Hugo Award winner Ben Bova continues his grand tour of the human-settled solar system with a look at life in the Outer Planets, among the moons of Neptune.
In the future, humanity has spread throughout the solar system, on planets and moons once visited only by robots or explored at a distance by far-voyaging spacecraft. No matter how hostile or welcoming the environment, mankind has forged a path and found a home.
In the far reaches of the solar system, the outer planets?billions of miles from Earth, unknown for millennia?are being settled. Neptune, the ice giant, is swathed in clouds of hydrogen, helium, and methane and circled by rings of rock and dust. Three years ago, Ilona Magyr’s father, Miklos, disappeared while exploring the seas of Neptune. Everyone believes he is dead?crushed, frozen, or boiled alive in Neptune’s turbulent seas.
With legendary space explorer Derek Humbolt piloting her ship and planetary scientist Jan Meitner guiding the search, Ilona Magyr knows she will find her father?alive?on Neptune.
Her plans are irrevocably altered when she and her team discover the wreckage of an alien ship deep in Neptune’s ocean, a discovery that changes humanity’s understanding of its future … and its past.
Release date:
August 17, 2021
Publisher:
Tom Doherty Associates
Print pages:
368
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On a very clear day from the top floor of the unfinished glass-walled tower you could see the dark smudge on the northwestern horizon that marked the capital, Budapest.
Even in its incomplete state the tower was of course the tallest building in the city of Budaörs, a slim, soaring monument to the pride and wealth of Baron Miklos Magyr, the richest man in the city, in all of Hungary, in the whole of southeastern Europe.
For slightly more than three years the glittering entrance to the incomplete Magyr Tower had been draped in black, mourning for the baron’s death in the dark, ice-clad ocean that encompasses the distant world of Neptune.
The baron’s daughter, Ilona, kept the funeral drapery in place, driven by grief and the prideful stubbornness that was a hallmark of the ancient Magyr family, whose ancestry could be traced back to those medieval days when the Hungarians were nomadic invaders of Europe galloping out of the endless wastes of the east, fierce and merciless. And clever. In time they settled in the fertile valley of the Danube, adopted Christianity, and became a powerful defender of the land against the new tribes of would-be invaders pouring in from the West.
Sitting alone in Castle Magyr’s spacious dining hall, the remains of her breakfast nothing more than crumbs scattered across her dishes, Ilona Magyr gazed at the portraits lining the walls around her. Her ancestors gazed down at her, proud, imperious, self-satisfied.
Ilona thought for the thousandth time that she should commission a portrait of her father. She would have it hung at the head of the hall, above the seat she occupied. But she shook her head. No, that would be admitting that he is dead. I can’t do that.
The chief butler, Ghulam, approached her as silently as a wraith.
“The children are waiting in the gymnasium,” he said in a near whisper.
Ilona looked up into the butler’s expressionless face. Ghulam was like the furniture that surrounded her, as much a part of the castle as its foundation stones. He was almost as tall as Ilona herself, but thickset, dark of complexion, his black hair cut in a bowl that framed his impassive face. He had been a member of the castle’s staff since Ilona had been a baby, as were his father and his father’s father.
“I’ll be there directly,” Ilona said, pushing her chair back. Ghulam guided the chair away from the table as Ilona got to her feet.
She was strikingly tall, slim, her bony long-jawed face far from beautiful but intelligent, purposeful, with a drive and a temper that matched her long, flowing red hair. She knew that her jaw was too strong for the rest of her face: some called it stubborn, even haughty. She accepted it as a family inheritance. She was wearing a fencer’s uniform: a white, high-collared padded jacket and knee-length knickers.
As she got to her feet, Ghulam reminded her softly, “Captain Humbolt is due in one hour.”
“Yes,” said Ilona. “I know.”
THE FENCING ACADEMY
Twenty-five girls and boys—aged from nine to fifteen—were waiting for Ilona in the castle’s spacious gymnasium, one floor below the grand ballroom.
All of them wore fencing outfits: high-collared white jackets with matching knickers and wire-mesh helmets. Several of them were already whacking away at one another, the ringing of steel blade against steel blade almost drowned out by the excited shouts of the youngsters gathered around the duelists.
The action and the clamor died instantly as Ilona strode into the gym, dressed in her form-hugging fencing uniform. The combatants whipped off their helmets and saluted her with their swords.
“Places, everyone!” she called out, clapping her hands sharply. The girls and boys immediately lined up, pulled their helmets over their heads, grasped their sabers in their gloved hands.
For nearly an hour Ilona worked them up and down the length of the gym. “Forward!” she commanded. “Right foot, left foot—lunge!” And twenty-five sabers flashed out, straight and true.
