Dannerman was pretty sure the old man meant it, if only because he had a little bit of a guilty conscience over Dannerman's lost inheritance. But it would be embarrassing if he was turned down. He was surprised when the taxi stopped. 'Here you are, mister,' the driver said, friendlier now when tipping time was near. She pulled the slip with the ten-o'clock fare update out of the meter and handed it to him, peering over his shoulder at the plaque over the building door. 'Hey. What's this T. Cuthbert Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory business? I thought telescopes were, you know, like on the top of a mountain someplace.'
Dannerman glanced at the midtown skyscraper that housed the observatory and grinned at the woman. 'Actually,' he said as he paid the bill, 'until this morning, so did I.'
Time was, indeed, when astronomers shared the night with the bats and the burglars, huddling their freezing buns in drafty domes on the tops of snow-clad mountains. If they wanted to peer far into space, they had no choice. That was where the telescopes were. That was time past. In time present the camera had made the all-night vigils unnecessary. The spread of electronic communication and control exempted the astronomers from having even to show up anywhere near their telescopes-and the best of the world's telescopes, or at least the ones of that kind that were still working, weren't where they were easy to visit anyway. Like the Starcophagus, they were in orbit. But wherever the data came from, they arrived-processed, enhanced, computerized, and digitalized- at an observatory comfortably located in some civilized place.
Uncle Cubby's final gift to the world of astronomy occupied the top floors of the building, but of course there were turnstiles and guards between the street door and the elevators. Danner-man presented himself at the lobby desk and announced his name. That drew interest from the guard. 'You a relative?' he asked.
'Nephew,' Dannerman admitted. 'Mr. Dixler made an appointment for me to see Dr. Adcock.'
'Yes, sir,' the guard said, suddenly deferential. 'I'll have to ask you to wait over there until someone can show you to Dr. Adcock's office. It'll just be a moment.'
It wasn't just a moment, though. Dannerman hadn't expected that it would be. The observatory's private elevator doors opened and closed a dozen times before a large, sullen man came out and lumbered over to the holding pen. He was not deferential at all. 'You the guy from Dixler, J. D. Dannerman? Show me some ID.' He didn't offer to shake hands. When he had checked the card he passed Dannerman through the turnstiles and into an elevator, and only then introduced himself. 'I'm Mick Jarvas, Dr. Adcock's personal assistant. Give me your gun.'
Dannerman took his twenty-shot from his shoulder holster and passed it over. 'Do I get a receipt?'
The man looked at the weapon with contempt. 'I'll remember where I got it, don't worry. Who's this Dixler?'
'Family lawyer.'
'Huh. Okay. Wait here. Janice'll tell you when you can go in.' That ended the conversation, and Dannerman was left to sit in the waiting room. It didn't bother him. It gave him a chance to see what a modern astrophysical observatory was like. This one wasn't like the mountaintop domes he remembered from his childhood. It was full of people glimpsed down corridors, elderly men talking to young dark-skinned women in saris, groups drinking Cokes or herbal tea out of the machines, a couple of people sharing the waiting room with him and improving their waiting time by talking business on their pocket phones. What interested him most was the big liquid-crystal screen behind the receptionist's desk. It was showing a great pearly mural that he recognized as a picture of a galaxy, some galaxy or other; switched to a picture of what he took to be an exploding star; switched again to a huge photograph of an orbiting observatory. He had no trouble recognizing that. It was the one he had been studying on the way over; it was also, he was aware, the gift that had eaten up half of Uncle Cubby's fortune before he died. The observatory was Starlab-sometime uncharitably called Starcophagus, for the dead astronomer who was still orbiting inside it. Starlab was the ancient, biggest and best-but unfortunately no longer operational-astronomical orbiter of them all.
Dan Dannerman's only previous experience of an astronomical facility had been when he was four years old and his father had taken him to visit Uncle Cubby in the old optical observatory in Arizona. Starlab was quite different, and all the engineering specs he'd been able to dig out of the databank didn't make it real for him. Getting up, he strolled over to the reception desk and cleared his throat. 'Janice? I mean, I don't know your last name-'
'Janice is good enough,' she said agreeably. 'And you're Mr. Dannerman.'
'Dan. I noticed you were showing the Starcophagus on the wall a minute ago-' She had begun shaking her head. 'Is something wrong?'
'Dr. Adcock doesn't like us ever to use that word here. It's the Dannerman Astrophysical Starlab. Mostly we just call it Star-lab.'
'Thanks,' he said, meaning it; it was a useful bit of information for someone who was about to ask the boss for a favor.
'It used to be the Dannerman Orbiting Astrolab,' she went on, looking him over, 'but Dr. Adcock changed that. Because of, you know, the initials.'
'Oh, right,' he said, nodding. 'DOA. I see what you mean. I guess nobody wants to be reminded about the dead guy up there. Anyway, I was wondering if you could fill me in a little bit. I understand, uh, Dr. Adcock's trying to get a mission flown to reactivate it.'
'There's talk,' she admitted cautiously.
'Well, when's that going to happen, do you know?'
'No idea,' she said cheerfully. 'You'd have to ask Dr. Adcock about that-wait a minute.' She paused, squinting as she listened to the voice in her earpiece, and paid no further attention to him.
He went back and sat down. Evidently he was to be kept waiting for a while, as was appropriate for someone who wanted to ask a favor. He didn't mind. It was what he had expected from a cousin-by-marriage he hadn't seen for years, and wouldn't be seeing now if the Bureau had not taken a sudden and serious interest in just what the woman was up to.
CHAPTER TWO
Pat
Dr. Pat Adcock's morning was pure hell-crises in the money problem and the Starlab problem, not to mention all the usual Hurry of regular observatory problems-but she took the long way from the bursar's office to Rosaleen Artzybachova's anyhow. I 'hat way passed by the reception room, and that let her get a quick look at her waiting cousin Dan.
She let him wait. She was impatient to hear what Rosaleen had to tell her about Starlab's instrumentation. Then the bursar had had no good news for her, and she needed to do a little thinking about that. She needed, too, to think about whether she wanted to go out of her way, at this particularly hectic time, to find some kind of spot on the staff for her job-seeking cousin. It was not a good time to be adding to the payroll. On the other hand-
On the other hand, family was family, and Pat wasn't displeased to have one of her few remaining relatives ask for a favor. Especially when the relative was Dan Dannerman. So she rushed through her meeting with Rosaleen Artzybachova, door closed and electronics off; the woman might be old but she was still sharp, and she was doing a good job of tracing the history of all the additions and retrofits Starlab had suffered in its observing career. 'And there's nothing that would account for the radiation?' Pat demanded. 'You're sure?'
The old lady looked up at her thoughtfully. 'Are you getting enough exercise?' she asked. 'You look like you could use some fresh air. Yes, I'm sure.'
'Thanks,' Pat said, not answering her question. But when she got back to her own office the first thing she did, even before she closed the door, was to study herself in the wall mirror. It wasn't really exercise she needed, she told herself. It was rest. A good night's sleep, for a start, and no worries. But what were the chances of that?
While Pat's office door was open the walls were displaying a selection of the major current projects of the observatory: the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, with its new gamma-ray bursters; the huge mass of neutral gas in Capricorn that Warren Krepps was investigating; and, just for the sake of prettiness, some particularly nice shots of
