Titan

20 May 2096: Simulations laboratory

Fritz von Helmholtz fought back the smile that wanted to form on his normally stem face. This morning his team of technicians had towed the massive excursion suit into the sim lab and stood it up on its feet. Gaeta had climbed into the armored suit with all the grinning enthusiasm of a little boy.

“Ready for the sim run.” Gaeta’s voice, clearly excited, came from the communications computer’s speaker.

Von Helmholtz turned to the technician at the main console. “Initiate the landing procedure,” he said calmly.

Friedrich Johann von Helmholtz was a short, slim, almost delicately built man. He could be cold, even arrogant; he was always meticulous, demanding. In Gaeta’s eyes, Fritz was the best damned technician in the solar system. As always, he wore his customary immaculate white, crisply pressed coveralls over an old-fashioned slate-gray three-piece business suit. He stood beside the looming excursion suit, his burr-cut head barely reaching its waist, and looked it over with a practiced eye. It appeared no worse for wear than the last time he’d seen it, more than eight months earlier. A few new dents from Gaeta’s little frolic through Saturn’s B ring, but nothing substantial.

Today’s simulation run was to practice Gaeta’s landing on Titan. That officious little scientist, Urbain, had insisted that Manny land directly on top of the landing vehicle itself, not on the surface of the moon. He didn’t want to take any chances on contaminating the life-forms living on Titan. But he doesn’t mind taking chances with the life-form from Earth that’s going to repair his ailing vehicle, Fritz grumbled silently.

It’s probably just as well Manny goes for the lander, he reasoned. The ground around it could be muddy, viscous, difficult to walk on, downright dangerous. But a lot of people were counting on that. This excursion to Titan’s surface—this mission to rescue a defunct robot—was already contracted to the biggest media combine in the Earth/Moon system. The more dangerous the stunt, the more viewers they could attract. With virtual-reality circuitry, the audience would even get the illusion that they were performing the stunt themselves. And the bigger the audience, the more money. We’ll all make millions out of this, von Helmholtz told himself. Tens of millions, perhaps a hundred million or more.

My task, he told himself, is to make the mission as safe as possible. The audience should experience a perception of danger, of risk. I am here to maximize that perception while minimizing the actual danger to my stuntman. He recalled all the other stunts that he and Gaeta had worked on together. The danger was always there; without it, there would be no audience interest, no money flowing in. He realized that although he and Gaeta lived with danger, Gaeta was the only one who could get killed if anything went wrong.

Von Helmholtz pursed his lips, then walked out of the simulation chamber and back to the consoles strung along the laboratory’s rear wall.

“We’re ready to initiate the landing sequence,” said the technician seated at the main console.

Von Helmholtz said curtly, “Begin.”

The walls of the simulation chamber seemed to evaporate, replaced by three-dimensional views of Titan’s surface.

“Looks like a cloudy day,” Gaeta quipped.

Von Helmholtz frowned at the comm console’s technician as if she had said it. “No jokes, please,” he said in his precise, clipped accent.

“Si, generalisimo,” Gaeta replied. “Strictly business.”

“Yes,” replied von Helmholtz. “Strictly business, if you please.”

Cardenas was going through the presentation for the third time, and getting more than a little irritated about it.

“Here are the final results,” she said, pointing to the graph displayed on Urbain’s office wall. “As you can see, all traces of biologically active materials have been broken down by the nanos, leaving nothing but inorganics such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen compounds that quickly dissipate.”

Urbain sat at the circular conference table in the corner of his office, frowning at the graph as if he didn’t trust it. Flanking him were Yolanda Negroponte and another biologist.

“And the nanomachines themselves?” Urbain asked. “What of them?”

“They self-destruct,” Cardenas replied, the same answer she’d given twice earlier when Urbain had asked the same question.

Urbain glanced uneasily at his two biologists. They said nothing.

“I can show you photomicrographic evidence of the nanos going inert,” Cardenas said.

“Inert is not destroyed,” said Urbain.

Cardenas forced a smile. “Once they go inert, they’re nothing more than nanometer-sized bits of dust. They’re not vampires; they don’t rise from the dead.”

“They’re not living creatures at all,” said Negroponte, almost condescendingly. “They’re just nanometer-sized machines.”

Urbain scowled at her.

“That’s right,” Cardenas agreed. “They’re just very small machines.”

“They successfully clean all the contaminants from the exterior of the stuntman’s suit,” Urbain said. It was halfway between a question and a statement of fact.

Cardenas suppressed a flare of annoyance at the word stuntman, but replied as pleasantly as she could. “Yes, they completely break down all the biologicals.”

