Uranus

THE HOSPITAL

Vincente Zworkyn lay on the hospital bed glaring down at his left leg. It was covered by a plastic bandage from just above the knee down to the ankle. It didn’t hurt much, but it itched maddeningly.

Damned fool, he told himself. Damned stupid, overeager, moronic idiot. Jetbike racing. At your age. Trying to show the youngsters that you’re just as good as they are. Reckless irresponsible asshole.

His hospital billet was screened off for privacy, but his team had squeezed in to visit him and offer their apologies for the accident. The four young men and one woman crowded around his bed, all looking as sheepish as children who had been caught raiding the cookie jar.

“Wasn’t your fault,” Zworkyn told them, trying to smile despite his foul mood. “I should have known better.”

It had seemed like a good idea, a bit of fun to break the monotony of their dedicated work. A race around the circular passageway of the Haven II habitat on jetbikes borrowed from the recreation center on the older wheel. Zworkyn had sped into the lead as they zoomed along the kilometers-long passageway, past teams of robots working on the construction details. Fun to feel the wind in your face and know you were ahead of the kids.

But it only took one discarded hammer lying on the passageway’s flooring to flip Zworkyn’s bike into the air and send him flying ass over teakettle into a newly installed section of paneling, badly bruising his back and breaking his kneecap and the slender fibula below it.

The hospital’s medical staff had welcomed him with barely hidden glee: they seldom got to deal with such interesting fractures.

Now he lay on the hospital bed, waiting for the stem cell injections to repair his bones. He felt little pain: even his injured back was quickly healing, thanks to modern electrotherapy.

But his leg itched. Zworkyn imagined he could feel the microscopic stem cells knitting his broken bones together. No, the chief of surgery explained to him, gently, patiently. The itching was psychosomatic. Had to be.

His team mumbled apologies and good wishes and shuffled out of his narrow space. Alone now, he glared at the bandaged leg, wishing that he could reach down and scratch the damned itch.

His bedside phone buzzed.

“Yes?”

“Professor Abbott wishes to visit with you,” the phone replied.

“He’s here?”

“He’s in the waiting room.”

“Send him in!” Maybe, Zworkyn thought, Abbott could get his mind off the insidious itch.

Zworkyn raised the bed to a sitting position as Abbott pushed through the curtains that surrounded his narrow berth.

“Well, well,” said Abbott, extending his hand. “How are you doing, Vince?”

Zworkyn made a grin. “Not too bad. They tell me I ought to be out of here tomorrow.”

Pulling up the enclosure’s only chair to the edge of the hospital bed, Abbott said, as he sat down, “Really? That’s remarkable.”

“Stem cells.”

“Ah.”

“How’s everything in the uninjured world?”

Abbott tilted his head slightly. “Your people and my people are working together rather nicely. They’ve been scanning images we’ve gotten from the sub, trying to reconstruct the city down there.”

“So? Have they come up with anything?”

“It’s a hard slog, I’m afraid,” Abbott said, unconsciously tugging at one end of his moustache. “The city’s been thoroughly flattened. It’s almost as though some angry god smashed it all with a superhuman hammer.”

Zworkyn nodded.

“And the dating is all out of whack,” Abbott went on. “Uranus was smashed by a sizeable planetoidal object back during the time of the Late Bombardment, some four billion years ago. Yet all the radioactive dating we’re getting from the city’s remains are much younger. Much younger. Something’s badly out of whack.”

Almost smiling, Zworkyn muttered, “That’s what makes science interesting, don’t you think? The unanswered questions.”

Fingering his moustache again, Abbott replied, “I wish it wasn’t so damned interesting! I want to find out what happened down there.”

With a heartfelt sigh, Zworkyn agreed, “So do I, Gordon. So do I.”

Raven tried to suppress a frown as she looked at Noel Dacco’s grinning face on the viewscreen of the boutique’s computer.

“A date?” she asked. “You want to take me to dinner?”

“I find you very attractive,” Dacco replied.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Noel. I’m practically engaged to Tómas Gomez.”

Dacco’s smile didn’t diminish by as much as a millimeter. “Practically?” he asked.

“He loves me.”

“And you love him?”

Raven’s breath caught in her throat. Then she answered, “Yes, I do.”

Waggling a finger at her, Dacco said, “You had to think about it.”

“I love him,” Raven said, more firmly.

“Wouldn’t you like to have a fling with me? It doesn’t have to mean anything. Just fun. One last fling before you tie the knot with Tómas.”

Raven shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”

Dacco’s smile evaporated. He said, “From what Waxman tells me, you weren’t so reserved before you came here. And you’ve slept with him often enough.”

“That’s over!” Raven snapped.

“Really?”

“Really.”

With a careless shrug, Dacco said, “Okay. You can’t blame a man for trying. You’re a very delectable dish. But you already know that.”

With a hand that trembled slightly, Raven tapped the screen’s OFF button. That’s not the end of it, she told herself. Waxman’s pointing him at me, like a hunter unleashing his dog to chase down a rabbit.

Well, I’m no rabbit, she thought. And wished it were true.

THE LATE BOMBARDMENT

Vincente Zworkyn lay back on his bed in his darkened compartment, his eyes closed as he tried to will himself to sleep.

But in his mind he saw the Late Bombardment.

Some four billion years ago, back in the early days of the solar system’s existence, countless chunks of rock and ice hurtled through the newly formed planets, blasting out continent-sized craters whenever they smashed into a fledgling world.

Zworkyn saw the turmoil, the havoc, the mayhem as thousands, millions of worldlets zoomed through the young solar system.

Four billion years ago, he said to himself. The craters that those cataclysmic collisions gouged out of the young Earth’s red-hot crust were erased in time, smoothed away by four billion years of weathering: wind and rain and continental drift. But the young Moon, airless and waterless, kept the evidence across its cratered surface. When human explorers reached the Moon, they dated the craters that blanketed its bleak surface.

Four billion years ago, Zworkyn repeated to himself. While the Earth and Moon were being pummeled, Uranus was hit by a truly massive planetoid, smashed so hard that the planet was knocked over sidewise, its poles pointing to the Sun, unlike any other world in the solar system.

That cataclysm scrubbed Uranus clean of all life. All life. Down to amoebas and even microscopic chains of DNA. Not just the city we’re exploring. All life. Destroyed.

Zworkyn stared at the darkened ceiling above him, clean and white. He listened to the monitors clicking and chugging away behind him at the head of his bed.

All life. Wiped out. Four billion years ago.

But why does the evidence we’ve pulled up from that destroyed city date it at only a couple of million years old? Two million years ago. That’s about when the last ice age began on Earth. It’s practically yesterday afternoon, in the history of the solar system.

Zworkyn closed his eyes and tried to let go of the puzzlement that bedeviled him. But instead of drifting to sleep he kept thinking about Uranus, lifeless, scoured clean of every living organism that once inhabited it. From the creatures who built that city down to the molecules that formed the basis of life. All gone. Destroyed. Wiped out.

His eyes flashed open. What if the cataclysm that knocked over Uranus’s spin didn’t happen during the Late Bombardment? What if it happened only two million years ago?

Then it would all fit! The planet was knocked over sideways. The city down there was flattened. All life on Uranus—all life, down to the molecular level—was eradicated.

