Saturn

SATURN ARRIVAL MINUS 4 DAYS

Controlled frenzy, Eberly decided. That’s what this is: controlled frenzy.

Since being named deputy director of the habitat, Eberly had moved his election campaign headquarters out of his apartment and into a vacant warehouse space in the Cairo village. It was large enough to house his growing staff of campaign volunteers and their even-faster-growing sets of computers and communications equipment.

He seldom visited the headquarters, preferring to stay aloof from his foot soldiers. The less they see of me, he reasoned, the more they appreciate my rare visits to them.

This evening before election day was one of those rare visits. Sure enough, the dozens of volunteers swarmed around Eberly as soon as he stepped through the warehouse’s big double doors. They were beaming at him, especially the women.

He allowed himself to be shown around the makeshift workbenches and shook hands with each and every volunteer. He wore his best smile. He assured them that tomorrow’s election would be a smashing triumph for them. They smiled back and agreed that “We can’t lose” and “By this time tomorrow you’ll be the top man.”

Eberly disengaged from them at last, and let Morgenthau lead him to the small private office that had been partitioned off in the far corner of the warehouse space. He had specified that the office should be enclosed by true walls that reached the high ceiling, not merely shoulder-high dividers. And the walls should be soundproofed.

Vyborg was sitting behind the desk in the office when Morgenthau shut the door behind Eberly, Kananga in the chair next to a bank of computer consoles. Both men got to their feet.

“It’s going well,” Vyborg said as Eberly approached the desk.

“Never mind that,” he snapped. “What about Holly? Have you found her?”

“Not yet,” Kananga replied.

“It’s been two weeks!”

“This habitat is very large and I have only a limited number of people to search for her.”

“I want her caught.”

“She will be. I’ve staked out all the places where she can obtain food. We’ll find her sooner or later.”

“Make certain she’s dead,” Vyborg said.

Eberly frowned at that, thinking, They all professes to be Believers but they don’t even blink at the thought of murder. And they want to make me a party to their crimes. Then they’ll have an even stronger hold over me.

Morgenthau wondered, “What if she surrenders herself in some public place? She might be clever enough to show up at the cafeteria at lunchtime and offer to turn herself in.”

Eberly actually shuddered. “If she starts talking, everything we’ve worked for could be ruined.”

“But she’s been neutralized,” Vyborg countered. “I’ve seen to it that everyone believes she’s a dangerous lunatic.”

With a shake of his head, Eberly replied, “No matter what the people believe, if she decides to start blabbing in public it could upset the election. It could throw the election to Urbain. Or even Timoshenko.”

“Tonight is the critical time, then,” Morgenthau said. “By this time tomorrow the election will be over.”

“I want her found tonight.”

“It would be good,” Vyborg said, almost in a whisper, “if she were found dead.”

Kananga nodded. “I’ll put the entire security force on it.”

“Has she any allies?” Eberly asked. “Any friends that she might turn to for help?”

Vyborg said, “She phoned Dr. Cardenas.”

“That was two weeks ago,” said Morgenthau.

“And only once,” added Kananga. “It was too brief for us to catch her.”

“Cardenas?” Eberly suddenly saw the way to catch Holly. “She phoned the nanotech expert?”

“Yes.”

Morgenthau saw the gleam in his eye. “Do you think …?”

“A nanobug threat,” said Eberly. Turning to Vyborg, he commanded, “Put out the news that Holly might be harboring dangerous nanomachines. Make it sound as if she’s a threat to the entire habitat. A nanoplague! Then every person in the habitat will be on the lookout for her. Kananga, you’ll have ten thousand people searching for her!”

The Rwandan laughed delightedly. Vyborg nodded and scampered to the desktop comm unit. As he began dictating a news bulletin, Eberly turned to Morgenthau.

“So much for our fugitive. Now, what are the latest election predictions?”

He expected her to give him a rosy forecast for the election. Instead, her smile faded and a cloud of doubt darkened her chubby face.

“We may have created a Frankenstein monster in this engineer, Timoshenko,” Morgenthau said, turning toward the computer bank.

She called up the latest projection, and a multicolored chart appeared against the bare office wall.

“The blue represents our votes,” said Morgenthau, “the red is Urbain’s and the yellow is Timoshenko’s.”

“We’re well ahead,” said Eberly.

“Yes, but there’s a disturbing trend.” The chart shifted, colors melting or growing. “If Timoshenko’s people throw their support to Urbain, they could beat you.”

“Why would they do that?”

Morgenthau shrugged heavily. “I don’t know why, but it’s happening. Urbain has picked up nearly twenty percent of the voters who were solidly in Timoshenko’s camp only a few days ago.”

“According to your analyses,” said Eberly.

“Which are based on extensive polls by our volunteers out there.” She pointed toward the door. “I may be overly alarmist, but it might be possible for Urbain to pick up enough of Timoshenko’s votes to win tomorrow.”

Eberly stared hard at the chart, as if he could force the numbers to change by sheer force of will. He kept his face immobile, trying to hide the anger and terror churning in his gut. I could lose! And then where would I be? They’ll take me back, put me back in prison!

He barely heard Morgenthau’s voice. “Cancel the election. You’re deputy administrator now. Wilmot’s been neutralized. Cancel the election and set up the government on your own authority.”

“And have three quarters of the population rebel against me?” Eberly snarled at her.

“If they do,” said Kananga, “you’ll have the perfect excuse to establish martial law.”

“Then we could control everyone,” Morgenthau agreed. “I had the blueprints for neural probes beamed here from Earth. Once martial law is established we could arrest the troublemakers and implant them with the neural controllers. It would be just what we want.”

Except that the people would hate me, Eberly thought. They would scheme against me. They’d work night and day to overthrow me.

“No,” he said flatly. “I can’t rule these people by force. Or by turning them into useless zombies.”

“You wouldn’t need neural implants,” said Kananga, drawing himself up to his full height. “I could make certain that they obey you.”

And make me dependent on you, Eberly answered silently. I want these people to respect me, to follow me out of admiration and respect. I want them to love me the way those volunteers outside love me.

“No,” he repeated. “I must win this election legally. I want the people to elect me freely. Otherwise there will be nothing but turmoil and resistance to my rule.”

Morgenthau looked genuinely alarmed. “But if the election goes against you? What then?”

“It won’t go against me.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The rally tonight. I’ll win them over. I’ll split Timoshenko’s supporters away from Urbain’s.”

“How?”

“You’ll see.”

Despite the fear that constantly gnawed at her, Holly was almost enjoying her exile. It’s like camping out, she thought. Not that she could remember camping out from her first life, back on Earth. Yet she felt strangely free, unattached to anyone or any duties except what she felt like doing. There were plenty of unoccupied areas up topside in the habitat, she knew; two whole villages had been set aside for population growth. And when she got tired of prowling through the tunnels she could always climb up into the orchards or farms and sleep undisturbed on the soft, warm ground.

As far as she could tell, no one was watching her, no one was tracking her. She had made that one call to Kris from the cafeteria’s storeroom, and sure enough, a squad of Kananga’s security goons had converged on the wall phone within minutes. Holly had watched them from the nearly shut trapdoor in the storeroom’s rear. Flatlanders, she thought. They haven’t tumbled to the idea that somebody could live beneath the ground, in the tunnels. And there’s a gazillion kilometers of tunnels down here, she told herself. I could stay for years and they’d never find me.

But always the realization that Kananga had murdered Don Diego stuck in her memory like a cold knife. And Malcolm’s in on it, somehow. How and why she didn’t know, but she knew she couldn’t trust Malcolm or anyone else. Well, you can trust Kris, she thought. But that would bring trouble down on Kris’s head. They murdered Don Diego and Kananga tried to kill me. Would they try to murder Kris if they thought she was helping me? Flaming yes, she decided swiftly.

As the days spun along, though, Holly realized she was accomplishing nothing. Kay, it’s fun hiding out in the tunnels and living off the farms and all that. But how long do you want to go on this way? You can’t let them get away with it, she told herself. And the election’s coming up. Once Malcolm’s elected chief of the habitat things’ll only get worse, not better.

You’ve got to find some way to nail them, she kept thinking. Kananga and fat Morgenthau and the little snake Vyborg. Yes, and Malcolm, too. But how? You can’t do it by yourself. You need somebody … but who?

At last it came to her. Of course! Professor Wilmot. He’s in charge of everything. At least, until the election is over. Once I tell him what it’s all about, he’ll know what to do.

Jeeps! she realized. The election’s tomorrow! I’ve got to visit the professor tonight.

PLANNING SESSION

Gaeta sat flanked by Kris Cardenas on one side and Fritz von Helmholtz on the other. Berkowitz sat on Fritz’s left. Nadia Wunderly stood before them, waving a laser pointer in one hand. We should’ve worn safety glasses, Gaeta thought. She’s gonna zap somebody’s eye with that thing if she’s not careful.

Wunderly was practically bouncing with excitement.

“Here’s the real-time position of the iceball,” she said, pointing at the computer display with the laser. “Right on track for capture.”

Gaeta saw Saturn floating lazily in the dark infinity of space, its rings bright and splendid. A greenish oval marked the habitat’s current position, heading toward an orbit outside the rings. The tiny red dot of the laser pointer was on a speck of light that was farther from the planet than their own habitat.

“And here’s what’s going to happen over the next four days,” Wunderly said.

They saw the habitat moving slowly into orbit, as planned. The iceball swung past the planet and almost completely out of the picture, but then Saturn’s gravity pulled it back. The iceball skimmed past the rings once, went behind the planet, then swung around again and pulled in tighter.

“Here we go,” Wunderly said breathlessly.

The iceball entered the wide, bright B ring from the top, popped through to the other side, circled behind Saturn’s massive bulk once more. When it reappeared it was noticeably slower. Gaeta saw it settle into the B ring almost like a duck landing gently on a pond.

“And that’s it,” Wunderly said, freezing the image. “Saturn acquires a new moon smack in the middle of the B ring. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this before.”

Berkowitz breathed an awed, “Wow. Every network will carry the capture event.” Leaning past Fritz slightly, he said to Gaeta, “What a terrific setup for your gig!”

Gaeta grinned at him.

“How will it affect the rings?” Cardenas asked.

Wunderly shrugged. “It’s too small to have any major effect. It’s only eight klicks across. Tiny, really.”

“But it will jostle the particles that are already in the ring, will it not?” asked Fritz.

She nodded. “Ay-yup, but it won’t affect the ring dynamics much. No changes in the Cassini division or anything like that. I’ve done the sims, the only strong effects will be very local.”

“So that’s where we want to be when it happens,” said Gaeta.

“No!” Wunderly and Cardenas said in unison.

“It’s too dangerous,” Cardenas added.

“I agree,” Wunderly said. “You should wait a day or two, give everything a chance to settle down.”

“Won’t hurt to wait a little,” Berkowitz agreed. “But not more than a day or two. We want to go while people are still focused on Saturn and the rings.”

Gaeta looked at Fritz, who was intently studying the three-dimensional image hanging before them.

“What do you think, Fritz?”

“It would be dangerous, but I think within our capabilities. The suit should hold up sufficiently. And it would give us spectacular foot-age.”

Wunderly said, “I don’t think—”

“Wouldn’t it be a help to you,” Gaeta interrupted her, “to get realtime footage of the capture from inside the ring itself?”

“I can do that with a few remotes,” she said. “You don’t have to risk your neck for the sake of science.”

“Still…”

“No, Manny,” said Cardenas, quite firmly. “You do what Nadia tells you. Nobody wants to see you get killed over this. Waiting a day or two won’t make the stunt any less spectacular.”

Fritz agreed with a glum, “I suppose they are right.”

“You really want to wait?” Gaeta asked his chief technician.

“No sense destroying the suit.”

Gaeta grinned at him, then shrugged. Looking squarely at Cardenas, he said, “Okay, we’ll wait until the next day.”

“Will that be time enough for the ring to settle down?” Cardenas asked.

Wunderly said, “Two days would be safer.”

“One day would be better,” said Berkowitz, “publicity-wise.”

“The next day,” Gaeta said, thinking, I can’t let Kris run this stunt. I can’t let her worries control my work.

“The next day, then,” Cardenas agreed reluctantly. She got up from her chair. “I’m going to the big rally. Anybody else want to see the fireworks?”

“I’ve got too much work to do,” said Wunderly.

Gaeta stayed in his seat as he said gently, “Nadia, if you’re finished with the pointer, would you mind turning it off?”

Only after she did so did Gaeta get up and head for the door with Cardenas.

Gaeta walked with Cardenas up the village street.

“Are you sure you’re not taking too big a chance by going the day after the new moon’s captured?” she asked.

He saw the concern on her face. “Kris, I don’t take risks I can’t handle.”

“That’s how you broke your nose.”

“The ice sled hit a rock and I banged my beak on the helmet faceplate,” he said, with a grin. “Could’ve happened in my bathroom, for God’s sake.”

“Your bathroom is on Mars?”

His grin faded. “You know what I mean.”

“And you know what I mean,” she replied, utterly serious.

“I’ll be okay, Kris. I’ll be fine. Fritz won’t let me take chances with the suit.”

She fell silent, while Gaeta thought, Jezoo, I can’t be thinking about her and her fears while I’m out there. I’ve gotta concentrate on getting the job done, not worry about what she’s thinking. Surest way to get yourself killed is to let your attention drift away from the job at hand.

They walked up the gently rising street in silence toward the apartment building where both their quarters were. Through the spaces between the buildings on their left, Gaeta could see a crowd already starting to gather by the lakeside, where the big election-eve rally was scheduled to take place. Eberly expects me there, he remembered.

“Maybe we oughtta get a quick bite in the cafeteria,” he said to Cardenas, “before we go to the rally.”

“I’ve got some snacks in the freezer. You can nuke them while I change.”

Gaeta nodded and smiled. Women have to change their clothes for every occasion. Then he thought about his own pullover shirt and form-fitting denims. I’m gonna be on the platform with Eberly, he realized. What the hell, this is good enough. I’m a stunt guy, not a vid star.

Raoul Tavalera was sitting on the doorstep of their apartment building, head hanging low, looking more morose than usual. He rose slowly to his feet as he saw Cardenas and Gaeta coming up the walk toward him. Gaeta thought he saw the younger man wince with pain.

“Raoul,” Cardenas said, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

“They closed down the lab,” he said.

“What?”

“About an hour ago. Four big goons from Security came in with their damned batons and told me to shut down everything. Then they locked everything up. Two of ’em are still there, guarding the door.”

Cardenas felt a flush of rage race through her. “Closed the lab! Why? Under whose authority?”

Rubbing his side, Tavalera answered, “I asked but they didn’t answer. Just whacked me in the ribs and muscled me out into the hall. Big guys. Four of ’em.”

Pushing through the building’s front door, Cardenas whipped out her handheld as she started up the stairs. “Professor Wilmot,” she snapped at the phone.

Gaeta and Tavalera followed her up the stairs and into the sitting room of her apartment. Tavalera looked gloomy. Gaeta thought idly that he could change his clothes in Kris’s bedroom; he had almost as much of his wardrobe in her closet as he had in his own.

Cardenas projected Wilmot’s gray-haired face against the far wall of the sitting room.

“Professor,” she said, without a greeting, “someone from Security has shut down my laboratory.”

Wilmot looked startled. “They have?”

“I want to know why, and why this was done without consulting me first.”

Brushing his moustache with one finger, Wilmot looked pained, embarrassed. “Um, I suggest you ask the deputy director about that.”

“The deputy director?”

“Dr. Eberly.”

“Since when does he have the authority to shut down my laboratory?”

“You’ll have to ask him, I’m afraid. Actually, I know nothing about it. Nothing at all.”

“But you can tell him to let me reopen my lab!” Cardenas fairly shouted. “You can tell him to call off his dogs.”

His face slowly turning red, Wilmot said, “I really think you should talk to him directly.”

“But—”

“It’s his show. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

Wilmot’s image abruptly winked out. Cardenas stared at the empty air, openmouthed. “He hung up on me!”

Gaeta said, “I guess you’ll have to call Eberly.”

Fuming, Cardenas told the phone to contact Eberly. Ruth Morgenthau’s image appeared, instead.

“Dr. Eberly is busy preparing his statement for this evening’s rally,” she said smoothly. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“You can call off the security officers posted at my laboratory and let me get back to my work,” Cardenas barked. “Right now. This minute.”

“I’m afraid that can’t be done,” Morgenthau said, completely unflustered. “We have a dangerous situation on our hands. There’s a fugitive loose, and we have reason to believe she might try to break into your laboratory and release nanobugs that could be very dangerous to everyone in the habitat.”

“A fugitive? You mean Holly?”

“She’s psychotic. We have reason to believe she murdered a man. We know she attacked Colonel Kananga.”

“Holly? She attacked somebody?”

Gaeta said, “Holly’s never been violent before. What the hell’s going on?”

Morgenthau’s face took on a sad expression. “Apparently Miss Lane has stopped taking her medication, for some reason. She is decidedly unbalanced. I can send you her dossier, if you want proof of her condition.”

“Do that,” Cardenas snapped.

“I will.”

“But I don’t see what this has to do with my lab,” Cardenas said.

Morgenthau sighed like a teacher trying to enlighten a backward child. “We know that she’s been friendly with you, Dr. Cardenas. We can’t take the chance that she might get into your lab and release dangerous nanobugs. That would be—”

“There aren’t any dangerous nanobugs in my lab!” Cardenas exploded. “And even if there were, all you have to do is expose them to ultraviolet light and they’d be deactivated.”

“I know that’s how it seems to you,” said Morgenthau patiently. “But to the rest of us nanomaehines are a dangerous threat that could wipe out everyone in this habitat. Naturally, we must be extremely careful in dealing with them.”

Seething, Cardenas started to say, “But don’t you understand that—”

“I’m sorry,” Morgenthau said sternly. “The issue is decided. Your laboratory will remain closed until Holly Lane is taken into custody.”

SATURN ARRIVAL MINUS 3 DAYS, 6 HOURS, 17 MINUTES

Gaeta could see that Cardenas was livid, furious. Even Tavalera, who usually seemed passively glum, was glaring at the empty space where Morgenthau’s image had been.

“Holly’s not a nutcase,” Tavalera muttered.

“I don’t think so either,” said Cardenas.

“But Morgenthau does,” Gaeta pointed out. “And so does Eberly and the rest of the top brass, I guess.”

Cardenas shook her head angrily. “And Wilmot won’t do a damned thing about it.”

Gaeta said, “This is serious, Kris. They’re saying Holly might’ve killed somebody.”

“Who?” asked Tavalera.

Striding toward the kitchen, Cardenas said, “The only person who’s died recently was Diego Romero. Drowned.”

“And they’re sayin’ Holly did it?” Tavalera said.

Cardenas didn’t answer. She went behind the kitchen counter and started yanking packages from the freezer.

Gaeta noticed the message light blinking on her desktop unit. “You got incoming, Kris.”

“Take it for me, will you?”

It was Holly’s dossier. The three of them studied it, displayed against the sitting room wall.

“She’s bipolar; manic-depressive,” Gaeta said.

“But that doesn’t mean she’d become violent,” said Cardenas.

Tavalera made a sour face. “I don’t believe it. She’s not like that.”

Cardenas looked at him for a long moment, then said, “Neither do I.”

“Could somebody have faked her dossier?” Gaeta asked. “Framed her?”

“There’s one way to find out,” said Cardenas. She commanded the phone to locate Holly’s dossier in the files of the New Morality headquarters in Atlanta.

“This is gonna take an hour or more,” said Gaeta.

“Let’s grab a bite to eat while we wait,” Cardenas suggested.

“Are we going to the rally?” Gaeta asked.

“After we have Holly’s Earthside dossier in our hands,” Cardenas replied.

Holly was waiting for the evening news report while eating a dinner composed of fresh fruits taken from the orchard and a package of cookies from the underground warehouse that cached the specialty foods brought from Earth.

She sat cross-legged on the floor of the utility tunnel that ran beneath the orchard. She planned to go later out to the endcap and sleep in the open, beneath the trees, safely hidden by the flowering bushes that grew in profusion there. Don Diego would’ve loved the area, she thought, its unorganized roughness, a little bit of wilderness in all this planned-out ecology.

The phone screen on the wall opposite her showed an educational vid beamed from Earth: something about dinosaurs and the comet-borne microbes that wiped them out. Holly thought that it was safe enough to watch the program; no one could trace a passive use of the phone. It was only if she made an outgoing call that they could track her location.

