Saturn gt-12

by Ben Bova

  A closed, carefully limited community in a self-sufficient ecology and a self-contained economy. Every feature of their physical existence under control. Individuals from Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Free-thinkers, mostly, people who chafed under the restrictions of their own societies. And the scientists, of course. The avowed purpose of this mission was the scientific study of the planet Saturn and its giant moon, Titan.

  Wilmot knew better. He knew the true purpose of this flight to Saturn, and the reason its real backers wanted their financial support kept secret.

  The Chinese had refused to join the experiment, as usual; they kept to themselves, isolationists to their core. But otherwise most racial and religious groups were represented. What kind of a society will these people create for themselves? An actual experiment in anthropology!

  Wilmot glowed inwardly at the thought of it, even though the purpose behind this experiment, the underlying reason for this venture to Saturn, troubled him deeply. Yet he put aside such worries, content to revel in the prospects lying before him.

  His office was a reflection of the man. It was as close to a duplicate of his office at Cambridge as he could make it. He had brought up his big clean-lined Danish styled desk and its graceful chair that molded itself to his spine, together with the bookcases and the little round conference table with its four minimalist chairs. All in white beech, clean and efficient, yet warm and comfortable. Even the carpet that almost covered the entire floor had been taken from his Earthside office. After all, Wilmot reasoned, I’m going to be living and working here for five years or more. I might as well have my creature comforts around me.

  The only new thing in the office was the guest chair, another Danish piece, but of shining chrome tubular supports and pliant butterscotch-brown leather cushions.

  Manuel Gaeta sat in it, looking much more relaxed than Wilmot himself felt. The third man in the room was Edouard Urbain, chief scientist of the habitat, a small, slim, dark-bearded man, his thinning hair slicked straight back from his receding hairline; he was seated in one of those spare, springy-looking chairs from the conference table in the corner. Wilmot did not particularly like Urbain; he thought the man an excitable Frenchman, despite the fact that Urbain had been born and raised in Quebec.

  “I can see that you’re physically and mentally fit,” Wilmot was saying to Gaeta, gesturing toward the wallscreen that displayed the man’s test scores. “More than fit; you are an unusual specimen, actually.”

  Gaeta grinned lazily. “It goes with the job.”

  His voice was soft, almost musical. He was on the small side, but solidly built, burly. Lots of hard muscle beneath his softly pleated open-necked white shirt. His face was hardly handsome: his nose had obviously been broken, perhaps more than once; his heavy jaw made him look somewhat like a bulldog. But his deep-set dark eyes seemed friendly enough, and his grin was disarming.

  “I must tell you, Mr. Gaeta, that—”

  “Manuel,” the younger man interrupted. “Please feel free to call me Manuel.”

  Wilmot felt slightly perplexed at that. He preferred to keep at least a slight distance from this man. And he noted that although Gaeta seemed quite able to speak American English, he pronounced his own name with a decided Spanish inflection. Wilmot glanced at Urbain, who did nothing except raise one eyebrow.

  “Yes, sorry,” Wilmot said. Then, “But I must tell you, Mr. … um, Man-well, that no matter what your backers believe, it will be impossible for you to go to the surface of Titan.”

  Gaeta’s smile did not fade one millimeter. “Astro Corporation has put up five hundred million international dollars for me to do the stunt. Your university consortium signed off on the deal.”

  Urbain broke his silence almost explosively. “No! It is impossible! No one is allowed to the surface of Titan. It would be a violation of every principle we are guided by.”

  “There must have been a misunderstanding,” Wilmot said more smoothly. “No one has been to Titan’s surface, and—”

  “Pardon me,” said Gaeta, “but that’s just the point. If somebody else had already been to Titan there’d be no reason for me to do the stunt.”

  “Stunt,” Wilmot echoed disapprovingly.

  “I have the equipment,” Gaeta went on. “It’s all been tested. My crew comes aboard tomorrow. All I need from you is some workshop space where they can set up my gear and check out the equipment. We’re all set with everything else.”

