Forward nodded, making his fleshy cheeks waddle slightly. “Proton energy density must be pretty high this close to the Sun. Have you measured it?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“If it’s the protons doing the damage you can protect the powersats with superconducting radiation shields, just as spacecraft are shielded.”
Yamagata’s brows knit. “How do you know about radiation shielding? You died before interplanetary spacecraft needed shielding.”
“I have access to all your files,” Forward reminded him. “I know everything your computer knows.”
Yamagata rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “If we could bring the powersats’ energy output up to their theoretical maximum, or even close to it…”
“You’d be able to sell their energy at a profit,” Forward finished his thought. “And go ahead with the starship.”
Nodding, Yamagata closed the Forward program. The physicist winked out, leaving Yamagata alone in his quarters. He put in a call for Alexios, who had returned to the base on the planet’s surface.
“I want to find out what’s causing this degradation of the solar cells,” Yamagata said sternly. “That must be our number one priority.”
Alexios’s mismatched image in the wall screen looked as if he had expected this decision. “I already have a small team working on it, sir. I’ll put more people on the investigation.”
“Good,” said Yamagata. To himself he added silently, Let’s hope we can solve this problem before the IAA drives me into bankruptcy.
EARTH
The International Consortium of Universities was less an organization than a collection of powerful fiefdoms. It consisted of nearly a hundred universities around the world, no two of which ever agreed completely on anything. Moreover, each university was a collection of departments ranging from ancient literature to astrobiology, from psychodynamics to paleontology, from genetic engineering to gymnastics. Each department head tenaciously guarded her or his budget, assets, staff, and funding sources.
It took a masterful administrator to manage that ever-shifting tangle of alliances, feuds, jealousies, and sexual affairs.
Jacqueline Wexler was such an administrator. Gracious and charming in public, accommodating and willing to compromise at meetings, she nevertheless had the steel-hard will and sharp intellect to drive the ICU’s ramshackle collection of egos toward goals that she herself selected. Widely known as “Attila the Honey,” Wexler was all sweetness and smiles on the outside and ruthless determination within.
Today’s meeting of the ICU’s astrobiology committee was typical. To Wexler it seemed patently clear that a top-flight team of investigators must be sent to Mercury to confirm Dr. Molina’s discovery and organize a thorough study of the planet’s possible biosphere. Indeed, everyone around the long conference table agreed perfectly on that point.
Beyond that point, however, all agreement ended. Who should go? What would be their authority? How would they deal with the industrial operation already planted on Mercury’s surface? All these questions and more led to tedious hours of wrangling. Wexler let them wrangle, knowing precisely what she wanted out of them, realizing that sooner or later they would grow tired and let her make the effective decisions. So she smiled sweetly and waited for the self-important farts—women as well as men—to run out of gas.
The biggest issue, as far as they were concerned, was who would lead the team sent to Mercury. Rival universities vied with one another and there was much finger-pointing and cries of “You got the top spot last time!” and “That’s not fair!”
Wexler thought it was relatively unimportant who was picked as the lead scientist for the team. She worried more about who the New Morality would send as their spiritual advisor to watch over the scientists. The spiritual advisor’s ostensible task was to tend to the scientists’ moral and religious needs. His real job, as far as Wexler was concerned, was to spy on the scientists and report what they were doing back to Atlanta.
There was already a New Morality representative on Mercury, she knew: somebody named Danvers. Would they let him remain in charge of the newcomers as well, or send in somebody over his head?
A similar meeting was going on in Atlanta, in the ornate headquarters building of the New Morality, but there were only four people seated at the much smaller conference table.
Archbishop Harold Carnaby sat at the head of the table, of course. Well into his twelfth decade of life, the archbishop was one of the few living souls who had witnessed the birth of the New Morality, back in those evil days of licentiousness and runaway secularism that had brought down the wrath of God in the form of the greenhouse floods. Although his deep religious faith prohibited Carnaby from accepting rejuvenation treatments such as telomerase injections or cellular regeneration, he still availed himself of every mechanical aid that medical science could provide. He saw nothing immoral about artificial booster hearts or kidney dialysis implants.
So he sat at the head of the square table in his powered wheelchair, totally bald, wrinkled and gnomelike, breathing oxygen through a plastic tube inserted in his nostrils. His brain still functioned perfectly well, especially since surgeons had inserted stents in both his carotid arteries.
“Bishop Danvers is a good man,” said the deacon seated at Carnaby’s left. “I believe he can handle the challenge, no matter how many godless scientists they send to Mercury.”
Danvers’s dossier was displayed on the wall screen for Carnaby to scan. Apparently someone in Yamagata’s organization had specifically asked for Bishop Danvers to come to Mercury. Unusual, Carnaby thought, for those godless engineers and mechanics to ask for a chaplain at all, let alone a specific individual. Danvers must be well respected. But there was more at stake here than tending souls, he knew.
The deacon on Carnaby’s right suggested, “Perhaps we could send someone to assist him. Two or three assistants, even. We can demand space for them on the vessel that the scientists ride to Mercury.”
Carnaby nodded noncommittally and focused his rheumy eyes on the man sitting at the foot of the table, Bishop O’Malley. Physically, O’Malley was the opposite of Carnaby: big in the shoulders, wide in the middle, his face fleshy and always flushed, his nose bulbous and patterned with purple-red veins. O’Malley was a Catholic, and Carnaby did not completely trust him.
“What’s your take on the situation, Bishop?” Carnaby flatly refused to use the medieval Catholic terms of address; “your grace” and “my lord” had no place in his vocabulary.
Without turning even to glance at the dossier displayed on the wall behind him, O’Malley said in his powerful, window-rattling voice, “Danvers showed his toughness years ago in Ecuador. Didn’t let personal friendship stand in the way of doing his duty. Let him handle the scientists; he’s up to it. Send him an assistant or two if you feel like it, but keep him in charge on Mercury.”
“He’s done good work since Ecuador, too,” Carnaby agreed, his voice like a creaking hinge.
The two deacons immediately fell in line and agreed that Danvers should remain in charge.
“Remember this,” Carnaby said, folding his fleshless, blue-veined hands on the table edge in front of him, “every time these secularists find another form of life on some other world, people lose a portion of their faith. There are even those who proclaim that extraterrestrial life proves the Bible to be wrong!”
“Blasphemy!” hissed the younger of the deacons.
“The scientists will send a delegation out to Mercury,” Carnaby croaked on, “and they will confirm this man Molina’s discovery. They’ll trumpet the news that life has been found even where no one expected it to exist. More of the Faithful will fall away from their belief.”
O’Malley hunched his bulky shoulders. “Not if Danvers can show that the scientists are wrong. Not if he can give them the lie.”
“That’s his real mission, then,” Carnaby agreed. “To do whatever is necessary to disprove the scientists’ claim.”
The deacon on the left, young and still innocent, blinked uncertainly. “But how can he do that? If the scientists show proof that life exists on the planet—”
“Danvers must dispute their so-called proof,” Carnaby snapped, with obvious irritation. “He must challenge
