Ben Bova - Saturn

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Second in size only to Jupiter, bigger than a thousand Earths but

light enough to float in water, home of cushing gravity and delicate,

seemingly impossible rings, it dazzles and attracts us: Saturn

Earth groans under the rule of fundamentalist political regimes.

Crisis after crisis has given authoritarians the upper hand. Freedom

and opportunity exist in space, for those with the nerve and skill to

run the risks.

Now the governments of Earth are encouraging many of their most

incorrigible dissidents to join a great ark on a one-way expedition,

twice Jupiter's distance from the Sun, to Saturn, the ringed planet

that baffled Galileo and has fascinated astronomers ever since.

But humans will be human, on Earth or in the heavens--so amid the

idealism permeating Space Habitat Goddard are many individuals with

long-term schemes, each awaiting the right moment. And hidden from

them is the greatest secret of all, the real purpose of this

expedition, known to only a few....

BEN BOVA

A six-time winner of the Hugo Award, a former editor of Analog and

former fiction editor of Omni, and a past president of the National

Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America, Ben Bova is

the author of more than a hundred works of science fact and fiction.

He lives in Florida. Visit his Web site: www.benbova.net.

SATURN

BEN BOVA

TOR

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed

in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

SATURN

right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden A Tor Book Published by Tom

Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty

Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bova, Ben, 1932-

Saturn / Ben Bova.--1st ed. p. cm.

"A Tom Doherty Associates book." ISBN 0-312-87218-6 1. Saturn

(Planet)--Fiction. I. Title PS3552.O84S28 2003 813'.54-dc21

2003040216

First Edition: June 2003

Printed in the United States of America 0987654321

Once more to dearest Barbara, and to Dr. Jerry Poumelle, a

colleague and friend who originated the term "shepherd satellites"

but never received the credit for it that he deserves.

There are some questions in Astronomy to which we are attracted ...

on account of their peculiarity ... [rather] than from any direct

advantage which their solution would afford to mankind.... I am not

aware that any practical use has been made of Saturn's Rings.... But

when we contemplate the Rings from a purely scientific point of view,

they become the most remarkable bodies in the heavens.... When we

have actually seen that great arch swing over the equator of the

planet without any visible connection, we cannot bring our minds to

rest.

--James Clerk Maxwell.

As the new century begins ... we may be ready to settle down before

we wreck the planet. It is time to sort out Earth and calculate what

it will take to provide a satisfying and sustainable life for

everyone into the indefinite future.... For every person in the world

to reach present U.S. levels of consumption would require [the

resources of] four more planet Earths.

--Edward O. Wilson.

BOOK I

For the same reason I have resolved not to put anything around

Saturn except what I have already observed and revealed--that is, two

small stars which touch it, one to the east and one to the west, in

which no alteration has ever yet been seen to take place and in which

none is to be expected in the future, barring some very strange event

remote from every other motion known to or even imagined by us. But

as to the supposition ... that Saturn is sometimes oblong and

sometimes accompanied by two stars on its flanks, Your Excellency may

rest assured that this results either from the imperfection of the

telescope or the eye of the observer.... I, who have observed it a

thousand times at different periods with an excellent instrument, can

assure you that no change whatever is to be seen in it. And reason,

based upon our experiences of all other stellar motions, renders us

certain that none will ever be seen, for if these stars had any

motions similar to those of other stars, they would long since have

been separated from or conjoined with the body of Saturn, even if

that movement were a thousand times slower than that of any other

star which goes wandering through the heavens.

Galileo Galilei.

Letters on Sunspots.

4 May 1612

SELENE: ASTRO CORPORATION HEADQUARTERS

Pancho Lane frowned at her sister. "His name isn't even Malcolm

Eberly. He changed it."

Susan smiled knowingly.

"Oh, what diff's that make?"

"He was born Max Erlenmeyer, in Omaha, Nebraska," Pancho said

sternly. "He was arrested in Linz, Austria, for fraud in 'eighty-

four, tried to flee the country and--"

"I don't care about that! It's ancient! He's changed. He's not the

same man he was then."

"You're not going."

"Yes I am," Susan insisted, the beginnings of a frown of her own

creasing her brow. "I'm going and you can't stop me!"

"I'm your legal guardian, Susie."

