very important position, and I’ve told you I’ll do everything I can.”
“Yeah? Phooey. Important? Who says so? What’s ‘media liaison’ anyway? I wanna
talk to the captain.”
“What captain?”
“Vent? Vant? . . . whatever. What’s the driver called?”
“You mean General Vantz?” Thoring looked appalled.
“That’s him. Where do I go?”
Thoring shook his head and moaned despairingly. “Look, Clarissa, believe me—you
can’t go raising something like this with General Vantz. He wouldn’t know
anything about it anyway. This would come under the mission’s Communications
Director, and I report directly to him. Okay?”
“Then I wanna talk to the Communications Director.”
Thoring raised a hand to his brow, closed his eyes and fiddled with the bridge
of his spectacles for a few seconds, then shook his head again and looked back
at Clarissa. Before he could say anything, one of the women from the secretarial
pool in the outer office called, “I’m through to New York, Mr. Thoring. They’re
sorry, but Hepperstein is in conference at the moment. Can he call you
tomorrow?”
Thoring sighed, stood, and walked round the desk to the open doorway. “No, it
can’t wait until tomorrow,” he said, sounding agitated. “He has to get back to
me today. Make sure they get a message to him, and that he knows it’s from me
personally.”
“Okay.”
“Who are you trying to kid?” Clarissa asked as Thoring came back to his desk and
sat down. At the same time she allowed a hint of doubt into her voice, and
marshaled an expression that was a shade more respectful. “I bet you don’t even
know who the Communications Director is. Why would your job involve dealing with
someone like that?”
Thoring lifted his chin and allowed himself a quick smirk of satisfaction.
“Well, you’d be surprised, lady. For your information, my level of
responsibility on this mission requires a working familiarity with all kinds of
confidential material that you don’t know about. That’s why you have to trust me
when I say I’ll do as much to help your interests as I can. But that’s all I can
say. Just accept for now that I have a lot more to worry about than you think.”
Clarissa’s belligerence evaporated. She leaned forward, glanced furtively across
at the open doorway, and hissed in a conspiratorial whisper. “What?”
Thoring’s voice lowered itself instinctively. “Come on, Clarissa—you know better
than that,” he muttered, tapping the side of his nose.
“But I wanna know,” Clarissa insisted, her eyes wide with excitement. “Is it
gonna be a group-sex experiment in space? Or maybe we’re going into another
dimension. You can tell me. Do I look like somebody who’d go spreading things
around—especially something said in confidence by a Media Liaison Director.”
Thoring frowned, bunched his lips perplexedly for a second, and then whispered,
“I can’t do that … but if I told you it’s big, would you stay off my back and
let me get on with my job?”
“But of course. I wouldn’t wanna interfere with something that might endanger
the national interests or something.”
“Well, you’re pretty close to the mark,” Thoring said, nodding somberly. “That’s
just what it is. You could help us a lot by backing off a little.”
“How big is it?” Clarissa asked, covering the side of her face with a hand and
murmuring out of the corner other mouth. “Have they found cosmic energy pyramids
on Mars? Are we gonna fight the KGB for them?”
“Nothing like that. But I’ll tell you this—the Mission Director is Daniel
Leaherney, deputy head of the U.S. National Security Council. His
second-in-command will be Charles Giraud, who’s connected with the French
government. They and their senior staff are on board now, shuttled up yesterday
without any publicity. That should tell you enough.”
“Never heard of them, but they sound important,” Clarissa said. “This is
exciting. What else?”
Thoring sat back in his chair suddenly and shook his head. “That’s more than I
should have mentioned. I can’t say any more, Clarissa . . . but will you stay
outta my hair from now on, please?”
“I never realized . . . You must have a lot on your mind.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”