Regan's Planet

TWELVE

In November, with opening day now less than a year away, Regan paid his first visit to the space satellite that was to house the 1992 Columbian Exposition.

The shell was complete, and had already become a landmark in the night sky, gleaming, coin-sized, easily visible even with low-powered field glasses. It was sealed tight, pressurized, the atmosphere generators already at work recycling air through the globe. Centrifugal spin provided artificial gravity, one G to keep everybody comfortable. Regan had toyed with the idea of pegging the Satellite at half-gravity to make every visitor feel more bouncy and lively, but had decided against it finally. A plan periodically to halt the spin entirely to give everyone aboard a brief no-grav interlude had also been scrapped; it would have been too much trouble to tie down everything portable during those interludes. Visitors to the Fair would get a sufficient taste of free fall while in transit, anyway.

Regan went to the Fair even as an ordinary citizen would have to do when it opened: via one of the new ships. He boarded it at Denver. The idea was to have half a dozen of the little ships deployed at each of Earth’s main spaceports, for the convenience of travelers. If demand warranted it, more of the ships could be constructed during the Fair itself.

The vessel was strictly economy class. It had been built as rapidly as prudence allowed, with one eye cocked toward the Federal safety regulations at all times. It was a double shell of aluminum, with rocket engines generating a few million pounds of thrust. The passenger cradles were Spartan, rudimentary. The baggage limit was eight pounds a passenger, permitting a couple of changes of underwear and not much more. Most of the visitors to the Fair would be spending no more than twenty-four hours there. Overnight accommodations were limited, and deliberately expensive; two hundred and fifty dollars entitled you to a single night’s use of a bare cubicle hardly big enough to lie down in. It was not an arrangement calculated to win many friends for the Fair, but it was dictated by the economics of the situation. The only way the Fair could show a profit was through high turnover, thousands of people paying admission fees, wandering around, and leaving. Space was limited; they weren’t running a resort up there.

At least, not yet, Regan thought.

There were thirty passengers aboard the ship Regan took: aside from the Factor himself, they included three members of Regan’s staff, several representatives of exhibitor nations, and a flock of reporters getting a free ride. Regan got the red-carpet welcome at the spaceport, but once aboard the ship, his cradle was no fancier than anyone else’s.

‘It’s not a bad ride, Factor,“ the steward told him. ”You just have to relax and stay loose. It’s over before you know it, sir.“

Regan grinned and strapped himself in. The warning gong sounded, and the ground personnel left the ship. The budget provided for a crew of just two, pilot and co-pilot. Stewards did not remain on board after blast-off. Too expensive to ferry hired hands back and forth.

The seconds ticked away. Regan waited, swaying gently in the hammock-like acceleration cradle.

Blast-off came. The ship groaned and lurched.

It reminded Regan of his very first space flight, a business trip to the Moon, aboard an old clinker of a rocket that went back almost to the ‘70’s. He had felt every jolt of the blast-off then, and he was feeling it now. Well, it was no luxury liner, he thought. Not at fifty bucks a ride! “

Gravity dragged at him. Five, six, seven G’s. His face distorted under the strain. But it was only momentary. It was too expensive, and too rough on the passengers, to push the acceleration any higher. The people aboard wouldn’t be trained astronauts. They’d be ordinary joes - though of course they’d all need medical certificates testifying that they could stand the gaff. The weak-hearted as well as the faint-hearted would get only secondhand impressions of this World’s Fair.

The engines cut out as the ship reached orbital velocity. Regan was used to the phenomenon of no-grav by this time, but he smiled at the thought of the thousands upon thousands of visitors to the Fair who would be experiencing it as something brand new and startling.

They drifted through the darkness. Somewhere nearby was the Satellite. Regan had no porthole to view by-economy!- and so all he could do was slump back in the cradle, relax, wait.

Hardly any time at all had elapsed. It was quicker to reach a satellite fifty thousand miles up than it was to drive from New York to Boston. That was the point that had to be hammered on in the promotional campaign: that it was just a short, easy hop, skip, and jump from your nearest spaceport to the World’s Fair.

