"Deepsix" - читать интересную книгу автора (Макдевитт Джек)

IV

At the critical moment of a critical mission, when his people most needed him, Randall Nightingale fainted dead away. He was rescued by Sabina Coldfield, and dragged to safety by that estimable woman at the cost of her own life. Everyone now seems shocked that the mission failed, and that no further attempt will be made to examine the mosquitoes and marsh grass ofMalena III. They say it costs too much, but they're talking about money. It does cost too much. It costs people like Cold field, who was worth a dozen Nightingales

— GREGORY MACALLISTER, "Straight and Narrow," Reminiscences

Marcel no longer believed the inhabitants of Deepsix were long dead. Or maybe dead at all.

"I think you might be right," said Kellie. She buried her chin in her palm and stared at the screen. They were examining visuals taken earlier in the day.

When this mission was completed, Marcel would certify Kellie Collier as fully qualified for her own command. She was only twenty-eight, young for that kind of responsibility, but she was all business, and he saw no point requiring her to sit second seat anymore. Especially with star travel beginning to boom. There were a multitude of superluminals out there begging for command officers, commercial carriers and private yachts and executive and corporate vessels. Not to mention the recent expansion of the Patrol, which had been fueled by the losses last year of the Marigold and the Rancocas, with their crews. The former had simply disintegrated as it prepared to jump into hyperspace; its crew had made it into the lifepods but had exhausted their air supply while waiting for a dilatory Patrol to respond.

The Rancocas had suffered a power failure and gone adrift. Communications had failed, and no one had noticed until it was too late.

As people moved out to the newly terraformed worlds, where land was unlimited, the public was demanding a commitment to safety. Consequently the Patrol had entered an era of expansion. It was hard to know how far a young hotshot like Collier might go.

Kellie was studying the foothills of one of the mountain ranges in central Transitoria. "I don't think there's any question about it," she said. "It's a road. Or it used to-be."

Marcel thought she was seeing what she wanted to see. "It's overgrown." He sat down beside her. "Hard to tell. It might be an old riverbed."

"Look over here. It goes uphill. That was never a watercourse." She squinted at the screen. "But I'd say it's been a long time since anyone used it."

They had, during the five days that had passed since the first discovery, seen widely scattered evidence of habitation. More than that, they'd seen the remnants of cities on three continents. The cities were long dead, buried, crushed beneath glaciers. It also appeared they had been preindustrial. Further elucidation would have to wait until Hutchins arrived and took her team down for a close look. But there were no structures that could be said to dominate the surrounding landscape, and the snow wasn't so deep as to bury major engineering work. There were no bridges, no dams, no skyscrapers, no signs of construction on a large scale. Just here and there a fragment in the snow. A rooftop, a post, a pier.

On an island they'd named Freezover, there was a ring of stones. A cart waited in the middle of a barren field near Bad News Bay, near the place at which Nightingale's mission had come to grief; and an object that might have been a plow had been sighted at Cape Chagrin in the Tempis.

But the road-

It was approximately thirty kilometers long, and they could trace it from its beginnings in a river valley, cross-country along the boundary of a small lake, onto a rise at the foot of one of the mountains. (Kellie was right: It could not be a watercourse.) It disappeared briefly into a tangle of forest before emerging again near the ocean.

The road ran past the base of one of the taller mountains. It towered almost seven thousand meters over the forest. Its northern side was sheared away, creating an unbroken drop from the cloud-shrouded summit down onto a gradual slope. When the sunlight hit the rock wall at dawn, they detected a cobalt tint, and so they called it Mt. Blue.

"The sightseer route," said Marcel. Kellie shrugged. "Maybe. I wish we could go down and look."

"The Wildside should be able to settle things when it gets here."

She folded her arms and let him see she was about to ask for something. Instead: "It's lucky there was an archeologist within range."

"Hutch?" Marcel allowed himself a smile. "She's no archeologist. Actually, she's in our line of work."

"A pilot?"

"Yeah. I guess she's all they had. But she's been down on some sites."

Kellie nodded, stood, and looked at him carefully. "You think she'd let me go down with her?"

