by Ben Bova
Cavendish accepted his prescription, wadded it into a tight little ball and threw it in the first trash receptacle he found outside the medical building.
Useless, he knew.
Now he stood on the front steps of the island’s best restaurant (the scientists had rated it at only minus one star) and decided to take a walk on the beach. His headache was gone, for the moment, but the memory of it had triggered an old fear in him that coursed through every nerve of his body.
The sun was touching the horizon, a fat ball of molten red. The sky was glowing copper, with a few long streamers of gold and purple clouds hanging in the west.
Cavendish felt bone-tired. His whole body ached. His eyes burned from lack of sleep. Yet something made him walk along the beach that circled the island. He walked slowly, like a man searching for a specific spot even though he doesn’t know where that spot might be. The sun sank out of sight and the shadows of evening covered the world.
All the way past the docks he walked, like a sentry, like an automaton, and down around the ocean side of the island, where the reef came close and the surf boomed out of the twilight.
Someone was sitting under the trees that fringed the beach. Waiting for him.
“Good evening,” said Maria Markova.
“Yes,” Cavendish answered.
Maria’s suitcase of electronic gear was at her feet, opened, its tiny light gleaming red in the shadows.
“Report.”
Without hesitation, Cavendish began, “The meeting was attended by Professor McDermott, Academician Zworkin, Dr. Thompson…”
Nearly an hour later, they were both sitting on the sand. Maria rested her back against a tree; Cavendish sat cross-legged, straight-backed. It was too dark to see the pain in his eyes.
“…and he suggested that I see a psychologist,” the Englishman finished.
Maria sat in silence for a while, thinking. “Anything else?” she asked.
“No…except for Schmidt.”
“Schmidt? The Dutchman?”
“Yes. There are rumors circulating around the island that he is becoming a drug addict. Certainly he has been useless as far as real work is concerned.”
“Tell me about Schmidt; everything you know about him.”
Cavendish did.
“This young man could be useful,” Maria said when he had finished. “Befriend him. Play on his animosity toward the Americans. Be certain to make him believe that it is Stoner who is stealing the glory from him.”
“Stoner?”
Nodding in the darkness, Maria said, “Stoner. He is the one who must be stopped. And Schmidt may be the way to stop him.”
“I…don’t understand,” Cavendish said.
“It is not necessary for you to understand. Only to obey.”
“Yes.”
“Very well,” Maria said. “You have done well. You may go now.”
“Yes,” Cavendish dutifully answered. He got slowly to his feet, and as he stepped out from under the shadows of the trees, into the pale moonlight, Maria could see for the first time the anguish that twisted the old man’s face into a hideous death’s mask.
Her breath caught. Cursing herself for a weakling, she dismissed Cavendish almost angrily. Painfully, stiffly, he walked away without another word.
Maria’s hands were shaking as she turned off her machine and snapped shut the lid of its suitcase. It felt heavier than ever as she carried it back to her bungalow.
* * *
CAMP DAVID
The rustic little briefing room was jammed with newsmen. Even though no TV cameras were allowed, photographers clicked and whirred away as the press secretary strode up to the podium.
“Okay,” he said, adjusting the microphone with one hand. “Here’s today’s statement:
“The President had breakfast with the Reverend Willie Wilson, the Urban Evangelist, this morning. Reverend Wilson’s evangelical mission is sponsoring an outdoor rally at RFK Stadium next Tuesday evening, and Reverend Wilson invited the President to attend. The President reluctantly declined, due to the press of other business….”
“Like the way the primaries are going,” a reporter sotto voce’d loudly enough for the whole room to titter.
The press secretary frowned, then returned to his statement: “The President congratulated Reverend Wilson on his fine work for inner city people. Reverend Wilson’s now famous ‘Watch the Skies’ message was not—repeat, not—discussed.”
The press secretary looked up at the reporters and photographers.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. This isn’t a press conference; I’m not going to answer any questions. Copies of the statement will be available in about ten minutes.”
* * *
CHAPTER 27
Stoner and Markov were eating together in the mess hall when Schmidt sauntered in.
“A sad case,” Markov muttered, spooning soup past his beard.
“What do you mean?” Stoner asked.
“Haven’t you heard? Schmidt spends his days puffing on narcotics instead of working.”
Stoner stared at the young astronomer, who was getting into line in front of the steam counter.
“Narcotics? You mean pot?”
“Marijuana, other things. I understand there is quite a market here for tranquilizers, amphetamines.” Markov shook his head in stern disapproval.
“So that’s why he’s been no damned use to anybody since he got here,” Stoner said, his mouth tightening. “Maybe we should have him busted.”
“Busted?”
“Thrown in jail. What he’s doing is illegal.”
“It is?” Markov looked surprised. “I thought the drug culture was an integral part of the decadent capitalist society.”
“It may be,” Stoner replied, his eyes still on Schmidt, “but that doesn’t mean it’s legal.”
“The hypocrisies of capitalism.”
Stoner looked at the Russian. He was grinning.
Turning back to Schmidt, he saw that the young astronomer had filled his tray, walked as far as the cash register, spoke a few flustered words to the native Marshallese woman working as cashier, then—red-faced—left the tray where it was and walked quickly out of the mess hall.
