Moonstruck
A New Golden Age … or the Apocalypse?
The moon has suddenly acquired its own satellite: a two-mile-
across starship that represents a hitherto unsuspected Galactic
Commonwealth. The F'thk, a vaguely centaur-like member species
for whom Earth's ecology is hospitable, have been sent to evaluate
humanity for prospective membership.
The F'thk are overtly friendly but very private—“Information is a
trade good.” As Earth's scientists struggle to understand their
secretive appraisers, odd inconsistencies emerge. As troubling as
those anomalies is the re-emergence of a bit of insanity humanity
thought it had outgrown: Cold War and nuclear saber-rattling.
The Galactics' arrival may signify the start of a glorious new era, or
it may presage the cataclysmic end of human civilization. Which
outcome do the aliens really desire . . .
And what will they do if humanity refuses to play its assigned role?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As a physicist and computer scientist, Edward M. Lerner gained
access to such unsuspecting techie havens as Bell Labs and
Hughes Aircraft—even onto NASA’s space shuttle simulator.
Probe, his first novel, was a techno-thriller that leveraged that
experience. Moonstruck builds on that tradition.
Lerner’s appearances in leading science-fiction magazines include
the cyberspace novel Survival Instinct (serialized in Analog) and
the InterstellarNet novelettes (in Analog and Artemis) about the
century-long evolution of a star-spanning, radio-based, trading
community. His SF/mystery/telecom novelette Creative Destruction
was anthologized in Year's Best SF 7 and was the sole work of
speculative fiction published in association with Telecom World
2003 (sponsored by the UN’s International Telecommunications
Union).
His website is www.sfwa.org/members/lerner/.
Illustration by Doug Chaffee
Cover design by Jennie Faries
Hardcover
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in
this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or
incidents is purely coincidental.
First printing, February 2005
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 0-7434-9885-2
Copyright © 2005 by Edward M. Lerner. A slightely different
version of this novel was first published in Analog Science Fiction
and Fact in 2003.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or
portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
http://www.baen.com
Production by Windhaven Press
Auburn, NH
Electronic version by WebWrights
http://www.webwrights.com
To friends and colleagues too numerous
to mention in and around NASA.
And to the Hard SF authors who
steered me in that direction.
Moonstruck
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
GIFT HORSE
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
A FOOLISH SYMMETRY
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
LAST ACTS
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
THE LAND OF DARKNESS
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
"T minus five minutes, and holding."
It wasn't even ten in the morning, but the day was already hot. Kyle
Gustafson squirted another dollop of sunscreen into his palm, then
rubbed his hands together. Smearing it over his face and neck, he
grimaced: he reeked of coconut oil. He made a mental note to
avoid all open flames until he showered.
Kyle had a Scottish-American mother and a Swedish-American
father, a combination that Dad called industrial-strength WASP. He
didn't belong below the forty-fifth parallel, let alone outside beneath
Cape Canaveral's summer, subtropical sun—but he never missed
an opportunity to witness a launch. His job helped: who better than
the presidential science advisor to escort visiting foreign
dignitaries to Kennedy Space Center?
"You could wear a hat, my friend."
I look really stupid in hats, Kyle thought. Turning toward his Russian
counterpart, he suppressed that answer as impolitic. Instead, he
changed the subject. "Sorry for the delay, Sergei. The hold is built
into the schedule to allow time for responding to minor glitches."
"T minus five minutes, and holding."
His guest said nothing. Sergei Denisovich Arbatov was tall, wiry,
and tanned. He'd been born and raised in the Crimea, the Black
Sea peninsula once popularly called the Russian Riviera. That
nickname had gone out of vogue when the USSR self-destructed,
and an independent Ukraine had made it clear that ethnic Russians
were no longer welcome. In 1992, Sergei had moved his family to
Moscow, where he'd moved up rapidly in the new, democratic
government. It wasn't clear to Kyle how Sergei avoided the
Muscovite's traditional pallor—unless it was by finagling trips to
Florida.
"T minus five minutes, and counting."
The single-word change in the announcement made Kyle's pulse
race. Across the plain from their vantage point at the VIP launch
viewing area, Atlantis shimmered through the rising waves of
heated air.
The shuttle on Launch Pad 39B stood 184 feet tall, the dartlike
body of the orbiter dwarfed by the solid rocket boosters and
external fuel tank to which it was attached. All but the tank were
white; the expendable metal tank, once also painted white, was
now left its natural rust color to reduce takeoff weight by 750
pounds.
"T minus four minutes, thirty seconds, and counting."
Kyle continued his standard briefing. "The gross weight of the
shuttle at launch is about 4.5 million pounds, Sergei. Impressive,
don't you think?"
"Apollo/Saturn V weighed a half again more." The gray-haired
Russian smiled sadly. "We never made it to the moon, and you
Americans have forgotten how. I don't know who disappoints me
more."
Kyle had been thirteen the night of the first moon landing.
Afterward, he'd lain awake all night, scheming how he, too, would
sometime, somehow, make a giant leap for mankind. The idealist
in him still shared Arbatov's regrets. Many days, only that boy's
dream sustained Kyle through Washington's game-playing and
inanity. Someday, he told himself, he would make it happen.
Someday seemed never to get closer.
"T minus four minutes, and counting."
Nervously, Kyle ran his fingers through hair once flame-red. Age
had banked the fire with ashes, for a net effect beginning to
approach salmon. Too late, he remembered the sunscreen that
coated his hands. "We'll go back, Sergei," he answered softly,
speaking really to himself. "Men will walk again on the moon. Will
visit other worlds, too." He shook off the sudden gloom. "First,
though, we've got a satellite to launch."
"T minus three minutes, ten seconds, and counting."
Loudspeakers all around them blared the announcement.
The Earth's atmosphere is effectively opaque to gamma radiation.
In 1991, to begin a whole new era in astronomy, Atlantis had
delivered the Gamma Ray Observatory to low Earth orbit. After
years of spectacular success, the GRO had had one too many
gyroscopes fail. NASA had deorbited it in 2000, in a spectacular
but controlled Pacific Ocean crash.
Now another Atlantis crew was ready to deploy GRO's
replacement. Major Les Griffiths, the mission commander, had
proposed that the mission badges on the crew's flight suits read,
"Your full-spectrum delivery service." The suggestion was rejected
as too flippant. A mere three missions into the post-Columbia
resumption of shuttle flights, American nerves remained raw.
"Da." Arbatov turned to the distant shuttle. He sounded skeptical.
"Then let us watch."
The remaining minutes passed with glacial slowness. Finally, a
brilliant spark flashed beneath Atlantis. Golden flames lashed at
300,000 gallons of water in the giant heat/sound-suppression
trench beside the launch pad, hiding the shuttle in a sudden cloud
of steam. Kyle's heart, as always, skipped a beat, anxious for the
top of the shuttle to emerge from the fog. A wall of sound more felt
than heard washed over them. Faster than he could ever believe
possible, no matter how often he saw it, the shuttle shot skyward
on a column of fire and smoke. Chase planes in pursuit, it angled
eastward and headed out over the ocean. The sound receded to a
rumble as he shaded his eyes to watch.
"Kyle!"
The American reluctantly returned his attention to his guest.
Arbatov still stared at the disappearing spacecraft, one of the
mission-frequency portable radios that Kyle's position had allowed
him to commandeer pressed tightly to his ear. Kyle's own radio,
turned off, hung from his wrist.
"Nyet, nyet, nyet!" shouted the Russian.
The presidential advisor snapped on his own radio. "Roger that,"
said the pilot. "Abort order acknowledged." The hypercalm,
hypercrisp words made Kyle's blood run cold.
A speck atop a distant flame, the shuttle continued its climb. The
far-off flame suddenly dimmed; the three main engines had been
extinguished. What the hell was happening? "Shutdown sequence
complete. Pressure in the ET"—external tank—"still rising.
Jettisoning tank and SRBs." Unseen explosive bolts severed the
manned orbiter from the external tank; freed from the massive
orbiter, the tank and its still-attached, nonextinguishable, solid-fuel
rocket boosters quickly shot clear. The manned orbiter coasted
after them, for the moment, on momentum.
Clutching their radios, Kyle and his guest leaned together for
reassurance. "Pressure still increasing."
Light glinted mockingly off the sun-tracking Astronaut Memorial, the
granite monolith engraved with the names of astronauts killed in the
line of duty. It seemed all too likely that the list was about to grow
by five more names.
"Pressure nearing critical." He recognized the voice from Mission
Control. "Report status."
What pressure? In the ET? Was it about to blow? Two Sea-Air
Rescue choppers thundered overhead as he did a quick
calculation. The ET must still contain at least 250,000 gallons of
liquid hydrogen!
"Beginning OMS burn."
The distant speck regrew a flame—had the orbital-maneuvering-
system engines ever been fired before inside the
atmosphere?—and began banking toward the coast. Unaided by
SRBs, its main engines unusable without the ET, the orbiter
seemed to lumber. Seemed mortally wounded. "Suggest my
escorts make tracks."
"Pressure at critical. Crit plus ten. Crit plus twenty. Twenty-three.
Twenty-four."
An enormous fireball blossomed above the escaping orbiter. From
miles away, Kyle saw the craft stagger as the shock wave struck.
"Tell Beth that I love her." The distant flame pinwheeled as Atlantis
began to tumble. Moments later, the roar and the shock wave of
the blast reached the Cape, whipping Kyle and Sergei with a
sudden gale of sand and grit. The distant spark extinguished as
safety circuits shut down the tumbling craft's rocket engines.
The orbiter began its long plunge to the sea, with both chase
planes diving futilely after it.
Like its mythical namesake, the orbiter Atlantis slipped beneath the
silent and uncaring waves to meet its fate.
GIFT HORSE
CHAPTER 1
Without warning, the Toyota pickup swerved in front of Kyle. He
tapped his brakes lightly—this near the I-66 exit to the Beltway,
such maneuvers were hardly unexpected—and gave a pro forma
honk. The yahoo in the pickup responded with the traditional one-
fingered salute. The truck's rear bumper bore the message: Have
comments about my driving? Email: biteme@whogivesashit.org.
Such is the state of discourse in the nation's capital.
Sighing, Kyle turned up his radio for the semihourly news
summary. There was no preview of this morning's hearing. That
was fine with him: he'd never learned to speak in sound bites. If the
session made tomorrow's Washington Post, his testimony might
rate a full paragraph of synopsis.
The good news was today's topic wasn't the Atlantis.
Reliving the disaster in his dreams was hard enough; the science
advisor's presence had also become de rigueur for every anti-
NASA representative or senator who wanted to use the disaster to
justify ending the manned space program. Challenger, Columbia,
and now Atlantis . . . after three shuttle catastrophes, they spoke
for much of the country. By comparison, today's session about
technology for improved enforcement of the Clean Air Act would
be positively benign.
As traffic crept forward, he tried to use the time to further prepare
for the senatorial grilling. He knew the types of questions his boss
would have posed to ready him: What would he volunteer in his
opening statement? What information needed to be metered out in
digestible chunks? Whose home district had a contractor who'd
want to bid on the program? Who was likely to leave the session
early for other hearings? All the wrong questions, of course, when
Kyle wanted to talk about remote-sensing technology and
computing loads. There was too little science in the job of
presidential science advisor.
In any event, he had to swing by his basement cranny in the OEOB
for last-minute instructions. He turned off his radio, which was in
any event unable to compete with the bass booming from the
sport-ute in the next lane.
The Old Executive Office Building was as far as Kyle got that
day—or the next one. About the time he'd traded witticisms with the
driver of the Toyota pickup, the emissaries of the Galactic
Commonwealth had announced their imminent arrival on Earth by
interrupting the TV broadcast of A.M. America.
* * *
The White House situation room held the humidity and stench of
too many occupants. Men and women alike had lost their jackets;
abandoned neckties were strewn about like oversized, Technicolor
Christmas tinsel. Notepad computers vied for desk space with
pizza boxes, burger wrappers, and soda cans.
In clusters of two and three, the crisis team muttered in urgent
consultation. A few junior staffers sat exiled in the corners, glued to
the TV monitors. Everything was being taped, but everyone wanted
to see the aliens' broadcasts live. Watching a new message, even
if it differed not a whit from the last twenty, provided momentary
diversion from the many uncertainties.
Neither Kyle's PalmPilot nor the remaining pizza had wisdom to
offer. He looked up at the entry of Britt Arledge, White House chief
of staff and Kyle's boss and mentor. The President's senior aide
could have been a poster child for patricians: tall and trim, with
chiseled features, icy blue eyes, a furrowed brow, and a full head
of silver hair. Within the politico's exterior sat a brilliant, if wholly
unscientific, mind. Arledge's forte was recognizing other people's
strengths, and building the right team for tackling any problem.
Kyle wondered whether his boss's legendary insight extended to
the Galactics.
"So what have we got?"
He parted a path for them through the crowded room to the
whiteboard where he'd already summarized the data. The list was
short. "Not much, but what we do have is amazing.
"The moon now has its own satellite, and it's two-plus miles across.
Not one observatory saw it approaching. Once the broadcasts
started and people looked for it, though, there it was."
Arledge had raised an eyebrow at the object's size. The NASA-led
international space station, two orders of magnitude smaller, was
still only half built. "But they can see it now."
Kyle nodded. "It's big enough even for decently equipped amateur
astronomers to spot." Far better views would be available once
STSI, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore,
finished computer enhancement of various images. Too bad the
supersensitive instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope would
be struck blind if it looked so close to the moon. "To no one's great
surprise, it doesn't look like anything we've ever seen. Or ever built.
The way that it simply appeared suggests teleportation or
subspace tunneling or some other mode of travel whose
underlying physics we can't begin to understand."
"What else?"
"You've seen the broadcasts, obviously." At Britt's shrug, Kyle
continued. "That's a pretty alien-looking alien. Also, White Sands,
Wallops, Jodrell Bank, and Arecibo all confirm direct receipt from
the moon of the signal that keeps preempting network broadcasts.
Overriding network satellite feed, to be precise.
"So far, that's it. I suspect we'll know a lot more soon."
"Commercial," called one of the exiles.
At the burst of typing that announced redirection of the signal,
everyone turned forward to the projection screen. A famous
pitchman vanished from the display almost so quickly as to be
subliminal (it was enough to make Kyle think of Jell-O), to be
replaced with the increasingly familiar visage of the Galactic
spokesman. No one could read the expression on the alien's face,
not that anyone knew that the aliens provided such visual cues, but
Kyle found himself liking the creature. What wonderful wit and
whimsy to present their announcements only during the
commercial breaks.
"Greetings to the people of Earth," began his(?) message. "I am
H'ffl. As the ambassador of the Galactic Commonwealth to your
planet, the beautiful world of which we were made aware by your
many radio transmissions, I am pleased to announce the arrival of
our embassy expedition. We come in peace and fellowship."
Kyle studied the alien's image as familiar words repeated. The
creature was vaguely centaurian in appearance: six-limbed, with
four legs and two arms; one-headed; bilaterally symmetric.
Any resemblance to humans or horses stopped there. His skin was
lizardlike: faintly greenish, hairless, and scaled. The legs ended in
three-sectioned hooves; the arms in three-fingered claws better
suited to fighting than to making or manipulating tools. A wholly
unhorselike tail—long, muscular, and bifurcated, with both halves
prehensile—appeared to provide counterbalance to the elongated
torso. The head had four pairs of eyes, with a vertical pair set every
ninety degrees for 360-degree stereoscopic vision. A motionless
mouth and three vertically colinear nostrils appeared directly in the
torso. The best guess was that H'ffl both spoke and heard through
tympanic membranes atop the head.
"Our starship has assumed orbit around your moon. Two days
from today, at noon Eastern Standard Time, a landing craft will
arrive at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC."
* * *
The control-tower radar at Reagan National tracked the spacecraft
from well off the Atlantic coast to touchdown. The blip was
enormous: the "landing craft" was larger than an Air Force C-5
cargo carrier. (That heavy-lift air transport had been dubbed the
"Galaxy" . . . How ironic, Kyle thought.) Fighters scrambled from
Andrews AFB reported a lifting-body configuration: a flattened
lower surface in lieu of wings. The turbulence behind the
spacecraft, visible to weather radars, suggested powered descent.
The spacecraft swooped into sight, following the twists of the
Potomac River as agilely as a radio-controlled model plane. The
Air Force officer to Kyle's right scowled. "What's the matter,
Colonel? You'd rather they fly over the city?"
"I'd rather that their ship wasn't so maneuverable."
Comparing capabilities? Kyle recalled the enormity of the mother
ship in lunar orbit, and stifled a laugh.
Civil air traffic had been diverted to Dulles International; the
Galactic vessel shot arrowlike to the center of the deserted field,
settling onto the X of two intersecting runways. A mighty cheer
arose from the throng that nothing short of martial law might have
kept away. The shouts faded into an awkward hush as thousands
realized that nothing was happening.
Kyle hurried to the tower elevator, descending to join the coterie of
welcoming dignitaries. They were already boarding the limos that
would drive them to the Galactics' vessel. He wound up in the last
car, between a deputy undersecretary of state and an aide to the
national security advisor. The woman from Foggy Bottom studied
papers from her briefcase.
Stepping from the car, Kyle obtained some new data: the concrete
beneath the landing legs of the spacecraft was broken. That thing
was heavy. The shout of greeting must have drowned out the
report of the runway cracking.
The welcoming party formed two concentric arcs facing the
spacecraft, heavy hitters up front, aides and adjutants in back. Kyle
took a spot in the second tier, vaguely pleased with his position: his
craning at the ship was less obtrusive this way.
Away from the crowd, only the creaks and groans of the ship
cooling down from the heat of reentry broke the silence. The sun
beat down unmercifully. Kyle tried to memorize details of the
ship—shape and proportion, aerodynamic control surfaces, view
ports, thrusters and main engines, antennae—even though
photographers around the airport and in helicopters overhead were
busily capturing everything with telephoto lenses. Sensors hastily
installed in the limos were measuring and recording any radiation
from the ship.
His overriding impression was one of age, that this ship had been
around for a while. Why? After a moment's thought, he focused his
attention on the skin of the ship. Under the cloudless noon sky, not
a bit of surface glinted. He wasn't close enough to be sure, but the
shadowed underbelly of the ship seemed finely pitted. How many
years of solar wind had it withstood? How many collisions with the
tenuous matter of the interstellar void? Beside him, the diplomats
were absorbed in their own unanswered, perhaps unanswerable,
questions.
And then, at long last, with soundless ease, a wide ramp began its
descent from the underside of the alien ship.
CHAPTER 2
The ramp struck the concrete runway with a solid thunk. The
walkway faced about 20 degrees away from the crowd, a shallow
enough angle that no one moved. Necks twisted and craned
slightly towards the shadowed opening. An inner door—an airlock
port?—remained closed.
Kyle snuck a peek at the meter in his pocket. The counter showed
an increase in radiation levels since the ramp had descended, but
not enough to worry about. Still, he chided himself for losing the
argument that the welcoming party wear dosimeters. That battle
lost, he'd done the best he could: the meter in his coat would beep
if his cumulative exposure exceeded a preset threshold.
Inference one, he thought, eyeing once more the cracked runway.
Radiation plus massive weight, enough weight for a major amount
of shielding, denote nuclear power. Then a sharp intake of breath
from the diplomat beside him returned Kyle's attention to the ramp.
As he watched, the airlock door cycled silently open.
Four aliens cantered down the incline, their scales iridescent in the
sunlight. The ramp boomed under thudding hooves, with a tone
that reminded Kyle of ceramic. The creatures halted on the runway
at the base of the ramp. For clothing, each wore only a many-
pocketed belt from which hung a larger sack like a Scottish
sporran. Only slight variations in skin tone, all shades of light green,
differentiated them. Each had about twelve inches on Kyle, himself
a six-footer.
The aliens didn't turn toward the human dignitaries. If rude by
human standards, the position nonetheless made sense: a face-to-
face stance would have given a good view to only one pair of eyes.
They're not human, Kyle reminded himself. For them to act like us
would be strange.
One of the aliens walked slowly toward the waiting humans. Pads
on the bottom of his hooves rasped against concrete. Extending
both arms, hands open, palms upward, the alien stopped directly in
front of Harold Shively Robeson.
"Thank you for meeting me, Mr. President," said the creature, the
bass voice rumbling eerily from the top of his head. "I am
Ambassador H'ffl. I bring you greetings from the Galactic
Commonwealth."
The President reached out and clasped one of the alien's hands.
"On behalf of the people of America and planet Earth, welcome."
* * *
So many mysteries; so little time.
Kyle stood in the White House basement command post of the
science-analysis team. There was no place on Earth he'd rather
be, except possibly upstairs in the Oval Office where the President
and sundry diplomats met with the F'thk themselves. Should he be
here, helping to make sense of what data they already had, or
there trying to gather more? The obvious answer was yes.
"How's it going?"
He'd been staring at a wall covered with Post-it notes. Each paper
square bore, in scribbled form, one comment about the aliens. As
he turned to the doorway where Britt Arledge had appeared, one of
the drafted wizards from DOE did yet another reshuffle of the
stickies. Two more squares, green ones, denoting inferences,
appeared between the rearranged yellow factoids. One of the
relocated squares, its adhesive dissipated by too many moves,
fluttered to the floor. A secretary scurried over to rewrite its content
on a new sheet.
Kyle gestured over toward his red-eyed boss, wondering who
looked more exhausted. "We're learning."
Britt nodded; it was all the encouragement Kyle needed. "For
starters, our guests have a fusion reactor aboard their landing craft.
That technology alone would be invaluable."
"Is that so?" The response was nearly monotonic; Arledge
seemed singularly unimpressed. "The F'thk didn't mention that."
"Gotta be." Kyle warmed to his subject. The meter he'd taken to
National hadn't differentiated between types of radiation, but the
gear he'd had stowed aboard the limos was far more
sophisticated. The drivers, following his instructions, had parked
the cars in positions well spaced around the spaceship. "There's
definite neutron flux at the back of the ship and magnetic fringing
like from a tokamak quadrupole."
"Uh-huh."
"Magnetic-bottle technology to contain the plasma, and lots of
shielding to protect the crew. Tons and tons of shielding, Britt. You
saw what their ship did to the runway."
"Okay."
"On our own, we may have practical fusion in fifty years." Thinking,
suddenly, of the distant mother ship, two-plus miles across, he
nervously ran both hands through his hair. "Momma must have one
big fusion reactor aboard."
"Oh, I doubt it," said Britt, a cat-who-ate-the-canary grin lighting his
tired face. "My friend H'ffl says it uses matter-to-energy
conversion. He wondered if we have antimatter."
Antimatter! No wonder Arledge was so unimpressed by his own
news. "Fleetingly, for research, and then only a few subatomic
particles at a time. Nothing you could power a spaceship with." Or
a lightbulb, for that matter. A flurry of new Post-it notes suggestive
of more progress distracted him. "What was that?"
"I asked, is antimatter dangerous? H'ffl says it's standard practice
to park antimatter-powered vessels in the gravity well of an
uninhabited moon when near an inhabited planet. Something about
protecting against the remote likelihood of a mishap. Does it make
sense for them to keep the mother ship out by the moon?"
"Yes, it's dangerous, and I don't know . . . Equal amounts of matter
and antimatter do convert totally to energy, at efficiencies far
greater than fission or fusion. Orbit just a thousand miles above
Earth, though, and there's no atmosphere whatever. No friction.
Even without engines, a ship would circle forever. If, for some
reason, it blew up, there'd be beaucoup radiation, but nothing—I
should do some calculations to confirm this—nothing the
atmosphere wouldn't effectively block.
"So, no, I don't see any reason to stay a quarter-million miles away.
Then, what do I know? It's not like Earth has technology remotely
like theirs."
The chief of staff persisted. "Is the mother ship a danger where it
is? What if it crashed on the moon?"
"A really big crater, as if one more would matter. The point is that
won't happen. The moon has no atmosphere. Any orbit higher than
the tallest lunar mountain should last forever." Kyle had fudged a
bit for effect: given enough time, he suspected, gravitational
perturbations from lunar mascons or other planets, or tidal effects
of the Earth, or solar wind would have disastrous effects on an
orbit that low. None of which applied, in less than geological time,
to the altitude at which the F'thk ship actually orbited the moon.
One glance through a telescope had convinced him that the
mother ship wasn't ever meant to land.
"The President will be relieved."
When had the Post-it notes stretched around to a second wall?
"What else can I tell you?"
"Nothing, really—I was mostly making conversation. I actually came
by to invite you to dinner." He waved off Kyle's protest. "A state
dinner, upstairs, tonight at eight. Perhaps Ambassador H'ffl or one
of his companions can enlighten you on F'thk orbital preferences."
* * *
Something was odd about the ballroom, thought Kyle, something
other than the green aliens making chitchat with Washington's elite.
What was it? He settled, at last, on the absence of hors d'oeuvres.
The F'thk would not eat in public: they said that trace elements in
their food were toxic to terrestrial life. White House protocol
officers had then decreed that the humans wouldn't eat either.
Some dinner! He wished someone had mentioned this decision
before he'd arrived. He'd gone home to change into a tux; any nuke
'n puke meal from his freezer, if not up to White House banquet
standards, still would've beaten fasting.
He sipped his wine; the F'thk with whom he and a gaggle of civil
servants were talking held tightly to a glass of water. The
microcassette recorder in Kyle's pocket was hopefully catching the
entire conversation. If not, well, he'd handed out others.
"You've been very quiet, Dr. Gustafson. I'd expected more
curiosity from a man in your position."
Kyle needed a moment to realize that the comment had come from
the alien. Earth's radio and TV broadcasts had served not only as
beacons but also as language tutorials—lessons the F'thk had
learned extremely well. "Lack of curiosity is not the problem,
K'ddl." Despite his best efforts, a hint of vowel crept into the name.
"Quite the opposite. I have so many questions that I don't know
where to begin."
"Oh, God," whispered a State Department staffer behind him.
"He's going to babble in nanobytes per quark volt."
Kyle ignored the crack, his mind still wrestling with the afternoon's
conversation about the mother ship. "I'm puzzled about one thing.
Why keep the F'thk mother ship in lunar orbit? It seems
excessively cautious."
Swelling violins from the chamber orchestra—Mozart, Kyle
thought—drowned out the alien's response. He shrugged
reflexively, realizing even as he did it how foolish it was to expect
the alien to understand the gesture.
Except K'ddl did. "I said, it's not F'thk. The mother ship is Aie'eel-
built. They fly it, as well." The alien made a periodic rasping noise
which, Kyle decided, must be a form of laughter. "You thought it
coincidental that the Commonwealth's representatives were so
humanlike? You would consider the Aie'eel so many headless,
methane-breathing frogs. The Zxk'tl and the #$%^&"—Kyle
couldn't even begin to organize that last sound burst into English
letters—"and other crew species aboard the mother ship would
seem less human still.
"We F'thk were chosen as the emissary species because we so
closely resemble you. We are accustomed to similar gravity,
temperature, sunlight, and atmosphere." He hoisted his still-filled
glass and took a drink. "We are even both water-based."
That was when too much wine on an empty stomach betrayed
Kyle. The room spun. His ears rang. Visions of . . . things . . . too
inhuman even to lend themselves to description assailed him. All
thought of orbits and exotic energy sources fled. He missed
entirely the last comment K'ddl made before turning his attention to
another White House guest.
The tape recorder in Kyle's pocket, however, was made of sterner
stuff. K'ddl had added, "I do not wish to offend, but no F'thk would
ever invent such dark nights or such a paltry number of moons."
* * *
Two sandwiches and four cups of coffee later, Kyle felt almost
himself again. He ignored the disapproving sniffs of the White
House chef. It was unclear, in any event, whether the criticism dealt
with Kyle's plebeian taste for peanut butter or his part in that
afternoon's delivery to the kitchen of so much bulky equipment. So
many instrument-covered counters . . . perhaps it was just as well
that dinner for three hundred had been canceled.
A Secret Service agent turned waiter for the evening came through
the double doors, a single half-empty glass on his tray. "One of the
aliens set this down. K'ddl I think, but I can't really tell 'em apart yet.
Sorry it wasn't any fuller."
Kyle nodded his thanks. "Doesn't matter. It's more than we need."
He tore the sterile wrapper from an eyedropper, then extracted a
few milliliters from the alien's glass. The sample went into an
automated mass spectrometer.
The analyzer beeped as it completed its tests. The color display lit
up, chemical names and their concentrations scrolling down the
screen. Water. Very dilute carbonic acid: carbon dioxide in
solution, basic fizz. Traces of calcium and magnesium salts. Kyle
compared the list to a sample taken before the aliens had arrived.
As best he could tell, the glass contained pure Perrier.
"Kyle?"
He turned to the casually dressed engineer, a friend from the
nearby Naval Research Labs, who'd spent the evening in the
kitchen. "Yeah, Larry?"
"The air samples are different." To an eyebrow raised in
interrogation, Larry added, "Check the plots yourself."
Kyle rolled out two strip charts, one annotated "6:05 p.m." and the
other "9:00 p.m." Spikes of unrecognized complex hydrocarbons
appeared on only the later sheet. If what passed for alien saliva
held no trace of metabolic toxins, apparently their exhalations did.
Still, the nine-o'clock spike seemed somehow familiar.
Ah.
"Can I bum a cigarette, Lar, and a match?" He lit up clumsily,
almost choking as he inhaled. Waving away the suddenly solicitous
engineer, he took a more cautious drag. He directed part of this
lungful into a test tube, which he quickly stoppered.
Larry, catching on quickly, ran the latest sample through the mass
spectrometer. The resulting strip chart, marked "10:11 p.m.," soon
lay beside the others.
The evening's addition to the White House air was simply tobacco
smoke. Whatever toxins the aliens ate didn't appear in their breath,
either.
Kyle poured a fresh cup of coffee, only in part to wash the
unaccustomed and unwelcome smoke residues from his mouth.
He also hoped for a caffeine jolt to settle jangled nerves. First, the
conundrum about the aliens' inconvenient orbit around the moon;
now, undetectable toxins.
He wondered when, or if, his study of the aliens would begin to
make sense.
CHAPTER 3
H'ffl Is Father of My Baby
—National Investigator
UFO Sightings Precede F'thk "Arrival"
—Star Inquirer
Satyr-like F'thk Are Devil's Spawn
—yesterday's most popular dialogue on the
Modern Revelations News Group, AmericaNet
F'thk Evaluate Earth for Commonwealth Membership
—Washington Post
Between two parallel lines of the Marine honor guard, a ramp
descended from the Galactics' ship. What looked like a Hovercraft
floated down the incline, any noise that it may have been making
drowned out by the crowd. Four F'thk and a large cylindrical object
filled the house-sized vehicle's open rear deck. The one-way glass
of the front compartment gave no clues as to the species of the
driver. From the shortness of the cab, it seemed unlikely that the
driver was another F'thk. Then again, maybe there was no driver.
At a stately ten miles per hour, the craft slid across the runway
toward the George Washington Parkway. Four Secret Service cars
pulled out in front of it; limos and more Secret Service fell in
behind to complete the motorcade.
At that speed, it'd be a while before the aliens arrived here at the
Mall. Kyle moved the inset TV window to the back of the palmtop
computer's display before turning to his companion.
Darlene Lyons was quietly attractive, with twinkling brown eyes, a
daintily upturned nose, and full lips slightly parted in a smile. In
faded jeans and an even more faded Metallica T-shirt, her black
hair flowing to the small of her back, she looked not at all like the
business-suited and bunned diplomat with whom he'd shared a
limo to the airport on Landing Day. Then again, it wasn't as if he
routinely wore cutoffs, a sleeveless sweatshirt, and an Orioles cap
to the OEOB. Alas.
"I'm glad you joined me."
"I'm glad you asked. You were right, too. I'll learn a lot more
watching people during the ceremony than seeing it live myself."
She raked both hands, fingers splayed, through her lustrous hair.
"Though I wouldn't have minded selling my ticket for the
grandstands."
Laughing, Kyle tapped a query into the comp. As they watched, the
bid on eBay for a bleacher seat popped up another three hundred
dollars, to over fifteen grand. "I don't think the Secret Service
would've gone for either of us scalping a seat on the presidential
reviewing stand. Beside, this way I'll have something to tell my
folks the next time they try to impress me with having been at
Woodstock."
Another reason went unstated. For the soon-to-be-appointed head
of the soon-to-be-announced Presidential Commission on Galactic
Studies, today was probably his last chance to get an unfiltered
assessment of the public's mood.
As far as the eye or network helicopters thp-thp-thp-ing overhead
could see, the Mall was packed. There would be other ceremonies
like today's, of course, celebrations all around the
world—Tiananmen Square tomorrow, Red Square the next day,
Jardin de Tuileries the day after that—but today was different.
Today was the first. Kyle and Darlene wanted to be in it, not just
watching it. Judging from the crowd, much of the Eastern
Seaboard had felt the same way.
He offered an elbow. "Shall we mingle?"
Giving only a snort in response, whether to the anachronistic
gesture or the impracticality of walking side by side through the
crowd, he couldn't tell, she plunged ahead. He hastened after. Only
by heading away from the National Gallery of Art, in front of which
the Fellowship Station was to be placed, were they able to make
slow progress.
" . . . Growing up as a . . . " " . . . Incalculable opportunity . . . " " . . .
Soulless monsters . . . " " . . . Food around here?" "Devils . . . " " . .
. To the stars?" Bits of conversation rose and fell randomly from
the milling, murmuring crowd.
Devils and monsters? "Wait a sec." Kyle pivoted slowly, listening in
vain for more of one conversation. "Did you hear someone
mention monsters?" She shook her head.
He dug the computer out of his pocket. A few finger taps retrieved
the sampling of today's headlines that had been radio-downlinked
from the White House's intranet. He grunted as the tabloid
headlines rolled into view. He'd come here to learn, and he had:
however inventive these nutty headlines were, there really were
people who believed them. A double tap on the AmericaNet entry
made him blink in surprise: 547 postings just yesterday to the
Modern Revelations news group. A quick scribble with the stylus
across the touch screen, "f'thk OR alien OR galactic" matched only
403 of these entries; "monster OR creature OR devil OR demon
OR satan" yielded 516 entries. Wondering if he'd missed any
synonyms, Kyle wrote himself a softcopy note to check out this
news group.
A roar arose from across the Mall. The crowd pivoted toward the
National Gallery, aligning itself to the north like so many iron filings.
People all around them retrieved their radios, portable TVs, and
pocket comps. As one, they turned the volume settings to max.
Once more, the aliens had arrived.
The Hovercraft coasted gracefully to a halt at the presidential
reviewing stand. A ramp slid from the deck area. A F'thk (Kyle
couldn't decide from the small screen if it was one that he'd met)
guided the cylindrical Fellowship Station down the slope. No longer
partially obscured by the side of the Hovercraft, the cylinder could
now be seen to have a flared base, a skirt for containing its own air
cushion, perhaps. To yet one more cheer, the cylinder settled to
rest on the grassy surface of the Mall.
As the President completed his words of welcome and
introduction, Darlene poked Kyle with a sharp finger. "Coming to
Washington first. Odd, don't you think?"
His home VCR was taping everything anyway. "So? They'll see
other capitals, meet other heads of state at other ceremonies,
starting with Chairman Chang tomorrow in Beijing."
"They've picked favorites, or seemed to, by coming to
Washington, first. Why not New York and the UN?"
"Maybe they didn't know about it."
"Yeah, right. They speak perfect English—and French, Spanish,
German, and Russian. People I respect say their Mandarin,
Japanese, and Hindi are just as good. They made themselves folk
heroes by interrupting only commercials. You really think they
never heard of the United Nations?"
"You don't buy that?"
"Hardly."
"Does everyone at Foggy Bottom feel this way?"
Her look of disgust was eloquent.
So . . . someone who didn't take the aliens at face value. Someone
whose thinking was, at the same time, orthogonal to his own. Kyle
made a snap decision. "Congratulations."
"For what?"
For being selected a member of the Presidential Commission on
Galactic Studies. Trying to look enigmatic, he turned back to his
computer screen, on which Ambassador H'ffl had just appeared.
"Ask me tomorrow."
* * *
After speaking of fellowship and galactic unity for fifteen minutes,
Ambassador H'ffl extended an arm toward the just-dedicated
Fellowship Station. In one smooth motion, a talon sliced through
the ribbon and depressed the single control button. The crowd
didn't go silent, that was too much to expect from what the media
now estimated at 720,000 people, but there was a decided
abatement of the din. An inset door in the station slid aside. H'ffl
removed something that sparkled in the sunlight and handed it to
President Robeson.
"On behalf of the Commonwealth, I offer you this orb, symbol of
galactic unity. May the peoples of Earth soon qualify for
membership."
Renewed shouting drowned out much of the President's response.
As Kyle and Darlene watched, H'ffl and his associates presented
one orb after another to the assembled dignitaries. A phalanx of
Secret Service agents, Park Service police, and DC cops held
back the crowd while the VIPs filed back to their limos. Honking as
it went, the motorcade receded.
Darlene and Kyle were among the lucky ones: they reached the
Fellowship Station and received their orbs in only a bit over five
hours. Each was an ever-changing crystalline sphere, resting in a
metallic bowl atop a ceramic pedestal. It seemed a nice enough
souvenir, if hardly worth the hoopla.
* * *
The next morning, an exhausted Kyle found an orb waiting on his
desk. The note left beneath the galactic memento read: When I
told H'ffl about your new duties, he insisted that you get one of
these. Britt.
CHAPTER 4
Economic Impact of Galactic Technology Uncertain
—The Wall Street Journal
Thousands Pray for Deliverance from Space Devils
—yesterday's most popular dialogue on the
Modern Revelations News Group, AmericaNet
Gustafson Commission Opens Hearings Today
—New York Times
Aides scurried around the enormous conference table, double-
checking the placement of name tags, distributing glasses and
pitchers of ice water, straightening network taps and power cords
for laptop PCs, and setting out pencils and pads of paper. The
secretaries were silent; the considerable noise within the room all
came from the milling crowd on the opposite side of the closed
double doors. From, that was, the press and the commission
members . . .
The chairman of the Presidential Commission on Galactic Studies
scowled at the totally anachronistic pads of paper, and at the
inclusion of so many committee members apt to use them. He'd
turned out to have less authority than expected—far less, for
example, than the President's chief of staff. Kyle could name as
many staffers as he wished; the commissioners were to be chosen
more for their political correctness ("A diversity of viewpoints," Britt
had gently rephrased Kyle's complaint) than for any insight they
were likely to have.
The list of private-sector members on which he and Britt had finally
converged was simultaneously top-heavy with CEOs from New
New Economy companies and light on technologists: more
campaign contributors than researchers. Kyle could at least hope
that these executives would tap their organizations' expertise, and
he'd had some success in holding out for execs whose firms did
relevant R&D. As to the Wall Street and Hollywood types, he could
only hope that the deliberations would put them to sleep. Would it
be unseemly to ask his token clergyperson to pray for that?
The next largest group of members was drawn from midtier
executives of key federal agencies and departments: EPA,
Energy, NASA, Homeland Security, DoD, Commerce—and State.
He smiled, recalling a rare victory: Darlene Lyons was one of "his"
diplomats.
The smallest set of slots was for practicing scientists and
engineers. With only ten member spots to work with, he'd scoured
academia and the federal labs for twenty-first-century Renaissance
people. Damn! He needed biologists, physicists, and engineers of
every type; astronomers; psychologists and sociologists; organic
and inorganic chemists; economists . . . the list seemed endless,
and ten seats didn't begin to cover it. After considerable anguish,
he'd filled the few experts' positions. Time would tell what
happened when seven Nobel laureates focused on one problem.
The hubbub outside was rising to a crescendo; he caught the eye
of Myra Flynn, his admin assistant. She did a final scan of the
facilities, then nodded: the room was ready. He nodded back,
dispatching her to open the doors.
Let the Galactic games begin.
* * *
Squinting under the onslaught of massed videocam lights, Kyle
studied the faces arrayed around the table. Despite his earlier
misgivings, he had to admit it: the hearing room was packed with
achievers and overachievers, great Americans all. For this mission,
it was impossible to be too competent.
It was time to stimulate their thinking. He took a sip of water while
he tried yet again to vanquish his stage fright.
"Fellow commissioners." The words came out as a croak. Another
sip. "You have all been invited, and have graciously accepted the
call, to serve your country at a time when great issues must be
addressed. Great issues, indeed." He tapped the keyboard built
into the lectern. An image popped up on the projection screen
beside him, and onto the display of every PC whose owner had
logged on to the committee-room network. The still picture was a
close-up of the Galactics' highly impressive landing craft. "This is
the tip of the iceberg."
Click. A second picture appeared, a telescopic close-up of the
two-mile-wide mother ship. H'ffl said it was named S'kz'wtz Lrrk'l,
which he'd translated as "Galactic Peace." "This is the iceberg.
The civilization capable of building this vessel represents
opportunities, and risks, which, I am convinced, we cannot yet even
begin to fathom. It is our responsibility to explore those
opportunities, to investigate those risks, and to chart a prudent
course between them."
Click. An aerial photo appeared of the Washington Mall, with any
trace of grass obscured by the myriads of people patiently awaiting
the arrival of the Fellowship Station. "The people of America . . . "
Click: a montage of aerial shots of major capital cities around the
globe, each showing a sea of citizens greeting the Galactics. " . . .
And of the world now look to their leaders in hope."
Click. For the first time, sound issued from the projection system:
xenophobic rantings. After a few seconds tightly focused on the
contorted face of the charismatic speaker, the camera panned
back to reveal a few dozen rapt faces, then hundreds, then
thousands. Kyle muted the harangue. "Or they look in fear. Fear of
the unfamiliar. Fear of the unknown."
Click. A back-lit close-up of an orb, the instantly famous symbol of
galactic unity, the crystal slowly, subtly, hypnotically changing
colors and texture. The larger-than-life image emphasized the
variations occurring throughout the sphere's crystalline depths: a
thing of beauty beyond words. Kyle noticed, for the first time, that
several commissioners had brought their own orbs to the session.
"Our task, and it is a most challenging one, is to advise the
President on whether, and how, to respond to an offer from the
Galactics, should one be forthcoming.
"Let us all be up to that challenge."
* * *
Chords crashed. Arpeggios rippled their way up and down the
keyboard. Speakers all around Kyle poured out music so pure that
his fingers imagined the stiff bounce of each key; his shoulders
and arms tensed in sympathy with the pianist's.
As the Saint-Saëns second piano concerto enveloped him in its
lengthy crescendo, he peered into a Galactic orb. Colors
shimmering and swirling throughout its depths drew him ever
inward. A lava lamp for the twenty-first century, whispered some
quirky corner of his mind.
He'd never seen the orb transform so rapidly. Colors flowed one
into another. Textures waxed and waned, one blending
imperceptibly into the next. Patterns formed and faded before a
merely human intellect could capture their meaning.
The final chords, and some epiphany, seemed to hang in the air,
tantalizingly just beyond his reach. As the music stopped, so, too,
did the changes within the orb. Sighing, he picked it up from the
coffee table. Not for a lack of trying, all that he, or anyone, had
learned was that the galactic unity icon responded to light and
sound. Like snowflakes, no two orbs were ever quite the same, nor
had any orb ever been seen to repeat itself. Fellowship stations
kept manufacturing them on demand, requiring only occasional
redeliveries of raw material from the F'thk.
From its cabinet across the living room, the red power LED of the
stereo amplifier stared unblinkingly at him like a cyclopean eye.
Setting the orb back down, he took up the remote control in its
stead. He aimed the remote at the entertainment center. Zap.
A sea of sound once more immersed man and orb, changing both
in ways too subtle to be immediately understood.
* * *
Piles of reports lined the back of Kyle's desk; a floor-bound stack
leaned precariously against a crammed bookcase. Even today's
mound of executive summaries, precisely centered on his blotter,
was daunting.
Sweeping sandwich crumbs from the top report, he read the title:
"Economic Repercussions of a Switch to a Fusion Economy."
Below that he found "Passive Infrared Analysis of the F'thk
Anatomy," "Means for the Analytical Substantiation of Antimatter
Power Systems," "On the Efficacy of the F'thk Visual Apparatus: a
Follow-Up Investigation," and "Speculations on Interstellar Trade
Modalities."
The top and bottom reports presumed that Earth and the F'thk
reached a meeting of minds, and were light-years outside his area
of expertise. He set those aside to review at home that evening.
The middle three showed more promise.
Speed-reading its abstract quickly revealed that "Means for
Analytical Substantiation" was an elaborate plea for replacing the
replacement Gamma Ray Observatory. He snorted. He hardly
needed a presidential commission to tell him that the fingerprint of
matter/antimatter energy conversion was gamma-ray production,
and that the atmosphere blocked gamma rays. The good news
was that a substitute for the satellite lost in the Atlantis explosion
might possibly, if money were no object, be quickly constructible
from the lab prototype. The bad news was that such an orbital
observatory, even more than its huge and ungainly forebear, would
need the services of a massive booster—the shuttle—for delivery
to space.
Oh, the irony of a grounded shuttle fleet when the Galactics came
a-calling. The Russians weren't flying manned missions either,
although in their case the stand-down was due to an ever imploding
economy. He wanted so badly for Man to be a spacefaring race,
even if only skimming the top of its own atmosphere, when dealing
with the F'thk. Sans shuttle, the International Space Station had
been vacated via its emergency lifeboat.
A fireball in a clear blue Florida sky returned, unbidden, to his
mind's eye. One more horrible image, like the glowing streaks of
the disintegrating Columbia, he knew he could never forget. He set
aside the report, grabbing another for distraction.
The IR study of the F'thk was crisp and factual: just what he
needed. Several conference rooms used for meetings with the
aliens had, at the commission's direction, been instrumented with
hidden infrared sensors. Satisfaction with the report faded,
however, as he completed the introduction and moved into results.
Computer-enhanced images from the sensor data revealed little
more than sporadic hot spots in ambient-temperature bodies.
Since the visitors seemed equally energetic and equally clothes-
free in all Earthly climates, this apparent cold-bloodedness was yet
another puzzle.
The low-resolution pictures provided the only anatomical data he
had—the F'thk consistently declined all suggestions that they
provide biological/medical information. Kyle's rationale for the
request, that such data were necessary to avoid any inadvertent
endangerment of either species, was politely dismissed. H'ffl
asserted full confidence in his guidance from the Commonwealth's
scientists. The possibility of a biological incident seemed to amuse
him. Beyond keeping their own knowledge to themselves, the F'thk
also refused requests to be examined by X-ray, ultrasound, or any
other active imaging technique. When pressed, they invariably
answered, "Information is a trade good."
Flipping pages impatiently, Kyle encountered more excuses than
derived anatomical data. The report ended with the predictable
request for supercomputer time for additional image enhancement.
"Approved," he scrawled, and tossed it into his out basket.
One down.
"Visual Apparatus" was full of minutiae about F'thk viewing angles
and stereoscopic vision. He was about to add this tome to the out
basket unread when his thumbing-through uncovered a section on
separate day-and-night vision systems. "The dilation of F'thk
pupils," he read, "indicates that the upper eye of each pair is
optimized for day vision, the lower eye for night vision." He
reached reflexively for his coffee cup as he began studying the
report more closely.
The night-vision data was the result of one of Kyle's suggestions.
The F'thk did not approve X-ray imaging—and certainly could carry
sensors to tell if their wishes had been ignored—but planning
could widen the range of achievable passive observations. After
the surreptitious tripping of a circuit breaker, low-light video
cameras in a rigged room had caught the pupils of F'thk night eyes
dilating with extreme rapidity. Pupil dilation—substantially wider
than occurred when lights had been dimmed for a viewgraph
presentation—was still in progress when the windowless room had
become too black for the high-sensitivity CCD videocams to
function.
Faugh. The coldness of the coffee finally registered; he emptied
the dregs into the potted plant beside his desk. Pouring a fresh
cup from the brewer on the credenza, he wondered what was
bothering him. Obviously, their night vision was suited to a
moonless world . . .
Moonless. Was that the problem?
The text-search program needed only a few seconds and some
keywords to find the transcript; K'ddl's words at the White House
reception were as he'd remembered. "I do not wish to offend, but
no F'thk would ever invent such dark nights or such a paltry number
of moons."
He shut his eyes in concentration, a finger marking his place in the
report. How likely was it for such ultrasensitive night vision to have
evolved on a planet with several moons?
He didn't know, but that's why the commission had a biologist.
* * *
A delightful aroma—basil and rosemary? Kyle speculated—wafted
down the State Department hallway. It was, happily, no longer
considered necessary to fast in front of the aliens. One week into
the commission's existence, a commissioner had fainted
midsession. An amused ambassador, upon learning the cause of
the commotion, insisted that the F'thk did not consider it rude for
the humans to dine whenever they wished. The aliens themselves
needed to eat only once for each of their days, about thirty Earth
hours. Rather than impede progress by suspending meetings for
meals, they would be happy to continue while the humans ate.
Really.
A group of commissioners and F'thk strolled slowly down the hall
toward one of State's many dining rooms. Kyle's stomach rumbled
as they approached the food, though from nerves rather than
hunger. He was, for the first time, deviating from the visitors'
explicit wishes. His right hand, hidden in his pants pocket, fondled
a tiny ultrasonic beacon; the gadget, when triggered, would pulse
once at a frequency to which a previous test had shown the aliens
unresponsive. The isolation of a suitable frequency had required
some experimentation—it had turned out that the F'thk
communicated among themselves by modulated ultrasound, using
a language human scientists had made zero progress in analyzing.
The hall narrowed where two china closets had been retrofitted.
Behind the wooden doors on both sides of the cramped
passageway were the newest and most sensitive ultrasound
imagers that money could buy. A F'thk named Ph'jk was in the
lead; as he entered the space between the hidden instruments,
Kyle squeezed the hidden signaling device.
It happened too fast to register. Ph'jk reared up on his hind legs,
lashing out with his front hooves at the right-hand doors. K'ddl
galloped forward, squeezing into the narrow space to shatter the
doors to the left. Within seconds, slashing claws and pounding
hooves reduced wood and electronics alike to splinters. Ignoring
the sparks and wisps of smoke rising from the wreckage, the F'thk
continued wordlessly into the dining room. Splintered wood
crunched beneath their hooves as they crossed the wrecked area.
Dazedly, the humans followed.
H'ffl set a claw, talons retracted, on Kyle's shoulder and squeezed.
"Information is a trade good," he said. "We trust you will not
attempt again to steal it."
* * *
Kyle wiped a swatch of condensed steam from his bathroom
mirror. The long, hot shower hadn't done much for his shoulder or
his mood; he scowled at his bruised reflection. A sore shoulder
was all he had to show for yesterday's escapade.
The ultrasound equipment had been ruined beyond hope of
recovery of any internal images of the aliens. Should've networked
the damn machines, he thought, hours too late. The data would've
been out of their reach before they had the chance to react.
Or maybe not. Over his first cup of morning coffee, he called the
commission staff desk to confirm his suspicions. Passive sensors
also hidden in the hallway had revealed three other ultrasound
sources to have been present: each of the F'thk had apparently
carried a jammer. It wasn't a big surprise: the immediate response
proved that they'd been carrying detectors; why not jammers, too?
He'd brooded all night for nothing. There had been no lost
opportunity to have spirited away stolen imagery by network before
the alien reaction. Sighing, Kyle headed to his office and the staff's
overnight report on the incident, at once eager and reluctant to
read what else he'd missed.
* * *
The private-sector commission members had largely disappeared
with the opening session's TV lights—to return when the cameras
did. Glory came of being named to the commission, not in serving
on it. Staffers were more than happy to fill in for the vacant
members.
The latest gathering in the committee room resembled the
colloquium of scientists, engineers, and policy makers he'd
expected in the first place. For at least the hundredth time since
joining the administration, he decided Britt was dumb like a fox. He
was also, to Kyle's unspoken chagrin, sitting in today—bosses
have prerogatives. So far, Britt had been a silent observer.
"Here's what we've got." Kyle gestured at nothing and no one in
particular. "Clean, essentially limitless, fusion power, the
technology for which they'll swap before they leave in return for
downloads from our public libraries—if we've voted to join the
Commonwealth. They will sell only to governments, who can then
license fusion to power-generation companies. Their reasoning is
that government control will minimize disruptions to the economy.
"Point two. If a . . ."
"Wait," called Darlene. "Why not license fusion just once, through
the UN?"
Fred Phillips from Commerce rolled his eyes. "Give it a rest. The
Galactics choose not to deal with the UN, and they don't want to
talk about it. Besides, I like the precedent: we have far more to
dicker with than most countries."
"And it doesn't strike you as odd that a galactic commonwealth,
talking planetary membership, is practicing national divide and
conquer?"
"Objection noted," interrupted Kyle. He agreed with Darlene, but
knew no one else did. Majority opinion, led by Commerce, was that
bypassing the UN eliminated a human cartel. Just shrewd
business.
"Point two. If a majority of nations," he gave Darlene a warning
look, "ask to join the Commonwealth, the F'thk say they'll submit
Earth's petition. Membership, as far as any of us can tell, appears
simply to regularize the trade relationship."
Krulewitch from MIT spoke without looking up from his palmtop
computer. "I thought we were still being evaluated."
"We are." Kyle fidgeted with the laser pointer someone had left on
the lectern. "The petition will be accompanied by their own report
about our suitability."
"Then isn't the fusion-for-library-access trade a conflict of interest?
And they won't let us send our own ambassador?"
"Yes, and no way. Not only can't we send an ambassador, we can't
set foot on the landing craft, let alone the mother ship." Kyle
rubbed his cheek ruefully. "I've asked for that privilege a dozen
times. They always change the subject."
"Antimatter production?" asked Krulewitch.
