Saturn (5 page)

The great advantage of having a scientist in charge of the habitat, thought Malcolm Eberly, is that scientists are so trustingly naïve. They depend on honesty in their work, which leads them to behave honestly even outside their sphere of expertise. In turn, this makes them believe that those they associate with are honest, as well.

Eberly laughed aloud as he reviewed his plans for the day. It's time to start things in motion. Now that we're on our way, it's time to start these people looking to me as their natural leader.

And who better to begin with than Holly? he thought. My newborn. She had been sulky, pouting, since he had been so curt with her at the breakout ceremony. He saw that his morning's messages included one from her; she had called him twice yesterday, as well. Ah well, he told himself, time to make her smile again.

He told the phone to locate her. The holographic image that appeared above his desktop showed that she was in her office, working.

As soon as she recognized Eberly's face her expression lit up with hope, expectation.

"Holly, if you have a moment, could you come to my office, please?" he asked pleasantly.

She said, "I'll be there f-t-l!"

Eff-tee-ell? Eberly wondered as her image winked out. What could
—
Ah! Faster than light. One of her little bits of slang.

He heard her tap on his door, light and timid.

Let her wait, he said to himself. Just long enough to make her worry a bit. He sensed her fidgeting uncertainly outside his door.

When at last she tapped again he called, "Enter."

Holly wasn't pouting as she stepped into Eberly's office. Instead, she looked apprehensive, almost afraid.

Eberly got to his feet and gestured to the chair in front of his desk. "Sit down, Holly. Please."

She perched on the chair like a little bird ready to take flight at the slightest danger. Eberly sat down and said nothing for a few moments, studying her. Holly was wearing a forest green tunic over form-fitting tights of a slightly lighter green. No rings or other jewelry except for the studs in her earlobes. Diamonds, he saw. Since the Asteroid Belt had been opened to mining, gemstones were becoming commonplace. At least she's taken off that silly decal on her forehead, Eberly noted. She's rather attractive, really, he thought. Some men find dark skin exotic. Not much of a figure, but she's got good long legs. Should I find someone to get her involved romantically? No, he concluded, I want her attention focused on me, for now.

He made a slow smile for her. "I hurt you, didn't I?"

Holly's eyes went wide with surprise.

"I didn't mean to. Sometimes I become so wrapped up in my work that I forget the people around me have feelings." With a sigh, he continued, "I'm truly sorry. It was thoughtless of me."

Her expression bloomed like a flower in the sunshine. "I shouldn't be such a pup, Malcolm. I just couldn't help it. I wanted to be beside you at the ceremony and
—
"

"And I let you down."

"No!" she said immediately. "It was my own dimdumb fault. I should've known better. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cause you any trouble."

Eberly leaned back in his comfortable chair and gave her his patient fatherly smile. How easily she's maneuvered, he thought. She's apologizing to me.

"I mean," Holy was prattling on, "I know you've got lots to do and all the responsibilities for the whole habitat's human resources and all that and I shouldn't have expected you to take time out and stand around watching the ridic' ceremonies with me like some schoolkid at commencement or something...."

Her voice wound down like a toy running out of battery power.

Eberly replaced his smile with a concerned expression. "Very well, Holly. It's over and done with. Forgotten."

She nodded happily.

"I have an assignment for you, if you can find the time to work on it."

"I'll make the time!"

"Wonderful." He smiled again, the pleased, grateful smile.

"What's the assignment?"

He called up the habitat's ground plan and projected it against the bare wall. Holly saw the villages, the parks and farmlands and orchards, the offices and workshops and factory complexes, all neatly laid out and connected by paths for pedestrians and electric motorbikes.

"This is our home now," Eberly said. "We're going to be living here for at least five years. Some of us
—
many of us
—
will spend the rest of our lives here."

Holly agreed with a nod.

"Yet we have no names for anything. Nothing but the engineers' designations. We can't go on calling our home towns 'Village A' and 'Village B' and so forth."

"I click," Holly murmured.

