Uranus

LIVING ROOM LABORATORY

Tómas Gomez sat in the makeshift laboratory that had once been his living room. The room was jammed with instrumentation—sensors, computers, diagnostic monitors—humming and beeping and flashing flickering images on their viewscreens.

He sat at the room’s tiny desk, staring glumly at the symbols scrolling down his desktop screen.

Nothing, he moaned inwardly. The submarine had scooped up more than a hundred samples of the seabed’s rocks and sands, which were now carefully laid out across the floor of the docking area where the submersible itself was resting, halfway across the habitat’s circular structure from Gomez’s apartment. Automated cameras and diagnostic analyzers slid slowly along an elevated trackway, carefully examining each specimen and automatically televising the imagery to Gomez’s desktop computer screen.

Nothing but rocks and sand.

Gomez looked up from his screen, across the narrow desk at the chair where Raven had been sitting. After a ten-hour-long day with him, she had left for dinner. She had asked Gomez if he wanted to come with her to the main cafeteria, but he had declined, glued to his self-imposed vigil.

Chemical analyses of the ocean bottom’s sands showed nothing but sand. Ordinary sand that had been sitting on the floor of the sea for billions of years. The same for the samples of rocks that the submarine had dredged up. Natural, commonplace rocks, nothing unusual about them, nothing that suggested anything surprising.

Nothing, Gomez told himself. Nothing but natural materials, no hint of anything that hadn’t been there since the planets were formed, nearly four billion years earlier.

He felt a surge of anger welling up inside him, a dark tide of violence.

To come all this way, to battle past the committees, the officials sitting behind their desks with their nods and smiles while they decided the course of my life, to fight my way out here to fucking Uranus and send the submarine to the bottom of the fucking ocean and find—nothing! Not a goddamned mother-humping shred of evidence, not a shit-faced pissing hint of anything beyond the natural crap that’s down there—it was more than he could bear.

His whole life hung in the balance. Finding nothing meant that he had spent the past three years of his life in vain, and the university committee had spent more than three billion international dollars—for what? A few scoops of rocks and sand.

I’m ruined, he knew. I’ll be known everywhere I go as the idiot who spent a fortune proving that there’s nothing on Uranus worth studying. Nothing that a gaggle of grad students can’t categorize and write a paper about that nobody will bother to read.

Slowly, Gomez pushed himself to his feet. Deep in his guts he felt a burning, raging urge to smash the machines that surrounded him, to destroy the technology that had failed him, to destroy himself and his pointless, worthless life.

How can I face them? he seethed inwardly. How can I go back to Earth with nothing to show them? Better to die here and get it over with.

He took a deep, shuddering breath. And sat down again. Staring at his desktop screen, he let his stubby fingers tap out the command to keep reviewing the results of the submarine’s excursion, to continue searching for something, anything, that might give a hope of discovering a new revelation.

He lost track of time. The images on his screen blurred into a slowly scrolling list of failure, of defeat, of the end of all his hopes and dreams.

In his mind’s eye, he saw himself returning to Earth, reporting his failure, being assigned to some backwater study that would drown him in meaningless details. Add another decimal point to somebody else’s analysis, clean up the work that this group of researchers has published, teach classes to bright and eager newcomers who’ve never heard of your work, sink deeper and deeper into obscurity.

Then a voice from deep within him said, Well, you had your chance and you took it. You tried, but the thing you were searching for just wasn’t there. It’s not your fault. It just isn’t there.

It’s not my fault, Tómas agreed. But I’ll carry this albatross around my neck for the rest of my life.

He realized that his desktop’s screen was blinking.

ANOMALY.

The letters flashed across the list of alphanumerics that filled the screen.

ANOMALY.

A glitch somewhere, Gomez told himself. He spoke to the voice-activated computer program. “Examine anomaly.”

The screen immediately showed a small piece of twisted metal, one of the hundreds of samples the submarine had returned from Uranus’s seabed.

Gomez blinked at the image. Nothing unusual about it, he thought. The data bar at the bottom of the screen showed that the sample was slightly less than eight centimeters long.

A scrap of metal, Gomez thought. We’ve brought up hundreds of similar bits. Natural enough: metal chunks scattered among the sand and rocks.

“Chemical analysis?” he asked the computer.

Letters took shape over the image. Gomez read aloud:

“Iron, ninety-five percent.

“Carbon, two point five percent.

“Manganese…

“Nickel…”

His jaw dropped open.

“Steel,” he whispered, as if afraid that if he spoke the word any louder the analysis would disappear from his screen.

He swallowed nervously, then asked the computer in a trembling voice, “Conclusion of analysis?”

The computer’s synthesized voice answered, “The imaged sample is composed of steel.”

Steel.

Gomez felt his heart thumping beneath his ribs. Steel! STEEL!

Steel does not exist in nature. It is created in ovens, in blast furnaces. Created by intelligent beings!

Gomez stared at the letters of the analysis, and the image of the twisted piece of metal in the screen’s background.

He leaped up from his chair and shouted, “Steel! It’s steel!”

STEEL

Standing there at his desk, slightly bent over, staring at the computer screen, his whole body shaking, his heart racing, Gomez repeated to himself in a heartfelt whisper, “Steel! Steel created by intelligent inhabitants of the planet Uranus.”

He sank back into his desk chair and commanded the computer, “Send this analysis to the chairman of the research division at the University of Valparaiso.”

The computer replied dispassionately, “Sent.”

Then he got to his feet again, slightly surprised that his legs supported him.

“Administrator Waxman,” he said to the computer. “Connect me to him. Urgent!”

“Connecting,” said the computer.

Gomez stood there impatiently, realizing that the difference between intelligent humans and intelligent computers is that computers didn’t care. A sneeze was just as important to the machines as the end of the world.

Waxman’s handsome, dark-bearded face appeared on the screen, smiling, unruffled, at ease. “I’m not available at the moment. I’ll call you back—”

Gomez interrupted, “Mr. Waxman, this is Tómas Gomez. I’ve found steel! At the bottom of the ocean! Steel!”

Waxman’s image on the screen flickered and disappeared, replaced by the man’s actual face.

“What’s that you say? Steel?”

“Steel!” Gomez shouted. “A scrap of steel at the bottom of the sea!”

“Steel,” Waxman repeated, his sculpted features looking puzzled.

“Steel doesn’t exist in nature,” Gomez babbled. “It’s artificial. It was created by intelligent creatures!”

“Are you sure…?”

“Yes! Yes! It had to be made by intelligent natives of Uranus.”

“But Uranus is barren. Dead.”

“It wasn’t always that way! It was alive! It was populated by intelligent people who manufactured steel.”

Waxman seemed uncertain. “Are you certain?”

“Yes!” Gomez replied, beaming. “The sample is at the docking port. The submarine dredged it up, together with a ton or so of other stuff.”

“Steel.”

“It’s not natural. It can’t be natural!”

“Maybe it’s from one of the earlier vehicles that our scientists put into the ocean,” Waxman reasoned.

“No, no, no!” Gomez countered. “It’s native to the planet. It has to be.”

Waxman looked unconvinced. “That’s a big claim, Dr. Gomez. A huge claim.”

“Yes, yes, I know. And I know Sagan’s old line, ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ But there it is! We scooped it up from the sea bottom. Steel!”

“Come over to my quarters, please,” Waxman said. “We’ve got to proceed very carefully about this.”

“I’ll be there in three minutes!” Gomez replied.

Steel, Waxman thought as Gomez’s fevered image winked out on his living room’s wall screen. This could change everything.

As he got up from his compact little desk, he thought, If that damned Latino is right, it will mean a horde of scientists descending on us. It will turn Umber’s haven for refugees into a mecca for scientific research.

He stood uncertainly in his living room, silently imagining: This habitat will be crawling with scientists. And engineers. Rocket people. Submarine people.

And news people! Waxman’s handsome face pulled into a scowl. News people will come roaring out here, poking their quirky little noses into every corner of the habitat.

