“Well, check it out for me, will you?”
“Certainly,” she said. “That’s what I’m here for.”
She waited for him to answer, to say something to her, anything. Even anger would mean that he cared.
Instead, he merely mouthed, “Thanks.”
He doesn’t care, she realized. He never cared. Not for an instant. He’s more worried about his goddamned computer program than about me.
“You’re quite welcome,” Jo said.
And hung up.
Stoner heard her voice, icy, as remote as the farthest star: “You’re quite welcome.”
The phone clicked dead.
The little bitch, he thought to himself. She’ll fuck anybody who can help her get what she wants. Well, I hope she’s enjoying herself with Big Mac.
He slammed the phone down, feeling the fury seething inside him, knowing that he was raging not at Jo, not even at McDermott, but at himself.
You’re quite a man, Stoner, he told himself. You sit here and let them hold you prisoner and tell yourself that your work is more important than personal ties and what you really want to do is kick the fucking door down and go out and grab her and carry her off to your cave.
“Just listen to that wind!”
Stoner jerked away from the phone to see Cavendish standing in the living room doorway, a brandy snifter in each hand.
With a deep, shuddering breath, he brought his raging emotions under control, forced his pounding heart to slow down, smothered the fury he felt burning inside him under a blanket of cold numbness.
“Are you all right?” Cavendish asked, crossing the big room toward him.
Stoner nodded, not trusting himself yet to speak. He accepted the snifter from Cavendish’s outstretched hand.
The old man lifted his glass and smiled wanly. “Cheers,” he offered.
“Cheers,” Stoner said. He sipped at the cognac. It slid down his throat like liquid fire.
Cavendish pulled the rocker up by the crackling fire and sat down with a weary sigh. “Quite a night out there,” he said. “Quite a night. You can hear the wind howling in the chimney.”
Going over to the easy chair that faced the old man, Stoner asked, “Why can’t you sleep?”
“H’mm? What?”
“You said you don’t sleep well.” It was a safe subject. Stoner could feel the anger damping down inside him, fading away to the hidden corner where it could remain without anyone knowing it was there.
“Bad dreams,” Cavendish answered, staring into the bright flames. “I was a prisoner of the Imperial Japanese Army for four years—just about the length of time it takes a photon to travel from Alpha Centauri to Earth.”
“Must have been rough,” Stoner said.
“Oh, that was only the beginning.” A heavy gust of wind rattled branches against the roof and Cavendish glanced up, his eyes haunted. “The Japanese moved us to Manchuria, you see, just in time to allow the Russians to capture us when they finally stepped into the Pacific war.”
“The Russians were on our side then.”
“They were on Stalin’s side. And Stalin decided that any scientist he could lay his hands on—even a young, starved, sick mathematical physicist—was going to stay in the Soviet Union and work for him, whether he wanted to or not.”
“They kept you in Russia?”
“In Siberia, actually. You boys had just set off your bloody atomic bomb, and Stalin was in an absolute sweat to catch up.”
“I thought they got their nuclear know-how from spies…”
“Nonsense! The only real secret about the atomic bomb was that it worked, that you could actually build one and it would explode satisfactorily. You gave that secret away at Hiroshima. Just as the biggest secret revealed by this alien spacecraft is that it exists—it came from somewhere other than Earth.”
“How long did they keep you inside Russia?”
“Years. Until Stalin died and his successors tried to ease tensions a bit. Even then, though, it wasn’t easy. They put me through hell and back before they let me go.”
“How come?”
Cavendish made a wry face. “The bloody KGB took it into their heads that I would make a marvelous espionage agent for them once I got back to England. I was treated to all sorts of brain-laundering techniques—and I do mean all sorts. That’s why I dread sleeping.”
His hands had started to shake.
“But you didn’t break,” Stoner said.
“Of course I broke! And I swore to them that I’d be a good Soviet spy for them. It took a lot to convince them, you know. They’re very thorough.”
Stoner just stared at him, waiting for more.
“Well, once I got home and my head cleared a bit, I went to British Military Intelligence and told them the entire story. They were delighted. MI told me that I could be a double agent, pretending to work for the Reds but actually working for the Crown.”
“Christ Almighty.”
“Quite. I didn’t want to work for any of them, but I’ve been doing both ever since. The reason I’m here, actually, is because both the KGB and British MI want me here.”
“You’re joking!”
“I wish I were. The Russkies have their own people puzzling over the radio pulses, but they don’t have a telescope in orbit that can give them data on the spacecraft. I’m supposed to funnel your Big Eye data to them.”
“Does the Navy know about this?”
“Your Navy? No. Neither does NATO, I believe. MI are curious about what you chaps are up to, you realize. Your Navy people haven’t shared their information fully with their NATO colleagues, as yet.”
“Cloak and dagger,” Stoner muttered.
“Indeed. In this business a man has no friends, you know. Absolutely none. Anyone could turn out to be your enemy. Anyone could turn out to be an assassin.”
“Assassin?” Stoner echoed. “You mean somebody might try to kill you?”
For the first time, Cavendish laughed. It was a thin, harsh, humorless sound. “Not me, dear boy. You. I’m merely a cog in the machine that both sides are working. If there’s an assassin lurking in the bush, he’s after your head, not mine.”
Stoner gaped at him. Slowly, he asked, “Are you trying to warn me, or…?”
The computer terminal suddenly erupted into clattering life. Stoner and Cavendish both bolted from their chairs by the fireplace and rushed into the dining room, where the typing unit was pounding away madly. Line after line of numbers sprouted on the long accordionfolded sheets of paper that passed through the machine’s roller.
“What is it?” Cavendish asked, the brandy snifter still in his fingers. “What’s it saying?”
“The latest fix on the spacecraft…” Stoner yanked the paper up so that he could read the first rows of figures at eye level without stooping over the chattering typewriter.
He gave a low whistle. “No wonder the computer had to chew on the data all night. The damned thing has changed its course.”
“What?”
“It’s accelerating.”
“Can’t be!”
“Look at this.” Stoner pointed to the numbers. “Here. And here again.”
Cavendish snapped impatiently, “It might as well be Sanskrit! I don’t know your language!”
“The spacecraft put on a burst of thrust,” Stoner explained. “Here and here.”
“It’s maneuvering? Changing course?”
“Yes.”
“Then there must be a crew on board!”
“Or a damned smart computer.”
“But where is it heading? What’s its new course?”
With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Stoner bent over the typewriter. Just as abruptly as it had started a few moments earlier, it stopped.
“Well?”