Space will be colonized—although possibly not by us. If we lose our nerve, there are plenty of other people on this planet. The construction crews may speak Chinese or Russian—Swahili or Portuguese. It does not take "good old American know-how" to build a city in space. The laws of physics work just as well for others as they do for us.
—Robert A. Heinlein
The meeting was called for 0900, but they were still straggling in at a quarter past. Some had hangovers. All had stayed up too late.
Too bad, Jenny thought. They'll have to get used to military hours. She had a strong urge to giggle. Suppose they didn't? Maybe they'd make Cheyenne Mountain adapt to the hours science fiction writers kept. . .
They took their places in the lecture room, but they tended to sit for a moment, then get up and gather in clumps. Most of them talked at once. Working with the science-fiction people was an educational experience. They had no reverence for anything or anyone, except possibly for Mr. Anson, and they argued with him; they just didn't call him names.
They'd spent the past days learning about U.S. and Soviet weapons. Now it was time to examine what was known about the aliens.
Not that there's anything to know. Our best photos don't show details. Just that it's damned big.
One of the men, the one with the heavy mustache, began before she could. "Major Crichton, I assume that the government has been no more successful in communicating with the aliens than all the private attempts were?"
"Correct. We've tried every means of communication we can think of."
"And a few no one would have thought of," Sherry Atkinson added. They all laughed, remembering that the mayor of San Diego had persuaded the citizens of his city to blink their lights on and off while they were in the alien ship's view.
"With no result," Jenny said. "Our best prediction is that the alien ship will arrive day after tomorrow. Sometime day after tomorrow. We can't predict it closer than that, because the ship has begun random acceleration and deceleration."
"As if it didn't want us to know the precise ETA," Curtis said.
"ETA?" Atkinson asked.
"Estimated Time of Arrival" Jenny said. "And yes, we've thought of that."
"It might be their engines aren't working properly." Atkinson looked thoughtful. "Or that the concepts of time and regularity don't mean much to them."
"Bat puckey," Curtis said. "If they're space travelers, they have to have clocks."
"Doesn't mean they use them," someone said.
Jenny spoke through rising voices. "Lieutenant Sherrad will review what we know." The chatter stopped.
Sherrad was a Regular Navy man hoping for his bad foot to heal so that he could go back to sea. Jenny wasn't quite sure how he'd been assigned to Colorado Springs, but she did know the Admiral thought well of him. His father had been a classmate.
The Navy seemed to have even more of that sort of thing than the Army. He ran new blowups of films taken by the Mauna Kea telescopes as far back as the late l970s. A few showed a flickering star that must have been the alien ship, although at the time no one had realized it.
Sherrad showed each film in sequence. Then again. He brought the lights up and waited, as if teasing the audience.
"Son of a bitch."
"What, Joe?"
"It dropped something."
Sherrad nodded. "It does look that way."
It took me four hours to see that, Jenny thought. Maybe there is a good reason to have these birds here—
"Our best guess is that it came from the southern region of the Centaur, dropped something heavy, rounded the sun, and went to Saturn," Lieutenant Sherrad said. "Decelerating all the way."
"They knew where they were going, then."
"Well, Dr. Curtis, it does seem so."
Jenny nodded approval. Sherrad had memorized the doctorates.
Voices arose from one of the clumps. "Okay, they refueled at Saturn—"
"Why not Jupiter?"
"It takes less delta-V to slow down for Saturn. Jesus, but they must have been going on the last teacup of fuel for that to matter!"
"Jupiter could have been around on the other side—"
"Could we see it again?" Anson asked.
Sherrad waited until they were quiet. "Certainly. We also have the computer simulation."
The room darkened again.
Black dots speckled a white field: a negative of the night sky. Astronomers generally preferred to use negatives; it was easier to see the spots that were stars. The scene jumped minutely every few seconds. The stars stayed where they were—the photographs had been superimposed—but one dot jumped too, and grew larger.
"These were taken from Mauna Kea observatory. Notice the point that jumps. When we realized what we had, we made same graphs—"
The first showed a curve across the star background, not very informative.