"A flat no. K'ddl suggested that a species stuck on one planet
shouldn't use the stuff." Playing the Galactic, Kyle changed the
subject, ignoring the MIT physicist's knowing grin. K'ddl's answer
rubbed salt in a still open wound. "Point three: lots of loose ends
and seeming contradictions, none of them having any obvious
bearing on whether this august body recommends a US vote for
joining the Commonwealth."
He rattled off some of the more vexing observations. The apparent
overconservatism of the mother ship's lunar parking orbit. The
ducking of most questions. The unwillingness to let human
biologists examine the F'thk. The inexplicably good F'thk night
vision. The absence of trace toxins around the F'thk, despite the
claimed toxicity of their food. The failure of air filters to capture any
hint of the F'thk organic chemistry. The . . .
"They're playing countries off one against the next," piped in
Darlene.
"Point four," called out an undersecretary from Energy. She gave a
nasty edge to her voice.
Kyle set down the borrowed pointer. He paused to make eye
contact with everyone in the room. "Three points are all. Trade is a
good thing, and they know things we'd like to learn. Commonwealth
membership would help us trade. The longer we study them, the
less I, for one, understand them."
Britt Arledge spoke for the first time that session. "Then I should
anticipate the full commission recommending an application for
membership?"
Across the room, heads of commissioners and staffers alike
bobbed yes. All heads but two: his and Darlene's.
What was so bothering him that he'd pass up the secret of
practical fusion power? That he'd risk never knowing what marvels
Earth and the aliens could next agree to share? Even if he could
convince the commission to say no, what was his justification?
"Kyle?"
Feeling that he'd failed, but not knowing how or why, Kyle was
reluctant to meet his boss's gaze. Instead, he found himself
peering into the galactic orb that sat on the table in front of
Arledge. Not sure to which of them he was speaking, Kyle finally
and unhappily answered. He willed his voice to be firm.
"So it would appear."
CHAPTER 5
President Lauds Galactic Commission Recommendation
—USA Today
Protect Earth's Information Birthright
—yesterday's most popular dialogue on the
Modern Revelations News Group, AmericaNet
Chernykov Denounces Western Cultural Imperialism
—Moskva Daily News
Gustafson Quits Galactics Commission
—Washington Post
Cleaning out an office, Kyle mused, wasn't the chore that it used to
be. Those of his files that could be retained, he'd copied over the
Internet to rented mass storage. He'd download them onto longer-
term storage once he started at the new job.
His physical possessions fit in one box: favorite desk accessories,
pieces of executive fidgetware, and photos of himself with
dignitaries he'd met as science advisor. In the last category was a
picture with Harold Shively Robeson, shot at Kyle's swearing in; it
memorialized the first and last time he'd met the President.
On top of everything else, he set an orb. "What secrets do you
keep?" he asked, gazing into its shimmering depths. Like
everything else Galactic, it kept its opinions to itself.
The PalmPilot in his coat pocket chose that moment to chime,
announcing an incoming call. The screen revealed the familiar face
of his Russian counterpart. Ex-counterpart. "Hello, Sergei
Denisovich."
"Good morning, my friend. I'm glad I caught you."
Kyle set the palmtop on the now-bare desk where its camera plug-
in could capture him. "At least you're not a reporter."
"Still, I wish to know why you did such a stupid thing."
"Take a number, Sergei." The Russian waited silently for more of
an answer. "Oh, hell, Sergei, why not tell you? There are too many
things about the F'thk I don't understand. Most of the commission
wanted to move now, locking up the secret of fusion; I wasn't ready
yet."
"We simple Russian peasants are new to this democracy
business, but don't people get to vote their consciences?"
"I did, by leaving the commission. It was pretty clear what the
administration wanted." Kyle grimaced. "There are also rules about
how much, and just plain how, a political appointee embarrasses
the President who named him."
"Deciphering politics in Moscow is difficult enough; I'll leave you to
sort out the rules in Washington." As the Russian spoke, the
picture briefly broke up. When the image returned, Sergei was
smiling sardonically. "Well, my friend, at least we will always have
Canaveral. As to your future endeavors, I wish you luck."
They chatted a bit more, mostly about Kyle's imminent return to his
pre-Washington position—he'd resigned as the presidential
science advisor as well as from the commission—but the
conversation never quite homed in on a real topic. Kyle wondered
just why the Russian had called.
That mystery was replaced with a new one when, by then in his
soon-to-be-vacated apartment, Kyle checked his e-mail. Judging
from a timestamp, the bad transmission during Sergei's call had
somehow registered as an incoming message—and it was all
garbage, of course.
His mind would not let go the conversation. What an odd phrase:
deciphering politics. Could this be an encoded message?
Like many Internet users, Kyle had posted half a pair of encryption
keys to a public key-management server. Anyone could send him a
confidential message by encrypting it with this public key; only
Kyle, using his private key could decrypt it. He ran the "message"
through his e-mail reader's decrypter and got different garbage.
This is foolishness, he thought—a diversion from the serious
packing the DC apartment yet required. The Cold War had ended
years ago; did he really suspect his Russian colleague of
practicing intrigue? Still, their conversation nagged at him. We will
always have Canaveral.
Academic cryptologists had decried the government-sanctioned
encryption algorithm as breakable; cynics claimed that Washington
wanted the ability to eavesdrop. Did Sergei share such fears? Was
Sergei telling him that the Russians had broken the code?
Or was Kyle simply paranoid about a burst of static that had
confused his comp?
A Web query revealed ziplock to be the hacking community's
secret-key algorithm of choice. He downloaded an executable for
the alternative privacy software from a file server.
Kyle was relieved when the key Canaveral failed to decrypt the
message. He had no better luck with Atlantis, with any of the crew
names, or with the date of the explosion. Get a life, he told himself;
his self, instead, tried again with "Apollo/Saturn V" as the key. The
ziplock decrypt program now revealed:
I don't trust the F'thk either.
P. A. Nevsky
Another Net search explained the vague familiarity of the alias.
Prince Alexander was an early Russian military hero, dubbed
Nevsky for his defeat of Swedish invaders on the banks of the
Neva River. Alexander later reached an accommodation with the
conquering Mongols, a deal with the devil that maintained a degree
of Russian autonomy.
Was Sergei likening the F'thk, some Russian faction, or the West
to the barbarian Mongols? Retrieving a morning headline that his
news filter had culled for him, Kyle hyperlinked to the Russian
president's polemic about spiritual pollution from encroaching
Western values. Chernykov's speech blasted the very idea of F'thk
using decadent Western culture to represent humankind to the
Galactic Commonwealth.
Multimedia client software in his palmtop subverted to accept an e-
mail message transmitted surreptitiously as static during an
international video call—a capability that the Russian intelligence
service surely didn't want known. The equivocal subtext about a
compromised (but by whom?) public encryption system. The
ambiguous alias. Russian nationalist hysteria.
The mind boggled.
Amid the expanding set of questions, Kyle clung to one certainty: a
peer whom he deeply respected shared his own distrust of the
F'thk.
* * *
In public life, one has contacts and associates. In politics, balloons
drop by the thousands at nominating conventions and are
otherwise unseen. In government, banners bear simplistic slogans
writ large in standard fonts.
At Franklin Ridge National Labs, Kyle's once and future employer,
the cafeteria brimmed with dozens of old friends, hundreds of
balloons, and a mildly bizarre welcome banner obviously plotted by
a fractal program. He wondered why he'd ever left.
Full of punch—spiked, his spinning head told him—and sheet
cake, he let himself be led to his new office. The path chosen by
Dr. Hammond Matthews, Kyle's friend, guide, and successor as
lab director, began to look suspicious. "Hold it, Matt. We're
heading for the director's office."
"Not so," Matt dissembled, nonetheless leading the way to Kyle's
former office. Matt gestured at the door, which read Office of the
Director Emeritus. "The director, that poor, benighted bureaucrat,
parks himself one aisle over. Some carefree researcher with a fat,
unencumbered budget hangs out here." Kyle was seldom
speechless, but finding this such an occasion, he threw open the
door and went inside . . .
. . . Where he was even more surprised to discover Britt Arledge
standing. Matt shrugged apologetically, and closed the door from
the outside.
"Good man, that," began Britt.
Kyle pointed to a seat, then settled into the chair behind the old,
familiar desk. He could've taken another spot at the conference
table; his anger led to the unsubtle reminder that he no longer
worked for Britt. "Miss me already?"
"I have work for you already."
Kyle had been in Washington too long to lose his temper with one
of the most powerful men in the administration. Lest that temper
escape confinement, he kept his answer short. "Oh?"
"Did you plan to spend some time here studying our F'thk friends?"
Kyle spared the barest hint of a noncommittal nod.
"Then fifty million dollars of the black may prove helpful."
Black money: intelligence-agency funds. A lot of it, and from a
budget which by its very nature was subject to the most minimal of
oversight. He considered various possible answers before settling
for the simplest. "Thanks." As silence stretched on uncomfortably,
he added, still in a monosyllabic mode, "Why?"
"In case you're right." Arledge took a cigar from his jacket before
continuing; failing to spot an ashtray, he sniffed the cylinder
longingly before putting it back. He climbed to his feet. "Since I
mean us to get fusion before the Russians do, I needed America's
best talent to find out."
The Russians again. Essential as news filters were, they had their
downside: when you were too busy to follow what was happening,
you didn't know to update them.
Wondering what, if anything, about the Alexander Nevsky message
to mention, Kyle almost missed the subtext. Almost. "You wanted
me off the commission. You pushed." This time, he left the why?
unstated.
"I needed you here. You can't act nearly as convincingly as you can
storm off in high dudgeon. QED."
He should be furious at the manipulation, Kyle thought, but
somehow he wasn't: he'd rather be here than Washington.
"Sometimes I marvel that you never ran for President."
Britt arched an eyebrow by an understated millimeter. "I didn't have
to," he said.
CHAPTER 6
Russia Protests U.S. Arms Sale to Ukraine
—NBC Moscow Bureau
Treasury Threatens Cutoff of Loans to Russia
—Voice of America
Nationalists Favored in Russian Federation Elections
—CNN
There could be very few matters more pressing than interstellar
visitors and their advanced technology, but a foolish humankind
seemed to have found one: a return to nuclear madness.
Bellicose speeches and resurgent Russian nationalism were bad
enough; now Kyle found himself immersed in a far scarier
nightmare. As world tensions inexplicably climbed, the White
House asked him to spearhead Franklin Ridge's round-the-clock
research into a national-security disaster: the rash of failures in
"national technical means," diplomat-speak for spy satellites. If, as
everyone suspected, the Russians were killing the satellites, how
were they doing it? And why?
And what would happen when, despite the nation's best efforts to
build and launch replacements, America found herself blind?
* * *
Franklin Ridge National Labs nestled into a secluded and pristine
fold of the Allegheny Mountains. The location was isolated but still
an easy drive from many East Coast cities.
National crises do not recognize weekends, but Kyle took one
anyway. The data made no sense. He needed an outside, fresh
perspective, and he knew where to find it. And from whom.
Darlene Lyons had stayed on the Galactic Studies Commission
when he'd left. "Someone," she had opined, "has to champion
reality there." He remembered the words, and hoped that they
would generalize to his new problem, as he rang the doorbell of
her Georgetown duplex.
After a welcome hug and some pleasantries, he wound up
perched on the front edge of a sofa, picking at crackers and
cheese. He picked, as well, at words, unsure how much to say
even as he reminded himself that he had invited himself over.
"Is there a scintilla of a reason for you to be here?" She studied
him over a glass of Chablis.
Scintilla was the compartmented code word for the top-secret
satellite investigations at Franklin. Startled, he almost spilled his
own drink.
"So much for the theory that my innate charms brought you."
Setting down her glass, she stacked a napkin with crackers. "Yes,
I'm cleared for Scintilla. What about it?"
"You know that the spysats have been killed with X-rays?"
She nodded.
"A couple of the birds were grazed by the beam before getting
fried. The final telemetry lets us approximate the power density of
the beam as it locks in." He'd reached the part of the analysis that
most upset him; he drained his glass and with a trembling hand
poured a refill. "I don't believe that the Russians—or anyone here
on Earth—could generate that beam. I think the F'thk are
meddling."
Settling next to Kyle on the sofa, she laid a hand on his elbow. "We
think so, too."
"The commission?"
"State." It was now her turn to look uncomfortable. "I don't have a
code word to exchange for this one. Just keep it to yourself.
"According to H'ffl, the Galactics have their own factions. It's been
centuries since the Galactics last discovered a new species
possibly eligible for membership. For all that time, their
Commonwealth has been evenly split between more-or-less
authoritarian states and more-or-less democratic, individual-rights
societies. That the nations of Earth are split between the two
philosophies has thrown the Galactics for a loop: neither side feels
comfortable about how we'd affect their power balance. Earth was
almost not contacted for that reason.
"The F'thk are basically libertarian, in the individualist camp; that's
why they came first to Washington. H'ffl has told several American
diplomats, me among them, of his biggest fear: he has reason to
believe one of his legation is an agent for an authoritarian species.
He is not sure which, and he doesn't think it's important. What does
matter is that the statists are determined to assure their side a
majority—and they will do anything to avoid a defeat."
Kyle rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "So this alien spy is behind the
nationalist authoritarian resurgence in Russia? They want to tip
Earth's balance of power to tip their commonwealth's?"
"There's no direct evidence the Russian situation isn't a
homegrown political phenomenon. It's far from uncommon for
beleaguered parties in power, or those who want to assume that
power, to look for a foreign enemy and play the nationalism card.
The scary question is, will alien chicanery cause the Russians to
do something foolish?"
"The Galactic authoritarians may win if the nationalists take back
Russia. They avoid losing, in any event, if the Earth immolates
itself."
"That's how it looks," Darlene agreed.
"How's the US commission stand on this? Other countries? Should
we ask the F'thk to leave?" Which is not to say they would
necessarily honor such a request.
"Won't happen." She shook her head. "Everyone's afraid that the
last guy seen got the latest techie favor from them. So every
country except the last one visited wants the F'thk to stay long
enough to see them again."
"And every new stopover ratchets up the anxiety level that much
more." He drained his wine, unable to see any escape from the
dilemma.
* * *
Hammond Matthews was a belt, suspenders, and Krazy Glue sort
of scientist—his findings, however counterintuitive, were thoroughly
tested before he ever verbalized them.
Matt sprawled the length of what had been, until recently, his own
sofa in his own office. With a shoulder-length mane of blond hair,
strong jaw, pale blue eyes, and absolutely no hint of a tan, Matt
looked like a vampire beach bum. He wore chinos, a knit shirt, and
sandals, his one suit and tie stored until the next Washington visitor
arrived.
"Heart attacks," echoed Kyle cautiously. When he had asked Matt
to search for interesting correlations with Galactic activities, he'd
not expected medical coincidences.
"Heart attacks," confirmed Matt. "Every city hosting a Fellowship
Station shows an increase."
"Unfortunate, but surely a natural enough response to the
excitement. I was on the Mall, you know, when they came to DC."
"In every case, the pattern began days after the visit. Interestingly,
pacemaker failures account for most of the increase."
Kyle caught the implication—he remembered the warning plaques
on early microwave ovens. "Orbs don't emit microwaves, or any
RF. Commission physicists monitored orbs from the day after I got
my first. No orb has ever been seen to radiate anything."
"And I'll bet every one of those measurements took place inside a
Faraday cage."
Of course the orbs were observed inside electromagnetic
shielding. How else suppress . . . external signals . . . that could
interfere . . .
Spotting the LED of enlightenment over Kyle's head, Matt climbed
to his feet. "Let's step down to the radiometry lab."
Radiometry was a windowless room whose walls, floor, and ceiling
hid a lining of grounded copper foil. With its metal door closed, the
entire lab was a Faraday cage. Around the room, antennas of every
description stood in storklike vigil. Orbs, in various states of
disassembly, were everywhere—not that dissection had explained
anything. ("No user-serviceable parts," he thought inanely.) In three
corners, frameworks of two-by-fours covered with fine-mesh
copper screening enclosed smaller test spaces for the conduct of
precision experiments.
The workbench along the back wall supported a parabolic antenna
aimed at an intact orb. A power cable snaked from the dish
antenna's blocky base to a power supply on a lower shelf. Thinner
signal cables connected several small dipole antennas arrayed
around the orb and around the parabolic dish to a rack of
instrumentation.
"We could approximate the carrier frequency from the sensitivity of
pacemakers, but it was trial and error to find a signal coding to
which the orb responded—if we weren't simply imagining things."
Matt rested a hand on the test rig. "Courtesy of your commission's
observations, at least we knew that the F'thk favor phase-
modulated transmission. The control computer ran through twenty-
odd thousand permutations before finding a pulse sequence to
which the orb responded."
At Kyle's eye level on the instrument rack, the screen of a digital
storage oscilloscope showed two flat traces: no signals in or out.
Kyle took a deep breath. "Show me."
A mouse click triggered the beamcast; the lines on the DSO
screen instantly mutated into complex waveforms. A bit of typing
made the computer translate both phase-modulated signals into
the more familiar format of binary pulse trains.
Whatever the orb had to say took lots of bits.
CHAPTER 7
"You've got fifteen minutes," said Britt Arledge. "Since the world is
coming apart at the seams, be happy for that."
The White House office was spartanly furnished and fanatically
organized. For once, Kyle appreciated the obsessive order—it
made it that much easier to spot the Galactic orb he felt certain
would be present. He quickly spotted one on a bookshelf beside
the room door.
He sidled to one end of Britt's desk, blocking with his back the line
of sight between Britt and the orb, before taking from his pocket a
folded sheet of paper. Raising the other hand to his mouth, he
made the universal "shh" gesture.
Britt read the note without visible reaction. "You know, I feel like
some coffee. Care to join me?"
They went instead, Kyle leading the way, to a previously arranged
cubbyhole in the next-door Old Executive Office Building. The
room had a table, two chairs, a PC, and no orbs. "Thanks for
bearing with me."
"Telling me my office is bugged is a surefire way to get my
attention." Britt sat on the edge of the table. "So who's bugging it,
and how do you know?"
"The F'thk, that's who. And you won't like the 'how' any better. The
orbs are recording devices."
"Which would mean that every officeholder of any significance in
this town is bugged, starting with the President."
Kyle didn't care for the skepticism implicit in would mean. Instead
of commenting, he popped a CD-ROM into the computer. The PC
was Tempest-rated, specially designed to suppress the
electromagnetic emissions that—in an ordinary computer—would
allow skilled eavesdroppers to recreate the monitor image. On-
screen, Hammond Matthews summarized a series of experiments
upon orbs.
Every orb that the lab had tested showed the same behaviors. If
immersed in an actively changing environment—people moving,
music playing—the crystalline depths of an orb also changed
quickly. When triggered by the proper microwave interrogation
pulse, the stimulated orb had a lengthy response. The same orb,
observed by videocam in an empty and silent room, changed its
appearance very slowly; when interrogated, it had a short
response. The experiment was repeated with consistent results
using orbs labeled Washington, Tokyo, Moscow, Beijing, and
London—units that Darlene had had embassy staff obtain
overseas and ship home by diplomatic pouch. Everyone was being
spied upon, whatever their political school.
Britt tugged an ear thoughtfully. "If I'm following, these devices are
usually inert, passively recording the images and sounds that
impinge on them. Only when they get this interrogation signal are
they active."
"Right. The recording portion, the crystalline globe, needs no
power. Think of it as very advanced, electronically readable film.
The readout-and-reply portion in the base, beneath the bowl-
shaped antenna, is externally powered—it takes its energy from a
microwave interrogation signal. Now that we know to look, we've
detected such interrogation signals. Orbs are routinely probed in
and around all major national capitals—everywhere a 'Friendship
Station' was left.
"Better, we can triangulate back to the origins of the triggering
signals. Those sources turn out to be satellites. They're radar
stealthed, which is why NORAD hadn't noticed them as part of the
routine tracking of orbital space junk. They're also very dark, which
makes them hard to detect visually even when you know where to
look. Still, the satellites soak up a lot of energy from the sun.
Infrared instruments on NASA satellites can spot these satellites
easily."
"Can we be sure these aren't Russian or Chinese, or other Earth-
originated satellites? Someone working with the F'thk?"
Kyle popped the CD from the computer. "There are no stealth
launches—when something blasts off from anywhere on Earth our
spysats know it. These birds had to have been deposited directly
into orbit from space, not launched from this planet."
"Which brings us to more pressing issues, like the escalating
mortality rate of our spysats."
"Related issues. We know instantly when our birds get fried,
because we're in constant communication. We don't have such
immediate knowledge of Russian satellites. It turns out, though,
that their spysats are starting to tumble in orbit, as if out of control.
More and more of their birds are acting just like our known dead
ones."
The tiny room fell silent as Britt struggled to absorb the enormity of
these discoveries. At long last, he shook his head sadly. "So the
F'thk go from capital to capital spreading suspicions. With bugging
devices by the millions spread across the great capitals of the
world, they know what buttons to push, and they watch how we all
react when our buttons are pushed. They're disabling everyone's
spysats, which has us and the Russians escalating our strategic
alert status—which keeps feeding the distrust. The Chinese don't
trust either of us, and now they're on heightened alert, too."
"Yup, that pretty much sums it up."
Britt gave him a hard look. "So why, exactly, are you smiling?"
"I'm just glad to have friends in high places who share my sense of
the danger."
* * *
The video, shot from a distance with a telephoto lens, was grainy
and jerky. The voice-over, apart from the raw emotion in the
narration, was unintelligible. Neither distraction diminished the
horror.
The footage of the spectacular launch and even more spectacular
explosion of a Russian Proton 2 rocket had been captured by an
enterprising Korean journalist. Debris rained down on the sun-
baked steppes surrounding the Baikonur Cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan. Kyle could not see the enormous fireball blossom
without recalling the Atlantis, without a lump forming in his throat.
At Britt's gesture, Kyle muted the sound on the CNN feed. An aide
was whispering into the President's ear, something about
President Chernykov. Moments later, the Moscow hotline
connection was active and on speakerphone. The pleasantries
were perfunctory and abrupt.
"Dmitri Pyetrovich, we had hoped that a joint scientific project
would help to diffuse the recent tensions. Needless to say, today's
fiasco will not contribute to this aim."
"Fiasco?" The booming accompaniment was probably a hand
slapping an unseen desk in emphasis. "An American fiasco, I say.
Your shuttle carried the first version of this satellite, and it blew up.
Now one of our most reliable rockets carries a hurriedly upgraded
lab model of the same observatory—and again there is an
explosion. If you look to assign blame, look to your own people."
"My people tell me it was a launcher failure . . . "
"Your spies, you mean." Another background rumble punctuated
the Russian's intense voice. "Our experts are still analyzing
telemetry, and have released nothing."
President Robeson scowled at the speakerphone. "Calm down,
Dmitri."
"Don't tell me to calm down. Judging from past incidents, the
Kazakhs are likely to demand some sort of penalty payment from
us for supposed environmental damages. The cosmodrome
immediately suspended all further launches of the Proton 2 until
they complete an investigation, which shuts down our commercial
delivery business for heavy comsats." There was whispering in the
background. "One of my aides wonders if you wanted this disaster,
even arranged it, to favor your own aerospace companies and their
launch-service businesses."
Accusations and veiled insults flew. Leaders of the two great
nuclear powers growled and fumed. At last, the President had had
enough. "I think we can agree continuing this conversation is not to
anyone's advantage. But before we end the call, perhaps you will
tell me this, Dmitri. Have your experts found anything surprising in
the telemetry?"
There was impatient finger tapping, and an unseen Russian
sighed. A new voice, that Kyle recognized as Sergei Arbatov,
spoke up. "No. Nothing unexpected. It is all a mystery."
* * *
"Damned Russians," snapped President Robeson for the benefit
of the orb on his desk. "I need to stretch my legs. Walk with me."
He stormed from the well-wired Camp David office, followed by
Britt, Kyle, and a Secret Service retinue. Without further comment,
he led them into the moonlit Catoctin Mountain woods. The house
was soon hidden from sight by the trees. "Give us some space,"
the President told the chief of the protection detail. The agents
faded into the woods, their attention turned outward.
"Good show, Kyle."
"Thank you, sir." His mind's eye kept flashing back to cataclysmic
fireballs. "I wish I'd been wrong."
"But you weren't," said Britt. "You were right all along the line. The
Galactics targeted the Baikonur launch, as you predicted. The
arrangements were made by phone and Internet—and surely many
of the relevant details were arranged out of range of the damned
orbs—so your theory that they can monitor all of our electronic
communications is apparently also right."
Kyle retrieved and began to fidget with a pine cone. "When the
opportunity arises, thank Sergei." Sergei who had somehow
expedited the launch. Sergei whose theatrical tone of resignation
disguised the agreed upon code phrase: nothing unexpected.
For the Galactics had no reason to suspect what the conspiring
human scientists now expected: microwaves. Steerable microwave
beams from stealthy satellites, beams that converged on the
Proton's fuel tank. Enormous energies focused onto the metal
shell of the rocket, metal that instantly conducted the energy as
heat to the liquid hydrogen within. Kyle pictured a sealed metal
container of gasoline in a microwave oven. First, the liquid heated,
expanding and evaporating, until the pressure burst open the
container. The pressure-driven spray rapidly mixed with air, to be
exploded by the first spark.
Nothing unexpected . . . but microwave-borne sabotage was
expected. That meant the sensors Sergei was to have secreted on
the Proton had, before the explosion halted telemetry, reported
back in some innocuous guise the presence of strong incident
microwave radiation. Russian-placed sensors read out by Russian
telemetry equipment—the latest evidence would surely allay any
doubts President Chernykov might have had.
"Dr. Gustafson. Sir?"
He shrugged off the reverie into which excited exhaustion had
taken him. A Secret Service women had emerged from the woods.
"Yes?"
"Call for you, sir." She handed him a cell phone.
"Sorry, sir," he told the President. To the phone, he added,
"Gustafson."
"Hello, pardner." The voice was Hammond Matthews's. They
exchanged a few pleasantries and touched on some routine
business, projects on which they didn't mind the Galactics
eavesdropping. "Too bad you missed the barbecue."
"Was it big?"
A chuckle. "We had five grills running hot. You would have loved it."
Translation: five stealthed Galactic satellites with a line of sight to
Baikonur at the time of the Proton launch had flared on infrared
sensors. Which meant they were generating far more power than
usual. Pumping out weapons-grade microwave beams,
presumably.
"Sorry I had other commitments. But I need to run." He returned
the phone to the agent, who disappeared back into the woods.
He brought his walking companions up to date on the final test and
confirmation.
Robeson gave him a hard look. "This must be what happened to
the Atlantis."
"Yes, Mr. President." He kept his voice flat. "They appear
determined to keep us from making gamma-ray observations."
"I have my own observation to make," said the President. "There's
a term for the situation where others attack your national assets,
where they kill your citizens.
"We call it a state of war."
* * *
It would be a strange war, a conflict unlike any Earth had ever
known.
The Galactics had yet to reveal a credible motive for their hostility.
Like so much of what the humans thought they had learned about
the F'thk, the aliens' behind-the-scenes hints were contradictory
and apparently part of their inscrutable plot. Ambassador H'ffl had
also confidentially told the Russians of the authoritarian and
individualist factions among the Galactics—but in this version, the
F'thk were socialists in the authoritarians' camp, worried about an
anarchist mole in their midst.
The war against the aliens must also remain hidden, for no one
could fathom why, if the Galactics wanted to destroy humanity, they
did not simply do it. The gigantic mother ship orbiting the moon,
regally indifferent to any direct communication from Earth, was
never far from anyone's mind. Perhaps nothing but rationalization
or a sense of squeamishness separated Earth from direct
annihilation by the aliens—reticence that could give way to resolve
if the humans were not seen to be playing their assigned roles.
Earth would fight its war for survival as its antagonists had
inexplicably begun it: through subterfuge.
And so the F'thk, and the vast majority of the people of Earth,
would be encouraged to believe that great and foolish powers
were edging ever closer to the nuclear brink . . . while the few
human leaders and scientists in the know were riddled with doubts.
How dangerously easy it would be for the appearance of imminent
global warfare being so realistically maintained to become
cataclysmic reality.
Unless and until that catastrophe occurred, Earth's best minds
would—when their disappearance from Galactic orbs and
compromised global communications could be justified—work to
unravel the mysteries and to imagine any possible defense against
the Galactic powers already revealed.
* * *
Silver light angled through the leafy canopy. As three men reached
a small clearing, one paused. He glanced overhead to the full
moon, his lips moving silently.
"What's that, Kyle?"
"A bit of poetry, Mr. President." He jammed his hands into his
pockets. "I've always known that somehow, someday, I'd go to the
moon. It's what drew me to physics in the first place. The day I met
Sergei, moments before the Atlantis disaster, I told him I was sure
that man would return there. The key to all this is the Galactics'
mother ship—out there, circling the moon. If we're to succeed, we
must go there."
"So what's the poetry?" asked the President.
Kyle tipped his head back, the better to observe the world that had
for so long held his fascination. Feeling strangely like an oracle, he
spoke crisply the words he had earlier been moved to whisper. "I'll
come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."
" 'The Highwayman'? Unless you're an incurable romantic, that
poem doesn't exactly have a happy ending."
Kyle's eyes did not leave the beckoning moon. "I'm an incurable
realist. I'll do what I must, go where I must, to achieve a happy
ending.
"And that's where I think it will be."
A FOOLISH SYMMETRY
CHAPTER 8
"A generally unrecognized contributor to the worldview of the
Krulirim," dictated Swelk, "is the symmetry of the Krul body shape."
Outside her cabin a raucous comment, followed by bellows of
laughter, defeated the computer's attempt to parse her words. She
repeated the sentence. Immersion in her longtime studies was a
distraction from brooding about the work she should have been
doing—and from which she was so inexplicably barred.
Her latched door quivered from the impact of something heavy—or
rather, someone, because he spoke. The complaint was drunken,
slurred and indistinct, but the word "freak" was clear enough.
"The Krul body is commonly described as triform, as most of its
components occur in threes. Within the largely spherical central
mass, internal organs are triplicated. Three limbs, spaced
equidistantly around the torso, are equally adapted for locomotion
and manipulation. Each limb ends in a three-part extremity, which in
turn bears three digits. Limbs, extremities, and digits are all
opposable, providing three progressively finer levels of physical
control. Sensory stalks near the top of the central mass are also
triplicated, providing multiperspective audio and video imagery at
all points in a full circle around the Krul.
"Despite the understandable descriptive focus on triplication, the
effective symmetry of the Krul form, which favors no specific
direction, is radial. So complete is this effective radial symmetry
that a Krul observer does not and cannot locate a physical object
solely by reference to her body. Distance from the observer may
be so defined, but the second geometric parameter needed to
localize an object within a plane requires a reference external to
the body. The magnetic sense of the Krul provides this external
reference, by defining a line between her and the nearest magnetic
pole. An angle with respect to this line of external reference can
then be combined with the bodycentric radial distance. . . ."
Nonreaction sometimes discouraged those outside. Not this time.
Impacts continued to rattle her door, and yelling to scramble her
dictation. The frequency of the interruptions showed it was once
more open season on misfits. How would those outside react,
Swelk wondered, if told their successful adaptation to life on a
spaceship showed they were freaks? Most Krulirim could not
function outside a planetary-scale magnetic field—the inconstancy
of the shipboard artificial field, its orientation noticeably changing
with every few steps taken, induced nausea and confusion.
Not well at all, she decided. She checkpointed the computer and
tucked it into a pocket. Any work she got done today would have to
be accomplished someplace more secluded. The same was likely
true of any sleep she might hope for. Taking a deep breath, she
flung open the door to run the gauntlet to somewhere hopefully
quieter.
"Swelkie, you monstrosity. Weirdo. Abomination." Taking tones of
voice into account, the taunts ranged from condescending
affection, as one might address an ugly but familiar pet, to open
hostility. The captain presumably intended no permanent harm to
befall Swelk—she remained an occasional resource to the project
from which she was so aggravatingly excluded, not to mention a
paying passenger—but the crew, to whom her quasi-confinement
had been entrusted, did not necessarily understand the intended
limits to their abuse. The scientist within her recognized with cool
detachment that they might lack the self-restraint to overcome
ages of social conditioning and temper their mistreatments.
"Hello, Froll. How's it going, Brelf?" She was unable to extend all
her placative greetings before the harassment began. It's not
personal, it's not personal, she told herself silently. She dodged a
flung partially eaten piece of fruit, only to trip over something thrust
between her limbs. A delighted roar greeted the splat of her
graceless landing, followed by gales of laughter as Brelf, ever the
ringleader, dumped on her a cup of something pungent. The
cackling intensified as Swelk slipped in a pool of the liquid while
trying to stand up.
"So where are you going, beautiful?" Brelf's witticism set them all
off to tittering.
"To clean up, I think." Her uncomplaining acceptance of their
pranks seemed to satisfy them; they did nothing more as she
struggled, with more care this time, to an erect position. They let
her pass, content to guffaw at her clumsy progress down the
corridor, her lame limb trembling, before returning to whatever
drunken game of chance the sorry fact of her existence had so
unjustly distracted them from.
* * *
Her lame limb trembling. My curse in a phrase, thought Swelk,
limping to a quieter part of the ship. And if my disability weren't
enough, they blame me for adding perhaps two three-cubes of
years to this voyage. That reckoning was in Krulchuk years, of
course, not ship's time, but whether a starfarer ever saw family and
friends again depended on the passage of time on the home
world. Most people did not leave home.
"Swelk!"
She pulled herself to full height, bearing most of her weight on the
good limbs, aware that she still dripped soup. "Yes, Captain."
"My officers and I are too busy to deal right now with passengers.
Why are you out of your quarters?"
Translation: too busy to deal with her. The shreds of wet vegetable
sticking to her body were suddenly an asset. "A mishap, sir. I came
forward for cleaning supplies from ship's stores."
"Very well." Captain Grelben leaned slightly. Balanced effortlessly
on two limbs, he pointed down the hall with the third. "Find your
supplies, get cleaned up, and return to your cabin." Dropping to all
threes, he strode away. He disappeared into the officers' lounge,
through whose briefly open door could be seen not only several
officers but also the ship's other passengers. They were using the
translation and cultural interpretation program she had trained, the
expert-system software whose operations she had been too
naively trusting to keep to herself.
In the blissful quiet of the storeroom, Swelk surrendered to anger
and fear. Her body shook; her weak limb threatened to collapse of
its own accord. She lowered herself, wearily, to the deck. The hard
lump in her pocket reminded her that she'd come here to continue
on her treatise, but she was no longer in the mood. It was not
supposed to be this way.
It was not fair. It was not right. But when had Swelk's life ever been
either?
CHAPTER 9
Krul came in only two kinds: perfect and mutants.
The race had had to advance from cave dwellers to a society
rooted in science before radioactivity, the cause of most mutation,
was discovered. They had had to develop interstellar travel to learn
that the concentrations of radioactive elements in Krulchuk's core
and crust were unusually high. By the time they knew enough to say
"There but for the aim of an alpha particle go I," by the time
medical advancements would have permitted prenatal correction
of most mutations, selective infanticide had long been an
unquestioned cultural imperative. Swelk was even sympathetic in
the abstract to the custom, without which the Krulirim would never
have cohered long enough as a species to have technology.
So abnormal newborns continued to be put out of their parents'
misery. Swelk was doubly a freak, because, despite her flaws, she
still lived. Swelk's father had been too resentful of Swelk's
mother's death in childbirth to relinquish a living entity to blame.
Once Father had sufficiently recovered from his loss to do the right
thing, too much time had passed—the "civilized" fiction that Swelk
had succumbed naturally to her birth defects was no longer
credible.
Swelk seldom saw her father. Her nurse taught that when life gives
you a kwelth, you make kwelthor stew with it. Swelk didn't care for
stew, kwelthor or other, but she took the point.
So, she was a freak in an intensely conformist society, and nothing
she could do would change that. Swelk picked her type of "stew":
to be the objective outside observer of a society that lacked
outsiders.
Over time, Swelk's personal journal overflowed with commentary
about the society that, from her unique perspective, was closed
and intolerant. Her restlessness grew with the volume of her private
notes. Krulchuk became too confining: unwilling to offer her an
opportunity, increasingly devoid of any even mildly interesting
variety.
The more Krulchuk palled, the more the stars beckoned to her:
new worlds, different societies, other intelligent species. Father
gladly paid her fare—with luck the frontier or the rigors of travel
would kill her off, or he himself might have passed on before the
monstrosity's return. In the worst case, Swelk's return during
Father's lifetime, her tour of Krulchukor colonies would still have
spared him the embarrassment of her freakish presence for some
three-cubes of years.
She realized after the first few planetfalls what only wishful thinking
had kept her from extrapolating before leaving home. Krulirim
brook no deviancy; ergo, transplanted communities differed little
from the society of the ancestral world. If anything, the new
societies were more orthodox, less accepting of differences, than
the home world. On any worlds with the potential to support
Krulchukor life, exotic biospheres were systematically weakened to
make way for imported biota. Those sentients that had been
discovered, none nearly so advanced as her own species, were
quarantined and systematically looted of any worthwhile resources.
Disdain and neglect combined in an unofficial policy of cultural
destruction.
She cashed in her remaining tickets to buy passage on the first
starship returning to Krulchuk. That vessel was the Consensus, a
well-used cargo craft with a few cabins for passengers of limited
means and corresponding expectations.
She knew no one aboard the Consensus, but that hardly mattered.
Her nurse aside, and she had passed on, the Krulirim of Swelk's
acquaintance mistreated her no less than did strangers. Few Krul
ever encountered anyone as visually different as she; those
exceptions lacked precedents for how to behave toward her.
Deference to authority generally won out—her treatment generally
depended on how authority figures treated her. Shipboard, the
captain's impatience with and sometime ridicule of her were quickly
adopted.
She gladly stayed in her room at first, organizing the extensive if
disappointing notes from her travels. When her tiny cabin grew
tiresome, she volunteered, notwithstanding her status as a
passenger, to stand watches. Between stars, nothing ever
happened on a watch, but someone was required on the bridge
just in case. She expected no gratitude from officers spared the
boring duty, nor did she receive any—she was content with a
change of scenery and less confining surroundings in which to be
shunned. And for the comparative peace . . . Captain Grelben did
not tolerate harassment when Swelk was on watch.
And that was why Swelk was the one to detect the radio signals
from Earth.
* * *
The unexpected signals were at first faint and erratic, and Swelk
did not doubt that any of Captain Grelben's undisciplined staff
would have simply ignored them. She persevered. Coping with her
handicap, and with those who would torment her because of it, had
taught her patience.
The radio-frequency anomalies had progressed slowly from
arguably a figment of her imagination to formless certainty—the
Consensus was not traveling toward the unexplained broadcasts;
rather the signals themselves kept getting stronger. Taking on
more and more extra shifts, she had slowly learned to assign
various patterns to different languages. Her puzzled analyses grew
more focused, if still unproductive.
She had yelped in surprise upon determining the modulation
scheme that converted some of the radio waves streaming past
the Consensus into moving pictures. A bit more tweaking had
added a synchronized sound subchannel to the moving pictures.
Now she began to adopt the software she had trained across visits
to several worlds to learning and translating the unknowns'
communications.
Even as Captain Grelben acknowledged Swelk's progress, the
discovery brought renewed cruelty from the crew. "Trust the freak
to find more freaks." And these beings were odd by Krul
standards, with separate limb-types in pairs: a bottom set
dedicated to locomotion and a top set to manipulation. Their
bodies moved preferentially in one direction, like Swelk's; their
sense organs favored that side. By reason of her handicap and the
shunning of her own kind, Swelk sometimes felt closer to the
humans than to her shipmates.
And then, amid the ever-swelling torrent of signals, Swelk
encountered what must have been educational material for the
youngest of the aliens. It was elemental: basic symbols and acting
out of their meanings, fundamental concepts repeated in endless
variations. While the big bird never made sense to her, she came
to recognize numbers, the sounds that went with letters, whole
words. Her vocabulary grew. In time, other Earth television
programs made sense.
And the more she learned, the deeper became her sense of
wonder.
* * *
Swelk's discovery had for a time transformed the trip from
mundane disappointment to the wondrous adventure of which she
had dreamed.
She was not the only passenger on the Consensus, although she
did not know much about the others. Their cabins were in the
better-tended parts of the ship, while she had been exiled to what
she suspected was a former closet in the crew quarters. The other
passengers were somehow involved in the entertainment industry,
she gathered. Popular amusement had no appeal to Swelk, the
unvarying perfection of the actors just one more personal rebuke.
She was astonished when Rualf, the leader of the other
passengers, took Swelk's part in an argument with the captain.
Swelk had become forceful for only the second time in her life.
The first time had been to negotiate the terms of what she and her
father both saw, for quite different reasons, as a voyage of
liberation. This time she was arguing with Captain Grelben to divert
the Consensus to investigate Earth.
Pre-spaceflight philosophers on Krulchuk had accepted without
qualm or question the silence of the cosmos. Surely the Krulirim,
who alone had overcome the universal tendency of species to
mutate into oblivion, were the ideal and only intelligent race.
Starflight had necessitated a redefinition of that uniqueness: the
planets of many stars fostered life, and intelligence, or at least the
use of language and tools, arose almost as often. Krulchukor
superiority and—of course—centrality survived those discoveries,
because the Krulirim remained in one way unique: their mastery of
technology. When other intelligences obtained technology, it
mastered them. Two three-squares of worlds were known where
the dominant species once aspired to technical greatness and the
stars; they had achieved only self-destruction and ruin. The causes
varied—overbreeding, environmental devastation, genetic-
engineering disasters, and, most frequently, nuclear
immolation—but the effects, collapse and regression, were
constants. And so the superiority of the Krulirim, and the perfection
of everything about them, was vindicated . . .
One more supposedly intelligent species, argued the captain,
meant nothing. It was of little interest, and even less cause for
diverting the Consensus. These humans would only destroy
themselves, while he incurred huge penalties for late deliveries,
and his debts continued to pile up. Relativity slowed many things,
but not the accumulation of interest.
"But they are right at the crisis point," Swelk argued, "perhaps past
the crisis, if only barely. They speak of reducing their nuclear
weapons, remedying their ecological excesses. If I am right, the
Krulirim could have a companion advanced species."
Grelben, unlike his suddenly assertive passenger, equally
monitored all directions at once. Nothing in his stance indicated
that he was seeing the recovered television pictures from Earth,
appearing on several screens on the bridge. Swelk nonetheless
knew he was; the shiver in the spacer's body declared that what
Swelk suggested was anathema. One deformed adult Krul on
board was almost too much to bear—could any sane person
consider normal a technologically capable planet that teemed with
such deviancy? "We will not change our course, you—"
"Captain Grelben, if I may." Rualf glided onto the bridge with a
grace Swelk could only envy. His entrance had surely spared the
cripple a devastating insult.
"Of course, sir." The quick transition to deference was astonishing.
"Captain, I've overheard in the corridors a little about this curious
discovery." Rualf's sensor stalks wiggled in an understated display
of worldly amusement. "Would it be possible to hear a bit about it
directly?"
"You heard the man," snarled the captain.
Swelk needed no encouragement: here, finally, was someone
interested in her amazing find. Rualf and his company were widely
traveled; perhaps she had lost faith too soon. Perhaps somewhere
among the worlds of the Krulirim there were people with the
creativity and imagination to consider new ideas. Maybe even
people to whom Swelk could sometime explain her concepts of
group dynamics and social organization.
She launched into an ardent exposition on the challenges of
technological development, the crises certain technologies caused
societies, the failure of Krulchukor explorers to find any peer-level
species. She waxed eloquent that this new species, whose
presence had become clear from its radio broadcasts, could yet
survive this crisis and become equals. Krulchukor philosophers
had long postulated that a self-destructive drive was inherent in all
other races; she marveled at the rebirth in thinking and worldview
that would arise once such Krul-centered thinking was disproven.
Swelk was too enthusiastic, too rapt in futuristic visions, to take
notice of the subtle interactions of gesture and posture between
captain and honored passenger. All that registered of her
audience's reaction—an audience! what an unaccustomed
concept!—was Rualf's spoken response.
"Young woman, you have discovered something extraordinary. I
find myself intrigued. Perhaps you will allow me to discuss the
matter in private with our captain."
Giddy with the unexpected courtesy, even praise, Swelk
stammered her concurrence and limped from the bridge.
* * *
Rualf had had influence that Swelk could only envy. The
Consensus was redirected, with the full support of all passengers,
to investigate Earth.
CHAPTER 10
Captain Grelben became harsh in enforcing Swelk's detention
once the Consensus neared the humans' solar system. Detention
was her term, not his; he merely made clear that she was
unwelcome without invitation beyond the crew quarters. Rualf's
coterie made similar feelings plain. Officers and passengers alike
fell silent whenever she approached—and there was no possibility
of sneaking up on beings who sensed equally well in all directions.
A life spent as an outside observer then served her well. She
gleaned what she could from overheard bits of conversation, from
changes to shipboard routine, from the general announcements
that preceded and accompanied the ship's maneuvers. She knew,
though no one told her directly, that the Consensus had stopped at
Earth's moon, that still-mysterious preparations had been made
there, that direct radio contact had been established with—in the
crew's words—Swelk's freaks.
Rualf occasionally solicited her help in the translation or
interpretation of a radio intercept while sharing as little information
as possible: her "independent" commentary, he said, was
invaluable. Rualf was always scrupulously polite; Swelk realized too
late that the open-mindedness she had trusted was a sham, an
example of his art. She remained clueless as to his interest in the
discovery of the humans, so interested that he'd championed
rerouting the flight he had chartered.
So, from many sources and with much deduction, she learned that
her hopes had been realized. The humans had not let their
technology destroy them!
Now, as the ship hopped from one Earth location to the next, the
crew was content to stay aboard. Experiencing an alien culture had
no attraction to normal Krulirim, nor was Earth itself hospitable: its
sunlight was too hot and yellow, its thin ozone layer admitted
unsafe levels of UV, its carbon-dioxide level was nonlethal but
debilitating. On board at a landing strip or on board in a parking
orbit—it was all the same to the able-bodied spacers. Her own
requests to visit with the humans were rejected.
Something happened at those landings, though, something to
which only the officers and normal passengers were privy. Rualf
alone among the inner circle occasionally shared crumbs of news
about the humans. The more robust her translation program grew
from extended use, the more Rualf's sporadic comments tilted
toward smug superiority about progress in some undisclosed
grand scheme.
Swelk burnt with curiosity, outrage, and feelings of injustice. Before
each planetfall she was escorted to her cabin, "So as not to be in
the way, you understand."
Fuming in her tiny room yet again, she reached a decision. She
opened her door. "Brelf," she shouted. "I have an offer for you."
The deckhand was off duty, which meant he'd be drinking or
gambling. Probably both. Hearing his off-color stage whisper to his
shiftmates, and their titters, she allowed herself a moment of
satisfaction: she'd picked her words to encourage some
amusement at her own expense. Brelf emerged from the crew
galley looking satisfied with his cleverness, his buddies following.
"What do you want, Swelkie?"
"Out of here, of course." To their laughter she added, "Any more
time in this closet will drive me insane." She dipped her sensor
stalks in a pout. "Trust me, that wouldn't be a pretty sight."
They roared in appreciation, the freak poking fun at herself.
"So here's my idea. I'm so tired of talking to myself that even a
Girillian swampbeast would be enjoyable company."
Brelf flexed the digits of an extremity thoughtfully. "Well, Swelkie,
that is an interesting suggestion. I'm sure you know that we have a
couple of swampbeasts on board. Not just them; we have
ourselves a whole Girillian menagerie, and a messy, ill-tempered
bunch they are. Thanks to you and your humans, we'll be watching
over the monsters for a whole lot longer before they get to the
imperial zoo on Krulchuk." He tipped onto twos, sweeping the
unburdened limb inclusively across the group of his mates.
"Anyone here care to let Swelkie take their shift feeding the
beasties?"
"And cleaning up their shit afterwards!" someone added, evoking
more hilarity.
"What do you say, Swelkie? Are you so tired of your deluxe
accommodations that you would do a little light cleaning for us?"
Success! Willing her voice calm, she flexed her shortened limb. "I
guess I can use the exercise."
"Come along then, Swelkie," said Brelf. "Who knows? A
swampbeast may find even you attractive."
* * *
Swampbeasts turned out not to be the most stimulating
companions Swelk had ever had, but neither were they the worst.
Where Swelk's sidedness resulted from a congenitally deformed
limb and the need to cope with it, swampbeasts were naturally
bilateral in two different respects. There were three limbs on each
side, each limb flaring into a large webbed appendage that
distributed their weight over a broad area to keep them from
sinking into their native muck. The eating end had a protuberance
that held not only the mouth, but also the brain and many of the
creature's sensory elements. The animals ate more or less
constantly, and excreted almost as rapidly out the other end, an
apparent trick to keep them well stocked with nutrients while
minimizing the body weight to be suspended above the swamp.
She raked together their many droppings without complaint. The
animals wouldn't care about her disapproval, and anyway, she had
asked to be here. Every so often she would trade her rake for a
shovel, emptying the dung into a standard bioconverter. The
machine recycled the wastes, plus a dollop of fresh chemicals
from ship's stores, into fodder as wholesome as could be found in
any swamp on Girillia.
That was the theory, anyway. With Swelk's surreptitious adjustment
to the bioconverter, the food was not quite that wholesome. She
felt some minor guilt about her actions, the swampbeasts being
aggrieved first in their capture, then in the mud-free artificiality of
their confinement, and now in her treatment of them. Guilt or no,
the feed they now received failed to agree with them. The cargo
hold pressed into service as a zoo was awash with feces, fouler
smelling even than usual. None of the crew objected to her taking
as many caretaker shifts as she wished. Brelf and his pals found
the outbreak of diarrhea hilarious. "Seeing Swelk makes even a
swampbeast ill."
The stench served a purpose: it substituted for close supervision
when she was out of her cabin. No one wanted to be near her while
she took care of the menagerie. That, in the end, was her purpose.
The Consensus carried four lifeboats, one of which was reached
through the cargo hold that had become the Girillian zoo. The
access hatches that led to the lifeboats were all monitored by
sensors that reported to the bridge—but one cut wire guaranteed
that the sensor to this lifeboat always reported the hatch to be shut.
She had unencumbered access to the tiny but complete
spacecraft. One part of the lifeboat's equipment was a radio.
CHAPTER 11
Her first uncensored news made Swelk wonder if she had gone
mad.
The broadcasts she had monitored most of the way to Earth had
shown humanity resolving old grievances, de-alerting its missiles,
reducing its weapons of mass destruction. Stepping away from the
nuclear brink . . .
Since she'd been excluded from the broadcasts, which had not
been a long time, much of that progress had been reversed. The
latest reports made clear that tensions had ratcheted up again. The
airwaves were full of threats and dangerous bravado.
An even bigger shock was the other story that dominated the
human media: the visit of the Galactics. Other starfarers had
arrived at about the same time as the Consensus. Earth was being
appraised for membership in some interstellar commonwealth.
Earth's evaluators were welcomed everywhere, lured by the
promise of the Galactics' fusion technology to those nations that
cooperated.
The Krulirim had had interstellar travel for generations, without
encountering a people as capable as themselves—not even, until
now, anyone as advanced as the humans. Some intelligent
species had failed to exit the Stone Age. Those that had achieved
higher technology universally reversed course, living pathetically
amid the mysterious and often deadly ruins of their own former
greatness.
The Galactic species touring and inspecting Earth bore no
resemblance to any intelligent race known to Krulchukor science. A
recognizable offshoot of an otherwise self-destructive race would
have made some sense, would have been satisfying to her. That
wasn't the case—the F'thk were totally unknown. If she couldn't
account for this one species, what explanation could there be for
the appearance of a whole multispecies federation?
And while the F'thk were all over the humans' news, she saw not
one Krul.
How could it be that she'd overheard nothing, from anyone on the
Consensus, of the supposed impossible: starfarers of a species
other than their own?
In her confusion, she almost forgot to reemerge from the lifeboat
to continue her zookeeper duties. The trilling alarm of her pocket
clock saved her. She would surely have died of disappointment
and curiosity if, deception discovered, she again lost touch with
events on Earth. She programmed the lifeboat's computer to
record selected topics and sources for her, then reluctantly
returned to the cargo hold.
With renewed feelings of guilt, Swelk arranged for the unexplained
ailment to spread to two other Girillian species. She needed lots of
time unsupervised.
* * *
"Captain." Swelk tipped her torso toward Grelben respectfully,
carefully keeping her bad limb behind her, out of his line of sight.
Stretching the shortened limb this way was painful, but normals
took hiding of her infirmity as a sign of respect.
Experimentation had shown that he was least antagonistic when
they were away from the humans. They were in Earth orbit now.
"May I have a moment of your time, sir?"
His olfactory organs wrinkled. "Make it quick. You stink of those
foul creatures in the hold."
"My apologies, sir." The bastard: having paid for her passage, she
was doing the work his crew found too objectionable. That was
unimportant and by her own design; she tamped down the
irrelevant thought, unexpressed. "I wondered about your contacts
with the humans. Was I right? Does it look like they will succeed?"
"It does not seem so. In fact, they are moving quickly towards
blowing themselves up." He flexed an extremity. The expression
was thoughtful, yes, but also implied something else. Anticipation?
"At least this bunch will be remembered better than most. We'll
have records of what they accomplished and how it ended."
There was a time when Swelk would have accepted Grelben's
statements without question. Growing up a freak, her defects a
cause for comment by every passerby, she often hid herself away.
Still, as unskilled as were her interpersonal skills, his comments
failed to ring true.
"So we will do more than save copies of their own broadcasts?"
The two eyes turned toward her narrowed in momentary suspicion,
then relaxed. Though Grelben's inability to see Swelk as an equal
served her purposes, she fumed inwardly. Underestimating the
freak was a too-common reaction.
