Holly laughed at his suddenly flustered expression. “You weren’t expecting me to throw my name in the mix?”
Grinning back at her, Berkowitz said, “The expression is ‘throw my hat in the ring.’ And, no, I wasn’t expecting it. This is news! We’ve got to stage it right.”
Holly allowed him to direct her. Berkowitz had her go back halfway down the aisle and, after adjusting the camera angles, cued her to walk up onto the stage once more.
She strode to the table purposively and announced in a clear, firm voice, “I want to register as a candidate for chief administrator.”
It was now precisely eleven A.M., and at that moment the double doors at the rear of the theater swung open again and Malcolm Eberly marched in, followed by exactly a dozen men and women. He was smiling confidently as he started up the aisle.
“No! Wait!” Berkowitz yelled from the stage. “We’re not finished here yet.”
Eberly slowed and stopped, his smile dwindling as he recognized who was at the registrar’s table.
“Holly?” he yelped.
“Be with you in a minute,” Holly answered.
“Let me finish with her,” Berkowitz called to him. “Then we’ll get you entering through the doors.”
Eberly’s face darkened as he stood with folded arms in the middle of the theater amid his entourage while Berkowitz videoed Holly giving her name to the registrar and his pulling up her dossier on his computer.
“You are now officially registered as a candidate for the office of chief administrator,” said the registrar in an overly loud voice, obviously aware of the cameras. “Good luck to you.”
“Thanks,” said Holly, smiling sweetly. “I’m gonna need it.”
“Okay,” Berkowitz called down to Eberly while he pecked at his handheld remote to reposition the cameras. “Go back to the doors and come in again.”
This is going to be great, Berkowitz exulted silently, as Eberly reentered the theater, his most dazzling smile firmly in place. We’re actually going to have a race for the election. Holly Lane’s running against her own boss.
Four minutes later, with Eberly’s registration safely recorded, Berkowitz beckoned the two candidates toward him.
“I need to ask you a few questions,” he told them. “Why you’re running, what you hope to accomplish, that sort of thing. Mr. Eberly, you first.”
“I’m running for reelection because I believe the people of this habitat need and deserve a man with experience. I think I’ve shown over the past year that I can run the office efficiently, fairly, and to the betterment of all our people.” Somehow Eberly managed to smile and look serious at the same time.
“And what will be your number one priority, if you are reelected?” Berkowitz asked.
Eberly’s smile brightened. “I believe that the path to wealth and a successful future for the people of this habitat lies in mining the rings of Saturn for their abundant supply of water ice. Water is the most precious commodity in the solar system, and we can become the prime supplier of water for the human settlements on the Moon, Mars, the Asteroid Belt and the research stations elsewhere in the solar system.”
“Despite the reservations voiced by our own scientists and others?” Berkowitz prodded.
“Our people should and must decide their own fate,” Eberly said, his voice firm and strong. “We should not allow Earthbound bureaucrats or unrealistic scientists to restrict our freedoms.”
Berkowitz turned to Holly, standing beside Eberly. He noted that she was slightly taller than Eberly, which would show clearly in a video two-shot.
“And Ms. Lane, why have you decided to oppose Mr. Eberly?”
Holly stumbled, “Well, it’s not … I mean, there’s nothing personal involved. I just think that Malcolm’s ignoring a problem that’s incredibly important.”
“What problem?”
“Population growth,” she replied immediately. “Our people are living under the zero-growth protocol. That’s got to change, sooner or later. Prob’ly sooner.”
“But with out limited resources—,” Berkowitz began.
Holly cut him short. “This habitat can support five times our current population easily. What we’ve got to do is work out a way to allow population growth within the limits of our resources. I think we’re smart enough to figure out how to do that.”
“Do you have a plan for allowing population growth?”
“Nossir, I surely don’t. But we need to get our best minds together to work on this problem. Even ask for advice from Earth if we need to; there’s lots of people on Earth who’ve dealt with population-growth issues.”
“Without much success,” Eberly interjected.
“We can’t ask the people of this habitat to keep on the way we’ve been. It’s inhuman! People want to have babies!”
“Women want to have babies,” Eberly countered.
“So do men,” Holly jabbed back. “Normal men.”
Before Eberly could reply Berkowitz physically pushed in between them. “I can see that this is going to be an exciting race. Can you both agree to having one or more formal debates on these issues?”
“Certainly,” Eberly snapped.
Holly nodded less assuredly. “I guess.”
“Good. I’ll meet with you individually to arrange the details. For now, would you kindly shake hands for the camera?”
Holly stuck her hand out and Eberly took it in a lukewarm grip.
“May the best man win,” Eberly said, looking straight into the nearest camera.
“May the better person win,” Holly corrected.
Eduoard Urbain ignored registration day; he did not watch the news broadcast that evening that showed the interviews with the two candidates. He didn’t even know that Holly Lane had registered in opposition to Malcolm Eberly.
The last one of his satellites had been successfully inserted into a low polar orbit around Titan, and Urbain had no time for anything except to search for his wandering Alpha. One of the satellites had malfunctioned at launch from the habitat; its guidance system had evidently been misprogrammed. Instead of heading for an orbit around Titan its trajectory aimed it into the moon’s thick atmosphere. Urbain had gone into a frenzy, terrified that the satellite would crash on Titan’s surface and contaminate the biosphere. His mission controllers, though, fired the satellite’s maneuvering thrusters and sent it into a long, looping trajectory that passed Titan safely and swung it into a course that would ultimately impact high in Saturn’s northern hemisphere, safely away from any possible contamination of Titan.
Eleven satellites in low orbit to scour the moon’s surface in search of the lost rover. Urbain spent night and day in the mission control center, peering at the displays on the smart walls, reviewing thousands of still images of Titan’s landscape.
The planetary physicists on his staff were ecstatic with the satellites’ imagery. They were generating a detailed photographic map of Titan’s surface, with a five-meter resolution.
“If we could overlap imagery from two or more satellites,” one of them suggested to Urbain, “we could build up a three-dimensional map with a resolution of better than one meter. We’d be able to see individual boulders!”
“Not until we find Alpha,” Urbain insisted doggedly.
“But that’ll help us find the beast.”
“Ah, yes,” Urbain backtracked. “Of course.”
He took his meals at the mission control center, even had a cot brought in so he could nap there when he could no longer keep his eyes open. Jeanmarie visited now and then, often to bring him a meal she had cooked for him. He had no time for her. A mumbled thanks and a brief peck on her cheek was all he could manage for his wife.