"—and this is what it would look like from above the Sun's north pole."
Three faintly curved lines radiated from a central point. Near that point, the sun, they were dotted lines—of course, no camera would have seen anything then—and they almost brushed the solar rim. The Navy man's light-pointer traced the incoming line. "It came in at several hundred miles per second," he said, "decelerating all the way. Of course the Intruder wasn't seen near the sun, and nobody was even looking for it then. This—" The light-pointer traced a line outward. "We have only three photos of it, and of course they could be artifacts, garbage. If they're real, then this one wasn't under power when it left the sun. It was dropped." The third line ran nearly parallel to the second, then curved away. "This section was under power, and decelerating at around two gravities, with fluctuations. We've got five photos, and then it's lost, but it might well have been on its way to Saturn."
"Not good," said a voice in the dark.
The lights came on. The Navy man said, "Who said that?"
"Joe Ransom." He had a gaudy mustache and the air of self-assurance the SF writers all seemed to share. "Look: they dropped something to save fuel. Could have been a fuel tank—"
"I'd think it was a Bussard ramjet," someone interrupted.
Ransom waved it away. "It almost doesn't matter. They dropped something they needed to get here. They probably planned to. Odds are they didn't take enough fuel to stop inside the solar system without dropping—well, something massive, something they didn't need any more, something that served its purpose once it got them from Alpha Centauri or wherever. If—"
Burnham jumped on it. "A Bussard ramjet wouldn't be any use inside the solar system. You need a thousand kilometers per second to intercept enough fuel—or there are some alternate versions, but you still—"
Ransom rode him down. "We can't figure out what it was yet and we don't care. They used it to cross, and then they dropped it. Either they figure to make someone build them another one, or they're not going home. You see the problem?"
Something icy congealed in Jenny's guts. They don't expect to go home. Maybe a Threat Team isn't such a bad idea. I'll have to call the Admiral.
Meanwhile, the meeting was degenerating into isolated clumps of conversation. Jenny spoke up to resume control. "Enough!" The noise dropped by half. "Mr. Ransom, you said Alpha Centauri. Why?"
"Just a shot in the dark. It's the three closest stars in the sky, and two of them are yellow dwarfs, stars very like ours."
"Stars?"
"Yes. What we call Alpha Centauri, meaning the brightest star in the Centaur constellation, is really three stars: two yellow ones pretty close together, and one wretched red dwarf."
"Our own sun's a yellow dwarf," Curtis said.
"Interesting," Lieutenant Sherrad said. "Our astronomers say the object came from the Centaur region. Is Alpha Centauri really a good prospect?"
The meeting came apart again. This time Jenny let it ride for a bit. Her patience was rewarded when Curtis bellowed, "May I have a consensus? Who likes Alpha Centauri?"
Two hands went up.
"Who hates it?"
Three hands. And three undecided.
"Sherry? Why don't you like Alpha Centauri?"
"Wade, you know how many other choices there are! There are almost a dozen yellow dwarf stars near us; and we don't know they came from that kind of star anyway!"
"Bob? You like it."
The wide white-haired man with the gaudy vest laughed and said, "I didn't at first. It's trite. But, you know, it's trite because it got used so much, and it got used so much because it's the best choice. Why wouldn't they go looking for the closest star that's like their own? And, Sherry, there aren't many yellow stars in that direction. That clump centers around Procyon and Tau Ceti and—"
"That's what I was getting at," Dr Curtis said. "It's trite. As I see it, the way to bet is that they came from Alpha Centauri, or else they came a hell of a long distance—and if they dropped half their ship—you see?"
Burnham said, "It'd be their first trip. They won't be very good at talking to us. Chances are they'll want to watch us from high orbit."
"Maybe it's good the Soviets can't go after them. They might run."
"It still isn't good. We should have met them around Saturn, just to get a little more respect—"
"Could have had a hotel on Titan by now—"
"Proxmire—"
They were at it again. Out of the babble she heard Curtis say, "One thing's sure. They came from a long way off. So the next question is, what do they want?"
