Titan

16 January 2096: Registration day

Eberly awoke with a smile. Registration day. The moment that my reelection campaign actually begins. Sitting up in his bed, he mentally scanned his political horizon. No obstacles in sight. Urbain has caved in to me, so there’ll be no real opposition to my plan to mine the rings.

As he got up and padded to the lavatory he thought, Of course that Wunderly woman will object and try to get the IAA to intervene, but that will just make me look more heroic to the voters, resisting the demands of Earthbound bureaucrats who don’t care about our real needs. Maybe I’ll get elected unanimously!

Best of all, he told himself, as he thoroughly brushed his teeth, I won’t have to play games with Urbain’s wife. What a pathetic little game she tried to play with me! Would she really have gone to bed with me? He shook his head as he rinsed his mouth and spat into the sink.

I can have my pick of just about any woman in this habitat, he said to himself. But why bother? Power is better than sex. Being admired by everyone—everyone!—that’s the really great thing in life. I don’t need women. I don’t need anything or anyone, not as long as I’m chief administrator. No one can hurt me. No one can touch me. I’m king of the hill and I’m not going to let anyone pull me down.

Zeke Berkowitz was smiling amiably as he inspected the camera placements he had personally set up around the stage of Athens’s only theater. As chief of Goddard’s communications department, Berkowitz still thought of himself as a newsman, and this day of registering for the coming election was one of those rare newsworthy events in the habitat.

Despite his slightly portly shape, Berkowitz cut a rather dapper figure in his pale yellow slacks and raw silk sports coat of toast brown. He had none of his minuscule staff with him; he figured he could handle this event alone with the help of the three remotely controlled cameras he had set in place. Unlike most of the younger people in the habitat, Berkowitz had disdained the enzyme treatments that would turn his skin golden. That’s for the kids, he thought. I’ll stay a pasty-faced old fart.

His years aboard Goddard had taught him not to expect a throng of curious onlookers. The inhabitants of this community were a strange lot, largely aloof to politics. No, Berkowitz reminded himself, they’re not aloof; they’re wary, suspicious of politics and politicians and everything that goes with them. Most of them had been exiled by their home countries, one way or another. They were aboard Goddard because their fundamentalist regimes at home had no use for them.

Berkowitz himself had come out to Saturn willingly, at the request of Professor Wilmot when the professor was organizing this permanent expedition. Retired after a lifetime in the news media business, bereft by the death of his wife, he had gladly accepted the chance to get as far away from his memories as he could.

Sure enough, the theater was practically empty. A few onlookers with nothing better to do were scattered among the otherwise empty seats. They merely made the place look emptier. Up on the stage, the official registrar sat behind a long table, bare except for the laptop computer opened in front of him. Berkowitz had expected the chief of human resources, Holly Lane, to serve as the registrar but apparently she had sent an underling. Holly’s a lot more photogenic than this young nonentity, he thought.

Ten A.M. was the official opening time for citizens who wished to register as candidates for election to the habitat’s post of chief administrator. It was now nearly eleven and no candidates had shown up. No matter, Berkowitz thought. Eberly will be here sooner or later, and he’ll unquestionably bring an entourage with him. With tight camera angles, good interview questions and some judicious editing I’ll make this the media event of the young year on this evening’s news broadcast.

He was mildly surprised when Holly Lane appeared at the back of the theater and strode boldly down the center aisle. Has she come to replace the guy behind the desk? It’s her job, as head of human resources, to serve as registrar. Maybe she was busy on something else and couldn’t get to it until now, Berkowitz thought.

“Good morning,” he called to Holly, as she climbed the stairs at one end of the stage.

“Hello, Zeke,” said Holly with a wave of her hand. She was wearing not her usual dull tunic and slacks but a brightly flowered short-skirted dress. Pretty young woman, Berkowitz thought. Nice legs.

Holly marched straight to the registrar and said, “I want to register as a candidate.”

The man behind the table—thirtyish, round-faced—had looked pretty bored up until that moment. His brows shot up and he squeaked, “You?”

