Zworkyn turned in his chair and extended his hand toward Gomez. “Congratulations, my boy. You’ve discovered the remains of intelligent life.”
Tómas sat there, feeling stunned. Someone clapped him on the back. All three of Zworkyn’s assistants had turned their chairs around and were grinning up at him. The astronomers in the rear of the chamber got to their feet, applauding lustily.
Zworkyn stood up. “All right! We can celebrate tonight. But right now, we’ve got to get this data to the Astronomical Association back on Earth. You’re all going to be heroes!”
They cheered mightily.
“Well don’t just sit there,” Zworkyn said, tugging at Gomez’s arm. “We’ve got to tell Waxman the good news.”
Tómas shook his head, as if to clear it, then rose shakily to his feet. Like a man in a trance, he followed Zworkyn out of the monitoring center, down along the curved passageway, toward Evan Waxman’s office. Even with the observation center’s doors closed they could still hear the cheering and applause.
The two of them barged past the woman who’d replaced Alicia as Waxman’s assistant and breezed directly into Waxman’s office.
“We’ve found unmistakable evidence of an ancient civilization on Uranus!” Zworkyn announced grandly.
Waxman looked up from his desktop screen, his expression a mixture of surprise and disbelief.
“Unmistakable? Really?”
Turning to Gomez, Zworkyn said, “Tell him, my boy.”
“Buried in the seabed,” Gomez chattered. “Circles. A straight line connecting them.”
Despite himself, Waxman asked, “A straight line?”
“Yes, sir.”
Waxman looked stunned, shocked. “I’d like to see your evidence.”
Still half-disbelieving what he himself had seen, Gomez nodded and commanded Waxman’s desktop computer to show the scenes that had appeared in the monitoring center.
Tómas saw Waxman’s frame stiffen with astonishment.
His eyes widened. “By God, that… that’s remarkable!” he exclaimed.
With a soft chuckle, Zworkyn said, “More impressive than a single twist of steel, eh?”
Waxman nodded, his cobalt-blue eyes focused on Gomez. “You’ve made a tremendous discovery, Tómas. You too, Mr. Zworkyn. Both of you. Congratulations.”
For the first time, Tómas felt an inner glow of triumph. He paid no attention to the flat, strained tone of Waxman’s praise.
CELEBRATION
The party began slowly, with Zworkyn’s people and Abbott’s staff, but it quickly grew to fill half the main dining room as news of the discovery spread through the habitat.
Tómas Gomez sat at the center of the growing crowd, basking in the warmth of their congratulations. But as he scanned the new arrivals he did not see Raven. She’s not coming, he told himself. She’s avoiding me. The warmth he had felt inside him slowly faded and turned to ice.
He accepted the crowd’s increasingly raucous congratulations with a grin and a nod, but inwardly he wanted to get away from their noise, their cheers. He wanted to be with Raven, or bitterly alone.
Zworkyn was grinning broadly as he climbed up atop one of the dining tables and silenced the crowd with shushing motions of both his hands.
“We have a lot to celebrate—”
The people roared and cheered. Zworkyn waited patiently for them to quiet down, then continued, “I don’t expect much work out of you tomorrow—” Laughter. “But the day after tomorrow our real work begins. Who were the creatures who built this city at the bottom of the sea? How did they die away? What happened here to extinguish all life on the planet?”
One of the younger men in the crowd shouted, “Where are we going to put the six zillion researchers who’ll come flocking out here as soon as they hear the news?”
Standing back at the fringe of the crowd, where the robots were busily picking up the discarded dinnerware, Evan Waxman frowned at the thought of hordes of newcomers arriving at Haven.
We won’t be able to accommodate them, he thought. Even if we finish the second module and let them have it, this is going to change everything. Ruin everything. A horde of scientists roosting here for God knows how long. Poking into everything.
But then a slow smile crept across his handsome face. A horde of new customers, he told himself. I’ll have to increase production.
Umber won’t like having a tide of newcomers descending on us, he realized. He set up Haven to be as far away from Earth as possible. He wants to keep this area for his refugees, his sick and lame and stupid poor people. He’ll want to refuse to let the scientists make a base here for themselves.
Well, I’ll have to change his mind about that. Or move him out of my way.
“Aren’t you going to join the celebration?” Alicia asked.
Raven looked up from her desktop screen’s view of the crowd in the main dining room. “I suppose I should,” she said, her tone far from celebratory.
“You don’t want to?” Alicia looked surprised.
“I do, but…”
“But you’re afraid you’ll wind up in bed with Tómas.”
“Yes.”
“Well why not? He’s a hero, the darling of the scientists. He’s made a great discovery.”
“And I’m his reward?” Raven asked.
Alicia stared at her. “It’s just a one-night fling. Why not?”
“Because it would mean more to Tómas than a one-night fling. He’s very serious.”
“And you’re not.”
“I don’t know!” Raven burst. “I like him, but…”
“But what?”
“What will he do when he finds out about what I was on Earth?”
“You don’t think he knows?”
“I don’t know!”
Raven felt Alicia’s pallid blue eyes boring into her like twin ice picks.
At last Alicia said, “You’re in love with him.”
“No! Don’t be silly.”
With a shake of her head Alicia insisted, “You’re in love with him, but you’re afraid to admit it to yourself.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Raven objected, with some heat. “I can’t be in love with anybody—especially not him.”
“It happens,” Alicia countered.
“Not to me.”
“Even to you, honey.”
Raven felt tears welling up. “I don’t want to hurt him.”
“And you think you’re not hurting him by staying away?”
“He’ll forget about me, sooner or later.”
A trace of a smile curved Alicia’s lips slightly. “Maybe. But will you forget about him?”
“Yes I will.”
“Then why don’t you go to him and give him a night he’ll remember? You know how to please men, why not please him?”
Raven’s self-control shattered. She burst into tears.
THE ACID TEST
Slowly, like a woman heading toward a guillotine, Raven made her way along the passageway toward the main dining room. She could hear the noise of thumping Latino music and the crowd’s celebration long before she reached the dining room’s closed doors.
She opened the main door and slipped in, a wall of music and laughter and dozens of shouted conversations assailing her ears.
And there was Tómas, standing on a tabletop with Professor Abbott on one side of him and the smaller, darker Zworkyn on the other.
All eyes seemed to be on Tómas; he looked somewhere between astonished and abashed by the adulation. But the instant his eyes met Raven’s, he jumped down from the table and pushed through the crowd toward her.
“Raven! You’re here!”
And Raven felt that this was where she wanted to be, with him, with this man who loved her.