Titan Read online

  Susie’s in there, Pancho thought. Then she remembered: Mustn’t call her Susie anymore. She changed her name to Holly. And it damned near killed her.

  Despite her best intentions Pancho couldn’t help feeling a simmer of resentment about her sister. Sooze was only three years younger than Pancho, as far as calendar age was concerned. But while Pancho had allowed her hair to go stark white and was taking rejuvenation therapies to stave off the encroachment of age, Susan was physically no more than thirty. And mentally, emotionally—Pancho grimaced at the thought.

  Susan had died while she was a teenager. Pancho had administered the lethal injection herself, once the medical experts had woefully assured her that there was no hope of saving Susan from the drug-induced cancer that was ruining her body. So Pancho pushed the hypodermic syringe into her sister’s emaciated arm and watched her die. As soon as she was pronounced clinically dead the medics slid her body into a heavy stainless steel sarcophagus, a coffin-sized dewar that they filled with liquid nitrogen, steaming white, deadly cold.

  For more than twenty years Pancho guarded Susie’s cryonically preserved body as she herself climbed the corporate ladder of power from hell-raising astronaut to CEO and board chairman of Astro Corporation. Pancho directed Astro’s side of the Second Asteroid War, and once that tragedy ground to its exhausted, blood-soaked finish, she had formally retired from Astro to start a new life of—what? she asked herself. What am I doing here, all the way the hell out at Saturn. What am I going to do with the rest of my life?

  Her immediate plans she knew. She was going to see her sister for the first time in nearly three years. Spend the holidays with the only family she had. The thought made her tense with apprehension.

  Once Susan had been revived from her long years of cryonic suspension and her cancer removed by therapeutic nanomachines, she was like a newborn baby in a young adult’s body. The years she had spent bathed in liquid nitrogen had saved her body but destroyed most of the synapses in the cerebral cortex of her brain. She had practically no higher brain functions. Pancho had to feed her, teach her to speak again and to walk, even toilet-train her.

  Slowly Susan became a mature adult, yet even when the psychologists happily proclaimed her training to be a complete success, Pancho was disturbed. She wasn’t the same Susie. Couldn’t be, Pancho realized, yet the difference unsettled her. She looked like Susie, talked and laughed and flirted like Sooze, but she was subtly different. When Pancho looked into her sister’s eyes, it was somebody else in there. Almost the same. But only almost.

  And the first thing Sooze did, once she was fully recovered, was to change her name and traipse out on the space habitat Goddard on this wild-ass mission to explore Saturn and its moon, Titan. She picked up and left Pancho behind, with a smile and a peck on the cheek and a perfunctory, “Thanks for everything, Panch.” She ran off with that slimy son of a bitch Malcolm Eberly.

  That was why Pancho was not in her most chipper and cheerful mood as Starpower III docked with Goddard and began to disembark its VIP passengers. She felt sullen resentment and an anger she believed to be completely justified. And she was more than a little apprehensive about how Susie would receive her. How’s she gonna react to having her big sister drop in on her, after she’s flown almost a billion and a half kilometers to get away from me? Merry Christmas, now go home: that’s what Pancho feared her sister’s attitude would be.

  Stewing inside, juggling these emotions, Pancho made her way down the ship’s central passageway to the main docking port after the skipper had announced they’d mated with Goddard. All the big muckety-muck scientists and news execs were gathering in the port’s waiting area, chatting and buzzing impatiently. She saw Jake Wanamaker easily enough; he towered over the others. His craggy face broke into a smile as he spotted her and Pancho couldn’t help but grin back at him.

  “Hi, there, sailor,” she said, once she had sidled through the gathering crowd to stand beside him. “New in town?”

  “Yes, ma’ am,” answered Wanamaker, falling into the old routine. “Thought maybe you’d show me the sights.”

  They both laughed and Pancho felt better.

  Until they finally stepped through the airlock and into Goddard’s reception area. The crowd was arranging itself into a straggly line as personnel from the habitat checked names and assigned the visitors to living quarters. Then Pancho spotted Susie, tall and lean as herself. She looks okay, Pancho thought, her heart leaping. She looks fine.

