Ben Bova - Venus

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VENUS

BEN BOVA

Heaven says nothing, and the whole earth grows rich beneath its silent rule.

Men, too, are touched by heaven's virtue; yet, in their greater part, they are

creatures of deceit. They are born, it seems, with an emptiness of soul, and

must take their qualities wholly from things without. To be born thus empty

into this modern age, this mixture of good and ill, and yet to steer through

life on an honest course to the splendors of success-this is a feat reserved

for paragons of our kind, a task beyond the nature of the normal man.

- Ihara Saikaku

HELL CRATER

I was late and I knew it. The trouble is, you can't run on the moon.

The shuttle from the Nueva Venezuela space station had been delayed, some

minor problem with the baggage being transferred from Earthside, so now I was

hurrying along the underground corridor from the landing pad, all alone. The

party had started more than an hour ago.

They had warned me not to try to run, even with the weighted boots that I had

rented at the landing port. But like a fool I tried to anyway and sort of hip-

hopped crazily and bumped into the corridor wall, scraping my nose rather

painfully. After that I shuffled along in the manner that the tourist-guide

video had shown. It felt stupid, but bouncing off the walls was worse.

Not that I really wanted to go to my father's inane party or be on the Moon at

all. None of this was my idea.

Two big human-form robots guarded the door at the end of the corridor. And I

mean big, two meters tall and almost as wide across the torso. The gleaming

metal door was sealed shut, of course. You couldn't crash my father's party;

he'd never stand for that.

"Your name, please," said the robot on my left. Its voice was deep and rough,

my father's idea of what a bouncer should sound like, I suppose.

"Van Humphries," I said, as slowly and clearly as I could enunciate.

The robot hesitated only a fraction of a second before saying, "Voice print

identification is verified. You may enter, Mr. Van Humphries."

Both robots pivoted around and the door slid open. The noise hit me like a

power hammer: thumping atonal music blasting away against wildly overamped

screeching from some androgynous singer wailing the latest pop hit.

The chamber was huge, immense, and jammed wall-to-wall with partygoers,

hundreds of men and women, a thousand or more, I guessed, drinking, shouting,

smoking, their faces contorted with grimaces of forced raucous laughter. The

noise was like a solid wall pounding against me; 1 had to physically force

myself to step past the robots and into the mammoth chamber.

Everyone was in party attire: brazenly bright colors with plenty of spangles

and glitter and electronic blinkers. And lots of bare flesh showing, of

course. I felt like a missionary in my chocolate-brown velour pullover and tan

micromesh slacks.

A long electronic window swept the length of the cavern's side wall,

alternately proclaiming "HAPPY ONE HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY!" and showing clips from

pornographic videos.

I might have known Father would pick a bordello as the site for his party.

Hell Crater, named after the Jesuit astronomer Maximilian J. Hell. The gaming

and porn industries had turned the area into the Moon's sin capital, a

complete cornucopia of illicit pleasures dug below the dusty floor of the

crater, some six hundred klicks south of Selene City. Poor old bather Hell

must be spinning in his crypt.

"Hi there, stranger!" said a brassy, buxom redhead in an emerald-green costume

so skimpy it must have been spray-painted onto her. She waggled a vial of some

grayish-looking powder in my general direction, exhorting, "Join the fun!"

Fun. The place looked like Dante's Inferno. There was nowhere to sit except

for a few couches along the walls, and they were already filled with writhing

tangles of naked bodies. Everyone else was on their feet, packed in shoulder

to shoulder, dancing or swaying and surging like the waves of sonic multihued,

gabbling, aimless human sea.

High up near the smoothed rock ceiling a pair of acrobats in sequined

harlequin costumes were walking a tightrope strung across the chamber. A set

of spotlights made their costumes glitter. On Earth, performing that high up

would have been dangerous; here on the Moon they could still break their necks

if they fell-or more likely break the necks of the people they fell upon. The

place was so tightly packed it would've been impossible for them to hit the

floor.

"C'mon," the redhead urged again, pawing at the sleeve of my pullover. She

giggled and said, "Don't be so twangy!"

"Where is Martin Humphries?" I had to shout to be heard over the din of the

party.

She blinked her emerald-tinted eyes. "Hump? The birthday boy?" Turning

uncertainly toward the crowd and waving her hand vaguely, she yelled back,

"The old bumper's around here someplace. It's his party, y'know."

