Financial Times, London
The economic fact was that she had hocked just about everything she owned to raise the money for her flight to the orbiter. Money shouldn’t have been any problem at all. The government should have financed or provided the whole thing. But the government hadn’t. So she’d had to find the money herself. It came to serious money, too, enough to bribe the Floridian authorities who controlled the launch pads at the Cape, to hire pilots, to fight the Feds’ lawyers through the courts until, reluctantly, they did give in and provide a launch vehicle for her.
And then she had managed to get that Clipper launched with the five of them in it. And then-
And then it all went to hell. “Dan-Dan?” she said tentatively.
He looked up warily from his eggs Benedict. “Yeah?”
She said slowly, trying to think it through as she spoke, “You know what’s funny, Dan? I can remember the flight up to orbit; I can remember the flight back. But all I can remember of what we saw in Starlab was that everything was just the way it was left when the satellite was abandoned. There wasn’t anything there that wasn’t on the specs. Nothing had changed.”
“Nothing had.”
“Well, I know that. I remember remembering that, when we were on our way back. But I don’t remember seeing it. Do you know what I mean?
He frowned. “Well, that’s the way it was for me, too. It’s funny, now that you mention it.”
“Do you think your Bureau people know why that is?”
But he was shaking his head. “Not those turkeys. They don’t know any more than we do.”
When the door opened again, the man who came in was the deputy director, Marcus Pell. He was followed by one of the uniformed cops. “Coffee for you too, sir?” the cop suggested.
“Coffee my ass. It might be breakfast time for you, but for me its lust the tail end of a long, long night. Get us a bottle of Jim Beam and some glasses.” He turned to Pat. “You were right, Dr. Adcock.” He caught her off-balance. “What was I right about?” “Alien technology. The man said so himself. The orbiter’s loaded with it… among other things. No”-he held up his hand-“I don’t know exactly whose technology, or how it got there. We’re having to be careful about communicating. You know all about that, Dr. Ad-cock; that’s what we got you out of bed for.”
“Was I actually any help?” she asked curiously. “It didn’t look that way.”
He gave her a judicious look, punctuated by a yawn “Sorry. Well, you were and you weren’t. What you did was remind us of Dr. Artzybachova.”
“But she’s dead!”
He shook his head, looking amused. “Not anymore. She’s alive and well on your Starlab. Or one of her is. There are a lot of duplicate people around, wouldn’t you say? So we sent her a narrow-beam query. She didn’t have anything that could make a really secure link, but we worked out a code.”
Dannerman was asking the deputy director questions, but Pat hardly heard. She was trying to get used to the idea of Rosie Artzybachova alive again. Then she remembered to ask a question,. “Why are you making such a big secret out of it?”
He grinned at her. “You’re asking me that? The lady that bet the ranch on finding extraterrestrial technology? Because if any part of what this man is saying is true, then there’s a lot of stuff there that we want, and maybe we want to keep it for ourselves-ah, about time,” he finished, as the door opened, and two of the uniforms came in. Silently they set down the whiskey, some mixers, glasses, ice, even a tray of hastily slapped-together hors d’oeuvres, glanced at the deputy director for permission to leave again, and did.
Pell poured himself two fingers of whiskey, disdaining the ice and the mixers. “Help yourselves,” he invited.
Pat shook her head. “I didn’t know prisoners were allowed to have liquor,” she said.
He gave her a friendly smile-no, she thought, not really a smile of any kind of friendship; it was the kind of smile you manufactured to make somebody think you were being friendly when you wanted to soften them up. This was a complex and totally controlled man. “You’re thinking about those federal charges against you. Bribery, filing false flight plans-all chickenshit, of course. You can forget them.
They’re dropped. And as for you, Dannerman”-he shrugged-“your suspension is lifted, too. You’re back on duty, with full pay restored.”
Incoming dispatch.
Spanish Federal Police, Madrid.
To Director U.S. National Bureau of Investigation.
Most secret.
Humint indicates probable major action by Catalan separatist forces in connection with the Iberian games, to be held in Barcelona this spring. Internal source states a large shipment of weaponry and explosive devices is expected from American sympathizers, probably channeled through Basque underground. Urgently request cooperation in dealing with this terrorist threat, in particular in identifying and embargoing arms shipment.
Dannerman looked wary, fingering his collar. “What about this?”
“Well,” the deputy director said, “that’s a whole other thing, isn’t it? Are you sure you want it taken off?”
Dannerman’s expression changed, now mostly puzzled. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Pell’s glass was empty; he refilled it, but this time with soda and ice and just enough whiskey to tint it lightly. “You know what you two have inside your skulls,” he said. “Did it ever occur to you that some people might want to get their hands on those things? Even if they had to kill you in the process?”
Pat Adcock felt a sudden chill. “What people?”
“Why, Dr. Adcock,” the man said cozily, “I would say just about anybody. Including some of our own people right here in the Bureau, I wouldn’t be surprised. But don’t worry about that; the President himself forbade any surgical attempts. So maybe you’d like to keep enjoying our hospitality for a while, don’t you think? Or, if you’d rather go out into the world again, we’ll supply you with as much protection as we can, same as we’ve done with Danno here, but there would certainly be a risk.”
“Damn it,” Dannerman said with feeling. “I knew I was being followed.”
“Of course you did,” Pell said, smiling that warm-hearted, empty smile again. “One way of looking at it, you were bait. If someone wanted to snatch you, we’d pick him up before he could get very far.”
Dannerman was looking at him with distaste. “That’s assuming they wanted to kidnap me alive. But if they were going to have to kill me anyhow-“
“You’re not thinking it through,” Pell said reprovingly. He reached out and tapped Dannerman’s collar. “That thing is tough plastic and metal. As long as you had that on your neck nobody could whack your head off and hustle it away before we got to them. So what would be the point of killing you on the street? No, we figured you were pretty safe . . . and, of course, there were other reasons for having you wear the collar. There was always the possibility that you were dirty after all, wasn’t there? Colonel Morrisey was pretty sure you weren’t. But some people had other opinions, and we had to cover all the bases.”
Dannerman said doggedly, “I want it off.”
“Yes, I thought you would. Well, when Hilda comes back I’ll have her take you down to the shop and they’ll remove it…. Excuse me.” There had been an inaudible signal; Pell lifted his phone to his ear. He listened for quite a long time, spoke briefly-Pat couldn’t make out a word-and listened again. When he was through he looked up at them.
“Well,” he said, sounding pleasantly surprised, “sometimes you get lucky when you least expect it. The Cape’s socked in-thunderstorms, high winds; the weather’s going to persist for a couple of days at least. So they can’t land there. That’s good; the last thing we want is to get the Floridians involved in this.”
“So where will they land?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? They’re working on it. Meanwhile, the President has warned everybody, especially the damn Europeans, that Starlab is U.S. property and anyone who attempts to board it risks being shot at.”
Pat stared at him blankly. “Shot at? What with?”
Pell said comfortably, “I always knew some of those old Star Wars orbiters might come in useful someday. There are two of them that still have some navigation capacity. They’re in the wrong part of the orbit, but the guys in Houston are working on moving them into position even as we speak. Of course the Europeans and the Chinese and so on know that. So we can leave it alone for a while, and right now the first thing we’re going to do is to get that party of nine down- and there are some surprises there. They’re not all human, you see.”