"Rualf's troupe is making additional recordings with their own
equipment. We may also be able to save some human artifacts."
"Then I guess we're doing everything we can." His eyes narrowed
briefly again before once more rejecting the possible double
meaning.
That her words could have a double meaning—despite not
knowing what that second denotation could be—was a chilling
confirmation of her darkest fears.
* * *
The hastily programmed data filter had worked well: Swelk's next
visit to the lifeboat was rewarded with an eye-popping collection of
television intercepts.
The presence of the Galactics changed the bigger picture. It would
be tragic if the humans, so close to achieving maturity, self-
destructed, but her bigger dream was intact. The Galactics,
wherever they came from, had obviously attained social maturity.
Here was companionship for the Krulirim. Here were alternative
body forms, and intelligences who would have no reason to
disparage what to them would surely be Swelk's very minor
differences.
More than anything, she ached to visit the Galactic mother ship.
The human media seemed every bit as fascinated with it as she;
telescopic views of the habitat-sized vessel were backdrop to
many news broadcasts. The lifeboat's computer did the
conversion from human units of measurement: the spacecraft
waiting in orbit around Earth's moon was enormous, as large as
Krulchuk's own third-largest moon. The object's perfectly
burnished surface, bristling with countless antennae and hatches,
made plain that this was an artificial structure.
The human media seemed never to tire of covering F'thk visits to
Earth's cities. Those visits, she first thought, came in approximate
order of political importance. Coverage of Earth's other major
story, the slide toward nuclear war, corrected her impression. The
F'thk ship was frequenting, in approximate order of destructive
capability, the capitals of Earth's declared and suspected nuclear
powers.
An insistent alarm recalled her again to her duties at slopping the
animals and hosing down feces-covered decks. "Just one more
video," she promised herself, resetting the timepiece to extend her
stay briefly. It was a good decision: the next item in the queue was
coverage of the initial F'thk visit to a city called Teheran.
Unlike the Galactic mother ship, the F'thk landing ship was of a
scale with which Swelk could identify. Using individuals in the
welcoming crowd for scale, she decided that the F'thk vessel was
somewhat smaller than the interstellar passenger ship on which
she had begun her grand tour. That vessel, the Unity, was her
standard of reference; shuttle-crew hostility had kept her in her
cabin on approach to the in-orbit, about-to-depart Consensus.
The F'thk gave speeches. Dark-skinned humans with facial hair
gave speeches. A nondescript Hovercraft deployed from the ship
to deliver a kiosk of some sort to an Iranian park. The F'thk
spokesperson operated the machine, extracting and distributing
ceremonial objects of some sort. She fast-forwarded: long after
the dignitaries left, masses of people queued up for the souvenirs.
Her alarm chimed again, and this time she dared not wait. She
closed the lifeboat behind her and returned to the unaccustomed
physical labor that made so much possible for her.
* * *
Though the knowledge had been slow in coming, Swelk had
learned to recognize Rualf's correct manners as a manifestation of
his art and a disguise for his contempt. Now Swelk would test her
own skills of deception. The next time the actor summoned her to
discuss a bit of intercepted video, Swelk was sensitized for any
evidence or clues, no matter how veiled.
She tipped her sensor stalks one way after another, as if the flat
image would reveal new information from the various perspectives.
Play the fool. "I recognize the human behind the desk. He is often
in the material you show me. Who is he?"
"The leader of their most powerful subdivision. He is called the
President."
"And these others?"
"Advisors of the President. Now listen." Rualf repeated the video.
She listened carefully to the recording, then asked for a replay.
"This subdivision, this country, feels threatened by another called
Russia. Those sound like alternative nuclear-warfare strategies
under review."
"Certainly," said Rualf, his tone indicating impatience. Belaboring
the obvious was not why he deigned to deal with her. And if
nuclear-strike planning was under way, then the horrible crisis that
Swelk dreaded could be almost upon the humans.
"My question, Rualf, is this: why would they broadcast such stuff?
Detailed planning for an all-out war is surely meant to be secret."
"This is not from a broadcast," Rualf conceded.
"I am astonished they would discuss these matters in front of
visiting Krulirim, or allow you to record them."
Rualf was silent for a long time; Swelk wondered if her probing had
been too overt. Boastfulness eventually defeated caution. "These
are not matters they would care to discuss in front of outsiders."
He whistled sharply in amusement. "Did you hear what I said? In
front. I've been dealing with these absurd creatures for too long.
"Never mind that, you are right—and since you recognized this isn't
a human video, I may as well make it easier to view." He adjusted a
control, changing the presentation to 3-D, then rewound toward the
midpoint of the recording. "Here. See that crystalline sphere in a
bowl on a metallic base on the President's desk? We give those
spheres out as gifts all over Earth, especially to the decision
makers. The images we are watching are from another such globe
elsewhere in his office.
"It's a passive audiovisual recording device. Periodically we scan
their major cities with steerable microwave beams. The
microwaves provide momentary power to the devices to upload
whatever they've recorded."
Rualf misunderstood her dumfounded look. "I'm not surprised that
you never encountered these gadgets. We use them all the time in
making 3-V films, but moviemaking is the only way I've ever seen
them used."
She had seen such objects, however. The surreptitious Krulchukor
bugging device was one of the souvenirs manufactured by the
Galactic Friendship Stations and distributed by the F'thk.
CHAPTER 12
Somehow Swelk maintained her composure long enough to
complete the conversation with Rualf. She limped to her cabin, too
attentive to her own thoughts to take notice of the crew's taunts.
The F'thk were distributing bugging devices, which Rualf implied
were Krulchukor technology. Data from those devices were being
exploited by the officers and other passengers of the Consensus.
Conspirators, she decided was the correct and much shorter term.
Either the conspirators were in league with the F'thk, or the
conspirators were the F'thk. In either case, what could possibly be
the purpose of the conspiracy?
Dropping wearily onto her sleep cushion, she could not decide
which theory was the more unimaginable. Of all the group she now
labeled conspirators, none but Rualf could for any length of time
disguise his repugnance for her deformities. Their distaste was
equally plain for the alien intelligences previously discovered by
the Krulirim. How could they possibly be cooperating with the
F'thk? Look at their attitude toward the humans. It all seemed so
psychologically unlikely.
But the alternative was not physically possible. How could the F'thk
be Krulirim?
And yet, how could the F'thk not be the Krulirim? The human media
showed no other aliens.
A gurgling stomach reminded her that she had missed the last two
meals. Swelk dug through a stockpile of prepackaged rations she
kept in her room, her company in the galley of the Consensus
seldom being appreciated by her shipmates. What a delightfully
uncomplicated pleasure: to pick some food and eat it. So few of
the concepts swirling through her mind were ever simple anymore.
Certainly, none were pleasant.
The practicality of her task brought a fresh perspective. There was
at least one variable that she could eliminate, with no subterfuge
required. She called up the ship's library and located a picture of
the ship in which she sat chewing.
Despite her suspicions, she almost choked at the hologram that
appeared. Either the F'thk landing ship was the Consensus, or the
F'thk had found its clone.
* * *
No clone: some of the broadcasts stored in the data banks of the
lifeboat were real-time reports of F'thk landings. Timestamps for
those recordings matched what Swelk knew to be landings of the
Consensus. Even physical locations matched.
Everything was consistent . . . and everything inexplicable. And
what, if anything could or should be done about it?
* * *
"You have got to help me, Rualf."
The entertainer peered dubiously at Swelk. She had just been
quite useful in interpreting one of the odder broadcasts from Earth.
"Help you with what? If you refer to your issues with the crew,
sorry—I will not get in the middle of that."
A dip of her sensor stalks suggested, You can't blame me for
trying. The shrug was a deception, something for Rualf to reject so
that a lesser request might be granted in consolation. "I suppose
not. I need distraction, is all. There is a great deal of nuance to
Girillian dung, at least for someone with my level of expertise, but I
have almost exhausted the possibilities."
"What did you have in mind?" His stance conveyed guardedness.
"You and your friends, your troupe. You make movies, correct?"
"Of course." The posture relaxed. He knew all about dealing with
fans. All fans were odd—their strangeness was just not usually so
visually evident.
"Well," she tipped toward him respectfully, "I've never actually
known anyone in the entertainment field. I wondered if you had
recordings of some of your troupe's films that I could borrow to
view in my room."
"Wait here." He popped into his cabin, returning with a standard
computer storage cube. "Enjoy."
"Oh, I'm sure that I will find your work very interesting." He did not
seem to take note of the potential difference between interest and
enjoyment.
* * *
The swampbeasts had come to trust Swelk, humphing in welcome
when she arrived, hanging their heads sadly when she left. The
show of affection deepened her guilt without altering her
resolve—and caused her to shift the food tampering to another
pair of creatures. So far those large limbless crawlers showed no
signs of eliciting her sympathies.
She limped from cage to tank to stall, cleaning up the various
messes. Despite her eagerness to see what new uncensored
information awaited in the lifeboat, she took pleasure in her task. It
was nice to be appreciated, even if only by a swampbeast. She
stroked their fur carefully with a long-handled brush, bringing forth
more contented humphs. Even the hold's smell was becoming
familiar.
Or was it abating? That would be bad, stench being the main
guarantor of her privacy. Steeped in shame, she synthesized fresh
batches of nutritionally deficient animal fodder. For good measure,
she spilled some feces near the hold's main door, to be sure to
track some into the corridor later.
The lifeboat computer kept selecting more broadcast material than
she had the time to review. She sampled and skimmed, without
obtaining answers to what was, in her mind, the biggest question:
why did the Consensus pretend to be what it was not?
Swelk whistled softly to herself in amusement: the beasts she
tended were always themselves—and the only beings on board to
enjoy her presence. If the humans did not destroy themselves,
would she be allowed to establish a relationship with some of
them?
A foolish notion, but it suggested another. The conspiracy she
suspected, its form still obscure, its purpose unknown, seemed
too much for her alone to uncover. There were, however, countless
humans. Did any of them have doubts? If such could be found,
could she and they somehow help each other?
She reconfigured the lifeboat's broadcast search to select
information on anyone who had expressed skepticism about
Earth's interstellar visitors, then returned to her duties in the hold.
* * *
Without enthusiasm, Swelk accessed the index on Rualf's data
cube. It turned out to contain three-squared and three movies.
Searching them for clues, to exactly what, she could not even
guess, would take a while.
Sooner started, sooner finished. She told the computer to run
through all the contents in storage order. Most of the actors she
recognized from shipboard encounters, not only Rualf: the same
group, as typical for Krulirim, had worked together for a long time.
That did not mean that she could put names to them; many of the
troupe ignored her.
She fell asleep to the quiet drone of the third film. Like the stories
that had preceded it, this movie involved a perfect character who
had lapsed into the slightest bit of individuality, becoming unhappy
and stressed as a result. Even Krulirim were not as variety-free as
these films suggested. Creativity and exploration require initiative,
even if the common culture chose not to recognize it. What boring
drivel . . .
Sleep was a vulnerable time for any Krul, slumber's sensory
shutdown in such utter contrast to normal awareness in all
directions at once. No one could sneak up on one of her
kind—except in her dreams.
* * *
Krulchuk was a planet with active plate tectonics, its interior kept
hot by the slow decay of an overabundance of thorium and
uranium. Without that internal energy source, Krulchuk would have
been inhospitable to life, as far as it was from its sun. Without the
high background radiation, the evolution of its unlikely life would
have been much different. And without the constant upwelling of
magma, first driving the continental plates apart and then reuniting
them in tremendous convulsions, and the attendant shifts in
oceanic circulation, Krulchuk would not have experienced regular
cycles of ice ages and warming.
Multicellular life arose soon after one such breakup of a temporarily
unified mega-landmass. The continents that resulted drifted
separately for eons, each a laboratory for evolution, before they
next crashed together. The distant ancestors of the Krulirim were
suddenly in a fight for survival with the offspring of a different path:
bilaterally symmetric creatures. The trilateral ultimately prevailed;
the bilateral disappeared without a trace until Krulchukor science
discovered the fossils of the vanquished monsters.
A few scientists whispered that a random metabolic mutation within
the trilateral phylum better suited them to Krulchuk's next ice age.
Their theory, that trilateralism itself was not inherently superior,
remained controversial.
Whatever had caused the great die-out of the bilats, their fossils
were an immediate sensation, instantly recognized by some
primitive underbrain survivor of that dawn-of-time struggle. The
unnatural beings that sometimes appeared to Krulirim in their
vulnerable dream states suddenly were of nature, and more
frightening than ever.
Rualf's character howled dramatically in another overacted film.
The emoting disturbed the dozing Swelk, who opened one eye in
reflexive curiosity. She shrieked herself, suddenly alert. It took
several deep breaths to slow her pounding hearts.
She had wakened during a dream sequence in which Rualf
wrestled with a monster from his inner mind. A horned and fanged
bilat, its talons and the corners of its mouth dripping gore, a
creature to whom the term nightmarish truly applied.
Rualf vanquished his inner beast, enriched by the recognition that it
symbolized his less than perfectly social ways. As the film ended,
the actor sought out the communal embrace of his neighbors. Big
surprise.
Credits rolled. There was a prominent credit for robotic effects.
Her first reaction had been that the bilat was a computer-generated
graphic. A robot made sense, though: the creature and Rualf had
been so entangled in their fight.
A robot. Swelk rewound the film to the dream sequence. The
monster seemed to be a cinematic amalgam, a composite of the
scariest old fossil finds and the director's imagination. "Enough
movies for now," she told the computer. "Does the ship's library
have an encyclopedia?"
"Yes."
"Show me an overview of extinct Krulchukor bilats." Text and an
image appeared instantly. "Scroll." Midway through the article she
encountered a skeleton that her imagination easily fleshed out.
Add two pairs of eyes and it was a F'thk.
CHAPTER 13
Swelk got no more rest that sleep-shift, her mind lost in a haze of
odd findings and vague suspicions. So what did she know? That
the so-called F'thk were robots controlled by the starship's
performer passengers, with full cooperation of the officers. That
the "symbols of galactic unity" the F'thk distributed everywhere
were audiovisual bugging devices. That she was excluded from
whatever the F'thk, and the Krulirim behind them, were doing.
Why these things should be true was a mystery, but as her mind
grappled with the few hard facts, an unsettling theory took shape in
her mind.
Testing that theory would require taking a big risk.
* * *
The product of a conformist species, Swelk had wondered if her
revised Earth news filter would find any skeptical humans. She
need not have worried. Her handicaps and social isolation made
her more individualistic than any Krul whom she knew—but the
cacophony of human viewpoints exceeded her ability to
comprehend.
Once governmental pronouncements and mainstream networks
were excluded, Earthly theories about the F'thk knew no logical
bounds. Speculations ranged from the imminence of a
supernatural catastrophe, if she correctly understood this English
word "apocalypse," to an equally delusional expectation that the
F'thk had crossed the light-years looking for fresh meat.
Then again, end-of-the-world scenarios weren't so bizarre: nuclear
tensions increased wherever the F'thk visited. Catastrophe, if not
from paranormal causes, was an increasingly realistic prediction.
Still, she did not see how the hysteria in the alternate channels
helped her. If she could contact any of these hysterics, she saw no
reason why she would. They, like she, were on the outside of
whatever was happening, trying to look in.
It did not help her sense of hopelessness that most Earthly
information was beyond her reach. In the time it had taken the
Consensus to reach Earth—a few months of relativity dilated ship's
time, several years of Earth time—the humans had migrated much
of their information infrastructure from analog to digital technology.
What the humans called their Internet apparently brimmed with
information. The lifeboat computer had not been designed to
interoperate with human networking protocols, alas, and she lacked
the skills to expand its repertoire.
So the latest query had put her into noise overload. What she
sought might not exist anywhere in this ocean of information. With
little hope of success, she asked the computer to look again, this
time saving only broadcasts with demeanor like several calm news
readers that she identified and that expressed concern about the
F'thk.
* * *
"What do you want?" Grelben grumbled.
"A word with Rualf," answered Swelk apologetically. Long gone
were the days when the captain let her be alone on the bridge. She
had waited to contact the actor until she knew he was here.
"It's not a problem, Captain," Rualf said soothingly. "I will talk with
her."
She launched into a prepared speech about a recording he had
once shown her. The new interpretation was not urgent; she sidled
as she spoke until she was leaning against the horizontal working
surface at the front of an unoccupied console. The underside of
the ledge was her target.
Her deformed limb was near the workstation. The infirmity made
most people uncomfortable; they tended not to look in its direction.
For once, she welcomed their distaste. With two good limbs and
the rim of the ledge to support her, she used the obscured limb to
take a blob of sticky putty from a pocket between her body and the
console. The blob was loosely wrapped in plastic sheeting to
which the adhesive did not cling well.
Swelk flattened the blob against the underside of the ledge. The
plastic, which peeled off silently, was returned to her pocket. She
removed a spare pocket computer, which she pressed deep into
the putty. The weak extremity cramping from such unaccustomed
fine-motor activity, she stretched sticky stuff around the edges of
the computer, the better to secure it.
"Are you about done?" asked the captain. "We have work to do
here."
"Almost, sir." Her real task complete, she brought to a conclusion
her rambling discussion with Rualf. "I'll be tending to the Girillian
animals, if you need me."
Neither suggested that such a consultation was likely, which was
fine with her. She hobbled to the cargo hold, where she had left her
usual pocket comp. Her call to the hidden unit on the bridge went
through silently, because she had disabled its speaker.
" . . . A house in Vrdlek City," declared Rualf's voice. Expensive
property.
"I prefer something in the desert," responded Grelben. "Perhaps
shorefront on the Salt Sea."
Swelk bobbed her sensor stalks in relief. Her improvised bug
worked.
* * *
The search program in the lifeboat computer was goal seeking.
When the main channels that it monitored failed to locate
information to Swelk's newly stringent specifications, the set of
frequencies audited was expanded, then expanded again.
Swelk found herself reviewing a segment recorded from a history
channel, puzzled that the computer had selected this. Mid-interview
she understood. The biography was of a famous scientist, who had
ended her career as an inspirational teacher. Her most infamous
student, it seemed, was a Kyle Gustafson, "the former presidential
science assistant and resigned chairman of the American
Commission on Galactic Studies." The camera lingered
momentarily on an image of two men.
One man she knew from Rualf's spying device: the President. And
that leader's science advisor had resigned in an undisclosed
disagreement over the F'thk?
"Computer. Find out all you can about this Kyle Gustafson."
* * *
"What do you think, Stinky?"
The male swampbeast humphed contentedly. He pressed his
head against the one-time broom with which he was now regularly
groomed. Both swampbeasts, tentatively Stinky and Smelly, loved
to be brushed between their nostrils. It was hard not to like
creatures who took such joy from Swelk's ministrations.
Humph wasn't much of an answer to her question: why interact with
humanity through the F'thk? The easy explanation was xenophobia:
use of what she now recognized as robots to avoid direct dealings
with the odd aliens. That seemed wrong—nowhere on her travels
had she encountered Krulirim using robots to interact with
previously discovered intelligent species.
She considered herself an expert in cultural variation, what little
there was, among the Krulirim. Entertainers were one such
variation. Certainly their willingness, even desire, to be personally
visible, to be the focus of attention, was outside her people's
mainstream. Rualf's troupe was clearly at the center of contacts
with the humans—the F'thk were their robots.
Smelly flumphed in impatience. She also wanted to be groomed.
"Almost your turn, baby." What advantage did the F'thk offer over
direct interaction with the humans?
Smelly lowered her head to butt Swelk. The impact could have
been much harder—it was only a request for attention. She patted
her oversized charge affectionately. "Big beastie. What a big . . ."
She was suddenly reminded of a fact that familiarity had
obscured—the swampbeasts loomed over her, as they towered
over any Krul.
As humans would tower over any Krul.
The robots called the F'thk, however, were taller than nearly all
humans. The F'thk "eyes" were very near the tops of their un-
Krulchukor heads. There was an advantage to using F'thk rather
than Krulirim to interact with the humans, and one that would appeal
to the troupe.
Assuming the F'thk "eyes" were camera lenses, an unobstructed
view for image capture.
* * *
"If a human group did spot one, surely it would be attributed to its
enemy."
Swelk stiffened. She had been resting in an acceleration couch,
sipping absently on a high-energy drink from the lifeboat's
emergency stores. "Return to the start of that conversation," she
ordered the computer. "Display text version."
Most bridge chatter turned out to be irrelevant, giving her hope that
what she feared about this conversation was all in her imagination.
Still, she believed that the inconclusiveness of her spying meant
only that the most interesting discussions took place in another
cargo hold of the Consensus, part of the ship to which the
entertainers had free access but from which she was barred.
There, presumably, could be found the controls for operating the
F'thk.
"Enemy" was one of the keywords with which she screened for
anything useful. After a momentary pause, a screen filled with text.
She scanned past the pleasantries as Rualf joined Grelben on the
bridge.
Rualf: Are our satellites all in position? Can they see in sufficient
detail?
Grelben: Yes and yes. (impatient tone) As I said they would.
Rualf: And the humans do not know?
Grelben: Your people listen to the Earth recordings, not mine, but I
would not think so. The satellites we deployed are radar-invisible; it
would take very bad luck for the humans to physically see one. If a
human group did spot one, surely it would be attributed to its
enemy.
Rualf: Stupid freaks. (laugh) Lovely monstrosities.
Swelk read on, in fascination and horror. There could be no doubt:
a conspiracy against the Earthlings was under way. Much about
how the plot would unfold remained clouded, but its purpose was
clear—and what she had most feared.
Rualf put it best. "Close-ups from our satellites of missile launches
and nuclear destruction. Intercepts of Earth's media as they scurry
in panic. Recordings from our bugs of their final moments." A
gleeful laugh. "Yes, the humans respond well to their cues. When
they blow themselves up, what a fine and profitable movie we will
make of it."
"I've been counting on it," said the captain.
* * *
Light-years from any authorities, Swelk had never felt so alone. Her
species' at-best benign neglect for their less accomplished fellow
sapients was awful enough. That was nothing compared to what
she had discovered: the planned genocide of the humans in the
name of profit.
And she had led the plotters to Earth.
She shut herself into her tiny cabin, clutching the sleep cushion
with trembling limbs, smothering moans of despair in the bedding.
Her sensor stalks slumped in abject misery against her torso.
What a fool she was. What arrogance to have thought herself a
capable observer of Krulchukor culture. Now her ignorant
presumption would destroy the most advanced civilization her
people had ever encountered.
No.
She willed her limbs to relax, opened her eyes, focused her mind.
Shame solved nothing. Realistically, nothing she could do aboard
this ship would change anything.
She had to get to Earth.
CHAPTER 14
There was a clue, but she was too excited to notice. That
carelessness almost cost Swelk her life.
Animals once more fed and groomed, she had returned to the
lifeboat to check on the latest data search. There was a wealth of
information about Kyle Gustafson, his education, his career history,
sessions of the American commission on the Galactics.
The newest file was a video of the American president in loud
telephonic argument with his unseen Russian counterpart, trading
accusations about the recent midlaunch explosion of an American
scientific satellite aboard a Russian rocket. So trivial a cause for so
high-level an argument: the relationship between the countries
must have become very strained. Kyle Gustafson took no part,
standing silently in the background, but his height and reddish hair
made him stand out.
Gustafson's mere presence had a staggering implication: his
principled resignation had not separated him from his nation's
leader. And that must mean Gustafson's concerns about the
Galactics received some level of consideration within the American
government.
As a loud boom echoed in the cargo hold, she realized she had
failed to make a more pressing deduction. "Unlock this door!"
shouted Captain Grelben.
She should have wondered why this material had been located by
her query. Like the war-strategy session that Rualf had shared, a
shouting match between national leaders was unlikely to be waged
in public. Which suggested that the meeting that so interested her
had also been recorded secretly by one of Rualf's spheres . . .
The shock of realization almost froze her. She had neglected to
limit her last request to current broadcast intercepts, and her query
must have enlisted the Consensus's main computer. It was easy to
guess what had followed: security software spotting the
unauthorized data access and tracing the request to the lifeboat's
computer, an alarm sent to the duty officer, a call to the captain, the
realization of the lifeboat's proximity to the zoo that she tended
without supervision.
"Swelk, you freak. Open this hatch now." A loud bang. Animals
bellowed in confusion.
Cultural genocide was her species' horrific norm. Physical
genocide was not. If the captain and Rualf had done half what
Swelk now suspected, she could never be allowed to speak with
the authorities on Krulchuk. Keeping her ignorant had been, in a
crude way, a kindness—it preserved the option of letting her live.
Discovery of Swelk's investigations eliminated her continuance as
a viable outcome.
At least the plotters had made one small mistake: coming straight
to the cargo hold in a rage without first looking up the hatch-lock
override code.
Not that her actions demonstrated better forethought. "Lifeboat.
Break communications with the Consensus." What next? Wasn't
she trapped as surely as her swampbeasts? No, although she
would have been had the Consensus been on the ground. "Can
you launch without the cooperation of the main computer?"
"Yes. That is one of my emergency modes."
The pounding and shouting stopped. That meant no one expected
her to open the door and someone had gone for the code. She
had only seconds—terminals were all over the ship.
"Can you take me to Kyle Gustafson?" The off-limits information
whose access had endangered her could also save her.
"Not with certainty. His current position is unknown, but the upload
does include his residence and work locations." Swelk wasn't
surprised: she had assumed the main computer had been tapped
into the Earth's Internet.
She'd have to take the chance.
An unseen hatch crashed against a wall; she heard extremities
slapping the cargo-hold floor and oaths of disgust at the animals'
smell. A short hall connected the lifeboat bay to the cargo hold; a
quick glance showed her that corridor hatch was ajar.
"Emergency departure. Close airlock. Launch."
* * *
The lifeboat and its automation could get her down to surface, but
she would be stuck where she landed—if she got that far.
She could only hope the confusion aboard the starship equaled
her own. Her few preparations for escape to Earth suddenly
seemed more fantasies than plans. "Lifeboat. No communications
with the Consensus, nor with any of its lifeboats." Her mind's eye
pictured a sudden windstorm in the ship she had fled, air streaming
from the cargo hold into space through the suddenly gaping
lifeboat bay, until the corridor hatch was sucked shut. Poor
swampbeasts! "Was anything big blown from the ship?"
"No."
At least her hasty exit had probably not killed anyone.
What could they do beyond following her? She had a moment of
panic on recalling the anti-spacejunk defense, then wondered if it
would require reprogramming to fire at something moving away
from the ship. That was pure speculation, but since she could do
nothing about the laser, she might as well assume her theory was
correct.
They would track the lifeboat all the way down, and there was
nothing she could do about it. Still, observation of an escape
attempt was something to which she had given thought: they could
not see through clouds, and radar would not reveal what she did on
the ground.
It was night in the United States. "Computer, show a weather map
centered on Gustafson's home. Indicate nearby safe landing
areas." Luck finally favored her; the whole region was clouded.
A landing site selected, she turned to other preparations. There
wasn't much time.
* * *
The lifeboat broke through a dense bank of fog shrouding the
forested and weathered peaks of the Allegheny Mountains.
Landing radar and the onboard computer had delivered her with
precision between two parallel ridges; the ship settled rapidly into a
narrow valley. Gustafson's house was one valley away; the Franklin
Ridge National Laboratory, to which Gustafson had returned in
official disfavor, and the nearest town, were two valleys farther. The
human's likeness, printed from one of the files whose download
had exposed her, was in a pocket of the fresh garment she had
taken from the lifeboat's stores.
She was belted securely into a padded couch, a squishy bag
strapped into the seat next to her. Many shifts spent tending to her
Girillian charges had cleansed her of all squeamishness; she
doubted she could otherwise have gone through with the ploy with
the sack. The bag was filled mostly with materials produced on the
way down by the lifeboat's bioconverter. The synthesizer itself,
portable of course, was in one of the tote bags she had
prepositioned in the airlock for her upcoming quick exit. Without
synthesized Krulchukor food, she would starve in a few
days—assuming she lasted that long.
"Landing in three-squared, three-squared less one . . . " A console
display showed an uneven surface rushing to meet her. Radar
reflectivity supposedly proved that the lumpiness was vegetation.
She would know soon, one way or another.
She struck with a thump, sliding and bumping along the uneven
surface. A landing limb hit something hard. The skid snapped; the
ship tipped and went into a roll. The craft finally jolted to rest, its
leading edge crumbled around the bole of a tree.
"Open both airlock doors." She may as well confirm reports that
Earth's air was breathable. Two doors cycled open; the rough
landing had not damaged the lock mechanisms. She released her
belts. In standing, she almost collapsed to the deck. The hard
landing had badly bruised one of her normally good limbs.
This was taking too long. "Status?"
"Another lifeboat just launched."
One deduction of which Swelk was certain: she would not be
chased by Krulirim. They had to expect her to abandon her
lifeboat; her pursuers would have to leave their own craft. She took
comfort that no human broadcast had ever shown a Krul. Surely
they would not reveal themselves now.
And a lifeboat in pursuit, not the Consensus—appreciated, if not
surprising, news. She had guessed the bigger ship would not dare
to land in this rugged terrain. Launching a lifeboat had meant delay
to retrofit teleoperation controls. While she had never seen a F'thk
in person, she had watched videos of them among humans—few
of the big robots could fit in a lifeboat.
The emergency stores included flares. She ignited one now,
shoving the lit end into a drawer packed with flammable supplies.
The fire blossomed, heat scorching her weak-limb sector as she
hobbled to the open airlock.
Swelk looped the straps of two supply sacks around her torso. She
couldn't make good time across the rough ground balanced on
only her two strong limbs, especially with one now injured, and her
foreshortened limb could never have supported that much weight.
And now that crippled extremity had another problem.
The lifeboat had ripped a scar across the valley floor. She
remained for two three-cubes of paces within the path of
destruction, lest the bulging sacks she dragged leave too obvious
a trail from the wreck. The fire grew hotter and brighter as she
turned toward the alien woods. A sickening smell followed her.
Then the flames must have reached the main fuel tanks, not
emptied by the short trip from low Earth orbit. Her last thought,
before light and sound and blast overwhelmed her, was a mixture
of doubt and hope.
Would the stranger whose picture she carried come, or would she
have to find him?
CHAPTER 15
Another day older, but not visibly wiser.
Kyle Gustafson sat on his porch, his rattan chair leaning against the
fieldstone front of the house. A vague yellow glow, barely
discernible through the fog that overhung the mountains, was the
only evidence of what the calendar declared to be a full moon. The
telescope that he would otherwise have been using lay idle on its
tripod.
He was contemplating—no, be honest: brooding about—the moon,
around which circled the enigmatic mother ship of the equally
mysterious Galactics. The enemy. On a clear night he could stare
endlessly through the telescope at the great vessel, the unsubtle
embodiment of science and technology far beyond Earth's own.
Under the threat of that behemoth, humanity dared not even let it
be known that a danger had been recognized. What could keep the
aliens, were their indirect destruction of mankind to be foiled, from
simply doing the deed themselves?
Key American and Russian space assets, including strategic early-
warning satellites, kept dying. Individual F'thk explained
confidentially that a Galactic faction was illegally assisting the other
human side. The aliens hinted at a balance-of-power crisis within
their commonwealth, and how humanity's competing authoritarian
and democratic philosophies could affect that balance, should
Earth be admitted. It was a plausible story for why F'thk factions
would meddle on Earth—but the stories didn't jibe. And, oh yes:
the pretty souvenir orbs that the F'thk distributed everywhere,
supposed "symbols of galactic unity," turned out to be spying
devices. No wonder the F'thk, in their whispering campaigns, knew
just which geopolitical buttons to push . . .
So the few people in the know play-acted the descent into nuclear
madness, posturing for the benefit of the ubiquitous Galactic orbs,
ever wondering whether today would be the day when an
overstressed bomber pilot or submarine captain or missile-silo
crew turned pretense into cataclysmic reality. Perhaps the aliens
had already tired of waiting—the tactics that had almost brought the
US and Russia to war were being tried now in Pyongyang,
Islamabad, New Delhi, Beijing, Teheran, and Tel Aviv.
The crack of a sonic boom demanded his attention. He turned
toward the sound, in time to observe a bright spark break through
the low clouds and sink into the adjacent valley. From the light of
the . . . exhaust? flames? . . . it did not look like an airplane, but
he'd gotten only a glance. By the time he heard the crash, he was
inside, dialing 911.
He had already plunged into the woods, flashlight in hand and cell
phone in his pocket, when an explosion lit the sky.
* * *
At one level, the situation was clear enough, if tragic: crashed
vehicle, fire, explosion. A sickening smell, not quite burning meat
and gasoline, hung over the area. There was no sign of survivors,
and the blaze was far too intense to let him approach the wreck. At
least the forest was too wet to spread the fire. Judging from the
violence of the detonation, he was almost certainly too late to help,
but he half loped, half slid down the slope as quickly as he dared.
His cell phone chirped, but all he received was static. Not a
surprise, here on the valley floor. If the call were from the rescue
squad, they could follow the light of the fire. They were clearly on
the way—the sirens were growing louder. After reaching his house,
they would have to hoof it in, as he had.
What was he looking at? The burning craft no more resembled a
plane up close than it had shooting across the sky. A F'thk vessel?
He pivoted slowly, absorbing the whole terrible scene, a wide
irregular gouge marking the craft's final careening course.
Trees swayed and branches bowed in the wind. Flames danced
and twisted, spurted and died back. Light and shadow swirled
around the valley in total confusion.
There! Perhaps twenty yards away, at the edge of the trees,
something totally out of place caught his eye. It could have been
the flames and odor operating on Kyle's subconscious, but his first
impression was of an old charcoal barbecue grill somehow
scuttling along on its three legs.
The sirens stopped; an emergency team would be over the crest
and here in minutes. It looked like there was someone to be
helped—and it was no F'thk.
* * *
The alien stood its ground as if pinned by the beam of Kyle's
flashlight. The barbecue-grill comparison wasn't bad, even with a
closer look. The limbs were jointed, though, unlike the tripod base
of a grill, and the articulated . . . hand? foot? . . . at the end of one
limb wore what could be a bandage. Three short stalks rose from
the top of the torso.
Two sacks slumped on the ground nearby. The alien murmured
softly, the sounds unintelligible—and a bag spoke. In English. "Are
you . . . Kyle Gustafson?"
He was shocked, both by the question and that it sounded like a
F'thk. A F'thk would not fit in that bag. A speech synthesizer and
translator, then. "Do you need help? Why are you here?"
"Are you . . . Gustafson?" it repeated insistently.
"Yes." What was going on?
"Turn off . . . your light," ordered the alien. "Don't let . . . them see
you."
He knew nothing about this species of Galactic, but judging from
its harsh rasping and the pauses in the synthesized speech, it was
gasping for breath.
Shouts of encouragement from the emergency team were getting
closer. Beams of their flashlights shone over the ridge. He dimmed
his flashlight and hurried to his unexpected visitor.
Trembling, the alien settled onto the ground. It pointed down the
valley, in the direction from which its wrecked ship had arrived. The
suspected bandage had a dark splotch, from which, as he
watched, a large drop plopped. "They're . . . coming." A sonic
boom soon proved it right. An intact version of what lay burning
nearby broke through the clouds. "The F'thk."
"Do you need help before they get here?"
"I will . . . be fine. Don't . . . let F'thk . . . find me."
"But why?"
More tremors wracked the creature's body. Its sensor stalks
dipped. "Keep . . . telling your . . . self it's . . . only a . . . movie."
CHAPTER 16
Kyle had only seconds to make a decision, and he decided. The
alien had sought him out specifically, and it must have a reason. He
had to trust that it was a qualified judge of its own medical
condition.
He carried the exhausted alien deep into the woods, walking
always toward his flame-cast shadow, until the blaze ceased to
light his way. Striding alone back toward the fire, he snapped
occasional branches to discreetly mark the path. He made another
trip with the bags of supplies.
The alien hidden, he walked parallel to the edge of the trees for a
while, before switching his flashlight back on to emerge from the
woods near the wreck. He called out a greeting to the rescue team
that was scampering down the slope. The roar of a second
spacecraft landing drowned out what could have been awkward
questions.
* * *
Two F'thk emerged, shutting the airlock behind them. F'thk were
difficult enough to tell apart in good lighting, as far as Kyle could
tell differing only in slight variations of skin tone. He had no idea
whether he'd met either in his days on the commission. The new
alien's warning fresh in his mind, Kyle did nothing now to call
attention to himself.
Easily seven feet tall, the F'thk towered over the human emergency
squad. Both stood closer to the flame than the humans, even the
protectively suited firefighters directing sprays of foam from
canisters lugged over the ridge.
"How many were on board?" asked a firewoman.
"One." The F'thk who spoke did not directly face the wreck or the
woman he answered. It wasn't being impolite—that was the F'thk
way.
It's only a movie, the exhausted alien had said. A hallucination,
surely—but if it were true, what a view the F'thk had. Behind Kyle,
someone whispered, "It smells like burnt meat. I don't think the
pilot made it out."
The F'thk also had acute hearing. "We will soon know," said one.
Eventually the other added, "A terrible mistake. This lifeboat was
ejected accidentally during routine maintenance."
Implausible on its face, but not impossible—like so much about the
F'thk. Of course Kyle knew something the F'thk didn't know he
knew: about the injured Galactic hiding in the woods.
Under a sea of foam, the fire flickered out. A F'thk clambered
aboard, charred wreckage crunching beneath his hooves. The
firefighters exchanged glances: it was still very hot in there. They
did not take into account its full-circle vision. "Do not be concerned.
My kind are very heat-tolerant for short periods."
Several rescuers shone flashlights through the open hatches.
Much of the cabin had been burnt beyond recognition. A
shapeless, incinerated mass was still belted into what looked like
an acceleration couch. The seats were far too small, and of the
wrong shape, for F'thk. "Crispy critter," someone muttered.
The F'thk on the still smoldering lifeboat removed the presumed
charred remains of his missing fellow. If it or its companion
mourned his/her/its death, they kept those sentiments to
themselves.
Then, as quickly as the F'thk had arrived, they were gone.
CHAPTER 17
Swelk rested on a soft platform, her wounded limb freshly
bandaged. The bed was in luxurious contrast to last night's trek
over the mountain ridge to Gustafson's house. Her scientific
detachment proved to be something of an abstraction: clinging to
an alien—even the man she had sought out—took a constant effort
of will. The experience of dealing intimately with Smelly and Stinky
had again served her well.
One of her good limbs held food freshly synthesized in the
portable bioconverter she had dragged from the lifeboat. Its
preprogrammed capabilities included a full menu of Krulchukor
cuisine.
"A useful gadget," her host said now. Kyle sat in a chair watching
her. "Don't leave your home planet without one."
He did not realize how useful. "Given an organic sample, it can
convert almost any biomass to any other." She raised her
bandaged limb, which still throbbed. "Such as skin, bone, muscle,
and blood." She did not know the meaning of his sudden pallor and
loud swallowing, so she continued. "My former shipmates would
not rest until they found me, and any humans thought to have
spoken with me could have been at risk."
"So you cut off your finger as a template for the synthesizer?"
Bit her digit off—there was no time to hunt for a knife. "And much
of the emergency rations on board were the biomass it converted."
From what Kyle had told her, the robots had returned to the
Consensus with "her" burnt remains: a perfect genetic match. Into
the sack of synthesized tissues had also gone the garment she
had worn onto the lifeboat, stained with Girillian feces. Grelben and
Rualf would want to believe that she'd perished in the lifeboat, her
body mangled and burnt beyond recognition in the crash. Swelk
had made it as easy as she could for them to hold that belief.
Color slowly returned to Gustafson's face. "I think you should
explain why you came here."
* * *
Swelk's host drank cup after cup of coffee, once she convinced
him, on the basis of his first serving, that the strong odor was not
offensive. Mildly odd, perhaps. She contented herself with tap
water and a snack fresh from the converter.
Both were, for the moment, talked out. After comparing notes,
each knew far more than before their meeting—and far less than
they needed to know.
Keep telling yourself it's only a movie. What a concise explanation
for the enigma that was the F'thk. What an indictment of Krulchukor
ethics: that nuclear devastation of Earth and millions of human
deaths were acceptable special effects for Rualf's film.
Any possible course of action was unclear. Krulchukor technology
was advanced far beyond Earth's, beginning with fusion power,
artificial gravity, bioconverters, and robotics. And the starship drive,
of course. To Kyle's dismay, Swelk had only the vaguest idea how
the drive worked. Her interests were in social, not physical,
sciences. She thought she remembered once hearing that the
drive tapped the base-level energy of a vacuum.
But she also brought good news . . . or if not good news, an upbeat
inference. The Galactic mother ship, that so unresponsively and
impressively orbited the moon, beyond human reach, could not
possibly be what it appeared. Like the F'thk, it must be a prop,
something improvised during the lunar stopover of the Consensus.
A radar buoy embedded in a holographic projection, Kyle
theorized—extremely impressive, and nothing humanity could
reproduce, but not real. A special effect.
If Earth's scientists could prove there were no miles-across enemy
vessel, it would mean mankind had only to deal with one spacecraft
. . . and the Consensus was still in the habit, from time to time, of
landing.
And anything that came to Earth, Kyle said, humanity had a chance
to handle.
* * *
A helicopter was on its way. When it landed, Swelk would allow
herself to be zipped into a duffel bag. Kyle would carry her aboard,
and both would be flown in secrecy to the presidential retreat he
called Camp David.
A small number of American and Russian officials already knew
that the F'thk were not what they seemed. No more than a handful,
Kyle had assured her, would be told that the F'thk were the
teleoperated puppets of the xenophobic Krulirim—or that one very
special, very brave Krul had defected to Earth.
One very frightened and guilt-wracked Krul, she would have said.
"Can I bring you anything?" He asked that a lot, and thanked her
often for coming, as if he owed her something.
Swelk channel-surfed as they waited. The television evoked a
simpler time, when knowledge of the humans had been hers alone,
solitary and naively content on the starship's bridge . . . a time
before she had brought here the threat of destruction. She
stopped at the image of magnificent, giant creatures. "What are
those?" The English translation came, muffled, from the other
duffel in which were packed her few belongings.
"Elephants."
"I should like to see elephants, sometime." And nurture them. Who
will take care of Stinky and Smelly?
"When it's possible, I will be delighted to escort you." A
mechanical thp-thp-thp-ing sound intruded. "Swelk . . . our ride is
almost here."
Swelk limped to the gaping duffel. Shunned by her own kind; now
to be hidden from most of his. Humanity remained in terrible peril
from her acts, the information she brought offering perhaps insight
but no help. Incredibly, she felt . . . happy. Something had changed
for the better. What?
Keep telling yourself it's only a movie, she had told Kyle. She had
known humans had movies, but seen very few. Her quote now to
Gustafson from one of his country's greatest films was
unintentional but apt.
"This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
LAST ACTS
CHAPTER 18
"Chief of staff in the side pocket!"
A startled Britt Arledge, urbane elder statesman and confidant of
the President of the United States, turned toward the unexpected
shout. Rolling along parallel to the laboratory floor, at about his
waist level and seemingly immune to gravity, was a basketball-
sized, mottled white sphere. The orb submerged without impact
into his torso before vanishing.
"Join me in my office and I'll explain." Kyle Gustafson led the way
out of the crowded lab, past electronics racks and grinning
technicians. He ignored his former boss's dour expression until
they were behind a closed door. "The so-called Galactic mother
ship is like that demo."
"A cue ball with glandular problems? This is why you urgently
summoned me from the White House?"
"Not a pool ball, a hologram." Kyle perched on a corner of his
desk. "It explains a lot."
Britt found a chair. "Not to me."
"From the day the Galactics arrived, I've never liked the
explanation for their mother ship parking in a lunar orbit. A safety
precaution, we're told, because it's antimatter-powered. Being a
big prop, meant to intimidate us, is a much more credible reason
for putting it where we can't easily examine it."
Britt crossed his arms across his chest but said nothing.
"If the aliens, as they claim, do react antimatter with matter on their
ship, it would produce telltale gamma radiation. Gamma rays don't
penetrate the atmosphere, so to maintain their lie they can't allow
high-altitude gamma detectors. That's why, shortly before
announcing their arrival, they destroyed the space shuttle carrying a
new gamma-ray observatory to orbit. That's why they exploded the
Russian rocket with the backup instrument." Kyle waved off an
objection while Britt was still formulating it. "No, I haven't confused
an inability to measure with proof there is nothing to be measured.
We've surreptitiously flown gamma-ray detectors on weather
balloons. The data we can collect that way are nowhere near as
good as the lost observatories would've gotten, but we've seen no
unexpected gamma radiation from the moon's vicinity."
"Anything else?"
The untimely on-orbit deaths over the past few months of older,
less-capable gamma-ray-sensing satellites was only circumstantial,
not conclusive. "Recall what we've learned from Swelk." He
glanced reflexively at his office safe, wherein sat a copy of the
CIA's most recent eyes-only report on the alien's ongoing
debriefing. "You know I've been perplexed by our observations of
the F'thk. It's no wonder I've been confused by their 'biological'
indications . . . Swelk says they're robots. I'm convinced that the
mother ship, like the F'thk, is a special effect. Swelk said the
starship from which she escaped spent time on the moon before
coming to Earth. That's a ship we know exists—we have the
cracked runways to prove it. A lunar stopover gave them the
opportunity to set up lasers to project the hologram—like my cue
ball, only much larger. Of course the Krulirim need lots of lasers,
and big ones at that, to simulate a mother ship orbiting the moon."
"Of course."
Kyle winced at the sarcasm. "You disagree?"
"I'm unconvinced. Say it is an enormous hologram. Why would a
hologram be visible to radar?"
Kyle nodded. "It wouldn't. But the Krulirim could have easily put a
radar buoy in orbit around the moon, a buoy around which the
hologram would be centered. The buoy would dynamically
generate a radar echo in response to any incident radar pulse."
"And this buoy, naturally, would be visibly obscured by the
hologram." Britt stood.
Such a buoy, even unobscured, would likely be too small to be
seen from Earth, even by the Hubble. Kyle kept that complication
to himself as an unnecessary distraction. "It's not as if we lack
evidence. We know the aliens destroyed the Russian's Proton
launcher, and how they did it. The manner of that rocket's
destruction matches everything we know about the Atlantis
disaster. We know the aliens are filling our cities with spying
devices. And an ET defector, looking nothing like the 'official' F'thk
emissaries, practically landed in my yard. She's proof."
"I concede alien hostility, and I don't forget for a moment it was
your skepticism which led us to that fact. But none of the evidence
relates directly to the mother ship. Maybe it has great shielding, or
the antimatter reactor is shut down for maintenance. Maybe the
ETs are lying, but only about using antimatter. Proving or
disproving such ideas is more in your bailiwick than mine.
"I'm going to propose an alternative scenario, one drawn from the
skills I use every day." Britt met Kyle's gaze. "It's a much simpler
explanation than yours. We have only Swelk's word for it that she
was defecting.
"Did you ever consider that she may be lying?"
* * *
A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma . . . Winston
Churchill's description of Russia fit the baffling Galactics at least as
well. And the mad scientist for whom she was waiting.
Darlene was a career diplomat and the senior-ranking State
Department representative to the American commission that
routinely coordinated with the Galactics. None of that experience
had prepared her for cloak-and-dagger operations. That Kyle was
no more plausible than she to play agent only deepened the
mystery.
Searching the crowded Metro parking lot, Darlene's head swiveled
to and fro in a manner she felt sure must somehow look furtive. Per
Kyle's odd request, she wore a head scarf and large-lensed
sunglasses.
A nondescript boxy sedan pulled up to the region of curb labeled
"kiss and ride"; the passenger-side window slid down. The mad
scientist was behind the wheel. "Can I give you a lift?" Kyle asked.
Darlene got in and removed her scarf. "Government license plates.
A motor-pool vehicle?"
"Swapped for my car inside a mall's covered parking garage. Any
overhead observers are very unlikely to know where I am." The
clearly implied watchers were Galactic. He merged expertly into
the heavy traffic streaming from the commuter lot.
"And per your invitation, which you so interestingly and oddly had
FedExed, I'm meeting you at a station that required me to change
trains in an underground Metro stop. That makes my whereabouts
equally disguised." She tucked the scarf into her purse. "Where
are we going that's so secret?"
He pulled onto a highway, heading northwest into rural Maryland.
"Let's just say a pleasant drive in the country."
"A few days ago a Galactic lifeboat crashed and burned near your
house. Now you're playing spy. I doubt those situations are
unrelated."
"We'll see."
She twisted her neck to examine a loosely closed box on the
backseat, a container from which emerged scratching sounds and
soft thuds. "What's in there?"
"Kittens for a friend. She's from out of town, and misses her own
pets." He pointed to a sunlit wooded hillside aglow in red and gold.
"Check out those leaves." He turned onto a shoulderless two-lane
country road. She gave up with a sigh, silently admiring the fall
foliage until after almost thirty minutes Kyle pulled into a small
graveled lot.
Behind a low, hand-stacked fieldstone wall, amid a sea of fallen
leaves, sat a picturesque white farmhouse. The sign dangling by
two chains from the crosspiece of a wooden post declared,
simply, Valley View—1808. She guessed that was the construction
date rather than an address.
Valley View could have been a bed-and-breakfast . . . except for
the four alert-looking men who paced nearby. One watched the
new arrivals, one studied the road, and two peered intently into the
nearby woods. From the corner of an eye she saw Kyle observing
her, a slight smile on his face. Wondering how she'd react to a
B&B?
The crash of the Galactic lifeboat could not have been kept secret.
A whisked-away survivor was another matter. She turned to Kyle.
"A CIA safehouse, I presume."
* * *
Swelk was sunken deep into what she'd been told was called a
beanbag chair, the single piece of Krul-friendly furniture in the
house. There were engine noises outside. Footsteps in the front
hall revealed that one of her guardians—or were they
captors?—was striding down the front hall. The unseen door
opened with a squeak. The mutters of human conversation were
too faint for her pocket computer to translate.
Perhaps only a change of shift. Leaving one stalk to monitor the
entrance to her room, her attention and two sensor stalks remained
fixed on the flat-screen television that hung on the wall. The only
signal source was something called a DVD player. There was little
else to do between questionings. Her lack of access to Earth's
broadcasts and its Internet shouted distrust.
Knowing what her people were doing, she could not fault her hosts
for their suspicion.
"Kyle!" she yelped in delight as her new friend entered, box in
hand. She struggled out of her hollow in the beanbag. A human
female accompanied Kyle, her eyes opened wide.
"Swelk, this is my friend and colleague Darlene Lyons, from the
American State Department. Darlene, I'd like you to meet a real
Galactic."
* * *
Standing, the chimerical alien rose only to Darlene's waist. Its torso
was a flattened black spheroid perched atop three spindly legs.
No, make that limbs—the appendage Swelk had extended in
greeting was as much an arm as a leg. It had a clearly prehensile
end, suggesting a cluster of three opposable hands, each with
three opposable fingers. Three objects vaguely suggestive of
untrimmed rubbery celery stalks protruded from the top of the
body. Two stalk tips seemed to be studying her. "I am pleased to
meet you," said a box on the counter, speaking moments after the
ET emitted a burst of vowelless and incomprehensible sound. "I
am called Swelk, from the Krulchukor ship Consensus."
She dropped in shock into a nearby chair, rationalizing that it was
diplomatic to come closer to the little alien's level. Kyle, thankfully,
interceded to bring her quickly up to date. Swelk's defection and
the intentional destruction of her lifeboat to cover her escape. The
xenophobic tendencies of the Krulirim. The long-extinct fossil
species from Krulchuk serving as the prototype for the tall
centauroid robots presented to humanity as interstellar emissaries:
the F'thk. The giant mother ship orbiting the moon a mirage meant
to intimidate. The movie company aboard the Consensus,
conspiring to provoke nuclear war as the ultimate special effect.
Her mind whirled. "So there is no Galactic Commonwealth?" she
finally managed.
"Not known to my people," answered the alien's translator.
Over the alien's head Kyle quizzically raised an eyebrow. The
alien's third eye stalk could surely have seen the gesture, but
would the ET have understood it?
His hopefully subtle signal was unnecessary. It had become clear
that the F'thk were lying . . . why should she not be as skeptical of
this new alien? Swelk's whole species was until now undisclosed.
Squealing, Swelk flexed a sensor stalk toward the cardboard box
Kyle had set down. A coal-black kitten, not yet grown into its ears,
was bursting through the flaps. Arching its back, the cat fluffed up
its fur and hissed at the alien. "What's that?" yelped the translator.
As Kyle tried to calm the feline, Darlene worked scenarios in her
mind. That the Krul was being truthful was only one possibility.
Ostensibly friendly F'thk had privately told Darlene and other
human diplomats that the many-specied Galactic Commonwealth
was riven by factions. If that much of the F'thk story were true,
Swelk could be an agent, planted by one side. If so, to what end?
"It's a baby animal, a young cat." Kyle offered a sack of kitty treats
to the alien. With his other hand he stroked the kitten soothingly, as
Swelk now cautiously extended an extremity. The black cat sniffed
daintily, then licked the offered treat. A loud purring began.
If Swelk were telling the truth, the aliens could be vulnerable when
their single starship landed at one Earth city or another. But if she
were lying . . . then the ship they might attack would be a mere
landing craft from a miles-wide behemoth in lunar orbit. What
retribution would the ETs exact?
And if there were, after all, a Galactic Commonwealth, a sneak
attack on its emissaries was likely, at a minimum, to disqualify
Earth's application. Without pretending to understand the
interspecies politics of the supposed Galactics, Darlene could
understand some aliens opting for the familiar. Maneuvering the
humans into discrediting themselves could be an easy way for one
faction to maintain the often-comforting status quo.
