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10

The Kronian mission, along with the security and administrative staff attending them, were on the top two floors of the Engleton, which had restricted access from the general part of the hotel and was one of the regular accommodations for official visitors to the city. In all, there were twelve delegates and eight crew members, the numbers having been kept low to leave capacity for the Osiris to carry emigrants back on the return trip. Some of the crew, however, had been left to maintain a skeleton presence on the ship and would get their chance to come down to the surface later.

On arriving, Keene went straight up to the eighth floor as he had been directed and checked with the security people in room 809. A personable young man in a dark suit verified that he was expected and escorted him to one of the larger suites on the floor above, where two more security men in suits admitted them through the doors. From the hubbub of voices, the party was evidently already in progress. Keene recognized the white-haired figure of Gallian, the leader of the Kronian delegation, seated a short distance inside, talking to an Oriental couple who looked as if they had also just arrived—apparently he was greeting everyone personally. Gallian spotted Keene and waved him over, introducing the couple as a Japanese space-technology administrator and his wife. He apologized for the unusual way of receiving guests. "It's the gravity, of course—and then two days of functions and presentations on top of it. Your people are working us hard already. But anyway, why am I making excuses? At my age one doesn't need any excuses." Keene grinned, told Gallian that he didn't know how many times this had been said already but " . . . welcome to Earth," and shook hands heartily. The Japanese couple exchanged pleasantries and were then ushered on to meet others in the room by another Kronian, who Gallian said was Thorel, from the Osiris's regular crew, and who must have stood at around seven feet.

Gallian turned back to regard Keene. He had a crusty, puckish-nosed face with eyes that were clear and mischievous. From their few long-delay message exchanges, Keene had formed an impression of bustling energy and a person who could never be content doing one thing at a time. Already, everything he saw was starting to confirm it. "Well, Lan, hello," Gallian said. "So here we are. You see, we made it. And so did you. Les Urkin obviously got the message through. I'm glad."

"I heard they're taking you off on a tour," Keene said.

"Yes, New York City to start with, then Niagara Falls . . ." Gallian waved a hand. "I'm not sure where after that."

"When will this start?"

"Well, it was supposed to be first thing tomorrow . . ."

"So soon? You're kidding."

" . . . but that may have to be postponed."

"Oh?"

"Allergic reactions," Gallian said.

"Yes, of course. I'd forgotten about that." It was a known risk for Kronian-born making a first-time visit to Earth. Keene shrugged sympathetically. "There's nothing anyone can do?"

"Not much, apparently. Immigrants like me don't have a problem. We prepared the first-timers with the recommended drugs, but several of them are affected all the same. Two are in bed, knocked off their feet. We'll know in the morning what the situation is."

There was a tap on the doors; one of the security men opened them, and two men and a woman were shown in. Gallian extended an arm. "Anyway, I must press on with my hostly duties. Go on in and meet the others. Sariena's around somewhere. We're informal tonight. There's a buffet in the suite. All of us agree, by the way, that whatever its other problems, Earth food is exquisite. And I'm finding that I'm particularly partial to wines. Vineyards are a luxury that we haven't graced Kronia with yet. Our synthetic efforts really don't compare. I'll definitely try to get that changed when we return." Gallian caught the attention of another Kronian, brown skinned and distinguishable by her tall build and casual, brightly colored trouser suit—distinctly not customary Washington dinner wear. "Polli, this is Landen Keene, an old friend of ours. Look after him and introduce him around, would you?" He looked back at Keene as the three arrivals approached. "I'll seek you out and pin you down with more serious questions to spoil the party with later, I promise."

The buffet was set up in the center of the suite, dispensed by hotel staff—a salad bar selection, cold cuts and cheeses, several hot dishes, dessert trolley, and a beverage bar. There were between one and two dozen people so far, Keene estimated, although the far end of the suite had an L-bend so there could have been more out of sight. Sariena was with a group on the far side by the windows, perched on an arm of a couch. And on the far side of the bar, to Keene's mild surprise—although it shouldn't have been, given the kind of job he had described—talking with two men, was Leo Cavan.