There was still no sensation of motion. And then, briefly, there was: the blast of lateral jets as the ship matched orbits with the Fair Satellite. Regan waited. There was a second jolt as the starboard jets were fired. This rendezvous maneuver was the most time-consuming part of all; two objects moving at thousands of miles an hour had to be brought together in such a way that the airlock of one and the airlock of the other could be joined.

A tricky maneuver, but not really a difficult one. And, under the circumstances, the only possible way of getting Fair visitors inside the Fair. Just as for practical reasons it was impossible to equip passengers aboard jet airliners with their own parachutes, so, too, it was unthinkable to provide a spacesuit and the training to use it for everyone who came to the Fair. Professional spacemen could suit up and cross a rope ladder through space to get inside the Fair Satellite; Earth-lubbers would have to move from airlock to airlock without once leaving an atmosphere.

The ship and the Satellite were joined. The locks opened. For the first time, Claude Regan set foot in the home of the 1992 Columbian Exposition.

He was impressed.

He found himself in a high vaulted chamber, brightly lit, walled on three sides. In the middle distance he saw workmen welding something, sparks showering gaily in casual disregard for the environment. Further off, a giant crane was being inched into position.

The welcoming committee came rushing up to greet him.

A Brazilian named Castelanho pumped his hand. “So glad to see you, Senhor Factor. So very glad!” Castelanho was in charge of construction and maintenance; he was the top-ranking Aero do Brasil man on the job. “We have everything ready for you to see,” Castelanho exclaimed. “I hardly know what to show you first, Senhor Factor!”

Regan grinned amiably. “It doesn’t matter. I want to see it all.”

It was quite a sight.

Even with everything half-completed or worse, it was possible to discern the outlines of the Fair that would be. The globular Satellite was divided into many levels for greater floor space, and the pavilions of the nations and the great companies were rising in every part of the huge orbiter. Workmen shouted across echoing voids; cables trailed everywhere; booms and cranes, assembled out here in space, swung in awesome majesty from one level to another.

There was little or no sensation of actually being in space. The normal gravity, the atmosphere, the solidity of everything around, gave one the feeling of still being on Earth, and yet not really in any familiar place, for one was definitely inside something, some vast enclosed space, and there were no five-hundred-acre enclosed spaces of this sort to be found on Earth. The Satellite was unique.

There were few portholes opening onto the blackness of space without. This was deliberate. Cutting down on the number of portholes reduced the structural weakness in the shell of the Satellite itself, and cut construction costs. All to the good, of course. Still more to the point was the fact that revenue could be promoted from the almost total absence of windows.

There were some windows-half a dozen of them, large plate-glass panels. They were to be operated as concessions. Anyone who wanted a squint of the starry void-and Regan imagined that would have to be just about everyone who came to the Fair-would have to hand over fifty cents or so to enter a window area. Penny by penny, the Fair would somehow pay its way.

Regan roamed on. His busy imagination transformed what he saw into completed pavilions, and he liked the effect. It would not, of course, resemble any of the World’s Fairs of the past except in general purpose. Regan could remember being taken, as a boy of nine, to the New York World’s Fair of 1964. He remembered the green meadows, the reflecting pools, the gay Lunar Fountain, the colossal Unisphere towering fifty yards high, the tree-bordered malls. It had seemed like a dazzling wonder-world, and he had never forgotten its glittering gaiety, its spectacular abundance.

Here there were no malls, no trees, no meadows. A single fountain fed water endlessly into a pool, but there was none of the elaborate machinery that had marked the fountains of that other fair. Nor were the pavilions the palaces of delight that Regan remembered from his childhood.

Everything was simpler, here. Of course. This was a tiny world in space, and what was built there was built at mind-staggering expense. Duplicating a terrestrial World’s Fair was beyond question. They had created something new here, something the world had never seen before.

Regan spent half an hour at the Global Factors pavilion, bordering on the main plaza. It was more nearly complete than any of the others, of course, since Regan had bulled the appropriation through the Board of Directors very early in the game. A Global engineer-one of the men who usually helped build dams in underdeveloped parts of Earth- spotted Regan out front, recognized him, and came out to meet the Factor.

