He looked at the face that he knew only from screens, outwardly so composed, yet what kind of agitation and uncertainties—fear even—had to be churning inside? In all her adult life, she had never seen an ocean, breathed a planet’s air, or walked under an open sky. She had been taken to Kronia as a child in the early days when the original base, named Kropotkin, was constructed on the moon Dione. Now she was returning for the first time as one of the deputation that the Saturn colony had sent to Earth following the Athena event to press the same case that Keene had summarized to Feld.
Keene raised his coffee mug. “And before any of those guys in tuxedos have a chance to get started with their toasts and speeches, let us be the first to say, Welcome to Earth, finally. The main thing you have to remember is that leaving the outside door open is okay. But don’t try walking on the blue stuff.”
Sariena laughed. “Will you be able to make it to Washington too, Joyce?”
“Sorry. Not for a while, anyhow. I’m stuck up in this grimy can for another three weeks.”
“Is that all?”
“Yeah, right, okay—you’ve got me. I was forgetting. What’s three weeks in space to you guys?”
“But their accommodation is probably a bit more roomy,” Keene said to Joyce.
“When are you going back down, Lan?” Sariena asked.
“In a couple of hours, probably. The firm’s bus is up here waiting already.” He gave Joyce a sideways look. “Then it’ll be a shower and a swim, clean clothes . . .” He watched the look forming on her face. “And maybe a good steak and some wine out somewhere nice tonight.”
“Pig,” Joyce muttered hatefully.
* * *
The Amspace minishuttle detached from Space Dock a little under three hours later. As the craft fell away, Keene was able to catch a glimpse of the Osiris passing above as an elongated bead of light in its higher orbit. Low to one side, partly eclipsed by the curve of Earth’s dark side, stretched the awesome spectacle of Athena’s braided tail streaming in the solar wind as the supercomet fell toward the Sun.
4
Amspace’s headquarters offices were located in Corpus Christi, southeast Texas, on North Water Street, a couple of blocks inland from the marinas on Corpus Christi Bay, at the fashionable, downtown end of Shoreline Boulevard. The company’s main manufacturing, engineering, and research center was twenty miles south of the city at Kingsville, with a launch facility thirty miles farther south at a place called San Saucillo, on the plain of sandy flats and sage brush between Laredo and the Gulf. It was Oil Country, and much of the company’s founding impetus had derived from the tradition of independence rooted in private capital and sympathetic local politics. All the same, taking an initiative toward developing the longer-term potential of space was a contentious and uncertain issue, and as insurance the corporation was constructing a second launch complex over the border in Mexico, on a highland plateau known as Montemorelos. Besides affording backup capability, Montemorelos would provide a means of continuing operations in the event that San Saucillo was shut down by politics.
It was late morning when the minishuttle carrying Keene and the other two NIFTV crew, along with several others from Space Dock who had been involved in the test mission, landed at the Saucillo site under a sun beating down through a dust haze that tinted the plain blue with distance. A bus carried the arrivals from the pad area to the assembly and administration complex at the far end of the landing field, where there was an interview session with waiting TV reporters. From there, a company helicopter flew them to the main plant at Kingsville for a post-mission debriefing over a burgers-and-fries lunch with senior technical staff in the office of the Technical Vice President, Harry Halloran. A lot of numbers and preliminary flight data were bandied about, and the NIFTV’s performance analyzed. The consensus was that the demonstration had comfortably exceeded expectations.
By rights, that ought to have been good news. But such were the circumstances of the times that negative reactions could be expected as a virtual certainty too. And, indeed, by afternoon the protest had already started, ranging from diplomatic notes being delivered in Washington to poster-waving in the street outside Amspace’s Corpus Christi offices. All the news channels were airing comments or polling views, and the company’s switchboard and electronic mail servers were overloading. So if it was true that there really is no such thing as bad publicity, and since the whole object had been to get attention, then there could be no serious grounds for complaint.