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Giordino dozed during the drive, while Pitt stared unseeing at the low buildings of the city The rush-hour traffic had begun strea into the suburbs were ja in the opposite direction
Pitt cursed his idiocy for not returning to Ice Hunter shortly after liftoff If Giordino had interpreted her e correctly, Maeve was in some sort of trouble The possibility that he had deserted her when she was calling out to hinawed at his conscience
The long arh his uilt Never in Pitt's years with NUMA had he ever placed his personal probleht to Punta Arenas, Giordino had provided the crowning touch
"There's a ti horny, and this isn't it People and s
ea life are dying by the boatload out there on the water The sooner we stop this evil, the et her for now When this cauldron of crap is over you can take a year off and chase her Down Under"
Giordino ht never-have been hired to teach rhetoric at Oxford, but he seldom failed to fill a book with common sense Pitt surrendered and reluctantly eased Maeve froered like a portrait that becae of time
His thoughts were broken as the car rolled over the driveway in front of the tall green, solar-glassed building that housed NUMA's headquarters The visitors' parking lot was covered with television transh microwaves to launch a new chicken rotisserie franchise
"I'll run you into the underground parking area," said the driver "The vultures were expecting your arrival"
"You sure an ax ?" asked Giordino
"No, the reception is for you The news media are starved for details of the cruise ship ht lid on it, but all hell broke loose after the surviving passengers talked when they reached Chile They were glowing in their praise of how you guys rescued the on the rocks The fact that two of the Arthur Dorsett naturally excited the expose rags"
"So now they're calling it a hed
"Lucky for the Indians they can't blame this one on them," said Giordino
The car stopped in front of a security guard stationed in front of a sned an entry form and took the elevator to the tenth floor When the doors opened they stepped into a vast rooer's electronics fiefdom from which the computer wizard directed NUMA's vast data systems network
Yaeger looked up froe horseshoe-shaped desk in the middle of the room and smiled broadly
No bib overalls today, but he earing a faded Levi's jacket that looked like it had been dragged froo by a horse He juorously shaking Pitt's and Giordino's hands "Good to see you two scoundrels back in the building It's been as dull as an abandoned amusement park since you skipped to the Antarctic"