“That was for a stunt, a publicity adventure. What I ask you now is for science.”
“You said you didn’t want to take the chance of contaminating the life-forms.”
“And you, Dr. Cardenas,” Urbain countered, turning toward the nanotechnology expert, “told me that you could decontaminate his suit with nanomachines.”
“I don’t care what I said,” Cardenas said hotly. “Manny’s not going to Titan. Period!”
“Now wait a minute, Kris,” Gaeta said, still grinning. “This is big. I could get Fritz and a top crew here for this stunt.”
“It’s not a stunt!” Urbain insisted.
“You’re not going!” Cardenas repeated, just as adamantly.
Jeanmarie said, “Don’t you see, Dr. Cardenas? Mr. Gaeta is my husband’s last hope. His career, the entire investigation of Titan’s surface, depends on him.”
“Your husband’s career,” Cardenas replied. “Manny’s life.”
“But—”
“He could get killed down there.”
“Hold on, Kris,” Gaeta said. “If I could get Fritz and his people to run the mission I could be the first human being on Titan. That’s worth a lot.”
“Is it worth your life?”
“It won’t be that dangerous,” Gaeta said. “I go down, put your package of nanos on the lander and come back up. Piece of cake.”
“Manny, no. I can’t go through this again.”
“Last time, Kris.”
“That’s what you said about going to the rings for Wunderly.”
“And I got through that okay, didn’t I?”
Urbain could see the fire in Cardenas’s eyes. And the desire in Gaeta’s.
“Look,” Gaeta said to her. “Lemme call Fritz, see what he thinks. He wouldn’t let me stick my head in a noose.”
“Not much.”
“And if Fritz thinks this stunt is worthwhile, he’ll zoom out here on a torch ship and run the whole operation. Just like old times.”
Cardenas started to reply but no words came from her mouth, only a half-strangled sound that might have been a sigh or a growl or a muffled wail of despair. She stamped off toward the path that led to the village. Gaeta hurried to catch up with her.
“He will do it,” Urbain said, his voice shaky, breathless.
“Yes,” said Jeanmarie. “I only hope that it will not destroy his relationship with Dr. Cardenas.”
Urbain almost said, What of it? But one look at his wife’s distraught face made him hold his tongue.
20 May 2096: Simulations laboratory
Fritz von Helmholtz fought back the smile that wanted to form on his normally stem face. This morning his team of technicians had towed the massive excursion suit into the sim lab and stood it up on its feet. Gaeta had climbed into the armored suit with all the grinning enthusiasm of a little boy.
“Ready for the sim run.” Gaeta’s voice, clearly excited, came from the communications computer’s speaker.
Von Helmholtz turned to the technician at the main console. “Initiate the landing procedure,” he said calmly.
Friedrich Johann von Helmholtz was a short, slim, almost delicately built man. He could be cold, even arrogant; he was always meticulous, demanding. In Gaeta’s eyes, Fritz was the best damned technician in the solar system. As always, he wore his customary immaculate white, crisply pressed coveralls over an old-fashioned slate-gray three-piece business suit. He stood beside the looming excursion suit, his burr-cut head barely reaching its waist, and looked it over with a practiced eye. It appeared no worse for wear than the last time he’d seen it, more than eight months earlier. A few new dents from Gaeta’s little frolic through Saturn’s B ring, but nothing substantial.
Today’s simulation run was to practice Gaeta’s landing on Titan. That officious little scientist, Urbain, had insisted that Manny land directly on top of the landing vehicle itself, not on the surface of the moon. He didn’t want to take any chances on contaminating the life-forms living on Titan. But he doesn’t mind taking chances with the life-form from Earth that’s going to repair his ailing vehicle, Fritz grumbled silently.
It’s probably just as well Manny goes for the lander, he reasoned. The ground around it could be muddy, viscous, difficult to walk on, downright dangerous. But a lot of people were counting on that. This excursion to Titan’s surface—this mission to rescue a defunct robot—was already contracted to the biggest media combine in the Earth/Moon system. The more dangerous the stunt, the more viewers they could attract. With virtual-reality circuitry, the audience would even get the illusion that they were performing the stunt themselves. And the bigger the audience, the more money. We’ll all make millions out of this, von Helmholtz told himself. Tens of millions, perhaps a hundred million or more.
My task, he told himself, is to make the mission as safe as possible. The audience should experience a perception of danger, of risk. I am here to maximize that perception while minimizing the actual danger to my stuntman. He recalled all the other stunts that he and Gaeta had worked on together. The danger was always there; without it, there would be no audience interest, no money flowing in. He realized that although he and Gaeta lived with danger, Gaeta was the only one who could get killed if anything went wrong.
Von Helmholtz pursed his lips, then walked out of the simulation chamber and back to the consoles strung along the laboratory’s rear wall.
“We’re ready to initiate the landing sequence,” said the technician seated at the main console.
Von Helmholtz said curtly, “Begin.”
The walls of the simulation chamber seemed to evaporate, replaced by three-dimensional views of Titan’s surface.
“Looks like a cloudy day,” Gaeta quipped.
Von Helmholtz frowned at the comm console’s technician as if she had said it. “No jokes, please,” he said in his precise, clipped accent.
“Si, generalisimo,” Gaeta replied. “Strictly business.”
“Yes,” replied von Helmholtz. “Strictly business, if you please.”
Cardenas was going through the presentation for the third time, and getting more than a little irritated about it.
“Here are the final results,” she said, pointing to the graph displayed on Urbain’s office wall. “As you can see, all traces of biologically active materials have been broken down by the nanos, leaving nothing but inorganics such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen compounds that quickly dissipate.”
Urbain sat at the circular conference table in the corner of his office, frowning at the graph as if he didn’t trust it. Flanking him were Yolanda Negroponte and another biologist.
“And the nanomachines themselves?” Urbain asked. “What of them?”
“They self-destruct,” Cardenas replied, the same answer she’d given twice earlier when Urbain had asked the same question.
Urbain glanced uneasily at his two biologists. They said nothing.
“I can show you photomicrographic evidence of the nanos going inert,” Cardenas said.
“Inert is not destroyed,” said Urbain.
Cardenas forced a smile. “Once they go inert, they’re nothing more than nanometer-sized bits of dust. They’re not vampires; they don’t rise from the dead.”
“They’re not living creatures at all,” said Negroponte, almost condescendingly. “They’re just nanometer-sized machines.”
Urbain scowled at her.
“That’s right,” Cardenas agreed. “They’re just very small machines.”
“They successfully clean all the contaminants from the exterior of the stuntman’s suit,” Urbain said. It was halfway between a question and a statement of fact.
Cardenas suppressed a flare of annoyance at the word stuntman, but replied as pleasantly as she could. “Yes, they completely break down all the biologicals.”