"Poosh! What's that got to do with spit? I'm almost fifty years

old, f'real."

Susan Lane did not look much more than twenty. She had died when

she'd been a teenager, killed by a lethal injection that Pancho

herself had shot into her emaciated arm. Once clinically dead she had

been frozen in liquid nitrogen to await the day when medical science

could cure the carcinoma that was raging through her young body.

Pancho had brought her cryonic sarcophagus to the Moon when she began

working as an astronaut for Astro Manufacturing Corporation.

Eventually Pancho became a member of Astro's board of directors, and

finally its chairman. Still Susan waited, entombed in her bath of

liquid nitrogen, waiting until Pancho was certain that she could be

reborn to a new life.

It took more than twenty years. And once Susan was revived and

cured of the cancer that had been killing her, her mind was almost a

total blank. Pancho had expected that; cryonics reborns usually lost

most of the neural connections in the cerebral cortex. Even Saito

Yamagata, the powerful founder of Yamagata Corporation, had come out

of his cryonic sleep with a mind as blank as a newborn baby's.

So Pancho fed and bathed and toilet trained her sister, an infant

in a teenager's body. Taught her to walk, to speak again. And brought

the best neurophysiologists to Selene to treat her sister's brain

with injections of memory enzymes and RNA. She even considered

nanotherapy but decided against it; nanotechnology was allowed in

Selene, but only under stringent controls, and the experts admitted

that they didn't think nanomachines could help Susan to recover her

lost memories.

Those years were difficult, but gradually a young adult emerged, a

woman who looked like the Susie that Pancho remembered, but whose

personality, whose attitudes, whose mind were disturbingly different.

Susan remembered nothing of her earlier life, but thanks to the

neuroboosters she had received her memory now was almost eidetic: if

she saw or heard something once, she never forgot it. She could

recall details with a precision that made Pancho's head swim.

Now the sisters sat glaring at each other: Pancho on the plush

burgundy pseudoleather couch in the corner of her sumptuous office,

Susan sitting tensely on the edge of the low slingchair on the other

side of the curving lunar glass coffee table, her elbows on her

knees.

They looked enough alike to be immediately recognized as sisters.

Both were tall and rangy, long lean legs and arms, slim athletic

bodies. Pancho's skin was little darker than a well-tanned

Caucasian's; Susan's a shade richer. Pancho kept her hair trimmed

down to a skullcap of tightly-curled fuzz that was flecked with spots

of fashionable gray. Susan had taken treatments to make her dark-

brown hair long and luxurious; she wore it in the latest pageboy

fashion, spilling down to her shoulders. Her clothing was latest mod,

too: a floor-length faux silk gown with weights in its hem to keep

the skirt hanging right in the low lunar gravity. Pancho was in a no-

nonsense business suit of powder gray: a tailored cardigan jacket and

flared slacks over her comfortable lunar softboots. She wore sensible

accents of jewelry at her earlobes and wrists. Susan was unadorned,

except for the decal across her forehead: a miniature of Saturn, the

ringed planet.

Susan broke the lengthening silence. "Panch, you can't stop me. I'm

going."

"But... all the way out to Saturn? With a flock of political

exiles?"

"They're not exiles!"

"C'm on, Soose, half the governments back Earthside are cleaning

out their detention camps."

Susan's back stiffened. "Those fundamentalist regimes you're always

complaining about are encouraging their nonbelievers and dissidents

to sign on for the Saturn expedition. Encouraging, not deporting."

"They're getting rid of their troublemakers," Pancho said.

"Not troublemakers! Free thinkers. Idealists. Men and women who're

ticked with the way things are on Earth and willing to warp off, zip

out, and start new lives."

"Misfits and malcontents," Pancho muttered. "Square pegs in round

holes."

"The habitat will be populated by the best and brightest people of

Earth," Susan retorted.

"Yeah, you wish."

"I know. And I'm going to be one of them."

"Cripes almighty, Soose, Saturn's ten times farther from the Sun

than we are."

"What of it?" Susan said, with that irritating smile again. "You

were the first to go as far as the Belt, weren't you?"

"Yeah, but-"

"You went out to the Jupiter station, di'n't you?"

Pancho could do nothing but nod.

