And in the Centrifugal Lounge, a celebration: passengers chattering at each other, drinking from tall flutes of golden champagne, some of them dancing tipsily to the music of the ship’s orchestra. Randolph Mays was there, although he firmly believed no one recognized him or even knew he’d been among them, for it suited him to travel incognito—as he had been since before Helios had left Earth—thus to see but not be seen. He was one of those men who liked to watch.
And to listen. The curve of the Centrifugal Lounge’s floor-walls, designed to maintain a comfortable half-g of artificial gravity for the comfort of the passengers, also made a good, quasi-parabolic reflector of sound waves. People standing opposite each other in the cylindrical room—thus upside down with respect to each other—could hear one another’s conversations with perfect clarity.
Randolph Mays craned his neck back and peered upward at a striking young woman, Marianne Mitchell, who stood momentarily alone directly over his head. A few meters away a young man, Bill Hawkins, was trying to work up his nerve to approach her.
She was certainly the prettiest woman on the ship, slender, dark-haired, green-eyed, her full lips glossy with bold red lipstick. For his part, Hawkins too was passably attractive, tall and broad-shouldered, with thick blond hair slicked straight back—but he lacked confidence. He’d managed no more than a few inconsequential conversations with Marianne in weeks of opportunity. Now his time was short—he would be leaving Helios at Ganymede—and he seemed to be trying to make up his mind to have one last go at it.
Through one of the thick curving windows that formed the floor, Marianne watched as, far below, the Ganymede spaceport swung into view on the icy plains of the Shoreless Ocean. Beneath her feet paraded what seemed like miniature control towers, pressurized storage sheds, communications masts and dishes, spherical fuel tanks, gantries for the shuttles that plied between the surface and the interplanetary ships that parked in orbit—the practical clutter that any working port required, not much different from Cayley or Farside on Earth’s moon.
She let out a disconsolate sigh. “It looks like New Jersey.”
“Beg pardon?” Bill Hawkins had lifted a bottle of champagne and two glasses from a circulating waiter and, having detached himself from the knot of partygoers, was finally moving toward her.
“Talking to myself,” said Marianne.
“Can’t believe my luck, finding you alone.”
“Well, now I’m not alone.” Her cheer seemed forced. What was there to say to him? Aside from the obligatory exchange of life stories, they hadn’t had much success conversing.
“Whoops. Shall I go away again?”
“No. And before you ask,” she said, eyeing the champagne, “I’d be delighted.”
Hawkins poured it—the real thing, from France, a fine Roederer brut—and handed her a glass.
“À votre santé,” she said, and drank off half the glass.
Sipping his own, Hawkins raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she said. “It’s consolation. Six weeks on this tub and we might as well be back at Newark shuttleport.”
“Couldn’t disagree more. For my money it’s quite a sight. The largest moon in the solar system. Surface area bigger than Africa.”
“I thought it was supposed to be exotic,” Marianne complained. “Everybody said so.”
Hawkins smiled. “Wait and see. Not long now.”
“Be mysterious, then.”
Indeed, Ganymede did have a romantic reputation. Not because of all the major settlements in the solar system it was the most distant from Earth. Not for the weird landscapes of its ancient, oft-battered, oft-refrozen crust. Not for its spectacular views of Jupiter and its sister moons. Ganymede was exotic because of what humans had done to it.
“When are they letting us off?” Marianne demanded, gulping more champagne.
“Formalities always take a few hours. I imagine we’ll be down below by morning.”
“Morning, whenever that is. Ugh.”
Hawkins cleared his throat. “Ganymede can be a bit confusing to the first-time visitor,” he said. “I’d be glad to show you around.”
“Thanks, Bill.” She favored him with a heavy-lidded glance. “But no thanks. Somebody’s meeting me.”
“Oh.”
His face must have revealed more disappointment than he realized, for Marianne was almost apologetic. “I don’t know anything about him. Except my mother is very eager to impress his mother.” Marianne, twenty-two years old, had left the surface of Earth for the first time only six weeks earlier; like other children of wealth—including most of her fellow passengers—she was supposed to be making a traditional year-long Grand Tour of the solar system.
“Does this fellow have a name?” Hawkins asked.
“Blake Redfield.”
“Blake!” Hawkins smiled—partly with relief, for Redfield was rather famously involved with the notorious Ellen Troy. “As it happens, he’s a member of Professor Forster’s expedition. As am I.”
