Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [84]
She giggled. "I meant down there. They have … those … in stores, to buy?"
"If you've got the money. Or good credit. Or even not-so good credit," Baker said. "Why? You want one? Hell, we'll find a way to get you one. You too, Pieter?"
"Could that be arranged?"
"Sure. No problem," Baker said. "I'll call the PR man at Texas Instruments. They'll give you a pair of them for the publicity. Help 'em sell more. Or would you rather have a Hewlett-Packard? Those use a different kind of notation, but they're fast—"
"That is what is confusing," Pieter said. "Two companies, two different rivals making such fine equipment. Wasteful."
"Maybe wasteful," Rick Delanty said, "but I can take you into any damn electronics store in the country and buy one."
"No politics," Johnny Baker warned.
"This ain't politics."
There was an awkward silence. Pieter Jakov drifted over to the UV camera with its digital readouts. He ran a hand lovingly over it. "So precise. So intricately machined, and the complex electronics. It is a real pleasure to work with your American machinery." He gestured around Hammerlab, at the containers of growing crystal, at the cameras and radars and recorders. "It is amazing how much we have learned on this short mission, thanks to your excellent equipment. As much, I think, as on any of our previous Soyuz flights."
"As much?" Leonilla Malik's voice was sarcastic. "More." Her voice held a bitterness that snapped three heads around in surprise. "Our kosmonauts go along for the ride. As passengers, to prove that we can send men into space and sometimes bring them down alive. For this mission we had nothing to contribute but food and water and oxygen—and one launch to your two."
"Somebody had to bring the lunch," Rick Delanty said. "Pretty good, too."
"Yes, but it is all we brought. Once we had a space program—"
Jakov interrupted in rapid-fire Russian. He spoke too rapidly for Johnny or Rick to follow, but what he was saying was obvious.
She answered with a short, sharp syllable and then continued. "The basis of Marxism is objectivity, is it not? It is time to be objective. We had a space program once. Sergei Korolev was as great a genius as anyone who ever lived! He could have made our space arm the greatest instrument for knowledge in the world, but those madmen in the Kremlin wanted spectaculars! Khrushchev ordered circuses to shame the Americans, and instead of developing our capabilities we gave the world stunts! The first to have three men in orbit—by taking out all the scientific instruments and jamming a third man, a very small man, into a capsule built for two, for one orbit! Circuses! We might have been the first to the Moon, but now we have yet to go there."
"Comrade Malik!"
She shrugged. "Is any of this news? No. I thought not. So we had our spectaculars, and we used up our opportunities to gain headlines, and today the best pilot in the Soviet Union cannot dock his spacecraft with a target the size of a comfortable dascha! And you offer to give us, give us as a promotion, something that the best engineers in the Soviet Union cannot build or buy for themselves."
"Hey, didn't mean to get you upset," Johnny Baker said.
Jakov made a final remark in Russian and turned away in disgust. Rick Delanty shook his head in sympathy. What had got into her?
They were quiet and formally polite until she went into the Soyuz. Baker and Delanty exchanged looks. They didn't need to say more. Johnny Baker went to the corner where Jakov had busied himself. "Need to get something straight," Johnny said.
"Yes?"
"You're not going to get her in trouble, are you? I mean, there's no need to report everything that gets said up here."
"Of course not," Jakov agreed. He shrugged. "We are all men of the world. We know that every twenty-eight days women become irrational. What married man does not know?"
"Yeah, that must be it," Johnny Baker said, and exchanged another glance with Delanty.
"And of course the State has been her parent," Jakov said. "Her father and mother died when she was young. It is not surprising