"Rainy!" Her boss burst through the door. "Sheila said you were here! I've been trying to call you all over the place!" He mopped his forehead. "What a mess," he moaned, his plump face filled with worry.
"I'm really sorry, Dr. Teppinger—"
"Oh, hell, Rainy, it wasn't your fault. I mean— No, of course it wasn't. But you wouldn't believe the heat we're getting!"
"Yes I would."
He blinked. "Well, anyway," he said, "I'm glad you're here. Listen. You're just in time. The Lab's going to have a news conference on the Newton-8 at four o'clock. They've been prayig you could get there."
"Another news conference?"
He shrugged. "It seems to be big news," he said morosely. "God knows why. Spacecraft stop functioning every day and nobody pays any attention." He scratched his bushy moustache. "Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to build our presentation around a spacecraft on its last legs," he said.
Rainy kept her mouth shut. It had been his idea, after all. "Uh, Dr. Teppinger? How's this going to affect me?"
"Oh, God, Rainy, who knows about that?" He considered for a second. "As far as your grant's concerned, of course, well, that's just out the window. Of course, you'll get severance pay."
"Dr. Teppinger! I just bought three rooms of furniture!" "I'm really sorry, Rainy. Listen, you'll connect somewhere—I tell you what I'll do. Were you going to the ASF meeting next week? Well, I think you ought to; it's a pretty good slave mart, especially if you make yourself visible. I'll see if I can get you a spot on the program, although it's the last minute. ..." His voice trailed off and he sat on the edge of her desk, staring unseeing at the launch photograph of the Newton-8 on her wall. "Rainy? What do you suppose did happen to the son of a bitch?" "I wish to God I knew," she said.
By the time she finished discussing that with him, they had gone over every possible disaster that either of them could imagine, and there were only twenty minutes left before the news conference. Rainy sighed, pulled a yellow pad toward her and began to make notes on what she should say.
At approximately 1830 hours on Wednesday, December 2d, Universal Mean Time—that would have been about ten-thirty AM, Pacific time—the spacecraft Newton-8 abruptly ceased transmission. The spacecraft had already completed every scientific mission for which it had been designed and budgeted. It was functioning normally until—
Rainy's phone rang.
For a moment she wished she dared not answer it, but the habits of a lifetime won out. Of course, it was Tinker. His soft, melancholy, undertaker's voice said, "Rainy, I've been trying to reach you for hours."
"I know that, Tink." At least five of the phone slips had been from him. "Tink, I'm really busy—"
"I know that, honey. Have you seen the paper?"
Had she not! Someone had carefully folded back the late edition to display the headlines. "Oh, yeah," she said, reading. "Let's see. 'Hippies Frolic at Space Mirror. "Gang Boss Indicted in Conspiracy Trial.' "
"No, no! I mean—"
"Tink, I know what you mean." Her story was right between them, and the biggest of the three. "It's been rough, and thanks for calling. "
"It's been rough around here, too," he said mournfully. "The garbage disposal broke yesterday. I just turned on the dishwasher and water spouted out through the sink. The repair man said he'd never seen anything like—"
"Tink! For God's sake, have mercy! I've got the most important meeting of my life coming up!"
"And what's my life, Rainy? There's only half of me here. I'm not complete without you—wait a minute," he added quickly, hearing her intake of breath. "Don't hang up. I'll let you go in a second, only there's something I want to ask you."
"Ask, damn it!"
"Aw . . . you know."
"Tink," she cried, "you're just not to be believed! You want to know if I'm screwing around, right?"
"I want to know if you've kept our agreement," he insisted.
"Yes! To the letter! Now, good-bye!" Shaking, she slammed the phone into its cradle and reached again for the pad; but there was no time. "Oh, sweet God," she moaned, jumped up, glanced at herself in the mirror, gave up and half-trotted down the hill to the Von Karman Auditorium. A few days ago it would have been a pipe dream to think of herself as the central figure in Von Karman . . . but a few days ago the world had been entirely different. In the sweltering Santa Ana she could feel her blouse sticking to her; what a mess she was going to look!
But that wasn't the thing that bothered her most.
What bothered her most was a little voice in the corner of her mind that kept pointing out to her that, if only she went back to her husband, she wouldn't have to worry about her professional reputation, or rent, or car insurance, or meeting the payments on all that furniture.
She was braced for the press conference; she didn't panic, she didn't lose her voice, she didn't fumble for words; all the same the questions astonished her. Such questions! "Do you have any reason to believe the Russians sabotaged your spacecraft?" "Can the space shuttle get a crew up to repair it?" "What would you say the cash value of the spacecraft is—I mean, how much has losing it cost us?" And the worst one: "According to reports, you have believed for some time that we were in danger from space. Is that in any way connected with the loss?" But she had hung in doggedly, and had managed, every time, to be polite.
And at least it was over. Or almost. On the way to the door she was stopped three times—a picture; questions about her childhood and her reasons for becoming an astronomer—even her sign of the zodiac. By the time she got out of the room it was almost empty, but two men were waiting outside. She had seen them during the news conference, in the back of the auditorium. They had been listening intently and apparently taping every word, but they had asked no questions. "Oh, gee," she said, "haven't I said enough on the subject yet?"
"I'm afraid not, Mrs. Keating," the taller one said. He flipped open a wallet. "We're from Air Intelligence. Let's go to your office for a minute. "
The kind of nuclear fusion that keeps the sun going produces neutrinos. Neutrinos are so tiny and so lacking in electric charge that detecting them is very difficult. A neutrino "telescope", typically, consists of ten thousand gallons of cleaning fluid at the bottom of a gold mine in North Dakota. The earth above the mine filters out all other particles; atoms in the cleaning fluid react with the neutrinos. Strangely, all the neutrino telescopes consistently report fewer neutrinos than the sun's core should be producing. One possibility is that the theories are all wrong. Another is that the sun has begun to grow colder.
Tuesday, December 8th. 8:40 AM.
Danny Deere stopped in his breakfast room on the way to the front door. "Jesus, Manuel," he cried in disgust, "you got the son of a bitch crooked. Has to go up on the left. You blind? Up."
The handyman hopped off the stool to take a look. The painting was a Reginald Marsh, just promoted from the basement. It clashed violently with the violently bright Leetig it faced across the room, but the handyman never expressed an opinion about art. "Oh, sure, boss," he agreed, smiling and bobbing his head. "Way up."
"Not way up, goddamit, maybe an inch up, and don't drop it." He turned to the door, accepting his raw-silk sports jacket from Manuel's wife. "Keep an eye on him," he ordered, slinging the jacket over his shoulder.
"Si, sehor." She also gave him a giant smile, which he did not return. His chauffeur opened the door of the Mercedes as Danny approached the terrazzo driveway; he didn't smile, but then he was the one who actually liked Danny Deere.