‘Looks pretty good, doesn’t it, Factor Regan?“

‘It looks grand,“ Regan said. ”The whole thing. It’s just terrific.“

Dawn was breaking over the Atlantic as Regan reached Washington, bone-tired. The vision of the World’s Fair Satellite still tingled in his brain. He had been unable to sleep on the trip back, down to the Denver Spaceport and then across the continent by jet to Washington. Images raced through his mind-of the Fair completed, of people patiently queuing up to board the little ships, of wide-eyed visitors strolling the aisles of the Satellite in wonder.

He managed to get a little sleep at the Georgetown home he had rented as his residence while in the Capital. At noon, he was at the Fair office, and he was not there more than minutes when Lyle Henderson came stalking into Regan’s room, tight-lipped, gaunt-faced, practically quivering with suppressed rage.

‘Good morning, Lyle,“ Regan began, pleasantly enough.

Henderson was in no mood for pleasantries. The aide put a newsfax sheet down on the Factor’s desk and blurted, “Look at this, Factor! Just look!”

Regan looked.

It was a clipping from a gossip column in one of the New York tabloids. Regan frowned, scanned the Sheet, waded through tales of Broadway nonsense. He wondered why Henderson was so irate. Perhaps the gossip columnist had said something nasty about Claude Regan’s marital problems, eh? On the surface, Nola was still his wife, and nobody officially knew there was trouble between them, but still, these snoopers…

Only why should Henderson be so sore about that?

Regan didn’t know. He read his way three quarters down the column, and then he saw what the trouble was. It had nothing to do with him and Nola.

It said:

F.B.I, agents are running around in circles trying to confirm a story which says that a certain foreign power is going to bomb the World’s Fair on opening day. As it comes to us, the Fair is slated to go Boom next October 12, when it’ll be chock full of notables from all over the world. Just where the fatal missile is going to take off from is slated to remain secret forever if the perpetrators can manage it. Our guess is that a certain heavily populated Oriental power is cooking up the big blast by way of dealing the deathblow to American prestige once and for all.

Regan looked up. He felt as though someone had just rammed him in the gut with a jackhammer.

‘Oh, Christ,“ he said. ”Christ! When did this garbage get published?“

‘Yesterday, Factor. It came through the machine at noon, and we started getting phone calls about five minutes later. And of course you had taken off for space, and there was no way we could reach you.“

‘How did you follow up?“

‘We had the story killed,“ Henderson said. ”I phoned the Graphic in your name, and let them know that we’d bring a libel action if that story didn’t get cut out. They dropped it from all editions starting twelve-thirty.“

Regan grinned wryly. “Did you get legal opinion on the libel angle?”

‘I asked Martinelli. He said it probably wasn’t actionable, but that I ought to call anyway.“

‘Good man. Who’d you talk to?“

‘The publisher,“ Henderson said. ’Tony Coughlin himself. He was pretty badly shaken up about it. He said he had no idea such a thing was running in his paper, and he was firing the columnist right away.”

‘A lot of good that does us,“ Regan muttered. ”Well, I don’t blame Coughlin for getting scared. Global holds notes on his lousy sheet. I could put him out of business tomorrow, if I wanted to, and he knows it.“

‘That won’t help, sir.“

‘Don’t I know that?“ Regan scowled. ”I wish I had put him out of business the day before yesterday! What a stinking business!“ He stared at the yellowish fax sheet on his desk, and the offending words seemed to blaze at him like beacons. ”How many people do you figure saw this thing?“

‘The Graphic has about seven hundred fifty thousand subscribers, sir.“ Henderson shook his head. ”The story ran for only half an hour. That’s a probable exposure of maybe fifty thousand readers. But you know how a thing like that spreads. Somebody reads the Fair is going to be blown up, and he tells three of his friends, and they turn around and tell-“

‘I know. Yes.“ Regan hammered on his desk. ”Have you talked to the F.B.I.?“

‘Yes, sir. They don’t know a thing about it.“

‘It’s all a figment of this bastard’s imagination, then,“ Regan said. He rose, paced around the office. He wanted to break things, to smash, to rend and tear. ”Some hundred-buck-a-week moron is trying to write a column, and he’s a hundred words short when he’s through gabbing about who’s sleeping with whom. So he pops a stimmo and inspiration strikes and he fakes a story about the bombing of the World’s Fair, and suddenly we’re in a mess because nobody wants to risk coming to see us. Damn! Damn damn damn!“

