Frederik Pohl The Siege of Eternity

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

T. Lawrence
Hecksher left the office he had the registry numbers of every document that
could have any bearing on the case: Uncle Cubby's will and the probate
records; the instrument creating the trust for the
T. Cuthbert Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory; the records of the building
of Starlab and all the disbursements made from Uncle Cubby's estate to pay for
it; Pat's own contract of employment, to show that she had authority to
institute a suit on the Observatory's behalf-"We'll need all your, ah, sisters
to sign the complaint as well, of course." When Pat suggested that most of
this could be obtained with less trouble from Dixler, the lawyer for Uncle
Cubby's estate, or from the
Observatory's own attorney, he gave her a forgiving smile. "I don't think
we'll trouble them, my dear. I find I work best when I don't involve any other
attorneys if I can help it. I'll have the complaints and summonses ready to
sign and serve by tomorrow morning. Serve on whom? Why, on everybody, Dr.
Adcock: the President of the United States, the secretary general of the
United
Nations, the director of the National Bureau of Intelligence-that's because
they have custody of the aliens. For that matter, on the aliens themselves,
but I'll have to do a little research on that. Trial? My dear Dr. Adcock,
there won't be any trial. All we want is money, and they'll throw that at us
to get rid of us. What you have to do is decide how much you want. I'm
thinking of, let's see, giving them a quit claim for whatever the cost of
manufacturing, outfitting and launching Starlab was when it was built,
adjusted for inflation, with interest, and perhaps a one hundred percent
penalty . . . yes, quite a large sum, I think. But we can discuss all those
details later. Good afternoon."
When he was gone Pat spent a few dizzying minutes calculating just how many
hundreds of millions of inflation-adjusted dollars all that might come to. It
would definitely be a lot. It was certainly enough to relieve all four Pats
from financial worries forever, and for Pat Five's unborn triplets and all
their descendants as well.
She leaned back, studying the numbers on the wall to take her mind off these
giddy visions of prosperity. A flash of color showed that another object had
been identified and an orbit plotted, but the flashing red showed that this
one was special. The funny thing about it was that it seemed to be heading in
the general direction of the Earth.
Page 115
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
That explained the flashing signal. It also caused Pat a moment's shock, but
when she checked its orbital elements she relaxed a bit; its trajectory seemed
to bring it within a couple hundred thousand kilometers of the planet, but
that was not particularly worrisome. Every few years an object was detected at
ranges like that, some of them coming closer than Earth's Moon. It would bear
watching, of course. But-
Her phone rang. Annoyed, Pat touched the screen control. "What is it?" she
demanded, expecting to see Janice DuPage with some new urgency to make demands
on her time.
But the face wasn't Janice's. It was her own face-well, Patrice's face, at
least-and she looked scared. "Pat? It's Pat Five. She's hemorrhaging. I've got
the medics here and they're taking her to the hospital. You'd better come."
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Hilda Morrisey got a few hours sleep on the plane to Guyana, needing it. The
night with Wilbur
Carmichael had been really pleasant, but it might have been a mistake. Was she
getting too fond of the man? Should she have promised to see him again as soon
as she got back? It had certainly cost her sleep that she could have used. But
it was a mistake she would have been glad to repeat, because Wilbur had been
fine.
She woke at dawn, just as the aircraft was circling the town of Kourou. All
she could see from the air was the giant new Holiday Inn between the lights of
the Pizza Hut and the all-night casino,
file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik...haton%202%20-%20The%20Siege%
20Of%20Eternity.txt (91 of 126) [1/15/03 6:27:07 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Eschaton%202%20-%20The%2
0Siege%20Of%20Eternity.txt but with the dark solid green of the jungle just
outside the town limits. The plane swooped out to sea to come in for a landing
from the east, and there, a kilometer or so from the town itself, was the
starkly floodlighted launch area, ancient gantries still standing in spite of
rust and time, the liquid fuel plants steaming away, the hideous barracks
blocks where most of the base's personnel lived.
When she got out of the aircraft the heat hit her. Kourou was hot and wet, and
there were bugs.
The zappers electrocuted a few thousand of them every hour, but there were
always thousands more coming up out of the rain forest, thirsty for Hilda
Morrisey's blood.
It was not, it seemed, going to be a comfortable assignment. Hilda wondered if
it was going to be a safe one; she had never signed on to be an astronaut. It
wasn't just that people got killed in space. She had long come to terms with
the possibility of early death, because in Hilda's line of work people got
killed from time to time just about everywhere she'd ever been. The hard part
was the thought that in a few days she would be climbing into that ancient and
ugly-looking LuftBuran space vehicle that was squatting on its hardstand at
die end of the runway and then she would be departing in it from the planet
she belonged on. When was the last time the damn Europeans had fired one of
the things? Would it still work? Her skin crawled in ways she had never
experienced before as she thought about all the questions.
On the other hand, Kourou had one very great advantage for Hilda Morrisey. It
wasn't the Bureau's hated Arlington madhouse.
Here in Kourou she was the senior American officer present, at least until the
deputy director got there for the actual launch. So she had no boss at all.
She certainly didn't take orders from
Colonel du-Valier-although, in spite of the fact that she clearly outranked
him, he did his best to give them.
If Hilda put up with the colonel at all it wasn't because he was chief pilot [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Odnośniki