The ed program ended as she munched on the cookies. A three-note chime announced the evening news.

Holly’s eyes went wide when the newscaster announced that she was not only a hunted fugitive, but a dangerously unbalanced mental case, wanted in connection with the drowning of Don Diego, who might try to unleash a nanoplague on the habitat.

“You bastards!” Holly shouted, jumping to her feet.

Then the newscast showed a prerecorded interview with Malcolm Eberly, who was identified as the deputy director of the habitat. With convincing sorrow, Eberly said:

“Yes, Miss Lane worked in the Human Resources Department when I served as its chief. She seemed perfectly normal then, but apparently once she goes off her medication she becomes… well, violent.”

“You’re flaming right I’m violent!” Holly screeched. “Wait till I get my hands on your lying face!”

Dressed in a sky-blue blouse and slacks, Cardenas came back into the sitting room where Gaeta and Tavalera were talking together.

“Has her dossier come in from Atlanta yet?” Cardenas asked.

Gaeta shook his head. “Your message is probably just reaching them Earthside by now. We’re a long way from home, Kris.”

Tavalera got to his feet. “The rally’s due to start in half an hour.”

“Sit down, Raoul,” said Cardenas. “I want to see Holly’s dossier before we go.”

“We’ll miss—”

“The candidates won’t be making their final statements for another hour, at least,” Gaeta said. “All we’ll miss is a lot of noise: the marching bands and all that crap.”

Sitting back on the sofa, Tavalera said, “I’m worried about Holly. Those goons from Security can be rough.”

“Where could she be?” Cardenas wondered aloud, going to the sofa and sitting beside Tavalera.

Gaeta, in the armchair across the coffee table from the sofa, suddenly lit up. “I bet I know.”

“Where?”

“The tunnels. She liked to explore the tunnels that run under the ground.”

“Tunnels?”

“There must be a hundred kilometers of ’em. More. They’d never be able to find her down there. And she knows every centimeter of them; has it all memorized.”

“Then how could we find her?” Cardenas asked.

“I’ll look for her,” said Tavalera, getting up again.

Gaeta reached out and grasped his wrist. “Raoul, there’s just too much of the tunnels to search. You’ll never find her. Especially if she doesn’t want to get found.”

Tavalera pulled free of his grip. “It beats sitting around here doin’ nothing,” he said.

“If you do find her,” Cardenas said, “bring her here. We’ll keep her safe until this all gets sorted out.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

With nothing else to do after Tavalera left, Cardenas and Gaeta watched the news broadcast that showed the crowd building up at the rally site beside the lake. The speaker’s platform was empty, but several small bands paraded through the gathering throng, blasting out marching tunes and working up the crowd. They noted that there were plenty of empty chairs spread out on the grass.

“We won’t have any trouble getting seats,” Cardenas murmured.

Gaeta got up from the armchair to sit beside Cardenas, on the sofa. They watched the video, close enough to touch. Despite everything else, Cardenas thought that within a week, two at most, Gaeta would be packing up and preparing to leave the habitat. His torch ship might be already on the way here, she said to herself. Should I go with him? Would he want me to?

The phone chimed. Cardenas displayed the message. It was the dossier of Susan Lane, from the files of the New Morality headquarters in Atlanta.

“They got the wrong Lane,” Gaeta said.

But then the file photo of Holly came up, unmistakable.

“She must’ve changed her name,” murmured Cardenas.

“Is that a sign of instability?”

They read the dossier, every word and statistic.

“No mention of mental or emotional problems,” Gaeta said.

“Or of medications.”

“The sonsofbitches have faked her dossier. They’re framing her.”

Cardenas recorded the entire file into her handheld. Then she popped to her feet.

“Let’s go to the rally and confront Eberly with this,” she said.

“Right,” said Gaeta.

But when he slid the front door open, four burly men and women in the dead black tunics of the security force were standing in the hallway, slim black batons hooked into their belts.

“Colonel Kananga wants to talk to you,” said one of the women, who seemed to be their leader. “After the rally. He asks that you stay here until he can get to you.”

Wordlessly, Cardenas slid the door shut and went back to the sofa.

“They must know what we’ve done,” Gaeta said.

“They’ve bugged this apartment,” said Cardenas, dropping back onto the sofa. “They can hear every word we say. And they know about Holly’s dossier from Atlanta.”

Feeling dazed, helpless, Gaeta said, “Then they know that Tavalera’s gone to the tunnels to find her.”

THE FINAL RALLY

It was hard to talk with so many people pressing around them. Eberly and Morgenthau were walking side by side along the path that led down to the lakeside rally site. Vyborg was slightly behind them, Kananga and a pair of his biggest men up ahead, clearing a path through the thick crowd of people who lined the path, shouting and smiling and reaching for Eberly to shake his hand, touch him, get a smile from him.

He wanted to shake their hands, smile at them, bask in the glow of their adulation. But instead he virtually ignored them as he talked with Morgenthau.

“She’s in the tunnels?” he shouted over the crowd’s meaningless hubbub.

Morgenthau nodded, puffing hard despite the fact that the press of the crowd slowed their pace to little more than a snail’s pace.

“Cardenas’s assistant has entered the tunnels to search for her,” she yelled into Eberly’s ear.

“I hope he has better success than Kananga’s oafs.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said louder. “Never mind.”

“We’ve detained Cardenas and the stunt man. They have Holly’s original dossier.”

A shock of alarm hit Eberly. “How did they get it?”

“From Atlanta. The New Morality has dossiers on everyone aboard the habitat, apparently.”

Wringing his hands in frustration, Eberly said, “I should have doctored those files, too.”

“Too late for that.”

“This is getting out of hand. We can’t keep Gaeta and Cardenas locked up. I’ve been pushing Gaeta’s stunt as a campaign issue.”

“Vyborg thought it best to keep them quiet until after the election tomorrow.”

Eberly glanced over his shoulder. Vyborg. That sour little troll has been the cause of all this trouble, he told himself. Once I’m firmly in power, I’ll get rid of him. But then he thought, The little snake knows too much about me. The only way to be rid of him is to silence him permanently.

A brass band came blaring up to him, surrounded his little group and escorted them to the speaker’s platform. They were amateur musicians, making up in enthusiasm what they lacked in talent. They blew so loudly that Eberly couldn’t think.

Urbain and Timoshenko were already seated on the platform, he saw as they approached. The crowd was cheering wildly, already worked up to a near frenzy. Wilmot was nowhere in sight. Good. Let him remain in his quarters, as I instructed. I want these people to see me as their leader, no one else.

He climbed the stairs and took his chair between Timoshenko and Urbain. The several little bands clumped together into one large conglomeration in front of the platform and played a faltering rendition of “Now Let Us Praise Famous Men.” Eberly wondered how the women of the habitat felt about the sexist sentiment. The band was so poor that it didn’t matter, he decided.

The blaring music finally ended and an expectant hush fell over the crowd. Eberly saw that fully three thousand of the habitat’s population was standing on the grass, facing him. It was the biggest crowd of the campaign, yet Eberly felt disappointed, dejected. Seventy percent of the population doesn’t care enough about this election to attend the rally. Seventy percent! They sit home and do nothing, then complain when the government does things they don’t like. The fools deserve whatever they get.

The crowd sat on the chairs that had been arranged for them. Eberly saw that there were plenty of empties. Before they could begin to get restless, he rose slowly and stepped to the podium.

“I’m a little embarrassed,” he said as he clipped the pinhead microphone to his tunic. “Professor Wilmot isn’t able to be with us this evening, and he asked me to serve as moderator in his place.”

“Don’t be embarrassed!” came a woman’s voice from somewhere in the throng.

Eberly beamed a smile in her general direction and went on, “As you probably know already, we are not going to bore you with long-winded speeches this evening. Each candidate will make a brief, five-minute statement that summarizes his position on the major issues. After these statements you will be able to ask questions of the candidates.”

He hesitated a heartbeat, then went on, “The order of speakers this evening was chosen by lot, and I won the first position. However, I think it’s a little too much for me to be both the moderator and the first speaker, so I’m going to change the order of the candidates’ statements and go last.”

Dead silence from the audience. Eberly turned slightly toward Urbain, then back to the crowd. “Our first speaker, therefore, will be Dr. Edouard Urbain, our chief scientist. Dr. Urbain has had a distinguished career…”

Holly watched the newscast of the rally from the tunnel. Professor Wilmot’s not there, she thought. I wonder why.

Then she realized that this was the perfect opportunity to get to Wilmot without Kananga or anyone else interfering. Holly got to her feet. Just about everybody’s at the rally, she saw, eyes still on the screen. I’ll bet Wilmot’s in his quarters. I could sneak in there and tell him what’s going down.

She turned off the wallscreen and started striding purposively along the tunnel, heading for Athens and Wilmot’s quarters.

After a few minutes, though, she turned off into a side tunnel that provided access for maintenance robots to trundle from one main utility tunnel to another. No sense marching straight to the village, she told herself. Go the roundabout way and look out for any guards that might be snooping around.

So she missed Raoul Tavalera, who came down the utility tunnel from the direction of Athens, looking for her.

Urbain and then Timoshenko spent their five minutes reviewing the positions they had stressed all through the campaign. Urbain insisted that scientific research was the habitat’s purpose, it’s very raison d’etre, and with him as director the habitat’s exploration of Saturn and Titan would be a great success. Timoshenko had taken up part of Eberly’s original position, that the scientists should not become an exalted elite with everyone else in the habitat destined to serve them. Eberly thought that Timoshenko received a larger and longer round of applause than Urbain did.

As Timoshenko sat down, Eberly rose and walked slowly to the podium. Is Morgenthau right? he asked himself. Are Timoshenko’s voters switching to Urbain? Are the engineers lining up with the scientists?

It makes no difference, Eberly told himself as he gripped the edges of the podium. Now is the time to split them. Now is the time to swing the overwhelming majority of votes to me.

“Now is the time,” he said to the audience, “for me to introduce the final speaker. I find myself in the somewhat uncomfortable position of introducing myself.”

A few titters of laughter rippled through the crowd.

“So let me say, without fear of being contradicted, that here is a man who needs no introduction: me!”

They laughed. Vyborg and several of his people began to applaud, and most of the crowd joined in. Eberly stood at the podium soaking up their adulation, real or enforced, it didn’t matter to him as long as the people down there performed as he wanted them to.

Once they quieted down, Eberly said, “This habitat is more than a playground for scientists. It is more than a scientific expedition. This is our home, yours and mine. Yet they want to tell us how we should live, how we should serve them.

“Theytake it for granted that we will maintain strict population controls, even though this habitat could easily house and feed ten times our current population.

“But how will we be able to afford an expanding population? Our ecology and our economy are fixed, locked in place. There is no room for population growth, for babies, in their plans for our future.

“I have a different plan. I know how we can live and grow and be happy. I know how each and every one of you can get rich!”

Eberly could feel the crowd’s surge of interest. Raising an arm to point outward, he said:

“Circling around Saturn is the greatest treasure in the solar system: thousands of billions of tons of water. Water! What would Selene and the other lunar cities pay for an unending supply of water? What would the miners and prospectors in the Asteroid Belt pay? More than gold, more than diamonds and pearls, water is the most precious resource in the solar system! And we have control of enough water to make us all richer than Croesus.”

“No!” Nadia Wunderly screamed, leaping to her feet from the middle of the audience. “You can’t! You mustn’t!”

SATURN ARRIVAL MINUS 3 DAYS, 3 HOURS, 11 MINUTES

Eberly saw a stumpy, slightly plump woman with spiky red hair pushing her way to the front of the crowd.

“You can’t siphon off the ring particles!” she shouted as the people moved away to clear a path for her. “You’ll ruin the rings! You’ll destroy them!”

Holding up a hand for silence, Eberly said dryly, “It seems we’ve reached the question-and-answer part of this evening’s rally.”

Once she got to the front of the crowd, at the edge of the platform, Wunderly hesitated. Suddenly she looked embarrassed, unsure of herself. She glanced around, her cheeks reddening.

Eberly smiled down at her. “If the other candidates don’t mind, I’d like to invite this young woman up here to the podium to state her views.”

The audience applauded: lukewarm, but applause nonetheless. Eberly glanced at Urbain and Timoshenko, sitting behind him. Urbain looked uncertain, almost confused. Timoshenko sat with his arms crossed over his chest, an expression somewhere between boredom and disgust on his dark face.

“Come on up,” Eberly beckoned. “Come up here and state your views so that everyone can hear you.”

Wunderly hung back for a couple of heartbeats, then — her lips set in a determined grim line — she climbed the platform stairs and strode to the podium.

As Eberly clipped a spare microphone to the lapel of her tunic, she said earnestly, “You can’t mine the rings—”

Eberly stopped her with a single upraised finger. “Just a moment. Tell us your name first, if you please. And your affiliation.”

She swallowed once, then looked out at the audience and said, “Dr. Nadia Wunderly. I’m with the Planetary Sciences group.”

“A scientist.” I thought so, Eberly said to himself. Here’s my chance to show the voters how self-centered the scientists are, how righteous they are, not caring an iota about the rest of us.

“That’s right, I’m a planetary scientist. And you can’t start mining the rings. You’ll destroy them. I know they look big, but if you put all of the ring particles together they’d only form a body of ice that’s no more than a hundred kilometers across.”

Turning to Urbain, Eberly said, “Would you care to join this discussion, Dr. Urbain?”

The Quebecois got up from his chair and approached the platform, while Timoshenko sat unmoving, his arms still folded across his chest, his face still scowling.

“The rings are fragile,” Wunderly said earnestly. “If you start stealing tons of particles from them you might break them up.”

Eberly asked, “Dr. Urbain, is that true?”

Urbain’s face clouded momentarily. Then, with a little tug at his beard, he replied, “Yes, of course, if you continue to remove particles from the rings, at some point you will destabilize them. That is obvious.”

“How many tons of ice particles can we remove without destabilizing the rings?”

Urbain looked at Wunderly, then gave a Gallic shrug. “That is unknown.”

“I could calculate it,” Wunderly said.

“How many tons of ice are there in the rings?” Eberly probed.

Before Urbain could answer, Wunderly said, “A little over five times ten to the seventeenth metric tons.”

“Five times…” Eberly made a puzzled face. “That sounds like a lot, to me.”

Urbain said, “It is five with seventeen zeroes after it.”

“Five hundred thousand million million tons,” said Wunderly.

Eberly pretended to be amazed. “And you’re worried about our snitching a few hundred tons per year?”

A few snickering laughs rose from the crowd.

“But we don’t know what effect that would have on the ring dynamics,” Wunderly said, almost pleading.

Urbain added more forcefully, “You say a few hundred tons per year, but that number will grow.”

“Yes, but there’s five hundred thousand million million tons available,” said Eberly.

Nostrils flaring, Urbain said, “And once all of Canada was covered with trees. Where are they now? Once the oceans of Earth were filled with fish. Now even the plankton are dying. Once the jungles of Africa were home to the great apes. Today the only chimpanzees or gorillas in existence live in zoos.”

Turning to the audience, Eberly said in his strongest, most authoritative voice, “You can see why scientists must not be allowed to run this habitat. They care more for apes than they do for people. They want to keep five hundred thousand million million tons of water ice out of our hands, when just a tiny amount of that water could make all of us wealthy.”

Wunderly burst, “But we don’t know enough about the rings! At some point you could upset the ring dynamics so badly that they’ll all go crashing down into the planet!”

“And what would happen to any organisms living beneath the clouds?” Urbain added. “It would be an environmental catastrophe beyond imagining. Planetary genocide!”

Eberly shook his head. “By taking a hundred tons or so, out of five hundred thousand million million?”

“Yes,” Urbain snapped. “I will not allow it. The International Astronautical Authority will not allow it.”

“And how will they stop us?” Eberly snapped back. “We’re an independent entity. We don’t have to follow the dictates of the IAA or any other Earthbound authority.”

Turning again to the audience, he said, “I will establish our government as independent of all Earthbound restrictions. Just like Selene. Just like the mining communities in the Asteroid Belt. We will be our own masters! I promise you!”

The audience roared its approval. Urbain shook his head in bafflement. Tears sprang to Wunderly’s eyes.

PROFESSOR WILMOT’S QUARTERS

Instead of his usual evening’s entertainment, Wilmot watched the final rally. Eberly’s a rabble-rouser, nothing less, he thought. Mining the rings and making everyone rich. What an extraordinary idea. Ecologically unwise, perhaps, but the short-term gains will wipe out any fears of long-term problems.

The scientists are unhappy, of course. But what can they do? Eberly’s got this election sewed up. Timoshenko’s people will vote their pocketbooks and go for Eberly. So will a good many of the scientists, I wager.

He leaned back in his comfortable upholstered chair and watched the crowd boil up onto the platform and carry Eberly off on their shoulders, leaving Urbain, Timoshenko, and that pathetic little red-haired woman standing there like forlorn children.

Holly knew there was no exit from the utilities tunnel that opened directly into the apartment building where Professor Wilmot lived. Since she’d gone into hiding she’d been able to sneak into office buildings in the dead of night and use their lavatory facilities. She had even gone clothes shopping in the main warehouse without being detected. But now she would have to risk coming up into the village and scurrying along the streets of Athens in full view of the surveillance cameras atop the light poles.

How can I do that without being seen? she asked herself as she made her way along the tunnel. I need a disguise.

Or a diversion, she realized. She stopped and sat on the floor, thinking hard.

Tavalera walked for kilometers along the main utility tunnel running from Athens out under the orchards and farms and all the way to the endcap. No sign of Holly.

He passed a sturdy little maintenance robot swiveling back and forth across a small patch of the metal flooring, its vacuum cleaner buzzing angrily.

Tavalera stopped and watched the squat, square-shaped robot. From his weeks spent with the Maintenance Department, Tavalera knew that the robots patrolled these tunnels, programmed to clean any dust or leaks they found, or to call for human help if they came across something beyond their limited means of handling. There was some kind of crud at this one spot, Tavalera reasoned. He couldn’t see any dirt or an oil smear. Could it have been crumbs? Could Holly have been eating here?

He looked up and down the tunnel. The robot, satisfied that the area was now clean, trundled off toward the endcap, deftly maneuvering around Tavalera, its sensors alert for anything amiss.

“Holly!” Tavalera yelled, hoping she was close enough to hear him. No answer except the echo of his own voice bouncing down the tunnel.

Sitting side by side, Cardenas and Gaeta watched the rally, too, from the enforced confinement of her apartment.

“Mine the rings?” Cardenas gasped at the idea. “Nadia’s going to have a stroke over that.”

Gaeta made a grudging grunt. “I dunno. Maybe he’s onto something. Ten to the seventeenth is a big number.”

“But still…” Cardenas murmured.

“You know what the going price is for a ton of water?”

“I know it’s more precious than gold,” said Cardenas, “but that’s because the price of gold has collapsed since the rock rats started mining the asteroids.”

“Mining the rings.” Gaeta scratched at his jaw. “Might be a workable idea.”

“What are we going to do about Holly?” Cardenas asked, her voice suddenly sharp.

Gaeta said, “There’s not much we can do, is there? We’re stuck here.”

“For the time being.”

“So?”

“There’s the phone,” Cardenas said.

“Who do you want to call?”

“Who can help us? And help Holly?”

“Quien sabe?”

“What about Professor Wilmot?”

“He wasn’t at the rally,” said Gaeta.

“So he’s probably at home.”

Cardenas told the phone to call the professor. No image formed, but Wilmot’s cultured voice said, “I cannot speak with you at the moment. Please leave a message.”

Before Gaeta could say anything, Cardenas said, “Professor, this is Kris Cardenas. I’m concerned about Holly Lane. I’ve taken the liberty of accessing her dossier from the Earthside files, and it doesn’t match the dossier that Eberly claims is hers. There’s no record of mental illness or emotional instability. Something is definitely wrong here, and I’d like to discuss it with you as soon as possible.”

Once the phone light winked out, Gaeta said, “That’s assuming Eberly lets us out of here.”

Cardenas replied tightly, “He can’t keep us under lock and key forever.”

“Well, he’s got us under lock and key right now.”

“What can we do about it?” she wondered aloud.

Gaeta reached for her. “Well, you know what they say.”

She let him pull her into his arms. “No, what do they say?”

Grinning, “When they hand you a lemon, make lemonade.”

She thought about the bugs that Eberly’s people must have planted in the apartment. “They’ve probably got cameras watching us.”

