Titan

10 January 2096: Midnight

It’s like an unending nightmare, Eduoard Urbain said to himself. He sat at his desk, head sunk between his hands, handsome silk ascot hanging loose and sweaty from his shirt collar, his pearl gray jacket tossed over the back of a chair.

Endless. Night and day I try to make something work and it is useless. It’s like one of those dreams where you are struggling to get away from something horrible but you can’t move. Your feet are mired in mud or sinking into wet concrete.

He banged a fist on his desktop so hard it hurt. “Why?” he demanded of the empty office. “Why won’t she speak to me?”

With red-rimmed eyes he reviewed the latest reports from his staff. Alpha was still incommunicado, somewhere on the surface of Titan. She could not be located unless low-altitude satellites were put in place around Titan to search for her with infrared and radar scanners. And Eberly will not allow the satellites to be launched unless I agree to his scheme to mine Saturn’s rings.

Endless. A never-ending cycle of frustration. My career is in tatters; my life is ruined. I am already a laughingstock back on Earth. The news media are doing stories about my failure.

What can I do? Urbain asked himself. What choice do I have? Eberly holds all the power. If I don’t give in to him, I’ll never find Alpha, never have a prayer of regaining contact with her.

Urbain straightened up in his chair. Let’s look at this calmly, he told himself. Rationally. Either you agree to mine the rings or you lose Alpha forever. Or at least until some other group is sent out here with the personnel and equipment to locate Alpha and get her to begin sending data. By then you will have been replaced, sent home to Quebec in disgrace, a miserable failure, a has-been, a never-was.

No! Urbain told himself sternly. That cannot be allowed. If I agree to allow that miserable extortionist Eberly to mine the rings, I can locate Alpha and bring her back to life. Me, myself.

Wunderly will go berserk, but that is her problem, not mine. Besides, she will immediately appeal to the ICU and IAA. They will never allow mining the rings if Wunderly can show that Saturn’s rings are indeed biologically active.

Urbain glanced at the digital time display on his desktop screen. Exactly midnight.

Very well, he told himself, his mind made up at last. I will agree to Eberly’s ridiculous demand. Let him mine the rings, or try to. My first priority, my only priority, is to save Alpha.

With a grim smile he ordered the phone to call Malcolm Eberly, regardless of the hour.

Holly hadn’t wanted to ask Pancho for advice but there was no one else she could think of. After her disastrous breakup with Raoul, she rushed to her apartment and spent hours pacing, thinking, rerunning their meeting in her head, calling herself a fool, a blind idiot, to put Raoul in a bind like that. No wonder he walked out. He thinks all I’m interested in is to get him to fly Nadia to the rings. Stupid! Stupid!

She realized that she loved Raoul Tavalera, but he would never believe her now. Love is based on trust, she knew, and he’ll never be able to trust me again. Never.

She held back the tears that threatened to engulf her, but Holly knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She didn’t even change into her nightclothes. She simply paced her apartment, eying the phone console, wanting to call Raoul but knowing it would be useless, pointless. I’ve been a cosmic idiot, she told herself. An intergalactic dimdumb.

It was just past midnight when she found herself ordering the phone to call her sister. As soon as she realized it she wanted to cancel the call. But before she could, Pancho’s face appeared on the small screen of the phone console.

“What’s up, sis?” Pancho looked wide-awake, grinning happily.

“I didn’t wake you up, did I?” Holly asked.

“Hell no. Jake and I were just raiding the fridge. Those meals at Nemo’s can be pretty skimpy.”

“I guess.”

Pancho’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

Swallowing once before replying, Holly asked, “Panch, could you come over here? To my place? I need to talk to you. Just the two of us.”

“Faster than light, kid,” said Pancho.

“It was so good of you to come here to meet me,” Jeanmarie Urbain said, wondering if Eberly could hear the nervous thundering of her pulse.

Eberly smiled graciously in the darkness of the little woods. “I must confess that your call surprised me, Madame Urbain.”

“Jeanmarie,” she murmured, as she walked alongside Eberly along the shadowy, twining path. “My friends call me Jeanmarie.”

“You count me as a friend?”

She hesitated a heartbeat. Then, “I hope so.”

Eberly chuckled softly. “Your husband doesn’t think of me as a friend.”

She thought carefully before replying, “Eduoard is completely immersed in his work. He has no time for friendships, no room for personal relations.”

“Not even for his wife?”

Jeanmarie pictured herself walking a tightrope over an abyss. One false step and I am doomed, she told herself.

Eberly took her silence as agreement. “It’s a shame that such a lovely woman is neglected.”

She sighed. “It is his work. His reason for existence. He takes others—his aides, his associates—for granted.”

“And you, as well.”

“I am afraid so.”

“That’s very sad.”

It took all her courage to reply, “Sad, yes. And lonely.”

Eberly walked in silence for several paces along the path. She could not make out the expression on his face. He was slightly taller than she, but she got no impression of brute masculine strength. Rather, Jeanmarie felt as if she were walking with a stealthy cat padding along beside her, eying her with calculating eyes.

At last he said, “I know what it is to be lonely.”

“You do?”

“Scientists aren’t the only ones to become ensnared in their work. I have the responsibility for this entire habitat on my shoulders. Ten thousand men and women. They all depend on me.”

“Yes, of course. I should have realized that.”

“Like you, I have no one to turn to,” Eberly went on, his voice a soft, poignant murmur.

