Read Between the Stars for Free Online Page A

killed." She looked at the others as if they were strangers. "Excuse me, but I want to be alone with this—this thing. I have some ideas about it. I work better alone."
    "Perhaps," Fu said, "we might avail ourselves of Mr. Roseberry's excellent refreshment facilities."
    "You talking about the bar?" said Roseberry. "Sure, sure, come on. Linde, don't you starve in here. I seen you like this before."
    "Certainly,'' she said, distracted. "Just send in meals. I promise to eat. Now go."
    Discreetly, they made their way out. Had their been any real gravity, they would have tiptoed. Sieglinde never took her eyes from the green egg. In the bar, they drew drinks all around. It was a spherical room detached from the main body of the museum and consisted mainly of windows open to the starry vastness of the Belt.
    "Now, young Derek," said Fu, "it is time we got to know one another. Since your clan is as numerous as my own, you must forgive me for not having made your acquaintance before this." The Fus were not prominent in the Belt, but there were incredible numbers of them on Luna, on Mars and in the orbital colonies. Chih' Chin was one of the elders and by far the most famous of them. "Do you know Sieglinde well?"
    "I've seen her maybe a dozen times in my life," he admitted. "Mostly at family functions—weddings and funerals and so forth. She's not what you'd call one of the family favorites." He hastened to avoid a misunderstanding. "I mean, it's not like anyone's hostile, it's just," he groped for words, "I guess we're all in awe of her."
    Fu smiled. "She is not the most approachable of women. I must tell you her story some time. The real one, not the one everybody learns in school. My old friend Thor was probably the only human being to penetrate beneath the armoring she constructed around herself. She is not always as forbidding as when hot on the trail of some new scientific principle."
    "Fine woman," Roseberry said. "Crazier'n hell, but a fine woman." He nodded in vigorous agreement with himself.
    "One way or another," Fu said, "your discovery shall be of tremendous significance. It could not have come at a better time for us. Sieglinde believes that it may turn the balance in our favor for the coming conflict."
    What conflict? Derek thought. "Does she know what it is?"
    "She has a theory, based on the data released so far by Aeaea. On the way here she was devising tests to prove or disprove this theory. She did not tell me much."
    "You mentioned a conflict. I've been sort of out of touch in the Saturn orbit. Has something been going on?"
    "Ah, the young," Fu said with a heavy sigh. "They have so little grasp of public affairs. Of course, their elders have little more, but that is no excuse."
    Derek dialed himself a beer. He was in no hurry.
    "The last few years," Fu continued, "our peace with Earth has become increasingly fragile. A complete break is not far off. A new generation of leaders is gaining power, the economic and environmental situations are growing more desperate—"
    "They have only themselves to blame," Derek said.
    "And they certainly aren't going to do that, so who does that leave for them to blame? It has to be us, and the answer has to be another war."
    "Another war?" There had been no wars in his lifetime, and it wasn't something the Confederates glorified. Life could be hard and dangerous enough without people deliberately trying to kill one another. Once piracy, hijacking and raiding had been a constant hazard in the Belt, but no longer. After the Space War, the Confederacy had made use of the extensive intelligence and security networks built during the conflict to obliterate the outlaw gangs. Under the leadership of the redoubtable Hjalmar Taggart, the campaign had been brief and brutal. Since then, criminal activity had been rare. The Belt was no longer used as a dumping ground for Earth's undesirables, and the rougher element among the immigrants had settled into steady, if hard-bitten, citizens.
    That