He grinned wickedly. “So let’s give ’em something to see.”

Cardenas shook her head. “Oh no. But we could stay under the blanket. I doubt that they’ve got infrared sensors planted.”

Holly came up in the administration building and slipped along its empty corridors to her own office. There was no window in her cubicle so she went to Morgenthau’s office and looked out at the street. Empty. Everybody’s either at the rally or at home watching the rally, she thought. She hoped.

But there are security goons watching the surveillance cameras. Worse, there are computers programmed to report any anomalies that the cameras pick up, she knew. I bet my description is on their list of anomalies. People can be distracted or lazy or even bribed; the warping computers never blink.

What I need is a distraction. It won’t fool the computers but it’ll keep the security people busy.

A distraction.

Holly closed her eyes, picturing the schematics of the habitat’s safety systems that she had memorized. For several minutes she sat at Morgenthau’s desk, her face twisted into a grimace of concentration. Then at last she smiled. She activated Morgenthau’s desk computer and, recalling the access code for the fire safety system, began instructing the computer to create a diversion for her.

Tavalera trudged wearily back along the tunnel he had come down. At least he was pretty certain it was the same tunnel. He had taken a couple of turns out near the endcap, where several tunnels joined together.

No sign of Holly. Maybe those security goons got her. He felt anger welling up inside him — anger and frustration and fear, mixed and churning inside his guts. And the sullen ache in his side where they had whacked him with their batons.

The bastards, he thought. Holly never hurt anybody. Why are they out to get her? Where could she be? Is she safe? Have they got her? Where could she be?

He stopped walking and looked around the dimly lit tunnel. Pipes and electrical conduits ran along the overhead and both walls.

“Christ,” he muttered, “where the hell am I?”

Monitoring the security cameras was easy duty. Gee Archer had his back to the double row of surveillance screens as he tapped a stylus against his teeth, planning his next move.

“You sleeping?” asked Yoko Chiyoda, grinning impishly.

“Thinking,” said Archer.

“It’s hard to tell the difference.”

She was a big woman, with a blocky torso and thick limbs well muscled from years of martial arts training. Archer was slim, almost delicate, with slicked-back blond hair and soft hazel eyes. The tabletop screen between them showed the battle dispositions of the Russian and Japanese fleets at the Tsushima Straits in May 1905. Just to devil Archer, she had taken the Russian side, and was beating him soundly nevertheless.

“Gimme a minute,” Archer mumbled.

“You’ve already had—”

Several things happened at once. The sprinklers set in the ceiling began spraying them with water. The intercom loudspeakers blared, “FIRE. EVACUATE THE BUILDING AT ONCE.” Archer jumped to his feet, banging his shin painfully against the play table. Chiyoda sputtered as she got up, blinking against the spray of ice-cold water drenching her. She grabbed Archer’s hand and dragged him limping toward the door.

Unseen behind them, one of the surveillance screens showed a lone woman walking swiftly along the empty street in Athens that led from the administration building to the complex of apartment buildings further up the hill. The security computer’s synthesized voice was saying, “Ninety-three percent match between the person in camera view and the fugitive Holly Lane. Notify security headquarters at once to take appropriate steps to apprehend the fugitive Holly Lane. She is wanted for questioning…”

But neither Archer nor Chiyoda heard the security computer. They were already halfway out of the building, drenched, rushing blindly to escape the fire that did not exist, except in the circuits of the safety computer.

Computers are so smart, Holly thought, and so dumb. A human person would’ve looked to see if there really was a fire in the building. But give a computer the right set of instructions and it’ll act as if a fire had truly broken out.

She grinned as she skipped up the steps in front of the apartment building and tapped out its security code. The door sighed open and she stepped in, out of range of the surveillance cameras at last, and hurried up the stairs to the second level, where Wilmot’s apartment was.

And ran almost into the arms of the two security officers standing in the corridor outside Wilmot’s door.

“Nobody’s allowed to see Professor Wilmot,” said the first one.

“But I—”

“Hey!” snapped the second guard, recognition dawning on his face. “You’re Holly Lane, aren’t you?”

Holly turned to run, but the guard grasped her arm. She swung on him but the second guard grabbed her other arm in midswing.

“Come on, now. We don’t want to hurt you.”

Holly saw it was useless. She relaxed and glowered at them.

The first guard banged on Wilmot’s door hard enough to rattle it against its frame while the second one spoke excitedly into his handheld:

“We’ve got her! Holly Lane. The fugitive. She’s here at Wilmot’s quarters.”

A tinny voice replied, “Excellent. Hold her there until we arrive.”

Wilmot opened his door, a fuzzy robe of royal blue wrapped around him and tightly tied at the waist. His eyes widened with surprise as he saw Holly in the grip of the guard.

“Got a visitor for you, Professor,” the guard said, pushing Holly past the startled old man and into his sitting room. Then he slid the door shut again.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be astonished that you’re here,” Wilmot said, standing by the door. “The remarkable thing is that you’ve managed to elude the security people for so long.”

“Not long enough,” Holly said ruefully.

“Well… do sit down. We might as well be comfortable. Would you like something? Sherry, perhaps?”

“No thanks.” Holly perched on the edge of one of the twin armchairs. She glanced at the closed door. No other way out of here, she knew. Wilmot sank down into the other armchair with a pained sigh.

“Whatever brought you here, to me?” he asked.

“I wanted your help,” Holly said. “Colonel Kananga murdered Don Diego and he’s after me now.”

“Diego Romero? I thought his death was an accident.”

“It was murder,” said Holly. “Kananga did it. He tried to kill me when I found out about it.”

“And Eberly is in on it, is he?”

“You know about that?” Holly asked, surprised.

His face showing distaste, Wilmot said, “He’s put out a dossier that purports to show you are dangerously unbalanced.”

Holly bit back the anger and remorse that surged within her. “Yes. Malcolm’s protecting Kananga.”

“A little earlier this evening Dr. Cardenas sent me your dossier from the files on Earth. Eberly’s done some creative lying about you.”

“Then you’ll help me?”

Wilmot shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m not even able to help myself, actually. He’s got me locked in here.”

“Locked up? You? How could he do that? I mean, you’re—”

“It’s a long, sad story,” said Wilmot wearily.

“Well, now he’s got me, too,” Holly said.

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

SATURN ARRIVAL MINUS 3 DAYS, 45 MINUTES

Eberly frowned as Kananga shooed the last of the well-wishers out of his apartment. He had enjoyed his triumph at the rally, gloried in the crowd’s adulation. Carried off on their shoulders! Eberly had never known such a moment.

Now, as midnight approached, Kananga officiously shoved the last starry-eyed young woman out into the corridor and slid the apartment’s front door firmly shut. Morgenthau sat on the sofa, nibbling at one of the trays of finger food that had been set out. Vyborg hunched by a three-dimensional image of the newscast, already showing a rerun of Eberly’s minidebate against the red-haired scientist.

“You’ve got them,” Vyborg said. “They all want to get rich. Most of them, at least.”

“It was a brilliant stroke,” Morgenthau agreed.

Still leaning against the door, Kananga snapped, “Turn that thing off. We’ve found her.”

A surge of sudden fear cut through the elation Eberly had been feeling. “Found her? Holly?”

Smiling grimly, Kananga said, “Yes. She tried to sneak into Professor Wilmot’s quarters. Looking to him for help, I suppose.”

“Where is she now?”

“Still there. My people have the apartment sealed off. I told them to cut Wilmot’s phone off, too.”

“What are you going to do with her?” Morgenthau asked.

The euphoria ebbed out of Eberly like water swirling down a drain. Morgenthau had asked Kananga, not him.

“We’ll have to eliminate her. Permanently.”

“Tricky,” said Vyborg. “If she’s with Wilmot you can’t just go in there and snap her neck.”

“She can always be killed trying to escape,” Kananga said.

“Escape how?”

Kananga thought a moment. Then, “Perhaps she runs away from my guards and goes to an airlock. She puts on a spacesuit and tries to go outside, to hide from us. But the suit is defective, or perhaps she didn’t seal it up properly.”

Morgenthau nodded.

Spreading his hands in a fait accompli gesture, Kananga said, “Poor girl. She panicked and killed herself.”

With a mean chuckle, Vyborg said, “She always was unbalanced, after all.”

The three of them turned to Eberly. This is getting out of control, he thought. They’re making me a party to their murders. They’re forcing me to go along with them. They’ll be able to hold this over my head forever.

And after tomorrow, when I’m the elected head of the government, they’ll still have power over me. I’ll be a figurehead, a puppet dancing to their tune. They’ll have the power, not me.

Kananga slid the door open. Eberly could see that the corridor outside was empty now. It was late. All his adoring crowd had gone to their own homes.

“Shall we go pick her up?” Kananga said.

“I’ll go,” said Eberly, trying to sound firmer, more in control, than he really felt. “Alone.”

Kananga’s eyes narrowed. “Alone?”

“Alone. It would be more believable if she escaped from me than from two of your thugs, wouldn’t it?”

Before Kananga could reply, Vyborg said, “He’s right. We’ve got to make the story as plausible as possible.”

Morgenthau eyed Eberly carefully. “This young woman is a definite threat to us all. Whether we like it or not, she’s got to be eliminated. For the greater good.”

“I understand,” said Eberly.

“Good,” Morgenthau replied.

Kananga looked less agreeable. He obviously wanted to take care of this himself. Eberly pulled himself up to his full height and stepped to the door. He had to look up to see into Kananga’s eyes. The Rwandan tried to face him unflinchingly, but after a few heartbeats he moved away from the door. Eberly walked past him and out into the corridor.

Not daring to look back, he strode down the hallway toward the outside door.

Standing in the apartment doorway watching him, Kananga muttered, “Do you think he’s strong enough to carry this out?”

Morgenthau pushed herself up from the sofa. “Give him a few minutes. Then you go to Wilmot’s building and take the guards away from his apartment door. Wait for him and the girl outside the building. When Eberly brings her out, you and the guards can take over.”

Vyborg agreed. “That way he’s not party to the killing. Good.”

Morgenthau cast him a contemptuous glance. “He’s party to it. We’re all party to it. I want to make certain that the girl is taken care of properly.”

Holly came out of Wilmot’s bathroom and sat tiredly on the sofa. The digital clock showed it was past midnight.

“My phone doesn’t work,” the professor grumbled. “They really want to keep us incommunicado.”

“What’s going to happen now?” she wondered.

With a sigh that was almost a snort, Wilmot replied, “That’s in the lap of the gods. Or Eberly and his claque, rather.”

“I wish there was some way I could talk to Kris Cardenas.”

“Dr. Cardenas lives in this building, doesn’t she?”

“Yes.”

Wilmot glanced at the door. “With those two guards outside, I don’t suppose we’d be able to get to her.”

“Guess not.” The sofa felt very comfortable to Holly. She leaned back into its yielding softness.

“It’s rather late,” said the professor. “I’m going to bed. You can stretch out on the sofa if you like.”

Holly nodded. Wilmot got up from his armchair and walked slowly back to his bedroom.

He hesitated at the bedroom door. “You know where the bathroom is. If you need anything, just give a rap.”

“Thank you,” said Holly, suppressing a yawn.

Wilmot went into his bedroom and shut the door. Holly stretched out on the sofa and, despite everything, fell into a dreamless sleep as soon as she closed her eyes.

Thinking furiously, Eberly walked slowly along the path that led from his apartment building to Wilmot’s.

The voting starts in a few hours, he said to himself. In twelve hours or so I’ll be the head of the new government. I’ll have it all in my grasp.

But what good will that be if Kananga and the rest of them can hold their murders over my head? They’ll be able to control me! Make me jump to their tune! I’ll just be a figurehead. They’ll have the real power.

It was enough to make him weep, almost. Here I’ve struggled and planned and worked all these months and now that the prize is at my fingertips they want to keep it from me. It’s always been that way; every time I reach for safety, for success and happiness, there’s someone in my way, someone in power who puts his foot on my neck and pushes me back down into the mud.

What can I do? What can I do? They’ve put me in this position and they’ll never let me out of it.

As he came up the walk in front of Wilmot’s building he saw that one of Kananga’s guards was standing outside the front door, waiting for him.

Of course, Eberly thought. Kananga’s already talked to him, told him that I’d be coming. Kananga and the others are probably coming up behind me.

And then it hit him. He stopped a dozen meters in front of the black-clad guard. The revelation was so powerful, so beautiful, so perfect that a lesser man would have sunk to his knees and thanked whatever god he believed in. Eberly had no god, though. He simply broke into a wide, happy smile, grinning from ear to ear. His knees still felt a little rubbery, but he strode right up to the guard, who opened the building’s front door for him. Without a word, without even a nod to the man, Eberly swept past him and started up the steps to Professor Wilmot’s apartment.

The knock on the door startled Holly awake. She sat up like a shot, fully alert.

“Holly, it’s me,” came a muffled voice from the other side of the door. “Malcolm.”

She got up from the sofa and went to the door. Sliding it open, she saw Eberly. And only one guard in the corridor.

Turning to the guard, Eberly said, “You can go now. I’ll take charge here.”

The guard touched his right hand to his forehead in a sloppy salute, then headed toward the stairs.

“Holly, I’m sorry it’s come to this,” Eberly said as he stepped into the sitting room and looked around. “Where’s Professor Wilmot?”

“Asleep,” she replied. “I’ll get him.”

Wilmot came into the room, wearing the same fuzzy robe. Otherwise he looked normal, wide awake. Not a hair out of place. His face, though, was set in an expression that Holly had never seen on the old man before: wariness, apprehension, almost fear.

“May I sit down?” Eberly asked politely.

“I imagine you can do anything you bloody well like,” said Wilmot, irritably.

Instead of sitting, though, Eberly took an oblong black box from his tunic pocket and swung it across the room in a full circle, then swept it up and down, from ceiling to floor and back again.

“What’re you doing?” Holly asked.

“Exterminating bugs,” said Eberly. “Making certain our conversation isn’t overheard by anyone else.”

Wilmot bristled. “You’ve had my quarters bugged for some time, haven’t you?”

“That was Vyborg’s doing,” Eberly lied smoothly, “not mine.”

“Indeed.”

“I want to get this all straightened out before there’s any more violence,” Eberly said as he finally sat in the nearer of the two armchairs.

“So do I,” said Holly.

Wilmot sank slowly into the armchair facing Eberly. Holly went to the sofa. She sat down and tucked her feet under her, feeling almost like a little mouse trying to make herself seem as small and invisible as possible.

“You’re in danger, Holly. Kananga wants to execute you.”

“What do you intend to do about it?” Wilmot demanded.

“I need your help,” Eberly replied.

“My help? What do you expect me to do?”

“In eighteen hours or so I’ll be the elected head of the new government,” said Eberly. “Until then you are still the director of this community, sir.”

“I’m under house arrest and threatened with scandal,” Wilmot grumbled. “What power do I have?”

“If you ordered those guards away, they would obey you.”

“Would they?”

Eberly nodded. “Yes, providing I second your command.”

“I see.”

Holly swiveled her attention from Eberly to Wilmot and back again. Scandal? she wondered. House arrest? What’s going on between these two?

She said to Eberly, “Kananga killed Don Diego, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“And he wants to kill me.”

“He certainly does.”

“How are you going to stop him?”

“By arresting him,” Eberly said, without hesitation. But his face looked worried, doubtful.

“Suppose he doesn’t want to be arrested?” Wilmot said. “He’s the chief of the security forces, after all.”

“That’s where you come in, sir. You still have the legal power and the moral authority to command the security officers.”

“Moral authority,” Wilmot mumbled.

“We’ll need to arrest Morgenthau and Vyborg as well. They were parties to Kananga’s crime.”

“Easier said than done. If Kananga wants to resist, I’ll warrant most of the security force will follow his lead, not mine.”

Holly said, “But the security force is only about three dozen men and women.”

“That’s a dozen for each of us,” Wilmot pointed out.

“Yes,” said Holly. “But there are ten thousand other men and women in this habitat.”

ELECTION DAY

Kananga looked at his wristwatch, then up at the apartment building. He’d been waiting out in the street with a half-dozen of his best people for nearly an hour.

“I don’t think she’s coming out, sir,” said the team’s leader. “We could go in and get her.”

“No,” Kananga barked. “Wait.”

He yanked his handheld from his tunic pocket and called for Eberly.

“What’s going on?” he demanded as soon as Eberly’s face appeared on the miniature screen.

“Miss Lane is going to stay here in Professor Wilmot’s quarters for the time being,” Eberly said smoothly.

“What? That’s not acceptable.”

“She’ll remain here until after the election is finished. We don’t want to have anything disturb the voting.”

“I don’t see why—”

“I’ve made my decision,” Eberly snapped. “You can post guards around the area. She’s not going anywhere.”

His image winked out, leaving Kananga staring angrily at a blank screen.

“What do we do now?” the team leader asked him.

Kananga glared at her. “You stay here. If she tries to leave the building, arrest her.”

“And you, sir?”

“I’m going to try to get a few hours’ sleep,” he said, stalking off toward his own quarters.

The phone woke Kris Cardenas. She sat up groggily and called out, “No outgoing video.” Glancing at Gaeta sleeping peacefully beside her, she thought that the man could probably snooze through the end of the world.

Holly’s face appeared at the foot of the bed. “Kris, are you there?”

“Holly!” Cardenas cried. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m in Professor Wilmot’s apartment, upstairs from you. Can you come up here right away?”

Cardenas saw that it was a few minutes past seven A.M. “There’s a couple of security goons outside my door, Holly. They won’t—”

“That’s okay. They’ll let you come up here. Professor Wilmot’s already spoken to them.”

Oswaldo Yañez woke bright and cheerful. He heard his wife in the kitchen, preparing breakfast. He showered and brushed his teeth, whistling to himself as he dressed.

Breakfast was waiting for him on the kitchen table, steaming hot and looking delicious. He kissed her lightly on the forehead and said, “Before I eat, I must do my duty as a citizen.”

He called to the computer as he sat across the table from Estela.

“Who will you vote for?” she asked.

Grinning, he replied, “The secrecy of the ballot is sacred, my darling.”

“I voted for Eberly. He makes more sense than the others.”

Yañez’s jaw dropped open. “You voted? Already?”

“Of course. As soon as I awoke.”

Yañez felt all the excitement of the day drain out of him. He wanted to be the first to vote. It was unfair of his wife to sneak in ahead of him. Then he sighed. At least she voted for the right candidate.

“You’re really okay?” Cardenas asked as soon as she entered Wilmot’s apartment. Gaeta was right behind her, looking a little puzzled.

“I’m fine,” said Holly. Turning to Eberly and Wilmot, she said, “You know everybody, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

Gaeta fixed Eberly with a pugnacious stare. “What’s the idea of cooping us up in the apartment? What’s going on?”

“We are trying to save Miss Lane’s neck,” Eberly said.

“Yes,” Wilmot added. “We want to avoid violence, but there are certain steps we must take.”

Holly told them what she had planned, and what she needed them to do.

Cardenas blinked, once she understood. “Posse comitatus?” she asked, unbelieving.

Gaeta broke into a nervous laugh. “Holy Mother, you mean a posse, like in the old westerns?”

“It won’t work,” Cardenas said. “These people are too independent to form a posse just because you ask them to. They’ll want to know why and how. They’ll refuse to serve.”

“I was wondering about them myself,” said Wilmot.

Eberly smiled, though. “They’ll do it. They merely need a bit of persuasion.”

After a few hours of sleep, Kananga stormed into Eberly’s apartment. “What are you doing? We agreed that the Lane woman would be put into my custody.”

Sitting bleary-eyed at his desk, watching the three sets of numbers from the early voting returns, Eberly said, “I’ve been up all night, working on your problem.”

“My problem? She’s your problem, too. I want her delivered to me immediately.”

Eberly said blandly, “She will be. Don’t get upset.”

“Where is she? Why isn’t she in my hands?”

Trying to control the tension that was tightening inside him, Eberly said, “She’s in Wilmot’s apartment. She’s not going anywhere.”

“What’s going on? What are you up to?” Kananga loomed over Eberly like a dangerous thundercloud.

“Wait until the election returns are in,” Eberly said, jabbing a finger toward the rapidly-changing numbers. “Once I’m officially the head of this habitat I’ll be able to act with real authority.”

Kananga scowled suspiciously.

Hoping he had at least half-convinced the Rwandan, Eberly got up from his desk chair. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get some sleep.”

