“Sure. So we go further.” Paxton’s grin widened. He seemed to be enjoying shocking them. “Nice to know an old fart like me is still capable of thinking bigger than you kids. What’s the most robust hab we know? A planet.”

Lyla stared at him. “You’re talking of terraforming.”

“Making the Moon or Venus into worlds enough like Earth that you could walk around in the open, more or less unprotected.

Where you could grow crops in the open air. Where humans could survive, even if civilization fell, even if they forgot who they were and how they got there in the first place.”

“They’ve been thinking about this on Mars,” Lyla said. “Of course now—”

“We’ll lose Mars, but Mars wasn’t the only option. In the very long term it’s the only robust survival solution,” Paxton said.

Alexei looked skeptical. “This is the kind of program space ad-vocates have been pressing for since the days of Armstrong and Aldrin, and never got close to. It’s going to mean a massive transfer of resources.”

“Oh, yes,” Bella said. “In fact Bob’s view is already widely accepted. And it’s going to start soon.”

“What is?” Lyla asked, curious.

“You’ll see. Leave me one last surprise…”

“We’re serious about this,” Bob Paxton said, challenging, au-thoritative. “As serious as I’ve been about anything in my entire life.

To gain access to the future, we have to secure the present. That’s the bottom line.”

They fell back to talking over details of Paxton’s vision, argu-ing, fleshing out some aspects, rejecting others. Soon Paxton cleared the tabletop of its colorful sunstorm factoids and started to make notes.

Bella murmured to Athena, “Looks like it worked. I would never have thought I’d see the likes of Bob Paxton and Alexei Carel working together.”

“We live in strange times.”

“That we do, Athena. And they get stranger all the time. Anyhow it’s a start.” She glanced at her watch. “I hate to do it, but I ought to go check through my messages. Athena, will you bring them coffee? Anything they want.”

“Of course.”

She pushed herself out of her chair and drifted off the bridge, heading for the shuttle and her secure softscreens. Behind her the conversation continued, animated. She heard Alexei say, half-seriously, “I tell you what will unite us all. Sol Invictus. A new god for a new age…”

54: Q-Day

December 15, 2070

The shuttle landed Bella at Cape Canaveral.

Thales spoke to her. “Welcome home, Bella.”

Bella, bent over her softscreen, was startled to find she was down. All the way from L1 she had been working her messages, and monitoring the progress of the two great events that were due to take place today: the switching-on of the Bimini, the new space elevator system in the Atlantic, and the closest approach of the Q-bomb to the Earth. Both were on schedule, as best anybody knew. But it was hard not to keep checking.

The wheels stopped rolling, and the shuttle’s systems sighed to silence.

She shut down her softscreen and folded it up. “Thank you, Thales. Nice to be back. Athena sends her regards.”

“I’ve spoken to her several times.”

That made Bella oddly uneasy. She had often wondered what conversations went on between the great artificial intelligences, all above the heads of mankind. Even in her role as Council Chair, she had never fully found out.

“There’s a car waiting for you outside, Bella. Ready to take you to the VAB, where your family is waiting. Be careful when you stand up.”

It still hurt to be returned to a full gravity. “It gets tougher every damn time. Thales, remind me to order an exoskeleton.”

“I will, Bella.”

She clambered down to the runway. The day was bright, the sun low, the air fresh and full of salt. She checked her watch, which had corrected itself to local time; she had landed a little before ten a.m. on this crisp December morning.

She glanced out to sea, where a fine vertical thread climbed into the sky.

Thales murmured, “Just an hour to the Q-bomb pass, Bella.

The astronomers report no change in its trajectory.”

“Orbital-mechanics analyses are all very well. People have to see it.”

“I’ve encountered the phenomenon before,” Thales said calmly.

“I do understand, Bella.”

She grunted. “I’m not sure if you do. Not if you call it a ‘phenomenon.’ But we all love you anyhow.”

“Thank you, Bella.”

A car rolled up, a bubble of glass, smart and friendly. It whisked her away from the cooling hulk of her shuttle, straight toward the looming bulk of the Vehicle Assembly Building.

At the VAB she was met by a security guard, a woman, good humored but heavily armed, who shadowed her from then on.

Bella crossed straight to a glass-walled elevator, and rose quickly and silently up through the interior of the VAB. She stared down over rockets clustered like pale trees. Once the rocket stacks of Saturn s and space shuttles had been assembled in this building.

Now a century old and still one of the largest enclosed volumes in the world, the VAB had been turned into a museum for the launchers of the first heroic age of American manned space exploration, from the Atlas to the shuttle and the Ares. And now the building was operational again. A corner had been cleared for the assembly of an Apollo — Saturn stack: a new Apollo 14, ready for its centennial launch in February.

Bella loved this immense temple of technology, still astonishing in its scale. But today she was more interested in who was waiting for her on the roof.

Edna met her as she stepped out of the elevator car. “Mum.”

“Hello, love.” Bella embraced her.

As Bella and Edna walked the security guard shadowed them, and a news robot rolled after them, a neat sphere glistening with lenses. Bella had to expect that; she did her best to ignore the silent, all-encompassing scrutiny. It was an historic day, after all. By scheduling the Bimini switch-on today, she had meant to turn Q-day into one of celebration, and so it was turning out to be — even if, she sensed, the mood was edgy rather than celebratory right now.

The tremendous roof of the VAB had long since been made over as a viewing platform. Today it was crowded, with marquees, a podium where Bella would be expected to make a speech, people swirling around. There was even a small park, a mock-up of the local flora and fauna.

Two oddly dressed men, spindly, tall, in blue-black robes marked with golden sunbursts, stared at a baby alligator as if it were the most remarkable creature they had ever seen, and perhaps it was. Looking a little uncertain on their feet, their faces heavily creamed with sunscreen, they were monks of the new church of Sol Invictus: missionaries to Earth from space.

Edna walked with the caution of a space worker restored to a full gravity, and she winced a bit in the brilliant light, the breeze, the uncontrolled climate of a living world. She looked tired, Bella thought with her mother’s solicitude, older than her twenty-four years.

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