MacRoscope Read Online Free PDF

project.”
    “So somebody is paying off a favor?”
    “Right. Indonesia will get the results, and the home state will never know the difference.”
    “How is it we can horn in, then?”
    “I preempted the slot for more important work. He understands.”
    “Just to show me the macroscope? Brad, you can’t—”
    The Israeli held up his glove. “It is quite all right, Mr. Archer,” he said. “We do not question Dr. Carpenter.” He put on the helmet, pressured his suit, and mounted to the airlock. Ivo detected no shock of air puffing out; there were no games of that kind here. Probably the man was hauling himself along one of the guy-chains, not trusting himself to any drift through the vacuum. That was the kind of sensible procedure Ivo preferred.
    Brad settled into a control seat of some kind and began making adjustments with sundry instruments. Ivo tried to make some sense out of the battery of dials and lights, but failed; it was far too complicated.
    “Okay, friend, we’re alone. No bugs here. I’m in a position to know.”
    Once more the nervousness came upon him. This was it. “Why did you summon me?”
    “We need Schön.”
    Ivo met this with silence. He had known it.
    “I don’t like to do this to you, believe me,” Brad said with genuine apology. “But this is crucial. We’re in bad trouble here, Ivo.”
    “Naturally it wasn’t my amiable half-witted companionship you missed. Not just to show off your fancy technology and your fancy girl.”
    Brad looked far more mature when serious, and he was far more serious now than the literal content of his speech indicated. “You know I like you, Ivo. You’re a damned Puritan at heart, and you’re afraid of anything that smacks too much of pleasure and what you’re doing here in the space age instead of the nineteenth-century Confederacy is beyond me to grasp. I
still
enjoy your company, more than that of Schön, and I wouldn’t change one jot of your archaic and poetic fancies. But this is — well, it sounds cliché, but it
is
a matter of world security. It’s frankly over my head. If your freak abilities were enough—”
    “So playing a simple flute has become ‘freak,’ and—” But he knew what Brad meant, much as he didn’t want to. “And who is an ignorant lad straining at one twenty-five to proffer advice to model one sixty? Particularly when he knows that’s a lie for the only one in the project to be adjudged two hundred and—”
    “Come off it, Ivo. You know better than anyone that those figures are meaningless. I tell you with all sincerity that the situation is
desperate
, and Schön is the only one I know with the potential to handle it. I have the privilege of calling him when I really need him. Well, it’s been twenty years, and I
do
need him.
Earth
needs him. You have to do it.”
    “I’m not just thinking of myself. Brad, once you let the genie out of the bottle — you know what Schön is. Your work, your girl—”
    “I may be giving up everything. I know that. I have no choice.”
    “Well,
I
have a choice. You’ll darn well have to prove to me that the cure is not worse than the problem.”
    “That’s why we’re here. I’ll have to acquaint you with the nature and function of the macroscope first, though, before I can make my point. Then—”
    “Keep it simple, now. I can’t even read your dials.”
    “Right. Basically the macroscope is a monstrous chunk of unique crystal that responds to an aspect of radiation unrelated to any man has been able to study before. This amounts to an extremely weak but phenomenally clear spatial signal. The built-in computer sifts out the noise and translates the essence into a coordinated image. The process is complex, but we wind up with better pictorial definition than is possible through any other medium, bar none. That was a major handicap at first.”
    “Superior definition is a
problem
?”
    “I’ll demonstrate.” Brad applied himself to the ponderous apparatus,