Convergent Series Read Online Free

should take a look at these, sir. As soon as you can."
    Kelly laid a folder on the plaited-reed tabletop that lay between them, sat back, and waited. Max Perry could not be rushed in his current mood.
    The ceiling of the room was transparent, looking directly up into Opal's normally cloudy skies. The location had been carefully chosen. It was close to the center of Quakeside, in a region where atmospheric circulation patterns increased the chance of clear patches. At the moment there was a brief predusk break in the overcast, and Quake was visible. With its surface only twelve thousand kilometers from the closest point of Opal, the parched sphere filled more than thirty-five degrees of the sky like a great, mottled fruit, purple-gray and overripe, poised ready to fall. From that distance it appeared peaceful, but already the dusky limb of the planet showed the softening of edges that spoke of rising dust storms.
    Summertide was just thirty-six days away, less than two standard weeks. In ten days' time Perry would order the evacuation from Quake's surface, then monitor that evacuation personally. In every exodus for the past six years he had been the last man or woman to leave Quake, and the first to return after Summertide.
    It was a compulsion with Perry. And regardless of what Rebka might want, Birdie Kelly knew that Max Perry would try to keep it that way.
    Already night was advancing on the surface of Opal. Its dark shadow would soon create the brief false-night of Mandel eclipse on Quake. But Perry and Kelly would not be able to see that. The break in the overcast was closing, eaten away by swirls of rapidly moving cloud. There was a final flash of silver from far above, light reflected from the glittering knot of Midway Station and the lower part of the Umbilical; then Quake faded rapidly from view. Minutes later the roof above their heads showed the starred patterns of the first raindrops.
    Perry sighed, leaned forward, and picked up the folders. Kelly knew that the other man had registered his earlier words without really hearing them. But Perry knew that if his right-hand man said he ought to look at the folder at once, there was a good reason for it.
    The green covering held three long message summaries, each one a request for a visit to the surface of Quake. There was nothing very unusual in that. Birdie had been ready to give routine approval pending examination of travel plans—until he saw the source of the requests. Then he knew that Perry had to see them and would want to study them in detail.
    The communicator buzzed again as Perry began to concentrate on the contents of the folder. Birdie Kelly took one look at the new message and quietly left the room. Rebka was arriving, but Perry did not need to be on the airstrip to welcome him. Birdie could do that. Perry had quite enough to worry about with the visit requests. Every one had come from outside the Dobelle system—outside, in fact, the worlds of the Phemus Circle. One was from the Fourth Alliance, one from a remote region of the Zardalu Communion, so far away that Birdie Kelly had never heard of it; and one, oddest of all, had been sent by the Cecropia Federation. That was unprecedented. So far as Birdie knew, no Cecropian had ever come within light-years of Dobelle.
    Stranger yet, every visitor wanted to be on the surface of Quake at Summertide.
     
    When Birdie Kelly returned he did something that he reserved for emergencies. He knocked on the door before he came in. The action guaranteed Perry's instant attention.
    Kelly was holding yet another folder, and he was not alone. Behind him stood a thin, poorly dressed man who stared about with bright dark-brown eyes and was apparently more interested in the room's meager and tattered furnishings than in Perry himself.
    His first words seemed to bear out that idea. "Commander Perry, I am pleased to meet you. I am Hans Rebka. I know that Opal is not a rich planet. But your position here would surely justify