She hadn’t strayed off the subject, he realized. It was just a roundabout way of addressing the issue he had raised.
She went on, “They saw Venus being ejected by Jupiter. To the Greeks it was Pallas Athene springing from the brow of Zeus. The Hindus have Vishnu being born of Shiva. The Egyptians, Horus. All names for the same planets, associated with events in the sky that are described the same way everywhere, over and over. Now tell me that Athena isn’t the same thing happening again.”
“You don’t have to convince me,” Keene said. “I’m already on your side, remember? But the scientists who’ll determine what our governments decide aren’t interested in old myths and legends. They’re going to want to see facts and evidence and numbers before they’ll budge, and none of them wants to budge because they’re happy with the ideas they’ve got and things the way they are.”
Sariena looked at Keene dubiously. “Is that really all that matters here?” she asked. “Comfortable livings and safe jobs? Prestige and promotions? Don’t things like where we’re all heading in the longer term, and wanting to know the truth count?”
“Maybe they did once—I don’t know; you hear these things. But people have always thought things were better in the past. Today, the creed is `Make what you can now and grab as much as you can get.’ There might not be a tomorrow.”
“One day, that could turn out to be a gruesome self-fulfilling prophesy,” Sariena observed. “I don’t understand how a system can function that seems to be based on nothing but antagonism.”
Keene smiled humorlessly. “Most people here can’t understand how your system can, that isn’t.”
“We couldn’t afford anything else out there,” Sariena said. “Everyone’s survival is at stake. We have to work together. And look what it’s achieving.” She paused, waiting, but Keene had nothing to add just then. After a short silence, she said, “Of course we have more than just ancient myths and records. They’re just the beginning. We have as much fact and evidence as anyone could reasonably need. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”
“I know about the mass-extinctions and geological upheavals,” Keene agreed. “But there are plenty of other theories going around as to what could have caused all that. How do you positively connect it all with Venus?”
“Venus is a young planet,” Sariena answered. “It hasn’t been there for billions of years. The evidence has been piling up for decades. A lot of scientists on Earth that we know of are aware of it.”
“I’ll be meeting one of them on my way back,” Keene said. “But even if you’re right, that doesn’t mean it nearly sideswiped Earth. That’s the biggest single problem you’re going to have to deal with: how an orbit that could take it from Jupiter to an Earth-encounter could circularize to what we see today. All of conventional theory says it couldn’t happen. That’s why people here are saying that Athena is something different. No mechanism known to science could reduce its eccentricity to almost zero in under four thousand years. That’s what they’re going to tell you. How are you planning on answering it?”
Sariena studied him for a moment. “Do you know about the electromagnetic changes that have been occurring all over the Solar System since Athena was ejected?” she asked curiously.
Keene looked at her uncertainly. “Electromagnetic changes to what?”
“The space environment itself. Its properties are being altered.”
Keene was still frowning, but with a new interest. “No . . .” He told her. “I don’t think I do. Suppose you tell me.”
“I don’t think it’s something that most scientists here are informed about,” Sariena answered. “Earth hasn’t been putting enough deep-space probes out to get the picture. We have. We must be getting a better perspective.”
“What’s been happening?” Keene asked.
Sariena motioned upward with an arm to indicate the night sky. “This white-hot mass, hurtling in from Jupiter for the last ten months, pouring out a tail of highly ionized particles that extends for millions of miles, orders of magnitude denser than that of any comet ever known . . . It’s turning space in the inner Solar System into an electrically active medium—at least, temporarily. Now move an incandescent body in a plasma state through that medium at high velocity. . . .” She left the suggestion unfinished.