by Joe Haldeman
Three of the aliens, including the mangled one, held back. The leader approached and said two syllables- then her eyes closed, her legs buckled and she fell to her hands and knees.
“Evidently the green tranquilizer works . . . No.” The alien shook her head and stood up again. “I’ll hold off on the red for a few minutes.” She smiled a shy, pretty smile: her teeth were white squares.
“I could have sworn all of them had pointed-“ Carol flinched as the alien pointed the weapon at her. A hole opened in the hull a couple of meters away, letting in a beam of white light.
“It’s working.” The alien wiggled the weapon and the hole widened to a long gash. She nodded and walked back to the other three. She tried the weapon on the bloody one and it sliced her in two.
Carol closed her eyes and swallowed rapidly. They aren’t human, she told herself over and over. They aren’t even proper animals, they don’t feel pain.
Deliberately looking away, she saw the alien who had first been in the room with her. It lay face-down on the floor, head against the wall.
“It looks like some of them are more vulnerable than others. One I threw against the wall is unconscious or dead.”
She forced her eyes back to the others. “They’re talking now, or growling. The . . . one they cut in two is also talking, lying on her back.
“That’s strange. She doesn’t look at all like the pictures we saw in training. Of slingshot accidents. It’s . . . the body cavity doesn’t have any identifiable organs. Just a lot of blood and yellow stuff. Here they come.”
Three walked slowly toward her while the fourth, the truncated one, rolled up on one elbow to watch. Carol centered her, its, forehead in the crosshairs and tongued the laser. A black spot appeared there, smoldering, and the creature toppled over.
“They can be killed. It takes a head wound.” The three others didn’t even look back. “Ten minutes.”
They tried all their wands on her simultaneously. She kept her arms flat against her sides; the beams glanced away and made latticework out of the thick hull. They grabbed her arms and shoulders and tried to pull her away from the wall.
“Maybe I can get you three.” Their weapons were dangling free; she swept up the cords with one hand and jerked. The machines flew in a glittering arc across the room.
She hugged the three aliens to her, lacing her fingers behind them. They struggled, growling, bones grinding, but couldn’t get free. “Nine minutes, I should be able to hold them. Unless reinforcements come, with better weapons.”
39 – CHAPTER ELEVEN
Arnold Bates didn’t look at the clock. “Thirty seconds.”
“Lefavre!” Riley said. “Get out of that rifleman’s line of sight. Get ready.”
Rather get in the way of a dart than a laser, Jacque thought. He shuffled over and, with everybody else, focused all of his attention on the crystal.
“Fifteen seconds.”
Carol and the three aliens materialized less than a meter above the crystal. She fell heavily but didn’t topple, and held on to them. A piece of the ship’s hull crashed beside her.
“Darts,” Riley said.
“Two in each!” Carol shouted.
One of the aliens got three and sagged. The others relaxed and Carol loosened her grip on them.
“All right, Lefavre, bio team . . .” Suddenly all hell broke loose. The aliens squirmed out of Carol’s grip and ran in different directions, toward the sandbags. “More darts,” Riley shouted, but the order was unnecessary; the air was filled with the missiles, most of which missed and clattered harmlessly on the metal walls.
As they ran, the aliens changed shape.
Their torsos sprouted extra limbs-claws, tentacles, hairy spider arms. Beautiful faces grew monstrous with huge luminous eyes, terrible fangs. Seductive curves hidden by hair, scales, plates, feathers.
All different, all horrible, all bent on bloody murder.
One headed straight for the control room, leaping the last two meters, its shoulder toward the glass. “Kill them,” Riley said as he grabbed Bates and both of them fell backwards to the floor.
The alien crashed into the glass just as the lasers started, lurid green pencils of energy crisscrossing in the air. The glass starred but didn’t break. Two laser beams cut the alien into three unequal pieces, and shattered the glass.
It was over in seconds. The aliens had killed two people and injured seven, not counting the three who got serious burns. Jacque was unconscious with a concussion. Smell of burnt cloth and flesh and of hot metal and something else. The chamber was filled with gray haze from the smoldering sandbags.
