"Eric Flint & Ryk E. Spoor - Boundary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)

down the other side. Helen expertly maneuvered the vehicle through the gateway and pulled
up to the sprawling ranch house in a cloud of dust.

Joe got out, pausing to let his legs steady, and possibly to give himself an excuse to watch
Helen going first. As he was a several-year veteran, she ignored the matter. She was used to the
fact that she got a lot of stares; in what was still a male-dominated profession, just about any
woman got them. And in her case, a woman whose figure was still very good for someone close
to forty years old. For a miracle, even, her face wasn’t showing the wrinkles you’d expect from
years of wind and sun in rugged country.

The door to the ranch house opened. “Welcome back, Doctor Sutter!”

Jackie Secord stepped aside and ushered them in with a wave of her hand. Combined with
Jackie’s striking appearance, the gesture had a dramatic flair to it that was absurdly out of
keeping with its humble purpose.

But that was pretty typical of the young woman. She was mostly Indian in her ancestry, on
her mother’s side. Her good-looking but intense face, black hair, black eyes and dusky
complexion sometimes reminded Helen of a cartoon version of a Foreign Spy.

Natasha, with a rural Montana accent. To make the absurdity perfect, Jackie was a graduate
student in engineering—and shared with Joe a fascination with space exploration. Her looks
and liking for dramatic gestures aside, the young woman was about as downhome American as
anyone could get.

Despite her intentions to become an astronaut, Jackie shared Joe’s longstanding side interest
in paleontology. That interest, as with Joe’s, had been triggered off years before by Helen
herself—but not as a student. The first time Helen had showed up in the area, she’d introduced
herself to the Secord family since they were one of the largest landowners around and she
needed their permission to conduct digs on their property.

Their daughter Jackie—then eighteen years old and a high school senior—had promptly
attached herself to Helen as a combination guide and gofer. Since then, Jackie had become one
of Helen’s main local contacts and a constant, helpful presence at the digs. She’d developed
into a top-notch amateur paleontologist, in fact, and usually tried to spend at least part of her
summers on one of Helen’s digs.
 “What’s with the ‘Doctor Sutter’ business, Jackie? It’s been ‘Helen’ for years remember?”

Jackie grinned. “I figure I gotta practice up on my formalities. I’m not all that far behind Joe
when it comes to getting my doctorate—and God help me if I start breezily referring to the
head of my committee as ‘Frank.’ So what’s up for this year?”

“Same as ever,” Joe said, coming in after Helen. “Spend a couple months working ourselves
to death to dig out a few fossils just like the ones everyone else has. Write some papers about
them that no one but us and the reviewers will read. Then Helen and company write another
grant proposal.”

“And Joey’s still the optimist, I see.”

Joe winced. He detested being called “Joey,” Helen knew. But some years before, when