Kyle released the kitten; as it sidled toward the alien, still holding a
treat, a second kitten, this one a gray tabby, scrabbled from the
box. With a manipulation no human arm could have duplicated,
Swelk's extended limb extracted and extended another morsel
without dropping the sack or the piece already being sniffed by the
black cat. "What are they called?"
"You can name them," answered Kyle.
He hadn't brought her here to play with the kittens, cute as they
were, nor had he lightly disclosed what must be an extremely
closely held secret. So why was she here? As an unofficial second
opinion, perhaps. As different as were their professions and
interests, she and Kyle shared what she considered a healthy dose
of skepticism (which, Darlene had good reason to suspect, her
Foggy Bottom associates more often considered an annoying
contrariness).
The respect was mutual, and the opportunity for a career diplomat
intriguing. She scooped up the curious tabby, for which the
antiques-furnished salon was entirely unprepared. "Swelk, I'd like
to learn all about your people."
CHAPTER 19
From deep within a beanbag chair—Kyle had now brought one for
most rooms of the building, Swelk watched two more curious and
dissatisfied visitors leave. Humans under stress, she knew from
both intercepted movies and her short time on Earth, paced to and
fro. Krulirim in like circumstances also moved, in their
case—naturally—always in circles.
Swelk's present immobility was willed. Her lame leg always ruined
the perfection of her loops; she'd endured enough ridicule about
her deviancies to have learned long ago how not to evoke more.
Seething though she was in unexpressed frustration, a fragment of
her mind laughed at the foolishness of maintaining self-discipline in
front of the bilateral humans.
"May I join you?" asked Darlene Lyons from the doorway. She was
at the house much more often than Kyle.
Why bother, thought Swelk. So far today she had failed dismally to
answer questions about the engines of the Consensus, the
numbers and capabilities of its antimeteor lasers, and the range of
its lifeboats. Of the lifeboats she had known only that the reach was
less than interstellar. She had abruptly ended the last session,
about "military capabilities," when she realized what motivated the
two men's inquiries: a possible assault on the Consensus. Despite
Swelk's abuse by its passengers and crew, thoughts of revenge
had not motivated her hasty departure.
"Of course," Swelk waggled two digits in feigned welcome. The
gray tabby, now named Stripes, leapt clumsily onto the beanbag
chair. It toppled against her, and almost immediately fell asleep.
The fuzzy little thing, all legs and ears and impossibly soft fur,
could not have been more different from a Girillian
swampbeast—and the kitten reminded Swelk achingly of her
abandoned charges. She would not cause them more suffering.
"But I won't help Earth attack my former shipmates."
Darlene's cheeks reddened, a reaction whose meaning Swelk
could not penetrate. "I have no desire to become a radioactive
extra in a Krulchukor movie. What would you propose we do?"
Swelk's sensor stalks drooped in sadness and shame. The
passengers and officers of the Consensus were eager to sacrifice
the most advanced race her people had ever discovered. Would
the plotters accept disappointment, meekly heading home if their
plans were widely disclosed . . . or would they find new means to
produce the same result? Rualf's special-effects wizards had
already produced the robotic F'thk and the illusion of a gigantic
moon-orbiting mother ship. Did she dare gamble they could not
find a way to goad any Earth country into attacking its national rival?
From newscasts Swelk had surreptitiously watched in her lifeboat
hideaway before her escape, it seemed that counterstrike after
counter-counterstrike would inevitably follow the first hostile launch.
And what if the filmmakers' attempts to fool Earth into a photogenic
self-destruction did fail? Would Rualf and Captain Grelben, their
dreams of vast wealth dashed, lash out at Earth in anger and
disappointment? Swelk felt certain that an unsuccessful attack on
the Consensus would draw an enraged response. Either way, as
the morning's earlier visitors had made her realize, she simply did
not know what danger the Krulchukor ship represented. There was
no doubting from the humans' questions that they were concerned.
And she had led Rualf and Captain Grelben here. The exile's
sensor stalks collapsed in withdrawal. The suddenly limp tendrils
lay draped across her torso, obscuring her vision and muffling her
hearing.
"Swelk!" called Darlene. "Are you all right?"
Swelk roused herself with a shake, her sensor stalks snapping
painfully erect. "I am far from all right, but I have only myself to
blame for that.
"And as for your previous question, I have no idea what we should
do."
* * *
Kyle watched Swelk watching the kittens from the comfort of the
beanbag chair she had towed into the dining room. Blackie and
Stripes—there were two unimaginative names . . . were all Krulirim
so literal?—were tussling for no obvious reason, their tiny mouths
opening repeatedly in meows either silent or too high-pitched for
him to hear. From time to time a cat forgot what she was doing and
pounced on the disheveled fringe of the oriental rug on which they
played.
The little alien had two sensor stalks pointed at her pets; the third
was time-shared between Kyle and routine scanning of the room.
One needed little time with Swelk, he thought, to deduce where the
ET's attention was focused. He glanced at his wristwatch and
sighed inwardly. His impatience was unfair, and he knew it. One
debriefer after another grilled her most of the day, every day. He
had to allow her an occasional mental break.
Those feelings of tolerance did nothing to expand the hours in
Kyle's day. Well, he hadn't grown up with pets for nothing. After a
while, he took the laser pointer from his pocket, waving it to make a
jiggly red dot beside the kittens. They immediately stopped
wrestling to chase the spot around the room. The hunt became a
stakeout at the hall-closet door beneath which the laser dot had
vanished. They were likely to stay there, staring at the gap under
the door, for some time.
With the kittens quieted down, he tried to get Swelk back to
business. "I'd like to talk some more about the bioconverter."
Success: she favored him now with two sensor stalks. "What else
is there to say? I put organic material in. I take different stuff out."
"How does it work?"
"Here is the On-Off button. I can pick what I want made from the
list in this display, or insert a sample here. I speak how much I
want. Raw material, when needed, goes into this chute. Anything it
can't use is emptied here. Food is deposited in the final
compartment." She flicked, three times, all the digits of one limb.
He took it as a sign of annoyance. "I have told you, and others, all
of this before."
The day was overcast; the illumination from the window was
gloomy. He pointed at the chandelier over the dining-room table.
"Would you mind if I turn on the lamp?" Standing without waiting for
an answer, he was surprised at the response he got.
"I do not like your lights. They make me jumpy."
"All right." He sat back down. Kyle knew people who got
depressed in the winter from too little sun. There was even a
medical name for the condition: seasonal affective disorder. In
Swelk's case, of course, the ambient light wouldn't improve with
the months-distant lengthening of the days. Renewed sympathy for
the solitary alien washed over him. He tamped down the
feeling—what Earth needed now was information. "I understand
the controls for the bioconverter. My question is different. What
happens inside to make it work?"
The alien hesitated. "Chemicals are broken apart. The pieces are
recombined into new chemicals. Maybe there's a computer inside
to control it."
Foiled again. Kyle's certified-evidence-free theory was that the
bioconverter employed nanotechnology: self-replicating molecular-
sized machines to manipulate atoms and molecules. Nanotech
was conceptual at best in some of Earth's cutting-edge labs; any
clues to its practical implementation could be priceless. The darker
side of Kyle's speculation, if he could substantiate it, would be a
whole new reason to fear the possible wrath of the Galactics.
Imagine flesh-eating bacteria with attitude . . . .
Quit it, Kyle. It seemed he would be getting no hints from Swelk.
Alas, her failure to answer these sorts of questions implied nothing
about the truth of her story. How many people did he know without
a clue how, say, their TV or refrigerator worked?
Speaking of refrigerators, and probably why he thought of one, he
wouldn't mind a cold soda. Retrieving a can would provide a few
minutes in which to exorcise his frustrations, since the safehouse
was presently without a functioning cooler.
No one had seen a way to tell whether Swelk's bioconverter or
computer had undisclosed capabilities . . . such as communicating
with the ship from which she had, or claimed to have, defected.
Even if her story were accepted—personally, he believed her—the
danger would remain that hostile Krulirim could eavesdrop through
her stolen equipment.
One of the few things he truly knew was that F'thk spying devices,
the Galactic orbs, used microwaves. That Swelk's gear, if it had a
communications mode, also exploited the electromagnetic
spectrum, seemed like a good bet to take.
In terms of suppressing radio-based communications, stashing the
alien in an existing radiometrics lab would have been ideal—but it
would have sacrificed secrecy and discretion. Instead, the isolated
one-time farmhouse had been hastily "remodeled" before Swelk
was moved in and her debriefing begun in earnest.
The farmhouse's walls were newly spray painted with an electrically
conductive pigment. Rolls of fine copper mesh lined the attic floor
and cellar ceiling. Copper screens now covered all windows and
doors. Everything was interconnected and grounded. Kyle had
personally tested and blessed the finished product: an unobtrusive
electromagnetic shield.
In the greater scheme of things, it was a small matter: a too
casually draped dropcloth had let some of the sprayed conductive
paint drift into the guts of the refrigerator. Plugged back in after the
alterations were finished, the motor, obviously shorted out, had
fried itself. It appeared that the owner previous to the CIA was one
of those frugal fools who used pennies as fuses.
"I'm going to the trailer for a soda," Kyle told Swelk. "Can I get you
anything?"
"I will stay with water from the kitchen tap."
The back door banged shut behind Kyle. The Airstream trailer to
which Kyle now headed sat discreetly behind the house. Originally
deployed as a communications station—the safehouse's shielding
also blocked the agents' cell phones—the motor home was now
most prized for its tiny refrigerator. He waved at an agent behind
the house on a cigarette break, got a Coke, and returned.
"Sorry for the interruption." Blackie and Stripes were still waiting for
the "mouse" to emerge from the closet. "About the bioconverter
again, how is it powered?"
Swelk had gotten a glass of water during his absence. She had to
climb to the counter to operate the sink. Instead of answering, she
and her computer traded untranslated squeals. Finally, her
computer said, "The translation program does not have the word I
want. Maybe your technology does not have this capability. Some
of the material I feed into the bioconverter is used to make the
electricity. The energy is stored in something like a battery."
It sounded like a fuel cell, although a much better and more flexible
design than any Kyle knew. That itself was interesting, but another
opportunity had just presented itself. "Does your computer have
notes about how the bioconverter itself works? Maybe even a
design?"
More squeals and whines. "I am sorry. No."
Had he imagined a pregnant pause after "sorry"? Or was Swelk
short of breath, as so often happened? She'd told him that Earth
had more CO2 than home. "Why not?"
Swelk's sensor stalks dropped. Body language for regret? Or for
evasion? "I was unprepared for my escape." Pause. "I left the
Consensus when my spying was discovered. My computer was
mostly filled with movies." An even longer pause. "Sorry."
Another plausible explanation . . . for another aggravating
roadblock. Britt's skepticism had one more data point of support.
* * *
"Cold War II: First Casualties!" screamed the headline.
A well-read Washington Post had been left on the table of the
NASA conference room in which Kyle waited for Britt Arledge.
Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland, was a short
drive from the White House—and the sprawling, campuslike
complex had several electromagnetically shielded labs for the
routine assembly and checkout of scientific satellites. A get-
together here offered reasonable assurances against Galactic
eavesdropping without drawing alien attention to Kyle or the federal
lab at which he officially worked. Proximity to the District was
simply a bonus.
Despite the inch-tall banner, details on the clash were sparse.
There had been a brief but deadly dogfight over the South China
Sea between Russian fighters based in Vietnam and carrier-based
American fighters. Accounts differed, of course, as to who had
fired first. Moscow claimed its planes had been on a routine
exercise, and their approach to the carrier task force was no more
sinister than hundreds of similar events over the years. Washington
said a targeting radar had been detected.
What was clear was that three SU-22s and two F/A-18s had been
splashed. Two pilots, one Russian and one American, had failed to
eject. Both were missing and presumed dead.
"Dirty business, that."
Kyle looked up at the sound of Britt's voice. "That it is." The
wonder was that more incidents, and more deaths, had not
occurred as the tensions between the United States and Russia
kept rising. It was, to the very few who knew, a simulation of a
nuclear crisis . . . but that pretense of hostility could turn real
enough at a moment's notice. Too many nerves were stretched
taut. Too many weapons could be loosed on a moment's notice.
He flung down the newspaper he'd been studying. Given what
Swelk had told them, did Earth's nuclear powers need to continue
the disaster-prone deception? He was trying to work that through in
his own mind. "We'll be meeting down the hall."
Nodding, Britt followed Kyle along a road-stripe-yellow corridor to
the shielded privacy of a cavernous, multistory satellite-assembly
lab. Hands clasping the steel-pipe railing of a catwalk, Kyle felt free
to speak his mind. "Is the President prepared to tell the Russians
about our defector? We need to stop the madness before
something even worse happens."
Britt's nostrils flared slightly, as visible a sign as he ever gave of
disagreement. "I'm not yet convinced that she is a defector, and
not an agent. Why are you?"
It was the debate they kept having. Nothing in Swelk's ongoing CIA
debriefings had revealed any inconsistencies in her story, nor had
the little ET shared anything irreconcilable with Kyle or Darlene. A
large part of that consistent story, unfortunately, was wide-ranging
unfamiliarity with her species' science and engineering. That an
intelligent member of a modern society could be ignorant of its
technologies—Britt cheerfully admitted that he was without a clue
how a radio worked and what kept a plane in the air—settled
nothing.
The more cynical CIA debriefers went further, speculating that the
very absence of minor loose ends in Swelk's story suggested a
fabrication. Kyle thought he'd squelched that insinuation, as a
groundless extrapolation to the aliens of a human foible. Who was
to say all Krulirim didn't have a flawless memory for detail?
This was no trivial difference of opinion; humanity's future teetered
on the fulcrum of the choice they must soon make. Kyle's knuckles
were white from pressure as he fought to control his emotions. "No
amount of contradiction-free interrogation is going to overcome
your doubts. Ironclad proof of her story, if Swelk is telling the truth,
is on the Consensus . . . which, as you know, the ETs won't allow
us aboard." The few attempts to hide bugs on the aliens or their
equipment had been met with uniform failure and angry F'thk
denunciations. The President himself had banned further attempts
as too dangerous.
"And yet," Britt flashed a momentary smile, "you asked that we get
together."
"True." Kyle extracted two glossy sheets from the manila envelope
that he'd carried tucked under an arm. Each page bore an image of
the moon, its cratered landscape unmistakable. "Take a look at
these."
Britt's eyes switched back and forth between pictures. The tiny
timestamps in the corners of each differed by only milliseconds.
"They're the same scene, right? The left one shows much more
detail."
"The higher-resolution shot is an optical image. The other is a
computer reconstruction from a reflected microwave pulse." Kyle
suppressed an urge to discuss just how much computation had
been required to generate the latter image. "We adopted
technology used to predict the stealthiness of airplane designs
without having to build them first."
He took back the images before handing over a third. The new
picture showed the supposed Galactic mother ship. Less than half
a hemisphere was visible, the rest an inky blackness. A similarly
divided lunar landscape provided a dramatic backdrop. "Sunlight is
striking from the side, obviously."
Britt tapped the photo. "What's this dark spot?"
"Good eye—it's a shadow."
"Of what? It must be something big."
"A hangar. Their utility spacecraft, the ones that never land on the
Earth-visible side of the moon, emerge from and return to that bay.
Most of the time the door is closed." One of the just-mentioned
auxiliary craft was also in the image. Kyle was aware, although the
still frame didn't support the knowledge, that the smaller vessel had
just exited the hangar.
Britt looked at him shrewdly. "But you claim not to believe in this
mother ship. Swelk says it doesn't exist."
"That hangar for the auxiliary craft would be a thousand-plus feet
deep. We can calculate that depth from the geometry of the
shadow." The previous microwave observation had shown craters
much shallower than that. With a flourish, Kyle offered a final
image. "Now look at this."
This computer-reconstructed microwave image, its timestamp
again well within a second of its optical analogue, did not show any
auxiliary craft. And the Galactic mother ship appeared only as a
featureless sphere.
CHAPTER 20
The American and Russian navies today separately announced
the apparent loss of a submarine in the North Atlantic. Few
details, and no official theories as to the cause or causes of the
incidents, are available. French and Spanish seismologists
recorded events in the region consistent with underwater
explosions. Deep submergence rescue vehicles are being
rushed to the area by the two navies, but hopes for any survivors
are slim.
The frigid state of relationships between these nuclear powers,
and the proximity of their lost submarines, suggest that the
disasters might in some way be linked. This is an inference
about which spokespersons of both sides declined comment.
—BBC News Service
* * *
They were sounded out, nominated, haggled over, and finally
agreed upon in the most casual of contexts: huffed conversations
between joggers; "chance" encounters of smokers in the shadow
of the Pentagon; a tête-à-tête between parents at a kids' soccer
match; walks in the woods surrounding Camp David; a half-dozen
other innocent-seeming meetings in venues previously confirmed
to be free of Galactic orbs and potentially compromised Earthly
comm gear. The disappearance for even a few hours of the
principals—the President, the director of the CIA, the secretary of
defense, the secretary of state, the national security
advisor—could trigger who knew what response from nervous
Russians or inscrutable aliens. The five who were now gathered, in
the most rustic of surroundings, would hold the debate their
principals could not.
Kyle had volunteered his sister's remote Chesapeake Bay cabin.
Darlene had driven from the District with him; the others arrived
soon after, two in separate cars and one in the motorboat now
bobbing alongside the cabin's rickety pier.
The dragged-indoors picnic table around which they met, a tarp
covering the carved doodles of Kyle's young nieces, had never
seen such august company. Erin Fitzhugh was a CIA deputy
director, the terseness of her official resume implying a long
history in covert operations. USAF Lieutenant General Ryan
Bauer—former B-52 pilot, Gulf War veteran, ex-director of the
Ballistic Missile Defense Organization—was presently on staff to
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Kyle was a widely respected
physicist and the director emeritus of Franklin Ridge National Lab;
more important, he was the one-time (and still unofficial) science
advisor to the President.
Darlene's credentials, she felt, were the least impressive. A long-
time foreign-service officer and now a deputy undersecretary of
the Department of State, she was here to represent the diplomatic
perspective. Britt had assured her that no one had ever considered
holding this summit about the aliens—which was all that the invitees
had been told about the gathering's purpose—without the first
diplomat to see through the facade of F'thk good intentions.
The President's chief of staff was the final member of the small
group, there to direct discussion of the still-undisclosed topic and
report back to his boss. Of all the participants, Britt had the highest
public profile. Official Washington thought he was down and out
with this fall's virulent strain of flu.
Kyle was indulging some odd urge to play host before the
discussion kicked off. As Darlene gave him a hand in the kitchen
with cold sodas and salty snacks, Bauer and Fitzhugh rehashed the
North Atlantic incident. The working theory was an undersea
collision between the Russian attack sub that had been trailing an
American boomer—ballistic-missile sub—and the American attack
sub too closely following the unsuspecting Russian.
The details didn't parse at first—Darlene's job at State dealt with
human rights and fostering democracy, not arms control and
nuclear deterrence. A chill washed over her as, through whispered
consultations with Kyle—a presidential science advisor's purview
certainly did include nuclear matters—she came up to speed.
Dissolution of the USSR had removed several outward-looking
land-based radars from the Russian missile-defense network,
gaps that became ever more troubling as the Galactics
systematically destroyed early-warning satellites. In predictable
parts of every day, the Russians were effectively blind to
submarine-launched missiles along two narrow corridors. Attack
subs like the one the Russians had just lost sought to find and
secretly track the American boomers. In case of hostilities,
destroying a boomer before it launched would scratch twenty-four
ballistic missiles, each with up to twelve nuclear warheads.
American attack subs, in turn, silently stalked their Russian
counterparts, ready to preemptively take out a Russian hunter. The
vulnerabilities created by the Russian blind spots made hair-
triggers inevitable . . . and incredibly dangerous.
The doomed subs had followed a boomer into one of the Russian
blind spots.
"We've got to step back from the brink," Darlene blurted from the
kitchen. "We're too close to disaster."
The national-security pros exchanged a look that said, "amateurs."
Erin Fitzhugh cleared her throat. She was more one of the guys
than most of the guys. "We and the Russkies have half a century's
practice at dancing on the edge. Now, whenever our tensions show
signs of leveling off, the F'thk, or Krulirim, or whoever the bug-eyed
monsters are, turn their attention to the less experienced nuclear
powers. Would you feel any safer if the damned ETs were working
their magic on the Pakistanis and the Indians? Israelis and
Iranians? I sure as shit wouldn't—their command-and-control
systems are all bad jokes."
Pretzels flew as the diplomat undiplomatically slammed a tray onto
the picnic table. "Are you saying the Atlantic incident was staged?"
"All too real," interrupted Britt. "Entirely real, and for the reasons
Erin has articulated. We don't dare encourage the aliens to put
more effort into manipulating the less seasoned members of the
nuclear club. And unless we keep the military in the dark we can't
hope to keep secret our knowledge of concealed ET hostility. So
the operative question is, when, if ever, do we take on the aliens?
"That, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the purpose of our
meeting. The President is considering telling President Chernykov
about our alien defector."
* * *
Stripes, who had been pouncing alternately on her sister, the
fronds of a fern rustling in the draft from the fireplace, and her own
tail, skidded to a halt with a sudden confused expression. After a
moment of whatever passed for consideration in her young brain,
the kitten skittered off in the direction of the nearest litter box. She
thundered up the worn wooden stairs making noise in total
disproportion to her size.
Swelk almost hoped the kitten would be too late. Tending to the
Girillian menagerie had begun as a ploy; caring for them had
become ennobling. She yearned to regain that quiet satisfaction of
being needed. There was a flurry of unseen digging noises, and
then Stripes returned at full gallop to the salon. With a leap and a
midair twist the cat was off in pursuit of something only it could
see. Swelk waggled her sensor stalks in amused confusion . . . the
thing Kyle called a poltergeist baffled her translation program.
With thoughts of him, her momentary good mood vanished. The
human to whom she felt closest had not stopped by in two days.
And it was not only Kyle—none of her most frequent visitors had
come by. Even an alien newly arrived could tell from the demeanor
of her guards that the substitute questioners were of lesser status
than those who had disappeared.
What Kyle and the others were doing, she could not imagine.
* * *
"It seems clear-cut enough to me," said Kyle. He didn't entirely feel
that way, but the other summiteers were erring in the opposite
direction. "Either Swelk is a defector or she's not. Which do we
believe?"
Everyone began animatedly speaking at once, stopped, then all
started up again. On the next random retry, the ex-spy got the floor.
"The ET could be a real defector—and delusional. She could be
entirely sane and sincere, and unaware that she's been filled with
disinformation. She could be lying through whatever she uses for
teeth, for reasons fathomable only to celery-eyed monsters, and
still reveal . . . with whatever encouragement is appropriate . . .
incredibly valuable information. We need to understand her
motivations to have any hope of making sense of anything she tells
us."
From nowhere came a memory of Swelk dangling a scrap of yarn
above leaping kittens. "Delusional? A secret agent? Erin, have you
ever actually met Swelk?"
"No, by intent." Fitzhugh impatiently flicked a potato-chip crumb
from the table. "My people have. I talk to them; I read their reports.
I'm objective. It's the professional way to handle supposed
defectors, even when the stakes aren't so high."
Ryan Bauer popped open another Coke. "It's just too convenient
that nothing in Swelk's story can be confirmed—short of what could
be a suicidal attack on the F'thk vessel. She claims she's some
kind of outcast and dilettante social scientist, excusing her not
knowing anything helpful. The lifeboat she came down on is melted
slag. Her computer can't be experimented with, because it
contains her translator. Her so-called bioconverter can't be fiddled
with because that would put at risk her food supply." He rolled his
eyes. "Could the little monster's story be any more convenient?"
"Oh, please," Darlene snapped. Beside her, Britt's head swung
back and forth, like a spectator at a tennis match. And just as
unuseful.
"Excuse me," said Kyle, stunned by the unexpected disbelief.
Swelk had specifically sought him out. Was he too close to, too
influenced by, the little ET? "Maybe we can approach the problem
another way. The most critical of Swelk's disclosures, whatever her
motives, is the nonexistence of the mother ship. If we can
corroborate that, if we can be sure there's 'only' the so-called F'thk
vessel to handle, her story would be valuable."
Ryan shoved back his chair, its legs grating against the floor.
"Come on, Kyle. Small telescopes see it. Radar shows it."
This time, Kyle had six copies of the images that had almost
convinced Britt. He passed the prints around the table without
explanation, letting the pictures tell their own story.
"Holy crap," reacted the CIA exec, her eyes bright. "The
microwave and visible-light images don't match." Ryan, nodding in
agreement, looked chagrined. The USAF Space Command could
have made the same observation . . . weeks ago.
"Why haven't we seen a discrepancy before?" asked Darlene. "I
know the mother ship has been scanned by radar."
"Radar's ordinarily used to locate and identify an object, not to
create a detailed image of it," Bauer explained. "What Kyle's
showing us took a lot of computation. Why bother when it was so
plainly visible to telescopes?"
Kyle rapped the table confidently. "The reason, my friend, is
because our defector said there could be no mother ship. I'm
saying the optical image is a hologram, and the featureless glob
must be the echo of a radar buoy we can't see."
Darlene, for some reason, refused to catch his eye. What was
going through her mind?
She didn't give Kyle long to wonder. "You know I like Swelk. I trust
her, too. That said, the stakes are too high to go with my gut. Like
Reagan famously said of the Sovs and disarmament, I think we
have to 'trust, but verify.' "
Dar was the last person he'd expected to object. "What other
explanation is there?"
She tipped her head, tugging a lock of hair in reflection. "I defer to
every one of you about technology. Without knowing much about
tech, though, I can concoct another explanation for what we're
seeing. Kyle, you've explained before that the aliens have radar
stealthing. Their satellites that upload recordings from the souvenir
orbs, the satellites that we watched destroy that Russian rocket . . .
they were stealthy."
"Go on," encouraged Britt.
"So imagine for a moment that Swelk's account isn't true. Whether
she's purposefully lying or has been filled with disinformation,
someone, in this scenario, wants us to believe her. They want us to
mistakenly conclude that the mother ship is fake." Darlene swept a
hand grandiloquently over the pictures, her words tumbling out in a
rush. "Couldn't they enable a stealth mode on their small craft?
Then those smaller spaceships would be seen visually but not by
radar. Isn't it at least possible that a real, physical mother ship
could use a stealth mode to prevent a true radar reflection and,
whenever pinged, emit a synthesized signal that matches a
featureless large blob? Wouldn't those stratagems also explain
your observations?"
Scientist, general, and spy master exchanged surprised glances.
Erin Fitzhugh found her voice first. "If you ever get tired of working
at State, there's a spot for you at the Agency."
Discussion continued—of Swelk's debriefings, of analyses of her
salvaged equipment, of the international dangers posed by recent
F'thk secretive whisperings—but the decision-making part of the
meeting had ended. Whatever their opinion of Swelk, no one could
be certain her story was true. There would be, for now, no
disclosure to the Russians of her arrival and claims. Unwilling
themselves to recommend a desperate attack on the F'thk ship,
they dare not risk influencing the Russians to try.
Would they be ready to share, Kyle wondered, before a nuclear
miscalculation obliterated them all?
CHAPTER 21
Stinky humphed with satisfaction, leaning into the pushbroom that
now served as his brush. Swelk groomed the swampbeast with
long, smooth strokes, quietly pleased at the glossiness of his
leathery skin. As Swelk worked, Smelly butted her head, first
gently, then insistently, against her. "Your turn is . . . "
Smelly's importuning was not simple impatience for her turn. Swelk
plummeted, only then realizing they had all been suspended in
midair. Stinky and Smelly shrank as she plunged, until only their
fading fearful trumpeting remained. A recess of her brain noticed
without explanation that the animals had not fallen.
She shuddered awake, intertwined digits rigid with fear. Bellows of
unseen swampbeasts filled her mind. After forcing her digits to
relax, to unlace, she tried but failed to stand. Visions of terrified
swampbeasts overwhelmed her as she toppled, overcome by
dizziness.
The nightmare did not surprise her—as much as she already loved
the kittens, she missed the swampbeasts terribly. For the intense
vertigo, however, she had no explanation.
Blackie and Stripes tumbled into the room, curious, perhaps, at the
unexpected nighttime noises from Swelk. She preferred to think
they had come to console her. As the exile stroked their soft fur,
she could not help but wonder, What is wrong with me?
* * *
It was not yet 9:00 a.m., and four new pies were already cooling on
the counter. The kitchen sink overflowed with mixing bowls,
measuring cups, and utensils Kyle couldn't name. Hours before the
Thanksgiving turkey would go into the oven, his seventy-year-old,
gray-haired, stooping mother kept bustling.
Britt had more or less insisted he take a break. "Juggling knives
blindfolded while riding a unicycle at the cliff's edge isn't instinctive
behavior. A few months of it gets to most people. You should take
some time away." To Kyle's rejoinder that he didn't exactly work for
Britt anymore, the politician had answered, "Then accept it as
advice from a friend. You're fried. Go away for a few days." So
here he was.
He'd offered to help Mom and been refused. He'd been shooed
away when he started to wash dishes without asking. He'd
proposed in vain that she sit for a while. With Mom it could've been
a gender thing; he suggested that she save the potato peeling for
Carol, Kyle's sister, whose family was due around noon. Nothing
worked. Dad no longer tried; he was in the den reading the morning
paper.
Fine. Kyle knew from whence came his own stubbornness gene.
"Say, Mom, you mentioned a scrapbook? I thought I'd take a look."
The St. Cloud Times was generally hard-pressed to find a local
angle to national, let alone interstellar, affairs—they had covered
Kyle's stint on the Galactic Commission with (to Kyle)
embarrassing fervor. Mom couldn't get enough, and had the fat
binder full of yellow-highlighted clippings to prove it. She'd brought
it up repeatedly since his arrival last night, undeterred by all
changes of subject. He knew she'd sit beside him on the parlor
sofa whenever he picked up the scrapbook—and she did. As he
leafed through it, he caught from the corner of his eye a self-
satisfied smile. Maybe he wasn't the only one smug about an
exercise in applied psychology.
Living as he did at the epicenter of events, none of the main
articles were surprising. The sidebars were more diverting. Upstate
Minnesota was not without its share of cranks—two had accosted
him at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, and the F'thk arrival was all
the proof they needed. That no facts tied the newcomers to
supposed UFO sightings and alien abductions seemed not to
matter.
The important thing was that Mom was off her feet. He proceeded
to read, slowly.
* * *
The 7-Eleven was mobbed. Not only was the convenience store
the closest approximation to an open grocery this Thanksgiving
Day afternoon, but it was half-time in a tied Cowboys-Vikings
game. Two men in line ahead of Kyle wore Vikings caps with soft
stuffed horns. As inane NFL headgear went, he preferred Green
Bay cheesehead hats. He kept the opinion to himself.
He looked randomly around the store, killing time. A full head of
white hair, glimpsed in an overhead security mirror, caught his eye.
Was the stranger watching Kyle? The man began studying his
boots self-consciously as Kyle turned toward him. With a shrug,
Kyle shuffled to face the checkout counter again. Thinking, This
would be easier if I were Swelk, he glanced over his shoulder at
the dairy case's glass door. The somehow-familiar reflection
peered back at him, the guy's expression a mix of brooding and
expectation.
Hell, after many years out East, Kyle was a Redskins fan. He
stepped out of line.
His observer was short, maybe five-six, with a gaunt face
dominated by a hawklike nose and piercing eyes. Up close the
man's hair was a pale, pale blond, not unusual here in Outer
Scandinavia. Dark brown, almost black eyes with that hair were.
"Do we know each other?"
"Um, no." Uncomfortable grimace around the chewed butt of an
extinguished cigar. "Anyway, you don't know me. I feel I know you,
Dr. Gustafson."
"Oh. Media coverage of the commission. My fifteen minutes of
fame." It didn't explain why Kyle thought he did recognize this guy.
"Sorry to have bothered you. I'm sure you have people to be with
today."
As grief flooded the stranger's face, Kyle realized why the man
looked so familiar.
* * *
"This will only take a few minutes," shouted Darlene over the
keening of the air popper she'd brought from home. The loud
whistle of the appliance's blower was soon punctuated by the rat-a-
tat salvoes of exploding corn kernels. Melting butter sizzled in a
pan on the stove top. Darlene warmed to the familiar sounds and
scents. What could be more normal than movies and popcorn?
The venue was far from normal: Thanksgiving in a safehouse with a
fugitive ET. The microwave-free kitchen seemed to predate the
Eisenhower administration. Cooking involved a freestanding gas
range that would be used that evening to reheat the CIA-provided
holiday dinners. The agents would eat, in ones and twos, at their
convenience. They were invariably polite to Darlene, but at the
same time intensely clannish. If she bothered with a reheated
meal, she figured it would be eaten with Swelk.
Swelk lacked holiday expectations, and in any event she would
synthesize her own dinner. The usual feedstock for her
bioconverter was pizza crusts and leftover takeout Chinese. So, as
the popcorn popped, Darlene was "cooking" for, and feeling sorry
for, only herself. Her folks, God bless them, were on a cruise. Fail
to make it home for three years running, and suddenly there's an
expectation. She couldn't say why she'd declined Kyle's invitation
to Minnesota.
On second thought, she could: confusion over what, beside
professional, her relationship with Kyle was supposed to be.
Darlene wasn't seeing anyone at the moment, nor did she care to.
Her last relationship, with a partner at a cut-throat DC law firm, had
ended badly when he forgot how to leave the go-for-the-jugular
attitude at the office. Not that a covert war against interstellar aliens
and the approach of Armageddon put one in the mood for a social
life . . .
She had to laugh as Stripes sauntered into the kitchen from the
hall. White markings around the kitten's eyes gave her an
expression of permanent surprise. Cats for Swelk—sometimes
Kyle's instincts were dead on. She valued Kyle as a colleague and
thought they were becoming good friends. Unfortunately, his Gobi-
dry humor and flirtation-impairedness had her at a loss about his
intentions. Who knew what signal she'd have sent by going to meet
his family? She'd think about sorting it out in a few months if
civilization still existed.
Plastic popcorn bowl in one hand, a warm Diet Coke in the other,
Darlene backed out of the kitchen, bumping the door open with a
hip. "Ready to start . . . " she began. She turned to find Swelk
splayed out on the dining-room floor, twitching. The din from the air
popper had clearly obscured the thud of the ET hitting the planking.
Nothing muffled the crashes of her bowl and soda can. "Swelk!
What's wrong?" Two agents burst in from the hall as she spoke.
"I don't know." The computer took forever to translate. "I suddenly
could not stand on all threes. The room was spinning around me."
Swelk arose shakily, her second utterance put more quickly into
English. "Whatever it was, it is going away."
The delayed translation was scary, bringing to mind slurred
speech. Did Krulirim have strokes? "Is there anyone we should
call?" That any human physician could treat the alien was
implausible, but Darlene couldn't bear not acting.
"Yes." Sensor stalks bobbed in amusement, involuntary tremors
marring the wry waggle with which Darlene had become familiar.
"My doctor is unfortunately light-years away." In the awkward
silence that followed, tremors subsided into mere tics.
"Ms. Lyons?" asked an agent economically.
"I don't see what we can do," she told the guards. One shrugged.
They left. "Swelk, maybe we should skip the movies." A whiff of
buttered popcorn rose as she cleaned up the worst of her mess.
One species' aroma was another's toxic fumes. "Does this smell
bother you?"
"It was not the smell." The digits of an extremity clenched
momentarily in Krulchukor negation. "Make more, if you would like.
As to the movies, it would comfort me to watch."
"Okay to the movies. I'll skip the food."
At Swelk's command, a hologram formed over the dining-room
table, projected by the alien computer. Indistinguishable Krulirim
milled about a packed circular room, as writhing spiders scrolled
around the bottom of the image. Opening credits? Captions for
Swelk's benefit, Darlene decided, as the translator intoned, in a
voice unlike what it used for Swelk, "The Reluctant Neighbor."
She watched from a slat-backed Shaker chair, rapt but unhappy.
Fascination with the alien film was understandable. Ditto her
unhappiness with Swelk's unexplained episode.
She knew she was overlooking something of extreme importance.
But what?
* * *
The rolling pasture was bleak and windswept, its dormant grass
brittle beneath Kyle's shoes. The flapping wings of a crow breaking
cover made the only sound. Then it was gone, and stillness
returned.
He was a good mile from pavement. How stupid was he to let
embarrassment bring him here? Too late he'd realized why the
man at the 7-Eleven looked so familiar: a press photo in Mom's
scrapbook. Andrew Wheaton's wife and son had disappeared, and
he blamed the F'thk. That the Galactics hadn't appeared for
another two months seemed unimportant.
"The farm breaks even," said Wheaton finally. A weather-beaten
red barn was just visible in the distance behind him, past a stand of
pin oaks. "Most years. With my night job at the airport we made . . .
I make . . . ends meet."
"Twin Cities?" asked Kyle.
"St. Cloud Regional. I'm a baggage handler." He tapped with a
scuffed boot tip at a tuft of grass. "Bunches of pilots radioed in
about an unidentified light that night. The tower people talked all
about it, but radar didn't see nothing."
An evening star? Venus appeared in the evening sky that time of
year. Ball lightning? A small plane whose radar transponder was
out of order? Several things could explain a mystery light in the
night sky.
"The house was empty when I got there." A gust of wind stirred the
farmer's pale hair. "Tina's car was in the drive. House lights was on.
Junior's sheets was rumpled, so he'd been to bed. Dinner dishes
was only half done. So they was home at around eight, same time
the pilots seen the thing in the sky."
Kyle jammed his hands into his coat pockets. He felt sorry for the
man, but how did that help? His body language must have
conveyed those doubts.
"I drove home through snow. The only tire tracks at the house was
from my truck. I found footprints, though. From boots, I mean.
Their coats and boots were gone." Wheaton stared at a low area in
the meadow. "They walked here, I think to check out the lights.
They didn't come back."
"What did the police say?"
"Snow covered everything before the cops got here. They didn't
believe me about the footprints. Said maybe a friend drove them
away. Said maybe they left before the storm started, so that there'd
be no tire traces under newer snow.
"They asked, did I beat them? Bastards. Changed their tune some
when they couldn't find Tina and Junior nowhere. Now, they think I
did it." He jerked his coat zipper up an inch. "Bastards," he
repeated.
"It?"
"Think I killed 'em. Cops dug up a bunch of the farm. Didn't find
nothing." A tear rolled down the farmer's cheek.
Jeez. Kyle didn't know how to respond. He studied the depression
which Wheaton had indicated. Today was a day for déjà vu. First
Andrew, and now the dip seemed familiar. Nothing grew here in
November, but the dry grass in spots of the hollow was stunted
and sparse. Kneeling for a closer examination, the ground's cold
wicking through his jeans, the thinness of the grass was explained:
the earth from which the few blades grew was compacted, like a
dense clay. The word "clay" also teased his memory.
How these observation helped, if at all, eluded Kyle. All that he felt
certain of, somehow, was that the despondent farmer had done no
harm to his wife and child. "If you don't mind, I'll have the area
checked out."
Wheaton nodded. He kept his face carefully composed, as though
afraid to hope.
Walking back to his car and Andrew's pickup, Kyle recalled what
Andrew had bought at the 7-Eleven: a turkey TV dinner and a six-
pack. He could do nothing about the lost family, but he could
address that sad and solitary holiday meal. "I hope you'll join me at
my folks' house for Thanksgiving dinner."
CHAPTER 22
The blackened blotch that marked Swelk's landing site dominated
the view eastward from Krieger Ridge. Kyle had paced out the
scar, and it was fifty yards wide at its narrowest. The only visible
irregularities at the opposite end of the valley were three reddish
patches that more suggested than presented themselves. Grass
didn't grow well in those spots, and the clay-tinted earth peeked
through.
In the Midwest, where Kyle had grown up, soil was black. Years
after settling in Virginia, its red soil sometimes still caught his eye.
These particular red areas, which together defined an acute
isosceles triangle, had lodged themselves in his subconscious:
they marked the landing site of the second F'thk lifeboat, that had
followed Swelk. The three landing skids had borne the entire
weight of the lifeboat, tamping down the ground underneath.
Kyle tore his eyes away from the photographic blow-up of the
valley near his home. The time for speculation was past. It was
time instead to see if he were imagining things.
Hammond Matthews jotted numbers onto a whiteboard. His annual
winter beard, begun at Thanksgiving, was almost neat. By Easter,
when he'd next shave, he would look like a mountain man . . .
except for the white socks and sandals. Past and present lab
directors were alone in the eavesdropper-proof confines of the
shielded radiometrics lab.
Matt finished with a John-Hancockesque flourish. "The top number
is a measurement: the weight of the charred remains of Swelk's
lifeboat. Middle pair of numbers: upper and lower bounds of weight
estimates for the F'thk lifeboat that followed her. The estimates
derive from soil compression under the marks of the landing skids,
just like you suggested. Measured wreckage weight falls nicely
inside the bounds of that calculation, so the approximation method
seems valid." Matt pantomimed a drum roll. "Last two numbers: the
same range computation for the similarly configured compression
marks in the pasture in Minnesota." He didn't bother stating the
obvious: these numbers were also consistent with a landing by a
F'thk lifeboat.
The result was only what Kyle had expected—and yet it was
shocking in its implications. He crossed the room to the insulated
carafe of coffee. Even a percolator or a hot pot would interfere with
the lab's sensitive instruments. He was less interested in a refill
than the opportunity to face away from his collaborator and good
friend. Need-to-know sucked.
"Kyle, buddy?"
"Yeah." He studied his cup.
"Compared to what we do for a living, tracing whose property your
samples came from wasn't much of a challenge. Neither was
running a Web search on the name Andrew Wheaton. Can you
guess what I'd like to know?"
Kyle turned. "How a F'thk lifeboat could land in Minnesota two
months before the mother ship arrived. What the F'thk have to do
with the Wheaton family disappearances. Why the F'thk would be
snatching humans."
"Yes, to all of the above, although those questions are way beyond
my pay grade." Matthews retrieved a paper scroll from a file-
cabinet drawer, unrolling it across a desk. It was a world map,
sprinkled with hand-drawn red circles. Most of the scribbles were in
the US and Russia. "No, what I'm wondering is how many of these
other UFO sightings in the past year also show evidence of F'thk
presence."
* * *
With its window cracked to let out steam, the safehouse bathroom
was freezing. Darlene showered quickly with the water turned to full
heat. She ran out of hot water within minutes.
The bathroom mirror was covered with condensation when she got
out. Unfortunately, the one outlet in the bedroom she'd adopted
was nowhere near its mirror. Shivering in her robe, she used her
hair dryer first to clear a spot on the befogged mirror and then on
her hair. She gave up on the job as soon as she achieved
nonsopping wet.
Hair damp and pulled back in a pony tail, she bounded down the
stairs for a mug of hot tea to wrap her hands around. Guards were
talking softly on the front porch as she rounded the corner to the
kitchen.
Swelk was spread-eagled on the kitchen floor, her limbs quivering.
"Again? What happened?" Her only answer was the dipping of
stalks: a shrug. Why the hell weren't the agents ever around when
this happened? Darlene knelt beside the alien, all thoughts of the
cold forgotten. Eventually, as the twitching subsided, Darlene
helped Swelk back to her feet. "What can I do?"
"I was suddenly dizzy. I do not know why." Wobbly on two limbs,
Swelk braced herself with the third against a cabinet. "What can be
done? Nothing like this has ever happened to me."
"Are you eating enough? Would you know if something were
missing from your diet?"
"My food is fine. At least my equipment tells me so." Swelk fell
silent, and seemed to withdraw. "I do not know what is happening.
When I sleep, I dream of falling. When awake, I sometimes do fall.
"I wish there was some way I could help."
Swelk pointed upward. She could not get herself a drink without
climbing onto the counter. It appeared she was too unsteady for
the ascent. "If you would pour me a glass of water, and watch a
movie with me, I would much appreciate it."
* * *
Inside what was, after all, a summer cabin, the howl of wind and the
drumming of rain were loud. The storm, passing up Chesapeake
Bay, was expected to become New England's first nor'easter of
the season. No one had arrived at this crisis-team meeting by boat.
Whether because of the noise, or the inexplicable air of distraction
from Fitzhugh and Bauer, Kyle found himself nearly shouting.
"Guys, it's really quite clear-cut. We know from direct
measurement what a Galactic lifeboat weighs. We know what
indications it leaves behind at a landing site. There are five
confirmed landing sites, each corresponding to an unexplained
disappearance. The implication is that aliens kidnapped these
people to figure out what makes us tick. What we're scared of.
One more way to know how to push our buttons."
"Are all the sites in the US?" Britt polished his eyeglasses with his
tie as he spoke.
"Yes, but that might be because we've only looked at suspected
landings here. Scoping out prospects in Russia will take resources
I don't have." Kyle looked pointedly at their CIA and DoD reps, but
they avoided his gaze. Time again to suggest more information-
sharing with the Russians? As he opened his mouth to propose it,
Erin Fitzhugh's pager beeped.
"Hot shit!" yelled the CIA deputy director as she scanned the short
text on the pager screen. Moments later, the general's pager burst
into a short fanfare. Reading his own message, Ryan, too, broke
into an out-of-character, ear-to-ear grin. They high-fived across the
table.
"Good news?" asked Darlene dryly.
"Big time." Erin Fitzhugh interlaced her fingers and ostentatiously
cracked her knuckles. "Big time. The Israeli Air Force just bombed
the crap out of a hole deep in the Iranian desert."
Kyle's stomach lurched. Wasn't this just another step down the
slippery slope to disaster? "War in the Middle East is somehow
good? I thought our plan, such as it is, required keeping the visible
tensions between us and the Russians."
"That's still the plan," said Bauer. "There's no chance of watching
CNN out here, is there? Damn. Anyway, 'Hot shit,' as Erin so
amusingly put it, is dead on. We were all but certain the Iranians
had a surreptitious nuclear program. Our best evidence, though,
was that they had only enough weapons-grade uranium for two or
three bombs. There's radioactive fallout downwind of the air strike."
"So Iran is now probably nuke-free," Darlene filled in the blank.
"With Israel's nuclear capability the world's worst-kept secret, the
Iranians are much more likely to behave."
"Game, set, and match," agreed Fitzhugh.
Fine, then, it was good news (presumably cryptically conveyed) . . .
but only to the extent of extinguishing one of the fuses the aliens
kept trying to light. And how many deaths had even this single
victory cost? "It's the Krulirim we have to stop. The landings and
kidnappings all predate the F'thk broadcast announcement and the
appearance of the mother ship. These landings and abductions
before the arrival of the so-called F'thk . . . surely they substantiate
Swelk's story."
Britt stood at a window, peering out over the Bay. The storm was
receding. "Backs it up, yes. Proves it, no. You'd like me to
conclude that because the F'thk arrived before we saw the mother
ship that the mother ship cannot be real.
"You can't certify that the mother ship wasn't, for example, lurking
behind the moon where we couldn't see it. You can't know that the
mother ship didn't just arrive later than the F'thk, that the vessel we
deal with wasn't a scout.
"The Israelis put out one fire for us. With good luck, and good
planning, we can douse a few more." Britt turned toward the table,
hands clasped behind his back. "I can tell you for a fact, the
President will not sanction an action as desperate as an attack on
starfaring aliens until he has absolute proof the mother ship doesn't
exist . . . or absolutely no alternative."
With bad luck, they'd all soon glow in the dark. Kyle took a deep
breath. "Understood. I believe there is a way to determine, once
and for all, whether the mother ship is real. We'll have only one
shot at the test, and—you won't like this—the experiment must
involve the Russians."
As the silence stretched, he suddenly realized that Britt, Erin
Fitzhugh, and Ryan Bauer were grinning. Britt gestured at Erin.
"Oh, we trust the Russians right now," she said. "Iran is a Russian
client, and guess who gave us the lead to locate the Iranian
nuclear-weapons factory."
CHAPTER 23
The galaxies were unimaginably distant, their violent, slow-motion
collision unleashing equally unfathomable energies. Millions of
years later, the tiniest fraction of that energy streamed past Earth.
Ironically, after traveling so incredibly far, the X-rays produced by
that intergalactic encounter were absorbed by Earth's thin skin of
atmosphere.
"Your request surprised me, my friend." Sergei Denisovich Arbatov
stood beside Kyle in the cluttered astronomic-studies lab at the
University of Helsinki. Sergei's hairline had receded shockingly in a
few months' time. Could stress do that? Some things hadn't
changed: the twinkle in the Muscovite's eyes and, despite the
onset of winter, his trademark deep tan. "NASA has several
instruments capable of observing the object you selected. Your
failure to comment why I would be interested also intrigued me."
The personal delivery by the American ambassador of Kyle's letter
might also have engendered some curiosity.
There was a time when research satellites were operated by large
teams of technicians from gleaming control rooms arrayed with
phalanxes of consoles. Such extravagance for mission control now
applied mostly to manned space flights—of which there were
none, with the shuttle fleet grounded and the Russians broke—and
bad sci-fi movies. An entry-level workstation with Internet access to
a steerable antenna sufficed. The PC on the dented wooden lab
bench was, just barely, adequate.
Tarja Nurmi, the instrument controller there to assist them, half sat,
half leaned on the lab stool in front of that PC. Her back was to
Kyle and Sergei. Her tattered and too-large sweatshirt was
incongruously emblazoned with a Virginia Tech seal. Her pale
blond hair, common enough in this corner of the world, brought
Andrew Wheaton guiltily to mind. The grim confirmation Kyle could
provide—that the site of his family's disappearance had seen an
alien landing—would do Wheaton little obvious good, while
possibly endangering Earth's underground resistance.
Focus, Kyle directed himself sternly.
The names the young astrophysicist had been given for her visitors
were aliases. If she wondered why, in a world possessed of a
ubiquitous Internet, those guests insisted on observing in person,
she made no comment. Language differences didn't stop
her—she and the Russian and French coprincipal investigators for
whom she usually toiled all communicated in English. Those co-
PIs were ticked off and several time zones distant, fuming at the
unexplained preemption by Rosaviacosmos of their long-
scheduled viewings. Sergei, as science advisor to President
Chernykov, had arranged the retasking of the Russian space
agency's orbiting X-ray observatory.
Surely the Russian had analyzed Kyle's unexpected request
before doing so. The American briefly inclined his head toward the
Tarja's back. I must be discreet. "Yes, we have X-ray instruments
in orbit. None has this exact viewing angle just now." The need to
use a Russian satellite was actually fortunate. It should make
Sergei much less likely to question what—Kyle fervently
hoped—they would soon see. He was not about to verbalize why
exactly now was so important, or that the biggest supercomputer at
Franklin Ridge had number-crunched for days to identify this not-
soon-to-be-repeated opportunity. "Are we ready, Tarja?"
"We're locked on now." With casual grace, she moused open a
new window. A scatterplot popped onto the PC monitor, colored
dots richly strewn across a black background, the many hues
representing X-ray frequencies invisible to the human eye. The
small blinking square at the window's exact center enclosed the
blazing dot that was tonight's target. In the lower-right corner, a
frequency-vs.-energy histogram summarized the radiation from the
crashing galaxies. In the lower left, a real-time clock counted in
milliseconds.
A large circle dominated one side of the window, part glowing
crescent and the rest a lightlessness interrupted by a faint dusting
of pinpoints. "The big disk is the moon, of course." The young Finn
tapped the screen. "The crescent is what Earth sees right now of
the sun-facing side. We're seeing directly reflected solar X-rays.
What appears to be the dark side of the moon is blockage by the
moon of the sky's X-ray background."
Sergei frowned. "Why are there any spots on the dark side?"
Tarja yawned and stretched before answering. Fair enough: it was
2:37 a.m. by local time. "Sorry. Those stray dots on the dark side
come from the scattering of solar X-rays from all around the solar
system. Reflections from planets and asteroids."
"Will the clock stay on-screen if you zoom in?" asked Kyle.
"It can." She yawned again. "Sorry." She keyed a new scale factor
and the window was redrawn. The targeting square and the dot it
encompassed lay near the dark edge of the moon.
Kyle crouched over Tarja's shoulder. The clock display, reading
out in Coordinated Universal Time, was scarcely a minute from the
instant he'd memorized. Forbidding himself to blink, he watched
the dot creep closer and closer to the moon. A side of the
targeting box kissed the limb of the moon, slid over the moon.
Sergei, on his right, exhaled sharply seconds later as the
multigalactic dot abruptly winked out, eclipsed by the moon.
"Get what you needed?" Stifling yet another yawn, she handed
them diskettes containing the session's observational data.
Before the American could overcome his own sympathetic yawn,
Sergei replied. "Yes, my young friend. We have." Tapping Kyle on
the shoulder, the Russian added, "Perhaps it would be best if we
took a walk."
* * *
The campus grounds were dark, deserted, and bitterly cold. The
deserted aspect of those circumstances was good. "Interesting
that you answered Tarja for me, Sergei." Kyle's breath hung in front
of him.
Sergei hunched his shoulders against an icy gust. "You were very
specific as to when a fairly unremarkable astronomical object must
be observed. Such insistence, it makes one ponder."
The stars sparkled like diamonds. The crescent moon they had so
recently "seen" by its X-ray reflection shone down with a cold white
light. "Were your musings rewarded?"
"I had to wonder, as perhaps young Tarja would, were she more
awake, why one would schedule an observation certain to be
interrupted. Could it be, I asked myself, that I'm not here to see
what my friend said he wanted to show me?" An eddy of snow
swirled past them. "Was it only a coincidence that you wanted to
look so near to the moon?"
"Go on." Did Sergei really know, or was he bluffing?
"There is something important in the vicinity of the moon."
Kyle scrunched his neck, in a vain attempt to shelter more of his
face and head within his upturned collar. And he'd thought
Minnesota was cold.
