Saturn

by Ben Bova

  As she munched on the sandwich in the faint glow from the pen-light, she felt almost like a little mouse down in its burrow. There are big cats out there, she knew. But I'm safe enough here. Unless somebody decides to divert the main water routing through this backup pipeline. Then I'd be a drowned little mouse.

  The two black-clad security officers stood uncertainly in the tunnel, gazing up and down along the pipes and conduits.

  "She just disappeared on us," the man said to the third tracker, who wore a gray running suit. He was tall, rangy, not a gram of fat on him; he looked like an athlete who trained hard every day.

  He held the chemical sniffer in one hand, a small gray oblong box—the same shade as his running suit.

  "She came this way, definitely," he said.

  "But where's she gone?" asked the woman.

  "That's not your problem. I'll take over from here. You can go back and report to the boss."

  They were reluctant to leave, not so much because they were zealous about their jobs, as a decided lack of enthusiasm for the prospect of facing Kananga empty-handed.

  "You sure you don't need help?" the man asked.

  The gray-clad tracker smiled and hefted the electronic sniffer. "I've got all the help I need, right here."

  Gaeta had been in the shuttlecraft before. Fritz insisted that the stuntman familiarize himself with the vehicle that would carry him from the habitat to the rings. Manny had found the craft to be pretty much like dozens of others he had seen: utilitarian, austere, built more for efficiency than comfort. The cockpit had two seats shoehorned in among all the flight controls. Behind that was a closet-sized "amenities" area with a zero-g toilet built into the bulkhead right next to the food storage freezer and microwave oven. The sink was there, too. Two mesh sleeping bags were pinned against the opposite bulkhead.

  The cargo bay was pressurized, so while Timoshenko ran through his final checkout of the craft's systems, Gaeta ducked through the hatch to look over his suit.

  It stood looming in the bay, so tall that the top of the helmet barely cleared the bay's overhead. Gaeta looked up into the empty faceplate of the helmet. Some people saw the suit for the first time and got the shudders. Gaeta always felt as if he were meeting his other half. Alone, each of them were much less than they were together: the suit an empty shell, the man a helpless weakling. But together—Ahh, together we've done great things, haven't we? Gaeta reached up and patted the suit's upper arm. Some of the dents from the simulation test they'd done hadn't been smoothed out of the suit's armored chest, he noticed. Shaking his head, he thought he should speak to Fritz about that. He should've treated you better, Gaeta said to the suit.

  "Launch in five minutes," Timoshenko's voice came through the open cockpit hatch. "You'll have to strap down."

  Gaeta nodded. With a final look at the suit, he turned and went back into the cockpit to start his journey through the rings of Saturn.

  Kris Cardenas tried to keep busy during the last hours before Gaeta's launch. Eberly had lifted the ban on her nanolab, so she had gone to the laboratory, where she had real work to do. It was better than sitting in the apartment trying to keep herself from weeping like some helpless female who was supposed to stand by bravely while her man went out to do battle.

  It annoyed her that Tavalera wasn't at his job, until she realized that he probably didn't know the lab had been allowed to reopen. She tried to phone him, but the comm system couldn't find him and his personal handheld had been deactivated.

  That's not like Raoul, she thought. He's always been reliable.

  She went through the motions of designing repair nanos for Urbain's Titan lander, then finally gave it up altogether and turned on the vid.

  "There is the shuttlecraft," Zeke Berkowitz's voice was poised on the edge that separated authoritative self-assuredness from excited enthusiasm. "In precisely fifteen seconds it will separate from the habitat and begin the journey that will carry Manuel Gaeta into the rings of Saturn."

  Cardenas saw a view from the exterior shell of the habitat. She knew that Berkowitz's newscast was being beamed to all the media networks on Earth. She could hear the computer's voice counting down the final seconds.

  "Three ... two ... one ... launch."

  The shuttlecraft detached from the habitat's huge, curved surface, looking like a squarish metallic flea hopping off the hide of an elephant. Against the iridescent glowing disc of many-hued Saturn, the shuttlecraft rose, turned slowly, and then began dwindling out of sight.