What could have caused that? he asked himself. Then he shivered as a wave of cold swept over his healing body.

Not what could cause that, Zworkyn realized. Who could cause that? Who destroyed all life on Uranus?

Gordon Abbott frowned down at Zworkyn’s body on his hospital bed as the two doctors finished their examination of the patient.

The male doctor straightened up and smiled at Zworkyn. “You’re fine. Kneecap and fibula are both completely repaired. You’re free to go.”

The woman doctor nodded. “All indices in positive territory. You can get up and leave whenever you’re ready.”

Abbott thought, Physically, Vincente is healed. But mentally…? I wonder.

As the two medics left his narrow stall, Zworkyn sat up on his bed. “Gordon, that’s got to be the answer. Uranus was battered over sideways a scant two million years ago, not during the Late Bombardment!”

Abbott shook his head. Softly, almost pityingly, he said, “That’s absurd, Vince. You can’t believe—”

“Where’s the evidence that Uranus was knocked sideways during the Late Bombardment? It’s all conjecture! Why couldn’t it have happened two million years ago instead of four billion?”

“Where’s the evidence for that?” Abbott snapped.

“Down at the bottom of the ocean! That smashed city. The radioactive dating tells us it was smashed two million years ago. That’s real, hard evidence, not conjecture.”

“The Late Bombardment isn’t conjecture.”

“Yes, I know. But there is no actual evidence that Uranus was whacked sideways at that time. That idea is conjecture! Truly!”

Abbott was frowning. “Two million years ago there weren’t big protoplanets whizzing through the solar system. How do you explain Uranus being smacked sideways? What caused that?”

“Not what,” Zworkyn replied. “Who.”

“Who?”

“What happened on Uranus wasn’t natural, Gordon. Not a cataclysm that erases all life on an entire planet, down to the molecular level. It was a deliberate act of destruction.”

“That’s crazy.”

“So was Wegener’s idea of continental drift,” Zworkyn countered. “But it turned out he was right.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am. Damned serious.”

Abbott’s face was turning red. “You can’t seriously believe that some interstellar invader wiped Uranus clean of life. That’s the stuff of fantasy!”

“So were airplanes and rockets and colonies on Mars, not so long ago.”

The look on Abbott’s face was more of sorrow than anger. He shook his head slowly. “Vincente, my friend, you’re going off the deep end. Maybe you need a bit more rest here in the hospital.”

“No,” Zworkyn barked. “We need to excavate the ruins down there at the bottom of the sea and find out what they have to tell us.”

Abbott started to reply, caught himself, then began over. “Well, that’s something I can agree with. When in doubt, study the evidence.”

“Right,” said Zworkyn.

“But if I were you, Vincente old friend, I wouldn’t spout your E.T. invasion idea to anybody. Not until you have some real evidence to back it up.”

Zworkyn nodded. “I suppose that’s right.”

“You bet it is.”

SEARCHING

“Can you keep a secret?” Tómas asked.

He was sitting beside Raven on the sofa in her living room, watching the Zworkyn team’s report on the latest samples they had dredged up from the ruined city at the bottom of the sea.

Raven nodded easily. “Keep a secret? Sure.”

“No,” Tómas said, turning to face her. “I mean really keep a secret. Not tell anybody else. Deep and dark.”

She saw that he was totally serious. “If you want me to.”

“It’s something Zworkyn told me. In total confidence. But it’s so crazy, I’ve got to tell somebody about it or burst.”

“I’ll keep your secret, Tómas. I promise.”

“Well…” He hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Zworkyn thinks that the city they’ve found was wiped out by aliens.”

Her eyes widening, Raven asked, “Aliens? Like extraterrestrials?”

Tómas nodded solemnly.

“Wow!”

“I don’t know if he’s gone off the deep end,” Tómas said, almost wistfully. “Maybe that jetbike accident has rattled his brain.”

“Does he seem okay? I mean, has he done anything weird?”

“No, but this afternoon he told me what he thinks about the city down on the seabed. It sounds crazy to me.”

“Did he give you any reason for what he believes?”

Tómas quickly ran through Zworkyn’s reasoning. Raven followed it, just barely.

Touching Tómas’s arm, she asked, “Does any of it make sense to you?”

“I learned about the Late Bombardment in undergraduate school. Everybody thinks that’s when Uranus got knocked over sidewise.”

“Do you think so, too?”

He nodded, but said, “Zworkyn pointed out that there’s no real evidence that Uranus got knocked sidewise at that time. It’s mostly conjecture. But it does add up, really. I mean that’s when the Late Bombardment took place.”

Raven murmured, “If everybody else thinks that’s when it happened…”

“Everybody but Zworkyn.”

“And he’s not really a scientist, is he? He’s just an engineer.”

Tómas almost frowned. “Engineers have brains, you know.”

Raven smiled at him. “Not like yours, Tómas.”

Noel Dacco smiled handsomely at Evan Waxman. “As far as I can see, Evan, you’re running a smooth operation.”

Dacco was sitting in one of the guest chairs in front of Waxman’s desk. Waxman smiled back at him, but he was thinking, This man is making a nuisance of himself. He’s obviously been sent here to check on my operation. Maybe the distributors back on Earth want to ease me out of the Rust production operation, put their own person in to replace me. Maybe I should send this black blowhard back to them in a fancy coffin.

“I’m glad you approve of the way I’m running things,” Waxman said, keeping his smile in place.

“One thing, though,” said Dacco, his face growing serious.

“Oh?”

“Raven.”

“Raven?” Waxman repeated.

“She’s being coy with me. Is there anything you can do to… uh, loosen her up?”

“She’s no longer in my employ. She’s attached herself to that young astronomer from Chile.”

“Gomez.”

“Yes. The one who’s stirred up this hullabaloo about the destroyed city down at the bottom of the sea.”

Just a hint of frown lines appeared between Dacco’s brows. “I’m supposed to be doing a major piece about him for CAJO.”

Waxman thought, Honest work? How unusual.

“About Raven,” Dacco reminded.

“Ah yes. Raven,” Waxman temporized. “Very independent woman.”

“I know that. But you promised me that you could, ah, break through her defenses.”

Waxman nodded. “I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.”

“But I do worry, Evan. I can’t stay here much longer. I have obligations back Earthside, you know.”

“And the article you have to write about Tómas Gomez.”

“Yes. That too.”

Waxman drummed his fingers on his desktop for a few moments. “I’ll get Raven for you.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow night.”

Dacco’s beaming smile returned. “Tomorrow night. Good.”

Waxman smiled back. Bind him to you with hoops of steel, he told himself. Send him back to Earth happy and satisfied.

Vincente Zworkyn stood on his two legs without a tremble. The legs felt fine, quite natural, completely healed. In the privacy of his hospital alcove he dressed quickly in the clothes that he’d been wearing when his accident occurred. They were stained and dusty but, thankfully, untorn.

Only one of his team was waiting for him at the hospital’s discharge lobby, the chunky, heavy-featured Leeanne Russell. The instant Zworkyn pushed through the lobby’s door, she jumped up from the chair she’d been waiting in.

“They wouldn’t let me in,” she said apologetically.

“That’s all right, Lee,” Zworkyn replied. “It was good of you to come and collect me.”

She grinned at him. “Where do you want to go?”

