CRADLE OF SATURN BY JAMES P. HOGAN

In the main, Earth’s policymakers had rejected the Kronian urgings in preference for the orthodox view. With the military no longer able to press as compelling a case as in the days of superpower rivalry, and other lobbies jostling for a share of largesse at the federal trough, expansion of the space sciences and industries had not been a high government priority. For the private sector, ventures much beyond the Moon were too massively demanding in outlay and too risky to interest the major institutional investors, who looked to areas of secure returns such as launch systems for satellites and limited scientific payloads—which conventional technologies served adequately. Comfort and security had become the world’s foremost concerns. Only fringe outfits like Amspace, and a few visionaries who were prepared to back them, had continued pushing for a general commitment to broadening what the Kronians had pioneered, and were calling for the enterprise that advanced, long-range, spacegoing capability would open up: colonization. Hence, organizations like Amspace had found themselves natural allies of the Kronians, communicating and cooperating for the same end: the Kronians to impart a cultural imperative; the Keenes of the world—and the Joyces, spending weeks on end in a cramped, orbiting boiler room; the Wallys, hoping to create a better world for their grandchildren—pursuing lifelong dreams.

Then Athena happened—and surely, they had all believed, that would change everything. But astoundingly, it had changed things hardly at all. Of course, the early months had seen a media orgy of sensational pictures of the planetoid and a deformed Jupiter gradually regaining its shape; hurried explanations by scientists; and endless lurid articles and documentaries that the public eventually grew weary of. Sales of amateur telescopes, astronomy books, and videos soared; related college classes reported record enrollments; catastrophism saw a dramatic revival. And yes, the scientific community conceded, with some hemming and hawing and smoothing of ruffled plumage, that their theories needed revising—and then clamored for more funding to support the new research that needed to be done. But the kind of research they had in mind involved bigger and more lavishly equipped departments, computers that even the particle physicists would envy, more chairmanships and committees, and appointments to oversee unmanned missions to various parts of the Solar System. The mainline contractors got in their bids where they saw opportunity, but practically without exception the equipment and techniques envisaged were all safe, proven, and more of the same. Nothing they talked about anticipated any meaningful move toward getting people in significant numbers out there anytime soon. Finally, in desperation, the Kronians dispatched a political-scientific delegation to present their case firsthand in an attempt to shake Earth out of its complacency.

There was a tap on the door, and Celia stuck her face in. “We’re off now,” she said to Keene and Vicki. “Have a good weekend.”

” ‘Bye,” Karen’s voice called from the outer office beyond.

“Take care with those cowboys out there,” Keene called back. One of the ongoing news topics of the office was Karen’s latest boyfriend. He nodded a goodnight to Celia. She disappeared, closing the door. Keene looked back at Vicki. “We’ll just have to wait and see what the next few weeks bring,” he told her.

As he saw things, it was the last chance. If this didn’t bring about a change in Earth’s outlook and policies, nothing would. Then he and Vicki might well end up applying for jobs at the Bandana instead of just stopping by for happy-hour drinks.

5

Thirty years earlier, the world had scoffed and said it was impossible when two extraordinary personalities got together and announced an intention to establish a human settlement among the moons of Saturn. After the parade of mediocrity that had marked the closing decades of the twentieth century, it seemed that leader figures with the charisma to inspire followings had conceded the stage to rock stars and sports idols. Then, one day, a disenchanted California trial attorney with the unremarkable name of Thomas Mondel gave up a promising career to denounce the world’s economic system with the contention that humans were made—created, evolved, or “just there”; whatever one chose to believe—for better things. There was something wrong with a society that spent millions trying to make computers and robots imitate humans while at the same time raising humans to behave like robots. California had seen more than a smattering of fads and cults before, of course. But this was different in several ways that mattered. Mondel was not another beard with sandals and beads, reaching out to lost sheep and adolescents of all ages desperate to find escape from the hopeless corners of life that they had painted themselves into. He was professional, articulate, wise to the ways of the world, and he knew how to get attention. His appeal was to the slowly atrophying cost accountant stuck in traffic twice a day, two-hundred-fifty days every year, with the IRS waiting to mop up whatever of his year’s income survived Christmas; to the marketing wage slave sitting out a four-hour layover at O’Hare, looking forward to a microwaved TV meal in a solitary apartment and wondering what happened to the glamorous, high-powered executive that she’d created out of movie images in the years she was at college; to the frustrated who had worked to be scientists or teachers or ministers or healers, but found themselves turned into full-time form-fillers and fundraisers instead. In short, to all those people to whom it didn’t make sense to have to labor year-in, year-out in dismally unfulfilling ways in order to be allowed a modest share of the produce in a world whose biggest preoccupation seemed to be with moving overproduced merchandise that nobody really needed. And it was amazing how many people like that there turned out to be.