Rualf sat amid a ring of displays, analyzing camera angles. The ship's hull was studded with sensors. The President was in the Oval Office, ready to watch a closed-circuit television view of the ceremony while, unbeknownst to him, an orb observed him. Rualf shouted final directions to the troupe as to where their F'thk cameras should stand. They wriggled into the robots' control suits.
Show time.
The outer door of an airlock cycled open. The ramp descended. The robots trotted down the incline and arranged themselves in an arc that faced a quintessentially human building: a hideously ugly box with huge doors. It was meant, obviously, as housing for the freaks' simple aircraft. Today it held instead a collection of Earth's primitive arts and crafts.
As always when the Consensus visited, the humans diverted their airplanes to other airfields. No humans were yet in evidence. That was good—the starship had visited Washington often enough that curious crowds no longer rushed to meet it. And an intimate ceremony befitted Rualf's sense of aesthetics.
A short door inset in an aircraft-sized portal swung open. The American delegation exited. As the humans approached across the concrete, Rualf whispered orders to position the robots into a slightly different configuration.
"Welcome back to Washington, H'ffl." A silver-haired human extended an arm in greeting. "Please accept the President's apologies for his unavoidable absence. He felt his presence would draw too much attention to this meeting."
The text window in Rualf's helmet provided an unnecessary reminder: Britt Arledge. H'ffl reached out one of its arms, gravely performed the human ritual. "It is good to see you again, Mr. Arledge. Please tell President Robeson that we understand."
"It would be a much happier occasion if we were about to join the Galactic Commonwealth. But that is not to be." Arledge peered directly into one set of H'ffl's "eyes": a perfect close-up. "The people of Earth have foolishly shown ourselves too immature. Perhaps the steps we are about to take are unnecessarily cautious. I pray that is so . . . but I dread it is not.
"The F'thk share your hopes and fears," lied Rualf. "We accept your treasures in trust, to show with honor across the galaxy, and, we hope, to return to you someday."
"Our cargo vehicles are loaded." Arledge pointed to the building that housed Earth's trinkets. His head bobbed in some signal, in a grotesque parody of the articulate fluency of which Krulchukor sensor stalks were capable. "So let us begin."
With the abundant energy from a spaceship's fusion reactor to run bioconverters and maintain an environment, stranded Krulirim could hope to survive in almost any solar system long enough to be rescued—if their need for recovery could be made known. That was why the Consensus, like most spaceships, carried amongst its provisions a collection of emergency buoys, and why its computers held directions for fabricating more. Standard practice, upon arrival at an unpopulated solar system, was to pre-deploy some buoys in case of later need.
The buoys were essentially freestanding interstellar signaling stations. That purpose required the ability to generate and store energy, to receive from a marooned crew the specific details of the call for help, to convert those specifics and that accumulated energy into coherent microwave pulses, and to aim the message pulses precisely at a distant target star. Each buoy was a solar-powered satellite, with a powerful onboard computer, a remote-control interface for programming by the presumed stranded crew, and precision sensors for aiming.
Point that powerful maser downward at planetary targets, rather than across interstellar distances, and the buoy was an enormously destructive weapon. The Consensus had ringed the Earth with two three-squares and three of such weapons.
Grelben straddled the squat padded cylinder that was his command seat. Displays encircling the bridge showed a panoramic view of the landing site and the unfolding of Rualf's climactic scene. Other displays updated him regularly as to which masers had a line of sight to this airport. Parking a few buoys in synchronous orbit would have eliminated that tedious task, but the humans had that near-Earth region filled with their own satellites. Keeping his buoys secret had meant putting them in inconvenient orbits, where they could not hover over a fixed terrestrial location. Keeping the satellites secret had also required making them invisible to radar, and grafting radar-canceling mechanisms to the buoys had made his hybrid devices sporadically unreliable. To be certain of killing a target, he had to assign several buoys.
He periodically glanced at the unfolding ceremony. "Some of my people's greatest accomplishments await within those trucks," a gray-topped human was saying. Grelben wondered whether these Earth mementos could somehow be sold—as movie props and souvenirs, of course, not as real artifacts. There would be time to sort that out on the long trip home.