"The old bumper is my father," I told her, enjoying the sudden look of

astonishment on her face as I brushed past her.

It was a real struggle to work my way through the crowd. Strangers, all of

them. I didn't know anyone there, I was certain of that. None of my friends

would be caught dead at a scene like this. As I pushed and elbowed my way

through the jam-packed chamber, I wondered if my father knew any of these

people. He probably rented them for the occasion. The redhead certainly looked

the type.

He knows I can't take crowds, and yet he forced me to come here. Typical of my

loving father. I tried to shut out the noise, the reek of perfume and tobacco

and drugs, and the slimy sweat of too many bodies pressed too close together.

It was making me weak in the knees, twisting my stomach into knots.

I can't deal with this kind of thing. It's too much. I felt as if I would

collapse if there weren't so many bodies crowded around me. I was starting to

get dizzy, my vision blurring.

I had to stop in the midst of the mob and squeeze my eyes shut. It was a

struggle to breathe. I had taken my regular enzyme shot just before the

transfer rocket had landed, yet I felt as if I needed another one, and

quickly.

I opened my eyes and surveyed the jostling, noisy, sweaty throng again,

searching for the nearest exit. And then I saw him. Through the tangle of

weaving, gesticulating partygoers I spotted my father, sitting up on a dais at

the far end of the cavern like some ancient Roman emperor surveying an orgy.

He was even clad in a flowing robe of crimson, with two beautifully supple

young women at his sandaled feet.

My father. One hundred years old this day. Martin Humphries didn't look any

more than forty; his hair was still dark, his face firm and almost unlined.

But his eyes-his eyes were hard, knowing; they glittered with corrupt pleasure

at the scene being played out before him. He had used every rejuvenation

therapy he could get his hands on, even illegal ones such as nanomachines. He

wanted to stay young and vigorous forever. I thought he probably would. He

always got what he wanted. But one look into his eyes and it was easy to

believe that he was a hundred years old.

He saw me shouldering through the strident, surging crowd and for a moment

those cold gray eyes of his locked onto mine. Then he turned away from me with

an impatient frown clouding his handsome, artificially youthful face.

You insisted that I come to this carnival, I said to him silently. So, like it

or not, here I am.

He paid no attention to me as I toiled to reach him. I was gasping now, my

lungs burning. I needed a shot of my medication but I had left it back at my

hotel suite. When at last I reached the foot of his dais I slumped against the

softly pliable fabric draped over the platform, struggling to catch my breath.

Then I realized that the strident din of the party had dropped to a buzzing,

muted whisper.

"Sound dampers," my father said, glancing down at me with his old disdainful

smirk. "Don't look so stupid."

There were no steps up the platform and I felt too weak and giddy to try to

haul myself up beside him.

I It- made a shooing motion and the two young women jumped nimbly from the

platform, eagerly joining the crowd. I realized that they Were just teenagers.

"Want one?" my father asked, with a leering grin. "You can have 'em both, all

you have to do is ask."

I didn't bother to shake my head. I just clung to the side of his platform,

trying to bring my breathing under control.

"For Christ's sake, Runt, stop that damned panting! You look like a beached

flounder."

I pulled in a deep breath, then stood as straight as I could manage. "And it's

lovely to see you, too, Father."

"Aren't you enjoying my party?"

"You know better."

"Then what'd you come for, Runt?"

'Tour lawyer said you'd cut off my stipend if I didn't attend your party."

"Your allowance," he sneered.

"I earn that money."

"By playing at being a scientist. Now your brother, there was a real

scientist."

Yes, but Alex is dead. It had happened almost two years ago, but the memory of

that day still scalded me inside.

All my life my father had mocked and belittled me. Alex was his favorite, his

firstborn, Father's pride and joy. Alex was being groomed to like over

Humphries Space Systems, if and when Father ever decided to retire. Alex was

everything that I'm not: tall, athletic, quick and handsome, brilliantly

intelligent, outgoing, charming and witty. I'm on the small side, I've been

sickly from birth, I'm told that I tend to be withdrawn, introspective. My

mother died giving birth to me and my father never let me forget that.

I had loved Alex. I truly had. I had admired him tremendously. Ever since I

could remember, Alex had protected me against Father's sneers in id cutting

words. "It's all right, little brother, don't cry," he would tell inc. "I

won't let him hurt you."

