A World of Difference Read Online Free PDF Page A

up, then shook his head. Two pawns was too far to be down to Sargon; the computer program was going to clean his clock again. He knew he ought to resign and have another try. He knew he was too stubborn to do it. He tried a knight move, thought better of it, and put the piece back.
    He was still tinkering and not getting anywhere much when he heard Emmett call, “Pat, Frank, come forward for a bit, if you could.”
    A moment later, Bragg came gliding into the cabin. He stopped himself on the back of his chair. Within a minute, Pat and Frank Marquard had joined everyone else in the cabin.
    “What’s up, Emmett?” Frank asked. He sounded casual, but his expression belied his tone. He and Pat both could tell something was up: Bragg had the veteran officer’s knack for turning ordinary words into an unmistakable order.
    The mission commander glanced down at the sheet of scratch paper in his hand. He was also holding, Irv saw, a map of Minerva compiled from
Mariner
and
Viking
photos. “Interesting,” was all he said.
    Louise would not let him get by with that. “Come on, Emmett, out with it,” she told him. “Suspense isn’t funny.”
    “All right,” he said, a little sheepishly. He held up the map. “We’ve all known since ’76 where
Viking
landed, haven’t we? Here.” He pointed.
    “Not far west of the Jötun Canyon, sure,” Irv said. Everyone else nodded.
    “Not sure. They’ve just done a pile of new computer work on the
Viking
data, and it turns out the lander actually came down
here
, about fifty miles east of where they thought. We’ll have to adjust our landing site to conform to the new data. Louise, honey, it’ll mean more time on the computer for you—sorry.”
    “I expect I’ll manage,” she said, which for a minute or so was the only break in the silence that followed her husband’s announcement.
    “How very—convenient,” Sarah Levitt said at last. “Now we know, and the Russians don’t.” Both missions had intended to land as close to the
Viking
touchdown point as possible; only there could they be sure they would find intelligent life.
    “There might be
anything
on the other side of that canyon,” Irv said. Pat Marquard nodded vigorously. He knew they were thinking along the same lines. Minerva’s big canyons were wider and deeper than anything Earth knew; each spring they carried meltwater from the south polar cap to the seas and lakes of the southern tropics—though on Minerva the word “tropics” had a strictly geographic meaning. The great gorges had to be formidable barriers to both ideas and genes.
    “I reckon the Russians will tell us, same as we’ll tell them what we come across on our side,” Emmett Bragg said. His drawl had gotten thicker. That happened, Irv had noticed, when Bragg did not want to come out with everything that was on his mind.
    “I think we ought to pass the word on to
Tsiolkovsky
,” Sarah said.
    Bragg raised an eyebrow. “If Houston had wanted
Tsiolkovsky
to know, they wouldn’t have coded the information before they sent it.” He sounded as though that closed the subject for him and expected it to for everyone else.
    It didn’t. “Houston is on Earth, umpty-ump million miles from here. The Russians are right here with us,” Sarah said. “Right now, I have more in common with them than with a pack of chair-warmers back in Texas.”
    “Really,” Frank Marquard agreed. “Is there intelligent life in Houston?”
    “I think they’re right, Emmett,” Irv said. “This is going to be tough enough, even sharing what we have. It’s too big for us not to.” He spoke with some hesitation. He was anything but combative and did not relish the idea of getting into a shouting match when the mission commander blew a fuse.
    But Bragg surprised him. Instead of losing his temper, or even pretending to for effect, he looked over at his wife and asked, “Honey, how many coded transmissions has
Tsiolkovsky
received since we assumed Minerva