“Yep, me.”

Berkowitz raced from his post at one end of the stage to the table. “Hey, no, wait a minute! We’ve got to do this over. I wasn’t expecting—”

Holly laughed at his suddenly flustered expression. “You weren’t expecting me to throw my name in the mix?”

Grinning back at her, Berkowitz said, “The expression is ‘throw my hat in the ring.’ And, no, I wasn’t expecting it. This is news! We’ve got to stage it right.”

Holly allowed him to direct her. Berkowitz had her go back halfway down the aisle and, after adjusting the camera angles, cued her to walk up onto the stage once more.

She strode to the table purposively and announced in a clear, firm voice, “I want to register as a candidate for chief administrator.”

It was now precisely eleven A.M., and at that moment the double doors at the rear of the theater swung open again and Malcolm Eberly marched in, followed by exactly a dozen men and women. He was smiling confidently as he started up the aisle.

“No! Wait!” Berkowitz yelled from the stage. “We’re not finished here yet.”

Eberly slowed and stopped, his smile dwindling as he recognized who was at the registrar’s table.

“Holly?” he yelped.

“Be with you in a minute,” Holly answered.

“Let me finish with her,” Berkowitz called to him. “Then we’ll get you entering through the doors.”

Eberly’s face darkened as he stood with folded arms in the middle of the theater amid his entourage while Berkowitz videoed Holly giving her name to the registrar and his pulling up her dossier on his computer.

“You are now officially registered as a candidate for the office of chief administrator,” said the registrar in an overly loud voice, obviously aware of the cameras. “Good luck to you.”

“Thanks,” said Holly, smiling sweetly. “I’m gonna need it.”

“Okay,” Berkowitz called down to Eberly while he pecked at his handheld remote to reposition the cameras. “Go back to the doors and come in again.”

This is going to be great, Berkowitz exulted silently, as Eberly reentered the theater, his most dazzling smile firmly in place. We’re actually going to have a race for the election. Holly Lane’s running against her own boss.

Four minutes later, with Eberly’s registration safely recorded, Berkowitz beckoned the two candidates toward him.

“I need to ask you a few questions,” he told them. “Why you’re running, what you hope to accomplish, that sort of thing. Mr. Eberly, you first.”

“I’m running for reelection because I believe the people of this habitat need and deserve a man with experience. I think I’ve shown over the past year that I can run the office efficiently, fairly, and to the betterment of all our people.” Somehow Eberly managed to smile and look serious at the same time.

“And what will be your number one priority, if you are reelected?” Berkowitz asked.

Eberly’s smile brightened. “I believe that the path to wealth and a successful future for the people of this habitat lies in mining the rings of Saturn for their abundant supply of water ice. Water is the most precious commodity in the solar system, and we can become the prime supplier of water for the human settlements on the Moon, Mars, the Asteroid Belt and the research stations elsewhere in the solar system.”

“Despite the reservations voiced by our own scientists and others?” Berkowitz prodded.

“Our people should and must decide their own fate,” Eberly said, his voice firm and strong. “We should not allow Earthbound bureaucrats or unrealistic scientists to restrict our freedoms.”

Berkowitz turned to Holly, standing beside Eberly. He noted that she was slightly taller than Eberly, which would show clearly in a video two-shot.

“And Ms. Lane, why have you decided to oppose Mr. Eberly?”

Holly stumbled, “Well, it’s not … I mean, there’s nothing personal involved. I just think that Malcolm’s ignoring a problem that’s incredibly important.”

“What problem?”

“Population growth,” she replied immediately. “Our people are living under the zero-growth protocol. That’s got to change, sooner or later. Prob’ly sooner.”

“But with out limited resources—,” Berkowitz began.

Holly cut him short. “This habitat can support five times our current population easily. What we’ve got to do is work out a way to allow population growth within the limits of our resources. I think we’re smart enough to figure out how to do that.”

“Do you have a plan for allowing population growth?”

“Nossir, I surely don’t. But we need to get our best minds together to work on this problem. Even ask for advice from Earth if we need to; there’s lots of people on Earth who’ve dealt with population-growth issues.”

