Wanamaker threw her a mock salute and ducked through the hatch. It was only three strides to the cargo bay, where Gaeta would ride inside his suit.
“I’m ready to come aboard,” Gaeta’s voice said from the speaker set above the airlock hatch.
“Hang five,” Wanamaker replied. “I’ve got to make certain we’re sealed tight here.”
“Panel’s in the green,” Pancho called.
“Right. Just doing a manual check.” It was part of the procedures they had rehearsed in the simulator. Wanamaker checked to see that there were no leaks between the craft’s airlock and the habitat’s.
“Okay,” he said after a two-minute inspection. “I’m opening our outer airlock hatch.”
Pumps rumbled and Wanamaker thought he could hear the outer hatch creak open. It’s all in my imagination, he told himself. Those bearings don’t squeak.
At last the inner hatch swung open and Gaeta thumped awkwardly into the cargo bay. The oversized suit loomed above Wanamaker; he felt as if a monstrous alien robot had stepped in.
“Welcome aboard,” he said, peering up to see Gaeta’s face in the suit’s visor.
“Is this the bus to Tijuana?” Gaeta wisecracked.
Pancho’s voice said, “Cut the clowning and seal the airlock. We gotta keep on schedule.”
Nadia Wunderly had hoped to get samples from the rings before Eberly’s debate against Holly, but delays in refurbishing the transfer rocket and switches in crew assignments from herself to Pancho and finally to Gaeta—who should have taken the responsibility from the beginning, she thought—held up the mission until the very day of the debate.
Eberly had played coy about granting permission to use a transfer craft, but one visit from Wanamaker and Gaeta had put an end to Eberly’s foot-dragging. Still, the man had managed to push their launch date to the day of the first debate between himself and Holly.
The debate wouldn’t start until eight P.M., Wunderly knew. Manny could be through the rings and on his way home by then. But I won’t know what he’s got in the sample boxes. The debate will start before I get the samples into my own lab.
Now she sat in her cramped little office, her one smart wall display split between the cameras on Gaeta’s excursion suit and a view of Saturn. The giant planet’s rings glittered like wide swaths of beckoning diamonds, alluring, endlessly fascinating.
It took an effort of will for Wunderly to drag her attention away from the rings. Nervously, she began rearranging the papers scattered across her littered desk, waiting for the spacecraft to detach from the habitat and start its flight to the rings.
Come on, she urged silently. Get on with it!
12 April 2096: Launch
Five-second countdown on my mark,” Pancho called out. “Mark! Four …”
She felt the craft shudder as the connectors holding it against the habitat unlocked.
“ … two … one …”
The automatic sequencer fired the cold gas jets, just a brief moment of thrust, hardly jarring Pancho as she stood in the cockpit. Her thumb was on the manual firing button, a needless backup.
“We’re off!” she sang out.
“Good luck,” Tavalera’s voice came through the speaker.
The sense of weight that had been imparted by the habitat’s spin dwindled away to nothing. Pancho felt her insides gurgle. Come on, girl, she said to herself, as she wiggled her soft-booted feet into the floor loops, you’ve been in zero g half your life, just about. Don’t get queasy on me now.
Wanamaker stuck his head through the hatch. “Manny’s having his breakfast.”
“Inside the suit?” Pancho asked, over her shoulder. She saw that he was holding onto the hatch’s rim with both hands, his feet floating up off the deck.
“Yup. You hungry? I can pull something from the galley.”
Pancho knew that this tiny craft’s galley was nothing more than a refrigerated bin stocked with premade sandwiches and fruit juices. Her stomach was still complaining, although moving her head hadn’t made her whoozy at all.
“Yeah, let’s grab a bite,” she said. “Nothin’ to do here for the next few hours except watch the board.” Besides, she said to herself, I don’t want to let zero g get the better of me.
Holly bit her lip as she studied the numbers displayed on the smart wall. Fifty-two hundred and sixteen signatures, she thought. Not enough yet. But we’re getting there.
She had hoped to be able to announce that the petition drive had succeeded at the debate against Eberly this evening. Not going to make it, she told herself. But we’re getting close. And more than a third of the signatures are from guys.
Her phone chirped. The data bar on the screen’s bottom told her it was Zeke Berkowitz. “Answer,” she called.
Berkowitz’s normally amiable features looked troubled. “Holly, we’re going to be running a news feature right before the debate. I thought you ought to see a preview of it, so you won’t be caught by surprise.”
“Okay,” Holly replied absently, still thinking about the petition drive.
“I’m shooting the interview to you now,” said Berkowitz.
“Thanks.”
For nearly half an hour Holly continued working on the petition drive figures, trying to determine if there were pockets of the population that they had not yet signed up. At last, more as a break from the work than anything else, she switched to the message Berkowitz had sent.
She was surprised to see Jeanmarie Urbain on screen. The chief scientist’s wife was sitting in the same studio that Berkowitz used to interview Holly and Eberly.
“Madame Urbain,” Berkowitz said from off camera, “why have you organized your committee?”
Jeanmarie Urbain looked tense, but she forced a smile and looked straight into the camera. Zeke prob’ly told her to do that, Holly thought.
“It is necessary for the future of this community to stop this ridiculous petition that is being circulated,” she said.
Holly jerked with surprise.
“You mean the petition to repeal the Zero Population Growth protocol?”
“Yes. Exactly. We must not repeal the protocol.”
“And why are you against the petition?” Berkowitz’s voice asked calmly.
Looking very earnest, very convinced, Mme. Urbain answered as if reciting a memorized reply, “This habitat of ours is quite limited in its resources. If we permit unregulated growth, our habitat will quickly be filled beyond our capacity to support the increased population. People will starve. Children—babies—will starve!”
“Don’t you think that’s an extreme view?”
“Not at all. Unregulated population growth will turn this beautiful habitat of ours into an overcrowded slum, a teeming cesspool of poverty, disease and crime. We must maintain the Zero Population Growth protocol! We must!”
“Forever?”
Jeanmarie Urbain hesitated. Holly thought she might be searching her memory for the answer she had been coached to give.
“No, not forever,” she said at last. “But not until we have achieved some means of bringing more wealth to our community should we think about increasing our population.”
“Some means of increasing our wealth,” Berkowitz repeated.
“Yes. Our habitat was designed to support ten thousand people. Unless our economic situation improves, we have not the resources to support a larger population.”
Silence for a moment. Then Berkowitz asked, “Madame Urbain, if the ZPG protocol were to be repealed, would you want to have a baby?”
Jeanmarie looked surprised by his question, shocked. “I? Would I want to have a baby?”
“You and Dr. Urbain are childless, aren’t you?”