Saturn (12 page)

It is the most beautiful sight in the solar system: Saturn and its glowing, glorious rings.

They arch above the planet's equator like a bridge of light, circling the ponderous flattened sphere of the planet, hovering above its middle as if in splendid defiance of gravity.

The second-largest planet of our solar system, Saturn is slightly smaller than Jupiter, but orbits twice as far from the Sun. Like Jupiter, Saturn is a gas giant world, composed almost entirely of the lightest elements, hydrogen and helium. If you could build a swimming pool nearly ten times the size of Earth, Saturn would float in it: the planet's density is slightly less than water's.

Approaching Saturn, the planet's pale yellow and tan clouds churn across a disc that is noticeably flattened by its frenetic spin rate. Saturn's day is a scant ten hours and thirty-nine minutes. Yet to the ancients, Saturn was the farthest planet they could see, and the slowest in making its way around the sky. At ten times the Earth's distance from the Sun, it takes 29.46 Earth years for Saturn to circle the Sun once.

The ring system is what makes Saturn so beautiful, so intriguing. Jupiter and the farther worlds of Uranus and Neptune have narrow, faint rings circling them. Saturn has broad bands of
rings,
shining brilliantly, suspended about the planet's middle, hanging in emptiness like a magnificent set of halos.

When Galileo first turned his primitive telescope to Saturn he thought he saw a triple planet: His small lenses could not make out the rings, to him they looked like strange ears sprouting on either side of the planet. He wrote to the German astronomer Johannes Kepler a letter in code, so that it could be read only by its intended recipient.

"I have observed the highest planet to be triple-bodied," Galileo wrote in an anagram. Kepler misunderstood, and thought that Galileo meant he had discovered two moons of Mars.

As telescopes improved, astronomers discovered those impossible rings. To this day, Saturn is one of the first objects that amateur astronomers turn to. The sight of the ringed planet never fails to inspire admiring, delighted sighs.

Saturn's beautiful rings are composed of particles of ice and ice-covered dust. While most of the particles are no larger than dust motes, some are as big as houses. The rings are about four hundred thousand kilometers across, yet not much thicker than a hundred meters. They have been described as "proportionally as thick as a sheet of tissue paper spread over a football field."

The rings' total mass amounts to that of an icy satellite no more than one hundred kilometers in diameter. They are either the remains of one or more moons that got too close to the planet and were broken up by gravitational tidal forces, or leftover material from the time of the planet's formation which never coalesced into a single body because it was too close to Saturn to do so.

The rings are
dynamic.
Hundreds of millions of particles circling the mammoth planet, constantly colliding, bouncing off one another, breaking into smaller fragments, banging and jouncing like an insane speedway full of lunatic drivers.

The dynamics of the rings are fascinating. There are gaps between the major rings, spaces of emptiness caused by the gravitational pulls of Saturn's several dozen moons. The rings are accompanied by tiny "sheepdog" satellites, minuscule moons that circle just outside or just inside each ring and apparently keep them in place with their tiny gravitational influence. The rings are self-sustaining: As particles are sucked down into the planet, new particles are chipped off the shepherd moons by constant collisions with the hurtling, jostling particles, abraded off these tiny moonlets as they grind their way around the planet, constantly bombarded by the blizzard of tiny icy particles through which they orbit.

The main rings are actually composed of hundreds of thinner ringlets that appear to be braided together. Spacecraft time-lapse photos also show mysterious spokes weaving through the largest of the rings, patterns of light and dark that remain unexplained and fascinating. Perhaps Saturn's extensive magnetosphere electrically charges the dust particles in the ring and levitates them, which may give rise to the spokes.

The planet itself presented an enigma to the inquisitive scientists from Earth. Like the more massive Jupiter, Saturn is heated from within, its core of molten rock seething from the pressure of the giant world squeezing down upon it. But Saturn is smaller than Jupiter, farther from the Sun, and therefore colder. Where Jupiter harbors a flourishing biosphere of aerial organisms in its thick hydrogen atmosphere, and an even more complex ecology of seagoing creatures in its deep planetwide ocean, Saturn seems bereft of life, except for the cold-adapted microbes that dwell in its upper cloud deck.