“Without much success,” Eberly interjected.

“We can’t ask the people of this habitat to keep on the way we’ve been. It’s inhuman! People want to have babies!”

“Women want to have babies,” Eberly countered.

“So do men,” Holly jabbed back. “Normal men.”

Before Eberly could reply Berkowitz physically pushed in between them. “I can see that this is going to be an exciting race. Can you both agree to having one or more formal debates on these issues?”

“Certainly,” Eberly snapped.

Holly nodded less assuredly. “I guess.”

“Good. I’ll meet with you individually to arrange the details. For now, would you kindly shake hands for the camera?”

Holly stuck her hand out and Eberly took it in a lukewarm grip.

“May the best man win,” Eberly said, looking straight into the nearest camera.

“May the better person win,” Holly corrected.

Eduoard Urbain ignored registration day; he did not watch the news broadcast that evening that showed the interviews with the two candidates. He didn’t even know that Holly Lane had registered in opposition to Malcolm Eberly.

The last one of his satellites had been successfully inserted into a low polar orbit around Titan, and Urbain had no time for anything except to search for his wandering Alpha. One of the satellites had malfunctioned at launch from the habitat; its guidance system had evidently been misprogrammed. Instead of heading for an orbit around Titan its trajectory aimed it into the moon’s thick atmosphere. Urbain had gone into a frenzy, terrified that the satellite would crash on Titan’s surface and contaminate the biosphere. His mission controllers, though, fired the satellite’s maneuvering thrusters and sent it into a long, looping trajectory that passed Titan safely and swung it into a course that would ultimately impact high in Saturn’s northern hemisphere, safely away from any possible contamination of Titan.

Eleven satellites in low orbit to scour the moon’s surface in search of the lost rover. Urbain spent night and day in the mission control center, peering at the displays on the smart walls, reviewing thousands of still images of Titan’s landscape.

The planetary physicists on his staff were ecstatic with the satellites’ imagery. They were generating a detailed photographic map of Titan’s surface, with a five-meter resolution.

“If we could overlap imagery from two or more satellites,” one of them suggested to Urbain, “we could build up a three-dimensional map with a resolution of better than one meter. We’d be able to see individual boulders!”

“Not until we find Alpha,” Urbain insisted doggedly.

“But that’ll help us find the beast.”

“Ah, yes,” Urbain backtracked. “Of course.”

He took his meals at the mission control center, even had a cot brought in so he could nap there when he could no longer keep his eyes open. Jeanmarie visited now and then, often to bring him a meal she had cooked for him. He had no time for her. A mumbled thanks and a brief peck on her cheek was all he could manage for his wife.

Still no trace of Alpha.

“Perhaps,” suggested one of the engineers, “it blundered into one of the seas and sank.”

“Blundered?” Urbain roared. “Blundered? Alpha is not blind. Not stupid. She has more computing power in her central processor than you have in your head!”

The man scurried away from Urbain’s red-hot wrath.

It was the youngest of the planetary physicists, a sweet-faced woman with more nerve than her colleagues, who approached him next.

“With the stereo imagery we’ll be getting,” she said, “and resolution down to the one-meter level, we ought to be able to detect Alpha’s tracks.”

“Her tracks?” Urbain picked up his head from the imagery he had been studying.

The young woman, standing in front of the console where Urbain was sitting, licked her lips nervously and explained, “We know where she landed. We can scan that region to see if we can find the tracks the beast’s treads left as she moved off on her own.”

“And follow the tracks until we locate her!” Urbain finished for her, so excited by the idea that he overlooked her calling his Alpha a “beast.”

“Yes, that’s exactly right,” she said.

Urbain jumped to his feet. For a moment the young geophysicist thought he was going to grab her and kiss her. Instead, he started shouting orders to the rest of the staff.

As the young woman returned to the planetary physics group, huddled in a corner of the mission control center, one of her fellow scientists raised his hand above his head, palm out. She recognized the gesture from old videos and smilingly gave him a high five.