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the damage you might cause."
"Yes. I see that."
_Do you?_ Hicks asked himself. And then, examining Crockerman's suspicious,
half-lidded expression, _Yes, perhaps you do...but that won't stop you._
17
Octobers
Arthur unfolded a newspaper as the Learjet taxied across the runway. On a far
apron, B-l bombers lined up, their sleek tan, gray, and green shapes obscured
by a layer of early morning sea haze. It took a few seconds for him to focus
on the headlines. His thoughts were still on Harry Feinman, and on the
autopsy.
The Guest had no discrete internal organ structure. Stuffed within the
thoracic cage was shell-pink tissue continuous except for occasional cavities,
more like a brain than anything else. The head consisted of the Lexan-like
articulated bone material, arranged in large solid masses, with no discernible
central nervous system. Small nodes the size of BBs interrupted the continuity
of the bone; they appeared to be made of some sort of metal, perhaps silver.
Harry would soon be undergoing his own probing and examination in Los Angeles.
The plane completed its taxi and began to accelerate down the runway, small
jets screaming thinly beyond the insulated walls.
Arthur focused on the newspaper. The front page headline read, PRESIDENT ON
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SECRET
DEATH VALLEY VISIT
Details Unclear:
May Be Related to Australian Aliens
The same unscrambled transmission that had brought Trevor Hicks to Furnace
Creek had led other reporters, just hours later, to reach similar conclusions.
Hicks had struck a mother lode. The others had had to make do with testimony
from inhabitants of Shoshone and one phone call to Furnace Creek Inn that had
gotten through to the apartment of a maid who spoke only Spanish. Bernice
Morgan had not been interviewed. _Perhaps Crockerman persuaded her,_ Arthur
thought, tracking the story several times to see if he had missed any telling
details.
General Paul Fulton, Commander in Chief of West Coast Shuttle Operations, was
on the flight with Arthur. He came forward as soon as they were in the air and
had finished their climb to 28,000 feet.
"Ah, the good old free press," he commented, taking the neighboring seat.
"Pardon me, Mr. Gordon. We haven't had time to just sit and talk."
"You're going back to testify?"
"Before some key congressmen, before the Space Activities Committee senators
God only knows what Proxmire is going to make of this. How he got on that
committee in the first place is beyond me. The man's politically immortal."
Arthur nodded. He felt as if his brain were mush. He had hoped to sleep
through the entire flight, but Fulton seemed to have something on his mind.
"A lot of us are worried about Crockerman's choice of Trevor Hicks. He's a
science fiction writer "
"Only recently," Arthur said. "He's quite a decent science writer, actually."
"Yes, and we actually don't fault the choice of Hicks, but we wonder about the
President's need to go beyond the...primary group. His staff and advisors and
Cabinet. The assigned experts."
"He wanted a second opinion. He mentioned that a couple of times."
Fulton shrugged. "The Guest shook him."
"The Guest shook me, too," Arthur said.
Fulton dropped the subject abruptly. "There will be two of our Australian
counterparts in Washington when we arrive. Flown in fresh from Melbourne. They
were spare parts down there, I suspect. The really important man Quentin Bent
is staying behind. Do you know him?"
"No," Arthur said. "There's something of a gap between the Northern and
Southern Hemispheres, science-wise, in all but astronomy. Bent's not an
astronomer. He's a sociologist, I believe."
Fulton looked dubious. "Your colleague, Dr. Feinman...Is he going to be able
to keep up?"
"I think so." Arthur recognized that he was taking a disliking to General
Fulton, and wondered how reasonable that was. The man was only trying to
gather information.
"What does he have?"
"Chronic leukemia."
"Terminal?"
"His doctors think it's treatable."
Fulton nodded. "I wonder if that's not a good diagnosis for the Earth."
Arthur didn't catch his meaning.
"Cancer," Fulton volunteered. "Cosmic cancer."
Arthur nodded reflectively and looked out the window, wondering when he would
find time to call Francine, talk to Marty, touch base with the real world.
Lieutenant Colonel Albert Rogers took the radio message in hand and climbed
out of the rear door of the communications trailer, down the corrugated metal
steps to the crunchy white sand. He didn't really want to think about the
implications of his orders; thinking on such an esoteric level would do him no
good whatsoever. The Guest was dead; Arthur Gordon had ordered his team to
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investigate the interior of the Furnace. Rogers would not allow anyone but
himself to do it.
He had been planning for such a mission. He had drawn incomplete diagrams of
the bogey's interior in a small notebook, little more than suppositions based
on length, height, width, and the angle and length of the tube running through
solid rock. Climbing the tube would present no problem even where it angled
straight up, he could take it like a rock climber in a chimney, back against
one side, legs/jackknifed and feet pressed against the other, inching his way
up. He would carry a miniature digital video recorder, smaller than the palm
of his hand, and a helmet-mounted finger-sized video camera. A Hasselblad for
high-resolution pictures and a smaller, lighter automatic film-packed 35mm
Leica completed his equipment. He doubted the investigation would take more
than a day. There was, of course, the possibility that the bogey was
honeycombed with interior spaces. Some-how, he doubted that.
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