The Kronian Congress of Leaders was headed by a triad consisting of the President, Xen Urzin, and two Deputies. Ranking equally below them were a Legislative Branch, a body of elected representatives called the Assembly of Delegates, and a system of "Directorates" overseeing such primary undertakings vital to the colony's viability and survival as Energy, Food Production, Life and Environment Support, Construction, and Supply of Materials.
The Artificial Gravity project would have an enormous effect on the future Kronian space effort, and its progress was followed closely by those responsible for general planning and equipment specification in the organizational branch designated Space Operations Executive. Although not termed as such for historical reasons, SOE constituted a Directorate in its own right, reflecting the importance of space developments in the overall scheme of things and its relevance to Kronia's longer-term aims. As befitted the AG project's instigator and leader, Pang-Yarbat was the prime contact for the designers and technical specialists at SOE Headquarters, located along with the administrative Offices of Congress at Foundation. Hence, Keene was somewhat surprised when, shortly after returning from Dione to Titan and the Tesla Center at Essen four days later, he received a call from a high-ranking SOE figure by the name of Jon Foy, inviting him to Foundation to discuss aspects of Kronia's space policy that he felt could benefit from Keene's input. Also, he had heard the story of Keene's part in getting his group to Mexico and off the surface, and he wanted to hear Keene's account firsthand and meet him personally. Keene was happy to accept. It was flattering to think that his name had been earning something of a reputation.
His surprise took on an added element of perplexity when further inquiring revealed Foy to be SOE's representative on the Kronian "Consolidation Council," which concerned itself with mapping the longer-term future toward which Kronia was heading. In other words, this was not just an official from one of the Directorates, but a member of the topmost level of the administration, charged with setting the aims that lay beyond merely existing from one generation to the next—the end purpose that the Kronians saw their existence as serving. He didn't seem the kind of person to be interested in details of propulsion system engineering. Keene got the feeling that more was going on than was obvious on the surface. He sensed Cavan's hand at work somehow, but what the motive might be, he was unable to fathom.
Keene arranged to arrive in time to join Foy and some unnamed others for lunch. He made the two-thousand-mile hop to Foundation in a surface transporter skimming at 10,000 feet through the twilight beneath Titan's cloud canopy above a wilderness of ice and rock, broken at intervals by scatterings of lights from a habitat or some kind of construction in progress. Eventually, the capital materialized from the gloom, growing and taking shape as the vessel descended, into another sprawl of domes and arc-lit metallic geometry huddled in the frozen night. Keene wondered how long it would be before humanity could once again flourish across sunny landscapes with coastlines and forests. No wonder so many of the younger Terrans like Robin had sunk into melancholy and dejection.
Keene had been to Foundation a number of times before on space-related business and in connection with energy matters, the last occasion being three months or so ago. The Kronian Offices of Congress had not been given any grand or imposing character to set them apart from the rest of the city complex. They were housed in a squat, hexagonal structure with several adjoining domes, standing west of the general central area and extending many levels below the surface. The transporter landed on a flood-lit pad atop the Hexagon, and Keene deplaned along with several other arrivals via a tube connected to the terminal entrance. He was met by a youngish couple who introduced themselves as Dril and Marna from SOE's Engineering and Development Division, and then escorted him down into a labyrinth of the kind that had come to seem normal for the sanitized metal and plastic environment that the surviving sliver of human civilization was creating for itself. They came to an entranceway displaying the SOE emblem of a gold sun-and-planets on a black background and passed through a lobby to a staircase leading down to a side room adjoining the cafeteria, where a table was set for lunch. The first figure Keene recognized, stepping out from the small, chattering group already assembled and evidently awaiting his arrival, was Cavan. He looked breezy and casual, and his expression was not without a hint of amusement at the look on Keene's face.
"Leo, I had a hunch you were behind this. Did you have to work at being subtle or does it just come naturally?"
"Oh, come on, you know my ways."
"So what's it all about?"
"In good time, Landen. All in good time." Cavan turned to present a man who was waiting. He was white haired with a dusky countenance, wearing a silver-gray robe-like garment, standing tall but relaxed and studying Keene attentively. "Jon Foy. Jon, this is Landen Keene, the man you've been hearing about."
"Leo has enthralled us with his account of your escape," Foy said. He was soft spoken, with a hint of what could have been taken for an Asian accent. His eyes were alert and alive—the kind that seemed to take in much from a distance. "A remarkable story of tenacity and endurance. I've been looking forward to meeting you, Dr. Keene."
"I've been looking forward to meeting you, sir," Keene replied.
Another figure, dressed in a light purple jacket embellished with silky trim and braid embroidery over a black polo-neck shirt, had moved up beside Foy and was exchanging words with Dril and Marna. He was fiftyish, stockily built for a Kronian, with wavy, yellow-brown hair, golden skin—UV tanning was widespread among Kronians—and firmly defined features underscored by a heavy-set chin. His name was Mylor Vorse. He ran Engineering and Development, and had presided over some of the meetings there that Keene had attended. On his other side was a woman in a maroon tunic, who from the compad and document holder she was carrying, Keene guessed to be some kind of assistant.
"And you two know each other," Cavan said.
"Good to see you again, Dr. Keene," Vorse greeted.
"The pleasure's always mine."
The Kronian woman, whose name was Adreya Laelye, turned out to be not Vorse's assistant but his deputy.
"And how is Pang-Yarbat these days?" Vorse asked Keene.
"Always irrepressible. How else?"
