The Forge of God Read Online Free PDF

having sex anymore."
    Marty nodded, satisfied, and took a hooked line from Arthur. Arthur gingerly pulled a worm out of the carton and handed it to his son. "Twist it around and hook it several times."
    "Blecchh," Martin said, doing as he was told. "Worm blood is yellow," he added. "Squishy."
    They fished in the hollow for an hour without luck. By nine-thirty, Martin was ready to put the pole down and eat a sandwich. "All right. Wash your hands in the river," Arthur told him. "Worm juice, remember."
    "Bleechh." Marty bent over the gunwale to immerse his hands.
    Harry leaned back, letting his knees grip the pole, and locked his hands behind his neck, grinning broadly. "We haven't done this in years."
    "I don't miss fishing much," Arthur said.
    "Sissy."
    "Dad's not a sissy," Marty insisted.
    "You tell him," Arthur encouraged.
    "Fishing's gross," Marty said.
    "Like father, like son," Harry lamented.
    Harry's floppy fisherman's cap cast a shadow over his eyes. Arthur suddenly remembered the dream, with Harry's head a full moon, and shuddered. The wind rose cool and damp in the tree shadows of the hollow with a beautiful, mourning sigh.
    Marty ate his sandwich, oblivious.
    October 4
    Beyond the wide picture windows and a curtain of tall pines, the river eddied quiet and green around a slight bend. To the west, white clouds rolled inland, their bottoms heavy and gray.
    In the kitchen, amid hanging copper pots and pans, Arthur cracked eggs into an iron skillet on the broad gas stove.
    "We've known each other for thirty years," he said, bringing out two plates of scrambled eggs and sausage and laying one on the thick oak table before his friend. "We don't see nearly enough of each other."
    "That's why we've been friends for so long." Harry tapped the end of his fork lightly on the tabletop. "This air," he said. "Makes me feel like thirty years ago was when I last ate. What a refuge."
    "You're cramping my sentimentality," Arthur said, returning to the kitchen for a pitcher of orange juice.
    "The sausages…?"
    "Hebrew National."
    "God bless." Harry dug into the fluffy yellow pile on the round stoneware plate. Arthur sat down across from him.
    "How do you ever get any work done here? I prefer concrete cells. Helps the concentration."
    "You slept well."
    "I snore , Arthur, whether I sleep well or not."
    Arthur smiled. "And you call yourself an outdoorsman, a fisherman." He cut the tip from a sausage and lifted it to his mouth. "Between consulting and reeducating myself, I've been trying to write a book about the Hampton administration. Haven't even seriously started on chapter one. I'm not sure how to describe what happened. What a wonderful tragic comedy it all was."
    "Hampton gave science more credibility than any President since… Well," Harry said, "since." He lifted one hand and splayed his fingers.
    "I'm hoping Crockerman."
    "That name. A president."
    "May not be so bad. He's part of the reason I invited you out here."
    Harry raised a bushy eyebrow. The two were as much a contrast as any classic comedy team—Arthur tall and slightly stooped, his brown hair naturally tousled; Harry of medium height and stocky to the edge of plumpness in his middle years, with a high forehead and a friendly, wide-eyed expression that made him seem older than he was. "I told Ithaca." Ithaca, the lovely, classically proportioned wife, whom Arthur hadn't seen in six years, was a decade younger than Harry.
    "What did you tell her?"
    "I told her you used the tone of voice that means you have some job for me."
    Arthur nodded. "I do. The bureau is being revived. In a way."
    "Crockerman's reviving Betsy?"
    "Not as such." The Bureau of Extraterrestrial Communication—BETC or "Betsy" for short—had been Arthur's last hurrah in Washington. He had served as science advisor and Secretary of BETC for three years under Hampton, who had appointed him after the Arecibo Incident in 1992. That had turned out to be a false alarm, but Hampton had kept Arthur on until