Ben Bova - Titan

Turning to face her, his face looking strangely flustered, embarrassed, Timoshenko explained, “Once you are chief administrator you will have the authority to put through calls to people on Earth, no?”

“Anybody has the right—”

“Not exiles,” Timoshenko interrupted. “The authorities won’t allow my ex-wife to receive calls from me.”

Understanding dawned on Holly. “So you want me to call her for you.”

“If you could.”

“I’d be glad to, Ilya. Maybe we can get her to come out here and be with you again.”

Timoshenko’s face turned flame-red. But his smile was anything but sheepish. Turning quickly, he pulled the hatch all the way open.

Holly saw the green and vibrant habitat spread out before her. Timoshenko made a little bow to usher her through the hatch and into her own domain.

Eberly sat alone in his apartment, his uneaten lunch on the kitchen table before him.

They voted against me, he said to himself for the thousandth time. She beat me by a landslide. They rejected me. I’m all alone now. I don’t even have a job.

He thought of the Bible story of the unjust steward who also found himself thrown out of his job. What can I do? Eberly asked himself. To dig I am unable, to beg I am too proud.

At that exact moment his phone chimed.

“Phone answer,” he called out glumly.

The kitchen cabinets to his left glowed and formed an image of Zeke Berkowitz, smiling his usual affable, avuncular smile.

“Good morning, Malcolm,” said Berkowitz brightly.

“It’s past noon,” Eberly replied. “And I’m in no mood for an interview about our change in administrations.”

Berkowitz looked almost startled. “Interview? No, no. That’s not why I called you.”

“Then what?” Crossly.

“I figured you’ll be looking for a new job and I wanted to get my offer in ahead of all the others.”

Eberly knew there were no others, and he suspected that Berkowitz did, too. “A new job?”

“I’ve got an idea,” Berkowitz said, his smile widening. “How would you like to be a commentator on our news broadcasts? You know, give the people your opinions on what’s happening, your slant on the stories of the day.”

“A video commentator?”

“Sure. You’d be a natural. And it would keep you in front of the public every day. People would look up to you, they’d value your opinions.”

“They’d admire me?”

“Of course they would! You’ve served this community well. You’ve worked hard. Now you can be the voice of habitat Goddard , sharing your insights on each day’s events with your fellow citizens.”

“Every day. I’d be seen every day.”

Berkowitz nodded cheerfully. His broad smile was soon matched by Eberly’s own.

Pancho sat in the front row for the swearing-in ceremony, with Jake beside her. She beamed as Holly took the oath of office from Professor Wilmot.

Holly looked slightly nervous as she began her inauguration speech, Pancho thought, but her sister launched into it smoothly enough.

“You ready for the big adventure?” Pancho whispered to Wanamaker.

“Chasing comets?” he whispered back.

“That’s only part of it.”

“What’s the rest?”

“Havin’ a baby.”

Wanamaker’s jaw dropped.

On Titan’s cold and murky surface Titan Alpha trundled across the spongy mats of dark carbonaceous soil. Its sensors were uplinking a steady stream of data to the intensely eager scientists of habitat Goddard while computer engineers labored to alter the master program’s prohibition against contamination.

The scientists had discovered that the single-celled creatures living in those widespread mats were beginning to form colonies, taking the first step toward developing true multicellular species. In a few hundred million years, the biologists thought joyfully, Titan would begin to undergo a Cambrian Explosion and evolve true plants and animals.

Meanwhile, a spherical shell of powerful electromagnetic pulses was expanding at the speed of light across the interstellar vastness, informing any species clever enough to decipher them that intelligent life exists on the planets circling a smallish yellow main-sequence star in the Perseus arm of the Milky Way galaxy.