That could ruin our Rust trade. Make it impossible to carry out business as usual.

This “discovery” that Gomez has made has got to be stopped, discredited, buried.

Then he thought: Or maybe not. Maybe this could make an ideal cover for the trade. While the scientists are flocking here, I could be doing business as usual—with a few new wrinkles here and there.

By the time Gomez appeared at his door, Waxman was actually smiling.

Business as usual, he was telling himself as he opened his front door and graciously invited the young astronomer into his apartment.

MAIN CAFETERIA

Alicia saw Raven enter the cafeteria and look around for her. She got to her feet and waved. Raven spotted her and made a beeline for her table.

As Raven slipped into the chair opposite her, Alicia leaned toward her and said quietly, “Evan sent me to your place to sprinkle some Rust in your refrigerator.”

Raven’s eyes went wide with shock. “What!”

“Don’t worry,” Alicia went on. “I dumped the crap down your disposal.”

Raven let out a breath of relief. But then, “He’ll expect…”

“He’ll expect you to be under the influence, I know. And me too, I guess.”

“He’ll want to party.”

Alicia’s gaunt features turned grim. “That’s why we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do.”

“I’m not going to party!” Raven snapped. “I’ve had enough of that. I’m through with it.”

“Me too,” Alicia said.

Raven looked at Alicia’s ice-blue eyes. She seems to mean it, she thought. She’s not fronting for Evan, she’s telling me the truth.

“So what are we going to do?” Alicia asked.

With a shake of her head, Raven replied, “I wish I knew.”

“He won’t let us go, you know.”

“It’s a shame you flushed the Rust. We could’ve used it on him.”

Alicia said, “He wears those damned nose filters all the time he’s in the office, I’m pretty sure.”

“Oh.”

The two women sat in mutual discontent, silent, unhappy, wondering and worrying about the future.

After several moments, Raven asked, “Could you get your hands on more Rust?”

“That won’t be easy,” Alicia responded.

Raven felt her lips curling slightly.

“Is something funny?” Alicia asked.

“Not funny,” Raven replied. “I was just thinking of something I read in my history sessions. It’s from the American Revolution, if I remember it right.”

Alicia’s eyebrows rose a few millimeters.

“‘Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,’” Raven quoted.

“That’s comforting.”

“I forget the rest of it.”

“Who said it?”

Raven shrugged her shoulders.

Alicia’s expression soured. “Well, we’re pretty much in hell, true enough.”

“And facing tyranny, for sure.”

“But what can we do about it?” Alicia challenged.

“I wish I knew.”

Raven’s wrist phone vibrated. She looked down at it and her eyes widened. “It’s Evan!”

Alicia glanced up at the ceiling. “He can see us together!”

“Don’t get excited.” Raven held her wrist close to her mouth and said, “Connect.”

Waxman’s face took shape on the phone’s minuscule screen. “Raven. Sorry to bother you so late in the day. Could you come over to my quarters, please?”

Raven glanced at Alicia’s fear-stricken face. “Now?” she asked.

“If you don’t mind. Dr. Gomez is here. He’s made what appears to be an important discovery.”

“Oh. Yes. I can be there in a few minutes.”

“Good.” The wristwatch’s screen went blank.

“He didn’t see me, did he?” Alicia asked, almost breathless.

“No, I don’t think so.”

Raven got to her feet. “How difficult would it be for you to get a sample of Rust?”

Alicia pushed her chair back and stood up also. “Without Evan knowing about it?”

“Preferably.”

“I think I can swing it. Maybe.”

“Good enough,” said Raven. “I’m going to Evan’s place. I’ll call you when I get back home.”

Uneasily, Alicia said, “Okay.”

Leaving Alicia standing by the table, Raven walked quickly toward the cafeteria’s exit, thinking, She’s terrified of Evan. Maybe I should be, too.

Waxman was all smiles. He let Tómas explain to Raven what he’d found, as he poured snifters of brandy for the three of them.

“If this discovery is valid,” Waxman said as he handed the drinks to Raven and Gomez, “we have a world-shaking event on our hands.” Then he amended, “Worlds-shaking.”

Sitting on the sofa next to Raven, Gomez took a perfunctory sip of the brandy, coughed, then laid his snifter on Waxman’s coffee table.

“Mr. Waxman is being very cautious,” he wheezed. But he smiled as he spoke.

As he eased himself down onto the sling chair opposite the coffee table, Waxman replied, “I’m sure the Astronomical Association back on Earth will be equally cautious, Tómas. After all, extravagant claims require extravagant evidence.”

Raven could not suppress a grin. “That’s a quote I’ve heard before, somewhere.”

“Carl Sagan,” Gomez said. “Twentieth-century astronomer.”

“Ah,” said Waxman.

“So where do we go from here?” Raven asked.

“Good question,” said Waxman. “We must do everything we can to eliminate the possibility that the scrap of steel that Tómas has discovered was inadvertently dropped onto the ocean bed by one of the earlier exploratory vessels our own scientists put into Uranus’s ocean.”

“One of our own vessels?” Raven echoed.

“Our scientists put dozens of submersibles into that ocean, back when we first reached Uranus,” Waxman explained. “It took them a long time to admit that the planet was sterile.”

“And they were wrong,” Gomez snapped.

“It’s sterile now,” Waxman said.

Gomez countered, “But it wasn’t always.”

“Maybe,” Waxman said. “But we’ve got to do everything we can to rule out the possibility that your sample of steel was left by one of our own exploratory vessels, years ago.”

“How in the world can we do that?” Raven asked.

Waxman focused on her. “You, my dear, are going to have to scan through the logs of every mission our people sent into that ocean. You’re to look for any mention of releasing metal into the water.”

Gomez objected, “That’s more than fifty years of missions! You can’t expect—”

“We’ve got to do it,” Waxman said firmly. “We’ve got to eliminate any possibility of a mistake.”

“Mistake,” Gomez grumbled.

Pointing a finger at the astronomer, Waxman said, “You don’t want to announce your discovery and then have it turn out that you simply misidentified a scrap of our own material. That would ruin your reputation, Tómas.”

Reluctantly, Gomez nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”

But Raven objected, “How can we go through all the expeditions that our scientists sent into the ocean? It’ll take years!”

Waxman smiled at her. “No it won’t. Computers can scan the logs of each expedition in microseconds. It will be a big job, I know, but I doubt that it will take more than a week or two.”

“I’ve already sent the announcement to the University of Valparaiso,” Gomez said.

“That’s all right,” Waxman replied calmly. “It’s fine. Just contact them and tell them your announcement was preliminary, not for public release until we confirm it.”

Raven saw that Tómas was not happy, but he didn’t object to Waxman’s decision.

DOGWORK

Raven spent the next week and a half staring at the desktop computer screen in Tómas’s living room. She had asked the computer to review the logs of all the missions sent into Uranus’s ocean and highlight any mention of jettisoning anything from one of the subs.

Nothing. As far as the computer records showed, each submarine mission into the ocean refrained from throwing anything overboard. Even the waste gases from the propulsion systems were kept inside each submarine until it surfaced and rejoined the orbiting spacecraft it had been launched from.

As far as the submarines’ logs were concerned, Uranus’s ocean was as pristine and unbefouled as it had been the day humans from Earth first reached the planet.

Gomez sat beside Raven for long hours, but instead of staring endlessly at the computer screen as Raven did, he spent most of his time holding his personal computer to his lips and whispering into the machine.

Late one afternoon, Raven pushed herself back from the desk they were using and got slowly to her feet. She could feel tendons popping along her spine as she stretched.

“I feel like I’m turning to stone,” she muttered.

Gomez, sitting beside her chair, didn’t respond. He was intent on his PDA, whispering to the computer like a lover murmuring into his darling’s ear.

Raven shook her head at his intense concentration.

Leaning slightly toward him, she said loudly, “I’m going to the cafeteria for a few minutes, Tómas. Can I bring you something?”

