Fallen Star Read Free

shyness had made her.
     She followed me promptly into the office with a fresh quart of ale, toured me around the room to look at the other pictures—all
     of them of historic events in recent physics, captured in the traces left by the atomic actors themselves—and had me securely
     seated at her desk, ready for business, before I had more than half eaten my way through the hors d’œuvres. I suspected that
     Ham had been through this long before, for he watched me walking innocently into the web with a very small smirk, and took
     possession of the potato chips and the spread the moment I got up.
    Oh, I was a willing victim, I can’t pretend that I wasn’t. The notion of being entrapped by the number two editor of Pierpont-Millennium-Artz
     didn’t repel me a bit.
    “Julian,” Ellen said seriously while I opened the second quart of ale, “tell me what you know about the International Geophysical
     Year.”
    “That’s a sizeable task,” I said. “It started July first of last year, and runs to the end of this year, and scientists all
     over the world are taking part in it; its over-all purpose is to enlarge our knowledge of the Earth; the projects involved
     range all the way from Antarctic expeditions to the launching of satellite missiles. I wrote a piece for the
Times
about it that pretty well sums up my knowledge of it, except for a few pieces of specialized knowledge that weren’t suitable
     fora lay audience, or were of too limited interest for a general discussion.”
    “I saw the article. That’s what made me ask Ham whether or not you
were available.
Frankly, the IGY needs competent science writers very badly.”
    “Well, I’m certainly interested,” I said guardedly. “Geophysics isn’t exactly my best subject, though.”
    “That doesn’t matter. Just about every science imaginable is involved in the project, and no one writer could cover it all
     in anything short of a decade. What we need most are historians to cover specific areas of the Year. And we need a man to
     write two books about the IGY for the layman.”
    “Two
books?”
    “Yes,” she said. “One isn’t really about the IGY
per se; I’ll
get to that one in a moment. The other is to be published after the Year is over, explaining what we originally hoped to
     accomplish, and how well we succeeded.”
    “An official historian, in other words?” Ham asked interestedly.
    “No. At least not in the technical sense. The official history will run to a good many volumes, and it won’t be for laymen.
     Probably we’ll ask Laura Fermi to do that for us. She has the qualifications, and she seems to be doing a stunning job on
     the Fifty-five Atomic Energy Conference at Geneva. What we want is an interpreter.”
    I worked on the ale while I thought about it. It took a good deal of thinking. If Ellen meant to offer the post to me, I couldn’t
     accept it out of hand. It would mean my committing myself to this one project for some years to come, to the practical exclusion
     of income from one-shot sources—the sources from which, ordinarily, I drew the money to keep a wife, four girls and a draughty
     fourteen-room house in operating condition.
    Finally I decided to say just that, and did. I suspected that Ellen might be a little repelled by the sheer crassness of such
     an approach to science, but I was wrong.
    “I can’t offer the whole thing to you anyhow,” Ellen said with a faint smile. “Ham reminded me of you——”
    I looked a dagger or two at Ham. He blinked benignly at the fire.
    “—too late for me to give you still a third book, one explaining what the IGY is for. But I think you may be justright on the second one, the layman’s book on what we do accomplish. In the meantime, since the IGY can’t pay you a retainer,
     I’ve made a tentative arrangement with Artz that will keep you paid until the Year is over.”
    “Very good. How does it work?”
    “Hold on to your bridgework,” Ham said sleepily.
    “We