He crossed the underground pedestrian precinct in the center of Foundation, Titan’s first settlement after the establishment of Kropotkin on Dione, situated a quarter of the way around the moon from Essen. As Titan consolidated to become the center of the Kronian culture, Foundation had been made the seat of the governing congress. Before Athena, the intention had been to move the administration to Mondel-Waltz City on the far side of Titan, named after two of the principal founders, which had been designed and built to accommodate it. But the new capital—fortunately housing no more than an initial skeleton population at the time—had been wiped out by a major impact, and the Kronian Congress would be occupying its old quarters now for as far ahead in time as it was possible to see.
Zeigler arrived at the steps leading up to the Terrarama, a museum and exhibition dedicated to preserving scenes and relics of Earth, and went inside. The entry hall was darkened and contained rows of rectangular holo-tanks showing images of New York City, San Francisco, London, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow, and other metropolises that were no more. Their glows highlighted the faces of school groups, parents standing with their awed children, and individuals silently immersed in thoughts of their own. The next hall contained scenes of landscapes and life, from cabins in the Canadian Rockies and a desert oasis, to crowded Australian beaches and a waterfall panorama in the upper reaches of the Amazon. Again, everything was in the form of electronic imagery; the pitifully few samples of physical remains actually salvaged from Earth were carefully preserved elsewhere. A major objective of the return missions that had been planned and then postponed had been a Noah’s Ark program to bring a variety of Terran animal and plant life back to Kronia.
Zeigler entered a side gallery devoted to selections of local life-styles, costume, and color, and spotted Kelm’s tall, blond-haired figure at the far end, contemplating one of the displays. As he drew nearer, he saw that it was a scene of the Miami ocean-front hotel strip and highway—a visitor could call from a practically limitless library of stored images. There was no one else around. Zeigler approached behind Kelm’s shoulder and shared the view of glass-paneled buildings and streaming automobiles in silence for a while.
“Everywhere, it was the same,” he commented finally. “If you lived south, something needed doing north. If you lived north, you had to be south. Everyone always in a rush to be somewhere else.”
The young Kronian turned his head. He looked officer material even out of uniform: trim and athletically muscular, shaped by Security Arm training, features handsome but with a haughty set, artificially tanned. He didn’t smile. “The same, everywhere? So many cars?”
“Every city in the world. Millions every day.”
“Where did they find enough pilots?”
“Pilots?”
“Whatever the word should be: professionals with the skills to execute such maneuvers. Earth didn’t have processors that advanced. . . . I’m not sure that we have anything in Kronia today that could do it. Where did they get all the pilots to take people where they wanted to go?”
It took Zeigler a moment to realize what Kelm meant. “It wasn’t a specialized profession,” he said. “Everyone drove their own.”
Kelm’s brow creased. “You mean ordinary people? Even students? The elderly?”
“Everyone.”
“I’m amazed. It doesn’t seem possible that it could work.”
Zeigler shrugged. “Humans are amazing creatures. I guess you’ve never known big open spaces. Did you ever visit Earth?”
“Never. I was born out here—on Dione.”
Zeigler nodded and looked at the image for a few seconds longer. Somehow a part of him still didn’t want to accept that it could all be gone, never to be returned to. Then he shook the thought away. There was nothing to be gained from such feelings. They had no bearing on the future that faced him now. “The reason I contacted you is that I think we might be able to help you,” he said.
“We?” Kelm repeated guardedly.
“The group that I represent.”
“Terrans?”
“They’re going to be a powerful force here one day, Kelm. Make no mistake about that. Kronia will need what we know, to become what it must.”