“Back to work. We’ve got a hypothesis to prove.”

HOOPS OF STEEL

Raven stared at the viewscreen in her living room. She had finished breakfast and was just about to leave for the boutique when Waxman’s call came through.

Despite the early hour, Waxman appeared to be in his office, dressed for a working day, all business.

“How’s your shop doing, Raven?” he asked, with a pleasant smile.

He’s not calling about the boutique, Raven told herself. He gets our sales information automatically. What does he really want?

“Sales are moving upward,” she said to the screen. “We’ll have to order more merchandise next week.”

“Really?”

“Really. But you could see that in the daily files we automatically send you.”

Waxman’s smile thinned just the tiniest bit. “Do you really think you can make a success of your little shop?”

“Look at the sales record,” Raven replied. “The trend is upward.”

“It’s not a very steep climb.”

“But it’s better than a downward spiral. Word’s spreading throughout the habitat, Evan. Women are coming in, looking at what we have to offer, and buying.”

He conceded the point with the barest of nods. But then, “My computer calculates it will take at least six months for you to reach a break-even point. Even if your sales keep climbing at their present rate.”

“But they’re not climbing at our present rate,” Raven countered. “They’re accelerating.”

“Slowly.”

Raven’s patience ended. “Look, Evan, I’ve got to get to the shop. Are we finished?”

“Not quite,” he said, his smile evaporating. “There’s the matter of Noel Dacco.”

“Noel Dacco? I’m not interested in him.”

“But he’s interested in you.”

So that’s it, Raven realized. “And you’re pimping for him.”

Waxman’s eyes flashed angrily. But he quickly took control of his temper. “What a pleasant way to put it.”

“Aren’t you?”

For a long moment Waxman said nothing. Then, “It would be good if you spent an evening with Dacco. He’s very interested in you.”

“And you’ve told him about my life in Naples.”

“Of course. Why do you think he’s interested in you? For your intellect?”

Raven gritted her teeth.

“It won’t hurt you to spend a night with the man.”

“I spend my nights with Tómas.”

Waxman broke into a grin and pointed an accusing finger at her. “Not true. Gomez sleeps in his own quarters most nights.”

“Not every night.”

With a careless shrug, Waxman said, “You can spend a night with Dacco. If you don’t, I’ll have to shut down your boutique.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Can’t I? Just try me.”

“I’ll tell Reverend Umber!”

“Hah! Our beloved minister. What do you think he’d do, once I’ve told him that you’ve been whoring here in his precious Haven?”

“That’s not true!”

Waxman smiled thinly. “It doesn’t have to be true, Raven dear. It just has to be believable. And I’ll make him believe me.”

Raven stared at the viewscreen, trying to think of something to say, some way to get out of this trap. I don’t want him to close the shop; that would destroy Alicia and everything she’s dreamed of. But if I do what he wants and Tómas finds out…

Then she realized that if she did what Waxman wanted, he’d have that to hold over her forever. Tómas would leave her. She’d be right back where she was before she came to Haven.

Waxman understood her silence. “You should go to the shop now. Call me this evening, when you get back home.”

Raven nodded wordlessly.

“The bastard!”

Alicia’s eyes blazed with fury.

Raven sat with her partner behind the boutique’s counter. It had been a slow morning, yet it wasn’t until nearly noon that the shop went empty enough for Raven to tell Alicia of her conversation with Waxman.

“I’ll never get him off my back,” Raven whispered, surprised at how weary, how desperate she felt.

“He’ll be pulling my strings as long as I live,” she added, close to tears.

Alicia stared at her in silence for several moments. Then she said, “As long as he lives.”

Raven’s eyes went wide as she realized what Alicia was thinking.

“No,” she said softly. “We can’t go that way.”

“Why not? You, yourself, were all for it a few weeks ago. He’s trying to kill you, isn’t he?”

“Not murder.”

“Justice,” said Alicia.

“No.”

“I’ll do it. Gladly.”

Raven leaned toward her friend and slid her arms around Alicia’s shoulders. “Don’t talk that way. That’s not the way to go.”

“How else are we going to get free of him?”

Raven straightened up and looked into Alicia’s ice-blue eyes, murderously cold.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know.”

Alicia shook her head pityingly. “Reverend Umber’s really changed you, hasn’t he?”

Before Raven could reply, the shop’s front door slid open and a trio of women strode in, their eyes goggling at the displays of clothing.

EVIDENCE?

Tómas Gomez sat in the living room of his quarters, staring fixedly at the wall screen, his makeshift laboratory jammed with analysis equipment, sensor receivers, and computers of half a dozen different types.

He ignored the mug of chilled malteada that he had made for himself. The drink rested on his cluttered coffee table, unnoticed.

Gomez studied the readouts from the analyses of the battered debris recovered from the seabed. Every reading of their age centered around the two-million-year mark.

Can Zworkyn be right? he asked himself. Was that city destroyed only two million years ago?

He leaned back in his sofa and rubbed his eyes. Two million years ago. Was Uranus knocked sideways then, not during the much earlier Late Bombardment? Could that be possible?

Taking in a deep breath, Gomez pushed himself to his feet. All around him, display screens showed scraps of metal, chips of stone, bits and pieces of the ruined city from the bottom of Uranus’s worldwide ocean. The city was destroyed two million years ago, he told himself. That’s what the evidence says and that must be what had happened.

But is that true? Could it be true? If it is, it flies in the face of all we’ve told ourselves about the history of the planet—of the whole damned solar system.

Yet that’s what the evidence shows.

With a dogged shake of his head, Gomez stepped past the accumulation of sensors and computers and headed toward his bedroom. Get yourself cleaned up and then call Zworkyn. Talk it over with him. And then—maybe—face Abbott with your evidence.

Briefly he thought about calling Raven. Then he decided against that. I’ve bothered her enough with this problem. She listens, but this is way above her level of understanding. I’ll talk to her tomorrow, when we have dinner.

Twenty minutes later, showered and dressed in clean clothes, he started for Zworkyn’s quarters, in Haven II.

For one of the rare times in her young life, Raven felt nervous about going out on a date.

Dacco had called her at the boutique and asked to take her to dinner. Raven knew that the man had much more than dinner in mind, but she also understood that Waxman would shut down their boutique if she refused Dacco.

To the man’s image on the shop’s desktop screen, she had said carefully, “Yes, I’ll go to dinner with you. But please don’t expect anything more.”

Dacco had smiled toothily. “Dinner at seven P.M.”

“In the main restaurant here in Haven,” Raven had said.

“Fine. I’ll call for you at your quarters at six forty-five or so.”

Before Raven could reply, he cut off the connection.

Raven said nothing about her dinner date to Alicia. They closed the store at 5:00 P.M.—actually shooing out a pair of women who’d been browsing through the skirts and blouses for the better part of an hour.

“Time wasters,” Raven muttered as she and Alicia turned off the display lights.

“Oh, they’ll be back,” Alicia said, with a smile. “Sooner or later.”

“To waste more time.”

“Patience. You have to be patient. And remember that the customer is always right.”

Alicia’s smile was infectious. Raven grinned back at her. “Whether she’s right or wrong.”

“Exactly.”