"Saturn is a dead end, as far as multicellular life is concerned," pronounced a disappointed astrobiologist after the earliest probes scanned the vast ocean that swirls beneath the ringed world's perpetual clouds, "just over the edge of habitability for anything more complex than single-celled organisms."

Wistfully, he added, "Just a little warmer and we would have had a duplicate of Jupiter."

Among the billions of ice particles that make up the rings, some prebiological chemical activity has been detected by robotic probes, but no evidence for living organisms has been found, as yet.

Saturn's giant moon, Titan, is an altogether different matter, however. A rich ecology of hydrocarbon-based microbes exists there, placing Titan off-limits for any development or industrial exploitation. No one but scientists are allowed at Titan, and even they have refrained from sending to its surface anything except completely sterilized robot probes.

The scientific community and the International Astronautical Authority are agreed that humans must not endanger Titan's ecology with the threat of contamination.

But others do not agree.

TO: All Human Resources Department Personnel.

FROM: R. Morgenthau, Acting Director.

SUBJECT: Prayer Meetings.

Several staff members have asked for a clarification of departmental policy concerning prayer meetings. Although habitat regulations do not specifically call for such meetings during normal working hours, neither do said regulations forbid them.

Therefore it will be the policy of the Human Resources Department to allow HR staff to conduct prayer meetings during working hours, providing such meetings are cleared beforehand with the Acting Director, and further providing that such meetings are no longer than thirty (30) minutes in duration.

Staff members are encouraged to attend prayer meetings. The Human Resources Department will, furthermore, encourage all other departments to follow a similar policy. Those who oppose prayer meetings are obviously attempting to impose their secularist opinions on the general population of this habitat.

R. Morgenthau.

Acting Director.

Human Resources Department.

Edouard Urbain imagined himself standing on the shore of Titan's hydrocarbon sea.

Larger than the planet Mercury, Titan is a cold and dark world, some ten times farther from the Sun than Earth is. Only pale and weak sunlight filters through the clouds and smog of Titan's thick, murky atmosphere.

Urbain pictured himself standing on an outcropping of ice, staring through his spacesuit helmet's visor at the black, oily sea surging across the rough, jumbled ice field below. In the distance a sooty "snowstorm" was approaching, a wall of black hydrocarbon flakes blotting out the horizon as it came closer.

Then the bleak, frozen landscape suddenly grew brighter. He looked up, and the breath caught in his throat. The clouds had broken for a moment and he could see Saturn riding high above, magnificently beautiful, ten times larger than a full Moon on Earth, its rings a slim knife edge slicing across the middle of the gaudily striped body of the planet. There is no lovelier sight in the entire solar system, he thought.

But the tide was coming in. Pulled by the immense gravitational power of Saturn, the hydrocarbon sea was a frothing tidal wave swiftly advancing across the broken landscape of ice, a slimy crawling monster swallowing everything in its path, submerging spires and boulder-sized chunks of ice, covering the frozen ground in hissing, bubbling black oil, flooding the world from horizon to horizon. Soon it would drown even the prominence Urbain was standing on, slithering halfway across Titan before reversing its course.

Someday I will stand by that sea, Urbain told himself, equipped to sample it and search for living organisms in the black, oily liquid. Someday.

He sighed and looked around his cramped little office, returning to reality. No one will go to the surface of Titan, not for many years to come, he knew.

Then his eyes fell on the three-dimensional schematic of the landing vehicle that hovered above his desk. It looked bulky and cumbersome, but to Urbain it was the epitome of pragmatic elegance. You will go down to Titan's surface, my beauty, Urbain said silently to the drawing.

Designing the lander had been little more than child's play, he realized. It was being built by his engineers and technicians, under his meticulous direction. That much was actually rather simple.

The big accomplishment was carrying it to Saturn, establishing this habitat in orbit around the ringed planet, where Urbain and his scientists could control the lander in real time.