At last Ilona saw Ghulam appear at the door, nodding silently to her. Humbolt has arrived, Ilona thought.
She pointed to the tallest boy among her pupils, who hurried to her side.
“Take over for me, Janos,” she said. “One hour, then let them go home.”
Janos—tall and gangly—grinned and nodded. He had been a member of the fencing class since Ilona had started it, more than six years earlier. She left him in the middle of the floor and headed for the door where Ghulam waited.
Then Ilona saw that another man was standing in the doorway, behind the butler. Derek Humbolt, Ilona realized.
Humbolt was known throughout the worlds as the most fearless, most competent, boldest explorer of them all. And a legendary womanizer. He was wearing a high-collared jacket, skintight trousers and calf-length boots polished to a mirror finish.
Smiling, Ilona thought he looked like a ruggedly handsome brute. His reputation must be well-earned, she told herself.
“Captain Humbolt,” she called as she approached him.
With a gracious sweep of his arm, he replied, “Baroness Magyr.”
Ghulam stepped back, leaving the two of them standing face-to-face.
“It was good of you to come,” Ilona said.
His lips curved into a smile. “An invitation from the baroness can’t be ignored.”
Raising her saber, Ilona smiled back and asked, “Do you fence?”
Humbolt looked past her to the youngsters exercising noisily across the gymnasium’s floor. “Not with swords, I’m afraid.”
“Too bad.”
“I suppose I could learn, although I imagine I’m a bit too old to start now.”
“Nonsense!” said Ilona. “You’re in the prime of life.”
“How kind of you to say so.”
Calling to the butler, Ilona said, “Ghulam, please show Captain Humbolt some of the castle while I get out of these sweaty clothes and wash up.”
“Certainly, Baroness.”
Turning back to Humbolt, she said, “I’ll meet you on the rooftop in half an hour.”
* * *
Half an hour later, dressed in a powder-blue pantsuit that accentuated her long, lean, leggy figure, Ilona sat at the table that had been set in the exact center of the spacious, nearly empty, roofless top floor of the castle and with an excellent view of the unfinished Magyr Tower. She silently studied Derek Humbolt, sitting across from her.
Humbolt was a bare two centimeters shorter than the willowy Ilona, broad of shoulder and flat of midsection, his dark thickly curled hair flecked with gray, his craggy face handsome enough to seem totally at ease even in the presence of Magyr riches. His jet-black eyes sparkled as he sipped at the wine that the robot server had poured.
“You set a good table,” he said to Ilona, placing the long-stemmed wineglass down as precisely as landing an interplanetary spacecraft.
Ilona smiled minimally. “I didn’t invite you here merely for lunch, you know.”
“I guessed that,” Humbolt said, his broad smile dazzling.
Ilona looked back at Humbolt. She could see it in his eyes: He wants to seduce me. I’m nothing more than a potential conquest, as far as he’s concerned. The trick will be to get him to agree to heading the mission without submitting to his male ego.
“I intend to go to Neptune,” she said flatly.
“The planet Neptune?” Humbolt asked, his brows rising. “That’s a long way from here.”
Ilona nodded slightly. “My father is there.”
“He died there.”
“I don’t believe that he is dead.”
Humbolt’s face remained smiling, but tensed visibly. He said, “Nothing’s been heard from him for more than three years. He must be dead.”
“Or cryonically preserved.”
“In cold storage? Not bloody likely.”
For the flash of an instant Ilona wanted to lean across the luncheon dishes and slap the self-certain egotist in his smiling face. She could picture the shock that would rattle his smug confidence.
But she suppressed the impulse. You get better results with sugar, she heard her sainted mother whispering in her mind.
“My father is an ingenious man. I believe he might well have chosen cryonic preservation once he realized his submersible was beyond recovery. I believe he’s waiting for me to find him.”
Humbolt shook his head slowly. “The temperature of Neptune’s ocean gets hotter, the deeper you go. Even if your father somehow rigged a cryonic system to freeze his body, it would have crapped out by now.”
Ilona’s dark gaze flashed again, but she chose again to ignore his deliberate crudity. “I need someone to pilot my ship to Neptune and enter its ocean to search for my father. I’ve been told you are the best man for the job.”
“That’s probably true,” Humbolt said, his easy smile returning.
“Will you do it?”
“Will you be coming along?”
“Of course.”
Fixing his gaze on Ilona’s cobalt-blue eyes, Humbolt asked, “How much are you willing to pay?”
“Whatever you wish,” Ilona replied, quickly adding, “Within reason.”
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