Molina felt a fierce proprietary passion about those rocks. They were his key to a future of respect and accomplishment, his ticket to Stockholm and the Nobel Prize.
It took a few moments for him to realize that someone was knocking at his laboratory door, rapping hard enough to make the door shake. With some irritation he called out, “Enter.”
Bishop Danvers slid the door back and stepped into the lab, a look of stern determination on his fleshy face. The door automatically slid shut.
“Hello, Elliott,” Molina said evenly. “I’m pretty busy right now.” It was a lie, but Molina was in no mood for his old friend’s platitudes.
“This is an official visit,” Danvers said, standing a bare two paces inside the doorway.
“Official?” Molina snapped. “What do you mean?”
Without moving from where he stood, Danvers said, “I’m here in my capacity as a bishop in the New Morality Church.”
Despite himself, Molina grinned. “What are you going to do, Elliott, baptize me? Or maybe bless my rocks?”
“No,” said Danvers, his cheeks flushing slightly. “I’m here to interrogate you.”
Molina’s brows shot up. “Interrogate? You mean like the Inquisition?”
Danvers’s face darkened, his heavy hands knotted into fists. But he quickly regained control of himself and forced a thin smile.
“Victor, the New Morality has placed a heavy burden on my shoulders. I’ve been tasked with the responsibility of disproving your claim of finding life on Mercury.”
Molina smiled and relaxed. “Oh, is that all.”
“It’s very serious!”
Nodding, Molina said, “I understand, Elliott.” He gestured to the only other chair in the room. “Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”
The plastic seat of the tubular metal chair squeaked as Danvers settled his bulk into it. The bishop looked tense, wary.
“Elliott, how long have we known each other?” Molina asked.
Danvers thought a moment. “I first met you in Ecuador, more than twelve years ago.”
“It’s closer to fourteen years, actually.”
“To be sure. But I haven’t seen you since the trial at Quito, and that was about ten years ago.”
Nodding again, Molina said, “But we were friends back in Ecuador. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t still be friends.”
Danvers gestured to the analytical equipment lining the laboratory’s walls. “We live in two different worlds, Victor.”
“Different, maybe, but not entirely separate. There’s no reason for us to be adversaries.”
“I have my responsibilities,” Danvers countered, somewhat stiffly. “My orders come straight from Atlanta, from the archbishop himself.”
Molina let out a little sigh, then said, “All right, just what do they want you to do?”
“As I told you: they want me to disprove your claim that life exists on Mercury.”
“I’ve never claimed that.”
“Or once existed, ages ago,” Danvers added.
“That seems irrefutable, Elliott.”
“Because of the chemicals you’ve found in those rocks?” Danvers pointed to the clear plastic containers.
“That’s right. The evidence is unmistakable.”
“But as I understand it, McFergusen and his team haven’t found any corroborating evidence.”
“Corroborating evidence!” Molina smirked. “You’re learning how to talk like a scientist, Elliott.”
Danvers grimaced slightly. “Your fellow scientists seem terribly puzzled that they haven’t been able to find anything similar to what you’ve discovered.”
With a shrug, Molina replied, “Mercury may be a small planet, Elliott, but it’s still a planet. A whole world. Its surface area must be similar to the continent of Eurasia, back on Earth. How thoroughly do you think a handful of scientists could explore all of Eurasia, from the coast of Portugal to the China Sea? In a few weeks, no less.”
“Yet you found your rocks the first day you set foot on Mercury.”
“So I did. I was lucky.” Suddenly Molina came up with a new thought. “Perhaps, in your terms, God guided me to those rocks.”
Danvers rocked back in his chair. “Don’t make a joke of God. That’s blasphemy.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you, Elliott,” Molina said softly. “I was simply trying to put my good fortune in terms you’d understand.”
“You should try praying, instead,” said Danvers. “As far as your fellow scientists are concerned, they don’t believe in your luck. Or God’s grace.”
TORCH SHIP
“I want it clearly understood,” McFergusen said, in his gravelly Highland brogue, “that this is strictly an informal meeting.”
Informal, Molina repeated silently. Like a coroner’s inquest or a session of the Spanish Inquisition.
The Scottish physicist sat at the head of the table, Molina at its foot. Along the table were ranked the other scientists that the IAA had sent, together with Bishop Danvers, who sat at Molina’s right. They were using the captain’s conference room; it felt crowded, tight, and stuffy. Too many people for a compartment this size, Molina thought.
“Although the ship’s computer is taking a verbatim record of what we say,” McFergusen went on, “no report of this meeting will be sent back to IAA headquarters until each person here has had a chance to read the record and add any comments he or she wishes to make. Is that clear?”
Heads nodded up and down the table.
McFergusen hesitated a moment, then plunged in. “Now then, our major problem is that we have been unable to find any specimens bearing biomarkers.”
“Except for the ones I found,” Molina added.
“Indeed.”
“How do you account for that?” asked the woman on Molina’s left.
He shrugged elaborately. “How do you account for the fact that, during some war back in the twentieth century, the first cannon shell fired into the city of Leningrad killed the zoo’s only elephant?”
Everyone chuckled.
Except McFergusen. “We have been scouring the planet for some six weeks now—”
“Six weeks for a whole planet?” Molina countered. “Do you really believe you’ve covered everything?”
“No, of course not. But you found your specimens on your first day, didn’t you?”
Feeling anger simmering inside him, Molina said, “You forget that I came here because of a tip from one of the construction workers. I didn’t just blindly stumble onto those rocks.”
“A tip from whom?” asked one of the younger men.
“I don’t know. It was an anonymous message. I’ve questioned the workers down there on the surface and none of them admits to sending me the message.”
“An anonymous tip that no one admits to sending,” grumbled McFergusen. “It strains credulity a bit, doesn’t it?”
The woman on Molina’s left, young, slightly plump, very intense, asked, “Why you?”
“Why me what?”
“Why did he—or she—send that message to you? You’re not a major figure in planetary studies. Why not to Professor McFergusen,” she gestured toward the older man, “or the head of the IAA?”
“Yes,” picked up one of the others. “Why wasn’t the message sent to the head of the astrobiology