  "Manuel Gaeta is on his way," Berkowitz was announcing ponderously, "to be the first man to traverse the mysterious and fascinating rings of Saturn."

  "Goodbye Manny," Cardenas whispered, certain that she would never see him again.

  INTO THE RINGS

  Even though she knew that the backup pipeline was perfectly safe, Holly began to get a little edgy about staying in it. In her mind's eye she saw some maintenance engineer casually switching the habitat's main water flow from the primary pipeline to the backup. Just a routine operation, yet it would send a flood of frothing water cascading down the pipe toward her, engulfing her, sweeping her along in its irresistible flow, drowning her as she tumbled over and over in the roaring, inescapable flood.

  Dimdumb! she snapped at herself. You're scaring yourself like some little kid afraid of monsters under the bed. Yet, as she crawled along the perfectly dry pipeline, she kept listening for the telltale rush of water, feeling with her fingertips for the slightest vibration of the pipe. And the pipe wasn't perfectly dry, at that: here and there small damp patches and even actual puddles told her that water had been flowing not so long ago.

  She had thought she'd stay in the pipeline until it made its big U-turn, up near the endcap. Well, maybe not all the way. It'd be good to get out and stretch, be able to stand up again. So she slithered further along the pipe, even though the lingering fear of drowning still gnawed at her.

  The tracker reached the hatch where Holly had entered the pipeline easily enough. The electronic sniffer in his hand followed the scent trail she had left quite easily. My faithful bloodhound, he thought, with a crooked smile.

  Now he had a decision to make. Should I go into the pipe and follow her, or stay outside? He decided to remain outside. He could make better time walking, or even jogging, than he could crawling inside the dark pipe. She has to come out sooner or later, and when she does the sniffer will tell me which hatch she used.

  But which direction did she go? She was heading away from the village, toward the endcap, he knew. I'll follow that vector. The chances that she'd double back toward the village are pretty scarce. Still, he phoned Kananga to report the situation and advise him to have a few people standing by at the pipeline hatches near the village.

  "I'll do better than that," Kananga said, grinning fiercely. "I'll order maintenance to run the main water flow through the line. That'll flush her out."

  Tavalera bicycled out to the endcap along the path that meandered through the orchards and farmlands. He left the bike at the end of the path, then followed the walking trail that led through the woods at the endcap. It felt strange: He could see he was climbing a decent slope yet it felt as if he were going downhill; the gravity diminished noticeably with every step he took.

  At last he reached the little spot in the woods where he and Holly had once picnicked. I can't search the whole habitat for you, Holly, he said silently, so you'll have to come to me.

  Tavalera sat down and began to wait for her to show up. It was the best course of action he could think of.

  Gaeta felt the same pulse of excitement that always hit him once he was sealed inside the suit, with all the systems turned on and working. Not merely excitement. What he felt was power. In the suit he had the strength of a demigod. The suit protected him against the worst that the universe could throw at him. He felt virtually invulnerable, invincible.

  Keep thinking like that, pal, and you'll end up dead, he warned himself. Take a deep breath an
d get to work. And remember that it's damned dangerous out there.

  Still, he felt like a superman.

  "Approaching insertion point." Timoshenko's raspy voice came through the helmet earphones.

  Gaeta nodded. "I'm sealed up. Open the cargo bay hatch."

  "Opening hatch."

  Gaeta had been through this many times. He always felt a thrill when the hatch slid open and he could look out at the universe of endless black void and countless brilliant stars.

  But this time was different. As the hatch opened the cargo bay was flooded with light, overpoweringly brilliant light. Gaeta looked up at an endless field of gleaming, dazzling white, as far as his eyes could see, nothing but glittering sparkling light. It was like looking out at a titanic glacier or a field of glistening snow that extended forever.

