The Siege of Eternity

"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."

"Not all human?"

"That's what Dannerman says, yes. He said a lot of other stuff, too-until we told him to shut up, even in code, and report in full once he's landed." He hesitated. "One thing, though. You're an astronomer, Dr. Adcock. Have you ever heard of somebody named Frank Tipler?"

"Tipler?" She frowned. "I think I might've heard the name-"

"He was some kind of astronomer, too. Late twentieth century. We retrieved all we could find about him from the bank, but the only interesting thing was that he wrote a book once about how Heaven was astronomically real."

"Oh, right," Pat said, tracking down a faint recollection. "I remember hearing something about him-maybe in grad school? It sounded pretty silly to me. What does Tipler have to do with all this?"

"That's what I'd like to know. Dannerman-the other Dannerman, I mean-said we should look him up. If I get you access to the network, can you do the Bureau a favor and see what you can find?"

· or Dr. Patrice Adcock the worst thing

about jail was having nothing to do-this woman who had never before in her life found herself with nothing to do. Now things were looking up. She wasn't in jail anymore and, better still, she had a job to do that she was good at.

It took Pat an impatient half hour's waiting to get access to Bureau's databank-no, not the classified databank, of course, but to the one that accessed most of the country's libraries. Then it took a while longer to get used to the Bureau's procedures. She found the American Men of Science entry for Dr. Frank Tipler quickly and began sorting through some of the sources cited. She hardly noticed when Dannerman was back, collarless and occasionally touching his now bare neck to remind himself of the change. That Colonel Hilda Morrisey came in with him.

"New orders, Dr. Adcock," Morrisey said cheerfully. "We're all going for a little ride tonight. The people from Starlab are coming down, and we're going to meet them."

CHAPTER SIX