ARECIBO
Because Jupiter is the greatest of the planets, it is named after the greatest of the Roman gods. As a god, Jupiter is known as Fulgurator, the thrower of lightning; Imperator, the ruler; Optimus Maximus, the best and most high. As a planet, Jupiter is all of those things. Its swirling atmosphere is lanced with lightnings. Its huge mass, outweighing all the other planets combined, rules the orbits of a thousand lesser worlds. And it is indeed Maximus. If it were any larger, it probably would not be a planet at all. It would be a star.
Wednesday, December 2d. 9:45 PM.
The party was beginning to slow down, but then it had never been a high-speed party. It was not meant to be. It was meant to mix the people who wanted money with the people who could give it to them, and the predominant mood was Cover Your Butt. The scientists had to be careful of the senators. The politicians had to be careful of the people from the news media. The news media people had no one to worry about, except perhaps each other. But they all had deadlines to make, because of the differences in time between Puerto Rico and wherever their home bases were, and early sessions in the morning to wake up for. Ancient old Senator Bielowitz was the first to go, before ten, and some of the newspersons hitched a ride with him to the motel at the bottom of the hill. It was a terrible waste of a good party, Tib thought, considering that it was out of doors in the warm Caribbean night and the sky was a glory, but then he wasn't here to have fun. One more drink, he told himself, and then I too will walk over to the Visiting Scientists Quarters and read myself to sleep with the reports on the tilt rate of the Salton Sea.
As he was building himself a weak Canadian Club and ginger, the chairman of the meeting climbed on a stone bench. "Gentlemen!" he called. "Ladies. Can I interrupt the fun for just a minute?" The chairman was a Florida meteorologist and, Tib thought critically, a bit of a butt- kisser. But maybe that was because they wore always under the gun with their forecasts. He waited a second, until a majority of the faces were turned more or less his way, and said, "Miz Georgia Raines Keating, our representative from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has something to tell you. Here you go, Rainy." He offered a hand to help her up.
Space scientists and weathermen, what the hell was he doing here with them? Tib took an angry swallow of his drink. They got all the money they needed! They had everything going for them, including a rub-off from the military budgets, because everybody knew that space rockets and nuclear missiles were first cousins, and weather was itself a kind of weapon. But everybody was quieting down to listen—partly, and there was another unjust thing, because the scientist from JPL was a very good-looking young woman who wore her jeans very tight. "Thank you, Dr. Zinfader," she called, and then, to the audience, "I've got good news. Our course corrections were optimal! Around two PM tomorrow—that's year 81, day 337, time 1613 in Universal Mean Time—Jupiter, the sun, and Newton-8 will be in syzygy. That means that, from the Newton-8 satellite, Jupiter will appear to transit the sun. Just as promised," she added, beaming. There were a few polite handclaps. "I'll be telling you more about it during the coffee break tomorrow morning. Right now I'm going to send it a message to tell it how to deploy its instrumentation to observe the transit, so if any of you would care to accompany me to the mission control . . . ?"
Most of the twenty-odd people left at the party were looking at their watches, and only about half a dozen took her up on the invitation. Tib, finishing his drink, decided to be one of them; it w.is on the way to the V.S.Q. in any case. What surprised him was that so few persons joined her. And none of them of any real importance. Two of the observatory scientists and their wives; one young woman who turned out to be Rainy Keating's assistant; himself. And the senators and the congressmen who were supposed to be here to learn everything they could learn about the science they were spending the taxpayers' money for? Not one!
Shocking, Tib thought to himself, though he was not really shocked. It was only what he cynically expected. He only half-watched while the young research assistant sat down at the keyboard of the mission control console and did not even half listen while Keating explained what she was doing. It was such a waste to fly three thousand miles to this place! His work interrupted, his time taken away from him, and for what? Only so that he could beg a few more dollars from the politicians, to do the things that every thinking human being knew absolutely had to be done anyway!
Still—speaking of things that had to be done—his slides were still in the car, and so was the easel for his charts. As long as he was here, he might as well set them up for his presentation, he thought, since he was speaking in the morning. As he came back into the little meeting room with the folded easel under his arm he discovered that everyone else had gone, and only Rainy Keating was standing by the doorway, looking lost. "Hey," she said. "Dr.—?"
"Sonderman. Tibor Sonderman."
"Right, you're the geologist. I wonder if you could do me a favor? I missed my ride down the hill. It's only about a mile, but at night—if you wouldn't mind—"
"Mind? Why should I mind? I've got a car right outside." But of course she knew that; she'd seen him go out to it. And of course she had no compunctions about imposing on him! If she had been a man, even if she had been an older woman, then there would have been quite a different thing. It would not have been a sex thing. Tib Sonderman's perception of sex things was that he was always on the losing side. The better the woman looked, the smarter, the more amiable, the more certain he was that the cards were stacked against him. "Let me help you with your things," he said, picking up her briefcase.
"Thanks." She gave him a quick, uncertain grin that faded when she saw his expression.
Outside again, in the damp, lush Puerto Rican air, she was making conversation about the stars and the radio telescope, and he was responding, but neither of them was making much of an effort. It was only a short drive, through the parking lot and down the looping road that descended the mountain to a white house with a solar roof, set back among trees at a bend in the road. Tib drove with great concentration, like someone who had never learned to drive until he was in his mid-twenties; he drove as though he were following a memorized checklist of instructions.
He drove as though he were in a hurry to get it over with and get rid of her, Rainy Keating thought. What an awkward person he was to be with! Good looking enough— not very tall, and maybe a little heavy, but he had a nice face. He even had a sense of humor, because she had been listening to him talking to one of the newsmen early in the party. But he didn't seem able to relax with her. And when they got out of the car and walked up onto the breezy porch of the house she had been allowed to stay in for the meeting, he almost blundered into the blown-glass mobile that hung near the door. "Oh, watch out," she cried, and he ducked just in time, grazing it and making it tinkle gently.
"I am sorry," he said. "I hope I haven't damaged your wind-chime."
"It's an orrery. I got it in San Juan, and I think it's all right—I'm sorry I shouted at you." And then there seemed nothing to do but to add, "Would you like to come in for a drink?"
He thought it over for a moment. "Thank you, yes," he said, but she had had time to get annoyed at his hesitation. And he still didn't come in, even after she had unlocked the door and held it. He said uneasily, "Do you hear voices? Your family, perhaps?"
"I don't have any family here. It isn't my house; the people who live here are on sabbatical, and they let me borrow it."