This time she didn't take a chance on missing it. She clutched it before the second ring, trying to see her watch at the same time because she was running close to critical for getting up the hill. "Oh, hell," she said, "it's only you, Tinker."
Her husband's—her ex-husband's!—distant voice was honeyed. "I'm sorry to bother you, love. I just wanted to know how you are."
"I'm fine," she said crossly. "I'm the same as I was yesterday afternoon when you called, and yesterday morning, and that's not what you called about. You called to tell me how important the family is and why we should get back together again and, Tink, I'm not going to do it."
Pause. Then his soft, troubled voice, trying to patch things over one more time. "I know how you feel, Rainy—"
"Hey!" She looked at her watch again. "It's four in the morning in L.A. What are you trying to do, Tinker?"
"I can't sleep," he said sadly.
"Oh, God," she said, as he began the same old thing again. The cat had got out and the car wouldn't start, and he was losing weight; and she was never more glad to hear her ride honking outside the door. "Got to run, Tink—you hear the horn blowing?" She hoped he had. But she didn't wait to find out. In the Jeep, winding up the narrow road, she wished with all her heart that Alvin Keating would find himself a new girl.
Just as they turned into the parking lot she saw an unkempt man and woman sitting up on the side of the hill, passing a suspicious-looking cigarette back and forth as they gazed over the vast radio-telescope dish and the blue- gray hills around it. Rainy glared at them. She was sure that the man was the Peeping Tom who had broken her orrery.
Yugoslavia is one of the world's most seismically active areas, because it lies where two giant tectonic plates crunch together. The continent of Africa tries to close the Mediterranean Sea like a door, with its hinge at Gibraltar. Yugoslavia is where the edge of the door slams. It shares its distinction as an earthquake center with Iceland, Japan, and nearly all the western coast of North America.
Thursday, December 3d. 9:20 AM.
Rainy slipped into the auditorium as inconspicuously as she could. The meeting did not seem to be going very well, at least not from the viewpoint of a scientist getting ready to hold out her own begging bowl; the particle physicist before her was sweating as he tried to explain why two hundred million dollars was not much to pay for a new accessory that would smash a handful of tiny bits of matter at very high speed into a handful of others. A freshman senator from one of the industrial eastern states was giving him a hard time; this same Senator Marcellico, along with two or three others, had already savaged the first presenter of the day, from Arecibo itself. The animals smell blood, Rainy thought to herself, trying to look both alertly attentive and impartial.
But they were taking a long time about it! She looked furtively at her watch. Did they understand that her next appearance had to be no later than 10:40 AM, no matter what?
The elderly blonde congresswoman from the farm belt took up the attack on the physicist. "Dr. Vorwaerts," she called from the back of the room. "I understand the Russians have an even bigger machine. Can you tell us why you want to spend all that money to build a second-best?"
The scientist nodded excitedly. "Ah, theirs is quite a different thing! It is the kind of particle here that is most important; ours will be at least five years in advance of anything they have!" The congresswoman sank back in her chair, satisfied, and Rainy filed that in her mind. The economy-minded legislator had not blinked an eye at two hundred million, as long as it looked like it was going to outdo the Russians.
Just as the physicist was finishing explaining why particle accelerators always seemed to be built in New York, Illinois or California—to a congressman from South Dakota— and Rainy was beginning to steal looks at her watch again, the chairman stood up. "If you don't mind," he said, "we're due for a coffee break in just a minute— and first, Miz Georgia Keating has thirty seconds for something that just won't wait."
"Thank you," she called, walking up to the command console on the side of the platform. "As you may remember, last night I sent an instruction to the Newton-8 spacecraft. It was rather a long one—eight hundred and twenty- five words. Now I am going to send the enabling command. " She turned and pressed the glowing red button at the corner of the keyboard. "That's all there is to it," she said. "The message has now been transmitted to the Deep Space Network, and relayed from Canberra, Australia, out to the spacecraft. At a hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second, it will take about an hour and fifty-two minutes to reach the spacecraft. At that point Newton-8 will deploy its instruments and cameras in the direction of the planet Jupiter—or the sun, which will be essentially the same thing at that time. A few minutes later it will observe the transit of Jupiter and relay the pictures and telemetry to us. And we will, of course, begin to receive them an hour and fifty-two minutes after that—at which time I will be here for my presentation. Are there any questions?"
Senator Marcellico called, "Just one, young lady. Are we going to see any little green men?" He was grinning, but the question left a bad taste in her mouth.
During the coffee break the senator was huddled with one of his aides, but as soon as the last morning session started again he was right there. It was Tibor Sonderman's turn, and Rainy observed that the geologist was as tactless with the legislators as he had been with her. He started out by saying that the really basic need was for fundamental research, and immediately Marcellico interrupted. "Is that going to find us any oil?" he called.
"Oil? No. Of course not. Our greatest need is to observe what is happening under the crust—way down, thirty or forty kilometers down—"
"Excuse me, Dr. Sonderman." It was Senator Townseqd Pedigrue, from California, with his brother and chief aide whispering in his ear. "Dr. Sonderman! You're not trying to revive the Mohole program, are you?"
Sonderman said stubbornly, "I do not think you will support drilling to the Mohorovicic layer, no, but it should have been done. Down there is basic knowledge, which we need, to understand what is going on in plate tectonics. It is too bad that former President Johnson involved it in Texas politics, so that we missed that chance. But the layer is still there. However, in more immediate terms—"
It looked rather doubtful that he was going to get a chance to tell what the immediate terms were, because Marcellico was upon him again like a ferret. Rainy slipped out of the room. She wasn't fond of Tib Sonderman, but she didn't want to see his blood spilled.
She walked over to the little garden where a buffet table was being set up for lunch, hoping to get a cup of coffee out of the kitchen without the necessity of talking to any senator, congressman, aide, or newsman. She failed on two counts. The coffee wasn't made yet, and one of the TV newscasters was sitting on a stone fence, having failed in the same errand. "You're Dr. Keating, right?" he asked, beckoning her over.
"Ms. Keating—A.B.D., not Ph.D. That means 'All But Dissertation'," she explained. "The dissertation is going to be based on the results from Newton-8."
"So you have a personal interest in your spacecraft?"
A little alarm went off in her brain, and she said, "Every good scientist does, Mr.—" she peered at his name tag— "Altonburg. By the way, did you know you were missing some excitement in the meeting?" She told him about Sonderman and the hard questions that were being thrown at him. The newsman looked concerned, then relaxed.
"My cameraman's getting the whole thing," he said. "Is this your first trip to Puerto Rico, Miz Keating?"