Borzov could not suppress a grin. “Why are you having such a hard time with Nicole des Jardins? I would think that since both of you are women, you would be able to speak to her more easily than the others.”

“She is entirely unsympathetic with the role of the press in this mission. She has told me so several times. And she is very stubborn about her pri­vacy.” Francesca shrugged her shoulders. “But the public is absolutely fasci­nated with her. After all, not only is she a doctor and a linguist and a former Olympic champion, but also she is the daughter of a famous novelist and the mother of a fourteen-year-old daughter, despite never having been mar­ried—”

Valeriy Borzov was looking at his watch. “Just for my information,” he interrupted, “how many more items are on your “agenda,” as you call it? We are due in the auditorium in ten more minutes.” He smiled back at Fran­cesca. “And I feel compelled to remind you that Madame des Jardins went out of her way today to accommodate your request for press coverage of this briefing.”

Francesca studied General Borzov for several seconds. ! think he ’s ready now, she thought to herself. And unless I misjudged him he will understand immediately. She pulled a small cubic object out of her briefcase and handed it across the desk. “This is the only other item on my agenda,” she said.

The Newton commander-in-chief seemed puzzled. He turned the cube over in his hands. “A free-lance journalist sold it to us,” Francesca said in a very serious tone. “We were assured it was the only copy in existence.”

She paused a moment while Borzov loaded the cube into the appropriate part of his desk computer. He blanched noticeably when the first video segment from the cube appeared on the monitor. He watched the wild rantings of his daughter, Natasha, for about fifteen seconds. “I wanted to keep this out of the hands of the tabloid press,” Francesca added softly.

“How long is the tape?” General Borzov asked quietly.

“Almost half an hour,” she replied. “I’m the only one who has seen the entire thing.”

General Borzov heaved a sigh. This was the moment his wife, Petra, had dreaded ever since it was first made official that he would be the command­ing officer of the Newton. The institute director at Sverdlovsk had promised that no reporters would have access to his daughter. Now here was a video­tape with a thirty-minute interview with her. Petra would be mortified.

He stared out the window. In his mind he was assessing what would happen to the mission if his daughter’s acute schizophrenia were paraded before the public. It would be embarrassing, he conceded, but the mission would not be damaged in any serious way… General Borzov looked across at Francesca. He hated making deals. And he wasn’t certain that Francesca herself had not commissioned the interview with Natasha. Never­theless…

Borzov relaxed and forced a smile. “I guess I could thank you,” he said, “but somehow it doesn’t seem appropriate.” He paused for a moment. “I assume I’m expected to show some gratitude.”

So far, so good, Francesca thought. She knew better than to say anything just yet.

“All right!” the general continued after the lengthy silence, “I will cancel the extra simulation. Others have already complained about it.” He turned the data cube over in his hands. “And Petra and I will come to Rome early, as you once suggested, for the personal interview. I will remind all the cos­monauts tomorrow about the party on New Year’s Eve and tell them that it is their duty to attend. But neither I nor anyone else can require Nicole des

Jardins to talk to you about anything except her work.” He stood up abruptly. “Now it’s time for us to go to that biometry meeting.”

Francesca reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Valeriy,” she said.

8

BIOMETRY

The medical briefing had already be­gun when Francesca and General Borzov arrived. All the rest of the cosmonauts were present, as well as twenty-five or thirty additional engineers and scientists associated with the mission. Four newspaper reporters and a television crew completed the audi­ence. At the front of the small auditorium stood Nicole des Jardins, wearing her gray flight outfit as always, and holding a laser pointer in her hand. To the side of her was a tall Japanese man in a blue dress suit. He was listening carefully to a question from the audience. Nicole interrupted him to ac­knowledge the new arrivals.

“Sumimasen, Hakamatsu-sanr ” she said. “Let me introduce our com­mander, General Valeriy Borzov of the Soviet Union, as well as the journal­ist-cosmonaut Francesca Sabatini.”

She turned toward the latecomers. “Dobriy Utra,” Nicole said to the general, quickly nodding a greeting in Francesca’s direction as well. “This is the esteemed Dr. Toshiro Hakamatsu,” Nicole said. “He designed and devel­oped the biometry system that we are going to use in flight, including the tiny probes that will be inserted into our bodies.”

General Borzov extended his hand. “I am glad to meet you, Hakamatsu-san,” he said– “Madame des Jardins has made us all very much aware of your outstanding work.”

“Thank you,” the man replied, bowing in the direction of Borzov after shaking his hand. “It is an honor for me to be part of this project.”

Francesca and General Borzov took the two empty seats at the front of the auditorium and the meeting continued. Nicole aimed her pointer at a keyboard on the side of a small podium and a full-scale, multicolored male model of the human cardiovascular system, with veins marked in blue and arteries in red, appeared, as a three-dimensional holographic image in the front of the room. Tiny white markers circulating inside the flowing blood vessels indicated the direction and rate of flow. “The Life Sciences Board of the ISA just last week gave final approval to the new Hakamatsu probes as our key health monitoring system for the mission,” Nicole was saying. “They withheld their approval until the last minute so that they could properly assess the results of the stress testing, in which the new probes were asked to perform in a wide variety of off-nominal situations. Even under those condi­tions there was no sign that any rejection mechanisms were triggered in any of the test subjects.

“We are fortunate that we will be able to use this system, for it will make life much easier both for me, as your life science officer, and for you. During the mission you will not be subjected to the routine injection!scanning tech­niques that have been used on previous projects. These new probes are injected one time, maybe twice at the most during our one-hundred-day mission, and they do not need to be replaced.”

“How did the long-term rejection problem get solved?” came a question from another doctor in the audience, interrupting Nicole’s train of thought. “I will discuss that in detail during our splinter session this afternoon,” she replied. “For now, it should be sufficient for me to mention that since the key chemistry governing rejection focuses on four or five critical parameters, including acidity, the probes are coated with chemicals that adapt to the local chemistry at the implantation site. In other words, once the probe arrives at its destination, it noninvasively samples its ambient biochemical environment and then exudes a thin coating for itself that is designed to be consistent with the chemistry of the host and thereby avoid rejection. “But I am getting ahead of myself,” Nicole said, turning to face the large model showing blood circulation in the human being. “The family of probes will be inserted here, in the left arm, and the individual monitors will dis­perse according to their prescribed guidance programs to thirty-two distinct locales in the body. There they will embed themselves in the host tissue.” The inside of the holographic model became animated as she spoke and the audience watched as thirty-two blinking lights started from the left arm and scattered throughout the body. Four went to the brain, three more to the heart, four to the primary glands of the endocrine system, and the remaining twenty-one monitors spread out to assorted locations and organs ranging from the eyes to the fingers and toes.