“Now? With the voting still going on?”

“There’s nothing I can do to affect the voting now. It’s all in the lap of the gods.”

Despite himself, Kananga smiled tightly. “Better not let Morgenthau hear you speaking like a pagan.”

Eberly forced himself to smile back. “I must sleep. It wouldn’t do for the newly-elected head of this habitat to have puffy eyes when he accepts the authority of office.”

SATURN ARRIVAL MINUS 1 DAY, 7 HOURS

Edouard Urbain watched the final few minutes of the voting in the privacy of his quarters with a strange mixture of disappointment and relief. Eberly had clearly won, that much was certain early in the afternoon. But Urbain waited until the voting ended, at 17:00 hours, before finally accepting the fact that he would not be the director of the habitat.

He almost smiled. Now I can get back to my real work, he told himself. I will no longer be distracted by these political monkeyshines.

Yet he felt close to tears. Rejected again. All my life I have been turned away from the top position. All my life I have been told that I am not good enough to be number one. Even Jeanmarie turned against me, in the end.

And more, he realized. Now I must face this crazy stuntman and his demand to go to the surface of Titan. Eberly will support his demand, of course. I will have to ask the IAA to inform Eberly that they will not permit it. I will have to show everyone back on Earth that I am not strong enough to keep a simple adventurer from contaminating a pristine new world.

Tears blurred his eyes as he commanded the phone to contact Eberly. I must congratulate him and concede my defeat, Urbain thought. Another defeat. With more to come.

Ilya Timoshenko had no difficulty making his concession message. Sitting at the bar in the Bistro surrounded by a gaggle of supporters — mostly engineers and technicians — he used his handheld to call Eberly.

“You’ve won and I’m glad,” he said to Eberly’s pleased image. “Now let’s get this bucket into its proper orbit around Saturn.”

Eberly laughed. “Yes, by all means. We’re all counting on you and the technical staff to bring us into Saturn orbit tomorrow.”

While Eberly’s supporters celebrated his victory with an impromptu picnic out by the lake, Holly was still in Wilmot’s apartment, using his computer to comb through the habitat’s personnel files. It took several hours, but at last she had a list of fifty men and women whom she thought could serve as her posse.

As she sent the list to Eberly at his quarters, she wondered how good her idea really was. Would the people she had selected actually agree to serve as a posse? It was so hard to pinpoint attributes such as loyalty and responsibility from a person’s dossier. Most of the people aboard the habitat were far from being “establishment” types. They weren’t misfits, as Pancho had called them, but they were definitely free thinkers, self-starters, unwilling to accept discipline imposed by others.

I hope this works, Holly thought. She realized that her very life depended on it.

The victory party was getting rowdy. Several of Eberly’s supporters had brought coolers of home-brewed beer to the lakeside picnic and now the celebrants were getting noisier and more obstreperous, laughing uproariously at almost anything, sloshing beer over one another’s heads, even wading into the lake fully dressed, giggling and staggering like college students.

Normally, Eberly would have basked in the adulation of his supporters. He didn’t drink, and no one dared to douse him with beer or anything else, but still Eberly would have enjoyed every millisecond of the hours-long picnic. Except that he knew what was coming after the party ended.

So despite the smile he wore, in the back of his mind he was thinking that he would have to deal with Kananga, and that was going to be far from pleasant. Dangerous, more likely.

Morgenthau seemed rather pleased, despite the drunken antics of the staggering, boisterous crowd. Even snaky little Vyborg chatted happily with a few of the glowing-eyed young women that clustered about him, Eberly noted. Power goes to some people’s heads; in other people, power goes straight to the groin.

Morgenthau shouldered her way through a throng of well-wishers crowding Eberly, a plastic cup in her chubby hand. Nonalcoholic, Eberly was certain. Probably lemonade. The crowd melted away. Are they being respectful, Eberly wondered, or do they realize that she views all this frivolity with infinite distaste?

Once the others had moved out of earshot, she quietly asked Eberly, “Enjoying your triumph?” A knowing smile dimpled her broad face.

He nodded soberly. He had been careful to drink nothing stronger than iced tea all through the picnic.

“Now our true work begins,” she said, in a lower voice. “Now we bring these people under control.”

Eberly nodded again, less enthusiastically. He knew that she meant that he too would be under control, as well. Her control. I’ve done all this work and she thinks she’s going to be the true power.

He wondered if Wilmot and Holly would turn out to be strong enough to help him.

The following morning, fifty puzzled men and women crowded into the largest conference room in the administration building. Holly, escorted by Gaeta and Cardenas, left Wilmot’s quarters to join them, after a detour to their own apartments for a shower and change of clothes. They could see Kananga’s security officers following them at some distance, hanging back but watching their every move as they spoke into their handhelds for instructions from Kananga. Holly thought of vids she had seen of hyenas tracking a herd of gazelles, waiting for a weak one to falter so they could pounce.

Eberly met them at the building’s front door and together they walked past the Human Resources offices, where Morgenthau should have been, to the conference room.

There weren’t enough chairs in the conference room for everyone, and the fifty people Holly had selected were mostly on their feet, making the packed room feel hot and sweaty with the press of too many bodies. And they were decidedly unhappy.

“What’s going on?” one of the men demanded as soon as Eberly stepped through the door.

“Yeah, why do you want us here?”

“We’re not gonna miss the orbit insertion, are we? It’s set for a few hours from now.”

Eberly made a placating gesture with both hands as he squeezed through the group and up to the head of the table. Holly, with Gaeta and Cardenas still flanking her, waited near the door.

“Hey, isn’t that the fugitive?” someone said, pointing at Holly.

“The security people want her.”

“She must’ve turned herself in.”

Holly said nothing, but it frightened her to be considered a fugitive, a criminal who has to be turned over to the authorities.

“What’s she doing here?”

“Maybe Eberly’s got her to give herself up.”

“Then why’re we here? What’s he want with us?”

Gradually, they all turned toward Eberly, who stood in silence behind the unoccupied chair at the head of the table, his hands gripping the chair back, waiting for their mutterings to cease.

At last he said, “I’ve asked you here because I need your help.” Pointing down the table to Holly, he said, “Miss Lane has been falsely accused. Colonel Kananga is the one who should be arrested.”

“Kananga?”

“But he’s the chief of security!”

“That’s why I need you,” Eberly said. “I want you to form a committee, a posse. We will go to Kananga’s office and arrest him.”

“Me?”

“Us?”

“Arrest the chief of security?”

“This has gotta be some kind of joke, right?”

“What about the rest of the security staff? You think those goons are gonna stand by and let us arrest their boss?”

Eberly said, “The fifty of you should be enough to discourage the guards from interfering. After all, they aren’t armed with anything more dangerous than their batons.”

“I heard they’re all martial arts specialists.”

“I don’t see why I have to get involved in this. You’re the chief administrator now. You do it.”

“As chief administrator, I am drafting you to serve—”

“The hell with that! I’m not going to get my face punched in just because you’ve got a gripe with the security chief. Get some other suckers to do your dirty work!”

One of the women said, “Anyway, you’re not really the chief administrator yet, not officially. Not until Professor Wilmot swears you in.”

“But I need you to arrest Kananga,” Eberly pleaded. “It’s your duty as citizens!”

“Duty my ass! You wanted to be head of this community. You do your duty. Leave me out of it.”

“Do it yourself,” a bellicose red-faced man thundered. “We didn’t ride all the way out here to Saturn to help you set up a dictatorship.”

“But—”

They turned away from Eberly and began filing past Holly through the door, grumbling and muttering.

“Wait,” Eberly called uselessly.

Hardly any of them even hesitated. They hurried by, leaving the conference room, most of them avoiding Holly’s eyes as they left.

Eberly stood at the head of the table, watching them leave. Morgenthau has all the offices bugged, he realized. Kananga will know about this failure before the last of them leaves the room.

SATURN ORBIT INSERTION

Unheeding of politics, uncaring of human aspirations and activities, oblivious to the hopes and fears of the ten thousand people aboard the habitat, Goddard fell toward the ringed planet, gripped in Saturn’s massive gravity well, sliding down into its preordained orbit just outside the ring system.

Half a million kilometers away, a jagged chunk of ice-covered rock half the size of the habitat was also falling into an orbit that would bring it squarely into Saturn’s brightest, widest ring.

In the tidy, efficient command center, Timoshenko scowled at the data his console screen showed him.

“We’re picking up more dust than predicted,” he said.

Captain Nicholson nodded, her eyes fixed on her own screens. “Not to worry.”

“It’s causing abrasion of the hull.”

“Within acceptable limits. Once we’re in orbit we’ll be moving with the dust and the abrasion level will go down.”

Timoshenko saw that the navigator and first mate both looked more than a little worried, despite the captain’s calm assurance.

“If the abrasion causes a break in one of the superconducting wires,” the first mate said, “it could cause our radiation shielding to fail.”

The captain swiveled her chair toward him. She was a small woman, but when her square jaw stuck out like that she could be dangerous.

“And what do you want me to do about it, Mr. Perkins? We’re in free fall now. Do you expect me to put her in reverse and back out of Saturn’s gravity well?”

“Uh, no ma’am. I was just—”

“You just attend to your duties and stop being such an old maid.

We calculated the abrasion rate before we left lunar orbit, didn’t we? It’s not going to damage our shielding.”

The first mate bent his head to stare at his console screens as if his life depended on it.

“And you,” she turned on the navigator, “keep close track of that incoming iceball. If there’s any danger here, that’s where it is.”

“It’s following the predicted trajectory to within five nines,” said the navigator.

“You watch it anyway,” snapped Captain Nicholson. “Astronomers can make all the predictions they want; if that thing hits us we’re dead meat.”

Timoshenko grinned sourly. She’s a tough old bitch, all right. I’ll miss her when she leaves.

And then he realized, When she and the other two leave I’ll be the senior man of the crew. Senior and only.

Vyborg hissed, “He’s sold us out. The traitor has sold us out.”

Kananga, watching the real-time display of Eberly’s failed meeting with his unwilling posse, laughed aloud. “No,” the Rwandan said. “He tried to sell us out. And failed.”

They were in Morgenthau’s office. From behind her desk she turned off the spy camera’s display, then hunched forward in her creaking chair. “So what do we do about him?” she asked.

“He’s a traitor,” Vyborg insisted. “An opportunistic turncoat who’d sell his mother’s milk if he thought he could make a penny out of it.”

“I agree,” said Morgenthau, her expression grim. “But what do we do about him?”

Still smiling, Kananga said, “That’s what airlocks are for. Him and the girl, as well.”

“And Cardenas?” Morgenthau asked. “And the stuntman? And Wilmot and anyone else who opposes us?”

Kananga started to nod, then realized what she was saying. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

Vyborg said, “We can’t execute everyone who disagrees with us. Unfortunately.”

“Yes,” said Kananga. “Even my best people would draw the line somewhere.”

“So we have to control them, rather than execute them,” Morgenthau said.

“Can we control Eberly now? In a few hours he’ll be installed as leader of this community.”

“It means nothing,” Morgenthau assured him. “You saw how those people reacted to his plea for their help. These malcontents and freethinkers won’t raise a finger to support him against us.”

“They elected him.”

“Yes, and now they expect him to run things without bothering them. They don’t want to get involved in the messy work of being active citizens.”

“Ahh,” said Kananga. “I understand.”

“As long as we don’t bother the people, they’ll let us have a free hand to run things as we see fit.”

“So Eberly has the title, but we make certain he has no power?”

“Exactly. He’ll have to jump to our tune, or else.”

“And Wilmot?”

“He’s already out of the way.”

“Cardenas? The stuntman?” Vyborg asked.

“The stuntman will be leaving after his performance. He’ll go out on the ship that’s bringing the scientists from Earth.”

“Cardenas,” Vyborg repeated. “I don’t like having her here. Her and her nanomachines.”

“And the Lane girl,” said Kananga, touching his once-swollen cheek. “She has got to be put away. Permanently.”

“She should be executed for Romero’s murder,” Morgenthau said.

“Better that she kills herself trying to escape,” said Kananga.

“Yes, probably so.”

“What about Cardenas?” Vyborg insisted.

Morgenthau took a deep, sighing breath. “I don’t like her, either. She could become a troublemaker.”

Then her face lit up. “Nanotechnology! Suppose we find that Dr. Cardenas is cooking up dangerous nanobugs in her lab?”

“She’s not.”

“But the people will believe she is. Especially if we find that Romero was murdered by nanomachines.”

Despite her reliance on Newtonian mechanics, despite her assurances to Timoshenko and the other two men of her minuscule crew, Captain Nicholson felt her insides tensing as the countdown clock ticked off the final seconds.

The screens were all boringly normal. Nothing seemed wrong with their trajectory. The dust abrasion was a worry, but it was only slightly above predicted limits. The approaching iceball was following its predicted path, a safe two hundred thousand kilometers away from the habitat.

Still…

“Thirty seconds to orbital insertion,” said the computer’s synthesized voice.

I know that, Nicholson replied silently. I can read the countdown clock as well as you, you pile of chips.

“Abrasion level rising,” Timoshenko called.

It was still within acceptable limits, the captain saw. Yet it was worrisome, despite her assurances.

“Ten seconds,” said the computer. “Nine … eight…”

Nicholson glanced up from her screens. The three men looked just as tense as she felt, all of them hunched over their consoles.

What if something breaks down? she asked herself. What could I do about it? What could anyone do?

“Three … two … one. Orbital insertion.”

The navigator looked up from his console, his worried frown replaced by a wide grin. “That’s it. We’re in orbit. On the nose, to five nines.”

Timoshenko called out, “The abrasion rate is decreasing rapidly.”

Nicholson allowed herself a tight grin. “Congratulations, gentlemen. We are now the forty-first moon of Saturn.”

Then she got up from her chair, noticing the perspiration that made her blouse stick to her back, flung her arms over her head and bellowed a wild, ear-splitting, “Yahoo!”

Like most of the other residents of the habitat, Manuel Gaeta watched the final orbital maneuver on his video. With Kris Cardenas beside him.

“It’s really gorgeous, isn’t it?” she murmured, staring at the image of Saturn with its bands of many hues swirling across the planet’s disc, and its rings hanging suspended above the equator, shining brilliantly in the light from the distant Sun, casting a deep shadow across the planet’s face.

The rings were tilting as they watched, almost as if they were coming up to meet the approaching habitat, becoming narrower and foreshortened with each passing second until they were nothing more than a knife edge slashing across Saturn’s bulging middle.stable orbit achieved: the words flashed out over the planet’s image. “That’s it,” Gaeta said. He turned and gave Cardenas a peck on the lips.

“We should do something to celebrate,” Cardenas said, without much enthusiasm.

“They’re going to have a big blowout right after Eberly’s installed in office,” Gaeta said, equally glum.

“I don’t feel like going out.”

“I know. Having those security mugs tracking us is a pain. Gimme a couple of beers and I’ll knock them both on their asses.”

“No you won’t,” Cardenas said firmly. “No alcohol for you. Tomorrow you’re going out to the rings.”

“Yeah. Tomorrow.”

Neither one of them mentioned it, but they both knew that after Gaeta’s stunt in Saturn’s ring system, he would be leaving the habitat and heading back to Earth.

INAUGURATION

“She’s got to be eliminated,” Morgenthau said firmly. “And the Cardenas woman, too.”

Eberly walked beside her at the head of the procession that wound along the central footpath of Athens down to the lakeside, where the inauguration ceremony would be held. Behind them, at a respectful few paces, strode the tall, long-limbed Kananga and Vyborg, looking like a hunchbacked gnome beside the Rwandan. Behind them marched several hundred of their supporters. Even though every member of the Security, Communications, and Human Resources Departments had been told to attend the inauguration, hardly half of their staffs had bothered to show up.

“Eliminated?” Eberly snapped, trying to hide the fear that was making his inside flutter. “You can’t eliminate someone of Cardenas’s stature. You’ll have investigators from Earth flying out here in torch ships to see what happened.”

Morgenthau cast him a sidelong glance. “Neutralized, then. I don’t want her working on those damnable nanomachines here.”

Without breaking stride, Eberly said, “You don’t want? Since when are you giving the orders here?”

“Since the very beginning. And don’t you forget it.”

“I’m the one being inaugurated,” Eberly said, with a bravado he did not truly feel. “I’m going to be installed as the leader of this community.”

“And you will do as I tell you,” Morgenthau countered, her voice flat and hard. “We know you tried to sell us out. You and your posse.” She broke into a low chuckle.

“That was a necessary tactical maneuver. I never had any intention—”

“Don’t add another lie to your sins. I could have you removed from this habitat and sent back to your prison cell in Vienna with just a single call back to Amsterdam.”

Eberly bit back the reply he wanted to make. They had reached the lakeside recreation area, where hundreds of chairs had been set in neat rows facing the band shell stage. A few dozen people were already seated there. Professor Wilmot sat alone up on the stage, looking somewhere between weary and bored. The band musicians that were lounging off at one side of the stage picked up their instruments and arranged themselves into a ragged semblance of order.

Eberly stopped at the edge of the last row of mostly empty chairs. Everything was as he had planned it. This was the moment he had worked for ever since that meeting in Schönbrunn Prison. He had planned out every detail of this inauguration ceremony. The only thing he could not control was the yawning indifference of the habitat’s people. That, and Morgenthau’s hardening attitude toward him. All the details are perfect, Eberly said to himself, but the day is an utter failure.

Turning to Morgenthau, he said, “You’ll have to walk three paces behind me.”

“Of course,” she said, with a knowing smile. “I know how to play the role of the subservient woman.”

Eberly took a deep breath. It’s going to be like this forever, he realized. She’s going to make my life a hell on wheels.

Outwardly, though, he appeared to smile and pull himself up to his full height. He hesitated at the last row of chairs until he caught the bandleader’s eye. With a nod, Eberly started marching down the central aisle between the empty chairs. Halfway between his second and third steps the band broke into a halfhearted rendition of “Hail to the Chief.”

Holly watched the inaugural ceremony from her own apartment, deeply uncertain about what her future had in store. Malcolm tried to go against Kananga and got nowehere. What will he do once he’s officially installed in office?

What will Kananga do?

Holly decided she couldn’t wait for them to make up their minds. She grabbed a few clothes, stuffed them into a tote bag, and headed for the door of her apartment. I’d better be where they can’t find me, she told herself, until I know what they’re really going to do.

Her phone buzzed. She put the bag down and pulled out the handheld.

Raoul Tavalera’s face appeared on the tiny screen. He looked bone-weary, disheveled.

“Holly? You okay?”

“I’m fine, Raoul,” she replied, nodding. “But I can’t really talk with you now.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Oh, for…” Holly didn’t know what to say. She felt genuinely touched. “Raoul, you don’t have to worry about me. I can take of myself.”

“Against that Kananga guy and his goons?”

She hesitated. “You shouldn’t get yourself involved in this, Raoul. You could get into deep trouble.”

Even in the minuscule screen she could see the stubborn set of his jaw. “If you’re in trouble, I want to help.”

How to get rid of him without hurting his feelings? Holly blurted, “Raoul, you’re really a special guy. But I’ve got to run now. See you later.”

She clicked the phone off, tucked it back into her tote, picked up the bag and left her apartment. I don’t want to hurt him, she told herself. He’s too nifty to get himself tangled up in this mess.

There were only two security people following her as she walked down the empty path: a chunky-looking guy and a slim woman who was either Hispanic or Asian — it was hard for Holly to tell which, at the distance from which they followed her. Both wore black tunics and slacks, which made them stand out against the village’s white buildings like ink blots on a field of snow.

She grinned to herself. I’ll lose those two clowns as soon as I pop down into the tunnels.

She never noticed the third security agent moving far ahead of her. But he tracked her quite clearly. Every item of Holly’s clothes had been sprayed with a monomolecular odorant that allowed the agent to track her like a bloodhound.

“You’re missin’ the inauguration,” Gaeta said.

Cardenas shrugged. “So I miss it.”

Gaeta’s massive armored suit stood like a grotesque statue in the middle of the workshop floor. The chamber hummed with the background buzz of electrical equipment and the quiet intensity of specialists going about their jobs. Fritz and two of his technicians were using the overhead crane to slowly lower the bulbous suit to a horizontal position and place it on its eight-wheeled transport dolly. It looked to Cardenas like lowering a statue. A third technician had crawled inside the suit: Cardenas could see his sandy-brown mop of hair through the open hatch in its back. Off at a console against the workshop wall, Nadia Wunderly was tracing the trajectory of the ice-covered asteroid that was making its last approach to the main ring before falling into orbit around Saturn. Berkowitz shuttled nervously from one to another, recording everything with his handcam.

