Read Sidney's Comet for Free Online Page B

salute of the Brigade.
    “I am not to be disturbed in here!” Mayor Nancy Ogg snapped, treading water at the center of the pool. Her eyes stung, and she blinked, thinking, Too much chlorine in the pool again — Doesn’t anyone ever listen to me?
    “But it’s a radio call . . . by microwave from Earth.”
    The Mayor scowled, then muttered something and swam smoothly to where the sergeant stood. As she grasped the plasticized pool edge, the tele-cube dropped to meet her, hovering in midair before her mouth.
    “This is Mayor Nancy Ogg.”
    “Nancy?” Hudson’s voice crackled over the distance and immediately there came a scramble-code beep.
    She motioned the sergeant away. Her eyes followed Rountree’s buttocks, then moved up his muscular back to the broad shoulders and wide neck.
    Rountree flicked a glance at her as he pushed through a double exit door. She saw him smile.
    “Yes, darling,” Mayor Nancy Ogg said to Hudson.
    “I’ve just come from a meeting with the President,” Hudson said, breathlessly. He sat on the edge of his desk, spoke into an intercom.
    “And how is my dear brother?”
    “He is well.”
    “Do you love me, Richard sweets?”
    “You know I do.”
    Mayor Nancy Ogg detected irritation in the tone, then asked: “And that is why you called? To tell me you love me?”
    Hudson scowled. “No, There are problems here on Earth.”
    “You haven’t called me for almost two weeks. Why not?”
    “I’ve been busy, Nancy. You know of the comet?”
    “Rumors,” she said, kicking the water playfully. “Tell me you love me.”
    “Nancy, I don’t have—”
    “Say it.”
    The line beeped.
    “All right. I love you. Now will you listen to me?” In his New City office, he could hear water splashing at Nancy’s end and realized she was in her pool. Hudson shook his head slowly in exasperation while staring out the window at an autocopter as it landed in a cloud of dust on a nearby rooftop. Sunlight flashed off the windows of the autocopter.
    Mayor Nancy Ogg swam on her back to the center of the pool. The tele-cube followed her, remaining in midair several centimeters above her mouth. “I’m listening,” she said.
    “The comet is not a rumor, Nancy.”
    “Oh come now, Dick. Our therapy cells are overflowing with doomies. But you’re not going to tell me that—”
    “I don’t have time to explain, but the danger is very real.”
    Mayor Nancy Ogg swam to the opposite side of the pool. The tele-cube followed her, and she spoke as she climbed out of the water. “Can it be stopped?’
    “Saint Elba is the closest orbiter to the flightpath of a ship we’re sending . . . and you have the manufacturing facility we need . . .”
    “I get the feeling I’m not going to like what you have to say next,” she said, throwing a towel over her shoulders.
    “Pay close attention to this. You must construct two E-Cell powered mass drivers, type J-sixteen with twin R-eleven fire probes on each. Scale everything up twenty-eight times.”
    “Twenty-eight times? Are you kidding?”
    “Our calculations show it will scale up with no problem.”
    “No problem? We’ll have to hand-make a lot of this, with no molds, no standard parts that big. That will take time!”
    “Put everyone to work on it. This is a Priority One.”
    “We don’t have an assembly area that large.”
    Hudson hesitated as he heard a scramble code beep, said, “Knock out the partition walls in Hub Sections A and B.”
    “But we have work in progress in those areas, government contracts to fill . . . deadlines to meet.”
    “Stop everything else, and I do mean EVERYTHING. Move it all out. Catapult it. Whatever, but get it to hell out of there.”
    Mayor Nancy Ogg dried her legs angrily with the towel, said, “And even if we get the damned things built, how are we going to get them out? The space doors are too small! I know, I know . . . put a crew to work on that too—”
    “Finish the mass-drivers by Friday of next week. At