He hung up.
V
Saturn pulsed palely in the void before them as though painted in three dimensions by a master artist. Kane pointed through the duraglass conning bubble at the spectacle. Ringed planets were rare, even in the wide fastnesses of Space which the ITA commanded with its far-flung fleet. And off to the huge, banded planet's lee swung the largest of its satellites, long since made livable by the now forgotten cleverness of the Solmen.
"Titan?" Deanne asked.
"It is," Jon said.
"May I ask you why you decided on it? There seem to be others. Full sized planets, even." She was standing close to him now, watching the silent beauty of the Spacescape as though, for the moment, she had forgotten all else. Jon looked at her, and wondered. Why, really, had she come with him.
"Before the Wars," he began, "Solmen made of that satellite their first project in conversion; battled it from a dead, frozen wasteland to a fertile, life sustaining oasis in Space. Back in the days before the Scientists were eliminated and the technicians shot down where they stood. Back when spaceships didn't even look like spaceships—clumsy, triple-sphered affairs—but they worked. I don't think the Solmen left on Titan ever quite forgot how it felt that day their last link with Sol III was severed; their last ship destroyed by the mobs that came from the mother planet despite the feeble resistance they were able to put up. Last link except for the ITA, that is, but of course they didn't know there'd even be an ITA in those days. Things were pretty rough for awhile."
"How do you know all this? According to what is taught in the history classes—" She let her sentence trail off and suddenly looked him full in the face. And comprehension stirred in her eyes. "You're not—not some erratic, mutant genius, then, as B-Haaq told my uncle."
"Hardly, Deanne, hardly. You've guessed right, I think. I got ahold of some old books once. That's all. In some ways, I know more than the ITA has forgotten in two hundred years. And that's why I picked Titan. I could be wrong, of course. But of all places where resentment might still smoulder, even after so long a time, Titan seemed like the place. The Solmen there knew what science and technology could accomplish for men's benefit; they knew best of all because they had helped accomplish the miracle of creating a living planet out of a hunk of sterile rock. And because they had, many of them were slaughtered, as were the other technicians and scientists in the dark days following the Holocaust. Somehow I don't think they've forgotten. And that's why I think they'll help us."