“Well, lucky for both of you.” When he made no reply, she gave him a sidelong glance. “You’re looking at me again.”
“Oh, I was just wondering if you’re really going to stick out this whole Grand Tour. You spend two weeks here—which is not enough to see anything, really. Next stop, San Pablo base in the Mainbelt—and anything more than a day there is too much. Then Mars Station and Labyrinth City and the sights of Mars. Then on to Port Hesperus. Then on to . . .”
“Please stop.” He’d made his point. For all that the ship would make many ports of call, she would be spending most of the coming nine months en route, in space. “I think I’d like to change the subject.”
Besides being the ship’s youngest passenger, Marianne was its most easily excited and most easily bored. Most of the others were new graduates of universities and professional schools, taking the year off to acquire a thin coat of cosmopolitan varnish before settling down to a life of interplanetary banking or stock brokerage or art dealing or fulltime leisure. Marianne had not yet found her calling. None of the undergraduate majors she’d undertaken had proved capable of holding her interest; pre-law, pre-medicine, history of art, languages ancient or modern—nothing had lasted beyond a romantic first encounter. Not even a real romance—she would tell this part delicately, hinting at a brief affair with a professor of classics—had carried her past the midterm in the subject. Semester after semester she’d started with A’s and ended with incompletes.
Her mother, possessed of a seemingly inexhaustible fortune but beginning to balk at financing Marianne’s ongoing education without some glimmer of a light at the end of the tunnel, had finally urged Marianne to take time off to see something of the rest of Earth and the other inhabited worlds. Perhaps somewhere in Europe or Indonesia or South America or out there among the planets and satellites and space stations, something would capture her daughter’s imagination for longer than a month.
Marianne had spent the year after her twenty-first birthday wandering Earth, acquiring clothes and souvenirs and intellectually stylish acquaintances. If she lacked discipline, she was nevertheless gifted with a restless intelligence and was quick to pick up the latest in modes pensées—among which the ideas of Sir Randolph Mays figured prominently, at least in North Continental circles.
“You’re actually working for Professor Forster? You didn’t tell me that before.” Her customary boredom was overcome. “You don’t look much like a conspirator type to me.”
“Conspirator? Oh . . . don’t tell me.”
“What?”
“You’re not one of those who take Randolph Mays seriously.”
“Several million people do.” Her eyes widened. “Including some very intelligent ones.”
“ ‘The ultimate spiritual presence that is the dweller in the innermost, besides being the creator and sustainer of the universe’—do I quote him correctly?”
“Well . . .” Marianne hesitated. “Why is Forster going to Amalthea, if he doesn’t know something he’s not telling?” she demanded.
“He may suspect he knows something, but he’s going for pure research. What else?” Hawkins, a postdoc in xeno-archaeology at the University of London, was a blind loyalist where his thesis advisor was concerned. “Remember, Forster applied for his grants and permits long before Amalthea got into the news; that anomalous radiation signature has been known for over a century. As for this warmed-over conspiracy business—really, that too belongs back in the 20th century,” Hawkins said a bit huffily.
Marianne was uncertain whether to be miffed; having formed few opinions of her own, she found herself at the mercy of people who claimed authority. She struggled bravely on. “So you think there’s no such thing as the Free Spirit? That aliens never visited the solar system?”
“I’d be a right fool to say that, wouldn’t I? Seeing as how I’m one of less than half a dozen people who can read Culture X script. So is Forster, which is how I know him. Which has nothing to do with Mays and his theories.”
Marianne gave it up then, and drained the last of her champagne. She studied the empty flute and said, “There’s a lot I don’t know about you.” She was stating a fact, not starting a flirtation.
Panic creased his brows. “I’ve done it again, launched into a lecture. I always . . .”
“I like to learn things,” she said plainly. “Besides, you shouldn’t try to be somebody you aren’t.”
“Look, Marianne . . . if you don’t mind my tagging alone with you and Redfield, maybe we could talk more. Not about me,” he said hastily. “I mean about Amalthea and Culture X . . . or whatever you’d like.”
“Sure. Thanks,” she said, with an open and thoroughly charming smile. “I’d like that. Got any more of this?” She wiggled the glass at him.
Watching from over their heads, Randolph Mays observed that Hawkins, having offered to continue his conversation with her later, soon ran out of things to say; when his bottle was dry he awkwardly retreated. Marianne watched him thoughtfully, but made no effort to stop him.
Mays chuckled quietly, as if he’d been privy to a confidential joke.