Polli was also an Osiris crew member, she told Keene as he selected a plate of cold assortments and took a glass of wine from the bar. Four of the ship's eight-person complement had come down with the delegation. The four who had stayed aboard included the captain, whose name was Idorf. Polli was astonished and delighted to learn that Keene was one of the three who had been in the news the previous Friday, and called Thorel over as he passed near after depositing some used plates on a side table. "You know who we have here, Thorel? Landen is one of the Terrans that we saw, who raced with the spaceplane the day we arrived."

Thorel was perhaps thirtyish, curly-headed, sallow-faced yet hefty, with an open and amiable manner. His field area was engineering too, and for several minutes he and Keene talked technicalities about the NIFTV and its performance. "So how is it you have all this trouble trying to convince your governments of things that should be obvious?" he asked in conclusion. "It seems such a waste of energies. And here you need all the energy you can get, just for standing up."

Keene had noticed that nearly all the Kronians around the room were sitting. "Is that how you're finding it?" he asked Polli.

"Also, it is bewildering," she told him. "Already I have seen more human beings than in all the rest of my life put together. And I still get attacks of . . . What is it when you fear going outside?"

"Agoraphobia?"

"Yes, that is right. We trained for the gravity, but it doesn't really prepare you for it. But the brilliance of the daylight is the most astounding. Nothing on screens can come close. But then, at night you have hardly any stars."

Thorel went to collect some more arrivals from Gallian, and Polli took Keene around to meet more of the guests. Besides other Americans, he was introduced to more Japanese, two Russians, and one each German, Chinese, Brazilian, and Australian. Sariena saw him from across the room and acknowledged with a wave. While still tall by Earth standards, she was smaller than average for the Kronian group. Keene remembered her as saying that she had gone to Saturn as a child, with most of her rapid-growth and developmental years completed. The younger ones, born to the environments of Saturn's moons or the low-g orbiting habitats, were uniformly one to two feet taller.

The word went around that one of the space crew from "that thing last Friday" was present, "The one who was on the news this evening—didn't you see it? That's him over there," and Keene found himself much in demand.

"Do you really think it has a future—foreseeably, in the practical sense?" one of the Americans asked dubiously. He was a director of Chase Manhattan, it turned out. "Where's the payoff? What can you bring from out there that we don't have already, and cheaper?"

"It iss interesting zat your ship can connect viss der UN shuttle zat brings you down," Keene overheard the German saying to one of the Kronians, who had a blotchy face and was sneezing intermittently. "Do you build to der same mechanical mating specifications zat you exchange maybe, ja?"

Everything inside Keene wanted to lean in and murmur, Ve haff vayss of making it dock. But he behaved himself, bit his tongue, and refrained.

Gallian appeared again and sought him out, accompanied by a man called Druche from an office of the Defense Department that dealt with space matters, whom Keene had met before on one or two occasions. "This is the man you should have building spaceships for you," Gallian told him. "Landen understands how long-range systems have to work. Lan, you would appreciate a real spaceship. Before we go back to Saturn, we must show you the Osiris."

Keene blinked at him, surprised. "Are you serious?"

"I don't play jokes on my friends. We'll sort out something for you, don't worry. Make sure you talk to me later about it," Gallian told him.

Gallian and Druche moved on, and Keene was promptly buttonholed by three more Japanese who seemed to be together. "Who are the other companies partnering Amspace?" the one who appeared to be the senior asked when they had been talking for a few minutes. "We could be interested in discussing further funding. How can we get in touch with the correct people?"

Keene mentioned Marvin Curtiss and offered to arrange an introduction. The Japanese seemed pleased. As Keene detached himself, Cavan drifted by, nursing a glass. "Just doing my job, you see," he murmured. " `Pump them when they don't suspect it,' is what I was told. A tacky world we live in, Landen. Tacky world." And then he was gone again.

