scientists who were on Europa and are now mysteriously not available?”

  “The scientists gave us the input for the computer graphics.”

  “Oh? They were available to help you prepare your presentations but they’re not available for this trial? Why is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Sam turned away from the witness. I thought he was coming back to our table, but suddenly Sam wheeled back to face Erskine again. “Do you have any samples of the Europa lichenoids?”

  “Samples? Me? No.”

  “Do any of the biologists have samples of them? Actual physical samples?”

  “No,” Erskine said, brows knitting. “They were living under more than seven kilometers of ice. We were—”

  “Tha
nk you, Dr. Erskine,” Sam snapped. Looking up at the judges he said grandly, “No further questions.”

  Erskine looked slightly confused, then started to get to his feet.

  “Redirect, please,” said the Beryllium Blonde.

  All three judges smiled down at her. I smiled too as she walked from behind the prosecution’s table toward the witness box. Just watching her move was a pleasure. Even Sam gawked at her. Beads of perspiration broke out on his upper lip as he sat down beside me.

  “Dr. Erskine,” the Blonde asked sweetly, “which scientists helped you to prepare the graphics you showed us?”

  Erskine blinked at her as if he were looking at a mirage that was too good to be true. “They were prepared by Dr. Heinrich Fossbinder, of the University of Zurich.”

  “Dr. Fossbinder is a biologist?”

  “Dr. Fossbinder is a Nobel laureate in biology. He was head of the biology team at Europa.”

  “All three of ‘em,” Sam stage-whispered loud enough to draw a warning frown from the judges.

  The Blonde proceeded, undeterred. “But if you have no samples of the Europa life-forms, how were these computer images produced?”

  Erskine nodded, as if to compliment her on asking an astute question. “As I said, the lichenoids were living beneath some seven kilometers of ice. We very carefully sank a fiber-optic line down to within a few dozen meters of their level and took the photographs you saw through that fiberoptic link.”

  With an encouraging smile that dazzled the entire courtroom, the Blonde asked, “Was your team drilling a larger bore hole, in an effort to extract samples of the life-forms?”

  “Yes we were.”

  “And what happened?”

  Erskine shot an angry look at Sam. “He ruined it! He came in with his ore-crushing machinery and chewed up so much of the ice that the entire mantle collapsed. Our bore hole was shattered and the lichenoids were exposed to vacuum.”

  “What effect did that have on the native life-forms of Europa?” she asked in a near-whisper.

  “It killed them all!” Erskine answered hotly. “Wiped them out!” He pointed a trembling finger at Sam. “He killed a whole world’s biosphere!”