"If you asked, she probably would. Probably be glad to get the help. The real question is whether I'd allow it."

Kellie was attractive, tall, with dark bedroom eyes, sleek bkck skin, and soft shoulder-length hair. Marcel knew that she found no difficulty having her way with men, and that she tried not to use her charms on him. Bad form, she'd told him once. But it came as natural to her as breathing. Her eyelids fluttered and she contrived to gaze-up at him even though he was still seated. "Marcel, they said we should render all assistance."

"I don't think they meant personnel."

She held him in her gaze. "I'd like very much to go. You don't really need me here."

Marcel considered it. "The lander's probably going to fill up with the science people," he said. "We'll have to give them priority."

"Okay." She nodded. "That's not unreasonable. But if there's room…"

Marcel was uneasy. He knew Hutch, not well, but enough to trust her. The experts weren't sure when Deepsix would start coming apart. And there was dangerous animal life down there. Still, Kellie was a grown woman, and he could see no reason to refuse the request. "I'll check with her, see what she says."

Beekman was lost in thought when Marcel took a seat beside him. He was frowning, his gaze turned inward, his brow wrinkled. Then he jerked into awareness and looked unsteadily at the captain. "Marcel," he said, "I have a question for you."

"All right." They were in project control.

"If there's really something, somebody, down there capable of building a house or laying a road, should we be thinking about a rescue operation?"

Marcel had been thinking about little else, but he could see no practical way to approach the problem. How did one rescue aliens? "Wildside only has one lander," he said. "That's it. How many do you think we could bring off? Where would we put them? How do you think they'd react to a bunch of cowboys rolling in and trying to round them up?"

"But if there are intelligent creatures down there, it seems as if we'd have a moral obligation to try to save a few. Don't you think?"

"How much experience have you with ET life-forms?" asked Marcel.

Beekman shook his head. "Not much, really."

"They might be people-eaters."

"That's unlikely. We're talking about something that makes roads." Beekman looked seriously uncomfortable. "I know the lander's small, and we've got only one. But we could take a few. It's what the Academy would want us to do." He was wearing a gray vest, which he pulled tightly about him as if he were cold. "How many does it hold? The Wildside lander?"

Marcel asked Bill. The numbers popped up on the screen. Eleven plus a pilot. "Maybe we should wait until we're confronted by the problem," he said.

Beekman nodded slowly. "I suppose."

"Taking off a handful," pursued Marcel, "might not be a kind act. We'd be rescuing them so they could watch their world die." He shook his head. "It would be dangerous. We'd have no way of knowing what they would do when we walked up and said hello. We wouldn't be able to communicate. And then there's the gene pool."

Beekman heaved himself out of his chair and went over to the wallscreen, whkh looked down on towering cumulus and cold blue seas. "We could probably synthesize the genes. Give them a chance to continue." He stared at Deepsix.

"It's not our call," said Marcel. "The Academy knows what we've found. If they want us to do a rescue operation, let them tell us so."

During the next couple of days, there were other discoveries: a collapsed structure that might have been a storage building along a river in Northern Tempus, a wooden palisade hidden in a forest, an abandoned boat frozen in the ice at Port Umbrage. The boat, lying on its side, was about twelve meters long, and it had masts. But its proportions suggested the mariners had been considerably smaller than humans. "Looks like a galley," said Mira. "You can even see a cabin in the rear."

Chiang Harmon agreed. "It would be small for one of us, but it's there. How old's the ice?"

"Probably been there since the beginning." She was referring to the system's encounter with the Quiveras Cloud. Port Umbrage, they believed, had been frozen solid three thousand years ago, and had never thawed. It was in the far northern latitudes on the east coast of Gloriamundi.

"What else can we conclude about the boat?" Beekman asked.

"Prow looks like a sea serpent," said Chiang. "Little bit of a Viking flavor."

"You know," said Mira, "I hadn't noticed that. But you're right. They have art."

