Saturn (4 page)

Eberly chose to stand with his back to the oblong window of the observation blister. Beyond its thick quartz the stars were swinging by slowly as the mammoth habitat revolved lazily along its axis. The Moon would slide into view, so close that one could see the smoothed launching pads of Armstrong Spaceport, blackened by decades of rocket blasts, and the twin humps of Selene's two buried public plazas, as well as the vast pit where workers were constructing a third. Some claimed they could even see individual tractors and the cable cars speeding along their overhead lines to outlying settlements such as Hell Crater and the Farside Observatory.

Eberly never looked out if he could help it. The sight of the Moon, the stars, the universe constantly swinging past his eyes made him sick to his stomach. He kept his back to it. Besides, his work, his future, his destiny was
inside
the habitat, not out there.

Standing before him, facing the window with apparently no ill effect, stood a short heavyset woman wearing a gaudy finger-length tunic of many shades of red and orange over shapeless beige slacks. Sparkling rings adorned most of her fingers and more jewelry decorated her wrists, earlobes, and double-chinned throat. Ruth Morgenthau was one of the small cadre of people the Holy Disciples had planted in the habitat. She had not been coerced into this one-way mission to Saturn, Eberly knew; she had volunteered.

Beside her was a lean, short, sour-faced man wearing a shabby pseudoleather jacket of jet black.

"Malcolm," said Morgenthau, gesturing with a chubby hand, "may I introduce Dr. Sammi Vyborg." She turned slightly. "Dr. Vyborg, Malcolm Eberly."

"I am very pleased to meet you, sir," said Vyborg, in a reedy, nasal voice. His face was little more than a skull with skin stretched over it. Prominent teeth. Narrow slits of eyes.

Eberly accepted his extended hand briefly. "Doctor of what?" he asked.

"Education. From the University of Wittenberg."

The ghost of a smile touched Eberly's lips. "Hamlet's university."

Vyborg grinned toothily. "Yes, if you can believe Shakespeare. There is no mention of the Dane in the university's records. I looked."

Morgenthau asked, "The records go back that far?"

"They are very sketchy, of course."

"I'm not interested in the past," Eberly said. "It's the future that I am working for."

Vyborg nodded. "So I understand."

Eberly glanced sharply at Morgenthau, who said hastily, "I have explained to Dr. Vyborg that our task is to take charge of the habitat's management, once we get underway."

"Which will be in two hours," Vyborg added.

Eberly focused his gaze on the little man, asking, "I have seen to it that you are highly placed in the Communications Department. Can you run the entire department, if and when I ask you to?"

"There are two very prominent persons above me in the department," Vyborg replied. "Neither of whom are Believers."

"I know the organization chart!" Eberly snapped. "I drafted it myself. I had no choice but to accept those two secularists above you, but
you are
the one I have chosen to run the department. Can you do it?"

"Of course," Vyborg answered without hesitation. "But what will become of my superiors?"

"You can't ship them home, once we get started," Morgenthau pointed out, a smile dimpling her cheeks.

"I will take care of them," Eberly said firmly, "when the proper moment comes. For now, I want to know that I can rely on you."

"You can," said Vyborg.

"Completely and utterly. I want total loyalty."

"You will have it," Vyborg said firmly. Then he smiled again and added, "If you can make me head of communications."

"I will."

Morgenthau smiled, satisfied that these two men could work together and further the cause that she had given her life to serve.

Holly was getting frantic. She had searched everywhere for Malcolm, from his austere little office to the other cubbyholes in the human resources section, then down the corridors in the other sections of the administration building. No sign of him anywhere.

He'll miss the breakout! she kept telling herself. She had it all planned out, she would take Malcolm to the lakeside site down at the edge of the village. Professor Wilmot and his managers had arranged more than a dozen spots around the habitat where people could gather and watch the breakout ceremonies on big vid screens that had been set up out in the open. The lakeside was the best spot, Holly thought, the prettiest and closest to their offices.

