Titan

14 April 2096: Morning

Kris Cardenas smiled at Gaeta, who was sleeping soundly beside her. He’s all right, she repeated silently for the thousandth time. He got through the rings and he’s not hurt. He’s finished with these wild stunts; he’s never going to risk his life again, never going to leave me again.

She slipped out of bed and padded to the lavatory, still smiling.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee woke Holly. She’d set the coffee machine for seven A.M. It was better than an alarm clock for her. It wasn’t real coffee, she knew; the habitat’s climate wasn’t right for growing coffee, even at the endcaps. The biotechnicians had produced an ersatz coffee by genetically engineering one of the bean crops the farms could grow. They’d even come up with a completely caffeine-free variation, although Holly preferred the “high octane” version.

Slipping out of bed, she wondered what Raoul was doing at this moment. We’re drifting apart, she realized. He’d been wholly involved with Manny’s mission to the rings while Holly herself was completely tied up in the election campaign.

Wish I’d never decided to run for office, Holly said to herself, as she brushed her teeth. She stared at her image in the mirror above the sink. But Malcolm’s just plain wrong. We can’t mine the rings if there’re living creatures in them. And we’ve got to figure out some way to allow population growth before women start getting themselves pregnant. Our whole society could fall apart once the women decide to ignore the ZPG protocol. Break one law and what’s to hold you to obeying all the others?

Wearily she trudged to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of the strong black coffee. Sitting at the little table, Holly asked herself, How can I counter Malcolm’s idea of using the profits we make from mining the rings to support population growth?

She spent the morning tussling with that problem.

Still in bed, Wanamaker said to Pancho, “You know, you’re a helluva pilot. I didn’t realize that until yesterday.”

She grinned at him. “And you’re a helluva lover, Jake. But I knew that all along.”

They laughed together. Pancho started to get out of bed, but he reached for her lean, long-limbed body.

“We’ve got nothing on the calendar,” he said, pulling her close. “Let’s spend the day in bed.”

“Maybe you got nothin’ to do,” Pancho said, pushing gently away from him, “but I gotta go over to Holly and help her figure out her next move.”

Frowning, Wanamaker grumbled, “What is this? You’re not her campaign manager, are you?”

“Sorta. Leastways, I can give her the benefit of my experience dealing with slimeballs like Eberly.”

“When did you ever—”

“Corporate politics, remember? Remember Martin Humphries?”

“He wasn’t a slimeball,” Wanamaker said. “A megalomaniac, maybe, but not a slimeball.”

As she got out of the bed, Pancho said, “Yeah, well, anyway, politics is politics and Holly needs all the help I can give her.”

Wanamaker sighed deeply. “Okay, you go play politics with your sister. If you want me, you know where I’ll be.”

Pancho laughed. “My hero.”

Nadia Wunderly had forced herself to get a good night’s rest. She had even managed to sleep, despite her eagerness to start working with Negroponte on the ice samples. Her sleep had been troubled by dreams, although she couldn’t remember anything specific from them once she’d awakened. Just a disturbing feeling that something was wrong.

Eberly, she realized, as she dressed. The news broadcasts were filled with Eberly’s proposal for mining the rings. I can’t let him do that, Wunderly told herself. He’ll ruin everything. Everything!

She stopped off at the cafeteria for a take-out breakfast of yogurt and honey, then hurried toward her laboratory. Ordinarily she’d have spent an hour at the gym, but not today, not with the samples waiting to be analyzed and Negroponte coming to work with her.

As she hurried through the morning sunlight toward her lab building, the thought of Eberly rose in her mind again. She had watched, horrified, the televised news reports of his debate with Holly. She saw his smug, smiling face as the stupid crowd cheered his proposal for mining the rings.

He can’t do that! Wunderly told herself. I won’t let him. I’ll kill him with my bare hands if I have to, but he’s not going to touch the rings!

Eduoard Urbain sat morosely at the breakfast table while his wife placed a dish of smoked salmon and thin slices of toast before him.

He had told Jeanmarie about Habib’s mad outburst of the day before. She had not been as sympathetic as he’d expected.

No one is on my side, he thought morosely, as Jeanmarie sat across the little table from him. She was smiling. Smiling! My staff is in rebellion, my Alpha is alone and silent on Titan, and my wife finds something to smile about.

“You seem cheerful this morning,” he said thinly.

“I have a meeting with my committee at ten,” Jeanmarie replied.

He said nothing, took up a piece of toast and placed a strip of fish on it. He brought it as far as his lips, then put it back on the plate again.

“I have no appetite,” he said.

“You’re concerned about your staff?”

He felt his brows hike up. “Concerned? Because they threaten a mutiny? Yes, of course I’m concerned.”

Jeanmarie put on a sympathetic expression. “Mon cher, why not allow them to do some useful work while your machine is idle? Whatever they accomplish will be credited to you, will it not? After all, you are their chief.”

“That’s what Habib said,” Urbain muttered.

“So? You see?”

He pushed the dish away. “I must find a way to regain contact with Alpha. I must.”

“Perhaps … ,” Jeanmarie began, then hesitated.

“Perhaps?”

“I was merely thinking, this Gaeta fellow. He flew to the rings again. Perhaps he could go down to Titan and see what’s wrong with Alpha?”

He snorted with disdain. “Nonsense! The man is a stuntman, not a scientist. A performer.”

“Still, you could direct him, tell him what to do. And he could tell you what he sees once he’s there.”

Urbain shook his head. “It would never work. He wanted to go down to Titan when he first came to the habitat. He wanted to be the first man to set foot on the surface.”

“And you refused him.”

“Of course! I cannot allow contamination there. Titan bears a living ecology. I can’t have some video stuntman tramping around down there.”

“Yet you sent your machine to the surface.”

“It was thoroughly sterilized. Much more thoroughly than a human could be, even inside that monstrosity of a suit he has. The levels of radiation we used to sterilize Alpha would have killed him.”

Jeanmarie nodded as if she understood. Then she said, “Still, if all else has failed, perhaps this stuntman is your only recourse.”

“Never! I refused him once. Now you want me to go to him with my hat in my hand and beg his assistance? Never!”

“I understand,” Jeanmarie said. And she thought that she truly did understand, much better than her husband.