Art was important to Mira. Working on an Academy vessel, she understood that a civilization's art was what defined it. In more personal terms, it was why one lived at all. One worked in order to make the time to enjoy the finer pleasures. She'd confided to Marcel that Beekman's people, with few exceptions, were "quite parochial," and were so consumed chasing down the details of the physical world that most had never learned to enjoy themselves. She considered herself a Sybarite in the highest sense of the word.

She was one of the older persons on board. Mira had, in her own phrase, crashed through middle age and come out the other side. She was nevertheless willowy, attractive, precise. One of those very fortunate women who seem unaffected by passing years.

"They had art," Beekman corrected.

"If we could get a close look at it," said Chiang, "we might be able to figure out what they looked like. What we really need is to see it up close."

Mira nodded. "Next time," she said, "we need to make sure we have a lander with us." She sounded as if she thought somebody had blundered, and she was looking directly at Beekman.

Later, Pete Reshevsky, a mathematician from Oslo, complained that he couldn't see what all the fuss was about. "There's nothing down there except ruins," he said. "And it's pretty obvious that whatever was here, they were pretty primitive. So we don't really have anything to learn from them." Reshevsky was small, sharp-nosed, muscular. A man who spent about half his time in the gym. His smile seldom reached his dark eyes. "We'd be better off," he continued, "if everyone would stick to business and try to keep in mind why we're here."

In the morning Wildside arrived. "Its captain wants to speak with you," Bill told Marcel.

Marcel liked Priscilla Hutchins. He'd worked with her on occasion, and had found her competent and easygoing. She'd become something of a legend twenty years ago when she'd piloted the expedition that discovered the omega clouds.

Marcel had envied her that mission. He'd been working for Kos-mik. Inc., at the time, making the long run out to Quraqua every few months. That had been a spirit-killing experience. The money was good, and he'd been ambitious, looking for promotion into the hierarchy. Hutchins had been little more than a kid when it all happened, but the incident had glamorized piloting for the general public and persuaded Marcel that he'd had enough posting back and forth to nowhere. Within months, he'd resigned from Kosmik and signed on with the Academy.

He was pleased to have Hutch in the neighborhood. It was a curious coincidence that the woman who'd played a major, if indirect, role in shaping his own career, should arrive at this moment. If he was going to be called upon to make decisions regarding the possible existence of aliens, it would be helpful to have her input.

"Put her through," he said.

She was just barely tall enough to have met the minimum standards for a license. She had dark eyes, black hair cut short, animated features that were capable of lighting up a room when she chose. She greeted him with a broad smile. "Marcel," she said, "good to see you again. I understand you've hit the jackpot."

"More or less. Do you think they'll give me a bonus?"

"The usual, I suspect."

"How much do you know?"

"Only that there's evidence of habitation. A tower. Are any of them still alive down there?"

"We haven't seen anybody." He brought her up to date. The cities we know about are here and over here; there've been indications of inhabitants in these half dozen places. He used graphics to specify. "Biggest of the cities is in Southern Tempus." He showed her. It was deep under a glacier. He didn't think she'd be able to cut through to it in the time available.

How much time was available?

"The actual collision will occur around dinnertime, December 9. We expect the planet itself will begin breaking apart about forty hours earlier." It was late Saturday evening, November 25. "But we can't really be certain. You won't want to push your luck."

"What do we know about the natives?"

"Not much. They were small. About the size of five-year-olds, looks like. And we have evidence they were on four of the continents."

"Where do you suggest we set down?"

"The tower's as good as anyplace. It looks as if you can get right in with a minimum of digging. But there is a downside: The area's directly on a fault line."

She hesitated. "You think it'll be all right for a few days?"

"Don't know. Nobody here wants to take responsibility for that kind of guess."

"Show me where it is."

"It's in northern Transitoria-"

"Where?"

Marcel directed Bill to post a chart.

She looked at it, nodded, and asked about the Event. "What precisely is going to happen? And when?"

"All right. Gunther-that's Gunther Beekman, the head of mission-tells me conditions should remain relatively stable until the breakup begins. Once that starts, though, the end will come quickly. So you'll want to get out early. I'd suggest a week early. Don't monkey around with this. Get in, get your artifacts, get out.

