“Although, I don’t know. . . with all those new worlds out there, you never know what we might find,” Hunt said. “It’s your line of business that the Ganymeans can’t compete in, not mine. I wouldn’t think of turning my badge in just yet if I were you.”
Jerry seemed unconvinced as he took another draft, but there was nothing to make an issue over. “Let’s hope you’re right,” he replied. After a pause he went on. “So I guess it’s all keeping you pretty busy over at Goddard, eh? I hear you coming and going at all hours of the day and night.”
“We’re up to our ears there,” Hunt agreed. He snorted lightly. “And the funny thing is that at the beginning of the last century it was the scientists who were talking about handing their badges in—half of them, anyway—because they didn’t think there was anything worthwhile left to discover. So maybe you can take some heart from that.”
“Are you mixed up with that thing that’s been in orbit up there for the last couple of weeks?” Jerry asked. “I saw on the news that a bunch of ‘em from there were down at Goddard.” A gigantic Thurien space vessel, named the Vishnu by Terrans, after the Hindu deity that was able to cross the universe in two strides, was currently visiting Earth, having brought delegations to meet with representatives of various nations, institutions, corporations, and other organizations for all manner of purposes as the scope of dealings between the two cultures grew.
“Yes, I talk to some of them,” Hunt said, nodding.
“What kind of thing do you do there exactly?” Jerry asked curiously.
Hunt drew on his cigarette and stared out at the central valley between the green, terraced slopes. A glint of metallic bronze appeared briefly as a car rounded a bend a short distance away on the road below. “I used to be with UNSA’s Navcomms division down in Houston—that was how I got to go on the Jupiter Five mission. So I was out at Ganymede and mixed up with the Ganymeans right from the start.”
“Okay.” Jerry nodded.
“Well, now this business with Thurien is all happening, one of the things we need to find out is what sense we can make of their sciences, and how much of our own needs to go in the trash can. UNSA moved me up to Goddard to head up a team that’s looking into some parts of that.”
“And they do things like travel around between stars and remodel whole planets?” Jerry thought about it for a moment. “That could be pretty hair—raising.”
Hunt nodded. “They’ve got power plants out in space that turn eight lunar masses of material a day into energy and beam it instantly to wherever you need it, light-years away. Sometimes I feel like a scribe from an old monastery would have, trying to unravel what goes on inside IBM.”
“Wasn’t there a woman who used to visit sometimes, when you first moved here?”Jerry asked. “Kinda red hair, not bad-looking. .
Hunt nodded. “That’s right. Lyn.”
“I talked to her once or twice. Said she’d moved up from Houston, too. So was she with UNSA as well?”
“Right.”
“Haven’t seen her around lately.”
Hunt made a vague gesture with the can he was holding, and stubbed his cigarette in a tin lid that he had found in the toolbox. “An old flame from her college days breezed in out of nowhere, and the next thing I knew it was serious and they got married. They’re over in Germany now. She’s still with UNSA—coordinating some program with the European side.”
“Just like that, eh?”
“Oh, it was just as well, Jerry. She’d been sending domestication signals my way for a while. You know how it is.”
“Not really your scene, huh?”
“No. . . Probably a great institution, mind you, Jerry. But I don’t think I’m ready for an institution yet.”
Jerry seemed more at ease, as if back on ground that he understood. He raised his beer. “I’ll drink to that.”
“Never tried it?” Hunt asked.
“Once. That was enough.”
“Not exactly a happy affair?”
Jerry pulled a face. “Oh, no, there’s no such thing as an unhappy marriage. They’re all happy—you only have to look at the wedding pictures. It’s the living together afterward that does it.” He crumpled his empty can and dropped it into the carton, then pulled out another, peeled back the tab, and settled back comfortably until he was half lying against a tree standing behind the rock.