Titan (36 page)
Authors: Ben Bova
D
a’ud Habib tried to get in a workout at the health center first thing every morning, before anyone else got there, but then he realized that Negroponte just happened to be exercising in a form-fitting sweat suit at the same time each day. Just as she just happened to be in the cafeteria when he came in for lunch. Invariably, she sat at his table. When he would show up later than usual she would move from the table she’d been sitting at to be with him.
a’ud Habib tried to get in a workout at the health center first thing every morning, before anyone else got there, but then he realized that Negroponte just happened to be exercising in a form-fitting sweat suit at the same time each day. Just as she just happened to be in the cafeteria when he came in for lunch. Invariably, she sat at his table. When he would show up later than usual she would move from the table she’d been sitting at to be with him.
The woman is pursuing me, he told himself. At first it was flattering, but it soon became an embarrassment. Negroponte thinks I’m some lover out of the Arabian Nights, he thought. A hawk-eyed emir who’s going to carry her off on his steed to his tent in the desert. Nothing could be farther from reality.
Habib had been born in Vancouver of an immigrant Palestinian family and raised in the faith of Islam. Bookish and deeply interested in computers, he was actually rather shy around women. Throughout his university years, with his exotic good looks he had never had trouble finding women; they found him. His difficulty had always been in getting rid of them. While he enjoyed sex, he had no desire to marry or even to live with a woman. There was too much else to do; tying himself down to a woman would get in the way of his studies, his career. There would be time for marriage and children later, he thought.
He had chosen to join Dr. Urbain’s scientific staff when his former faculty advisor had phoned him and suggested he do so.
“It’s an opportunity, Da’ud,” the graying professor had told him.
“Five years?” Habib questioned.
“When you return to Earth you’ll have your pick of universities eager to take you on. Even the New Morality will look favorably on you.”
“Why should they?”
“They want this habitat to succeed, to become an example of how people can live off-Earth.”
“Most of the habitat’s people will be exiles, won’t they?”
The professor had grinned knowingly. “Yes, but there are lots of other bright young men and women whom the New Morality would like to see move off this world.”
“I don’t see how my going out there with them—”
“Trust me, Dau’ud. It’s a better opportunity for you than anything you can hope for here on Earth.”
Habib thought he heard a veiled message: spend the five years on this Saturn mission or find the New Morality blocking your applications to the better schools. He was no fighter. He did what his advisor suggested.
It was like living in a university town, to a great extent. And the work was fascinating—at first. Habib directed the programming of the bulky probe Urbain was building, his cherished
Titan Alpha.
It was a fascinating challenge to program the complex machine so that it could operate independently in the alien environment of Titan’s surface, flexible enough to cope with unknowns and to learn from the surroundings in which it found itself.
Titan Alpha.
It was a fascinating challenge to program the complex machine so that it could operate independently in the alien environment of Titan’s surface, flexible enough to cope with unknowns and to learn from the surroundings in which it found itself.
Then
Alpha
had landed and gone silent, and Urbain had gone slightly insane. Habib felt certain that there was a hitch in the programming somewhere, but though he spent night and day trying to find an error, so far he could discern nothing wrong with the programming.
Alpha
had landed and gone silent, and Urbain had gone slightly insane. Habib felt certain that there was a hitch in the programming somewhere, but though he spent night and day trying to find an error, so far he could discern nothing wrong with the programming.
There were lots of women available in the habitat, and although he tried to remain free of entanglements, his normal male hormones made their demands on him. He was surprised, though, when Dr. Wunderly asked him to go to the New Year’s Eve party with her. He agreed, even though he would not have thought to ask her. Nadia Wunderly was not
the most attractive woman he knew, yet she seemed to genuinely like him; more important, she was just as wrapped up in her work as he was in his. She would not try to force a commitment upon him.
the most attractive woman he knew, yet she seemed to genuinely like him; more important, she was just as wrapped up in her work as he was in his. She would not try to force a commitment upon him.
He felt certain Negroponte would. Yet, with her tall, ample figure and almond-eyed face she was powerfully attractive.
Habib got through his abbreviated workout, showered and changed back into his workaday tunic and slacks, then headed for his eleven o’clock meeting with Timoshenko. At last he had something solid to show the maintenance chief. Mathematics is so much simpler than women, he thought. A mathematical relationship remains fixed unless some discernable value produces a change. A relationship with a woman is always changing, often for no recognizable reason.
Habib got to Timoshenko’s office and slid open the door to the anteroom. Three engineers were sitting with their heads bent over display screens. The chief of maintenance did not have a personal assistant. He believed that computers could do the routine office work; each of his employees was actively engaged in maintaining the habitat’s myriad mechanical, hydraulic, electrical and electronic systems.
Habib went straight to the door of Timoshenko’s private office.
