The answers to these riddles would not be found in Alaska. Packard waited until a State Department courier arrived at McClusky with the official news that communications with Gistar had ceased and the UN delegation was returning to Earth, and then left for Washington with Caidwell. Lyn went with them for the purpose of returning to McClusky with an update as soon as they had talked to Pacey.
Hunt and Danchekker stood on the apron at McClusky, watching the UNSA jet that had just lifted off to take Packard, Caldwell, and Lyn to Washington turn and begin climbing away steeply toward the south. Not far from them, a ground crew was busy shoveling snow over the holes in the concrete left by the landing gear of the perceptron, which had moved itself into line with the other UNSA aircraft parked along one side of the apron in order to provide a more natural scene for the “organization’s” surveillance instruments. Although the black hole contained in the vessel’s communications system was microscopic, it still had the equivalent mass of a small mountain; McClusky’s apron hadn’t been designed for that.
“It’s funny when you think about it,” Hunt remarked as the plane shrank to a dot above the distant ridgeline. “It’s twenty light-years from Vranix to Washington, but the last four thousand
miles take all the time. Maybe when we get this business cleared up, we could think about wiring a few parts of this planet into
VISAR.”
“Maybe.” Danchekker’s voice was noncommittal. He had been noticeably quiet since breakfast.
“It would save Gregg a lot of charges from Transportation Services.”
“I suppose so.”
“How about wiring up Navcomms HQ and Westwood? Then we’d be able to go straight to Thurien from the office and be back for lunch.”
“Mmm..
They turned and began walking back toward the mess hall. Hunt glanced sideways to give the professor a curious look, but Danchekker appeared not to notice and kept walking.
Inside they found Karen Heller hunched over a pile of communications transcripts and notes she had made while at Bruno. She pushed the papers away and sat back in her chair as they entered. Danchekker moved over to a window and stared silently out at the perceptron; Hunt turned a chair around and straddled it to face the room from a corner. “I just don’t know what to make of this,” Heller said with a sigh. “There just isn’t any way that some of this information could have been known to anybody here or on the Moon except us-unless they’ve been in contact with Calazar’s ‘organization.’ Could that be possible?”
“I wondered the same thing,” Hunt replied. “How about the coded signals? Maybe Moscow wasn’t transmitting to Calazar’s bunch at all.”
“No, I’ve checked.” Heller gestured toward the papers around her. “Every one that we picked up was sent by Calazar’s aide. They’re all accounted for.”
Hunt shook his head and folded his arms on the backrest of the chair. “It’s got me beat too. Let’s wait and see what they find out from Norman when he gets back.” A silence descended. Lost in thoughts of his own, Danchekker continued staring out through the window. After a while Hunt said, “You know, it’s funny- sometimes when things become so confusing that you think you’ll never make any kind of sense out of them, it just needs one simple, obvious thing that everybody’s overlooked to make everything come together. Remember a couple of years back when we were
trying to figure out where the Lunarians came from. Nothing added up until we realized that the Moon must have moved. Yet looking back, that should have been obvious all along.”
“I hope you’re right,” Heller said as she collected papers and returned them to their folders. “Something else I don’t understand is all this secrecy. I thought Ganymeans weren’t supposed to be like that. Yet here we are with one group doing one thing, another doing something else, and neither wanting to let the other know anything about it. You know them better than most people. What do you make of it?”
“I don’t know,” Hunt confessed. “And who bombed the relay? Calazar’s bunch didn’t, so it must have been the other bunch. If so, they must have found out about it despite all the precautions, but why would they want to bomb it, anyway? It’s definitely a strange way for Ganymeans to be carrying on, all right. . . or at least, it is for the kind of Ganymeans that existed twenty-five million years ago.” He turned his head unconsciously and directed his last words at Danchekker, who still had his back to them. Hunt had not yet been convinced that such a span of time couldn’t have been sufficient to bring about some fundamental change in Ganymean nature, but Danchekker had remained intractable. He thought that Danchekker hadn’t heard, but after a few seconds the professor replied without moving his head.