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- Prologue
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  - Prologue
Introduction
by Larry Niven
Once upon a time, my wife Marilyn and I went to England for a World Science Fiction Convention. On
return, the Customs official scanned my passport and said, "Larry Niven the writer?
Lucifer's Hammer
?"
I said, "Right. You're a science fiction fan?"
"No," he said, and lifted the magazine he was reading. It was a publication for survivalists.
Lucifer's Hammer
(written with Jerry Pournelle) was, at that time, being used as a survivalist text.
Several of the surviving characters in that book are of that stamp: determined to make themselves self-
sufficient and ready for anything the universe or the Soviet Union might throw at them.
The survivalists in
Lucifer's Hammer
weren't just ready for the collapse of civilization. They were eager.
Dr. Forrester was an exception. He was a diabetic. He needed to find a group that would find him worth
saving. Dr. Forrester's preparations were given in nitpicking detail. Dr. Pournelle researched them
thoroughly, and that's what got the attention of the survivalists.
There are more survivalists than you think. Their ideal is self-sufficiency.
I raise the subject because Dean Ing is one of those. From my viewpoint it seems he can do anything
with his hands. He designs and builds cars and planes and other tools, sometimes to leave a clean
environment, sometimes to win races, sometimes—as in the Rackham stories—to weave a plausible
near-future.
I'm not one of these myself: not good with my hands. I sometimes wonder if people like Dean Ing know
how I see them. They're the original model for Motie Engineers (as in
A Mote in God's Eye
.) A better
model might be Dr. Zarkhov from the Flash Gordon comic strip. He knows enough about anything to
make the tool that fits.
This tool building talent is the most human of traits, but some of us have more of it than others.
Dean Ing wants you to survive, if you're smart enough to read his books.
He's a muscular guy, not spectacularly tall, who weighs no more than he should. In this respect he's quite
different from his character Rackham. But Rackham is another Zarkhov: he can make a tool on the spot.
The difference is that you will understand the tool. You'll be able to make it yourself.
The Rackham stories date from the Cold War. That's okay. The laws of physics and engineering haven't
changed.
My favorite of his novels is
Soft Targets.
If I tried to describe the premise, you wouldn't believe me. It's
up-to-the-minute relevant. I just can't quite believe it would work.
—Larry Niven
September 2003
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- Prologue
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 - Chapter 1
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  - Chapter 1
INSIDE JOB
One
"The longer I live, the more I realize the less I know for sure." That's what my friend Quentin Kim used
to mutter to me and curvy little Dana Martin in our Public Safety classes at San Jose State. Dana would
frown because she revered conventional wisdom. I'd always chuckle, because I thought Quent was
kidding. But that was years ago, and I was older then.
I mean, I thought I knew it all. "Public Safety" is genteel academic code for cop coursework, and while
Quent had already built himself an enviable rep as a licensed P.I. in the Bay Area, he hadn't been a big-
city cop. I went on to become one, until I got fed up with the cold war between guys on the take and
guys in Internal Affairs, both sides angling for recruits. I tried hard to avoid getting their crap on my size
thirteen brogans while I lost track of Dana, saw Quent infrequently, and served the City of Oakland's
plainclothes detail in the name of public safety.
So much for stepping carefully in such a barnyard. At least I got out with honor after a few years, and I
still had contacts around Oakland on both sides of the law. Make that several sides; and to an
investigator that's worth more than diamonds. It would've taken a better man than Harve Rackham to let
those contacts go to waste, which is why I became the private kind of investigator, aka gumshoe, peeper,
or just plain Rackham, P.I.
Early success can destroy you faster than a palmed ice pick, especially if it comes through luck you
thought was skill. A year into my new career, I talked my way into a seam job—a kidnapping within a
disintegrating family. The kidnapped boy's father, a Sunnyvale software genius, wanted the kid back
badly enough to throw serious money at his problem. After a few days of frustration, I shot my big
mouth off about it to my sister's husband, Ernie.
It was a lucky shot, though. Ernie was with NASA at Moffett Field and by sheer coincidence he knew a
certain Canadian physicist. I'd picked up a rumor that the physicist had been playing footsie with the
boy's vanished mother.
The physicist had a Quebecois accent, Ernie recalled, and had spoken longingly about a teaching career.
The man had already given notice at NASA without a forwarding address. He was Catholic. A little
digging told me that might place him at the University of Montreal, a Catholic school which gives
instruction in French. I caught a Boeing 787 and got there before he did, and guess who was waiting
with her five-year-old boy in the Montreal apartment the physicist had leased.
I knew better than to dig very far into the reasons why Mama took Kiddie and left Papa. It was enough
that she'd fled the country illegally. The check I cashed was so much more than enough that I bought a
decaying farmhouse twenty miles and a hundred years from Oakland.
Spending so much time away, I figured I'd need to fence the five acres of peaches and grapes, but the
smithy was what sold me. "The smith, a mighty man was he, with large and sinewy," et cetera. Romantic
bullshit, sure, but as I said, I knew it all then. And I wanted to build an off-road racer, one of the diesel-
electric hybrids that were just becoming popular. I couldn't imagine a better life than peeping around the
Port of Oakland for money, and hiding out on my acreage whenever I had some time off, building my
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