Titan

24 December 2095: Habitat Goddard

“Titan Alpha has landed!” the mission controller sang out. “She’s down safely.”

With a loud howl of triumph he yanked the communications plug out of his ear and tossed it to the steel-beamed ceiling of the crowded control center. For the past six days the teleoperated Titan Alpha had spiraled through the radiation-drenched vacuum between the massive habitat Goddard and Saturn’s giant moon, cautiously orbiting Titan a dozen times before attempting to enter its thick, smoggy atmosphere. Now it had landed safely, and it was time for celebrating.

Eduoard Urbain felt an urgent need to urinate. He realized that he had been standing in front of the mission control center’s main console for more than six hours, and now that the controllers were whooping and pounding each other on the back, he felt he could breathe again. And pee.

But it was not to be. Not yet. Standing beside him was Jacqueline Wexler, president of the International Consortium of Universities, from whom funding and promotion and prestige either flowed or was withheld.

At this moment of triumph, Dr. Wexler was all smiles and accolades.

“You’ve done it, Eduoard!” she enthused over the bubbling chatter of the elated scientists and engineers. “A successful landing. It’s going to be a happy Christmas for us all.”

Urbain heard champagne corks popping, the laughter and the raucous horseplay that comes when nerve-twisting tension is suddenly released. Although he felt the same joy and satisfaction, he had no desire to celebrate, no urge to behave foolishly. All he really wanted at this particular moment was to get to the urinal.

Wexler was not about to release him, though. She grasped his forearm with fleshless talonlike fingers, hard enough to make Urbain wince, and began to introduce him to the other Important Persons who had flown all the way out to Saturn for this momentous occasion.

She was hardly an imposing figure. Dr. Wexler looked hard, brittle, Urbain thought: a short, bony woman with an intense birdlike face and plain brown hair cut short, wearing a tailored tunic and deep blue slacks designed more to disguise her skeletal figure than to make a fashion statement. Yet she had power and the ruthlessness to wield it. Back on Earth she was often called “Attila the Honey.” Not to her face, of course.

Urbain himself was quite elegant. He had given a lot of thought to his wardrobe for this morning’s event, and—with his wife’s help and eventual approval—had selected a trim gray business suit with a soft Persian blue silk cravat.

Jeanmarie was in the crowd of onlookers, he knew. Searching for her, he finally saw her watching him, her eyes glowing with his success. She is beautiful, Urbain thought. Beautiful and happy, at last.

Thirty-seven university and news media VIPs had flown on a high-velocity fusion torch ship to this habitat in orbit around Saturn, courtesy of Pancho Lane and Astro Corporation. Normally, the men and women who directed the International Consortium of Universities preferred to remain on Earth and spend their money on research or teaching. Normally, news network executives sent their reporters afield while they remained in their opulent offices. But Pancho Lane was heading for habitat Goddard and had invited the ICU and the news media to send a contingent along with her, so here they were.

Urbain suffered through what seemed like an endless round of introductions. Wexler even introduced him to Professor Wilmot, who had been aboard Goddard from the outset as its chief administrator—living and working with Urbain for nearly three years now.

“Good show today, Eduoard,” said Wilmot jovially, as they clasped hands while Wexler beamed approvingly. “Hope everything goes this well tomorrow.”

Tomorrow, Urbain thought. Christmas day. When they begin to turn on Titan Alpha’s sensors and start the exploration of Titan’s surface.

“Have some champagne, Eduoard.” Wilmot proffered his own untouched plastic cup. “You’ve earned it.”

“Er, not just yet, thank you,” Urbain replied. “There is something I must do first.”