[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] Mother Nature, hidden, working at her own schemes somewhere in the mantle of the planet. But, said some, what if it was the machine? Worse yet, what if the machine and Mother N. were working in some unholy alliance? There was nothing he could do about it. He tried to return to his immediate duties. First he put in a request to Lena for a formal review of possible damage to the station by the jolt. By midday, he was putting the finishing touches on the first draft of his report of Stafford's disappearance the disappearance that had suddenly become a nondisappearance. The others were right: In the big picture, his report would be moot. He needed to supply some written record to keep the bureaucracy off his back, but his official role had been reduced to irrelevance. Except that now, Annie had put this bomb in his hands and thrust him back onto center stage. Page 188 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html Throughout this mess, he reflected, Annie always had her goals laid out, while he was always improvising. But her determination seemed too simple. It was as if she could avoid uncertainty merely by announcing a reporting objective. She was ever the journalist, with a one-track mind. It must be nice, he thought, just to hop around the solar system asking questions, cavalierly making friends and enemies, taking responsibility for no one. Having no planet depending on you. And Stafford had a point: The scientists would, in any case, soon report the discovery anyway. Even without Sturgis's spooks, they would have kept the discovery quiet for months, getting the bugs out, getting it just so,putting together their just-so stories. This whole crisis about beating Sturgis's deadline was the kind of issue he hated, manufactured by those looking for some moralistic point to outrage themselves. Why not stop whining and let them release their report in a few weeks, by the end of March. Maybe he should go talk to Stafford. Get a commitment that they would put it out on time.... There was even the chance that Annie was bluffing. A small voice urged him to consider that while her code might be real, she might not have any automatically timed message in files. It was another one of her ploys to sucker him in, use him to get the story out. He put away the thought. He didn't want to think about her this way. By late morning, the seismic triangulations had been refined. The original tremor and the continuing tremors originated directly below the far node of the alien device. "You know what I'm going to do when this is all over?" Philippe was being his expansive self, at lunch with Carter. "I sketched plans last night while you were, um, occupied." He smiled. "I would like to make a monument at the present day pole. They left their monument. We should leave ours. A real pole. Big, .aluminum, right at the true pole of rotation, homage to their tubes, or whatever they are." This was when Annie came by. She listened for a moment. "What's the point, Philippe?" she challenged him. "Right now, we've got..." "The point? It will be there for all time, just as their monument is. Two species' monuments. Besides, it will confuse the hell out of the next species to visit Mars, a billion years from now. Figuring out the relationship between the two installations." Philippe's eyes sparkled. "I don't want it to be too phallic. Still... it ought to be a pole. The pole that marks thesouth pole . In the long term..." "For me," Annie interrupted, jokingly, "I don't care about the philosophy anymore; I just want to get Sturgis where I want him." Carter glanced around the room. He had seen some of Sturgis's crew sitting at a table, dressed slightly too neatly. No one seemed to be hearing them. Philippe stared at her, hard. "Look, this discovery will come out, one way or another. Four hundred years from now, what will people remember about this year? The pitiful political issues surrounding the discovery? No. The discoveryitself, and what we do with it. That is why I do what I do. I sit [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl blacksoulman.xlx.pl