Riley pulled himself up off the control room floor. The table was littered with blood-smeared glass. He surveyed the wreckage and adjusted his throat mike. “See if Lefavre’s alive. Someone else pick up the bridge.
Maybe not all the creatures are dead yet.”
“Look for one without a head wound,” Carol said, her amplified voice booming into the stunned silence. “You can’t kill them otherwise. Jacque?”
A medic was kneeling over Jacque, holding back his eyelids to check his pupils. “He’ll be all right, I think,” she said, and gave him an injection.
Riley was recovering. “Let’s get an autopsy going here . . . Physics, get a sample of that metal and run it down the hall. Is that one over in the corner alive?”
“Goddam right it is,” someone said. “Tried to bite me.” The alien had been sliced off just below the shoulders; it had one functioning tentacle and stubs of two other limbs. A laser had grazed its head-during the flurry of action Carol had shouted for them to aim there-taking off an ear and exposing a bluish brain mass. It lay on its back in a gory pool, tentacle twitching, growling in its throat.
“One of you suited Tamers grab the thing and restrain it. Who’s got the bridge?”
“Lefavre’s coming around,” the medic said.
“Well, get him over there. How much time we have?”
Bates was back in his chair. “Seventeen minutes, fifty seconds. Then you have five minutes to get out. I have to steam and bake and dump the air. And stay away from my crystal. You’ve got it filthy already.”
The loading crew came through a door carrying and pushing a new window and two ladders on rollers. They moved fast and stared straight ahead.
Carol got to the creature and grabbed its tentacle, pinning it under her arm. The alien tried to bite her on the wrist; she pulled its head back by the hair.
One of the Psych Group had the bridge. He approached rather timidly and touched it to the alien’s chest.
“Not much,” he said. “There’s a sound, a word, that it repeats over and over. ‘Liv . . . liver eye.’”
Jacque came over, stumbling, holding the side of his head. “Here, let me try.” A creature had slugged him between the temple and eye; it was already swelling.
He bridged with the creature and instantly recoiled. “Jesus!” His face grew even paler. He hesitated and then made contact again.
“It . . . it’s dying, I can tell that. I’ve never felt, never felt-there’s so much hate here. Contempt. Disgust . . . It sees me as a, as a soft . . . squishy thing, ugly. It would rather kill me than live, I think.
“There is one word. ‘L’vrai.’ Maybe that’s its name. Maybe the name of its race.”
Jacque was silent for a minute. Then he set the bridge on the floor and sat back on his heels. “It’s dead now.” The creature continued to stare but had stopped growling.
“I made a kind of contact with the thing, just before it faded out. Nonverbal.” He closed his eyes. “See if I can get it straight.
“If L’vrai is its name, it’s also the name of the other two. It was checking, seeing whether the others were still alive. It’s telepathic, at least in some limited way.
“I came closest to communicating when I allowed myself to . . . hate it back. When I couldn’t control my revulsion. It understood that.
“There’s more. It’s hard to put
into words.”
“That’s all right,” Riley said. “We’ll see what we can get with hypnotics. Either of the other ones alive?”
Jacque was glad they weren’t.
40 - Autobiography 2053 (continued)
(From Peacemaker: The Diaries of Jacque Lefavre, copyright © St. Martin’s TFX 2151:)
24 Jan 2053.
Spent most of today under hypnosis, the Psych group trampling around in my brain, trying to find out what that L’vrai said to me. They didn’t seem too happy when they released me.
They have Carol now. She’ll be home in an hour or so. We can sit and groan at each other. It’s no fun to do it alone. They wouldn’t give me anything stronger than APQ’s-and an admonition not to drink any alcohol for eight hours, unless I wanted my stomach pumped. Couldn’t be any worse than having your mind pumped.
I don’t remember much of what I said to them; I was conscious and could hear myself talking, but the words didn’t register. Guess I’ll have to read the report.