He jerked erect and looked up at her. “Huh? Oh, nothing. I’m okay.”

Curiosity getting the better of her, Raven asked, “What are you doing?”

He held his PDA in one upraised hand. “Checking on the varieties of steel each of the submersibles was made of.”

“Each submersible?”

“All those that were sent into the ocean. And their consumables, too.”

“Must be a long list.”

“Yeah. But so far, none of the steels they carried had the exact same composition as our sample.”

Raven sat down again, next to him. “None of them?”

“That scrap of steel we found didn’t come from any of our submarines,” Gomez said firmly. “It’s a local product, made by inhabitants of Uranus.”

Evan Waxman was sitting before Reverend Umber’s handsome desk.

“They’re going to send a shipload of investigators here, Kyle,” Waxman said.

Umber’s brows knit slightly. “Investigators?”

“Scientists.”

“Oh.”

“Gomez’s discovery has stirred up the scientific establishment back on Earth.”

“I see. Understandable. If Uranus was once populated by intelligent creatures, naturally our scientists would be interested. Aren’t you?”

Waxman hesitated a moment before answering, “I’m just concerned about how it might affect our operations here.”

“I’m sure we could continue as we have been. How many people are they sending?”

“A couple of dozen, I believe, to start with. If Gomez’s suppositions turn out to be correct, there’ll be hundreds more.”

“Could we house them on Haven II?”

“I hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps we could. Or we could ask them to remain on the ship that’s carrying them here. Keep them completely separated from our people.”

Umber’s round face puckered into a frown. “That wouldn’t be very hospitable, would it?”

“No, I suppose not. But do you really want them mingling with our people?”

“Why not?”

Waxman suppressed an annoyed sigh. Patiently, he explained, “Kyle, most of our people are very lower class—”

“We have no class distinctions here!”

“I know, but, well—our people are mostly uneducated, lower class. They’re refugees, for God’s sake!”

“We’re educating them,” Umber insisted. “We’re training them. We’re creating a new society for them.”

“Yes, I know. But how would they mix with a group of astronomers… scientists, PhDs, highly educated men and women.”

Strangely, Umber’s roundish face eased into a quizzical little smile. “Think of this as a test, Evan. It will be interesting to see how your educated scientists interact with our unwashed masses.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“God works in mysterious ways.”

Waxman shook his head slowly. “This is going to cause problems, Kyle.”

“Of course,” Umber replied, his smile unwavering. “And problems arise to be solved.”

Pigheaded idiot! Waxman said to himself. But as he said it, he made a smile for Reverend Umber and got up from his chair.

“I think it’s a mistake, Kyle. But if this is what you want…” He shrugged and turned toward the door.

Umber watched him leave, then turned to the small frame hanging on the wall behind his desk. He had to squint to make out the faded words printed over the photo of the statue:

His eyes misted over as Umber whispered to himself, “I lift my lamp beside the golden door. That’s a calling worth a man’s life.”

RECEPTION CENTER

Tómas Gomez stood in Haven’s main reception center, his innards twisting and throbbing uncontrollably. In a few minutes, he knew, he would be greeting the team of astronomers arriving from Earth.

He had spent the night in his darkened bedroom studying their resumés on his handheld computer. Fourteen men and women with impressive curricula vitae; not the top people in their fields, but eager young up-and-comers who had flown to Uranus to evaluate Gomez’s discovery.

To pick it apart, Tómas told himself. To tell me I’m wrong, I’m dreaming, I’m trying to make a mountain out of less than a molehill.

We’ll see, he said to himself as he stood waiting in the reception center, unconsciously drawing himself up to his full height and squaring his shoulders like a soldier facing a firing squad. I’ve got the evidence, let them try to deny that!

Tómas’s eyes were fixed on the hatch where the new arrivals would enter the habitat. Fourteen of them. And their leader, Professor Gordon Abbott, chairman of the Astronomical Association’s planetary studies committee. Big brass. His fourteen associates might be small potatoes, but Abbott is a major force in the Association. He’s the one I’ve got to convince, Gomez told himself.

At last the hatch swung inward and the team of astronomers entered the reception center, Gordon Abbott at their head. The team members were youngish, not much more than Tómas’s own age, he figured. Their heads swiveled as they took their first look at the habitat’s interior.

Gordon Abbott did not waste his time ogling.

My god! Gomez said to himself. He looks like a general out of some old army campaign.

Abbott was a big man, close to two meters tall, broad in the shoulders and thick in the waist. The creases on his light tan trousers and loose-hanging safari shirt looked razor sharp. Silver-gray hair shaved down to a buzz cut. Bushy moustache drooping past the corners of his mouth. He strode into the reception area as if he were marching at the head of a parade. Gomez thought, all he needs is a swagger stick.

Sucking up his courage, Gomez walked up to Abbott and put out his hand, suppressing an urge to snap off a military salute.

“Professor Abbott,” he said, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “I am Tómas Gomez.”

Abbott grasped Gomez’s proffered hand in a crushing grip.

“Ah! Dr. Gomez! The man who’s raised all this fuss.”

Wringing his throbbing hand, Tómas replied, “Yes, I discovered the relic—”

“We don’t know yet whether it’s actually a relic, do we? That’s what we’re here to determine.”

“Yes, of course, sir.”

“Good. Let’s get on with it.”

Tómas led the little group through the automated inspection machines, noting that when Abbott smiled toothily at the facial identification screen there was a significant gap between his two upper front teeth.

“Family distinction,” Abbott said cheerfully. “Some damned gene that keeps cropping up every generation or so. My father had a gap you could drive a lorry through.”

Gomez made a weak smile.

“You keep Greenwich time aboard this habitat, of course,” Abbott said as the others of his group made their way past the identification screens. “That’s good. We’ll settle into our quarters for a bit and meet you for dinner at nineteen hundred hours.”

Seven o’clock, Gomez realized.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll be at your door—”

“No need for a native guide,” Abbott said, smiling broadly. “We’ll see you at the dining hall. Thank you.”

Gomez realized he was being dismissed. “Well,” he managed to say, “welcome to Haven.”

“Yes, of course.”

Gomez stood there and watched the team troop toward the escalator that led down to the living quarters.

When Gomez entered the dining hall, he saw that Abbott and his crew had already appropriated one of the long tables. And there was an empty chair waiting for him at Abbott’s immediate right.

He sat down, selected his meal from the menu displayed on the tabletop screen, then turned to Abbott, who introduced each and every member of his team. Tómas forgot their names almost as soon as Abbott pronounced them, but he smiled and nodded at each of the astronomers in turn.

As soon as he finished the introductions, Abbott fixed Gomez with a cocked eyebrow as he asked, “Whatever gave you the idea of coming out here to search the ocean of Uranus, my boy?”

“The anomaly,” Gomez answered immediately. “The other three giant planets have thriving biospheres in their oceans. Uranus was apparently sterile. That didn’t seem to fit.”

“H’mm,” Abbott murmured. “You were flying in the face of the common wisdom.”

“New knowledge, new discoveries, often fly in the face of common wisdom,” Gomez replied. “Common wisdom often turns out to be wrong.”

A hint of a smile played across Abbott’s face. “True enough,” he said. “True enough.”

One of the astronomers across the table from Gomez, a long-faced, lank-haired young woman, challenged, “Do you really believe that this one little specimen you’ve turned up is evidence of an ancient civilization?”

Gomez glanced at Abbott, who sat with his hands clasped beneath his chin, the food before him ignored, eager to hear his response.

“Steel is not a natural metal. It is produced by intelligence.”

“Or dropped by one of the submersibles that investigated this ocean decades ago,” the woman retorted. “What you’ve discovered is most likely the result of an accident.”

“We’ve scanned the logs of all the submersibles that entered the ocean. No record of offloading a scrap of steel.”

The woman’s lips curved into a slight smile. “Maybe the people operating the sub had an accident that they didn’t want to report.”

