Ben Bova - Titan

“So far.”

Holly tapped his chin with a forefinger. “We’ll examine each comet before we start chopping up its ice. If we find anything we’ll leave that one to the scientists. There’s plenty of others.”

He grasped her hand and looked into her eyes. “Holly, you’re gonna win this election, you know.”

“Maybe.”

“What happens to us when you do?”

She felt a lump in her throat. Swallowing hard, she replied, “I don’t know, Raoul. I guess what happens is up to you.”

When Gaeta opened his eyes again, he saw that Cardenas was standing at the foot of his bed smiling at him. A chubby, round-faced man in a white medical smock stood beside her; he was smiling, too.

“Good morning,” said the doctor. “I am Oswaldo Yañez, your attending physician.”

“Good morning,” Gaeta echoed. The gray plastic sheath still covered his arm, but he felt clear-headed, bright. No pain.

Cardenas stepped swiftly to the side of the bed, leaned over, and kissed him hard. Gaeta grasped her with his good arm and held her tightly.

“You’re going to be all right,” she said, half-whispering as she leaned against him. “I’ve got nanomachines repairing your arm. You’ll be fine in a few days.”

She pulled away from him at last as Yañez took a palm-sized remote from the pocket of his smock. An x-ray picture of Gaeta’s arm appeared on the wall to his right.

“The bone break is already healed,” the doctor said cheerfully, “with the help of Dr. Cardenas’s little devices. Repairing the damage caused by the freezing will take a while longer, however.”

“You saved my arm,” Gaeta said to her.

“I want you all in one piece, with all your parts working right.”

He grinned. “Me too.”

Yañez coughed politely. “Do you feel strong enough for visitors? There are several people outside.”

“Sure,” said Gaeta. “Send ’em in.”

Pancho and Jake Wanamaker trooped in, together with a darker-skinned guy with a trim little beard fringing his jawline.

“This is Da’ud Habib,” Pancho said, without any preliminaries. “He’s the one you were talkin’ with when you were down on Titan.”

“I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for bringing Alpha back to life for us,” Habib said. Gaeta saw that the man’s eyes were glistening; he was on the verge of tears.

“I guess Urbain is pretty damned happy, huh?”

Habib stiffened slightly. “Dr. Urbain is dead.”

“Dead?”

“He suffered a massive coronary attack while you were working on the surface. By the time we found him in his office it was too late to do anything to help him.”

“Holy shit,” Gaeta said fervently.

“But you brought Alpha back to life,” Habib said. “The probe is under our control and sending streams of data. For that we owe you our eternal thanks.”

Impulsively Habib grabbed Gaeta’s right hand and pumped it. Then, as if embarrassed by his burst of emotion, he dropped Gaeta’s hand and stepped back from the bed.

Before anyone could think of something to say, Fritz von Helmholtz stepped into the little room, impeccably attired in a navy blue blazer over a golden yellow turtleneck.

“Hi, Fritz,” Gaeta said. “Join the party.”

Fritz smiled tightly and offered, “Apparently you are well on the road to recovery.”

“That’s what they tell me,” said Gaeta.

“Your mission to Titan was a great success financially. We will clear slightly more than fourteen million, even factoring in medical expenses.”

Gaeta laughed. “You frozen Popsicle. You were worried about me, admit it.”

“I knew you would survive,” Fritz said, unruffled. “And Dr. Cardenas’s nanomachines will repair your arm, no?”

Cardenas said, “Damned right.”

“So,” Fritz said. “The mission was a great success.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Pancho.

Still focusing on Gaeta, Fritz went on, “Requests are pouring in. We are doing preliminary studies of a trek across Mercury at perihelion.”

“Not me,” Gaeta said. “I’m retired.”

“I’ve heard that before,” said Fritz, a tiny smile twitching his lips.

“For keeps,” said Gaeta, reaching for Cardenas with his good arm. “When you and the crew head back to Earth, take the suit with you. I’m finished with it.”

Cardenas squeezed his hand so hard Gaeta was surprised at the strength in her.

From his seat in the rear of the jam-packed auditorium, Tavalera thought that Yolanda Negroponte looked like a blonde Amazon, standing tall and determined in the midst of the crowd. Eberly was at the lectern, trying to keep from scowling at her. Behind him sat Holly and Professor Wilmot.

Wilmot had thrown the debate open to questions from the floor immediately after the candidates’ brief opening statements. Holly hadn’t had a chance to show the graphs and imagery that Tavalera had helped her to put together. He didn’t even give her a chance to tell them about mining comets, Tavalera thought fretfully.

Several of Eberly’s flaks had asked about mining the rings in the face of the IAA’s order, received that morning, banning any commercial activity in Saturn’s rings until the presence of nanomachines there could be thoroughly investigated.

Eberly had insisted that he would start mining operations anyway, and negotiate with the “Earthbound bureaucrats” to permit mining and scientific studies at the same time. “They’re a billion kilometers away,” he’d said. “How dare they try to tell us what to do?”

That’s when Negroponte shot to her feet.

“There’s more involved here than a jurisdictional conflict with the IAA. Those nanomachines were put into the rings by somebody. An intelligent species. We don’t know when and we don’t know why.”

Eberly forced a condescending smile. “It was probably millions of years ago. Whoever seeded the rings with those machines is probably long gone, maybe extinct.”

“Do you know that for a fact?” Negroponte demanded. Before Eberly could reply she went on, “No, you don’t. No one does. But we know that the nanomachines put out surges of electromagnetic energy. That’s what caused the power outages we’ve had—”

“That problem has been fixed,” Eberly said quickly.

“But suppose those surges are actually signals?” Negroponte insisted. “Suppose those nanomachines are sending out a message to their creators, a message that says we are here, in Saturn’s vicinity?”

The crowded auditorium went absolutely silent.

“Suppose,” Negroponte added, “that whoever planted those nanomachines would be angry with anyone who disturbed them? What then?”

Eberly’s mouth twitched several times before he replied, “That’s … sheer speculation.”

“But do we dare take a chance? We’re facing some enormous unknowns here.”

Eberly tried to smile again. But Holly got up from her chair and asked Professor Wilmot, “May I respond to her question?” The pin mike clipped to her tunic amplified her voice so that the audience heard it clearly.

Wilmot also got to his feet. “If Mr. Eberly is finished,” he said.

Eberly backed away from the lectern, but remained standing.

Holly licked her lips as she gripped the lectern’s sides and said, “I know how we can get rich from selling water without touching the rings.”

The crowd stirred. Turning to Wilmot as she fished a palm-comp from her pocket, Holly said, “I have a few images to show.’ Kay?”

“Go right ahead,” said Wilmot.

Tavalera sat back and watched the imagery he had helped Holly to prepare flash onto the wall screen at the rear of the auditorium’s stage. Holly went through the presentation they had rehearsed in a methodical, orderly way: Use Goddard as a base of operations; locate comets sailing inward from the Kuiper Belt; mine them for their water; sell the water to the human settlements throughout the solar system.