Part 4 (1/2)
”Madam Chairwoman,” Rodrick said, after the laughter had subsided, ”if I may intrude again, strictly unofficially?”
”Of course,” Evangeline replied.
”We lost three members of our group at Cygni A,” Rodrick said. ”The aforementioned Clay Girard, who seems to get around, was reminding me just this afternoon that we should name some significant geographic features after them. ”
”Hear, hear,” someone said.
”Clay knew Dinah Purdy and Pat Renfro well. He seems to think that Dinah would have been honored by our naming the large inland lake to the northeast after her.”
”Let's see a map,” someone said, and Evangeline projected a map. The committee was in a decision-making mood, and within five minutes not only the lake but the eastern river that had its source there had names, Lake Dinah and the Dinah River. The coastal, wooded mountains became the Renfro Mountains, and the bay was now officially Stanton Bay.
”And now,” Evangeline said, ”lets move on. The names we're considering for the planet are New Earth, Earth Two, Hamilton's World, Troy, Elysium, Shaw-in honor of Harry Shaw-and Columbia. Isuggest that we try to narrow the field even more.”
It was done. One by one, negative votes eliminated Shaw, Elysium, Troy, and Earth Two, because it could be perverted to Earth Also.
Clive Baxter, the leading proponent for New Earth, had the floor. ”I'm not saying that Dexter Hamilton is not a great man, but let's look back into our history. When our ancestors came to America, they began to name places for royalty: North and South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia, for example. Our government has no royalty, and I see no reason why we must carry on the tradition of naming places and geographic features after our so-called great men. We need a simple name. Whatever we call the planet, sooner or later it's going to become, if not for us, for our children and their children, The World, or The Earth. Might as well call it New Earth from the beginning.”
”I agree with Dr. Baxter,” said a distinguished geologist. ”We're going to avoid the evils of politics here.
Let's not give the name of a politician to our new world. However, we have a chance to right a great historic wrong done centuries ago to a brave and brilliant man. I speak of Christopher Columbus, who braved the Atlantic, quelled a mutiny, and sailed on to discover a continent which, for inexplicable reasons, was named for Amerigo Vespucci, an obscure merchant who didn't even set foot on a s.h.i.+p until five years after Columbus had discovered the New World. I vote strongly that we right that long-past wrong and honor the great explorer, Christopher Columbus, by naming our planet Columbia.”
The discussion was long and often heated. Several votes were taken, and the two remaining names in consideration, New Earth and Columbia, were caught in an exact tie.
Evangeline Burr said, ”Is there anyone who would like to change his or her vote and break the tie?”
”No,” Clive Baxter said, glaring at her. ”It's up to you. You have the tie-breaking vote.”
Evangeline knew that feelings were running deep. She sighed. ”I admit, my friends, that I am a coward. I don't want to alienate any of you. May I put forward a compromise?”
”New Columbia?” Baxter asked.
”No, not that,” Evangeline said. ”I've been thinking since the reports from the investigative teams began to come in that we are so very, very lucky to have found this planet on our very last chance. We didn.'t have enough rhenium to explore other possibilities. It's such a warm, friendly planet. There are no dangerous wild animals. There are no snakes. There are no stinging scorpions, and most unbelievably, no biting insects have been discovered to date. The weather is beautiful. The land is beautiful. The soil is rich, the water pure and sweet.”
”She's going to suggest that we call it Heaven,” Clive Baxter said.
”I'm going to suggest that we consider naming our planet Eden.”
”Well, it makes sense,” someone said.
”Are you going to be Eve, Evangeline?” Baxter asked. ”And wear a fig leaf?”
”Not in your presence, Dr. Baxter,” Evangeline said, blus.h.i.+ng. ”Shall we vote?”
Eden. Duncan Rodrick liked it. He nodded his approval and put in his two cents worth again to say that,in his opinion, Eden was an excellent name.
”Maybe for the country, but not for a planet,” Clive Baxter objected, and immediately picked up supporters.
”Just so we can have some progress, then,” Evangeline suggested, ”do I hear a motion to name our peninsula Eden?” She did. Eden it was, for that area between the high, snowy mountains and the sea.
The battle was joined once more. Another compromise had a majority feeling that Dexter Hamilton should be honored in some way. The town on Stanton Bay became Hamilton City and would, as the days pa.s.sed, become just Hamilton, in Eden, by Stanton Bay.
New Earth or Columbia? The discussion raged on into the night. A name for the planet would be selected before the meeting ended.