  No, he realized. It's like looking out at a whole world made of diamonds: sparkling, glittering diamonds. They're not just white, they gleam and glow like diamonds, hundreds of millions of billions of bright, beautiful gems spread out from one end of the universe to the other.

  His breath caught in his throat. "Jesus Cristo," he muttered.

  "What was that?" Timoshenko asked.

  "I'm going out," Gaeta said.

  "Your trajectory program is operative?"

  Gaeta called up the trajectory program vocally. It splashed its colored curves on the inside of his faceplate.

  "Operative."

  "Ready for insertion in eight seconds. Seven..."

  Gaeta had to make a conscious effort to concentrate on the task ahead. His eyes kept wandering to the endless field of dazzling gems stretching out before him.

  They're just flakes of ice, he told himself. Nothing more than bits of dust with ice covering them.

  Yeah, answered a voice in his mind. And diamonds are nothing more than carbon. And the Mona Lisa is nothing more than same dabs of paint on a chunk of canvas.

  "... one ... zero. Launch," said Timoshenko.

  The suit's master computer ignited the thrusters in the backpack and Gaeta felt himself pushed gently out of the cargo bay. Now he was looking down on the endless field of gleaming gems and beginning to drift toward them.

  How fucking beautiful, he thought. How incredibly fucking beautiful!

  "Say something!" came Berkowitz's voice, relayed from the habitat. "We need some words from you for posterity."

  Gaeta licked his lips. "This is the most incredibly beautiful sight I've ever seen. It's ... it's ... beyond description. Words just can't capture it."

  For some minutes Gaeta just drifted along above the ring plane, allowing the computer to guide him automatically along the preset trajectory. He knew the cameras in his helmet were recording it all, so there wasn't much for him to do at this point in the trajectory. He simply gaped, awed by the splendor that surrounded him.

  "It's like something out of a fairy tale," he said, hardly realizing he was speaking aloud. "A field of diamonds. A whole world of diamonds spread out below me. I feel like Sinbad the Sailor and Marco Polo and Ali Baba, all rolled into one."

  "That's great," Berkowitz's voice answered. "Great."

  "Have any particles hit you?" Fritz asked.

  "No, nothing that the sensors have picked up," Gaeta replied. "I'm still too high above the ring." Good old Fritz, he thought. Trying to bring me back to reality.

  Another gentle push of thrust at his back and Gaeta began to come closer to the ring. Within minutes he would be going through it. That would be the dangerous part of the stunt, barging in there among all those bits and chunks while they're whipping around the planet in their orbits.

  He could see now that the ring wasn't a solid sheet. It was clearly made of separate, individual rings, braiding together and unwinding even while he watched. He could see stars through the ring, and the ponderous curve of Saturn with its colorful bands of clouds.

  "Looks like a cyclonic storm down in the southern tropics," he reported.

  "Never mind that," Fritz said. "Pay attention to the rings."

  "Yes, master."

  "What about the spokes?" Wunderly's voice, trembling with exhilaration. "I can see them in your camera view. One of them is approaching you."

  Gaeta realized that there were darker regions in the ring, undulating like a wave made by fans at a sports arena.

  "Yeah, heading my way," he said.

  Looking closer, he saw that it was almost like a cloud of darker bits of dust rising up from the ring plane and sweeping along the brighter stuff of the ring's main body. And he was approaching it at a fairly rapid clip.

  "I'm going to duck into it," he said.

  Fritz warned, "Wait. Let us examine it first."

  "It'll pass me; I'll miss it."

  "There will be others."

  Gaeta didn't want to wait for another spoke to swing by. He pulled his right arm out of the suit sleeve and tapped in a maneuver command for the navigation program.

  "Here we go," he said as the suit tilted and dove into the approaching cloud.

  Fritz muttered something in German.

  "It's dust," Gaeta saw. "Sort of gray, like there's no ice coating the particles."

  "Adjust your approach vector," Fritz snapped. "Don't go plunging headlong into the cloud."

  "I'll just skim along it," said Gaeta, enjoying himself now. "Doesn't look thick enough to cause any problems. I can see right through it."

