Ben Bova, author of Earth, continues his exploration of the future of a human-settled Solar System with the science fiction action adventure Uranus.
On a privately financed orbital habitat above the planet Uranus, political idealism conflicts with pragmatic—and illegal—methods of financing. Add a scientist who has funding to launch a probe deep into Uranus’s ocean depths to search for signs of life, and you have a three-way struggle for control.
Humans can’t live on the gas giants, making instead a life in orbit. Kyle Umber, a religious idealist, has built Haven, a sanctuary above the distant planet Uranus. He invites “the tired, the sick, the poor” of Earth to his orbital retreat where men and women can find spiritual peace and refuge from the world.
The billionaire who financed Haven, however, has his own designs: beyond the reach of the laws of the inner planets, Haven could become the center for an interplanetary web of narcotics, prostitution, and even hunting human prey.
Meanwhile a scientist has gotten funding from the Inner Planets to drop remote probes into the “oceans” of Uranus, in search of life. He brings money and prestige, but he also brings journalists and government oversight to Haven. And they can’t have that.
Release date:
July 21, 2020
Publisher:
Tom Doherty Associates
Print pages:
384
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There were thirty of them, eleven women and nineteen men, their ages ranging from late teens to approaching senility, standing wide-eyed, gaping at the trees and shrubs and—beyond the Glassteel dome above them—the blue-gray clouds of the planet Uranus.
Pointing toward the bland-looking planet, their group leader said sternly, “That world’s name is pronounced ‘YOU-ra-nus.’” His craggy face dead serious, he went on, “I don’t wanna hear any wiseguys call it ‘Your-ANUS.’ Unnerstand me?”
The thirty newbies nodded and mumbled assent.
His ham-sized fists planted on his hips, Quincy O’Donnell nodded back at his new charges. “All right, then,” he said, the flat twang of his native Boston still unmistakable in his creaky tenor voice, “let’s get on with it. The minister is waitin’ to greet you.”
They were standing in the garden, a wide swath of Earthly greenery planted and lovingly tended by the inhabitants of Haven, the spindly ring-shaped space station swinging in orbit around the huge planet Uranus. In the distance, they could see several towers rising high above their level. And overhead there was more real estate: green empty acres, small clusters of towns that looked sparkling new, untouched as yet.
A whole new world, built inside the ring of metal and plastic that encircled them.
Not one of the dozen newcomers moved a centimeter. They were all gaping at the habitat spreading as far as the eye could see, even above their heads. They stared wide-eyed, frozen in wonderment.
It’s hitting them, O’Donnell said to himself. For the first time, the reality of it is making itself felt. You’re a long way from Earth, he told them silently. And there’s no goin’ back. This is your new home. Permanently.
“All right now, that’s enough of sightseein’. Let’s get moving.”
They stirred, reluctantly. But they moved in response to his command. Good. They’ll learn to obey orders, they will. Or suffer for their sins.
O’Donnell turned and led the newbies along the winding brick path that led through the profuse foliage to the waiting auditorium. Thirty more poor souls, he said to himself. Thirty more lost waifs searchin’ for paradise. Well, maybe they’ll find it here. If not here, I don’t know where on God’s green Earth they’ll find a place to rest their poor bones.
Then he reminded himself that they weren’t on God’s green Earth, not anymore. They were damned near three billion kilometers from Earth, out at the ass end of the solar system, swinging endlessly around the planet Uranus.
O’Donnell clenched his teeth tightly. There you go again, Quincy old boy, swearin’ like you haven’t been taught better. Remember to include that sin in your next confession.
“C’mon,” he shouted. “The minister is waitin’ for yez.”
DATA BANK
Uranus is the third largest of the solar system’s eight planets, orbiting beyond beringed Saturn, out in the cold and lonely darkness of the Sun’s most distant children.
More than four times larger than Earth, Uranus orbits nearly three billion kilometers from the Sun. Uranus’s year is slightly more than eighty-four Earth years. It spins around its axis every seventeen hours and four minutes.
While the planet’s mass is 14.5 times more than Earth’s, its density is merely 1.3 times greater than that of water. Its atmosphere—at least the uppermost part of it—is composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, the two lightest elements, with significant amounts of methane and ammonia. The temperature of its cloud tops is truly frigid: more than 197 degrees below zero Celsius.
Uranus is weird. The other planets of the solar system have axial tilts ranging from Jupiter’s 3.1 degrees to 26.7 degrees for Saturn. Earth’s axis is tipped 23.4 degrees, a tilt that produces its seasons.
Uranus, though, is tilted 97.9 degrees from vertical. Its north pole points toward the Sun for part of its year, while half a Uranian year later (some forty-two Earth years) its south pole points Sunward. And unlike all the other planets, Uranus spins from east to west, retrograde, in astronomical parlance.
Uranus has rings circling over its equator. Thin, dark rings of meteoric bits of rock and metal, barely visible except on those rare occasions when they happen to catch a glint of sunlight.
Curious scientists from Earth sent dozens of unmanned probes into orbit around Uranus, and deep into the placid blue-gray clouds that cover it from pole to pole. They were only partially successful in unveiling the planet’s secrets. Something collided with Uranus early in the solar system’s history, the scientists reasoned, banging its axial tilt so far from vertical. Something apparently sterilized the planet-wide ocean that lies beneath Uranus’s methane and ammonia clouds. Unlike the oceans of Jupiter and Saturn, and even the more-distant Neptune, the ocean of Uranus is dead: no living creature has been found there, not even single-celled protoplasms.
Interest in Uranus faltered in the face of such discouraging discoveries. A sterile planet, dead, lifeless. Scientific probes were sent elsewhere. Uranus was a dead end, literally.
Until the self-styled Reverend Kyle Umber conceived his plan of building a haven for Earth’s poor, disenfranchised, forgotten men and women, in orbit around the planet Uranus.
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