Utopia - By Isaac Asimov,Roger E. Allen Page 0,88

communication with the outside world as possible. Here he could focus on the project itself. If he went back to Hades, it was all but inevitable that he would get swept up talking about the project, rather than doing something about it.

Very well. Now the world knew about the comet, and he had not been the one to tell them. All to the good. But now there was another problem. The obvious thing to do now was to allow the public discussion move forward to the point where he could confirm the existence of the comet plan to a populace ready to accept the idea. But how the devil could he do that when he would be forced to make the ridiculous-sounding admission that they had misplaced the comet?

Plainly, the best answer to that problem was to relocate the comet as soon as possible. But Kresh had done as much as he could in that direction for the moment. Sometimes the job of leadership was simply to get things started, and trust in others to get them done. He would have to keep on here, focusing on other aspects of the project, working on the assumption that they would be able to find the comet in time. Back to work, he told himself.

"Still with me, Dee?" Kresh asked.

"Yes, sir, I am," Unit Dee replied. "Was there anything of interest in your mailbox?"

"Quite a bit," he said. "But nothing that you need worry about. I have a new task for you."

"I would be delighted to be of further assistance."

"Right," said Kresh, his tone of voice deliberately brusque. There was something about courtly manners from a robot that got on his nerves. "My personal robot, Donald 111, is at work on the preliminary preparations for the cometary impact. Safety plans, evacuations plans, that sort of thing. I want to contact him and have him hand off that job to you. Clearly, you're better suited to it than he is. I should have assigned the job to you in the first place. Relay my orders to that effect, then order Donald to join me here as soon as possible without revealing my whereabouts."

"I will contact him at once," Dee said.

"Good," said Kresh. "I'm going to step out for a breath of fresh air. When I return, we will return to refining your impact targeting plan."

"With the extremely rough data we got from Dr. Lentrall, I am not sure there is more we can do."

"But there might be," Kresh said. "At the very least we can work out a range of scenarios and contingencies, so that we are more ready to act when the time comes. We'll work out a few hundred possible rough trajectories, and give Unit Dum something to do."

Dee did not respond to the very small joke, but instead spoke with her usual urbane civility. "Very well, sir. I will continue with my other duties while I await your return."

"Back in a minute," Kresh said, and stood up. He stretched, yawned, and ignored the stares of the Center's workers as he rubbed his tired face. Let them wonder what their governor was doing here. Alvar headed out the huge armored door of Room 103, down the corridor of the Terraforming Center, out the double doors that led to the outside, and into the morning.

It had been a long time since he had worked a job all night, worked all the clock around. He was close to exhausted, but not quite. There was something invigorating about seeing the morning after a hard night's work. Somehow Kresh always felt as if he had earned the loveliness of morning after working through the darkness.

The rains were gone now, and the world was fresh and bright, scrubbed clean. The sky was a brilliant blue, dotted with perfect white clouds that set off the deep azure of the heavens. The air smelled sweet, and good. Alvar Kresh looked toward the west, in the direction of the governor's Winter Residence. He remembered another morning like this, with everything fresh and bright, and all good things possible. A morning he had spent with Fredda, just after he had assumed the governorship. That had been a morning of good omen. Perhaps this would be as well.

And maybe it was time to move over to the Winter Residence. That would let him stay on the island. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed a good idea to keep a low profile just now. But that could wait