Peter Hamilton - If at First...

‘That doesn’t surprise me. There’s always rotten apples, Juliet, remember that. All you can ever do is hope to exclude them from achieving top-rank positions.’

‘What will you do now?’

The hand massaged his brow again. ‘Tell Walshaw, for a start. If we can’t trust him then we may as well pack up today. After that I’ll bring in an independent, get him to check this mess out for me – security, Zanthus management, the memox-furnace operators, the whole bloody lot of them.’

‘What sort of independent?’

He grinned. ‘Work that out for yourself, Juliet. Management exercise.’

‘How many guesses?’ she shot back, delighted. He was always challenging her like this. Testing.

‘Three.’

‘Cruel.’

‘Good night, Juliet. Sweet dreams.’

‘Love you, Grandee.’

He kissed two fingers, transferring it to the screen. Her fingers pressed urgently against his, the touch of cold glass, hard. His face faded to slate grey.

Julia pulled the sheet over herself, turning off the brass swan wall-lights. She hugged her chest in the warm darkness; elated, far too alert for sleep to claim her.

Access Surveillance Camera: West Wing, Guest Suite Seven.

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If at First… is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

2011 Del Rey eBook Edition

Copyright © 2007 by Peter F. Hamilton

Excerpt from Mindstar Rising by Peter F. Hamilton copyright © 1993 by Peter F. Hamilton

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY is a registered trade mark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction , edited by George Mann and published by Solaris Oxford, UK, in 2007.

eISBN: 978-0-345-52908-4

Cover art: Shutterstock

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