* * *
Rogachev's office was roomy enough, by station standards. Much of its furniture looked like afterthoughts: the hot plate, the curved sofa that had replaced a standard air mattress; even the window, shuttled from Earth and welded into a hole sawn in the hull: a thick-walled box, two panes of glass sandwiching a goop that would foam and harden in near vacuum. But it let light through, so that Station Commander Arvid Pavlovich Rogachev could see the stars.
They flowed past, left to right, while Arvid mixed powdered tea with boiling water in a plastic bag. The station was equipped for free-fall, in case of emergencies. He served the tea into two cups, and passed one to his second in command.
"The station will house twelve," Arvid said. "Twelve are aboard. Four are foreign observers. No more important event has occurred aboard any spacecraft, and it will happen while Kosmograd is both crowded and shorthanded."
"Not quite so bad as all that," said Aliana Aleksandrovna Tutsikova. "Recall that there is nothing to be done about the alien ship. We don't have to go to meet them; we don't even have a motor."
"Neither drive nor weapons. We could not flee either."
"Exactly. It will come, we are privileged to watch. I suggest that we are doing fairly well."
"Perhaps we are." Arvid smiled. "It helps that our guests cannot talk to each other well."
"Their dossiers said that."
Arvid didn't entirely trust any dossiers, but Aliana knew that. He said, "I've watched them exercising their language deficiencies."
"Do you see a security problem?"
"From them? No. It is my habit to make threat estimates. Shall we? As a game?"
"My mother would call it gossip."
"Let us gossip, then. Which of our guests do you find interesting?"
"The Nigerian. He's the blackest man I've ever seen. I actually have trouble looking him in the face."
"Really? What will you do when aliens are aboard?"
"Perhaps I'll hide in your office." She lost her smile. "Comrade Commander, I have an irrational fear of spiders and insects."
"Then we must hope that the approaching guests will be neither." But they will not be shaped like men, Arvid thought; and Aliana could not even see all men as men. She would be of little help to him if aliens came aboard. He had not suspected this weakness in her. It was well he'd learned it now.
She said, "The Nigerian speaks English and three native languages . . . which must make him effectively retarded. There are forty-three languages active within the borders of Nigeria. Educated in England, then Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, but he learned little Russian. He favors economic independence for Nigeria."
"We won't cure that here. He spends all his time with Dmitri Parfenovich and Wes Dawson. That would be good, except that Dmitri has been trying to convert Dawson to his own views, whereas Dawson sometimes takes the time to try to tell George what's going on. Dawson is good at explaining complex matters."
"Could you have a word with Dmitri?"
Arvid laughed. "Do you want me to tell our Political Commissar how to convert the heathen? Aliana, I do not seek converts."
She laughed. Officially, Dmitri Grushin was Deputy Commander and Information Officer for the station, but he was so little qualified for either job that his KGB origins showed clearly. "We may find ourselves seeking converts among people with nightmare shapes," Aliana said. "If so, Dawson is the one to watch. Nigeria and France would be no threat to us—"
"His nation made a good choice there, I think. The Honorable Wes Dawson is frantic to meet aliens."
"Wasn't it politics that—"
Rogachev shrugged. "Certainly his dossier suggests that he forced himself aboard. Even so, although I know little of American politics, I would not think a mere congressman could force the American President too far in a direction he did not wish to go."
Aliana grinned. "Dawson is more qualified than Dmitri. Surely they have similar positions?"
Rogachev shrugged. "I do not think so, but it hardly matters."
"Dawson's dossier calls him politically liberal."
"A lazy agent wrote that. 'Politically liberal'—he copied that out of some newspaper! Dawson has invariably favored the American space program." Rogachev's face twisted into a look he didn't show to many people: a distinctly guilty grin. "I have closely watched the Honorable Wes Dawson. He has been sick with envy since he came aboard. He does not even care much for the design. Indeed, he knows precisely how he would rebuild the station if it were his. But as it is not, it is killing him!"
Aliana smiled back. "If we had the funding, wouldn't we make improvements too? Very well. Dr. Beaumont has been a French communist for two decades. We can count her an ally. She has a kind of beauty, wouldn't you say?"
"Classic and severe, but yes."
