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2012
Page 14
The satcom link monitor soon revealed the familiar sight of Foster Shinj to Ted Mercer. Although older than Ted, Foster was no less intense, nor intelligent. The smile on Foster's face did nothing to hide the surprise of meeting Ted face to face albeit cybernetically "You are about the last person I ever expected to get a satcom call from Mercer."
"This is not a social call Shinj. I have a business proposition for you."
At that Foster's eyebrow raised in surprise. Just like you westerners to be so blunt. What is your proposition?"
Ted frowned at the insult "The foundation would like to hire your organization to recover an item that was stolen from us."
Foster blatently laughed "I take it that you mean that you want me to recover the merchandise that one of your employees so inconvienantly stole from you when he crashed into the Indian Ocean?"
"Interesting that you would know so much about it already?" Ted said with obvious annoyance.
"What's your point Mercer?" Shinj said strongly defensively.
Ted shrugged "Obviously you don't have it, or you would be ransoming it to us this very moment. The fact is you ole pirate, the equipment we need to recover could quite possibly save your own hide as well as that of a few million other people" Ted thought to himself that it was more likely a few billion people's lives a stake, but no sense in giving this letch more ammunition than he needed.
"Listen Mercer, I'm a busy man and I have no time to trade insults with you." Foster responded sourly.
Ted shrugged "You are right Foster. There is far too much at stake to get snagged on our personal differences. Have you heard of the approaching comet?"
The euroasian Foster looked puzzled "I heard about your incident with an astroid. That was involved with your delima about which you are referring."
"No, there's much more to it than that." Ted said urgently. Even though he did not like, or trust Foster Shinj, he knew that he would have to fully inform him of the current situation in order to get his help. "A comet is headed toward us on a colision course. It is due to strike the earth in 72 hours. Best estimates say that the impact are will be the Southwest Pacific, although it may not make much difference since it could most likely wipe out all life on earth anyway."
Foster sat thoughtfully qiet for a moment. "Then whatever was stolen from your company must be important toward staving off this disaster."
Ted shrugged "What was stolen from the Byrd Foundation was a state of the art stellar propullsion unit. It would guarantee that we could deflect the comet enough to safely miss earth. The only catch is, we have to have it recovered in 18 hours in order to make use of it."
"18 hours!" Foster protested "then we are as good as dead then."
"Not necessarily, we can use our space transShuttle to cut down travel time. Our main problem, and where we need your help is to find out who took the engine, and where it is now." Ted explained optimistically.
Foster shook his head "That is so little time, and so much needs to be done. There's a lot of territory to cover. Obviously whoever has it will not want to give it up willingly."
Ted nodded "As you say, there is precious little time. I do believe that we can pull it off if we combine resources."
Foster looked grim "This will need to be done on the fly, which will require data sharing via satcomlink." He hesitated for a moment "As a business man, I should ask about the financial arrangements. However, if what you say is true then my neck is in the noose too."
Ted nodded "We'll have to trust each other probably more than either one of us wants to, but the alternative is certainly bleak."
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Last updated by Denton on 12/10/97