Abbott broke in with, “That’s a possibility, don’t you think? Remote, perhaps, but a possibility.”

Gomez suddenly realized that they were testing him. “The submersibles were controlled robotically. There were no humans aboard, nobody to attempt covering up evidence of an accident.”

“Or incident,” said the young man sitting next to the woman.

Gomez continued, “We’ve scanned the logs of every sub that was in the ocean. There is no record of offloading anything, not even a bubble of gas.”

Abbott broke into a chuckle. “I’m afraid he’s already covered your hypothesis, Theresa.” Looking down at the dish in front of him, he said, “Come on now, let’s eat. The soup’s getting cold.”

DOUBLE CHECKING

Abbott took over effective command of Gomez’s investigation. His first step was to review every part of Tómas’s work.

Raven suddenly had nothing to do. Abbott’s team of professionals was tracing her work, and they did not want her in their way or looking over their shoulders.

“Good!” said Evan Waxman when she told him what was happening. “You can come back to work with me.”

Raven—wearing nose plugs wormed into her nostrils—replied, “I’ll come back to work with you, but that’s all. No fun and games. No Rust or other junk.”

Waxman leaned back in his desk chair and studied her face for a long, silent moment. Then, “You mean that, don’t you?”

Standing in front of his desk, Raven felt like a schoolgirl who’d been sent to see the principal. But she clenched her fists and said, “Yes, Evan. I mean it.”

“Alicia never sprinkled the Rust I gave her into your refrigerator, did she?”

Raven made her eyes go wide. “Rust? In my refrigerator?”

Waxman almost smiled. “Come on, Raven. I can see that you and Alicia have become friends. And become enemies of mine.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Evan,” Raven lied.

“Oh, yes you do.” Waxman leaned forward and jabbed an index finger in her direction. “Never try to fool me, Raven. You’re beyond your depth, out of your league.”

Raven stood there and said nothing.

“You’re fired, Raven,” Waxman said, quite calmly. “I don’t want to see your face again. Just clear your office out. And don’t expect to get anything more than the minimum compensation from now on. You’re on your own.”

“All right.”

“I expect you’ll make out all right. Selling yourself, as usual.”

“No, Evan. I’m not going back there.”

“Sooner or later,” he said, with a smirk. “Sooner or later.”

She made an about-face and strode angrily out of his office, past Alicia who sat rigidly at her desk, silent and unmoving.

Once Raven reached her own cubbyhole of an office and started cleaning out her desk, a thread of memory played in her mind. Something about a guy in the Bible who was fired from his job, wondering what he was going to do next: “To dig I am unable, to beg I am too proud.”

But what will I do? she asked herself. What will I do? One thing she was certain of, she was not going back to her old way of life.

The habitat gives everybody a subsistence payment, she knew. It’s not much, but it’s better than starving.

She remembered Alicia’s dream of running a store for women’s wear. Maybe I can work there.

Maybe.

Then she realized, I’m already working for Tómas! Maybe he can give me a salary. It doesn’t have to be much.

But what would he expect in return? she asked herself.

With some trepidation, Raven phoned Gomez as soon as she carried the meager contents of her desk back to her apartment.

Tómas’s broad-cheeked face appeared almost instantly on the wall screen in Raven’s living room. He seemed flustered, upset.

“Hola!” Raven said, forcing a smile.

Gomez looked startled for a moment, then he smiled back—a little tiredly, Raven thought—and answered, “Hello, Raven.”

Behind him Raven could see a trio of astronomers intently scanning a viewscreen filled with alphanumeric symbols.

Keeping her smile in place, she asked, “How’s it going, Tómas?”

His lips twitched into a bitter grimace. “They’re tearing all my work apart. I feel like a criminal who’s being investigated by the police.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

Trying to stay cheerful, Raven said, “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”

He sighed. “I’m having dinner with Professor Abbott and his crew.”

“Oh.”

His face brightening, Gomez said, “You could join us, though. Why don’t you?”

She suppressed the frown that threatened to break out and said instead, “Okay, sure. Where and what time?”

“Seven o’clock at the main restaurant.”

“I’ll be there.”

Gomez broke into a genuine grin. “Great!”

DINNER FOR SEVENTEEN

As usual, Professor Abbott sat at the head of the long table. Gomez was several seats below, but Raven saw that he had kept the chair next to him empty for her.

She sat down and nodded greetings to the others. They nodded back and smiled at her.

How much do they know about me? Raven wondered. About my background, my past life? Those records are supposed to be kept private, but…

“And how are you, Ms. Marchesi?” Abbott asked from the head of the table.

“Fine, thank you,” Raven lied.

“I believe we’ve just about concluded the first phase of our study,” Abbott went on, smiling enough to show the gap between his front teeth.

Raven saw Tómas stiffen in his chair. “And?” Gomez asked.

Still smiling, Abbott said, “No news is good news, my boy. We haven’t found anything that invalidates your conclusion.”

“The sample didn’t come from one of our own vessels?” asked one of the astronomers, sitting across the table.

Abbott shook his head slowly. “Apparently not. At least, we haven’t been able to find any evidence that it did.”

The astronomer—young, blond, husky—countered, “Absence of proof is not proof of absence, Professor.”

“I quite agree, but we have run into a blank wall. That scrap of steel is real, and—as Dr. Gomez has told us many times—its composition does not match any of the types of steel used in our own submersibles.”

Raven saw that Tómas was trembling. “Then it’s from here, from Uranus,” he said.

Abbott fingered his moustache thoughtfully before answering, “That’s the best hypothesis we have at the moment. It might be wrong, mind you, but we haven’t found any evidence that proves it’s wrong.”

The table went absolutely silent. Raven could hear threads of conversation from the other tables in the dining room: laughter, the clink of tableware, murmurs and mumbles from across the big room. But the astronomers’ table was absolutely silent.

Yet she knew what was going through the minds of the young astronomers: the scrap of steel that Tómas found was manufactured here on Uranus, by intelligent Uranians. Yet the planet has been sterilized, wiped clean of their existence.

Gomez broke their silence. “So what do we do now?”

“We scan the seabed. We use your submarine to start scanning in the region where your scrap of steel was found. And I intend to ask the Astronomical Association to send digging equipment and a crew out here as soon as possible.”

Tómas sank back onto his chair. His face looked halfway between stunned and unutterably satisfied.

The dinner turned into a celebration. Fourteen astronomers, plus Abbott, Tómas and Raven ate, laughed, made jokes, offered toasts until the dining room emptied out almost completely, except for their table. The robot servers waited with inhuman patience by the restaurant’s rear wall as the men and women reveled with unrestrained delight.

Through all the merriment, Gomez marveled, They’re not against me. They didn’t come here to tear me down. They like me!

He basked in the newfound warmth, even as Abbott warned, “What we’re facing now is a task that will be far from easy. We’re astronomers, not miners—”

The husky blond fellow across the table suggested, “Maybe we could recruit some of the Rock Rats from the Asteroid Belt. They’re miners.”

But Abbott shook his head. “Not the type we need, not at all. It’s one thing to tear up an asteroid and extract the minerals that have a high market price, it’s quite another to search for scraps of what might be relics buried in a seabed full of worthless rocks and sand.”

The blond young astronomer nodded his reluctant agreement.

“No,” Abbott went on, “we have before us a task of the most grueling kind. We’re going to need patience, skill, and a fairly sizeable amount of luck.”

That’s a cheerful note, Raven thought. She saw that Tómas looked sober, thoughtful, as if from an old story of the American Wild West about a gunslinger facing a challenger.

The dinner broke up at last and the group headed for the restaurant’s doors. Raven noticed that several of the astronomers paired off; romance was in the air.

Abbott seemed to pay no attention to the apparent couplings. Then Raven realized that Gomez was walking beside her, silent. But his eyes were focused on her face.

