Footfall

“Maybe I can get something from the science-fiction writers.” Nobody else was trying that; it might get him a new slant. At least they’d talk English. “It looks like things are starting.”

Frank Bristow, the JPL newsroom manager, had taken his place at the podium. Roger had met him briefly when signing in. The regular press corps all seemed to know him as well as each other. Roger didn’t know anyone.

Bristow was about to make his opening statement. The Voyager project manager and four astrophysicists were taking their seats at a raised table. Brooks sat down again. He wished he were somewhere else.Roger Brooks was approaching thirty, and he didn’t like it. There were temptations in his job: too much free food and booze. He took care to maintain the muscle tone when his lifestyle didn’t. His straight blond hair was beginning to thin, and that worried him a little, but his jaw was still square, with none of the, softening he saw in his friends. He had given up smoking three years ago, flatly, and suffered through horrid withdrawal symptoms. His teeth were white again, but the scars between the index and middle fingers of his right hand would never go away. He’d been taken drunk one night in Vietnam , and a cigarette had burned out there.

Roger Brooks had been just old enough to cover some of the frantic last days in Vietnam , but he had been too late to get anything juicy. He had missed Watergate: his suspicions were right, but he was too junior to follow them up. Other reporters got Pulitzer prizes.

Something had changed in him after that. It was as if there were a secret somewhere, calling to him. Little assignments couldn’t hold his interest.

“He missed one chance to be played by Robert Redford,” one of his ladies had been heard to say. “He isn’t about to miss another.”

This was a little assignment. He wondered if he should have taken it, even for the chance to get to California , even though half the Washington newsroom staff would have sold fingers and toes for the chance. But nobody was keeping secrets here. Whatever Voyager One told them, they would shout it to the world, to the Moon if they could. The trick was to understand them.

No big story, maybe, but the trip was worth it. He glanced at Linda and thought: definitely worth it. — He twisted uncomfortably as old memories came back. They’d been so inexperienced! But they’d learned, and no sex had ever been as good as his memory of Linda that last time. Maybe he’d edited that memory. Maybe not. I’ve got to stop thinking about that! It’ll show … What in hell am I going to write about?

Another group was clumped beneath the full-size model of the Voyager spacecraft. They had to be scientists, because most of them were men and they all wore suits. A couple of the sciencefiction writers stood with them, more like colleagues than press. No reporters did that. Would that make an interesting angle? The sci-fi people didn’t pretend to be neutral. They were enthusiasts and didn’t care who knew it, while the reporters tried to put on this smug air of impartiality.

The briefing began. The Program Director talked about the spacecraft. Mission details, spacecraft performing well. Some data lost because it was raining in Spain where the high-gain antennae were located — was that a joke? No, nobody was laughing.

“Three billion miles away, and they’re getting pictures,” somebody said on his right. A pretty girl, long legs, slim ankles, short bobbed hair. Badge said Jeri Wilson, some geological magazine. Wedding ring, but that didn’t always mean anything. Maybe she’d be here the rest of the week. She seemed to be alone.

The mission planning people left the podium and the scientists, Brad Smith and Ed Stone and Carl Sagan, came up to tell what they thought they were learning. Roger listened, and tried to think of an interesting question. In a situation like this, the important thing was get yourself noticed, for future reference, then try for an exclusive. He jotted useful phrases:

“New moons are going to get dull pretty soon.”

“Not dozens of rings. Hundreds. We’re still counting.” Long pause. “Some of them are eccentric.”

“What does that mean?” someone whispered.

The sci-fi man in the khaki bush jacket answered in what he probably thought was a whisper. “The rings are supposed to be perfect circles with Saturn at the center. All the theory says they have to be. Now they’ve found some that aren’t circles, they’re ellipses.”

Other scientists spoke:

“May be the largest crater in the solar system in relation to the body it’s on …”

“There isn’t any Janus. There are two moons where we thought Janus was. They share the same orbit, and they change places every time they pass. Oh, yes, we’ve known for some time those orbits were possible. It’s a textbook exam question in celestial mechanics. It’s just that we never found anything like it in the real universe.”

Brooks jotted down details on that one; it was definitely worth a mention. Janus was the moon named for the two-faced god of beginnings—