“What’s he doing?” Stoner wondered.
Markov shrugged. “He’s probably spent all his money on drugs and forgot that he didn’t have anything in his pockets to pay for his dinner.”
* * *
Edouard Reynaud was sitting at the writing desk in his trailer, trying to compose a dignified letter to Cardinal Benedetto on the latest progress of Project JOVE.
He let the pen drop from his fingers, then rubbed his eyes. The words kept blurring. His head still buzzed from whatever he had taken that afternoon with Schmidt. Besides, he hated writing. Equations are so elegant and direct, he thought. Words are slippery and full of pitfalls.
Looking up, he saw that it was fully night outside. The little desk lamp was the only illumination in his trailer.
“I’ll miss dinner,” he mumbled to himself. The food on this miserable island made it easier to avoid the sin of gluttony.
A knocking rattled the trailer. Reynaud got up and went to the flimsy metal door. Opening it, he saw Hans Schmidt standing on the step, droopy-eyed, worried.
“I don’t have any more money,” Schmidt said.
Reynaud blinked with surprise. “What?”
Schmidt seemed to be weaving slightly, even though his feet didn’t move. “Money. They took all my money. I can’t buy a meal.”
Remembering the mosquitoes that could keep a man awake all night, Reynaud stepped outside and shut the trailer door firmly. “You mean you’ve spent all your money, and now you have nothing left for food?”
Schmidt insisted stubbornly, “They took it all. They didn’t leave me any for myself.”
“Come and have dinner with me,” Reynaud said, reaching for the young man’s arm. “You’ve had enough of a high for one day. You m
ust sober up before you hurt yourself.”
Schmidt laughed. “Come over to my place. I have some good grass.”
“No, no.” Reynaud tugged at his arm. “Come and get some food into you.”
“I thought you were my friend.”
Looking up at that angelic face with its golden frame of hair, Reynaud took his hand away from Schmidt and said carefully, “I am your friend. More of a friend than those who are selling you these drugs.”
Schmidt backed away, stumbling slightly on the sandy ground. “You’re just like all the rest of them! Go away! Get away from me! Leave me alone. I know who my real friends are.”
Reynaud stood in front of his trailer as Schmidt lurched off into the night. It would be so easy to go with him, to use the drugs to seduce him. But with a resolute shake of his head the cosmologist turned in the opposite direction, toward his dinner.
I can’t help him, Reynaud told himself. I can only make things worse for him.
Jo Camerata sat glumly at the bar in the Officers’ Club, an unfinished daiquiri in front of her. It was early in the evening, the club was quiet and almost empty. McDermott was probably wondering where she was, but she just didn’t have the heart to spend another evening with the old man.
She slipped off the barstool and headed for the ladies’ room. The trio of Navy officers at the end of the bar smiled and called to her. She smiled back but kept on going.
Once inside the ladies’ room the smile vanished from her face. Jo sat in front of the cosmetics mirror and took a long look at herself. You’d better start spending more time sleeping, girl, or you’ll look like forty before you’re twenty-five.
When she came out and surveyed the club again she was suddenly filled with boredom. The same guys making the same jokes, she thought, and thinking with their balls. She went to the door and stepped out onto the dimly lit street, heading for the hotel where the single women were quartered.
“Mind if I walk you home?”
She turned and saw, in the dimness of a distant streetlamp, that it was Jeff Thompson.
“Oh, hello, Dr. Thompson.”
“Calling it a night so soon?” Thompson asked, falling in beside her.
“I’m tired,” Jo said.
“Yeah. Me too.”
“Have you been working all this time?”
“I dropped over to the comm center, to see if our visitor has decided to say anything to us yet.”
“Nothing?”
“Not a peep.”
“Maybe it’s trying to decipher our messages, just like we tried to decipher the radio pulses from Jupiter.”
Thompson shook his head. “I just wish it was all over and done with. I’d sure like to be back home.”
“Your wife will be coming out here soon, won’t she?”
Thompson shrugged. “Now the kids are complaining that they don’t want to miss the summer with their friends. It’s hard to uproot a family.”
Jo said nothing. They walked along the empty street side by side for several paces in silence.
Then Thompson asked, “How’s Big Mac?”
She almost laughed. “He’s old.”
He reached out and took her hand. “Jo, I never thought that…”
But she wouldn’t let him finish. “You know, Dr. Thompson, you’re the kind that would hate himself the next morning.”
“You think so?”
“Yes.” She stepped closer and kissed him, swiftly, on the cheek. “That’s the way you are, and it’s a shame. You would have been so much better for me.”
Then she turned and walked quickly down the street, toward the hotel, leaving Thompson standing there alone, smiling foolishly, wondering whether he ought to be proud of his self-control or mortified at his lack of courage.
He jammed his hands into the pockets of his slacks and walked slowly toward the BOQ, determined to call his wife despite the hour and the cost.
Markov and Stoner left the mess hall together, and saw Jo striding alone down the street.
