Saturn gt-12

by Ben Bova

  “Oh, right. F’sure.”

  “For your information, however,” Morgenthau said as she pushed herself up out of the desk chair, “I will be with Malcolm all day. We are going over several drafts of possible constitutions.”

  Eberly sipped herbal tea while Vyborg and Jaansen argued with quiet passion. Kananga was obviously bored with the argument, while Morgenthau watched it in silence as she nibbled on pastries.

  Kananga’s a man of action, Eberly thought. He doesn’t think very deeply, which is good. He makes a useful tool. Morgenthau, though, she’s different. She just sits there watching everything, silent as a sphinx. What’s going on inside her head? How much of this is she reporting back to Amsterdam? Everything, I suppose.

  “If you allow the people all these personal freedoms,” Vyborg was saying, almost hissing, actually, “the result will be chaos. Anarchy.”

  “Most of the inhabitants have come to this habitat to escape repressive regimes. If their individual liberties are not guaranteed, they’ll reject the constitution altogether.” Jaansen leaned back on the sofa, smiling as if he had won the argument.

  “Individual liberties,” Vyborg spat. “That’s the kind of license that nearly caused the collapse of civilization. If it weren’t for the New Morality—”

  “And the Holy Disciples,” Morgenthau interjected, then, glancing at Kananga, she added, “and the Sword of Islam.”

  Jaansen frowned at her and Vyborg, both. “No matter what you think, these people will not accept a constitution that doesn’t guarantee their historical freedoms. They’re here because they got fed up with the restrictions back on Earth.”

  Vyborg thought otherwise. He continued to argue.

  Sitting at the end of the coffee table, Eberly thought that Vyborg, in the room’s best armchair with his skinny legs tucked under him, looked rather like a coiled snake: lean, small, dark, his eyes glittering menacingly. Jaansen was just the opposite: cool, pale, but as immovable as a glacier. And he kept that damned palmcomp in his hand, fiddling with it like some voodoo charm.

  Kananga butted in. “In a closed ecology like this, we can’t tolerate fools and troublemakers. Pop them out an airlock without a suit!”

  Morgenthau laughed. “My dear Colonel, how can we resort to airlock justice if each citizen is guaranteed due process of the law for any offense they might commit?”

  “Exactly my point!” Vyborg exclaimed, staring straight at Jaansen. “We have no room here for legal niceties.”

  Pursing her lips for a moment, Morgenthau said, “There is another possibility.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve heard that some scientists on Earth are experimenting with electronic probes they put inside peoples’ skulls. They attach the probes to the brain—”

  “Bioelectronics,” Jaansen said.

  “Yes,” agreed Morgenthau. “With these probes attached to various brain centers they can control a person’s behavior. Prevent violent criminal behavior, for example.”

  Vyborg scowled. “What of it?”

  “Perhaps we can use such probes to control behavior here,” said Morgenthau.

  “Insert neural probes to control people’s behavior?” Jaansen shuddered.

  “It could work,” said Morgenthau.

  “They would have to agree to the operation,” Vyborg pointed out.

  Kananga countered, “Not if they were found guilty of criminal behavior.”

  “It might be a way to control the people,” Morgenthau said.

  Shaking his head, Jaansen said, “The population would never agree to it. These people aren’t stupid, you know. They wouldn’t give the government that kind of power over them.”

  “We wouldn’t have to tell them,” Kananga said. “Just do it.”

  That started an argument that grew steadily more fervent. Eberly watched and listened, sipping his tea, while they squabbled louder and louder.

  At last he asked them, “May I make a point?” He spoke softly, but all eyes immediately turned to him.

  “Even in the so-called democracies back on Earth, the desperate conditions caused by the greenhouse crash have led to very authoritarian governments. Even in the United States, the New Morality rules most of the large urban centers with an iron fist.”

  “Which is why most of these people joined this habitat,” Jaansen pointed out. “To find more freedom for themselves.”

  “The illusion of freedom,” muttered Kananga.

  “Secularists,” grumbled Morgenthau. “Troublemaking unbelievers. Agnostics and outright atheists.”

