Footfall

This is Saturn!

Huge TV screens showed pictures as they came in from the Voyager. Every few minutes a picture changed. A close view of the planet, black-and-white streamlines and whorls. Rings, hundreds of them, like a close-up of a phonograph record. Saturn again, in color, with his rings in wide angle. Sections of the rings in closeup. Shots of moons. All just as it came in, so that the press saw it as soon as the scientists.

At the Jupiter passings the pictures had come in faster, in vivid swirls and endless storms, God making merry with an airbrush, and four moons that turned out to be worlds in their own right. But to balance that they’d soon see Titan, which was known to have an atmosphere. Sagan and the other scientists weren’t saying they hoped to find life on Titan — but they were certainly interested in the giant moon, which had so far been disappointingly featureless.

The screens shifted, and the babble in the room fell off for a moment. A moon like a giant eyeball: one tremendous crater of the proportions of an iris, with a central peak for the pupil. Anything bigger, Nat thought, would have shattered the whole moon. He heard a female voice say, “Well, we’ve located the Death Star,” and he gri

Nat couldn’t make himself care. A screen changed to show something like a dry riverbed or three twined plumes of smoke or … F-ring, the printout said. Nat said, “What the hell …”

“You’d know if you’d been here last night.”

“I’ve got to get some sleep.” Nat didn’t need to look around. He’d written two books with Wade Curtis; he expected to recognize that voice in Hell, when they pla

He also had a tendency to lecture. “F-ring,” he said. “You know, like A, B, C, rings, only they’re named in order of discovery, not distance from the planet, so the system’s all screwed up. The F-ring is the one just outside the big body of rings. It’s thin. Nobody ever saw it until the space probes went out there, and Pioneer didn’t get much of a picture even then.”

Nat held up his hand. I know, I know, the gesture said. Curtis shrugged and was quiet.

But the F-ring didn’t look normal at all. It showed as three knotted streamers of gas or dust or God knows what all braided together. “Braided,” Nat said. “What does that?”

“None of the astronomers wanted to say.”

“Okay, I can see why. Catch me in a mistake, I shrug it off. A scientist, he’s betting his career.”

“Yeah. Well, I know of no law of physics that would permit that!”

Nat didn’t either. He said, “What’s the matter, haven’t you ever seen three earthworms in love?” and accepted Wade’s appreciative chuckle as his due. “I’d be afraid to write about it. Someone would have it explained before I could get the story into print.”

The press conference was ready to start. The JPL camera crew unlimbered its gear to broadcast the press conference all over the laboratory grounds, and one of the public relations ladies went around turning off the screens in the conference mom.

“Hmm. Interesting stuff still coming in,” Curtis said. “And there aren’t any seats. I had a couple but I gave them to the Washington Post. Front-row seats, too.”

“Too bad,” Nat said. “What the hell, let’s watch the conference from the reception area. Jilly’s out there already.”

On the morning of November 12. 1980, the pressroom at Jet Propulsion Laboratories was a tangled maze of video equipment and moving elbows. Roger and Linda had come early, but not early enough to get seats. A science-fiction writer in a bush jacket gave up his, two right in the front row.

“Sure it’s all right?” Roger asked.

The sci-fi man shrugged. “You need ’em more than I do. Tell Congress the space program’s important, that’s all I ask.”

Roger thanked the man and sat down. Linda Gillespie was trapped near the life-size spacecraft model, fending off still another reporter who was trying to interview her: what had it been like, marooned on Earth while her husband was aboard Skylab?

She looked great. He hadn’t seen her since — since when? Only twice since she’d married Edmund. And of course he’d been at her wedding. Linda’s mother had cried. Damn near cried myself, Roger thought. How did I let her get out of circulation? But I wasn’t ready to marry her myself. Maybe I should have…

The trouble was, he wasn’t getting any story he could understand. People were excited, but they didn’t say why. The regular science press people weren’t telling. They all knew each other, and they resented outsiders at big events like this.

Roger doodled, looking up when anyone called a greeting, hoping nobody would want his attention. He hadn’t asked for this assignment.

He heard, “Haven’t you ever seen three earthworms in love?” and looked. A clump of science-fiction writers stood beneath a screen that showed… yeah, three earthworms in love, or a bad photo of spaghetti left on a plate, orjust noise. He wrote, “F ring: Three earthworms in love,” and tapped Linda’s shoulder. “Linda? Save my seat?”

“Where’re you going?”

“Maybe I can get something from the science-fiction writers.” Nobody else was trying that; it might get him a new slant. At least they’d talk English. “It looks like things are starting.”

Frank Bristow, the JPL newsroom manager, had taken his place at the podium. Roger had met him briefly when signing in. The regular press corps all seemed to know him as well as each other. Roger didn’t know anyone.

Bristow was about to make his opening statement. The Voyager project manager and four astrophysicists were taking their seats at a raised table. Brooks sat down again. He wished he were somewhere else.Roger Brooks was approaching thirty, and he didn’t like it. There were temptations in his job: too much free food and booze. He took care to maintain the muscle tone when his lifestyle didn’t. His straight blond hair was begi

Roger Brooks had been just old enough to cover some of the frantic last days in Vietnam , but he had been too late to get anything juicy. He had missed Watergate: his suspicions were right, but he was too junior to follow them up. Other reporters got Pulitzer prizes.

Something had changed in him after that. It was as if there were a secret somewhere, calling to him. Little assignments couldn’t hold his interest.

“He missed one chance to be played by Robert Redford,” one of his ladies had been heard to say. “He isn’t about to miss another.”

This was a little assignment. He wondered if he should have taken it, even for the chance to get to California , even though half the Washington newsroom staff would have sold fingers and toes for the chance. But nobody was keeping secrets here. Whatever Voyager One told them, they would shout it to the world, to the Moon if they could. The trick was to understand them.

No big story, maybe, but the trip was worth it. He glanced at Linda and thought: definitely worth it. — He twisted uncomfortably as old memories came back. They’d been so inexperienced! But they’d learned, and no sex had ever been as good as his memory of Linda that last time. Maybe he’d edited that memory. Maybe not. I’ve got to stop thinking about that! It’ll show … What in hell am I going to write about?