Saturn (20 page)

About three years ago I wrote that to my great surprise I had discovered Saturn to be three-bodied: that is, it was an aggregate of three stars arranged in a straight line parallel to the ecliptic, the central star being much larger than the others. I believed them to be mutually motionless, for when I first saw them they seemed almost to touch, and they remained so for almost two years without the least change. It was reasonable to believe them to be fixed with respect to each other, since a single second of arc (a movement incomparably smaller than any other in even the largest orbs) would have become sensible in that time, either by separating or by completely uniting these stars. Hence I stopped observing Saturn for more than two years. But in the past few days I returned to it and found it to be solitary, without its customary supporting stars, and as perfectly round and sharply bounded as Jupiter. Now what can be said of this strange metamorphosis?

That the two lesser stars have been consumed, in the manner of the sunspots? Has Saturn devoured its children? Or was it indeed an illusion and a fraud with which the lenses of my telescope deceived me for so long
—
and not only me, but many others who have observed it with me? Perhaps the day has arrived when languishing hope may be revived in those who, led by the most profound reflections, once plumbed the fallacies of all my new observations and found them to be incapable of existing!

Galileo Galilei.

Letters on Sunspots.

1 December 1612

Manny Gaeta's rugged face appeared on Holly's desktop screen.

"Hi," he said, grinning. "When do you close up shop?" He called her once a week, as punctually as if he had ticked it off on his calendar. Holly kept putting him off. She had no desire to complicate her life. Since Don Diego's death Holly had buried herself in work, running the naming contests, keeping the office functioning despite Morgenthau's utter indifference to departmental duties. Her nights she spent thinking about Don Diego, going over the medical record time and again, picturing in her mind every detail of the scene down at the culvert when she first came across the old man's dead body. It wasn't an accident, Holly convinced herself. It couldn't be an accident. There's no evidence of any physical trauma: His heart was sound, he didn't have a stroke, he didn't even have a bump on his head or a bruise anywhere on his body. But he drowned. How? Why?

She hardly saw anyone except Kris Cardenas now and then. They had lunch together every few days. Holly asked Kris to help her go over Don Diego's medical records. Cardenas looked them over and then told Holly she could find nothing amiss.

"You've got to accept the fact that people die, Holly," Cardenas told her over lunch in the bustling cafeteria. "It doesn't happen often, but it happens. People die."

"It doesn't make any sense," Holly insisted.

"Give it up, Holly," Cardenas said gently. "He was a sweet old man, but he's dead and you can't bring him back."

"Someone killed him."

Cardenas's eyes went wide. "Murder?"

Holly nodded, knowing she was being cosmically stupid about this but unable to back away from it.

"I think you need to get your mind off this, kid," said Cardenas. "You're getting ... well, you're getting almost paranoid about it."

"But he couldn't have just walked down the embankment and stuck his head in the water and drowned. That's impossible!"

"Get off it, Holly. This is consuming too much of your time and energy. Go out tonight and have a good time. Take your mind off it. Have some fun for yourself."

Holly saw that Cardenas was in earnest. "Momma Kris," she murmured. And smiled.

"There must be plenty of young men who'd be happy to take you out for the evening," said Cardenas.

Trying to push Don Diego out of her mind, Holly replied, "Manny Gaeta's been calling me."

"There you go. He's a chunk of Grade-A beef."

Holly nodded.

"Do you like him?"

"I went to bed with him once," Holly blurted.

"Really?"

"That night he rescued the injured astronaut."

"Oh yeah," Cardenas said, remembering. "He must've been on an emotional high. Pumped up with adrenaline."

"I guess."

"And testosterone."

Despite herself, Holly laughed. "Plenty of that."

"And he's been calling you?"

"Uh-huh. But I don't want to get involved with him. I don't think I do, but if I go out with him I guess he'll expect me to do it again."

Cardenas glanced down at her salad, then said, "You don't have to do what he expects. You can have dinner and nothing more. Just don't give him the wrong signals."

"Signals?"

"Be pleasant, but no touchy-feely."

