David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

Quiverian shook his head. “Propaganda. I have heard it a thousand times.”

Malenkov went on unperturbed. “The possibilities are endless. When we have proven long-duration sleep slots, comets may make great space liners—to cruise the solar system in safety.”

Saul saw that a small audience had begun to gather at the open door to the lab, attracted from nearby offices. Malenkov noticed them and waxed even more enthusiastic.

“We might find more useful chemicals, maybe, like those Joao and Captain Cruz found on Encke. Why, there may even be some merit in that wild idea to use comets to terraform Venus or Mars! Eventually they might be made suitable for colonization.”

“Hah!” Quiverian snorted.

“Gentlemen,” Saul cut in. “I suggest we—”

But Quiverian ignored him, shaking a slender, plastic-coated sample tube at Malenkov. “This is the attitude I cannot bear. The original idea was to study comets, the most pristine of all God’s handiworks. But now knowledge for its own sake doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Now you not only want to harvest this comet, but recklessly alter entire worlds before we even understand them!”

Malenkov blinked in surprise at Quiverian’s anger. Saul knew that Nicholas had few political opinions. He was one of the most brilliant people Saul had ever met, but the man never seemed to learn that to some people a disagreement was not a chess game, not a sport for gentlemen. In this respect, he was a most unRussian Russian.

Saul tried once more to stop this. “Joao! Nick was only talking about possibilities. In thirty years Earth will have had time to decide…”

But the angry Brazilian wasn’t listening anymore. Quiverian’s left hand clenched the core tube and his right formed a fist. “We have just emerged from the most terrible century in human history… the worst for our world since the holocaust of the Pleistocene… and now idiots want to send giant iceballs hurtling down onto planets?”

“I never said—”

Quiverian stepped menacingly toward Malenkov. “Tell me, Doctor. How long before the target is not Mars, or Venus, but Earth ?”

His arms chopped for emphasis, unwise in the weak pseudo-gravity. Quiverian flailed for balance and the long tube smashed onto the tabletop, splitting with a loud report. Dark brown ice, laced with black and white veins, spilled out onto the lab bench.

“Idiot! Goyishe kopf!” Saul caught the Brazilian before his head struck the big core microscope. He swiveled quickly and pointed at the people standing by the door.

“All of you, out! Shut that hatch and trigger the air seal. Nick, Joao, go get masks!”

Saul pushed Quiverian off toward the emergency cupboard. Moving quickly he grabbed up a plastic recycling container and dumped its wad of crumpled printouts onto the floor. By the time Malenkov returned, fastening a small mask over his face and holding out another, Saul was sweeping slivers of swiftly melting ice into the tub.

The Russian’s voice was muffled. “Your mask, Saul! Put it on.”

Saul shook his head and kept working. He had complete faith in his little bloodstream symbionts—in their ability to keep him safe from cyanide and other cometary poisons. They had better, or the colony wouldn’t last long inside Halley. Right now he was more concerned about preventing contamination of the other samples than danger to himself.

The spilled slivers seemed to give off a faintly pleasant aroma…reminding him of the almond groves of Lake Kinneret, in the Galilee at springtime.

“My core!” Quiverian cried out as he returned, fumbling with his face mask. “What are you doing, you meddlesome Jew`’ That was the deepest core we had taken!”

Saul swept up the last slivers, threw the sponge into the tub, and sealed its lid. There were more than a trillion tons of ice out there under Halley, ready to be studied. This loss was no scientific tragedy.

“Oh, but that’s not true, Joao,” Malenkov said reassuringly. The stocky. Russian sifted through the self-cooling tubes on the counter. “Why, only an hour ago my countryman, Otis Sergeov, returned with a new core, taken from a kilometer within Halley! Let me see if I can find it here.”

“Sergeov!” Quiverian cursed. “That fanatical Percell mutant? Oh, fates! There were so many fine planetologists who might have come along! Why, oh why have I been saddled such assistants—a huge Russian fool, a legless Percell, and a genetic w itch doctor!”

Malenkov shrugged and answered amiably, as if it were the most reasonable question in the world, “I guess you’re stuck with us because those other guys didn’t come along, Joao.”

Saul closed his eyes, and put his hands over them.

“Yaah!” Quiverian threw himself at the door, ignoring the yellow air-alert light, and burst out through the crowd outside.

“What is eating him?” Malenkov asked Saul after the door hissed shut again. He frowned. “Saul? What’s the matter? Are you in pain?”

Saul uncovered his eyes at last. They were filled with tears.

“Saul? My friend, I…”

Saul slapped the console next to him and laughed out loud, unable to contain it any longer.

“Joao is right,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Comet Halley definitely deserves better than this. But it’s stuck with us.”

Saul wasn’t surprised, a while later, when an officer came around to investigate the spillage incident. But he did blink when Lieutenant Colonel Suleiman Ould-Harrad entered, a clipboard in one hand and a trace-gas detector in the other. The dark-skinned Mauritanian was the last man Saul expected.

Ould-Harrad’s specialty was large, massive life-support systems, the kind they were installing on Halley right now. But he must have been the only one available at the moment to investigate the accident.

Everyone knew why Ould-Harrad was on this mission. The young officer had had friends in the Temple Mount Conspiracy, and only ties with the Mid-African royal family had won him exile instead of imprisonment for the crime of unwise associations.

The Mauritanian had spoken no more than ten words to Saul over the last three years. The regard had been returned.

Earth is far behind you, Saul reminded himself. And nothing can change the past. He stepped aside. “Come in, Colonel. I’ve already dictated an accident report. Go ahead and look around while I fast-fax a copy for you.”

Ould-Harrad seemed ill at ease as he followed Saul into the lab, his broad nostrils flaring at the faint aroma of escaped cometary gases. His eyes kept flicking to the gauges of the instrument. His dour expression seemed little cheered by Saul’s obvious good health.

“Dr. Lintz, you should not have remained here after the leakage alert was thrown.”

Saul tapped the face of a sense-screen display. “Yes, yes. I know. But somebody had to stay and clean up the mess. Anyway, I might as well be the first guinea pig. It’s appropriate, that I should give the blood cyanutes their first field test, no?”

The console spat out a small data pellet. Saul marked it with his namechop. He smiled up at Ould-Harrad. “If I drop dead, we all might as well climb into sleep slots and wait a few centuries to be picked up, ’cause this expedition is over.”

The spacer officer nodded curtly, accepting the logic. “There are rules, nevertheless. Procedures designed for collective safety and order.”

Saul tossed the data pellet to the other man and laughed somewhat bitterly.

“Safety and order, yes. How well I remember those words. Didn’t General Lynchon use that very phrase when his U.N. troops moved into the Judean hills?”

Ould-Harrad shook his head. “It was a consensus operation, Dr. Lintz. The coalition government of Israel-Inshallah invited them in.”