Read Between the Stars for Free Online

it?"
    "Who knows where that woman is? She's been notified, but she hadn't showed at the time of my last communication. Nobody controls her movements, but she must be far away to miss something like this."
    Carstairs knew her habits better than most. Once, when his intelligence service had her located in Jovian orbit, she had walked into his maximum-security office in Geneva. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Ambassador. Please keep me informed of future developments."
    "I'll keep the whole world informed, Mr. Carstairs. This could be the beginning of a new age for humanity." The hologram faded.
    He shook his head. "Bastards still talk like that. Rough as it is out there, I don't know why they haven't had the optimism kicked out of them yet."
    Valentina shrugged and finished her Scotch. "Pioneer spirit, I would imagine. You want me to find out what they really know about Object X?"
    "Exactly. It won't be easy, because you'll not only have Confed security to contend with, but another U.N. team or two on the same mission. Also, Larsen and Shevket will send someone as well. That's where the real danger will be. Whatever this thing means, I don't want it in the hands of those two."

THREE

    Sieglinde wasn't alone when she arrived. Derek broke off a chess game with Roseberry to meet her at the airlock. She smiled at him as she came in. Her appearance had changed little in the previous three decades. She was a small, compact woman with short, blonde hair. As she hugged him, he saw the man behind her. He was Chinese, wearing the utterly incongruous robes of a Confucian scholar. He knew this had to be Chih' Chin Fu, another of the legendary figures of what were, to Derek, the "early days" of the independent Island Worlds.
    "It's so good to see you, Derek! You know Chih' Chin Fu, don't you? You don't? Well, surely you've heard of him."
    "Who hasn't?" Derek said. He took Fu's hand. Spacers never actually shook hands, an operation that could be dangerous in zero-gee. Fu had been the media wizard of the war. While the Confederate forces and the outlaw Defiance Party had fought the military end of the war, Sieglinde had dominated the scientific end and her husband, Thor, had been the leader in Confederate Diplomacy. Throughout, Fu had handled the propaganda war, for years bombarding Earth with a relentlessly accurate picture of exactly what was happening. Everyone agreed that it had been Fu's propaganda campaign, enabled by Sieglinde's inventions, that had finally brought Earth to the peace talks.
    "Honored, sir," Derek said. As he looked more closely, he saw that the frail old man before him was actually in his vigorous middle years. The elderly effect was the result of makeup, for what reason he couldn't imagine. People like Sieglinde and Fu were renowned for their eccentricities.
    "So you are the young man destined for the history books?" said Fu. "I envy you."
    "Maybe on Rhea they'll build a monument to my sore toe," he said. As he led the pair to the lab where the egg was stored, he told them his story. At the lab, Sieglinde stared at the thing in rapt silence for a full twenty minutes, then she turned to Derek.
    "Finding it may have been blind luck, " she said, "but getting this one here undetected was sheer genius. From now on, you can write your ticket with the family."
    "Actually," Derek said, "what I really need is some fuel. See, I—"
    "I brought it. This is an unbelievable opportunity. Now I can conduct my own investigation without bother from those idiots on Aeaea, or the Institute for Arts and Sciences." It seemed odd to hear the most formidable institute for applied technology and the most distinguished body of abstract scientists in human history thus referred to, but Derek said nothing.
    "I think," Roseberry said hesitantly, "old Ugo has a message for you, Linde."
    "I know he has. He has them for everybody and every occasion. I'll be damned if I'll listen to another one. I still think it was that last one that got poor Thor