"I don't know if that would work," Holly said uncertainly.

"Meet him at the restaurant. Stay in public places. Walk yourself home."

"I guess."

"Unless you
want
to go to bed with him again."

"I don't! Well, not really. It's like, I want him to like me, but not too much."

With a shake of her head, Cardenas dug her fork into the salad. "Men aren't subtle, Holly. You have to set the rules clearly. Otherwise there'll be a problem."

"See," Holly confessed, feeling confused, "I really want Malcolm to notice me. I mean, he's the reason I signed up for this habitat in the first place but I've hardly even seen him in the past few months and Manny's flaming nice and all but I don't want to get myself involved and..." She didn't know what more to say.

"Malcolm?" Cardenas asked. "You mean Dr. Eberly?"

"The chief of human resources, yes."

Cardenas looked impressed. "You're interested in him."

"But he's not interested in me." Holly suddenly felt close to tears.

"Isn't that always the way?"

"I don't know what I should do."

Cardenas glanced around the busy cafeteria, then said firmly, "Have as much fun as you can with the stunt stud. Why not?"

"You think it'll make Malcolm jealous?"

With a huff that was almost a grunt, Cardenas replied, "No, I don't think he'll pay any attention to it. But why shouldn't you have some fun? He seems to be a nice guy."

"F'sure."

"Then have some fun with him while you can. He'll be leaving for Earth after he's done his stunt, so you won't have to worry about a long-term commitment."

"But I
want
a long-term commitment," Holly blurted, surprising herself. She immediately added, "I mean, maybe not right now, and not with Manny, I guess, but sometime."

"With Eberly?"

"Yes!"

Cardenas shook her head. "Good luck, kid."

Nadia Wunderly had dieted stringently, exercised regularly, and lost four kilos. Her tireless work on her research proposal had paid off, too: Dr. Urbain had approved her study of Saturn's rings. His approval was reluctant, she knew; Wunderly was the only scientist on the staff interested in the rings. All the others were focused on Titan, as was Urbain himself.

She was in Urbain's office, pleading for an assistant and some time on the habitat's major telescope.

"I can't do it all by myself," she said, trying to walk the fine line between requesting help and admitting defeat. "My proposal called for two assistants, if you remember."

"I remember perfectly well," Urbain said stiffly. "We simply do not have the manpower to spare."

The chief of the Planetary Sciences Department sat tensely behind his desk as if it were a barricade to protect him against the onslaughts of revolutionaries. Yet all Wunderly wanted was a little help.

"The main telescope is completely engaged in observing Titan," Urbain went on, as if pronouncing a death sentence. "This is an opportunity that we must not fail to use to our advantage."

"But the rings are
—
"

"Of secondary importance," said Urbain.

"I was going to say, unique," Wunderly finished.

"So are the life-forms on Titan."

Wondering how to convince him, she said, "I wouldn't need much time on the 'scope. An hour or so each day to compare
—
"

"An hour?" Urbain looked shocked. His trim little dark beard bristled. "Impossible."

"But we should use this time as we approach the planet to do long-term studies of the ring dynamics. It'd be criminal not to."

Nervously running a hand over his slicked-back hair, Urbain said, "Dr. Wunderly, this habitat will be in orbit around Saturn for many, many years. Indefinitely, in fact. You will have ample opportunity to study the dynamics of your rings."

He almost sneered at those last words. Wunderly knew that behind her back the other scientists called her "the Lord of the Rings," despite the gender inaccuracy.

She pulled out her trump card. "I thought that if we could study the rings during the months of our approach, do a synoptic study, a thorough one, then we could publish our findings before we established orbit around Saturn, before the university teams fly out to take over our research work. With your name as the lead investigator, of course."

Instead of snatching at the bait she offered, Urbain stiffened even more at the mention of the university teams that would supercede him.

Visibly trembling, his face ashen, he said in a low, hard voice, "Every resource I have at my disposal will be used to study Titan. All my other staff personnel are working overtime, working nights as well as days, to complete the rover vehicle that we will send to Titan's surface. That moon bears life! Unique forms of life. You are the only member of my staff who is not working on Titan, you and your precious rings! I leave you undisturbed to study them. Be grateful for that and don't bother me again with demands that I cannot meet."