"The orchards should have names of their own. The hills and the woods
—
everything. Who wants to go shopping in 'Retail Complex Three'?"

"Yeah, but how will we pick names for everything?"

"I won't," Eberly said. "And you won't, either. This is a task that must be done by the residents of the habitat. The people themselves must choose the names they want."

"But how
—
"

"A contest," he answered before she could complete her question. "Or rather, a series of contests. The residents of each village will have a contest to name that village. The workers in a factory will have a contest to name their factory. It will engage everyone's attention and keep them busy for months."

"Cosmic," Holly breathed.

"I need someone to work out the rules and organize each individual contest. Will you do this for me?"

"Absotively!"

Eberly allowed himself to chuckle at her enthusiasm. He went on, "Later, you'll have to form committees to judge the names entered and count the votes."

"Wow!" Holly was almost trembling with anticipation, he could see.

"Good. I want you to make this your top priority. But tell no one about this until we're ready to announce it to the general populace. I don't want knowledge of this leaking out prematurely."

"I'll keep it to myself," Holly promised.

"Fine." Eberly leaned back in his chair, satisfied. Then he cocked an eye at her and said, "I notice that you called me several times. What is it you wanted to talk to me about?"

Holly blinked as if suddenly shaken awake from a dream. "See you? Oh, yeah. It's prob'ly nothing much. Just some details, not a big deal, really, I guess."

Leaning slightly forward, Eberly thought that her persistent calls were merely a thinly-disguised attempt to get to see him. He rested his arms on his desk. "What is it, then?"

With a concerned knitting of her brows, Holly said, "Well... I was running routine checks on the dossiers of the last batch of personnel to come aboard and I found some discrepancies in a few of them."

"Discrepancies?"

She nodded vigorously. "References that don't check out. Or in-completed forms."

"Anything serious?" he asked.

"Ruth Morgenthau, for example. She's only got one position filled in on the prior-experience section of her application."

"Really?"

"It's a wiz of a good one," Holly admitted. "Chief of administrative services for the Amsterdam office of the Holy Disciples."

Eberly smiled faintly. "That
is
rather impressive, don't you think?"

"Uh-huh, but it's only one and the form calls for at least three."

"I wouldn't worry about it."

She nodded. "Kay, no prob. But there's one guy, he claims references from several universities but I can't find any mention of him in any of their records."

"False references?" Eberly felt a pang of alarm. "Who is this person?"

Holly pulled a palmcomp from her tunic pocket and pointed it at the wall opposite the one showing the habitat's layout. She glanced at Eberly, silently asking permission. He nodded curtly.

A human resources dossier appeared on the wall. Eberly felt himself frowning as he saw the name and photo at its top: Sammi Vyborg.

Scrolling down to the references section of the dossier, Holly highlighted the names of five university professors.

"Far's I can dig, he never attended any of those schools," she said.

Eberly leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, hiding his intense displeasure, thinking furiously. "Have you contacted any of those professors?"

"Not yet. I wanted you to see this before I go any deeper."

"Good. Thank you for bringing this to my attention."

"I can query each of the profs. But what do we do with Vyborg if they don't back him?"

Eberly spread his hands. "Obviously we can't let the man remain in the post he's been assigned to.
If
he has falsified his references."

"We can ship him back Earthside when we refuel at Jupiter, I guess," Holly mused. "But what do we do with him till then? Put him to work in the farms or something?"

"Or something," Eberly temporized.

"Kay. I'll query the
—
"

"No," he said sharply. "I will contact these professors. Each one of them. Myself."

"But you've got so much to do."

"It's my responsibility, Holly. Besides, they're much more likely to respond quickly to a query from the chief of human resources than from one of the chief's assistants."

Her face fell briefly, but she quickly brightened. "Yeah, guess so."

"Besides, you're going to be very busy arranging the contests."

She grinned at that.

"I'll take care of it myself," Eberly repeated.

"Doesn't seem fair," she murmured. "I'm sorry I brought it to you. I should have done it without bothering you."

"No, Holly. This is something that should have been brought to my attention. You did the right thing."