But Malcolm was nowhere to be found. Where could he be? What's he doing? He'll miss everything! People were streaming along the paths toward the assembly areas where the big screens had been set up, couples and larger groups, chatting, smiling, nodding hello to her. Holly ignored them all, searching for Eberly.

And then she saw him, striding along the path from the woods with that overweight Morgenthau woman beside him. Holly frowned. He's spending a lot of time with her, she thought. But a smile broke across her face as she watched them: Morgenthau was puffing hard, trying to keep up with Malcolm's longer strides. Serves her right, Holly thought, as she started down the path to intercept them and bring Malcolm over to the shore of the lake. She wanted him standing beside her as the habitat started its long flight to Saturn. Nobody else, she told herself. He's got to stand with me.

Sitting up in bed, Pancho Lane stared unhappily at the hologram image of
Goddard
hanging in space. It appeared as if one half of her bedroom had disappeared, to be replaced by the darkness of space with a miniature habitat floating in the middle of the scene, revolving slowly. The Moon edged into view, pockmarked and glowing brightly. Pancho could see the laser beacon that marked the top of Mt. Yeager, just above Selene, not all that far from her own bedroom.

She's really doing it, Pancho grumbled to herself. Sis is really going off in that danged tin can, getting as far away from me as she can get. I saved her life, I broke my butt paying her medical expenses and the cryonics and all that, I nursed her and taught her and wiped her shitty ass, and now she goes traipsing off into the wild black yonder. That's gratitude. That's a sister's love.

Yet she couldn't work up real anger. She knew that Susie needed to break away, needed to start her own life. Independently. Every kid's got to go out on her own, sooner or later. Hell, I did myself when Susie was just a preteen.

Not Susie, she remembered. She calls herself Holly now. Got to remember that when I call her. Holly.

Well, if things don't work out for her I'll send a torch ship out to bring her home. All she's got to do is ask. I'll fly out to her myself, by damn.

The holographic view of
Goddard
winked out, replaced by a life-sized image of Professor Wilmot. To Pancho, watching from her bed, it seemed as if the man's head and shoulders hovered in midair across her bedroom.

"Today we embark on an unprecedented voyage of discovery and exploration," Wilmot began, in a slow, sonorous voice.

"Blah, blah, blah," Pancho muttered. She muted the sound with a voice command and then ordered her phone to get her security chief. I just hope Wendell got somebody really good to keep an eye on Sis. If he hasn't I'll toss him out on his butt, no matter how good he is in bed.

"Vyborg makes a good addition to our cadre," Morgenthau said as she walked beside Eberly, heading back to the lakeside village.

Eberly brushed at a brilliant monarch butterfly that fluttered too close to his face. "He's ambitious, that's clear enough."

"There's nothing wrong with ambition," said Morgenthau.

"As long as he can follow orders."

"He will, I'm sure."

Inwardly, Eberly had his doubts. But I've got to work with the material at hand, he told himself. Morgenthau has practically no ambition, no drive for self-aggrandizement. That makes her a perfect underling. Vyborg is something else. I'll have to watch him closely. And my back, as well.

To Morgenthau he said, "Information is the key to power. With Vyborg in communications we'll have access to all the surveillance cameras in the habitat."

"And he could help us to tap into the phones, as well," Morgenthau added.

"I want more than that. I want every apartment bugged with surveillance cameras. Secretly, of course."

"Every apartment? That's... it's a tremendous task."

"Find a way to do it," Eberly snapped.

Holly tried not to run, she didn't want to appear
that
anxious, but the closer she got to Eberly and Morgenthau, the faster she trotted. As she approached, she wondered why Malcolm had chosen to be with Morgenthau. She's not much to look at, Holly giggled to herself. Really, she's
too much
to look at. And all decked out like she's going to some wild-ass party. She'd be pretty if she dropped twenty or thirty kilos.

Eberly looked up and recognized her.

"Malcolm!" Holly called, slowing to a walk. "Come on! The ceremonies've started already. You're gonna miss it all!"

"Then I'll miss it," Eberly said severely. "I have work to do. I can't waste my time on ceremonies."

