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arrived to join him in the launch area back at Rhombus, when Jenyn had
followed him. Lorili had been with Reen.
The scientists were evidently in a jovial mood. "Oh, I think Kyal has other,
very good reasons for wanting to move to
Explorer too," one of them quipped short and squarely built, with a dark
beard. A
caption popped up saying BORGAN CASSELO.
"She's purely a coincidence," Reen said, smiling. The banter moved on to other
things.
Jenyn muted the sound and sat back heavily in the chair. The picture replayed
in his mind of Lorili and Reen embracing before Reen departed with his partner
to catch the shuttle. He could no longer hide from himself that his obsession
to reassert himself with Lorili had stemmed from the jealousy he had felt
since that moment. When Derlen tried to call her, the friend of Elundi's who
worked with Lorili had told her that Loril was moving to a new laboratory, but
he wouldn't say where. And Sherven was talking about reassigning Reen to a job
in
Explorer 6
.
On a hunch, Jenyn killed the news channel and brought up a directory showing
the organizational structure of departments and personnel in
Explorer 6
. He found the section for scientific offices and laboratories, went to the
heading BIOLOGICAL, and began searching under Molecular Biology.
"Hilivar, Lorili, F.Exp.Sci.(Biochem)" was a new entry listed in Molecular
Genetics & Cell Biology
Laboratories, Room C-23.
His breathing became labored and shaky as he stared at the screen. He could
see the picture clearly now: her scheming with Elundi and his friend; the
clandestine visit to Tyarla's; a way out already planned.
Even after he had been prepared to forget her earlier treachery back at Venus
and give her a second chance, she had stabbed him in the back again and run
away to her new-found lover with a famous name one of Sherven's clique,
doubtless with a direct ticket into the Establishment. So much for the worth
of loyalty and principle.
The same cold but relentless rage began taking hold of him again as he had
felt after listening to
Derlen down in Rhombus. Once again, he saw his carefully laid plans and
ambitions, the result of years of work, about to come apart because of the
same person. He worked a fist savagely into the other hand.
No
! he felt some force that was arising inside him saying. She would learn that
he was not someone to sit by and let her get away with it, but a person to be
reckoned with. It was a test of himself also. He would prove to himself that
he was capable of the boldness and the nerve that his vision for the future
demanded.
Jenyn closed the directory and brought up in its place an index of
Explorer 6
layout and construction plans.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
As Kyal had predicted, the attendees from the morning's meeting were in no
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hurry to break up after the news interview, but stayed on, debating different
angles and using the conference-area screens in
Sherven's office. The sense of significant new findings about to unfold
intensified when it was discovered that there had indeed been a town called
Santa Cruz in central Bolivia. But the directions that Elundi, down in
Rhombus, had supplied in connection with the Terran engineer who had flown
from Santa Cruz to Providence couldn't be made to fit. Late in the afternoon,
Elundi called back in response to a request that Casselo had sent for
confirmation. Kyal went through the problem with Elundi again, while others
followed or continued with their own discussions around the room.
"The engineer flew from Santa Cruz to Providence, then back to wherever this
Bay Area was."
"That's what it says," Elundi confirmed from a screen adjacent to the one
displaying the map of western south America, which included Bolivia.
"And 'Bay Area' would imply the coast."
"Yes."
"Which we're saying appears to be the west coast."
"Yes."
Kyal sent an appealing glance to the others around him. "Which means
Providence would have to be somewhere east of Santa Cruz. It's supposed to be
in the region of this "High Lake," which we think was
Titicaca. But Titicaca is west of central Bolivia and Santa Cruz, not east." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]