"Have you made advances?"
Arvid laughed. "She would not be interested. A male can tell before he commits himself. Perhaps I have grown too fat. She speaks little English. I have taken opportunities to put her together with Dawson, to see what would happen."
"And?"
"Oh, he shows some interest . . . but Captain Greeley and Giselle Beaumont have spent much more time together. Aliana, I find that odd."
She nodded comprehension. "Captain John Greeley, USAF A good-looking man, three years younger than the French doctor . . . but fourteen years younger than, for example, me. Greeley probably considers Dawson a step in his career, which might end in public relations or political campaign management. Yet he seems to be trying to share a bed with the Frenchwoman. Dawson might find her attractive as well. Greeley is competing with a man who could help or hurt him."
He shrugged. "Some men have little control over their gonads."
"What would you do? I hardly have to ask, do I, Arvid? You would help your superior seduce the woman, and thereby advance your career."
"I no longer must resort to such tactics. Yet I would have said that Greeley does."
"Greeley knows Dawson better than we do. Dawson may be homosexual—"
"It would be in his dossier. Even if the Americans do not know. The KGB would."
"Then again, some married people are more thoroughly married than others." That was a dig, but meant in friendly fashion. Arvid found Aliana's position perfectly reasonable. With a husband and a child on Earth, and a career to manage as well, her life was easily complex enough without adding a lover.
Arvid poured more tea for them from the plastic bag. (Oh, yes, he would make changes here if he had the funding. Powdered tea! A samovar wouldn't occupy that much room.) "I enjoy gossiping with you, Aliana."
"We are also discussing security, are we not?"
"Perhaps. Security isn't my department either . . . Decisions have already been made, and not by me. My own inclination would be to bar any tourists from the station during this crucial time. But the Chairman favors world opinion these days—"
"I generally find that reassuring."
"Too often it precedes an invasion. Not this time, perhaps. Mother Russia is about to greet the first visitors from interstellar space. They will come here first; intelligent creatures would not leave potential enemies above them when they land. And that coup will make the U.S. landings on the Moon look like a child reciting for his elders."
"Must we have visitors to watch our triumph? It could be filmed."
"We can guess at a second purpose. When the aliens arrive we will seem to represent the world . . . It doesn't matter. Security is out of my hands. I can forbid our foreign visitors to enter parts of the station. I can forbid the crew to discuss technical matters. Information may leak through anyway; it usually does. But the blame will not fall on Arvid Rogachev."
* * *
The little truck groaned up Coldwater Canyon. Harry clutched his twelve-string guitar and shivered in the wind-wake behind the cab. It was cold for May in Los Angeles. Lately all the nights had been cold. Cold or not, it beat walking. It was nice of Arline to duck her old man and come pick him up. Too damn bad she had five other people with her, so he had to ride in the back.
It had been a good evening in the Sunset Bar, where he played for free drinks and customer change. Once Harry had thought he'd be a real performer, but the auto wrecks had finished that. Twice within two weeks, in his own car and then his boss's borrowed car, and neither had headrests! It went beyond bad luck. His head hurt, and his back hurt, and he cursed the two separate sets of sons of bitches who'd separately rear-ended him and left him part crippled. And the insurance companies and their goddam lawyers and—
Ruby moved over to sit against him. A hundred and eighty pounds of fleshy cushion: her warmth felt good. "Want to come to my place?" she asked.
"Love to," Harry said. And I don't like to sleep alone. "But you know, I have this place I have to watch."
"Take me with you, then."
"Can't do that, either," Harry said. He didn't want to. Ruby had been a nice, soft, affectionate partner, and not just in bed, ten years ago. Naive but nice. Maybe he'd been expecting her to grow up. God, how she'd changed! She'd grown out: forty pounds, maybe more. She'd been soft, then, but she hadn't sagged! You noticed the lack of brains more now. Arline, now she'd be nice, but Jesus, she lives with her old man and he'd get sticky as hell.
For a moment Harry thought it over. Arline would come with him. She'd love the Dawson house. And—
And word of honor on record. Heckfire. The truck was passing Laurel Canyon on Mulholland. He tapped on the glass. The pickup pulled over. Harry climbed out. He waved to Arline. "Thanks," he called.