"Kay," she said, getting slowly to her feet. "If you say so. Still..."

"Thank you for bringing this to me," Eberly said. "You've done a fine job."

She beamed. "Thanks!"

"I'm sure it's just a mistake or a misunderstanding somewhere along the line. I know Vyborg personally. He's a good man."

"Oh! I didn't know
—
"

"All the more reason to check this out thoroughly," Eberly said sternly. "There can be no personal favoritism here."

"No, of course not."

"Thank you, Holly," he said again.

She went to the door, slowly, as if reluctant to leave his presence. He smiled at her and she finally left his office, sliding the door shut quietly.

Eberly stared at the dossier still on his wallscreen, the false references still highlighted.

Idiot! he fumed. There was no need for Vyborg to pad his dossier. He's let his ego override his judgment.

Still, Eberly said to himself, a mistake like this gives me a little leverage over him. Something to make him more dependent on me. All to the good.

Now to correct his folder. And he began dictating to his computer the glowing references from each of the university professors that would be placed in Vyborg's dossier.

"Come on," groused Manuel Gaeta, "there's gotta be a way. There's
always
a way, Fritz."

Friederich Johann von Helmholtz got up from his knees and drew himself to his full height. Despite his imposing name, he was a short, slim, almost delicately-built man
—
and the best technician in the solar system, as far as Gaeta was concerned. At the moment, however, there was precious little good will flowing between them.

Fritz's burr-cut head barely rose to Gaeta's shoulders. Standing beside the muscular stuntman, the technician looked almost like a skinny child. Both of them were dwarfed by the massive cermet-clad suit standing empty in the middle of the equipment bay.

"Of course there is a way," Fritz said, in precisely clipped English. "You get into the suit. We seal it up. Then we go through the sterilization procedure that Professor Wilmot and Dr. Urbain insist upon, including the gamma-ray bath. And then you die."

Gaeta huffed mightily.

Fritz stood beside the empty suit, his arms folded implacably across his slim chest.

"Jesoo, Fritz," Gaeta muttered, "those Astro Corp suits paid half a bill for me to be the first man to set foot on Titan. You know what they'll do to me if I don't do it? If I don't even
try
'cause some tightass scientists are worried about the bugs down there?"

"I would imagine they will want their half billion returned," Fritz said calmly.

"And we've already spent a big chunk of it." Fritz shrugged.

"They'll take it outta my hide," Gaeta said, frowning with worry. "Plus, nobody'll ever back me for another stunt. I'll be finished."

"Or perhaps dead." Fritz said it without the faintest flicker of a smile.

"You're a big help,
amigo."

"I am a technician. I am not your financial advisor or your bodyguard."

"You're
un fregado,
a cold-blooded machine, that's what you are."

"Insulting me will not solve your problem."

"So what? You're not solving my problem. Nobody's solving my problem!"

Fritz pursed his lips momentarily, a sign that he was thinking. "Perhaps ... no, that probably would not work."

"Perhaps what?" Gaeta demanded.

Reaching up to pat the bulky suit on its armored upper arm, Fritz mused, "The problem is to insert you into the suit after it has been sterilized without contaminating it."

"Yeah. Right."

"Perhaps we could wrap you in a sterile envelope of some sort. A plastic shroud that has been decontaminated."

"You think?"

Cocking his head to one side, Fritz added, "The problem then becomes to get you sealed into the shroud without contaminating it."

"Same problem as getting into the
maldito
suit in the first place." Gaeta broke into a string of Spanish expletives.

"But if we did it outside the habitat, in space," Fritz said slowly, as if piecing his ideas together as he spoke, "then perhaps between the ambient ultraviolet flux out there and the hard vacuum the contamination requirements could be satisfied."

Gaeta's dark brows shot up. "You think?"

Fritz shrugged again. "Let me run some numbers through the computer. Then I will talk with Urbain's planetary protection team."

Gaeta broke into a grin and thumped Fritz on the shoulder hard enough to make the smaller man totter. "I knew you could do it,
amigo!
I knew it all along."