Over the years I learned from Alex a love for exploration, for seeing new

vistas, new worlds. But while Alex actually went out on missions to Mars and

the Jovian moons, I had to stay cocooned at home, too frail to venture

outward. I flew an armchair, not a spacecraft. My excitement came from streams

of computer data and virtual reality simulations. Once I walked with Alex on

the red sands of Mars, linked by an interactive VR system. It was the best

afternoon of my life.

Then Alex was killed on his expedition to Venus, he and all his crew. And

Father hated me for being alive.

I left his house for good and bought a home on Majorca, a place all my own,

far from his dismissive sarcasm. As if to mock me, Father moved to Selene

City. Later I found out that he'd gone to the Moon so he could take

nanotherapies to keep himself young and fit. Nanomachines were outlawed on

Earth, of course.

It was clear that Father went for rejuvenation treatments because he had no

intention of retiring now. With Alex dead, Father would never leave Humphries

Space Systems to me. He would stay in command and keep me exiled.

So Father lived some four hundred thousand kilometers away, playing his chosen

role of interplanetary tycoon, mega billionaire, hell-raising, womanizing,

ruthless, corrupt giant of industry. I was perfectly content with that. I

lived quietly on Majorca, comfortable with a household staff that took

excellent care of me. Some of my servants were human; most were robots.

Friends came to visit often enough. I could flit over to Paris or New York or

wherever for theater or a concert. I spent my days studying the new data about

the stars and planets that were constantly streaming back from our space

explorers.

Until one of my friends repeated a rumor she had heard: My brother's

spacecraft had been sabotaged. His death was not an accident; it was murder.

The very next day, my father summoned me to his moronic birthday party on the

Moon, under the threat of cutting off my stipend if I didn't show up.

Looking up at his youthfully taut face again, I asked my father, "Why did you

insist that I come here?"

He smiled down sardonically at me. "Aren't you enjoying the party?"

"Are you?" I countered.

Father made a sound that might have been a suppressed laugh.

Then he said, "I have an announcement to make. I wanted you to be on hand to

hear it directly from my lips."

I felt puzzled. An announcement? Was he going to retire, after all? What of

it; he would never allow me to run the corporation. Nor did I want to,

actually.

He touched a stud set into the left armrest of his chair and the stupefying

noise of the party blasted against my ears hard enough to crack my skull. Then

he touched the other armrest. The music stopped in mid-beat. The tightrope-

walking acrobats winked out like a light snapped off. A holographic image, I

realized.

The crowd fell silent and still. They all turned toward the dais, like a

sullen horde of party-dressed schoolchildren forced to listen to their

principal.

"I'm delighted that you could come to my party," Father began, his low,

modulated voice amplified and echoing across the crowded chamber. "Are we

having fun yet?"

On that cue they all cheered, clapped, whistled, and yelled lustily.

Father raised both hands and they all fell silent again.

"I have an announcement to make, something that you hardworking

representatives of the news media out there will find particularly worthwhile,

I think."

Half a dozen camera-carrying balloons were already hovering a few meters from

the dais, like glittering Christmas ornaments floating buoyantly. Now several

more drifted out of the farther reaches of the chamber to focus on my father.

"As you know," he went on, "my beloved son Alexander was killed three years

ago while attempting to explore the planet Venus."

A collective sigh swept through the throng.

"Somewhere on the surface of that hellhole of a world his spacecraft lies,

with his remains inside it. In that terrible heat and pressure, the corrosive

atmosphere must be slowly destroying the last mortal remains of my boy."

Somewhere a woman broke into soft sobbing.

"I want to offer an inducement to someone who is bold enough, tough enough, to

go to Venus and reach its surface and bring back what's left of my son to me."

They all seemed to stand up straighter, their eyes widened. An inducement?

My father hesitated for a dramatic moment, then said in a much stronger voice,

"I offer a prize often billion international dollars to whoever can reach my

dead son's body and return his remains to me."

They gasped. For several seconds no one spoke. Then the chamber filled with

excited chatter. Ten billion dollars! Reach the surface of Venus! A prize of

ten billion dollars to recover Alex Humphries's body!

I felt just as stunned as any of the others. More, perhaps, because I knew

better than most of those costumed freeloaders what an impossible challenge my

father had just offered.

