He checked his suit. Everything seemed all right. His shoulder itched around his suit yoke and he moved, trying to scratch.
The irony was inescapable: the blowout of gases through the vent made the cometary tail flare out from this ancient vessel, causing him and Len to come here and discover it—but that same eruption deflected Icarus enough to strike the Earth, and made necessary its destruction. Fate is a double-edged blade.
“Nigel?”
He started toward the vent and then stopped. Might as well finish it.
“Listen, Len—and be sure Dave hears this, too. I’ve got the arming circuits and the trigger. You can’t set off the Egg without them. I’m taking them into the vent with me.”
“Hey! Look—” Behind Len’s voice was a faint chorus of cries from Houston. Nigel went on.
“I’m going to hide them somewhere inside. Even if you follow me in, you won’t be able to find them.”
“Jesus! Nigel, you don’t under—”
“Shut up. I’m doing this for time, Len. Houston had better send us more air and supplies, because I’m going to use the full week of margin I think we’ve got. One week—to look for something worth saving out of this derelict. Maybe those computer banks, if there are any.”
“No, no, listen,” Len said, a thin edge of desperation in his voice. “You’re not just gambling with those Indians, man. Or even with everybody who lives near the seacoasts, if you even care about that. If the Egg doesn’t work and Houston can’t reach that rock with the unmanned warheads, and it hits the water—”
“Right.”
“There’ll be storms.”
“Right.”
“Enough to keep a shuttle from coming up to get us back into Earth orbit.”
“I don’t think they’d want to bother, anyway,” Nigel said wryly. “We won’t be too popular.”
“You won’t.”
“The search will be twice as effective if you come down here and help, Len.” Nigel smiled to himself. “You can gain us some time that way.”
“You son of a bitch!”
He began moving toward the vent again. “Better hurry up, Len. I won’t stick around out here for long to guide you in.”
“Shit! You used to be a nice guy, Nigel. Why are you acting like such a bastard now?”
“I never had a chance to be a bastard for something I believed in before,” he said, and kept moving.
PART TWO
2034
ONE
He awoke, basking in the orange glow of sun on his eyelids. A yellow shaft of light streamed through the acacias outside the window and warmed his shoulder and face. Nigel stretched, warm and lazy and catlike. Though it was early, already the heavy, scented heat of the Pasadena spring filled the bedroom. He rolled over and looked appreciatively at Alexandria, who was seriously studying herself in the mirror.
“Vanity,” he said, voice blurred from sleep. “Insurance.”
“Why can’t you simply be a scruff, like me?” “Business,” she said distantly, smearing something under her eyes. “I’m going to be far too busy today to pay attention to my appearance.”
“And you must be spiffy to face the public.” “Ummm. I think I’ll pin up my hair. It’s a mess, but I don’t have time to…”
“Why not? It’s early yet.”
“I want to get into the office and thrash through some paperwork before those representatives from Brazil arrive. And I have to leave work early—have an appointment with Dr. Hufman.”
“Again?”
“He’s got those tests back.”
“What’s the upshot?”
“That’s what I’m to find out.”
Nigel squinted at her groggily, trying to read her mood.
“I don’t think it’s really important,” she volunteered. The bed sloshed as he rolled out and teetered on one foot, an arm extended upward in a theatrical gesture.
“Jack be nimble,” Alexandria said, smiling and brushing her hair about experimentally.
“You didn’t say that last night.”
“When you fell out of bed?”
“When we fell out of bed.”
