John Sandford: Saturn Run

Ship-wide groans.

Sandy had been confined for a week after his performance on the bridge, but the confinement was obviously pointless—where was he going to run to?—and he hadn’t yet been convicted of anything, though he surely would be. And he wasn’t dangerous… and nine-tenths of the people on the ship thought he’d probably saved their lives.

So they let him out.

Fang-Castro told him, “Too many people in Washington know about this to let it go. You’re going to spend time in jail.”

“Not too much,” he said, with his grin.

“If I were you, I’d brace myself,” Fang-Castro said. “Among other things, Santeros is looking for a scapegoat.”

Now, in Earth orbit, Sandy set up for an interview with Fiorella, announcing the onset of the plague.

“I probably wouldn’t refer to it as the plague,” Fiorella said.

“They want you to,” Sandy said.

“Maybe. But I’m a journalist, not a lapdog,” she said. “Really.” She sounded slightly guilty. She’d had an extremely pragmatic talk with Santeros.

“I just take the pictures,” Sandy said. “Really.”

Clover cruised by. “One-point-two million in the Hump Pool. Not a single person has bet on tonight. Or last night or tomorrow night. So, I was thinking we ought to pull the trigger, but… you know, even though the whole concept of the Hump Pool is despicable, taking the money smacks of fraud. I’m getting mildly cold feet.”

Sandy said, “If we pull the trigger, you could fund your own archaeological expedition. To anywhere.”

Clover said, “My feet got warmer. Keep talking.”

“I don’t really need the money, but I want it,” Fiorella said. “It’s me that the Hump Pool is about. The assumption that I could never resist Mr. Money and Big White Teeth. I will not mind sticking it to them and turning a profit on twisting the knife.”

Sandy brought out the teeth: “Dinner and a movie? Tonight at my place?”

“I’ll be there at seven o’clock,” Fiorella said. She threw her head back, released a well-simulated sexual groan, then straightened and said, “And I’m just warming up.”

Clover rubbed his hands together. “I was hoping you’d talk me out of my spasm of righteousness. The Hump Pool was wrong. I’m defending the reputation of women everywhere by taking the cash.”

“Absolutely,” Fiorella said.

An hour later, she was live from the bridge:

“While the crew, including myself, and the former crewmen of the Celestial Odyssey , will have to spend some time in a Level Four biocontainment facility, now being fabbed in the new Chinese Divine Wanderer , there’s not much doubt the viral visitor can be eradicated from our bodies. There remains the question of what will happen to the Nixon . Eradicating every last organic particle from this ship would be a vast task, not made easier by the fact that we’d have to do it in space. Preliminary tests have shown that this particle may not be killed by exposure to a vacuum….”

She went on for a while, but the thrust was clear: a solution would have to be found for eliminating the contamination of the Nixon . The world could not risk the introduction of a new alien organism… or any other organisms that hadn’t yet been found.

Later that evening, after another performance, she said hoarsely, “Damn, my voice is shot.”

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sore from bouncing that cot up and down. I’m thinking the real thing is a lot less work.”

“Probably, and neither of us will likely get an Oscar for our performance…”

“Your moans were pretty convincing…”

“…but you can’t fault the pay scale.”

“Amen, sister.”

Clover was taking high fives in the Commons. He had a spaghetti pot under his arm, stuffed with currency.

Fang-Castro glanced around her bare quarters.

Saturday, December 1, 2068. She’d remember this date, the day she gave up the command of the Nixon .

The Chinese had been prompt and efficient. They could, in fact, have launched and arrived a day earlier than projected. It was the personnel on the Nixon who’d held to the original schedule, transmitting every last bit of their work to Earth… in native English and math… through a Chinese relay.

Not a lot of trust there. Not a lot of trust, anywhere.

Three Americans and two Chinese had died in her ship, though Admiral Zhang was probably dead by the time he arrived. There were four bodies in cold storage, and one was still sailing, in a broken egg, toward the outer planets. The thought of Becca Johansson, on her lonely voyage, still made Fang-Castro tight in the throat.

They’d also lost one cat on the trip: Mr. Snuffles had died of a heart attack three weeks out. John Clover had been devastated, but had said, “He never would have made it back on Earth, anyway. The gravity would kill him the first day. Better this way.”

The living Americans—and the former crew members of the Celestial Odyssey , as well—would be going through meticulous body scans before they’d even be allowed in the Chinese facility, and then they’d be confined to the Level 4 biocontainment area until the docs were absolutely, one hundred percent sure that they’d eliminated the last of the…

Measles.

A mild, attenuated, fast-developing form of measles genetically designed to produce the raw material for a measles vaccine, should that ever be needed; and though it was attenuated, it nevertheless produced the blotching pink rash of regular measles. The only place where the regular disease occasionally popped up was the wilds of Marin County, California. If a few hundred parents hadn’t resisted, it would have been eradicated there decades earlier. This outbreak had been brought up by the first visitor to the Nixon , a cheerful, politically reliable doc from the CDC.

With both the Chinese and American propaganda machines denying that there was any real danger from the “alien” virus, at the same time they used various ignorance-bathed celebrities to spread fear and misinformation through the Internet, most of the world had become convinced that the Nixon was a death machine.

A long-forgotten film from a century earlier, The Andromeda Strain , resurfaced on the Internet. Medical personnel—so they claimed to be—called and texted late-night talk shows, citing research that had shown how microorganisms could survive under the most extraordinary conditions. They reminded listeners how diseases on Earth had jumped between species, given the right set of chance mutations. Organisms that might normally infect an alien host might, and they emphasized the word “might,” be able to make the jump to human beings.

Probably not. But maybe.

Santeros said it most plainly, in a talk on public television:

“Humans have encountered aliens. No one knows, for certain, what the Nixon might have brought back with it in the way of pathogens—germs. We are confident that we can eliminate any pathogens in the human body itself, but with the Nixon , that’s a much different situation.

“We have consulted with the Chinese, European, Brazilian, African Union, and Indian governments. As much as it breaks my heart, the decision has been taken to destroy the Nixon in a way that will remove any doubt that rogue pathogens have been destroyed with it….

“The only things to be brought back from the ship are eight alien machines, which will also be thoroughly decontaminated, and from which we hope and expect to derive much information about their computer technologies. As an act of goodwill between the U.S. and its many foreign allies, the machines will be distributed among the major states represented on the UN’s Security Council. We hope, however, to develop a mutual research program.”