"Sure this is all right?" she asked.
"Fine," Harry said. He waited until she'd driven on up the hill and around a corner, then started climbing toward the Dawson house.
It's good for me, Harry thought. It's got to be. And, by damn, my legs are tightening up. He slapped his thigh—it did feel more solid than it had in a long time—and shifted the guitar from his left hand to his right.
The little .25-caliber Beretta was too heavy in his shirt pocket. He knew he ought to leave it at home. It wasn't much of a gun, and even so, the cops would get soggy and hard to light if they caught him with it. But it was all the gun he had, and there were some bad people out there.
Not the only gun, he thought. He'd rooted around in the Dawson house—hell, Wes knew he'd do that, that's why he told him about the money in the drawer behind the big drawer in the kitchen—and he'd found the Army .45, the one Wes bought for Carlotta on Harry's advice, and damn all, she hadn't taken it with her. But it wasn't his gun, and Harry couldn't carry it. It would really hit the fan if he was caught carrying a piece registered to a congressman.
Hell, he'd never carry that weight up this hill! It was always steeper. Every fucking night it got steeper.
It's good for me. It's really good for me. Oh, my, God, I have got to get that motorcycle fixed.
I've got enough for a deposit. They'll fix the engine. Maybe if I sing at three places, the hell with the free drinks, get to places where the tips are good, I can scrape up enough to get it out, because I can't go on climbing this hill! And there's groceries. Jesus, I'm down to chili and cornmeal and NutriSystems—
For the first week it had been easy. There had been food in the refrigerator. He ate vegetable omelets, then frozen stuff, then cans. But now he was down to the NutriSystem stuff Carlotta had bought years ago.
Diet stuff! Lord God. It tastes better than it ought to, and I could lose some belly, here. But opening the cans feels like opening cat food, looks like opening cat-food cans, and Carlotta went off the diet two years ago! Fry it with eggs, and it looks like cat food and snot! And I'm out of eggs.
He shifted the guitar to his other hand. Nothing left but breakfast cereal! I'm going to get that engine fixed.
Tomorrow, Harry thought. He shifted the guitar again. I can take the Kawasaki apart, but the engine has to be rebuilt. I'll have to carry it in. Borrow Arline's pickup again.
If you pulled a drawer in the Dawson kitchen all the way out, there was another drawer behind it, and a thousand dollars in fifties behind that. A good burglar would find it and go away, Harry thought, and that was probably its major purpose. Burglar bait, for God's sake, and thank God he didn't need it. He had enough for the deposit.
* * *
Jenny stood quickly as Admiral Carrell came into her tiny office in the White House basement.
"Sit down," he commanded. "I'm just old enough to feel uncomfortable when ladies stand up for me. Got any coffee?"
"Yes, sir." She took cups from her desk drawer and poured from a Thermos pitcher.
"Pretty good. Not up to Navy standards, of course. Navy coffee will peel paint. Did we get anything out of that zoo?"
"Yes, sir," Jenny said.
"You sound surprised."
"Admiral, I was surprised. I thought the exercise was a waste of time, but once those sci-fi types got going, it was pretty good." She opened a folder that lay atop her desk. "This, for instance. When the alien ship came into the solar system almost fifteen years ago, a few telescopes including Mauna Kea happened to be pointed that way. No one noticed anything then, but when we really looked—" She showed the photographs.
"It look like blobs to me."
"Yes, sir. They looked like blobs to all of us. Maybe they are blobs. But the scifi people suggested that the alien ship dropped a Bussard ramjet."
"A—"
"Bussard ramjet, Admiral." She looked down at her notes and read. "Vacuum isn't empty. There's hydrogen between the stars. The ramjet is a device for using the interstellar hydrogen as a means for propulsion. In theory it will take ships—large ships—between the stars. It uses large magnetic fields for scoops, and—"
"You may spare me the technical details."
"Yes, sir. The important point is that they dropped something massive, something they may need if they contemplate leaving our solar system."
"Which means they intend to stay," Admiral Carrell said mildly.
