“Could we get something like Skylab up there in time?” Harvey asked.
“Skylab? No. But Rockwell’s got an Apollo capsule we could use. And we’ve got the equipment here at the labs. There are big military boosters around, things the Pentagon doesn’t need anymore. We could do it, if we started now, and we weren’t chicken about it.” Sharps’s face fell. “But we won’t. Too damn bad, too. We could really learn something from Hamner-Brown that way.”
The cameras and sound equipment were packed away and the crew went out with the PR lady. Harvey was saying his farewells to Sharps.
“Want some coffee, Harvey? You’re in no hurry, are you?” Sharps asked.
“Guess not.”
Sharps punched a button on the phone console. “Larry. Get us some coffee, please.” He turned back to Harvey. “Damnedest thing,” he said. “Whole nation depends on technology. Stop the wheels for two days and you’d have riots. No place is more than two meals from a revolution. Think of Los Angeles or New York with no electricity. Or a longer view, fertilizer plants stop. Or a longer view yet, no new technology for ten years. What happens to our standard of living?”
“Sure, we’re a high-technology civiliz—”
“Yet…” Sharps said. His voice was firm. He intended to finish. “Yet the damned fools won’t pay ten minutes’ attention a day to science and technology. How many people know what they’re doing? Where do these carpets come from? The clothes you’re wearing? What do carburetors do? Where do sesame seeds come from? Do you know? Does one voter out of thirty? They won’t spend ten minutes a day thinking about the technology that keeps them alive. No wonder the research budget has been cut to nothing. We’ll pay for that. One day we’ll need something that could have been developed years before but wasn’t — ” He stopped himself. “Tell me, Harv, will this TV thing of yours be big or will it get usual billing for a science program?”
“Prime time,” Harvey said. “A series, on the value of Hamner-Brown, and incidentally on the value of science. Of course, I can’t guarantee people won’t turn to reruns of ‘I Love Lucy.’ ”
“Yeah. Oh — thank you, Larry. Put the coffee right here.”
Harvey had expected styrofoam cups and machine coffee. Instead, Sharps’s assistant brought in a gleaming Thermos pitcher, silver spoons and sugar-and-cream service on an inlaid teak tray.
“Help yourself, Harvey. It’s good coffee. Mocha-Java?”
“Right,” the assistant said.
“Good.” He waved dismissal. “Harv, why this sudden change of heart by the networks?”
Harvey shrugged. “Sponsor insists on it. The sponsor happens to be Kalva Soap. Which happens to be controlled by Timothy Hamner. Who happens—”
Harvey was cut off by shrieks of laughter. Sharps’s thin face contorted in glee. “Beautiful!” Then he looked thoughtful. “A series. Tell me, Harv, if a politician helped us with the study — helped a lot — could he be worked into the series? Get some favorable publicity?”
“Sure. Hamner would insist on it. Not that I’d object—”
“Marvelous.” Sharps lifted his coffee cup. “Cheers. Thanks, Harv. Thanks a lot. I think we’ll be seeing more of each other.”
Sharps waited until Harvey Randall had left the building. He sat very still, something unusual for him, and he felt excitement in the pit of his stomach. It might work. It just might. Finally he punched the intercom. “Larry, get me Senator Arthur Jellison in Washington. Thanks.”
Then he waited impatiently until the phone buzzed. “He’ll talk to you,” his assistant said.
Sharps lifted the phone. “Sharps here.” Another wait while the secretary got the Senator.
“Charlie?”
“Right,” Sharps said. “Art, I’ve got a proposition for you. Know about the comet?”
“Comet? Oh. Comet. Funny you mention that. I met the guy who discovered it. Turns out he was a heavy contributor, but I never met him before.”
“Well, it’s important,” Sharps said. “Opportunity of the century—”
“That’s what they said about Kahoutek—”
“God damn Kahoutek! Look, Art, what’s the chance we could get funding for a probe?”
“How much?”
“Well, take two cases. Second best is anything we can get. The lab can cobble up an unmanned black box, something that goes on a Thor-Delta—”
“No problem. I can get you that,” Jellison said.
“But that’s second best. What we need is a manned probe. Say two men in an Apollo with some equipment instead of the third man. Art, that comet’s going to be close. From up there we could get good pictures, not just the tail, not just the coma, there’s a fair chance we could get pix of the head! Know what that means?”
“Not really, but you just told me it’s important.” Jellison was silent for a moment. “Sorry. I really am, but there’s no chance. Not one chance. Anyway, we couldn’t put up an Apollo if we had the budget—”
“Yes we can. I just checked with Rockwell. Higher-risk mission than NASA likes, but we could do it. We’ve got the hardware—”
“Doesn’t matter. I can’t get you a budget for that.”
Sharps frowned at the phone. The sick excitement rose in his stomach. Arthur Jellison was an old friend, and Charlie Sharps did not like blackmail. But… “Not even if the Russkis are putting up a Soyuz?”
“What? But they’re not—”
“Oh, yes, they are,” Sharps said. And it’s not a lie, not really. Just an anticipation—
“You can prove that?”
“In a few days. Rely on it, they’re going up to look at Hamner-Brown.”
“I will be dipped in shit.”
“I beg your pardon, Senator?”
“I will be dipped in shit.”
“Oh.”
“You’re playing games with me, aren’t you, Charlie?” Jellison demanded.
“Not really. Look, Art, it’s important. And we need another manned mission anyway, just to keep up interest in space. You’ve been after a manned flight—”
“Yeah, but I had no chance of getting one.” There was more silence. Then Jellison said, more to himself than Sharps, “So the Russkis are going. And no doubt they’ll make a big deal of it.”
“I’m sure they will.”
Another silence. Charlie Sharps almost held his breath “Okay,” Jellison said. “I’ll nose around the Hill and see what kind of reactions I get. But you better be giving it to me straight.”
“Senator, in a week you’ll have unmistakable evidence.”
“All right. I’ll give it a try. Anything else?”
“Not just now.”
“Okay. Thanks for the tip, Charlie.” The phone went dead.
Abrupt he is, Sharps thought. He smiled thinly to himself, then punched the intercom button again. “Larry, I want Dr. Sergei Fadayev in Moscow, and yes, I know what time it is over there. Just get him on for me.”
The legend of Gilgamesh was a handful of unconnected tales spreading through the Earth’s Fertile Crescent in Asia… and the comet was nearly unchanged. It was still far outside the maelstrom. The orbit of the runaway moon called Pluto would have looked like a quarter held nearly on edge, at arm’s length. The Sun, an uncomfortably bright pin point, still poured far less heat across the comet’s crust than had the black giant at its worst. The crust was mostly water ice now; it reflected most of the heat back to the stars.
Yet time passed.
Mars swallowed its water in another turn of its long, vicious weather cycle. Men spread across the Earth, laughing and scratching. And the comet continued to fall. A breath of the solar wind, high-velocity protons, flayed its crust. Much of the hydrogen and helium in its tissues had seeped away. The maelstrom came near.
March: One
And the Lord hung a rainbow as a sign,