News of the stalemate had been spread by the s.h.i.+p's grapevine. All meetings were open meetings, and people gathered in lounges to watch the debate. Pet.i.tions were quickly written and signed, some supporting the New Earth proponents, some the Columbia proponents.
Max Rosen and Grace Monroe had been busy all day. It was Max's responsibility to mothball the s.h.i.+p's power units, rockets, and the Shaw Drive for future use. When colonists, alerted to the great debate, began to call engineering requesting further viewscreen hookups so that they could watch the meeting, Max growled and, at first, complied. After the fourth interruption of his work he looked at Grace and asked, ”What the h.e.l.l's going on?”
”I don't know,” she said, turning on a screen to hear a learned scientist talking heatedly, his face red and earnest. Max listened for a few minutes. New Earth or Columbia.
”I was named to that committee,” he growled. ”If we're going to get our work finished, we're going to have to do something about this. You want to go with me?”
Grace smiled. ”I wouldn't miss it for the world.”
Max stalked into the meeting room, his uniform mussed and oil stained, his hair standing in all directions.
”Evangeline,” he growled.
”The chair recognizes Chief Engineer Max Rosen,” Evangeline said.
”You monkeys,” Max said, ”are getting the whole s.h.i.+p upset, forcing people to take sides, and what's worse, you're keeping me from my work. I think both of your names stink. New Earth sounds like something out of a cheap science-fiction story, and if you want to name the continent or an ocean Columbia, do it, but there's only one name for this big ball we're on, because, as you all know, it was our G.o.dd.a.m.ned last chance. If this planet hadn't been livable, we'd all be breathing recycled air right now instead of creating all kinds of hot air about what we're going to call her. She's Omega. The last. Our last chance.”
Max turned, grabbed Grace's hand, and led her out. She looked back over her shoulder at Duncan Rodrick and smiled. Evangeline Burr giggled. Other women, and then Rodrick, and then the men joined in the laugh. The motion was pa.s.sed.
At last, the committee members could get to their beds. There was another day of work ahead, to makethe town of Hamilton, on Stanton Bay, habitable, to get everyone off the s.h.i.+p and into land quarters.
Most of them were pleased with the night's work: A lake, a river, a bay, a range of mountains, a town, a country, and a planet had been named, along with a pleasant, clear, rocky little creek. And, by dawn, Jumpers Run was dropping its crystal waters into Stanton Bay near Hamilton City in the country of Eden on the continent of Columbia on the planet Omega-the last chance, and a glorious one, where not even the bees had stingers.
FIVE.
”Well, Clay,” Stoner McRae said as the crawler rolled and rocked over uneven ground, ”you flew over the area. Which direction shall we take?”
They had traveled seventy miles on a line northeast from Hamilton, and the first low scarp of the highlands was no more than a mile ahead. They'd made fast time across the rolling plains, but now the terrain became drier, more uneven.
Clay had not been able to get out of his mind the conviction that he'd seen something that was too smooth, too regular in its angles to be of natural origin. He had been doing some mental calculations, based on his memory ofDinahmite's navigation instruments. He pointed.
”It looks as if there's a break in the scarp there, Stoner,” he said. ”And then there's some interesting-looking country almost straight ahead.”
After the crawler found a sandy, dry opening in the low cliffs, which led to a very rugged plateau, Clay oriented himself on a distant peak of the big mountains and pointed Stoner in that general direction.
It was slow going, partly because of the broken, barren, rocky terrain, and also because Stoner often stopped the crawler to take volcanic-rock samples, which Betsy, Cindy, and Clay carefully labeled and put into a bag.
Each hour Clay reported their position to the control center on theSpirit of America . Once he spoke to Duncan Rodrick, who asked him how the badlands looked from the ground. Most of the time during the morning he was talking to the scout pilot Renato Cruz, whose radio call, like his scout s.h.i.+p, wasApache Two .
They had lunch in the shade of high cliffs, which marked yet another scarp as the highland rose. They had to detour far to the south to find a break in the line of cliffs, and the going was tough-so tough that the usually silent hydrogen engine of the crawler whined in protest, and the jerks and jars became more severe for the pa.s.sengers. The crawler clawed its way up a scree slope of fifty degrees inclination and burst over the top with a jar that caused both Cindy and Betsy to cry out as the vehicle slammed down.
It was that jar, Clay decided later, that had put the radio out of action. When he tried to call in on the hour, he could not reach the s.h.i.+p, and when he tried to receive, there was nothing-not even static.