Free Act of God by John Maddox Roberts, Eric Kotani Page B

stared, utterly at a loss as to how to deal with this mad little dynamo.
    "Okay," Sam said at last. "Now we know how they plan to carry the expedition off, but we still don't know why. How come Nekrasov's interested?" Sam saw Ciano's sly smile. "Hold it!" he ordered. "If you jump up on the table, I'll bat you across the room."
    "No need," Ciano said. "It's the same answer. Ice." He sat back in his chair with a contented smile and drained his glass. Sam did the same and signaled for another round. When the fresh drinks arrived, he said, "Okay, enlighten us."
    "They got food here?" Ciano said. "All of a sudden, I'm hungry." Sam glared at him, but decided that the little man really should get something in his stomach to soak up the alcohol he was absorbing. The waiter came and Ciano ordered barbecued ribs, french fries and onion bagels. Sam and Laine ordered a late supper as well.
    "Jesus, I hate bagels," Ciano said.
    Then why the hell did you order them?" Sam demanded, almost at the end of his tether. Laine laid a restraining hand on his arm.
    "All in good time," Ciano said. He launched into anotherr technical discussion with Laine, in German. Sam stared into his drink, wishing for the good old days, when people just shot at you and you could shoot back. The food arrived and Ciano attacked his ribs wolfishly. By that time, it was time for another round of drinks. Ciano sat back, satisfied, sipping his third Wild Turkey, his bagel still untouched.
    "Okay," Ciano finally said. "We got 'em to the comet, and we know how they're gonna get back. The question is why? You remember what Tarkovsky was supposed to speak about?"
    Sam thought back. It was something that meant nothing to him, so he couldn't remember the title of the scheduled talk.
    "It was something about the Tunguska event," Laine said. "It was—" her voice trailed off and she turned decidedly pale. Sam was alarmed. It was unlike Laine to lose her self-possession. "Ice!" she half-whispered at last.
    "The light dawns," Ciano said. He looked sharply at Sam. "You know about the Tunguska event?" Sam shook his head. "Okay, lemme give you a rundown," Ciano said. "It was something happened in Siberia way back before the Revolution, a big blast that laid down hundreds of square kilometers of forest but didn't kill anybody because there was nobody there."
    Sam's professional hackles stood up at the words, "big blast," and something about it shook a memory loose. "Hold it. I think I read or heard something about it, years ago. No remains, right? No crater or meteorites?"
    "Exactly," Ciano confirmed. "Now, I got a lot of friends who'll swear that what caused the blast was a UFO blowing up, or some kind of natural atomic explosion, or a whole lot of other explanations."
    "Why an atomic explosion?" Sam asked.
    Ciano grinned triumphantly. "Where the blast went off, the trees were still standing at the center. That's a torus effect, just like you get with an aerial atomic blast." He grabbed up his bagel and held it out. "That's a torus, a bagel, a donut, an inner tube. It means that the released energy is largely confined within this closed, tubular matrix and stuff standing at the epicenter stays standing. Get it? That's what happened at Tunguska, and that's what Tarkovsky was gonna talk about tonight."
    Sam knew that this was what he had been searching for. He also knew that he was going to have to let this displaced Hobbit go about telling him his own way. "Go on," Sam said.
    "A few years ago," Ciano said, "Tarkovsky published a paper. For some reason, it never made it into the major astronomical journals. I guess he yanked it shortly afterward to polish it some. I've done that myself. Anyway, I ran across it in a little Japanese publication I subscribe to. The Japanese are great comet-watchers, you know. Most new comets are spotted by amateurs, and Japan is the preeminent country for amateur astronomers." Sam didn't know that, but he let it ride for the moment in hopes that Ciano