Saturn

She eyed him, disbelief clear in her expression. And something else, he thought. Curiosity? Maybe even regret?

“I just want you to know,” he said, “that you’re the only one who means anything to me. You’re the one I don’t want to lose.”

That shocked her. “You’re joking!”

“No joke, Kris,” he said. “I’ve never said this to anybody else in my life. I think I love you.”

Cardenas started to reply, then closed her mouth, pressed her lips together tightly.

“I mean it,” Gaeta said. “I never said that to anybody before.”

At last she replied, so softly he could barely hear her, “I never thought I’d hear anyone say that to me again.”

Ruth Morgenthau wanted to sleep, but she had hours and hours of vids to watch and phone taps to listen to. Eberly was pressing her for results, and she was determined to go through all of the material that Vyborg had amassed on Professor Wilmot’s communications. So she sat in her padded recliner, resisting the urge to crank it all the way back and drift off to sleep. I’ve let this material pile up so much, she realized. I’ve got to wade through it; otherwise it will just get worse.

Why not let Vyborg do this? she asked herself wearily as the hours ground on. He’s put the taps in place, his people have set up the cameras in Wilmot’s quarters and office. Why not let him drudge through all this drivel? She knew the answer: it was because if Vyborg found something, Vyborg would get the credit in Eberly’s eyes. Morgenthau shook her head ponderously. No, that will never do. If anyone is going to bring Wilmot low, it must be me. Eberly must see that I did it. No one else but me.

She worried about Eberly’s devotion to their cause. He seems more interested in being admired than in furthering the reach of the Holy Disciples. He’s an American, of course, and they’re all infatuated with their own individuality, but still he’s subject to the judgments of their New Morality.

Another reason to see this job through, she thought. If I can bring him something to use against Wilmot, it will make Eberly see that he needs me. Vyborg and that murderous Kananga can help him in some ways, but I must make him realize that he is dependent on me. One word from me can put him back in prison, yet he treats me as just another of his underlings. He’s smart enough to call my bluff on that. If I send him packing, our whole mission here will be destroyed. Urbain or that growling Russian will be elected leader of this habitat and I’ll have failed miserably.

Eberly has no respect for my abilities. He thinks I’m lazy, incompetent. Well, let me bring him the goods on Wilmot and his opinion of me will have to change.

Silently Morgenthau prayed for help, for success. Let me find something that we can use against Wilmot, she prayed. For the greater glory of God, let me find a way to bring the professor to his knees.

The only answer she received was hour after hour of watching Wilmot at his desk, listening to his phone conversations, reading the reports he wrote before he encoded them to send back to Earth. Each evening the professor sat watching vids for hours. Morgenthau fast-forwarded and skipped past them. She could not see them clearly from the vantage point of the camera set in Wilmot’s sitting room ceiling, and she couldn’t hear the sound tracks because he listened to the vids through a miniature plug he wormed into his ear. Hour after hour, he watched the indecipherable vids.

And hour after hour, Morgenthau skimmed past them, looking for something tangible, something sinful or illegal or merely embarrassing, something that could hurt Professor Wilmot.

Utterly bored and weary, Morgenthau yawned and rubbed her heavy-lidded eyes. I can barely stay awake, she said to herself. Enough is enough.

She turned off the display, still showing Wilmot staring at his entertainment vid in rapt concentration, and started to push herself up from her recliner when she remembered to check if Wilmot had sent any messages out of the habitat, to Earth. Each week he sent a coded report to somewhere in Atlanta, she knew. Very cryptic, even once the computer decoded them. A strange coincidence that whoever Wilmot was reporting to resided in the same city as the headquarters of the New Morality. Morgenthau shrugged it off as merely a coincidence.

Already half asleep, she pulled up the file of his outgoing messages.

Aside from the usual brief report to Atlanta, there was an even shorter message to some address in Copenhagen. And he had sent it not through the usual radio cha

Suddenly Morgenthau was wide awake, calling the same number in Copenhagen, tracing Wilmot’s message.

“She knows?” Vyborg asked, startled.

Eberly, walking along the curving path between Vyborg and Kananga, replied, “She suspects.”

To a casual observer the three men seemed to be ambling slowly along the flower-bordered pathway out beyond the edges of Athens. Late morning sunlight streamed through the habitat’s solar windows. Bees hummed among the hyacinths and hollyhocks. Butterflies fluttered. Vyborg, short and spare, hunching over slightly as he walked, was scowling like a man who had just swallowed something vile. Even tall, regal Kananga, on Eberly’s other side, looked displeased, perhaps even worried.

“And she came to you for help,” Kananga said.

Eberly nodded slowly. “I have volunteered to bring her to your office.”

“Not my office,” said Kananga. “Too many eyes watching there. We’ll have to meet somewhere more secluded.”

“Where?” Eberly asked.

Vyborg suggested, “How about the scene of the crime?”

Kananga smiled gleamingly. “Perfect.”

Eberly glanced from one man to the other. They’re drawing me into their crime, he realized. They’re going to make me a party to another murder. What alternative do I have? How can I keep clear of this?

Aloud, he said, “I’ll tell her to meet me at the scene of the old man’s death, but I won’t be there when she arrives.”

“I will,” said Kananga.

“She’s got to disappear entirely,” Eberly said. “We can’t have another dead body to explain.”

Vyborg said, “In a habitat as large as this, there must be thousands of places where she could run off to.”

“I don’t want her body found,” Eberly repeated.

“It won’t be,” said Kananga. “That’s what airlocks are for.” Looking past Eberly to Vyborg, he said, “You’ll be able to erase the airlock security camera record, won’t you?”

Vyborg nodded. “And replace it with perfectly normal footage that will show absolutely nothing.”

“Good,” Kananga said.

Eberly drew in a deep breath. “Very well. When shall we do it?”

“The sooner the better.”

“This afternoon, then.”

“Fourteen hundred hours,” Kananga suggested.

“Make it earlier,” said Vyborg, “while most of the people are at lunch.”

“Yes,” Kananga agreed. “Say, twelve-thirty hours.”

“Good.” Vyborg smiled, relieved.

“I don’t like any of this,” Eberly said.

“But it’s got to be done.”

“I know. That’s why I’m helping you.”

“Helping us?” Vyborg challenged. “What will you be doing to help us? The colonel here is doing what needs to be done. You’ll be in your office, establishing an alibi.”

Eberly looked down at the smaller man coldly. “I’ll be in my office amending Holly Lane’s dossier to show that she is emotionally unstable, and has attempted suicide in the past.”

Kananga laughed aloud. “Good thinking. Then her disappearance won’t look so suspicious.”

“Just be certain that her body isn’t found,” Eberly snapped.

“It won’t be,” said Kananga, “unless someone wants to get into a spacesuit and search a few million kilometers of vacuum.”