"And now we commit our treasures to Earth's new friends . . ."
The Consensus had never landed this near to buildings—he had always insisted on wide separation, the better to escape from potential surprises by an emergency launch—but Rualf's "artistic integrity" for this scene dictated a cozy, confidential setting. Can we move this along? fumed Grelben to himself. He felt exposed down here.
Alas, the onboard lasers could only fire forward, since in space the ship was only at risk from junk overtaken in flight. So here he sat, watching anxiously in all directions for he knew not what, tracking the buoys as they orbited in and out of line-of-sight. If a threat did materialize, and none ever had, he would have to select a target, pinpoint its location, and uplink those coordinates to a satellite. It was also hard to know in advance with what maser frequency to strike. Ship's sensors would monitor his target for scattered energy; if too little energy were being absorbed he would have to reprogram the attack frequency.
Yes, he would have been far happier with what had become a routine landing: in the center of a human airfield, far from any possible hazard. Grelben had no reason to doubt that the humans, who had never in any way threatened his ship, had no intention of making trouble today. Rualf kept assuring him that the humans were entirely intimidated by the light show made manifest near Earth's moon. The freaks should be overawed by it, even if the main cause for fear and dread had yet to be manifested. But it would. . . .
From the shadow beneath a retractable passenger walkway, Andrew Wheaton surveyed the idle runways of Reagan National Airport. A Baltimore Orioles cap, bought that day as camouflage, shaded his eyes. His FAA ID tag from St. Cloud Regional dangled from his coat zipper. He ambled to the traffic noise from the nearby George Washington Parkway, trying to project a casualness he did not feel, onto the deserted field. The top of the spaceship peered over a line of hangars.
Chewing an unlit cigar, he sauntered to the fuel depot and a row of parked tanker trucks. With air traffic diverted for the aliens' visit, the drivers had the afternoon off. In Andrew's pocket was the heavy ceramic ashtray he'd taken from a workers' lounge. He threw the ashtray through the driver's window of the end tanker. Reaching through the shattered glass with a gloved hand, he unlocked the door.
Andrew had rewired the farmhouse twice; hot-wiring an ignition did not faze him. The truck was already rolling when someone burst from the depot to check out the noise. The watchman receded rapidly in Andrew's rearview mirror. Cold wind spilling through the broken side window whipped the cap from his head.
Those F'thk bastards who had stolen his family would now pay.
A cargo van, supposedly the first of many, approached the awaiting starship. Kyle was the van's passenger. His heart pounded as they started up the ramp into the gaping airlock. F'thk watched silently from the concrete; others of the robots awaited in the airlock itself, to assist with the expected unloading.
"Ready?" Col. Blake drove one-handed, his other hand resting on the parking-brake lever. He was of the "I won't ask my men to do anything I wouldn't do" school. Oddly, Blake saw no inconsistency in hinting Kyle was a few beers short of a six-pack for accompanying him.
What would Blake do if I answered no, wondered Kyle. They were nearing the top of the ramp. "Let's do it."
"Okay." The commando slammed on his brake pedal and yanked the emergency brake lever. They squealed to a halt with the van's tail hanging out of the airlock. "Sit tight." The advice was unnecessary. The F'thk in the airlock were being torn apart by a hail of bullets from hidden snipers—and from the Uzi Blake had retrieved from the glove box to fire through the windshield. The same fate befell the more exposed robots on the ground. As if in slow motion, the outer airlock hatch clanked impotently against the reinforced van. "Go, go, go."
They flung open their doors. The control panel was right where Swelk had said it would be, its buttons labeled in spidery characters reminiscent of the keypad on her computer. Familiarity was not enough; two human hands did not begin to have the dexterity of the nine fully opposable digits at the end of a Krul limb. Grinding his teeth, Kyle tried again and again to press precisely the sequence of key clusters he had memorized.
It didn't help that Blake, who was applying plastic explosives to the inner hatch, kept bumping into him. One way or another, they were going to get inside, because only a crew held hostage could disable whatever doomsday devices they had deployed.