‘I haven’t issued any retractions, sir,“ Henderson murmured. ”I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Perhaps the best thing is just to let it die of its own accord.“

Regan peered out. Dark November clouds scudded across the horizon. It was a bleak, miserable day, and he felt bleak and miserable inside. “If we don’t deny it,” he said. ‘people are going to keep thinking that there’s a Chinese plot to H-bomb the Fair. If we do deny it, we’ll not only sound unconvincing, but we’ll thereby bring the story to the attention of a lot of people who may not have heard it in the first place. So we’re fried whatever we do. Eh, Lyle?“ ”I was thinking the same thing.“ ”How does the staff feel about this?“

‘Divided, sir. Martinelli and a few others think we should get the Graphic to issue an immediate retraction. The rest seem to believe we ought to let the matter drop without raising a fuss about it.“ ”And you?“ Regan said. ”I don’t know, sir. I don’t know at all.“ Regan closed his eyes for a moment, trying to group his defenses. This was a low blow, a totally unexpected blow from the gutter.

He was silent a while. A muscle flicked in his cheek. He longed to get his hands on the man who had written that story. But what good would that do? So long as there were tabloid newsfax sheets, there would be mud thrown, lies given out as solemn truth, and all the rest. There is a kind of person, Regan reflected, whose role in the universe seems to be to destroy, and if not to destroy then to tarnish.

At length he said, “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll have the Graphic run a little squib saying that yesterday’s story was pure fabrication. Just a column inch or so, so it won’t draw attention. Then you and your staff will get on the phone and talk to the boss of every communication medium in the country-every newsfax chain, every video network, every news magazine. You will give out the word that the bomb story was vicious, irresponsible, and baseless, and that Claude Regan feels it should be allowed to die without further discussion. That he believes there should not even be a report of the incident, no matter if the story says six times that there won’t be any bombing. I want it killed.”

Henderson frowned. “Suppose it backfires, sir? Suppose somebody decides that the news must be published without external interference, and makes a cause celebre out of this? I mean, they might begin by reprinting the original story, and then cover your attempt to kill it.” “It’s the chance we take,” Regan said. “Global Factors holds the mortgage on everybody, Lyle. I’ve never tried to use that as a lever to control the news media before. I’ve studied history and I know all about the Zenger case and the rest But there’s too much at stake, here. Somebody has played dirty with us, and I’ve got to play dirty in return. I don’t like it, Lyle, but I’ve got to do it. Get started.”

Henderson left. Regan remained standing near his window, clenching and unclenching his fists.

The filthy bastards, he thought.

Somebody should have killed that story in the womb. But it was out, and no amount of behind-the-scenes suppression would really succeed in quashing it now.

People would talk. It was risky enough to get into a spaceship and fly off to a satellite in the sky. It was risky enough to spend time aboard a satellite. Hadn’t a satellite blown up in 1977 and taken four lives? Suddenly everybody would remember that incident, irrelevant to the present situation as it was. Okay. Given those risks, should one go on to take the further risk of being aboard a target for a Chinese warhead?

Regan felt like weeping. How could he tell people that the chance was one in a billion that anything would go wrong with the Satellite? How could he stand up and say that the world was at peace, that it was ten years since anybody had last detonated a nuclear bomb even for testing purposes, that economic competition cutthroat-style had come to serve at long last as the much-mooted Moral Equivalent of War? The Chinese wouldn’t blow up the Fair. Hell, Ch’ien himself would be on board, opening day. Nobody would blow up the Fair, neither the Chinese nor the Russians nor the Congolese nor the Lithuanians nor the Andorrans. Nations didn’t think in terms of blowing each other up anymore. They had subtler ways of fighting. The only one who would dream up such an idea was a tired, typewriter-happy rummy fighting a deadline in a newsfax office.

The damage was done;

May he roast in hell, whoever he was, Regan prayed.

Already, in defense, Regan had been forced to meddle with the freedom of the press-thus violating his own ethics, using Global’s power immorally. It was a descent. And perhaps a pointless one.

Who knew but that those hundred words might not have already ruined the Fair? And ruined with it Global Factors, and Claude Regan as well?

Who knew?

Wait and see, that was all Regan could do at this point Just wait and see, wait and see.