Raven rushed home and changed into one of the boutique’s outfits: a sleek pale pink dress with knee-length skirt and round-necked bodice, attractive without being overtly seductive. You want to keep Noel happy, she told herself, but not salivating.

Dacco rang her door buzzer precisely at six forty-five, wearing a one-piece form-fitting outfit of white and gold.

His eyes brightened when Raven opened the door.

“You look beautiful!” he said, then amended, “You are beautiful.”

“And you look dashing,” answered Raven, as she closed the door behind her. “Very handsome.”

Dacco offered his arm. Raven took it, smiling sweetly, and together they walked to the restaurant.

“Do you really think so?” Zworkyn asked.

Gomez shrugged. “I don’t know. All the evidence we’ve dug up so far leads to the conclusion that Uranus was clobbered only a couple of million years ago. But…”

Gomez had ridden over to Haven II and gone straight to Zworkyn’s quarters. Despite the piles of equipment arrayed from wall to wall, the engineer’s living room was as tidy and precisely arranged as a military barracks. Everything in place, neat and well-ordered. Even the coffee urn that Zworkyn had brought in from the kitchen seemed to be polished and standing at attention.

Now they sat on the living room sofa, side by side, frustrated and unhappy.

“But?” Zworkyn prompted.

“But it’s kind of fantastic to think that some alien invaders wiped Uranus clean of life.”

“That’s what the evidence is telling us.”

Gomez shook his head slowly. “Maybe that’s what we want the evidence to say, and we’re fooling ourselves.”

Zworkyn stared at the younger man. “Maybe,” he conceded.

“We should try to come up with an alternative scenario,” Gomez mused.

“Like what?”

Gomez shrugged elaborately. “Damned if I know.”

“There isn’t any other possibility!” Zworkyn shouted, startling Gomez. “It happened two million years ago, not four billion.”

Staring into space, Gomez muttered, “Aliens entered the solar system—”

“About two million years ago,” Zworkyn added.

“And they found an intelligent civilization on Uranus.”

“And wiped it out.”

“Why?”

“That’s not our problem,” Zworkyn said. “Our problem is to prove that our dating is correct.”

Gomez nodded wearily. But suddenly he brightened. “Wait a minute. If I remember my classroom studies correctly…”

He got up and threaded his way through the rows of equipment, heading for Zworkyn’s desk. “May I use your desktop, Vincente?”

With a gracious nod, Zworkyn replied, “Be my guest.”

Sitting at the engineer’s desk, Gomez tapped the computer’s ON button and said, “History of Neptune’s moons, please.”

Zworkyn got up from the sofa, puzzlement showing on his face. “Neptune?”

It took a few minutes of jiggering the program that the desktop brought up, but at last Gomez leaned back in the desk chair and gestured at the computer’s screen.

“I thought I remembered this from my history lessons.”

Zworkyn bent over Gomez’s shoulder and stared at the screen.

“Display system of Neptune’s moons, please,” Gomez commanded.

“Thirteen moons,” Zworkyn read off the computer’s monitor. “Only one big one, Triton. The rest are just little chunks of rock.”

“Show history of Neptune system,” Gomez commanded.

The screen blinked once, then showed the planet Neptune with a retinue of twenty-five tiny moons, bits of irregularly shaped rock and metal too small to pull themselves into spherical bodies.

Then a much larger body—perfectly spherical—swung through the system, tossing the tiny moonlets into a wild jumble of looping, asymmetrical orbits. As the two men watched, twelve of the moonlets were hurled out of the picture entirely, while the rest settled into new orbits around Neptune. As did the much larger body.

“That’s Triton,” Zworkyn said, awed.

“Right,” Gomez agreed. “According to present thinking, that interaction happened during the time of the Late Bombardment.”

“Some four billion years ago,” said Zworkyn.

“But what if it happened only two million years ago? What if this cataclysm forced a much larger moon into a collision with Uranus?”

“But the analysis doesn’t show a big moon.”

“That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a major-sized moon in the system. A moon big enough to knock Uranus sideways.”

Zworkyn reached for a chair and dropped into it. “Orbital analysis might be able to prove the dating.”

“Maybe,” said Gomez.

“And if the dating shows it happened two million years ago…”

“We’ve proved my theory,” Gomez said.

For several moments Zworkyn remained silent, staring at the mayhem that the computer screen was still displaying.

Then he said, “We’ve got to show all this to Abbott. First thing tomorrow morning.”

TRUTH

Raven was growing more nervous with each step as she and Dacco strolled leisurely along the passageway toward her quarters.

Dinner had been pleasant enough. Noel chattered endlessly about himself, especially about the interview he was planning with Tómas.

“Interesting fellow,” he was saying.

Raven nodded absently, thinking about how she could get rid of Dacco at her door.

Smiling contentedly, he pointed. “That’s your place, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Raven.

They walked up to the door. Raven turned toward Dacco, her back to the closed door, got up on tiptoes and gave him a peck on the lips.

“Goodnight, Noel.”

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You expect me to go all the way back to Haven II, alone and forlorn?”

“I really can’t ask you in.”

His smile fixed on his face, Dacco said, “You could if you wanted to.”

“Noel… I’m practically engaged to Tómas.”

“Practically.”

A youngish couple ambled past them, smiled hello, and continued on their way.

“Young love,” sighed Dacco, following them with his eyes.

“Goodnight, Noel.”

His smile disappeared. Looking down at her, Dacco said, “No, Raven. That’s not the way this evening is going to end.”

“Noel…”

He reached past her and tapped out her entry code on the door’s control panel. Almost silently, the door slid open.

Tómas Gomez stepped through the shuttle’s hatch and back into the empty reception area of the Haven habitat. Alone, he trudged past the silent ID computers and made his way through the hatch and into the passageway that led to his quarters.

Glancing at his wristwatch, he saw that it was past eleven o’clock. I wonder if Raven’s still awake? he asked himself. Without any real deliberation, he started for her quarters.

Dacco pushed Raven into the living room of her apartment. The front door slid shut behind them.

Raven glared up at him. “Noel, this isn’t going to work. I’m not going to bed with you.”

“Oh, yes you are,” Dacco said, grinning at her. “Just pretend you’re back in Naples, on the job.”

“No!”

He smacked her in the face. Not too hard, just enough to make her understand who was in charge. Hardly left a mark on her cheek.

“Be reasonable, Raven,” he said, calmly, placatingly. “If you don’t come through Waxman will close up your little shop.”

Growing angrier with each breath she took, Raven hissed, “Waxman can go to hell. And you with him!”

Dacco let out a mournful sigh. “Do you want me to get rough with you?”

“I want you to leave!”

“Come on, Raven. I’m not so terrible. And you’re not in a position to turn me down. What will your friend Alicia do when Waxman closes up your boutique?”

“Get out!” Raven screamed.

Dacco’s smile turned sinister. “Some like it cold,” he misquoted, “some like it hot…”

Raven glanced around the living room, looking for a weapon, a tool, an ornament, anything that she might use to defend herself. She backed away from Dacco, her eyes searching.

“Would you like some Rust?” Dacco asked, drawing a slim plastic bag from his pocket. “It’ll make it easier for you.”

“Go away! Leave me alone!”

Instead, Dacco grabbed her and ripped her dress down off her shoulders. Then he swept her struggling form up in his arms and headed for the bedroom. She kicked the empty air so hard that one of her shoes flew off; she struggled to free her arms, pinned to Dacco’s chest, to no avail.