“Ah, our fellow revolutionary,” Markov said. He hurried down the stairs and called out to her, “Jo! Miss Camerata!”
She turned and saw the two of them loping up toward her like a pair of eager teen-agers.
“Hi,” Jo said to them both.
Stoner felt suddenly awkward with Markov beside him. “Hello…”
But the Russian took her hand, kissed it and said, “And a good evening to you, my lovely lady. Your beauty outshines the stars.”
Jo giggled. Stoner felt his face go slightly red.
Tucking her arm under his own, Markov said, “Tonight we must make a request of your knowledge, your skill, your bravery.”
Keeping her voice light, Jo asked, “What are you talking about?”
“We need you to do some bootleg work for us,” Stoner said.
“What do you mean?”
As they strolled slowly down the street, Stoner began explaining his plans to her. Jo looked back and forth from him to Markov and back to Stoner again.
“Sure,” she said, “the computer stores all the tracking data from the radars. I could start a rendezvous program easily enough. But I thought that McDermott had put…”
“That thing isn’t a comet,” Stoner blurted. “It’s not a natural object at all. It’s an artifact.”
“Professor McDermott is being too narrow-minded,” Markov added. “We must prevent him from ruining the entire purpose of this project.”
“He’s afraid of it,” Jo said. “Mac wants it to be a natural object because he’s scared of what it might really be.”
Stoner shook his head. “He doesn’t have that much imagination.”
“Now, listen,” Jo insisted, “I know what goes on in his head…”
“I’ll bet you do.”
Before she could reply, Markov stepped between them. “Jo, dearest lady, I said that we needed your courage as well as your skill. And we do. This tracking data must be prepared without Professor McDermott knowing of it.”
“It’s important,” Stoner said, dropping his argument with her. “Vital.”
Jo said nothing.
“Will you help us?” Stoner asked.
“So you can fly up to this thing and meet it,” she said.
He nodded. “That’s right. You want to be an astronaut someday? Help us make contact with this bird and they’ll be hiring astronauts by the thousands.”
“Sure,” Jo said. “It’ll be a great opportunity for me. If Mac doesn’t toss us all in the slammer first.”
Stoner raised his hands in a gesture that said, It’s all up to you.
“Why a manned rendezvous mission?” Jo asked. “Why not an automated probe, like the kind that landed on Mars and Venus?”
Stoner answered quickly, “Because it takes years to build such probes. And they’re dumb. They’re just preprogrammed machines that do exactly what they’ve been programmed to do and not one damned thing more. How do you design a machine to examine something we’ve never seen before? That we know almost nothing about?”
“The object would be gone from the solar system before the committee discussions were finished,” Markov pointed out.
“But we do have manned spacecraft,” Stoner went on urgently. “NASA has its Space Shuttle. The Russians have their Soyuzes. I think there’s even a launch facility out on Johnston Island, not that far from here.”
“We also have our Salyut space station in orbit continuously with two cosmonauts aboard it. They can be sent to…”
“No,” Stoner snapped. “I’m the man who goes.”
Markov replied, “I realize that you would like to be the one to go, but…”
“No buts. We need somebody who knows what to look for. You can’t program a cosmonaut with everything he needs to know. You can’t turn a rocket jock into an astrophysicist, not in a couple of months. I’m the logical man for this mission. If you send anybody else, it’d be just as stupid as sending an automated probe with its limited programming.”
Tugging at his beard, Markov said, “Your logic is unassailable. Certainly you have all the knowledge of what we are doing here. Perhaps we can get you boosted up in a Soviet rocket, with one of our cosmonauts as your companion.”
Stoner nodded. “That would be fine by me.”
Jo said, “But if you go…it’s going to be a kind of hurry-up, makeshift mission, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Stoner said. “If Big Mac had planned on a manned rendezvous mission from the beginning, things would be a lot easier for us.”
She shook her head. “It sounds awfully chancy.”
They were passing under a streetlight, and Stoner could see real concern on her face.
He smiled at her. “Don’t worry. Driving a car in Boston is a lot more dangerous.”
Jo nodded, but she didn’t look convinced.
“You don’t believe me?”
Jo thought a moment as the three of them walked down the dimly lit street, past house trailers and the dull, graceless cement block office buildings.
“Does it really matter what I think? You’ve made up your mind that you’re going off into space to greet our visitor.”
“I’ve got to go,” Stoner said. “I’ve got to.”
Markov broke in, “We will need someone else to help us with our little revolution.”
“Someone else?” asked Stoner.
“Yes. Someone with enough stature to override Professor McDermott’s objections once he finds out what we are doing.”
Jo suggested, “What about your head man, Zworkin?”
“Not him,” Markov said. “He is too old and cautious to outshout McDermott. I was thinking of the cosmologist, Reynaud.”
“The monk?”
“Yes. He has a direct line to the Vatican, which can be politically very useful.”
“The Vatican? What political clout does the Vatican have?”
Markov laughed softly. “Our lamented Josef Stalin once asked the same question—and found the answer, much to his chagrin.”
“Reynaud looks like a cream puff to me,” Stoner said. “He won’t have the guts to fight Big Mac. What about Cavendish?”
