But the era of grand projects, of great visions, was fading before it had gotten properly under way. The Terra Nova starship project had been canceled, and now the word was that the Ring of Charon was being shut down. What hope could there be for a plan to rebuild a world? More than likely, the microbes stored at Gerald’s Isolated Exobiology Facility would never get their chance to seed Venus.
He looked up from the valley, into the late-night sky. Venus would not rise for hours yet, but he knew it was there. And Marcia was there, aboard VISOR as it circled that hell-hot world. He had spent much of the last year preparing to join her there—but now the two of them were forced to face the likelihood that it would be Marcia returning here, as humanity retreated from the challenge of Venus.
The comm center bleeped, and Gerald rushed over to it, sat down and powered up the screen. The countdown clock appeared, ticked down to zero, and then was replaced by Marcia’s dark exquisite face.
“Hello, Gerald,” she said, her voice warm and loving. “Thank heavens I got through—we just got word of a big experiment that we’ll need all our transmission bandwidth for. There was supposed to be a ten o’clock cutoff on personal messages, but Lonny knew I was scheduled and stretched the rules for me. He’ll keep me on as long as he can, but I might get cut off abruptly. Nothing to worry about—they just need this vision channel. Lonny’s sending a text message from me on a sideband right now. It tells what the experiment is so I don’t waste view time talking about it. Sorry, but the text message isn’t much—just a data dump on what we’ve been told about the experiment. I haven’t had time to write a real letter. I’m working on one. I should be able to send it tonight.”
The printer bin buzzed and a thin sheaf of papers dropped into it. Gerald ignored the document, reached out a hand and touched the screen. These few moments with her image were all he had, and now even this contact was being rationed. Never again, he decided. Once he got there, or she came here, never again would they be separated.
“There isn’t much excitement beyond this experiment run,” Marcia’s image said. “McGillicutty’s driving us all even madder than usual, but I suppose I should be used to that by now. The work is going well—though we’re all watching the news and hoping we’re not in it.” There was a muffled voice from off camera, and Marcia glanced away. “Oh damn!” she said, cursing with the sincerity of someone who didn’t do it often. “Lonny says I’ve got ten seconds. I love you, Gerald. I can’t wait for your next message to me. Finish up all your business and get here. I love you. Good-bye—”
The screen cut off, and Gerald felt a lump in his throat. There was only so much of this separation that he could take. Thank God it would be over soon, one way or the other.
Aboard VISOR, Marcia MacDougal forced a smile, thanked Lonny, and hurried out into the corridor. But where to go? she wondered. She felt lost, empty. Gerald gone, the project dying. What did it matter? To the wardroom, she decided, almost at random. Maybe there would be people there, someone to talk to, someone to take her mind away from loneliness.
She went into the corridor and walked the short distance. But the wardroom was empty. McGillicutty must have pulled everyone in to help observe the gravity experiment. No doubt she’d get drafted herself, sooner or later.
Finding herself alone, Marcia MacDougal made the best of it. She stepped over to the wardroom’s big observation port, and looked down at the planet’s glaring cloud tops.
She was a striking woman, seeming taller than she really was by virtue of her determined character. She had clear, flawless skin the color of dark mahogany, and her face was round and expressive. Her eyes were dark brown, bright and clear; eyes that seemed to see everything. But there was nothing at all to see out the observation window.
To the naked eye, dayside Venus was blindingly bright, a featureless wall of cloud. She could have fixed that: the observation windows could be controlled, the contrast, brightness, and spectrum manipulated. With the right settings, pattern and order appeared in the cloud tops.
But right now, to Marcia, a blank, staring, featureless globe seemed most appropriate. The light was so bright that nothing could be seen. So much information was coming in that nothing could be understood. The metaphors seemed apt to the era of the Knowledge Crash. And VISOR seemed likely to be the next Crash victim.
Venus Initial Station for Operational Research— VISOR—had been meant to be the stuff that dreams were made of. The headquarters for the creation of a brave new world—a new Venus, cooled, watered, made new with life.
No one knew exactly how it was to be done, how a world would be brought to life. That was what VISOR was for—to find the answers. There had been some wild ideas: VISOR dropping huge probes and seeder ships onto the planet, manhandling ice-bearing asteroids and monstrous atmosphere skimmers into place. Huge sunshades orbiting the planet, floating chemical factories built under enormous dirigibles and set loose in the upper atmosphere.
Some of the more wild-eyed miners in the Asteroid Belt had their own ideas. They had quite seriously offered to blow up the planet Mercury with a fearsome device named the Core Cracker. With a second asteroid belt close to Sun, they would really get some use out of solar power. Venus didn’t really have much to do with the idea, but the Belt Community crowd had tried to sell its plans to VISOR, pointing out the Mercury Belt would be an ideal place to build those massive sunshades or rotation-enhancement impact bodies.
There were other schemes, not quite so mad, and VISOR would have tried some or all of them. At the present time, of course, no one had the faintest idea how to do any of those things. And that was the whole point. VISOR was built to last for centuries, built to grow, change, evolve. The station designers expected that it would have to handle technologies whose inventors were not yet born.
VISOR. The last two words in the acronym were the key. Operational Research. Before Venus could be remade, the scientists and engineers had to learn how the task could be done. A lot could be resolved with computer models and small-scale simulations, but when dealing with a massive planetary environment, those techniques simply weren’t enough. The engineers and scientists needed a whole planet to play with, a whole planet to make mistakes on. Terraforming required on-the-job training.
Couldn’t the United Nations see that? Couldn’t they see how vital the station was? How disastrous a shutdown, or even a temporary mothballing, would be? Venus was a task for decades, generations. It could not be done in fits and starts.
Suddenly the intercom hooted at her. A high-pitched slightly peevish voice that Marcia had learned to dread spoke. “MacDougal! Get on up to Main Control!” McGillicutty’s voice said. “I need you to monitor some low-end radio for me.”
Marcia shut her eyes and counted to ten before turning away from the window and heading up to the lab. She was willing to bet that even her husband’s patience would be worn thin by Hiram McGillicutty. She’d have to try the experiment, once Gerald got here.
Hiram McGillicutty was the staff physicist of the Venus Initial Station for Operational Research. Most days, that job made Mcgillicutty as useful as a parachute on a fish.
No one disputed that VISOR needed a physicist, but only in the sense that a small town needed a fire department. You had to have one around, just in case something unexpected happened.
McGillicutty did not think much of his colleagues on the station. Mere engineers. Give them the numbers to plug into the equations, and they were perfectly happy. Never mind what the numbers meant, or how they were derived. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they not only would not need to know how the numbers came to be there, they would positively resent your wasting their time with such petty details.