"He and I have known each other for many years. I'm hardened to the gruesome puns now. But the last time we met him was . . . when?" He looked at Adreya inquiringly.
"At Essen," she supplied. "Suliman Besso's wedding."
"Ah, yes. We talked about gardening. I told Pang I thought that more space in the Swiss Cheese should be reserved for growing flowers. Wouldn't you agree? Coming from Earth, you must miss them."
"I think I do . . . agree that more space should be reserved," Keene said.
"Of course it should. We need them more than ever down in these mole-holes of ours. What would Besso's wedding have been without them?"
The group parted to make room for a last few who had been holding back. The man at the fore was of crusty complexion and sprightly build, with an upturned, puckish nose and a mirthful expression that broadened to a grin as Keene recognized him. It was Gallian, who had headed the Kronian delegation to Earth that had brought Keene and his companions back. Keene swung his head accusingly toward Cavan. "Leo, why didn't you tell me? You knew Gallian would be here!"
"Oh, you know I always like to have a surprise in store," Cavan returned unapologetically. "Especially if it's a pleasant one."
"Of course, you two know each other already," Foy observed.
"If it hadn't been for Gallian we wouldn't be here," Cavan said—although SOE people would be aware of the details. Gallian had insisted that the Osiris, the ship in which his delegation had traveled, remain in the vicinity of Earth when all hope for Keene's party seemed lost. "Idorf wanted to pull out." Idorf had been the ship's captain.
"Which was correct in his position. Safety had to be his first consideration." Vorse sighed. "It was a shame about Idorf. He was one of the best. The Osiris was a fine ship." Idorf had also commanded a later mission back to Earth to look for survivors, in which he and the Osiris were lost.
"So are you with SOE now?" Keene asked Gallian, to lighten the mood.
Gallian nodded. "I'm hoping to go with the return mission when one's finally authorized."
"Didn't you have enough last time?"
"But . . . to see a whole new world beginning. How could I stay out?"
The remaining few were SOE technical people and a couple from elsewhere who were interested in the AG program at Essen. Vorse, who seemed to be in charge, made a short introductory announcement, and the group spread out around the table to seat themselves. For the benefit of those who were new to the subject, Keene gave an overview of the AG work, describing the early experiments on Valkyrie, the formation of the enlarged group at Tesla, and the design aims of the scaled-up system now being built there. The listeners were quick to raise further speculations beyond the obvious applications of creating normal living conditions in space and on the surfaces of minor astronomical bodies. Was there potential for new methods of excavating and earthmoving, or moving heavy loads? One of the SOE scientists asked about shaping and manipulating the fields on a smaller scale, and if it proved feasible, what kinds of devices might such capability permit? None of this was new, since the team at Tesla spent many hours debating such issues. Keene responded, "Back in the nineteenth century, a Victorian engineer would probably have agreed that the electric motor was a great idea and every home should have one—and he'd have mounted it on a pedestal in the basement, with belts and shafts going all over the building to transmit the power. What he'd never have dreamed of is having motors in just about every tool and appliance he owned. Well, we might be talking about the beginnings of something just as revolutionary that'll be taken for granted a hundred years from now."
Vorse raised the question of how an electrical source of gravity could be reconciled with an alternative model that others were proposing, in which the force didn't arise within the gravitating body at all but resulted from collisions of momentum-transfer agents—analogous to photons carrying electromagnetic energy across space, but far smaller and moving much faster. A cosmic background flux of such agents was posited, acting somewhat like a gas, which an isolated object would feel equally from all directions, giving no net force and imparting no motion. But two objects would "shadow" each other to some degree, giving rise to an imbalance in which the excess forces on the outer sides would drive them together. The result would be an apparent attraction, diminishing with distance as the subtended shadow angle grew smaller. This disposed of the need for "missing mass" that had been vainly sought after for over half a century, since the effect ceased to approximate an inverse-square law over large distances. Vorse's point, however, was that the cosmic flux model put the cause outside the gravitating object, whereas Pang-Yarbat's electrical explanation held it to be inside. Both couldn't be true. How could one view be squared with the other?
Keene was familiar with the momentum-transfer theory. He suggested that the AG model's electrical effects could arise from alterations of a particle's effective cross-section to blocking the external flux, thus influencing its "gravitating" capability indirectly. This led to an exchange across the table that brought in things like supra-luminal propagation velocities, the validity of curved-space models of gravitation, and local Lorentzian ether equivalents as the successor to Special Relativity, which the Kronians had discarded.
They never did get around to any of the space program and propulsion issues that Keene had assumed to be Foy's reason for asking him here, but he presumed that would come later. But he felt elated and gratified. Since coming to Kronia, he had seen what had been his small, relatively obscure engineering research group investigating a standard approach to power generation, become part of a major project that could open up a new realm of physics, and which was now being followed attentively by those responsible for the most far-reaching Kronian decision-making.
Under the intricate Kronian system of protocols and implications, it meant that Cavan's motives in bringing this about ran very deep. And Cavan understood the system very well. Whether or not a scientific venture went ahead and was supported, and if so to what degree, was decided not by funding committees or decree, but by the standing and effectiveness of those who believed in it and chose to support it—from leading theoreticians who attracted scientific talent, to managers of the workshops that made essential instruments and parts. Keene's presence and presentation amounted, in effect, to a funding application.
But a funding for what? Not the AG project itself, since Pang-Yarbat already took care of that. As seemed inevitable whenever Cavan was involved, something devious was going on.