"Exactly on schedule, the edge of the moon hid our celestial X-ray
source. But that eclipse was not what you brought me to see, was
it?" Sergei grasped Kyle's coat sleeve. "More interesting, I think, is
that our observation went uninterrupted until the moon blocked our
view.
"It is time, tovarich, to explain why you expected the Galactic
mother ship to be transparent to X-rays." The glaring political
incorrectness of that Soviet "comrade" showed just how
overwrought Sergei was. "And does such transparency mean, as I
believe, that there is no mother ship?"
CHAPTER 24
Roosevelt and Churchill held several secret summits in the depths
of World War II. Less often, both met with Stalin. It was assumed
that the Axis Powers had spies in all the Allied capitals, but the
leaders still managed to sneak away and meet.
Kyle searched for solace in that imperfectly remembered bit of
history. Alas, the one war-time conference he knew by name was
the infamous, arguably failed Yalta. He hoped that catastrophic
encounter wasn't an omen.
He was one of a handful of Americans in the summit delegation. A
Russian contingent of similar size was across the table. The table
in question resided in a private estate an hour's drive outside
Ankara. As far as the rest of the world knew, this was a gathering of
oilmen to discuss new pipeline routes for Caspian Sea crude. The
cover story excused secrecy amid tight security.
Also as far as rest of the world (and, hopefully, the aliens) knew,
President Robeson and his senior advisors were on retreat at
Camp David . . . but when Marine One, the presidential helicopter,
had returned to its base in Quantico, Virginia, the summiteers were
on board. A low-key motorcade that had to have made the Secret
Service cringe took the entourage to the general-aviation section of
Dulles International Airport outside Washington. Their Russian
counterparts arrived in Turkey by equally circuitous, and, it was
hoped, confidential means.
The room had been swept for bugs by the protection details of two
presidents. Sergei, whom Kyle was glad but unsurprised to see,
accompanied him on another inspection. This was one meeting
most definitely not staged for hidden observers. Completing their
rounds, they eyed the sumptuous buffet left by their absent host.
Kyle hurried to his seat, pausing only to fill a mug with strong,
muddy Turkish coffee. No time would be spent coddling the jet-
lagged.
"Dmitri Pyetrovich, how are you?" began President Robeson. Dark
bags beneath his eyes belied a light tone.
"Fine, fine." President Chernykov impatiently waved his interpreter
to silence. A former KGB apparatchik, his English was excellent.
"You, me, the bug-eyed monsters, we are all great. Is merely a
vacation of old friends." The cigarette trembling in his hand
underlined the sarcasm.
"I take your point, Dmitri. We cannot be out of the public eye for
long, and we have much to do."
"I hope we can agree on something to do."
Kyle summarized America's findings, Sergei from time to time
interjecting corroborative data from the Russian investigations.
Kyle tried to be brief, but there were enough new players in the two
delegations that much give-and-take was required. When he at last
retook his chair, utterly drained, he was hopeful that the gist had
been successfully conveyed.
The Galactic orbs, those supposed symbols of peace and unity so
freely dispensed by the F'thk, were spying devices. The
systematic destruction of the satellites each nation relied on for
detecting ballistic missile launches, losses that gave credibility to
the innuendoes spread by the aliens on their travels. The many
peculiarities of the F'thk visitors. The anomalies of the mother ship:
none of the expected gamma radiation, its complete lack of detail
when viewed with microwaves, its transparency to X-rays. Human
disappearances at sites marked by the signs of a F'thk lifeboat
landing—often months before the announced arrival of the aliens.
And the pièce de résistance: the alien defector whose shocking
explanation—"it's only a movie"—explained every known fact.
A movie intended to climax in the nuclear self-annihilation of Earth.
Chernykov's expression grew uglier and uglier. None of this could
have been new to him, but the succinct totality was intense. "Damn
these aliens. Damn them. I want to strike. Enough, I say, of
science projects." He snarled something in Russian.
General Mikhail Denisovich Markov, Chernykov's military advisor,
sat ramrod straight in his chair, looking ill at ease in his civilian
clothes. A jagged scar angled down his left cheek. He reddened at
his president's words.
"Who speaks today about how we will destroy these evil
creatures?" said the American translator. Something in the delivery
suggested a serious toning down of Chernykov's comment.
A muttered Russian response. Chernykov cut off the translator.
"My military feels we cannot attack. The once-proud Russian
armed forces cower from a movie company on a rundown cargo
ship."
Kyle's fingers dug into the padded arms of his chair. This was no
time for macho crap. Britt might later tear him a new one, but Kyle
had to speak. "This movie company has a starship at its disposal.
They have a fusion reactor. I've seen their incredibly powerful
masers—microwave-frequency lasers—destroy a space shuttle.
We know they can fry satellites with X-ray lasers. Swelk, our
defector, says the starship uses lasers to blast space junk. If they
can vaporize objects hurtling at them at an appreciable fraction of
light speed, do you think anything we launch at them can matter?
We damn well should be afraid of attacking."
His words tumbled out, faster and faster. "Suppose we attack and
do succeed? Will the fusion reactor blow up? Will the stardrive,
about which we haven't a clue, explode? How big a crater will be
made if that ship does go boom?"
Chernykov, his upper lip curled, studied faces turned ashen at
Kyle's outburst. "I thought we had come here to prepare to act.
They have blown up your shuttle Atlantis. They have cost each of
us one of our finest submarines. Will you ask them, 'Please, go
home now' ?"
What of the five crew on that shuttle, or the hundreds on those
subs? The never-distant image of the fireball above Cape
Canaveral blossomed anew in Kyle's mind. How many millions had
to join them? A hand was suddenly squeezing Kyle's forearm. A
warning from Britt . . .
"Dmitri." President Robeson's voice oozed calm reason. Kyle had
learned over the past few months that the icy calm masked bottled
anger. At whom this anger was directed was not obvious. "We
concur on the need to act. That agreement leaves many questions.
What are the aliens' vulnerabilities? How can we exploit such
weaknesses? When and where can we strike?"
"This is better, Harold. Please tell me more."
"General Bauer will explain, Dmitri."
Ryan went to the head of the table. "Dr. Gustafson raises pertinent
points about the complexity of an attack on the aliens."
Chernykov frowned but held his peace.
"The aliens' laser weapons would be a factor in any attack on the
ship in flight. We must assume, as the good doctor suggests, that
the ETs can acquire and destroy targets quickly. Our bombs and
missiles would be nothing more than slow-moving space junk,
easily killed."
A burst of Russian words stopped Bauer. The American translator
rendered Markov's interruption. "Certainly, General, the starship
must handle an occasional meteor. Would it handle many targets at
once? Perhaps we can overwhelm their defense with a massed
attack."
Bauer's forehead creased in thought.
This was madness—but could he raise another objection without
being escorted from the room? Kyle began drumming on the table;
as people looked his way in annoyance, he managed to catch
Sergei's eye.
"Quite ingenious," said Sergei, taking the hint. "Still, I hope you will
indulge a physicist's view of the problem. Our fastest missiles go
only a few kilometers per second. In CIA debriefing notes I have
been shown, this Swelk claims their ships approach light speed.
As you know, the speed of light is three hundred thousand
kilometers per second. That's how fast their ship overtakes space
junk that's more or less stationary. At even one-hundredth that
speed—which rate they surely exceed, or else a trip between even
the closest stars would take centuries—they are accustomed to
targets moving orders of magnitude faster than anything we can
fire."
Britt leaned forward. "Dr. Arbatov, I don't follow you. You discuss
the speed at which their ship travels. The issue relates to their
ability to counter a massed attack by our missiles."
"Excuse me. I will make the point more directly. Imagine the alien
starship overtaking a pebble in space at a thousand times the
speed of our rockets. They must spot it, track it, shoot and destroy
it, all in an instant. May not their defenses handle each slow Earth-
fired missile, one by one by one, each with ease?" He smiled
disarmingly at the American general. "Your fine navy has Aegis
cruisers that can shoot down missiles traveling at hundreds of
miles per hour. How many hang gliders must an assailant deploy to
overwhelm an Aegis cruiser?"
* * *
Swelk came awake with a whimper, the world whirling around her.
At least the spinning tended to stop after her eyes had been open
for a while. Why could she not sleep soundly?
Guilt, loneliness, a fault in the bioconverter on which her life entirely
depended . . . she had many theories. Perhaps confinement.
Perhaps nothing more than the intermittent bonging of the angular
ugliness that Darlene called a grandfather clock. A recess of
Swelk's mind insisted it had recently heard four bongs.
Climbing shakily to an erect position, she began to prowl yet again
what little she was allowed to experience of her adoptive world.
The only humans around this late were her guards, outside on
patrol or else in their trailer. Enough moonlight filtered through the
curtains for her to forego Earth's unpleasant artificial illumination.
Four rooms upstairs, four down. Compared to her cabin on the
Consensus, these chambers were luxuriously spacious, but there
was no denying her situation. She had traded her own kind's open
hostility for the less obvious, but no less real, distrust of the
humans.
She was not allowed outside the building. What little news she was
given of Earth's peril—due, she could not help reminding herself,
to her own gullibility—was highly selective. Her many questions
were deflected with polite evasions. And Kyle, the human to whom
she had fled in hope and guilt and desperation, had disappeared
without explanation.
Blackie stirred at the soft sounds of Swelk's approaching tread.
The kitten stretched languorously, rubbing one eye with a forepaw.
She tipped onto twos, using her lame limb to scoop up the yawning
kitten. The kitten burrowed herself into the complicated three-way
juncture between the limb's extremities and broke into a loud purr.
That gentle rumble, pressed against the deformity that so defined
Swelk, was ineffably soothing.
If only the humans' distrust could be so readily overcome.
* * *
Cooler heads prevailed and declared a recess. While most of the
summiteers attacked the breakfast buffet, Britt and President
Robeson disappeared into the estate's richly paneled, high-
ceilinged library. When they reappeared, the President had an
index card in his hand. After a final glance at his notes, Robeson
cleared his throat.
"The president," and Robeson nodded at Chernykov, "made a
comment earlier that we did not pursue. That remark was
something like, 'Can we ask them to go home?' It was an idea
expressed in the heat of debate, and perhaps we did not give
Dmitri Pyetrovich's observation the attention it deserved.
"We are all outraged at the deaths the aliens have caused. Having
said that, revenge is seldom a wise basis for policy. Our prevailing
interest, I submit, is the avoidance of future losses . . . most
particularly prevention of a nuclear war. Our scientific folks," and he
saluted Sergei and Kyle with a glass of ice water, "have done us a
great service. It is time to focus our minds on 'the man behind the
curtain.' May not these Krulirim illusionists, like the great and
terrible Wizard of Oz, bow to reality? They have been found out!"
Explaining the simile to the Russians took longer than the whole
speech. As that got sorted out, Kyle marveled anew at watching a
master politician at work. Crediting Chernykov with wisdom for what
had been biting sarcasm . . . what a slick way to let the Russian
gracefully distance himself from suicidal attack plans. Not for the
first time, Kyle wished he had absorbed a fraction of the people
skills to which Washington had exposed him.
"I apologize, Mr. President, for my unfamiliar reference. Your
mastery of English and of our culture are such that I sometimes
forget where you are from." Robeson removed his glasses,
peered through them at a window, then wiped them vigorously with
his handkerchief. (A premeditated moment of quiet, Kyle
suspected, for the Russian to take in the flattery.) "The point, I
hope, remains valid. We have known for months the aliens'
purpose: incitement to nuclear war. For all that time, if I may be
allowed another theatrical figure of speech, we have been afraid
not to be seen playing our parts. The aliens, we told ourselves,
want to destroy us. The owners of that awe-inspiring mother ship
could certainly obliterate us if we did not cooperate. Our best
theory for the curious indirection of the obvious alien hostility was
fastidiousness: their consciences would be cleaner if, in the end,
we blew ourselves up.
"But things have changed. Our understanding has changed, thanks
to a courageous Krul from whom we now know what is truly going
on, thanks to rigorous scientific research to verify what Swelk has
told us. There is only the one spaceship that flits from country to
country, stirring up trouble. They incite us to self-destruction not
from any intent to work indirectly, but because only self-destruction
serves their purposes.
"So I return to the Dmitri Pyetrovich's insightful question."
Robeson, who had been pacing, halted across the table from
Chernykov. "If they are told their cinematic goal will not, and
cannot, be achieved, may they not simply go home?"
The atmosphere in the conference room, all morning so gloomy
and foreboding, suddenly changed. As only Nixon could have gone
to China, only this American president could propose accepting
their losses from the aliens and moving on.
Despite exhaustion, jet lag, and incredible pressures, Robeson cut
an imposing figure. Kyle could not help but recall his amazing
biography. Marine captain and decorated Vietnam vet. Crusading
state's attorney, fearlessly pursuing organized-crime families in
New Jersey. Trustbuster in the Department of Justice. Two-term
senator with a passion for national-security policy. Still early in his
first term as President, making headway fulfilling a campaign
promise of military reform.
Yes, it was a speech that only Robeson could have made, and he
had done so masterfully.
Aw, crap! thought Kyle. Here we go again.
* * *
For fear of eavesdropping, all personal electronics had been left
outside the conference room. Deprived of his PalmPilot and Net
access, Kyle couldn't hope to get the quotation exactly right—and it
was probably by Anonymous, anyway. The essence of the line, in
any event, was crystal clear. "Every complex problem has a
solution that is simple, obvious . . . and wrong."
You haven't lived until the presidents of two nuclear powers scowl
at you. But having done so, could you then live long?
Britt, with characteristic poise, asked only, "What's on your mind,
Kyle?"
Here goes. "It's possible the Krulirim will go home if we ask.
Before their arrival they had no reason to wish Earth ill. That said,
there's a small voice whispering in my ear."
He'd just seen a politician at work, flattering Chernykov. "One of my
flaws, I freely admit, is the tendency to view everything through the
lenses of science and logic. In my early attempts to influence
government policy, when you first brought me to Washington, I
relied too rigorously on logic. I also crashed and burned far more
often than I succeeded. A very wise man"—okay, Britt, recognize
yourself here!—"eventually got through to me. I now occasionally
know enough to ask, 'Can the other guy afford to live with my
logic?' What worries me at this moment is how unclear it is that the
Krulirim can afford to just leave.
"To be brief, I wonder . . . will Swelk's former shipmates accept the
risk that what they attempted here will remain secret? Is that a
gamble they can afford to take?"
Doubts were appearing on faces around the table, including, he
was relieved to see, on the faces of both presidents.
"I'm trying to imagine how the conspirators may see their situation.
Must they not be asking themselves, Will we ever be held to
account for our actions? What if another Krulchukor ship were to
discover Earth? If humanity refuses to obliterate itself, how soon
until Earth's starships are visiting our worlds?
"What if humans and other Krulirim do meet? Our aliens killed the
crew of the Atlantis. They've presumably killed all the people they
kidnapped, before their splashy public arrival, to better understand
us. They're responsible for yet more deaths, beginning with the
submarine catastrophe. We have film of their ship at sites across
our planet. We have by now millions of the orbs and a wrecked
lifeboat from their ship: technology whose origin they can't refute.
In short, the plotters can hardly deny trying to stampede us to self-
genocide."
"Even if we do nuke each other, some records may survive." Britt
spoke with his eyes shut, deep in thought. "And survivors may still
speak with future visitors. And that means . . ."
" . . . And that means," completed Kyle, "there's a very real
risk—whether we blow ourselves up or not—that the ETs planned
all along to utterly obliterate humanity before leaving our solar
system."
* * *
"Depend on it, sir," Samuel Johnson is said to have remarked,
"when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it
concentrates his mind wonderfully." The summiteers outside
Ankara, eye-to-eye with the extinction of humanity, found their
attention wholly focused. That convergence gave birth, at last, to a
terrifying plan possessed of but a single virtue—no one saw any
reason why the plan was necessarily doomed to failure.
Which wasn't to say a failure wasn't likely.
Attempting to destroy the starship was too risky. Ignoring the
starship and hoping it would depart in peace was likewise too risky.
And that left . . . capture.
Commandos would strike the next time the starship visited a
Russian or an American city.
CHAPTER 25
"I think I misjudged you." Ryan Bauer, a water tumbler full of ice
and amber liquid in his hand, flung himself into the captain's chair
across from Kyle. "In a fingernails-across-the-blackboard sort of
way, you're all right."
The borrowed private jet, most specifically not designated Air
Force One, was plushly carpeted and richly appointed. There were
no flight attendants aboard, in the interests of the trip's secrecy, but
the Cessna's pantry came stocked for major partying. With the
summit over, and serious attack-planning impossible until they got
home, the passengers were taking advantage. "You'll turn my
head, General. Or is it the bourbon speaking?"
"Scotch." Ice cubes tinkled as Bauer downed a healthy swig. "But
in a good cause."
"Okay." Kyle had no idea where this was going.
"You're all right," the flyer repeated. "You have a good head on
your shoulders and an insane willingness to speak your mind."
"So what good cause does the Scotch support?"
"My willingness to step onto a plane." Laughing, he nabbed a
jumbo shrimp from Kyle's plate. "Not what you expected, was it."
"Most pilots actually like airplanes."
"It's not that." Bauer leaned forward conspiratorially. "You
understand these things. I'll gladly fly after the Tea Party."
Tea Party was the code name for the as-yet unscheduled assault
on the starship. What Kyle failed to grasp was what he supposedly
understood. "Excuse me?"
"Beam weapons." Bauer expropriated another shrimp. "The lasers
on the moon use visible-light frequencies, so that we can see the
hologram. They took out the Atlantis and that Proton with
microwave frequencies. The early-warning birds are being fried
with X-rays. Why X-rays, do you suppose?"
"Because the atmosphere blocks X-rays. If the aliens had used
microwaves, like they did with the Atlantis, we and the Russians
would have had a better chance to see what was really going on,
instead of automatically blaming each other for the saticide. Some
of those downward-stabbing microwaves could have been
detected on the ground. We don't have beam weapons in space,
and neither do the Russians . . . as far as we know, anyway."
"Saticide. I like that. Hafta suggest it to someone at the Pentagon."
Bauer admired the spectacular alpine scenery rushing by far
below. "Swelk's ugly friends have lasers that are far too tunable for
my liking. Now, whenever I'm flying, I feel like a sitting duck."
Tunable lasers. Microwave beams tuned to an excitation energy for
liquid hydrogen had exploded the fuel tank of the Atlantis. X-rays
from the same alien satellites continued to destroy Earth's
satellites. The leisurely pace at which Earth's satellites were
targeted had been a mystery. Since Swelk's defection, Kyle had
come to believe it was plot-related. Film plot, that was. Rualf, no
friend of Swelk's, presumably wanted his bugs to capture plenty of
suspenseful scenes in the build-up to Armageddon.
"Kyle, buddy. Are you with me?"
Tunable lasers. How separated were the excitation frequencies of
liquid hydrogen and jet fuel? They were surely much closer
together than microwaves and X-rays. "Sadly, Ryan, I am with you .
. . but maybe you're not worried enough. Why limit your misgivings
to attacks on the jet fuel in planes? What about petroleum
pipelines? Natural-gas storage tanks? Hell, what about ordinary
everyday gasoline?"
"Yeah, you're all right." Bauer downed another healthy swig of
scotch. "Planning for Tea Party just got a whole bunch more
complicated."
"How so?"
"Because," said Bauer, "you may be right. We and the Russians
had better plan to attack all the alien satellites at the same time
commandos storm the ship on the ground."
* * *
The F'thk ambassador trotted briskly up the ramp into the gaping
airlock. As was his custom, H'ffl was the last of the delegation to
come aboard. He stood in the airlock, gazing serenely over six
hundred thousand smiling Pakistanis, until the outer door thumped
shut.
Ridiculous two-sided creatures.
"Helmet, clear. Unit, off." The effect of Rualf's first command was
to give him a view of the cargo bay. The robot through whose
cameras he had been seeing remained in the airlock. His second
command put the robot itself into its idle mode. Stiff from spending
much of an Earth day inside the teleoperations gear, he cautiously
disengaged his limbs from its delicate controls. With a squeal of
delight, he freed his sensor stalks from the restrictive helmet. All
around him, members of the troupe were extracting themselves
from their own equipment. They all moved like Rualf felt: clumsy
and stiff from long confinement.
It was night shift by ship's time, and he strode grandly through the
mostly empty corridors to the officers' mess. Control of a F'thk
required precise motions of the digits; flexing and stretching and
moving boldly felt wonderful.
His mood was far from the euphoria the strutting suggested. The
humans, in a display of sly animal cunning, continued in their
stubborn refusal to destroy themselves. The Pakistani junta, the
true subjects of this visit, were not progressing toward an attack on
India with nearly the speed Rualf would have liked. At least the
generals had rounded up a good crowd of extras.
How long until the captain's still good-natured rumblings of
impatience turned serious? How long until the captain insisted on a
return to civilization? Or could Grelben, his ship heavily mortgaged
even before the interstellar detour, afford to go home without his
cut of this film?
"No rest for the wicked," he announced to no one in particular. It
was an Earth expression learned from one of the first freaks they
had abducted The expression amused Rualf greatly. The freak, of
course, was long beyond amusement. He changed direction on
impulse, deferring his snack to go instead to the bridge.
"How was . . . Islamabad?" asked Grelben. The question was a
courtesy; his attention was mostly on a maintenance console.
"Fine, Captain. Very interesting." Rualf reared onto twos to
thoughtfully flex the digits of his third extremity. "Could I have a
word with you in private?"
"Take over," Grelben told a junior officer. "I want a report by shift's
end on the status of the environmental system. To Rualf he added,
"Come to my cabin."
They walked in silence to the captain's quarters. Inside, Rualf
admired the hologram of a Salt Sea shorescape. "Beautiful
scenery. I understand why you want to acquire property there."
"Which implies completion of our little project here. I hope what
you want to discuss is the imminent completion of our
undertaking."
Rualf tipped toward the captain in an insincere show of respect.
"I've been thinking about that happy day. With their many
shortcomings, the humans could fail to do a proper job of self-
destruction. I can envision a situation where we have all the
recordings needed for a three-square of movies—but a few
survivors still retain some technology."
Grelben trained two sensor stalks on him. Inside the small cabin,
such direct scrutiny was a frank, almost rude, stare. "Are you
saying your plan is not working?"
"Of course not." If it were true, he would not say that. "We set out
to capture scenes that we could not invent, and we have those. I
could make terrific films now."
The staring eyes narrowed shrewdly. "I remember bold promises
of nuclear destruction. Special effects that you have yet to
produce."
"I will." Rualf was confident the F'thk could goad some humans into
a nuclear exchange, which would suffice for the movie. That said,
only the Russians and Americans had the capacity to do truly
global damage. For reasons that remained unclear, and despite his
best efforts, the Russian freaks and the American freaks kept
recoiling from full-scale warfare.
The worry gnawing at Rualf's gut was devastatingly simple. What if
Swelk had been correct about the humans' potential?
The Consensus could not leave behind an unobliterated Earth.
Krulirim were long-lived, especially those who, like his troupe, did
much relativistic traveling. Until the destruction of the space shuttle
and the subsequent abandonment of their space station, the
Earthlings had been, if just barely, spacefaring. How long, if they
did not destroy themselves, before they became starfaring?
His kind had freely pillaged the worlds of the primitive species they
came across—but the savages were never overtly harmed. An
encounter between humans and another Krulchukor ship or a Krul-
settled world could be disastrous.
There had to be a plan to destroy Earth if the freaks refused to
follow his script.
"So why did you want to see me?" Grelben had stopped staring, if
only long enough to pour himself a drink.
"It occurred to me we have an option. We are closest to success
with countries having smaller stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
Hostilities between two such countries will give us almost
everything we could hope for. We may want to consider leaving
once that kind of war happens. It could get us home sooner." Time
to see what the captain was made of. "But it would require us to do
a little cleanup."
Grelben stoppered his flask. His penetrating gaze returned to
Rualf. "Some fumigation?"
Great minds, it appeared, thought alike. "That's right."
"I like to clean up after myself." The captain waggled his sensor
stalks in amused satisfaction. "I happen to have given some
thought to how it could be accomplished."
* * *
The strip-mall restaurant boasted, using the verb loosely, an
eclectic mix of Chinese wall hangings, a bar filled with brass
fixtures and potted ferns, and art-deco furniture. It was shortly after
six o'clock on a Saturday evening, and not quite half the tables
were occupied. The Hunan Tiger evidently wasn't the first eatery to
occupy this location. It was unlikely to be the last.
Amid the ebb and flow of diners' conversations, Kyle had an
epiphany: I need to get out more. Two men in a nearby booth
looked away in embarrassment as he caught them eyeing him. He
shrugged and smiled—his fifteen minutes of fame again. Or they
were staring at Darlene, which would have combined bad manners
with good taste.
"We won't be talking much shop tonight." Darlene had been
scarfing down rice noodles; she pushed away the half-empty bowl.
"What were you thinking, suggesting this place?"
"That it would be nice not to talk shop for a change." And that this
was the calm before the storm. He refilled their tea cups, awaiting
her response.
A brief smile chased away an even shorter flash of surprise. "Yes,
I'd like that."
"So what's your story?"
"More a vignette than a story. I'm from Iowa. Mom taught French in
high school; Dad, German." She quit talking as the waiter delivered
their egg rolls, and didn't resume when he left.
Ah, a fellow Midwesterner and an only-in-the-workplace extrovert.
No wonder he could relate. "Therefore you became a diplomat to
prevent another European war?"
She had a nice laugh. "I'm told the French were the aggressors in
this case."
"Go on."
"In my own understated way, I rebelled—I studied Spanish. That
led me to Latin American history. I don't have the patience to
teach, so here I am."
He spooned duck sauce onto his egg roll. "If you don't have
patience, why doesn't working in government make you crazy?" He
canted his head thoughtfully. "Or has it?"
She'd just begun a snappy comeback when his cell phone chimed.
Very few people knew this number. "Hold that retort."
If the summons wasn't unexpected, its timing was. He waved over
their sullen waiter. "Please cancel the rest of our order." To
Darlene, he explained as much as he could in public. "We have to
get back to town."
* * *
"We're not ready." Ryan Bauer's tone carried conviction. "Most of
North America is covered, in theory. The Russians tell me the
same about central and eastern Europe. Hawaii and most of
Russia east of the Urals are still hanging out there. And last I
heard, a few people live in Africa, Latin America, most of the
European Union, China, India."
The crisis team had reconvened at Britt's urgent summons. Wind
rattled the cabin windows; the sky was forebodingly gray. Today's
agenda had only one topic: how soon could the Consensus be
assaulted? Britt didn't like the answer he was getting. Or rather the
nonanswer. "Ryan, that's irrelevant. I asked about the starship."
"Britt, you've seen Kyle's study. Their weapons satellites can kill an
airliner within a minute. We know they routinely scan our cities with
low-power beams. That's how they do a readout of the infernal
orbs. A frequency tweak and a squooch more power, and the
same scans will explode cars instead. What would that do to, say,
London or Rio or Tokyo?" Ryan thumped the table. "Our strategic
defense labs are all in-country, not surprisingly. Same with the
Russians. Those labs are where the experimental beam weapons
are. To have a prayer of protecting anyone else, we need to
deploy, and in secret, to other spots around the world."
A Franklin Ridge study sat in front of Kyle. His lab had done its
usual beyond-thorough job. Bauer, if anything, was downplaying the
potential disaster. Urban sprawl routinely engulfed once-isolated
refineries and natural gas tanks. And natural gas had become the
fuel of choice for small, city-sited electric power plants. These new
plants were everywhere, run by factories and electric utilities alike.
Estimated casualties of a microwave strike from enemy satellites:
tens of thousands per city, almost instantaneously.
"I said, how soon, General?" Britt's voice was icy.
"Britt. Since we've started down the path of reviewing our
vulnerabilities to the satellites, it'd help me, at least, to finish that."
Darlene had read the study, too. Erin Fitzhugh nodded her
concurrence.
"Five minutes," begrudged Britt, bending only slightly to the
unusual display of unanimity. Bad news as yet unshared peeked
out from his eyes. "Then I expect a number, Ryan. And it better be
measured in days."
"Five minutes," Bauer agreed. "Very discreetly, I've had the best
analysts at BMDO"—the Ballistic Missile Defense
Organization—"look into this. Keeping the enemy satellites from
doing who knows what means engaging them the moment we
reveal ourselves."
"Engage them how?"
"Any way we can, Britt. We have experimental ground-based ABM
and ASAT, antiballistic missile and antisatellite, laser weapons. So
do the Russians. Those can engage enemy satellites that are
reasonably close to overhead. We have some mothballed air-
launched ASAT missiles, launched from F-15s. Those can be
deployed overseas, but that will take a little time. The Russians
have tested a space-mine system. That basically put bombs into
orbit, bombs that are exploded when their orbits approach a target.
And we can improvise weapons, fitting ballistic missiles with
infrared sensors. The ET targets are stealthed, but they can't help
radiating excess heat that we can see."
A thunderclap shook the cabin. Seconds later, a sloppy mix of rain
and sleet began pelting the roof and walls. Britt stared downhill at
the wind-whipped bay. "I remember Sergei's glider analogy. Can
ASAT missiles accomplish anything, or are they more for our
consciences? I won't delay for symbolism."
"Oh, we'll accomplish something. I guarantee it." Bauer shook his
head sadly. "We'll draw their fire. If we're really lucky, the
commandos will penetrate the starship and get the aliens to call off
the satellites, before they've done real damage to civilian targets."
Megadeaths were riding on one roll of the dice. Kyle took a deep
breath. "Britt, the Russians agree with the plan of deploying
rudimentary civil defense before the raid. You know that. What's
going on?"
"You have to specify your Russians. President Chernykov, yes.
Your friend Sergei, yes. The ultranationalists, no." Britt turned away
from the window and the storm. "The Russian ambassador brought
a dispatch to the White House this morning. It's about yesterday's
gangland shoot-out in Moscow."
The story had merited two paragraphs in the morning's Washington
Post: cops and robbers and a warehouse fire. "I don't get it," Kyle
said.
When had Britt ceased looking distinguished and begun looking
old? "It had nothing to do with the Russian Mafia. The nationalists
learned Chernykov's government leaked the site of the Iranian
nuclear-weapons depot. They were furious at the betrayal of a
long-time Russian ally.
"Bottom line, there was a coup in the works. The fire was to cover
up the real story—a botched raid by the Interior Ministry police.
Chernykov thinks he can suppress the story for maybe a week. He
hasn't trusted the nationalists' judgment enough to bring them in on
the real aliens situation." He raised an interrogatory eyebrow at Erin
Fitzhugh.
"The Agency doesn't trust them either," she answered. Britt's news
was apparently not a surprise to her. "Russia's sacred destiny,
restore the glorious empire of the golden communist era, yada
yada yada. I wouldn't trust the nationalists with Swiss Army knives,
let alone nukes. Problem is, the military and internal-security forces
are riddled with sympathizers."
"Thanks, Erin," said Britt. "Dmitri was advising the president, in an
act of incredible statesmanship, that he may not be able to retain
power much longer, at least not without entrusting the nationalists
with the truth about the aliens. Possibly as little as two weeks.
"The Consensus is scheduled to visit Washington in six days.
That's how long, General, you have to get prepared."
* * *
Kabuki theater, ballet, and medieval passion plays.
Darlene sank with a sigh of quiet contentment into her favorite
chair. A cup of tea sat beside her on the end table. She hadn't
been in her own house much these past few months. Only rotten
weather and the twilight finish of today's crisis meeting on the Bay
had brought her home tonight, instead of driving another two hours
to the safehouse.
Indian Devadasi temple dancers and Chinese shadow-puppet
theater.
Diplomats spent hours politely observing the traditional dramatic
arts of other countries. At the start of her career, that had included
countless—and endless—zarzuelas, the Spanish variation on
opera. Sadly, understanding the dialogue and lyrics made opera
even more artificial.
Aboriginal storytellers banging clapsticks and drums.
At the zap of a remote, the gas log in the fireplace lit with a
whoosh. The flames appeared twice—directly, behind the
fireplace's tempered glass doors, and again reflected from her
big-screen TV. The television was off . . . she'd had it up to here
with visual entertainment.
Her long-last-at-home serenity was evaporating. Guess who wasn't
in the defense/spy circle? Guess who wasn't Britt's protégée? Now
take a wild guess who was tasked to watch movies?
Despite years of on-the-job desensitization and her initial
enthusiasm, the Krulchukor films were grinding her down. Earth's
covert resistance had so few members—how had she wound up in
such a meaningless and unproductive role? This was like too many
overseas assignments, when she'd been the sacrificial diplomat
nodding through some lavish cultural extravaganza the
ambassador had refused to attend.
She tucked herself into an afghan. How many movies had she
watched so far with Swelk? Six, she thought, but they all blurred
together. Swelk had started her with The Reluctant Neighbor.
Pausing the holographic film every few minutes to ask questions,
re- and rere-watching scenes to catch stuff she realized she'd
missed, training herself to recognize alien cinematic conventions . .
. that first movie had stretched itself out over twelve hours. Kyle
had asked her to describe it, and the best she could come up with
was "Victorian comedy of manners meets film noir." Then came
Circle of Friends, ten and a half hours, and Strength in Numbers,
ten. The movies weren't getting shorter, but she was acquiring
some facility at reading a Krul's body language. The new skill
reinforced a conviction that Swelk was telling them the truth.
So? If she accepted the concept of a world-threatening hostile
theater company, it wasn't much of a stretch to believe that the one
Krul she had met could act.
Darlene eyed the heap of mail a neighbor had been regularly
bringing inside. She couldn't bring herself to look at it. What came
next? Oh, yes. Revenge of the Subconscious. She'd had high
hopes for that; it contained, Swelk had advised, the dream
sequence based on extinct Krulchukor monsters. Even a human
could see the resemblance to the once enigmatic F'thk. Darlene
had once more found herself believing the little ET.
And again that movie was a predictable morality play. Conformity is
good; individuality is an aberration. Fit in, get along, understand the
other Krul. Empathy, empathy, empathy.
Darlene found herself on her feet, hunting for a snack. Her milk
was two weeks past its expiration and lumpy; she returned the
cereal to the pantry and heated canned soup. The movies were
rich with nuanced relationships and subtle societal cues, replete
with hints of cultural structure she was only beginning to notice.
They were invaluable as social commentary, but it was so hard,
when viewing them so intensively, to get past the boringly
consistent moral.
Going Home had made Swelk cry—at least weeping was how
Darlene understood the collapse of Swelk's sensor stalks into
overcooked-pasta flacidity. The title alone, given Swelk's situation,
was enough to make Darlene's eyes mist. The ET had no
expectations of ever seeing home again. Dammit, she liked Swelk,
but her job did not allow her to trust the alien.
Darlene returned to the den and its cheerful fire. She couldn't even
remember the name of one movie. She had to tell herself she did
good for the cause at the team meetings—she couldn't see what
she accomplished as a film critic. Or did she even delude herself
that she contributed in the group? She hadn't been brought to the
big meeting with the Russians.
Flickering flames, familiar surroundings, comfort food . . . she
plopped back into her arm chair. Cultural force-feeding
notwithstanding, she really did know her immersion in Krulchukor
social structures and conventions was invaluable. It had to be,
didn't it?
Think, woman.
She found a memory instead of a thought: Kyle dismissing her plot
summaries as "Chick flicks on steroids." Real helpful.
Or was it?
"It's only a movie." Those were among Swelk's first words to Kyle.
Only a Krulchukor movie. A movie directed by Rualf, as were,
supposedly, all the films Darlene had been lamenting. What sense
did the coming apocalypse make as a Rualf film?
More, even, than Revenge of the Subconscious, the film in which
humanity was unwillingly starring would have spectacular visual
effects. Wide distribution of Galactic orbs finally made sense—no
self-respecting Krulchukor movie could get by on explosions. It
needed pathos. Heads of state and their orbs would be vaporized
when the missiles hit . . . but the troupe could continue scanning
orbs in the countryside. Plenty of poignancy and social interest as
chaos and fallout spread.
It was a stunning insight. Shivering, Darlene reclaimed the afghan
earlier cast aside. She knew there was something else here, some
other implication waiting to be recognized.
When it finally came to her, she actually clapped her hands in glee.
* * *
Britt was the product of old money and a multigenerational tradition
of public service. His mother was a past national-society president
of the DAR. A deep social chasm separated the landmark Arledge
mansion from Darlene's humble home.
When enlightenment struck, well past midnight, she didn't hesitate
to drive over. Time truly was of the essence.
"It's all right, Bill," Britt told the Secret Service agent who answered
her knock. Instead of the silk pajamas and velvet smoking jacket
she'd envisioned, her host wore a plaid flannel shirt over cargo
pants. She must have looked surprised. "And I put them on one
leg at a time."
He led her into a sitting room, then cut short her nervous visual
search. "No orbs in the house. No gadgets in this room that could
possibly be tapped. Daily bug searches. What can I get you to
drink?"
"Nothing, thanks." Darlene was glad he had a fire going. His burnt
real logs. She stood by the hearth, arms outstretched to warm her
hands. "You know that tea party we're planning for a few days from
now?
"I think I know an easier way for the partygoers to get in."
CHAPTER 26
Rualf rapped confidently at the cabin door behind which, he had
good reason to suspect, the captain was asleep. One extremity of
his raised limb held an ornately carved flask; a second extremity
clasped matching goblets.
"What is it?" Grelben's voice was groggy and abrupt, as if to
disprove the cinematic convention that all ships' captains woke
instantly.
"I have good news, Captain." Excellent news. Long-awaited news.
"And some vintage k'vath to toast it."
The door swung open. Grelben's posture of annoyance vanished
as he noticed the near-legendary label on the bottle. "Come in."
"It has been a long road." Rualf carefully decanted two servings of
the foaming green elixir. "Here is to the next road. To the road
home, and wealth at our journey's end."
One eye widened in curious suspicion. "You seem to be leaving
out a few details."
"May I use your computer?" Receiving a grunt of assent, Rualf
continued. "Intercepts file for the American president.
Conversation tagged 'almost there.' "
The hologram that leapt into being featured two familiar humans.
The office where they met was, as if a parody of Krulchukor
perfection, oval in shape. "The President and his chief advisor.
Watch."
"This must be held in absolute confidence, Britt," said the
President. He sat behind a massive desk, his image clearly
captured by an orb. A scrolling ring of text interpreted the facial
expression and stance as denoting extreme levels of tension and
weariness. Swelk's artificially intelligent translation program
continued to learn. "There's something I need done that requires
the utmost discretion. You'll get lots of opposition, but I trust you to
make it happen anyway."
"Of course, Mr. President."
The President waved one of his freakish upper limbs. The
translator called the gesticulation dismissive. "It's just us, Britt, and
we've no time for formality."
"Fine, Harold. What is this about?" Curiosity and worry, speculated
the text caption.
"Art and history. It's about culture. It's about preserving our
heritage."
"I have to say, Harold, this is rather mysterious."
"Watch," interjected Rualf. "I could not have scripted this moment
in a million years."
The President swiveled his chair to look out the window behind his
desk. The orb lost its direct view—but the leader's strong profile
and haunted expression were captured perfectly in reflection on
the glass. Behind and through that image could be seen a towering
stone obelisk. Robeson's reflected chin trembled. "In a matter of
days it all ends, Britt. The somewhat-sane Russians are losing
control. The lunatics who are taking over will hit us with everything.
We'll defend ourselves. Between us, we'll reduce it all to so much
radioactive rubble.
"There must be something left to remember us by. Something to
teach the survivors—if nuclear winter doesn't kill everyone—that
once we were great."
"Visually, that is just perfect." Rualf pointed into the hologram.
"That tall monument, whatever it is. It reaches to the sky like a
satiric symbol of the potential these poor ill-fated creatures did not
live to fulfill." He savored his use of the past tense, considering the
humans' doom already determined.
The presidential aide had recoiled in shock, settled heavily into a
chair, then recovered his wits. "What do you want me to do? What
can I do?"
"Gather—very discreetly—some of our national treasures: art,
archives, artifacts. Have it taken for safekeeping somewhere
unlikely to be bombed." The President spun back towards his
confidant. The interpretive subtitle announced: great sadness. "But
on the remote chance I'm too pessimistic, you must do this behind
the scenes. Worse than the panic publicity would cause is the
probable interpretation by the Russians. They could misinterpret
that we were evacuating our cities in preparation for our own first
strike. I don't want to goad them into launching."
Britt rocked in his chair. "There are always museum exhibits on tour
between cities; some of those should be easy to waylay. And I've
read that much of any museum's collection is not on display, but
warehoused or in labs for study. It should be possible to quietly
pack up and move some nonpublic parts of collections."
"That sounds excellent." The President's lips briefly curved
upward. The translator advised: feigned good cheer. "Maybe a few
of the most precious items on permanent exhibit, like the
Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, can be
withdrawn under pretense of doing some restorative work."
"I'll do what I can, Harold."
"I depend on it, Britt."
"Freeze," commanded Rualf. "This is what was missing." To
Grelben's puzzled gaze, he added, "It was going to be a good
film—but not artistic. Not important. Our audience had no reason
yet to really care about the humans. But this . . . this striving against
all odds for immortality. How can the audience not love that?"
Grelben grunted. "I leave such matters to you."
As you should. Keeping his self-approval to himself, Rualf struck a
dramatic pose. "You know what would be even better?"
"What?"
"An ironic success. Imagine the F'thk rescuing a few human
trinkets. I see the humans, as they die, taking comfort that some of
their artifacts have been removed from Earth to preserve their
memory." Rualf was overcome with the majesty of his artistic
vision. "I love it."
* * *
In a tumultuous scene, the Krul heroine overcame her aspirations
of personal fame. Her family embraced her. Credits rolled. Music
swelled. At least Swelk called it music . . . the repertoire of the
Krul's translation software did not extend to cross-species
harmonic substitutions. Darlene's private description for the film's
audio accompaniment was the enthusiastic stirring of a large bag
of broken glass. The soprano counterpoint suggested that the
mixing was performed with the bare limb of the musician.
Despite the predictability and aural assault, Darlene could not help
but smile. In a flash of synergy, or serendipity, or gestalt, or
epiphany, or . . . her insight was multicultural and by rights ought to
be known by a hundred names. Earth had been plunged into
danger to produce a film—and the filmmaker's artistic sensibilities
would prove to be his undoing and Earth's salvation. There was a
symmetry here that she couldn't get over. God bless these awful
movies.
It would have been perfect to share her discovery with Kyle, but he
was off helping strategize the upcoming attack on the maser
satellites. It felt so good to know she was truly contributing. She
could even watch the alien movies now without wincing.
As if reading Darlene's mind, Swelk asked, "What did you think of
that show?"
"I enjoyed it," Darlene lied tactfully. Now could she unobtrusively
redirect the discussion? She thought she saw an opening by which
Swelk could validate her thinking. She wasn't after a sanity check
so much as a fine-tuning. "I was taken with the emotional wealth of
the final scene. It seems like Rualf likes to end all his films with an
intense personal climax like that." Did the translator handle tones of
voice? Darlene didn't know, but just in case, she made an extra
effort to sound casual. "Am I correct in remembering that we're
watching a complete collection of his works?"
"So I was told." Blackie and Stripes dependably fled the vicinity of
Krulchukor music. Now that the film was over, the kittens were
back. Swelk, sunk deep into a beanbag chair, now devoted an
entire limb to each pet. Each kitten was on its back, stomach
bared, purring loudly at the massaging of nine digits. "Rualf, unlike
his heroine, continues to appreciate attention. I would be very
surprised if he omitted any of his films. At the least, these must be
the movies of which he is most satisfied. Why?"
"It occurred to me to wonder about the movie Rualf is now making.
Worldwide ruin and destruction don't seem to give Rualf the type
of ending he always goes for." Darlene strove for nonchalance.
"I'm no expert on Krulchukor cinema, but it seems the new film
is"—what term had she used with Britt? Oh yes—"dramatically
deficient. It lacks personal realization."
"I see." The atonality of the translation implied anything but
understanding.
"Here's a crazy thought." Hopefully not. Hopefully this thought was
entirely sane. At Darlene's urging, Earth's one shot at surprising the
aliens relied on this idea. She forced a casual laugh. "I don't know
why I'm even thinking about this. It's not like Earth's interests lie in
the structure of Rualf's film. I'm just reacting to watching so many
of his past projects.
"Wouldn't the movie be more consistent with Rualf's approach if
humans did something altruistic before the end? If, before they
perished, they made some noble gesture? If they acted—of
course, tragically too late—for the betterment of all?"
"It would indeed. That finale would almost certainly appeal to Rualf.
But the artistry of the film is hardly Earth's biggest concern." Swelk
paused in her ministering to the kittens. "Or am I wrong? Have
circumstances become so dire that you seek immortality in a great
film?"
"Hardly," said Darlene. She was feeling pretty smug at the
confirmation the little Krul had provided. "My fondest hope is that
Rualf never finishes his film."
* * *
The secretary backed silently from the Oval Office, leaving a grim
President alone with his visitor. Behind that visitor, a galactic orb
high on a bookshelf saw all. "Welcome, Ambassador H'ffl. I
appreciate you coming on such short notice."
Rualf peered out through the camera lenses of the F'thk robot.
"Please, Mr. President, have a seat. I prefer to stand, but there is
no reason for you to." A standing robot did not tire, and it had an
excellent filming angle. He did not continue until the human
retreated to the chair behind his desk. "Now what is this matter of
great sensitivity mentioned in the radio message?"
Enigmatic muscular twitches played across the human's face.
("Unhappy and worried," interpreted a text window in Rualf's
helmet). "This is a hard matter of which to speak."
"Pardon me, Mr. President, but the tensions between America and
Russia seem to be escalating. Human politics are not my field of
expertise, but to an outsider the situation looks unpromising. I fear
this is not the time for delay. If I can be of service, I hope you will
speak plainly." Orbs and intercepted communications showed
preparations for war increasing so rapidly, finally, that the H'ffl robot
had been delivered in a lifeboat. Rualf had been unwilling to delay
meeting with the President until the next scheduled visit to
Washington of the Consensus.
The President's face contorted ("grieving," read the interpretation).
"Things aren't very promising to an insider, either." He opened his
mouth as if to say more, then closed it. The sad expression
continued.
Did no human ever make things easy? Rualf would have thought
the appropriate course of action obvious. Clearly he had been on
this awful world too long, if he seriously expected reason from the
natives. "I apologize in advance for the suggestion I am about to
make. My words will seem to imply a lack of confidence, when
perhaps all will work out for the best." The robot tipped its head in
mimicry of a human gesture of confidentiality. "What I am
considering skirts the limits of my authority." He paused again,
hoping the human would make the conceptual leap. The scene
would be more dramatic if the human made the
proposal—whatever hints Rualf made to get there could be edited
out.
"No need to apologize. Some new thinking is very much needed."
The President briefly squeezed his eyes shut ("struggling for the
proper words"). "Can your people stop our madness? We seem
powerless to stop ourselves."
"How? By threatening harm to you or your adversaries? Coercion
would not only be wrong, and against everything for which the
Galactic Commonwealth stands, but surely also futile. Why would
our threat be more of a deterrent than your own evident plans to
harm each other?" Rualf zoomed in as the robot spoke, capturing a
tight close-up of the President's face. The human leader closed
his eyes again in thought and sorrow.
A moment later, those eyes snapped open amid an interplay of
facial muscles Rualf could not understand. ("He has reached some
decision?" guessed the caption.) "Mr. Ambassador, I believe you
can help. Help us in the event of the worst. We could destroy
ourselves, destroy our world. If that happens, I would die happier
knowing that a small part of what we accomplished will be
remembered."
Thank you! These humans at least had some sense. "You have
much of which to be proud. I can promise you that even if the worst
does happen your story will be remembered." Now, you slow-
witted bilat freak, actually make the offer.
"That is good news." ("Increased decisiveness.") There was a
dramatic pause—too long a pause, but that would be tweaked in
editing. "I want to go a bit further. I would like to send with you a
sample of our achievements. Pieces of our art, selections of our
finest thought."
Success! Rualf made the robot nod its head in humanlike
agreement. "I understand. A sad plan, but perhaps a prudent one.
Yes, I would be willing to do this." Playing to the orb he had the
robot add, "All will be enthusiastically returned if we are, happily,
too pessimistic."
"I wish this fine old house could be saved, or the great monuments
of this wonderful city. They can't. Most of our finest treasures are
impossible to save." President Robeson studied the room as he
spoke, as if trying to memorize it. He straightened in his chair in
resolve. "Anything too visible cannot be taken without being
noticed. Notice would bring panic. Panic would be misinterpreted
by the Russians as a pre-attack evacuation. I will do my duty to
defend and avenge America. I will not trigger her obliteration."
Rualf somehow contained his glee for long enough to complete
the transaction. A landing by the Consensus could hardly be
disguised, and the President insisted there be no big deviation
from past routine that could raise Russian suspicions, but still
some unique arrangements were necessary. The trusted aide
whom the orb had seen assigned to gather America's treasures
was now brought in to coordinate the details of a circumspect
transfer. This Britt person thankfully had a mind for details—what
he now proposed was workable.
The coming scene took shape in Rualf's mind as plans were
finalized, and it was a thing of poignant beauty.
* * *
Andrew Wheaton chewed on an unlit cigar, debating whether he
was going to do this. The scrap of paper in his hand had the
unlisted cell-phone number of Kyle Gustafson, information
wheedled from the scientist's mother. The Gustafsons, who had
welcomed Andrew to their Thanksgiving dinner with open arms,
were the salt of the Earth. Andrew was a lot less certain what he
thought of their son.
Dirty dishes filled the sink. Crumbs and stains covered the table in
front of him. Tina would have been disappointed—she kept the
little farmhouse spotless. He choked back a sob. If Tina was here
he would not be thinking about this call.
Would Kyle talk with him? The man had been nice, at least. But the
cops had been nice too, at first. Then they had laughed behind
their hands at the UFO nut. Then they had as much as accused him
of killing his own wife, his own son.
Was Kyle Gustafson any different? Andrew had dared to hope so.
After he'd shown Kyle the field, people had come to the farm. They
took samples from the pasture, did a survey. But then . . . nothing.
Kyle had left a business card with a phone number—but he never
answered the phone. Sometimes an assistant, a young-sounding
man, picked up. He took messages, even returned calls. The
young man was polite, but he knew nothing. "Kyle will call back
when he can."
What did he expect, anyway? Tina used to tease Andrew for
buying tabloids. The "big" newspapers didn't understand about
aliens, only the tabloids did. A tear ran down his cheek. Did Tina
understand now? His gut told him that she was gone.
Was there anything he could do? He had thought and
thought—and there was something. But that something made
sense only if he had abandoned hope. He looked again at the
scrap of paper in his hand. At his last hope. He dialed.
"Hello?"
"Dr. Gustafson, this is Andrew Wheaton."
"Hi, Andrew. I didn't know you had this number."
Didn't want me to have it. "I told your mom I had to reach you."
When no comment came, Andrew continued. "I need to know what
your people found."
"Andrew." There was anguish in the voice. "There's nothing I can
tell you. I'm sorry."
His guts felt like someone had reached in and squeezed them.
"Nothing to tell? Or nothing you want to tell?"
"I'm sorry," Gustafson repeated. "Sincerely. Andrew, I have to go."
Tina had sewn the blue gingham curtains over the kitchen window.
She'd cross-stitched the samplers decorating every wall. Andrew
Junior had colored the crayon drawings pinned to the corkboard
and magneted over most of the refrigerator door. "I'm sorry, too,"
he whispered.
The alien devils . . . soon they would be sorry. He would see to it.
CHAPTER 27
The coaster clung to Kyle's glass of ice water, suspended by a film
of condensation. Then gravity had its way; the coaster fell to the
floor.
Drink coasters were a concept with which Swelk was unfamiliar.
The unexpected noise made her drop her glass. It shattered. She
shuffled in confusion.
"My fault. I'll take care of that." Kyle started picking the largest
shards from the puddle, pausing to shoo away the kittens, who had
come to investigate. They were in the safehouse's dining room,
Swelk's favorite room. If he had to guess, based on his woefully
inadequate grasp of Krulchukor psychology, that was because of
the large oval table. It was one of the few curved pieces of
furniture in the house.
Darlene, who'd been about to leave after her own visit, stuck her
head in the door. "Blot that with a towel. I'll be right back." She
returned pushing a vacuum cleaner, its power card trailing behind
her into the front hall. She flicked on the handle-mounted switch.
Swelk collapsed, her legs convulsing. Her sensor stalks went rigid.
Kyle lunged for the cord and yanked. As the plug whipped into the
room, Swelk's seizure was already fading. Her squeals of protest
were untranslatable. "Swelk, what can we do?"
Darlene dropped the vacuum's handle. "Not again."
"Again!" snapped Kyle. His eyes remained on the twitching alien.
"What the hell does again mean? You've seen this before?"
"Seen, no. Well, sort of. Twice I've been in another room when
Swelk had some type of twitching episode. I was never right there
when it happened, and I saw nothing like this. The first time, a pair
of agents saw her right after, too." Her brow furrowed in
recollection. "Swelk made it sound like vertigo. I know she's
mentioned waking up dizzy."
"I . . . I am . . . am fine," the translator stuttered. The alien climbed
back to her feet and walked shakily to the nearest beanbag chair.
She dropped heavily, rustling the plastic peanuts inside. "That was
horrible . . . whatever . . . it was."
She had dropped like a stone when the vacuum cleaner started.
The kittens had bolted at the same time. Was it the unexpected
racket? "Swelk, it's important that we isolate the problem. If you
agree, I'd like to turn this"—he pointed at the vacuum cleaner—"on
for a moment. We need to see if the symptoms return."
Swelk clasped her extremities, all the digits interlaced. From within
the hollow of the beanbag chair, she said, "At least I cannot fall
from here."