  Jaansen shifted the palmcomp from one hand to another as he said, “I don’t disagree with you, really. I’m a Believer, too. I understand the need for firm control of the people. But those secularists aren’t fools. Many of them are scientists. Even more are engineers and technicians. All I’m saying is that if you try to get them to agree to a constitution that does not include the kind of individual liberties they expect, they’ll reject the constitution.”

  “Not if we count the votes,” Morgenthau said with a heavy wink.

  “Be serious,” Jaansen countered.

  “It’s been done,” she said, snickering.

  Eberly let out a long sigh. Again, they all turned to him.

  “None of you understand history,” he said. “If you did, you would see that this problem has been faced before, and resolved properly.”

  “Resolved?” Vyborg snapped. “How?”

  Smiling with superior knowledge, Eberly said, “More than a hundred years ago Russia was part of the conglomeration called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”

  “I know that,” Vyborg said sourly.

  “Soviet Russia had a constitution, the most liberal constitution on Earth. It guaranteed freedom and brotherhood to everyone. Yet their government was among the most repressive of them all.”

  Jaansen seemed intrigued. “How did they manage that?”

  “It was simple,” Eberly replied. “In the midst of all those highflown constitutional phrases about liberty and equality and the brotherhood of man there was one tiny little clause that said, in effect, that all the rest of the constitution could be suspended temporarily in case of an emergency.”

  “An emergency,” repeated Kananga.

  “Temporarily,” said Vyborg.

  Eberly nodded. “It worked quite well. The Soviet Union was in a permanent state of siege, and the government ruled by terror and deceit. It worked for nearly three quarters of a century, until the Soviet government collapsed under pressures from the Western nations, especially the old United States.”

  “We would have no outside pressures to contend with,” Vyborg said.

  Eberly spread his hands. “So we give the people the sweetest, kindest, most liberal constitution they have ever seen. But we make certain that we have that emergency clause in it.”

  Morgenthau laughed heartily. “Then, once the constitution is in effect, all we have to do is find an emergency.”

  “Or make one,” Vyborg added.

  Even Jaansen smiled. “And then, if anyone objects—”

  “We stick a neural probe into his brain,” Morgenthau said, “and turn him into a model citizen.”

  “A model zombie,” Jaansen muttered.

  “Or better yet,” said Kananga, grinning, “out the airlock with them.”

  JUPITER ENCOUNTER MINUS THREE DAYS

  Eberly asked Jaansen to sweep his apartment for bugs at least once a week.

  “Are you really worried that Wilmot is spying on you?” the tall, pale Norseman asked as he walked across the bedroom, electronic detector in his hand.

  Eberly, shorter, darker, replied, “It’s what I would do if I were in his place.”

  “Are you bugging his office?” Jaansen asked, with a smile.

  “Of course.”

  “Well, in three days we fly past Jupiter,” said Jaansen. “It’s a milestone.”

  Eberly agreed with a curt nod. “I’m more interested in wha
t happens inside the habitat than outside.”

  Jaansen, ever the engineer, pointed out, “We’ll be taking on fresh fuel. Without it we won’t be able to get to Saturn.”

  “I have other things on my mind. More important things.”

  “Such as?”

  “The coming elections.”

  Jaansen clicked off the detector and announced, “You’re all clean. No cameras, no microphones, no electrical power drain anywhere, down to the microvolt. Nothing that shouldn’t be here.”

  “Good.” Eberly walked him back into the sitting room and gestured him to the sofa.

  Sitting himself in the easy chair, Eberly said, “Sooner or later, we must get the people to vote on a new constitution and new leaders.”

  Jaansen nodded, tucked the detector into one pocket and pulled out his inevitable handheld computer from another.

  “I’ve been thinking about the elections,” Eberly said.

  “They’re a long way off.”

  “Less than a year now. We must prepare for them.”

  Jaansen nodded, fiddling with his palmcomp.

  “The scientists will vote for one of their own, probably Urbain.”

  Another nod from Jaansen.

  “They form a sizable bloc of votes.”

  “Not a majority, though.”