“He’s not in,” said one of the engineers, barely looking up from her desktop screen. “Hasn’t been in yet this morning.”
“But we have a meeting scheduled for eleven.”
“You’re three minutes early,” came Timoshenko’s voice from behind him.
Turning, Habib saw the Russian walking toward him. Timoshenko looked terrible: his eyes red and puffy, as if he had not slept all night.
“I have good news for you,” Habib said, by way of greeting.
“Good,” said Timoshenko, almost in a growl. “I could use some news that’s good, for a change.”
Five minutes later, Habib was sitting beside Timoshenko at the little round table in a corner of the maintenance chief’s office. One wall screen was filled with a set of graphs displaying complex curves.
“So you’re telling me that Titan is causing the power surges?” Timoshenko asked, eying the graphs suspiciously.
“I don’t know if Titan is the cause of the surges,” Habib replied, “but they correlate very closely with the position of Titan and the other major moons in their orbits around Saturn.”
Timoshenko grunted.
Pointing to the graphs, Habib explained, “We get the power surges whenever Titan and the other major moons line up on the same side of Saturn.”
In a heavy low voice Timoshenko muttered, “That’s why the surges are grouped approximately every two weeks. Titan’s orbit is sixteen days.”
“Yes. And it explains why you can go for months without any surges at all: that’s when the outer moons are not on the same side of the planet as Titan.”
“You’re certain of this?”
“The mathematics are definitive,” Habib said with some pungency in his tone. He didn’t like having his calculations questioned.
“But what’s causing it? What we have here looks like astrology, not physics.”
Habib shrugged. “You’ll have to ask Wunderly or one of the astrophysicists. I am a mathematician.” Pointing to the wall screen display, he added, “You asked me to tell you how to predict when the surges will come and that’s what I’ve done.”
Timoshenko nodded. “Yes. So you have.” Turning slightly in his chair he called out, “Phone! Get Dr. Wunderly. Top priority.”
T
he cocktail reception was ostensibly to welcome the shipload of biologists and planetary scientists who had arrived from Earth in the wake of Wunderly’s confirmation that Saturn’s rings harbored living organisms. Urbain’s entire scientific staff, as well as the habitat’s most prominent citizens were there to greet the newcomers.
he cocktail reception was ostensibly to welcome the shipload of biologists and planetary scientists who had arrived from Earth in the wake of Wunderly’s confirmation that Saturn’s rings harbored living organisms. Urbain’s entire scientific staff, as well as the habitat’s most prominent citizens were there to greet the newcomers.
Ordinarily, Urbain would not have invited Manuel Gaeta. After all, the man was not a scientist: nothing more than an entertainer, a stunt performer, little more than a trained ape. But Gaeta was living with Dr. Cardenas, who was a Nobel laureate. Urbain could not invite her without having him come along.
Besides, Urbain needed this trained ape.
The party was at the lovely lakeside bandshell, at the foot of the gentle hill on which the village of Athens was built. Champagne flute in hand, Urbain saw Pancho Lane and her sister with a pair of men he couldn’t quite place. He leaned toward his wife and asked her who they were. Jeanmarie told him that the older, taller of the two men was Pancho’s companion, a former admiral. The other was the engineer that the habitat had taken in when it passed Jupiter.
“Ah yes,” Urbain murmured, recognizing the somber-faced younger man. “Tavalera is his name, I believe.”
And there was Eberly, of course, with his claque following wherever he went. Urbain suppressed a frown. The chief administrator was totally in his element, surrounded by admirers, smiling and chatting and laughing with them.
Gaeta, Urbain said to himself. I must get to Gaeta.
He saw that the stuntman and Dr. Cardenas were standing by the lake’s edge, deep in earnest conversation with Wunderly. Strange, he thought. Wunderly should be the center of attention at this reception, yet she is off to one edge of the crowd with her
little circle of friends. Urbain shook his head. She has much to learn about the politics of science, he told himself.
little circle of friends. Urbain shook his head. She has much to learn about the politics of science, he told himself.
Taking his wife’s free hand, Urbain said to the women she was chatting with, “Excuse us, if you please. I must speak with Dr. Wunderly for a few moments.”
And he led Jeanmarie toward the little group at the water’s edge.
Wunderly was babbling away nonstop to Kris Cardenas. Gaeta stood with the two women, barely understanding a word of what Wunderly was saying.
“ … So when Da’ud showed me the graphs he’d worked up I ran through the vids of the ring spokes and sure enough they correlated to five nines,” Wunderly gushed.
“The spokes correlate with Titan’s position?” Cardenas asked.
Gesticulating so forcefully that she sloshed champagne onto the grass, making Gaeta jump nimbly out of the way, Wunderly said, “Yes! We’d wondered what caused the spokes and now we’ve got an explanation! Just in time for me to go back to Earth.”