While the rest of the group headed down to the quarters that had been assigned to them, Raven walked with Tómas past her own apartment. And his.

“Where are we going, Tómas?” she asked.

“To the observation blister down at the end of this passageway,” he said, almost in a whisper.

“Why?”

He shrugged his husky shoulders. “I want to say goodnight to the universe.”

She saw that he was smiling shyly. And she wondered what else he had in mind.

He opened the observation blister’s hatch and gestured Raven inside. It was noticeably cooler inside, even though the blister’s glass bubble was opaqued.

Before Raven could say anything, Gomez touched the control button next to the hatch and the bubble immediately became perfectly transparent. Raven felt as if she were suddenly standing among the stars, vast clouds of swirling dots of light looking down at her, with blue-gray Uranus hanging to one side, huge and silent.

Raven shuddered at the beauty of the universe.

“You’re cold?” Gomez asked, stepping closer to her.

She shook her head. “It’s just so… so…”

“Magnificent,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Magnificent.”

He slid his arm around her shoulders and for several moments they stood together, silent, awestruck.

“I come here often,” Gomez said softly. “I need to remind myself of what I’m dealing with.”

Raven forced herself back to reality. It wasn’t easy, with the heavens gazing down at her, but she made an effort of will.

“Tómas, Mr. Waxman fired me. I don’t have a job anymore.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“He called and told me. He said you’d come crawling to me now.”

Sudden anger surged through Raven’s veins.

Before she could say a word, though, Gomez told her, “I can hire you as my assistant. You’ve been doing the work, why shouldn’t I pay you for it?”

“Tómas, I can’t—”

“Of course you can’t,” he said, in a near whisper. “I don’t want you to. I don’t want to buy your love, Raven. I want you to love me, really love me.”

In the light of the stars, she saw that his eyes were gleaming.

“I don’t know if I can, Tómas. I don’t know if I know how to!”

“Time will tell, Raven. Time heals all wounds, so they say.”

“So they say,” she echoed.

He let his arm fall away from her shoulders. Turning toward the blister’s hatch, Gomez said, “Come on. I’ll walk you home.”

Raven walked alongside him toward the hatch, thinking, I don’t deserve him. I don’t deserve him.

But as they stepped back into the long, curving passageway that led back to the habitat’s living quarters, she saw that Gomez was smiling happily.

MANEUVERING

It took more than four weeks for the Astronomical Association to put together a digging team and send it, with its equipment, to Haven.

Abbott’s team of astronomers had little to do but wait. Several of them left the habitat and returned to Earth. Abbott himself jaunted back to Earth for more than a week, then returned on the same vessel that brought the digging team.

During the weeks of waiting, Raven and Alicia worked on the idea of opening a women’s clothing shop.

“Evan is absolutely against it,” Alicia told Raven over dinner in her quarters. “He doesn’t want us to become independent.”

Sitting across her narrow kitchen table from Alicia, Raven said, “Then we’ll have to go over his head.”

Alicia blinked. “Reverend Umber?”

“Reverend Umber,” Raven confirmed.

“You’re serious!”

“He’s the only one who can trump Evan.”

“But what makes you think he’ll agree with us? What makes you think he’ll go against Evan?”

“He’s worried about Evan,” Raven answered. “Besides, who else can we turn to?”

Alicia had no answer.

“It’s good of you to see me, Reverend,” said Raven.

She had seated herself in front of Umber’s handsome desk, wearing the standard gray uniform of the habitat, feeling like a nun or a novice come to beg a favor from the head of a medieval holy order.

Umber made a small gesture with his right hand. “Not at all, Raven. Your well-being is important to me, as is the well-being of all our people.”

Trying to look penitent, Raven said, “What I’ve come to ask you is out of the ordinary, I know.”

Umber’s brows rose noticeably. “Really?”

“You know Alicia Polanyi?”

“She’s Evan’s assistant, isn’t she?”

“Part of Evan’s harem.”

She saw Umber’s head snap back as though she had slapped him. For an endless moment, the reverend said nothing. Then, tiredly, “I’ve tried to show Evan the error of his ways, but he just nods and goes right ahead doing what he wants.”

“Alicia and I want to break free of him.”

“Evan told me he fired you.”

“Yes, he did.”

“Whatever for?”

“For refusing to have sex with him.”

“Ah.”

“He used Rust on me. Got me to do things…” Raven let her voice trail off into silence.

Umber’s red, round face settled into a forbidding scowl. “I’ve tried to get him to stop that kind of behavior.”

“He won’t stop. He enjoys it.”

“Yes, I know. I’m afraid he’s damning himself, his soul.”

“And dragging others down with him,” said Raven.

With a sad shake of his head, Umber admitted, “There’s no way I can control him, bring him to God’s grace. God knows I’ve tried, but he ignores me. He laughs at me!”

“There is one thing you can do, Reverend. It’s just a little thing, but you can help free Alicia Polanyi and me from Evan’s control.”

“Free the two of you?”

Raven bit her lip, then plunged ahead. “Alicia and I want to open a women’s clothing shop.”

Umber’s eyes went wide for a moment. Then he leaned forward in his capacious desk chair and asked, in a voice heavy with skepticism, “A women’s clothing store? How in the world could that make a difference here on Haven?”

Raven took a deep breath, then began to explain.

Raven’s throat felt scratchy, sore, by the time she finished telling Reverend Umber of the hopes that she and Alicia had built.

Umber’s chunky face went from scowling disbelief to puzzled wonderment, to nodding understanding. By the time Raven finished her description he seemed to grasp what she was driving at.

But once she stopped talking, he slowly shook his head. “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea, Raven. We don’t want to set up distinctions of dress among our people. We don’t want that kind of competition among them.”

“But it’s natural!” Raven countered. “Why should everybody dress the same? Let the women express themselves. They’ll be happier for it, and so will the men.”

“It will set them in competition against one another. That’s something we should avoid.”

“Some competition is natural, Reverend,” Raven pleaded. “You think the women of this habitat don’t compete against one another?”

Umber hesitated, then replied, “I… I don’t know. I suppose I’ve never given it much thought.”

“Well, they do. It’s natural. And healthy, I think.”

A long silence. Raven thought she could see wheels turning inside Umber’s head.

“Most of the women already alter their uniforms,” she argued. “Just in small ways, perhaps, but they try to make their uniforms a little bit different, distinctive. It’s quite natural, actually.”

“But if you give them the chance to buy completely different outfits it will set up competition, rivalries, resentments among our women.”

With a shake of her head, Raven countered, “It will allow the women of the habitat a measure of self-expression that’s denied to them now. Our boutique wouldn’t offer the kind of outrageous outfits you can buy on Earth,” she insisted. “But something more stylish than these uniforms we’re forced to wear would be welcome, I think.”

“It’s true that many of the women alter their uniforms, at least a little,” Umber admitted.

“Of course they do,” Raven said. “Why should we all dress exactly alike? It’s not natural.”

“Not natural,” he muttered.

“Let us open the boutique and see how the women react to it,” Raven pleaded. “If you’re unhappy with the results, you can shut us down easily enough.”

“I suppose that’s possible.”

“Then you’ll do it? You’ll let us open a shop?”

For an endless moment, Umber remained silent. At last he said, “On a temporary basis. A trial run. If it causes dissension, disharmony, I’ll have to close it down.”

Raven jumped up from her chair. Suppressing an urge to lean across the desk and kiss the reverend, she extended both her hands and grasped his. “Thank you, sir! Thank you! From both of us!”

Umber looked more embarrassed than pleased. But he managed to say, “Good luck with your endeavor.”

Raven practically ran out of his office, not willing to give the red-faced Umber a chance to change his mind.

THE MINERS

There were only four of them—three men and a heavyset, deeply tanned woman. And Professor Abbott, of course, marching alongside a fifth person, a much smaller dark-skinned man with tightly curled black hair, wearing a wrinkled jumpsuit of faded blue.

