“What’s the matter?” she said as she strode into the apartment, her head swiveling as if she were looking for cutthroats and assassins.
Within minutes the two sisters were sitting together on the sofa as Holly poured out her troubles.
“Oh, Panch, I’ve made such a mess of things!”
Pancho nodded tightly.
“He’ll never want to talk to me again. Never.”
“Does that matter so much to you?”
“It does! It truly does. I didn’t realize how much I really love Raoul until now. I’ve flamed out, Panch. I’ve wrecked it all.”
Leaning back on the sofa, Pancho scratched idly at her chin. “Cool down, sis. Let’s take this one step at a time.”
“He thinks all I want is to get him to fly Nadia to the rings. He doesn’t know that I really love him.”
“Well, to begin with, you’ve gotta find somebody else to pilot the spacecraft. That’ll show him that he’s not on the spot for that assignment.”
“I wish. But even if I could find somebody he’d still be sore at me. He’ll go back to Earth soon’s he can, I bet.”
“Which won’t be real soon,” Pancho said, as soothingly as she could. “There aren’t any ships heading all the way out here that I know of.”
“There will be, in a few months.”
“That’s a long time from now.”
“Yeah, maybe, but—”
“What you need, first shot out of the box, is somebody to fly your scientist pal to the rings.”
“Timoshenko won’t do it,” Holly said. “And we don’t really have anybody else except Raoul who can do the job. We need an experienced astronaut.”
Grinning widely, Pancho said, “You’re lookin’ at one.”
“You? But Jake said—”
“Never mind what Jake said. I spent more time drivin’ spacecraft than you’ve spent brushing your teeth, just about.”
“But … but that was years ago, Panch. You’re too old—”
Pancho’s face hardened. “Don’t say it, kid. My reflexes are still quick enough to give you a spanking. A little time in a simulator and I’ll be sharp as a samurai sword’s edge.”
Holly sat there, mouth open, clearly disbelieving.
“Jake can help your mission control team. He gets along pretty good with Manny Gaeta.”
“I s’pose …”
“And you can get your boyfriend to join the techie team, too. He can stay nice and safe here while I fly out to the rings. This is gonna be fun!”
“Pancho,” said Holly, shaking her head, “you can’t—”
“The hell I can’t.”
“But Raoul won’t join the mission control team. He won’t even talk to me.”
“Sure he will,” Pancho said cheerfully. “Ask him while you’re in bed.”
“I couldn’t!”
“Best time to ask a man anything,” Pancho said with a knowing wink.
16 January 2096: Registration day
Eberly awoke with a smile. Registration day. The moment that my reelection campaign actually begins. Sitting up in his bed, he mentally scanned his political horizon. No obstacles in sight. Urbain has caved in to me, so there’ll be no real opposition to my plan to mine the rings.
As he got up and padded to the lavatory he thought, Of course that Wunderly woman will object and try to get the IAA to intervene, but that will just make me look more heroic to the voters, resisting the demands of Earthbound bureaucrats who don’t care about our real needs. Maybe I’ll get elected unanimously!
Best of all, he told himself, as he thoroughly brushed his teeth, I won’t have to play games with Urbain’s wife. What a pathetic little game she tried to play with me! Would she really have gone to bed with me? He shook his head as he rinsed his mouth and spat into the sink.
I can have my pick of just about any woman in this habitat, he said to himself. But why bother? Power is better than sex. Being admired by everyone—everyone!—that’s the really great thing in life. I don’t need women. I don’t need anything or anyone, not as long as I’m chief administrator. No one can hurt me. No one can touch me. I’m king of the hill and I’m not going to let anyone pull me down.
Zeke Berkowitz was smiling amiably as he inspected the camera placements he had personally set up around the stage of Athens’s only theater. As chief of Goddard’s communications department, Berkowitz still thought of himself as a newsman, and this day of registering for the coming election was one of those rare newsworthy events in the habitat.
Despite his slightly portly shape, Berkowitz cut a rather dapper figure in his pale yellow slacks and raw silk sports coat of toast brown. He had none of his minuscule staff with him; he figured he could handle this event alone with the help of the three remotely controlled cameras he had set in place. Unlike most of the younger people in the habitat, Berkowitz had disdained the enzyme treatments that would turn his skin golden. That’s for the kids, he thought. I’ll stay a pasty-faced old fart.
His years aboard Goddard had taught him not to expect a throng of curious onlookers. The inhabitants of this community were a strange lot, largely aloof to politics. No, Berkowitz reminded himself, they’re not aloof; they’re wary, suspicious of politics and politicians and everything that goes with them. Most of them had been exiled by their home countries, one way or another. They were aboard Goddard because their fundamentalist regimes at home had no use for them.
Berkowitz himself had come out to Saturn willingly, at the request of Professor Wilmot when the professor was organizing this permanent expedition. Retired after a lifetime in the news media business, bereft by the death of his wife, he had gladly accepted the chance to get as far away from his memories as he could.
Sure enough, the theater was practically empty. A few onlookers with nothing better to do were scattered among the otherwise empty seats. They merely made the place look emptier. Up on the stage, the official registrar sat behind a long table, bare except for the laptop computer opened in front of him. Berkowitz had expected the chief of human resources, Holly Lane, to serve as the registrar but apparently she had sent an underling. Holly’s a lot more photogenic than this young nonentity, he thought.
Ten A.M. was the official opening time for citizens who wished to register as candidates for election to the habitat’s post of chief administrator. It was now nearly eleven and no candidates had shown up. No matter, Berkowitz thought. Eberly will be here sooner or later, and he’ll unquestionably bring an entourage with him. With tight camera angles, good interview questions and some judicious editing I’ll make this the media event of the young year on this evening’s news broadcast.
He was mildly surprised when Holly Lane appeared at the back of the theater and strode boldly down the center aisle. Has she come to replace the guy behind the desk? It’s her job, as head of human resources, to serve as registrar. Maybe she was busy on something else and couldn’t get to it until now, Berkowitz thought.
“Good morning,” he called to Holly, as she climbed the stairs at one end of the stage.
“Hello, Zeke,” said Holly with a wave of her hand. She was wearing not her usual dull tunic and slacks but a brightly flowered short-skirted dress. Pretty young woman, Berkowitz thought. Nice legs.
Holly marched straight to the registrar and said, “I want to register as a candidate.”
The man behind the table—thirtyish, round-faced—had looked pretty bored up until that moment. His brows shot up and he squeaked, “You?”
“Yep, me.”
Berkowitz raced from his post at one end of the stage to the table. “Hey, no, wait a minute! We’ve got to do this over. I wasn’t expecting—”