"You'll probably experience quakes, major storms, stuff like that, early on. When Deepsix gets inside something called the Turner Horizon, the atmosphere will be ripped off, the oceans torn out, and the crust will turn to oatmeal. All pretty much within a few hours. The core will be all that's left by the time it plunks into the soup. Just a chunk of iron."

Her eyes came back to him. "Okay. I guess we won't want to dawdle."

"Do you expect to stay and watch it? The collision?"

"Now that I'm here? Sure. If my passengers don't scream too loudly."

For a long moment neither spoke. "It's good to see you again, Hutch," he said. It had been almost two years. She'd been coming in from Pinnacle, about to dock, and he was on his way out with a survey team. They'd talked a few minutes over the system, as they were doing now.

But they hadn't been physically in the same room for twice as long. They'd attended a navigation seminar at home on the Wheel. He'd been drawn to her, had spent part of an evening at a dinner party with her. But conditions had never been right. They'd always been going in opposite directions.

She was looking at pictures. "It's not much of a tower, is it?" It was circular, made of stone, with eight windows, each at a different level, facing a different direction. It stood twelve meters high. But the sensors had indicated another fifteen meters down to its base below ground, where it appeared to be connected to the interior of the city wall. There was a possibility they could use it to get directly into the city.

Marcel had propped two pictures of it on his console. One was a close-up. The other depicted the tower in all its isolation.

"When are you planning to start?" he asked.

She canted her head. "Soon as we can pack the sandwiches."

"Hutch, my number one would like to go down with you."

She looked pleased. "Sure. If he wants, we'll be glad to have him."

"He's a she. Name's Kellie Collier. She's good. Be a big help if you run into trouble."

"I can use her. You don't have any archeologists on board, I don't guess?"

"No. I've got a boatload of mathematicians, physicists, climatolo-gists."

Hutch nodded. "How about an industrial-sized laser?"

He laughed. "Wish I did." "Okay. It was worth a try." "Hutch, one other thing." "Yes?"

"As I'm sure you know, we don't have a lander. If you get in trouble, I can't come after you."

"I know. Have no fear, I plan to be very careful."

"Good. And do me a favor while you're down there?"

"Sure."

"Keep a channel open. So I can listen to what's going on."

Hutch had put off informing Nightingale that Gomez thought it would be a good idea if he accompanied the landing party. She doubted he'd want to go, and was even less persuaded he'd be of use if he did. But at the moment she, Toni, and Kellie Collier were the entire team. She was going to need a couple of volunteers to stand guard and help carry out the artifacts. If they were able to find any artifacts.

She thoroughly disliked this part of her job. They were calling on her to do something she knew little about, and she'd been around Academy politics long enough to know that Gomez would get credit for anything that came off successfully, and Hutch's name would be forever blackened by any failure.

Like the loss of Richard Wald twenty years ago.

Wald had been a preeminent archeologist whom Hutch had piloted to Quraqua. During a long test of wills with a group of terraformers, Wald had been lost to a tidal wave. That episode had become legendary. Wald had stayed too long at an underwater site on that world, had stayed even while the wave approached, and in the end Hutch had been unable to lift him safely away. Some people had blamed her for the misfortune, claiming that she was the only one who had a clear view of events, and that she'd waited too long to warn him.

She wondered whether Nightingale was another instance of the Academy's tendency to find scapegoats.

It was time to get it over with. She finished talking with Marcel, stopped by the common room for a sandwich, and then strolled down to Nightingale's quarters and knocked on the door.

He opened up and looked surprised. "Hello, Hutch," he said. "Come in." He'd been working at his computer. An image of Deepsix floated on the wallscreen. She glanced at it, at its blue seas, its cloud masses, its vast ice-covered continents. "Beautiful world," she said.

He nodded. "Cold world. They all look good from orbit."

"Randy, I'm sorry about the delay getting home."

"Hutch." His eyes fixed hers. "You didn't come here to go on about flight schedules. What can I do for you?"

She handed him a copy of the transmission. He read it, looked at her, dropped his eyes again to the paper, looked up. "This is what Gomez wants," he said. "What do you want?"