"So I'm going out to Saturn. I won't be alone. There'll be ten

thousand of us, f'real! That is, if Malcolm can weed out the real

troublemakers and sign up good workers. I'm helping him do the

interviews."

"Make sure that's all you're helping him with," Pancho groused.

Susan's smile turned slightly wicked. "He's been a perfect

gentleman, dammit."

"Blister my butt on a goddam' Harley," Pancho grumbled. And she

thought, Damned near thirty years I've been working my way up the

corporation but ten minutes with Susie and she's got me talkin' West

Texas again.

"It's a great thing, Panch," said Susan, earnest now. "It's a

mission, really. We're going out on a five-year mission to study the

Saturn system. Scientists, engineers, farmers, a whole self-

sustaining community!"

Pancho saw that her sister was genuinely excited, like a kid on her

way to a thrill park. Damn! she said to herself. Susie's got the body

of an adult but the mind of a teenager. There'll be nothing but grief

for her out there, without me to protect her.

"Say it clicks, Panch," Susan asked softly, through lowered lashes.

"Tell me you're not ticked at me."

"I'm not sore," Pancho said truthfully. "I'm worried, though.

You'll be all alone out there."

"With ten thousand others!"

"Without your big sister."

Susan said nothing for a heartbeat, then she reached across the

coffee table and grasped Pancho's hand. "But Panch, don't you see?

That's why I'm doing it! That's why I've got to do it! I've got to go

out on my own. I can't live like some little kid with you doing

everything for me! I've got to be free!"

Sagging back into the softly yielding sofa, Pancho murmured, "Yeah,

I suppose you do. I guess I knew it all along. It's just that... I

worry about you, Susie."

"I'll be fine, Panch. You'll see!"

"I sure hope so."

Elated, Susan hopped to her feet and headed for the door. "You'll

see," she repeated. "It's gonna be great! Cosmic!"

Pancho sighed and got to her feet.

"Oh, by the way," Susan called over her shoulder as she opened the

office door, "I'm changing my name. I'm not gonna be called Susan

anymore. From now on, my name is Holly."

And she ducked through the door before Pancho could say a word

more.

"Holly," Pancho muttered to the closed door. Where in the ever-

lovin' blue-eyed world did she get that from? she wondered. Why's she

want to change her name?

Shaking her head, Pancho told the phone to connect with her

security chief. When his handsome, square-jawed face took shape in

the air above her desk, she said:

"Wendell, I need somebody to ride that goddamned habitat out to

Saturn and keep tabs on my sister, without her knowin' it."

"Right away," the security chief answered. He looked away for a

moment, then said, "Um, about tonight, I--"

"Never mind about tonight," Pancho snapped. "You just get somebody

onto that habitat. Somebody good! Get on it right now."

"Yes, ma'am!" said Pancho's security chief.

LUNAR ORBIT: HABITAT GODDARD

Malcolm Eberly tried to hide the panic that was still frothing like

a storm-tossed sea inside him. Along with the fifteen other

department leaders, he stood perfectly still at the main entrance to

the habitat.

The ride up from Earth had been an agony for him. From the instant

the Clippership had gone into Earth orbit and the feeling of gravity

had dwindled to zero, Eberly had fought a death struggle against the

terror of weightlessness. Strapped into his well-cushioned seat, he

had exerted every effort of his willpower to fight back the horrible

urge to vomit. I will not give in to this, he told himself through

gritted teeth. Pale and soaked with cold sweat, he resolved that he

would not make a fool of himself in front of the others.

Getting out of his seat once the Clippership had made rendezvous

with the transfer rocket was sheer torture. Eberly kept his head

rigidly unmoving, his fists clenched, his eyes squeezed down to

slits. To the cheerful commands of the flight attendants, he followed

the bobbing gray coveralls of the woman ahead of him and made his way

along the aisle hand over hand from one seat back to the next until

he glided through the hatch into the transfer vehicle, still in zero

gravity, gagging as his insides floated up into his throat.

No one else seemed to be as ill as he. The rest of them--fifteen

other men and women, all department leaders as he was--were chatting

and laughing, even experimenting with allowing themselves to float up

off the Velcro carpeting of the passenger compartment. The sight of

it made Eberly's stomach turn inside out.

