The man at Max-Planck was a cheerful youngster named Gerd Hausewitz. He was considerably more cooperative, especially because Dannerman's German was what he'd acquired in his four years in the Democratische Neuereich. Hausewitz was about to go home for the day, he mentioned-it was nearly six o'clock in Europe-but he promised to get the plates, and Dannerman, feeling cheerful, went back to replacing the wilting flowers on the desk of Janice DuPage.
Talking German again had reminded him of the good times in Europe-of the parts of those times that were good, anyway: the cakes with mountains of schlag on the ring boulevards of Vienna, the beer in Frankfurt, the girl named Use who had invited him into her bed and then into the secret society called the Mad King Ludwig. It was the Mads he had been working on, but Use was a definitely valuable fringe benefit. Undoubtedly she was a terrorist, and almost certainly she had been involved in the group that had tried to spread cholera in the drinking water of the UN in New York, but she was also about the most beautiful woman he'd ever shared a mattress with.
Dannerman took a short lunch hour, and when he came back it was Janice DuPage, the receptionist, who checked his carry gun for him.
"How come?" he asked.
"Checking weapons is my job when Mick's out body guarding Pat Adcock."
"Huh. What does she need a bodyguard for, anyway?"
Janice looked at him unbelievingly. "Daniel, what galaxy do you come from? Pat's a good-looking woman. She needs some kind of muscle to protect her from rapists and kidnappers and general scum-not counting sometimes she likes to wear some pretty high-priced rocks when she goes out. Why do you carry a gun?"
He shrugged. "Everybody does."
"And everybody knows why."
He persisted, "So why does she hire a retired kick-boxer who never won,\ fight that wasn't fixed?"
"Ask him yourself. And some Kraut's been calling you, it's in your voicemail."
Gerd Hausewitz was as good as his word, but before he transmitted the plates he wanted to talk to Dannerman again. "Anything wrong?" Dannerman asked.
I lie broad face on the screen looked troubled. "Just that it's a hinny thing, Dr. Dannerman. You said you were looking for a comet-like object, both in EUV and our gammas? But comets do not radiate in such frequencies."
"I guess that's what makes it only comet-like, " Dannerman said equably.
"To be sure, yes. But my superiors were interested that you should ask, and interested also in your Starlab satellite. We understand there is to be a flight to repair it, is that correct?"
Dannerman's expression didn't change, but he was suddenly more interested. "Yes?"
"That would be splendid, naturally. It is a fine instrument. However, we have found nothing in the literature to describe the plans for repair. Could you perhaps send us a copy of the mission plan, if it is not too much trouble?"
"I'll have to ask the boss."
"Of course. But please do. We would greatly appreciate. Is there anything else I can do for you?"
Dannerman hesitated, then took the plunge. "Your gamma-ray observer-"
"Yes?"
"I was just wondering, have there been any unusual gamma observations lately? In the last couple of years, that is?"
The German looked puzzled. "Unusual? There are of course the bursters, but those occur all the time. Nothing unusual, however. Why do you ask?"
Dannerman backtracked swiftly. "It was just something someone said. It's not important. Anyway, thanks for the plates.
After Dannerman passed the plates on to Harry Chesweiler, the German's question stuck in his mind. He wished he knew a little more about astronomy. Did this CLO have anything to do with Starlab? Did the fact that it wasn't a normal comet mean anything? Why was the man from Max-Planck asking about the satellite in the first place?
Colonel Hilda would want the answer to that, too, so Dannerman got into conversations on the subject as much as he could manage. He didn't get much. No one seemed to have access to the Starlab flight plan; Dr. Adcock was handling that directly with Commander Jimmy Peng-tsu Lin. No one really knew just what had happened to Starlab, not even Dr. Artzybachova, though she gave him a frosty look when he asked.
At the end of working hours, when all the employees were lining up at Janice DuPage's desk to collect their day's pay before inflation knocked another two or three per cent off it, he dawdled to ask more questions, with little more success. It wasn't that the people in line with him were unwilling to talk, but what they wanted to talk about was their own special programs-black holes, galaxy counts, red-giant stars, red-shift measurements.
When Dannerman got the conversation onto the prospective repair mission for Starlab they were happy to discuss that, too, or at least to discuss what a newly functioning Starlab would mean to their hunt for organic molecules in interstellar gas clouds, or for the "missing mass" that seemed to concern some of them. Whatever that was. By the time the line carried Dannerman to Janice DuPage's desk he decided he didn't even know what questions to ask until he got more information from Colonel Hilda.
Then, as he was handing his cash card over to Janice DuPage for his pay, she said, "Oh, there you are, Dan. Dr. Adcock wants to talk to you before you leave."
And when he got to his cousin's office she glared at him. "What's this I'm hearing about you? Why are you asking for the Starlab flight plan?"
He wasn't surprised that she asked the question; he had no doubt that Pat Adcock kept an ear to everything that went on in the observatory. "I wasn't asking for myself, Pat. I got some data for Dr. Chesweiler from the Max-Planck people, and they were the ones who wanted to know. I thought it would be, you know, professional courtesy to give it to them."
"Professional courtesy isn't your department. You aren't a professional here, and it's none of their damn business. You don't pass out any information to anyone outside the observatory without my personal approval. Ever. Do you understand that? And, another thing, Janice tells me that you've made a payment commitment to Cerro Toledo for their data; we'll have to pay it, but you ought to know you don't have any authority to do that, either. Dan, this just isn't satisfactory. I don't want to have to warn you again, but- Hold it a minute."
Her screen was buzzing. Dannerman couldn't see the face on it, but he recognized Harry Chesweiler's voice. It sounded excited. "I've got your orbital elements for the CLO, and they're damn funny. There's definite deceleration, and-"
"Wait, Harry," she ordered, turning back to her cousin. "That's all, Dan. You can go. Just be more careful in die future."
He shared the elevator going down with two of the scientists, arguing over what the search for WIMPs really signified. They seemed close to coming to blows, so he interrupted. "What's a WIMP?"
They paused to stare at him. "Weakly interactive massive particle," the postdoc who'd been talking to him about the missing mass said.
"Oh, thanks. And, say, long as I've got you, there's something else I've been wondering about. If there's a comet that radiates in gamma and EUV, and it is slowing down as it comes toward the Sun, what does that mean?"
The other man laughed. "Means it isn't a comet, that's all. Maybe it's one of your fucking WIMPs, Will."
"Jesus," the postdoc said, "what are you telling him that for? You know it couldn't be a WIMP. Maybe some old spacecraft?"
"You know of any old spacecraft that would be coming in toward the Sun, Will?"
"So it's probably just a screwed-up observation. Anyway," the man said, getting back to his own subject, "believe me, WIMPs are definitely out there, and they make the difference; they're why the universe isn't going to expand indefinitely."
Dannerman gave up. He was glad enough when they came to the ground floor and he could get out. This debate about whether the universe would continually expand, or rebound to a point again, was sort of interesting, but not, as far as he could see, in any way relevant to any of the questions he was working on.