Authors: Ben Bova
Venus (3 page)
T
his is the opportunity of a lifetime,” Professor Greenbaum groaned like a creaking hinge, “and I’m too old to take advantage of it.”
his is the opportunity of a lifetime,” Professor Greenbaum groaned like a creaking hinge, “and I’m too old to take advantage of it.”
I had never actually seen an elderly person before, not close up, in the same room. I mean, poor people probably aged, but with everybody who could afford it getting telomerase treatments as soon as they reach adulthood, and rejuvenation therapy for adults who had aged before telomerase was approved for general use, no one grew old anymore.
But Daniel Haskel Greenbaum was
old
. His skin was all wrinkled and spotted. He was stooped over and looked so frail I was afraid his bones would shatter when I shook hands with him. Actually, his grip was rather firm, even though his eyes were pouchy and the skin of his face sagged and was filled with lines and creases, like a worn old arroyo eroded by centuries of weathering.
old
. His skin was all wrinkled and spotted. He was stooped over and looked so frail I was afraid his bones would shatter when I shook hands with him. Actually, his grip was rather firm, even though his eyes were pouchy and the skin of his face sagged and was filled with lines and creases, like a worn old arroyo eroded by centuries of weathering.
Yet he was only seventy-something.
Mickey had warned me about Greenbaum’s appearance.
Michelle Cochrane had been one of his graduate students. Now a full professor herself, she still worshiped Greenbaum. She called him the greatest living planetary scientist in the solar system.
Michelle Cochrane had been one of his graduate students. Now a full professor herself, she still worshiped Greenbaum. She called him the greatest living planetary scientist in the solar system.
If you could call his asthmatic, arthritic, painfully slow pace of existence
living
. He had refused rejuvenation therapy, for some obscure reason. His religion, I think. Or perhaps just pure stubbornness. He was the kind who believed that aging and death were inevitable, and should not be avoided.
living
. He had refused rejuvenation therapy, for some obscure reason. His religion, I think. Or perhaps just pure stubbornness. He was the kind who believed that aging and death were inevitable, and should not be avoided.
One of the last of that kind, I might add.
“He has the courage of his convictions,” Mickey had told me years earlier. “He’s not afraid of dying.”
“I’m scared to death of dying,” I had joked.
Mickey hadn’t seen the cleverness of my
mot
. Yet I knew she had taken telomerase treatments when she finished puberty as a matter of course. Everyone did.
mot
. Yet I knew she had taken telomerase treatments when she finished puberty as a matter of course. Everyone did.
Greenbaum was the world’s leading authority on the planet Venus, and Mickey had pleaded with me to meet with the old man. I had agreed without giving it another thought. The next thing I knew, she had arranged a meeting in Washington, D.C., not only with creaking Professor Emeritus Greenbaum, but with an angry-looking black bureaucrat from the space agency named Franklin Abdullah.
My father had immediately trumpeted to the news media that his other son—me—was going to try to recover Alex’s remains on the surface of Venus. Like a proud parent, he assured the reporters that if I came back with Alex’s body I would be rewarded with the ten-billion-dollar prize. I became an instant celebrity.
Fame has its advantages, I’ve been told, but I have yet to discover any of them. Every scientist, adventurer, fame-seeker, and mentally unstable person in the Earth-Moon system sought me out, begging for a chance to go to Venus with me. Even religious fanatics had insisted it was their destiny to go to Venus and I was God’s chosen method of transporting them there.
Of course, I had willingly invited a half dozen of my
closest friends to come on the voyage with me. Artists, writers, videographers, they would make valued contributions to the expedition’s history and be good company as well: more so than dull scientists and wild-eyed zealots.
closest friends to come on the voyage with me. Artists, writers, videographers, they would make valued contributions to the expedition’s history and be good company as well: more so than dull scientists and wild-eyed zealots.
Then Mickey had called me from her office in California and I had agreed to meet with her and Greenbaum without even asking myself what she might be after.