“And you can apply the nanos to the suit after the man gets inside it and seals it up?” asked the other biologist, a pert, freckle-faced redhead.

“Yes, that’s the plan.”

“So there will be no contaminants on the suit’s exterior when he goes to Titan’s surface,” said Negroponte.

“That’s right,” Cardenas said tightly.

Urbain hiked his brows, lowered them, brushed his moustache with a fingertip, shrugged his shoulders. Finally he said, “Then we can proceed to decontaminate the suit just before he leaves on the mission.”

“The plan,” Cardenas said, “is to do the decontamination procedure in the transfer ship’s airlock, just before he goes down to Titan’s surface.”

Urbain nodded and said, “Very well. Thank you, Dr. Cardenas.”

Cardenas picked up her palmcomp and left Urbain’s office with nothing more than a terse farewell. As she walked out of the building and headed back through the morning sunlight toward her own lab, she thought, Manny’s going through with this. No matter what I’ve said, no matter how I’ve pleaded with him, he’s going through with it. Like a kid with a new toy. Like a man hooked on a narcotic drug. He’s obsessed with the idea of doing this mission. I’m playing second fiddle to this … this stunt he wants to do.

No, she told herself. It’s not just that he wants to do it. He needs to do it. There’s no way in heaven or hell that I can stop him. He’s going to go through with this even if it kills him.

I’ve got a rival, she realized. Until he gets past this mission, I’m not the most important thing in his life. What will he be like once he’s finished the stunt? Will he come back to me?

What if the stunt kills him? What will I do then?

“You heard the man,” Timoshenko said sourly, “we’re supposed to have this problem solved before election day.”

Habib looked up from his computer display. “Eberly? He said that?”

“At the last debate. He promised.”

Habib muttered, “A politician’s promise.”

Timoshenko had come to the computer center to witness the crucial test of Habib’s prediction scheme. If the man’s work was right, there should be a surge from Saturn’s magnetic field some time this morning. For his part, Timoshenko had increased the shielding on the superconducting wires that spanned the habitat’s outer shell and put in place a set of electronic backups that automatically shunted power when a surge caused dangerous voltage hikes in the habitat’s electrical circuitry.

“Well,” said Habib softly, “there’s nothing to do now except wait.”

Timoshenko did not enjoy waiting. He paced impatiently among the dozen men and women at their workstations, all of them bent over the work on their own screens and trying to ignore the Russian’s impatient footsteps clicking along the tiled floor. Hands clasped behind his back, face squinched into a dark scowl, Timoshenko paced and fidgeted, glanced at the wall clock, paced and fidgeted some more.

“Try to relax,” Habib said, looking up as Timoshenko reached his workstation. “You can’t force it to happen.”

“I know. I know.”

The minutes dragged by. Timoshenko thought of Eberly as he marched to and fro across the computer center. Eberly. The man had never spoken with Katrina. Never. Eberly’s whole story about Katrina joining him here had been nothing but a lie, a damned lie, a trick to get him to accept the job as chief of maintenance. Katrina would never come out here. Never. Why should she? Why would anyone leave Earth to come to join me in exile? She doesn’t want to be with me.

I’ll kill him, Timoshenko told himself. Sooner or later, I’ll kill Eberly and myself and everyone in this tin can of a Siberia. I’ll put an end to this misery once and for all.

“Try to relax,” Habib repeated.

You try, Timoshenko answered silently. But he stopped pacing and pulled up a little wheeled chair to sit next to Habib. Half a minute later he sprang to his feet and began pacing again.

“Shouldn’t you be in touch with your staff people?” Habib suggested mildly.

“No,” the Russian snapped. “Either the shielding works or it doesn’t. Either the automatic relays do their job properly or they don’t. My people have done their jobs. Now we wait for the real test.”

“You’re going to give yourself a heart attack,” Habib warned.

“My heart wouldn’t dare attack me.”

“But if you don’t—” The curve on Habib’s screen that displayed the intensity of Saturn’s magnetosphere began to kink visibly. “Wait. I think it’s coming.”

Timosheko raced back to the chair and plopped on it.

“Yes,” said Habib, pointing with a trembling finger. “It’s spiking rapidly.”

Timoshenko stared at the ragged curve. It rose, writhing like a thing alive, jagged peaks and small dips between them climbing, climbing.

“It’s a big one,” Habib murmured.

The intensity continued to climb for several minutes while the two men stared at the screen, hardly breathing. Then it began to go down again.

Habib blinked, then looked around. All the others were still bent over the screens as if nothing had happened.

“Nothing happened,” Timoshenko said.