  Urbain shook his head vehemently. “Teleoperated probes only will be sent to the surface of Titan. No humans!”

  “With all respect, sir,” Gaeta said, his voice still soft and friendly, “you’re thinking like a scientist.”

  “Yes, of course. How else?”

  “See, I’m in show biz, not science. I get paid to do risky stunts, like surfing the clouds of Jupiter and skiing down Mt. Olympus on Mars.”

  “Stunts,” Wilmot muttered again.

  “Yeah, stunts. People pay a lotta money to participate in my stunts. That’s what the VR gear is for.”

  “Virtual reality thrills. Vicarious experiences.”

  “Cheap thrills, right. It brings in the big bucks. My investors’ll make their half-bill back the first ten seconds I’m on the VR nets.”

  “You risk your life so that other people can get their adventure plugged into a virtual reality set,” Urbain said, almost accusingly.

  If anything, Gaeta’s smile widened. “The trick is to handle the risks. Do the research, buy or build the equipment you need. They call me a daredevil, but I’m not a fool.”

  “And you want to be the first man to reach the surface of Titan,” Wilmot said.

  “Shouldn’t be that tough. You’re going out there anyway, so we hitch a ride with you. Titan’s got an atmosphere and a decent gravity. Radiation levels are nowhere near as bad as Jupiter.”

  “And contamination?” demanded Urbain.

  Gaeta’s brows hiked up. “Contamination?”

  “There is life on Titan. It is only microscopic, I grant you: single-celled bacterial types. But it is living and we must protect it from contamination. That is our first duty.”

  The stuntman relaxed again. “Oh, sure. I’ll be in an armored space-suit. You can scrub it down and bathe me in ultraviolet light when I get back. Kill any bugs that might be on the suit’s exterior.”

  Urbain shook his head even more violently. “No, no, no. You don’t understand. We are not worried about the microbes contaminating you. Our worry is that you might contaminate them.”

  “Huh?”

  “It is a unique ecology, there on Titan,” Urbain said, his blue eyes burning with intensity, his beard bristling. “We cannot take any chances on your contaminating them.”

  “But they’re just bugs!”

  Urbain’s jaw sagged open. He looked like a Believer who had just heard blasphemy uttered.

  “Unique organisms,” corrected Wilmot sternly. “They must not be disturbed.”

  “But they’ve landed probes on Titan,” Gaeta protested, “lots of ’em!”

  “Each one was as thoroughly disinfected as science can achieve,” Urbain said. “They were subjected to levels of gamma radiation that almost destroyed their electronic circuits. Some of them were actually disabled during the decontamination procedures.”

  Gaeta shrugged. “Okay, you can decontaminate my suit the same way.”

  “With you inside it?” Wilmot asked quietly.

  “Inside? Why?”

  Urbain replied, “Because when you get into your suit you will be leaving a veritable jungle of microbial flora and fauna on every part of its exterior that you touch: human sweat, body oils, who knows what else? One fingerprint, one breath could leave enough terrestrial microbes to utterly devastate Titan’s entire ecology.”

  “I’d have to stay in the suit while you fry it with gamma rays?”

  Wilmot nodded.

  Urbain said flatly, “That is the only way we will allow you to go to Titan�
��s surface.”

  DEPARTURE MINUS 38 DAYS

  He’s really handsome when he smiles, Holly noted silently. But he’s always so serious!

  Malcolm Eberly was peering intently at the three-dimensional display floating in midair above his desktop. To Susan he looked like a clean-cut California surfer type, but only from the neck up. His blond hair was chopped short, in the latest style. He had good cheekbones and a strong, firm jaw. Chiseled nose and startling blue eyes, the color of an Alpine sky. A killer smile, too, but he smiled all too rarely.

  She had bent over backwards to please him: dressed in the plain tunics and slacks that he preferred, let her hair go natural and cut those stubborn curls short, took off the decal she had worn on her forehead and wore no adornments at all except for the tiny asteroidal diamond studs in her ears. He hadn’t noticed any of it.