Father touched the stud on his chair arm and the babble of the crowd

immediately was cut down to a muted buzz again.

"Very nice," I said to him. "You'll be named Father of the Year."

He gazed disdainfully down at me. "You don't think I mean it?"

"I think you know that no one in his right mind is going to try to reach the

surface of Venus. Alex himself only planned to coast through the cloud decks."

"So you think I'm a fraud."

"I think you're making a public relations gesture, nothing more."

He shrugged as if it didn't matter.

I was seething. He was sitting up there and getting all this publicity. "You

want to look like a grieving father," I shouted at him, "making the whole

world think you care about Alex, offering a prize that you know no one will

claim."

"Oh, someone will try for it, I'm certain." He smiled coldly down at inc. "I

en billion dollars is a lot of incentive."

"I'm not so sure," I said.

"But I am. In fact, I'm going to deposit the whole sum in an escrow account

where no one can touch it except the eventual prize winner."

"The entire ten billion?"

"The whole sum," he repeated. Then, leaning slightly toward me, he added, "To

raise that much cash I'm going to have to cut a few corners here and there."

"Really? How much have you spent on this party?"

He waved a hand as if that didn't matter. "One of the corners I'm cutting is

your allowance."

"My stipend?"

"It's finished, Runt. You'll be twenty-five years old next month. Your

allowance ends on your birthday."

Just like that, I was penniless.

DATA BANK

She glows so bright and lovely in the night sky that virtually every culture

on Earth has called her after their goddess of beauty and love: Aphrodite,

Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte, Venus. Sometimes she is the dazzling Evening Star,

brighter than anything in the sky except the Sun and Moon. Sometimes she is

the beckoning Morning Star, harbinger of the new day. Always she shines like a

precious jewel.

As beautiful as Venus appears in our skies, the planet itself is the most

hellish place in the solar system. The ground is hot enough to melt aluminum.

The air pressure is so high it has crushed spacecraft landers as if they were

flimsy cardboard cartons. The sky is perpetually covered from pole to pole

with clouds of sulfuric acid. The atmosphere is a choking mixture of carbon

dioxide and sulfurous gases.

Venus is the nearest planet to Earth, closer to us than Mars. At its nearest

approach, it is slightly less than sixty-five million kilometers from Earth.

It is closer to the Sun than Earth is; Venus is the second planet outward from

the Sun, while Earth is the third. Venus has no moon.

It is almost the same size as Earth, slightly smaller, so that the gravity at

its surface is about 85 percent of Earth-normal.

There the similarities end. Venus is hot, with surface temperatures well above

450 degrees Celsius (nearly 900 degrees Fahrenheit). It rotates so slowly that

its "day" is longer than its "year:" the planet makes an orbit around the Sun

in 225 Earth days-a Venusian year, yet it rotates around its axis in 243 Earth

days-a Venusian day. And it rotates backward, clockwise as viewed from its

north pole, while Earth and the other planets rotate counterclockwise.

Venus's atmosphere is so thick that atmospheric pressure at ground level is

equal to the pressure of an earthly ocean more than a kilometer below the

surface. That atmosphere is more than 95 percent carbon dioxide, with less

than 4 percent nitrogen and only negligible traces of free oxygen.

The thick layers of clouds that perpetually cover Venus from pole to pole

reflect some 75 percent of the sunlight that hits the planet and make it very

bright and beautiful to look at. The clouds, though, are made of sulfuric acid

and other sulfur and chlorine compounds; there is practically no water vapor

in them.

There are mountains and volcanoes on Venus, and evidence of plate tectonics

that have shifted vast sections of the crust. There must be Venus-quakes, as

well.

Imagine trying to walk on the surface of Venus! The very ground is red-hot.

The atmosphere is so thick that it warps light like a fisheye lens. I 'he sky

is perpetually clouded. Yet there is no real darkness: even during the long

Venusian night there is an eerie, sullen glow from the red-hot ground.

Because Venus is moving in its orbit around the Sun while it slowly rotates on

its own axis, if you stood on one spot on the surface it would take 117 Earth

days from one sunrise to the next-if you could see the sunrise through those

thick, all-pervading clouds. And the Sun would rise in the west, set in the

east.

