She didn't answer that, but then she didn't need to. She simply steered him firmly out of the doors and around the corner to where a large truck was parked at the curb. The liquid-crystal display on its side glittered with the words NIITAKE BROS. MOVING amp; STORAGE, but Dannerman knew it was not going to be any ordinary moving van.
It wasn't. It turned out to be a complete mobile NBI surveillance station, with a Police Corps master sergeant saluting smartly as Colonel Hilda Morrisey brought him in.
'It's time for us to do a little business,' she said cheerfully. 'Take a pew, Danno. Want some coffee? A beer? We're pretty well stocked here, and Horace'll get you anything you want.'
'What I wanted was to be left alone for one damn evening with my friends.'
'Another time, Danno. How's it going?'
'As well as can be expected, considering you picked Korngold up the day before the opening.'
'Not me. They,' she corrected. 'They picked everybody in the operation up, but I wasn't involved. I've been off the Carpezzio business as long as you have, because your cousin's is more important. Let's have your report.'
She absorbed the news about the Floridian general and the diamonds without comment, but winced when he told her that the 'muggers' had broken Mick Jarvas's wrong arm. 'We'll have to do that another way,' she said resignedly. 'You've got to get his job, because she's going out to Starlab and you're going to have to go with her.'
He goggled at the woman. 'Into space? Nobody goes into space anymore!'
'She does; that's what she was bribing the general for. And she would've taken Jarvas along for muscle, but we'll have to change that.'
'You want me to go into space?' he said again.
'Why are you making such a big deal out of this? Lots of people have gone into space.'
'Not the Bureau! And not recently for almost anybody.'
'Well, until recently the Bureau didn't have a reason.'
He looked at her more carefully. 'Something's happened,' he said.
'That data from your cousin's file happened, Danno,' the colonel said triumphantly. 'I knew there'd be something there. You know what it was? Synchrotron radiation!'
He said impatiently, 'Cut the crap, Hilda. I don't know what that is.'
'Well, neither do I, exactly. But that's what started your cousin off. Seven or eight months ago the observatory was trying one more time to reactivate the satellite, and they detected a burst of this synchrotron radiation coming from it.'
'But you said to check into gamma radiation.'
'I know what I said. The agent who passed the word along must've gotten it wrong; anyway, the word is it's definitely synchrotron, not gamma. There wasn't much of it. It lasted just for a few seconds. But it was definite, according to your cousin's analysis, and the thing is, there isn't supposed to be anything on Starlab that could cause it.' She paused, studying his face. 'So you know what that means? Something's been added to Starlab.'
'Are you going to tell me what that is?'
'I'll show you, as much as we know. Horace? Will you start the simulation now, please?'
The sergeant touched one button, and the inside of the truck body went dark; touched another, and the simulation tank at the front of the body lit up with a picture of Starlab, sailing along in its perpetual fall toward Earth, with its ruff of solar panels soaking up photovoltaic power to run the instruments that were no longer responding, and its huge collector eyes staring un-seeingly out at the universe.
'As you can see,' Hilda instructed, 'it's big. That's because it was designed to let astronomers live there for weeks at-'
'I've seen all this, Hilda. It's no secret. Christ, they've got a model of the thing in the observatory waiting room.'
'Don't rush me, Danno. We're coming to what you haven't seen. This is stuff we got from your cousin's observatory records. She had this whole segment deleted from the public bank-decided to keep it a secret, I guess-but once our technicians knew what to look for they had no trouble retrieving it. This is enhanced imaging, otherwise you couldn't see anything at all. Watch that little thing coming in from the upper right.'
'I see it.' It was a nearly featureless lump, by comparison with the huge Starlab no bigger than a football. It slipped past the great solar vanes and gently caressed the sheathing of the main body of the satellite. It didn't bounce away. It stuck where it touched. Then, while Dannerman watched, the object draped itself to the curvature of the shell. In a moment it was almost invisible again, except as a nearly imperceptible swelling of the hull.
'So what the hell is it?' Dannerman demanded. 'Space junk?'
'Did that look like junk? It didn't crash into the satellite, did it? Looks to me like it docked with the son of a bitch.'
'What then?' As the idea struck him: 'Does it have any connection with the CLO?'
'Good question,' she said approvingly. 'I ran that past the experts as soon as they dug out the clip on the object. They said no. They said this thing was way too small to be taken for a comet, although they couldn't turn up any later observations of the object; lost it somewhere, I guess. But they didn't exclude the possibility that this thing had come in on the CLO and been dropped off.'
'Like a probe?'
'I guess. Anyway, they're pretty sure it is some kind of an artifact.'
'Well,' he said reasonably, 'if it's an artifact somebody would have to put it in orbit. Who's been launching spacecraft lately?'
'Nobody. Not openly, anyway.'
'Some terrorist bunch?'
'God, I hope not. If there's some kind of technology that can launch an artifact without anybody detecting it we need to know about it. If terrorists got hold of it… well, can you imagine what it would mean if the Mads or the Irish or the goddam Basques could put up their own satellites?' She shrugged expressively, then added, 'But maybe that would be better than the other possibility, at that. Your cousin seems to think it's extraterrestrial.'
'But that doesn't make any sense, Hilda! If she thought that, why would she keep it a secret?'
'Money,' she said shortly.
'From what, damn it?'
'Oh, Danno,' she sighed, 'you know what your trouble is? You just don't think like a normal human being. You aren't greedy enough. Think about it: some kind of technology that can produce synchrotron radiation where there isn't supposed to be any. The brains tell me that it can't be done without a big particle accelerator-those things that run out of subway-tunnel kind of things, fifteen or twenty miles long. So that means there has to be some pretty hot hardware up there. If it's alien, it's worth money to whoever finds it. For us, on the other hand, it doesn't matter whether it's from some weirdo ET or somebody on Earth; we want it.'
'So let the Bureau send a mission up to get it,' Dannerman said reasonably.
She shook her head. 'That's one option, sure. But maybe we can't. It's tricky. Starlab's private property; your uncle paid for it out of his own pocket. Maybe we could get around that- that's what we've got lawyers for, for God's sake-but then there's the other problem. We don't want to alert other people to what's going on. The goddam Europeans might send up a mission of their own if they knew we were after something; they can move faster than NASA, and you know there's no security there. And anyway the goddam Floridians still control the launch facilities.'
'So?'
'So-probably-the final decision hasn't been made, because too many of the top people are all tied up with the press-secretary thing-so probably we want to let her go ahead, but send one of our own along to make sure we get first crack at whatever's there.'
'Ah,' said Dannerman glumly. 'Like me, you mean.'
'Exactly like you, Danno, so you have to take Jarvas's place. I've got an idea about that. Sergeant? Kill the display and let's have some light again while we brief Agent Dannerman on what he's going to do for us.'
As she turned to get something out of a locker, Dannerman tardily remembered the other thing that had been on his mind. He sneaked a look at his watch.
It was late. The play would be long over before he got away from the colonel. And so he wouldn't be keeping his promise to meet Anita backstage; which meant that probably that particular problem had already settled