Gaeta walked slowly to the diagnostic console and bent over it to study rows of steady green lights intently.

He’s really trying to get away from me, Cardenas said to herself. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be distracting him now. I should leave him to focus completely on his job.

Yet she stayed, shuffling uneasily, uncertainly, as the men around her went through their final tasks before wheeling the suit down to the airlock where they would stow it aboard the shuttle craft that would take Manny to the rings.

As Gaeta watched them gently lowering the suit, Cardenas realized that the contraption would be his home for the next two days. He’ll have to live inside it, work inside it… maybe die inside it.

Stop it! she commanded herself. No blubbering. He’s got enough to worry about without you crying all over him.

It took an enormous effort of will, but finally Cardenas heard herself say, “Manny, I’d better get back to my apartment. I—” She stopped, then touched his strong, muscular shoulder and kissed him lightly on the lips. “I’ll see you when you get back,” she said.

He nodded, his face deadly serious. “In two days.”

“Good luck,” she said, barely able to move her hand from his shoulder.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said, making a smile for her. “This is gonna be a walk in the park.”

“Good luck,” she repeated, then abruptly turned away from him and started walking toward the workshop door. Her mind kept churning, He’ll be all right. He’s done more dangerous stunts than this. He knows what he’s doing. Fritz won’t let him take any unnecessary chances. He’ll be back in two days. In two days it’ll be all over and he’ll be safe.

Yes, said a voice in her mind. And then he’ll leave the habitat, go back to Earth, leave you for good.

“Therefore,” Professor Wilmot was saying, “in accordance with this community’s Principles of Organization, I declare the new constitution to be the deciding law of this habitat. I further declare that you, Malcolm Eberly, having been duly elected by free vote of the population, are now officially the chief administrator of this habitat.”

The few hundred people scattered among the chairs spread across the grass rose to their feet and applauded. The band broke into “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Wilmot gripped Eberly’s hand limply and mumbled, “Congratulations, I suppose.”

Eberly grasped the podium’s edges and looked out at the sparse audience. There sat Morgenthau, in the front row, eying him like an elementary school teacher waiting for her pupil to recite the speech she had forced him to write. Kananga and Vyborg sat behind her.

Eberly had composed an inauguration speech, liberally cribbed from the words of Churchill, Kennedy, both Roosevelts, and Shakespeare.

He looked down at the opening lines, in the podium’s display screen. With a shake of his head that was visible to everyone in the audience, he looked up again and said, “This is no time for fancy speeches. We have arrived safely at our destination. Let those who are Believers thank God. Let all of us understand that tomorrow our real work begins. I intend to file a petition with the world government, asking them to recognize us as a separate and independent nation, just as Selene and Ceres have been recognized.”

There was a moment of surprised silence, then everyone jumped to their feet and applauded lustily. Everyone except Morgenthau, Kananga, and Vyborg.

LAUNCH

Raoul Tavalera watched the orbital insertion and Eberly’s inauguration from his apartment, although he barely noticed what the images displayed. He was thinking about Holly. She was in trouble, and she needed help. But when he had offered to help her, she had turned him down flat.

The story of my life, he grumbled to himself. Nobody wants me. Nobody gives a friggin’ damn about me. Mr. Nobody, that’s me.

He was surprised at how much pain he felt. Holly had been kind to him, more than kind, since he had first come aboard the habitat. He remembered the dates they had had. Dinners at the Bistro and even Nemo’s, once. That picnic out at the endcap, where she told me about old Don Diego. She likes me, he told himself, I know she does. But now she doesn’t want me to be with her. Why?

He tried phoning her again, but the comm system said her phone had been deactivated. Deactivated? Why? Then it hit him. She’s on the run again. She’s trying to hide from Kananga and his apes. That’s why she deactivated her phone, so they can’t track her.

Slowly, Tavalera got up from the chair in which he’d been sitting most of the day. Holly’s in trouble and she needs help, whether she thinks so or not. My help. I’ve got to find her, help her, show her she’s not alone in this.

For the first time in his life, Raoul Tavalera decided he had to act, no matter what the consequences. It’s time for me to stop being Mr. Nobody, he told himself. I’ve gotta find Holly before Kananga’s baboons do.

Focus, Gaeta told himself. Blot out everything from your mind except the job at hand. Forget about Kris, forget about everything except getting this stunt done.

He stood at the inner hatch of the airlock, surrounded by Fritz, Berkowitz, and Timoshenko, who would pilot the shuttlecraft to the rings. The other technicians were behind him, checking out the suit for the final time.

Berkowitz had microcams mounted on the walls around the airlock enclosure, inside the airlock chamber, even clipped to a headband that matted down his stylishly curled and tinted brown hair.

“How does it feel to be undertaking the first human traverse through Saturn’s rings?” Berkowitz asked, almost breathless with eager intensity.

“Not now, Zeke,” said Gaeta. “Gotta concentrate on the work.”

Fritz stepped between them, a stern expression on his face. “He can’t do interviews now.”

“Okay, okay,” said Berkowitz amiably enough, although disappointment showed clearly in his eyes. “We’ll just record the preparations documentary-style and put in the interviews over it afterward.”

Gaeta turned to Timoshenko. “It’s going to be just you and me out there.”

“Not to worry,” Timoshenko said, totally serious. “I’ll get you to the B ring, then swing through the Cassini division and pick you up on the other side of the ring plane.”

Gaeta nodded. “Right.”

“Suit’s all primed and ready to go,” said one of the technicians.

“Any problems?” Gaeta asked.

“The pincer on your right arm is a little stiff. If we had a couple hours I’d break it down and rebuild it for ya.”

“You won’t be needing the pincers,” Fritz interjected.

“It works good enough,” the tech said. “Just isn’t as smooth as it oughtta be.”

Gaeta thought, If it’s good enough for Fritz it’ll be okay.

But Fritz said, “I’m going in for a final check.”

Gaeta smiled and nodded. He had expected that. There were three standards of acceptability in this world: average, above average, and Fritz. His chief technician’s keen eye and finicky demands had saved Gaeta’s life more than once.

Sure enough, Holly eluded her trackers after less than half an hour in the tunnels. She had ducked through an access hatch, clambered down a ladder, and then scooted light-footedly along the lower tunnel until she came to the big valve on the water line. Holly knew that this pipeline was a backup and not in use except when the main line was down for inspection or repair. So she tapped out the combination code on the hatch’s electronic lock and crawled into the dark pipe, closing the hatch after her without making a sound.

She couldn’t stand up inside the pipe; couldn’t even get up to a kneeling posture. She slithered along on her belly almost effortlessly. The pipe was dry inside, its plastic lining smooth and easy to slide along. Her only problem was estimating distance in the dark, so she used a penlight to show her where the hatches appeared. Holly knew to the centimeter the distances between hatches. When she had crawled half a kilometer, she stopped and broke open one of the sandwich packs she had brought with her.

As she munched on the sandwich in the faint glow from the pen-light, she felt almost like a little mouse down in its burrow. There are big cats out there, she knew. But I’m safe enough here. Unless somebody decides to divert the main water routing through this backup pipeline. Then I’d be a drowned little mouse.

The two black-clad security officers stood uncertainly in the tunnel, gazing up and down along the pipes and conduits.

“She just disappeared on us,” the man said to the third tracker, who wore a gray running suit. He was tall, rangy, not a gram of fat on him; he looked like an athlete who trained hard every day.

He held the chemical sniffer in one hand, a small gray oblong box — the same shade as his running suit.

“She came this way, definitely,” he said.

“But where’s she gone?” asked the woman.

“That’s not your problem. I’ll take over from here. You can go back and report to the boss.”

They were reluctant to leave, not so much because they were zealous about their jobs, as a decided lack of enthusiasm for the prospect of facing Kananga empty-handed.

“You sure you don’t need help?” the man asked.

The gray-clad tracker smiled and hefted the electronic sniffer. “I’ve got all the help I need, right here.”

Gaeta had been in the shuttlecraft before. Fritz insisted that the stuntman familiarize himself with the vehicle that would carry him from the habitat to the rings. Manny had found the craft to be pretty much like dozens of others he had seen: utilitarian, austere, built more for efficiency than comfort. The cockpit had two seats shoehorned in among all the flight controls. Behind that was a closet-sized “amenities” area with a zero-g toilet built into the bulkhead right next to the food storage freezer and microwave oven. The sink was there, too. Two mesh sleeping bags were pinned against the opposite bulkhead.

The cargo bay was pressurized, so while Timoshenko ran through his final checkout of the craft’s systems, Gaeta ducked through the hatch to look over his suit.

It stood looming in the bay, so tall that the top of the helmet barely cleared the bay’s overhead. Gaeta looked up into the empty faceplate of the helmet. Some people saw the suit for the first time and got the shudders. Gaeta always felt as if he were meeting his other half. Alone, each of them were much less than they were together: the suit an empty shell, the man a helpless weakling. But together — Ahh, together we’ve done great things, haven’t we? Gaeta reached up and patted the suit’s upper arm. Some of the dents from the simulation test they’d done hadn’t been smoothed out of the suit’s armored chest, he noticed. Shaking his head, he thought he should speak to Fritz about that. He should’ve treated you better, Gaeta said to the suit.

“Launch in five minutes,” Timoshenko’s voice came through the open cockpit hatch. “You’ll have to strap down.”

Gaeta nodded. With a final look at the suit, he turned and went back into the cockpit to start his journey through the rings of Saturn.

Kris Cardenas tried to keep busy during the last hours before Gaeta’s launch. Eberly had lifted the ban on her nanolab, so she had gone to the laboratory, where she had real work to do. It was better than sitting in the apartment trying to keep herself from weeping like some helpless female who was supposed to stand by bravely while her man went out to do battle.

It annoyed her that Tavalera wasn’t at his job, until she realized that he probably didn’t know the lab had been allowed to reopen. She tried to phone him, but the comm system couldn’t find him and his personal handheld had been deactivated.

That’s not like Raoul, she thought. He’s always been reliable.

She went through the motions of designing repair nanos for Urbain’s Titan lander, then finally gave it up altogether and turned on the vid.

“There is the shuttlecraft,” Zeke Berkowitz’s voice was poised on the edge that separated authoritative self-assuredness from excited enthusiasm. “In precisely fifteen seconds it will separate from the habitat and begin the journey that will carry Manuel Gaeta into the rings of Saturn.”

Cardenas saw a view from the exterior shell of the habitat. She knew that Berkowitz’s newscast was being beamed to all the media networks on Earth. She could hear the computer’s voice counting down the final seconds.

“Three … two … one … launch.”

The shuttlecraft detached from the habitat’s huge, curved surface, looking like a squarish metallic flea hopping off the hide of an elephant. Against the iridescent glowing disc of many-hued Saturn, the shuttlecraft rose, turned slowly, and then began dwindling out of sight.

“Manuel Gaeta is on his way,” Berkowitz was announcing ponderously, “to be the first man to traverse the mysterious and fascinating rings of Saturn.”

“Goodbye Manny,” Cardenas whispered, certain that she would never see him again.

INTO THE RINGS

Even though she knew that the backup pipeline was perfectly safe, Holly began to get a little edgy about staying in it. In her mind’s eye she saw some maintenance engineer casually switching the habitat’s main water flow from the primary pipeline to the backup. Just a routine operation, yet it would send a flood of frothing water cascading down the pipe toward her, engulfing her, sweeping her along in its irresistible flow, drowning her as she tumbled over and over in the roaring, inescapable flood.

Dimdumb! she snapped at herself. You’re scaring yourself like some little kid afraid of monsters under the bed. Yet, as she crawled along the perfectly dry pipeline, she kept listening for the telltale rush of water, feeling with her fingertips for the slightest vibration of the pipe. And the pipe wasn’t perfectly dry, at that: here and there small damp patches and even actual puddles told her that water had been flowing not so long ago.

She had thought she’d stay in the pipeline until it made its big U-turn, up near the endcap. Well, maybe not all the way. It’d be good to get out and stretch, be able to stand up again. So she slithered further along the pipe, even though the lingering fear of drowning still gnawed at her.

The tracker reached the hatch where Holly had entered the pipeline easily enough. The electronic sniffer in his hand followed the scent trail she had left quite easily. My faithful bloodhound, he thought, with a crooked smile.

Now he had a decision to make. Should I go into the pipe and follow her, or stay outside? He decided to remain outside. He could make better time walking, or even jogging, than he could crawling inside the dark pipe. She has to come out sooner or later, and when she does the sniffer will tell me which hatch she used.

But which direction did she go? She was heading away from the village, toward the endcap, he knew. I’ll follow that vector. The chances that she’d double back toward the village are pretty scarce. Still, he phoned Kananga to report the situation and advise him to have a few people standing by at the pipeline hatches near the village.

“I’ll do better than that,” Kananga said, grinning fiercely. “I’ll order maintenance to run the main water flow through the line. That’ll flush her out.”

Tavalera bicycled out to the endcap along the path that meandered through the orchards and farmlands. He left the bike at the end of the path, then followed the walking trail that led through the woods at the endcap. It felt strange: He could see he was climbing a decent slope yet it felt as if he were going downhill; the gravity diminished noticeably with every step he took.

At last he reached the little spot in the woods where he and Holly had once picnicked. I can’t search the whole habitat for you, Holly, he said silently, so you’ll have to come to me.

Tavalera sat down and began to wait for her to show up. It was the best course of action he could think of.

Gaeta felt the same pulse of excitement that always hit him once he was sealed inside the suit, with all the systems turned on and working. Not merely excitement. What he felt was power. In the suit he had the strength of a demigod. The suit protected him against the worst that the universe could throw at him. He felt virtually invulnerable, invincible.

Keep thinking like that, pal, and you’ll end up dead, he warned himself. Take a deep breath and get to work. And remember that it’s damned dangerous out there.

Still, he felt like a superman.

“Approaching insertion point.” Timoshenko’s raspy voice came through the helmet earphones.

Gaeta nodded. “I’m sealed up. Open the cargo bay hatch.”

“Opening hatch.”

Gaeta had been through this many times. He always felt a thrill when the hatch slid open and he could look out at the universe of endless black void and countless brilliant stars.

But this time was different. As the hatch opened the cargo bay was flooded with light, overpoweringly brilliant light. Gaeta looked up at an endless field of gleaming, dazzling white, as far as his eyes could see, nothing but glittering sparkling light. It was like looking out at a titanic glacier or a field of glistening snow that extended forever.

No, he realized. It’s like looking out at a whole world made of diamonds: sparkling, glittering diamonds. They’re not just white, they gleam and glow like diamonds, hundreds of millions of billions of bright, beautiful gems spread out from one end of the universe to the other.

His breath caught in his throat. “Jesus Cristo,” he muttered.

“What was that?” Timoshenko asked.

“I’m going out,” Gaeta said.

“Your trajectory program is operative?”

Gaeta called up the trajectory program vocally. It splashed its colored curves on the inside of his faceplate.

“Operative.”

“Ready for insertion in eight seconds. Seven…”

Gaeta had to make a conscious effort to concentrate on the task ahead. His eyes kept wandering to the endless field of dazzling gems stretching out before him.

They’re just flakes of ice, he told himself. Nothing more than bits of dust with ice covering them.

Yeah, answered a voice in his mind. And diamonds are nothing more than carbon. And the Mona Lisa is nothing more than same dabs of paint on a chunk of canvas.

“… one … zero. Launch,” said Timoshenko.

The suit’s master computer ignited the thrusters in the backpack and Gaeta felt himself pushed gently out of the cargo bay. Now he was looking down on the endless field of gleaming gems and beginning to drift toward them.

How fucking beautiful, he thought. How incredibly fucking beautiful!

“Say something!” came Berkowitz’s voice, relayed from the habitat. “We need some words from you for posterity.”

Gaeta licked his lips. “This is the most incredibly beautiful sight I’ve ever seen. It’s … it’s … beyond description. Words just can’t capture it.”

For some minutes Gaeta just drifted along above the ring plane, allowing the computer to guide him automatically along the preset trajectory. He knew the cameras in his helmet were recording it all, so there wasn’t much for him to do at this point in the trajectory. He simply gaped, awed by the splendor that surrounded him.

“It’s like something out of a fairy tale,” he said, hardly realizing he was speaking aloud. “A field of diamonds. A whole world of diamonds spread out below me. I feel like Sinbad the Sailor and Marco Polo and Ali Baba, all rolled into one.”

“That’s great,” Berkowitz’s voice answered. “Great.”

“Have any particles hit you?” Fritz asked.

“No, nothing that the sensors have picked up,” Gaeta replied. “I’m still too high above the ring.” Good old Fritz, he thought. Trying to bring me back to reality.

Another gentle push of thrust at his back and Gaeta began to come closer to the ring. Within minutes he would be going through it. That would be the dangerous part of the stunt, barging in there among all those bits and chunks while they’re whipping around the planet in their orbits.

He could see now that the ring wasn’t a solid sheet. It was clearly made of separate, individual rings, braiding together and unwinding even while he watched. He could see stars through the ring, and the ponderous curve of Saturn with its colorful bands of clouds.

“Looks like a cyclonic storm down in the southern tropics,” he reported.

“Never mind that,” Fritz said. “Pay attention to the rings.”

“Yes, master.”

“What about the spokes?” Wunderly’s voice, trembling with exhilaration. “I can see them in your camera view. One of them is approaching you.”

Gaeta realized that there were darker regions in the ring, undulating like a wave made by fans at a sports arena.

“Yeah, heading my way,” he said.

Looking closer, he saw that it was almost like a cloud of darker bits of dust rising up from the ring plane and sweeping along the brighter stuff of the ring’s main body. And he was approaching it at a fairly rapid clip.

“I’m going to duck into it,” he said.

Fritz warned, “Wait. Let us examine it first.”

“It’ll pass me; I’ll miss it.”

“There will be others.”

Gaeta didn’t want to wait for another spoke to swing by. He pulled his right arm out of the suit sleeve and tapped in a maneuver command for the navigation program.

“Here we go,” he said as the suit tilted and dove into the approaching cloud.

Fritz muttered something in German.

“It’s dust,” Gaeta saw. “Sort of gray, like there’s no ice coating the particles.”

“Adjust your approach vector,” Fritz snapped. “Don’t go plunging headlong into the cloud.”

“I’ll just skim along it,” said Gaeta, enjoying himself now. “Doesn’t look thick enough to cause any problems. I can see right through it.”

Wunderly said, “See if you—” Her voice broke up into crackling static.

“Say again,” Gaeta called. “You’re breaking up.”

No answer except hissing electronic interference. Gaeta was barely touching the cloud as it swept along the ring. He called for a systems check and the displays on his faceplate showed everything in the green, including the radio.

Outside interference, he said to himself. Something in the dust cloud screws up radio communications.

The cloud raced past him, swinging along the ring far faster than Gaeta’s leisurely pace.

“…off the scale!” Wunderly was shouting excitedly. “That proves the spokes are driven by electromagnetic interactions.”

“I can hear you again,” Gaeta said. “Whatever it was that blocked the radio is gone now.”

“It’s the spokes!” Wunderly said. “We’ve just proved that high-powered electromagnetic fields drive them!”

“And interfere with radio links,” Fritz added calmly.

“It didn’t mess up anything else in the suit,” Gaeta said.

“The suit is heavily shielded,” said Fritz.

“Yeah.” Gaeta saw that he was approaching the ring particles pretty fast now. Like diving into a field of diamonds, he thought, chuckling.

“What is funny?” Fritz demanded.

“I was thinking I shoulda brought a big bucket to haul back some of these diamonds.”

“They are not diamonds. They are dust particles covered with ice.”

“But the ones in the spokes don’t seem to have ice on ’em.”

“That is a mystery for Dr. Wunderly to ponder. For you, you should be adjusting your velocity vector to make it as close to that of the ring particles as possible. That will minimize impacts and abrasion problems.”

It was all in the automated nav program, Gaeta knew, but he checked his approach velocity against the ring particles’ and saw that he could notch down his approach a hair. That’ll give me more time in the ring itself, he thought. Good.

Then he saw a bigger chunk of ice tumbling slowly through the ring, glittering brilliantly.

“Hey, see that one? It’s big as a house.”

“Stay away from it,” Fritz commanded.