  “Panch!” Sooze yelped, and she pushed through the line of notables toward her sister.

  Mustn’t call her Susan, Pancho reminded herself. She’s Holly now.

  Her sister threw her arms around Pancho’s neck and Pancho knew it was going to be alright between them. No matter what, it was going to be okay. She introduced Holly to Jake, who took her hand in his meaty paw and said hello almost solemnly while Pancho beamed at them.

  “C’mon, let’s go to my place,” Holly said. “You can find your apartment later, after the crowd’s thinned out.”

  Pancho happily followed her sister as far as the hatch that led out to the corridor beyond the reception area. Standing there was a handsome, youngish man, hair the color of straw swept in thick waves, strong cheekbones, thin straight nose, chiseled firm jaw and piercing sky-blue eyes. His face was sculpted so perfectly that Pancho guessed he’d had cosmetic therapy. What was that word the old-time racists used? she asked herself. The answer came to her swiftly: Aryan. That’s what he looked like: the ideal Nordic hero. Yet below the neck he looked soft, a slight potbelly bulging his loosely draped tunic. As if his face was all that mattered to him.

  “Panch, this is Malcolm Eberly, Goddard’s chief administrator and—”

  Pancho lashed out with her right fist in a lightning punch that caught Eberly’s smiling face solidly on the jaw and knocked him backward onto the seat of his pants.

  “That’s for damn near killing my sister, you no-good son of a bitch,” Pancho snarled at him.

  23 DECEMBER 2095: HABITAT GODDARD RECEPTION AREA

  For an instant, nobody moved. No one spoke. Eberly shook his head groggily and sat up, rubbing the side of his face with one hand.

  Holly broke the silence. “Pancho! For god’s sake!”

  “It wasn’t my doing,” Eberly said, almost in a whine. “I tried to stop them.”

  Pancho snorted and stepped past the man, suppressing an urge to kick him where it would do the most good. A pair of men in black coveralls moved toward her; both wore white armbands proclaiming SECURITY. Both had stun wands strapped to their hips. Wanamaker pushed in front of Pancho protectively.

  “It’s all right,” Eberly told the security guards as he slowly got to his feet. “I’m not hurt.”

  “Too bad,” Pancho huffed and, without a glance back, stepped through the open hatch.

  Holly quickened her pace to catch up with her sister. “Pancho, he’s the elected head of this whole flamin’ habitat!”

  “He stood aside and let those New Morality bastards beat you half to death,” Pancho growled, walking determinedly down the short passageway, Wanamaker at her side.

  “That’s over and done with,” Holly said, from Pancho’s other side. “And they weren’t New Morality; they were from the Holy Disciples.”

  “Whatever.”

  “The people responsible have been sent back Earthside. One of them was killed—executed, for creep’s sake.”

  Pancho stopped at the hatch set into the far end of the steel-walled passageway. “Come on, let’s get out of here before those network execs remember they’re in the news business and start sniffing after me. Where the hell are we, anyway? Am I going in the right direction?”

  Holly’s anger dissolved; she grinned at her sister. “Yep, this is right. C’mon, let me show you.” And she tapped out a code on the keypad next to the hatch.

  Pancho looked back over her shoulder. Eberly was on his feet, the two security guards flanking him, several of the visiting e
xecutives peering curiously in Pancho’s direction. Neither Eberly nor any of the incoming visitors had left the reception area, though.

  The hatch swung inward and Pancho felt a breath of warm air puff against her face. Still grinning, Holly made a little bow and, with a sweep of her arm, announced, “Welcome to habitat Goddard.”

  Pancho stepped through the hatch, Wanamaker right behind her. Despite her knowledge, despite her expectations, her jaw dropped open and she gasped with delighted surprise.

  “Jumpin’ jeeps,” she breathed. “It’s a whole world in here.”