They were an undistinguished-looking group, Gomez thought as he stood in the reception area, except for Abbott, striding along as if he were leading a parade.

Abbott trooped them to where Gomez was standing.

“Tómas Gomez,” he boomed, by way of introduction, “meet Vincente Zworkyn, the best product ever of Italian-Russian collaboration.”

Zworkyn grinned, put out his hand and said, “Hello.” Gomez took the hand in his own. “Welcome to Haven, Dr. Zworkyn.”

The man barely came up to Abbott’s shoulder. Even Gomez was a good three or four centimeters taller. His face was swarthy, squarish, with a strong chin and slightly hooked nose. His hair was thick and dark.

“I don’t have a doctorate,” Zworkyn said, without a trace of embarrassment. “I’m a mining engineer.”

Gomez glanced at Abbott, then stumbled, “Oh! I’m sorry… that is, I apologize…”

“No need to apologize,” Abbott said. “Vincente is the top man in his field. He doesn’t need a PhD, do you, Vince?”

Zworkyn shrugged good-naturedly, “I’ve never found the time to acquire one.”

Gomez realized that his mental image of miners was of dirt-encrusted men shoveling rocks in some deep, dank underground cavern. These people are engineers, he told himself: they don’t go down into mines, they direct machinery that does the labor.

Abbott introduced the other three miners, then led the little group through the computers that registered their arrival while they scanned their bodies, leaving Gomez standing there, suddenly alone.

“See you at dinner, Tómas,” Abbott called to him as he hurried the miners to the hatch that led into Haven’s interior.

Gomez felt more than a little shaky as he walked alone toward the habitat’s main restaurant. I’m getting accustomed to having Raven as my dinner companion, he realized. But for the past few evenings, Raven had been busy with Alicia Polanyi, planning the shop they were going to open.

All right, Gomez said to himself as he pushed through the doors of the restaurant’s main entrance. I don’t need her. I can stand on my own feet.

Still, he missed her.

The restaurant was crowded, but the human maître d’ led Gomez directly to the circular table where Zworkyn and his four colleagues were sitting with Abbott and a half-dozen of his astronomers. There was one empty chair, between Abbott and Zworkyn. A robot came up and held it out for Gomez.

“Ah, here at last,” Abbott said, with a big gap-toothed grin.

“It’s still a few minutes before seven,” Gomez protested.

“Yes, yes. We started ahead of you.”

Gomez saw that each of the men and women around the table had drinks at their places. He ordered a margarita.

“With salt?” asked the robot.

“Of course.”

“Of course,” echoed Abbott. Gomez wondered how much he’d already had to drink.

Zworkyn leaned forward slightly and asked Gomez, “What on Earth ever possessed you to search for evidence of life here on Uranus?”

Gomez shrugged. “All the other major planets in the solar system have biospheres—extensive biospheres. It seemed odd that Uranus was sterile. It didn’t fit.”

“Good thinking,” said Abbott. “Go after the anomalies. Find out why they’re anomalies.”

Zworkyn nodded. “And you found this piece of steel.”

“It’s not natural,” Gomez said. “And it didn’t come from one of our own submersibles.”

“That’s not one hundred percent assured,” Abbott corrected.

“Close enough,” said Gomez.

Nodding again, Zworkyn agreed. “Close enough to get us sent out here to help you explore the region.”

“Yes,” said Gomez.

Tugging at one end of his luxurious moustache, Abbott asked the miner, “So when do you start digging?”

With a tight smile, Zworkyn replied, “Once we find something worth digging for.”

“Explain, please,” said Abbott.

“First we’ll have to install our scanning equipment in your submarine, Dr. Gomez—”

“Please call me Tómas.”

Zworkyn dipped his chin minimally. “Tómas, then. And I am Vincente.”

Abbott smiled benignly at the two of them.

“We will survey the area where you found the relic,” Zworkyn continued, “scanning that region of the sea bottom for similar metal. Penetrating radar and isotopic scanners should let us see at least a hundred meters below the seabed’s surface. Once we have a picture of what’s sitting down beneath the surface, then we can start digging.”

“But what if there isn’t any other steel down there?” Gomez asked.

With a shrug of his narrow shoulders, Zworkyn replied, “Then we’ll have to expand our search.”

“Poke around in the dark,” said Abbott, “in the hopes of finding something.”

One of the other miners chipped in, “Playing blind man’s bluff, down at the bottom of the ocean.”

“What we’re looking for might be buried deeper than our instruments can scan,” Zworkyn admitted.

Gomez muttered, “If that’s the case…”

“If that’s the case,” Zworkyn said softly, “then we’re out of luck. You could be sitting atop a gold mine, but if it’s buried too deep for our instruments to detect it, we’ll never know that it’s there.”

Abbott shook his head. “Doesn’t sound terribly encouraging, does it?”

Gomez didn’t reply aloud, but he thought, They don’t expect to find anything. They think they’ve been sent here on a fool’s errand, and I’m the fool who’s responsible for it.

PATIENCE… AND ANTICIPATION

Raven was running through a long list of women’s fashions when her phone buzzed. Glancing at the corner of her screen, she saw that it was Tómas calling. Again.

I’ve been neglecting him, she realized. She looked over at Alicia, busily conversing with the image on her screen of the contractor who was turning one of the habitat’s empty storage areas into their shop.

Leaning closer to her own screen, Raven said softly, “Phone answer.”

Tómas’s face filled the screen. “Raven! Hello!”

“Hello, Tómas,” she said.

“How’s it going?”

She smiled “We’re aiming to open the shop in two weeks.”

“That’s good.”

“It’ll be good only if we can get a thousand and one details squared away in that time.”

“Oh. You must be pretty busy.”

“Very,” she said. “Extremely.”

Gomez looked disappointed. “I guess you don’t have time to go to dinner, then.”

Raven hesitated. Tómas looked disappointed, forlorn.

She asked, “Would you mind if I brought Alicia along?”

It was his turn to hesitate.

“She’s been working awfully hard,” Raven said. “I think a pleasant dinner would be very good for her.”

Gomez nodded, but it seemed clear his heart wasn’t in it. “Okay, I guess.”

Raven smiled her brightest. “You’re a dear.”

“Seven o’clock? In the main restaurant?”

“Can you make it eight o’clock? We have so much work to get through.”

“Eight o’clock, sure,” said Gomez. Then he added, a bit more sullenly, “Dinner for three.”

Alicia objected that she didn’t want to be a third wheel at dinner.

“It’s you he’s interested in, not me.”

“I know,” Raven admitted. “But I don’t think I want to let him get too close. Not yet. Not now.”

Alicia studied Raven’s face for a long, silent moment. At last she said, “All right. I’ll be your chaperone.”

“Thanks,” said Raven. Yet somehow she didn’t really feel grateful.

Once she and Alicia had seated themselves at the table with Gomez, Raven asked, “How’s the search going, Tómas?”

“Zworkyn and his people have just started scanning the area,” Gomez replied, noticeably less than enthusiastic. “Nothing’s turned up so far.”

“Patience,” Alicia counseled. “You’ve got to be patient.”

Gomez tried to grin at her, failed.

Raven said, “They’ve just started, after all.”

Gripping his salad fork hard enough to bend it, Gomez said, “I wish I could go down there myself and dig through the rubble.”

“Rubble?” asked Raven.

With a shrug of his shoulders, Gomez replied, “The seabed’s covered with rocks, all shapes and sizes. And a lot of sand. Like somebody’s pounded everything into wreckage.”

Alicia’s brows knit. “There’s a word for that… for when you see what you expect to see, instead of what’s really there.”

Raven suggested, “Hope?”

“No, it’s something else,” Alicia said. “I remember reading it somewhere.”

“Anticipation,” said Gomez.

“Yes, that’s it,” Raven said. Then she cautioned, “But you mustn’t let your anticipation blind you to what you’re actually seeing.”

Alicia giggled. “Like the two of us are doing with this shop we’re going to open.”