“Can you get close enough to measure its size precisely?” Wunderly asked.

Gaeta laughed again. “Right. Stay away and get close. No sweat, folks.”

CAPTURED

Crawling along the pipe on all fours, Holly’s right hand splashed into a shallow little puddle at precisely the same instant that her left hand felt a slight vibration along the pipe’s curved interior surface.

She froze for an instant, listening for the rush of water, then decided, By the time I hear it, it’ll be too late to do anything about it.

She had passed a hatch about five minutes earlier. That meant the next hatch would be roughly five minutes ahead. Which way is the water coming? she asked herself. Doesn’t matter, came the answer. You’ve got to get your butt out of here. Now!

She scurried forward, feeling like a mouse in its burrow, scampering as fast as her hands and knees would carry her. She heard a rumble from somewhere behind her, thought it might be her imagination overreacting, then felt the unmistakable shudder of water rushing along the pipe. By the time she reached the hatch she could hear the flood roaring down toward her. With trembling fingers she opened the hatch, crawled out of the pipe, and slammed the hatch shut again. Water thundered past, some of it splashing through the hatch before she could seal it properly.

That was close!

Holly’s legs wouldn’t hold her up. She slid to the metal flooring of the tunnel and sat in the puddle beneath the hatch.

They knew I was in the pipe! she realized. They knew and they tried to drown me.

The tracker was loping along the tunnel, running easily alongside the pipeline. He could hear the water gushing through it but, careful man that he was, he jogged down the tunnel on the chance that his prey had gotten out in time. Take no chances, don’t give the prey a chance to get away.

He was an Ethiopian who had dreamed of winning Olympic gold medals for long-distance running until the Olympic Games were indefinitely postponed. He had supported himself, his parents, and his younger siblings on a policeman’s meager salary. Even that failed, however, when a relative of a politician from the capital was handed his position and salary. Faced with starvation, he accepted a position on the outbound Saturn habitat, on the condition that his salary be sent each month to his parents. Once aboard the habitat, he was befriended by Colonel Kananga and given a soft post with the Security Department.

This job of tracking was his first important duty for the colonel, after so many months of routine security patrols in a habitat where there were no real criminals, only spoiled, independent-minded sons and daughters of the wealthy who acted like children that didn’t have to grow up.

He had no intention of failing this assignment. He wanted to please Colonel Kananga.

“I’m getting pinged,” Gaeta said.

He was still a considerable distance above the ring, but particles of dust were already impinging on his suit, according to the sensors on its outer shell. No problem, Gaeta told himself. Not yet. It’ll get worse in a coupla minutes.

It was hard to estimate distances. He was looking down at a dazzling field of white, glaring light, like floating down in a balloon to the top of an enormous glacier. Yet the ring wasn’t solid; it was composed of millions upon millions of particles, like all the shiny bright marbles in the universe had gathered themselves together here. The house-sized chunk of ice had passed by, tumbling end over end, visibly banging into the smaller particles that swarmed around it.

Fritz’s voice, calm and assured, said, “Tour velocity vector is good. The impacts should be at minimal energy.”

“Yeah,” Gaeta agreed, drifting closer to the vast sea of glittering particles. “I don’t feel anything yet.”

“We’re getting size estimates for the particles,” said Wunderly. “There doesn’t seem to be anything above a few millimeters now.” She sounded disappointed.

“You want me to look for bigger stuff?”

“You just stick to the planned trajectory,” Fritz said stiffly. “No adventures, please.”

Gaeta laughed. No adventures. What the hell do you call this?

Wunderly came back on. “The new moon has settled into its permanent orbit.”

“Can’t see it from here.”

“No, it’s on the other side of Saturn. I’m getting video from the minisat in polar orbit.”

The particles were noticeably thicker now. Gaeta felt as if he were slowly sinking into a blizzard: whirling snowflakes glistening all around him, swirling, dancing on an invisible wind. They seemed to be moving away from him slightly, making room for him in their midst.

“I know this is crazy,” he said, “but these flakes are moving away from me, looks like.”

He could sense Fritz shaking his head. “It’s merely your perspective. They’re moving around Saturn in their own orbits, just as you are.”

“Maybe, but I could swear they’re keeping their distance from me.”

“Can you grab any of them?” Wunderly asked.

Gaeta worked his keyboard, then wriggled his arms back into the suit’s sleeves. “I’ve opened the collection box, but I don’t think any of ’em are getting caught in it.”

He heard Fritz chuckle dryly. “Do you think they’re avoiding you? Perhaps they don’t like your smell.”

“I don’t know what to think, pal. It’s as if—” Gaeta stopped as a red warning light suddenly flared on the inner surface of his faceplate. A shock of alarm raced through his nerves.

“Got a red light,” he said.

“Sensors down,” Fritz said, his voice abruptly brittle, tense. “No immediate problem.”

Scanning his helmet displays swiftly, Gaeta saw that four of the sensors on the suit’s skin had gone blank. Two on the backpack and two more on his left leg. He knew it was impossible to see his legs from inside the suit but he tried anyway. All he could see through the faceplate was the tips of his boots. They seemed to be rimed with ice.

He raised both arms and saw that they too were covered with a thin layer of ice. As he watched, he saw the ice moving along each arm.

“Hey! I’m icing up. They’re covering me with ice.”

“That shouldn’t happen,” Wunderly said, sounding almost annoyed.

“I don’t give a shit what should happen. These little cabróns are covering me up!”

More red lights flashed on his faceplate. One by one the sensors on the skin of the suit were going down. Covered with ice.

“Can you still move your arms and legs?” Fritz asked.

Gaeta tried. “Yeah. The joints are running a little stiff but they still — uh-oh.” Several particles of ice attached themselves to his faceplate.

“What’s the matter?”

“They’re on my faceplate,” Gaeta said. He stared at the particles, more fascinated than frightened. The little fregados are crawling across my faceplate, he realized.

“They’re moving,” he reported. “They’re walkin’ across my faceplate!”

“They can’t walk,” Wunderly said.

“Tell it to them!” Gaeta answered. “They’re covering up my faceplate. The whole suit! They’re wrapping me up in ice!”

“That’s impossible.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Whatever they were, the tiny particles were crawling over his faceplate. He could see it. More of them were coming in, too, covering more and more of the visor. Within minutes Gaeta could see nothing of the outside. His suit was completely encased in ice.

PRISONERS

Wunderly was in her own cubbyhole office, a pair of video monitors on her desk, trying to watch Gaeta on one display screen and the new moon that had joined the main ring on the screen beside it.

All she was getting from Gaeta was data from his suit’s interior sensors and his own excited report that the ice particles were encasing the suit. They can’t move, she told herself. They’re not alive, not motile. They’re just flakes of dust covered with ice.

But what’s making them cover Manny’s suit? Electromagnetic attraction? Temperature differential?

She was running through possibilities that grew more and more fanciful while she absently switched to the spectrographic sensor from the minisatellite that was watching the newly arrived moonlet on the other side of the ring. Wunderly frowned at the display. It didn’t look right. She called up the spectrograph’s earlier data. The moonlet was definitely icy, but laced with dark carbonaceous soot. Yet the real-time spectrogram showed much less carbon: it was practically all ice. Where did the carbon get to?

Intrigued, she switched back to the minisat’s visual display. And sank back in her little chair, gasping.

The moonlet was in the center of what looked like a maelstrom. A whirlpool of ice flakes was swirling around the moonlet, like a huge family engulfing a newly arrived member.

“My God almighty, they’re alive!” Wunderly shouted, leaping out of her chair. “They’re alive!”

Gaeta had learned long ago that panic was the worst enemy. Even with his faceplate covered so thickly that he could see nothing outside, he kept calm as he checked the suit’s systems. Life support okay, power okay, communications in the green, propulsion ready. No need to push the red button yet.

“Try rubbing the ice off your faceplate,” came Fritz’s voice, also calm, methodical.

Fritz’ll keep on recommending different fixes until I go down in flames, Gaeta knew.

“I’ve done that,” he said, raising his left arm to wipe at the faceplate again. The arm felt suffer than it had just a few moments earlier. “They just come back again.”

As he spoke, Gaeta rubbed the pincers of his left arm across the faceplate. They scraped some of the ice off enough so that he could see more particles rushing toward him. Within seconds the faceplate was covered up again.

“No joy,” he said. “They just swarm in and cover everything. It’s like they’re alive. I can see them crawling across my faceplate.”

“They are alive!” Wunderly broke in, her voice shrill with exhilaration. “Get some in the sample box!”

Gaeta huffed. “Maybe they’re gonna get me in their sample box.”

He wondered how much thickness of ice it would take to block his antennas and cut off communications. I’m getting freeze-wrapped like a Christmas turkey and she’s worried about getting samples to study. He checked the temperature inside the suit. The display was normal, although Gaeta thought it felt chillier than normal. Just my imagination, he told himself. Yeah. Sure.

He called to Fritz, “I think maybe I oughtta light off the jets and get outta here.”

“Not yet!” Wunderly pleaded. “Try to collect some samples!”

Fritz’s voice, icy calm, said, “Your suit functions aren’t being impaired.”

“Not yet,” Gaeta agreed. “But what chingado good am I sitting out here, blind as a bat and covered with ice?”

Wunderly asked, “Can you at least wait until the minisat swings over to your side of the planet, so I can get spectrographic readings on the ice that’s covering you?”

“How long will that take?” Fritz asked.

A pause. Then Wunderly answered, her voice much lower, “Eleven hours and twenty-seven minutes.”

“The suit is designed for a forty-eight-hour excursion,” said Fritz.

“But if the ice covering continues to build up, his communications and propulsion functions might be disabled.”

Before Wunderly could reply, Gaeta said, “I’m okay for now, Fritz. Let’s see what happens.”

Berkowitz spoke up. “This is terrific stuff, people, but all your suit cameras are covered up. We’re getting nothing but audio from you, Manny. If we can get outside video from the minisat, we’ll be golden.”

Gaeta nodded inside his helmet, thinking sardonically, And if I get killed, the ratings’ll be even better.

Feeling shaky after her near drowning, and even shakier knowing that somehow Kananga’s people were tracking her, Holly walked as fast as she could to the end of the tunnel, climbed the metal ladder that led up to the surface, and pushed open a hatch disguised to look like a small boulder. She was at the endcap; she paused for a moment and took a deep breath of air. It seemed fresh and sweet. The entire habitat spread before her eyes, green and wide and open.

She pulled herself up from the hatch, swung the plastic boulder shut again, and started across the springy green grass toward the grove of young elms and maples sprouting farther up toward the centerline.

Somebody was already there, she saw as she approached the woods. Lying stretched out on the mossy ground in among the trees.

Holly froze, feeling like a deer that’s spotted a mountain lion. But the man — she thought it looked like a man — seemed to be asleep, or unconscious or even dead. He wasn’t wearing the black outfit of the Security Department, either; just tan coveralls.

Cautiously, Holly approached near enough to make out his face. It’s Raoul! she realized. What’s he doing out here? A thought stopped her in her tracks. Is he working for Kananga? Is he part of some search group, looking for me?

Then she realized she was standing out in the open, perfectly visible to anyone within a kilometer or more. Raoul wouldn’t go over to Kananga, she decided. He’s a friend.

She went to him, feeling a little safer once she was within the shadows of the trees.

Tavalera stirred as she approached him, blinked, then sat up so abruptly it startled Holly.

He blinked again, rubbed his eyes. “Holly? Is it you, or am I dreaming?”

She smiled warmly. “It’s me, Raoul. What are you doing all the way out here?”

“Lookin’ for you,” he said, getting to his feet. “Guess I dozed off. Some searcher, huh?” He grinned sheepishly.

“You’re just going to get yourself in trouble, Raoul. Kananga’s people are following me. I’ve been trying to stay a jump ahead of them.”

Tavalera took in a deep breath. “I know. I came to help you.”

Holly thought that if Raoul knew enough about her to wait for her here at the endcap, Kananga’s people must have figured out her habits, too.

“We’ve got to find someplace to hide,” she said. “Someplace where we’ll be safe.”

“It’s too late for that,” said a new voice.

They turned and saw a tall, lanky young man whose skin was the color of smooth dark chocolate. In his hand was the small electronic sniffer.

“Colonel Kananga wants to see you, Miss Lane,” he said, his voice soft, nonthreatening.

“I don’t want to see Colonel Kananga,” said Holly.

“That’s unfortunate. I’m afraid I must insist that you come with me.”

Tavalera stepped in front of Holly. “Run, Holly,” he said. “I’ll hold him off while you get away.”

The black man smiled. Pointing out beyond the trees to a trio of black-clad people approaching them, he said, “There’s no need for violence. And there’s no place to run to.”

RING CREATURES

Wunderly could barely contain her excitement. She was bouncing up and down in her little chair as she watched the ring particles swarming over the new moonlet.

It’s food for them! she told herself as she switched from visual to infrared and then to the spectrographic display. She wished there had been room in the minisat for ultraviolet and gamma ray sensors. What we need is an active laser probe, she thought, then immediately countered, But that might kill the particles. Particles? No, they’re living creatures. Ice creatures, surviving at temperatures of minus two hundred Celsius and lower. Extremophiles that thrive in a low-temperature environment.

The mystery of Saturn’s rings is solved, she thought. The rings aren’t just passive collections of ice flakes. They’re made of active, living creatures! They grab anything that falls into their region and take it apart. Asteroids, little ice chunks, it’s all food for them. That’s how Saturn can maintain its ring system. It’s alive.

Let’s see, she thought. Saturn has forty-two moons that we know of. Every so often an asteroid or an ice chunk from the Kuiper Belt wanders into the ring system and these creatures chew it up. The rings are constantly losing particles, having them sucked down into Saturn’s clouds. But the rings keep renewing themselves by devouring the incoming moonlets that stray into their grip.

Suddenly she looked up from the displays. Manny! They’ll try to chew up Manny’s suit. They could kill him!

She yelled into her comm link, “Manny! Get out of there! Now! Before they chew through your suit!”

Fritz’s voice replied coldly, “I don’t know if he can hear us. I haven’t had any word from him for nearly half an hour. The ice must have built up too thickly over his antennas.”

Holly watched the three black-clad figures approaching, climbing the grassy rise toward the copse where she and Tavalera stood with the Ethiopian tracker. He had his comm unit to his ear, nodding unconsciously as he listened to his orders.

At last he said, “Colonel Kananga is on his way. He wants to meet you by the central airlock, here at the endcap.”

Tavalera suddenly lunged at the tracker, shouting wildly, “Run, Holly!” as he tackled the Ethiopian.

The two men went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Holly hesitated an instant, long enough to see that Raoul was no fighter. The Ethiopian quickly recovered from his surprise and threw Tavalera off his back, then scrambled to his feet. Before he could do anything, Holly launched herself in a flying kick that caught the tracker in the ribs and knocked him down again. Tavalera got up and grabbed for her hand.

The bolt of a laser beam knocked him down again. Tavalera grabbed his leg with both hands as he rolled on the ground in pain. “Shit! The same friggin’ leg!”

Holly froze into immobility. Raoul’s leg wasn’t bleeding much, but a pinprick of a black hole smoldered halfway up his thigh.

The Ethiopian got slowly to his feet as the three other security officers ran across the grassy rise toward them.

“How’d they get weapons into the habitat?” Holly asked, sinking to her knees beside the writhing, cursing Tavalera.

“Cutting tools,” Tavalera grunted, grimacing. “They must’ve adapted laser tools into sidearms.”

The leader of the three newcomers looked over the situation. “Good work,” he said to the Ethiopian. Gesturing to his two underlings, he said, “Haul this one to his feet and drag him along.”

They grabbed Tavalera, not gently at all.

“Come along,” the leader said to Holly. “Colonel Kananga wants to see you at the central airlock.”

The only thing that truly worried Gaeta was being cut off from communicating with Fritz. The suit was holding up all right, although the interior temperature had definitely dropped nearly three degrees.

Gaeta was thinking of his possible alternatives as he drifted, wrapped in ice, mummified cryogenically. Wunderly thinks the ice particles are alive. Maybe she’s right. They sure looked like they were crawling across my faceplate. So maybe they’re trying to eat me, eat the suit. Can they eat cermet or organometallics? Jezoo, I hope not!

Wait for another eleven hours, so they can get video of me? I could be dead by then.

But if I bug out now, there won’t be any video to show the nets.

Funny, he thought, how the mind works. Right here in the middle of this mierda what does my brain come up with? He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. These rings have existed for thousands of years, millions, more likely. They’re not going away. I can come back. With better preparation, better equipment. And better video coverage.

That decided him. Gaeta pulled his right arm out of its sleeve and set up the thruster program. I’ll be flying blind, he realized. He had lost all sense of where he was in relation to the habitat or to Timoshenko, waiting for him in the shuttlecraft. The suit’s navigation program was useless now. Better take it slow and easy. First priority is to get your butt out of this blizzard. But don’t go blasting off to Alpha Centauri.

He touched the keypad that fired the thruster jets. Nothing happened.

Eberly had taken over Professor Wilmot’s old office, now that he was officially the habitat’s chief administrator. His first official act was to send Wilmot’s stuffy old furniture to storage and replace it with sleek modernistic chrome and plastic bleached and stained to look like teak.

He had hardly sat at his gleaming desk when Morgenthau pushed open the door to his office and stepped in, unannounced. Dressed in a flamboyant rainbow-hued caftan, she looked around the office’s bare walls with a smug, self-satisfied smile that was close to being a smirk.

“You’ll need some pictures on these walls,” she said. “I’ll see that you get some holowindows that can be programmed—”

“I can decorate my own office,” Eberly snapped.

Her expression didn’t change at all. “Don’t be touchy. Now that you have the power you should surround yourself with the proper trappings of power. Symbols are important. Just ask Vyborg — he knows all about the importance of symbolism.”

“I have a lot of work to do,” Eberly said.

“You have to meet with Kananga.”

Eberly shook his head. “It’s not on my agenda.”

“He’s waiting for you at the central airlock, out at the endcap.”

“I’m not going—”

“He has Holly in custody. He wants you there for her trial. And execution.”

DRUMHEAD

Blinded by the ice coating his suit, his communications antennas blocked, the temperature inside the suit dropping, Gaeta mulled over his options. The thrusters won’t fire, he realized, and I don’t know why. The diagnostic display splashed on the inside of his faceplate showed the propulsion system was in the green.

“Engineer’s hell,” he muttered to himself. “Everything checks but nothing works.”

The suit’s diagnostics were bare-bones. Fritz had a better idea of what was going on than he did, Gaeta knew. He’s got the details. He’s even got the positioning data that feeds my nav program; all I’ve got is a comm link that doesn’t work.

Gaeta had one last trick in his repertoire. If this doesn’t work I’ll be a frozen dinner for these chingado ice bugs, he told himself. He popped the suit’s emergency antenna. The spring-loaded Buckyball wire cracked through the ice shell and whizzed out the full length of its hundred meters. Gaeta felt the vibration inside the suit, like the faint buzz of an electric razor.

“Fritz! Can you hear me?” he called.

“Manny!” Fritz’s voice replied immediately. “What’s your situation? The diagnostics here are a blur.”

“Suit antennas iced over,” Gaeta replied, slipping automatically into the clipped, time-saving argot of pilots and ground controllers. “Thrusters won’t fire.”

“Life support?”

“Okay for now. Thrusters, man. I gotta get outta here.”

“Have you tried the backup?”

“Of course I’ve tried the backup! It’s like everything’s frozen solid.” Wunderly’s voice interrupted, “Crank up your suit’s heaters.”

“The heaters?”

“Run them up as hot as you can stand it,” she said. “The ice bugs probably don’t like high temperatures.”

“Probablydoesn’t sound like much help,” Gaeta said.

“Try it,” Fritz commanded.

Gaeta knew the suit’s electrical power came from a nuclear thermionic generator: plenty of electricity available for the heaters.

Reluctantly he said, “Okay. Going into sauna mode.”

Holly was more worried about Tavalera’s leg than her own prospects. Two of the black-clad security people were dragging Raoul up the slope toward the central airlock. He looked to be in shock, his face white, his teeth gritted. It was foolish of him to try to help me, Holly thought. Foolish and very brave.

With the Ethiopian in the lead, they climbed the gentle rise, feeling the odd decrease in gravity as they got closer to the habitat’s centerline. Holly wondered if she could use the confusing loss of gravity as a weapon, but there were four of Kananga’s people and only herself and the wounded Tavalera to counter them. She couldn’t leave Raoul in their clutches, no matter what lay ahead.