She'd expected him to decline without hesitation. "I'd be pleased if you came. I can use some help."

"Who else is going?"

"First officer from Wendy."

"That's it?"

"And Toni."

"You understand, despite what Gomez thinks, I have no special knowledge. I know the place is dangerous, but any living world is dangerous. You don't need me to tell you that. And I'm not an archeologist."

"I know."

"If anyone were to ask my advice, Hutch, I'd say forget it. Stay away from the place."

"I don't have that option."

"I know. You still want me?"

"Yes. If you'll come, I'd like very much to have you."

Marcel was surprised to discover how little interest in going down to the surface existed among his passengers. The general consensus seemed to be that if it were true there were natives of one sort or another on Deepsix, it was hard to see the significance of the fact. Nobody really cared. The culture was clearly primitive, and therefore there would be nothing to learn.

He understood that exocology, that branch of the sciences which concerned itself with the social structures of alien societies, wasn't part of their specialty, but he thought nonetheless they'd want to be on the ground for a major scientific find. A few came forward, commented that they wished they could go down, but then, when he offered to ask Hutch, backed off. Just too much to do. Experiments to set up. Otherwise, I'd go in a minute. You understand.

Only Chiang Harmon volunteered. And Marcel suspected he wanted to go because Kellie was going.

Theoretically, the ground mission should be simple. Just land, get pictures and samples, and come back. If natives show up, get pictures of them, too. Hutch hadn't brought up the thorny issue of attempting to rescue any inhabitants, so he was going to let it lie. He decided that if locals appeared, and they indicated they wanted help, then he would try to provide it. Otherwise, he would simply let it go. It was a decision that kept him awake at night, but it seemed the only practical approach.

There was another aspect to the mission that worried him. He knew how the scientific mind worked. Hutch's team would get down there, they'd be looking at a new marvel, and they'd inevitably discover things that would be hard to explain. And they'd want to get the last possible artifact, the last possible answer, and he had no trouble imagining Deepsix gliding toward its unhappy conclusion while he pleaded with Hutch to get off the surface, and she continually reassured him that she would. That she needed only another hour.

Of course Hutch didn't officially possess a scientific mind. And she'd stated she planned to be away with time to spare. So why not take her at her word?

On the Evening Star, Gregory MacAllister had just excused himself for the evening and left The Navigator, headed for his quarters, when a young woman approached and asked if she might speak with him briefly. He recognized her as having been present in the bistro during the evening's discussion on the postmodernist movement in Russian theater. She'd been seated toward the rear, and had contributed nothing, but had remained attentive throughout.

That the woman was extraordinarily attractive cut no ice with him. MacAllister never had trouble collecting beautiful women. But he could be impressed by a person's ability to concentrate, which always implied talent.

He was no respecter of money or position, nor could he be won over by charm or by that series of affectations known as charisma. During his sixty-odd years, he had found there were as many louts in the patrician classes as there were ignoramuses farther down the social spectrum. He liked to believe that only intellect engaged him, al-

though he was inclined to assess intellect as a direct corollary of an individual's regard for MacAllister's opinions.

"My name is Casey Hayes," she said. She fumbled in a jacket pocket and produced a press card. "I'm with Interweb."

MacAllister allowed his eyes to drift momentarily shut. A journalist.

She was tall, with fashion-model features, and lush brown hair brushed back in the current style. She wore gray slacks and a dark jacket with a diamond stud. No ordinary journalist, this one, he decided.

"What can I do for you?" he asked, noncommittally.

"Mr. MacAllister, have you been listening to the reports out of the Maleiva system?"

"Regarding the ruins? Yes, I've been keeping up with them. Of course."

He had slowed his pace but not stopped. She fell into step beside him. "It occurred to me," she said, "that this is precisely the sort of event that would interest you. A solitary tower in a faraway place."

