The Siege of Eternity

"This is James Daniel Dannerman calling my associates in Arlington from orbit. Pat Adcock was right, except that it's a lot bigger than she thought. I'll try to bring some samples of the stuff we were talking about with me when I come back. That will be very soon, assuming Jimmy Lin can get this Assured Crew Return Vehicle thing working. And assuming that we can all fit in, because there are nine, ah"-the voice hesitated for a moment-"nine persons here, and we don't want to leave anybody aboard. Please acknowledge on this frequency."

That was it. Broadcast in clear, so every son of a bitch with a radio, all over the world, could have been listening in. And a lot of them had been. "Is that me?" Dannerman demanded, looking from Hilda to Pat; and, when they only shrugged, "Well, what does he-I-what do they mean, nine people? Only five of us went up there!"

"How would I know?" Hilda asked reasonably. "Maybe your friend Artzy-what's-her-name had quadruplets."

"Space Voice" May Belong to U.S. Intelligence Agent.

A retired member of the U.S. intelligence community has identified the "voice from space" as belonging to National Bureau of Investigation agent James Daniel Dannerman. Although the source declines to be identified, he states there "is no damn doubt at all" of the identification, adding that until recently Dannerman was reported to be under house arrest on unspecified charges. Officials of the NBI decline to comment on the report.

- The New York Times

He gave her a dangerous look, but all he said was, "Play it again!"

So they played it again, and again, and then they switched to a news channel to hear all the things everybody had to say about this astounding report. Hilda gave that five minutes. Then she squirmed ahead to the front seat, phoning ahead to make arrangements at the headquarters. Then she just sat there, the dead phone to her ear, because she had nothing to say to either Pat or Dan and didn't want to hear any more of their questions. There was one good thing, she thought. There was at least a temporary hold to the D.D.'s little plan to anesthetize Dannerman and Adcock and then blandly hand Dr. Evergood the impeccably best "signed" release the skilled forgers of Documents could produce. Maybe that hold would be permanent. Maybe even this baffling new development was going to confirm what Hilda had always known in her heart. Her own Dan Dannerman simply could not possibly have been turned or subverted. Oh, "\ sure, the evidence had looked pretty bad, but that just meant the evidence had to be wrong. There had to be some other explanation.

Now it appeared that there was one-well, sort of an explanation, anyway-but who was going to explain this wholly incomprehensible explanation?

At the headquarters she wasted no time. She hustled the two of them into an elevator, down to the accommodations she had arranged for them. "You can watch the news," she said, "or you can go to bed or you can do anything you like-except leave here. I'll see you in the morning."

"Have a heart, Hilda!" Dannerman begged. "I want to know what's happening!"

"So do I. Get some sleep. I've got work to do."

I he truth, though, was that she didn't.

Everyone else did. Every other person she saw in the Bureau's underground fortress seemed not only to have something to do, but to be about thirty minutes late in getting it done and desperately trying to make up lost time, but not Hilda Morrisey. The last time she had seen the joint jumping like this had been when the President's press secretary got himself kidnapped and murdered-no, she corrected herself, not even then. That was just an ordinary kill; the only reason the Bureau got involved in it at all was because the President demanded it. What was going on now was-was-well, what was it, exactly? Weirdness, that's what it was. Unthinkably preposterous weirdness. But it happened to be real.

She couldn't find Marcus Pell or the director herself. She couldn't even find Daisy Fennell. They were certainly somewhere, on some level of the subterranean headquarters. No one seemed to know just where. More likely, Hilda thought bitterly, the ones who did know simply weren't telling. The topmost of the top brass were holed up somewhere, dealing with this new crisis as best they could, and they didn't want to be bothered with peons who would only get in the way.

Hilda Morrisey did not like being one of the peons.