That could ruin our Rust trade. Make it impossible to carry out business as usual.
This “discovery” that Gomez has made has got to be stopped, discredited, buried.
Then he thought: Or maybe not. Maybe this could make an ideal cover for the trade. While the scientists are flocking here, I could be doing business as usual—with a few new wrinkles here and there.
By the time Gomez appeared at his door, Waxman was actually smiling.
Business as usual, he was telling himself as he opened his front door and graciously invited the young astronomer into his apartment.
MAIN CAFETERIA
Alicia saw Raven enter the cafeteria and look around for her. She got to her feet and waved. Raven spotted her and made a beeline for her table.
As Raven slipped into the chair opposite her, Alicia leaned toward her and said quietly, “Evan sent me to your place to sprinkle some Rust in your refrigerator.”
Raven’s eyes went wide with shock. “What!”
“Don’t worry,” Alicia went on. “I dumped the crap down your disposal.”
Raven let out a breath of relief. But then, “He’ll expect…”
“He’ll expect you to be under the influence, I know. And me too, I guess.”
“He’ll want to party.”
Alicia’s gaunt features turned grim. “That’s why we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do.”
“I’m not going to party!” Raven snapped. “I’ve had enough of that. I’m through with it.”
“Me too,” Alicia said.
Raven looked at Alicia’s ice-blue eyes. She seems to mean it, she thought. She’s not fronting for Evan, she’s telling me the truth.
“So what are we going to do?” Alicia asked.
With a shake of her head, Raven replied, “I wish I knew.”
“He won’t let us go, you know.”
“It’s a shame you flushed the Rust. We could’ve used it on him.”
Alicia said, “He wears those damned nose filters all the time he’s in the office, I’m pretty sure.”
“Oh.”
The two women sat in mutual discontent, silent, unhappy, wondering and worrying about the future.
After several moments, Raven asked, “Could you get your hands on more Rust?”
“That won’t be easy,” Alicia responded.
Raven felt her lips curling slightly.
“Is something funny?” Alicia asked.
“Not funny,” Raven replied. “I was just thinking of something I read in my history sessions. It’s from the American Revolution, if I remember it right.”
Alicia’s eyebrows rose a few millimeters.
“‘Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,’” Raven quoted.
“That’s comforting.”
“I forget the rest of it.”
“Who said it?”
Raven shrugged her shoulders.
Alicia’s expression soured. “Well, we’re pretty much in hell, true enough.”
“And facing tyranny, for sure.”
“But what can we do about it?” Alicia challenged.
“I wish I knew.”
Raven’s wrist phone vibrated. She looked down at it and her eyes widened. “It’s Evan!”
Alicia glanced up at the ceiling. “He can see us together!”
“Don’t get excited.” Raven held her wrist close to her mouth and said, “Connect.”
Waxman’s face took shape on the phone’s minuscule screen. “Raven. Sorry to bother you so late in the day. Could you come over to my quarters, please?”
Raven glanced at Alicia’s fear-stricken face. “Now?” she asked.
“If you don’t mind. Dr. Gomez is here. He’s made what appears to be an important discovery.”
“Oh. Yes. I can be there in a few minutes.”
“Good.” The wristwatch’s screen went blank.
“He didn’t see me, did he?” Alicia asked, almost breathless.
“No, I don’t think so.”
Raven got to her feet. “How difficult would it be for you to get a sample of Rust?”
Alicia pushed her chair back and stood up also. “Without Evan knowing about it?”
“Preferably.”
“I think I can swing it. Maybe.”
“Good enough,” said Raven. “I’m going to Evan’s place. I’ll call you when I get back home.”
Uneasily, Alicia said, “Okay.”
Leaving Alicia standing by the table, Raven walked quickly toward the cafeteria’s exit, thinking, She’s terrified of Evan. Maybe I should be, too.
Waxman was all smiles. He let Tómas explain to Raven what he’d found, as he poured snifters of brandy for the three of them.
“If this discovery is valid,” Waxman said as he handed the drinks to Raven and Gomez, “we have a world-shaking event on our hands.” Then he amended, “Worlds-shaking.”
Sitting on the sofa next to Raven, Gomez took a perfunctory sip of the brandy, coughed, then laid his snifter on Waxman’s coffee table.
“Mr. Waxman is being very cautious,” he wheezed. But he smiled as he spoke.
As he eased himself down onto the sling chair opposite the coffee table, Waxman replied, “I’m sure the Astronomical Association back on Earth will be equally cautious, Tómas. After all, extravagant claims require extravagant evidence.”
Raven could not suppress a grin. “That’s a quote I’ve heard before, somewhere.”
“Carl Sagan,” Gomez said. “Twentieth-century astronomer.”
“Ah,” said Waxman.
“So where do we go from here?” Raven asked.
“Good question,” said Waxman. “We must do everything we can to eliminate the possibility that the scrap of steel that Tómas has discovered was inadvertently dropped onto the ocean bed by one of the earlier exploratory vessels our own scientists put into Uranus’s ocean.”
“One of our own vessels?” Raven echoed.
“Our scientists put dozens of submersibles into that ocean, back when we first reached Uranus,” Waxman explained. “It took them a long time to admit that the planet was sterile.”
“And they were wrong,” Gomez snapped.
“It’s sterile now,” Waxman said.
Gomez countered, “But it wasn’t always.”
“Maybe,” Waxman said. “But we’ve got to do everything we can to rule out the possibility that your sample of steel was left by one of our own exploratory vessels, years ago.”
“How in the world can we do that?” Raven asked.
Waxman focused on her. “You, my dear, are going to have to scan through the logs of every mission our people sent into that ocean. You’re to look for any mention of releasing metal into the water.”
Gomez objected, “That’s more than fifty years of missions! You can’t expect—”
“We’ve got to do it,” Waxman said firmly. “We’ve got to eliminate any possibility of a mistake.”
“Mistake,” Gomez grumbled.
Pointing a finger at the astronomer, Waxman said, “You don’t want to announce your discovery and then have it turn out that you simply misidentified a scrap of our own material. That would ruin your reputation, Tómas.”
Reluctantly, Gomez nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”
But Raven objected, “How can we go through all the expeditions that our scientists sent into the ocean? It’ll take years!”
Waxman smiled at her. “No it won’t. Computers can scan the logs of each expedition in microseconds. It will be a big job, I know, but I doubt that it will take more than a week or two.”
“I’ve already sent the announcement to the University of Valparaiso,” Gomez said.
“That’s all right,” Waxman replied calmly. “It’s fine. Just contact them and tell them your announcement was preliminary, not for public release until we confirm it.”