Retread Shop 1: First Contact

by T. Jackson King

  “A penny for your thoughts?”

  Jack looked across the aisle between the temporary canvas seats that occupied the Gosay cargohold. The questioner was a very pretty, blond-haired and gray-eyed woman dressed in a NASA jumpsuit. MIT and Goddard patches adorned her left shoulder. She looked like one of those TV Scandinavian beauties that used to pitch visits to Sweden. The woman had just come up from the rear seating area.

  “No need to pay, they’re free. I’m Jack Harrigan, vid-reporter with CNN International,” he said, wondering how he’d let the two-hour trip from LaGuardia pass without meeting the only other passenger aboard. “And I’m thinking, it’s all too much too fast for us humans. The base I mean.”

  She smiled pleasantly. “I’m Amanda Wernke. And why the puzzlement. Do you think we shouldn’t be in space?” she asked with a questioning tilt to her head. The smooth features, well-filled out jumpsuit and slight hint of Desire perfume reminded him it had been too long since he’d been with Colleen.

  “No, of course not! I’m no fundamentalist.” He gestured at the porthole view. “It’s just that like a lot of people, I wonder if everything isn’t happening too fast.”

  “Haven’t things been happening too fast ever since we got agriculture ten thousand years ago?” she asked with a quirky grin. Her gray eyes were laughing, but not at him.

  Jack turned around more in the seat, taking a more serious look at his flight mate. This was no hostess for U.N. tea parties at Tycho, and she certainly knew more than just astronautics. The patches said she had spent time at Goddard station and was very smart. The jumpsuit said she worked for NASA. Could she be a friend in the making?

  “You’re right,” Jack said, folding his hands in his lap as the cargo ship lowered toward a landing pad. “What brings you to Tycho? Research, Trade or politics?”

  “Research.” Wernke also shifted in her seat, pulling slim legs up onto the canvas seat beneath her. “I’m been invited to work with Dr. Sung at Farside’s Tsander Crater observatory on Cepheid variables in the Perseus Arm. But it’ll be a day before the circumlunar shuttle arrives to pick me up. Seems they have to detour around the Russian-Zik mining base at Copernicus Crater.”

  “Why the detour?” Jack asked, genuinely curious why any human craft needed to worry about overflight restrictions on a Moon under de facto Compact control. The national bases at Tycho, Langrenus, Copernicus and Biot craters, and the private mining bases at the south pole, were under the continuous, watchful eye of the Strelka Traffic Control station in polar orbit.

  “Rumor,” she smiled back at him with a slight are-you-interested lift of her pale yellow eyebrows, “has it that the Russians just want to keep all of their dealings with the Ziks very secret.”

  “That’s stupid. Everyone knows Bochtov is supplying the Ziks with large numbers of zero-gee trained construction workers and technicians for indentured work on Zikhope. To build lots of Trade credits.” He wondered just how much she knew of international politics. “And that they’re probably mining lithium silicates at Copernicus.”

  “True,” she said. “But you know the Russians.”

  Despite the gravplates of the Gosay ship, he felt a slight tug as the Gosay ship entered final approach to Tycho. With a glance out the porthole, he turned back to a very attractive lady who almost made him wish he wasn’t being met.

  “I do. Met a few in years past. We’re about to land. My Life-Mate Colleen McIntyre is meeting me. Want some dinner on Compact credit with us?” he offered, pleased he could put the Horem expense account to some use. Despite his mention of Colleen, Amanda didn’t look bothered. She kept the friendly, open look on her face.

  “Not right now, thanks anyway. Maybe a drink later?”

  “Sounds great. You staying at the American barracks? In the Compact base?”

  “Yes,” she said, reaching up to grab an overnight bag from a wall hook. “No point in going to the U.S. base when my shuttle will land at this dome. Just ask for me. I’m sure there isn’t any other Amanda Wernke at Tycho.”

  He laughed. “Fine. I’ll do that, although I may bring my Colleen—she likes meeting new people.”

  “Sounds good. See you soon.” And with that his briefly met seatmate swiftly off boarded before his bemused face, hailing with a wave a robot floater disk. Jack looked up as he started down the exit ramp. The bright lights of the pressurized dome that had opened up and closed over the Gosay transport glared down at him. In just over a year, the Compact already had a spaceport—or spaceports, to be exact—on the Moon. Jack shook his head in wonderment.

  “Jack! Over here you dummy!” called a familiar voice from a nearby veranda. He looked toward the call.

  Colleen McIntyre, daring the low Moon gravity with a Highland tartan mini-skirt, looked glad to see him. He felt a special feeling that had nothing to do with the light gravity.

  “Colleen,” he called out as his hand-tooled boots made clattering sounds on the metal ramp, “no need to be insulting. Save it for the politicians. How’s it going?” Jack asked as he ran up the steps to the veranda and gathered her in his arms. Her freckled nose and sea-green eyes looked back at him from inches away. He both saw and felt her tender caring.

  “Better . . . now that you’re here.” They kissed, hard and long, ignoring the sounds of a few passing spaceport personnel and other travelers. She came up for air, face slightly flushed. “Next time, don’t keep me in purdah on Hekar—I don’t break easily.” She turned toward the landing dome exit. Taking her hand and lifting the duffle, he followed her down an access hall to the subterranean tunnels that interlinked every part of Tycho Base, including the U.S. dome.

  “No, I don’t guess you do. But it was best—things are breaking down at home.”

  She sighed. “Well, they’re still working up here and out in the Asteroid Belt,” she quietly informed him. “What’s our assignment?”