Raven glared at her.

“Well, look at us,” Alicia explained. “We’re working night and day to set up our boutique. But suppose once we open it, nobody comes to buy? What if the women in this habitat don’t care about what we offer them?”

Gomez gave her a lopsided grin. “The Japanese have a word for that.”

“They do?”

“Sure. Hara-kiri.”

The three of them walked slowly along the passageway that led to their living quarters.

Still thinking of Tómas’s “hara-kiri” joke, Raven wondered what he would actually do if the search of the sea bottom turned up nothing of interest. How will he react? she asked herself. What will he do?

They reached Alicia’s quarters and bade her goodnight, then Raven and Gomez walked slowly onward. His unit was next, then hers, several doors farther along the passageway.

“You’re awfully quiet,” he said as they strolled along.

“I’ve got a lot to think about,” Raven replied. “A lot of things to do.”

Gomez studied the flooring as they walked. “I’ve got nothing to do. Nothing but waiting.”

“They’ll find something, Tómas. I know they will.”

He made a tiny smile. “As my Jewish friends say, ‘From your mouth to God’s ear.’”

“You’ll see,” Raven insisted.

They reached the door to his apartment.

“Would you like to come in?” he asked. “For a nightcap?”

“Tómas, I shouldn’t,” said Raven. “I can’t.”

“You could if you wanted to.”

“I do want to. But I shouldn’t. Please try to understand.”

He shook his head. “I’ll never understand women.”

Raven pecked at his cheek. “Patience, Tómas. Please.”

“And anticipation,” he added softly. Reaching for her arm, he said, “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

SCANNING

Tómas Gomez sat in the stuffy observation center between Zworkyn and Abbott, staring at the viewscreen that covered one entire wall of the crowded room.

The observation center was built like a miniature theater. All four of Zworkyn’s assistants were sitting tensely at the bottom level, eyes focused on the viewscreens they were monitoring. Gomez, Zworkyn and Abbott sat at the next higher level, then a half-dozen of Abbott’s astronomers sat in the next tier, above them.

The submersible that Gomez had originally used—now packed with deep-scanning sensors—was slowly coasting a few meters above the sea floor. A pencil-thin beam of blue-green laser light angled upward, toward the ocean’s surface, a precariously slim pencil beam of communication.

The observation center’s wall screen showed a full-color view of the seabed, nothing but rocks and sand. No fish, no fronds of vegetation, no sign of life whatsoever.

“Good imagery,” Abbott said.

“We’re lucky,” replied Zworkyn. “The sea’s very calm today, very clear. Yesterday the verdammt laser beam was so scattered by turbulence that we had to get the sub to send up message drones.”

“Today is better,” Gomez half whispered, as if fearful of breaking their good luck.

“Much,” Abbott agreed.

Zworkyn muttered, “Scan twenty meters deeper.”

One of his assistants replied, “That would be nearly at the equipment’s limit. We can’t scan much deeper.”

“Do it,” Zworkyn said.

The image on the wall screen changed minimally. Rocks and sand. Sand and rocks.

“No steel,” muttered Abbott.

“No metals of any kind,” Zworkyn agreed. Somehow, Gomez thought, the man sounded just as disappointed as he himself felt.

A curved line slid into their view. Zworkyn’s brows hiked up. “What’s that?” he asked.

The one woman among his assistants looked down at an auxiliary screen set into her desktop. “Strontium eighty-seven,” she said.

“Follow it.”

The man beside her spoke into the microphone perched just above his lip. The big wall screen followed the curved line.

Zworkyn glanced at Gomez, the beginnings of a smile slightly bending his lips. Before Tómas could ask a question, he explained:

“Strontium eighty-seven is formed when rubidium eighty-seven decays radioactively. Its half life is some fifty billion years, within an error of roughly thirty to fifty million years.”

“But that’s on Earth,” Gomez objected. “We’re looking at Uranus.”

Zworkyn’s smile broadened. “The atoms don’t know that. They behave the same way no matter where they are.”

“Oh.” Pointing at the big screen, Gomez said, “So we’re following a curve that originally contained a fair amount of rubidium.”

“Precisely,” said Zworkyn. “Clever lad.”

“But it might be natural.”

“There was a trace amount of rubidium—and strontium—in the sample you picked up.”

“And your sensors are picking up a trace of strontium!”

Nodding, Zworkyn replied, “Indeed they are. And smooth, precise curves like this one could hardly be natural. Not at all.”

The observation center fell silent. For several minutes all the people in the cramped room stared at the wall screen. The curve went on and on.

“It’s huge,” Gomez breathed.

The woman at her screen called out, “Diameter, seven hundred meters, plus.”

“Keep following it,” Zworkyn commanded.

For long breathless minutes the screen kept tracking the curve. Until a straight line angled off from it.

“A-hah!” shouted Zworkyn.

Gomez felt his heart thump.

Grinning fiercely, Zworkyn exclaimed, “Curves exist in nature. But straight lines don’t. They are made by intelligent creatures.”

Intelligent creatures! Gomez echoed silently. Straight lines are made by intelligent creatures! He expected the crowded little room to erupt in cheers, celebration. But it was deathly, inhumanly silent. Every eye was focused intently on the straight line that angled away from the mammoth circle.

“Follow that line!” Zworkyn snapped.

Straight as an arrow’s flight, the line extended through a maze of stones and sand. Until it connected with another broad circle.

“Diameter seven hundred meters, plus!”

“Identical,” Zworkyn muttered.

Gomez sagged back in his chair. Two identical circles, connected by a straight line.

“That’s not a natural formation,” said one of the astronomers sitting behind Gomez, his voice hushed with awe.

“Can’t be,” agreed the woman at her console, below them.

Zworkyn turned in his chair and extended his hand toward Gomez. “Congratulations, my boy. You’ve discovered the remains of intelligent life.”

Tómas sat there, feeling stunned. Someone clapped him on the back. All three of Zworkyn’s assistants had turned their chairs around and were grinning up at him. The astronomers in the rear of the chamber got to their feet, applauding lustily.

Zworkyn stood up. “All right! We can celebrate tonight. But right now, we’ve got to get this data to the Astronomical Association back on Earth. You’re all going to be heroes!”

They cheered mightily.

“Well don’t just sit there,” Zworkyn said, tugging at Gomez’s arm. “We’ve got to tell Waxman the good news.”

Tómas shook his head, as if to clear it, then rose shakily to his feet. Like a man in a trance, he followed Zworkyn out of the monitoring center, down along the curved passageway, toward Evan Waxman’s office. Even with the observation center’s doors closed they could still hear the cheering and applause.

The two of them barged past the woman who’d replaced Alicia as Waxman’s assistant and breezed directly into Waxman’s office.

“We’ve found unmistakable evidence of an ancient civilization on Uranus!” Zworkyn announced grandly.

Waxman looked up from his desktop screen, his expression a mixture of surprise and disbelief.

“Unmistakable? Really?”

Turning to Gomez, Zworkyn said, “Tell him, my boy.”

“Buried in the seabed,” Gomez chattered. “Circles. A straight line connecting them.”

Despite himself, Waxman asked, “A straight line?”

“Yes, sir.”

Waxman looked stunned, shocked. “I’d like to see your evidence.”

Still half-disbelieving what he himself had seen, Gomez nodded and commanded Waxman’s desktop computer to show the scenes that had appeared in the monitoring center.

Tómas saw Waxman’s frame stiffen with astonishment.

His eyes widened. “By God, that… that’s remarkable!” he exclaimed.

With a soft chuckle, Zworkyn said, “More impressive than a single twist of steel, eh?”

Waxman nodded, his cobalt-blue eyes focused on Gomez. “You’ve made a tremendous discovery, Tómas. You too, Mr. Zworkyn. Both of you. Congratulations.”

For the first time, Tómas felt an inner glow of triumph. He paid no attention to the flat, strained tone of Waxman’s praise.

