Saul generally got along with the man, as long as they were discussing the primordial matter of the ancient solar system. This time, however, Quiverian was in a political mood.

“Come now, Saul. This news from Earth is important, a milestone! I had expected more out of you. An indignant protest. Perhaps a declaration that Percells are actually human beings.”

Saul was here in the planetology lab to help analyze the delicate ice cores the spacers were bringing back from Halley—the “second hat” he had been assigned because of his laboratory skills. He had not come to be goaded by Quiverian. He looped his left foot under the chair stanchion. “Come on, Joao, you wanted me to examine some organic inclusions for you. Let’s look at the sample.”

He held out his hand for the slender, sealed, eight-foot tube the Brazilian had laid on the table behind him.

But Quiverian was insistent “Nobody’s saying that these poor mutants are unhuman. Only that they were a horrible mistake. You cannot blame the people of Earth-with the nations of the Arc of the Sun in the vanguard-for calling for controls.

“I see.” Saul nodded. “Controls like banning Percells from the Olympics. What’s next, Joao? Segregated restrooms? Special drinking fountains? Ghettoes?”

Quiverian smiled. “Oh, Saul. It wasn’t just those athletic records a few Percells had broken—freakish performances that raised the ire of millions. Those were only the last straw. Your creations—”

“Not my creations.” Saul shook his head insistently.

Quiverian held up a hand. “Very well, Simon Percell’s creatures—his monsters—these people are living reminders of the arrogance of twentieth-century northern science, which nearly destroyed the world!”

Saul sighed. “Come on, Joao. You can’t blame science and the Old North for everything. True, they used up more than their share of resources, but you talk as if the nations of the Arc were completely guiltless for the Hell Century. After all, who cut down the tropical forests in spite of all the warnings? Who raised the carbon dioxide levels—”

Quiverian interrupted him, red-faced: “You think I am unaware of that, Saul? Look at my homeland, Brazil. Only now, after massive struggle, are we beginning to recover from an environmental holocaust which wiped out a third of the Earth’s species… all sacrificed at the altar of thoughtless greed.”

“Very well, then the guilt is distributed—’

“Yes, certainly. But technology itself was partly at fault! We simply barged ahead with the best of intentions”—Quiverian arched his eyebrows sardonically—”doing good to the detriment of Nature herself!”

Obviously, the man believed this, passionately. Saul found it ironic. Back before the turn of the century, the nations of the Old North had preached environmentalism to an unheeding Third World —after already reaping most of the planet’s accessible wealth. Now, the pendulum had swung. The equatorial peoples in the Arc of the Sun seemed obsessed with a mystic passion for nature that would have astonished their land-hungry grandparents.

Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people apologize to corpses?

He was spared having to reply as a thickly accented voice rose from beyond a table stacked high with core samples.

“Hey! Did I miss something? Eh? Exactly what crimes was do-gooder science responsible for? I’ll tell you which! Maybe our Brazilian friend refers to foreign doctors who came in to reduce infant mortality in countries such as his. Boom! Overpopulation. To your modern Arcist, that must have been the worst horror of them all!

Quiverian’s face colored. “Malenkov, you fat Russian hypocrite! Come out here and argue face to face like a man. You don’t have to hide; I am no Ukrainian sniper!”

“Thank the saints for that much, at least.” Nicholas Malenkov rounded the table holding a clipboard, smiling, a hulking giant of a man who moved with the grace of a wrestler, even in the awkward Coriolis tides of the gravity wheel.

Rescued, Saulthought gratefully and seized the chance to change the subject. “Nicholas, I hear Cruz and the engineers have preliminary results from the gas-panel experiments. Were you there?”

The stocky Slav grinned. “They wanted at least one of us iceball lovers around when they tried it out. You, Joao, and Otis were busy. So I sat in.”

Along with Saul and the legless spacer, Otis Sergeov, Dr. Malenkov wore a second hat as a cometologist… much to Joao Quiverian’s frequent protests of dismay. The big Russian spread his hands. “My friends, the results are encouraging. With only a few of the panels in place we have already altered the orbit of Comet Halley! The effect is small, but we’ve proved that controlling the comet’s outgassing can let us make orbital changes!”

Saul nodded. “Of course, the method only works near perihelion, close to the sun.”

“True. This run of tests showed only a small, diminishing effect. Soon surface sublimation will cease altogether. The panel project will shut down for seventy years. But next time,” Malenkov “when we are diving once more inward, toward the Hot…”

The Hot. It was the first time Saul had heard the sun referred to that way…

“… then this work will prove its usefulness. With the big Nudge rockets having their maximum effect at aphelion, and the evaporation-control panels working at perihelion, we will have the means to herd this ancient iceball into almost any orbit we want!”

Quiverian frowned darkly and shook his head. “Suppose all of this meddling works. Exactly what, Doctor, would you want to do with… with a herded comet?”

Oh, no. Saul saw where the conversation was heading.

“Who cares!” Malenkov said enthusiastically. “Ideas have bounced around for more than a century, about what people might do with comets.”

“Crackpot ideas, you mean.”

Malenkov shrugged. “Our present plan is to arrange a loop past Jupiter in seventy years, and use big planet’s gravity to snare Halley into much more accessible orbit. Eventually, this iceball can supply cheap volatiles and help the NearEarth people create their Third Plateau in space.”

Quiverian shook his head. “Propaganda. I have heard it a thousand times.”

Malenkov went on unperturbed. “The possibilities are endless. When we have proven long-duration sleep slots, comets may make great space liners—to cruise the solar system in safety.”

Saul saw that a small audience had begun to gather at the open door to the lab, attracted from nearby offices. Malenkov noticed them and waxed even more enthusiastic.

“We might find more useful chemicals, maybe, like those Joao and Captain Cruz found on Encke. Why, there may even be some merit in that wild idea to use comets to terraform Venus or Mars! Eventually they might be made suitable for colonization.”

“Hah!” Quiverian snorted.

“Gentlemen,” Saul cut in. “I suggest we—”

But Quiverian ignored him, shaking a slender, plastic-coated sample tube at Malenkov. “This is the attitude I cannot bear. The original idea was to study comets, the most pristine of all God’s handiworks. But now knowledge for its own sake doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Now you not only want to harvest this comet, but recklessly alter entire worlds before we even understand them!”

Malenkov blinked in surprise at Quiverian’s anger. Saul knew that Nicholas had few political opinions. He was one of the most brilliant people Saul had ever met, but the man never seemed to learn that to some people a disagreement was not a chess game, not a sport for gentlemen. In this respect, he was a most unRussian Russian.

Saul tried once more to stop this. “Joao! Nick was only talking about possibilities. In thirty years Earth will have had time to decide…”

But the angry Brazilian wasn’t listening anymore. Quiverian’s left hand clenched the core tube and his right formed a fist. “We have just emerged from the most terrible century in human history… the worst for our world since the holocaust of the Pleistocene… and now idiots want to send giant iceballs hurtling down onto planets?”