He walked right past her, with the Morgenthau woman slogging along beside him. Holly stood there with her mouth hanging open, fighting desperately to keep from crying.

Hardly anyone aboard
Goddard
knew about the "bridge." Actually, the massive habitat's navigation and control center was in a compact pod mounted on the outside skin of the huge cylinder like a blister on a slowly-rotating log.

Captain Nicholson's title was an honorific. She had skippered spacecraft out to the Asteroid Belt and had once even commanded a trio of ships on a resupply mission for the scientific bases on Mars.

Of the four-person crew that ran the navigation and control center, Nicholson, her first mate, and her navigator intended to return to Earth as soon as they had established
Goddard
in orbit at Saturn. Only the systems engineer, Ilya Timoshenko, had signed on for the mission's full duration. In fact, Timoshenko never expected to see Earth again.

Samantha Nicholson did not look like a veteran spacecraft commander. She was a petite woman who had allowed her hair to go silvery white. The descendent of a long line of shipping magnates, she was the first of her family to heed the call of space, rather than the sea. Her father disowned her for her stubborn, independent choice; her mother cried bitterly the first time she left Earth. Nicholson consoled her mother and told her father she neither needed nor wanted the family fortune. She never returned to Earth, but made Selene her home instead.

Timoshenko admired the captain. She was capable, intelligent, even-handed whenever a dispute arose, and when necessary she could peel four layers of skin off a man with language that would have made her mother faint.

"X minus thirty seconds," said the computer's synthesized voice.

Timoshenko eyed his console. Every single icon was in the green.

"Ignite the thrusters on my mark," said Captain Nicholson.

"Roger," the first mate replied.

Normally Timoshenko would have sneered at her insistence on human control. The four of them knew perfectly well that the computers actually ran the propulsion system. This lumbering oversized sewer pipe would be pushed out of lunar orbit at precisely the right instant even if none of them were on the bridge. But the captain kept the old traditions, and even Timoshenko
—
normally as dour and scornful as a haughty, patronizing academic
—
respected the old lady for it.

The computer said, "Ignition in five seconds, four ... three ... two..."

"Fire thrusters," the captain said.

Timoshenko grinned as his console showed the computer command and the human action taking place at the same instant.

The thrusters fired.
Goddard
broke out of lunar orbit and began its long flight path to the planet Saturn.

Even with Duncan Drive fusion engines, an object as massive as the
Goddard
habitat does not flit through the solar system the way passenger carriers or even automated ore haulers do.

Part of the problem is sheer mass. At more than a hundred thousand tons, the habitat is equal to a whole fleet of interplanetary ships. To push the habitat to an acceleration of even one-tenth g would require enormous thrust and therefore a bankrupting amount of fusion fuel.

Yet the major problem is the spin-induced gravity inside the habitat. A major acceleration from rocket thrust would turn the world inside the cylinder topsy-turvy. Instead of feeling a gentle Earthlike pull "downward" the inhabitants would also sense an acceleration pushing them in the direction of the rocket thrust. Life within the habitat would become difficult, even weird. It would feel to the inhabitants as if they were constantly struggling uphill, or traipsing downhill, even when walking on normal-looking flat ground.

So
Goddard
accelerated away from the Moon at a leisurely pace, a minute fraction of a g. The force went unnoticed by the ten thousand inhabitants, although it was closely monitored by the habitat's small crew of propulsion engineers.

It would take fourteen months to reach the vicinity of Jupiter, giant of the solar system. There
Goddard
would replenish its fusion fuels, isotopes of hydrogen and helium delved from Jupiter's deep, turbulent atmosphere by automated skimmers operated from the space station in orbit around the enormous planet. Jupiter's massive gravity would also impart a slight extra boost to the habitat as it swung past.

Eleven months after the Jupiter encounter,
Goddard
would slip into orbit around ringed Saturn. By then, more than two years after departing the Earth/Moon vicinity, anthropologist James Wilmot expected the subjects of his experiment would be ready to form the political systems and personal bonds of a new society. He wondered what form that society would take.

Malcolm Eberly already knew.