  “We’ve got to be more selective in our screening processes,” he said, without looking up from the display. His voice was low, richly vibrant; he spoke American English, but with an overlay of a glass-smooth cultured British accent.

  “Look.” Eberly thumbed his remote controller and the display rotated above the desktop so that Susan could see the three-dimensional chart. The office was small and austere: nothing in it but Eberly’s gray metal desk and the stiff little plastic chair Susan was sitting in. No decorations on the walls. Eberly’s desktop was antiseptically bare.

  She leaned forward in the uncomfortable squeaking chair to inspect the series of jagged colored lines climbing steadily across the chart floating before her eyes. Just as she had remembered it from last night, before she’d gone home for the evening.

  “In the two weeks since you’ve started working in the human resources office,” Eberly said, “successful recruitments have climbed almost thirty percent. You’ve accomplished more work than the rest of the staff combined, it seems.”

  That’s because I want to please you, she said to herself. She didn’t have the nerve to say it aloud; didn’t have the nerve to do anything more but smile at him.

  Unsmilingly, he continued, “But too many of the new recruits are convicted political dissidents, troublemakers. If they caused unrest on Earth, they’ll probably cause unrest here.”

  Her smile crumpled. She asked, “But isn’t that the purpose of this mission? The reason we’re going to Saturn? To give people a new chance? A new life?”

  “Within reason, Holly. Within reason. We don’t want chronic protesters here, out-and-out rebels. The next thing you know, we’ll be inviting terrorists to the habitat.”

  “Have I done that bad a job?”

  She waited for him to reassure her, to tell her she was doing her job properly. Instead, Eberly got to his feet and came around the desk.

  “Come on, let’s go outside for a bit of a stroll.”

  She shot to her feet. She was just a tad taller than he. From the shoulders down Eberly was slight, skinny really. Thin arms, narrow chest, even the beginnings of a pot belly, she thought. He needs exercise, she told herself. He works too hard in the office. I’ve got to get him outside more, get him to the fitness center, build him up.

  Yet she followed him in silence down the hallway that led past the habitat’s other administrative offices and out the door at its end.

  Bright sunshine was streaming through the long windows. Colorful butterflies flitted among the hyacinths, multihued tulips, and bloodred poppies that bloomed along the path. They walked in silence along the path that ran past the cluster of low white buildings and down the shoulder of the hillside on which the village was built. The tan-bricked path wound around the lake at the bottom of the ridge and out into a pleasant meadow. A bicyclist passed them, coasting down the gentle slope. Leafy young trees spread dappled shade along the path. Susan heard insects humming in the bushes and birds chirping. A complete ecology, painstakingly established and maintained. Looking at the grassy field and the clumps of taller trees standing farther along the gently curving path, she found it hard to believe that they were inside a huge, man-made cylinder that was hanging in empty space a few hundred kilometers above the surface of the Moon. Until she glanced up and saw that the land curved completely around, overhead.

  “Holly?”

  She snapped her attention back to Eberly. “I-I’m sorry,” she stuttered, embarrassed. “I guess I wasn’t listening.”

  He nodded, as if accepting her apology. “Yes, I forget how beautiful this is. You’re absolutely right, none of us should take all this for granted.”

  “What were you saying?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t important.” He raised his arm and swept it around dramatically. “This is the important thing, Holly. This world that you will create for yourselves.”

  My name is Holly now, she reminded herself. You can remember everything that happens to you, remember your new name, for jeep’s sake.

  Still, she asked, “Why’d you want me to change my name?”

  Eberly tilted his head to one side, thinking before he answered. “I’ve suggested to every new recruit that they change their names. You are entering a new world, starting new lives. A new name is appropriate, don’t you agree?”

  “Oh, right! F’sure.”

  “Yet,” he sighed, “very few actually follow my suggestion. They cling to the past.”

  “It’s like baptism, isn’t it?” Holly said.

