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yet on his life's ambition.
"Maybe it will, someday," he said aloud to Dietrich. "But it'll never be as
easy as in the old days, when we only had to protect a President after he was
elected." He shook his head. "I wish to hell Bounzer had never invented his
damn time-travel machine."
FINAL SOLUTION
Narda Jalal had finished her solitary dinner and was starting go load the
dishes into the sonic cleaner when the kitchen radio reached its five-thirty
timer setting and switched on.
"...Five-thirty world news survey. The Hasar Council of Ministers has
officially rejected the demand by the Lorikhan Nation that the minerals of the
Enhoav Basin be divided evenly among all the nations of
Kohinoor. Supreme Minister Zagro has said repeatedly that, since Hasar
provided ninety percent of the technology and funding used to crack the mantle
fault three years ago, the bulk of the project's rewards should be ours.
Lorikhan's threat of war over this issue is dismissed by the government as
mere bluff. The
Prima of Missai, meanwhile, has offered his nation's good services as
mediator-"
"Radio control: off," Narda called. Obediently, the radio fell silent.
Brushing a strand of hair from her face, Narda stared through the dishes by
the sink, her teeth clenched with abnormal tightness. So that
was it. Three years of negotiation had ended without anyone budging a single
centimeter, and once more the threat of war hung like a weapons satellite over
Kohinoor, circling and waiting to drop. And this time it wouldn't be just a
local flare-up over borders or water rights. The Enhoav Basin, that tremendous
treasure house of minerals torn forcibly from Kohinoor's molten insides, was a
potential Juggernaut in a world economy where even copper was selling for over
a hundred ryal per kilo. For the riches of Enhoav all the nations would fight.
All of them.
"Oh, God, please," Narda half-groaned, half-prayed. "Not another world war.
Please."
It seemed impossible to her that a single world could have so much war,
especially a world with
Kohinoor's history. Its founders had left Earth for the express purpose of
escaping warfare and conflict.
They'd been men and women of peace, if the history disks could be believed;
visionaries who believed there was a better way. What had gone wrong?
A motion across the street caught her eye. Looking through the window, she saw
their neighbor Mehlid step from his door, easel and paints in tow, and head
toward the row of hills a few hundred meters behind his house. He was a large
man, surprisingly well-built for an artist. Narda watched him as he walked
away, thinking of the long, sensitive fingers that seemed so out of place with
those broad shoulders-
With a sharp shake of her head she tore her eyes away, a hot rush of guilt
flooding her face with blood.
She had never been unfaithful to her husband, and she knew with absolute
certainty that she never would.
Why then did she find herself watching Mehlid so often, and with such
interest? It was wrong-wrong and uncomfortably juvenile-and yet she couldn't
stop.
A surge of anger flowed in to cover the guilt. It was Pahli's fault, she told
herself blackly; Pahli's and the military's. If they would just let the Susa
stay on patrol around Kohinoor instead of sending it out on so many deep-space
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surveys, she would have a man around the house more often. Pahli didn't have
to keep accepting these assignments, either.
No. She was being unfair, and she knew it. At least some of the tension on
Kohinoor was due to the lack of new frontiers, to the general feeling that
there was nowhere else to go. None of the other twenty-eight bodies in
Kohinoor's system was habitable, and the grand experiment with orbiting space
colonies had been horribly and tragically ended two wars ago. If Pahli and his
crew ever found a suitable world out there, the results would be well worth
one woman's minor inconvenience. On the heels of that thought came another,
more sobering one: if world war broke out the first battles would be fought in
space... and even small ships like the Susa would be prime targets.
With an effort, Narda pushed her fears from her mind. The news survey would be
over now, and some music would help her mood. "Radio control: on," she called.
She was in luck; they were playing something soft and peaceful. Picking up one
of the dirty dishes, she sent an involuntary glance through the window. Good;
Mehlid was out of sight. He was easy to ignore when not visible. Placing the
dish in the cleaner's rack, she thought about Pahli. What was he doing now,
she wondered... and was he thinking of her?
Pahli Jalal's thoughts were, in fact, a dozen light-years from his wife.
Specifically, they were on the massive object some fifty thousand kilometers
off the Susa's starboard bow.
"No chance that it belongs to Lorikhan or any of the others, is there?" he
asked Ahmar, his aide, as he studied the image on the telescope screens.
"None, sir." Peering at his bank of displays, Ahmar touched a button and then
shook his head.
"Completely unknown configuration and space-normal drive spectrum. Scanner
Section reports their star drive probably works on the same principles as
ours, but it's definitely not a standard Burke system." He glanced at the
commander. "Are we going to make contact?"
Before Pahli could answer, the helmsman spoke up. "Commander, it's changing
course-coming toward us!"
"Looks like the decision's been made," Pahli said to Ahmar.
"We could attack, sir, or even run," First Office Cyrilis pointed out. "Or
both; we could fire a torpedo salvo and be gone before they even knew the
missiles were on the way."
Pahli and Ahmar exchanged glances, and Pahli felt his jaw tighten momentarily.
Fight or run-it was always the same reaction to every problem. When, he
wondered, would humanity learn to solve conflicts with understanding and
mutual respect instead of with animal reflexes? "Recommendation noted,
Lieutenant.
We'll hold orbit here and see what they want."
"Yes, sir. Recommend we put weapons stations on full alert anyway, Commander.
Just in case."
Eyes still on the screens, Pahli waved an impatient hand. "All right. See to
it."
Cyrilis saluted and floated across to the main intercom board. Sotto voce,
Ahmar said, "I hope he doesn't blow them out of the sky before they even have
a chance to say hello."
Pahli shrugged. "I wouldn't worry about that. He's got better combat nerves
than either of us."
"Commander!" the scanner chief reported suddenly. "UV laser hitting us; coming
from the other ship.
Low-power, too diffuse to be a weapon. It seems to be frequency-modulated."
Pahli threw a tight smile at Ahmar. "I think they've said hello. Get a
recorder on that laser and turn
Cryptography's computers loose on it. I think there's also a package of basic
language instruction on file, isn't there?"
Ahmar nodded. "Disk file Ninety-three something, for opening communication in
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