  “Not of themselves,” said Eberly. “But suppose the engineers and technicians vote with them?”

  Recognition dawned on Jaansen’s face. “That could be a majority. A solid majority.”

  “Therefore we must somehow split the engineers and technicians away from the scientists,” Eberly said.

  “How can we do that?”

  Eberly smiled. “Let me explain what I have in mind.”

  Edouard Urbain tried to control the trembling he felt inside him as he stared out the observation port. The giant planet Jupiter, no more than a bright star only a few days ago, was now a discernable disk even to the naked eye, obviously flattened at its poles, streaked with muted colors from bands of clouds racing across the face of that enormous world. Four tiny stars flanked the disk: the moons that Galileo discovered with his first telescope.

  Tucked into a close orbit just above those multihued clouds, Urbain knew, was the research station Thomas Gold. I could have been there, he told himself for the thousandth time. I could have been leading the teams studying the life-forms on Europa and Jupiter itself. Instead I am here in this glorified ark, stuck in along with renegades and madmen like this Gaeta fellow.

  He knew it was his imagination, but Jupiter seemed to be getting larger as he watched. No, we are not that near to it yet, Urbain said to himself. Three days from now, that is when the spectacle will occur.

  Habitat Goddard’s complement of scientists and their equipment was far smaller than Urbain had asked for. The university consortium was unwilling to send their best people on a multiyear voyage out to Saturn. Let them sit on their thumbs while the habitat lumbers its way out to that distant planet? No, never. Urbain recalled the face of the consortium’s chief scientist with perfect, painful clarity:

  “We can’t tie up our best people for several years like that, Edouard. You take a skeleton team out to Saturn. Once you’re established in orbit about the planet, we can shoot our top researchers out to you on a torch ship, get them there in a month or two.”

  The implied insult still burned in Urbain’s heart. I am not one of their top people. A lifetime of work on Mars and the Moon, three years in orbit around that hellhole of Venus, a life dedicated to planetary science, and all they think me capable of is playing nursemaid to a skeleton crew of also-rans.

  It rankled. It cut. His wife had refused to come with him; instead, she sued for a divorce. She had warned him, over the years, that he was foolish to ignore the political aspects of his career.

  “Make friends,” Jeanmarie had told him, over and again. “Play up to those who can do you good.”

  He could never do it. Never play that game. He had done good work, solid work, perhaps not the level that wins Nobel Prizes, but important contributions nevertheless. And now this. The end of the road. Exiled to Saturn. I’ll be retirement age by the time I can work my way out of this habitat.

  I should have paid more attention to Jeanmarie. I should have heeded her advice. I should have paid more attention to the New Morality counselors. They pull the strings behind the scenes. Mediocre Believers get promotions while honest researchers like me are left behind.

  A wasted life, he thought.

  Yet, as he looked out at Jupiter glowing like a beacon in the dark depths of infinite space, the old excitement simmered within him. There’s a whole universe out there to explore! Worlds upon worlds! I won’t be able to study Jupiter or its moons, but I’ll be at Saturn before any of the others. I’ll be directing the first real-time probes of Titan’s surface.

  He thought of the tracked rover vehicle that his staff was building. It will roam across the surface of Titan and obtain more data about that world in a few weeks than all the scientists back on Earth have been able to amass in their lifetimes. Before the bright youngsters get there on their torch ships I’ll already be getting data from Titan. And from the cloud deck of Saturn. And the ice rings.

  Perhaps my life won’t be a waste, after all, thought Edouard Urbain. Perhaps this time I’ll hit the jackpot. Perhaps there is a Nobel Prize waiting for me in the future, after all.

  Perhaps, he even thought, Jeanmarie will return to me.

  In the workshop where he and his team labored, Manny Gaeta was walking Kris Cardenas around his EVA suit. Von Helmholtz and his four technicians stood at the benches that ran along two walls of the chamber, watching their boss and the nanotech expert as they slowly paced around the heavy, bulky suit, like shoppers inspecting a new outfit built for Frankenstein’s monster.

  She had arrived at the lab carrying a small briefcase, which she had left on the floor by the door as soon as Gaeta came over to greet her. The technicians stayed well clear of it.

