Titan

Professor Wilmot’s oral diary

This entire habitat is reverberating with campaign politics. I never expected these apathetic, disaffected rejects from Earthly society to become so excited about a political campaign. But they are organizing petition drives, setting up parades, filling the news broadcasts with speeches and speculations about who will be our next chief administrator.

There, even I have fallen into the spirit of things. I said “our,” didn’t I? Let me go back and check. Yes, “our.” Fine attitude for an anthropologist who’s supposed to be studying these people dispassionately.

Eberly has everyone excited about the prospects of getting rich from mining Saturn’s rings for their water ice. He’s already getting bids for water deliveries from the miners’ habitat at Ceres, in the Asteroid Belt, and there are rumors that Selene is willing to enter into a long-term contract for purchasing water.

Holly Lane, on the other hand, has most of the women energized over the zero-growth protocol. It looks as if she’ll easily get enough signatures to force its repeal. Plenty of men are signing the petition, probably because their women are denying them sex unless they do. It’s Lysistrata come true. Old Aristophanes would be splitting his sides with laughter.

There’s only one small voice objecting to Eberly’s plan for mining the rings: the woman who claims there are organisms living in the ice. There are rumors that she’s trying to send a mission to the rings and collect samples to prove her point despite Eberly’s opposition.

Meanwhile, poor old Urbain is still trying to reestablish contact with his vehicle on Titan’s surface. The machine has not sent up any data since it landed, four months ago.