Speaking of reports. Somebody put a clipping from Midnight TFX on the bulletin board outside the ready room; an exposé of the AED. Says there’s no such thing as the Levant-Meyer Translation, men have never been to other planets, the holos and pictures are all faked (and Hollywood does a better job), the reams of official reports are all fiction. The AED is a hoax perpetrated by World Order members to maintain an expanding economy without allowing cash flow to non-member enterprises in proportion to their contributions to the GWP. I suppose Midnight is owned by an Independent.
The article explains everything except this fucking bruise on my face. If those L’vrai were actors I hope they got paid well.
I was lucky, though. The same one who cuffed me killed two scientists by cracking their heads together.
Maybe I was also lucky that psychologist picked up the bridge and used it first on the L’vrai. It made the alien fourth in sensitivity, rather than third. And that was bad enough.
Still can’t describe it. It was like seeing a color you’ve never seen before, a new primary color. The only thing familiar about the alien’s thoughts was hate, and I’ve never felt any emotion so strongly with bridge. Not even from the Thanos people.
What will they do now? They got their autopsy and a little more behavioral information. And gave the L’vrai some information about us, I guess. Maybe they’ll keep repeating the one-Tamer/minimum-time expedition until they stop learning new things.
Or they might take action. Gus told me there was some talk about attacking the aliens via the LMT. Pushing nuclear bombs through, dirty ones that would fill the planet’s atmosphere with deadly isotopes.
Sounds stupid to me. What would we do if some aliens wiped out 61 Cygnus A? We’d have to go find them, and fight them, out of self-preservation.
And with the L’vrai we’d certainly lose the fight. They’re technologically superior to us in most ways, as well as being shape-changers and natural telepaths. Naturally bloodthirsty, too. And when they go to a planet, they stay there, even if it takes them longer to get there.
It’s enough to keep you awake nights. As Sweeney’s report said, they might be in our backyard right now.
Carol’s home.
41 - All I Know Is What I Read in the Papers
SIRIUS WAVES
ALIEN THREAT?
PARIS, 13 JULY (WPI). Scientists here confirmed today that the gravity waves recently received from the vicinity of Sirius are of the same form and intensity as those which last October revealed the presence of L’vrai space ships near Achernar.
Sirius, less than nine light-years distant, is one of the closest stars to the Earth. It has a white dwarf companion and, so far as is known, no planetary system. It is too close to have been explored by the AED via the Levant-Meyer Translation.
The gravity waves were detected Monday by the Legrange satellites of Institut Fermi, at whose headquarters here an emergency conference met this morning.
An AED spokesman refused to comment on this new development, saying that an official statement is being prepared. . . .
AED FOES CLAIM
SIRIUS HOAX
LOS ANGELES, 14 July (IP). In a press conference here today the Union of Independent Scientists charged that a conspiracy exists between Institut Fermi and the Agency for Extraterrestrial Development.
They claim that the AED plans to capitalize on public hysteria over the threat of a L’vrai invasion to greatly increase their annual appropriation from the World Order Council. This appropriation will come to a vote next Wednesday, they point out; the coincidence is striking.
While admitting the existence of gravity waves from Sirius, the UIS claims that Institut Fermi has exaggerated the similarity between these and the Achernar disturbance that last year led to the discovery of the L’vrai.
They explained that the companion of Sirius is an extremely dense white dwarf star. A minute change in the angular momentum of the system could generate gravity waves similar to the ones detected by Institut Fermi....
AED ON SIRIUS HOAX:
NO COMMENT?
COLORADO SPRINGS, 14 July (WPI). An angry spokesman for the AED at first refused to comment today on the UIS charge that his organization had deliberately misinterpreted data for the purpose of increasing AED’s appropriation next week.
John T. Riley, Director of AED Colorado Springs, was reached at his home early this afternoon. When queried on the UIS allegations, he said that they were “beneath the attention of any intelligent person.”
Riley at first refused to elaborate, but then gave his opinion as a private citizen (noting that his views did not necessarily agree with the official AED position), accusing the UIS of “criminal cynicism,” charging that the twenty-year-old union is “playing politics with the very survival of the human race.”
