I’m not frail here, he marveled to himself as he floated effortlessly down the tunnel to Hab 1, following a ruddy-faced young crewman to the quarters he had been assigned. I’m strong again. Young again! I may never leave this place.
Within an hour of settling his meager luggage in his sleep compartment— and actually laughing when his clothes took on a weightless life of their own and floated almost out of his reach before he could corral them—Bianco used the intercom to call a meeting of all the Trikon personnel aboard the station.
The scientists and technicians gathered in the rumpus room at Bianco’s command. He did not need to ask permission, nor did he need to ask where to hold the meeting. Bianco knew the station’s layout in his heart, better perhaps than many of the scientists who had spent ninety days aboard. Bianco had spent years “seeing” Trikon Station in all its details.
Although the expended shuttle external tank that formed the rumpus room was the same size as the Mars module, its lack of scientific equipment made it the single most spacious area on the station, and the natural site for the meeting. Of course, there was no dais, and there were no chairs. Dan secured his three bonsai animals so they would not make a distracting backdrop for Bianco as he spoke. Lance Muncie and Freddy Aviles installed a portable floor grid on which the Trikon scientists and technicians could anchor their feet during the meeting.
Every member of the Trikon scientific community gathered in the rumpus room. Aaron Weiss joined the group, but rather than anchor himself to the floor grid he drifted above the assembly and slightly to one side so that he could see their faces without distracting them too much. His Minicam was loosely attached to his neck and he gripped a magnetized notepad in one hand.
Bianco looked small, almost shrunken in the light-blue Trikon flight suit he wore for the occasion. The open collar exposed the wrinkles and veins of his neck. The clinging pants revealed the sharp points of his knee and hip bones. Yet somehow he looked vital, eager. His eyes sparkled. He smiled gently at his employees.
“When I was a young man,” he began, “I would sit in my family’s garden at night and watch the stars track slowly across the sky. I dreamed of another star, not a glowing ball of hydrogen and helium hundreds of light years away, but a glittering diamond of aluminum and titanium that could circle our planet in a mere ninety minutes. And in that glittering diamond the finest minds from every nation would gather and direct their energies toward developing a second generation of science and technology that would solve the problems created by our well-meaning but ignorant forebears.”
Bianco hesitated a moment. The scientists and technicians, anchored by their floor restraints, swayed slightly like a field of brightly colored anemones rocking back and forth in the tide.
“There are many in the world who blame all our ills on science and technology. They say that we have too much technology, that we must give up our sophisticated machines and return to a simpler way of life. Otherwise the world will be polluted to death.”
The light in Bianco’s eyes changed. His voice became stronger, more urgent.
“But how can the human race go back to a simpler life without allowing billions to die? Can we privileged rich permit the world’s poor to starve, to die of disease? No. The answer, my friends, is not less technology, but more. We need an entirely new type of technology, second-generation technology, new and clean and based on the scientific breakthroughs that you are striving to create. Second-generation technology can feed the hungry without polluting the air and the seas. Second-generation technology can give us all the energy we need without destroying the global environment.”
Bianco studied their faces as he spoke. Only a few seemed to be accepting his words. Most of them looked impassive, indifferent.
“The most important task for our new scientific capabilities is to learn how to clean up the filth that the first-generation technologies have generated. That is why we are here. That is our high purpose. To cleanse the Earth of the toxic waste that is choking the air and strangling the oceans of our planet. That is why I created Trikon Station: to give you a place where you can save the world.