Time had defeated earlier attempts to explore Titan remotely. It took more than an hour to send a signal from Earth to Saturn, even when the two planets were at their closest. Remotely-controlled probes failed, no matter how sophisticated they were, because of that time lag. For decades scientists on Earth gnashed their teeth in frustration as one probe after another trundled blithely into a crevasse or was blanketed in oily black snow, simply because it took hours for their human controllers to get the proper commands to them.

No longer, Urbain told himself. Now we will control the lander from a mere few light-seconds away. If necessary, we can establish a command post in orbit around Titan itself and cut the reaction time to less than a second.

But no human will set foot on Titan, he knew. Not for many years. The thought saddened him, in his heart of hearts. He wanted to plant his own boots on that cold, dark, black-ice surface. Deep in the place where he kept his most secret desires, Edouard Urbain wanted to be the first man to reach the surface of Titan.

"Jezoo, it's like a movie set down here."

Holly was leading Manuel Gaeta along the utilities tunnel that ran beneath the village. Overhead lights flicked on automatically as they walked along the tunnel, then went dark again once they had passed. The walls were lined with electrical conduits, plumbing pipes, valves, control panels, phone screens spaced every hundred meters. More pipes ran overhead, color coded blue for potable water, yellow for sewage heading to the recyclers, red for hot water going to the waste heat radiators outside the habitat. The tunnel hummed with the constant throb of pumps and electrical equipment. Holly could feel the metal deck plates vibrating through the soles of her softboots.

"What's a movie set?" she asked.

"Where they shoot vids," Gaeta replied, eying all the ductwork around them as they moved along the tunnel. "You know, if they need to do a scene in ancient Rome they build a set to look like ancient Rome."

"Oh. Sure. I click. But how does this look like a movie set?" He grinned at her. "Like the back side of a set. They're all fake, just a facade, usually made out of plastic. You go behind, it's all propped up with girders and scaffolds."

"And this reminds you of that?" she asked, puzzled.

"Kinda," he replied. "I mean, a couple dozen meters over our heads is the village
—
"

"No, we're past the village now," Holly corrected. "We're underneath the park, heading for the farms."

"Whatever. Up top it all looks so real, but down here you realize it's all fakery."

"It is not!" she said, with some heat. "It's as real as real can be. You eat the food we grow on the farms, don't you? You sleep in an apartment in the village. How real can it get?"

Gaeta held up both hands in a mock surrender. "Hey, whoa. Don't take it so personal. I just meant, this whole habitat is an artificial construction. It looks like a real village and real farms and all that, but when you're down here you realize it's all inside a big machine."

"Well, f'sure," Holly said. "Everybody knows that."

They walked in silence for a while, the overhead lights turning on for them and off again once they passed. Like magic, Holly thought. Then she remembered that she should have been in the office, working. But this is fun, she told herself, exploring the tunnels. Why work all the time? A person ought to have a little fun now and then.

The tunnel branched up ahead, and one wall opened up to reveal another tunnel that crossed theirs at a lower level.

"This way," Holly said, swinging a leg over the guardrail.

"Down there?" Gaeta asked.

"Sure." She flipped over the metal railing, grasped its bottom rung and hung there for an instant, then dropped to the metal flooring of the lower tunnel, four meters below.

"Come on," Holly called up to Gaeta. "It's a shortcut to the farms."

He leaned over the rail, looking dubious. Then slowly, methodically, he clambered over the rail and let himself drop down beside her, landing lightly on the balls of his feet.

"For a stunt guy," she chided, "you're warping cautious."

"That's how a stunt guy stays in one piece," he replied, grinning. "There are old stuntmen and bold stuntmen, but there are no old, bold stuntmen."

Holly laughed, understanding.

"How far to the farms?" Gaeta asked.

"Not far now."

"How far?"

She wrinkled her brow for a moment, then answered, "Less than three kilometers."

"You certain of that?"

"I've got all the tunnels memorized," Holly told him.

"All of them? Every one? Every kilometer?"

"Every centimeter."

