Out of the corner of his eye, Demerest saw the gaping darkness, but he did not look. A dankly salt vapor issued from it; a queer odor of dead steam. He even imagined he could hear the flopping sound of the gathered water at the bottom of the lock.
Demerest said, “In a rational manual unit, the outer door ought to be frozen shut now. With the inner door open, nothing ought to make the outer door open. I suspect, though, that the manuals were put together too quickly at first for that precaution to have been taken, and it was replaced too quickly for that precaution to have been added. And if I need further evidence of that, you wouldn’t be sitting there so tensely if you knew the outer door wouldn’t open. I need touch one more contact and the waterclap will come. We will feel nothing. “
Annette said, “Don’t push it just yet. I have one more thing to say. You said we would have time to persuade you.”
“While the water was being pushed out.”
“Just let me say this. A minute. A minute. I said you didn’t know what you were doing. You don’t. You’re destroying the space program, the space program. There’s more to space than space.” Her voice had grown shrill.
Demerest frowned. “What are you talking about? Make sense, or I’ll end it all. I’m tired. I’m frightened. I want it over.”
Annette said, “You’re not in the inner councils of the PPC. Neither is my husband. But I am. Do you think because I am a woman that I’m secondary here? I’m not. You, Mr. Demerest, have your eyes fixed on Luna City only. My husband has his fixed on Ocean-Deep. Neither of you know anything.
“Where do you expect to go, Mr. Demerest, if you had all the money you wanted? Mars? The asteroids? The satellites of the gas giants? These are all small worlds; all dry surfaces under a blank sky. It may be generations before we are ready to try for the stars and till then we’d have only pygmy real estate. Is that your ambition?
“My husband’s ambition is no better. He dreams of pushing man’s habitat over the ocean Boor, a surface not much larger in the last analysis than the surface of the Moon and the other pygmy worlds. We of the PPC, on the other hand, want more than either of you, and if you push that button, Mr. Demerest, the greatest dream mankind has ever had will come to nothing.”
Demerest found himself interested despite himself, but he said, “You’re just babbling.” It was possible, he knew, that somehow they had warned others in Ocean-Deep, that any moment someone would come to interrupt, someone would try to shoot him down. He was, however, staring at the only opening, and he had only to close one contact, without even looking, in a second’s movement.
Annette said, “I’m not babbling. You know it took more than rocket ships to colonize the Moon. To make a successful colony possible, men had to be altered genetically and adjusted to low gravity. You are a product of such genetic engineering.”
“Well?”
“And might not genetic engineering also help men to greater gravitational pull? What is the largest planet of the Solar System, Mr. Demerest?”
“Jupi—”
“Yes, Jupiter. Eleven times the diameter of the Earth; forty times the diameter of the Moon. A surface a hundred and twenty times that of the Earth in area; sixteen hundred times that of the Moon. Conditions so different from anything we can encounter anywhere on the worlds the size of Earth or less that any scientist of any persuasion would give half his life for a chance to observe at close range.”
“But Jupiter is an impossible target.”
“Indeed?” said Annette, and even managed a faint smile. “As impossible as flying? Why is it impossible? Genetic engineering could design men with stronger and denser bones, stronger and more compact muscles. The same principles that enclose Luna City against the vacuum and Ocean-Deep against the sea can also enclose the future Jupiter-Deep against its ammoniated surroundings.”
“The gravitational field—”
“Can be negotiated by nuclear-powered ships that are now on the drawing board. You don’t know that but I do.”
“We’re not even sure about the depth of the atmosphere. The pressures—”
“The pressures! The pressures! Mr. Demerest, look about you. Why do you suppose Ocean-Deep was really built? To exploit the ocean? The settlements on the continental shelf are doing that quite adequately. To gain knowledge of the deep-sea bottom? We could do that by ’scaphe easily and we could then have spared the hundred billion dollars invested in Ocean-Deep so far.
“Don’t you see, Mr. Demerest, that Ocean-Deep must mean something more than that? The purpose of Ocean-Deep is to devise the ultimate vessels and mechanisms that will suffice to explore and colonize Jupiter. Look about you and see the beginnings of a Jovian environment; the closest approach we can come to it on Earth. It is only a faint image of mighty Jupiter, but it’s a beginning.
“Destroy this, Mr. Demerest, and you destroy any hope for Jupiter. On the other hand, let us live and we will, together, penetrate and settle the brightest jewel of the Solar System. And long before we can reach the limits of Jupiter, we will be ready for the stars, for the Earth-type planets circling them, and the Jupiter-type planets, too. Luna City won’t be abandoned because both are necessary for this ultimate aim.”
For the moment, Demerest had altogether forgotten about that last button. He said, “Nobody on Luna City has heard of this.”
“You haven’t. There are those on Luna City who know. If you had told them of your plan of destruction, they would have stopped you. Naturally, we can’t make this common knowledge and only a few people anywhere can know. The public supports only with difficulty the planetary projects now in progress. If the PPC is parsimonious it is because public opinion limits its generosity. What do you suppose public opinion would say if they thought we were aiming toward Jupiter? What a super-boondoggle that would be in their eyes. But we continue and what money we can save and make use of we place in the various facets of Project Big World.”
“Project Big World?”
“Yes,” said Annette. “You know now and I have committed a serious security breach. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Since we’re all dead and since the project is, too.”
“Wait now, Mrs. Bergen.”
“If you change your mind now, don’t think you can ever talk about Project Big World. That would end the project just as effectively as destruction here would. And it would end both your career and mine. It might end Luna City and Ocean-Deep, too—so now that you know, maybe it makes no difference anyway. You might just as well push that button.”
“I said wait—” Demerest’s brow was furrowed and his eyes burned with anguish. “I don’t know—”
Bergen gathered for the sudden jump as Demerest’s tense alertness wavered into uncertain introspection, but Annette grasped her husband’s sleeve.
A timeless interval that might have been ten seconds long followed and then Demerest held out his laser. “Take it,” he said. “I’ll consider myself under arrest.”
“You can’t be arrested,” said Annette, “without the whole story coming out.” She took the laser and gave it to Bergen. “It will be enough that you return to Luna City and keep silent. Till then we will keep you under guard.”
Bergen was at the manual controls. The inner door slid shut and after that there was the thunderous waterclap of the water returning into the lock.
Husband and wife were alone again. They had not dared say a word until Demerest was safely put to sleep under the watchful eyes of two men detailed for the purpose. The unexpected waterclap had roused everybody and a sharply bowdlerized account of the incident had been given out.
The manual controls were now locked off and Bergen said, “From this point on, the manuals will have to be adjusted to fail-safe. And visitors will have to be searched.”
“Oh, John,” said Annette. “I think people are insane. There we were, facing death for us and for Ocean-Deep; just the end of everything. And I kept thinking—I must keep calm; I mustn’t have a miscarriage.”
“You kept calm all right. You were magnificent. I mean, Project Big World! I never conceived of such a thing, but by—by—Jove, it’s an attractive thought. It’s wonderful.”
“I’m sorry I had to say all that, John. It was all a fake, of course. I made it up, Demerest wanted me to make something up really. He wasn’t a killer or destroyer; he was, according to his own overheated lights, a patriot, and I
