“Okay, so NASA wasn’t and isn’t perfect.”
“No, it isn’t just NASA. It’s, it’s whenever people deny their own interior visions. Or don’t communicate them correctly.”
“Organization is impossible without compromise,” Evers said, the webbing around his eyes crinkling with amusement.
“Granted,” Nigel said judiciously. “But I seem to’ve run smack into situations where I couldn’t see the motivation—”
“You mean NASA has screwed up the Snark business.”
“You were going to. Your message to the Snark was a balls-up.”
“Probably. But that was because we didn’t have your input.”
“You weren’t in the mood, it seemed to me.” “You’ve got to understand where I’m coming from here, Nigel,” Evers murmured, hunching forward.
“How so?”
“I’m the kind of guy I am because of what I’ve done. I had a pretty bumpy career until the Chinese Trigger. I took a look at the intelligence estimates, sure, everybody did. Hell, I’ll bet lots of guys had it cross their minds that the slants might have a joker in the deck. It’s one thing to guess, it’s another to act.”
“Surely we agree on that.”
“Check. You did, too, at Icarus.”
“With middling results.”
“Sure, but you followed your nose ’cause you had to. I respect that. I went out on a limb and depth-bombed those subs and I was right.”
“So Commander Sturrock could become a national hero.”
“Yeah. Well, you know …” A shrug. “Gottlieb got it straight, though.”
“You’ve done pretty well in the government.” “So-so. That little venture when I was undersecretary—you know, in ’17, breaking the back of that metals cartel—bought me more enemies than I thought it would.” He paused and seemed to pull himself out of a private mood, straightening up as his flexchair moved to accommodate him. “But I’m back on my way again. Moving up. And I’m kind of a renegade myself, Nigel, I guess that’s what I’m saying.”
“I can see that. I never said I didn’t respect you.”
“No, you didn’t. But then”—he chuckled—“I never asked.”
“I suppose,” Nigel murmured carefully, “we simply have different feelings about how organizations should be used.”
“Check. Down where I come from, Nigel, near Mobile, there’s an old story. Back in the days when the South was down, way down, there was a lot of trouble, over race, y’know. Somebody from the North, down to help straighten things out, asked a relative of mine if he didn’t have to watch what he said in favor of black people, living down there, and considering the attitude of the police and so on.”
“Yes.”
“So my relative thought a minute and said, ‘Why no, we don’t have to watch what we say. We just have to watch what we think.’”
Nigel burst into laughter. “I take the point,” he said, smiling.
“I can tell you’ve got your head screwed on right. All I’m sayin’ to you is that getting along with NASA is going to be a tradeoff—but you don’t have to watch what you think, not if you’re careful. Things aren’t that bad.” He squinted at Nigel warmly. “I made my way so far by defending the West, Nigel, and that’s the way I see this mission. Hell, only we may be defending the whole damned planet this time.”
“Umm.”
“Okay, I could be wrong.” He waved a hand. “We won’t argue. I’ve kind of let down my hair today so I could see what sort of guy you were, and it’s settled my mind. You’re a classy sort of astronaut, Nigel, the best and the oldest we’ve got. That British thing you’ve got going for you—it’s a big help with Americans, y’know. A big help. It’ll come in handy when I push this thing through.”
“So you’re going to back me.”
“Sure.” Evers relaxed. “I just decided. I want a guy out there I understand. I have a hunch the Snark isn’t going to give us a lot of warning when it decides to come Earth-side—probably on purpose, to be sure we can’t set up elaborate defenses. So we’ll be in a damned rush and there won’t be time for a lot of talk amongst ourselves. I don’t ask that you agree with me, but I have to understand you in order to know for sure what you’re saying, when your voice comes over a squawk box.”
Nigel nodded. Evers came to his feet and held out a hand, beaming. “Glad we had this talk, Nigel.”
He let a secret smile crease his face as he made his way back through the fluxing Mirrormaze hallway. It had gone quite well, all things considered, and his prior careful rummaging into Evers’s past now made sense. Nigel didn’t for a moment believe he’d seen the core of Evers, but there had been another layer, certainly, deeper than the no-nonsense bureaucratic sheen. Evers very probably thought the down home, good-ole-boy persona was the real Evers; if you spend time developing a role, you become it. But Nigel sensed something further. Inside every hard-edged executive there seemed to lie a shadow of the ambitious boy, and beneath that lurked whatever made the boy step on the first rung. Glad we had this talk, Nigel. A clear signal that Evers now thought of him as an ally, a team player, cheerfully backing Evers for his next leap upward. I want a guy out there I understand. Glad we had this talk. But Evers had done very nearly all the talking himself.
FOUR
It was deliciously pleasant to drift, restrained by the buckles and pads, and spin soft coils of illusion. Zero-g did that. Below, the random splotchings of craters wheeled, each slipping below the arched horizon before he had memorized it. An old friend lost without a farewell handshake; memory of a million such. When shaking hands, remember your manners, Nigel, take off your glove first (cold snatching at your fingers)…
His mind wandered.
Which wasn’t right, he told himself. He should stay alert. He was not here for the view. Nor did segmented tanks of high-energy fuel ride to the side of him, above, below, aft, for his own amusement. They waited for their signal, the soft percussion of a button, to apply the bootheel and send him straight into history.
Or into the abyss beyond Earth’s web, he thought. Hipparchus Control—awesome name for six sheet-metal huts buried in twenty feet of dust—had been a touch vague about the margin of error they had allowed for getting him back. Maybe there wasn’t any.
Off to his right the northmost rim of Mare Orientale slid into view, slate-gray sheets of lava cooled in their convulsions. The crater’s center lay a good fifteen degrees south of his near-equatorial orbit, but even at this low altitude he could see the marching mountain ranges that curved away from him, inward, toward the focus. He wondered how big the rock had been that caused that eerie effect: crests of ancient waves that froze into mountains. An enormous bull’s-eye in the moon’s ribs. Assassin’s knife. Death from an asteroid, a brother of Icarus—
“Hipparchus here,” a voice rattled and squeaked in his ear. “Everything’s okay?”
Nigel hesitated a moment and then said, “Shut up.” “No, it’s okay. We’ve calculated it out. We’re both of us in the moon’s radio shadow, as far as the Snark is concerned. It can’t pick up any of this.”
“I thought we weren’t taking any chances.”
