The Siege of Eternity

Those bills still had to be paid, no matter what. Figuring out how to do it was still part of the director's job-the boring part, but what could you do? She settled down to it but, as she worked over the numbers on her desk screen she couldn't help looking up from time to time at the wall display. The pretty pictures were gone; what the wall showed now was all alphanumeric, the constantly changing, always growing, list of new discoveries from the world's telescopes. Each time a new dot was discovered-they were coming less than a minute apart now-its coordinates flashed on the screen. As one of the great telescopes accepted the task of checking it out, the name of the instrument appeared. When the same dot was found nearby in that instrument's search, the coordinates changed color. If there was a third sighting the computers took over; and then, with luck, the first approximation of its orbital elements were displayed in their turn.

Then the object went on the waiting list for instruments operating in other frequencies: gamma rays, infrared, ultraviolet, radio telescopes-even the ancient pair of orbital X-ray telescopes that were still, sometimes, creakily operational. What all those instruments were looking for was the chemical and physical composition of that point of light. The ones that showed a coma of gases, however tenuous, were dropped from the screen. They were nothing but ordinary comets. Their elements went into the cometary databank for any future astronomer who might take an interest, but they were of no importance in the present search. . . .

And, for that matter, dawdling over the search wasn't getting the bills paid. She gritted her teeth and worked doggedly away until hunger reminded her she hadn't had any breakfast.

On her way to an early lunch Dannerman stopped her. He looked amused. "I think I've got a lawyer for you," he said. "He's a shark, all right. He worked for the Carpezzios-they were big druggers; I was working on them before, uh-"

"Before you decided to come and spy on us," Pat said helpfully.

"Well, yes. The only thing is, he's expensive. First thing he said was that he wanted a fifty-thousand-current-dollar retainer before he'd even talk to you."

"I haven't got fifty thousand-" Pat began, but Dannerman was shaking his head.

"Wait a minute. When I told him what it was all about he said he'd waive the retainer, only he wanted half of whatever he collected for you.

Pat was scandalized. "That might be millions!"

"More than that. So we went round and round for a while, and he finally came down to twenty-five percent. You're not going to do any better, Pat."

"I'm not?" She thought for a moment, then sighed. "He's really good?" she asked.

"He's really bad. He got the Carpezzios off with two years in a country-club jail, when I figured they'd be away for life. And he's handled big suits against the government before. Anyway, he'll be here this afternoon."

At the elevator Rosaleen Artzybachova came hurrying out of her office. "Take me along," she pleaded. "I have to get away from that truly exhausting woman for a while."

In the elevator Rosaleen described her morning with the Bureau brigadier. Hilda Morrisey had all but sucked Rosaleen's brains out to get the data she wanted, which amounted to a complete plan of the Starlab orbiter as it had been abandoned, with every bit of equipment marked and identified, and then the whole thing compared with the sketches the instrument-Doc had been ceaselessly turning out at Camp Smolley. "I left her transmitting the plans to the Doc back at the biowar plant, so he could mark the positions of all the Beloved Leaders material-oh, sorry. I mean the Scarecrow material, of course; it's just that we called them Beloved Leaders for so long, I got in the habit. But, Pat, do you have any idea how much stuff is there? God knows what it will do to our lives when we get it sorted out. If indeed we ever can do that. It's like-it's like giving some Renaissance genius like Leonardo da Vinci a brand-new pocket screen to play with. Or a fusion bomb. Or like all of current technology, all at once, to see what he could make of it. And we're not Leonardos."

In the restaurant Pat toyed with her Caesar salad while the old lady devoured a huge platter of fajitas, washing it down with a bottle of Mexican beer, talking the whole time. It had been an active morning for Rosaleen, with Brigadier Morrisey setting an unflagging pace-"She's trying to get it all in today because she's leaving for the Eurospace base at Kourou tomorrow morning. And I don't think she'd had any sleep last night, either." She chewed in faintly envious silence for a moment. "Makes me wish I was fifty again."