"Take off!" screamed Rualf. The edge in his voice came partially from simple desire for instant obedience, but mostly from irrational terror. The rich data stream from the robotic control suit gave an illusion of reality that while normally a convenience had without warning become a near-death experience. Rualf had just suffered the tearing apart of H'ffl's body and the final spasmodic misfirings of dying sensors. "Grelben! Get us out of here."
From the computer in Rualf's pocket came a shouted reply. "I can't take off. The outer door is jammed, and the ramp is designed not to retract with the airlock open. I have someone trying to override the interlock. And these freaks you promised would never attack? They radioed a demand for our surrender."
With shipboard sensors Rualf saw that all the outside robots were down. A camera viewing outward from the airlock showed two busy humans inside and more vehicles converging. Only the inner airlock hatch separated him and his troupe, all struggling to extricate themselves from the teleoperations suits, from their assailants. The hatch suddenly seemed a very flimsy and inadequate defense. "Grelben! Use the satellites. Blast them."
"Blast what? Our own ship?" came the angry answer. There was a pause. "Maybe I can use the masers on nearby buildings, or parked airplanes, to create a diversion. Get ready to drive out an unblocked airlock and tow the . . . oh, shit."
"What!?" Rualf was finally free of his suit. Fleeing the cargo bay, he could not put from his mind the humans at the airlock controls. How could they possibly expect to find the command sequence? As he waited for the zoo hold's inner airlock hatch to cycle, he interrupted Grelben's cursing. "What's wrong?"
"Get a Hovercraft out now." The captain's voice was grim. "The buoys are under attack."
With a liquid hum, the airlock controls finally responded to Kyle's inputs. "Back inside the van." There was no way to know what might come at them through the hatch he'd been so eager to open. On the rear deck of the van was a gas-powered, seven-thousand-watt, electric generator. Several multioutlet surge protectors were plugged into the generator. From the surge protectors, in turn, hung two vacuum cleaners, a leaf blower, a belt sander, a kitchen mixer . . . pretty much every motorized appliance in Kyle's house.
"Fire in the hole." He mashed down the generator's On button. As the engine roared to life, he and Blake began switching on appliances. The noise was deafening. As he stepped down from the van's side door, the inner airlock hatch thunked into its fully open position. Krulirim writhed and thrashed on the deck, some with limbs entangled in unrecognizable equipment. The thunder of the portable generator masked any sounds the aliens may have been making.
Just as Kyle was thinking, Victory, he was jerked roughly around. He lip-read, rather than heard Blake's words. "We have a problem."
The overcrowded trailer in which Swelk anxiously waited was ripe with an odor she did not recognize. Despite every effort to keep out of the way, she was bumped and bruised. The humans stretched, contorted, and strained to look past one another at the instruments and display panels lining the trailer's walls. Darlene tried to report status occasionally, but the cacophony of speech rendered the translator mostly useless.
It grieved Swelk that the humans still distrusted her. The trailer doors were secured by a keypad device. The irony that she had revealed the keypad code to the Consensus was not lost on her. What was lost on the people streaming in and out of the trailer, however, was that a Krul saw in a full circle—she was in no sense "facing" one of the walls of instrumentation as were her human companions. She had already espied the code that would let her exit. That knowledge was of no practical use—this trailer was the only enclosure in the vicinity shielded against Kyle's impromptu magnetic weapon.
A cheer rang out. Swelk quivered, though the reaction must be only nerves. Actual exposure would have incapacitated her. Kyle must have succeeded in opening the airlock door. Please be all right. Please be all right. Images of her shipmates, of the Girillian menagerie, of Kyle alternated in her mind. She was not certain for whom the wishes of safety were most fervently intended. Please be all right. Please be . . .
The mass of people in the trailer had fallen suddenly, ominously silent.
Truly awful violin music screeched from the Walkman cassette recorder Andrew Wheaton had brought to the airport. Wild clapping greeted the end of the tune. "That's great, sweetie," Tina encouraged. "Play it again for Mommy?" Andrew laughed through his tears, remembering what Tina had later admitted—she'd had no idea what Junior had played.
"Thank you, Mommy," answered a voice as sweet as the music was tortured. Screeching resumed. Tina's again was the single clue this shrieking was related to the earlier "tune."
