Day of the Dragonstar Read Free Page A

personnel, if this thing drags out to a few days and you two need sleep. In effect, you’re going to be confined to the Observatory.”
    “I practically live here anyway. Boucher, though . . .”
    “We’ll have to issue some kind of cover story for your confinement. Security will take care of things. From now on, all communications to and from the Observatory will be classified and on Security Intercept. I’m going to convene a meeting of the Joint Chiefs right away . . . that is, as soon as you get the rest of the hard data collected. When you tie down an orbit, I want you to present the information to the Staff.” Kemp adjusted the collar of his uniform, cleared his throat. “Now, tell Boucher I’d like to have a few words with him . . .”

WITH A TENTATIVE SMILE , Becky set the plate down before him. “Best I could do at such short notice,” she said, wrapping her dressing gown tighter around her slim body.
    “Thanks,” said Kemp. He picked up a piece of toast and began to munch it between sips of steaming, aromatic tea. He scanned the preliminary readouts that Professor Labate had provided.
    “Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting in an hour, huh?” said Becky, settling down with her own plate of soy sausage and scrambled reconstituted eggs.
    “Yeah.” The hardfacts had come in, and they’d been absolutely incredible. Labate was going to present them to the meeting, implications and all. That was going to be some meeting, all right. “You stuck around just to find out that was going on, right?”
    “I stuck around because I fell back to sleep” Phineas.” Her dark and attractive Semitic features lost their smile. “I just happened to overhear —”
    “And you’re just dying to know what all the hoopla is about. I know you, my dear. I don’t blame you. I’d be the same way. But frankly, this is classified stuff. I can’t tell you.”
    She wiped her long black hair away from her face and glared at him, ignoring her meal. “You know, Phineas, you’re probably the most tight-assed man I’ve ever met. I truly resent your lack of trust in me. I want to talk about it. It goes deeper than just this and—”
    Kemp cut her off with a single cold and curt word. “Later.”
    She blinked her dark brown eyes in a vexed manner, and then settled down into a surly silence over her breakfast.
    Too bad she’d stayed the night. This wouldn’t have had to happen. Rebecca Thalberg was the one person he really didn’t like to treat this way. But the qualities he admired most in her — curiosity, intelligence, and a cute womanish stubbornness—were also the things that caused them to occasionally lock horns. Still, he loved her. She was different from the other women he had known. And Kemp had known plenty of women. They were attracted to his rugged good-looks, his abrasive, cocky demeanor, his status as a rising star . . . a man to be respected and listened to. A man in control. But Kemp’s affairs with women had always managed to be such ephemeral, casual liaisons. The women had never seemed to be able to delve beneath his surface, and he’d never sought to know them in any other way than physically. Rebecca was, different. She’d met him will to will, and demanded that he know her as a person. Kemp had chosen to do just that, and there were moments, like this, that he regretted that.
    Still, she was a beautiful woman. He liked the way her raven hair was parted in the middle, with a little curl or additional arrangement — the way it framed her oval face. He liked the way her high-breasted body shone with health and warmth. She was the Coordinator of Copernicus Biomedical Division, clever and intelligent, gentle and loving . . . and sometimes a royal pain in the ass.
    He played with his eggs as he concentrated again on the figures, reading them over again to make sure his eyes hadn’t played tricks on him.
    A large unidentified body was entering the main plain of the solar system at an oblique angle, out near