“Why are you taking us here?” Holly demanded.

“Just following orders,” said the burly leader of the security team.

“Orders? Whose orders?”

“Colonel Kananga’s. He wants to meet you at the central airlock.”

Eberly groused and grumbled, but he realized he had no choice but to accompany Morgenthau to this meeting with Kananga. What else can I do? he asked himself. I’m nothing more than a figurehead. She holds the real power: she and Kananga and that viper Vyborg. If it hadn’t been for him and his stupid ambition, none of this would have happened. I’ve won power for them, not myself.

He meekly followed Morgenthau to the bike racks outside the administration building and mounted one of the electrically powered bicycles. From the rear, Morgenthau looked like a hippopotamus riding the bike. He noted that she hardly pedaled at all, even on the flat; instead she let the quiet little electrical motor propel her along. I hope she runs out of battery power by the time we have to start climbing, Eberly thought viciously.

But she made it all the way to the endcap and the hatch that led to the central airlock, Eberly dutifully following behind her. They left the bikes in the racks at the hatch and entered the cold, dimly lit steel tunnel that led to the airlock.

As the hatch swung shut behind them, Eberly looked over his shoulder, like a prisoner taking his last glimpse of the outside world before the gates close on his freedom. He saw a small group of people trudging up the slope toward the hatch. Three of them were in the black tunics of the security forces. The tall slim figure in their midst looked like Holly. He didn’t recognize the even taller man in a gray outfit walking up ahead of the others. Two of the security people were dragging a man who was clearly injured.

Then the hatch closed, and Eberly felt the chill of the cold steel tunnel seep into his bones.

“Come along,” said Morgenthau. “Kananga’s waiting for us at the airlock. Vyborg is there, too.”

Wondering what else he could do, Eberly followed her like a desperately unhappy little boy being dragged to school.

Gaeta blinked sweat from his eyes. He had reeled in the emergency antenna and fired it out again, twice. Each time it had given him about five minutes of clear communications before the ice creatures coated it so thickly that the radio link began to break up.

His faceplate displays were splashed with yellow as he diverted electrical power from the suit’s sensors and even the servomotors that moved its arms and legs to pour as much energy as possible into the heaters. The arms were getting too stiff to move even with the servomotors grinding away. Christ knows how thick the ice is packing up on them.

Trouble is, he knew, the suit’s skin is thermally insulated too damned well. The suit’s built to keep heat in, not to let it leak outside.

That gave him an idea. It was wild, but it was an idea. How long can I breathe vacuum? he asked himself. It was an old daredevil game that astronauts and stuntmen and other crazies played now and then: vacuum breathing. You open your suit to vacuum and hold your breath. The trick is to seal up the suit again before you pass out, or before your eyes blow out from the loss of pressure. A lot of people claimed the record; most of ’em were dead. Pancho Lane had a reputation for being good at it, he remembered, back in the days when she was an ass-kicking astronaut.

The real question, Gaeta realized, is: How much air does the suit hold? And how fast will it leak out if I pop one of the small hatches, like the one in my sleeve?

He wished he could check it out with Fritz, but even the emergency antenna was out now; the last time he’d used it, it got too thickly coated with ice to reel it back in.

You’re on your own, muchacho. Make your own calculations and take your own chances. There’s nobody left to help you.

Kananga looked calm and pleased, standing tall and smiling in front of the inner hatch of the airlock. It was an oversized hatch, wide and high enough to take bulky crates of machinery or other cargo, as well as individuals in spacesuits.

Vyborg was fidgeting nervously, obviously anxious to get this over with, Eberly thought.

On the other side of the steel-walled chamber stood Holly, trying to look defiant but clearly frightened. A young man who identified himself as Raoul Tavalera lay at her feet, grimacing in pain and anger. Eberly remembered him as the astronaut who had been rescued during the refueling at Jupiter. The Ethiopian tracker and the three security team people were further down the tunnel, blocking any attempt to run away.

“I’m pleased,” said Kananga, “that our newly installed chief administrator could take the time away from his many duties to join us here at this trial.”

“Trial?” Eberly snapped.

“Why, yes. I’d like you to serve as the chief judge.”

Eberly glanced uneasily at Holly, then quickly looked away.

“Who is on trial? What’s the charge?”

Extending a long pointing finger, Kananga said, “Holly Lane stands accused of the murder of Diego Romero.”

“That’s bullshit!” Tavalera shouted.

Kananga stepped toward the wounded young man and kicked him in his ribs. The breath rushed out of Tavalera’s lungs with a painful grunt. Holly’s hands balled into fists, but Kananga turned and struck her with a vicious backhand slap that split her lip open. She staggered back a few steps.

“This court will not tolerate any outbursts,” Kananga said severely to the gasping, wincing Tavalera. “Since you have aided and abetted the accused, you stand accused along with her.”

“If I’m the judge here,” Eberly said, “then I’ll determine who can speak and who can’t.”

Kananga made a mock bow. “Of course.”

“I assume you are the prosecutor,” Eberly said to the Rwandan.

Kananga dipped his chin once.

“And who is the defense attorney?”

“The accused will defend herself,” Morgenthau answered.

“And the jury?”

Vyborg said, “Morgenthau and I will serve as the jury.”

Eberly thought bleakly, A drumhead military trial. They’re making me part of it. I’ll never be able to deny that I took part in Holly’s execution, they’ve seen to that. The best I can do is see to it that this drumhead trial follows some kind of legal order. The result is as clear as the fear in Holly’s eyes.

He sighed deeply, wishing he could be somewhere else. Anywhere else, he thought, except my old prison cell back in Vienna.

“Very well,” he said at last, avoiding Holly’s eyes. “This trial is called to order.”

EXECUTION

Using the suit’s internal computer, Gaeta made some rough calculations. The temperature inside the suit was still sinking even though he had the heaters up full blast. Make up your mind while you’ve still got some heat inside the suit. Otherwise you’re dead.

He made his decision. Gaeta pulled both arms out of the suit sleeves. Getting his legs out of the suit’s legs was more difficult. Shoulda taken those yoga lessons they were offering last year, he told himself as he strained to pull out one leg and fold it beneath his buttocks. The other leg was even more difficult; Gaeta yelped with pain as something in the back of his thigh popped. Cursing in fluent Spanglish, he finally managed to pull the other leg up into the suit’s torso. Panting from the exertion, feeling his thigh muscle throbbing painfully, he sat inside the suit’s torso in a ludicrous parody of a lotus position.

“Okay,” he said to himself. “Now we see how long you can breathe vacuum.”

“I didn’t kill Don Diego,” Holly insisted, dabbing at the blood from her split lip. With her other hand she pointed at Kananga. “He did. He admitted it to me.”

“Do you have any witnesses to that?” Eberly asked, stalling for time. He didn’t know why. He knew there was no hope. Kananga was going to “convict” Holly of the murder and execute her, with Tavalera alongside her. Airlock justice.

Holly shook her head dumbly.

Kananga said, “She’s lying, of course. She was the last one to see Romero. She claims she discovered the body. I say she murdered the old man.”

“But why would I do that?” Holly burst. “He was my friend. I wouldn’t hurt him.”

“Perhaps he made sexual advances at you,” Eberly suggested, clutching at straws. “Perhaps the killing was self-defense. Or even accidental.”

Morgenthau, standing to one side beside Vyborg, muttered, “Nonsense.”

“You’re the jury,” Eberly said. “You shouldn’t make any comments.”

“She’s guilty,” Vyborg snapped. “We don’t need any further evidence.”

Let the heat out of the suit and maybe it’ll drive ’em away, Gaeta told himself. If it doesn’t, I’m dead. So what’ve I got to lose?

He nodded inside the ice-covered helmet. So do it. What’re you waiting for?

He refigured the control board inside the suit’s chest to pop the access panels in both the suit’s arms and both legs. The four keypads glowed before his eyes. The four fingers of his right hand hovered above them.

Do it! he commanded himself.

Squeezing his eyes shut and blowing hard to make his lungs as empty as possible, Gaeta jammed his fingers down onto the keypad.

And counted: One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three…

In his mind’s eye he saw what was happening. The suit’s heated air was rushing out of the open access panels. The ice creatures should feel a sudden wave of heat. Maybe it would kill them. Certainly it should make them uncomfortable.

…one thousand eight, one thousand nine…

Gaeta’s ears popped. He couldn’t hold his breath much longer, but he didn’t dare open his eyes yet. He remembered tales of guys who’d been blown apart by sudden decompression. The whole suit’s insides’ll be dripping with my blood and guts, he thought.

…one thousand twelve, one thousand…

He banged the keyboard and felt the access panels slam shut. Opening his eyes a slit, he hit the air control and heard the hiss of air from the emergency tank refilling the suit.

But his faceplate was still completely iced over. In final desperation he banged on the thruster firing key again.

It was like lighting a firecracker under his butt. The thrust of the jets caught him completely unaware. He yowled in a mix of surprise, delight, and pain as the suit jetted off. He was flying blind, but at least he was flying.

Morgenthau and Vyborg didn’t even have to look at each to agree on their verdict.

“Guilty,” said Morgenthau.

“Guilty as charged,” said Vybrog. “And her accomplice, too.”

“Accomplice?” Tavalera blurted.

Kananga kicked him again.

“The jury has found you guilty,” Eberly said to Holly. “Is there anything you wish to say?”

“Plenty,” Holly spat. “But nothing you’d want to hear.”

Morgenthau stepped in front of Holly. Pulling a palmcomp from her gaudy caftan, she said, “There is something I would like to hear. I want you to confess that you and your friend here were working with Dr. Cardenas to develop killer nanobugs.”

“That’s not true!” Holly said.

“I didn’t say it had to be true,” Morgenthau replied, with a sly smile on her lips. “I merely want to hear you say it.”

“I won’t.”

“Neither will I,” Tavalera said.

Kananga looked down at the wounded, beaten engineer, then turned to face Holly. Smiling wolfishly, he said, “I think I can convince her.”

He punched Holly in her midsection, doubling her over. “That’s for the kick in the face you gave me,” he said, fingering his jaw. “There’s a lot more to come.”

Fritz had been sitting tensely at the main control console for hours, not speaking, not moving. The other technicians tiptoed around him. With their communications link to Gaeta inoperative, there was nothing they could do except wait. The mission-time clock on Fritz’s console showed Gaeta still had more than thirty hours of air remaining, but they had no idea of what shape he was in.

Nadia Wunderly came into the workshop and immediately sensed the funeral-like tension.

“How is he?” she whispered to the nearest technician.

The man shrugged.

She went to Fritz’s side. “Have you heard anything from him?”

Fritz looked up at her, bleary-eyed. “Not for two hours.”

“Oh.”

“Are those ice flakes actually alive?” Fritz asked.

“I think so,” she said, with the accent on the I. “We’ll have to get some samples and do more studies before it’s confirmed, though.”

“They’re actually eating the new moonlet?”

Wunderly nodded somberly. “They’re swarming all over it. I’ve got the instruments making measurements, but it’ll be some time before we’ll be able to measure a decrease in the moonlet’s diameter.”

“I see. You’ve made a great discovery, then.”

“I wish I had known about it before Manny went out—”

“Hey Fritz!” the radio speaker crackled. “Can you hear me?”

“Manny!” Fritz jerked to his feet. “Manny, you’re alive!”

“Yeah, but I don’t know for how long.”

RETURN

Alone in the cockpit of the shuttlecraft, Timoshenko had listened to the chatter between Gaeta and his technicians, then grown morose as Gaeta fell silent. So the scientists have made a great discovery, he thought. They will win prizes and drink champagne while Gaeta is forgotten.

That’s the way of the world, he thought. The big shots congratulate one another while the little guys die alone. They’ll do some video specials on Gaeta, I suppose: the daring stuntman who died in the rings of Saturn. But in a few weeks he’ll be totally forgotten.

Timoshenko had programmed the shuttlecraft to ease through the Cassini division between the A and B rings and take up a loitering orbit at the approximate position where Gaeta was programmed to come out below the ring plane. He knew that the stuntman wasn’t going to come out at that precise spot, not with what had happened to him. Probably Gaeta would not come out at all, but still Timoshenko remained where he had promised he would be.

“Hey Fritz! Can you hear me?”

Fritz blurted, “Manny! You’re alive!”

The sound of Gaeta’s voice electrified Timoshenko. He stared out the cockpit’s port at the gleaming expanse of Saturn’s rings, so bright it made him blink his eyes tearfully. Then his good sense got into gear and he checked his radar scans. There was an object about the size of a man hurtling out of the rings like a rifle shot.

“Gaeta!” Timoshenko shouted into his microphone. “I’m coming after you!”

It took Gaeta a few seconds to recover from the shock of the thruster’s sudden ignition. He had no control over it; he banged at the keyboard in desperate frustration, but the rocket simply blasted away until it ran out of fuel and abruptly died. Only then did Gaeta try his comm link. He got Fritz’s voice in his earphones; the chief tech sounded stunned with surprise and elation, something that was so rare it made Gaeta laugh. The old cabrón was worried about me!

“What is your condition?” Fritz asked, getting back to his normal professional cool. “The diagnostics we’re getting are still rather muddled.”

Watching ice particles fly off his faceplate, Gaeta said, “I’m okay, except I don’t know where the hell I’m going. What’s my position and vector?”

“We’re working on that. Your thruster has burned out, apparently.”

“Right. I’ve got no way to slow myself down or change course.”

“Not to worry,” came Timoshenko’s voice. “I have you on radar. I’m on a rendezvous trajectory.”

“Great,” said Gaeta. The faceplate was almost entirely clear now. He watched one little ice flake scurry around like an ant on amphetamines and finally disappear.

“So long, amigito,” Gaeta said to the particle. “No hard feelings. I hope you get back home okay, little guy.”

Pain!Holly had never known such white-hot pain. Never even dreamed it could exist. Kananga punched her again in the kidneys and fresh pain exploded inside her, searing, devastating agony that overwhelmed all her senses.

“A simple statement,” Morgenthau was saying, bending over her. “Just a single sentence. Tell us that you were helping Cardenas to develop killer nanobugs.” She jabbed the palmcomp under Holly’s nose.

Holly could barely breathe. Through lips that were puffed and bleeding she managed to grunt, “No.”

Kananga put a knee into the small of her back and twisted her left arm mercilessly. Holly screamed.

“It only gets worse,” Kananga hissed into her ear. “It keeps on getting worse until you do what we want you to.”

Holly heard Eberly’s voice, miserable, pleading, “You’re going to kill her. For God’s sake, leave her alone.”

“You call on God?” Morgenthau said. “Blasphemer.”

“You’ll kill her!”

“She’s going to die anyway,” Kananga said.

“Work on the other one,” Eberly pleaded. “Give her a rest.”

“He’s unconscious again. Holly is a lot tougher, aren’t you, Holly?” Kananga grabbed a handful of hair and yanked Holly’s head back so sharply she thought her neck would snap.

“If we had the neural controllers,” Vyborg said, “we could make her say anything we wanted.”

“But we don’t have the proper equipment,” Morgenthau said. She sighed heavily. “Break her fingers. One at a time.”

Timoshenko swung the little shuttlecraft into a trajectory that swiftly caught up with the hurtling figure of Gaeta.

“I’m approaching you from four o’clock, in your perspective,” he called. “Will you able to climb into the cargo bay hatch once I come within a few meters of you?”

Gaeta answered doubtfully, “I dunno. Got no propulsion fuel left. Nothing but the cold-gas attitude microthrusters; all they can do is turn me around on my long axis.”

“Not so good.” Timoshenko looked through the cockpit port. He could see the tiny figure of a man outlined against the broad, brilliant glow of Saturn’s rings.

“Ow!” Gaeta yipped.

“What’s the matter?” Fritz’s voice.

“I pulled a muscle when I got my legs outta the suit legs,” Gaeta answered. “Now I’m putting ’em back in and it hurts like hell.”

“If that’s your worst problem,” said Fritz, “you have nothing to complain about.”

Timoshenko couldn’t help laughing at the technician’s coolness. Like a painless dentist, he thought. The dentist feels no pain.

Gaeta said, “I’m not gonna be much help getting aboard the shuttlecraft. I’m just barging along like a fuckin’ meteor. Got no more propulsion, no maneuvering fuel.”

“Not to worry,” Timoshenko said. “I’ll bring this bucket to you. I’ll bring you in like a man on the high trapeze catching his partner in midair. Like a ballet dancer catching his ballerina in her leap. Just like that.” He wished he truly felt as confident as he sounded.

Holly lay crumpled on the steel flooring of the airlock chamber, unconscious again.

“She’s faking,” Morgenthau said.

“For God’s sake, let her be,” Eberly begged. “Push her out the airlock if you want to, but stop this torture. It’s inhuman!”

Vyborg said, “We have enough recordings of her voice to synthesize a statement against Cardenas.”

“I want to make certain,” Morgenthau insisted. “I want to hear it from her own lips.”

Kananga nudged Tavalera’s inert body with a toe. “I’m afraid some of his ribs are broken. He’s probably bleeding pretty heavily internally. Perhaps a lung’s been punctured.”

Morgenthau planted her fists on her wide hips, a picture of implacable determination in a ludicrous rainbow-striped caftan.

“Wake her up,” Morgenthau commanded. “I want to hear her say the words. Then you can get rid of her.”

“One hundred meters and closing.” Timoshenko’s voice in Gaeta’s helmet earphones sounded calm, completely professional.

He couldn’t see the approaching shuttlecraft in his faceplate, so Gaeta spent a squirt of minithruster fuel to turn slightly. There it was, coming on fast, its ungainly form looking as beautiful as a racing yacht to Gaeta’s eyes. The cargo hatch was wide open, inviting.

“You look awful damn good, amigo,” Gaeta said.

“I’m adjusting my velocity vector to match yours,” Timoshenko replied.

Fritz’s voice added, “Your fuel supply is reaching critical. Instead of trying to return to the main airlock, it will save fuel if you come in to the central ’lock at the endcap.”

“Is it big enough to let me squeeze through in the suit?” Gaeta asked.

“Yes,” said Fritz. “Aim for the endcap’s central airlock.”

Gaeta said, “Lemme get aboard the shuttleboat first, man.”

Timoshenko nodded his silent agreement. Get safely aboard the shuttlecraft. Then we can head for the airlock that’s easiest to reach.

Deftly he tapped out commands on the control panel, edging the shuttlecraft closer to Gaeta. Timoshenko knew that if he’d had the time he could have set up the rendezvous problem for the craft’s computer and have it all done automatically. But there was no time for that. He had to bring Gaeta in manually. He almost smiled at the irony of it. The computer could solve the problem in a microsecond, but it would take too long for him to set up the problem in the computer.

There was no way to match their velocities exactly. He had to close the distance to Gaeta, move the shuttlecraft on a trajectory that would intersect Gaeta’s path at the smallest possible difference in velocity. Timoshenko wiped sweat from his eyes as he stared at the radar display. Ten meters separated them. Eight. Six.

Gaeta saw the cargo hatch inching closer and closer. Come on, pal, he encouraged silently. Bring it in. Bring it in. He wished he had some drop of fuel left in the propulsion unit; even the tiniest nudge of thrust would close the gap between him and the cargo hatch.

“Almost there.” Timoshenko’s voice sounded tense, brittle.

Gaeta raised both arms and tried to reach the hatch’s rim. Less than a meter separated his outstretched fingertips from safety.

“Get ready,” Timoshenko said.

“I’m ready.”

The hatch suddenly lurched toward Gaeta, engulfing him. He slammed into the cargo bay with a thump that banged the back of his head against the inside of his helmet.

“Welcome aboard,” said Timoshenko. Gaeta could sense the huge grin on his face.

“A little rough, but thanks anyway, amigo.”

They both heard Fritz breathe an astonished, “Thank God.”

AIRLOCK JUSTICE

Fritz and the three other technicians, accompanied by Wunderly and Berkowitz, raced out to the endcap to meet Gaeta and Timoshenko when they docked. Much to Fritz’s amazement, pudgy, wheezing Berkowitz kept up with him as they pedaled madly along the length of the habitat. Even Wunderly was not far behind, while his technicians lagged farther along the bike path.

He waited impatiently for them at the hatch to the endcap’s central airlock, thinking, I’ll have to see that they get considerably more physical exercise. Watching how they panted and sweated, he shook his head. They’ve turned into putty globs since we’ve been aboard this habitat.