"Yes, sir—"
"Rather presumes on our hospitality. Almost as if they didn't intend us any free choice." He stood. "Well, we will know soon enough."
"Yes, sir."
"My congratulations on your work with the advisors. Perhaps I can glean more speculations from them."
"You're going to work with them, sir?"
"I may as well. The President has decided that someone responsible must be inside Cheyenne Mountain when the aliens arrive. That someone, apparently, is to be me."
"Good choice," Jenny said.
Carrell smiled thinly. "I suppose so."
"Any special preparations I should make, sir?"
"Nothing that isn't in the briefing book. I've discussed this with the Strategic Air Command and the Chief of Naval Operations. They're ordering a Yellow Alert starting tomorrow afternoon."
Yellow Alert. The A Teams on duty in the missile silos. All the missile subs at sea. Bombers on ready alert, fueled, bombs aboard, with crews in quarters by the runways. "I do hope this is a waste of time."
Admiral Carrell nodded agreement. "So do I, Major. Needed or not, I leave this afternoon. Before I do, we must discuss this with the President. I give you one hour to reduce all we know to a ten-minute briefing."
* * *
Jeri Wilson piled the last of the gear into the station wagon and slammed the tailgate. Then she leaned against it to catch her breath. It was warm out, with bright sun overhead, but the morning low haze hid the mountains ringing the San Fernando Valley. She glanced at her watch, "Eleven, and I'm ready to go," she announced.
Isadore Leiber eyed the aged Buick's sagging springs. "You'll never make it, he announced." Clara nodded agreement.
"Good roads all the way," Jeri said. "I've left enough time so I won't have to drive too fast. You're the ones who are cutting it close; you have farther to go."
"Yeah," Isadore said. "Jeri, change your mind! Come with us."
"No. I am going to find my husband."
Clara looked uncomfortable. "Jeri, he's not really—"
"He damned well is, that divorce isn't final. Anyway, it's not your problem. It's mine. Thanks for worrying about me, but I can take care of myself."
"I doubt it," Isadore said with embarrassed brutality.
Melissa came out with a large bear named Mr. Pruett. Thank God there weren't any animals, Jeri thought. Except the goldfish. She'd taken care of that problem by flushing the fish down the toilet while Melissa was asleep.
Isadore showed her an entry in his notebook. "That's the right address and phone number?"
She nodded.
"Caddoa, Colorado," Isadore said, "I never heard of the place."
Jeri shrugged. "Me either. David thinks they're crazy, but somebody thinks he can find oil there."
"Sounds small."
"I guess it is. Harry marked out a route for me—"
"Harry," Clara said contemptuously.
"Harry's all right," Jeri said. "Anyway, I went to the Auto Club too. They say the roads are good all the way. Isadore, Clara, it's sweet of you to worry, but you've done enough. Now get out of here before George and Vicki get mad at you."
"Yeah," Isadore said. "I sure would hate it if George got mad at me. . ."
"You would, though," Jeri said. "Give the Enclave my best. Melissa, get in the car. We're on our way. Clara, from your look you'd think you weren't ever going to see me again!"
"Sorry." Clara tried to laugh, but she wasn't doing a very good job of it.
"Do you know something?" Jeri demanded.
"A little," Isadore said. He sounded reluctant to talk, but finally added, "George caught something on short wave. All the strategic forces are on alert. Also, there's some kind of problem in Russia, he thinks. I'm not sure what."
"George is always hearing about problems in Russia," Jeri said.
"Yeah, but he's been right, too. Remember how he predicts that shake-up—"
Jeri shrugged. "Too late to worry about it." She got into the station wagon and started the engine. "Thanks again," she called, as she pulled away from the curb.
The Buick was sluggish, and she wondered if she really had loaded it too heavily. It was an old car, and for the past year it had been pretty badly neglected. I ought to have new springs put in. And have the brakes looked at, and a tune-up, and—and no! If I wait, I may never go at all.
He didn't say no. He couldn't quite get himself to say yes, but he didn't say no. And that's enough for me! "Melissa, buckle up. We've got a long ride ahead."