“An astronomer,” Raven echoed.
“He’s coming here to Haven because he wants to study Uranus. We need someone to show him around, get him settled, familiarize him with our habitat.”
Suddenly it clicked in Raven’s mind. I haven’t done anything wrong! She doesn’t want to punish me. She’s asking me to help her!
“You want me to be his guide?”
“Yes. Only for his first few days. Help him get his feet on the ground, so to speak. Help him get his equipment set up.”
Raven said, “I don’t know anything about astronomy.”
“That’s no problem. What we need is someone to make Gomez feel comfortable here in Haven. Get him settled in. I believe he plans to stay here for at least a year, perhaps longer.”
“I can do that,” Raven said.
Before she could think about how she might make the man comfortable, Fremont’s smile evaporated.
Raising a warning finger, Fremont said, “We know about your life back in Naples, Raven. That’s all behind you now. We are not asking you to treat Gomez as a sexual customer. In fact, I think he would be shocked and horrified if you even hinted at such behavior.”
“Of course,” Raven said softly. But she was thinking, We’ll see.
TÓMAS GOMEZ
Two days later, Raven met Tómas Gomez at the reception area just outside Haven’s main docking port.
The place was busy, as usual. Raven saw troops of newbies being led by officers like Quincy O’Donnell, gaggles of young men and women goggling at the broad expanse of the arrival center and the busy chatter of the newcomers and their hardworking guides.
She recognized Tómas Gomez from the photos she’d seen in his file. He was walking slowly among the crowd, his head pivoting as if he were searching for someone to meet him.
He was just about Raven’s own height, stocky, his hair dark and straight, his face the light brown of uncured tobacco leaf. Ordinary face, broad cheeks, his eyes just slightly slanted, not oriental but mestizo. Native American heritage, Raven realized, using some of the history lessons she had recently absorbed.
“Señor Gomez?” she asked as he stepped across the lines painted across the reception area’s floor.
He stopped and stared at her. Raven had spent most of her evenings studying a computer course in dressmaking, and had altered her baggy, saggy uniforms into tighter, sleeker outfits.
“I am Tómas Gomez,” he replied, in English.
Switching to English herself, Raven extended her hand as she said, “Hello. I am Raven Marchesi. I’ll be your guide for your first few days here in Haven.”
Gomez’s face lit up with a broad smile. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Ms. Marchesi.”
“Raven,” she said.
“Raven,” he repeated, still smiling.
Raven led Gomez down into Haven’s living area, and through the intersecting passageways to the compartment that had been assigned as his living quarters. It was much like her own: living room, kitchen, bedroom, bath.
“This will be your home while you’re living here,” she said cheerfully.
His eyes flicked to the travel bags sitting by the door to the bedroom. “My equipment?” he asked. “Where is my equipment?”
Raven tugged the phone from her hip pocket as she asked, “Do you have an identification number for it?”
Gomez nodded and spelled out a nine-digit string of alphanumerics.
Raven’s phone showed that the equipment was being taken to one of the habitat’s docking ports.
“I must go see it,” he said.
With a smile that she hoped showed self-assurance, Raven said, “We can see it from here.”
“Really?”
“Of course.”
It took three tries, but at last Raven got the living room’s wall screen to show six bulky crates being unloaded in a docking area by a team of robots and their human overseer.
Gomez slowly sank onto the sofa and stared at the screen as if it showed his whole life being delivered.
“That’s your equipment?” she asked softly.
Gomez nodded, his eyes glued to the screen.
Raven sat down beside him, fully an arm’s length away. “What’s in the packages?” she asked.
Without taking his eyes from the screen, Gomez replied, “Spectrographs, sampling equipment, a boring machine, computer systems to operate them all.”
Little by little, Raven got Gomez to explain what the equipment was supposed to do.
“Vessels that go into Uranus’s ocean are cut off from contact with us, here in space,” he told her. “The ocean absorbs ordinary electronic transmissions. Even laser beams are distorted beyond comprehensibility.”
Raven nodded in what she hoped were the right places. Dimly, she understood that ships sent into the planet-wide ocean down on the planet were on their own, any signals they sent out were cut off by the seawater.
“Then how do you control them?” she asked.
Gomez shook his head, still without looking at her. “We can’t control them. They are preprogrammed. All we can do is hope that the programming works.”
“You mean you don’t know if it works or not?”
At last his head turned toward her. “No. Not yet.”
Raven stared at him.
“Something happened to Uranus,” Gomez said, his voice stronger than before. “Something knocked the whole planet sidewise and sterilized its ocean. I hope to learn what that something was.”
She saw an intensity burning in his coal-black eyes, a fury.
“By sending a submarine into the ocean,” she said.
“To the bottom of that ocean,” Gomez corrected, his face set in rigid determination. “I’m going to dredge up samples from the seabed and bring them back here for analysis. I’m going to find out what happened to the planet billions of years ago.”
Raven simply stared at him. She couldn’t think of anything to say.
And suddenly Gomez’s iron-hard expression melted into an embarrassed smile. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I tend to get carried away with my own importance.”
“No,” Raven countered. “I think it’s exciting… wonderful. What happened to this planet? It’s a marvelous mystery.”
“And I’m a marvelous egotist to think that I can solve it.”
“Somebody will, sooner or later,” Raven said. “Why not you?”
“That’s the big question, isn’t it?”
Before Raven could think of a reply, Gomez’s phone buzzed.
“Answer, please,” he called out.
The scene of the docking port vanished and Evan Waxman’s handsome face appeared on the screen.
“Dr. Gomez,” said Waxman. “Welcome to Haven.”
“Thank you, Mr. Waxman.”
“I wonder if you could drop in at my office tomorrow morning?”
“Of course,” said Gomez. “What time would be convenient for you?”
“Oh, nine, nine thirty.”
“I’ll be there at nine,” Gomez said.
“Fine. See you then.”
And Raven’s pulse quickened. I’ll go with you, she said silently to Gomez. I’m going to meet Evan Waxman!
MEETING
Raven was up at six. She showered, then dressed carefully, noting that the dull and shapeless uniform that was standard dress for newcomers now looked trimmer, more form-fitting. Not sexy, perhaps, but at least it hinted that there was a desirable woman beneath the gray fabric.
She called Gomez and arranged to meet him at his apartment at 0730 hours. Then she led him to the closest cafeteria for breakfast. Once they finished eating, she used her phone’s scanner to guide them and led Gomez to Waxman’s office. Gomez rapped on its door at precisely 0858 hours.