Farside Read Free Page A

frosty. The director swung his gaze from McClintock to Trudy, then said in a resigned tone, “Very well, then, let me describe our observatory and its goals to you, Dr. Yost. Mr. McClintock will fill you in on the observatory’s organization and management.”
    The walls lit up with views of four different lunar craters. Trudy recognized the Cyclops radio telescope assembly, under construction up above them on the surface of the Sea of Moscow.
    Uhlrich began, “We are building three one-hundred-meter telescopes at Crater Mendeleev, Crater Korolev, and Crater Gagarin.” The frame around each screen lit briefly as the professor mentioned it.
    Trudy saw that construction was under way at each crater.
    “The hundred-meter main mirrors for each of these sites are being built here, at Moscow. The first of them has been completed, and is now being transported to Mendeleev, where it will be installed—”
    The buzz of a phone interrupted him. Frowning at his desktop console annoyedly, Uhlrich said, “Pardon me. That is the emergency line.”
    He called out, “Answer,” and the wall screen in front of Trudy showed the face of a young man, looking grim, troubled. His hair was a thick dark mop, so was his ragged dark beard. He had the saddest eyes Trudy had ever seen, dark and downcast. He looked as if he were carrying the troubles of the world on his shoulders. She saw that he was in a space suit, but he had removed its helmet.
    “Professor,” he began, then his voice broke.
    “What is the emergency? What is it?” Uhlrich demanded.
    “The mirror,” said the harried-looking man. “Halfway up the ringwall … it … it slid off the carrier and cracked.”

 
    THE LARGE AND THE SMALL
    Uhlrich shot to his feet. “Cracked?” he shrieked.
    The man on the screen looked as if he’d rather be roasting on a spit. “Yessir. Halfway up the slope the rig slewed off the road and … and the mirror slid off and cracked. Too much torsional strain, even in the frame that was holding it.”
    For an instant Trudy thought that Professor Uhlrich was going to have a stroke. His face went red, then chalk white. His fists clenched at his sides.
    “How could it slip off the road?” he demanded. “How could you allow such a stupid, criminal thing to happen? You’ve ruined everything!”
    The man on the screen looked weary, spent. His bearded face was sheened with perspiration, his dark hair matted, plastered over his forehead. But his expression hardened as Uhlrich berated him.
    “Look, Professor, I tried to warn you about the risks. You try lugging a hundred-meter-wide chunk of glass across those mountains. I told you it’d be chancy.”
    “Don’t you understand that we’re in a race? A race against time! And you’ve ruined two years’ work! Two years’ work!”
    In a race? Trudy asked herself. Then she remembered that the IAA was building a humongous interferometer in space. Professor Uhlrich wants to beat them, she realized. He wants to get the Farside Observatory running before the IAA can complete its project. Holy spit, no wonder he’s blazing.
    Uhlrich slumped back into his chair, then stared at the screen with undisguised contempt. “You built that road, Mr. Simpson. You vouched for it, you told me the mirror could be transported across the ringwall safely. You—”
    “Professor, I built the road to the specifications that Nate Oberman set out and you okayed. I told Oberman that we ought to make the grading easier, all those switchbacks were a risk. But you ordered Nate to push it through as fast as possible. You told us you were willing to take the risks. So now you’re paying the price.”
    “Oberman assured me that the road would be perfectly safe!”
    “Professor, I warned you it would be a crapshoot.”
    “I don’t remember such a warning,” Uhlrich said stubbornly.
    “Transporting that mirror isn’t like taking a walk in the frigging park, what with those switchbacks and all. If we’d had more time