Before anyone else could pounce on him, Keene made his way over to Sariena. They had managed to exchange barely a few words so far. She was sitting on the arm of one of the couches, still managing to do justice to the unpretentious but stylish dress that she was wearing—black and sleeveless, with a high, oriental-style neck and just the right touch of trim—but closer he could see that weariness was beginning to show. A slim woman in a light green dress, with graying hair tied high, was standing talking to her. Keene remembered her being introduced earlier as with the Smithsonian but couldn't recall her name. Sariena smiled as he approached.

"Lan, do join us. Have you two met yet?"

"Oh, we all know who he is," the woman said.

Keene smiled uneasily for a moment. "Smithsonian," he managed.

"Catherine Zetl," the woman said, getting him off the hook. "I'm the historian."

"Oh, right."

"Ancient—the history, not me. Well, I hope not too much, anyway."

"Catherine has been telling me some fascinating things," Sariena said. "She's just back from Arabia—involved with the Joktanian discoveries there."

Keene searched his memory. There had been a stir in the news a couple of years back, and occasional mentions since in the scientific literature. "Some civilization they found from way back, isn't it? Caused some surprises for the specialists." Which about exhausted his knowledge of the subject.

"That's putting it mildly," Zetl said. "It's turned all our ideas upside down. The Sumerians and Babylonians were supposed to have been the earliest to settle and build, but these people date from much earlier. Yet some of their architecture and workmanship appears more sophisticated. And there's no obvious relationship to the cultures that came later. It's as if they represent some lost age that flourished long before it should have been possible. For some reason it ended abruptly, and then what we've always thought was the beginning of civilization was a second start that came much later."

"Isn't it fascinating, Lan?" Sariena said again.

"So do we know what ended it?" Keene asked, getting more interested. "Was it your Kronian supercomet again?"

"Oh, I'm impressed by the Kronians' arguments, but I refuse to be dragged into any of that tonight," Zetl said, holding up a hand. "In any case, it couldn't have been the comet, Venus, or whatever. This race existed long before the Egyptian Middle Kingdom and the Exodus. And I use the word `race' deliberately. They were large—comparable to the Kronians around here."

"The name Joktanian comes from Noah's grandson," Sariena informed Keene. "I didn't know that."

"That's who the ancient Arabic legends say the first people of the southwest peninsula were descended from," Zetl said, nodding. "Their word is Qahtan." She glanced away. "Oh, there's somebody about to leave that I must catch. Excuse me." She laid a hand briefly on Sariena's arm. "Sariena, we do have to talk more about all this. Do call me when they give you a moment—if they ever do."

"I certainly will."

Zetl excused herself again and hurried away.

Sariena looked at Keene, sighed, and rotated her face slowly to stretch her neck. "Oh my. Is this what it's like to be what you call a celebrity? You do it all the time? Where do you get the stamina? What's the secret?"

"Not really," Keene said. "Most of the time I deal with reactors and engines. This is just temporary, since Friday. Attention spans on this world tend to be short." He looked at the glass that Sariena was holding. "Want me to get you another? Save your feet."

"Oh, please. Any kind of fruit juice with a touch of vodka. . . ." She handed him the glass. "Do I look unladylike up here on the arm like a bird on a perch? If I sit down in this couch I can't get up again. It digests you."

"I don't think you could look unladylike in a boiler suit," Keene replied. "Something more to eat?"

"Thanks, but I've had enough."

He went over to the bar and got a refill, along with a straight Scotch for himself. He wasn't driving tonight. Might as well make the most of it, he figured. "Anything else for you, sir?" the cocktail waiter tending the bar asked. He peered at Keene more closely. "Say, aren't you one of those three guys who—"

"You've got it," Keene murmured, covering his mouth and slipping a ten into the glass set aside for tips. "But don't spread it around."

He went back, handed Sariena her drink, and looked at her while he sipped his own. There had been so many things he'd listed in his mind that he wanted to ask her when they finally met. He wanted to know about her world and what it was like to live out there; how it felt to be without a planet that automatically self-renewed and replenished everything necessary for life; to be totally dependent for survival itself, every moment, on machines. He wanted to know how a moneyless system could function and still sustain—evidently—all the complexities of a technological society. What motivated people to provide for each other in place of the penalties and rewards that just about every authority on Earth insisted were indispensable? . . . So many things. And now here they were, and suddenly none of it felt appropriate.