Gomez arrived at Raven’s door and hesitated. She’s probably asleep, he told himself. You don’t want to make a nuisance of yourself.

But his left hand was already tapping out the entry code on Raven’s door pad.

The door slid open with barely a sound. Gomez looked in. The living room was empty, but its lights were on.

She’s not asleep yet, Gomez told himself. He stepped into the living room. The door to the bedroom was open and he heard Raven shout, “Stop it! Get off!”

Tómas dashed to the bedroom door. Raven was on the bed, struggling fruitlessly, Dacco atop her, pinning her down.

Without an instant’s hesitation Tómas raced to the bed and slammed his right fist into Dacco’s kidney. His spine arched and he yowled with pain. Tómas grabbed at him with both hands and pulled him off Raven.

Dacco fell off the bed. The expression on his face was murderous.

“You’re gonna pay for that,” he growled, climbing slowly, painfully to his feet.

Tómas backed away a couple of steps, both fists raised. He saw Raven sit up on the bed, the bodice of her dress torn from her shoulders, her chest heaving, eyes wide as she stared at Tómas.

He quickly returned his eyes to Dacco, who was stepping toward him, his hands raised in a karate posture, bloody fury blazing in his eyes. Dacco was several centimeters taller than Gomez, and bulkier in the shoulders and arms.

Dacco lunged at Tómas, who ducked under his arm and rammed his head into Dacco’s midsection. The breath gushed out of Dacco’s lungs. Tómas kicked at Dacco’s knee and the black man crumpled to the floor.

Raven swung off the bed, the phone console from the night table in both hands, and smashed it onto the back of Dacco’s head. He slumped over, facedown, onto the carpet.

Raven looked up at him. “Tómas,” she breathed.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.… I think so.”

He saw that the side of her face bore the red imprint of Dacco’s fingers. Looking down at the unconscious form, he muttered, “I should kill the bastard.”

Raven tossed the phone console onto the bed and rushed into Tómas’s arms. “He was going to rape me!”

“I should kill him,” Gomez repeated.

“No!” Raven snapped. “No. Just call the security team. Let them deal with him.”

Without taking his right arm away from Raven, Tómas spoke into his wrist phone. At their feet, Dacco groaned and began to stir.

Raven slipped out of Tómas’s protective grasp and sank wearily onto the bed. He stood beside her, looking down at Dacco’s writhing form.

“You broke my knee,” Dacco moaned.

“I should have broken your damned neck,” said Tómas.

Dacco touched his knee lightly. It looked swollen, beneath his trousers.

“Where did you learn to fight like that?” Raven asked.

Tómas came close to smiling. “You grow up in the slums of Santiago, where I did, you learn to fight. Or you die.”

“I’ll get you for this,” Dacco muttered, rubbing his knee.

“When you can walk again, come and see me,” said Tómas.

A uniformed security team—one lanky, leggy young man and one elfin, dark-haired young woman—appeared at the bedroom doorway. They stared at Dacco, still sitting on the floor.

“What the hell happened here?” the young man asked.

“They attacked me!” Dacco snarled.

Raven, holding her tattered dress up to her shoulders, pointed to Dacco and said, “He tried to rape me.” Gesturing toward Tómas, she went on, “My fiancé saved me.”

The woman called for a medical team. Once they arrived and carted Dacco off to the hospital, together with the security team, Tómas stared in wonder at Raven.

“You told them I’m your fiancé,” he said.

“Yes, I did.”

“Am I? I mean, really?”

Raven smiled warmly. “Yes, Tómas darling. Really and truly.”

TRIALS (1)

“This proves nothing,” said Gordon Abbott.

Zworkyn and Gomez were sitting before Abbott’s spotlessly clean desk. Nothing on it but a phone console, a fancy pair of pens and an ancient wire in-basket, conspicuously empty. The viewscreen that covered the wall to their right showed a display of Uranus and its moons.

“Nothing?” Gomez bleated. “It shows that Uranus was knocked into its present orientation two million years ago, not four billion!”

“By mysterious alien invaders,” said Abbott, irony dripping from his lips.

“It’s what the available data shows,” Zworkyn said calmly.

Abbott shook his head. “It’s all conjecture, Vincente.”

“Conjecture?” Gomez screeched.

“Nonsense,” Abbott insisted.

“It’s what the available data shows,” Zworkyn repeated.

Abbott shook his head. “It’s conjecture, pure and simple. You started with a premise and you’ve arranged the available evidence to make things work out the way you want them to.”

“No,” Gomez countered. “That’s what the available evidence shows.”

“It couldn’t have taken place only two million years ago. That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s what the evidence shows!”

“It’s what the evidence you’ve selected to deal with indicates,” Abbott insisted. Unconsciously tugging at his moustache, he added, “Good heavens, man, you’re flying in the face of established astronomical fact.”

“Not fact,” Gomez insisted. “Conjecture. Blaming everything on the Late Bombardment is where the conjecture lies.”

“And what is inventing an alien invasion of the solar system? Where are the facts supporting that piece of fantasy?”

Zworkyn said mildly, “I recall hearing a line that some twentieth-century astronomer spoke: ‘Just because an idea is crazy doesn’t mean it’s wrong.’”

“It doesn’t mean it’s right, either,” Abbott snapped.

The office fell silent. Zworkyn and Gomez sat on one side of the desk, Abbott on the other, glaring at one another.

At last, Abbott asked more moderately, “Do you have any evidence that proves your hypothesis? Anything that undeniably shows you’re right and the rest of the astronomical community is wrong?”

Zworkyn shifted uneasily in his chair. “Well…”

“Undeniably,” Abbott emphasized.

“I think I can get it,” Gomez said.

“You can?”

His hands trembling excitedly, Gomez said, “If we can use Big Eye—”

“The lunar Farside telescope?”

“Yes. The moons that were ejected from Uranus’s orbit, if we can locate one of those moons, would that satisfy you?”

Abbott stared at the younger man for a long, silent moment. Then he murmured, “And the data shows that its current position agrees with the idea that it was tossed out of Uranus orbit only two million years ago.…”

Brightening, Gomez added, “If it was ejected during the Late Bombardment, it’ll be too far away even for Big Eye to pick out.”

“It’s a long shot,” Zworkyn murmured.

“But if it works, it’ll prove we’re right,” said Gomez. Then he turned to Abbott. “If we can get a few hours on Big Eye.”

Abbott started to frown, but eased into a slow grin instead. “I’ll get Big Eye for you… if you come up with a reasonable approximation of where your errant moon should be.”

Gomez nodded enthusiastically. “I will! Or bust a gut trying.”

TRIAL (2)

Kyle Umber wore his usual spotless white suit as he entered the conference room. Raven, Gomez and Waxman got to their feet as the minister went to his chair at the head of the oval table.

“Where’s Mr. Dacco?” Umber asked, as he sat down.

“He should be here,” Waxman said, his brows knitting. “He was released from the hospital earlier this morning.”

The conference room was small, almost intimate. Its walls were smooth, bare, gray floor-to-ceiling viewscreens, all blank at the moment. The ceiling glowed with glareless lighting.

