The pattern of womanizing was long and clear. The affair with the German financier’s wife was interesting . . . with the rival lover who had publicly sworn vengeance and then met with a skiing accident less than a month later in dubious circumstances. A lot of evidence implied people had been bought off to close the investigation. Yes, Sverenssen was a man with connections he would not like to see aired publicly and the ruthlessness to use them without hesitation if need be, Sobroskin thought to himself.
And more recently-within the last month, in fact-why had Sverenssen been communicating regularly and secretly with
Verikoff, the space-communications specialist at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow who was intimately involved with the top-secret Soviet channel to (3istar? The Soviet Government did not comprehend the UN’s apparent policy but it suited them, and that meant that the existence of the independent channel had to be concealed from the UN more than from anybody else; the Americans had doubtless deduced what was happening, but they were unable to prove it. That was their loss. If they insisted on tying themselves down with their notions of fair play, that was up to them. But why was Verikoff talking to Sverenssen?
And finally, in years gone by Sverenssen had always been a prominent figure in leading the UN drive for strategic disarmament, and a champion of world-wide cooperation and increased productivity. Why was he now vigorously supporting a UN policy that seemed opposed to seizing the greatest opportunity the human race had ever had to achieve those very things? It seemed strange. Everything to do with Sverenssen seemed strange.
Anyhow, what was he going to do about Malliusk’s assistant? She was an American girl, Malliusk had said. Perhaps there was a way in which be could clear this irritating business up without inviting Sverenssen’s close attention at a time when he was particularly anxious to avoid it. Their national loyalties aside, he admired the way in which Pacey had continued battling to promote his country’s views after Heller left, and he had got to know the American quite well socially. In fact it was a shame in some ways that over this particular issue the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. were not together on the same side of the table; at heart they seemed to have more in common with each other than with the rest of the delegation. Very probably it wouldn’t make much difference for a lot longer anyway, be admitted to himself. As Karen Heller had said on one occasion, it was the future of the whole race they should be thinking about. As a man he tended to agree with her; if the contact with Gistar meant what he thought it meant, there would be no national differences to worry about in fifty years’ time, nor maybe even any nations. But that was as a man. In the meantime, as a Russian, he had a job to do.
He nodded to himself as he closed the ifie and returned it to the safe. He would talk to Norman Pacey and see if Pacey would talk to the American girl quietly. Then, with luck, the whole thing would resolve itself with no more than a few ripples that would soon die away.
chapter thirteen
Framed in the screen that took up most of one wall of the room was the image of a planet, captured from several thousand miles out in space. Most of its surface was ocean blue or stirred into spirals of curdled clouds through which its continents varied from yellowy browns and greens at its equator to frosty white at the poles. It was a warm, sunny, and cheerful world, but the image failed to recreate the sense of wonder at the energy of the life teeming across its surface that Garuth had felt at the time the image was captured months earlier.
As Garuth, commander of the long-range scientific mission ship Shapieron, sat in his private stateroom staring at the last view to be obtained of Earth, he pondered on the incredible race of beings that had greeted the return of his ship from its long exile in the mysterious realm of compoundly dilated time. Twenty-five million years before, although only a little over twenty by the Shapieron’s clocks, Garuth and his companions had left a flourishing civilization on Minerva to conduct a scientific experiment at a star called Iscaris; if the experiment had gone as planned, they would have been gone for twenty-three years of elapsed time back home, having lost less than five years from their own lifetimes. But the experiment had not gone as planned, and before the Shapieron was able to return, the Ganymeans had vanished from Minerva; the Lunarians had emerged, built their civilization, split into opposing factions, and finally destroyed themselves and the planet; and Hoino sapiens had returned to Earth and written several tens of thousands of years of history.