He plugged the vacuum cleaner back in. The switch was still on;
the motor restarted with a roar. Swelk's limbs spasmed. He pulled
the plug, and the fit began immediately to subside. "I guess we
won't be doing much vacuuming."
Darlene impaled him on a dirty look. "What can we do for you?"
she asked Swelk.
What was going on? "Swelk, what were you doing when the earlier
episodes struck? What was happening around you?"
"Maybe some water, Darlene." The ET's sensor stalks bobbed. "In
an unbreakable container, if there is one." She chugged most of a
glassful before answering Kyle. "I wasn't doing anything. Standing
in this room, waiting for Darlene."
He exchanged puzzled looks with her. "Dar, do you remember
what you were doing?"
Her eyes closed in thought. "The first time was before one of
Swelk's movies. I was getting popcorn. The other time, I'd spent
the night. It happened the next morning while I was showering."
Showering wasn't terribly noisy, and the only shower in the
safehouse was upstairs. Kyle pinched the bridge of his nose in
concentration. Hmmm. Getting was a rather all-purpose verb.
"Were you popping the corn?"
"Uh-huh."
"In the little microwave oven in the trailer?"
She shook her head. "The microwave stuff has too much fat. I'd
brought an air popper from home."
I see, said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw.
"The second time, did you dry your hair?" To her puzzled nod, he
added, "With a hair dryer?"
"Well, yes."
Vacuum, air popper, hair dryer . . . what they had in common were
electric motors. More precisely, if not per the everyday usage,
electromagnetic motors. Swelk had mentioned once that the
safehouse's electric lights made her jumpy. The radiation from
household wiring was tiny compared to the E-M noise the vacuum
cleaner's motor emitted.
"Kyle, what are you thinking?"
He recognized the impatient worry in Darlene's voice. "It's okay.
Give me a second." If electrical appliances were the problem, why
had there been so few incidents? He ran a mental inventory of
modern conveniences. This old house had been chosen for its
isolation, not its features. Its heat came from radiators, the
circulation driven only by hot water rising and cold water sinking.
The water was heated by an oil burner—no motor required. The
rarely used stove burnt propane. The refrigerator and its big motor,
entirely by accident out of commission. No bathroom fans. The
guards came and went in shifts, so there generally wasn't
showering—or, more important, hair drying—going on. The original
landline phone, with its electromagnetic ringer, was out of service,
which was easier than guarding it.
There was a moment of uncertainty as he recalled Swelk had a
television. He'd once lost a college assignment by carelessly
leaving a computer disk on a TV. His doubts receded as he
remembered what set she had. To accommodate the old house's
tiny rooms, the CIA had followed Kyle's advice and gotten an
expensive wall-mounted model like the one he owned. The
upscale unit had an LCD flat screen: real low-voltage stuff. Not a
CRT with big coils.
This had to be important.
Flickering lights triggered seizures in some epileptics. How did
flickering magnetic fields affect Krulirim?
Swelk was very proud of her studies. Kyle strained to remember
something in a debriefing report, something from the Krul's
personal research notes. Something about Krulirim orienting
themselves by reference to the home world's magnetic field.
Hmmm. Earth's magnetic field was excluded by the safehouse's
shielding. Was that why Swelk often woke up dizzy?
"Ladies, it will be for the best if I remove this vacuum cleaner."
He'd happily bet an arm and a kidney that Swelk—or any
Krul—couldn't tolerate fluctuating magnetic fields, at least at some
frequencies. The sixty-cycle hum of standard wall current must be
one of them. It would be a simple enough experiment at Franklin
Ridge to measure the field strength of the appliance that had so
instantly incapacitated her.
With the crisis a mere two days away, was it too late to exploit this
discovery?
* * *
"General Bauer is unavailable. Would you care to leave a
message?" The aide at the other end of the connection sounded
bored. If he recognized the caller's voice or remembered having
taken four messages from Kyle already that day, he disguised it
well.
"No, thanks." There wasn't time for this nonsense, not with the Tea
Party imminent.
Kyle hung up and redialed. When Britt's secretary wouldn't put him
through either, he asked for voicemail. He had painful familiarity
with the politician's total recall—anyone who had ever worked for
Britt did. Today Kyle was counting on it. "Britt, I'm going to recite
some numbers. What I've just learned is equally important. I must
meet with the Mad Hatter. Now." Kyle had invented that alias for the
leader of the raid, but Britt would surely crack the code.
He rattled off numbers in twos, each pair the month and day he'd
first discussed with Britt some key finding about the aliens. The
revelation that Galactic "unity orbs" were spying devices. The
discovery that the mother ship was transparent to X-rays. The
confirmation that "F'thk" lifeboats had been at abduction sites, long
before the aliens' overt appearance. "He must meet me at my
funny friend's place. Please acknowledge."
Hanging up, Kyle left Franklin Ridge for the safehouse, to do the
thing in the world he was worst at . . . waiting.
* * *
Why was Darlene so nervous?
Swelk stared out a dark window, miserably alone. Inside the
safehouse, only she and the kittens were awake; Darlene, who was
spending the night, had gone to bed. Krulchuk's day was roughly
three-cubed and three Earth hours in length, and Swelk was far
from adapted to her new planet's speedier rotation.
Recently, Krulchukor movies seemed to fascinate Darlene. The
diplomat probably understood Krulirim better than any other visitor,
but that insight came from experience with only one Krul and one
small film collection. Darlene did not know how many human
entertainments Swelk had viewed: a lot. Human broadcasts had led
the Consensus to Earth. The lonely Krul had watched many more
hours of Earth's television than the entirety of Rualf's library.
Counting the guards, Swelk's experience with humans included
more than two three-squares of individuals. She was a far better
interpreter of humans than the other way around.
Why was Darlene so nervous?
Trees outside the window swayed. The house creaked. A kitten
scratched enthusiastically at her litter box. A beanbag chair rustled
as Swelk shifted her position. Darlene was more immersed than
ever in Rualf's movies. The human's excitability had intensified
after a discussion about the actor's artistic sense, after that odd
conversation about whether Rualf would prefer to end the filmed
destruction of Earth with some human act of altruism.
Swelk dismounted from the chair to pace in imperfect circles.
Darlene had been agitated by those cinematic insights, but had
tried not to show it. And why the recent shift in mood to
nervousness? Swelk understood worry in anticipation of impending
doom—but not disguised expectation. In the nighttime stillness,
bedsprings squeaked. Darlene was also restless.
Excitement at how Rualf would prefer to end the movie? Did that
suggest a human intention to influence the filming? But Rualf
wanted to film an epic disaster, so why would the humans care
about the details? What did Darlene imagine as the act of human
altruism?
Swelk paused midcircle. Whatever this dramatic act might be, its
purpose was to bring Rualf to film it. Was Rualf being tricked?
Scenes from human entertainments flooded her mind, scenes she
did not totally understand, from contexts foreign to her. Soldiers,
criminals, imaginary monsters . . . all were unfamiliar concepts
imperfectly grasped. A large part of that incomplete understanding
was a preference for ambush. Violent, surprise, deadly attack.
Was a subtle appeal to the filmmaker being used to lure the
Consensus into danger? Was Darlene's interest in Rualf's films
focused on constructing an irresistible scene? Almost certainly,
yes. Less clear was how Swelk felt about this. How had she
imagined this would all end?
But killing was wrong, no matter by whom.
Her interrogators had resigned themselves to a steadfast refusal to
answer direct questions about vulnerabilities of the
Consensus—while continuing in convoluted ways to collect data. It
was as if a tacit bargain had been struck. They amassed
information that could be used in an attack . . . but she could
believe, or rather delude herself, that she was not responsible.
Swelk enabling Darlene to understand and entrap Rualf was as
much a betrayal as would have been revealing any weakness of
the ship.
Well, she was responsible—and she could not bear it if the
resolution of her mess caused the deaths of her one-time
shipmates.
Alone in midnight darkness, Swelk knew her existence as a solitary
Krul was doomed. In Revenge of the Subconscious, which she
had recently rewatched with Darlene, Rualf confronted a flawed
aspect of himself. His character had become a loner, attempting to
be complete unto himself. He had naturally failed.
Now she had to vanquish her inner monster.
There was an outburst of mewing and thuds: playful tussling by
Blackie and Stripes. Much as she loved the kittens, the image that
came to mind was of larger, much more docile creatures: Stinky
and Smelly. She could not endure the thought of harm to those
innocent beasts.
Crossing the hall, she reared up on twos to pound on Darlene's
closed door. Without waiting for an answer, Swelk entered. The
cold moonlight streaming into the room made Darlene, seated on
the edge of her bed, look ashen. Her hair was matted and tangled.
"I know an attack is planned on the Consensus. Proceeding means
destruction, for you, for the Krulirim, or probably both. I want to
avoid that suffering. I want to help.
"But it must be done on my terms."
* * *
Snow flurries swirled around Kyle and his visitor. "If this diversion
costs me one casualty, I will personally rip out your heart and feed
it to you." Barrel-chested, with arms thicker than Kyle's thighs,
Colonel Ted Blake's soft-spoken threat was entirely believable.
Blake was livid at being summoned from Delta Force's base at
Fort Bragg a day before the attack on the starship. His
commandos were en route to Washington as they spoke.
They were in the woods that abutted the safehouse, on whose
sagging porch Kyle had awaited Blake. He brushed aside a low
branch. "I understand your concern, Colonel."
"Oh? Whose lives are you personally responsible for?"
The whole planet's, but he didn't suppose that answer would be
well received. "Colonel, I know for a fact neither you nor any of the
Delta Force has met a Krul. Don't you want to know something
about your opponents?"
"Don't tell me my business," said Blake. "I know for a fact that you
have no military background. Now give me one good reason why I
should even be here, or I'll be on my way."
Kyle exhaled sharply. Here goes. "When we go inside, I'll stay in
the foyer. You go through the doorway to your left and back into the
dining room where Swelk will be. Keep your eyes on her. What you
need to see will happen as soon as I hear you say her name."
They returned to the safehouse, Kyle signaling with a finger raised
to his lips that the agent at the door was not to speak. Inside, Swelk
and Darlene could be heard talking. As Blake turned left, Kyle took
an electric razor from his coat pocket. He plugged it into the front-
hall power outlet. When Blake said, "Swelk, I presume," Kyle
clicked the switch to on.
There was an immediate thud, followed by a drumming against the
wooden floor and shouts of dismay from Darlene. Kyle turned off
the razor. The drumming quickly faded. He clicked the razor on; the
spastic beat resumed. He switched off the shaver a second time,
this time unplugging it.
When Kyle entered the dining room, Darlene was hovering
anxiously over the still-prone Swelk. He shrugged apologetically to
them both.
Blake's glower had been replaced by shrewd calculation. "Shall we
continue our hike?" asked Kyle. An agent handed him a backpack
as they left the safehouse.
"What you just witnessed, Colonel, was the aliens' biggest
weakness. Swelk was instantly disabled by the electric motor in my
razor."
"Explain."
"Members of her species orient themselves by reference to the
planetary magnetic field. Any electric motor, not just the one in a
razor, converts an alternating current into an alternating magnetic
field. The electromagnetic part, called the rotor, pushes
magnetically against a stationary permanent magnet, the stator. As
you know, wall current alternates at sixty cycles per second. I just
inflicted on my friend a sixty-times-per-second reversal of her
sense of direction."
"So she had extreme vertigo."
"Right," agreed Kyle. "But more than that. You saw her twitching
uncontrollably. If you listened closely, you might also have heard
that her computer immediately stopped translating her words.
Swelk was shouting something, but while the motor ran that speech
was unintelligible." The computer itself was unaffected, continuing
to translate, or at least to make alien-sounding noises, in response
to Darlene's English.
"Couldn't your ugly little friend be play acting?"
"She had no warning of what I did, and her response surely seems
involuntary. That aside, it turns out the house surveillance system
recorded prior incidents." Once Kyle had been told of Swelk's
previous episodes, he had known to look. Darlene, who had been
unaware of the hidden cameras, no longer showered there. He dug
in the backpack. "Hence this videocam."
They stopped beneath a towering hemlock. Blake accepted the
videocam and pushed the Play button. In the preview screen,
Swelk stood in the dining room, a date and time appearing in tiny
digits in the display's corner. Moments later, Swelk collapsed. Kyle
handed over a second videotape. The new image showed Darlene
in the kitchen, overseeing an air popper. The date and time
matched Swelk's collapse on the first tape.
"Check these." Kyle offered two more tapes. Once more Swelk
was stricken, now concurrent with Darlene's use of an electric hair
dryer.
"Maybe it's the noise, not the motors." Probing curiosity had
replaced hostility.
"Nope. A razor heard across the house is quieter than Swelk's own
translator. I made an audio tape of a popcorn popper and played it
back on a cassette recorder. That made her ill at ease, because
the recorder itself has a small motor, but how loudly I played the
tape made no difference." They resumed their walk. "When I
converted that same tape of popper noise to MP3 format and ran
the file through an electronic player, Swelk didn't react at all."
"You're saying we can disable the ETs with a big electric motor
near the starship."
The safehouse was no longer visible through the trees, but a
clearing had come into view. A windswept field in Minnesota
rushed to mind, the meadow from which Andrew Wheaton's family
had been abducted. "No, the ship's hull would surely shield them.
But if we can get an airlock open, penetrate that shield . . ."
"My guys know all about penetrating things, and we're not restricted
to kicking down doors." Blake's smile was frankly predatory.
"There's a fusion reactor in that ship, which will be in the heart of
metropolitan Washington. The last thing we want to do is to make it
go boom."
"I don't think they're going to respond to the Delta Force ringing the
bell, even if all we're carrying is razors."
"Swelk knows how to get us in." Kyle ignored an outburst of
protest. "She deduced from her questioning that an attack must be
imminent."
Blake swallowed an oath. "You trust the little monster?"
"That's exactly what I propose to do: trust her. If we bring her, she
promises to share the airlock keypad code that will let us into the
ship."
"Bring an enemy to the raid." Blake was incredulous.
"Bring a defector. An ally. That's what I sincerely think she is. Every
fact in our possession confirms that she is. If I'm right, her help will
be invaluable, in operating the onboard systems after we take over
the ship, in interpreting anything the crew says."
"And if you're wrong?"
Kyle swallowed hard. "I'll be very sorry. You see, I'm going to be in
the lead truck."
CHAPTER 28
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.
CHAPTER 29
Groaning, Kyle crawled away from the heat and flames. After a few
painful yards, he was grabbed under an arm by Ted Blake, who
half dragged, half carried him from the hell that had erupted. Blake
left him propped against a hangar wall, goggling at the raging
inferno. He had by sheer good luck rolled behind the wrecked van,
and been sheltered from the worst of the fireball.
What did this all mean? After his leap from the speeding van and
the explosion, he couldn't think straight. Of one thing he was
certain: Wheaton was dead. How many Krulirim had the man taken
with him?
Darlene appeared from somewhere. "Kyle!? Are you all right?"
He failed miserably in an attempt to smile, but vomited noisily
without effort. "I've been better." Still, his mind was clearing. The
airlock he had with such difficulty opened was engulfed with
flames, entirely impassable. And apart from the flames, the ship
looked funny. It was at an odd angle; a landing support must have
been snapped by the blast.
The fire and explosion had surely incinerated the generator and his
sorry collection of appliances. Swelk always recovered quickly
after a electric motor was switched off. If any Krulirim survived,
maybe on the opposite side of the ship, they would be recovered
by now.
What would they be doing?
* * *
For time without measure, the deck fell from beneath Grelben. The
walls spun around him, receding into infinite space. He somehow
floated and fell simultaneously, limbs spasming. When the
sensation faded, he pulled himself onto his command seat. Bridge
displays showed F'thk robots littering the concrete, mostly torn to
pieces. On other screens, a human ground vehicle racing toward
the deployed ramp. The inner airlock door had been opened
during his incapacity. His ship was exposed! Before he could
engage the remote-hatch override, the onslaught of vertigo
resumed. He toppled from the seat, limbs entangled.
The explosion that rocked the Consensus penetrated even the
chaos into which he had once more been plunged. The mysterious
disorientation stopped, but his still-quaking limbs refused at first to
function. A searing wind burst onto the bridge, tossing the duty
crew like leaves. The bridge displays went blank; his dazed mind
needed a moment to deduce that the hull cameras had protectively
retracted. It was an automatic mechanism, normally triggered by
the heat of an atmospheric entry. Hull sensors reported a soaring
temperature. As bodily control returned, he slapped the audio
reset on the alarm panel; its many flashing lights told him
everything that he needed. Fire suppressant sprayed from nozzles
in the ceiling.
"Brelf, you're on damage control," he snapped at the first live
crewman he saw. His attention remained fixed on his ship's
defense. "Rualf, report. Rualf." There was no response. The alarm
panel revealed a raging fire in the cargo hold where the troupe
worked. It seemed impossible that anyone there had survived.
Communications with the robots ran from the incinerated controls
in the hold to the ship's radio center to antennae in the hull. The
high-gain antenna dishes, like the exterior cameras, were retracted
and useless. One antenna, however, was molded into the hull
itself. That configuration made the antenna necessarily
omnidirectional, dispersing energy with profligacy in all directions,
but his immediate needs were short range. With that antenna he
broadcast to the robots. He couldn't control them with bridge
equipment, but he needed to see through their sensors.
Only three robots responded, and their images came from close to
the tarmac. Just one view showed the ship—and that picture made
him knot his digits in rage and fear. Amid billowing black smoke,
flames licked hungrily at the Consensus. The ship had tipped, its
stern flattened where it had struck the ground.
More and more lights glowed on the alarm panel. "Captain," called
Brelf. "Fire is spreading throughout the ship. Most controls are
damaged, unresponsive. The drive . . ."
The crewman did not need to complete his thought. Without the
interstellar drive, nothing else mattered. They were marooned, at
the mercy of the freaks whose extinction he and Rualf had
conspired to cause. Without access to the high-gain antennas,
Grelben could not even control the satellite weapons. They were
without hope, he thought.
But not without options . . .
* * *
Images of the Consensus in the grip of flames looked down at
Swelk from three walls. Her view of the command-trailer
instrumentation was suddenly unimpeded. Darlene had been the
first out the door; others, to whom no one had bothered introducing
Swelk, soon followed. She cringed the first time after the explosion
that the door opened, but the horrifying dizziness did not strike.
The fire must have destroyed Kyle's weapon.
The soldiers who remained had eyes only for their equipment . . .
while her vision, as always, went in a full circle. No one was
watching her. She had either been forgotten in the excitement, or
the humans had excessive trust in their locked door. She tapped
out the key code that unlatched the trailer door. A hinge squealed
as she pushed against the door. As she jumped out, one of the
uniformed men in the trailer lunged at her. He crashed to the
trailer's floor, half of his torso hanging outside—but caught her by
her belt. She tore loose, but the pocket in which she kept her
computer ripped. The computer fell to the pavement just outside
the hangar. There was no time to stop for it. She screamed as she
ran, "I must help. I must help." Those giving chase gave no signs
of having understood her.
An eye aimed antimotionward, toward the hangar, saw Kyle. He
was bloody, agitated, and screaming. The evidently unbroken
computer translated, "Don't shoot." Not waiting to see if that advice
would be taken, she fled toward the Consensus. She ran no faster
than the men in pursuit—an unlame Krul would have left them far
behind—but with her three-limbed ability to veer instantly in any
direction, she was much more agile. She could also see them
coming, from whatever bearing, and her shortness made her hard
to grab. She dodged and bobbed, unable to outpace them,
but—however precariously—at liberty. Bright red trucks raced
toward the Consensus, sirens blaring. From the hangar came the
shouted words, anguished even in translation, "I'm sorry, Swelk.
I'm sorry."
Reaching the ship, she found she was more tolerant of heat than
the humans. She stood near the blaze, panting in exhaustion, for
the moment beyond the soldiers' reach.
Through the flame-filled airlock came the panicked bellowing of the
swampbeasts.
* * *
Swelk had run here impulsively, unable to stand idly by when the
only Krulirim within light-years were imperiled. No, be realistic . . .
the survivors would all die if they did not get out.
Another terrified howl rang out. Despite the roar of the fire she
knew it was Stinky. His renewed call was joined by his mate. As
flames billowed from the open airlock, Swelk realized, Something
inside is fanning those flames. She galloped around the hull,
sticking close to the ship where the soldiers could not follow. A
second airlock was wide open; she could feel the draft of air being
sucked into this hold by the raging fire. This hold's ramp was
unextended, but the landing foot's collapse brought the entry within
reach. She clambered aboard.
She found herself inside the zoo hold. Her Girillian friends
screamed in fear, hurling themselves again and again against their
cages. Fire suppressant streamed from nozzles overhead. She
ran between the pens, unlatching doors. The heat seared her
lungs. "Get outside!" she screamed at a Krul she found fallen but
stirring beside a cage. Soot-covered, he was unrecognizable.
Whether the disorienting weapon or the explosion—or perhaps
both—had downed him she could not tell. "Out the hold airlock."
Ignoring her own advice, Swelk limped deeper into the ship. Two
crewman stumbled by her, bleeding, dazed, purposeless. "To the
zoo hold," she called as she pushed on. Flickering emergency
lights guided her to the bridge, through corridors ever thicker with
smoke.
She arrived, finally, gasping for breath, at the command center. Still
bodies littered the room. Only one Krul worked purposefully:
Captain Grelben. He toiled feverishly at a console, so rapt in his
duties that he did not at first see her enter. He ignored the alarm
panel that glowed from top to bottom in the purple blinkings of
worst-case disaster. "Captain. Come away."
"Swelk." His voice was cold. "I trust we have you to thank for our
difficulties." A coughing fit interrupted him. "It does not matter.
Your freaks are doomed."
Predestined in his mind to fail, because of Krulchukor prejudice?
Or condemned by his plans, by some twisted revenge the captain
still strove to inflict? "Captain. There is still time to get off the ship.
We can live here. The humans are good people." The smoke was
choking her. "Will you let them find their own way?"
Grelben reared up on twos, sweeping the third limb through a
broad arc. It somehow encompassed the death and destruction on
the bridge and throughout the ship. A hacking convulsion deep in
his torso made him wobble, his upraised limb tremble, ruining the
grand gesture. "This is their way. Death is their way. So run away,
mutant, but it will do you no good.
"Before I am done, you and your disgusting freaks will experience
death on a scale beyond your wildest imaginings."
* * *
Kyle pressed a bloody cloth to his head. Darlene sat beside him,
her back, like his, braced against the hangar wall. Fire trucks were
spraying foam on and around the ship. They had had some
success containing the blaze, but the flames leaping from the
Consensus itself were growing. Blake's men ringed the ship from a
distance.
"Not bad for an amateur." Blake, who looked as spent as Kyle felt,
was on his feet and in complete charge. Several of the Delta Force
stood nearby. Whether the compliment referred to Kyle's efforts or
Andrew Wheaton's suicide attack was unclear. "You'll be pleased
to know the weapons satellites are inactive."
"That is good news." Kyle's tone belied his words. Swelk had gone
into the burning ship. Could she possibly survive?
"So are we safe now?" asked the colonel. "Is it over?"
"I don't know. Even if the aliens are dead, there are systems on
board we know nothing about." Kyle tried to think past his pain and
worry. The Krulirim had an interstellar drive, artificial gravity,
bioconverters—incredible technologies he did not begin to
understand. How could he possibly say whether the fiery
destruction of such equipment would release uncontrolled forces?
That was just one of many reasons why the plan had necessarily
been capture of the ship. Quit it, he told himself sternly. Don't
waste time on useless speculation. What can you usefully
contribute? "They have a fusion reactor. You can think of it as a
controlled thermonuclear bomb. The biggest danger may be the
reactor blowing."
"How big a problem are we talking?" Blake was amazingly matter of
fact.
"We have no way of knowing. If they're good engineers, though,
there will be safety shutdowns." Kyle's head throbbed as
secondary explosions wracked the starship. "Be happy for one
difficulty we don't have. Swelk knew that their reactor fused helium-
three. If they'd used hydrogen isotopes, like our experimental
fusion reactors, we'd have faced an enormous explosion. Think
Hindenberg, but much bigger—even without a nuclear event."
A commando had appeared at Blake's side. "Sir, you should see
this. It was found on the tarmac near the command trailer."
This was Swelk's pocket computer. No sooner had Kyle
recognized it than it spoke. "Captain. Come away."
"Swelk," answered a second voice. "I trust we have you to thank for
our difficulties. It does not matter. Your freaks are doomed."
"I remember," whispered Darlene. "Swelk had hidden a pocket
computer on the bridge. That's how she determined what the
plotters were up to."
"Right." Kyle tried to recall everything he'd learned or surmised
about Krulchukor computing. What he called Swelk's computer
was more—it was also a communications device. All such
computers on the Consensus were wirelessly networked. The
Krulchukor magnetic sense was indifferent to radio frequencies,
just as human eyes were indifferent to ultraviolet light. And with
inner and outer airlocks doors open, the ship's wireless network
must now extend onto the airfield. They were near enough for the
device hidden on the bridge to network with the unit Swelk had
dropped—a unit still set to translate to English.
"Before I am done, you and your disgusting freaks will experience
death on a scale beyond your wildest imaginings."
* * *
"Congratulations, by the way,"
Swelk felt the captain's scrutiny. She was covered with burns,
oozing fluids from countless scrapes and burns. "For what?"
"For a successful escape. For surviving this long." Grelben
seemed indifferent to the state of the alarm panel, where lights
were increasingly switching from crisis purple to an even more
ominous Off. Panels and consoles around the bridge sprayed
sparks. He coughed, choked by smoke, fire suppressant, and
unknowable fumes. "For the cleverness of your bilat friends."
"System integrity at risk. Redundant equipment failures. Safety
shutdown of reactor in three-cubed seconds." The ceiling
speakers crackled and hissed.
"I could override the shutdown. It would turn this side of the
continent into a large hole."
"No! Do not do that. You must not do that!"
"Why not?" Grelben whistled in amusement at her. "This ship was
everything to me. Look at it now."
"The humans should not suffer for what I have done. I brought us
here." Her thoughts raced, even as she felt her body succumbing
to the heat and toxic gases and injuries. "If you want someone to
blame, it should be me." She had been so proud of herself for
spotting Earth's broadcasts. She had done everything in her power
to convince him to bring the Consensus here. That Grelben had
agreed for his own dishonorable reasons did not mitigate her
responsibility. The depth of her presumption stunned her. How
arrogant it had been to undertake a personal exploration of Earth
rather than report her findings to the authorities on Krulchuk. Pride
blinds the eyes, her old nurse liked to say. Swelk's pride had
caused all this.
"Safety shutdown of reactor in two three-squared seconds."
"I blame you. You do not need to doubt that." A rumble deep in the
ship made his words hard to hear. "What say you? Would you like
to go out with a bang?"
"Captain, please let the reactor shut down safely." Her hearts
pounded in fear, in guilt, in dismay. The mass murder Grelben
envisioned was, like Rualf's stage-managed war, almost too large
to grasp. One way or another, she knew she was dying, and
another extinction also clutched at her. "Let the crew escape. I
lived here—all it takes is standard bioconverters. They can live
here, too. You can live here."
"Safety shutdown of reactor in three-squared seconds."
"A captain without his ship? I do not think so." He clenched all the
digits of an extremity in violent negation. "Nor will, I think, sane
Krulirim follow your example."
She had to keep him talking. A few more seconds, and the
shutdown would be complete. Amid so many crashed systems, the
reactor could not possibly be reactivated, to become once more a
threat. "Let that . . ." A wave of smoke erupted onto the bridge,
gagging her. She hacked and coughed, unable to speak. Would
she fail, in the end, simply from an inability to get out the words?
With a violent rasp, she spit out the pitiful remainder of her
argument. " . . . be their decision."
"Safety shutdown of reactor in three seconds . . . two . . . one."
"Get out of here," coughed Grelben.
"Reactor shut down. Plasma has been vented."
* * *
Swelk groped through smoke-obscured corridors as fire crackled
within the walls. Had her feeble words in the end swayed the
captain? Whatever the reason for his forbearance, she was
grateful. But she could not forget his taunt: Nor will, I think, sane
Krulirim follow your example.
Could she not avoid the guilt of the whole crew's death? Revenge
of the Subconscious flashed into her mind. Was she not the
monster? She lived apart from her people—of necessity, she
always told herself, but was that entirely true? Did she relish her
uniqueness? There was no denying that her personal actions had
brought a shipload of her kind here. Brought them to a world of
bilats, who—however justifiably—were now slaughtering the
Krulirim. She had to convince the ship's survivors to escape with
her.
Swelk turned from her path toward the zoo hold to save her
people.
* * *
Grelben tripped and fell over a body in the almost impenetrable
smoke, the impact knocking the wind from him. Inhaling reflexively,
his lungs filled with noxious fumes. He retched repeatedly crawling
through the murk for an emergency respirator.
Limbs weak and shaking, he regained a secure position on his
command seat. He removed the breather from his mouth. "Status
comm." His rasping voice was no longer understandable. "Status .
. . comm," he repeated with exaggerated enunciation. The
hologram that formed was too attenuated by smoke to be read.
"Flat . . . screen . . . mode." He leaned toward the display, bending
a sensor stalk until it almost touched the flat surface. Comm
remained, in theory, operational. He could send a message with
any antenna he did not mind losing in seconds to the flames
gripping the hull. "Command . . . file . . . 'Clean . . . Slate.' "
Sucking oxygen again from the respirator, he recalled with
amusement Swelk scuttling to what she considered safety. The
mutant believed she had dissuaded him. Well, in a way, she had.
She had convinced him that the quick death of a fusion explosion,
for her and those who had abetted her, was too kind. So there had
been no need to keep the reactor hot while he finished his other
business. "File . . . open." A deep breath from the respirator.
"Send . . . file."
* * *
"Help me up." Kyle's unaided attempts at verticality were feeble.
"Hurry."
Blake grabbed his outstretched arm and tugged. "You should be
seeing a doctor. From our minimal acquaintance, though, I sense
you're not big on taking advice."
Kyle ignored him. "Dar, help me out to the ship."
"Sergeant," bellowed Blake. He waved to a woman in a Humvee.
"Drive my friends."
Darlene helped him into the low-slung truck, and seconds later, out
again. They joined the soldiers who surrounded the wreckage, and
the fire crews who had contained the blaze. They made no attempt
to douse the ship itself. Kyle could not find fault with their decision
not to endanger whatever firefighting mechanisms were built into
the vessel. "This is too reminiscent of the night I met Swelk. Her
death in the flames of the very ship she had successfully escaped
. . . it's so awful. I can't help but picture Rualf laughing mockingly."
"Convincing the captain to let the reactor shut down . . . she saved
our lives, the lives of untold millions. She really is a hero."
"I know."
He could no more stand still here, baking in the intense heat of the
fire, than he'd been able to sit and watch from across the concrete
apron. He started limping around the ship; Darlene followed in
silence. There was a second open airlock. Through heat shimmers
and smoke he saw motion within. Survivors? Were they afraid to
come out? "Hand me Swelk's computer. Come out. You will not be
harmed." The computer emitted the vowelless noise with which it
always spoke to Swelk—at a low volume that could not possibly be
heard inside the ship. "Computer, maximum sound level." It
babbled back, no louder than before. "Computer, as loud as
possible." Repeated paraphrasings had no effect.
What else could he try? Yelling. Perhaps it would translate louder if
he spoke louder—and so it did. "Come out! You will not be
harmed!" The Krulchukor equivalent, a vowelless eruption, burst
forth. Moments later, two metal containers were flung from the
open airlock.
"Don't shoot!" hissed Kyle to the startled commandos. The
devices were clones of Swelk's bioconverters. The translation of
these words, hopefully, was too soft to be heard inside. "Come
out!" he screamed again.
* * *
Rualf struggled to remain upright, dazed by the latest explosion to
rock the Consensus. Smaller blasts sounded throughout the ship.
Smoke thickened even as he marveled, stupefied, at the disaster.
The hatch into the heart of the ship flapped between half- and full-
open, its motorized mechanism thudding in abrupt reversals,
unable to respond to fire both inside and out. With a spectacular
tearing sound, the machinery stopped.
A gale whistled through the hold, sucked through the gaping airlock
and stoking the spreading blaze like a bellows. The open airlock . .
. that was his only hope of escape. He had a vague recollection of
someone telling him so. Had one of the crew, or of his troupe,
already come through here? No—whoever it was had gone into the
ship. Some foolish hero type. He stumbled, limbs still quivering
from what must have been a human weapon, toward the lock.
An impossibly loud feminine voice shouted from outside. "Come
out. You will not be harmed." Had humans learned to speak like
Krulirim? How could that be? Somehow, the thundering voice was
familiar.
Swelk!
The Krul who had gone past him, gone deeper into the ship . . . it
was she. She was the reason the humans knew to stage a scene
he could not resist filming. To bait a trap. The impossibly loud
command, doubtless synthesized by Swelk's computer, nearly
paralyzed him with fear. What would the humans do to him if he fell
into their power?
A wave of coughing came over him. He was dead if he stayed
here. But if he were the only survivor . . . the humans would not
know he was the one responsible for directing their photogenic
self-destruction. He waded through smoke to the interior hatch with
its broken motorized controls. The hatch that had inconveniently
frozen half open. There was an access panel beside the controls;
he flipped it open to get at the manual crank. Wheezing, he worked
until the heat-warped door was fully shut—then he jammed the
mechanism. The wind whistling inward from the lock, due to fire-
fed suction into the ship, died abruptly as the hatch slammed shut.
Time for his escape. He groped toward the beckoning airlock, low
to the deck where the air was slightly fresher. Fodder, animal shit,
the Girillian ferns they had started synthesizing for the animals to
shit on . . . stuff was piled everywhere, and more and more of it
was burning.
He was forgetting something. Escape to what? He could not
survive without Krulchukor food. These beasts ate synthesized
food, surely. Behind a cage he spotted what must be
bioconverters. Gripping with one limb the handles of two heavy
synthesizers, he dragged them, awkwardly, to the airlock. He flung
them outside, and went for more.
"Come out!"
Something monstrous emerged from the smoke, as though
summoned by the imperious demand. A bilateral head on a thick
neck towered over him, like a ghost of the F'thk. Rualf had just
recognized it for a Girillian creature when it knocked him over.
Massive hooves pressed him into the metal deck. Agony washed
through him—but to lose consciousness now was to die. As he
tried to lever himself upright, a Girillian carnivore ran over him. It
was smaller than the first animal, but its feet were studded with
talons. Rualf collapsed, screaming, to the floor. Thick smoke filled
his lungs.
As Rualf lay quivering, limbs splayed, bleeding and coughing,
battered and bruised, apparition after apparition burst from the
smoke and flames. The biggest were deep within the hold, as if
herding the rest. He sprawled, helpless, as creature after creature
stomped and slashed him, each encounter inflicting new anguish.
The last thing Rualf ever saw was the huge flat foot of a
swampbeast descending upon the center of his torso, directly over
his sensor stalks.
* * *
The commandos flinched as a six-legged creature leapt from the
open airlock. Only that moment of surprised nonrecognition saved
the animal. "Hold your fire!" yelled Kyle. As Swelk's simulated
voice reverberated from starship and hangars, he searched for and
found on the computer what he hoped was its microphone. He
covered the aperture with his thumb. "Hold your fire!" Muffled, the
repetition went untranslated. He'd seen such a creature before—in
a hologram projected by this very computer. "It's a zoo animal.
There may be more."
Animal after animal appeared out of the smoke and flames. They
retreated in confusion from burning ship and human building, lost
and confused, huddling together. If the Girillian menagerie
included predator and prey—and Kyle was almost certain from
Swelk's tales that it did—the xenobeasts were too overwhelmed to
care. He'd never quite believed the stories of terrestrial predators
and prey fleeing peacefully side by side from forest fires—now all
skepticism vanished. "Call the National Zoo. We need
gamekeepers, pronto."
"Swampbeasts. They're beautiful." Darlene's voice was quietly
awestruck. She pointed, quite unnecessarily, at two magnificent,
web-footed animals that stood about eight feet tall. They were the
last to emerge from the airlock now impenetrably thick with smoke.
She gently took Swelk's computer from Kyle's hand. Walking
slowly toward the knot of shivering animals, she crooned, "Smelly.
Stinky. Smelly. Stinky." The computer repeated something after
her, softly. The swampbeasts pushed forward. Bowing their heads,
they approached cautiously, eyes wide and staring. They brushed
their enormous heads against Darlene's outstretched hand, then
settled to their knees beside her.
Swelk's computer did not translate "humph," but that was okay.
They understood what it meant.
* * *
Swelk coughed and spat, splattering a smoke-blackened clot of
blood against the bulkhead. The clot sizzled. Despite the fire-
suppressant sprays, fire was everywhere. Her skin was blistered.
Her extremities had been so repeatedly scorched that she no
longer felt them.
The initial fireball had burst through the open hold where Rualf and
his troupe had been working, killing everyone. She had no idea why
the hatch to the ship's interior, never unlocked when she was
aboard, was now wide open. The ship's corridors had channeled
the fire and blast, catching most of the crew at their posts. The
draft from the second airlock had deflected the fireball from parts
of the ship, sparing the bridge from the worst of it.
And saving her Girillian friends.
She had explored the Consensus from end to end, and there were
no survivors. She omitted Grelben from her tally. He would surely
refuse to leave the ship. Captain's prerogative. Captain's curse.
Captain's penance, too, she considered, still unable to wish upon
him, or anyone, death in this manner.
She had been lost repeatedly in the smoke, been saved more than
once by providential discoveries of emergency respirators. Their
capacity was limited, and she'd left a trail of empties behind her on
her trek. She finally found her way to the hatch that led to the zoo
hold and safety.
The entrance was shut and inoperative.
Frantically, she tore open the access panel to get at the manual
override. The crank stuck after a quarter turn. Crying in frustration,
she tugged and tugged. It would not budge.
The corridor grew ever hotter. Gagging, Swelk limped to the cargo
hold where the fire had begun. The flames there remained
impenetrable to vision, let alone passage. She could not get off the
ship. She turned inward, stumbled to the bridge, feeling herself
roasting.
"I did not expect to see you again." The captain was slumped
across his command seat, his limbs and sensor stalks limp. A
command console behind him flashed insistently.
Swelk could not see the console—the flashing was an alarm of
some kind, she assumed—but its light pulsed luridly through the
thick, billowing smoke. "No Krul should die alone."
Grelben winced at her words. "You are a better Krul than I give you
credit for." When she did not comment, he added, "You are a
better Krul than many of us.
"Let me show you something. Look closely; the outside sensors
burn off in seconds when I expose them." A gagging fit interrupted
whatever explanation he was trying to make. He gestured at a flat
display. "Section . . . three . . . two . . . two . . . camera . . . on."
Swelk peered through swirling smoke into the little display, flat like
a human television. A sense of warmth, totally unrelated to the fires
ravaging the starship, suffused her. The Girillian animals, her
friends, were wandering on the airfield. There was no mistaking the
two who were settled calmly beside Darlene: Smelly and Stinky. As
the swampbeasts extended their long necks to be touched, the
image dissolved into a blizzard of static.
"Sorry, Swelk. That's my last outside sensor."
They sat—together—in companionable silence until
consciousness faded from them.
* * *
Except for smoke and hungry flames, all that moved on the bridge
of the Consensus was the text still blinking on the command
console.
Clean Slate acknowledged.
THE LAND OF DARKNESS
CHAPTER 30
The garments and skin colors varied with the architectural
backdrops, but the scenes were otherwise depressingly alike.
Seething seas of humanity: fists shaking, faces contorted in anger,
mouths agape in angry chanting. Desecrated flags—usually
American, with a scattering of Russian. Hand-lettered
signs—always in English—denouncing the two great nuclear
powers. Uncle Sam in effigy, hung or aflame or trampled
underfoot.
Why isn't anything Russian ever hung in effigy? wondered Harold
Robeson. An effigy bear, maybe? Hal, isn't there something more
productive you could be thinking about?
There was a hesitant tap. His secretary was befuddled by his
blowing off a long-scheduled confab with a key senator, for no
apparent reason other than navel gazing. "Yes, Sheila."
A mass-of-black-curls head poked through a barely ajar door into
the Oval Office. "Secretary McDowell to see you, sir."
Nathan McDowell, the secretary of state, was a short, pudgy fellow,
his acne-scarred face dominated by a plug nose and a scruffy
goatee. He evidently went out of his way to find ill-fitting suits,
which he then had professionally rumpled. The contrast of his
dishevelment with his ten-steps-ahead thinking could not have
been starker. "Mr. President."
They were alone, old friends who'd met as Marine lieutenants in
Nam. The formality was ominous. He pointed at a chair. "Take a
load off. What's up, Nate?"
Ignoring the invitation, Nate studied the muted monitors. "Basking
in the appreciation of our fellow citizens of Earth?"
"I never expect appreciation, but is holding down the stupidity so
much to ask?"
"Not stupid, Hal, only ill-informed. Reacting to dashed hopes." His
friend paused, hands clasped behind his back, watching the
chanting mobs. "Do you know how many billion people on this
Earth live in grinding poverty? How many have yet to use a phone?
"The arrival of the Galactics was a big deal to them." McDowell
gestured at the screens. "In some ways, more than for the
advanced countries. These people are taught—with some
justification—to blame the major powers for colonialism and Cold
War proxy wars, for the banking panics that periodically crush their
economies, for global warming. The Galactics stood for hope.
They promised new wonders for Earth. The poorest on our planet
had the most to gain, while the envied, and sometimes hated, First
World was revealed in its technological shortcomings.
"Now we and the Russians have taken all that away."
"What hope?" Robeson pounded what had once been Teddy
Roosevelt's desk. "Dammit, Nate, the aliens were genocidal. We
and the Russians, the ones being reviled in Cairo and Beijing, in
Caracas and Lagos and wherever, we saved the world from
megadeaths, to be followed by radioactive fallout and maybe
nuclear winter. We suffered hundreds of casualties stopping it all."
"So we say." McDowell raised his hand. "Don't shoot the
messenger. If you're a subsistence farmer or sweatshop worker in
a Third World hell hole, would you believe aliens came from
another star to meddle in human politics?"
"You think we should have revealed the aliens tried to destroy us
for their movie?"
"Despite being the truth, that is even less believable. What's our
evidence? Shot-up F'thk robots just prove the aliens were wise not
to leave their ship in person. Swelk's debriefing videos? Since her
responses came from a translator gadget, anyone skeptical will
'know' the tapes were dubbed." Nate shook his head. "How many
Americans believe the Apollo landings were staged? No, the
Krulirim first-level deception—that balance-of-power issues in their
Galactic Commonwealth made Earth expendable—remains our
best bet. There are lots of countries whose politicians were part of
the F'thk whispering campaign."
"Do these fools think Atlantis blew itself up, that our early-warning
satellites spontaneously fried themselves? Why, in God's name,
do they suppose we attacked the aliens?"
McDowell finally settled into a chair. "You know why, Hal,
unpalatable as it sounds. For very good reasons, we and the
Russians mock-waged Cold War II. For our gambit to succeed,
that mutual hostility had to be believable—and it was. We have the
casualties to prove it. You can't expect everyone to suddenly
believe we were kidding.
"Details vary from version to version, but here's what most people,
including Americans, think. The Twenty-Minute War was our
misguided attempt to turn Cold War Two hot. Radioactively hot.
Benevolent aliens did their best to protect Earth from our folly,
downing our missiles and slagging launching sites. In retaliation, or
to disrupt the alien meddling, we killed the ETs we could reach.
The other aliens, those aboard the moon-orbiting mother ship, left
in disgust."
Robeson jammed his hands into his pockets—the President can't
be seen plopping his head wearily into his cupped hands, not even
by his oldest confidant. Too bad. "If the aliens are the heroes, what
do the rioters think holds us back now? We have plenty of missiles
left."
"They think," said McDowell, "we came momentarily to our senses.
And that they'd better keep our minds focused." A muted screen
changed scenes, from the humanity-filled Tiananmen Square to
the besieged American embassy in Jakarta. "Or that the quasi-
coup in Moscow cooled things down."
Robeson shivered. It had been so close. Dmitri Chernykov had
failed in the first requirement of an officeholder: knowing how
secure was his grip on power. He was supposed to have had
another few days before the nationalists made their move. "Will
their new coalition hold?"
"Nam was simpler, wasn't it?" McDowell was standing again,
holding a Marine Corps-era snapshot of them he'd taken off a
bookshelf. "Ending a firefight unshot and uncaptured meant things
were fine." He put back the photo. "My Russia experts say the
power-sharing pact may be stable. The nationalists in the coalition
seem fervently to believe the credible disinformation about a
shooting war. In their eyes, Chernykov is a hero for lobbing nukes
at us. That said, near-immolation is a bit scary. They're content to
let things simmer down. America, goes the current thinking, knows
better now than to try pushing around Mother Russia."
"Meaning Chernykov must pretend belligerence. It keeps getting
better." Robeson took a bottle of spring water from the well-
concealed mini-refrigerator. "Something for you?"
"Got anything harder?" To Robeson's glance at a clock, Nate
added, "It's late enough in London."
"What did the Brits do now? Don't tell me they don't accept the
truth." Robeson splashed liquor into a glass. His reach for the
water carafe drew a frown; he delivered the scotch neat.
Something bad was coming.
"To paraphrase a former occupant of this office, it depends what
your definition of 'accept' is. Recognize the validity of our data,
yes. Believe what we say transpired, yes." McDowell took a long
swallow. "Understand why they weren't party to the deliberations?
Show willingness to come to terms with their exclusion? Not . . . a .
. . chance."
Flashes of color outside the Oval Office window caught his eye.
The first was his visiting three-year-old granddaughter, who had,
she'd proclaimed at breakfast, dressed herself. He had to laugh.
Brittany had on lime-green pants, a maroon-and-gray plaid shirt,
and yellow sneakers. A broken kite dragged and bounced behind
her. His daughter and two Secret Service agents tagged along. He
tore his eyes away. "Go on, Nate."
"It's more than the Brits. France, Germany, Canada, Japan . . . pick
your loyal ally. They're all outraged." Another swig. "As a diplomat,
I understand. Not consulting a long-time partner is bad enough.
They don't much like the explanation: we considered telling them
what was really happening an unacceptable security risk. They
can't handle that, for the best of reasons, I grant you, we flat-out
lied to them." McDowell drained the glass. "I lied to them."
"No more than did I."
Nate stared into the empty tumbler, looking old. At long last he
said, "The difference is, you were elected."
"No." The suggestion was too horrible to consider. "You're not
resigning."
"Yes, I am. America's best friends have a real problem with us.
We've lost credibility, and only something dramatic will show our
contrition. They want proof of our remorse." McDowell poured a
refill. "It's for the greater good."
"Your resignation is not accepted. I need your help, Nate."
"Then take it. My considered opinion is I'm expendable." McDowell
waved at Brittany, skipping past the window again. "I have
grandkids, too. You'll be doing me a favor."
"I didn't become President to sacrifice my friends." In meaningless
symbolic atonement, Robeson's thoughts continued. At that
instant, he truly hated his job.
"But you will." McDowell's smile was worldly-wise, as if reading his
mind. "I don't recall the Constitution making you the planet's
guardian, either—but you are."
"Pour me a shot," Robeson said. They both knew that meant,
"Yes."
* * *
The spring day was delightful. Only a few high clouds scudded
across a blue sky. Flowering trees were in full bloom; the air was
thick with pollen; the gentle breeze was warm. Elementary-school
students streamed by, teachers and parental escorts shushing and
herding.
Nuclear war and alien Armageddon alike seemed as unreal as
snow.
"Great place," said Kyle. He sat beside Darlene on a bench at the
National Zoo, the new Girillian habitat before them. That exhibit's
popularity was in no way reduced by complete ignorance where
Girillia was. The snaking queue of tourists extended well past the
sign that read: three hours wait from this point. The adjacent Panda
House, home of the zoo's famous Chinese great pandas, was for
the first time in Kyle's knowledge without its own line.
"Lovely." Darlene brushed an errant lock of hair from her eyes.
"Swelk would've approved."
Nearby, an elephant trumpeted. A swampbeast—almost certainly
Smelly, Kyle thought—boisterously harrumphed back. Not a day
had passed since the near-apocalypse at Reagan National that he
did not think of Swelk, but visiting her charges here was especially
wrenching. "I made a promise, the day we met. She was channel
surfing at my house while I made arrangements for her. She asked
to see elephants."
"It's not your fault, Kyle."
"She specifically sought my help. If not my fault, then whose?" As
close as he and Dar had become in their grief, the silence
stretched awkwardly. Kyle found himself studying the faint lunar
crescent, scarcely visible in the day sky. "I don't know that Krulirim
ever wear shoes, but I keeping waiting for a huge boot to drop."
"They're gone, Kyle. All gone. The hologram of the mother ship
disappeared—you know this—while . . . while the ship was burning.
The satellites they left behind are inert."
He understood the catch in Dar's throat: she could as accurately
have identified that instant as just before Swelk's death. Delta
Force surveillance cameras had captured the brief appearance
amid the flames of an antenna. Much analysis later, he knew the
dish had been aimed at the moon. Something had been
transmitted: the mother ship had vanished seconds later. "In a way,
I wish we had been better able to hear those last exchanges on the
bridge." And in a way, that would have made their helpless
witnessing of Swelk's death yet more painful . . . even though it
seemed she passed away entirely at peace. "Whatever the
reason—the crackling flames, or Grelben and Swelk coughing
from the smoke, or overheating of the hidden computer through
which we eavesdropped—so much that we heard was garbled,
incomplete.
"What was in the file 'Clean Slate'? Steps to reverse however
much of the damage they could? Or some sort of doomsday
device?" Despite the balmy weather, he shivered.
"Kyle, you'll drive yourself crazy." She squeezed his hand. "Why
don't we go see the girls?" Dar had adopted Swelk's kittens, now
eight months old.
He squeezed back. "I'd like that." And I like you, though he wasn't
prepared to explore that feeling. He didn't think she was quite
ready either. But there would come a time . . .
Strolling together to the subway station, Kyle tried hard not to stare
up at the ghostly moon. On that lifeless world, so central to the
aliens' deceptions, he somehow knew Earth's future would be
determined.
CHAPTER 31
The legendary courtier Damocles is said to have reveled at a
royal banquet, oblivious to the sword suspended above him by a
single hair. Humanity, in celebrating its escape from the plot of
hostile Krulirim, may be as recklessly unobservant as was
Damocles. Like Damocles, extreme peril hangs, unnoticed, just
over our heads and beyond our reach.
—excerpt from "The Continuing Danger
from Krulchukor Artifacts"
(Classified national-security briefing to the President)
* * *
The sword of Damocles was a later conceit. The comparison with
which Kyle first vocalized his resurgent dread was less elegant,
and far less flattering to his species.
Inch-thick salmon steaks, crusted with black pepper, sizzled on the
grill. Mesquite smoke rose from a bed of perfect red-hot coals.
Chirps and warbles filled the air. An ice dam collapsed in the
chrome bucket in which a champagne bottle was chilling for the
meal, the melting cubes settling with a lyrical tinkle into new
positions.
If only things were as idyllic as they appeared.
"I like it." Britt's sweeping gaze encompassed the old fieldstone
house, the rough-surfaced redbrick terrace in massive
weathered timbers, the ranks of pine and mountain ash and
dogwood in full flower that graced the nearby hillside. Kyle's other
guests were at that moment hiking up that steep slope. "Very
calming."
"Thanks, boss." Kyle expertly flipped the salmon as he tried to
imagine a segue into what was bothering him. Darlene had
succeeded, at his instigation, in drawing those other guests, the
balance of the erstwhile crisis task force, from earshot. The more
time he spent with her, the more glaring were his own rough edges.
How would she—had she known—bring this up?
He needn't have worried.
"We've been colleagues how long?" Britt nibbled on a deviled egg.
"This is my first time here. And, no offense, you're an every-silver-
lining-has-a-cloud sort of guy . . . not to deny that your annoying
pessimism all too often turns out to be annoying realism. In short,
you're the last member of our merry band I'd expect to host a
victory party. What is this really about?"
Still unsure how to begin, Kyle pondered the salmon sizzling on the
grill. "It's like shooting fish in a barrel," he blurted. "And we're the
fish." In plain English, that was the unnerving conclusion of weeks
of confidential research.
Darlene, Erin Fitzhugh, and Ryan Bauer emerged into the clearing
on the crest of nearby Krieger Ridge. From where they stood, the
burned-out site of Swelk's arrival remained evident. All
recognizable fragments of the lifeboat had long ago been taken to
the Franklin Ridge lab. Good job, Dar: they'd be away long enough
to cover the basics.
"Would you mind elucidating, Kyle?"
"The Krulchukor weapon platforms. They're orbiting over our
heads, beyond our reach. They're quiescent, but we can't know
what may set them off again." Now that the topic was broached, icy
calm settled over him. He was as certain of this analysis as any
work he'd ever done. "Ever ask Ryan about his fear of flying?"
"Care to pick up the pace? I imagine you arranged our friends'
absence to speak alone with me. They'll surely be back for dinner
soon."
Guilty as charged. "The masersats have been quiet since the
destruction of the Consensus. We've taken that to mean the
starship controlled them. No starship, no threat. But that was only
inference. People at the lab have been poring over the records
from that day. We can't interpret the radio signals from the
Consensus, but there is no obvious time correlation between
messages and maser blasts. We witnessed several smooth hand-
offs of attack roles as Earth's rotation took some satellites out of
line-of-sight of their targets. And we now know the masersats didn't
all stop shooting at once." Kyle suppressed an irrelevant twinge of
cognitive dissonance at calling the tactical transfers hand-offs.
Krulirim did not exactly have hands.
"And this means?"
