Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [93]
"You've got the swimming pool filled with fresh water and I couldn't use it yesterday and you covered it up!" Her voice rose. "You made a couple of hundred dollars' worth of dried beef and you sent our boy into the mountains and you filled the garage with expensive liquor and—"
"Loretta—"
"—and we don't drink that kind of thing, and nobody could eat that meat unless they were starving to death. So you think we'll be starving. Don't you?"
"No. Honey, it's hundreds to one against—"
"Harvey, please. Stay home today. Just this once. I never make a fuss about you being off somewhere all the time. I didn't complain when you volunteered for another tour in Vietnam. I didn't complain when you went to Peru. I didn't complain when you took three weeks extra in Alaska. I've never said anything about having to raise your boy, who's smarter than I am only he's seen less of his father than Ralph Harris ever saw of his. I know your job means more to you than I do, but please, Harvey, don't I mean something to you?"
"Of course you do." He grabbed her and pulled her to him. "Lord, is that how you feel? The job doesn't mean more than you do." It's just the money, he thought. And I can't say that. I can't say that I don't need the money, you do.
"Then you'll stay?"
"I can't. Really can't. Loretta, these documentaries have been good. Really good. Maybe I'll get an offer from ABC. They'll need a new science feature editor pretty soon, and that's real folding money. And there's a real chance of a book … "
"You've been up all night, Harvey, you're in no shape to go anywhere. And I'm scared."
"Hey." He hugged her tightly and kissed her hard. And it's all my fault, he told himself. How could she not be scared, after all the stuff I bought? But I can't miss Hammer Day … "Look. I'll send somebody else down to City Hall."
"Good!"
"And I'll have Charlie and Manuel meet me at UCLA."
"But why can't you stay here?"
"Got to do something, Loretta. Manly pride if nothing else. How can I tell people I sat at home in the root cellar after telling everybody else there wasn't any danger? Look, I'll get some interviews, and the Governor's in town for a charity thing at Los Angeles Country Club, I'll go over there just after the thing has gone by. And I won't ever be more than ten or fifteen minutes from here. If anything happens, I'll come home fast."
"All right. But you still haven't eaten your breakfast. It's getting cold. And I filled your Thermos, and put a beer in the TravelAll."
He ate quickly. She sat and watched him the whole time, not eating anything at all. She laughed when he made jokes, and she told him to be careful when he drove down the hill.
Communications were still bad. Mostly they spoke into recorders. It would be important to get their observations because the instruments weren't going to be much use. Too much sandblasting. They had preserved the big telescope that could be attached to the color TV, though, and they'd record the video as well as try to send it back to Earth.
"Solar power's down to about twenty-five percent," Rick Delanty reported.
"Save the batteries," Baker said.
"Rojj."
It was getting warm in the spacecraft, but they needed the power for the recorders and other instruments.
Leonilla Malik spoke rapid-fire Russian into a mike. Jakov played with the transmitter controls, trying to get some response from Baikunyar. No luck. Leonilla continued to record. She had moored herself oddly, twisting to watch the observation port and still see the instrument board. Rick tried to follow what she was saying, but she was using too many unfamiliar words. Waxing lyrical, Rick thought. Letting her poetic streak have its way. Why not? How else could you describe being inside a comet?
They now knew less about Hamner-Brown's path than Houston did. The last report from Houston was a miss by one thousand kilometers, but Rick wondered. Was that based on his visual observation? Because if it was, it meant only that that particular mountain would be that far off, and the cloud of solid gup was large. Not