“About the scope, Felix. What’s going on, then?”
Borlan had been expecting the question. He straightened slowly in
his chair and appeared to think for a moment. At last he said:
“Did you see the call I made to Francis?”
“Yep.”
“Then. . .” Borlan didn’t seem sure of how to put it. “. . . I
don’t know an awful lot more than you do.” He placed his hands
palms-down on the desk man attitude of candor, but his sigh was
that of one not really expecting to be believed. He was right.
“Come on, Felix. Give.” Hunt’s expression said the rest.
“You must know,” Gray insisted. “You fixed it all up.”
“Straight.” Borlan looked from one to the other. “Look, taking
things worldwide, who would you say our biggest customer is? It’s
no secret-UN Space Arm. We do everything for them from Lunar data
links to-to laser terminal clusters and robot probes. Do you know
how much revenue I’ve got forecast from UNSA next fiscal? Two
hundred million bucks. . . two hundred million!”
“So?”
“So. . . well-when a customer like that says he needs help, he gets
help. I’ll tell you what happened. It was like this: UNSA is a big
potential user of scopes, so we fed them all the information we’ve
got on what the scope can do and how development is progressing in
Francis’s neck of the woods. One day-the day before I called
Francis-this guy comes to see me all the way from Houston, where
one of the big UNSA outfits has its HQ. He’s an old buddy of
mine-their top man, no less. He wants to know can the scope do this
and can it do that, and I tell him sure it can. Then he gives me
some examples of the things he’s got in mind and he asks if we’ve
got a working model yet. I tell him not yet, but that you’ve got a
working prototype in England; we can arrange for him to go see it
if he wants. But that’s not what he wants. He wants the prototype
down there in Houston, and he wants people who can operate it.
He’ll pay, he says-we can name our own figure-but he wants that
instrument-something to do with a top-priority project down there
that’s got the whole of UNSA in a flap. When I ask him what it is,
he clams up and says it’s ‘security restricted’ for the moment.”
“Sounds a funny business,” Hunt commented with a frown. “It’ll
cause some bloody awful problems back at Metadyne.”
“I told him all that.” Borlan turned his palms upward in a gesture
of helplessness. “I told him the score regarding the production
schedules and availability forecasts, but he said this thing was
big and he wouldn’t go causing this kind of trouble if he didn’t
have a good reason. He wouldn’t, either,” Borlan added with obvious
sincerity. “I’ve known him for years. He said UNSA would pay
compensation for whatever we figure the delays will cost us.”
Borlan resumed his helpless attitude. “So what was I supposed to
do? Was I supposed to tell an old buddy who happens to be my best
customer to go take a jump?”
Hunt rubbed his chin, threw back his last drop of scotch, and took
a long, pensive draw on his cigar.
“And that’s it?” he asked at last.
“That’s it. Now you know as much as I do-except that since you left
England we’ve received instructions from UNSA to start shipping the
prototype to a place near Houston-a biological institute. The bits
should start arriving day after tomorrow; the installation crew is
already on its way over to begin work preparing the site.”
“Houston. . . Does that mean we’re going there?” Gray asked.
“That’s right, Rob.” Borlan paused and scratched the side of his
nose. His face screwed itself into a crooked frown. “I, ah-I was
wondering . . . The installation crew will need a bit of time, so
you two won’t be able to do very much there for a while. Maybe you
could spend a few days here first, huh? Like, ah . . . meet some of