Jupiter by Ben Bova Read Free Book Online Page B

sit there! Get to the security chief's office. Understand me?'
    Grant scrambled to his feet and headed for the door.
    'You've gotten off on the wrong foot, Archer,' the director called from his desk.
    Turning, Grant saw that he had swung his chair away from the desk slightly. It was a powered wheelchair. Beneath his full-length tunic the director was wearing ridiculous-looking green plaid shorts, and Grant could see that Wo's legs were pitifully thin, emaciated, scarred and twisted, dangling uselessly from his chair. He looked like a gnome or a troll from childhood tales.
    If Dr Wo was bothered by Grant's shocked stare, he gave no hint of it.
    'Get on the right track and stay on it,' he snapped. 'Or else.'
    'Yessir,' Grant said. 'I will, sir.'

    Once outside in the blessed cool of the corridor again, Grant realized that Wo had given him no chance to ask for a reassignment to Farside. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Feeling wretched, he wondered where the cursed security office might be. He knew it had to be along the corridor somewhere, there was only this one main passageway that went through the entire wheel-shaped station, if he remembered the schematics correctly. But the station was so big, Grant realized he could be walking for an hour or more.
    The corridor was still empty and silent; no one in sight to ask for directions. Then he spotted a videophone on the wall up ahead. He used it to pull up the station layout and found the office of the security chief, someone named Lane O'Hara.
    The office was actually only a few dozen meters up the corridor. Grant hustled to it and rapped on the door, -which bore O'Hara's name.
    'Come in.'
    It was a much smaller room than the director's. Grant saw that it must be an anteroom; nothing but a small desk and a single straightbacked chair in front of it. A pert young woman sat at the desk. An assistant, no doubt. There was an unmarked door on the far wall. That must be O'Hara's office, he said to himself.
    'I'm Grant Archer. The director sent me here to see Mr O'Hara.'
    'Miss O'Hara,' she corrected. 'That's me.' Rising from her chair, she extended her hand over the desk. She was at least two centimeters taller than Grant.
    Surprised, Grant shook her hand as he blurted, 'You're the security chief?'
    'Lane O'Hara… Elaine, if you look up my baptismal record.'
    'Oh,' said Grant.
    Lane O'Hara was no more than Grant's own age, slim as a willow, her boyish figure clad in a loose slate-gray turdeneck pullover and odd-looking shiny black leather leggings lined with rows of dull gray metal studs along the outside seams. Her face was elfin, with high cheekbones, a tilted nose, a slightly sharpish chin and delicate lips that were curved into a pleasant smile. Her eyes were bright green, and they were smiling, too. She wore her chestnut hair tied into a tight bun at the back of her head.
    'What were you expecting?' she asked. 'Some great brute of a policeman, maybe?' There was a lilt in her voice that Grant had never heard before: charming, musical.
    'I guess I was,' he said, smiling back at her as he followed her gesture and took the chair in front of her desk.
    'Oh, we have them, too,' she said as she sat back in her little swivel chair. 'On a station this size you need a few thumpers here and there, now and then.'
    Grant pictured some of the stern-faced, beefy security guards he'd seen at school.
    'Now then,' O'Hara said lightly,'the director's all fussed about your prying into the station schematics, looking to find out what he's got in the annex.'
    'I was curious
    'Of course you were. Everybody is. But the director is just a wee bit paranoid about the annex. It's his special project, you know.'
    'I didn't know,' Grant said.
    'How could you, seeing that you just arrived an hour or so ago?' She shrugged her slim shoulders. 'Well, I'm required to put you through the standard security briefing and there's nothing for it. I'll try to run through it quickly enough so we can get finished with it