Breaking into a huge grin, Habib said, “Yes! Exactly! We’ve just experienced a monster spike and nothing happened. No power outages. The lights didn’t even blink!”

Timoshenko yanked his palmcomp out of his pocket. “I’ll check with my staff. I need a full report—every circuit.”

As he pecked out the numbers on his handheld he realized that if there had been an outage anywhere his phone would be ringing. It worked, he told himself. We’ve learned how to prevent the outages.

And he knew that the same knowledge could be used to totally shut down all the electrical systems in the habitat, when he wanted to end it all.

Holly was surprised that Douglas Stavenger himself answered her call to Selene. She had heard earlier from George Ambrose, the chief administrator of the asteroidal miners’ headquarters at Ceres, who had confirmed that he’d communicated with Eberly.

“We’ll buy water ice from you blokes soon’s you can ship it to us,” Ambrose had said in response to Holly’s call. Since there was nearly an hour’s lag time in communications between Saturn and the Asteroid Belt, even at the speed of light, conversations were impossible. Holly called in the morning, Ambrose replied several hours later.

“You asked about the price your chief administrator quoted,” Ambrose had said, his shaggy, red-maned face filling Holly’s phone screen. “He was kinda vague about it, but I got the impression it’d be less’n half what it costs us now for squeezin’ water outta the carbonaceous rocks here in the Belt.”

Ambrose had rattled on for more than a quarter hour, then bid Holly farewell with a cheery, “You got any more questions, just zip ’em to me. I’ll be happy to deal with you blokes.”

Douglas Stavenger was completely different. Holly had sent her message to the chairman of Selene’s governing council. All day she had waited for a reply. She was getting ready for sleep when his return call came in.

Now she sat cross-legged on her bed while Stavenger spoke He looked much younger than Holly had expected, and his face seemed to be about the same skin tone as her own. He’s been the power-behind-the-throne at Selene for ages, Holly though How can he look so young? And handsome.

“I’m answering your query because the council doesn’t want to make a formal declaration as yet. Your Mr. Eberly made it clear that his inquiry was … well, not secret, exactly, but sensitive.”

Just like Malcolm, Holly said to herself. He does everything in whispers.

“Selene manufactures its own water from oxygen in the lunar regolith,” Stavenger explained, “and hydrogen blowing in on the solar wind. We also extract water from the frozen caches at the poles.”

And they sell water to the other settlements on the Moon, Holly thought.

“However, if habitat Goddard could supply us water at a price lower than our existing costs, we’d be foolish not to consider the offer very seriously.”

That meant they would take it, depending on the price, Holly figured.

“On the other hand,” Stavenger said, “there’s a good deal of excitement in the scientific community Earthside about one of your people finding living creatures in the rings. The university consortium is already holding discussion with the IAA about banning all commercial activities in Saturn’s rings. If that happens, it would make mining the rings politically and legally impossible.”

Unless Malcolm’s willing to risk going to war with the IAA, Holly replied silently.

“The thing is,” Stavenger went on, “water is the key to expansion here on the Moon. And elsewhere in the solar system as well, I should think.”

Holly almost asked him what he meant, but she knew he wouldn’t hear her question for more than an hour. Instead, she continued to listen as Stavenger spelled out, “You see, we can get along all right on the water available to us now. We recycle pretty thoroughly. There are some losses, of course: no system is one hundred percent perfect. But if we had a reliable, continuous supply of additional water we could expand and build new settlements here on the Moon. Lord knows there are plenty of people anxious to get away from Earth and live here. But we’ve always had to limit our growth to our water supply. Increase the water supply and Selene can grow; we could even spin off daughter cities. We could raise the Moon’s population from a few thousand to millions.”

Holly sank back on her pillows. This is cosmic, she said to herself. We hold the key to the growth of human settlements all across the system!

“But the IAA is most likely going to ban commercial activities in the rings, at least until the scientists can thoroughly study the ring creatures, and that might take years.” Almost as an afterthought Stavenger added, “Maybe you should think of other sources of water. After all, you’re a lot closer to the TNOs than anyone else in the solar system.”

“TNOs?” Holly blurted aloud.

“I hope that answers your questions, Ms. Lane. Please feel free to call me personally if you’d like to discuss this further.”

The phone screen went blank, leaving Holly thinking: Trans-Neptunian Objects, that’s what he means. The Kuiper Belt. There’s zillions of icebergs out there; that’s where comets come from.

She shook her head, though. Too far away. We might be closer to ’em than anybody else, but they’re still more’n twenty Astronomical Units away from us. Just too far to be practical.

I think.