“Courtesy of our friends of the environment,” Keene quipped to Vicki, who was staring fixedly out as the helicopter rose and headed north. She didn’t seem to hear. He moved a hand up and down in front of her face. “Hello. Earth to Vicki. You can come back now. The rest of you is already here.” She blinked and smiled faintly. “Where were you—still up in the Osiris?” Keene asked.
Vicki didn’t answer at once. “In a way. . . . I was thinking about those markings on the things Sariena showed us from Rhea. I know this sounds crazy, Lan, but I’m sure I’ve seen them before . . . or something close. I just can’t put my finger on where.”
That was crazy. How could she have seen markings from objects only discovered within the last year that hadn’t even arrived at Earth yet? “Maybe they got into some transmission from Kronia somehow, that you saw,” was the only thing he could think of to suggest.
Vicki shook her head. “No, I’m sure it wasn’t anything like that. It was in a book or something. I’ve been dabbling in so many different things lately: Venus and Mars, dinosaurs and mammoths, Biblical history, ancient legends. . . .”
“Yes, but it couldn’t possibly have been—” The phone in Keene’s pocket beeped and cut him off. “It’s started already,” he sighed, taking it out and activating it. “Hello, Landen Keene here.”
“Lan, it’s Judith. You should be down by now. Are you anywhere near getting away yet?”
“We’re on our way to Kingsville in a chopper right now.”
“Vicki’s there?”
“Of course, sitting right next to me.”
“How’d it all go?”
“Just great. But that obviously isn’t whatever couldn’t wait. What’s up?”
“I just heard from Jerry. He’s finished the preliminary run and sent me the figures. They’re dynamite. I’m on my way over to Kingsville right now to see the complete outputs. So I guess I’ll see you there.”
“All right!” Keene pocketed the phone and clapped Vicki’s shoulder. “That was Judith. Jerry’s finished the first run. She’s leaving the office now and coming up to Kingsville. It sounds as if there might be some interesting news.”
After clearing more formalities at Kingsville, Keene and Vicki went straight to Jerry Allender’s section. Judith still hadn’t arrived from Corpus Christi, but Allender took them into his office and showed them the preliminary results. Essentially, tidal pumping induced through combined electrical and gravitational forces in a hot plastic body of the kind Venus was theorized to have been would drive an initially eccentric orbit toward a minimum-energy state, circularizing it much more rapidly than anything in conventional theory permitted. It didn’t prove that Venus had originated that way; but it showed that it was possible.
Keene was jubilant. Added to what he and Vicki had seen aboard the Osiris, this was a powerful argument for taking the Kronians seriously. Judith arrived and joined them while Allender was still expounding on the details. Keene, however, had already seen enough. Leaving the others still poring over the printouts and putting more images up on the screens, he went into an empty office and called Les Urkin at the downtown building.
“Hey, Les. First, I just wanted to let you know that we brought Jenny back okay. We’re at Kingsville now, in case you haven’t heard from her already. It went well. She did real good.”
“Yes, she called me about half an hour ago. . . .”
“The other thing, Les: I’ve just talked to Jerry, who’s got the results of those computations. It really puts the whole thing on a solid foundation. Jerry says the buzz is going around among the astronomers already. I think we should try for some good general coverage at the same time to tie in with the start of the Kronian talks. Let’s get some exposure for Salio, Charlie Hu at JPL, all the other guys we’ve been talking to who don’t buy the party line, and . . .” Only then did Keene register the solemn expression on Urkin’s face, and that he wasn’t reacting to Keene’s enthusiasm. Keene’s expression changed. “What is it, Les?”
On the screen, Urkin shook his head and looked bleak. “It’s all changed, Lan. Things have been going on that I don’t understand. We’ve lost Salio. He’s not going to be in it anywhere. And I don’t think he’ll be the only one either. I—”