Uranus Read online

  “But that’s on Earth,” Gomez objected. “We’re looking at Uranus.”

  Zworkyn’s smile broadened. “The atoms don’t know that. They behave the same way no matter where they are.”

  “Oh.” Pointing at the big screen, Gomez said, “So we’re following a curve that originally contained a fair amount of rubidium.”

  “Precisely,” said Zworkyn. “Clever lad.”

  “But it might be natural.”

  “There was a trace amount of rubidium—and strontium—in the sample you picked up.”

  “And your sensors are picking up a trace of strontium!”

  Nodding, Zworkyn replied, “Indeed they are. And smooth, precise curves like this one could hardly be natural. Not at all.”

  The observation center fell silent. For several minutes all the people in the cramped room stared at the wall screen. The curve went on and on.

  “It’s huge,” Gomez breathed.

  The woman at her screen called out, “Diameter, seven hundred meters, plus.”

  “Keep following it,” Zworkyn commanded.

  For long breathless minutes the screen kept tracking the curve. Until a straight line angled off from it.

  “A-hah!” shouted Zworkyn.

  Gomez felt his heart thump.

  Grinning fiercely, Zworkyn exclaimed, “Curves exist in nature. But straight lines don’t. They are made by intelligent creatures.”

  Intelligent creatures! Gomez echoed silently. Straight lines are made by intelligent creatures! He expected the crowded little room to erupt in cheers, celebration. But it was deathly, inhumanly silent. Every eye was focused intently on the straight line that angled away from the mammoth circle.

  “Follow that line!” Zworkyn snapped.

  Straight as an arrow’s flight, the line extended through a maze of stones and sand. Until it connected with another broad circle.

  “Diameter seven hundred meters, plus!”

  “Identical,” Zworkyn muttered.

  Gomez sagged back in his chair. Two identical circles, connected by a straight line.

  “That’s not a natural formation,” said one of the astronomers sitting behind Gomez, his voice hushed with awe.

  “Can’t be,” agreed the woman at her console, below them.

  Zworkyn turned in his chair and extended his hand toward Gomez. “Congratulations, my boy. You’ve discovered the remains of intelligent life.”

  Tómas sat there, feeling stunned. Someone clapped him on the back. All three of Zworkyn’s assistants had turned their chairs around and were grinning up at him. The astronomers in the rear of the chamber got to their feet, applauding lustily.

  Zworkyn stood up. “All right! We can celebrate tonight. But right now, we’ve got to get this data to the Astronomical Association back on Earth. You’re all going to be heroes!”

  They cheered mightily.

  “Well don’t just sit there,” Zworkyn said, tugging at Gomez’s arm. “We’ve got to tell Waxman the good news.”

  Tómas shook his head, as if to clear it, then rose shakily to his feet. Like a man in a trance, he followed Zworkyn out of the monitoring center, down along the curved passageway, toward Evan Waxman’s office. Even with the observation center’s doors closed they could still hear the cheering and applause.

  * * *

  The two of them barged past the woman who’d replaced Alicia as Waxman’s assistant and breezed directly into Waxman’s office.

  “We’ve found unmistakable evidence of an ancient civilization on Uranus!” Zworkyn announced grandly.

  Waxman looked up from his desktop screen, his expression a mixture of surprise and disbelief.

  “Unmistakable? Really?”

  Turning to Gomez, Zworkyn said, “Tell him, my boy.”

  “Buried in the seabed,” Gomez chattered. “Circles. A straight line connecting them.”

  Despite himself, Waxman asked, “A straight line?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Waxman looked stunned, shocked. “I’d like to see your evidence.”

  Still half-disbelieving what he himself had seen, Gomez nodded and commanded Waxman’s desktop computer to show the scenes that had appeared in the monitoring center.

  Tómas saw Waxman’s frame stiffen with astonishment.

  His eyes widened. “By God, that … that’s remarkable!” he exclaimed.

  With a soft chuckle, Zworkyn said, “More impressive than a single twist of steel, eh?”

  Waxman nodded, his cobalt-blue eyes focused on Gomez. “You’ve made a tremendous discovery, Tómas. You too, Mr. Zworkyn. Both of you. Congratulations.”

  For the first time, Tómas felt an inner glow of triumph. He paid no attention to the flat, strained tone of Waxman’s praise.

  CELEBRATION

  The party began slowly, with Zworkyn’s people and Abbott’s staff, but it quickly grew to fill half the main dining room as news of the discovery spread through the habitat.

  Tómas Gomez sat at the center of the growing crowd, basking in the warmth of their congratulations. But as he scanned the new arrivals he did not see Raven. She’s not coming, he told himself. She’s avoiding me. The warmth he had felt inside him slowly faded and turned to ice.

  He accepted the crowd’s increasingly raucous congratulations with a grin and a nod, but inwardly he wanted to get away from their noise, their cheers. He wanted to be with Raven, or bitterly alone.

  Zworkyn was grinning broadly as he climbed up atop one of the dining tables and silenced the crowd with shushing motions of both his hands.