  Now she and Gaeta stared up at the suit, looming head and shoulders above them, gleaming in the light from the ceiling lamps.

  “It’s big,” Cardenas murmured. With its helmet and jointed arms, it reminded her of a medieval suit of armor.

  “It’s gotta be big,” Gaeta said as they paced slowly around it. “Lots of gear inside.”

  “You’ve got room in there for a cafeteria,” she joked.

  With a rueful grin, Gaeta answered, “Nope. Just enough room inside for me to squeeze in. The rest is packed with sensors, cameras, VR transmitters, servomotors to move the arms and legs, radiation armor, life support systems—”

  “Systems? Plural?”

  “You bet. Redundant systems are the only way to go. One craps out, you can live on the other.”

  Cardenas peered at the gleaming armor’s bright finish. “Is this cermet?”

  “Partly,” said Gaeta. “Lots of organometallics in it, too. And semiconductor surfaces, protected by borosilicates and Buckyfilament shields.”

  “How do you put it on?”

  He walked her around to the suit’s back. “You climb in through the hatch.”

  Cardenas broke into a laugh. “Like the trapdoor in old-fashioned long johns!”

  Gaeta tilted his head to one side. “I never thought of it like that, but yeah, you’re right. Kinda like that.”

  Sobering up somewhat, Cardenas said, “Could you show me how you get into it?”

  “Sure. You want to go in? It’s okay, I can help you.”

  Cardenas shook her head. “No. You get into it.” Nodding toward the briefcase she had left by the door, “Then I can take samples of whatever residues you leave on the outside.”

  “Samples?”

  “If you want nanomachines specifically tailored to clean up your residues, I have to know exactly what they are, down to the molecular level.”

  Gaeta nodded his understanding. “Okay.” He called to von Helmholtz, “Yo, Fritz, I gotta get inside.”


  Von Helmholtz and the four techs started for the suit. The chief technician hesitated, though, and asked, “Dr. Cardenas, will you need your case?”

  “Yes I will, thank you.”

  He brought the briefcase to Cardenas while two of the technicians began unsealing the suit’s hatch and the other two booted up the monitoring consoles standing along the far side of the lab.

  “You plan to go outside when we pass Jupiter?” Cardenas asked Gaeta as von Helmholtz handed her the briefcase.

  “Yep. We’ll have a couple hundred million VR viewers sharing the experience as we zip past Jupiter. Should be fun.”

  “Flying past Jupiter as seen from outside. I’d like to experience that myself,” Cardenas said.

  The technicians swung open the hatch in the back of the suit and Gaeta stepped to it. Over his shoulder he told Cardenas, “Sure, why not? Fritz can fix you up with a VR rig, can’t you Fritz?”

  “It would be an honor,” said von Helmholtz. Cardenas couldn’t decide if he meant it or he was being snotty.

  She watched as Gaeta hiked one leg up over the rim of the hatch, grabbed the sides with either hand, and then pulled his other leg in. His head disappeared into the darkness inside.

  She heard a thud, then a string of muffled Spanish curses.

  “It’s pretty tight in there,” one of the technicians said, grinning at her.

  Gaeta called, “Okay, I’m set.” The techs closed the hatch and sealed it shut.

  Walking around to the front of the suit, Cardenas had to crane her neck to see Gaeta’s face through the heavily tinted visor of the helmet.

  The right arm of the suit stirred into motion with a buzz and whirr of servomotors.

  “Hello, Kris,” boomed Gaeta’s voice, amplified powerfully, as he waved at her. “Wanna dance?”

  But she was already on one knee, opening the briefcase that carried her analysis tools, all business.

  JUPITER ENCOUNTER MINUS TWO DAYS

  The cafeteria was bustling and noisy with the clatter of silverware and a hundred buzzing conversations. Ilya Timoshenko ignored the lines of people waiting at the various counters, preferring to punch out his lunch selections from the automated dispensers. He had filled his tray with a McGlop sandwich and a bowl of steaming soup; now he stood before the beverage dispenser.