Pegasus in Flight Read Online Free PDF

that such contracts were public knowledge. “My fellow directors do not consider that you have a true emergency, Engineer Barchenka.”
    For the first time Barchenka flared angrily. “I say this is an emergency! I say I must have a larger work force to complete this world priority project.”
    “You have unlimited access to the conscriptable pool of workers.”
    “Bah! They are useless—sterile, uneducated, untrainable grunts! I cannot build a space platform only with grunts. I will have the kinetics I need. I promise that, Director!” With that she wheeled and, in a dangerous imbalance, made a lurching exit, Prince Phanibal following her.
    Per Duoml took one step forward, bowing slightly at the waist. “Even half a dozen kinetics would improve the situation tremendously.”
    “As I have explained repeatedly, Per Duoml, insure the Talents shielded quarters and a six-hour maximum shift and they will be amenable. Surely if there’s credit enough in your budget to support the number of trips back to Earth that have been made for the purpose of recruiting Talents, the funds can be found to supply their basic needs on Padrugoi!”
    “Engineer Barchenka must adhere to the budget. No alterations can be made to existing staff accommodations.”
    “Then Engineer Barchenka is stuck with the result.” Rhyssa fervently wished that Per Duoml would relax his mental shield long enough for her to place directly in his mind the information her words patently did not convey. “You require kinetics to shift objects of mass proportions in the assembly of Padrugoi. You also need kinetics who can assemble chips of the most complex delicacy in the total vacuum of space. The kinetic energy required by both tasks is the same and exhausting. They need quiet to restore their strength—they are sensitive to the metallic vibrations of Padrugoi itself, the inhumanly close quartering, the lack of privacy, and the appallingly bad rations which are insufficient to replenish their bodies and minds.”
    Per Duoml nodded impassively and then shrugged, unwilling to comment before he, too, turned to leave.
    His departure left Rhyssa with an uneasy sense of foreboding. She directed a query to Sirikit on duty in the Control Room of the Center.
Any precogs in just now?
    Sirikit:
None. You’re expecting one?
    Rhyssa projected an image of Ludmilla Barchenka’s grim visage:
Possibly!

 
    CHAPTER 4
     
    The boy blinked three times, and the channel on the ceiling screen changed again. He sighed. Yet another oldie he had already seen often enough to have memorized the good parts. He blinked the switch signal again, and realized that he had been through enough of the channels to be sure that there was nothing on to catch his attention—not even an educational program unfamiliar to him. The first few weeks he had been in the ward it had been lots of fun, watching the tri-ds all through the long nights. Kept his mind off—things—after his headaches had eased. Sometimes he almost missed those headaches, because at least then he had been feeling
something
in his body.
    He sighed. He could do that, too, he reminded himself, thinking positively as Sue, the therapist, said he must. He didn’t understand a lot of what she told him, like imagining himself walking and running, thinking hard of how he used to do it—before he had run alongside the ruins and that brick wall had collapsed on him.
    Why? The agonizing question made him gasp. He had thought he had stopped thinking about that. Asking “why” was definitely negative and always depressed him terribly.
Why
had that wall come down just as he, Peter Reidinger, had been running past it? Had he kicked a stone that had been enough to trigger the collapse? Had one of the boys chasing him lobbed a stone at the wall?
Why,
since it had been standing for fifty or a hundred years all by itself,
why
had it picked that moment to come down? Three seconds later, he would have been safe—safe from both the wall and