  “We have a lot to celebrate—”

  The people roared and cheered. Zworkyn waited patiently for them to quiet down, then continued, “I don’t expect much work out of you tomorrow—” Laughter. “But the day after tomorrow our real work begins. Who were the creatures who built this city at the bottom of the sea? How did they die away? What happened here to extinguish all life on the planet?”

  One of the younger men in the crowd shouted, “Where are we going to put the six zillion researchers who’ll come flocking out here as soon as they hear the news?”

  Standing back at the fringe of the crowd, where the robots were busily picking up the discarded dinnerware, Evan Waxman frowned at the thought of hordes of newcomers arriving at Haven.

  We won’t be able to accommodate them, he thought. Even if we finish the second module and let them have it, this is going to change everything. Ruin everything. A horde of scientists roosting here for God knows how long. Poking into everything.

  But then a slow smile crept across his handsome face. A horde of new customers, he told himself. I’ll have to increase production.

  Umber won’t like having a tide of newcomers descending on us, he realized. He set up Haven to be as far away from Earth as possible. He wants to keep this area for his refugees, his sick and lame and stupid poor people. He’ll want to refuse to let the scientists make a base here for themselves.

  Well, I’ll have to change his mind about that. Or move him out of my way.

  * * *

  “Aren’t you going to join the celebration?” Alicia asked.

  Raven looked up from her desktop screen’s view of the crowd in the main dining room. “I suppose I should,” she said, her tone far from celebratory.

  “You don’t want to?” Alicia looked surprised.

  “I do, but…”

  “But you’re afraid you’ll wind up in bed with Tómas.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well why not? He’s a hero, the darling of the scientists. He’s made a great discovery.”

  “And I’m his reward?” Raven asked.

  Alicia stared at her. “It’s just a one-night fling. Why not?”

  “Because it would mean more to Tómas than a one-night fling. He’s very serious.”

  “And you’re not.”

  “I don’t know!” Raven burst. “I like him, but…”

  “But what?”

  “What will he do when he finds out
about what I was on Earth?”

  “You don’t think he knows?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Raven felt Alicia’s pallid blue eyes boring into her like twin ice picks.

  At last Alicia said, “You’re in love with him.”

  “No! Don’t be silly.”

  With a shake of her head Alicia insisted, “You’re in love with him, but you’re afraid to admit it to yourself.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Raven objected, with some heat. “I can’t be in love with anybody—especially not him.”

  “It happens,” Alicia countered.

  “Not to me.”

  “Even to you, honey.”

  Raven felt tears welling up. “I don’t want to hurt him.”

  “And you think you’re not hurting him by staying away?”

  “He’ll forget about me, sooner or later.”

  A trace of a smile curved Alicia’s lips slightly. “Maybe. But will you forget about him?”

  “Yes I will.”

  “Then why don’t you go to him and give him a night he’ll remember? You know how to please men, why not please him?”

  Raven’s self-control shattered. She burst into tears.

  THE ACID TEST

  Slowly, like a woman heading toward a guillotine, Raven made her way along the passageway toward the main dining room. She could hear the noise of thumping Latino music and the crowd’s celebration long before she reached the dining room’s closed doors.

  She opened the main door and slipped in, a wall of music and laughter and dozens of shouted conversations assailing her ears.

  And there was Tómas, standing on a tabletop with Professor Abbott on one side of him and the smaller, darker Zworkyn on the other.

  All eyes seemed to be on Tómas; he looked somewhere between astonished and abashed by the adulation. But the instant his eyes met Raven’s, he jumped down from the table and pushed through the crowd toward her.

  “Raven! You’re here!”

  And Raven felt that this was where she wanted to be, with him, with this man who loved her.

  “Congratulations, Tómas,” she shouted into his ear. “You’ve made a great discovery.”

  “You’re my discovery,” he answered, taking her in his arms.

  Raven let him swirl her away through the crowd, dancing to the heavy beat of the music.

  Nothing else matters, she told herself. Only Tómas. Only his happiness.

  * * *

  She awoke the next morning in Tómas’s bed, curled next to him as he snored softly, a contented smile on his lips. Raven realized that she had hardly ever seen Tómas smile: he was always so serious.

  She lay there beside him and studied his face. It was a handsome face, she decided. Strong. Capable. Serious. And she realized that she was serious, too. Despite everything, despite her past and her unknowable future, she wanted to be with Tómas for the rest of her life.

  But a voice in her head asked, Will he want to be with you? Once he knows what you were, will his love dissolve and disappear like a beautiful dream burned away by the morning sun?

  Then she remembered Alicia and the boutique. I’ve got to get to work, she told herself.

  As gently as she could, she eased herself away from Tómas’s arm and began to slip out of bed.

  “Good morning,” he mumbled drowsily.

  “Oh! I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m sorry.”

  Half covered by the twisted bedsheet, he turned and squinted at the bedside clock. “I ought to get up. Work to do.”

  “Yes,” said Raven, sitting up on the edge of the bed. “Me too.”

  As casually as a man seeking travel directions, Gomez asked, “Will you marry me?”

  Raven stared at him. “Marry? That’s … that’s a big step, Tómas.”

  Lying there with a soft smile on his lips, Gomez replied, “It’s not an unusual step.”