"Well, you've certainly created some attention," Sariena said. "Let's hope it's a good omen for the talks."

"We can but try," Keene said.

"So what brought you to Washington so soon? Was the President so impressed that he wants you to put together a real space program for them at last?"

"I wish." Keene sipped his Scotch and saw that Cavan was watching them inconspicuously from across the room. "As a matter of fact, somebody wanted me to talk to you while I was here. Not the President, but it was to do with your mission." Sariena waited, curious. Keene looked around. The suite was in the penthouse, with an exterior balcony all the way around. "Let's go outside," he suggested. "Gallian says you need to get used to the air."

Sariena rose and moved toward one of the sliding glass panels that had been opened. Keene picked up a chair and followed her along the balcony to a corner, away from the others who were outside talking. Keene placed the chair by the wall and leaned an elbow on the rail while Sariena sat down. He began: "The person that I mentioned is on the inside here. And I've seen something myself today of what reactions are going to be." He shook his head. "Earth isn't going to buy this line about Venus being an earlier Athena. Yes, Athena happened and the standard theories were wrong. Nobody can deny that. But they're going to fight any suggestion that the two have anything in common. As far as they're concerned Venus is a planet and moves like a planet. Athena is a one-time anomaly that will be a spectacle for a year until it leaves the Solar System. . . ." Keene paused, thinking for a second that Sariena wasn't listening. She was sitting back against the window glass, staring up at the sky with a faraway, almost rapturous expression.

"I love stars," she said.

Keene looked away and turned his head upward. "Polli told me we don't have any," he replied. It was a clear night, not bad by Washington standards. The angle of the walls faced roughly north, making just a wisp of Athena's tail visible behind the building to their left. It only occurred to Keene then that until the last couple of days, Sariena's only recollections of seeing a sky had probably been from inside some kind of enclosure or a helmet.

"Paltry," she agreed. "But you know that, Lan. You've been out there too. . . . But what you've never seen is Saturn from one of its moons. This sky has nothing to compare with it. Pictures don't come close—any more than they can show sunshine. It's like . . ." She turned her face up again. "All the rainbows you've ever seen stirred together into a glowing ball ten times as big as the Moon. And you're looking at it across the rings seen edge-on. It seems to be floating in a golden ocean that extends away into the sky. If you're on one of the moons that has a tilted orbit, the ocean seems to be rising and falling." Sariena looked back at him. "Did you know that there are many legends from the distant past—before the beginnings of our literate age, like those people that Catherine was talking about—that make Saturn the greatest god in the sky and describe it as rising out of an ocean? Isn't that strange? It's almost as if they'd seen it too." Keene frowned at the city lights, searching for a way of turning the subject back to more immediate matters. "Can you pick out Saturn in the sky?" Sariena asked him.

"Er, no. . . . I guess not. It isn't really one of my things."

"Not many people can—nor any of the other planets. And isn't that strange too? They're such insignificant pinpoints that most people can't even find them. And yet in just about every system of religion and myth from times gone by, they filled people with awe and terror and were associated with gods fighting titanic battles in the sky—mightier even than the Sun and Moon. Why would that be?" Sariena went on before Keene could respond, "Because the planets moved in different orbits then, that brought them much closer."

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.

The expression on Keene's face told her there was no need to say any more. A charged body moving through an electrically active medium would be subject to forces that in those conditions could conceivably rival or even exceed gravity. Forces that conventional astronomic theory, based on the assumption of a pre-Athena, electrically quiescent Solar System, had never taken into account.

Sariena nodded, seeing that Keene had made the connection. "Our scientists in Kronia have been running some calculations. The preliminary results came in to the Osiris just before we came down to the surface. They're being rechecked before we present anything here officially. But perhaps you could arrange for them to be duplicated independently here on Earth as well—the more confirmation we get, the better. We'll give you the codes to access the files of original data from our probes. I think you'll find the results interesting."

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Framed