He laughed. "All up in your head, huh?" he teased, tapping his own temple.

Holly pulled her handheld from her tunic pocket and pressed the locater key with her thumb. The screen showed a schematic of the tunnels that threaded beneath the habitat's landscaping, with a blinking red cursor identifying their location.

Gaeta peered at the little screen over her shoulder. She could feel his warm breath on the back of her neck, sense his body heat.

"I'll be damned," he said, slightly awestruck. "You were right on the button."

"I told you, didn't I? I've memorized the whole layout of the habitat. Every centimeter of it."

Gaeta placed his hand on his heart and made a little bow.
"Perdone me, senorita.
I apologize for doubting you."

"De nada,"
said Holly, which just about exhausted her knowledge of Spanish. She promised herself she would learn more.

Their adventure had started just before lunch, when Gaeta had popped into Holly's office asking about authorization for an excursion outside the habitat.

"Gotta test the suit," he explained. "We've made half a dozen modifications to it and we need to test it in hard vacuum."

Looking up at him from her desk chair, Holly noticed that his eyes were the darkest brown she had ever seen.

"You need to see the Safety Department about that," she said. "This is Human Resources."

Gaeta made a small shrug. "Yeah, I know, but I thought maybe you could help me with it. I don't know any of the people in the Safety Department, and at least you and I have met before."

She thought that sounded something like a lie. Or maybe an excuse to see me? Holly wondered. With hardly a moment's thought, she phoned the Safety office and made an appointment for Gaeta to talk with them.

Then he asked her to lunch and they began chatting about his plans for getting down to the surface of Titan and living in the habitat and before she knew it Holly was telling him her life story, or as much of it she remembered.

"Let's take the afternoon off," he suddenly suggested.

Holly sipped at her coffee, thinking that there was too much work waiting at her desk even though Manny was kind of handsome in a beat-up way and when he smiled like that those dark, dark eyes lit up like candles on a birthday cake.

"And do what?" she asked.

He spread his hands and grinned at her. "Nothing. Just loaf. Take it easy for a few hours."

"I have a better idea," Holly said, putting her coffee cup down with a tiny clink.

"What?" he asked.

"Let's go exploring," said Holly.

So she led him to one of the access hatches built into the back of the administration building and down the metal ladder into the utilities tunnel.

"Like going down to the Morlocks," he muttered as they clambered down the ladder.

"Oarlocks?" Holly asked, puzzled.

Gaeta just laughed.

As they walked along the tunnel, talking, looking, discovering, Holly realized that here she was all alone with this guy and nobody knew where she was. What'll I do if he starts to come on to me? she wondered. And another part of her mind asked, What'll you do if he doesn't come on to you?

He's a stallion, all right, Holly thought as they prowled along the tunnel. Not much taller than she, but strong, muscular. She had never had the chance to do any sexual experimenting while under her sister's watchful eye, although according to what Pancho had told her she'd had her share of toy boys
—
and even serious lovers
—
when she'd been in school before she'd died.

Could I make Malcolm jealous? she wondered. He hasn't paid any attention to me at all. Maybe if he finds out I'm seeing this stud, he'll take some notice. Maybe
—

"How well do you know Dr. Cardenas?" Gaeta asked as they paused at a fork in the tunnel.

Holly hesitated a moment, picturing the tunnel layout in her mind. "That way," she pointed, "leads out to the farms. This way goes to the factories."

He scratched his chin. "We gonna walk all the way back to the village?"

"Sure. It's only three, four klicks."

"There's no transportation?"

Holly laughed. "Don't tell me you're tired!"

"Naw, not really. I was just thinking it's getting close to dinnertime and I ought to take a shower, you know, and get into some fresh clothes."

Holly felt her pulse speed up. Is he trying to get me to his apartment?

"I got a dinner date with Dr. Cardenas," he explained, "and I oughtta look decent for her."

Holly's face fell. "With Dr. Cardenas?"

He must have seen her disappointment. She realized that a blind man could have seen it.