CELEBRATION

The party began slowly, with Zworkyn’s people and Abbott’s staff, but it quickly grew to fill half the main dining room as news of the discovery spread through the habitat.

Tómas Gomez sat at the center of the growing crowd, basking in the warmth of their congratulations. But as he scanned the new arrivals he did not see Raven. She’s not coming, he told himself. She’s avoiding me. The warmth he had felt inside him slowly faded and turned to ice.

He accepted the crowd’s increasingly raucous congratulations with a grin and a nod, but inwardly he wanted to get away from their noise, their cheers. He wanted to be with Raven, or bitterly alone.

Zworkyn was grinning broadly as he climbed up atop one of the dining tables and silenced the crowd with shushing motions of both his hands.

“We have a lot to celebrate—”

The people roared and cheered. Zworkyn waited patiently for them to quiet down, then continued, “I don’t expect much work out of you tomorrow—” Laughter. “But the day after tomorrow our real work begins. Who were the creatures who built this city at the bottom of the sea? How did they die away? What happened here to extinguish all life on the planet?”

One of the younger men in the crowd shouted, “Where are we going to put the six zillion researchers who’ll come flocking out here as soon as they hear the news?”

Standing back at the fringe of the crowd, where the robots were busily picking up the discarded dinnerware, Evan Waxman frowned at the thought of hordes of newcomers arriving at Haven.

We won’t be able to accommodate them, he thought. Even if we finish the second module and let them have it, this is going to change everything. Ruin everything. A horde of scientists roosting here for God knows how long. Poking into everything.

But then a slow smile crept across his handsome face. A horde of new customers, he told himself. I’ll have to increase production.

Umber won’t like having a tide of newcomers descending on us, he realized. He set up Haven to be as far away from Earth as possible. He wants to keep this area for his refugees, his sick and lame and stupid poor people. He’ll want to refuse to let the scientists make a base here for themselves.

Well, I’ll have to change his mind about that. Or move him out of my way.

“Aren’t you going to join the celebration?” Alicia asked.

Raven looked up from her desktop screen’s view of the crowd in the main dining room. “I suppose I should,” she said, her tone far from celebratory.

“You don’t want to?” Alicia looked surprised.

“I do, but…”

“But you’re afraid you’ll wind up in bed with Tómas.”

“Yes.”

“Well why not? He’s a hero, the darling of the scientists. He’s made a great discovery.”

“And I’m his reward?” Raven asked.

Alicia stared at her. “It’s just a one-night fling. Why not?”

“Because it would mean more to Tómas than a one-night fling. He’s very serious.”

“And you’re not.”

“I don’t know!” Raven burst. “I like him, but…”

“But what?”

“What will he do when he finds out about what I was on Earth?”

“You don’t think he knows?”

“I don’t know!”

Raven felt Alicia’s pallid blue eyes boring into her like twin ice picks.

At last Alicia said, “You’re in love with him.”

“No! Don’t be silly.”

With a shake of her head Alicia insisted, “You’re in love with him, but you’re afraid to admit it to yourself.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Raven objected, with some heat. “I can’t be in love with anybody—especially not him.”

“It happens,” Alicia countered.

“Not to me.”

“Even to you, honey.”

Raven felt tears welling up. “I don’t want to hurt him.”

“And you think you’re not hurting him by staying away?”

“He’ll forget about me, sooner or later.”

A trace of a smile curved Alicia’s lips slightly. “Maybe. But will you forget about him?”

“Yes I will.”

“Then why don’t you go to him and give him a night he’ll remember? You know how to please men, why not please him?”

Raven’s self-control shattered. She burst into tears.

THE ACID TEST

Slowly, like a woman heading toward a guillotine, Raven made her way along the passageway toward the main dining room. She could hear the noise of thumping Latino music and the crowd’s celebration long before she reached the dining room’s closed doors.

She opened the main door and slipped in, a wall of music and laughter and dozens of shouted conversations assailing her ears.

And there was Tómas, standing on a tabletop with Professor Abbott on one side of him and the smaller, darker Zworkyn on the other.

All eyes seemed to be on Tómas; he looked somewhere between astonished and abashed by the adulation. But the instant his eyes met Raven’s, he jumped down from the table and pushed through the crowd toward her.

“Raven! You’re here!”

And Raven felt that this was where she wanted to be, with him, with this man who loved her.

“Congratulations, Tómas,” she shouted into his ear. “You’ve made a great discovery.”

“You’re my discovery,” he answered, taking her in his arms.

Raven let him swirl her away through the crowd, dancing to the heavy beat of the music.

Nothing else matters, she told herself. Only Tómas. Only his happiness.

She awoke the next morning in Tómas’s bed, curled next to him as he snored softly, a contented smile on his lips. Raven realized that she had hardly ever seen Tómas smile: he was always so serious.

She lay there beside him and studied his face. It was a handsome face, she decided. Strong. Capable. Serious. And she realized that she was serious, too. Despite everything, despite her past and her unknowable future, she wanted to be with Tómas for the rest of her life.

But a voice in her head asked, Will he want to be with you? Once he knows what you were, will his love dissolve and disappear like a beautiful dream burned away by the morning sun?

Then she remembered Alicia and the boutique. I’ve got to get to work, she told herself.

As gently as she could, she eased herself away from Tómas’s arm and began to slip out of bed.

“Good morning,” he mumbled drowsily.

“Oh! I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m sorry.”

Half covered by the twisted bedsheet, he turned and squinted at the bedside clock. “I ought to get up. Work to do.”

“Yes,” said Raven, sitting up on the edge of the bed. “Me too.”

As casually as a man seeking travel directions, Gomez asked, “Will you marry me?”

Raven stared at him. “Marry? That’s… that’s a big step, Tómas.”

Lying there with a soft smile on his lips, Gomez replied, “It’s not an unusual step.”

Raven fought down an urge to cry. “Tómas, you don’t know anything about me… who I am, really…”

“I know I love you.” Before she could reply, he added, “And you love me.”

“One night in bed together isn’t love!”

“Isn’t it?”

The tears were threatening to burst out. “Tómas, I was a whore! Back in Naples—”

“I know,” he said, reaching out to grasp her arm. “Waxman told me.”

“He told you? And you still…?”

“Raven, you were a whore. Were. You’re not a whore now. You’re never going back to that. I’m here for you. I’ll protect you.”

She collapsed into his arms, sobbing softly, and for long silent moments they clung to each other as Raven said to herself, I love him and he loves me. This is wonderful. Nothing else matters. Nothing. Nothing.

Evan Waxman was sitting before Reverend Umber’s ornate desk, spelling out the future.

“I have no idea how many scientists will want to come here, but it will be considerable. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.”

“Thousands?” Umber’s round face went pale.

“This is a momentous discovery, Kyle. Uranus was once populated by an intelligent species, and now they’re gone. Eradicated.”

“God’s will.”

Waxman huffed. “Well, there are going to be a horde of investigators coming here to try to figure out how and why God wiped out a whole intelligent species and every other living creature on the planet.”

“We can’t allow them into Haven,” Umber said firmly. “They’d ruin everything we’re trying to accomplish here.”

With a slow nod, Waxman replied, “I suppose we could house them in Haven II.”

“No! That’s for more refugees. We already have contracts with the social agencies on Earth and the transportation corporations.”

“The Astronomical Association can invalidate those contracts.”

Umber’s face settled into an unhappy scowl.

“And,” Waxman continued, “they can commandeer Haven II as a shelter for the incoming scientists.”

“And set our work back for how long? Months? Years?”

Waxman shrugged. “I think you should sit down with this man Abbott. He sits pretty high in the Association’s pecking order.”

“I don’t want them here in Haven,” Umber said firmly. “I’ve thought it through time and again. I don’t want them mixing with our people here in Haven.”

“Neither do I,” Waxman agreed. “But there’s no way we can keep them from taking over Haven II.”

Umber shook his head unhappily.