Riley further claimed that the explanation of the Sirius gravity waves advanced by the UIS “could be disproved by a retarded undergraduate with a blunt pencil.” He challenged the UIS to “come up with a mechanism, however absurd” that could change the total angular momentum of a stellar system without affecting the rotation and revolution rates of one of the stars.
TRILLION-DOLLAR
AED BUDGET PASSES
STOCKHOLM, 23 July (IP). The World Order Council today passed by a narrow margin appropriations totaling $877,000,000,000 for the operation of the Agency for Extraterrestrial Development in fiscal 2053-4.
Opposition to the bill, which passed by a vote of 563 to 489, was headed by Minority Leader Jakob Tshombe (L., Xerox), who has threatened to resign his post in protest to the record-breaking budget.
Almost three times the size of last year’s budget, most of the money is earmarked for the AED’s Sirius crash program. The most expensive part of this program is the construction of a Levant-Meyer Translation facility on a planet circling Tau Ceti.
Critics of the program point out that the Sirius system is almost certainly planetless, and that the LMT requires a target planet. The AED, however, claims that at the range of Sirius from Tau Ceti (less than thirteen light-years), the target body need be no larger than a small asteroid.
42 – CHAPTER TWELVE
TAU CETI MISSION, 14 FEBRUARY 2054
PERSONNEL:
1. TAMER 7 TANIA JEEVES. FEMALE, 33. 11TH MISSION. SUPERVISOR.
2. TAMER 5 GUSTAV HASENFEL. MALE, 28. 8TH MISSION.
3. TAMER 4 (PROB) JACQUE LEFAVRE. MALE, 28. 7TH MISSION.
4. TAMER 3 CAROL WACHAL. FEMALE, 26. 4TH MISSION.
5. TAMER 2 VIVIAN HERRICK. FEMALE, 26. 3RD MISSION.
EQUIPMENT:
5 GPEM MODULES
1 PERSONNEL RECORDER
1 HOMING FLOATER (SECOND SHOT)
(ADDITIONAL EQUIPMENT WILL BE SUPPLIED ON TAU CETI FOR SECONDARY TRANSLATION TO SIRIUS SYSTEM (SEE ATTACHED SPECIFICATIONS))
POWER REQUIREMENT:
2 SHOTS 9.84699368131 SU, TUNING
@ LOCAL TIME
07:45:28.28867BDK200561
; 07:48:11.38557BDK200560
MISSION PRIORITY 1.
FUNDING #999999 SIRIUS 90%
#000105 GEOFY 10%
Jacque and Carol went to Hell the week of its first rainfall.
Hell was the logical name for the only planet in Tau Ceti’s biosphere. No bodies of standing water, constant dust storms, Sahara-like temperatures even at the polar regions.
They landed near the equator, where Tau was an amorphous white glare overhead, where abrasive clouds sped along the ground on hurricane winds almost hot enough to boil water. Dunes melted and formed with surreal swiftness around them and there was no horizon, only white sand at your feet and white sky overhead and a white storm all around.
The wind loved only flatness; it had long since ground every mountain and hill down for dust to fill the valleys, and it screamed displeasure at their height and tried to blow them down.
Jacque could tune out the shriek of the wind outside, but the suit’s stabilizer moaned a wavering complaint as it fought to keep him upright. The sound all but deafened him, and made his teeth buzz.
Prudent animal instinct was telling him he’d be better off anyplace else. He resisted the urge to run blindly away, but did keep walking in nervous circles, looking for the floater. So did everyone else.
After a few minutes the floater appeared, tacking in against the wind. It bobbed like a bucking horse as they struggled on to it, then spiraled crazily up through the storm.
At about two thousand meters they hit a steady strong tailwind and started homing north, toward the polar settlement. Below them the top of the storm was an unbroken white surface, more like a snowscape than a maelstrom.
The storm began to break up as they moved north. Mottled ground was visible through twisting cyclone swirls of cloud. Eventually it turned hilly; nearing the pole they had to reach for altitude to clear the frost-dusted tops of mountains, Himalaya-sized but weathered into gentle lines.