Umber’s usually smiling face pulled into a frown. “We can’t hold this hearing without—”

The door that connected to the passageway outside slid open and Noel Dacco limped in. He leaned heavily on a cane and his head was swathed in bandages.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Dacco as he hobbled to the empty chair at the foot of the table.

Waxman asked, “How are you, Noel?”

With a rueful grin Dacco said, “I’m one of the walking wounded. The medics said my knee will heal in a few days. My concussion is only a slight one, nothing to worry about.”

“You could have been killed,” Waxman said.

Gomez, tense as a hunting cat, muttered to himself, “He should have been.”

From the head of the table, Umber said in a carefully modulated tone, “Now that we’re all here we can begin. We are here to determine what happened two nights ago that led to Mr. Dacco’s injuries.”

Waxman said, “Violent assault.”

Umber seemed to ignore the comment. Looking down the length of the conference table, he said, “Mr. Dacco, you are accusing Ms. Marchesi and Dr. Gomez of attacking you.”

Dacco nodded, wincing.

Turning to Raven, Umber continued, “And Ms. Marchesi, you are accusing Mr. Dacco of sexual assault.”

“He would have raped me if Tómas hadn’t intervened.”

Dacco objected, “We were engaging in some bedtime fun when he”—pointing at Gomez—“burst in and attacked me.”

“He was trying to rape me!” Raven cried.

“You can’t rape a whore,” said Dacco, smirking.

Tómas bolted up from his chair.

“Sit down!” Umber commanded, in a voice of sudden thunder.

Tómas stared at the minister, but dropped back onto his chair, his face red with anger.

Patiently, Umber listened first to Dacco’s version of the night’s happenings, then to Tómas’s.

Turning to Raven, he asked gently, “And what do you have to say, Ms. Marchesi?”

Her face still bearing a slightly bluish bruise, Raven replied, “I had dinner with Noel at Evan Waxman’s request. He said he would shut down the boutique Alicia Polanyi and I had just recently opened if I didn’t.”

“I never said that!” Waxman objected.

Ignoring the remark, Raven continued, “Noel walked home with me from the restaurant. I said goodnight to him out in the passageway, in front of my door. But he forced his way into my quarters, pawed me, tore my dress and carried me into the bedroom. I tried to fight him, but he was too strong, too powerful. If Tómas hadn’t come in, he would have raped me.”

Umber turned to Gomez. “You just happened to pop into her quarters.”

His voice trembling, Tómas answered, “Raven is my fiancée, sir.”

“Utter bilge!” Waxman exploded. Jabbing a finger toward Raven, he went on, “She’s got him wrapped around her little finger! He’ll say anything she tells him to!”

“Quiet, Evan,” Umber said. Returning his focus to Gomez, he asked, “What did you see once you entered Ms. Marchesi’s quarters?”

With a murderous glance at Dacco, Tómas replied, “He was on top of her, on the bed. She was struggling and shouting. I pulled him off her.”

“He dislocated my knee and she gave me a concussion,” Dacco grumbled.

Umber closed his eyes momentarily. When he opened them he looked down the table toward Dacco. “Unfortunately, we have no visual or even audio record of what took place inside Ms. Marchesi’s quarters.”

Waxman smiled slightly and cocked a brow at Dacco.

“But we do have this,” Umber continued. Raising his head slightly, he spoke to the sound system built into the ceiling, “Show passageway security camera record.”

The wall screen behind Waxman glowed to life. He and Dacco both turned in their chairs to look at it. On the other side of the table, Raven and Gomez also stared at the screen.

From a camera built into the ceiling of the passageway that went past Raven’s quarters they saw and heard Dacco and Raven.

The two of them walked up to Raven’s door. She turned toward him, her back to the closed door, got up on tiptoes and pecked at his lips.

“Goodnight, Noel.”

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You expect me to go all the way back to Haven II, alone and forlorn?”

“I really can’t ask you in.”

His smile fixed on his face, Dacco said, “You could if you wanted to.”

“Noel… I’m practically engaged to Tómas.”

“Practically.”

A youngish couple ambled past them, smiled hello, and continued on their way.

“Young love,” sighed Dacco, following them with his eyes.

“Goodnight, Noel,” Raven repeated, more firmly.

His smile disappeared. Looking down at her, Dacco said, “No, Raven. That’s not the way this evening is going to end.”

“Noel…”

He reached past her and tapped out her entry code on the door’s control panel. Almost silently, the door slid open. He pushed Raven into the apartment and stepped in after her. The door slid shut.

Umber’s face seemed set in stone. “She didn’t invite you into her quarters, Mr. Dacco.”

Dacco shrugged. “Not in so many words.…”

“Where did you get the door’s entry code?”

His eyes shifting momentarily to Waxman, Dacco admitted, “Evan told me.”

Waxman sat in silence, his eyes staring straight ahead.

Umber’s gaze was locked on Dacco’s face. He repeated, “Ms. Marchesi did not invite you into her quarters.”

Again Dacco muttered, “Not in so many words.”

Kyle Umber seemed to relax, although his facial expression remained grave. For long moments the conference room was absolutely silent, except for the faint whisper of the air circulating system.

At last Umber made up his mind. “Mr. Dacco, I personally find your conduct reprehensible. If I allowed this case to go before a jury I’m sure you would swiftly be found guilty of sexual assault and sentenced to our habitat’s prison. Therefore, I strongly recommend that you leave Haven on the next departing vessel. Return to Earth as quickly as you can, and try to mend your ways.”

Dacco stared back at the minister. “I’m supposed to interview Dr. Gomez.…”

“I don’t think that will be possible now,” Umber said, his voice cold and hard.

“Totally impossible,” Tómas confirmed, through gritted teeth.

“Go back to Earth,” Umber repeated. “Try to find God’s mercy and forgiveness.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You will be placed under arrest, put on trial, found guilty, and put in jail.”

Looking alarmed for the first time, Dacco glanced at Waxman, who refused to return his gaze.

“Well?” Umber demanded. “What is your decision?”

His shoulders sagging, Dacco said mildly, “I’ll leave. I’ll return to Earth.”

“Good,” said Umber. “And I’ll pray that God brings you to His path.” Glancing at the others around the small table, he added, “This hearing is ended. Praise God.”

Raven reached for Tómas’s hand as she echoed, “Praise God.”

WAXMAN, ABBOTT, AND DACCO

The Reverend Kyle Umber remained in his chair, hands folded as if in prayer, while the rest of the group got up from the conference table and headed for the door.

“Evan,” he said, as Waxman went past him. “Please wait. Sit down.”

Waxman hesitated, then turned around and took the chair at the minister’s left. The others stepped out into the passageway. The door slid shut.

For a nerve-tightening few seconds, Umber stared into Waxman’s face, as if searching for something, some sign, some expression.

Impatiently, Waxman said, “Well, what is it, Kyle?”

“You gave Dacco the combination to Ms. Marchesi’s door control?”

Waxman’s eyes shifted away from Umber’s face. “I don’t know. I may have.”

“You did.”

With a shrug, Waxman said, “What if I did? He was taking a whore to dinner. What happened afterward was only to be expected.”

“She’s not a whore. Not anymore.”

Waxman laughed. “She comes to my bed when I want her to.”

“Because you threaten to close the shop she and Ms. Polanyi have opened.”