Andrew brushed away the tears, but left the tape, the final recording of lost wife and child, running. Swinging the stolen tanker truck around the end of a row of hangars, the alien ship loomed before him like a beached whale. The truck had fishtailed coming out of the curve; he eased up on the gas, lining up on one of the vessel's landing legs. He patted the photo of the three of them he'd taped to the dashboard.
Then he pushed the gas pedal to the floor.
He was astonished to see puffs bursting from the concrete. Moments later, the tanker lurched, its rear dragging. People were shooting at him—or at his tires, anyway. Were there troops here to protect the murdering devils? The truck swerved and swayed as he fought to control it. One of those swerves revealed a ramp leading into the ship. Newscasts often showed the outer airlock hatch open at the top of a ramp.
A low armored truck, a "high mobility vehicle," sped from a hangar, rashly trying to cut him off. There was no need to see if that driver truly was suicidal—better to sweep around and charge up the open ramp. Another Humvee raced up parallel to him. He didn't hear these shots either over Junior's playing, but his windshield filled with holes. The wind of his forward motion pressed against the weakened windshield. The glass shattered, countless shards stabbing him in the chest and face and arms.
He patted the St. Christopher's medal that dangled from the rearview mirror, and once more the photo. "See you soon."
The ramp was directly in front of him.
Either the roar of the portable generator or the boom of the backup explosives was the commandos' cue to race across the tarmac from hangar to starship. No part of the plan involved a tanker truck—but one was nonetheless barreling toward them.
Kyle couldn't make out much detail at this distance. The tanker driver had pale hair, dark eyes, and a cigar in his mouth. Then it hit him: Andrew Wheaton. Kyle never doubted that the grieving father and husband meant to crash into the ship. Blake's soldiers were at a loss, unable to stop the tanker and unwilling to risk setting it afire as it sped toward their objective.
Could he deflect the tanker? Keep it from climbing the ramp? Kyle gestured; Blake followed him back to the van. The generator weighed nearly 250 pounds; grunting, they shoved it out the van's side door onto the airlock floor. Electric cords yanked loose; Kyle threw appliances from the van. "Plug it all back in!" he screamed into the sudden comparative quiet. He jumped into the driver's seat and threw the van into reverse.
Rualf thrashed and convulsed, as all around him animals calmly circled their cages or nibbled their fodder or stood watching him. Whatever had rendered him helpless had no effect on the Girillian beasts. Hearts beating erratically, limbs flailing, he tried to call out for assistance. His words were unintelligible, even to him.
When would it end? Would it end? That second question had just occurred to him when the phenomenon, whatever it was, abated. Limbs quivering, he climbed falteringly from the deck. How much time had been lost? To save a few seconds, he keyed in the override that opened the airlock's second hatch. He had to get outside with a utility Hovercraft, had to drag the human's obstruction from the other airlock, so that they could escape.
He was staggering toward a Hovercraft when the invisible forces, whatever they were, surged anew. Rualf dropped again to the floor, in helpless terror of whatever might come through the airlock that now gaped open, entirely unguarded.
A cargo van burst in reverse from the airlock. It bounced down the ramp, gaining speed, aimed right at Andrew. Sorry fella, he thought in utter sincerity. He maintained course.
At the last moment, the van driver dived out, to be struck brutally by his own door. The van veered, whether from a final tug on the steering wheel or the drag of the open door. As the tanker smashed into the van, Andrew was glad to see the driver had tumbled clear.
The tank tried to go straight even as the cab tipped going over the van. As Andrew fought the skid, the cab's wheels slammed back down, the front left wheels of the tank hit the crushed van, and the steering wheel twisted out of his hands.
The rig jackknifed. The tanker spun and scraped along the concrete, raising a sea of sparks and a sound like the end of the world. The overturned vehicle kept moving forward. Near the base of the ramp, the tank ruptured. Clear liquid and the stench of kerosene streamed toward the starship and its gaping port. Battered and bruised, Andrew saw a second person leaping from the ramp. Run fast, he thought, as another bounce cracked his head against the side window.
A spark ignited the spilled jet fuel. The devils who had taken his family were doomed.