“The spokes?” Gaeta asked, frowning slightly. “You mean those lanes of dust in the rings?”
Wunderly nodded vigorously. “The dust lanes that rise above the plane of the ring particles and then drift down again.”
“Like they’re doing the wave at a ball game,” Gaeta said.
“The wave?” Wunderly looked puzzled.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the gathering of partygoers, Yolanda Negroponte was deep in conversation with four of the biologists who had just arrived from Earth.
She had come to the reception alone, dressed in a simple off-white miniskirted frock that showed her long legs to advantage. She had phoned Habib several times during the course of the day to ask him to escort her to the party, but he had not answered her calls. Now she stood at the center of the little group of newcomers, trying to keep up the conversation with them while looking out over their heads, scanning the crowd for Habib.
He’s afraid of me, she said to herself. I came on too strong. Yet she knew that if she did not pursue Habib he would drift away from her. Why must he be so difficult? she asked herself.
And why must you insist on going after him? asked a voice in her mind. There are lots of other men here. You could have your pick of them. But it was handsome, gentle, shy Habib who interested her. He was such a tiger when he got angry.
“Have you done a DNA analysis yet?”
Negroponte barely heard the question. It took an effort for her to focus on the quartet of biologists around her: two men, two women.
“Preliminary,” she responded. “The cellular structure has a nucleus and what appears to be nucleic acids, although their chemical composition is completely different from terrestrial DNA.”
“And their structure? Is it a double helix, like ours, or triple, like the Martian biota?”
Negroponte shook her head slightly. “There’s no evidence of helical structure at all.”
“Not helical?”
“We’ve done gamma-ray diffraction and MRF microscopy. The nucleic acids appear to be a crystalline lattice.”
“That’s impossible!”
Negroponte smiled knowingly at the flustered little man, who didn’t quite came up to her shoulder. “Come to my lab tomorrow and I’ll show you.”
Then her smile widened into genuine warmth. She saw Habib among the partygoers, looking very handsome in a forest green suit. And he was pushing his way through the crowd, heading toward her with a champagne flute in each hand.
“Look at how beautifully the lake reflects the lights of the shell and the land above,” said Jeanmarie to her husband. He ignored her, his attention bent on Wunderly, Gaeta and Cardenas standing down by the water’s edge.
“Good evening,” Urbain said as he and his wife got to within earshot. “Are you enjoying the reception?”
Wunderly grinned at her boss. “The food’s good,” she answered,
eying the nearest table. It was laden with finger foods and surrounded by guests. Robot waiters from the Bistro, squat little flat-topped machines that rolled silently on tiny trunions, were busily bringing up replenishment trays, marching like a line of ants from the restaurant in the village to the tables scattered across the grass.
eying the nearest table. It was laden with finger foods and surrounded by guests. Robot waiters from the Bistro, squat little flat-topped machines that rolled silently on tiny trunions, were busily bringing up replenishment trays, marching like a line of ants from the restaurant in the village to the tables scattered across the grass.
“You have made a great contribution to science,” Urbain said graciously to Wunderly. “I will be sorry to see you leave the habitat.”
Both he and Wunderly knew that Urbain had opposed her single-minded concentration on the rings. Urbain had wanted everyone on his staff to focus on Titan; Wunderly had held out stubbornly—and won.
“I couldn’t have made the contribution without you, Dr. Urbain,” she said, equally congenial. “I owe all my success to you.”
“Not at all,” he said. But he beamed at her.
“I think we made another major breakthrough today,” Wunderly said.
“Oh?”
“The spokes in the rings correlate with the positions of Titan and the outer moons!”
Urbain stared at her for a moment. “Are you certain of this?”
“Da’ud Habib’s done the correlation and I checked it with the vids we have of the spoke actions.”
“But what could be the cause of this?” Urbain was suddenly engrossed. “Could it be gravitational?”
“I think it’s electromagnetic,” Wunderly said. “Electromagnetic force is orders of magnitude stronger than gravitational.”
“Yes, true. And Saturn’s electromagnetic field is very powerful.”
“And it extends way out beyond the orbits of the major moons.”
“True. We must calculate the energies involved.”
Kris Cardenas butted in, “From what Nadia tells me, this also explains the electromagnetic surges from Saturn that’ve been causing power outages here.”
“A useful byproduct,” Urbain granted. But his attention was
entirely focused on Wunderly’s news. He forgot that he was hosting this reception; he forgot about the party altogether. He even forgot that he needed to ask Gaeta to go down to his stranded
Alpha
on the surface of Titan.
entirely focused on Wunderly’s news. He forgot that he was hosting this reception; he forgot about the party altogether. He even forgot that he needed to ask Gaeta to go down to his stranded
Alpha
on the surface of Titan.
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