It seemed to Holly that they covered the subject pretty thoroughly in the first half hour, but the panel members droned on, rehashing the issue endlessly. They’re talking just to hear the sound of their own voices, Holly thought. All of them except Wilmot; he was the panel moderator, and he kept his opinions to himself, except for an occasional wry smile or a subtle lifting of his gray brows.
Citizens phoned in their questions and comments, as welclass="underline"
“You don’t expect men to sign this petition, do you?” a woman asked. “They don’t want children. All they want is sex without the responsibilities.”
A man remarked, “You take away the ZPG law and this place’ll look like Calcutta before the biowar inside of a few years!”
“We came out here to get away from those religious nuts and their holier-than-thou regulations. Why do we need this ZPG protocol? Aren’t we responsible enough to regulate our own affairs?”
“Birth control is a personal matter. The government shouldn’t be poking its nose into our bedrooms.”
“We live in a limited environment, for god’s sake! How’re we going to feed double, triple, five times our current population?”
Wilmot allowed each of the panelists to speak to each caller. Holly found herself making shorter and shorter responses.
“We have the intelligence and the understanding to allow responsible population growth,” she repeated several times. “Not unlimited growth. But not zero growth, either.”
Wilmot finally spoke up. “Yes, but who will make the decisions about growth? Will you appoint a board that will decide who will be allowed to have a child and who will not?”
Holly stared at him, her mind churning. At last she heard herself reply, “I honestly don’t have an answer for that. Not yet. I’m hoping we can bring together a group of people who can offer suggestions about that. Then the general population can vote on how they want to proceed.”
That brought an avalanche of phone calls, and the panel all chimed in with their opinions, as well. After what seemed like hours, Wilmot waved them all down and said, “I’m afraid that our time is up. I want to thank all the panelists for their participation, and all you callers for your thought-provoking questions.”
Before any of the panelists could rise from their seats, the professor added, “This subject should be debated thoroughly by the two contestants for the office of chief administrator. I intend to arrange such a debate in the very near future.”
The red eyes of the cameras died, and Holly let out a weary sigh.
“Very good show,” Wilmot said jovially, as he got to his feet and stretched his arms over his head. “Capital!”
Holly slumped back in her chair. “I’m glad it’s over.”
The other panelists seemed to feel the same way as they shuffled tiredly toward the studio’s main doors.
Berkowitz was all smiles. “Terrific audience response,” he said to Holly. “All those calls mean that more than half the population was watching. Terrific!”
Holly was too tired to care. She pulled herself to her feet as Berkowitz and Wilmot walked away, deep in amiable conversation. A shower and a good night’s sleep, Holly told herself. That’s what I need.
She was surprised to see Raoul Tavalera standing in the open doorway of the studio. He looked uncertain, hesitant.
“Raoul!” Holly blurted. “What’re you doing here? How long—”
Almost shyly, Tavalera said, “I started to watch you on the vid, then I figured you might like to have a drink or something after you were through, so I came down here.”
“You’ve been waiting outside all this time?”
He looked down at his shoes momentarily. “I slipped in and watched from the back of the studio. I guess you didn’t see me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You want a drink? Something to eat?”
She reached for his arm, suddenly no longer weary. “I’m starving!”
Grinning at her, Tavalera started down the corridor. “Cafeteria’s closed by now, but the Bistro’s still open.”
“Cosmic!”
“Oh, by the way,” Tavalera said, his face turning serious, “I want to sign that petition of yours.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “I might want kids someday.”
Holly felt as if she could walk on thin air.
21 March 2096: Midnight
Urbain had lost track of how many times he’d walked between his own office and the mission control center that night. The biologists had settled themselves around the little oval conference table in his office, still throwing out theories about what smoothed Alpha’s tracks and what observations they needed to decide which theory was correct. If any. The engineers in the control center were doggedly tracing those ghost tracks and looking for fresh ones.
As Urbain returned to the dimly lit control center once again, half a dozen of the engineers were gathered around the coffee urn, arguing intently:
“We’ve covered the whole damned surface and no trace of her. The frigging junk heap must’ve sunk into one of the seas.”
“Or maybe that smaller lake. Tracks went right up to it.”
“And out again.”
“How can you tell if some of the tracks were outbound from the lake?”
“Too many tracks to be all one way. Besides—”
“Besides, bullshit! We’ve got five-meter resolution imagery. And stereoscopics. We’ve covered the whole fucking surface of Titan. Nothing! Nothing but tracks and ghosts of tracks.”
Urbain realized for the first time that his team of engineers were feeling just as frustrated and angry as he himself. They’re close to cracking, he told himself. I must do something to lift their spirits. But what?
One of the women said, “It’s a big world down there. Even with three-dimensional imagery we could miss the beast. We need to keep hunting.”
“Til we trip over our long, gray beards, huh?”
“What else can we do?”
“Go back home. Admit the damned thing’s lost and go back to Earth. We’re not exiles, we’re volunteers. We can go back whenever we want to.”
“Whenever there’s a ship to take us back.”
“You mean whenever somebody’s willing to foot the bill to carry us back.”
“The ICU has to take us back! We didn’t sign on for a permanent appointment all the way the hell out here!”
Urbain cleared his throat noisily and they all looked up.
“Any progress?” he asked pointedly.
No one bothered to answer him. They drifted back to their consoles, sullenly, Urbain thought. Like unhappy schoolchildren who would rather be somewhere else, anywhere except here.
“I know this is frustrating,” he said, loudly enough for everyone in the control center to hear him. Before anyone could reply he added, “But the search for Alpha must continue. Already the biologists have made an important discovery.”
“Already,” someone muttered acidly.
“Alpha is down there, and she needs our help. We must—”
One of the men at the consoles sang out, “Got something here! Looks like fresh tracks.”
Urbain rushed to his console and peered over the engineer’s shoulder at his central display screen. Across the spongy landscape he could see the sharp, deep imprint of a double row of cleat tracks.
“Follow them!” he shouted. “Follow them!”
The landscape shifted. The tracks continued, clear and straight. Suddenly the display went blank.
“What happened? Urbain demanded.
Without looking up from his screens the engineer replied, “Reached the limit of that satellite’s range of vision. Switching to another …”