At Abdullah’s insistence the meeting took place in the space agency’s headquarters, a musty, dreary old building in a run-down neighborhood of downtown Washington. We met in a windowless little conference room; the only furniture was a battered old metal table and four unbelievably uncomfortable stiff, hard chairs. The walls were decorated—if that’s the proper word—with faded old photographs of ancient rocket launches. I mean, some of them must have gone back a century or more.
Until that afternoon, I had never seen Mickey in person. We always communicated electronically, usually through an interactive virtual reality link. We had first met—electronically—several years earlier, when I’d begun to get interested in Alex’s work in planetary exploration. He had hired her to tutor me. We worked together every week in virtual reality sessions, she from her office at Caltech, I in the family home in Connecticut, at first, then later from my own place in Majorca. Together we roamed Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the asteroids—even Venus.
Seeing her in the flesh was a bit of a shock. In our VR sessions she had apparently used a much younger, slimmer image of herself. Sitting across the conference table from me, she was a rotund little thing with mousey brownish hair that hung limply down to her earlobes. Telomerase treatments could keep you physically young, but they could not overcome years of sitting in a university office eating junk food and not getting any exercise. Mickey wore a black pullover sweater and black athletic slacks, the kind that have loops for your feet. Yet her round chubby face was so full of good humor, so sparkling with enthusiasm, that it was easy to forget her dumpy appearance.
Franklin Abdullah was something else altogether. He sat across the conference table from me, wearing an old-fashioned three-piece suit of charcoal gray, his arms folded across his chest, and scowled as if everything in his life had always gone wrong. Believe me, he didn’t give the appearance of the stereotypical “faceless bureaucrat.” He had an
attitude
. I didn’t know why, but he actually seemed angry that I was preparing to go to Venus. A strange point of view from someone in the space agency.
attitude
. I didn’t know why, but he actually seemed angry that I was preparing to go to Venus. A strange point of view from someone in the space agency.
“Since you asked for this meeting, Professor Cochrane,” Abdullah said, “why don’t you tell us what you have in mind.” His voice was deep and rumbling, like the growl of a lion.
Mickey smiled at him and wiggled a little in her chair, as if trying to get comfortable on the iron-hard plastic cushion. Clasping her hands on the tabletop, she looked at me—a bit apprehensively, I thought.
“Van is putting together a mission to Venus,” she said, stating the obvious. “A crewed mission.”
Professor Greenbaum cleared his throat noisily, and Mickey immediately shut up.
“We are here, Mr. Humphries,” the old man said, “to plead with you to bring at least one qualified planetary scientist to Venus with you.”
“With a full complement of proper sensors and analytical systems,” Mickey added.
Now I understood what she was after. I should have seen it coming, but I’d been too busy looking over the design and construction of my ship. And fending off all the other crazies who wanted a free ride to Venus.
I felt a little embarrassed. “Um … you see, this isn’t a scientific mission. I’m going to Venus—”
“To win the prize money,” Greenbaum interrupted, cranky and impatient. “We know that.”
“To recover my brother’s remains,” I said firmly.
Mickey hunched forward in her chair. “But still, Van, this is an opportunity to do terrifically valuable science. You’ll
be beneath the clouds for days on end! Think of the observations we’ll be able to make!”
be beneath the clouds for days on end! Think of the observations we’ll be able to make!”
“But my ship is designed strictly for the pickup mission,” I explained to them. “We find the wreckage of my brother’s ship and take back his remains. That’s it. We won’t have the space or the capacity to carry a scientist with us. The crew is at a minimum.”
That wasn’t exactly the truth, of course. I had already invited those friends of mine to come along on the expedition, the writers and artists who could immortalize this expedition after we returned. The engineers and designers naturally took a dim view of carrying what they considered to be nonessential personnel. I was already fighting with them over the size of the crew. I couldn’t go back to them and ask them to add still another person, plus all the equipment that a scientist would want to bring along.
“But, Van,” Mickey coaxed, “to go all the way to Venus without making any scientific studies of the planet …” She shook her head.
I turned to Abdullah, sitting at the head of the little table, his arms still folded across his vest.
“I thought that the scientific exploration of the solar system was a responsibility of the space agency’s.”
He nodded grimly. “It was.”
I waited for more. Abdullah just sat there. So I said, “Then why doesn’t the agency send an expedition to Venus?”