“You need a friend,” she said.

“That’s perfectly true. You’re a very understanding woman.”

“You are very kind.”

“I’m happy that you believe so.”

She decided she had to play her penultimate card. “You know, I have admired you for several weeks now. You are so … so commanding. So superb.”

He stopped walking and turned to face her. Jeanmarie’s heart thumped in her chest.

“You really admire me?” he asked, his voice high with wonder.

“Truly,” she lied.

“Perhaps …,” he began, then paused dramatically.

“Perhaps?”

Taking both her hands in his, Eberly said, “Perhaps we could be friends.”

She allowed him to hold her hands as she gazed into his eyes, trying to fathom what was going on behind them.

“But you’re a married woman,” Eberly said gloomily. “In a closed habitat like this, it could never work.”

“If Eduoard were busy working on his probe, searching for it, trying to regain control of it …”

“He’d have no time for you at all, would he?”

“None at all,” she agreed.

“But we couldn’t be seen together in public,” Eberly said gravely. “That wouldn’t do.”

She replied, “We could meet here and take walks, talk to each other, share our thoughts.”

“I suppose I could arrange for an electric cart and we could ride to one of the endcaps, or one of the unoccupied villages.”

Jeanmarie recognized the danger in that.

“I could not be away from home for so very long,” she temporized.

“But if your husband had the satellites he wants he’d be spending all his time searching for his probe, wouldn’t he?”

Nodding, she added, “And once he found the machine he would be with it every hour of the night and day.”

Eberly smiled. “You have a rival.”

“Yes, I do.”

He stepped closer and put his hands on her shoulders. And his palmcomp chimed.

Jeanmarie shuddered as if rudely awakened from a bad dream. Eberly grumbled something and flicked his handheld open.

“Yes?” he snapped.

“Chief Administrator Eberly?” he heard from the handheld’s tiny speaker. Urbain’s voice! Does he know … ?

“Yes,” he said, more guardedly.

“This is Eduoard Urbain. I have decided to withdraw my opposition to mining the rings of Saturn.” Urbain’s voice was brittle, sharp-edged. “Providing, of course, that you permit my people to launch the satellites into orbit around Titan. And to build replacement satellites.”

Glancing at Jeanmarie, who was staring at him with eyes so wide with guilt that he could see their whites even in the nighttime darkness, Eberly answered, “Very well. We can discuss this in my office first thing tomorrow morning.”

He snapped the handheld shut and said to Jeanmarie, “It’s quite late. You’d better get home.”

“Was that Eduoard?” she asked, in an agonized tone.

Nodding, Eberly said, “He’ll be at your apartment shortly, wondering where you’ve been.”

With that he turned abruptly and began striding back toward Athens, leaving Jeanmarie standing in the shadows alone. Both of them felt relieved.

Pancho did not break the light-speed barrier, but she was knocking at Holly’s door before Holly could finish washing the tears from her face.

“What’s the matter?” she said as she strode into the apartment, her head swiveling as if she were looking for cutthroats and assassins.

Within minutes the two sisters were sitting together on the sofa as Holly poured out her troubles.

“Oh, Panch, I’ve made such a mess of things!”

Pancho nodded tightly.

“He’ll never want to talk to me again. Never.”

“Does that matter so much to you?”

“It does! It truly does. I didn’t realize how much I really love Raoul until now. I’ve flamed out, Panch. I’ve wrecked it all.”

Leaning back on the sofa, Pancho scratched idly at her chin. “Cool down, sis. Let’s take this one step at a time.”

“He thinks all I want is to get him to fly Nadia to the rings. He doesn’t know that I really love him.”

“Well, to begin with, you’ve gotta find somebody else to pilot the spacecraft. That’ll show him that he’s not on the spot for that assignment.”

“I wish. But even if I could find somebody he’d still be sore at me. He’ll go back to Earth soon’s he can, I bet.”

“Which won’t be real soon,” Pancho said, as soothingly as she could. “There aren’t any ships heading all the way out here that I know of.”

“There will be, in a few months.”

“That’s a long time from now.”

“Yeah, maybe, but—”

“What you need, first shot out of the box, is somebody to fly your scientist pal to the rings.”

“Timoshenko won’t do it,” Holly said. “And we don’t really have anybody else except Raoul who can do the job. We need an experienced astronaut.”

Grinning widely, Pancho said, “You’re lookin’ at one.”

“You? But Jake said—”

“Never mind what Jake said. I spent more time drivin’ spacecraft than you’ve spent brushing your teeth, just about.”

“But … but that was years ago, Panch. You’re too old—”

Pancho’s face hardened. “Don’t say it, kid. My reflexes are still quick enough to give you a spanking. A little time in a simulator and I’ll be sharp as a samurai sword’s edge.”

Holly sat there, mouth open, clearly disbelieving.

“Jake can help your mission control team. He gets along pretty good with Manny Gaeta.”

“I s’pose …”

“And you can get your boyfriend to join the techie team, too. He can stay nice and safe here while I fly out to the rings. This is gonna be fun!”

“Pancho,” said Holly, shaking her head, “you can’t—”

“The hell I can’t.”

“But Raoul won’t join the mission control team. He won’t even talk to me.”

“Sure he will,” Pancho said cheerfully. “Ask him while you’re in bed.”

“I couldn’t!”

“Best time to ask a man anything,” Pancho said with a knowing wink.