  He looked at her and she saw something like respect in his piercing blue eyes. “Baptism, yes. Born again. Beginning a new life.”

  “This’ll be my third life,” she told him.

  Eberly nodded.

  “I don’t remember my first life,” Holly said. “Ear’s I can remember, my life started seven years ago.”

  “No,” Eberly said firmly. “Your life began two weeks ago, when you arrived here.”

  “F’sure. Right.”

  “That’s why you changed your name, isn’t it?”

  “Right,” she repeated, thinking, He’s so bugging serious about everything! I wish I could make him smile.

  Eberly stopped walking and slowly turned a full circle, taking in the world that stretched all around them and climbed up over their heads to completely encircle them.

  “I was born in deep poverty,” he said, his voice low, almost a whisper. “I was born prematurely, very sick; they didn’t think I would live. My father ran away when I was still a baby and my mother took up with a migrant laborer, a Mexican. He wanted me to die. If it weren’t for the New Morality I would have died before I was six months old. They took me into their hospital, they put me through their schools. They saved me, body and soul.”

  “I’m glad,” Holly said.

  “The New Morality saved America,” Eberly explained. “When the greenhouse warming flooded all the coastal areas and the food riots started, it was the New Morality that brought order and decency back into our lives.”

  “I don’t remember the States at all,” she said. “Just Selene. Nothing before that.”

  He chuckled. “You certainly seem to have no trouble remembering anything that’s happened to you since. I’ve never seen anyone with such a steel trap of a mind.”

  With a careless shrug, Holly replied, “That’s just the RNA treatments they gave me.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” He started walking again, slowly. “Well, Holly, here we are. Both of us. And ten thousand others.”

  “Nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight,” she corrected, with an impish grin.

  He dipped his chin slightly in acknowledgment of her arithmetic, totally serious, oblivious to her attempt at humor.

  “You have the opportunity to create a new world here,” Eberly said. “Clean and whole and new. You are the most fortunate people of the ages.”

  “You too,” she said.

  He made a little gesture with one hand. “I’m only one man. There are ten thousand of you — minus one, I admit. You are the ones who will create this new world. It’s yours to fashion as you see fit. I’m completely satisfied mer
ely to be here, among you, and to help you in any way that I can.”

  Holly stared at him, feeling enormous admiration welling up within her.

  “But Malcolm, you’ve got to help us to build this new world. We’re going to need your vision, your…” she fumbled for a word, then … “your dedication.”

  “Of course, I’ll do what I can,” he said. And for the first time, he smiled.

  Holly felt thrilled.

  “But you must do your best, too,” he added. “I expect the same dedication and hard work from you that I myself am exerting. Nothing less, Holly.”

  She nodded silently.

  “You must devote yourself totally to the work we are doing,” Eberly said. “Totally.”

  “I will,” Holly answered. “I already have, f’real.”

  “Every aspect of your life must be dedicated to our work,” he insisted. “There will be no time for frivolities. Nor for romantic entanglements.”

  “I don’t have any romantic entanglements, Malcolm,” she said, in a small voice. Silently she added, Wish I did. With you.

  “Neither do I,” he said. “The task before us is too important to allow personal considerations to get in the way.”

  Holly said, “I understand, Malcolm. I truly do.”

  “Good. I’m glad.”

  And Eberly thought, Carrot and stick, that’s the way to control her. Carrot and stick.

  DEPARTURE MINUS TWO HOURS

  Eberly chose to stand with his back to the oblong window of the observation blister. Beyond its thick quartz the stars were swinging by slowly as the mammoth habitat revolved lazily along its axis. The Moon would slide into view, so close that one could see the smoothed launching pads of Armstrong Spaceport, blackened by decades of rocket blasts, and the twin humps of Selene’s two buried public plazas, as well as the vast pit where workers were constructing a third. Some claimed they could even see individual tractors and the cable cars speeding along their overhead lines to outlying settlements such as Hell Crater and the Farside Observatory.