“All right.” Cardenas said, once Wunderly had sat down and arranged her dishes on the table. “What are you wearing to tonight’s party, Nadia?”
Wunderly took in a breath, then said swiftly, “Never mind that. I’ve decided to go into the rings myself.”
“What?”
“I know it’s too much to ask Manny to do it, so I’ve decided to do it myself.”
“You’ll get yourself killed,” Tavalera said.
Ignoring him and focusing on Cardenas, Wunderly said urgently, “Manny can show me how to use his suit, and he can run the operation from here. Just like that German guy who was Manny’s chief technician.”
“Fritz,” Cardenas murmured. “He was Austrian.”
“Whatever.” Turning to Tavalera, she went on, “And I thought that you, Raoul, could pilot the ferry ship that takes me in and brings me back after I’ve gone—”
“Me?” Tavalera yelped. “Fly a transfer vehicle into the rings? You gotta be kidding!”
“Not into the rings,” Wunderly countered. “Just close enough for me to go in.”
“And then I’ve gotta fish you out again?”
Cardenas interrupted them. “Nadia, Manny almost got killed when he went through the rings. The ice particles attacked him, for god’s sake.”
Wunderly shook her head impatiently. “They didn’t attack him. They coated his suit—”
“And blocked his communications antenna, covered his helmet visor, nearly froze him to death.”
“But we know about that now. We can keep the suit’s exterior too hot for the ring organisms to attach themselves.”
They argued all through lunch. Wunderly never did get dessert. The best she got was a reluctant agreement from Cardenas to discuss the idea with Manny. Tavalera said very little, but he was thinking that if Gaeta agrees to this he can fly the fricking transfer ship himself. I’m not going out into the rings. Mother Tavalera didn’t raise her son to be a hero. Or an idiot.
New Year’s Eve
About the party tonight,” Cardenas said to Gaeta. They were both in the compact kitchen of the apartment they shared.
“Yeah?”
“Be sure to compliment Nadia on her figure. She’s been working hard to lose weight.”
Gaeta gave her a sidelong glance as he set dishes on the foldout table. “You been helping her?”
“She thinks so. She asked for nanos to take the fat off. I gave her an appetite suppressant, a diuretic, and a pep talk about exercise and diet.”
Gaeta laughed. “So she thinks it’s nanomagic when it’s really her own effort.”
“And the pills.” Cardenas rummaged through the silverware drawer and came out with two sets of forks and knives. In the same tone of voice, she added, “And she wants to fly through the rings herself, using your suit.”
“What?” Gaeta snapped.
“She’s decided she’ll fly through the rings herself. With your help.”
Gaeta laughed bitterly. “They all think it’s easy,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “Just seal yourself inside the suit and that makes you Superman.”
It was Cardenas’s turn to make dinner. She stood in front of the open freezer in the kitchen, trying to decide which package to shove into the microwave. Manny enjoyed cooking and was good at it; Cardenas’s idea of home cooking was to spend as little time as possible in the kitchen. Something light, she thought; we’ll be eating and drinking at the party later.
“She knows it’s dangerous,” she said as she pulled out a pair of precooked fish fillet dinners. “It’s just that she’s so crazy to get some samples from the rings that she’s willing to risk her own life.”
Gaeta was at the counter by the sink, opening a bottle of wine. “No, she’s not,” he said. “She’s just trying to shame me into going for her.”
“No! Nadia’s not that devious. She’s not devious at all. She’s just a scientist who’s desperate to get her research done.”
The plastic stopper came out of the wine bottle with a pop.
“Look, chiquita,” Gaeta said, tapping his forehead lightly, “Nadia might not realize it up in the top of her head, but what she’s really doing is trying her damnedest to get me to say, ‘No, it’s too dangerous for you, kid. I’ll do it.’”
Cardenas gave him a crooked grin as she read the heating instructions on the packages. “That’s machismo bullshit, Manny.”
“You think so? I’m supposed to sit here and let her fly in my old suit and most likely get herself killed out there?”
“She wants to do it.”
“Why can’t they rig a robot probe to take samples from the rings? That ought to be easy enough.”
“She’d need Urbain’s okay for that and he’s so wrapped up with his missing probe that he won’t even give her the time of day.”
“She could just appropriate one, then. While Urbain’s not looking.”
“It’s not that simple,” Cardenas argued. “There’s only a dozen or so of the generic probes in storage and Urbain’s keeping them under lock and key. Besides, Nadia would need some of Urbain’s engineering people to modify the probe so it can collect samples.”
Shaking his head like a man surrounded by conspirators, Gaeta poured a dash of wine into one of the tumblers he’d pulled from the cabinet. He sipped.
“Not bad,” he said with some surprise. “Local vintage. Straight from the vineyards down by the endcap.”
“That’s why there’s no label,” Cardenas said.
“Not yet. I just got one of their first bottles from a guy who works at the winepress.”
He poured a glass for Cardenas and she sampled it. With a frown that furrowed her brow, she said, “Fizzy.”
“Give it some time to breathe.”
“I didn’t know you were a wine expert,” she teased.
“Hey, there’s still some things you don’t know about me.”
Cardenas slid the two packaged meals into the microwave and then set the timer. Turning back to Gaeta, she said, utterly serious, “Nadia’s really desperate.”
Gaeta looked into her bright blue eyes for a long moment. “You want me to go back to the rings for her?”
“No!” Cardenas snapped. “But if she’s willing to do it, I think you ought to help her.”
“She really can’t snitch a robot probe? You said there’s a dozen of’ em.”
“Urbain’s hoarding them. He wants to send them into low orbits around Titan to search for his missing machine.”
Gaeta made a sigh that was close to being a snort. “Damn scientists. They’re all crazy.”
“Hey, watch it, Mr. Macho. I’m a scientist, remember?”
“But you’re not crazy.”
“Yes I am,” Cardenas said. “I’m crazy about you.”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and she slid hers around his neck. The microwave oven chimed but neither of them paid the slightest attention.
Eduoard Urbain stared disappointedly at the inventory of robotic spacecraft displayed on his office wall.
“That is all?” he asked. “Only a dozen?”
“That’s the entire inventory, sir.” His aide looked distinctly uncomfortable. It was New Year’s Eve and the big party down by the lake would be starting up soon.
Urbain had no interest in the party. “There should be more,” he insisted.
“We had to cannibalize several of them to build Titan Alpha. Don’t you remember, sir?”