Read Online The Medusa Chronicles by Stephen Baxter - Free Book Online Page A

behind him.
    Mo grinned and whispered, “LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you save today?”
    Seth shushed him. “Those TV lights, though. Johnson doesn’t even look like he’s sweating.”
    â€œThat’s make-up for you,” Sheridan murmured. “Believe me, he’s sweating on the inside. He doesn’t want to be the president who failed to stop the end of the world. On the other hand he’s not going to stand again in ’68, you know. And who is his most likely successor for the Democrat nomination?”
    â€œBobby Kennedy,” Mo breathed. “Whose guts LBJ hates. And who he just named as his Icarus czar.”
    â€œLBJ! What a guy! With one bound he’s taking credit for establishing NASA, which is now going to save the world, he’s defusing the Cold War by inviting the Russians to join in, and he’s making sure his most realistic successor for the presidency is going to spend the next year staring at rocket equations instead of campaigning.”
    Now the President had finished speaking, and faced a clamour of questions from the floor.
    Sheridan put his heavy arms around the astronauts’ shoulders. “So that’s that. Now let’s get out of here and go find Deke Slayton. I got another assignment for you two . . .”

TWO
----
    ADAM
    2107–2199

8
    There was a game he liked to play, every time the medics brought him back to consciousness. Could he tell where he was, just from the nerve signals reaching his brain?
    Earth was easy. If he woke up sensing a one-gravity pull, it could only be one place in the solar system. There were other places with close-enough gravitational pulls—the surface of Venus, the outer atmospheric layers of Saturn—but there were certainly no cybernetic surgical clinics there. Of course, he had rarely been back to Earth itself since that decades-ago drama on the Sam Shore . Times had changed; the public mood now tended to regard him as a disturbing relic from the past, and when he was in the vicinity of his home world he felt a lot more comfortable staying in the elderly elegance of Port Van Allen, a thousand kilometres out in space. And, with time, Hope Dhoni had acknowledged the growing prejudice and transferred the supervision of Falcon’s treatment and recovery to a medical facility at Aristarchus Base, on the surface of the Moon. But even that had not lasted long before Hope felt obliged to move her entire clinic and team out to the burgeoning human settlement on Ceres.
    So, was he on the asteroid now? The gravitational pull was certainly too low for Earth or Moon, but not weak enough for Ceres. Titan, perhaps?There were settlements on Saturn’s moon, certainly, but that chill satellite was an unnecessarily cumbersome setting for a clinic. Callisto, moon of Jupiter? A moon with a significant and permanent human presence—the largest in Jovian space aside from Ganymede—lying safely outside the giant planet’s radiation belts. There was a scientific facility there, at Tomarsuk Station; Hope had mentioned it, for her daughter was there, studying the biochemistry of the subsurface ocean. But no, this felt weaker even than Callisto. Somewhere else again—further out still . . . ?
    â€œHoward? Can you hear me? It’s Hope. I’ve just reconnected your auditory and vocal circuits. See if you can respond.”
    â€œYou’re coming through loud and clear.”
    â€œHow do you feel?”
    â€œConfused. Adrift. In other words, same as usual.”
    â€œThat’s helpful. Were you dreaming?”
    He had been, he realised. “Just remembering a day I made a snowman. Or tried to.”
    Falcon heard the clatter of a keyboard, the beep of a stylus. “I’m going to switch on your vision in a moment. If you’re able, lock onto my face.”
    â€œYou make me sound like a weapons system.”
    There was an intrusion of brightness,