CRADLE OF SATURN BY JAMES P. HOGAN

What else was there for them to do but agree? It was past 3:00 A.M., and Hayer was weary. He still hadn’t adjusted fully to the responsibilities he found himself with suddenly, and there was no denying the edge of fear that Keene detected in his voice. But Keene also noticed something else. Though he might feel fear as much as any human, Hayer was able to control it. And there was a resoluteness in his face that Keene had never seen before in all the public images that had filled the telescreens and news magazines in the last six years.

* * *

Voler and Tyndam had left by the time Keene and Lomack came out from their interview with the President. So had Vincent Queal, the intelligence-agency official, and several others who had sided with them. Keene remembered Cavan saying something about the East Coast academic interests that Voler represented having ties to the defense and investment sectors, but what it might signify he wasn’t sure. Neither was he in a condition to think too much about it. The time was after dawn, and Keene dragged himself away to one of the White House guest rooms to grab a few hours of sleep that could no longer be put off. It was afternoon when he awoke. After showering and shaving, he emerged to join others who had also stayed over and more arrivals who were being introduced to the situation. The President was elsewhere, reportedly at the Pentagon. Lomack had left with a group who had gone to the Engleton to repair relationships with the Kronians and prepare the way for more cooperation between Terran and Kronian scientists.

The world was still unsuspecting. While emergency and mobilization orders had begun going out as agreed the previous night, and similar measures were being initiated in other nations whose leaders had been informed, few people were as yet discerning the wider pattern and starting to talk in ways that would arouse the media. At the same time, high-level contacts in the news organizations had been notified to be ready for announcements of national importance, probably within the next twenty-four hours.

Meanwhile, reports were being logged worldwide of increasing radio disturbance and unusually bright auroras at higher latitudes due to high incoming fluxes of the particles that cause ionization in the upper atmosphere. The first whispers of Athena’s approach were already reaching Earth.

26

The two primary focal points into which observational data poured from astronomers worldwide were the IAU center in Cambridge, where Voler’s associate Tyndam was based and seemed to command a lot of influence, and the parallel operation at JPL in Pasadena, both of which Salio had mentioned. The dependability and possible motives of the authorities responsible for the official reporting from those centers was precisely what Hayer was uneasy about, and Keene’s task, basically, was to carry out some checks by going back to the main locations where the inputs to such collecting points originated. He was given office space at the White House and assigned two secretarial staff, Barbara and Gordon, as helpers. The eventual list that they came up with in the limited time available included NASA’s Laboratory of Astrophysics at the nearby Goddard Space Flight Center, where data came in for processing from the orbiting and lunar laboratories; the Palomar, McDonald, Kitt Peak, Lick, and USN observatories in the U.S., the NASA, UCLA, and Caltech observatories on Mauna Kea in the Hawaiian Islands; the British Herschel Observatory, located in the Canary Islands; the European Astronomical Center in Geneva; and the Russian network centered on the Pastukhov Institute. Keene also called David Salio for suggestions as to possible sources in the private sector.

Salio stared somberly from the screen after giving Keene some names for him to follow up, including one at the Aerospace Sciences Institute where Salio worked. “It’s Athena, isn’t it?” he said finally, keeping his voice low.

Keene answered guardedly. “Why do you say that?”

Salio gave one of his humorless smiles, only this time coming closer to a grimace. “I know what kind of an object it is, and I saw how your case was being undermined from the beginning in that charade in Washington. Jean was telling me over dinner tonight about rumors she’s been hearing at the hospital of emergency measures being activated on a major scale. Its orbit has shifted, hasn’t it? It’s going to come closer than they thought.”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *