Oblivion by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch Read Free Book Online

younger than twenty, with his blond crew cut and his flaming red sunburn. His eyes had shadows beneath them, though, just like everyone else who worked on this project. It was their version of the thousand-yard stare.
    “I wish I could say I was only here to bring you lunch, but you’re wanted in Washington, sir, and I’m not allowed to leave until I take you with me.”
    Jamison shot him a look. Cross took a final bite of his burger, then set the rest of it down. It no longer tasted as good.
    “I’ve already told them I’m staying here,” Cross said.
    “I’m not supposed to take no for an answer. General Maddox’s orders, sir.”
    The officer said General Maddox’s name as if she were God. And maybe to him she was. She was one of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and also a representative on the panel that formed the Tenth Planet Project. She had, during the Project’s existence, kept it on track and given it validity throughout the military structure. She had also come up with the only game plan that had allowed them to destroy enemy ships.
    She was justifiably famous.
    She was also an absolute hard-ass whom Cross had tangled with more than once.
    “Did she say why?” Cross asked.
    “Something about you being the vision of the Tenth Planet Project.”
    He blinked. The burger he had eaten sat like a lump in his stomach. He had been the vision behind the Tenth Planet Project. He had been the push to get the world governments to do something, anything, before the tenth planet arrived. It had been his foresight that had enabled them to find the planet in the first place.
    The tenth planet had an elliptical 2006-year orbit that took it into the very depths of space. Unlike other recurring events in the solar system, from Hailey’s comet on down, the tenth planet’s orbit was so long that only archaeological records held its secret. There was no one alive who remembered it, and there were few written records about it—and certainly no written records from anyone who understood it.
    Cross had seen the archaeological record, and had managed to tie it, through astroarchaeology, to something that happened in the sky. He had used his friend Doug Mickelson, the secretary of state, to open doors that would otherwise have remained closed.
    That was why Clarissa Maddox called Cross the vision of the Tenth Planet Project.
    “I think I’m more useful here,” he said.
    “You can argue with the kid all you want,” Jamison said, “but he’s not going to stand up to Maddox for you. You’ll have to fly back to D.C. to do it on your own.”
    Cross shook his head. “I’m not beyond my usefulness here.”
    “We can do this. I can train someone else to use the wand,” Jamison said.
    “Yes, but I am the one familiar with the fossils. I’m the one—•”
    “We’ll know it when we see it,” Jamison said. “If we have any questions, I can always e-mail or call you. Chances are, they need you for some bogus meeting, and you’ll be back here when it’s done. Trust me, going is easier than fighting a member of the Joint Chiefs.”
    Cross sighed. He was just getting tired of meetings in which everyone rehashed all the facts that they didn’t know. He found it even more discouraging than digging through this dust and finding fillings that had, until a few weeks ago, been a part of someone’s mouth.
    “You’re not going to let me off the hook either, are you?” Cross asked.
    Jamison finished his second burger and tossed the wrapper in the bag. “If I’d known this was why you were avoiding your link, I’d’ve been on your butt in an instant. This is a needle-in-a-haystack project no matter how you spin it, Leo. And you don’t know what they’re going to discuss in Washington. They might need you more there than we do here.”
    “I think I know,” Cross said. “It’s just another meeting.” “If it were just another meeting, don’t you think your colleagues would let you stay out here?”
    Cross