Saturn

People glanced at each other and murmured. A few turned around and started walking toward the door.

“I’m not finished,” Eberly said.

The crowd paid scant attention. It began to break up. A woman raised her voice loudly enough for everyone to hear, “I don’t know about you, but I’ve got work to do tomorrow morning.” More people began drifting toward the door.

“Listen to me!” Eberly demanded, his voice suddenly deeper, stronger, more demanding. “You are the most important people in this habitat. Don’t turn your backs on your own future!”

Their muttering stopped. They turned back toward Eberly, every eye focused on him.

“The others,” Eberly said, in a voice more powerful than Holly had ever heard before, “those who are too lazy, or too timid, or too poorly informed to be here, will envy you in time. For you are the ones who are wise enough, strong enough, brave enough to begin to seize the future in your own hands. You understand that this is your habitat, your community, and it must be controlled by no one except yourselves.”

“Right!” someone shouted.

Holly was staring at Eberly, dimly aware that everyone in the crowd was doing the same now, listening, hearing that richly vibrant voice and the mesmerizing message it carried.

She jumped nearly out of her skin when someone tapped her on the shoulder.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to spook you.”

Holly saw a smiling, solidly built youngish man with a rugged bulldog face. Dark eyes and darker hair.

“What’s going on?” he asked in a stage whisper.

Holly gestured toward the stage and whispered back, “Dr. Eberly is giving a speech.”

“Eberly? Who’s he?”

She shook her head and touched a finger to her lips, then pantomimed for him to come into the cafeteria and listen. Still smiling, the man stepped past her, then stood at the rear of the crowd and crossed his beefy arms over his chest.

Eberly was saying, “Why should you be governed by rules made hundreds of millions of kilometers away, written by old men who know nothing of the conditions you face? What do they know of the problems you encounter every day? What do they care? It’s time for you to create your own government and choose your own leaders.”

Someone began clapping. The rest of the crowd took it up, applauding and even cheering out loud. Holly clapped along with the others, although she noticed that the newcomer kept his arms folded.

Soon Eberly had them roaring their approval with almost every sentence he spoke. The crowd became a single, unified creature: an animal with many heads and hands and bodies, but only one mind, and that mind was focused entirely on Eberly’s message.

“It’s up to you to build this new world,” he told them. “You will be the leaders of tomorrow.”

They applauded and stamped and whistled. Holly thought they would storm the platform and carry Eberly off on their shoulders.

The newcomer turned to her and shouted through the noisy accolade, “He knows how to turn ’em on, doesn’t he?”

“He’s wonderful!” Holly yelled back, hammering her hands together as loudly as she could.

Eberly smiled brilliantly and thanked the audience several times and finally stepped down from the platform, to be immediately surrounded by admiring people. The rest of the crowd began to break up and drift outside.

The newcomer asked Holly, “Am I too late to get something to eat?”

“The cafeteria’s closed until tomorrow morning,” Holly said. Gesturing toward the food dispensers, she added, “You can get something from the machines.”

He wrinkled his pug nose. “Stale sandwiches and sodas that make you belch.”

Holly giggled. “Well, there are the restaurants. They stay open till midnight, I’m pretty sure.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I guess that’s it.”

The last of the crowd was leaving, little knots of two or three, talking about Eberly’s speech.

Kris Cardenas stopped beside Holly. “I’m going over to the Bistro for some dessert. Would you like to join me?”

The newcomer said, “Why don’t the two of you join me?

Holly glanced at Cardenas. She knew the man’s face, but she couldn’t recall his name or occupation.

Sensing her puzzlement, he said, “My name is Manuel Gaeta. I’m not part of your regular population here, I’m -

“You’re the stuntman,” Holly blurted, remembering now.

Gaeta smiled, almost shyly. “My publicity people say I’m an adventure specialist.’”

“You’re the one who wants to go down to the surface of Titan.

He nodded. “If Professor Wilmot lets me do it.”

“Why on Earth would anyone want to go to the surface of Titan?”

Cardenas asked.

Gaeta gri

With that, he took each of the women by the arm and started off for the Bistro, halfway across the village.

PROFESSOR WILMOT’S QUARTERS

James Colerane Wilmot followed a comfortable routine almost every night. A lifelong bachelor, he usually had an early di

He had known that Eberly intended to make a speech of some sort that evening, but had not let the knowledge interfere with his nightly custom. Eberly ran the Human Resources Department well enough, Wilmot thought, which meant that no one brought complaints about the department to Wilmot’s attention. He exceeded his authority by allowing that nanotechnology woman to join the community without Wilmot’s approval, but that could be handled easily enough. If the man wants to make a speech, what of it?

He felt a bit rankled, therefore, when his phone chimed in the middle of one of his favorite vids, Secrets of the Star Chamber. He checked the phone’s screen and saw that it was a minor assistant calling. With an irritated huff, Wilmot blanked the holographic image and opened the phone cha

Bernard Isaacs’s face appeared in midair: round, apple-cheeked, tightly curled hair. He seemed flushed with excitement, or perhaps worry.

“Did you hear his speech?” Isaacs asked urgently.

“Whose speech? Do you mean Eberly and his silly contests?”

“It’s more than contests. He wants to tear up the protocols and write a new constitution, form a new government!”

Wilmot nodded, wondering what the problem was. “When we reach Saturn, yes, I know. That’s in our plan of—”

“No!” Isaacs interrupted. “Now! He’s telling them they should do it now.”

“Telling who?”

“Anyone who will listen!”

“Can’t be done,” Wilmot said, completely calm. “Everyone signed the agreement to stick by our protocols until we establish the habitat safely in Saturn orbit.”

“But he wants to do it now!” Isaacs repeated, his voice rising half an octave.

Wilmot raised a hand. “That’s not possible and he knows it.”

“But—”

“I’ll have a talk with him. See what he’s after. Possibly you misunderstood his intention.”

Isaacs’s round jaw set stubbornly. “I’ll send you a vid of his speech. You can see for yourself what he’s up to.”

“Do that,” Wilmot said. “Thank you very much for informing me.”

He clicked the phone co

Wilmot resolved to review Eberly’s speech. But not until he finished the vid on Henry VIII’s means of extracting confessions from his subjects.

Two hours later, after watching Eberly’s speech several times and helping himself to another healthy-sized whisky, Wilmot sat back in his favorite easy chair with an odd little smile playing across his lips.

So it’s finally begun, he said to himself. The experiment begins to get interesting. At first I was afraid they would all be anarchists, troublemakers, but so far they’ve behaved rather well, damned little sign of rebelliousness or mischief. Probably they’re all getting themselves accustomed to their new world, adapting to life in the habitat. Most of them have never had it so good, I suppose. But this man Eberly wants to rouse them a bit. Very good.