Stoner stared at the final row of figures. He didn’t need to check a reference table. He had memorized that set of numbers weeks earlier, because he had feared, or hoped, or maybe dreamed that they would show up to face him, inevitably.
“Where is the bloody thing heading?” Cavendish demanded.
“Here,” Stoner said.
Cavendish’s mouth fell open. “Here,” he finally managed. “You mean Earth?”
Stoner nodded. “It’s finished looking at Jupiter. Now it’s heading for Earth.”
Book Two
Chapter 18
If the light of a thousand suns suddenly arose in the sky, that splendor might be compared to the radiance of the Supreme Spirit.
The General Secretary stared gloomily out the window of his limousine at the gray snowy morning.
“You know,” he said in a low, heavy voice, “that I am dying.”
Georgi Borodinski gasped. “Comrade Secretary! You mustn’t say such a thing.”
The General Secretary turned awkwardly to face his aide. Both men were wrapped in heavy dark coats and fur hats, despite the limousine’s heating system.
With a halfhearted grin, the General Secretary asked, “Why not? It is the truth.”
“But still…”
“You’re afraid the car is bugged. My prospective heirs might get a little overanxious and try to put me out of misery?” He laughed: a dry, rasping sound.
Borodinski said nothing. By the standards of the Kremlin’s inner elite he was a youngish man, only slightly past fifty, his receding hair still dark, his flesh still firm. He had risen from the ranks of Party functionaries by steady hard work, unspectacular, uninspired, seemingly unambitious. But he had recognized his one chance for advancement twenty years earlier, and had attached himself with the dogged faithfulness of a loyal serf to the man who was now General Secretary of the Party and President of the Soviet Union.
Now Borodinski stood on the verge of becoming General Secretary himself—if he could survive the struggle that would inevitably follow the death of his master.
“Do you know why we are riding through the cold and snow, instead of staying warm and comfortable in my office?” asked the General Secretary.
“I think I do,” Borodinski answered.
Gesturing toward the driver on the other side of the bullet-proof glass partition, the Secretary explained, “A Tartar, from beyond Lake Baykal. He checks the car every day before I step into it. We are safe from eager ears.”
“Yes.”
“I must live like an ancient Roman Emperor, surrounded by my Palace Guard—all foreigners, barbarians, loyal to me personally and not to anyone or anything else. A fine state of affairs for the leader of a Marxist state, isn’t it?”
“Every great leader has enemies, Comrade Secretary. Within as well as without.”
The Secretary’s heavy brows inched upward. “But if everyone within the Kremlin is a good Marxist, why should I require such protection?”
Borodinski saw where he was heading. “They are not all good Marxists. Even some in the Presidium and the Inner Council have their…failings.”
The Secretary nodded grimly. “Now then,” he said, “about this latest offer from the American President…”
Puzzled by the abrupt shift in their conversation, Borodinski blurted, “But what has that to do with…?”
The General Secretary slapped the younger man’s knee and laughed heartily. “You don’t see it, eh? You still have a few things to learn about the art of ruling.”
His laughter turned into a wheezing cough. Borodinski sat still, waves of sadness and fear washing through him. And impatience. But he sat unmoving as his master slowly won his struggle to breathe normally.
“I was saying,” the General Secretary resumed, after wiping his lips and chin with a linen handkerchief, “the American President has made what appears to be another generous offer.”
Borodinski nodded. “They’ve invited us to send a team of scientists to their base in the Pacific. Kwajalein Atoll, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” the Secretary said. “According to all available intelligence, the American offer seems genuine. Their President wants to use this—this alien spaceship—as a symbol to build stronger ties of co-operation between our two nations.”
“Despite everything they’ve done over the past few years?”
“Perhaps because of everything they’ve done over the past few years. They may have finally realized the futility of their so-called ‘get tough’ policies.”
Borodinski considered that possibility for a moment, then asked, “Will you accept their offer?”
Leaning closer to his aide, the Secretary asked, “What would you do?”
It was a test, Borodinski realized, a test to see if he was fit to take over his master’s position. He fought down the fear rising in his throat and kept his long-simmering ambition deep within his heart.
“There is strong opposition within the Presidium,” he said slowly. “The idea of co-operating with the capitalists can cause bitter resentment among our more conservative comrades.”
“The same comrades who insisted that we march into Afghanistan,” the Secretary muttered, “without thinking about how difficult it is to march out again.”
“They have caused us many difficulties, true,” said Borodinski.
“And,” the General Secretary pointed out, “there is strong pressure within the Presidium that we accept the American offer.”
Borodinski nodded and stroked his pointed, Lenin-style goatee. “I have learned that the United Nations is also interested in the American program. And they will certainly bring the Chinese in with them.”
“Then we would be left out in the cold if we refused to co-operate, wouldn’t we?”
“But if we do co-operate, it will infuriate some of the most powerful members of the Presidium. Not to mention the Red Army.”
The General Secretary gave him a smirking grin. “A nice little problem, isn’t it? How would you handle it?”
Borodinski sank into silent thought. The limousine drove on through the snowy gray silence of morning, well beyond the buildings and houses of sprawling Moscow, far beyond the range of rooftop directional microphones and laser snoopers that can record conversations from the vibrations that spoken words make on the windows of a moving automobile.
Finally Borodinski said, “I think we have no alternative but to accept the American offer. Otherwise we will fall behind them and the others. They could obtain enormous amounts of information from this spaceship…” He had more to say, but the pleased expression on the General Secretary’s face told him it was time to stop talking.
“A good, honest, straightforward decision.” The old man patted his knee. “Now allow me to give you a lesson in politics to go with it.”
Borodinski sat up a little straighter.
“I am a dying man, comrade. The doctors have confirmed it. Everyone in the Politburo and the Presidium knows it. This is a dangerous time for me—and for you.”
Borodinski nodded, not trusting his voice to reply.
The Secretary closed his eyes for a moment. Then, “You pointed out, quite correctly, that if we accept the Americans’ offer of co-operation it will infuriate some of our most conservative comrades. It might well enrage them to the point where they might try to—well, hasten my demise.”
“They’d never dare!”
“Oh yes they would,” the Secretary assured him with a grim smile. “It wouldn’t be the first time a ruler in the Kremlin was hurried to his grave. And it hasn’t happened only to the Tsars, either.”