Still he held back the bile that was burning his throat. I will not

give in to this, he told himself over and over. I will prevail. A man

can accomplish anything he sets his mind to if he has the strength

and the will.

Strapped down again in a seat inside the transfer rocket, he stared

rigidly ahead as the ship lit off its engines to start its flight to

lunar orbit. The thrust was gentle, but at least it provided some

feeling of weight. Only for a few seconds, though. The rocket engines

cut off and he felt again as if he were falling, endlessly falling.

Everyone else was chattering away, several of them boasting about how

many times they had been in space.

Of course! Eberly realized. They've all done this before. They've

experienced this wretchedness before and now it doesn't bother them.

They're all from wealthy families, rich, spoiled children who've

never had a care in their lives. I'm the only one here who's never

been off the Earth before, the only one who's had to fight and claw

for a living, the only one who's known hunger and sickness and fear.

I've got to make good here. I've got to! Otherwise they'll send me

back. I'll die in a filthy prison cell.

Through sheer mental exertion Eberly endured the hours of

weightlessness. When the woman in the seat next to him tried to

engage him in conversation he replied tersely to her inane remarks,

desperately fighting to keep her from seeing how sick he was. He

forced a smile, hoping that she would not notice the cold sweat

beading his upper lip. He could feel it soaking the cheap, thin shirt

he wore. After a while she stopped her chattering and turned her

attention to the display screen built into the seat backs.

Eberly concentrated on the images, too. The screen showed the

habitat, an ungainly cylinder hanging in the emptiness of space like

a length of sewer pipe left behind by a vanished construction crew.

As they approached it, though, the habitat grew bigger and bigger.

Eberly could see that it was rotating slowly; he knew that the spin

created a feeling of gravity inside the cylinder. Numbers ran through

his mind: The habitat was twenty kilometers in length, four

kilometers across. It rotated every forty-five seconds, which

produced a centrifugal force equivalent to normal Earth gravity.

In his growing excitement he almost forgot the unease of his

stomach. Now he could see the long windows running the length of the

gigantic cylinder. And the Moon came into view, shining brightly. But

seen this close, the Moon was ugly, scarred and pitted with countless

craters. One of the biggest of them, Eberly knew, housed the city-

state of Selene.

Swiftly the habitat grew to blot out everything else. For a moment

Eberly feared they would crash into it, even though his rational mind

told him that the ship's pilots had their flight under precise

control. He could see the solar mirrors hugging the cylinder's

curving sides. And bulbs and knobs dotting the habitat's skin, like

bumps on a cucumber. Some of them were observation blisters, he knew.

Others were docking ports, thruster pods, airlocks.

"This is your captain speaking," said a woman's voice from the

speakers set above each display screen. "We have gone into a

rendezvous orbit around the habitat. In three minutes we will be

docking. You'll feel a bump or two: nothing to be alarmed about."

The thump jarred all the passengers. Eberly gripped his seat arms

tightly and waited for more. But nothing else happened. Except--

His innards had settled down! He no longer felt sick. Gravity had

returned and he felt normal again. No, better than normal. He turned

to the woman sitting beside him and studied her face briefly. It was

a round, almost chubby face with large dark almond eyes and curly

black hair. Her skin was smooth, young, but swarthy. Eberly judged

she was of Mediterranean descent, Greek or Spanish or perhaps

Italian. He smiled broadly at her.

"Here we've been sitting next to each other for more than six hours

and I haven't even told you my name. I'm Malcolm Eberly."

She smiled back. "Yes, I can see." Tapping the name badge pinned to

her blouse, she said, "I'm Andrea Maronella. I'm with the agrotech

team."

A farmer, Eberly thought. A stupid, grubbing farmer. But he smiled

still wider and replied, "I'm in charge of the human resources

department."

"How nice."

Before he could say more, the flight attendant asked them all to

get up and head for the hatch. Eberly unstrapped and got to his feet,

happy to feel solid weight again, eager to get his first glimpse of

the habitat. The inner terror he had fought against dwindled almost

to nothing. I won! he exulted to himself. I faced the terror and I

beat it.