Looking up into the grayish-yellow clouds you might see patches of darker

areas hurtling across the sky, forming and dissolving against the murky

background nearly fifty kilometers overhead, scudding from horizon to horizon

in about five hours. Now and then you might see a stroke of lightning flashing

down, or hear the threatening rumble of a distant volcano.

No place in the inner solar system is so challenging, so dangerous. By

comparison, the Moon is easy and Mars a picnic.

Could life exist on Venus, either high in the clouds (where temperatures are

cooler) or deep underground? There is something in Venus's atmosphere that

absorbs ultraviolet light; planetary scientists are not certain what it might

be. Could there be bacterial forms that live underground, as there are on

Earth and presumably on Mars and Jupiter's moon Kuropa?

If there are any creatures living on the surface, they must be capable of

withstanding heat that melts aluminum and pressures that can crush spacecraft.

Formidable monsters indeed.

SELENE CITY

It should've been you, Runt!" he howled. "It should've been you who died, not

Alex."

I awoke with a start, springing up to a sitting position in the dark-cued

hotel room, both my fists gripping the bedsheets tightly enough lo rip them. I

was soaked with cold sweat and trembling from head to foot.

The dream had been too real. Too totally real. I squeezed my eyes shut,

sitting there on the bed, and my father's enraged face burned before me like

the wrath of some ancient god.

The party at Hell Crater. His announcement of the Venus prize. His notice that

he was cutting me off without an income. It had all been too much for me. By

the time I made it back to my hotel in Selene City I was near collapse, the

carpeted hotel corridors swimming dizzyingly, my legs weak as tissue paper

even in the low lunar gravity. I got to my room, went straight to the

lavatory, and fumbled with my hypospray syringe. At last I injected a full

dose of the enzyme medication into my arm, then tottered off to bed and fell

almost instantly asleep.

Only to dream. No, it wasn't actually a dream; it was a reliving of that

terrible day when we learned that Alex had been killed. A nightmare I relived

every agonizing moment of it. When we got the news that there was no possible

hope left, Father had blanked his phone screen and turned to me, his face

distorted with fury.

"He's dead," my father had said, his voice cold and hollow, his gray eyes like

ice. "Alex is dead and you're alive. First you killed your mother and now

you're still alive while Alex is dead."

I just stood there while he glared at me, grim and bitterly angry. At me. At

me.

"It should've been you, Runt," he snarled, his fury mounting, his face going

from white to red. "You're worthless! Nobody would miss you. But no, you're

here, you're alive and breathing while Alex is dead. It should've been you,

Runt!" he howled. "It should've been you who died, not Alex."

That was when I moved out of the family home in Connecticut and bought my

place on Majorca, as far from Father as I could get. Or so I thought. But he

went me one better, of course, and moved to Selene City.

Now I sat in a hotel bed, shaking and cold with midnight sweat, alone, totally

alone.

I got up and padded barefoot to the lavatory; tottered, actually, that's how

weak and wretched I felt. The light went on automatically and I fumbled with

my hypospray syringe until I finally got a plastic cylinder preloaded with the

proper dosage of enzyme clicked into place and pressed it against my bare arm.

The faint hiss of the medication squeezing through the microneedles and into

my bloodstream always reassured me. But not that night. Nothing could calm me,

I thought.

I was born with a rare form of pernicious anemia, a birth defect caused by my

mother's drug addiction. It could be fatal if not controlled by injections of

a cocktail of enzymes that included vitamin B12 and a growth hormone that

prompted my body to create new red blood cells. Without that medication I

would weaken and eventually die. With it I could lead a perfectly normal life-

except for the need to take the injections at least twice a day.

If anyone ever tells you that nanomachines could cure any medical condition,

if only they weren't outlawed on Earth, don't believe him. The best labs at

Selene City-the capital of nanotechnology research-haven't been able to

program a nanobug that can build millions of red f >I cells every few hours.

I wont back to the bed with its tangled sweaty sheets and waited for the

medication to take effect. With nothing better to do, I called out for the

video news. The wall screen immediately glowed to life and showed a scene of

terrible devastation: another raging hurricane had swung all hr way across the

Atlantic and was pounding the British Isles. Even the Thames Barrage -the

high-tech dam across the river-had been over-run and large sections of London

were underwater, including Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.

