The Siege of Eternity

And so, documents he got: documents, documents and more documents. By the time T. Lawrence Hecksher left the office he had the registry numbers of every document that could have any bearing on the case: Uncle Cubby's will and the probate records; the instrument creating the trust for the T. Cuthbert Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory; the records of the building of Starlab and all the disbursements made from Uncle Cubby's estate to pay for it; Pat's own contract of employment, to show that she had authority to institute a suit on the Observatory's behalf-"We'll need all your, ah, sisters to sign the complaint as well, of course." When Pat suggested that most of this could be obtained with less trouble from Dixler, the lawyer for Uncle Cubby's estate, or from the Observatory's own attorney, he gave her a forgiving smile. "I don't think we'll trouble them, my dear. I find I work best when I don't involve any other attorneys if I can help it. I'll have the complaints and summonses ready to sign and serve by tomorrow morning. Serve on whom? Why, on everybody, Dr. Adcock: the President of the United States, the secretary general of the United Nations, the director of the National Bureau of Intelligence-that's because they have custody of the aliens. For that matter, on the aliens themselves, but I'll have to do a little research on that. Trial? My dear Dr. Adcock, there won't be any trial. All we want is money, and they'll throw that at us to get rid of us. What you have to do is decide how much you want. I'm thinking of, let's see, giving them a quit claim for whatever the cost of manufacturing, outfitting and launching Starlab was when it was built, adjusted for inflation, with interest, and perhaps a one hundred percent penalty . . . yes, quite a large sum, I think. But we can discuss all those details later. Good afternoon."

When he was gone Pat spent a few dizzying minutes calculating just how many hundreds of millions of inflation-adjusted dollars all that might come to. It would definitely be a lot. It was certainly enough to relieve all four Pats from financial worries forever, and for Pat Five's unborn triplets and all their descendants as well.

She leaned back, studying the numbers on the wall to take her mind off these giddy visions of prosperity. A flash of color showed that another object had been identified and an orbit plotted, but the flashing red showed that this one was special. The funny thing about it was that it seemed to be heading in the general direction of the Earth.

That explained the flashing signal. It also caused Pat a moment's shock, but when she checked its orbital elements she relaxed a bit; its trajectory seemed to bring it within a couple hundred thousand kilometers of the planet, but that was not particularly worrisome. Every few years an object was detected at ranges like that, some of them coming closer than Earth's Moon. It would bear watching, of course. But—

Her phone rang. Annoyed, Pat touched the screen control. "What is it?" she demanded, expecting to see Janice DuPage with some new urgency to make demands on her time.

But the face wasn't Janice's. It was her own face-well, Patrice's face, at least-and she looked scared. "Pat? It's Pat Five. She's hemorrhaging. I've got the medics here and they're taking her to the hospital. You'd better come."

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Hilda Morrisey got a few hours sleep on the plane to Guyana, needing it. The night with Wilbur Carmichael had been really pleasant, but it might have been a mistake. Was she getting too fond of the man? Should she have promised to see him again as soon as she got back? It had certainly cost her sleep that she could have used. But it was a mistake she would have been glad to repeat, because Wilbur had been fine.

She woke at dawn, just as the aircraft was circling the town of Kourou. All she could see from the air was the giant new Holiday Inn between the lights of the Pizza Hut and the all-night casino, but with the dark solid green of the jungle just outside the town limits. The plane swooped out to sea to come in for a landing from the east, and there, a kilometer or so from the town itself, was the starkly floodlighted launch area, ancient gantries still standing in spite of rust and time, the liquid fuel plants steaming away, the hideous barracks blocks where most of the base's personnel lived.

When she got out of the aircraft the heat hit her. Kourou was hot and wet, and there were bugs. The zappers electrocuted a few thousand of them every hour, but there were always thousands more coming up out of the rain forest, thirsty for Hilda Morrisey's blood.