"Really?" Journalists always saw in him a potential story, and they were perfectly willing to fabricate whatever circumstance might dictate to get him to talk. There was just no knowing when MacAllister might say something outrageous and shock the public sensibility, or perhaps offend a whole bloc of people. Like last year's remark at Notre Dame, where he was receiving an award, that anyone who truly wished to develop tolerance toward other human beings should start by casting aside any and all religious affiliation. When challenged by one of the other guests, he had asked innocently whether anyone could name a single person put to death or driven from his home by an atheist over theological matters. Had the individual been fully functional, MacAllister had thought, he would have questioned the editor's own celebrated intolerance.

But thank God these people were never quick on their feet.

"Yes," she continued. "I've been a reader of yours ever since college." She launched into a short dissertation on the wonderfulness of his work, and he was inclined to let her go on. But it was late and he was tired. So he encouraged her to come to the point.

"On Maleiva HI," she said, "we're looking at a lost civilization. Maybe some of them are even still alive." She beamed a smile intended to sweep his resistance into the night. "What were they like, do you think? How long had they been there? Does this kind of climax suggest that their entire history, everything they've ever accomplished, is really of no consequence?"

"Young lady," he began.

"Casey."

"Young lady, how on earth would I know? For that matter, why would I care?"

"Mr. MacAllister, I've read Reflections of a Barefoot Journalist."

He was surprised. Barefoot was a collection of essays from his early days, jabbing every social stupidity from breast worship to the timorousness of husbands. But it also contained a long essay defending the bizarre notion, originally promulgated by Rousseau, that there was much to be learned from those untouched by the decadent influence of civilization. That of course was before he'd grasped the truth, that decadence was rather an appealing state. "None of it applies," he said. "The fact that somebody lived on Deepsix who knew how to pile stones on top of one another scarcely seems to be of any significance. Especially since they and the stones are about to go to a happier world."

She looked at him and he saw determination in her eyes. "Mr. MacAllister, you must be wondering why I stopped you."

"Not really."

"I'd like very much-"

"To do an interview with me."

"Yes. As a matter of fact, I would. If you could spare the time."

He'd been a young journalist himself once. Long ago. And it was hard to refuse this particular woman. Why was that? Was he being compromised by his wiring? "About what?" he asked.

"I'd just like to do a general conversation. You can talk about whatever pleases you. Although since we're both here for the Event, that would undoubtedly come up."

He thought about demanding the questions in advance. But he wouldn't want to have it get about that one of the world's most spontaneous thinkers had to have everything up front. "Tell me, uh…" He hesitated, his mind blank. "What did you say your name was, again?"

"Casey Hayes."

"Tell me, Casey, how do you happen to be on this flight? Did you have some sort of foreknowledge about this?"

She tilted her head and gazed steadily back at him. He decided he liked her. She seemed intelligent for a woman journalist.

"Why, no," she said. "In fact, I'm not supposed to be working at all. The ticket was a birthday gift from my parents."

"Congratulations," he said. "You're very lucky to have such parents."

"Thank you. I'll confess I thought that the prospect of watching worlds crash into one another had considerable possibility for a story. If I could get the right angle."

"Let us see if you've done so, Casey. How did you plan to approach the matter?"

"By finding one of the world's most brilliant editors and presenting his reactions to the public."

The woman had no shame.

She gazed steadily at him. He thought he saw the glitter of a promise, of a suggestion for a reward down the road, but ascribed it to the same male software that rooted him in place, that prevented his precipitate retreat to his quarters. "Maybe," she continued, "we could talk over lunch tomorrow, if you're free? The Topdeck is quite nice."

The Topdeck was the most posh eating spot on the vessel. Leather and silver. Candles. Bach on the piano. Very baroque. "Doesn't seem quite right," he said.

"All right" She was all compliance. "Where would you suggest?"

"I put it to you, as an alert journalist. If you were going to interview someone on the significance of the Titanic, or the Rancocas, where would you propose to hold the conversation?"

She looked blank. "I'm not sure," she said.

"Since both have been recovered and, to a degree, reconstructed, surely nothing would serve as effectively as one of the forward staterooms."

"Oh," she said. And again: "Oh! You mean go down to the surface."

