trouble?'
'I'll have to ask the boss.'
'Of course. But please do. We would greatly appreciate. Is there anything else I can do for you?'
Dannerman hesitated, then took the plunge. 'Your gamma-ray observer-'
'Yes?'
'I was just wondering, have there been any unusual gamma observations lately? In the last couple of years, that is?'
The German looked puzzled. 'Unusual? There are of course the bursters, but those occur all the time. Nothing unusual, however. Why do you ask?'
Dannerman backtracked swiftly. 'It was just something someone said. It's not important. Anyway, thanks for the plates.
After Dannerman passed the plates on to Harry Chesweiler, the German's question stuck in his mind. He wished he knew a little more about astronomy. Did this CLO have anything to do with Starlab? Did the fact that it wasn't a normal comet mean anything? Why was the man from Max-Planck asking about the satellite in the first place?
Colonel Hilda would want the answer to that, too, so Dannerman got into conversations on the subject as much as he could manage. He didn't get much. No one seemed to have access to the Starlab flight plan; Dr. Adcock was handling that directly with Commander Jimmy Peng-tsu Lin. No one really knew just what had happened to Starlab, not even Dr. Artzybachova, though she gave him a frosty look when he asked.
At the end of working hours, when all the employees were lining up at Janice DuPage's desk to collect their day's pay before inflation knocked another two or three per cent off it, he dawdled to ask more questions, with little more success. It wasn't that the people in line with him were unwilling to talk, but what they wanted to talk about was their own special programs-black holes, galaxy counts, red-giant stars, red-shift measurements.
When Dannerman got the conversation onto the prospective repair mission for Starlab they were happy to discuss that, too, or at least to discuss what a newly functioning Starlab would mean to their hunt for organic molecules in interstellar gas clouds, or for the 'missing mass' that seemed to concern some of them. Whatever that was. By the time the line carried Dannerman to Janice DuPage's desk he decided he didn't even know what questions to ask until he got more information from Colonel Hilda.
Then, as he was handing his cash card over to Janice DuPage for his pay, she said, 'Oh, there you are, Dan. Dr. Adcock wants to talk to you before you leave.'
And when he got to his cousin's office she glared at him. 'What's this I'm hearing about you? Why are you asking for the Starlab flight plan?'
He wasn't surprised that she asked the question; he had no doubt that Pat Adcock kept an ear to everything that went on in the observatory. 'I wasn't asking for myself, Pat. I got some data for Dr. Chesweiler from the Max- Planck people, and they were the ones who wanted to know. I thought it would be, you know, professional courtesy to give it to them.'
'Professional courtesy isn't your department. You aren't a professional here, and it's none of their damn business. You don't pass out any information to anyone outside the observatory without my personal approval. Ever. Do you understand that? And, another thing, Janice tells me that you've made a payment commitment to Cerro Toledo for their data; we'll have to pay it, but you ought to know you don't have any authority to do that, either. Dan, this just isn't satisfactory. I don't want to have to warn you again, but- Hold it a minute.'
Her screen was buzzing. Dannerman couldn't see the face on it, but he recognized Harry Chesweiler's voice. It sounded excited. 'I've got your orbital elements for the CLO, and they're damn funny. There's definite deceleration, and-'
'Wait, Harry,' she ordered, turning back to her cousin. 'That's all, Dan. You can go. Just be more careful in die future.'
He shared the elevator going down with two of the scientists, arguing over what the search for WIMPs really signified. They seemed close to coming to blows, so he interrupted. 'What's a WIMP?'
They paused to stare at him. 'Weakly interactive massive particle,' the postdoc who'd been talking to him about the missing mass said.
'Oh, thanks. And, say, long as I've got you, there's something else I've been wondering about. If there's a comet that radiates in gamma and EUV, and it is slowing down as it comes toward the Sun, what does that mean?'
The other man laughed. 'Means it isn't a comet, that's all. Maybe it's one of your fucking WIMPs, Will.'
'Jesus,' the postdoc said, 'what are you telling him that for? You know it couldn't be a WIMP. Maybe some old spacecraft?'
'You know of any old spacecraft that would be coming in toward the Sun, Will?'
'So it's probably just a screwed-up observation. Anyway,' the man said, getting back to his own subject, 'believe me, WIMPs are definitely out there, and they make the difference; they're why the universe isn't going to expand indefinitely.'
Dannerman gave up. He was glad enough when they came to the ground floor and he could get out. This debate about whether the universe would continually expand, or rebound to a point again, was sort of interesting, but not, as far as he could see, in any way relevant to any of the questions he was working on.
And, as far as he could know, it wasn't, of course. Because, of course, at that point Dan Dannerman had still never heard of the eschaton.
That night there was a call waiting from the lawyer, Dixler, begging him to have lunch with him the next day. That was a puzzle. Dannerman could think of no reason the lawyer would want to talk to him, and even fewer reasons why he would want to spend an hour with the man. But when he had reported in to Colonel Hilda she said, 'Do it. See what he wants.'
'It sounds like a waste of time to me.'
'So? We're the ones who're paying for your time, if we want you to waste it then you do it. Maybe he knows what your cousin is spending her money on.'
'What's that about her money?'
'She's liquidating assets, and it isn't just to pay off her lawyers. I'd like to know why. Something else, Danno. You didn't mention the query from Max-Planck about Starlab in your report.'
He stared at her. 'Oh, Christ, you've put a tap on the observatory lines.'
'No tap is allowed without a court order, you know that, and we can't apply for one without taking the chance that she'll find out about it,' the colonel lectured him. 'Of course we put a tap on their lines. I don't like this questioning by the Krauts, though. What do you suppose their interest is?'
'You could ask the Bay-Kahs,' he suggested.
'No, I couldn't, even if everybody wasn't going ape about the press secretary. But I did get some data for you, like on that old lady, Rosaleen-uh-'
' Artzybachova.'
'Sure. I think you ought to cultivate her. She's an instrument specialist; it says in her file that she helped design the original Starlab project. Is Starlab what she's working on there now?'
'I don't know what she's working on. She always blanks her screen before she lets me bring her tea in.'
'You need to get into their system, Danno. Your cousin's keeping secrets, and that's where she's keeping them, I bet.'
'Are you telling me you can't break her code?'
'It's a closed circuit. Get in. And, listen, Danno, I've been checking your file and you haven't been on the range for nearly two weeks.'
'I'll fit it in.'
'Damn right you'll fit it in. You want to keep your skills up. Martial arts, too, Dan, because you know what occurs to me? It occurs to me you'd make a pretty good bodyguard for your cousin.'
He protested, 'Mick Jarvas already has that job.' 'Maybe something can be arranged; I'll work on it. Any questions, outside of the usual one?'
'You mean the usual one that asks you what this is all about?' She sighed. 'Yes, that's the usual one, all right,