He politely allowed Maronella to slide out into the aisle ahead of

him and then followed her to the hatch. The sixteen men and women

filed through the hatch, into an austere metal-walled chamber. An

older man stood by the inner hatch, tall and heavyset; his thick head

of hair was iron gray and he had a bushy gray moustache. His face

looked rugged, weather-beaten, the corners of his eyes creased by

long years of squinting in the open sun. He wore a comfortable suede

pullover and rumpled tan jeans. Two younger men stood slightly behind

him, clad in coveralls; obviously underlings of some sort.

"Welcome to habitat Goddard," he said, with a warm smile. "I'm

Professor James Wilmot. Most of you have already met me, and for

those of you who haven't, I look forward to meeting you and

discussing our future. But for now, let's take a look at the world

we'll be inhabiting for at least the next five years."

With that, one of the young men behind him tapped the keyboard on

the wall beside the hatch, and the massive steel door swung slowly

inward. Eberly felt a puff of warm air touch his face, like the light

touch of his mother's faintly remembered caress.

The group of sixteen department leaders started through the hatch.

This is it, Eberly thought, feeling a new dread rising inside his

guts. There's no turning back now. This is the new world they want me

to live in. This huge cylinder, this machine. I'm being exiled. All

the way out to Saturn, that's where they're sending me. As far away

as they can. I'll never see Earth again.

He was almost the last one in line; he heard the others oohing and

aahing by the time he got to the open hatch and stepped through. Then

he saw why.

Stretching out in all directions around him was a green landscape,

shining in warm sunlight. Gently rolling grassy hills, clumps of

trees, little meandering streams spread out into the hazy distance.

The group was standing on an elevated knoll, with a clear view of the

habitat's broad interior. Bushes thick with vivid red hibiscus and

pale lavender oleanders lined both sides of a curving path that led

down to a group of low buildings, white and gleaming in the sunlight

that streamed in through the long windows. A Mediterranean village,

Eberly thought, set on the gentle slope of a grassy hill, overlooking

a shimmering blue lake.

This is some travel brochure vision of what a perfect Mediterranean

countryside would look like. Far in the distance he made out what

looked like farmlands, square little fields that appeared to be

recently plowed, and more clusters of whitewashed buildings. There

was no horizon. Instead, the land simply curved up and up, hills and

grass and trees and more little villages with their paved roads and

sparkling streams, up and up on both sides until he was craning his

neck looking straight overhead at still more of the carefully,

lovingly landscaped greenery.

"It's breathtaking," Maronella whispered.

"Awesome," said one of the others.

Eberly thought, A virgin world, untouched by war or famine or

hatred. Untouched by human emotions of any kind. Waiting to be

shaped, controlled. Maybe it won't be so bad here after all.

"This must have cost a bloody fortune," a young man said, in a

strong, matter-of-fact voice. "How could the consortium afford it?"

Professor Wilmot smiled and touched his moustache with a fingertip.

"We got it in a bankruptcy sale, actually. The previous owners went

broke trying to turn this into a retirement center."

"Who retires nowadays?"

"That's why they went bankrupt," Wilmot replied.

"Still... the cost..."

"The International Consortium of Universities is not without

resources," said Wilmot. "And we have many alumni who can be very

generous when properly approached."

"You mean when you twist their arms hard enough," a woman joked.

The others laughed; even Wilmot smiled good-naturedly.

"Well," the professor said. "This is it. This will be your home for

the next five years, and even longer, for many of you."

"When do the others start coming up?"

"As the personnel board approves applicants and they pass their

final physical and psychological tests they will come aboard. We have

about two-thirds of the available positions already filled, and more

people are signing up at quite a brisk pace."

The others asked more questions and Wilmot patiently answered them.

Eberly filtered their nattering out of his conscious attention. He

peered intently at the vast expanse of the habitat, savoring this

moment of discovery, his arrival into a new world. Ten thousand

people, that's all they're going to permit to join us. But this

habitat could hold a hundred thousand easily. A million, even!

He thought of the squalor of his childhood days: eight, ten, twelve

people to a room. And then the merciless discipline of the monastery

schools. And prison.

Ten thousand people, he mused. They will live in luxury here. They

will live like kings!

He smiled. No, he told himself. There will be only one king here.

One master. This will be my kingdom, and everyone in it will bend to

my will.

VIENNA: SCHÖNBRUNN PRISON

More than a full year before he had ever heard of habitat Goddard,

Malcolm Eberly was abruptly released from prison after serving less

than half his term for fraud and embezzlement.