  They were standing on an elevated knoll, with a clear view of the habitat’s broad interior. A green sunlit landscape stretched out in all directions around them. Gently rolling grassy hills, clumps of trees, little meandering streams went on and on into the hazy distance. Pancho’s breath caught in her throat. So much greenery! Nowhere off Earth had she seen such a … a … it was a paradise! A man-made Garden of Eden. The breeze was fragrant with the soft scent of flowers. Bushes thick with vivid red hibiscus and lavender jacarandas lined both sides of a curving path that led down to a village of low buildings, white and gleaming in the light streaming in through the solar windows that were wrapped around the great cylinder like a ring of brilliant sunshine.

  It looks like one of those Mediterranean towns, Pancho thought. The village in the distance was set on the gentle slope of a grassy hill, overlooking a shimmering blue lake. Like the Amalfi coast in Italy. Like a picture out of a travel brochure. This is what a perfect Mediterranean countryside would look like. She made out farmlands farther in the distance, square little fields of fresh bright green, and more villages of whitewashed buildings dotting the gently rolling hills. There was no horizon. Instead, the land simply curved up and up, hills and grass and trees and more little villages with their paved pathways and sparkling streams, up and up on all sides until she was craning her neck to look straight overhead at still more of the carefully, lovingly landscaped greenery.

  “This is better’n any of the Lagrange point habitats,” Pancho told her sister. “This is beautiful.”

  “It has to be,” Wanamaker said matter-of-factly, “for people to make it their permanent home.”

  Pancho shook her head in wonderment and uttered a heartfelt “Wow.”

  Holly beamed at them. “And I’m in charge of the human resources department.”

  “Really?” Pancho asked.

  “F’real, Panch.”

  They dispatched Wanamaker to find the quarters that he and Pancho had been assigned to while Holly led her sister to her own apartment.

  “Home sweet home,” Holly announced, as she ushered Pancho into her sitting room.

  “Nice,” said Pancho, taking in the sparse furniture and minimal decorations. The place looked tidy and had that citrusy, almost antiseptic tang of a recent cleaning. She’s tidied up the place for me, Pancho thought, as she asked, “Are those smart walls?”

  “You bet. I can program them to show almost anything you want.” Holly went to the desk in the corner and picked up a remote control wand. One entire wall of the room suddenly showed a real-time image of Saturn and its spectacular rings.

  “Whoosh!” Pancho exclaimed. “It’s almost like being outside.”

  “Sit.” Holly gestured toward the small sofa. “I’ll get us something cold to drink.”

  Pancho sat on an upholstered chair while her sister went into the kitchen. Well, if she’s clanked up about me dropping in on her, Pancho thought, she sure doesn’t show it. She looks really glad to see me. Hope I didn’t embarrass her too much, sockin’ that Eberly creep.

  “The walls don’t have voice recognition circuits?” she asked.

  “Turned it off,” Holly called from the kitchen. “Too sensitive. Can’t hold a conversation without the walls thinking you’re talking to them.”

  Pancho chuckled to herself as she pictured the wall screens flashing through a kaleidoscope of pictures while people chatted with one another.

  From around the kitchen partition, Holly brought in a tray holding two tall frosted glasses and put it down on the coffee table, then sat beside her sister on the sofa.

  “You’re lookin’ really good, kid,” Pancho said with a beaming smile. “Really good.”

  “You too,” Holly replied guardedly.

  Anyone would have recognized at a glance that they were sisters. Both women were tall and rangy: long, leggy and slim. Their skin color was slightly darker than a well-tanned Caucasian’s. Both their faces were sharp-featured, with flaring cheekbones and square, stubborn chins. Their eyes were the same dark brown, bright with intelligence and wit. Pancho had let her hair go entirely white and kept it cropped into a tight skullcap. Holly’s hair was still dark and cut in the latest spiky fashion.

  “Is Eberly really the chief administrator for this whole habitat?” Pancho asked, reaching for one of the glasses.

  “All ten thousand of us,” Holly replied. “He won a free and fair election.”

  “But he was involved with those fanatics who tried to kill you. How can—”

  “That’s all in the past, Panch. And he did try to stop them, y’know. Not very effectively,’ course, but he did try.”

  Almost sheepishly, Pancho said, “Guess I shouldn’t have decked him.”

  Holly giggled. “He sure looked surprised.”