"It suggests that the satellites have autonomous capability. That
worries me. And we can see from Swelk's translation program, and
dealings with the F'thk robots, that Krulirim have better language-
understanding software than humans. Natural language
understanding is one of the largely unmet challenges of artificial-
intelligence research. The observations all confirm Swelk's claims
of widespread AI usage at home, technology far beyond anything
we have."
A wind gust riffled Britt's hair as he thought. "Then why did the
masersats stop firing? What would make them start again?"
"Now I'm drawing my own inferences. There might have been
multiple causes for the halt. First, we were attacking the masersats
as best we could. We probably damaged or destroyed a few.
Meanwhile, and second, some masersats might just have hit all
their preprogrammed targets. Before stopping, they'd already
destroyed our and the Russians' experimental ground-based
ABM/antisatellite laser facilities. They'd obliterated the International
Space Station"—thankfully abandoned since shortly after the
Atlantis disaster—"and far too many other satellites. They'd nailed
dozens of ICBMs in flight, missiles we'd retasked as antisatellite
weapons, then fried the silos those rockets launched from." Kyle
scowled in remembrance of the casualties.
"Point three. The masersats are solar-powered. Even one
microwave blast uses lots of stored energy. Infrared observations
during the assault suggest some masersats were temporarily
drained. They would have had to recharge before they could fire
again.
"The Krulirim didn't expect our ambush. My hypothesis is that the
masersats were in an automatic self-defense mode. Once they hit
all preprogrammed targets"—like, presumably, the innocent, sitting
duck of a space station—"and once we stopped providing targets
of opportunity by firing at them, there was nothing obvious left to
shoot at. Who knows what activity, what overheard radio chatter,
AIs on the satellites might interpret, or misinterpret, as threatening?
Who's to say under what circumstances they can self-designate
new targets?"
Kyle rushed on. "And we still don't know the meaning of 'Clean
Slate.' Or what the Krulirim did on the moon. We must go there, we
have to."
Britt's beer stein shattered on the patio. Kyle stared. His boss
never lost his temper.
"No." Widened eyes revealed Britt's self-amazement. "Kyle, there
are limits."
"But we don't . . ."
"I said, no. Do you honestly believe Nate McDowell wants to retire
right now? Do you understand what happens when a billion
overseas consumers boycott American corn and fast food and
computers and movies?"
Kyle's other guests crossed a glade halfway down the hill.
Whatever he'd done wrong, he had to make amends. Quickly. He
did a mental rewind. "A moon program isn't affordable?"
"Not politically. Not economically." Kneeling, Britt began to collect
bits of glass. "I apologize for my outburst."
"It's all right." But it wasn't. How dire were circumstances? Take
something when you can't have everything. The advice that
popped into his head could have come from Britt's years of
mentoring, or Dar's more recent influence. It wasn't his normal
approach to problems.
"Britt, excuse me. Forget I mentioned the moon, and we'll get back
to certainties. The aliens eavesdropped on us by satellite. Their
software translated and interpreted what they overheard. And our
most optimistic projections say we disabled fewer than half the
masersats."
Erin, Ryan, and Darlene made known their imminent return in an
outburst of laughter. Erin Fitzhugh roared the loudest, no doubt
relishing her own raunchy joke. A grinning Ryan Bauer followed her
from the woods, waggling the beer emptied during the brief hike.
Darlene appeared last, looking sheepish.
"Enjoy your meals, folks." Britt straightened, a cupped hand
holding a carefully arranged mound of glass shards. His confident
manner belied his earlier, unwonted anger. "It looks like we have
work yet ahead of us."
* * *
Darlene blushed at another peal of laughter, as Britt, Ryan, and
Erin made their ways to their cars. She made a production of
dumping paper plates and plastic utensils into the trash—it kept her
back to the hall from which Kyle, having escorted the others, would
reappear. As she dawdled, crunching gravel marked the departure
of vehicles.
"Thanks again for the help." Kyle had stopped in the doorway. "For
the side dishes and getting me time alone with Britt."
Damn that Erin Fitzhugh. Darlene began scraping serving bowls.
"My pleasure."
"Leave those. That's above and beyond the call of duty. You've got
a long drive, too."
She puttered a little longer at the sink, until she felt her face was no
longer red. Frantic scratching at the patio door gave her a good
excuse to turn. She'd brought the kittens for the day. "Mind if I let in
Blackie?" Stripes was already ramming around inside.
"Sure." Pregnant pause. "On the back forty before dinner . . . why
all the cackling?"
She was a trained diplomat, and she could surely spin, digress, or
weasel her way out of any admission. But this wasn't work; maybe
she'd play it straight. Wiping damp hands on her jeans, she
swiveled to face him. "How shall I put this? Erin speculated
somewhat colorfully about the . . . closeness . . . of our friendship."
"I can imagine how delicately she made the suggestion." Kyle
grimaced. "If you don't mind my asking, Dar, what was your
response?"
She hadn't dignified Fitzhugh's gibe with an answer. Darlene
crouched to scratch Blackie between the ears. The kitten was a
gangly teenager now. Swelk loved the cats—and she'd never see
them grow up. Darlene fought back tears.
Life was too short to always play it safe. They kept skirting the
edge of a deeper relationship, and then shying away. As Erin
would have said, screw this. "I defended your virtue."
"Ouch! You sure know how to hurt a guy."
Saying nothing is an old ploy for making the other person say
more. She said nothing for a long time. The moon peeked over the
ridge, cool silver light streaming through the patio doors.
"And you said nothing I didn't deserve." He crossed the room and
kissed her. "The moon is beautiful tonight. Let's sit outside for a
while."
CHAPTER 32
In his heart of hearts, the campaign that began at Kyle's barbecue
was Project Swelk. Not only, he liked to think, would his friend have
approved, the private name also befit the plan having three stages.
The plan's final part, however, was something best unarticulated . .
. at least for now. His reticence left unchallenged Ryan Bauer's
proposed code name: Project Clear Skies.
Today was a big day in the execution of Phase One.
Kyle sensed the weight of the mountain, deep within whose bowels
the command center was burrowed. It wasn't claustrophobia, which
had never afflicted him. No, his awareness of the vast bulk of
Cheyenne Mountain manifested itself in feelings of safety. Easily a
billion tons of rock separated him from the masersats—reassuring
despite his conviction that today's activities could draw no hostile
attention here. The imagery he so eagerly awaited was being
collected by passive sensors scattered around the globe. Much of
the comm link from each telescope and instrument to these
underground warrens traversed buried, military-use-only—which
was to say, supposedly untrackable and unhackable—optical
fibers.
If you're so confident, Kyle, why is that gigaton of shielding
overhead so comforting?
He was in a VIP viewing area, whose glass front formed the top
half of the rear wall of the space control center. Fingering his tie
nervously—he was in a suit; his three companions were Air Force
officers, and in uniform—Kyle scanned the tiers of workstations
below, and the men and women laboring intently at their terminals.
An enormous, flat-screen display dominated the front of the control
center. The screen showed a world map, overlaid with the ground
tracks of orbits of interest. Bright spots on the ground tracks
marked the current positions of specific satellites. All but one orbit
shown was for alien weapons platforms. The side walls held
lesser, but still impressively large, displays. Those were currently
blank.
Space Control, one of six major operations in the NORAD
complex, kept tabs on everything in near-Earth space. Satellites
operational and otherwise, spent upper stages of rockets that had
launched those satellites—and debris from rockets that had
exploded in the attempt, tools dropped on manned orbital missions
. . . all in all, there were thousands of objects to be watched.
NORAD did not reveal just how small an item it could detect, but
they did, from time to time, warn NASA and commercial satellite
owners to tweak a mission's orbit because a bit of space junk
would otherwise pose a hazard.
There was an intercom button in the frame retaining the wall of
glass. Bethany Johnson, the brigadier general commanding the
21st Space Wing, with responsibilities including Cheyenne
Mountain Air Force Station, pressed it. "Five minutes. Look sharp,
people." She was a wiry black woman of average height, with wide-
set eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. Johnson had none of
Bauer's ex-pilot, good-ole-boy swagger; she'd risen through Air
Force ranks on the unglamorous logistical side until Space
Command began offering operational opportunities to women. Her
demeanor conveyed endless determination. Releasing the button,
she turned to Kyle and Ryan Bauer, her guests. "Any requests for
the auxiliary screens?"
"Can you project our wayward satellite and the target?" Kyle asked.
"Absolutely, optically and in pseudocolored IR view. No radar, of
course . . . by your rules. We wouldn't want to risk your AIs, should
they be real, knowing we're watching." This particular masersat was
visible to radar, although it hadn't been before the Twenty-Minute
War. That this bird appeared on radar was one more reason to
believe it was out of commission. Johnson nodded to her aide,
who whispered urgently into his headset mike.
The side screens came alive. On Kyle's right appeared an
unmanned spacecraft of obvious human design: gold-foil-covered
(except for its solar-cell wing) and boxy, with nozzles and
instruments and antennas jutting in all directions. The telescopic
image was blurry, details lost to atmospheric shimmer. A picture-in-
picture shot rendered the same satellite as imaged by infrared
sensors. The computer-generated colors were indicative of
incident sunlight absorbed by the satellite and reradiated, and of
heat generated and emitted by internal operations. The satellite
jittered and tumbled, the flames from random firings of attitude jets
unmistakable in the IR view. Only in close-up were the tumbling
and corkscrewing motions visible; at the coarse resolution of the
front screen, the satellite's blue track was arrow-straight.
"Thanks," said Kyle. The left screen showed another spacecraft,
whose flowing curves screamed of an alien origin. The hull had
paired bulbous sections, suggesting the segmented body of an
insect. The sections struck him as subtly mismatched, as though
dissimilar machines had been fused. Whether that perception had
any validity, he couldn't begin to guess. But forget guessing—the
operation culminating today was part of a systematic process. In
due course, if all went according to plan, an artifact like this would
become available for dissection.
And Captain Grelben's plans? If Kyle had miscalculated, today's
actions would trigger dormant Krulchukor AIs. The Atlantis fireball
came unbidden to his mind's eye. Packed jumbo jets were as
vulnerable to masers. Was it wiser to let sleeping weapons of
mass destruction lie?
The Krulchukor satellite also tumbled slowly. Its wings, presumed
power-generating solar panels, met the hull at quite different
angles. "The masersats don't all look bent, do they?"
"Only a few are asymmetric; the irregularities that do occur all
differ," said Ryan. "Best guess is it's battle damage. The laser
probably wasn't on one spot long enough to sever a strut, just to
soften it. And check out the IR view, how the bent wing's surface
radiates heat so unevenly. I'm guessing our Russian buddies
melted some solar cells."
That would be before another alien satellite slagged the Russian
ground-based ABM laser. They were rehashing familiar facts,
running out the clock. Kyle's stomach churned. His head swiveled
from image to image: target and probe.
"Colonel," said Johnson to her aide. "Three minutes to closest
approach. Would you do a synopsis for our guests?"
"Yes, sir!" Arnold Kim, a Korean-American with close-cropped gray
hair, towered over his commanding officer. "General Bauer, Dr.
Gustafson, we'll start on the main screen. You see seven parallel
tracks, running pole to pole." On the display, those tracks tipped
about twelve degrees to the north-south axis—the effect on the
ground track of Earth's rotation. "Each orbit has three enemy
satellites, equally spaced, appearing on their track as colored dots.
The orbits are also evenly separated; that's one every fifty-one and
change degrees of longitude. All twenty-one satellites circle at the
same altitude, about twenty-three hundred miles. Every spot on
Earth is in sight of several weapon platforms at all times."
The scenario was familiar: VIPs visit from Washington, and the
attention-starved assistant belabors the obvious. Killing time was
one thing; missing the action—even though everything was being
captured for replay—was another. The translucent timer
superimposed over Antarctica decremented below two minutes.
"I've got it, Colonel. Green dots for satellites believed to be
disabled, like that one." Kyle pointed. "Red dots for enemy
satellites thought still to be dangerous." As the next encounter will
be . . . if we get that far. "Yellow for the birds we're unsure of. That
includes the three that have never been seen to fire, presumed
defective."
"Yes, sir." The tone conveyed disappointment at thunder stolen.
Ryan Bauer glowered disapprovingly at Kyle. Too brusque,
interpreted Kyle. By way of amends, he tossed out a question for
which he needed no answer—and for which the reply should be
brief. "But the blue track, Colonel, on the intersecting path across
the alien orbits?"
"Our innocent, helpless visitor, sir."
"Sixty seconds." The advisory came over the intercom,
presumably from someone in the control room beneath.
Kim whispered again into his mike. Sensors monitoring the
satellites panned back; the spacecraft now appeared together in
the side displays. Both spacecraft tumbled, the boxy one also
jittering about seemingly at random. It defied mere human abilities
to extrapolate whether a collision would occur—although, on the
world map, the blue and green dots had merged. A text window
popped up in a corner of the close-up, the value thus revealed
dancing up and down without leaving the vicinity of ninety percent.
The inset infrared view of the alien craft stayed cool—there was no
sign of masers preparing to fire.
"Thirty seconds." The numbers continued to bounce, but the trend
toward 1.000—certain collision—was unmistakable. "Twenty
seconds . . . fifteen . . . ten."
The human satellite zigged once more, impelled by yet another
seemingly random firing of an attitude jet. The spacecraft suddenly
diverged; the numbers dropped in a blur towards zero. To whistles
and claps and cheers of approval, in the viewing gallery above and
the control room below, blue and green dots on the big screen
separated.
Kyle extended a hand in congratulations to their relieved-looking
host. "Well done, General."
* * *
How many alien weapons still functioned? Were those that had
survived potentially hostile? What might induce an attack? Without
answers, it was impossible to know whether the Krulirim were, from
beyond the grave, still capable of trapping mankind on Earth.
Space missions that had come to seem routine could now provoke
truly frightening retribution. From the Atlantis explosion to the
destruction of underground missile silos, the dangers of a space-
based siege were all too apparent.
Today's maneuver had probed one of the masersats whose
behavior had changed since the Twenty-Minute War. It tumbled
along its path, where before it had maintained an orientation toward
Earth. Its looping course was slowly deviating from the orbit it had
once precisely shared with two other alien satellites—unlike those
neighbors, it no longer performed the occasional maneuvers that
would compensate for the perturbations from solar wind, lunar
drag, and slight irregularities in the Earth's mass distribution. Its
presumed solar wings no longer pivoted to track the sun, sharply
diminishing the amount of solar power it could be accumulating.
Observed by ground-based infrared sensors, it exhibited far less
variability in heat distribution than most other alien satellites. And it
had lost its one-time invisibility to radar.
If this satellite was, in fact, irreparably damaged, it ought not to
respond to a flyby. With luck, none of the undamaged masersats
would notice a flyby of this derelict, or if they did notice, consider
the close encounter reason to react. The challenge, when the
stimulus most likely to provoke an automated attack was a missile
launch, was to somehow approach their prey.
Kyle's insight had been that launch would be avoided, if (and it was
a big if) an already on-station spacecraft could be repurposed.
With Ryan Bauer's ungentle prodding, Space Command offered a
spysat. It was higher than most surveillance platforms, put there to
test technology for observations from heights unreachable by the
primitive missiles of rogue states.
The earthly concern that had motivated the expensive orbiting test
bed now seemed quaint.
The spysat had been launched scant months before the arrival of
the Consensus, with fuel for a five-year mission. It was owned by
the National Reconnaissance Office, the supersecret agency
whose very existence remained classified throughout the Cold
War. No doubt not having paid for the satellite made it easier for
Space Command to offer it up.
Kyle's scheme involved far more maneuvering than the NRO's
mission planners had had in mind—but he didn't object to
spending onboard fuel profligately. What mattered was that the
spysat's orbit was about right, that its instrument suite included an
IR sensor, and that the manufacturer had a good simulation
program for modeling the satellite's response to engine burns.
The wide separation between masersats gave ample opportunities
to send signals, without fear of detection, to human-built satellites.
Soon after Kyle's barbecue, a new navigation program was
beamed to the spysat. Two days later, the satellite's attitude jets
began firing erratically. Fuel sufficient for eighteen months' normal
orbit-tweaking was burnt in seconds, sending the spacecraft
tumbling wildly and slightly raising the apogee of its orbit. From
time to time, its onboard controls seemed to have some success
in regaining stability, in reorienting the solar panel so that the
batteries could be recharged—and then the sporadic engine firings
would resume.
The episodic engine burns, however unconventional, were not
random—but, it was hoped, observant AIs would infer equipment
failure from the satellite's haphazard course. Eighty-six and a
fraction orbits later, the wobbling satellite, its fuel half gone, had
barely missed a Krulchukor satellite showing every appearance of
inoperability.
* * *
"Phil Davis here is the wizard who coded the navigation program."
The gangly lieutenant was one of the officers General Johnson
invited to the viewing gallery after the rendezvous had passed
safely. His blue eyes, beneath a single caterpillar-like brow, darted
about the room.
"Excellent job, Lieutenant." Kyle gestured at the side display still
showing the initial target. The human spysat had receded from this
view. "Brilliant programming." Praise only made the young man's
nervous ocular motions increase. Kyle sighed inwardly: his words
were sincere. "Did you have any questions, Lieutenant?"
Davis glanced at his feet. His scuffed shoes, however unmilitary,
evidently instilled confidence. "Yes, Dr. Gustafson. I was given a
navigation problem to solve, under rather odd constraints. What,
exactly, were we hoping to accomplish?"
Short, and to the point. "We were gathering data. Your
calculations"— Kyle had in mind the probability estimate that had
briefly overlaid the scene—"showed a very high likelihood our
wobbly bird would impact the alien craft. If a functional AI were
watching, don't you think it would've gotten the masersat out of the
way before our last-moment zig?"
Cocking his head, Davis considered the alien craft. "A working AI
and control of its own propulsion. It's much the worse for wear."
"I concede that ambiguity, but the larger conclusion is unchanged.
In the Twenty-Minute War, we clobbered this thing enough that it
can't defend itself. That raises my confidence about other
masersats we thought disabled."
There was a soft knock, a pause, and the door swung partway
open. A steward backed in, tugging a squeaky-wheeled cart laden
with soda cans, bottled water, an ice bucket, and a cookie platter.
He left as unceremoniously as he'd entered.
"Healthier than my usual celebratory libations. Thanks, I guess."
Bauer grabbed a Coke. "So, Lieutenant. Will the next bit go as
smoothly?"
The attention of two generals and a presidential advisor, plus, for
all the junior officer knew, the fate of human civilization on his
narrow shoulders . . . Davis broke into a sweat. A quaver in his
voice, he pointed at the main screen. The timer still floating over
Antarctica decremented toward the next mission milestone. "Thirty
minutes, sir, and we'll know."
* * *
The commandeered NRO satellite continued its seemingly random
attitude-jet firings. Pitch, yaw, and roll slowed dramatically, without
altogether stopping. With no obvious indication of being under
control, it reduced its tumbling enough for onboard sensors to
reestablish with precision its orientation and position. Every few
seconds it took a fresh IR reading of a remote patch of the
southern Pacific.
The satellite likewise gave no overt indication when the message
for which it waited was received. It was scanning for a large fire,
unmistakable to its infrared sensor. The nonexistence of that oil-
slick blaze was unambiguous—and an absence could not be
correlated by a hostile AI with subsequent events. The nonrecall
authorized the spysat to execute the next routine in its uploaded
navigational program: rendezvous with a second orbiting alien
artifact.
The new target was armed and presumed extremely dangerous.
* * *
Through the fiber-linked, surreptitious eye of a telescope far from
Cheyenne Mountain, the hurtling spysat was seen to perform a
series of brief attitude-jet firings. Pitch, yaw, and roll largely
damped out. The men and woman in the VIP viewing room, all
spectators at this point, stared at the wavy, grainy image. The main
parabolic antenna on the spacecraft spun three times around its
mounting post.
Three rotations meant "target acquired."
"Well done, again, Lieutenant." Bauer slapped the embarrassed
young man on the back.
* * *
"Now it gets interesting." Kyle studied a side screen. This
masersat's wings looked identical; both were tipped to catch the
maximum sunlight. In the infrared view, stripes on the spacecraft
rippled and flowed, like a beast languorously flexing its muscles.
The spysat on his left had resumed its manic tumbling. Infrared
revealed more seemingly ineffectual engine firings. Sensors
caught a flurry of heat bursts, longer at first, and then trailing off to
sputtering. In the end, the solar panel pointed straight down to
Earth, twenty-three hundred miles below. It sure looked, thought
Kyle, as though the probe halted its spin with the dregs of its fuel.
Here's hoping any AI on the target agrees. In truth, the tanks
remained one-third full.
The countdown timer on the map display forecast rendezvous in
six minutes.
"What's next, Lieutenant?" Bauer perched on the edge of the
viewing room's oak table.
Davis gulped. "More waiting."
A red spot bloomed on the masersat's IR image, and the
estimated collision probability plummeted. "That hot spot's no
maser," said Bauer. "What happened?"
"It's moving," answered Kyle. "Now to answer the big question:
was it sidestepping a suspect visitor? Or was it a coincidence, an
ordinary orbit-maintenance maneuver?"
The spysat they did not dare to radio so near to its target obeyed
its programming—and the absence of an at-sea fiery abort signal.
Its engines sputtered anew, and its path changed. The collision
probability climbed. The two craft came close enough to be viewed
on the same screen.
On the spysat, fuel pumps toiled. Safety interlocks in the original
software had been overwritten from the ground, allowing pressure
to mount behind closed fuel-line valves. Other unorthodox
reprogramming had retracted the heat-dumping radiator panels.
Streaming sunlight, unfiltered by atmosphere, drove heat into the
seemingly crippled satellite. Heat seeping into the fuel tanks raised
the temperature of the contents, and the pressure of the vapors
within.
The masersat pivoted toward the approaching spacecraft.
Reddening of the IR image revealed waste heat from torrents of
power being routed. "Weapon charging." Kyle spoke more to
unclench his teeth than in expectations of conveying information.
"Something on board learns fast . . . maneuvering once didn't help,
so it's preparing more active measures."
"Funny thing." Ryan's eyes gleamed. "We can learn, too."
The spysat's earthward-hanging solar panel served as an
impromptu anchor, the gravity gradient holding steady the
satellite's orientation. Solar heat continued to flood in. When fuel-
tank pressures exceeded a preset level, the onboard computer
opened the valves.
Overpressurized fuels gushed into the attitude jets' combustion
chambers. No spark was needed—monomethyl hydrazine and
nitrogen tetroxide ignite on contact. In such over-spec quantities,
that ignition was spectacular indeed. A fireball erupted, its IR
image painfully bright. (This bang is our doing! thought Kyle. See
how you like it.) The explosion turned the NRO's expensive
satellite into tons of shrapnel.
IR sensors flared. Fragments blazed as they were blasted by the
maser. But too many pieces were headed toward the masersat,
from too close . . .
The Krulchukor satellite twitched as the wave of debris struck.
Holes gaped in the solar panels and hull. The IR view flashed and
sparkled, as metallic shards shorted out circuitry. Then the whole
room flashed crimson—the catastrophic discharge inside the
masersat of stored energy meant to be pumped out through the
masers.
When tearing eyes could again focus, no satellites were on-
screen.
Kyle steadied himself against a wall. His heart pounded. The only
change to the situational map was two dots removed. No alarms
meant no retaliatory strikes. "The bad news is, we've confirmed the
masersats have the capacity to act independently."
"The good news is, we can still, at least sometimes, out-think
them."
* * *
Eighty-seven days later, a barrage of reprogrammed ballistic
missiles, launched in a synchronized attack from safely submerged
American boomers, overwhelmed the eleven Krulchukor satellites
thought most likely still to be functional. The other ten remained
gratifyingly inert.
In condemnation of American unilateralism, sixteen nations and the
European Union recalled their ambassadors to Washington.
Overseas corporations, bowing to public outrage, cancelled high-
profile orders for American passenger jets, oil platforms and
pipelines, pharmaceuticals, and supercomputers. The immediate
human toll: another eighty thousand badly needed jobs.
As a longer-term consequence of the Second Twenty-Minute War,
the space control center at Cheyenne Mountain started tracking
thousands more bits of orbiting space junk.
CHAPTER 33
The helicopter thp-thp-thpped its way across the Los Padres
National Forest. The heavily wooded park was lush and green, the
jagged gash of the San Andreas fault unmistakable as the chopper
raced over it. Spectacular scenery and engine roar alike conspired
to preempt conversation. The burly, ruddy-faced pilot, in any case,
wasn't terribly talkative.
Kyle peered past his reflection at the countryside sliding by
beneath. The trip from Los Angeles to Vandenberg Air Force Base
was, as the crow rolled the flat tire, roughly 150 miles. The view
from the aptly designated scenic highway would have been
superb. In a simpler world, he would have loved to have driven, Dar
beside him, sharing breathtaking vistas of coastal mountains and
rocky shore.
Of course, in a simpler world, a mission this dangerous would
never have been conceived.
While he yearned for the impossible, he could hope that the roads
to VAFB not be clogged by misinformed protesters, nor half the
world's weather disrupted by El Niño. The same climatological
phenomenon that kept this forest so verdant had his wife leading a
State Department delegation from Indonesian drought zones to
Peruvian flood plains. The squall line barely visible to the west, far
out over the Pacific, might or might not be another manifestation of
El Niño. Would weather delay today's launch? Obstruction by
natural causes seemed so unfair. Wasn't it enough to face the
technological superiority of the Krulirim?
The taciturn Air Force captain flying Kyle over the protesters
pointed at something to the south. One of the Channel Islands? A
ship? A noncommittal answering grunt seemed to satisfy her. It
was just as well Kyle wasn't driving; the scenery had already lost
his attention. He could not keep his mind off his problems.
The world's problems, Dar would have insisted, not his. The point
of semantics made not a whit of difference. For five years, Kyle's
had been a lonely voice, often the only voice, championing today's
mission. For five years, he'd kept all doubts to himself—there were
enough advocates for inaction. For five years, he'd awakened each
day wondering if this were the day a growing deficit, or international
hostility, or political expediency finally overwhelmed his tenacity.
And for five years after the fiery destruction of the Consensus, the
flotilla of alien satellites circled overhead. Had they been a part of
Clean Slate? In theory they had been neutralized . . .
As the helicopter began its final descent to the VAFB airfield, Kyle
again rephrased his thoughts. After five years of preparations, he
was about to test theory with six people's lives.
* * *
Tantalizingly just beyond humanity's reach circled three failed-in-
orbit masersats. These inert satellites had gone untargeted in both
Twenty-Minute Wars. The first time, that omission had reflected
expediency—more obviously dangerous targets had drawn Earth's
fire. By the second conflict, leaving alone these three satellites was
a matter of strategic calculation.
Phase Two of Clear Skies aimed to retrieve one of those nearly
intact artifacts.
A space shuttle could take a masersat on board— if it could climb
far above its four-hundred-mile altitude limit, and if it could achieve
polar orbit. Two extraordinarily big ifs. Raising the shuttle's altitude
meant refueling it in orbit. Refueling meant somehow lofting large
amounts of fuel into space in a vessel with which the shuttle could
mate. Flight-testing a large-capacity space tanker could hardly be
done in secret.
Nor could the preparations be hidden for a new shuttle launch site.
Populated regions north and south of Florida precluded initiating
polar missions from Cape Canaveral. Another coastal location was
required. Somewhere, should the worst again happen, with ample
empty ocean to its south. Someplace like Point Arguella,
California—which, not coincidentally, lay within the borders of
Vandenberg AFB.
All this activity by a reinvigorated American space program—and
involving a launch site within a military base—was anathema to the
international community. In a world that believed—or, as in
Russia's case, where realpolitik favored pretending to
believe—that benevolent aliens had left behind orbiting guardians,
renewed astronautical ambitions by the slayers of those masersats
were intolerable.
But protests, worldwide boycotts, and the grinding recession
notwithstanding, after five arduous years of preparation, it was
finally time to execute Phase Two.
* * *
When, finally, the weather held and the Navy drove a flotilla of
seagoing protesters from the restricted seas off Point Arguella,
when at last the first manned mission ever to launch from
Vandenberg AFB rose on a bone-jarring, ear-shattering, column of
fire . . . it was tremendously, awe-inspiringly, and blessedly
anticlimactic. Kyle exited the massively blast-proofed Launch
Control Center as soon as it was safe, gazing southward until the
last faint speck of a spark disappeared. The contrail twisted and
tore as the winds along its length assailed it.
"Way to go, Endeavor!" Ryan Bauer gave Kyle a congratulatory
slug in the shoulder. The general had become a fixture at Space
Launch Complex Six (SLC-6, "Slick Six" to the locals). "I can't tell
you how good that feels."
Kyle couldn't argue. But still . . . "That was the easy part."
"What is it Britt says about you? Every silver lining has a cloud."
"I should have been on board! I could have been. Plenty of
payload specialists have been shuttle-trained in two months—I
could have afforded that." But the President had nixed it, for
"national security" reasons. Damn it.
"What payload would you have overseen, besides a stomach full
of butterflies?"
"A head full of insight about Krulirim." A seagull fluttered to a
landing by Kyle's feet. "How many of the crew have that
background?"
"None—which is why you're here. Should this mission fail, we'll
need more than ever what's in your head." Bauer grabbed Kyle's
arm, turning him until their eyes met. "Leading isn't always done
from the front. Trust me: I know what it's like to order others into
battle."
"Hopefully, it won't come to battle." Kyle swallowed hard. "But
there's plenty of risk even if the masersats stay dormant."
* * *
The cabin cruiser bounced and shuddered, bludgeoning a path
through high seas. Darlene for the umpteenth time patted her
sleeve. The Dramamine patch was still on her arm, and still
unequal to the task. With each wave crested, the boat and her
stomach fell out from under her, to return an instant later with a
bone-jarring impact. The worst of the storm, supposedly, was now
pummeling Mexico.
"I said," yelled Roone Astley, the ambassador to Costa Rica, "the
weather is much better." It was his boat, and he stood with
maddening assurance on what Darlene considered a bucking
deck. He motioned to starboard. "The sky is getting lighter."
Another lurch of the boat sent her reeling. Astley caught her before
she fell. The bite of breakfast she'd foolishly taken rose
threateningly in her gorge. Yes, the sky was brighter, which only
made more horrifying the view of the shoreline they were
paralleling. The tropical downpour whose trailing edge continued to
lash the boat had stalled for three days over the narrow Pacific
coastal strip. The rain-saturated mountainside had come rumbling
down in two.
They were nearing one more village washed away by mudslide.
Except for the occasional stone chimney, nothing but snapped tree
trunks at odd angles emerged from the muck. Pounding waves had
churned the encroaching mud into an enormous stain stretching
hundreds of yards into the ocean. Objects that thankfully could not
always be identified bobbed in the darkened sea. Many were
corpses, already bloating from decomposition. It was hard to
imagine anyone surviving the disaster. With the houses buried, she
couldn't begin to guess what the population had been. Hundreds,
surely. And they'd passed a dozen such tragedies already. "This is
horrible," she said. "You know I have emergency funds to release.
What else can the US do?"
Astley paused for a staticky announcement from the marine radio
before answering. "What the Costa Ricans urgently need is
emergency supplies and logistical support. They're getting some
from the EU and Japan. I doubt they'll take such visible aid from
us."
The hull slammed into another wave trough. Darlene staggered.
"Another government still officially enraged at us? Have we made
no progress?"
"We're still the murderers who drove away the Galactics, and with
them the secret of free fusion power." He throttled back briefly, for
reasons she was too landlubberly to understand. "They'll take our
money, of course, if we give it privately."
The worst thing was, this immense, slow-moving tropical
depression wasn't an isolated event. This year's El Niño
phenomenon was the worst in years. As America's goodwill
ambassador, she'd been traveling from catastrophe to catastrophe
for weeks. Drought and uncontrollable forest fires in the western
Pacific, storms in the eastern. How had her country fallen so low in
the world's esteem that accepting American disaster relief was an
embarrassment? And knowing what she did about the aliens . . .
the rage against the US was so unjust.
The Krulirim! Her watch confirmed a belated, jet-lagged
recollection of the date. Today was Kyle's big launch. Guiltily, she
wondered how the end of Clear Skies was going.
* * *
NASA practice for the shuttle was to separate the orbiter from its
external tank when the pairing reached ninety-seven percent of
orbital velocity. In a fuel-wasting maneuver, the manned orbiter
aimed its tank, just before that decoupling, for a dramatic
splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The logic was to safely dispose
of the tank rather than have them accumulate in orbit.
This was an Air Force mission, and the start of a new practice. The
now nearly empty tank stayed with the orbiter all the way into a
circular orbit at an altitude of 150 miles.
"Target on visual," drawled Major Tara "Windy" McNeilly, the
Endeavor's laconic pilot. Closed-circuit TV gave the ground team a
pilot-eye view of the dartlike fuel carrier being overtaken by the
orbiter. The waiting tanker—basically an unmanned and stripped
orbiter replete with fuel—had been launched from Slick Six weeks
earlier. It had been parked in a higher orbit until needed, then
lowered in preparation for Endeavor's launch. "Ten klicks."
In simpler times, the first manned launch from Vandenberg and the
first shuttle to carry its ET into orbit would have been enough
experimentation for one flight. For today's mission, the novelty had
just begun. Minute by minute, hour by hour, tension built. The
spacewalk to attach radio-controlled attitude jets to Endeavor's
about-to-be-jettisoned external tank. (Built-in thrusters would have
required extensive ET modifications and unmanned shuttle test
flights—time Kyle was reluctant to spend.) Remotely piloting the
tanker to Endeavor's now-separated ET. Docking, refueling, and
undocking—and repeating that dangerous maneuver until it was
routine. Rendezvousing again with the partially refilled ET (no
human spacecraft could carry a full ET's worth of liquid hydrogen
and liquid oxygen into orbit). Mating Endeavor with its refueled ET .
. . remembering throughout how the botched docking of a much
smaller resupply capsule had almost killed everyone aboard the
late, lamented Russian Mir.
"Piece of cake," said McNeilly as she completed the final docking.
She unbuckled and floated free in the small cabin, making
microgravity bows. Colonel Craig "Tricky" Carlisle, her restrained
mission commander, waited until the disconnect valves in both
orbiter and ET reopened before flashing thumbs-up. A middeck
camera showed four more beaming faces.
The expressions in mission control were equally happy. Kyle found
an unused mike, then shot a questioning look at the capsule
communicator, who nodded her go-ahead. "I suggest you folks get
some sleep. Your next stop is going to be really interesting."
* * *
Two astronauts floated free, the orbiter having backed off to a
distance that made tethers impractical. Puffs of compressed gas
from the backmounted MMUs, manned maneuvering units, nudged
them closer and closer to their quarry. The black, vaguely insectile
masersat absorbed most of the illumination from their helmet-
mounted lights.
"It's as we expected," said Major Anson "Big Al" Buckley. "The
wings are covered in a repeating pattern, a grid of squares
connected by fine lines. It sure looks like a solar-cell array."
"Agreed." Major Juanita Gonzalez, a woman of few words, was
cursed with the unavoidable astronaut-corps nickname of
"Speedy."
Thousands of miles away, Kyle overcame the urge to scream with
impatience. Solar cells weren't today's issue. "Can you fold the
wings?" CAPCOM relayed the question. The masersats could not
have exited the cargo-bay airlocks of the Consensus unless the
struts folded—nor could one fit aboard Endeavor with its wings
extended.
"Negative on that. No visible hinges, buttons, switches, or cranks."
On the telephoto view broadcast from the Endeavor, only a tiny
gap appeared between Buckley and the satellite. From the
camera's frame of reference, the astronaut was floating on his
head.
"I'm stumped," admitted Gonzalez. "I'm clueless how the twenty-
seven-toed buggers fold the wings."
The spacewalkers tried a few tentative pushes and shoves, to no
avail; the wings did not budge. "Okay, propose we go to Plan B."
CAPCOM looked to Kyle and Ryan Bauer for approval. Kyle triple-
checked the IR view of the screen. Just solar heating, as far as he
could tell. He nodded. "Roger that, Speedy."
On Endeavor's video, the astronauts were seen to deploy small,
shiny tools: cordless power saws. Gloves and bodies conveyed a
trace of electric-motor whine into the spacesuits, to be picked up
by helmet mikes. Plan C, if needed, involved small shaped
charges. "Here's luck for a change," said Big Al. "These spars cut
like butter."
Not entirely good luck . . . Kyle had hoped to use a spar stub as a
grappling point for the orbiter's robot arm. The stumps sounded
too soft for that purpose, which took them to Plan B-and-a-half.
Gonzalez jetted slowly around the alien artifact, trailing double-
insulated braided steel cable. The astronauts snugged the loop
loosely about the masersat's waistlike indentation with a sturdy
metal ratcheting clamp. Strong brackets with heavy-duty knobbed
posts were secured under the cable, and the clamp ratcheted until
the cable was taut. The spacewalkers jetted back to the waiting
shuttle, each with an alien solar panel in hand.
"All set," said the mission commander finally. It meant the
spacewalkers were back aboard and the wings stowed in the cargo
bay. It meant Evelyn Tanaka, the only civilian aboard but NASA's
unchallenged master at operating the shuttle's robotic arm, was
ready to reach out and make history. It meant "Windy" McNeilly
was set for another close encounter. The orange-insulated cable
and chromed brackets made the waiting satellite far more visible
than on initial approach. "Houston, six votes here for loading up this
bad boy and doing a boogie on down."
All eyes were on Kyle. "Lots of ayes here, too, Commander."
Forty minutes later, with the long-sought satellite securely locked
into a cargo-bay cradle, Kyle allowed himself to truly believe this
was going to work.
* * *
Darlene clung to the railing, the gale streaming the remains of her
breakfast away from the boat. Foul taste in her mouth aside, she
felt better. That was not the same as feeling well.
Several embassy marines had accompanied the ambassador; one
left the cabin to check on her. She couldn't recall his name. "Can I
get you some water, ma'am?"
Sky, sea, and mud-covered land . . . everything was gray.
Something caught her eye. Not far behind them, a pier stuck out to
sea. The jetty, like the village that had once owned it, was mostly
buried in mud, but the last twenty feet or so were uncovered.
Huddling on the end of the pier was . . . something. "Do we have
binoculars?"
"Yes, ma'am." He returned quickly with a pair. "Here."
The binoc view only amplified the apparent motion of the boat.
Ignoring her nausea, she swept the glasses along the shore.
There! A child of uncertain age was trapped on the end of the pier,
clinging desperately to a piling around which her arms scarcely
reached. Between crashing waves, the girl waved frantically. Her
mouth gaped, but Darlene could hear nothing over the roar of the
sea. She handed back the glasses. "Sergeant. Watch that jetty."
She half ran, half slid into the cabin, to see if the ambassador
could, somehow, rescue the child.
The cursing that erupted behind her made plain, before the boat
had scarcely begin to turn, that the storm had claimed one more
victim.
CHAPTER 34
Only Kyle's feet were outside the shadow of the beach umbrella,
and that exposure was by choice. He was planted in a beach chair,
toes digging into damp sand whose moisture was sporadically
replenished by swirls of mild Caribbean waters. An unopened
novel rested on his lap.
Reading was the last thing he felt like.
Darlene's chair and his shared the umbrella. Beneath the wide-
brimmed straw hat that covered her face she murmured in her
sleep. She was the reason he was here. She badly needed a
vacation, and the only way to get her on one was to go himself.
Globe-trotting hadn't worn her out, it was her itinerary: disaster after
catastrophe after cataclysm. He tried to share her worries, her
sadness, but talking wasn't enough.
What was the world coming to when lolling on the beach with a
beautiful woman was a duty instead of a delight? Sipping a piña
colada, he tried to get interested in his book. What part of his
frustration, he wondered, came from knowing he may as well be
here as at the lab? Specialists needed the first crack at the
recovered masersat. He'd only have been in their way.
Maybe he did belong on the beach: Project Clear Skies was over.
(But not Project Swelk, his inner conniver rebutted. Kyle had yet to
dare articulating the unsuspected step three.)
Aside from Dar's murmuring, all that could be heard were seagulls
and lapping waves. They had a long stretch of St. Croix shoreline
to themselves. Not many Americans could afford vacations these
days, while former friends took their tourist euros, yen, and rubles
elsewhere.
The utterances muffled by Dar's hat became whimpers. Her limbs
twitched. Damn it! Kyle was neither mind reader nor gambler, but
he'd have bet big bucks she was reliving that moment off Costa
Rica. The one tragedy that, unfolding before her eyes, personified
the many deaths for which she'd tried to extend America's often-
rejected concern. That poor girl! How long had she been trapped
at the dock's end, only to drown with rescue within sight?
And poor Dar, watching helplessly as it happened.
With a flash of déjà vu, the azure sky once more blossomed with
remembered flames. Of the many deaths for which the Krulirim
were responsible, none obsessed him like the five men and
women on the Atlantis. He could no more have saved them than
the doomed submariners or silo crews. The difference was he'd
experienced the shuttle tragedy at first hand, and that it was of a
scale he could viscerally understand. He understood Dar's grief, all
right. The next time she cried out, he had an urge to join. He threw
his book in frustration.
"Drink, mister?"
Kyle turned. The crockery on the boy's tray glistened with
condensation. Cherry stems, cocktail umbrellas, and plastic straws
peered over the rims. "A colada. Bill it to room 412."
"Two, please." Dar sat up and removed her hat. "I woke myself
up." She shouted herself awake many nights.
"No, I disturbed you, hailing this young fellow." The lad kept from
his face any reaction to the white lie as Kyle accepted two
brimming drinks.
She waited for the boy to continue his rounds. "Not unless your
voice rose an octave and you were whimpering."
"You've got to lighten up on yourself." He handed her a beverage.
"No, really."
"Physicist, heal thyself."
Touché. He drew a long sip through his straw. "We are a sorry pair,
aren't we?"
"Speaking of being sorry . . . I apologize in advance if this offends
you." Holding her mock-coconut vessel at arm's length, she
exchanged grimaces with its ceramic face. "We finally have
the"—she glanced around furtively, although no one on the beach
was in earshot—"item. It will be studied. Maybe it's time to apply
that same focused attention to climate issues. Global warming. El
Niño. Improved weather forecasting."
"The same focused attention" meant, Change what you're doing.
Kyle, tackle a problem that's certain. She knew he knew. He leaned
over and kissed her. "I really love you."
That didn't mean yes.
* * *
"UN SecGen demands custody of stolen Galactic guardiansat."
Kyle ripped the clipping with its screaming headline from a
corkboard. He hurled it, wadded and torn, into a trash can. What
would the UN do with the artifact if they had it? He pictured it
behind glass in a museum.
Before letting that happen, he'd swipe it again.
"Like a patient etherized upon a table." If Hammond Matthews had
noticed his colleague's fit of pique, he gave no sign. It was Friday,
and Matt wore scientist casual: jeans, T-shirt, white socks and
sandals.
The outbuilding devoted to the study of the captured masersat was
uncharacteristically empty. It's amazing, thought Kyle, what fifty
bucks of pizza can accomplish. He would join the mini-thanks after
his private viewing.
The "patient" spanned a line of lab benches. It was twenty-some
feet long, and the canvas tarp draped over it revealed only gentle
curves and the hint of a waist. "Try not to disturb it."
"We're doing our best."
The metaphor Kyle truly favored was too discouraging to express,
a comparison that had first come to him as the charred, twisted
wreck of the starship was trucked to Franklin Ridge.
The aliens had fusion power, an interstellar drive, and artificial
gravity. How far ahead of human technology were they? Swelk said
they'd had space travel for many Earth centuries. Still, a species as
tradition-bound as the Krulirim surely discouraged the heresies that
begat scientific revolutions. For the sake of argument, imagine they
were merely one century ahead of humans.
A hundred years ago, Earth's cutting-edge technology was vacuum
tubes and biplanes. No jet engines or rockets. No quantum
mechanics, which meant no transistors or integrated circuits. No
computers or fiber optics. What would the best scientific minds of
1907 make of, say, a half-melted space shuttle or Boeing 777?
What beside wings and a tail would make sense?
Negativism was a vice Kyle refused to indulge. He flipped back the
tarp to uncover the familiar insectile shape. To his surprise, the
satellite gave no evidence of having been opened. Except for
strips of masking tape, it looked untouched. He felt the surprise on
his own face. "But the wings came right off."
"Watch." Matt grabbed a portable electric heater with a pistol
grip—an industrial-strength hair dryer. It started with a roar, heat
shimmers rising from its nozzle. He directed hot air toward the
stump from which had once sprouted a solar-wing spar. After a few
seconds, a gap formed. The stump divided very near the hull,
suggesting the hinge that had eluded the spacewalkers. Gripped in
an insulated glove, the hinged joint swung freely. "No, wait." He
waved off Kyle. After the area cooled, he straightened the spar and
reheated it. The seam disappeared. Wiggling the stump showed
the junction had returned to its former rigidity. "Works every time, at
exactly the same distance from the hull."
Shape-retaining alloys were found in expensive eyeglass frames
and golf clubs, but Kyle had never heard of a material that
remembered and reformed seams. "How'd you find this?"
"We wanted to get inside. There were no bolts to undo, no seams
to unweld. Rather than cut at random, and damage who knows
what, we did an ultrasound scan. It showed seams. The hull
material feels," he rapped, "more like plastic than metal, so
someone mentioned thermoplastic. We tried heating the lines from
the ultrasound image."
Aha. "The tape on the hull marks heat-activated seams."
"This is why you're paid the big bucks." Ignoring Kyle's humph,
Matt began heating the waistlike indentation between the main hull
sections, rocking the satellite to reach completely around.
"Everyone comments these sections don't look like they belong
together." A space opened as he spoke. "Things are often as they
seem."
Kyle pried gingerly at the newly opened gap with asbestos-coated
gloves. The hull sections parted, only a few wires linking the
halves. Every satellite he'd ever seen was jam-packed, its parts
tightly interlinked. "Okay, one side has the phased-array antennas
for active radar cancellation—stealthing. The other side has wave
guides for the maser. Any guesses?"
"In a minute." Matt unrolled a paper scroll, weighting the corners
with empty coffee mugs. The printout appeared to be an
ultrasound image. "The other grafts are less obvious, but four
pieces make up this baby. Look here," he tapped, "and here. You
can see two smaller modules also spliced in. Like the radar
section, there aren't many connections to the main body."
"Any idea what this means?"
"Yeah. Swelk told you the starship was a commercial freighter. She
traveled with a film company. So why did the Krulirim have
doomsday weapons?"
"We've all wondered." The question drove Ryan Bauer nuts.
"Here's our best guess," said Matt. "Imagine you're on the
interstellar equivalent of a tramp steamer. You have no weaponry,
but signaling equipment must be very powerful to reach between
stars. Say, comm masers." He rummaged in a cabinet drawer and
found some candy. "At this rate, there won't be any pizza left. Now
there's no reason to hide comm masers, but the aliens wanted
these hidden. Their plan wouldn't work if we'd seen them frying the
Atlantis or the early-warning birds. So what could they have carried
that would hide comm satellites?"
"Radar buoys?" guessed Kyle. "Handy for returning to places
one's already checked out. Only you reprogram the buoys to beam
the opposite signal of whatever they sense."
"So we think." Matt popped a handful of candy into his mouth. "Say
they've improvised a stealthed weapon. How is it aimed? The star
sensors used with a comm maser wouldn't track a shuttle in flight."
He tapped a small circle on the printout. "See this little guy spliced
into the maser section? We hope to prove it's an IR sensor,
interfaced to the onboard computer."
"What's this graft?" Kyle pointed on the scan to another hull
alteration. This section had its own antenna; a few wires connected
it to the main electronics section. His question elicited only a shrug.
"Well, I have a thought. It looks like an independent, much lower
power, microwave subsystem. Maybe it was used to read out the
damned orbs. Swelk said the recording equipment was from the
troupe's supplies."
"Makes sense."
His on-the-beach feelings of redundancy were largely confirmed.
Matt's team was making tremendous progress. "Now the big
question. Why did it stop working?"
By way of reply, Matt aimed a penlight. "What do you see?"
Kyle pondered. Fat wires leading from the two small grafts and the
radar section ended in an ill-shapen metallic glob. Near that clump
was something blocky whose only familiar features were a
connection to the solar-panel stump and what looked like a "heat
pipe" for transporting thermal energy to an external radiator. On a
human satellite, the greatest source of heat was the main power
supply. The blocky thing had a small scorch on an otherwise
featureless and unused metal connector. He burst out laughing.
"You just can't get good help these days."
"Yup," agreed Matt. "Bad power connections. It would seem a
sloppy soldering job has given us our best chance yet to
understand these guys."
* * *
I would've thought it impossible, thought Darlene, to be lonelier
than the sole noncelebrant at a party. Now I know better. Being that
lone noncelebrant's spouse was much worse. The intimate setting,
an antique-filled sitting room in the White House Residence, only
emphasized Kyle's withdrawal. She nursed a piña colada—she'd
become enamored with them in the Virgin Islands—while chatting
with the rest of the team. In a gathering of five, there was no
disguising Kyle's silent sulking.
Britt said the President would be by to extend his appreciation, "for
a job well done." For a job two-thirds done, Kyle had muttered, not
that his principled dissent or his odd choice of fractions now
mattered. Nor did it improve his mood that even she, however
reluctantly and diplomatically, disagreed with him. As one of the
team, she couldn't paper over this difference of opinion. Sighing,
she again sampled her drink. The White House bartender was
second to none.
The ringing of fine crystal got everyone's attention. Britt was
wielding the silver spoon. "Everyone? A moment of your time,
please."
"That ship sailed five years ago," said Erin Fitzhugh, drawing a
laugh.
"Fair enough." Britt set down his champagne flute. "And since I,
too, want to thank you all for your heroic efforts, that reminder is
entirely apt. Darlene, Erin, Kyle, Ryan—the order of that list being
alphabetical, mind you—your country owes you a debt of deep
gratitude."
Darlene at best half listened to Britt's valedictory speech, brooding
still on the fallout in her personal life of the group's unresolved rift.
Despite every appearance of victory, Kyle wanted America to stay
its course in a dogged quest for scientific certainties.
She didn't know how the mother ship had been projected. She
didn't care. The key thing was, it was gone. That, and that the
masersats were neutralized—for which Kyle deserved full credit.
They had in hand, finally, one of the orbiting weapons—again
thanks to him. With his own lab showing just how kludged it was,
continued anxiety about alien threats was no longer tenable. Sorry,
hon, we have more pressing problems. Like mending fences with
the ingrate rest of the world. Like ten-plus percent unemployment.
Like climate disasters. Could I, she wondered yet again, interest
him in global-change research? How rotten a wife would I be to
try?
"The President will be here in a few minutes, to add a few words."
She set down her glass, shaking her head no, when an attentive
steward started her way. She'd be driving home. All she could do
for Kyle tonight was let him drink freely.
The President entered. "Everyone, thank you for coming."
Robeson circulated, shaking the men's hands and embracing the
women. "What you accomplished, for country and planet, is
exceptional. That so much had to be done in secrecy—and was
done despite the approbation of the uninformed and
unappreciative—makes those deeds all the more noteworthy. You
have my complete respect and admiration.
"The dissatisfying part of our circumstances, I don't need to tell
you, is the world's lack of understanding. That, my friends, makes
the next point so difficult. It's surely far harder for you."
The President's gaze, which had been sweeping from face to face,
locked now on Kyle. This will really hurt, thought Darlene.
"The campaign you orchestrated assured our victory. But in any
war, especially one of subterfuge and deceit, an early casualty is
truth. Suppression of the truth, our focus on the alien artifacts, and
our custody of those artifacts, continue to estrange America from
other nations.
"In a televised address Monday evening, I will announce
completion of our program of alien study. The alien satellite and
wrecked starship will be released to international investigation,
under UN stewardship. I will also cancel the remaining satellite-
recovery missions."
"Mr. President," Kyle blurted. "What about Clean Slate?"
"I'm sorry, Kyle. I know your concerns are sincere. That said, it's
been a long time. Maybe the aliens tried something, and it did not
work. You convinced us, rightly, that we had to understand the
threat hanging over our head. Despite economic pain and world
condemnation, we followed the course you laid. And maybe the
alien captain was simply messing with our heads. The fact is, there
is no credible evidence of an alien threat. So now—"
"But Grelben didn't know Swelk had bugged his bridge." Kyle
couldn't contain his frustration. Darlene cringed—you don't interrupt
the President. You certainly don't use that lecturing tone with him.
"Grelben couldn't have been speaking for our benefit."
"So now," repeated Robeson, "it's time to move on, to enjoy such
modest rewards as are in my power to bestow. I have many friends
in the private sector, for those looking to make a change. And you'll
have a sympathetic ear for new challenges you may aspire to in the
executive branch." Robeson winked. "I won't mind if you avoid
positions requiring Senate confirmation."
"Respectfully, sir." Kyle was nothing if not persistent, thought
Darlene. Sometimes maddeningly so. "We haven't checked the
moon yet, although the aliens spent time there. We need a lunar
program."
That remark earned Britt a presidential glower: He's your protégé.
Britt read the dirty look the same way she did. He took Kyle's arm
and steered him into a corner. Their whispered conversation was
unintelligible but intense.
Darlene joined Kyle as soon as Britt left, standing so that to face
her, Kyle remained facing the corner. Behind him, by the hors
d'ouevres table, Ryan and Erin compared notes animatedly—about
Kyle's near meltdown, surely. Britt and the President were in
another corner having their own one-on-one. "Honey, a boss once
advised me, 'The third time I tell you something, I really mean it.'
Wasn't there a third 'no' about a lunar program long ago?"
"I've lost count." He had the decency to look embarrassed,
perhaps realizing he had pushed too far. "I'm getting another drink.
You want a refill?"