Flanked by Wunderly and the still-puffing Berkowitz, with the technicians behind him, Fritz marched along the steel-walled tunnel that led to the airlock. They got as far as the chamber that fronted the airlock’s inner hatch. A trio of black-clad security people stopped them. A taller black man in gray coveralls was with them.

“This area is restricted,” said the guard leader.

“Restricted?” Fritz spat. “What do you mean? A shuttlecraft is going to dock at this airlock within minutes.”

The guard drew his baton. “You can’t go in there. I have my orders.” A woman’s scream rang off the steel walls, curdling Fritz’s blood. “What the devil is going on in there?” he demanded.

As Timoshenko guided the shuttlecraft to the endcap airlock, he called to Gaeta in the cargo bay. “Do you want to get out of your suit? I can come back and help you.”

“No can do,” said Gaeta. “I’ve got this hijo de puta pulled muscle in my thigh. I’m gonna need a couple guys to help pull me out.”

Timoshenko shrugged. “Hokay. We’ll be at the airlock in less than ten minutes.”

But when they reached the habitat and Timoshenko mated the cargo bay hatch to the airlock’s outer hatch, his command screen showed, AIRLOCK ACCESS DENIED.

“Access denied?” Timoshenko grumbled. “What stupid shit-for-brains has put this airlock off-limits?”

“Try the emergency override,” Gaeta suggested.

Timoshenko’s fingers were already dancing across his keyboard. “Yes, good, it’s responding.”

He got out of the cockpit chair and ducked through the hatch into the cargo bay. Looking at Gaeta in the massive suit, he grinned. “At least I can enter the habitat in shirtsleeves.”

“Tell you the truth, amigo, the way my fregado leg feels, if I weren’t inside this suit I wouldn’t be able to walk without somebody propping me up.”

Through a haze of agony, Holly forced her mind to center on only one thought. Don’t give them what they want. Don’t let them drag Kris down. I’m already dead, I’m not going to let them kill Kris, too.

One of her eyes was swollen shut, the other down to a mere slit. She felt a hot breath on her ear. Morgenthau’s voice, heavy and dark, whispered, “This is nothing, Holly. If you think you’ve felt pain, it’s nothing to what you’re going to feel now. So far we’ve merely given you a beating. If you don’t speak, we’ll have to start tearing up your insides.”

Holly concentrated on the pain, tried to use it to keep the fear out of her mind. They’re going to kill me, whatever she says, they’re going to kill me. All the pain in the world isn’t going to change that.

Someone shouted, “The airlock’s cycling!”

“Impossible. I gave orders—”

“Look at the indicators.” That sounded like Eberly’s voice. “The outer hatch is opening.”

Inside the bulky suit Gaeta watched the telltales on the airlock’s inner wall flick from red through amber to green. Jezoo, he thought, it’ll be good to get out of this suit. I must smell to high heaven by now.

The inner hatch slid open slowly, ponderously. Gaeta expected to see Fritz and the techs waiting for him. Instead, he saw a group of strangers. Eberly, he recognized after a disoriented moment. And those others -

Then he saw two figures on the floor. Bloody. Beaten. Jesus Christ almighty! That’s Holly!

“What the fuck’s going on here?” he demanded.

Gaeta’s voice boomed like a thunderclap in the steel-walled chamber.

Eberly blurted, “They’re trying to kill Holly!”

Morgenthau whirled on Eberly, hissing, “Traitor!”

Kananga stepped in front of the huge suit, looking almost frail in comparison. “This doesn’t concern you. Get out of here immediately.”

“They’re killing Holly!” Eberly repeated, even more desperately.

Kananga called up the tunnel, “Guards! Take this fool out.”

The three security personnel raced toward him, but skidded to a stop at the sight of Gaeta’s suit, looming like some monster from a folk tale. A taller man in gray coveralls hovered uncertainly behind them.

“Shoot him!” Kananga bellowed. “Kill him!”

From inside the suit, Gaeta saw the three guards drawing laser cutting tools from their belts. Behind them, Fritz and the others came up cautiously. His eyes returned to Holly, lying on her back on the floor, her face bloody and swollen, one arm bent at a grotesque angle, the fingers of her hand caked with blood.

The guards fired their lasers at him. They’re trying to kill me, Gaeta realized, as if watching the whole scene from a far distance. The sons of bitches!

The red pencil lines of three laser beams splashed against the armor of the suit’s chest. With a growl that the suit amplified into an artillery barrage, Gaeta pushed Kananga aside and advanced on the three guards. One of them had the sense to aim at his faceplate, but the heavily tinted visor absorbed most of the laser pulse; Gaeta felt a searing flash on his right cheek, like the burn of an electric shock.

He barged into the guards, smacking one backhanded with his servo-amplified arm, sending the man smashing into the wall. He grabbed the laser out of the hand of the woman and crushed it in the pincers of his right hand. They turned and fled, running past Fritz and his openmouthed companions. The guard that Gaeta had hit lay crumpled on the floor, unconscious or dead, he didn’t care which.

He turned back toward Kananga, who was staring at him with wide, round eyes.

“Trying to kill Holly,” Gaeta boomed. “Beating her to death.”

“Wait!” Kananga shouted, retreating, holding both hands in front of him. “I didn’t—”

Gaeta picked the Rwandan up by the throat, lifted him completely off his feet, and carried him back through the open hatch of the airlock. With his other arm he banged the airlock controls. The hatch slid shut. Kananga writhed in the merciless grasp of the pincers, choking, pulling uselessly at the cermet claws with both his hands.

“We’re gonna play a little game,” Gaeta snarled at him. “Let’s see how long you can breathe vacuum.”

The airlock pumped down. Gaeta kept his the pincers of his left hand firmly pressed against the controls, so that no one outside could open the hatch. He held Kananga high enough to watch his face as the Rwandan’s terrified eyes eventually rolled up and then exploded in a shower of blood.

EPILOGUE: SATURN ARRIVAL PLUS 9 DAYS

Professor Wilmot sat sternly behind his desk, wishing desperately he had a glass of whisky in his hand. A stiff drink was certainly what he needed. But he had to play the role of an authority figure, and that required absolute sobriety.

Sitting before his desk were Eberly, Morgenthau, Vyborg, Gaeta, and Dr. Cardenas.

“They made me do it,” Eberly was whining. “Kananga murdered the old man and they made me stay quiet about it.”

Morgenthau gave him a haughty, disgusted look. Vyborg seemed stunned into passivity, almost catatonic.

Pointing to Morgenthau, Eberly went on, “She threatened to send me back to prison if I didn’t do as she wanted.”

“Prison would be too good for you,” Morgenthau sneered.

For more than an hour Wilmot had been trying to piece together what had happened at the airlock. Part of the background he already knew. Gaeta had freely admitted to killing Kananga; Cardenas called it an execution. Wilmot had gone to the hospital and was thoroughly shocked when he’d seen Holly Lane, her face battered almost beyond recognition, her shoulder horribly dislocated, her fingers methodically broken. Tavalera was in even worse shape, broken ribs puncturing both his lungs. Dr. Cardenas hadn’t waited for permission; as soon as she learned what had happened to them she had rushed to the hospital and began pumping both of them full of therapeutic nanomachines: assemblers, she called them. Drawn from her own body, they were programmed to repair damaged tissue, rebuild bones and blood vessels.

Wilmot agreed with Cardenas. Killing the Rwandan was an execution, nothing less.

“Colonel Kananga deliberately murdered Diego Romero?” Wilmot asked.

Eberly nodded eagerly. “He put Kananga up to it,” he said, jabbing a thumb toward Vyborg. “He wanted to be in charge of the Communications Department.”

Vyborg said nothing; his eyes barely flickered at Eberly’s accusation. Wilmot remembered Eberly’s insistence that Berkowitz be removed from the department.

“And all this was part of your plan to take control of the habitat’s government?” he asked, still hardly able to believe it.

“My plan,” Morgenthau insisted. “This worm was nothing more than a means to that end.”

With an incredulous shake of his head, Wilmot said, “But he was elected to the office of chief administrator. You won the power in a free election. Why all the violence?”

Before Eberly could frame a reply, Morgenthau answered, “We didn’t want to have a democratically run government. That was just a tactic, a first step toward acquiring total power.”

“Total power.” Wilmot sank back in his chair. “Don’t you understand how unstable such a government would be? You self-destructed within hours of being installed in office.”

“Because of his weakness,” Morgenthau said, again indicating Eberly.

“And this disgusting torture of Miss Lane? What good did that do you?”

“We had to get rid of all traces of nanotechnology in the habitat,” Morgenthau said, with some heat. “Nanomachines are the devil’s work. We can’t have them here!”

Bristling, Cardenas said, “That’s idiotic. If you really believe that, then you must be an idiot.”

“Nanotech is evil,” Morgenthau insisted. “You are evil!”

Cardenas glared at the woman. “How can anybody be so stupid? So self-righteously stupid that they’re willing to commit mayhem and murder?”

Morgenthau glared back. “Nanotechnology is evil,” she repeated. “You’ll pay for your sins, sooner or later.”

Wilmot had his own reservations about nanotechnology, but this Morgenthau woman is a fanatic, he realized.

He turned to Eberly. “And you just stood there and let them torture the poor girl.”

“I tried to stop them,” Eberly bleated. “What could I do?”

Wishing more than ever for a whisky, Wilmot took in a deep breath. Tricky waters here. They still have those foolish entertainment vids hanging over my head.

“Very well,” he said. “My course seems clear enough. Ms. Morgenthau and Dr. Vyborg will return to Earth on the ship that brings the scientists here.”

“We don’t want to go back to Earth,” Morgenthau said.

“Nevertheless, that’s where you’re going. The two of you are banished from the habitat. Permanently.”

“Exiled?” For the first time Morgenthau looked alarmed. “You can’t do that. You haven’t the authority to do that.”

“I do,” said Eberly, breaking into a smile. “I think exile is a perfect solution. Go back to your friends in the Holy Disciples. See how they reward failure.”

Morgenthau’s eyes flared. “You can’t do that to me!”

“I’m the duly elected chief administrator of this community,” Eberly said, obviously enjoying the moment. “It’s well within my power to exile the two of you.”

Vyborg finally stirred from his stupor; suddenly he looked startled, frightened. Wilmot was focused on Eberly, however. Can I strike up an alliance with this man? the professor asked himself. Can I trust him to run the government properly?

“Yes, you are officially the chief of government,” Wilmot agreed reluctantly. “But we’re going to have to find some way to get the entire population involved in the running of your government.”

“Universal draft,” Cardenas said. “It’s been done in Selene and some countries on Earth; seems to work pretty well.”

Wilmot knew the concept. “Require every citizen to spend at least a year in public service?” he asked, full of skepticism. “Do you actually think for one instant that such a scheme could be made to work here?”

“It’s worth a try,” Cardenas replied.

“The people here will never go for it,” Wilmot said. “They’ll laugh in your face.”

“I’ll go for it,” said Gaeta. “It makes good sense to me, getting everybody involved.”

Wilmot raised an eyebrow. “What does it matter to you? You’ll be leaving on the same ship that brings the scientists in.”

“No I won’t,” Gaeta said. He turned toward Cardenas, suddenly shy, almost tongue-tied. “I mean, I — uh, I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here. Become a citizen.”

“And quit being a stuntman?” Cardenas asked, obviously surprised.

He nodded solemnly. “Time for me to retire. Besides, I can help Wunderly explore the rings. Maybe even get down to Titan’s surface one of these days, help Urbain and the other science jocks.”

Cardenas threw her arms around his neck and kissed him soundly. Wilmot wanted to frown, but found himself smiling at them instead.

Sitting in the chief scientist’s office, Urbain and Wunderly watched once again a replay of the new moonlet’s arrival in the main ring. They saw the ring’s bright icy particles swarm around the newcomer, covering its darker irregular form in glittering ice.

“Remarkable,” Urbain murmured. He used the same term each time they had watched the vid. “They behave like living creatures.”

“They are living creatures,” Wunderly said. “I’m convinced of it.”

Urbain nodded as he smoothed his hair with an automatic gesture. “Too big a leap, Nadia. The particles are dynamic, yes, that much is obvious. But alive? We have much work to do before we can state unequivocally that they are living entities.”

Wunderly grinned at him. He said we, she thought. He’s on my side now.

“Already many academics have spoken against your interpretation,” Urbain pointed out. “They refuse to believe the ring particles are alive.”

“Then we’ll have to get the evidence to convince them,” said Wunderly.

“That will be your task,” Urbain said. “Myself, I will return to Earth on the ship that brings in the other scientists.”

Wunderly was shocked. “Return to Earth! But—”

“I have thought it all out very carefully,” Urbain said, with a finger upraised for emphasis. “You need a champion back on Earth, someone who can present your evidence and argue your case against the skeptics.”

“But I thought you’d stay here.”

“And play second fiddle to the newcomers?” Urbain forced a smile, and she could see there was pain behind it. “No, I return to Earth. I have never been any good at pushing my own career, but I believe I can be ferocious defending yours. For you, and your ring creatures, I will be a tiger!”

Wunderly didn’t know what to say. Every young scientist with an unorthodox new idea needs a champion, she knew. Even Darwin needed Huxley.

“Besides,” Urbain went on, “my wife is on Earth. In Paris, I believe. Perhaps… perhaps I can impress her enough to come back to me.”

“I’m sure you could,” Wunderly said gently.

“So the decision is made. I return to Earth. You will be in charge of all work on the rings.”

“In charge…?”

He smiled widely. “I have given you a promotion. The team coming in from Earth has only three researchers interested in the rings, and they are all junior to you, still graduate students. I have named you as chief of the ring dynamics study. They will work for you.”

It was all Wunderly could do to refrain from hugging the man.

Holly flexed the fingers of her right hand, holding the hand up before her eyes as she sat in the hospital bed.

“Good as new, almost,” she said.

Cardenas smiled satisfiedly. “Give it a few days. Even nanomachines need some time to put everything right.”

Gaeta was sitting beside Cardenas, the two of them perched on little plastic chairs, close enough to touch each other.

“I’m gonna use nanos the next time I go into the rings,” he said.

“Even Urbain is losing his fear of nanomachines,” Cardenas said. “He came into my lab this morning and didn’t flinch once!”

All three of them laughed.

Then Holly grew more sober. “Manny, I want to thank you for saving my life. Kananga was going to kill me.”

His face hardened. “I let him off too easy. Back in the barrio we would’ve done to him just what he did to you and Raoul. And then dropped him on the freeway from an overpass.”

“You guys talkin’ about me?”

Tavalera wheeled himself into Holly’s room and pulled to a stop on the other side of her bed.

“I was going to come in to look you over,” Cardenas said. “How are your lungs?”

“Okay, I guess. The medics examined me this morning. They looked kinda surprised I’m healin’ so fast.”

“Rebuilding your lung tissue is going to take several days,” Cardenas warned. “The ribs were easier.”

Tavalera nodded. “It’s funny. I think I can almost feel these little bugs workin’ inside me.”

“That’s your imagination.”

“I must have a good imagination,” he said.

“Raoul,” said Holly, “you were really wonderful, trying to protect me.”

His face reddened. “I didn’t do you much good, though.”

“You tried,” said Holly. “When I needed help the most you were there trying.”

“And I got a body full of nanobugs to show for it.”

Cardenas caught his meaning. “Don’t worry, I’ll start flushing them out of your system in a few days. You’ll be able to go back home. You won’t have any trace of nanomachines in you by the time you get back to Earth.”

“You’re gonna hafta to go back by yourself, amigo,” said Gaeta. “I’m staying here permanently.” And he slid an arm around Cardenas’s shoulders.

Holly saw the light in Cardenas’s eyes. “But what about your technicians?” she asked. “Will they stay, too?”

With a shake of his head, Gaeta said, “Naw. Fritz wants to go back to Earth and find a new pendejo to make into a media star. But I’m keepin’ the suit. That baby is mine.”

Tavalera looked pensive. “I been thinkin’ about that too.”

“About what?” Holly asked.

“Stayin’ here.”

“You have?” Holly asked, her eyes widening.

“Yeah. Sort of. I mean … it ain’t so bad here. In this habitat, y’know. I was wondering, Dr. C, could I keep on workin’ in your lab? As your assistant?”

Cardenas answered immediately, “I need your help, Raoul. I was wondering what I would do after you left.”

“I wanna stay,” Tavalera said, glancing at Holly.

She held out her hand to him. As he took it in his, she warned, “Not too tight, Raoul. It’s still kind of tender.”

He grinned and let her hand rest atop his.

Cardenas got to her feet. “I’ve got work to do. I’ll drop in on you two later this afternoon. Come on, Manny.”

Gaeta leaned back in the creaking little chair. “I’ve got no place to go. I’m retired, right?”

Cardenas grabbed him by the collar. “Come on, Manny. I’ll find something for you to do.”

He let her haul him to his feet. “Well, if you put it that way…”

They left. Holly lay back in the bed. Tavalera still clasped her hand lightly in his.

“You’re not staying because of me, are you?” she asked him.

“No, not—” He stopped himself. “Yeah, I am. I really am staying because of you,” he said, almost belligerently. “That’s the truth.”

Holly smiled at him. “Good. That’s what I wanted to hear.”

He grinned back at her.

Holly called out. “Phone! Connect me with Pancho Lane, at Astro Corporation Headquarters in Selene.”

Tavalera let go of her hand and started to back his wheelchair away from the bed.

“Don’t go away, Raoul,” Holly said. “I want my sister to meet you.”

Professor Wilmot sat in his favorite chair, gently swirling the whisky in the glass he held in his right hand. Although his eyes were focused on the report he was dictating, he was actually staring far beyond the words hovering in mid-air before him, looking with his mind’s eye into the events of the past few days and trying to foresee the shape of the events to come.

For a long while he sat there, alone, slowly swishing the whisky, wondering what he should say to his superiors back on Earth, how he should explain what had gone wrong with the grand experiment.

“Actually,” he said at last, “nothing has really gone wrong. This experiment was intended to test the ability of a self-contained community to survive and develop a viable social system of its own. Unfortunately, the social system they began to develop was definitely not the type that we expected or desired. It was based on violence and deception, and it would have led to a rather harsh, restrictive authoritarian regime. On the other hand, such systems are inherently unstable, as the events of the past few days have proven.”

He sat in silent thought for long moments. Then, taking a sip of his whisky, he continued, “We are now entering a new phase of the experiment, an attempt to develop a working democratic government. The question is, are the people of this community too lazy, too selfish to work at governing themselves? Are they nothing more than spoiled children who need an authoritarian government to run things for them? Only time will tell.”

He thought of Cardenas’s suggestion of a universal draft: require each citizen to serve a certain portion of time in public service. It’s worked elsewhere, Wilmot said to himself. Perhaps it could work here. But he had his doubts.

He took a longer pull on the whisky, then spoke the final section of his report to the leaders of the New Morality organization in Atlanta.

“You have provided the major funding for this expedition to ascertain if a similar selection of individuals could serve as the population of a mission to another star, a mission that would take many generations to complete. Based on the results of merely the first two years of this experiment, I must conclude that we simply do not know enough about how human societies behave under such stresses to make a meaningful judgment.

“In my personal opinion, we are not ready to begin planning an interstellar mission. In fact, we are nowhere near the understanding we will require to send a genetically viable human population out on a star flight that will take many generations to complete.

“That is disappointing news, I’m sure, but it should hardly be surprising. This is the first time an artificially generated human society has been sent on its own so far from Earth. We have much to learn.”

He drained the whisky, then continued on a brighter note, “On the other hand, this group of cantankerous, squabbling, very bright men and women has accomplished some significant successes. We have made it to Saturn. We have avoided falling into the trap of an authoritarian government. We have found a new life-form in the rings of Saturn, possibly. We are preparing to study the moon Titan with surface probes and, eventually, with a human presence on the surface of that world.

“You of the New Morality may not like everything that we have accomplished, and you may not agree with everything we plan to do — including using nanotechnology wherever it is appropriate. But you can take comfort in the fact that your generous funding has helped to establish a new human outpost twice as far from Earth as the Jupiter station; an outpost that is prepared to explore Saturn, its rings, and its moons.”

Wilmot smiled at the irony of it. “In a very real sense, you have shown the rest of the human race how to escape the limits of the Earth. For that, no matter what you think or what you believe, you will gain the eternal thanks of generations to come.”