I leaned back against my pillows and watched, hollow-eyed, as thousands of

Londoners poured into the streets in the lashing cold rain to escape the

rising floodwaters. "The worst cataclysm to hit London since the Blitz of

World War II, more than a century ago," the news announcer intoned in a crack-

of-doom voice.

"Next channel!" I called. Death and destruction were not what I wanted to see.

But most of the channels were showing London's agony, live and in full color.

I could have watched it all in three dimensions if I'd called up the hologram

channel. There were flotillas of boats chugging down the Strand and Fleet

Street, rescuing men, women, children-even pets. Workers were struggling to

protect Buckingham Palace mini the encroaching waters.

Finally I found a channel that was not showing the flood. It was a panel

discussion by self-proclaimed experts on the global warming that was causing

such storms and flooding. One of them wore the green armband of the

International Green Party, another I recognized as a friend of my father's -a

sharp-tongued corporate lawyer who clearly loathed the Greens. The rest were

scientists of various stripe, no two of them agreeing anything.

I watched, glassy-eyed, hoping their quiet, mannered deliberation would lull

me to sleep. As they spoke, the screen displayed animated maps that showed how

the icecaps in Greenland and Antarctica were melting and how much sea levels

were expected to rise. Half the American Midwest was in danger of being turned

into a huge inland sea. The Gulf Stream was going to break up, they said,

freezing Britain and Europe into an extension of Siberia.

Just the perfect lullaby to soothe me to sleep. I was about to turn the wall

screen off altogether when the yellow message light began blinking. Who would

be calling me at this time of night? I wondered.

"Answer," I called out.

The entire wall screen turned a milky grayish white. For a moment I thought

there had been some malfunction of the video.

Then a synthesized computer voice spoke to me: "Mr. Humphries, please excuse

my not showing my face. It would be too dangerous for you to see me."

"Dangerous?" I asked. "For whom?"

The voice ignored my question, and I realized this was a prerecorded message.

"We know you have heard the rumor that your brother's ship was sabotaged. We

believe your father was responsible for his death. Your brother was murdered,

sir, and your father is his murderer."

The screen went dead. I sat there in the darkened hotel bedroom, stunned,

shocked, gaping wide-eyed at the faintly glowing wall screen. My father had

Alex murdered? My father was responsible for his death? It was a terrible,

awful accusation, made by someone too cowardly even to show his or her face.

And I believed it. That's what staggered me the most. I believed it

I believed it because I remembered the night before Alex left for his ill-

fated expedition to Venus. The night he revealed to me why he was really

going.

Alex had told everyone that he was going to Venus to study the planet's

runaway greenhouse. Which was true enough. But he had a hidden agenda as well.

He told me about it that night before he left. There was a political motive

behind his scientific mission. I remember Alex sitting in the cozy, quiet

library of the Connecticut house, where we lived with Father, and whispering

his plans to me.

Earth was just starting to feel the effects of greenhouse warming, Alex told

me. Glaciers and polar caps melting. Sea levels rising. Global climate

changing.

The International Green Party claimed that drastic steps must be taken before

the whole American Midwest is turned back into the inland sea it once was and

the permafrost in Canada melts, releasing megatons of frozen methane into the

atmosphere and driving the greenhouse effect even further.

"You're one of them?" I whispered in the dark to him. "A Green?"

He chuckled in the shadows. "You'd be too, Little Brother, if you paid any

attention to the real world."

I remember shaking my head and muttering, "Father would kill you if he knew."

"He knows," Alex said.

He wanted to use his mission to Venus to show the world firsthand what a

runaway greenhouse can do to a planet: turn it into a dead ball of rock

mantled in poisonous gases, without a drop of water or a blade of grass. It

would be a powerful icon, a picture branded into the consciousness of the

world's voters: This is what Earth will become unless we stop the greenhouse

warming.

Powerful political forces opposed the Greens. Men such as my father had no

intention of letting the IGP gain control of the international organizations

that regulated environmental protection measures. The Greens wanted to triple

taxes on multinational corporations, ban all fossil-fuel burning, force the

evacuation of major cities, redistribute the world's wealth among the needy.

Alex's expedition to Venus, then, was actually a mission to help the Greens,

to give them a powerful image to use against the entrenched political power of

the Establishment, against our own father.

"Father would kill you if he knew," I had said.

And Alex had replied grimly, "He knows."

My fear of Father's reaction was merely a metaphor, kids' talk. Now I wondered

if Alex had understood it that way.

