Still angry, Meloni shot a message to Personnel at Mexico City. That
done, he forgot about it. The buck had been passed, let the boys sitting
on their backsides down on Earth handle it.
Colonel Hausman, second in command of Personnel Division of UNRC, was
the man to whom Meloni's message went. He snorted loudly when he read
it. And later, when he went in to report to Garces, the brigadier
commanding the Division, he took the message with him.
"Meloni must be pretty badly rattled by the crash," he said. "Look at
this."
Garces read the message, then looked up. "Anything to this? The Delhi
experiments, I mean?"
Hausman had taken care to brief himself on that point and was able to
answer emphatically.
"Damned little. Those chaps in Delhi have been playing around freezing
insects and thawing them out, and they think the process might be
developed someday to where it could revive frozen spacemen. It's an iffy
idea. I'll burn Meloni's backside off for bringing it up at a time like
this."
Garces, after a moment, shook his head. "No, wait. Let me think about
this."
He looked speculatively out of the window for a few moments. Then he
said,
"Message Meloni that this one chap's body--what's his name, Kieran?--is
to be preserved in space against a chance of future revival."
Hausman nearly blotted his copybook by exclaiming, "For God's sake--" He
choked that down in time and said, "But it could be centuries before a
revival process is perfected, if it ever is."
Garces nodded. "I know. But you're missing a psychological point that
could be valuable to UNRC. This Kieran has relatives, doesn't he?"
Hausman nodded. "A widowed mother and a sister. His father's been dead a
long time. No wife or children."
Garces said, "If we tell them he's dead, frozen in space and then
buried, it's all over with. Won't those people feel a lot better if we
tell them that he's _apparently_ dead, but might be brought back when a
revival-technique is perfected in the future?"
"I suppose they'd feel better about it," Hausman conceded. "But I don't
see--"
Garces shrugged. "Simple. We're only really beginning in space, you
know. As we go on, UNRC is going to lose a number of men, space-struck
just like Kieran. A howl will go up about our casualty lists, it always
does. But if we can say that they're only frozen until such time as
revival technique is achieved, everyone will feel better about it."
"I suppose public relations are important--" Hausman began to say, and
Garces nodded quickly.
"They are. See that this is done, when you go up to confer with Meloni.
Make sure that it gets onto the video networks, I want everyone to see
it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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