Free Saturn Run by John Sandford, Ctein

yours, Rebecca?”
    “If I build your power plant, I get to go along.”
    Santeros nodded: “Okay.”
    Vintner, the bureaucrat: “Before we give you any more details or address your speculations, which we cannot confirm at this moment, we’re going to need you to sign some documents.” He handed her a slate.
    “If this is about clearance, I’m already cleared for nuclear work,” Becca said.
    “We know that. This is a higher level of clearance. You were vetted for it last night,” Vintner said.
    Santeros walked around behind her desk, sat down, looked at a screen, tapped it a couple of times, and said to Becca, “Sit and read it.”
    Becca sat and gave it a quick scan. Boiled down to a few words, it said that if she talked out of turn, she was going to jail. She signed it, touched the ID square with her thumb, and handed it back to Vintner.
    Santeros offered up the barest of smiles. “So we can give you a detail—and please remember what you just signed. We’re not going to Mars—we’re going to Saturn.”
    “Saturn?” Becca was dumbfounded. “Why Saturn? You can’t just be one-upping the Chinese. Jupiter’d be closer. What’s at Saturn?”
    Santeros said to Vintner, “You’re right. She is pretty smart.” And to Becca: “More by accident than anything else, one of our astronomical observatories saw what we believe to be an alien starship going into Saturn—and we believe there’s something else there, possibly a station.”
    “Holy shit!”
    “Exactly. I’m sure you can work out the implications.”
    “But . . .” Becca rubbed her forehead with a knuckle, thinking, then said, “It’ll take us years to get out there.”
    “Not with the power plant you’re going to design,” Vintner said.

8 .
    Crow had never allowed himself to get tired, when he didn’t have to. Other people could get tired, but not him: he’d taught himself to sleep, anytime, anyplace. He’d slept on helicopters on combat missions, he’d slept in fighter planes, he’d deliberately put himself to sleep in the President’s private office, waiting for her to return from a meeting.
    His wrist-wrap tapped him, and his eyes popped open. The limo was easing through the narrow, rotting streets of the Ninth Ward, reading the address sensors buried in the street. Crow popped a piece of breath-cleaning gum, poured a palmful of water from a bottle, wiped it across his eyes, checked the time: he’d gotten a solid forty-five minutes rolling in from Louis Armstrong International.
    A minute later, the limo eased to a stop outside a dilapidated faux-Restoration house. Crow picked up his slate, stuck it in his jacket pocket, got out, walked up the badly cracked sidewalk, pushed the doorbell, and stood back to look at the moss.
    Moss everywhere, including fine tendrils advancing across the windows. The Restoration style became popular after Hurricane Clarence flooded the city in 2044. New Orleans had been submerged three times in the first half of the century, and each time, the levees were built higher, the pumps made bigger, and the city fathers swore that once and for all they’d solved the problems born of rising seas and eroding deltas.
    The residents hadn’t believed them in 2044, any more than they had the two previous times, but that hadn’t stopped them from rebuilding. Now, with almost a quarter century gone since the last wipeout, houses that had been new in 2045 were beginning to sink into the landscape.
    There was no response to the doorbell. Crow leaned on it again, and this time, heard a muffled bellow from inside; unintelligible, but not panicked or in pain. Crow tried the doorknob, which was unlocked, and as the door swung open he heard a more intelligible bellow: “. . . open, let yourself in!”
    “Mr. Clover?”
    “I’m in the kitchen. Come on back. Don’t kick the cat.”
    Crow stepped inside, closed the door, stepped over an old, scruffy gray cat sleeping on the floor next to an ottoman, and threaded