“That’s just her excuse. She’s a whore, plain and simple.”

Umber stared at him, his face a frigid mask. Then, “I want your resignation, Evan. It pains me to say it, but I don’t see how we can continue with you heading this habitat’s administration.”

For a moment Waxman looked surprised. Then his face broke into a wide grin. “My resignation! You want me to resign. That’s rich. Kyle, you’re really very funny.”

“This is not a laughing matter.”

“Yes it is,” Waxman retorted. “It’s ridiculous. You think you have the power to fire me? That’s beyond ridiculous. It’s ludicrous. It’s—”

Calmly, Umber interrupted, “And this drug trafficking has to stop, as well. I won’t have it.”

“You won’t have it? Hah! You’ve got it, Kyle. You’re stuck with it! How do you think we keep this home for runaway bums and prostitutes running? By prayer? It’s the money we take in from Rust and other narcotics that keeps Haven afloat financially. Cut that off and you’ll be out of business in less than a year.”

“God will find a way to keep us going.”

“God’s already found the way, and I’m administrating it. Open your eyes, Kyle!”

“I won’t have it.”

“You’ve got it. And I’ve got the Council. Try to oust me and they’ll laugh in your face. Maybe they’ll vote to kick you out of Haven.”

“They wouldn’t do that.”

“Oh no? Don’t be so sure. You’re just a figurehead, Kyle. We could find another one easily enough.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Don’t tempt me.”

Umber sagged in his chair. Waxman stared at him, gloating, for a few moments, then got up and walked out of the conference room, leaving the minister sitting there, alone and silent.

Tómas Gomez walked Raven to her door. She tapped out the entry code on the door’s keyboard and gestured him to enter.

Glancing up at the passageway’s ceiling, Tómas said, “I think I’d better not, Raven.”

With a smile, she replied, “Not even for lunch?”

Obviously torn, Tómas said, “I have a lot of work ahead of me. An enormous amount.”

“You can tell me about it over lunch.”

He broke into a sheepish grin. “All right. But it’s all astronomical stuff.”

“Tell me about it. Teach me.”

Tómas nodded, smiled and followed Raven into her quarters.

The clock on Abbott’s desktop computer read 1:45 as Tómas came through the door. Vincente Zworkyn, sitting in front of Abbott’s desk, turned to greet the new arrival.

From his chair behind the desk, Abbott asked, “How’d the hearing go?”

Striding to the empty upholstered chair in front of the desk, Tómas answered, “Reverend Umber ordered Dacco to clear out.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Tómas replied. Hunching forward in his chair, he said, “Now let’s get down to work.”

With a nod, Abbott said, “You’ve put yourself into a lovely trap, my boy.”

“Trap?”

“Yes indeed. Vincente and I have been going over the available data, and it looks awfully slim.”

Zworkyn said, “The estimates of the moons ejected from orbits around Uranus are nothing more than that: estimates. They’re based on theoretical conjectures, not observational facts.”

Tómas nodded. “But they’re all we’ve got to go on.”

“Yes,” said Abbott. “And you want to use these guesses to—”

“They’re more than guesses,” Tómas objected. “They’re based on backtracking the orbits of Uranus’s existing moons.”

“Not much better than guesses,” Abbott said.

Zworkyn said nothing.

His back stiffening, Tómas said, “Well, it’s the best we’ve got. We’ll have to work with that.”

Smoothing his moustache with a finger, Abbott said, “I was afraid that would be your response.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Zworkyn offered.

“Not by much,” said Abbott.

Tómas asked, “How much time can we get on Big Eye?”

“That depends on when we want the time,” Abbott replied. “It varies from twelve to maybe twenty-four hours.”

“Hours?” Tómas gasped.

Abbott nodded. “Time is a precious commodity.”

“Hours,” said Zworkyn. “That means we’ll have to have a pretty damned precise estimate of the moon’s location before we ask the Big Eye people for some time.”

“Hours,” Tómas muttered. “Hours.”

Abbott commiserated. “It’s going to be like asking a blind man to find a penny in a dark alley.”

“Worse,” said Zworkyn.

Abbott shook his head. To Tómas he said, “You’re going to need an incredible amount of luck, my boy.”

“Luck, mi trasero,” Tómas growled. “We’re going to need to work our tails off. And then some.”

His healing leg propped up on the bed of his stateroom, Noel Dacco repeated to his visitor, “I don’t want any slip-ups.”

His visitor was wearing the sky-blue uniform of one of Haven’s security police, a sergeant’s chevrons on its sleeve, the name JACOBI lettered on an ID card pinned to his jacket’s chest. He nodded knowingly. “There won’t be any slip-ups. We’ve done this kind of thing before. Plenty times.”

“For what I’m paying you,” Dacco went on, his voice low and hard, “I want the job done right.”

Jacobi was slight of build, his face all bones and glittering eyes, his hair shaved down to a thin fuzz. “It’ll be done right. Just as you said.”

“Break his leg, fracture his skull. Maybe pop some ribs for good measure.”

“Look,” Sergeant Jacobi said, “my people know what they’re doing. We control our whole section of the habitat. Somebody gets out of line, we bring them back where they belong.”

Dacco stared at the man. “Make it look like an accident. But make sure he knows who did it to him.”

“He’ll know. I’ll tell him myself.”

“Good.”

The overhead speaker announced, “Departure in fifteen minutes. All visitors must return to the habitat.”

Jacobi got to his feet. “Gotta go.”

Dacco nodded. “His name is—”

“Tómas Gomez,” said Jacobi. “You already told me.”

“Let me know when it’s done.”

“Right.”

Jacobi left the narrow stateroom. Dacco stared at the closed door for long minutes. Give the snotty little bastard what he deserves, he told himself. Break him up real good.

NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK

“These are estimates, Tómas,” said Zworkyn, his voice edging close to exasperation. “Not much better than guesses.”

The two men were sitting side by side in Zworkyn’s quarters, staring at a wall screen that showed the planet Uranus surrounded by dozens of tiny moons.

Without taking his eyes from the screen, Gomez muttered, “When you’re given a lemon, make lemonade.”

Zworkyn sighed dramatically. “I just don’t see how you’re going to get anything useful from these wild-ass guesses.”

Gomez turned in his chair to look at the engineer. “They’re more than guesses, Vincente. They’re based on backtracking the orbits of the moons now in orbit around Uranus.”

“With error bars on the estimates that are bigger than the orbits themselves.”

“That’s what we have to work with. We’ll have to project these estimates and see where they lead us.”

Zworkyn shook his head. “You have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

Gomez smiled thinly. “Not much blood, but plenty of toil and sweat.”

Smiling back at the younger man, Zworkyn said, “I understand. You’re telling me to stop crabbing and get to work.”

“Sort of. The computers will do most of the actual work. All we have to do is to program them correctly.”

Zworkyn puffed out a sigh. “All right. Tell me what you need me to do.”

Sitting behind the boutique’s central counter, tapping out the command to close the shop’s blinds, Alicia asked Raven, “How’s Tómas?”

Raven was straightening up a rack of dresses that had been pawed through by several customers. She shrugged her slim shoulders. “I haven’t seen much of him this past week. He looks tired, but kind of happy.”

