Free Between the Stars by John Maddox Roberts, Eric Kotani Page B

the ellipsoid, but so far the scientists had accomplished nothing, save finding negative results almost as exciting as the positive kind. There was a long list of experiments that had turned up nothing. Valentina could understand little of that part.
    From the announcement of the discovery, scholars throughout the solar system had clamored to be allowed onto the study team. Aeaea was a private company, though, and allowed only a few supremely prestigious scientists who were not among its personnel to examine the object. There was no mention of Sieglinde Kornfeld. That in itself meant nothing. Her passion for secrecy was notorious and she might be working on Aeaea under a news blackout.
    Popular response to the discovery had been, predictably, mixed. Many decried the right of Aeaea to sole access. Others declared that the thing was some sort of holy relic and should not be studied at all. Another school considered it dangerous and favored putting it on a ship and firing it out of the system.
    There had been a brief flurry of interest in the popular media with all the usual wild extrapolations and pseudo-scientific explanations. Astrologers had had a field day. Interest had quickly subsided, largely because the Rhea Object was so prosaic. Had it had some bizarre shape, or been very large, or covered with alien writing, it might have been more interesting. Best of all might have been a pyramidal shape, or Mayan glyphs or some discernible connection with Stonehenge. It was difficult to work up much enthusiasm over something that resembled a glass paperweight. It seemed to be utterly inert. No voices came from it; it performed no miracles. Its major distinction was its fantastic density, and that was a quality that came across poorly on holographic reproduction.
    Valentina switched off the set. So much for public information. Now it was time to extrapolate. She keyed the walls for a star display sans planets. In an instant, she was sitting on tatami adrift in deep space, in total silence. Holographic display had reached such perfection that it was in no way discernible from reality except to the touch. If she reached out a few feet, her fingers would touch the solid wall. She knew that intellectually, but to all the senses, she was in space. She had always preferred this holo environment for meditation.
    The available information had contained nothing new. She had little interest in the object itself. That was not her task. To get her hands on it, and on all the information, public or otherwise, that had been gleaned, required access to it. She began at the first, with the discovery. What interested her now were the anomalies. What was not being said? What was being left out, sidestepped, glossed over? There she might find the key.
    First, there was the discoverer. The find was being treated as a McNaughton discovery, because it had been found during one of that firm's explorations, and it had been a McNaughton ship that had delivered the object to Aeaea. Why was the discoverer, Derek Kuroda, being slighted?
    A team of high-powered physicists and other scientists had been assembled to study the thing, most of them Aeaeans, but some from other places. Why was the most illustrious physicist of them all, Sieglinde Kornfeld-Taggart, not mentioned? It might be her passion for secrecy, but there might be other reasons. Was she dead? Was she conducting her part of the study from a distance? Was she in some part of the system so remote that she had not had time to reach Aeaea yet? It was not unthinkable. Even with the development of the Ciano-Kornfeld antimatter drive, there were parts of the system that could require months to reach. But she had reliable information that Sieglinde had been on or near Avalon just days before the discovery. Intuitively, Valentina felt that the key to her problem was here. She suppressed it and left it for her subconscious to work out.
    Back to the discoverer. She called up all the information she could find