Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [26]
Greg pointedly glanced at his watch. "Got to be in the office at five A.M.," he said. "The market's going crazy. And after that show, it will be worse."
"Huh?" Tim frowned. "Why?"
"Comets," Greg said. "Signs in the sky. Portents of evil change. You'd be surprised how many investors take things like that seriously. Not to mention that diagram the professor drew. The one that showed the comet hitting Earth."
"But it didn't," Pat protested.
"Tim! Could it?" his mother demanded.
"Of course not! Didn't you listen? Sharps said it was billions to one," Tim said.
"I saw it," Greg said. "And he said comets did hit the Earth, sometimes. And this one will be close."
"But he didn't mean it that way," Tim protested.
Greg shrugged. "I know the market. I'm going to be in the office when the big board opens—"
The phone rang. Tim looked puzzled. Before he could get up, Jill answered it. She listened for a moment, then looked puzzled as well. "It's your answering service. They want to know whether they should put through a call from New York."
"Eh?" Tim got up to take the phone. He listened. On the TV a NASA official was explaining how they might, just might, be able to get up a probe to study the comet. Tim put the phone down.
"You look dazed," Penelope Joyce said.
"I am dazed. That was one of the producers. They want me to be a guest on the 'Tonight Show.' With Dr. Sharps, Pat, so I'll meet him after all."
"I watch Johnny every night," Tim's mother said. She said it admiringly. People who got on the 'Tonight Show' were important.
Randall's documentary ended in a blaze of glory, with photographs of the Sun and stars taken by Skylab, and a strong plea for a manned probe to explore Hamner-Brown Comet. Then came the last commercial, and Tim's audience was leaving. Tim realized, not for the first time, just how far apart they'd grown. He really didn't have much to say to the head of a stockbroker firm, or to a man who built town houses, even if they were his brother-in-law and his brother. He found himself mixing drinks for himself and Penelope (Joyce!) alone.
"It felt like opening night in a bad play," Tim said.
"In Boston with an allegory and the Shriners are in town," Joyce teased.
He laughed. "Hah. Haven't seen Light Up the Sky since … by golly, since you were in that summer drama thing. And you're right. That's what it was like."
"Poo."
"Poo?"
"Poo. You always did think like that, and there never was any reason to, and there isn't one now. You can be proud Tim. What's next? Another comet?"
"No, I don't think so." He squeezed lime into her gin and tonic and handed it to her. "I don't know. I'm not strong enough on theory to do what I really want."
"So learn the theory."
"Maybe." He came around and sat next to her. "But anyway, I made the history books. Skoal."
She lifted her drink in salute. She wasn't mocking him. "Skoal."
He sipped at his drink. "I'll follow it as far as it goes, whatever else I do. Randall wants another documentary, and we'll do it, if the ratings aren't too bad."
"Ratings? You worry about ratings?"
"You're teasing me again."
"Not this time."
"Hmm. All right. I'll back another documentary. Because I want it. We'll go heavy on the space probe. With enough publicity we might get the probe up, and somebody like Sharps really will understand comets. Thanks."
She put a hand on his arm. "You're welcome. Run with it, Tim. Nobody else here tonight has done half of what they want to do. You've already got three-quarters, and a shot at the rest."
He looked at her and thought, If I married her, Mom would heave a great sigh of relief. She was in that limited class of women. They all seemed to know his sister Jill; they'd gone east to college, and to New York during vacations; they'd broken the same rules; they were not afraid of their mothers; they were beautiful and frightening. The sex urge in a teen-age boy was too powerful, too easily twisted and repressed. It made the beauty of a young woman into a flame, and when that flame was coupled to total self-confidence … a girl like any of Jill's