  Raven fought down an urge to cry. “Tómas, you don’t know anything about me … who I am, really…”

  “I know I love you.” Before she could reply, he added, “And you love me.”

  “One night in bed together isn’t love!”

  “Isn’t it?”

  The tears were threatening to burst out. “Tómas, I was a whore! Back in Naples—”

  “I know,” he said, reaching out to grasp her arm. “Waxman told me.”

  “He told you? And you still…?”

  “Raven, you were a whore. Were. You’re not a whore now. You’re never going back to that. I’m here for you. I’ll protect you.”

  She collapsed into his arms, sobbing softly, and for long silent moments they clung to each other as Raven said to herself, I love him and he loves me. This is wonderful. Nothing else matters. Nothing. Nothing.

  * * *

  Evan Waxman was sitting before Reverend Umber’s ornate desk, spelling out the future.

  “I have no idea how many scientists will want to come here, but it will be considerable. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.”

  “Thousands?” Umber’s round face went pale.

  “This is a momentous discovery, Kyle. Uranus was once populated by an intelligent species, and now they’re gone. Eradicated.”

  “God’s will.”

  Waxman huffed. “Well, there are going to be a horde of investigators coming here to try to figure out how and why God wiped out a whole intelligent species and every other living creature on the planet.”

  “We can’t allow them into Haven,” Umber said firmly. “They’d ruin everything we’re trying to accomplish here.”

  With a slow nod, Waxman replied, “I suppose we could house them in Haven II.”

  “No! That’s for more refugees. We already have contracts with the social agencies on Earth and the transportation corporations.”

  “The Astronomical Association can invalidate those contracts.”

  Umber’s face settled into an unhappy scowl.

  “And,” Waxman continued, “they can commandeer Haven II as a shelter for the incoming scientists.”

  “And set our work back for how long? Months? Years?”

  Waxman shrugged. “I think you should sit down with this man Abbott. He sits pretty high in the Association’s pecking order.”

  “I don’t want them here in Haven,” Umber said firmly. “I’ve thought it through time and again. I don’t want them mixing with our people here in Haven.”

  “Neither do I,” Waxman agreed. “But there’s no way we can keep them from taking over Haven II.”

  Umber shook his head unhappily.

  BOOK FOUR

  THE INVESTIGATORS

  GORDON ABBOTT

  Gordon Abbott tugged at one end of his extravagant moustache as he repeated in his mind a few lines from Kipling:

  “You may talk o’ gin and beer

  “When you’re quartered safe out ’ere,

  “An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it…”

  “Penny-fights,” he muttered. “That’s what I’m doing. Penny-fights.”

  With an exasperated sigh, he gazed up again at the wall-sized viewscreen that displayed the habitat Haven II: a huge spoked wheel riding in orbit alongside the original Haven space station. Dozens of teams of workmen and robots crawled across the habitat’s skin. To Abbott they seemed like maggots infesting a corpse.

  His superiors at the Astronomical Association’s headquarters on Earth had sent another “reminder” this morning. Abbott scanned it quickly and suppressed the urge to delete it and send it to electronic oblivion.

  The message told him that the construction of Haven II was still behind schedule—a fact that Abbott was well aware of—and asked when it would be ready for the groups of scientists who were champing at the bit for their chance to investigate the extinct civilization of Uranus—a question to which Abbott had no reliable answer.

  Trying to use the man-and-woman power of the refugees living on the original Haven habitat to build Haven II had been—at best—a long shot. The
Reverend Umber had hatched the idea and insisted on it; his administrator, Waxman, had reluctantly bowed to the lamebrained concept.

  Uneducated, for the most part, and unskilled, the immigrants were doing their best, and actually learning to control and command the robot workforce, but it wasn’t good enough, fast enough, polished enough for the deskbound bureaucrats Earthside.

  Abbott pointed out to his superiors that the task of organizing an experienced construction team and sending them a few billion kilometers out to Uranus was extremely expensive. Use the local talent. Train the uneducated. Teach the beggars. Besides, Umber insisted on it, and without his cooperation nothing could be accomplished.

  But the Earthside bureaucrats saw only the original timetable of the construction task and the fact that Abbott’s amateurs were lagging behind their preset goals.

  There’s only one way to ease the pressure they’re putting on me, Abbott knew. It was a course he did not really want to take, but when one’s career is on the line, a certain amount of risk is called for.

  “Memo to Harvey Millard, Interplanetary Council Executive Director,” he dictated. As he spoke, his words appeared on the viewscreen.

  “Harvey: We’re working as hard as we can to prepare the habitat Haven II for the scientists who want to come here to Uranus. But we’re behind schedule, and the Astronomical Association is putting a lot of pressure on us. Do you think it might be possible to send a small group of the scientists here, sort of an advance guard? We can house them in the portion of the habitat that we’ve finished and let them get started on their investigation. Then we can add more groups as the work on the habitat progresses. Do you think that’s a reasonable course of action?”

  Abbott leaned back in his chair and studied his words. Yes, that sums up the problem and the potential solution very neatly. Harvey can take it from there. He’ll get the credit for solving the problem, of course. But I’ll get the pressure off my back.