“What’s on?” Keene asked. “Business dinner? Press Club? Some kind of civic function?”
“My stepdaughter Anna is playing the cello. It’s her first appearance in public, and it would be more than my life’s worth not to be there.” Curtiss looked pleased that Keene had asked. He seemed quite proud. Keene liked it when tycoons showed a human touch. It meant there was hope for the race yet.
He called Vicki immediately afterward and caught her at the house just as she was about to leave for the office. “Something came up at the Kronian party last night that could be important,” he told her. “Can you pull Judith off that Japanese project and ask her to take a look at it—maybe give her a hand. I want you to access the Kronian research files and find some data they’ve been collecting on changes in the electromagnetic properties of the space environment during the past ten months. You can get it from the databank in the Osiris—no need for all the delays in dealing with Saturn. I’ll send details and access codes to you at the office.”
“Changes?” Vicki repeated, looking surprised.
“Yes. It seems that all that stuff that Athena’s spewing out has been altering the inner-system free-space permeability and permittivity—for a while, anyway, until the solar wind blows it away. But in the meantime we’re in a more electrically active neighborhood. I want to compute the forces that would act on a hot, massively charged body and how they would affect its orbital characteristics.”
“You want us to do this . . . ?”
“No, no—not all on your own, there, anyway. I’ve just talked to Marvin. He’s going to have Jerry Allender set it up in his department over there. But they’re all in a panic this morning over something else that’s going on. I just want us to do the go-betweening with the Kronians for them. You might need to involve a specialist too. I can think of a couple of names you could try. I’ll send them with the other stuff.”
Vicki stared at him for a few seconds, thinking rapidly. “Are we talking about Venus?” she asked at last.
“Could be,” Keene answered noncommittally.
“Are you saying that our scientists here don’t know about this already?”
Keene shrugged. “All too busy writing begging letters to Congress or getting themselves into the Washington black-tie cocktail-party circuit.”
The significance was slowly sinking in. Vicki shook her head, looking disbelieving. “Lan . . . do you realize that what you’re talking about could upset half of astronomy all the way back to Newton? I mean, you just call on the phone when I’m leaving for work and mention it as casually as if it were a bookshelf you want ordered. . . .”
“Yes, I know, but I haven’t got time to go into raptures over the philosophy of it right now. There’s probably a cab waiting for me downstairs already.”
Just then, a blurred voice called something in the background behind Vicki. She looked away. “I said on the table in the kitchen,” she directed to somewhere off-screen.
“Robin getting ready for school?” Keene said.
Vicki turned back again. “You guessed. How do you do it, Lan?”
“And how is he? Anything new with the dinosaurs?”
“It’s led into mammoths. But don’t ask me right now; I’ll mail you a note if you’re interested.”
“Sure, I’m interested.”
“You want to say hi to him?”
“Sure.”
“Robin, it’s Landen on the line. Like to say hello for a second?”
A few seconds went by, and then Robin moved into the view alongside the image of Vicki. “Hi, Lan. How’s Washington? Did you get to meet the Kronians?”
“Sure did. I’ll tell you all about them next time I stop by.”
“Is that it?” Vicki asked Robin, gesturing at a blue folder that he was holding.
“Yes. I was sure it was upstairs.”
“What’s in it?” Keene inquired.
“Oh, a project we’re doing at school, in the science class. We have to write an essay on the Joktanians and the kinds of things that have been turning up in the places they’re digging at.”
“That’s the old civilization from around Arabia and Ethiopia that was only discovered in the last few years,” Vicki supplied for Keene’s benefit. “So give the school system some credit—they’re keeping up to date.”