Abdullah slowly unfolded his arms and leaned them on the tabletop. “Mr. Humphries, you live in Connecticut, isn’t that right?”
“Not anymore,” I said, wondering what that had to do with anything.
“Any snow there this winter?”
“No, I don’t think so. There hasn’t been any snow for several winters in a row.”
“Uh-huh. Did you see the cherry trees here in Washington? They’re in bloom. In February. On Groundhog Day.”
“Today is Groundhog Day, that’s right,” Greenbaum agreed.
For a moment I thought I had fallen into Alice’s rabbit hole. “I don’t understand what—”
“I was born in New Orleans, Mr. Humphries,” said Abdullah, his deep voice like the rumble of distant thunder. “Or what’s left of it, after the floods.”
“But—”
“Global warming, Mr. Humphries,” he growled. “Have you heard about it?”
“Of course I have. Everybody has.”
“The space agency’s limited resources are fully committed to studies of the Earth’s environment. We have neither funding nor approval for anything else, such as exploring the planet Venus.”
“But the Mars expeditions—”
“Are privately funded.”
“Oh, yes, of course.” I had known that; it had just never occurred to me that the government’s space agency
couldn’t
participate in the exploration of Mars and the other planets.
couldn’t
participate in the exploration of Mars and the other planets.
“All studies of the other bodies in the solar system are privately funded,” Greenbaum pointed out.
Mickey added, “Even the deep-space work that the astronomers and cosmologists are doing has to be financed by private donors.”
“Men like Trumball and Yamagata,” said Greenbaum.
“Or organizations such as the Gates Foundation and Spielberg,” Mickey said.
Of course I already knew that the big corporations backed the mining and manufacturing operations off-Earth. The competition for raw materials out in the Asteroid Belt was something that Father had often talked about, heatedly.
“Your father is financing this mission to Venus,” Abdullah said. “We are—”
“I am raising the money for this mission,” I snapped. “My father’s prize money will be awarded only when and if I return safely.”
Abdullah closed his eyes for a moment, as if thinking over what I’d just said. Then he corrected himself. “No matter what the ultimate source of the funding may be, we are appealing to you to allow this private venture to include a scientific component.”
“For the good of the human race,” Greenbaum said, his raspy voice actually quavering with emotion.
“Think of what we might discover beneath the clouds!” Mickey enthused.
I sympathized with them, but the thought of battling with those designers and engineers made me shake my head.
Greenbaum misunderstood my gesture. “Let me explain something to you, young man.”
My brows must have gone up. Mickey tried to hold him back; she literally tugged at the sleeve of his pullover shirt, but he shrugged her off. Surprising vigor for a rickety old man, I thought.
“Do you know anything about plate tectonics?” he asked, almost belligerently.
“Certainly,” I said. “Mickey’s taught me quite a bit about it, actually. The Earth’s crust is composed of big plates, the size of continents, and they slide around on top of the hotter, denser rock below the crust.”
Greenbaum nodded, apparently satisfied with the state of my education.
“Venus has plate tectonics, too,” I added.
“It did,” Greenbaum said. “Half a billion years ago.”
“Not now?”
“Venus’s plates are locked,” Mickey said.
“Like the San Andreas fault?”
“Much worse.”
“Venus is on the verge of an upheaval,” Greenbaum said, his eyes fixed on mine. “For something like five hundred million years the planet’s plates have been locked together. All across the planet. She’s been building up internal heat all that while. Sometime soon that heat is going to burst out and totally blow away the planet’s surface.”
“Sometime soon?” I heard myself squeak.
“Geologically speaking,” Mickey said.
“Oh.”
“For the past five hundred million years Venus’s surface has been virtually unchanged,” Greenbaum went on. “We know that from counting meteor impacts. Below the surface, the planet’s internal heat is blocked. It can’t get through the crust, can’t escape.”
Mickey explained, “On Earth, the planet’s internal heat is vented out of volcanoes, hot springs, that sort of thing.”
“Water acts as a lubricant on Earth,” Greenbaum said, peering intently at me, as if to determine if I was understanding him. “On Venus there’s no liquid water; it’s too hot.”
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