"No, thanks. What about the President's gracious offer?" Diplomat
101: when an issue is irresolvable, change the subject.
"Outplacement assistance?" He mimed deep thought for about two
seconds. "Astronaut doesn't require confirmation." His answer was
too loud to have been only her benefit.
Britt, thankfully out of Kyle's line of sight, extracted a twenty-dollar
bill from a coat pocket and handed the money to the President.
Darlene would have given Britt long odds on that bet.
* * *
"Hi, Chuck," Kyle called to the bored-looking guard. Hammond
Matthews, ambling at his side, waved a greeting. They tried to
exude nonchalance: the visiting VIP and the lab director on a
casual walk-by inspection.
"Greetings, Docs. Too bad you're working. It's a beautiful
weekend." He pointed at the note taped to the glass door clicking
shut behind them. "I haven't seen the computer geeks. Can I call
the help desk for you?"
"No, thanks. It won't take long once they arrive." Matt's smile stayed
internal until they rounded a corner. "No time at all." The advertised
network upgrade was entirely fictitious.
"Your secret plan for assuring our privacy is a sign on the door?
Matt mashed his thumb onto the fingerprint scanner beside the lab
door. "The note's a memory jogger for anyone coming by despite
the well-publicized scheduled maintenance. Their ID card won't get
them inside today."
The lab had been stripped in preparation for the masersat's arrival;
weeks later, the room still looked barren. Odds and ends,
however—soda cans and coffee cups, small tools, digital meters,
misplaced cell phones, open tech journals left facedown, wire
scraps—had proliferated everywhere. Five computers remained
on despite the purported network upgrade, their monitors flashing
screen savers. Amid chaos striving to reassert itself, the masersat
awaited.
Beneath its tarp, the satellite gaped open. "You have the parts?"
asked Kyle. Getting a nod, he unsoldered four electronic
components. Whatever those devices did, components with like
surface markings—parts codes, they hoped—were in every
Krulchukor pocket computer.
Matt jotted a discrete number with a fine-point marker on each
liberated item. It wouldn't do to get confused which parts came
from where.
Eleven not-entirely-destroyed computers had been recovered from
the Consensus. Not one functioned. All had, presumably, been
damaged by the fire. Swelk's computer worked—but its memory
was filled with alien movies. While Swelk's was their only
operational alien computer, it was too precious to tinker with. This
could be their last chance to repair the other computers. Who knew
what information those contained?
Of course, few of the computer components and none of the
masersat parts appeared broken. Kyle imagined a 1907 engineer
faced with an inoperative modern computer. If the only electronics
I'd ever seen used vacuum tubes, what sense could I make of
integrated circuits? Would ruined chips even look damaged? Heat
can destroy electronics without melting the parts.
Which reduced them to crossing fingers and swapping
components.
He tried not to consider the many permutations of parts
substitutions ahead, as he soldered scavenged, same-labeled
parts into the satellite. Whatever the international monstrosity that
eventually arose to examine the masersat . . . if and when they got
their act together, and actual research resumed . . . he'd eventually
suggest that they try chip substitutions. Perhaps by then he'd have
an online tutorial explaining everything.
Life was never that cooperative, though, was it?
CHAPTER 35
"Hi, Stinky. Yo, Smelly." Boggy vegetation squished beneath their
slowly shuffling, broad webbed feet. Good. Swelk had fretted
about the unnatural metal decking her friends suffered aboard ship.
The animals chewed contentedly on synthesized sludge, massive
jaws sliding and grinding in a totally alien motion. Despite
widespread suspicions that Krulchukor bioconverters employed
nanotech, no one—certainly not Kyle—would endanger the
Girillians by opening one for inspection. "Do they brush you guys
enough?"
"Perhaps you could give the other guests a chance, sir." A zoo
guard politely indicated the serpentine queue behind Kyle. Plenty
of tourists were glued to the railing, but, Kyle guessed, none spoke
so familiarly to the main attractions. "This exhibit is quite popular."
He moved along rather than argue. Seeing Smelly and Stinky was
how he communed with his dead friend. He loved the cats, but
associated them more with Dar. He drifted through the rest of
Girillia House, murmuring as he went. None of these critters had
bonded like the swampbeasts with Swelk; none affected him as
deeply.
He found an empty bench. Swelk, he thought, at least one puzzle
that had us stymied is solved. That reflection yielded a bit of the
solace he'd sought unsuccessfully in Girillia House.
The computer Matt had repaired with masersat parts might—in
twenty years? More?—lead to amazing breakthroughs. It wasn't a
cookbook for fusion or interstellar travel, but it offered clues:
operating procedures and detailed parts inventories. The
recovered files, in Kyle's belief, held more promise than the
charred starship surrendered to UN custody.
The how of the mother ship holo-projection had gnawed at him
long after the fact of the hologram became obvious. Why would
the aliens have such equipment with them? Discovering the
masersats to be cobbled-together devices had only deepened the
mystery.
But now, extrapolating from newly recovered Krulchukor files, he
had an answer.
The alien star drive, its physical principles still maddeningly
obscure, was inoperative deep within a star's gravity well. Starships
used solar sails to exit solar systems—sailing conserved He3 for
interstellar travel. In settled solar systems, big laser cannons
rapidly propelled starships to where their drives could engage. In
low-tech solar systems (which, in practice, meant any system not
colonized by Krulirim), shipboard emergency gear included kits to
build laser boosters. Seed a convenient, sunlight-drenched,
silicon-rich asteroid with nanomachines. Wait a bit for
semiconductor lasers, and the solar cells to power them, to grow.
Voilà!
The moon's surface was one-fifth silicon by mass. Without an
atmosphere, solar energy was abundant on the dayside.
If Swelk's translator had correctly converted units of measure, an
emergency booster kit would expand into an about-kilometer-
squared patch. An individual laser was a silicon structure only
millimeters in size, but a full-grown booster contained billions.
Inventory records showed several kits had been taken from ship's
stores.
The evidence was entirely circumstantial, but Kyle was sure he
finally understood the mother-ship trick. Just as Grelben's
engineers had kludged masersats from onboard equipment, they,
or perhaps Rualf's special-effects team, must have hacked into the
booster-kit software. Change the aiming logic to track a moon-
orbiting radar buoy instead of a receding starship. Add an
animation model of the movie-prop vessel to be projected. (Model,
as well, the occasional holographic auxiliary ship going to or from
the mother ship—an effective bit of misdirection.) Schedule the
hand-off of projection duties from laser patch to laser patch, to
compensate for the moon's rotation and to mimic the mother ship's
purported orbital path. For a species with centuries of computer
experience, he guessed the reprogramming was a snap.
Memories of Swelk occupied his walk to the Metro station and the
subway ride itself, reminiscences intermingled with hopes for a
new beginning. In a West Wing waiting room, he tried to focus on
the latter.
"Sorry, I'm running late. Crisis du jour." Britt had appeared in the
doorway. "Much simpler than crises we've handled. Come in. Can I
get you something?"
"Water, thanks."
"Carl, two Perriers." Once the earnest intern nodded
acknowledgment, Britt led the way to his office. "How's my favorite
diplomat?"
"Fine." He took a chilled bottle. "Busy." A workaholic, not that I'm
entitled to criticize.
Britt draped his suit coat over a chair. "It's ominous when you get
terse and tongue-tied on me. What now?"
"Good news, actually." Kyle took a photo from his shirt pocket.
"Matt's team repaired a recovered Krulchukor computer. Unlike
Swelk's, it wasn't filled with movies and a translation program."
They'd have been out of luck, though, without Swelk's computer to
translate for it.
Britt raised an eyebrow. "After all these years, they fixed it.
Interesting."
Admit nothing. "Good things come to he who waits."
"We'll let that lie. What's on your always active mind?"
Had there been an emphasis on "lie"? "It was a crewman's
computer. The maintenance files should be very helpful in
recreating Krulchukor technology. Case in point." Kyle explained
the mother-ship illusion. "It's nice to know why the mother ship was
off in lunar orbit."
An intercom buzzed. "Your next appointment is here, sir."
Britt picked up the photo. "For someone bearing good news, you
don't seem happy."
Nothing would be gained by citing the maddeningly vague
reference in a recovered file to Clean Slate. Nor would reasserting
his unshaken conviction of dangers lurking on the moon
accomplish anything. Every suggestion over the years of a lunar
program had been rebuffed. Krulirim were patient. They had to
be—interstellar voyages lasted years.
Why was he the only one who believed Grelben's plans could be
years in preparation?
None of this prevented Kyle from doing his damnedest to be
prepared. "Dar predicts the President will give the computer, too,
to the UN. Our favorite diplomat implies I'm bitter."
Britt clasped his hands, fingers interlaced. "If, as I think likely, she's
right, then what? Can I lure you into the District more often?"
"No, but with a good excuse." They had arrived, at last, at the
reason for his visit. "I'd like to accept the President's offer of a job
referral."
CHAPTER 36
Darlene's right leg dangled from the freestanding hammock, her
bare foot inches above the patio brick. The hammock was
nevertheless swaying, Kyle's longer leg rocking them gently. Her
head rested on his shoulder. Blackie was curled up and purring on
her lap. A mild breeze was blowing, moonlight was streaming.
"Explain again why we hardly ever do this?"
He kissed the top of her head. "Because, Madam Undersecretary,
you're usually off gallivanting around the world."
That was a half truth not worth debating. She swigged some no-
longer-cold beer rather than respond. The past few months, he
was in Houston as much as she was gone on her own, more varied
travel. The President, true to his word, had gotten Kyle a shot at a
payload-specialist berth on an upcoming NASA shuttle mission.
The payload for whose calibration, operation, and, if need be,
repair, Kyle would become responsible did upper-atmosphere
measurements, the details of which eluded her. Kyle's
understanding, of course, was infinitely deeper than hers and
growing daily. (They'd been together long enough that she knew
nothing was larger than infinite, but she didn't care. She just
wouldn't express the thought.)
The astronauts she'd met were pilots and engineers, not scientific
experts. That surely meant the payload could be operated without
a full theoretical understanding of the measurement techniques, or
the climate models in which the measured values would be used,
or the abstruse controversies that swirled around competing
climate models . . . but there was no way Kyle would be satisfied
flying without that expertise. So when he wasn't training at Johnson
Space Center, he was immersed in self-study of atmospheric
physics. They were once again coming at a globally vital problem
from two entirely different sides.
This time, thank God, the problem wasn't eating him up. She patted
his arm.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
That could have been a reference to togetherness, the weather,
the patio and its wooded setting, or the cloudless night sky aglitter
with stars. Had her companion meant any of those things, he
wouldn't have been Kyle. "The full moon? Yes, it's gorgeous."
They were silently admiring its round perfection when, as if by the
throwing of a switch, the moon went dark.
* * *
"Yes, I'm serious!" insisted Kyle. "How's the weather? Look out
your window."
"Sunny and warm. Basically like every day." His old college buddy,
who lived in LA, sounded puzzled and not a little peeved. "Why did
you really call?"
"The sun's normal?" Kyle persisted into his cell phone. He'd
outwaited a call-waiting signal. Dar ran inside to answer the house
phone.
"Big bright yellow ball, intends to set in the west. Yes, it's normal.
So this is about . . . ?"
"Gotta go—I'll explain later." He hung up over annoyed protests.
Overhead, stars sparkled like diamonds, as brightly as ever. How,
in a cloudless night sky, could the moon be ghostly dim when in
California, where it was just after six, the sun was behaving?
There was no denying the apparition overhead.
He was swinging his telescope toward the spectral moon when his
cell phone rang. Dar yelled from inside, "That's Britt. I transferred
the call."
"Hi, boss." As best Kyle could tell, the moon, apart from having
gone ashen, was unchanged. He'd studied it enough nights to trust
his impression. "Yes, I know. Yes, the moon's gone dark and no, I
can't say why." He unbent from his crouch over the telescope
eyepiece. "But I'm on it."
* * *
Too many people jammed in a consequently overheated room.
Too many speculations and too few facts. It was disquietingly like
the arrival day of the Galactics.
Kyle fanned himself with a folder as he digested the latest findings.
An obvious change from that earlier crisis was the medium of note
taking: electronic whiteboards, read/writeable across the Internet,
had replaced walls covered in Post-it notes. The Franklin Ridgers
could as easily have coordinated from their offices, like the
hundreds of scientists worldwide whose data they were collating.
Crowding this room showed psychology trumping technology.
"That's one possible explanation shot to hell." Ellen Nakamura, a
twenty-something new hire with spiky blue hair, hung up her cell
phone. "Thank God." She threaded a path through the crowd to a
terminal. On the big wall display marked "solar status" new text
appeared: SOHO readings nominal. The Solar and Heliospheric
Observatory probe was permanently stationed a million miles
sunward from Earth, at an Earth-sun gravitational balance point. If
SOHO, with its plethora of instrumentation and uninterruptible view
of the sun, saw no variation in the sun's behavior, that was
definitive. The sun was normal.
There weren't many ways to dim the moon. Moonlight was only
reflected sunlight, so a solar problem could have been the root
cause. Nakamura was right: thank God. If the sun were the source
of the problem, they could all speedily freeze to death. A second
wall was dedicated to an investigation of any unknown
phenomenon impeding the light path from sun to moon, or moon to
Earth. Regularly updated windows mirrored the findings of
observatories worldwide. Some big light blocker in space, never
mind where such a thing could have come from, would likely also
darken some stars. No such dimmed stars were in evidence. That
did not eliminate a filtering disk precisely sized and placed to
obscure only and exactly the moon as viewed from anywhere on
Earth. But how could such an object be held stationary, against the
solar-wind pressure on such a huge expanse? "Matt. Any word on
radar sweeps for a blocker?"
"He's stepped out," answered a voice Kyle didn't recognize. "But
yes, there's news. Rear wall, lower left corner. Radar sees nothing
between here and the moon."
"Thanks." So if there were a light-blocking object in space, it's not
only precisely positioned and placed, it's radar-transparent.
Stealthed. If such an object existed, and popped up out of
nowhere, surely it would be an alien artifact. Spoiling the moonlight
. . . Clean Slate couldn't be anything simultaneously so huge and
so petty, could it?
"Heads up."
Kyle turned toward the call and saw a can of Coke lofted his way.
He bobbled the catch. "Thanks, Matt. I clearly need the caffeine."
"What'd I miss?"
"Can't be a solar problem and doesn't look like something in space
blocking the light." That left the moon suddenly absorbing light it
had once reflected. That left the subject matter of a third wall,
whose virtual caption read: lunar surface. The big observatories
only confirmed what Kyle, with his amateur telescope, had decided
minutes after the mysterious fadeout: the moon's surface, other
than darkening, looked unchanged. Optical telescopes and radar
pinging alike detected no change to the moon.
"Infrared." Matt whapped his forehead with the heel of his hand.
"Matt, you dummy. Ellen! Do we have before-and-after IR images
of the full moon?"
"I'm on it." Ellen started typing feverishly.
"Not dumb, Matt. Sleep-deprived, probably. Brilliant, certainly." It
was almost five in the morning. Almost time for his chopper ride to
Washington, to try to make sense of this for the President and an
emergency cabinet meeting "If the moon is suddenly absorbing
more sunlight, it'll be hotter."
"Here's before," called Ellen. "It's an archival shot from the three-
meter IR telescope facility up on Mauna Kea." A new display
window opened on the wall devoted to lunar-surface findings,
showing a gray-scaled disc with occasional dark splotches. The
gray-coded key confirmed the predominant lightly shaded areas
were around 140oC. The dark patches, in the shadows, were as
cold as -170 oC.
"What about a current IR view?"
"The file is downloading now. Go figure—the Internet's slow
tonight." Ellen rubbed her eyes wearily. "Got it."
Yet another window popped up on the wall, and Kyle's eyes
popped open with it. The surface of the moon was getting colder.
The details were far from clear, but at that instant Kyle knew what
Clean Slate had to be. It was worse than anything he had ever
imagined.
CHAPTER 37
Two years since The Big Dim, seven years after the arrival of the
"Galactics," forty-some years since a boy fell in love with the space
program . . . no matter how Kyle viewed it, today had been a long
time coming.
No one but he thought of today's launch as Phase Three of Project
Swelk.
He was flat on his back, strapped snugly into one of two mission-
specialist seats on the Endeavor's flight deck. He wore the
uncomfortable collection of clothing and gear that in NASA-speak
was a "crew altitude protection system." Besides the spectacularly
misnamed antigravity suit, the "system" consisted of a helmet,
communications cap, pressure garment, gloves, and boots.
In the two front seats, as on the masersat recovery mission, were
Windy McNeilly as pilot and Tricky Carlisle as mission commander.
Speedy Gonzalez had the mission-specialist seat beside Kyle's.
The middeck compartment was empty. A crew of four was below
the norm for a shuttle flight, but this was no normal flight.
"Are we boring you, Dr. Doom?"
Kyle struggled to abort a yawn. After three weather scrubs in as
many days, they'd been woken abruptly last night as the weather
forecast unexpectedly broke in their favor. His limited view out the
forward windshields showed merely overcast, rather than the gusty
rain that had kept them grounded. "Sorry, Craig. What can I do for
you?" At this stage of the mission Kyle was simply a passenger.
What could he do for Carlisle?
"Nothing, Doc. Ignition is not most people's preferred wake-up
call."
"Don't worry. I promise I won't miss a thing." He followed the last-
minute checklists and the cabin/ground-control chatter until, with a
sound like the end of the world, the shuttle's main engines roared
to life. Six seconds until takeoff. Then the solid rocket boosters
added their thunder, and the shuttle started to rise. They began a
roll, pitch, and yaw maneuver, tipping the nose for a head-down
ride to orbit, in the process gaining a view through two overhead
windows of the rapidly receding ground. Thrust squashed him into
his seat. Amid the noise and vibration, three Gs were far harder to
take than in the training centrifuge in Houston.
"Throttle-down commencing," called Windy.
Air resistance, and the attendant stresses on the shuttle, were
greatest early in the launch. Throttle-down reduced those stresses
until the ship reached thinner atmosphere. The shaking and din
seemed to have gone on forever, but the pilot's calm
announcement meant they were only twenty-six seconds into the
flight. The jarring kept intensifying, but at a lesser rate.
"Commencing throttle-up."
Which put them at about T+60 seconds. As the shuddering
reached a peak, Kyle knew how a milkshake must feel. The Earth
slivers visible from his back-row seat continued to recede.
"Approaching SRB separation." McNeilly had a hand beside the
backup SRB separation switch, but the computers once again
performed on cue.
The solid rocket boosters burnt out in two minutes. This was farther
than the Atlantis got, some recess of Kyle's mind reminded him.
He felt the thunk of the separation. The noise began to abate, both
because the SRBs were gone and from the thinning of the
atmosphere. From nowhere came a maddening itch on the tip of
his nose. Ignoring the tickle seemed more sensible than lifting an
unnaturally heavy arm.
"Negative return," radioed ground control.
More progress. They were far enough into the launch that an abort
back to the Cape was no longer possible. Milestones continued
passing normally as the ship climbed and the sky turned black and
starry.
"Coming up on MECO," warned Windy.
Main engine cutoff, about eight minutes into the flight. More than
seventy miles up. More than seventeen thousand miles an hour.
And no separation from the external tank—two unmanned tankers
awaited to top off their nearly empty ET.
"Three . . . two . . . one . . . MECO."
Kyle's arms floated free of the armrests. His stomach lurched. His
pulse raced. It was suddenly, blissfully quiet; radioed exchanges
with ground control were the only sounds. As he tipped his head
backward, a bony finger poked him: Speedy reaching across the
gap between their seats. "Welcome to space, Doc." In the front
seats, Carlisle and McNeilly tended to the details of raising and
circularizing their orbit. He could not tear his eyes from the
panoramic view of Earth through the overhead cabin windows. He'd
dreamed of this moment for forty-some years now, had an image
in his mind's eye of sparkling blue and rich brown and lacy white.
The Earth stretched out below him was a cruel caricature of that
expectation. Huge, angry whirlpools of cloud dominated the
Atlantic. In the black masses of cloud masking much of western
Europe, lightning sparked and flashed like Thor and Zeus gone to
war.
And exactly as if hostile aliens had conspired to wipe Earth clean
of all life.
* * *
The Big Dim was actually quite simple.
The moon, like the Earth, receives solar energy at an average rate
of 1345 watts per square meter. To darken the moon, convert
incoming sunlight to electricity. To cool the moon, use that
electricity to broadcast an electromagnetic signal . . . energy is
removed instead of absorbed. Emit half of the incident energy that
way, and—the moon being far smaller than the Earth—the
transmitted energy is about 3% of the solar energy Earth receives.
By way of comparison, the annual change in sunlight that causes
Earth's seasons is only plus-or-minus 3.4%.
And if the goal is at the same time to sterilize the Earth? Merely
broadcast in a suitable microwave frequency. Pick a frequency to
which the Earth's atmosphere is transparent, a frequency strongly
absorbed by liquid water—then focus all of that energy on the
Earth. A frequency of 2.45 GHz works well . . . the frequency used
inside every microwave oven.
Solar energy to electricity? That's easy: solar cells. Electricity to
microwave beams? That's also straightforward: masers. Solar cells
and masers are readily fabricated from semiconductors, with well
understood human technology. The most common semiconductor
is silicon. By weight, a fifth of the lunar surface is silicon.
But what could cover the whole surface of the moon with solar cells
and masers?
Krulchukor laser cannons had already been grown on the moon,
enclaves of solar cells and semiconductor lasers reprogrammed
to project the mirage of the mother ship. That which has been
reprogrammed can be reprogrammed again.
What humans call light and microwaves are only different regions
in the electromagnetic spectrum, so resize and recalibrate new
semiconductor structures to emit microwaves. Move the aiming
point from a tiny, fast-moving radar buoy to the impossible-to-miss
globe of Earth. Delete the code that limited the growth to small
regions. Wait until the nanotech-produced texture—no dimension
of its surface manifestation larger than inches, impossibly small to
see from Earth—infests the entire lunar surface.
Then turn out the lights and crank up the heat.
* * *
"Like a freaking ballet outside, only interesting." Speedy was
admiring an ET/unmanned-tanker rendezvous through a flight-deck
window. "Doc. You gotta see this."
Kyle was out of her sight, on the middeck. "I caught the first act."
The ET had already drained one remote-controlled tanker. The
load from the second tanker would bring the ET to about half filled.
That would more than get Endeavor where it needed to go. The
hard part of space travel was reaching low Earth orbit.
"You staring dirtside again, Doc?" she persisted.
"Uh-huh." Doctor Doom was too many syllables for regular use.
He'd lucked out—Doom would have gotten old. "It keeps me
focused on why we're up here."
They were over the eastern Pacific, approaching the Panamanian
coast. Two enormous tropical depressions were converging on the
area. By historical standards, it was early in hurricane season, but
the National Hurricane Center was already up to Norman on this
year's second pass through the alphabet. Central America was
going to get clobbered again. He couldn't help but remember that
kid who washed out to sea. It had been one death among
thousands in a single storm, and there had been hundreds of
hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones since—and it was the tragedy
that still gave Darlene nightmares.
His eyes were glued to the ten-inch window in the side hatch.
Logically, the view was no different than what he'd seen often in
satellite imagery. Maybe so, but it was more real with only a pane
of glass and vacuum between him and the unfolding catastrophe.
As he watched, lightning erupted like popcorn over the cloud-
cloaked mountainous spine of the isthmus. More mudslides in the
making? Damn Grelben.
"Doc. Since you're downstairs, check on the MDS, willya?"
"Sure, Craig." The microwave dump system was one of the
postapocalypse retrofits to the orbiter. Endeavor had launched
during a waning crescent moon; there was comparatively little
Earth-bound microwave energy. Even if the moon had been full, its
microwaves were a different sort of hazard than the defeated
masersats. Those had focused weapons-grade bursts on small
targets. The endless lunar emissions blanketed all of Earth facing
the moon. The MDS reradiated the incoming, comparatively diffuse
microwaves. "The panel shows all green."
"Thanks, Doc."
"Coming through." Speedy dove through an interdeck opening,
with a grace in micro-G he could only envy. She retrieved a camera
from her locker on the middeck. The storm caught her attention on
her return soar. With a tuck, roll, and light kick off a bulkhead, she
stopped gracefully in midair. "Je-sus!"
"I wouldn't want to be wherever that monster comes ashore."
Another well-placed kick propelled her closer. She stared out the
hatch's inset window. "You understand this stuff? Really?"
The implicit admission surprised him, since there was so much he
had yet to learn. Maybe he'd feel more at home when the puking
stopped. That half of astronauts had a few days of space
adaptation sickness was little comfort. The old hands
recommended keeping busy. " 'This stuff'? You mean how The Big
Dim hoses the climate?"
"Right, Doc." She took a snack bar from a jumpsuit pocket. "You
want half?"
His stomach gurgled. "No thanks. All right, the weather. The moon
used to reflect about ten percent of sunlight hitting it, and that was
scattered. Now, about half the incident light is reemitted, and it all
comes Earth's way. As microwaves. If the microwaves hit
water—and Earth's surface is seventy-percent water—they
increase evaporation. Vast regions of moist, warm air rise, spun up
by Coriolis forces." He pointed at the huge storms forming below.
"Okay?"
"So far, so good."
"But more energy and more storms are just the start. Greenhouse
effect is the kicker."
She nabbed a crumb that had floated off. "I don't get it."
Not her field, not her fault. "During the day, solar energy soaks into
the ground. The heat reradiates to space at night, as infrared. But
some gases block IR, trapping heat in the atmosphere. The effect
is like glass in a greenhouse."
"Like carbon dioxide."
At five miles per second, crossing Central America didn't take
long; the Endeavor made the traverse while Kyle was in what Dar
called pedantic mode. A hurricane was brewing in the Caribbean.
"Right. But not only carbon dioxide. Water vapor is another
greenhouse gas."
"Aha. The microwaves increase evaporation, producing water
vapor, which traps heat, which further increases evaporation. A
vicious cycle." She finished the snack bar and carefully zipped the
wrapper into a pocket. "The evaporation leads to more clouds, and
so to more rain."
"Yes, but not indefinitely. Hot air rises. The water vapor-laden air
rises. Rain, of course, begins as airborne droplets forming in the
cool upper atmosphere, condensing around airborne dust.
Condense enough water, and the drop gets heavy and falls. But
these microwaves evaporate water from would-be raindrops. So
the new vapor rises still higher, into colder and colder parts of the
atmosphere. Drive the vapor high enough, and you get permanent
upper-atmospheric ice crystals instead of rain."
"I'm a simple mechanic, but haven't we had more rain since The
Big Dim, not less?"
Simple mechanic? Speedy had a PhD in aeronautical engineering.
He made the mistake of looking at her. She was suspended in
midair, her body at almost a right angle to what his confused
senses considered the vertical. The little food he'd kept down that
day made a fresh attempt to escape. Keep busy. "True
observation, but not a rebuttal. It means that for now the increased
oceanic evaporation is a bigger effect than vapor trapping in the
upper atmosphere. Both effects are bad. Both are incontrovertibly
ongoing."
Grabbing his arm, she pulled herself toward the deck. The
enormity of the situation had just registered—there was horror in
her eyes. "So left to itself, this process cranks along until
greenhouse effect makes Earth too hot for us, or until all water is
locked up in the atmosphere."
He favored her with the optimistic smile he'd been practicing on
Dar. "That, my friend, is the reason for our jaunt to the moon. We're
going to find a way to stop the process."
CHAPTER 38
The ungainly vessel sparkled in Endeavor's floodlights. The fifty-
foot-long spacecraft cautiously receded from the orbiter, puffs of
gas gradually increasing the separation. Bulbous tanks, exposed
struts, and an aggressively unstreamlined configuration made plain
that the newly disgorged ship was never meant to touch an
atmosphere.
The nearby moon, around which both vessels now orbited, cast
only a pale, ghostly glow—as far as the human eye was
concerned. The torrents of microwaves continued unabated.
"Everyone comfy?" Windy's light tone fooled no one—she wanted,
as much as anyone, to walk on the moon. But someone had to stay
on the orbiter—it landed on Earth as a glider, hardly a practical
approach for alighting on an airless body—and the person best
able to bring the Endeavor home, if for whatever reason the lander
failed to return, was the logical choice.
"Roger that, Windy," The mission commander answered for the
three strapped in on the lander. "Ready to go . . . except for one
final detail. Doc?"
It was a moment of high historical drama and great personal honor.
The President herself—Harold Robeson's second term had
expired before the lander was completed—had asked Kyle to
christen the lander. She must have ordered NASA and his USAF
crewmates to keep to themselves any opinions on the subject.
What could possibly compare with "The Eagle has landed"?
Beyond memorability, he wanted a name that conveyed hope and
confidence and, despite the ship's wholly American provenance
and crew, an entire world's aspirations.
The timer decrementing before him insisted that, named or not,
this vessel would begin its deorbiting burn inside five minutes.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the good ship Resolute."
* * *
The moon-spanning circuitry very precisely, in some way yet
unknown, tracked the Earth and focused a myriad of maser beams
upon it. No one wanted to learn the hard way whether proximity
detection could instigate a close-in defensive retargeting. So,
although the tangential approach of the Endeavor had evoked no
discernible response, Resolute deorbited above the night side,
where the solar-powered masers were inactive. But they couldn't
accomplish their mission by hiding in the dark. Speedy set them
down inside a small crater, entirely unremarkable but for its position
about an Earth day to the predawn side of the onrushing day/night
terminator.
"Houston," reported Tricky Carlisle, "the Resolute has landed." He
covered the mike with his hand. "Resolutely, I may add."
Applause from Mission Control, after the unavoidable but annoying
two-and-a-half second round-trip delay, almost drowned out
CAPCOM's equally businesslike "Copy, and congrats." There was
a short silence, into which Windy McNeilly from lunar orbit injected
her own "Well done," before Houston continued. "Resolute, you're
cleared for a stroll."
The few minutes it took to seal the space suits worn for the landing
were interminable. Kyle was second through the single-person
airlock. He found Carlisle standing on a large mat; more pads, with
adhesive backs and Velcro tops, remained in the airlock. Peeling
paper sheets from the adhesive, Kyle handed down several pads
before climbing gingerly down the landing leg that doubled as a
ladder. The crescent Earth floating above the crater wall nearly
took his breath away. Carlisle gave him a friendly nudge, reminding
him to clear the area. The crater floor glittered and shimmered in
the earthlight. Faint crunching sounds accompanied his footsteps,
transmitted through mat and boots into his suit—brittle circuits
crushed by his weight. Moments later, Speedy reached the foot of
the ladder.
Carlisle's voice came over a private radio channel. "One more
presidential curse, Doc. Say something catchy."
Kyle, having suspected this was coming, was prepared. He
switched to the mission's unencrypted main frequency. "On behalf
of all humanity, we reclaim our moon." Faint green digits floating on
his head's up display counted down to local sunrise. He returned to
a secured band. "Now what do you say we reclaim our first acre?"
They had an aluminized plastic tarp spread across the crater with
hours to spare.
* * *
Kyle stood on the lip of the crater they now called home. From a
thin crescent when Resolute had landed, the Earth had waxed near
to half full. An enormous cyclone threatened Japan, and a second,
the Philippines. Would those storms have formed absent the alien
attack? There was no way to know.
He shivered, and it had nothing to do with the menace they battled.
His suit thermostat was cranked low to minimize the drain on the
batteries. In the tarp's shadow it was cold enough to liquefy
nitrogen. "Speedy, I'm ready to walk the back forty."
"You're on camera," she assured him.
Kyle stepped out from under the awning, the direct sunlight all the
more blinding for the contrast with the light-stealing surface. A
metallic mesh was embedded in the glass of his helmet's visor,
like the window in a microwave-oven door. Exactly like a microwave
oven . . . the openings through which he gazed were too small to
admit microwaves. Downhill, like a rock garden arranged by drunks,
stretched their experimental plots: dozens of regions of varying
sizes, shapes, and textures. Pole-mounted videocams swept back
and forth, monitoring each plot. It was ironic, Kyle thought, that
they'd had to bring solar cells from Earth to power the cameras.
He made his way carefully down an intersector boundary, along
what Carlisle had dubbed a carpet runner. Nails driven by rivet gun
into the rocky surface held the walkway in place; an adhesived
patch had been set carefully over each nail head to seal the hole.
The Velcro'ed surface gripped Kyle's boots, holding him to the
supposed nanomachine-free safety of the from-Earth path. It
wasn't as though on a microscopic scale the adhesive didn't have
gaps—they had no choice but to trust the shadows from the
patches to keep the nannies underneath inert.
As on every sticky-footed excursion from the Resolute, Kyle felt
cheated. He longed to move about in the kangaroo hop made
famous on the Apollo missions. Status lights in his helmet reported
all three microwave reradiators in his suit were operational.
"Are you done yet?" Carlisle's words, accompanied by a chuckle,
were more an old joke than a status inquiry.
"Just medium rare." Humor was the only way to cope with the ever-
present danger. Untreated, each square meter of the sunlit surface
generated close to seven hundred watts—like the interior of a
standard microwave oven at its full-power setting. He was in line of
sight of many square meters. Line of sight . . . or line of fire. It was
a disconcerting thought. The gauge on Kyle's wrist detected none
of the microwaves that, had they been directed at him, should be
immediately dispersed by any of the three reradiating systems he
carried. Despite the redundancy, he yearned for a physical,
foolproof, grounding cable. Alas, a trailing tether would almost
certainly slide off the protective runways and onto the nanny-
covered lunar surface.
Their crater was a dimple within a great flat plain, one of the lunar
maria. Standing on that "sea-level" surface, he could see barely a
mile in any direction, the horizon foreshortened by the moon's
diminutive size. Small relative only to Earth, of course: the surface
area was close to fifteen million square miles. As many stars
shone overhead, diamond-brilliant and unwavering.
"Quit your sightseeing," called Carlisle.
"You caught me. Again. Starting with plot one." Bending and
crouching, pacing back and forth along a runner, he examined the
first plot from several angles.
Soon after landing, in the shadow of plastic sheeting temporarily
stretched between poles, this slice of territory had been bulldozed
clean of visible infestation by radio-controlled robots. The little RC
vehicles would stay behind and be teleoperated from Earth; Las
Vegas bookmakers were taking bets on how long the devices
would last. Alien circuits began refilling the area as soon as the
sun-blocking sheeting came down. The masers and the solar cells
powering them were completely restored within minutes.
They'd "fenced" the area with shadows before the robots scraped
it clean again. The field regenerated almost as quickly the second
time, this time entirely from random spots within the torn-up field. It
was, apparently, hard to remove every trace of nanotech "seeds"
too small to see. That result reinforced the mission directive
against touching the surface. They'd mechanically cleansed plot
one repeatedly, and the results never changed: rapid regrowth.
Repeating the experiment at scattered test spots gave comparable
results. The propagation rate was always in the neighborhood of
seven miles per day. "No surprises, Craig. Plot one is entirely
regrown since your last inspection. No holes or gaps. I'm moving
on."
The next few plots had, like plot one, been wiped clean and
allowed to regrow to calibrate growth rates. There was some
variation, correlated to robot-measured differences in trace-
element concentrations. Plots two through ten had been treated
with acids, bases, and other pollutants. No chemical made a
significant difference to the regeneration rate. No coating disabled
unplowed masers or solar cells for any useful length of time. For
completeness—Kyle privately considered it more a matter of
desperation—they were trying combinations. "We're not
accomplishing a damn thing here."
"Any thoughts why?" asked Speedy.
"Sure. Nanomachines manipulate individual atoms. With such
abundant solar energy, the nannies have no problem repairing
themselves or cloning themselves or disassembling any
inconvenient molecules created by our chemical spills. We must
concurrently destroy every smaller-than-microscopic nanomachine,
and keep new ones from migrating in from neighboring areas, to
make any difference. The little critters are too hardy."
"That sounds a lot like admiration, Doc," said Carlisle. "By the way,
no progress here, either." The commander was inspecting another
stretch of plots, these heat-treated. They'd tried, among other
methods, a rocket-fuel flame thrower, an electric-arc furnace, and a
large, sunlight-concentrating, paraboloid mirror. It took three
thousand degrees to purge a shadow-fenced area. No one could
imagine a way to apply the technique on a moonwide scale.
"It is admiration, but don't worry." Kyle straightened from the
crouch in which he'd been eyeing yet another plot. "Respect for
their ruggedness doesn't detract from the scariness." If only there
were some way to tame these beasts.
It didn't help Kyle's mood that by the time he headed back to the
ship a new typhoon was forming in the Indian Ocean.
* * *
Kyle resisted the inane urge to wave at the fast-moving glimmer
that was Endeavor. "How's the R&R, Windy?"
The pilot mocked retching. "It's no holiday when all the food is
reconstituted."
The meals down here were squeezed from tubes. There hadn't
been weight margin or physical space in the lander for a fancy,
shuttle-style galley. Of course, Windy would trade places with him
in an instant. "How's our farm looking from up there?"
"Huh. I thought the idea was to not grow stuff."
"Ahem?"
"Lessee." There was the unmistakable flipping of paper in a
clipboard. "Okay, these are my notes. I'll downlink the details in a
minute. For fields one through eighteen and twenty through thirty-
six, the emissions as always correlate nicely with the size of the
plot and the regrowth rate you're reporting from the ground."
"And nineteen?" Kyle didn't let himself get excited. Most anomalies
were data-collection glitches.
"This is interesting. Right after our noble commander last flame-
broiled nineteen, not only did nineteen turn off, but I noticed that a
whole region around that plot stopped emitting."
That was interesting. "And did that larger area come back on when
plot nineteen did?"
"Roger, Doc." There was more rustling of paper. "And guess what:
plot nineteen is smack in the middle of the larger blanked-out
region. What do you suppose it means?"
"I am without clue." With a fat gloved finger, Kyle poked at the
keypad on his suit's left sleeve. His head's up display showed that
three of their little robotic tractors were idle. "Windy, how much
longer are you in range?"
"Directly? Three minutes plus. But one or more of the satellites we
deployed always has Resolute in line of sight."
He should have remembered that. The eighteen-hour days were
taking a toll. Best to confirm his thinking. "Beside comm, they
detect microwaves, too? Show if an area is on or off?"
"They have to be pretty much right above to spot beamed
microwaves, but then, yes."
The planet overhead had passed full and was waning. In a few
Earth days, lunar night would fall and they would pack up and
rendezvous with Endeavor for the trip home. There could be no
more unique clock, nor a better reminder of why they were here.
How much longer did they have to save the Earth? Climatologists,
when pressed, threw up their hands. Before The Big Dim, they had
invested years, even decades, on competing models of global
warming—simulations envisioning nothing remotely like recent
conditions. The not-for-attribution best guesses were that
temperatures would creep up and up until upper-atmosphere vapor
levels crossed a much debated threshold . . . followed by runaway
greenhouse effect. After that, planetary temperature would
skyrocket.
Can you say Venus?
His exhausted mind had wandered again. "Trickster? Speedy?
Were you listening?" Both responded in the affirmative. "I'd like the
untasked robots to go over plot nineteen with a fine-toothed
comb."
"Agreed," said the commander. "Windy, you and your flock of birds
keep an eye on us."
Neither the patiently surveying robots nor their human controllers
had noticed anything different about plot nineteen when, once
more, it and the surrounding region went inert.
* * *
"Good morning, Resolute," called the familiar voice. "This is
Carlene Milford."
"Good morning, Madam President," answered the three crew. It
was morning in Washington, but here lunar nightfall was fast
approaching. They were nearly packed and entirely eager to go
home, even though they had left not a single bootprint on the
moon's surface. The Resolute's landing stage, like the mats and
runners on which they had trod, would stay behind with its certain
contamination of dangerous nanotech.
"My compliments, and the world's appreciation, for your bravery
and discoveries. We wish you a safe journey home."
At least, thought Kyle, the rest of the world has finally accepted
reality: that the aliens had been a threat. "Madam President, are
you linked into our video system?"
"Yes, Dr. Gustafson. Those are cramped quarters you've been
living in."
While true, the Apollo astronauts had managed in a fraction the
space. "If you can, ma'am, I suggest you switch to our camera six."
Presidential calls are scheduled well ahead of time, giving Kyle
ample opportunity to pre-position the videocam. One of the
lander's monitors showed the recommended fisheye-lens view of
the pallid surface, across which, if one looked closely, several
black rectangular mats were distributed.
"You've worked with presidents, Doctor. You know how busy are
our schedules. I've been briefed, of course, but I'd like to hear
from you directly a short summary your findings."
The operative word, Kyle knew, being short. What on her docket
was more urgent than preventing life's extinction on Earth? "Yes,
ma'am. You're aware the aliens covered the moon with self-
growing, self-regenerating masers, and solar cells to power the
masers. These structures are tiny, on the scale of inches. We also
knew there had to be, but did not at first find, components for
control. There had to be sensors for locating the Earth in the lunar
sky."
Viewed from the moon's surface, Earth spanned a mere two
degrees of arc. Due to the tilt of the moon's axis and the ellipticity
of the moon's orbit, Earth from the same lunar vantage point
migrated around a celestial box of about fifteen degrees by
thirteen—movement the astronomers called libration. These
weren't details any politician wanted or needed. "As there has to be
computing power somewhere giving very precise directions to the
masers." Any single maser was a physically rigid structure, the
direction of whose output was fixed. By precisely controlling the
emissions of sets of masers, however, those outputs could be
aggregated into vast steerable beams. It worked just like a military
phased-array radar.
"Not my specialty, Doctor, but it seems logical."
Kyle fancied he heard the sound of eyes glazing. Simplify! "Our
work involved altering test plots on the lunar surface. As expected,
a cleared region did not radiate until the masers regrew. To our
surprise, however, one experiment rendered inert an area much
larger than had been temporarily cleansed. We had happened
upon a sensor that gave steering guidance. When that sensor
could no longer spot Earth, the masers that it controlled stopped
firing." Emissions from a blinded region would likely interfere with
an adjacent well-aimed beam; suppressing an area whose sensor
was for any reason targetless made sense.
"It sounds like we finally got lucky," said the President.
Now that the explorers could recognize the sensors, they knew
how widely those sensors were dispersed. They had actually been
unlucky, considering how much landscape had been tested, to go
as long as they had before randomly encountering a sensor.
"We've been using our utility robots to blind sensors with opaque
scraps." While nanotech quickly regrew a destroyed sensor, an
intact sensor could be covered. The nannies didn't distinguish
shadow from nightfall.
"And the robots can spot sensors?"
If only it were that easy. "You might have heard of archeologists
hunting for lost cities with space-based, ground-penetrating radar.
Major McNeilly"—he caught himself before calling her
Windy—"used Endeavor's radar to map beneath her orbit. A
subsurface view, and only using a narrow range of frequencies,
reveals a nonobvious large-scale structure. The alien infestation
repeats on the scale of a square kilometer. There's a sensor at the
center of each region.
"This is what we do. Using the radar survey, we guide a robot to the
center of a region. As the robot trolls back and forth, we use its
videocam to hunt for a small and subtle discontinuity in the artificial
surface: the sensor. The robot then parks atop a suspected sensor
until a satellite passing overhead can confirm that the surrounding
area has stopped emitting. The robot sets a scrap of asbestos
over the confirmed sensor, then heads off to the next region." At a
snail's pace.
"It sounds ingenious, Doctor. Is it too soon to say our problem is
solved?"
He suppressed an oath. The moon was big. "I'm afraid, ma'am,
that it is too soon. Disabling all the masers this way will take an
armada of moon-orbiting satellites and myriads of moon-crawling
robots. There are millions of sensors to be blinded, one by one."
And, perhaps, again and again. Kyle expected the nanotech to
eventually, atom by atom, carry away the obscuring mats—as they
had, on the day of The Big Dim, removed the last thin skin of lunar
dust that had disguised the spreading infestation.
"It sounds like an epic undertaking, Dr. Gustafson, but nonetheless
something we can undertake. We have far greater cause for hope
than before this expedition. I look forward to discussing it with you,
and to meeting with the whole crew, very soon."
The President did not articulate the thought in everyone's mind.
The four astronauts were returning to a remote quarantine, their exit
from which was far from certain.
CHAPTER 39
"Ready for another first, guys?"
McNeilly sounded altogether too chirpy, but it was probably just
pilot bravado. The alternative explanation, pilot exhaustion, didn't
bear thinking about—nor could Kyle do anything about it. "I say we
get out and walk."
The first to which Windy referred was a manned aerobrake
maneuver. The heat tiles that insulated Endeavor during its fiery
reentry had been designed for near-Earth missions. Symmetry was
a cruel mistress: just as the orbiter had had to add speed to reach
the moon, it now had more speed to shed than any previous
returning shuttle. That faster-than-spec reentry turned directly into
unacceptable thermal stress on the tiles. Instead of reengineering
yet another critical system, the mission had turned to a technique
previously tried only with robotic interplanetary probes.
"Hold on to your helmets, folks." The orbiter shuddered as it
bludgeoned its way through the Earth's upper atmosphere. The
angle of attack was by intent shallower than any previous reentry.
"Getting toasty up here." The "up here" was because Windy, for
her own protection, was alone on the flight deck. Those who had
been to the lunar surface remained sealed in Resolute's
claustrophobic ascent stage, inside Endeavor's cargo bay.
Darkroom-style red bulbs provided their only, and decidedly dim,
lighting.
"Nearing fourteen hundred degrees C." Carlisle meant the tiles, not
the flight deck. He was studying telemetry from the cockpit. His
remoted instruments reproduced everything he would have seen in
his now-empty command seat beside the pilot. "I'd say that
qualifies as warm."
"And back out we go."
Kyle clutched the arms of his acceleration seat as the cabin
vibrated like mad. Aerobraking was such an antiseptic term. In
reality, the Endeavor had hit the atmosphere at almost seven miles
a second. The Earth's skin of air was softer than, say, a brick wall .
. . but at these speeds, not by much. The trick was to strike a
glancing blow. Each dip into the atmosphere removed a bit of
velocity, followed by a return to space to shed the friction-induced
heat. If they entered at the wrong angle, the Endeavor would
bounce like a stone skipping off a lake, or heat up past the thermal
tiles' capacity to protect them.
"Whee!" Gonzalez was either having a great time or had forgotten
their thin margin of safety. Maybe both. "Once more, Windy."
"Anything for you, Speedy."
A few tooth-rattling repetitions slowed them enough for a sedate,
five-mile-per-second low Earth orbit, circularized at an altitude of
two hundred miles. Landing from LEO should be a piece of
cake—if all the aerobraking shocks hadn't dislodged too many
tiles.
"Great job, Endeavor."
"Copy that, Houston. Quite a ride, actually."
"Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but you'll have to wait a bit
longer. Storm in the Marshalls." That put off until the weather
cleared another item for the record books: the first shuttle landing
at a remote Pacific atoll.
Quarantine Central.
* * *
Endeavor smacked the isolated runway, bounced, and settled into
a fast roll. The landing strip had been lengthened for them, but the
curve of the atoll limited what could be done. They shook with relief
when the orbiter coasted to rest with only a few hundred feet to
spare.
"You make it look easy, Windy. Whenever you're ready."
"Thanks, Houston." Over the in-ship radio Kyle heard flung metal
buckles striking whatever—and a meaty thud. "Head rush."
It was a wonder, thought Kyle, the shuttle pilot could stand at all.
Except for a few minutes acceleration and deceleration, she had
been weightless for almost a month. By rights, someone should
have helped her from her seat. That was a risk no sane person
would take.
"Tricky, Speedy . . . Doc." The pilot was breathless merely from
struggling back to her feet. "It's been . . . fun. See you . . . in a few
weeks."
They watched by close-circuit TV as their shipmate stumbled to
the middeck. Braced against a bulkhead, Windy waved at the
videocam. "Stay out of trouble, guys." She struggled briefly with
the hatch's release. As the door slid aside, TV showed the three
(still sealed in the Resolute's ascent stage) an approaching,
teleoperated motorized staircase. Windy would be taken, entirely
by remote-controlled vehicle, to the farthest part of the atoll. They,
once she was safely away, would go to their own, separate
quarantine.
They had one final task to perform first.
Kyle and Craig Carlisle struggled with the suddenly heavy cooler-
sized chest, in which nested smaller vacuum-sealed vessels. Each
inner container held lunar-dust samples, harvested by abandoned
robots. Gonzalez, meanwhile, opened the hatch into the
Endeavor's payload bay. Two weeks in one-sixth G, Kyle decided,
were little better than free-fall the entire time as McNeilly had
experienced. All three were panting before they'd wrestled the
chest from the ascent vehicle, through the orbiter, and down
mobile stairs to the concrete runway. It was the middle of the night,
as per plan, and the electric lighting on the stairs was decidedly
dim.
Out of breath, Kyle awaited another remote-controlled vehicle. Out
to sea, warships were discernible only by their running lights. They
were here to enforce the quarantine.
A driverless truck rolled up. "Excuse the informal welcome,"
announced an unseen speaker. Grunting, the astronauts hoisted
the chest onto the flatbed and slammed shut the tailgate. The truck
looped around them and drove to a pier jutting into the lagoon.
Darkness and distance kept Kyle from seeing exactly how the
chest was transferred to the awaiting submarine. No one knew how
best to isolate the nanotech samples, or how rapidly the contagion
might reproduce in terrestrial conditions. For lack of an alternative,
the safety protocols in the onboard labs, converted torpedo rooms,
were based on biohazard containment.
The submarine sailed off into the midnight darkness, headed, Kyle
knew, for the deepest point in the island's lagoon. Nuclear
powered, the sub extracted oxygen by electrolysis and desalinated
its drinking water. The Navy boasted that its subs could remain
submerged as long as the food lasted.
In the worst-case scenario, this sub would never surface.
The driverless truck returned. "Hop in, folks," crackled the speaker.
"Time for your all-expenses-paid tropical vacation, courtesy of
Uncle Sam." They climbed in for the ride to a nearby cluster of
huts. It went unspoken that their stay could be permanent if the
coming dawn revealed an outbreak of alien nanotech.
No one slept until an entirely ordinary sunrise became a gloriously
ordinary day.
EPILOGUE
Kyle and Darlene strolled hand in hand along a serpentine strip of
sand. Combers rolled lazily into the lagoon of the lonely atoll. Wind
sighed through the fronds of palm trees. Stars sparkled overhead,
all the brighter for the pallor of the altered moon. Both were
barefoot, wearing only thin shirts over swim suits. Humidity had
frizzed her hair.
"You shouldn't be here, you know." The gentle squeeze he gave
her hand belied his words. "It's dangerous."
She snorted. "Yeah, I can see what hardship duty this is."
"It didn't tell you something that the only way you could come was
to be lowered in a harness from a helicopter?" And that the
chopper pilot then jettisoned the cable, a very long cable, instead
of rewinding it?
"I missed you, too."
They'd talked for hours. Cat anecdotes. Weather disasters
possibly caused by the microwave onslaught. The paperwork
minutiae of modern life. Cat anecdotes. Radioed progress reports
from the submerged lab. There was, at last, some unmitigatedly
upbeat news: discovery that the nanotech was optimized for
unfiltered-by-atmosphere sunlight. The nannies, should any
escape, would spread much slower on Earth than on the moon.
With miles of tropical beach to themselves and, for the moment,
perfect weather, apocalyptic scenarios and civilization's routines
seemed equally improbable. Kyle whistled softly to himself, at
peace with the world.
Darlene stopped short. "I know that look."
"What look?"
"That cat-that-ate-the-cardinal expression." Stripes was quite the
huntress; and there were no wild canaries in Virginia. "Like
someone who thought his hidden agenda for refueling shuttles in
space was, well, hidden."
"You knew?"
"Honey, we all suspected." She pecked his cheek. "Retrieving the
masersat was the right thing to do. It didn't matter that the capability
to do so might also make other things possible."
"And you never said anything." He said it wonderingly—one who
conspired had no standing to complain about others holding their
tongues.
"So . . . about that look of yours."
"We, mankind, have no choice but to develop a major lunar
presence. People manufacturing robots and dispersing them
across the moon's surface." He rotated slowly, drinking in the
beautiful night sky. This near the equator, many of the
constellations were unfamiliar. It still took him a moment to get his
celestial bearings. "Maintaining that human presence will mean
mining the ice in the eternal shadows, the forever nanotech-safe
shadows, of the moon's polar craters. If permanent defeat of the
alien nanotech does not come quickly—and nothing about this
battle has gone smoothly—supporting lunar outposts will mean
more space travel, to harvest icy asteroids. But that's okay,
because just as reaching low Earth orbit is most of the work of
getting to the moon, a lunar base is the hard part of reaching the
planets."
His thoughts churned faster than he could find words. His mind's
eye pictured mechanisms for aiming banks of masers, rather than
simply blinding their sensors. Steer the microwaves to antenna
farms in the deep desert, where water vapor won't be increased,
and the moon became Earth's solar-energy power plant. And if
research could recover the original programming of the Krulchukor
laser cannons? It would mean human sail-equipped spacecraft.
"Swelk never meant Earth any harm, so the outcome is fitting. The
result of her visit will be, not disaster, but a rebirth of human
exploration. I sincerely believe that her legacy will be mankind's
dominion over the solar system."
"Keep going."
"Huh?" Gentle amusement wasn't the reaction he'd expected to his
impassioned speech.
"Don't even try to bluff a diplomat. It's never going to work." She
peered at the ghostly crescent overhead. "Since long before we
met, the moon has been your obsession . . . yet you've scarcely
glanced at it since I arrived. So I want to know, what has taken its
place in your always scheming mind?"
He indicated a brilliant red spark near the horizon. A telescope for
the object's proper study topped his wish list for the next airdrop. "I
don't expect it to be me personally"—not that I expected to go to
the moon, either—"but that is what. That is mankind's next big step.
"Mars."
THE END
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