ENDGAME ENIGMA
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my gratitude to the following people for their help and advice in writing this book:
Brent Warner of NASA’s Goddard Space Center, Maryland, who spent many hours thinking about pendulums, gyroscopes, vortexes, and rotating geometries, and gallantly placed his sanity at risk by sharing for a while the weird kind of world that science-fiction writers inhabit. Jim Waligora of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston, for information on the physiology of low pressures and spacesuit design. Steve Fairchild of Moaning Cavern, Murphys, California, for thoughts on just about everything and his invaluable penchant for devil’s advocacy. Lynx Crowe of Berkeley, California, for suggestions on security methods. David Robb of Applied Perception Technologies, Minneapolis, for lots of data on space colonies. Cheryl Robinson, who helped hatch Lewis and his companions from a pile of barren notes. Owen Lock of Ballantine Books, for sharing some of his immense knowledge of the world of military intelligence. Kathy Sobansky, for her assistance with Russian language translations. And Takumi Shibano, for his guidance in penetrating Oriental inscrutability.
And then there was Jackie, who doubled as electrician, plumber, handyman, auto mechanic, gardener, chauffeur, and carpenter, as well as being a mother to three small, rowdy boys—and never once complained about the hours a writer works. She made the book possible; they made it necessary.
Dedication
To EDWARD JOSEPH, my third son in a row, who,
after three daughters in a row, restored my faith in mathematics
by proving that the law of averages does work in the end,
provided one gives it long enough.