“You know,” Tavalera said grudgingly, “you wouldn’t even have to go out to the Kuiper Belt.”
“What do you mean?”
“Comets come our way all the time. They get perturbed out of their TNO orbits and fall into the inner solar system.”
“Only one or two each year,” she said.
“More like ten or twelve. But they’re big, Holly. Kilometers across. A year’s worth of water in each one of’em. More.”
“We could capture comets!”
Tavalera nodded. “You could become the water supplier for Selene and everybody else without touching the rings.”
“Utterly cosmic! Wait’ll I spring this on Eberly.” Holly was bouncing on her chair so hard people at other tables turned to stare at her. “I can’t wait for the next debate!”
Tavalera realized he had just slit his own throat.
28 May 2096: Free fall
The shaking slowed and then stopped altogether. Gaeta opened his eyes. The bath of fiery gases that surrounded the aeroshell had dimmed considerably. He felt weight, felt the shell swaying to and fro as it dropped like a falling leaf through the thick, murky cloud layer of Titan’s atmosphere.
No stars to be seen. He thought about activating the infrared viewing system but that would mean letting go of the hand cleats to press buttons on the keypad built into the wrist of his suit. He had no intention of releasing his grip on the cleats. Not yet, he told himself. Ride this sucker down as far as she’ll go. You’ll have plenty of time for heroics later on.
“ … past plasma sheath blackout,” he heard Fritz’s voice saying, sounding slightly annoyed. “Can you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Gaeta replied, knowing that his transmission was being relayed off one of the minisatellites Urbain had placed in orbit around Titan, then back to the habitat in Saturn orbit. It took damned near twelve seconds for signals to make the round trip.
“You are through the blackout,” Fritz said needlessly. Gaeta thought he sounded just the slightest bit relieved.
“Yeah. I’m floating down through the lower layers of the atmosphere now. The sky’s clouded over completely but there’s enough light down here to see okay.”
Then he waited twelve seconds for Fritz’s response to reach him. “Once the aeroshell destructs you can activate your infrared receptors.”
“Yeah. Right.”
Glancing at the timeline display splashed on the left side of his helmet visor, Gaeta saw that the shell was set to break up in another three and a half minutes. Two hundred and ten seconds. Time enough for housekeeping chores.
“Check all your internal systems,” Fritz commanded.
“Copy systems check.”
Gingerly, Gaeta snapped the grippers at the end of his right arm onto the x-frame’s cleat and wriggled his arm out of the suit’s sleeve. Then he tapped on the keyboard inside the suit’s chest, going through its life-support systems first. The displays flashed on his visor: air supply, pumps, heaters, water circulation, all in the green. He went on to check the suit’s servomotors, the structural integrity of its outer shell, then the sensor systems. All within nominal limits.
Fritz sounded almost pleased. “Our displays show the suit’s systems in the green.”
“All green,” Gaeta agreed.
Again the delay imposed by distance. Then, “Aeroshell self-destruct in forty-three seconds.”
“Forty-three, copy,” Gaeta said, keeping his voice flat, calm. There’ll be plenty of time for screaming when this bathtub breaks apart, he said to himself.
Cardenas sat alone in her nanolab, perched on a stool beside the workbench. Tavalera was nowhere in sight. The lab was empty and silent.
Her mind was churning. Those things in Saturn’s rings can’t be nanomachines, she repeated to herself for the hundredth time. They can’t be! That would mean they were built by intelligent engineers or scientists. We’re the only intelligent species in the solar system, and we didn’t put them in the rings. Then who did?
The aliens who built that artifact in the Asteroid Belt? she asked herself. But that’s just an unsubstantiated rumor. There hasn’t been a peep in the news about that for years.
With a shake of her head, she looked up at the digital clock on the wall, then commanded her computer, “Display Titan mission timeline, please.”
The smart wall immediately showed a chart with a small red dot pulsating along its horizontal axis. Manny’s in Titan’s atmosphere now, she saw. He’ll be ditching his heat shield in half a minute.
“Call—” She hesitated. I shouldn’t bother Fritz and his team, she told herself. If anything goes wrong, if there’s any trouble, he’ll call me. Sooner or enough.
I could just call and ask if everything’s going all right, she thought. Fritz would be annoyed, but what do I care?
You mustn’t interrupt him in the middle of the mission, her conscience warned her. Don’t distract him. He’s Manny’s lifeline—don’t do anything to endanger that link.
I could go to the mission control room, she said silently. I could just stand there by the door and be as quiet as a mouse. Quieter. I wouldn’t disturb Fritz or any of his people. They wouldn’t even know I was there.
And what good would that do? her conscience demanded. You can’t help Manny. If anything went wrong, there’s not a damned thing you could do about it.
I could be there. I could see what’s happening. I wouldn’t have to sit here waiting, not knowing.
It wouldn’t do any good. You’d just be in their way.
Cardenas knew it was true. Still … Manny’s carrying the package of nanos. If there’s any problem with them I could be right there at the control center to tell them how to handle it.
Her conscience replied, A rationalization, at best. A pretty lame excuse, actually.
But she got off the stool and started for the airlock door of the nanolab, thinking, a lame excuse is better than none.
At the door she hesitated. That’s it! she thought. That’s the way to tell if they’re machines or not.
“Phone,” she called out. “Get Dr. Negroponte.”
The mission timeline chart disappeared from the wall screen, replaced by Negroponte’s face. The biologist looked surprised.
“Kris?I was about to call you.”
“I just hit on a way to tell if your bugs are nanomachines or not.”
“Yes?”
“Watch them reproduce,” said Cardenas. “If they’re biological they’ll fission or mate, right? If they’re nanos they’ll construct new copies of themselves out of the atoms in the ice.”
Negroponte nodded solemnly. “You’d better come over here again, Kris. You’ll want to see this firsthand.”
As Tavalera walked Holly down the street from the cafeteria back to her apartment she was still chattering with enthusiasm.
“I’m gonna talk to Staveneger and see what he thinks about capturing comets. He’s a blistering smart corker, maybe the smartest guy in the whole twirling solar system.”
“Hey,” Tavalera protested, “it was my idea, remember?”
“Yes, Raoul, I know. You’re smart, too. I love you for your brain as well as your body.”
He felt his cheeks go warm.
“I’ve gotta call my sister, too. Panch’ll go crazy over this. She’s been lookin’ for something to do. Well now she can become a comet hunter.”
They had reached the front steps of Holly’s apartment building.
“I’ve got to get back to the nanolab,” Tavalera said, reluctant to leave her.
“Right. Sure,” Holly said absently. She pecked him on the cheek, then went bouncing up the steps and disappeared into the apartment building.