The threat was hardly veiled, Wunderly realized. Leave him alone or he'll put me to work on Titan, along with everybody else.

She pushed herself to her feet, feeling defeated, empty, helpless. And angry. The man's fixated on almighty Titan, she grumbled to herself as she left Urbain's office. He's so doggone narrow-minded he could look through a keyhole with both eyes.

Precisely at 17:00 hours, Gaeta rapped once on the frame of Holly's open door and stepped into her office.

"Quitting time," he announced. "Come on, I've got something to show you."

Despite her inner turmoil, Holly laughed and told her computer she was leaving for the day. The holographic image blinked once and winked off.

"What's this all about?" Holly asked as she let him lead her out of the building.

"I thought you'd enjoy a good long look at where we're going," Gaeta said.

"Saturn?"

"Yeah. You can see it pretty easy now with the naked eye."

"Really?"

He chuckled. "Just like I thought. You haven't taken a peek at it, have you?"

"Not for a while," Holly admitted.

He had a pair of electrobikes waiting outside the office building. Holly followed him, pedaling along the winding bike path across the park, through the orchard and farmlands, out toward the endcap. They left the bikes in racks that stood at the path's terminus and headed up a narrow footpath, through flowering shrubbery and a few young trees.

"I'll never get used to this," Gaeta muttered.

"What?"

"The way gravity works in here. We're walking uphill but it feels like we're going downhill."

Holly put on a superior air. " 'The habitat's spin-induced gravity,' " she quoted from the orientation manual, " 'decreases as one approaches the habitat's centerline.' Which is what we're doing now."

"Yeah," he said, sounding unconvinced.

At last they came to a small building with a single door marked TO
ENDCAP OBSERVATION
UNIT. Inside, a flight of dimly lit metal stairs led downward. As their softboots padded quietly on the steel treads, Holly realized that it felt as if they were climbing up, not down.

"We're not in Oz anymore," Gaeta muttered as they made their way along the shadowy stairwell. His voice echoed slightly off the metal walls.

"Oz?" Holly asked.

"It's an old story. I'll get the vid beamed up from Earthside for you."

Holly really didn't understand what he was talking about. The stairs ended and they walked along a narrow passageway, a tunnel lined with pipes and conduits overhead and along both walls. Although the tunnel looked straight and level, it felt as if they were trudging up an incline. At last they reached a hatch marked
endcap observation unit: use caution in entering.
Gaeta tapped on the entry pad and the hatch sighed open.

An automated voice said, "Caution, please. You are about to enter a rotating enclosure. Please proceed with care."

An open cubicle stood on the other side of the hatch. Its walls, floor, and ceiling were softly cushioned.

Gaeta laughed as they stepped in. "Great. They finally got me into a padded cell."

"Rotation beginning," announced the computerized voice.

Holly suddenly felt light-headed, almost woozy.

"It's like an amusement park ride," Gaeta said, grasping Holly around the waist.

The computer voice announced, "Ten seconds to hatch opening. Use caution, please."

The padded wall they were facing slid open and Gaeta, still holding Holly by the waist, pulled her through. Holly gasped and forgot the slightly wobbly feeling in her legs. A million stars were spread across her view, hard unblinking pinpoints of light, the eyes of heaven staring back at her.

"Cosmic," she breathed.

"That's a good word for it," Gaeta said in a hushed voice.

Then Holly realized that someone was already there in the dimly lit blister, her back to them, staring out at the stars. She looked short and stocky; in the muted light the color of her spiky hair was difficult to determine; Holly thought it might have been red.

The woman stirred as if coming out of a trance, turned slightly and whispered, "Hi."

"Hello," Holly whispered back. It was like being in a cathedral; nobody raised her voice.

Gaeta said softly, "This whole compartment counter-rotates against the habitat's spin, so you can see everything without having it revolve all around you."