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complete the connections into the power grid within a short time of the date
he had been speaking from in 2048, why weren't the modules connected? If
Garfax had set up the Columbus complex to supply power from almost thirty
years ahead, why didn't history record it as having happened? How could the
complex be both operating by 2048, and at the same time be abandoned and
uncompleted thirty years later? Scientists from
Washington to Moscow wrestled with the logical impossibilities of plastic
timelines, but every answer anyone suggested always seemed to pose ten new
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questions and contradict every other answer. Perhaps, as Norfield had said, a
totally alien kind of mind was needed to comprehend it a mind possibly endowed
biologically with different instincts and schooled in different processes of
experience to form its notions of what made sense and what didn't, what was
sane and what was crazy.
The grenades started coming down the timeline shortly thereafter. Garfax
announced that an explosive mine would be planted beneath the White House,
fused to detonate after twenty-seven years. The building was evacuated, and a
frenzied search by a Marine Corps bomb-disposal team uncovered a dummy device
bearing the sign Just Testing.
Garfax then advised that the next mine would be buried in a remote part of
Alaska, controlled by a high-precision electronic timer to explode at the
exact moment when Norfield was speaking. Norfield promptly made inquiries and
was advised that seismometers and Earth-orbiting satellites had detected a
blast only minutes previously at the spot that Garfax indicated.
Then things got serious. The next three one below the Los Alamos Laboratories
in New Mexico; one under the Capitol; and one at a Space Force launch facility
in Texas were all live, but Garfax gave sufficient early warning to allow
sweating teams of engineers to find and deactivate them before they timed out.
The next three, Garfax said, would not be revealed in advance. The Mount
Rushmore
National Monument collapsed into rubble twenty-four hours later. The ones
following the two that were left, Garfax said, would be nuclear.
It was all over.
A white-faced Gregory Norfield capitulated unconditionally, and orders went
out from ISA
Headquarters in Geneva for work on the lunar constructions to cease, and for
the power relays receiving the beams from the projectors in close solar orbit
to be moved away from Luna and redirected on
Nomad
. Garfax allowed three weeks for this operation and stated that no slippage
would be tolerated.
Fifty tons of TNT went off underwater a few miles out from the Golden Gate
Bridge to emphasize the point. The schedule was not allowed to slip.
The
Guam was the focal point of all the activities going on around
Nomad
, and groups of visitors from
Earth began arriving to play various parts in getting the operation together.
Included among them was a deputation of government and scientific executives
from Washington who had been coordinating the
Distant Solar Relay Program.
* * *
Carol first saw him over the top of the console at which she was working in
the
Guam
's message-exchange center. He was one of a group in business suits and
dresses, standing with some
Space Force officers, discussing something on one of the mural displays. He
hadn't changed in the year or more since she last saw him. His hair was as
black and glossy as ever, his eyes bright and alert, and as he spoke, his
mouth still broke into the natural, easygoing smile that had made her go
fluttery inside when she was a mathematics undergraduate of twenty. Amanda
smiled in exactly the same way.
She watched them for about twenty minutes while their discussion continued.
Then somebody called for a break, and the group broke up in different
directions. He stayed behind to study the screen, keying details into a hand
compad. Carol suspended the job that she was doing, got up, and moved quietly
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over to behind where he was standing. "Hi," she murmured.
Dr. Donald Yaiger looked around, and his face broke into a smile of delighted
surprise. "Carol!" He dropped the pad into a pocket and brought his hands up
to grip her shoulders. "You're here, on the
Guam
? I had no idea. It's a small universe. I thought you were still shuttling up
and down from
California."
"I transferred to a Fleet command five months ago," Carol told him, returning
the smile. "When did you arrive?"
"A day ago, with the DSRP group from Washington. We've been so tied up, I've
hardly seen anything of this ship. It's huge. . . ." Don released her and
shook his head. "It's just such a wonderful surprise . . .
about the last thing I'd have expected. So how've you been? How's Amanda?"
"She's just fine. I was just thinking how much she's got your smile."
"And Doreen?"
"Oh, you know her. She never changes."
"I watched her Chopin recital the other week. She was terrific. The audience
loved it. Did you see all the flowers? Did she get the birthday present I sent
her the perfume? Amanda told me once it was her favorite."
"Yes, and she loved it," Carol told him. "We both went there for the
afternoon. Amanda said that people should get all their birthday presents from
every year all together up front while they were still young, not have to wait
until they were old. Then they'd get more fun out of them than having to waste
all that time waiting. You can't fault her logic, I guess."
Don laughed. "Nobody can argue with Amanda logic. She'll go a long way, just
like her mother."
"So what are you doing yourself?" Carol asked. "I hear rumors that you're
doing well in the Relay
Program. That has to be why you're on the
Guam
. Where do you fit into this crazy business?"
Don glanced around. "You know, we don't have to stand here talking like this.
There must be somewhere we can grab a sandwich or something. How are you
fixed?"
"Not that busy," Carol answered. "The maindeck cafeteria isn't far. Come on,
I'll show you the way."
* * *
"It's bad news all-round," Don said over a half-eaten turkey club twenty
minutes later. "Norfield doesn't have any choice. We're having to back down
all the way along the line. Without the DSRP relays, the whole
lunar-construction program, and therefore the colonies program too, will have
to shut down. It will take years to begin putting the pieces together
again and even then, who's to say it will stop there? My feeling is that
Garfax will just keep squeezing harder and harder. Our whole space and energy
budget will end up being used to expand his economy. And there's no way out.
If we don't play ball, he'll start nuking cities. He's insane enough to do
it."
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