Sharps drew a dot within the blur of the comet’s outgoing course. “There’s where we’ll be. Of course we won’t see a lot until the comet passes the Earth, because until it gets by we’ll be looking straight into the Sun to see it. Hard to observe then. But when it’s passed us, it should be quite a sight. There have been comets with tails across half the sky. See them in daytime. We’re overdue for a big comet this century.”
“Hey, doc,” Mark said. “You’ve got Earth right in that thing’s path. Could it hit us?”
Harvey turned to look daggers at Mark.
Sharps was laughing. “Chances are zillions to one against it. You see the Earth as a dot on the blackboard. Actually, if I drew this to scale you wouldn’t be able to see the Earth in the drawing. Or the comet nucleus either. So what’s the chance that a couple of pinpoints will come together?” He frowned at the board. “Of course, the tail is likely to go where we do. We might be in it for weeks.”
“What does that do?” Harvey asked.
“We went through the tail of Halley’s Comet,” Mark said. “Didn’t hurt a thing. Pretty lights, and—”
This time Harvey’s look was enough.
“Your friend’s right,” Sharps said.
I knew that. “Dr. Sharps, why do all the astronomers get so excited about Hamner-Brown?” Harvey asked.
“Man, we can learn a lot from comets. Things like the origins of the solar system. They’re older than Earth. Made out of primordial matter. This comet may have been out there way past Pluto for billions of years. Present theory says the solar system condensed from a cloud of dust and gas, an eddy in the interstellar medium. Most of that blew away when the Sun started to burn, but some is still in the comet. We can analyze the tail. The way we did with Kahoutek. Kahoutek was no disappointment to astronomers. We used tools we’d never had before. Skylab. Lots of things.”
“And that was useful?” Harvey prompted.
“Useful? It was magnificent! We should do it again!” Sharps’s hands waved around in dramatic gestures. Harvey glanced quickly at his crew. The camera was rolling, and Manuel had that contented look a sound man has when things are going well in his phones.
“Could we get something like Skylab up there in time?” Harvey asked.
“Skylab? No. But Rockwell’s got an Apollo capsule we could use. And we’ve got the equipment here at the labs. There are big military boosters around, things the Pentagon doesn’t need anymore. We could do it, if we started now, and we weren’t chicken about it.” Sharps’s face fell. “But we won’t. Too damn bad, too. We could really learn something from Hamner-Brown that way.”
The cameras and sound equipment were packed away and the crew went out with the PR lady. Harvey was saying his farewells to Sharps.
“Want some coffee, Harvey? You’re in no hurry, are you?” Sharps asked.
“Guess not.”
Sharps punched a button on the phone console. “Larry. Get us some coffee, please.” He turned back to Harvey. “Damnedest thing,” he said. “Whole nation depends on technology. Stop the wheels for two days and you’d have riots. No place is more than two meals from a revolution. Think of Los Angeles or New York with no electricity. Or a longer view, fertilizer plants stop. Or a longer view yet, no new technology for ten years. What happens to our standard of living?”
“Sure, we’re a high-technology civiliz—”
“Yet…” Sharps said. His voice was firm. He intended to finish. “Yet the damned fools won’t pay ten minutes’ attention a day to science and technology. How many people know what they’re doing? Where do these carpets come from? The clothes you’re wearing? What do carburetors do? Where do sesame seeds come from? Do you know? Does one voter out of thirty? They won’t spend ten minutes a day thinking about the technology that keeps them alive. No wonder the research budget has been cut to nothing. We’ll pay for that. One day we’ll need something that could have been developed years before but wasn’t — ” He stopped himself. “Tell me, Harv, will this TV thing of yours be big or will it get usual billing for a science program?”
“Prime time,” Harvey said. “A series, on the value of Hamner-Brown, and incidentally on the value of science. Of course, I can’t guarantee people won’t turn to reruns of ‘I Love Lucy.’ ”
“Yeah. Oh — thank you, Larry. Put the coffee right here.”
Harvey had expected styrofoam cups and machine coffee. Instead, Sharps’s assistant brought in a gleaming Thermos pitcher, silver spoons and sugar-and-cream service on an inlaid teak tray.
“Help yourself, Harvey. It’s good coffee. Mocha-Java?”
“Right,” the assistant said.
“Good.” He waved dismissal. “Harv, why this sudden change of heart by the networks?”
Harvey shrugged. “Sponsor insists on it. The sponsor happens to be Kalva Soap. Which happens to be controlled by Timothy Hamner. Who happens—”
Harvey was cut off by shrieks of laughter. Sharps’s thin face contorted in glee. “Beautiful!” Then he looked thoughtful. “A series. Tell me, Harv, if a politician helped us with the study — helped a lot — could he be worked into the series? Get some favorable publicity?”
“Sure. Hamner would insist on it. Not that I’d object—”
“Marvelous.” Sharps lifted his coffee cup. “Cheers. Thanks, Harv. Thanks a lot. I think we’ll be seeing more of each other.”
Sharps waited until Harvey Randall had left the building. He sat very still, something unusual for him, and he felt excitement in the pit of his stomach. It might work. It just might. Finally he punched the intercom. “Larry, get me Senator Arthur Jellison in Washington. Thanks.”
Then he waited impatiently until the phone buzzed. “He’ll talk to you,” his assistant said.
Sharps lifted the phone. “Sharps here.” Another wait while the secretary got the Senator.
“Charlie?”
“Right,” Sharps said. “Art, I’ve got a proposition for you. Know about the comet?”
“Comet? Oh. Comet. Funny you mention that. I met the guy who discovered it. Turns out he was a heavy contributor, but I never met him before.”
“Well, it’s important,” Sharps said. “Opportunity of the century—”
“That’s what they said about Kahoutek—”
“God damn Kahoutek! Look, Art, what’s the chance we could get funding for a probe?”
“How much?”
“Well, take two cases. Second best is anything we can get. The lab can cobble up an unmanned black box, something that goes on a Thor-Delta—”
“No problem. I can get you that,” Jellison said.
“But that’s second best. What we need is a manned probe. Say two men in an Apollo with some equipment instead of the third man. Art, that comet’s going to be close. From up there we could get good pictures, not just the tail, not just the coma, there’s a fair chance we could get pix of the head! Know what that means?”
“Not really, but you just told me it’s important.” Jellison was silent for a moment. “Sorry. I really am, but there’s no chance. Not one chance. Anyway, we couldn’t put up an Apollo if we had the budget—”
“Yes we can. I just checked with Rockwell. Higher-risk mission than NASA likes, but we could do it. We’ve got the hardware—”
“Doesn’t matter. I can’t get you a budget for that.”
Sharps frowned at the phone. The sick excitement rose in his stomach. Arthur Jellison was an old friend, and Charlie Sharps did not like blackmail. But… “Not even if the Russkis are putting up a Soyuz?”
“What? But they’re not—”
“Oh, yes, they are,” Sharps said. And it’s not a lie, not really. Just an anticipation—
“You can prove that?”