The rambling old Schönbrunn Palace had been turned into a prison in

the aftermath of the Refugee Riots that had shattered much of Vienna

and its surroundings. When Eberly first learned that he would serve

his sentence in the Schönbrunn he had been hopeful: at least it

wasn't one of the grim state prisons where habitual criminals were

held. He quickly learned that he was wrong: a prison is a prison is a

prison, filled with thugs and perverts. Pain and humiliation were

constant dangers; fear his constant companion.

The morning had started like any other: Eberly was roused from

sleep by the blast of the dawn whistle. He swung down from his top

bunk and waited quietly while his three cell mates used the sink and

toilet. He had become accustomed to the stench of the cell and quite

early in his incarceration had learned that complaints led only to

beatings, either by the guards or by his cell mates.

There was a hierarchy among the convicts. Those connected with

organized crime were at the top of the prestige chain. Murderers,

even those poor wretches who killed in passion, were accorded more

respect than thieves or kidnappers. Mere swindlers, which was

Eberly's rap, were far down the chain, doomed to perform services for

their superiors whether they wanted to or not.

Fortunately, Eberly maneuvered himself into a cell where the top

con was a former garage mechanic from the Italian province of

Calabria who had been declared guilty of banditry, terrorism, bank

robbings, and murders. Although barely literate, the Calabrian was a

born organizer: he ran his section of the prison like a medieval

fiefdom, settling disputes and enforcing a rough kind of justice so

thoroughly that the guards allowed him to keep the peace among the

prisoners in his own rough manner. When Eberly discovered that he

needed a man who could operate a computer to keep him in touch with

his family in their mountaintop village and the remnants of his band,

still hiding in the hills, Eberly became his secretary. After that,

no one was allowed to molest him.

It was the mind-numbing routine of each long, dull day that made

Eberly sick to his soul. Once he came under the Calabrian's

protection, he got along well enough physically, but the drab

sameness of the cell, the food, the stink, the stupid talk of the

other convicts day after day, week after week, threatened to drive

him mad. He tried to keep his mind engaged by daily visits to the

prison library, where he could use the tightly-monitored computer to

make at least a virtual connection to the world outside. Most of the

entertainment sites were censored or cut off altogether, but the

prison authorities allowed--even encouraged--using the educational

sites. Desperately, Eberly enrolled in one course after another,

usually finishing them far sooner than expected and rushing into the

next.

At first he took whatever courses came to hand: Renaissance

painting, transactional psychology, municipal water recycling

systematics, the poetry of Goethe. It didn't matter what the subject

matter was; he needed to keep his mind occupied, needed to be out of

this prison for a few hours each day, even if it was merely through

the computer.

Gradually, though, he found himself drawn to studies of history and

politics. In time, he applied for a degree program at the Virtual

University of Edinburgh.

It was a great surprise when, one ordinary morning, the guard

captain pulled him out of line as he and his cell mates shuffled to

the cafeteria for their lukewarm breakfasts.

The captain, stubble-jawed and humorless, tapped Eberly on the

shoulder with his wand and said, "Follow me."

Eberly was so astonished that he blurted, "Why me? What's wrong?"

The captain held his wand under Eberly's nose and fingered the

voltage control. "No talking in line! Now follow me."

The other convicts marched by in silence, their heads facing

straight ahead but their eyes shifting toward Eberly and the captain

before looking away again. Eberly remembered what the wand felt like

at full charge and let his chin sink to his chest as he dutifully

followed the captain away from the cafeteria.

The captain led him to a small, stuffy room up in the executive

area where the warden and other prison administrators had their

offices. The room had one window, tightly closed and so grimy that

the morning sunlight hardly brightened it. An oblong table nearly

filled the room, its veneer chipped and dull. Two men in expensive-

looking business suits were seated at it, their chairs almost

scraping the bare gray walls.

"Sit," said the captain, pointing with his wand to the chair at the

foot of the table. Wondering what this was all about, and whether he

would miss his breakfast, Eberly slowly sat down. The captain stepped

out into the hallway and softly closed the door.

"You are Malcolm Eberly?" said the man at the head of the table. He

was rotund, fleshy-faced, his cheeks pink and his eyes set deep in

his face. Eberly thought of a pig.