"It's the only time we can talk about how she can make the nanobugs to decontaminate my suit," he explained. "She's so damn' busy setting up her lab the only chance I get to talk with her is at dinner."

"Oh."

"It's strictly business."

"Yeah. I click."

Gaeta gave her a sheepish little-boy look. "You wanna come, too? Bring a friend
—
we can make it two couples."

With a start, Holly realized she didn't have a friend she could call for a dinner date. She had plenty of acquaintances, but most of them were from the office. Ever since coming into the habitat she had spent all her time, all her thoughts, on Eberly. Until this day when Gaeta had popped into her office.

And now this.

"No," she said firmly. "Thanks anyway. I have a lot of work to catch up on."

He nodded glumly. "I've taken you away from your work, huh?"

"That's all right," Holly said. "It was a fun afternoon."

She started back down the tunnel in the direction they had come from. Gaeta quickly caught up with her.

"Maybe you could have dinner with me tomorrow?" he suggested.

Holly brightened. "Tomorrow? Sure, why not."

"Great," he said, smiling at her.

When Gaeta got back to his apartment he stripped, showered, and decided the depilatory was still working well enough so that he didn't need to shave yet. As he pulled on his clothes, one eye on the digital clock by his bed, he commanded the phone to send a message to Wendell Sloane, in Selene.

"Mr. Sloane," he said, slightly uncomfortable at being so formal. "Progress report on Ms. Lane. Nothing much new to report. She's still working in the Human Resources Department. Doesn't appear to have any personal attachments; no boyfriends, not much of a social life at all. I had lunch with her this afternoon. She's really a fine young lady: very bright, very sharp. She seems happy in her work here in the habitat. Tell her sister she's got nothing to worry about as far as she's concerned. But I'll keep on looking out for her, just like you want. Just wanna let you know there's no problems here."

That oughtta keep the suits back in Selene satisfied for a while. Without their backing, this whole Titan stunt would go down the tubes. Astro Corporation was the major funding source for Manuel Gaeta and his team.

Sammi Vyborg sat rigidly at his desk, looking past the open door of his cubbyhole office at the larger office across the corridor. It belonged to his immediate superior, Diego Romero.

Vyborg glanced at the numerals of the digital clock flashing away in the corner of his desk. Every day it's the same routine, Vyborg grumbled to himself. He spends the morning pretending to work, takes his lunch, then goes out for the afternoon. I sit here buried in duties and chores and he spends every afternoon out of the office. The number two man in the department, and he only puts in half a day, at best.

Don't get mad, Vyborg reminded himself. Get even. It's time to set this lazy old incompetent against the director. With a bit of luck, I can bring them both down.

Romero stepped out into the corridor and slid his office door shut. Turning, he noticed Vyborg watching him.

"Buenos tardes,"
he said, with a smile and a slight bow.

Vyborg smiled back at him, sourly.

As soon as Romero was gone, Vyborg got up from his desk and walked down the corridor to the office of the Communications De
p
artment's director, Zeke Berkowitz. He rapped once on the half-open door, making it rattle against its track.

"Come on in," Berkowitz called. As Vyborg slid the door all the way open and stepped into the office, Berkowitz smiled and said, "Ah, Sammi. What can I do for you?"

Amiable was the word for Berkowitz. The man had spent a long and successful career in the video news business, first as a local reporter, then as a network anchorman, and finally as a global executive. He never made an enemy, although in the cutthroat world of news broadcasting many people had tried to chop him down, stab him in the back, or even forcibly retire him. He survived it all with a smile and a homily about Christian charity, liberally sprinkled with self-deprecating Jewish humor.

When he reached mandatory retirement age, the still-youthful Berkowitz moved into academia, happily teaching a new generation of would-be journalists and public relations flacks the realities of the communications business. It was at an international conference that he met James Wilmot, the famous anthropologist; the two men became instant friends, even though they lived and taught on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Years later, when Wilmot invited Berkowitz to be head of the Communications Department on the Saturn-bound space habitat, Berkowitz
—
recently a widower after fifty years of loving marriage
—
accepted the opportunity to get as far away from his memories as he could.