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expressionless and pleading. "Come on," Sturgis said, from the other end of
the room. Carter continued printing.
A SERIES OF MINOR TREMORS HAS CONTINUED. NO DAMAGE REPORTED TO POLAR
STATION. ON STAFFORD SITUATION, NO FIRM NEWS, BUT WILL DO INTERVIEWS
AND TRY TO GET SOMETHING. HOLD FURTHER REPORTS ON STAFFORD UNTIL I
COMPLETE SATISFACTORY STORY. I WILL REMAIN HERE FOR TWO MORE WEEKS
AND WILL PARTICIPATE IN FIELD TRIP TO GATHER MORE INFO ON SEISMIC NET
STORY AND ON THE RESULTS OF THE EXTENSIVE POLAR STRATA EXCAVATIONS.
WILL BE IN TOUCH.
ANNIE
"How's that?" Carter said in an offhand way as Sturgis picked up their papers.
Sturgis perused Annie's paper first,then read what Carter had written. "Cute,
Carter. Nice try." He struck out the phrase about the excavations. "We don't
need that little bit about digging. Otherwise, they're perfect. I congratulate
you." He handed the papers to the aide at the head of the table. "Okay.
Run the semantic tests and then send them. Send them."
"Somebody told me once," Carter whispered later in Annie's ear, "when you're
writing a report for a bureaucrat, you put in something so stupid even the
bureaucrat can spot it. He takes it out. Then it becomes his report. I figured
it would work for Sturgis. When he took that line out about excavations, he'd
love the rest and feel he had done his bit for truth, justice, and the
American way."
Sturgis was outraged when IPN broke the story late that afternoon. Sturgis
denied everything, but IPN
had opened Annie's file of notes. The News-net headline ran STAFFORD
DISAPPEARANCE ON
MARS: NEW CLUES POINT TO SOUTH POLAR RESEARCH STATION. The story cited rumors
from highly placed sources suggesting Stafford might have been picked up by a
hopper from the Polar
Station. Then the calls came in from all four of the major global nets. None
of them knew about the artifact; they did not know what questions to ask, but
they wanted answers.
Sturgis drafted evasive replies, in a doomed effort to preserve the secret.
The nets replied that their people were already on the way.
29
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2031 ,MARCH 8, SUNDAY
Carter, Annie, and Philippe were feeling a heady glow of victory as they
headed the next morning toward the "tower," a room atop the South Polar
Station, surmounted by a clear dome that gave a commanding view of the sky and
the bleak polar hills, swept by bone-colored snow.
Sturgis and his crew were bustling around when they came in. Stafford, silent
in the background, nodded to them.
When they arrived, Carter recognized the odd mixture of exhilaration and
apprehension he felt in these domes: being under the sky without a suit. The
pink light filtered everywhere. High clouds scudded overhead. He wondered if
such clouds had existed in the initial years, before the pressure went up.
The story was out and the networks' reporter-stringers were on the way. The
die had been cast and the world would never be the same. Make that two worlds,
he thought both Mars and Earth. He could not identify a specific moment when
he had decided to accept Annie's plan. He felt as if it had been something
growing inside him, not a decision he had arrived at consciously. When the
opportunity caught him by surprise, he had acted by instinct.
Last night, when Annie curled indivisibly against him, she had whispered, "You
will go down in history, you know. You figured out where Stafford was, and you
wrote the words that broke this thing wide open. I'll write it that way,
because it's true." True? How many heroes, described in the books as
clear-eyed visionaries, had really thought anything out? How many had merely
reacted to some spur-of-the-moment poll of conflicting inner voices?
"So I rate a page in your book?"
She nudged against him. "I'd say you definitely rate a page in my book."
Carter noted with guilty satisfaction that Sturgis was livid; he looked like a
man harassed on all sides.
Within an hour of the messages going out, yesterday afternoon, Sturgis had [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]