  Pancho grinned back at her and took a sip of her drink. Fruit juice. Good. Susie had done more than her share of booze and drugs. Pancho hoped Holly was different.

  “Panch, why’d you come all the way out here?” Tension showed in the tone of Holly’s voice, in the sudden stiffness of her body.

  “To spend the holidays with you, of course,” Pancho answered, trying to make it sound warm, natural. “You’re the only family I’ve got.”

  Holly tried to unbend. “I mean, what do you intend to do here? This habitat isn’t a tourist resort, y’know.”

  Pancho’s smile dimmed a little. “Listen, sis, I’m a rich woman, a retired multimillionaire. I got a terrific guy living with me, and we can go anywhere in the solar system we want. I decided to come out here and see how you’re doin’.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Don’t be a shit-kicker, kid. I’m not here to pry into your life or try to tell you what to do. You’re a big girl now, Sooze, and I wouldn’t—”

  “My name isn’t Susan anymore,” Holly snapped. “Hasn’t been for years.”

  Pancho grimaced. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. Just slipped out.”

  “And if you’re still worried about me and Malcolm Eberly, you can stop worrying. That’s over. Never got started, really.”

  “I should think so, after what he did to you.”

  “Not him, really. His friends. They tried to take over the habitat. It got a little rough for a while.”

  “But it’s all over now?”

  “His friends were shipped back Earthside. Malcolm’s the chief of the habitat’s government.”

  Pancho’s brows rose. “I thought Professor Wilmot was in charge.”

  “Not anymore. We set up our own constitution and government and all that soon’s we reached Saturn orbit.”

  “And Eberly was elected to head it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I wonder if he’ll take any action against me for sockin’ him.”

  Holly thought a moment, then shook her head. “If he’d wanted to, he’d’ve got the security guards to take you into custody right there and then.”

  “You think?”

  “Yep.” Holly’s grin broke out again. “He knows he deserved what you gave him.”

  Pancho grinned back at her. “You know the old saying about Hungarians?”

  “Hungarians?”

  “If you meet a Hungarian on the street, kick him. He’ll know why.”

  The sisters laughed together, long and loud and unforced. But then Holly asked, “How long’re you going to stay?”

  “Jeeps, kid, I just got here! Give m
e enough time to unpack my bags, huh?”

  Frowning, Holly said, “I didn’t mean it that way, Panch. It’s just … well, I don’t need a mother hen anymore. I’ve been on my own for more’n three years now.”

  Pancho grinned at her. “And you don’t want your pain-in-the-butt big sister lookin’ over your shoulder. Can’t say I blame you.”

  Shifting her tactics a bit, Holly asked, “So who’s this guy you came with?”

  “Jake Wanamaker?” Pancho’s grin turned mischievous. “Former admiral in the U.S. Navy. Headed military operations for Astro during the fighting out in the Belt.”

  “You’re living with a sailor?”

  “He’s my bodyguard.”

  Holly looked at her sister for a long moment, then they both burst into laughter again.

  “Wanna have dinner with us tonight?” Pancho asked.

  “Cosmic! And I’ll bring a friend, too.”

  “Great!” said Pancho with real enthusiasm. Maybe the ice is breaking a little, she thought. Maybe things will be okay between Sooze and me. Then she admonished herself: Don’t call her that. Her name’s not Susan anymore. She’s Holly. Holly. But looking into her sister’s deep brown eyes, Pancho remembered the helpless baby that she had raised after their parents died. And she remembered shooting home the lethal injection that killed Susan when the medics refused to do it.

  I had to kill you, Susie, Pancho said silently. So you could be reborn. And here you are, alive and healthy, all grown up, and suspicious as hell about your big sister.

  DATA BANK: TITAN

  This much is known about Titan, by far the largest of Saturn’s several dozen moons and the second largest moon in the entire solar system.

  With a diameter of 5,150 kilometers, Titan is bigger than the planet Mercury and only a shade smaller than Jupiter’s largest satellite, Ganymede. Titan is the only moon in the solar system to possess a substantial atmosphere. Indeed, Titan’s atmosphere is 50 percent denser than Earth’s at ground level.