I could no more sleep than I could lift Gibraltar. I prowled through my suite

in the long shuffling strides that the Moon's low gravity demands, by turns

angry, frightened, desperate.

Like all the lunar communities, Selene City is underground, dug into the

ringwall mountains of the giant crater Alphonsus. So there is no dawn creeping

through your windows, no sunrise to announce when a new day begins. The lights

out in the corridors and public spaces turn up to a daytime level, bang,

that's it. In my suite the lights turned on automatically as 1 paced, the

switches activated by my body heat.

After several hours I finally realized what I would do. What I had to do. 1

ordered the phone computer to contact my father.

It took several minutes. No doubt his disgusting party was still going on in

high gear. At last, though, his face appeared on the wall screen in my sitting

room.

Father looked tired, but relaxed, smiling lazily at me. I realized he was in

bed, leaning back on glistening silk-covered pillows. He was not alone,

either. I heard muffled giggles from beneath his bedcovers.

"You're up early," he said pleasantly enough.

"So are you," I replied.

He huffed. "Don't look so disapproving, Runt. I offered these ladies to you,

remember? It would be a shame to waste such talent."

"I'm going to take your prize money," I said.

That popped his eyes open. "What?"

"I'll go to Venus. I'll find Alex's body."

'You?" He laughed.

"He was my brother!" I said. "I loved him."

"I had to twist your arm to get you come up here to the Moon, and now you

think you're going to Venus?" He seemed enormously amused by the idea.

"You don't think I could do it?"

"I know you can't do it, Runt. You won't even try, despite your brave talk."

"I'll show you!" I snapped. "I'll take your damned prize money!"

Smirking, he answered, "Of course you will. And elephants can fly."

"You're forcing me into it," I insisted. "That ten-billion prize is a powerful

incentive to a man whose income shuts off next month."

His smirk faded and he turned thoughtful. "Yes, I suppose it would be,

wouldn't it?"

"I'm going," I said firmly.

"And you assume that you'll win my prize money, eh?"

"Or die trying."

"You don't think you'll be the only one trying to grab my ten billion, do

you?"

"Who else in his right mind would even think of going?"

With a sneer, Father answered, "Oh, I know someone who'll try. He'll try

damned hard."

"Who?"

"Lars Fuchs. That bastard's out somewhere in the Belt right now, but as soon

as the word reaches him, he'll head for Venus without blinking an eye."

"Fuchs?" I had heard my father speak of Lars Fuchs often, and always with

hatred. He was an asteroid miner, from what little I knew of him. Once he had

owned his own corporation and had been a competitor of my father's, but now he

was nothing more than an independent miner scratching out a living in the

Asteroid Belt, a "rock rat," in my father's genteel phrasing.

"Fuchs. You'll have to wrestle my prize money away from him, Runt. I don't

think you're man enough to do it."

I should have realized at that precise moment that he was manipulating me, he

was forcing me to jump through his hoops. But to be perfectly honest, all I

saw was a life of destitution unless I could take that prize money.

Well, that wasn't quite all that I was thinking about. I still saw Alex's

handsome, determined face from that last night he had spent on Earth.

"Father would kill you if he knew," I had said.

"He knows," Alex had replied.

Washington, D.C.

"This is the opportunity of a lifetime," Professor Greenbaum groaned like a

creaking hinge, "and I'm too old to take advantage of it."

I had never actually seen an elderly person before, not close up, in the same

room. I mean, poor people probably aged, but with everybody who could afford

it getting telomerase treatments as soon as they reach adulthood, and

rejuvenation therapy for adults who had aged before telomerase was approved

for general use, no one grew old anymore.

But Daniel Haskel Greenbaum was old. His skin was all wrinkled and spotted. He

was stooped over and looked so frail I was afraid his bones would shatter when

I shook hands with him. Actually, his grip was rather firm, even though his

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VENUSBENBOVAHeavensaysnothing,andthewholeearthgrowsrichbeneathitssilentrule.Men,too,aretouchedbyheaven'svirtue;yet,intheirgreaterpart,theyarecreaturesofdeceit.Theyareborn,itseems,withanemptinessofsoul,andmusttaketheirqualitieswhollyfromthingswithout.Tobebornthusemptyintothismodernage,thismixtureofgo...

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Ben Bova - Venus

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