  Wunderly said, "See if you—" Her voice broke up into crackling static.

  "Say again," Gaeta called. "You're breaking up."

  No answer except hissing electronic interference. Gaeta was barely touching the cloud as it swept along the ring. He called for a systems check and the displays on his faceplate showed everything in the green, including the radio.

  Outside interference, he said to himself. Something in the dust cloud screws up radio communications.

  The cloud raced past him, swinging along the ring far faster than Gaeta's leisurely pace.

  "...off the scale!" Wunderly was shouting excitedly. "That proves the spokes are driven by electromagnetic interactions."

  "I can hear you again," Gaeta said. "Whatever it was that blocked the radio is gone now."

  "It's the spokes!" Wunderly said. "We've just proved that high-powered electromagnetic fields drive them!"

  "And interfere with radio links," Fritz added calmly.

  "It didn't mess up anything else in the suit," Gaeta said.

  "The suit is heavily shielded," said Fritz.

  "Yeah." Gaeta saw that he was approaching the ring particles pretty fast now. Like diving into a field of diamonds, he thought, chuckling.

  "What is funny?" Fritz demanded.

  "I was thinking I shoulda brought a big bucket to haul back some of these diamonds."

  "They are not diamonds. They are dust particles covered with ice."

  "But the ones in the spokes don't seem to have ice on 'em."

  "That is a mystery for Dr. Wunderly to ponder. For you, you should be adjusting your velocity vector to make it as close to that of the ring particles as possible. That will minimize impacts and abrasion problems."

  It was all in the automated nav program, Gaeta knew, but he checked his approach velocity against the ring particles' and saw that he could notch down his approach a hair. That'll give me more time in the ring itself, he thought. Good.

  Then he saw a bigger chunk of ice tumbling slowly through the ring, glittering brilliantly.

  "Hey, see that one? It's big as a house."

  "Stay away from it," Fritz commanded.

  "Can you get close enough to measure its size precisely?" Wunderly asked.

  Gaeta laughed again. "Right. Stay away and get close. No sweat, folks."

  CAPTURED

  Crawling along the pipe on all fours, Holly's right hand splashed into a shallow little puddle at precisely the same instant that her left hand felt a slight vibration along the pipe's curved interior surface.

  She froze for an instant, listening for
the rush of water, then decided, By the time I hear it, it'll be too late to do anything about it.

  She had passed a hatch about five minutes earlier. That meant the next hatch would be roughly five minutes ahead. Which way is the water coming? she asked herself. Doesn't matter, came the answer. You've got to get your butt out of here. Now!

  She scurried forward, feeling like a mouse in its burrow, scampering as fast as her hands and knees would carry her. She heard a rumble from somewhere behind her, thought it might be her imagination overreacting, then felt the unmistakable shudder of water rushing along the pipe. By the time she reached the hatch she could hear the flood roaring down toward her. With trembling fingers she opened the hatch, crawled out of the pipe, and slammed the hatch shut again. Water thundered past, some of it splashing through the hatch before she could seal it properly.

  That was close!

  Holly's legs wouldn't hold her up. She slid to the metal flooring of the tunnel and sat in the puddle beneath the hatch.

  They knew I was in the pipe! she realized. They knew and they tried to drown me.

  The tracker was loping along the tunnel, running easily alongside the pipeline. He could hear the water gushing through it but, careful man that he was, he jogged down the tunnel on the chance that his prey had gotten out in time. Take no chances, don't give the prey a chance to get away.

  He was an Ethiopian who had dreamed of winning Olympic gold medals for long-distance running until the Olympic Games were indefinitely postponed. He had supported himself, his parents, and his younger siblings on a policeman's meager salary. Even that failed, however, when a relative of a politician from the capital was handed his position and salary. Faced with starvation, he accepted a position on the outbound Saturn habitat, on the condition that his salary be sent each month to his parents. Once aboard the habitat, he was befriended by Colonel Kananga and given a soft post with the Security Department.