"Yes, I am," Eberly replied. Then he added, "Sir."

"Born Max Erlenmeyer, if our information is correct," said the man

at the pig's right. He was prosperous-looking in an elegant dark blue

suit and smooth, silver-gray hair. He had the look of a yachtsman to

him: Eberly could picture him in a double-breasted blazer and a

jaunty nautical cap.

"I had my name legally changed when--"

"That's a lie," said the yachtsman, as lightly as he might ask for

a glass of water. An Englishman, from his accent, Eberly decided

tentatively. That could be useful, perhaps.

"But, sir--"

"It doesn't matter," said the pig. "If you wish to be called

Eberly, that is what we will call you. Fair enough?"

Eberly nodded, completely baffled by them.

"How would you like to be released from prison?" the pig asked.

Eberly could feel his eyes go wide. But he quickly controlled his

reactions and asked, "What would I have to do to be released?"

"Nothing much," said the yachtsman. "Merely fly out to the planet

Saturn."

Gradually they revealed themselves. The fat one was from the

Atlanta headquarters of the New Morality, the multinational

fundamentalist organization that had raised Eberly to manhood back in

America.

"We were very disappointed when you ran away from our monastery in

Nebraska and took up a life of crime," he said, genuine sadness on

his puffy face.

"Not a life of crime," Eberly protested. "I made one mistake only,

and now I'm suffering the consequences."

The yachtsman smiled knowingly. "Your mistake was getting caught.

We are here to offer you another chance."

He was a Catholic, he claimed, working with the European Holy

Disciples on various social programs. "Of which, you are one."

"Me?" Eberly asked, still puzzled. "I don't understand."

"It's really very simple," said the pig, clasping his fat hands

prayerfully on the tabletop. "The International Consortium of

Universities is organizing an expedition to the planet Saturn."

"Ten thousand people in a self-contained habitat," added the

yachtsman.

"Ten thousand so-called intellectuals," the pig said, clear

distaste in his expression. "Serving a cadre of scientists who wish

to study the planet Saturn."

The yachtsman glanced sharply at his associate, then went on, "Many

governments are allowing certain individuals to leave Earth. Glad to

be rid of them, actually."

"The scientists are fairly prestigious men and women. They actually

want to go to Saturn."

"And they are all secularists, of course," the yachtsman added.

"Of course," said Eberly.

"We know that many people want to escape from the lives they are

leading," the pig resumed. "They are unwilling to submit to the very

necessary discipline that we of the New Morality impose."

"The same thing applies in Britain and Europe," said the yachtsman.

"The Holy Disciples cleaned up the cities, brought morality and order

to the people, helped feed the starving and find jobs for the people

who were wiped out by the greenhouse floods."

The pig was nodding.

"But still, there are plenty of people who claim we're stifling

their individual freedoms. Their individual freedoms! It was all that

liberty and license that led to the near-collapse of civilization."

"But the floods," Eberly interjected. "The greenhouse warming and

the droughts and all the other the environmental disasters."

"Visitations by an angry God," said the pig firmly. "Warnings that

we must return to His ways."

"Which we have done, by and large," the yachtsman took up. "Even in

the bloody Middle East the Sword of Islam has worked miracles."

"But now, with this mission to Saturn--"

"Run by godless secularists."

"There will be ten thousand people trying to escape from the

righteous path."

"We cannot allow that to happen."

"For their own good."

"Of course."

"Of course," Eberly agreed meekly. Then he added, "But I don't see

what this has to do with me."

"We want you to join them."

"And go all the way out to the planet Saturn?" Eberly squeaked.

"Exactly," the yachtsman replied.

"You will be our representative aboard their habitat. We can place

you in charge of their human resources department."

"So that you'll have some hand in selecting who's allowed to go."

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SecondinsizeonlytoJupiter,biggerthanathousandEarthsbutlightenoughtofloatinwater,homeofcushinggravityanddelicate,seeminglyimpossiblerings,itdazzlesandattractsus:SaturnEarthgroansundertheruleoffundamentalistpoliticalregimes.Crisisaftercrisishasgivenauthoritarianstheupperhand.Freedomandopportunityexist...

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Ben Bova - Saturn

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