Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson Read Free Book Online

be ludicrously optimistic until she remembered that essentially all the world’s resources were being thrown at this.
    Konrad Barth was simply asked to stay on after the meeting for a talk with Doob. It was obvious enough that he would soon be repurposing every astronomical gadget on the space station to the problem of looking for incoming rocks. This was a topic no one wanted to dwell on. If Izzy got hit by a rock of any size, it was all over. In that sense there really was no point in talking about it.
    The life scientists were Lina Ferreira; Margaret Coghlan, an Australian woman studying the effects of spaceflight on the human body;and Jun Ueda, a Japanese biophysicist running some lab experiments about the effects of cosmic rays on living tissues. Also in that general category was Marco Aldebrandi, an Italian engineer who focused on the more practical matter of running the life support systems that kept the rest of them alive. Of those four, Lina already had a special status in that she had actually done work on swarming. It wasn’t that closely related to what she had been doing on the space station, but now she was going to have to dust it off and make it her life’s work. Sparky gave her carte blanche to hole up in a quiet place and cram her brain with papers on that topic for a little while, getting back up to speed. Margaret and Jun were told to put their more abstract research work out the airlock and work under Marco on readying Izzy for a large expansion in population.
    That covered eleven of the twelve. So far, Sparky hadn’t said a word to Dinah.
    Meetings had never been her strong suit. She felt like she was playing an away game whenever she sat down in a conference room. Her awareness of this got in the way and turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. It had always been thus. The fact that the world was ending changed nothing. As Sparky kept ticking down the list, telling each person what they would be doing in the coming weeks, she kept feeling more and more the point of focus precisely because she hadn’t been focused on yet. And when it became clear that she was last on Sparky’s list, she had a good long while, as he talked to Margaret and Jun and Marco, to wonder what that meant. Being Dinah, her first assumption was that she was considered so important that she was being saved for last. But by the time Sparky finally spoke her name, she had arrived at a different guess as to what was happening. Her heart was already thumping and her pinkies tingling, her tongue bulky in her mouth.
    “Dinah,” Sparky said, “you’re indispensable.”
    She knew exactly what this meant, in meeting-speak: they would put her out the airlock if they could.
    “You have such a wide range of capabilities and we all admire your attitude so much.”
    Sparky hadn’t said a word to anyone else about their attitude.
    “Obviously, asteroid mining—which you’ve devoted so much of your career to—is a project with a long-term payoff. But we are in short-term mode now.”
    “Of course.”
    “I am detailing you to assist Ivy and look for ways that you can put your amazing skill set to use in supporting the activities of the others. Fyodor and Zeke can only go on so many space walks. Maybe your robots can be put to use doing things that they can’t.”
    “As long as it involves cutting through iron, they’ll be awesome,” Dinah said.
    “Sounds great,” Sparky said, missing the sarcasm entirely. In his own mind he was finished with the conversation, tolerating a few moments’ small talk before the after-meeting with Doob and Konrad.
    Dinah thought better of herself than this. How could she let herself get into this frame of mind at such a time?
    Because maybe there was actually a good reason for how she was feeling.
    She was halfway through saying goodbye to Sparky when she pivoted back. “Hang on a sec,” she said. “I respect what you said about short-term mode. I get that. But if, or when, this Cloud Ark thing