“Like I feel,” Alicia said, leaning back in her padded chair. It had been their busiest day ever; from the moment they’d opened that morning the shop had been filled with eager, chattering women fondling through the merchandise on display.

“How’d we do today?” Raven asked.

Pointing at her computer screen with a happy smile, Alicia said, “Best day ever. We’re going to need to restock our inventory sooner than we thought.”

“Wonderful!”

“But Tómas,” Alicia asked again. “How is he?”

“Like I said,” Raven replied. “Tired but happy.”

“Have you set a date for the wedding?”

Raven shook her head. “Not yet. He’s too busy with his astronomy work to even think about a wedding.”

“But you do plan to get married, don’t you?”

“He insists on it. Says we’re living in sin and he wants to make an honest woman of me.”

Alicia couldn’t help giggling. “He must have been raised Catholic.”

“What else?”

Suddenly Alicia’s expression changed. Her smile faded. Her eyes misted over.

Raven stared at her friend. “What’s the matter?”

Getting up from her chair, Alicia answered, “Nothing much. I’m jealous, that’s all.”

“Jealous?” Raven came away from the clothing rack, stepped around the counter and embraced her friend.

“Alicia, there must be at least three or four men to every woman in this habitat…”

“I know,” said Alicia. “But look at me. Skin and bones. A recovering drug addict. Who’d want me?”

Raven held her by both shoulders and stared into her eyes. “You’ve got good bones. And a pretty face. All you need is to put on a few kilos and you’ll be stunning.”

With a forlorn nod, Alicia said, “My parents never married. I don’t think their parents were married, either.” She shook her head. “But there it is. Wedding bells. I’m like a teenager.”

“It’s natural,” Raven said.

“But not for me.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Raven smiled at her friend. “You do have to make an effort. You can’t sit in this shop and then go straight home.”

Smiling back faintly, Alicia said, “And then get up the next morning and come straight to the shop.”

“We need to find somebody to make a foursome out of us.”

“I don’t want to tangle up your relationship with Tómas.”

“Nonsense. We’ll get started on this right away.”

“But—”

Raven placed a fingertip on Alicia’s lips. “No buts. You allowed me to join you here at the shop. The least I can do is help you to find a little happiness.”

REVENGE

“It’s useless,” Tómas moaned. “We’re using data that was assumed to be some four billion years old. Nothing more than an educated guess.”

Sitting across her kitchen’s narrow table from the astronomer, Raven asked, “The data isn’t good enough?”

Tómas shook his head wearily. “It’s all guesses. Theory. Hot air.”

“But you said you thought the moons were scattered two million years ago, not four billion.”

“That’s a guess, too. My guess.”

“Isn’t there any way to prove that?”

He stared at her. “Raven, what do you think I’ve been trying to do for the past two weeks? Zworkyn and I have been going through the numbers backward and forward and upside-down! Nothing works!”

“What about the big moon, Triton? Could you backtrack its orbit or something?”

“Pah! You don’t understand. You just don’t understand anything!” Tómas pushed his barely touched plate of dinner away and got to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Raven asked.

“Back to Zworkyn’s place. At least I can talk to him. He knows what we’re up against.”

And he stormed out of the kitchen, through the living room, and left Raven sitting at the table alone.

In Haven’s surveillance center, Sergeant Jacobi sat in front of a spare monitor screen. Three other men, all in security department uniforms, hunched behind him.

“There he is now,” said Jacobi, pointing to Tómas Gomez’s figure as the astronomer left Raven’s quarters.

The men nodded. “Shouldn’t be much trouble,” said one of them, a chunky, dour-faced Asian.

“Get him when he’s alone. No witnesses. Plain clothes.”

“Sure.” Straightening up, the Asian turned to his two companions. “Come on, our shift’s just about over. Let’s get out of these uniforms.”

“Hoodies,” said Jacobi. “The surveillance cameras won’t be able to identify you.”

The Asian nodded. He left with the two others following him.

Jacobi turned back to the monitor screen, a grim smile creasing his face. He whispered, “You’re in for a surprise, smart boy.”

As he stared at the computer’s latest imagery, Vincente Zworkyn shook his head.

Turning to Gomez, perched tensely beside him on the edge of the sofa, Zworkyn said mournfully, “Another dead end, Tómas.” He pointed at the screen. “See? The trajectory data disappears into the noise.”

Gomez nodded. “Let’s go on to the next one.”

“What for?” Zworkyn demanded, his voice rising. “We’ve tracked six of the moons and their paths all get swallowed up in gibberish. It’s hopeless!”

“We still have a half-dozen more moons to track.”

“And their trajectories will all end up in the noise, too! Admit it, we’re defeated.”

His jaw settling into a stubborn scowl, Gomez said, “The information is there, Vincente. I know it is.”

“No,” Zworkyn countered. “You think it is. You hope it is. That doesn’t mean that it’s really there.”

“It’s got to be there!”

“Why? Because you want it to be? The universe doesn’t play favorites, Tómas. You’ve got to know when to fold ’em, buddy.”

Never! Gomez said to himself. But he slowly got up from the sofa and, without a word, left Zworkyn’s quarters.

Out in the empty passageway, Tómas debated whether he should go to his own quarters or ask Raven if he could spend the night with her.

If she’d have me, he said to himself. I treated her pretty shabbily at dinner. He glanced at his wristwatch: almost midnight. She’s probably already asleep.

Still, he walked to the embarkation center where the shuttle was moored.

There was only one person at the center, an elderly white-bearded clerk sitting comfortably behind a semicircular desk, intently watching a motion picture of some sort on his desktop screen.

He looked up as Tómas approached. “Evenin’, Doc. Workin’ late again, huh.”

Tómas nodded and gave him a half-hearted smile.

“You’re in luck, Doc,” said the clerk. “We got one bird all primed and ready to go.”

“Thanks,” said Tómas. He ducked through the hatch and entered the shuttle’s passenger deck. It was empty, except for him.

“Bon voyage,” called the clerk.

Tómas made a half-hearted wave for him.

The shuttles were automated, no crew aboard. Tómas took a seat, the hatch swung shut, and within less than a minute he felt the subtle surge of acceleration. Five minutes later the shuttle made a little lurch that meant it had docked at Haven.

I wonder if Raven will open her door for me? Tómas asked himself as he stepped through the shuttle’s hatch and into the empty reception area. I wasn’t much fun for her at dinner.

Still, he walked through the reception area and out into the passageway that led to Raven’s quarters. The passageway was empty, except for a trio of kids in hoodies lounging a few dozen meters up ahead. Tómas paid them no mind.

Until, as he passed them, one half whispered, “Hello, Doc.”

Slowing his pace, Tómas asked, “Do I know you?”

“Naw. But we know you.”

They weren’t kids, Tómas realized as the three of them surrounded him. Two grabbed his arms and the third smashed a paralyzing blow to his nose. Tómas’s head snapped back. He struggled to free his arms. A punch to his kidney collapsed him and he sagged to the ground.

One of his assailants pulled a hammer from his jacket. “Compliments of Noel Dacco, pal.” He smashed Tómas’s left leg just below the kneecap. The pain was shattering. Then another crushing blow to his head and Tómas blacked out.

When he regained consciousness he was lying on the passageway floor, bleeding, his leg broken and his skull fractured. As if from an incredible distance he could hear the sound of a trio of footfalls running away.