David Brin - Earth

“Tell me, though, Lustig, what do you think the new committee will do when they take authority over the new science of gazerdynamics?”

Obviously, the question was rhetorical. Alex already saw the colonel’s point.

“Except for one or two small research sites, they’ll slap on a complete ban, with fierce inspections to make sure nobody else emits even a single graviton! They’ll let you keep vigil on Beta, but outlaw any other gazer use that hasn’t already been tested to death. Oh sure, that’ll prevent chaos. I agree the technology has to be monitored. But can you see why we wanted to delay it for a while?”

Spivey pressed both hands on his desk. “We hoped to finish developing gazer-based launch systems, first! If they were already proven safe and effective, the tribunes couldn’t ban them entirely. We’d save something precious and wonderful… perhaps even a way out of the doomsday trap.”

Alex exhaled a sigh. Teresa should hear this. She despised Spivey. And yet he turned out to be as much a believer as she. Apparently the infection went all the way to the pinnacles of power.

“Our projections say resource depletion is going to kill human civilization deader than triceratops — this poor planet’s gifts have been so badly squandered. But everything changes if you include space! Melt down just one of the millions of small asteroids out there, and you get all the world’s steel needs for an entire decade, plus enough gold, silver, and platinum to finance rebuilding a dozen cities!

“It’s all out there, Lustig, but we’re stuck here at the bottom of Earth’s gravity well. It’s so expensive to haul out the tools needed to begin harnessing those assets…

“Then came your gazer thing… Good God, Lustig, have you any idea what you did yesterday? Throwing megatons of ice to the moon?” A vein pulsed in Spivey’s temple. “If you’d landed that berg just ten percent slower, there d have been water enough to feed and bathe and make productive a colony of hundreds! We could be mining lunar titanium and helium-3 inside a year! We could…”

Spivey paused for breath.

“A few years ago I talked several space powers into backing cavitronics research in orbit, to look for something like what you found by goddam accident! But we were thinking millions of times too small. Please forgive my obvious jealousy…”

Someone behind Alex muttered, “Jesus Christ!” He turned to see Teresa Tikhana standing behind him. Her face was pale, and Alex thought he knew why. So her husband hadn’t worked on weapons research after all. He had just been trying, in his own way, to help save the world.

There would be some poignant satisfaction for her in that, but also bitterness, and the memory that they had not parted in harmony. Alex reached back and took her hand, which trembled, then squeezed his tightly in return.

“… I guess what I’m asking is that you use your influence with the tribunal — and it will be substantial — to keep some effort going into launch systems. At least get them to let you throw more ice!”

Spivey leaned even closer to the camera.

“After all, it’s not enough just to neutralize some paranoid aliens’ damned berserker device. What’s the point, if it all goes into a toxic-dumpit anyway?

“ But this thing could be the key to saving everything, the ecology… ”

Alex was rapt, mesmerized by the man’s unexpected intensity, and he felt Teresa’s flushed emotion as well. So they both flinched in reflex surprise when somebody behind them let out a blood-chilling scream.

“Give that back!”

Everyone turned, and Alex blinked to see June Morgan waging an uneven struggle with… Pedro Manella! The blonde woman hauled at her briefcase, which the Aztlan reporter clutched in one meaty hand, fending her off with the other. When she kicked him, Pedro winced but gave no ground. Meanwhile, Colonel Spivey droned on.

“… creating the very wealth that makes for generosity, and incidentally giving us the stars…”

Alex stood up. “Manella! What are you doing!”

“He’s stealing my valise!” June yelled. “He wants my data so he can scoop tonight’s presidential speech!”

Alex sighed. That sounded like Manella, all right. “Pedro,” he began. “You’ve already got an inside story any reporter would die for—”

Manella interrupted. “Lustig, you better have a—” He stopped with a gulp as June swiveled full circle to elbow him sharply below the sternum, then stamped on his foot and snatched the briefcase during her follow-through. But then, instead of rejoining the others, she spun about and ran away!

“S-stop her!” Pedro gasped. Something in his alarmed voice turned Alex’s heart cold. June held the valise in front of her, sprinting toward the towering resonator. “A bomb?” Teresa blurted, while Alex thought, But they checked for bombs !

At another level he simply couldn’t believe this was happening. June ?

She leaped the railing surrounding the massive resonator, ducked under the snatching arm of a Maori security man, and launched herself toward the gleaming cylinder. At the final instant, another guard seized her waist, but June’s expression said it was already too late. People dove for cover as she yanked a hidden lever near the handle.

Alex winced, bracing for a sledgehammer blow…

But nothing happened!

In the stunned silence, Glenn Spivey’s voice rambled on.

“… so with this message I’m sending a library of all the surface-coupling coefficients we’ve collected. Naturally, you’re ahead of us in most ways, but we’ve learned a few tricks too…”

June’s face flashed from triumph to astonishment to rage. She cursed, pounding the valise until it was dragged from her hands and hustled outside by some brave and very fleet security men. It was Pedro, then, who finally wrestled her away from the resonator and forced her into a chair. Alex switched off the sound of the colonel’s words, which now, suddenly, seemed mockingly irrelevant.

“So this was all a hoax, June? Spivey holds our attention while you sabotage the thumper?” His pulse pounded. To be deceived by the military man’s apparent sincerity was nothing next to the treachery of this woman he thought he knew.

“Oh Alex, you’re such a fool!” June laughed breathlessly and with a note of shrill overcompensation. “You can be sweet and I like you a lot. But how did you ever get to be so gullible?”

“Shut up,” Teresa said evenly, and though her tone was businesslike, June clearly saw dark threat in Teresa’s eyes. She shut up. They all waited silently for the security team to report. It seemed better to let adrenaline stop drumming in their ears before dealing with this unexpected enormity.

Joey came back shortly, bowing his head in apology. “No bomb after all, tohunga . It’s a liquid-suspension catalyst — a simple nanotech corrosion promoter — probably tailored to wreck the thumper’s piezogravitic characteristics. The stuff was supposed to spray when she pulled the lever, but the holes had been squished shut, so nothing came out. A lucky break. Lucky our reporter friend’s so strong.” Joey gestured toward Manella, who blinked in apparent surprise.

“His hand print covers the holes,” Joey explained. “Broke the hinge, too. Don’t nobody challenge that guy to a wrestling match.”

June shrugged when they all looked at her. “I got the idea from those scrubber enzymes Teresa keeps asking for, to clean her old shuttle. Your guards grew used to me bringing chemicals in little packages. Anyway, just a few drops would put you out of business. It takes days to grow a new resonator — all the time my employers needed.”