Did he mean that? But yes, why not? History of a sort was about to be made. It wouldn't hurt his reputation to be present at the nexus. He might be able to put the appropriate interpretation to events. The world's uplifters, sentimentalists, and moralists would be in rare form during these next few days, drawing what lessons they could from the death of a sentient species. (How sentient, of course, would never become an issue.) There would be the usual references to the event as a warning from the Almighty. It occurred to him that if any of these unfortunate creatures were actually found, there would be a heart-_ wrenching outcry for some sort of desperate rescue effort, presumably from the decks of the Evening Star.

Why not indeed?

"Yes," he said. "If we want to talk about Deepsix, then Deepsix is the place we should go."

She was hesitant. "I don't see how we can arrange it," she said. "Are they sending any tours down?"

He laughed. "No. But I'm sure it can be managed. We have a couple of days yet. I'll see what I can do."

When he got back to his stateroom, MacAllister locked the door and sank into a chair.

The journalist reminded him of Sara.

Not physically. The angles of Sara's face were softer, Sara's hair was several shades darker, Sara's bearing not quite so imperial. They were both about the same size and weight, but once you got beyond that, it was hard to see a physical similarity.

Yet it was there.

The eyes, maybe. But Sara's were green, Casey's blue. Nonetheless, he recognized the steady gaze, and maybe something in her expression, in the way her smile played at the corners of her mouth or the way her voice softened when she thought she could work her will no other way.

Or maybe his imagination had simply run wild, because he was on a flight that was going to become memorable, and he would have liked very much to share it with Sara.

After spending twenty years relentlessly attacking marriage as an institution for the mentally deficient of both sexes, an evolutionary trap, he had met her one evening during a presentation to a group of young journalists. She'd invited him to dinner because she was working on an assignment and it required an interview with him. He was at the time perhaps America's best-known misogynist. The grand passion always wears out, he'd maintained. He'd set its maximum limit at one year, three months, eleven days.

With Sara, he never got a chance to test his figures. Eight months after he'd met her, three weeks after the wedding, she'd died in a freak boating accident. He hadn't been there, had been in his office working on Premier when it happened.

It was a long time ago now. Yet no day ever passed that he did not think of her.

Sara had lived in many moods, somber and delighted, pensive and

full of laughter. Her last name had been Dingle, and she used to tell people that the only reason she'd consented to marry him was to effect the name change. It had, she said, always been an embarrassment.

He couldn't have said why, but that was the Sara whose spirit occupied his stateroom at the moment. Stupid. He was getting old.

He collected a strawberry clipper from the autobar and called up the library catalog. There was a new novel by Ramsey Taggart that he'd been wanting to look at. Taggart was one of his discoveries, but he'd begun coasting. MacAllister had spoken with him, shown him where he was going wrong. Nevertheless the last book, a dreary adultery-in-the-mountains melodrama, had shown no improvement. If the trend continued in this latest book, MacAllister would have no choice but to take him to task more formally. In public.

He thought through the conversation with Casey, because it seemed to him he was missing something. He was not one to put him-self to trouble on behalf of others, and yet he'd volunteered to do an on-site interview that would seriously inconvenience him. Why had he done that?

Gradually, it occurred to him that he wanted to go down to the surface of Maleiva III. To walk among its ruins and let its great age surround him. To soak the sense of oncoming disaster into his blood, What would it be like to stand on the surface of that doomed world and watch the giant rushing down?

To manage things, he would have to win over the assistance of Erik Nicholson.

Nicholson was the captain of the Evening Star, a small man, both in physical stature and in spirit. He was, for example, quite proud of his position, and strutted about like a turkey. He spoke in a manner that was simultaneously distant and weak, as if he were delivering di-vine instructions from the mountaintop and hoping you'd believe

MacAllister was scheduled to join the captain for dinner next evening. That would serve as an opportunity to draw him into a pri-vate conversation and get the ball rolling. The trick would be to find a reason strong enough to persuade him it would be in his interest to send the ship's lander to the surface. With MacAllister in it.

The book came up and he started on it. Once or twice, though, he glanced around the room to reassure himself he was really alone.