Страница 48 из 67
“I plan to be. Look, I’ll be on Atlantis again in less than a week, then straight back to Earth for the beanstalk landing and tether. I’ve sent you a list of equipment that I’ll want to take with me on the ship going out.”
“Wait until you’ve heard what I have to say, Rob. Then your plans may change. That’s the whole reason why I called you. We’ve found new evidence of Goblins.”
“What! More than the two you told me about?” Rob in his excitement leaned closer to the screen, so that the image of his intent face filled the whole wall display in Anson’s office. His eyes were alert, but everything else about his appearance suggested a man who had spent no time on personal care for many weeks. “When was it? A long time ago? Was it back when my parents were killed?”
“Stop right there.” Anson held up a well-manicured hand. “You’re asking four questions at once. Let me play you what I have, then you can ask questions. Get ready to record. This is audio only, but video wouldn’t add a thing.”
“Just a minute.” Rob cut in a data storage unit. The beanstalk control station, one of a dozen scattered between L-4 and synchronous orbit, permitted line-of-sight communications with Anson’s office back on Earth. To men who had been talking to each other with many seconds of round-trip delay, the fraction of a second that they were now experiencing was a pleasant luxury. Anson waited for the control check that would indicate that he could transmit straight to the recording mode.
“It’s not old information,” he said. “In fact, we almost missed it because it’s too new. We’ve been screening reports that mostly go back over twenty years. Then last week one of my people turned one up that’s only two weeks old. He got it from a `Can You Believe It?’ spot on a Tycho Base news station — just about the last place in the System that I’d have thought of looking. I was going to ignore it until I got to the physical descriptions, then I changed my mind and took a closer look. All right, get ready to record.”
“Well, it seems that the Little People are with us again, folks. At least, they are if you’re willing to believe Le
Anson held up his hand. “I’m holding the playback for a second, Rob. I’m used to the `Can You Believe It?’ spot, but if you don’t know it I ought to warn you. The news style is so cute you’ll probably throw up when you hear it. But I thought you ought to hear it word for word. Just ignore the form and settle for the content. All right? Then back to the recording.”
“Ole Le
So ole Le
Anson paused. “I’m going to skip a bit here, Rob. There were about three minutes of broadcast where Tinman Petey — that’s the name of the half-witted fistula who was doing the broadcast — tells his audience all about the way that he met his third wife. I don’t know what they thought of it, but it was too much for me. I’ll skip to the point where he gets back to talking about Le
“So Le
“It’s two little men, floatin’ inside the pod, and they’re bare as a baby, except for a sort of collar. They don’t move none, so Le
“They don’t move a bit. So Le
“Ole Le
“By now Le
“Would you believe it, over there on Medaris they don’t seem to want to listen to him at all?
“Seems like Le
“So there you got it, friends. What do you think? Do we have the Little People, moved out here mebbe now Earth’s not so friendly as it used to be? Or do you think there might be an engineer who’s firin’ skew on one or two jets? One thing’s for sure. We won’t know which, ’less one of you can take off after ole Le
Anson leaned across and flipped a switch. “There you have it, Rob. That’s the whole thing, except for Tinman Petey’s sign-off. And that’s the same every time.”
“You talked to Pascal?”
“Sure. Tinman Petey too. I couldn’t get much more than what you heard from either of them. Le
“Too much acceleration?” Rob interrupted. “That’s what it sounds like. Did Pascal check the drive log?”
“That’s the odd part. He had the same thought as you did, and he felt they must have been exposed to more than thirty gees. He looked at the drive log in the pod and all it had been used for was small control maneuvers. Nothing big. In fact, Pascal said that he didn’t think a Mischener can give much thrust, even at top power.”