  He detected a tone of relish in her use of the word ‘our.’ “More Liaison work. Sargon wants me—us—to sniff around, get a feel for why everyone’s so uptight.”

  Colleen laughed loudly, stopping to look up at him. “You told him the obvious, didn’t you? That we humans just damn well don’t like being reminded we can’t do everything ourselves. That we need help?”

  “Yes,” he grunted. “But he wants more. He wants me to patch things up—all over the solar system and down on Earth.”

  “Crap,” said his blunt-talking Life-Mate as they resumed their walk down the subterranean tunnel. “That’s what they have diplomats and spies for. You’ve got two Pulitzers, a world-wide reputation and a hot lover.” Turning down a side tunnel, they stopped before the hatch leading into the U.S. residential section. It opened as it sensed their Compact IDs. They entered the rock tunnel lying on the other side of the hatch. In the distance moved other humans. Following a hoverbot, they made it through several side corridors before the bot stopped moving. Fortunately, at Tycho Base, everything was close to everything else. Particularly when there were only 2,000 humans at the Compact base. “Who are you going to serve first?” Colleen asked as she faced a metal door.

  “The most basic of all human needs—what else?”

  Colleen’s left palm slammed the sensor plate at one side of the entry to their room—private, he noted. “Does that mean love or money.”

  “Love! Of course! I’m no alien.”

  “Good. Follow.”

  Jack followed her into the small room, five meters below the radiation-insulating topsoil of a dead world. He had no doubt how they would spend the next few hours. He just hoped she would leave him enough energy to do some sleuthing.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Jack had learned years ago, while on assignment in London, that if you wanted to find out what was really happening in a city, you went to the most popular bar. More honest than an embassy, more reliable than a spook, the local neighborhood bar resonates with the primal currents that underlay any human habitation. Which was why he and Colleen had decided to have break
fast at Diamond Lil’s. It was the best bar in Tycho, and the only real one on the whole Moon. Everyone, Colleen had assured him after they came up for air from beneath the satin sheets, came here. Even the alcohol-disdaining Arabs who liked to escape the eye of their religious police. They walked into a bustling riot of multiple languages, weird clothing, diverse skin colors and freewheeling attitudes. They found a free table in a semi-quiet corner of the long, rectangular room, its walls painted with California Gold Rush images.

  Jack appraised his lover’s new choice in wardrobe. A neon green and scarlet jumpsuit might show her figure to great advantage, and make sense when donning a pressure suit, but it hurt his eyes. His vision found geometric shapes in the plaid pattern that really weren’t there.

  “Do they have the culture tanks up yet, or do we dine on freeze-dried?” he asked, trying to lean back in his plastic bucket chair. It didn’t lean. At least he could dress comfortably here in jeans and brown flannel shirt. And no one had carried out a weapons check since their arrival. Traveling by Compact carrier did offer some advantages in dealing with his fellow humans.

  “Both, really,” Colleen said with a lively twinkle in her eyes. “There’s real ham, eggs and any vegetable you want, but other meats and some root crops are dried. Try the ham and pancakes,” she recommended.

  He took her suggestion and tapped in his order on the table top. The nice thing about not leaving as quickly as Sargon had suggested at the UN was that it gave Colleen time to make the trip from Hekar to the Moon before he got there. Though she must have taken a superfast magpulse craft to get there faster than the four days it had taken to get out to the belt. Jack had taken time to pursue some leads on Hartman and the Church while in New York, except that he’d been forced to use his .45 on a lower Brooklyn mugger. No one had questioned his action. In fact, it hadn’t even made the next day’s police report. He turned to the food when it arrived, delivered by a hoverbot, feeling very hungry.

  “Jack.”

  “Yeah honey,” he replied over a mouthful of pancakes.

  “What do you really think of the Compact aliens?”

  Jack stopped short and looked sharply at his lover and future wife-to-be. Her normally merry face was quite serious. Too serious, in fact. Something was bothering her. He looked around—they were in a back corner of the rock-cut bar and reasonably alone, although some miners, construction workers and tech types were gathered up front drinking. Diamond Lil’s, he saw, served booze at any time of the day. By hoverbot of course, although he did see two women behind the serving counter who might do more than handle payments. Since the base operated on three shifts, someone’s morning was another’s evening. Perhaps there was enough privacy.

  “I like ‘em—most of them,” he told her. “The Horem, the Strelka, the Gosay, the Zik and the Arrik are interesting people. As for the others—they’re too weird for me to feel much empathy. Why?”

  “Well,” she began, still with that very serious look in her green eyes, “while you were gone I got friendly with an Arrik computer tech who introduced me to her boss—a female named T’Erees T’Say. Some kind of sub-ruler, I think.” Damn, didn’t she know T’Say was the Life-Mate of the chief honcho of the Arrik, T’Klick T’Klose? “And I asked her about that space war they had with the Compact that has a security lock on it. She told me all about it.”

  Jack’s food was going cold, but he didn’t care. This was real news. It was a subject of great importance to all humans, but to date all anyone knew was the basic fact that a fight had occurred. And was over in six seconds. But he was equally concerned about the effect of the info on Colleen—she looked scared.

  “So what did she say.”

  Colleen bit her lip. “She said, Jack, that the Compact used a—what’s the phrase—a ‘neutron antimatter beam’ against their three ships, in addition to other beam weapons.” She gulped. “Jack, isn’t antimatter very dangerous?”

  Shit! No wonder the fight was over in six seconds. He didn’t know if he liked the hot potato he’d just been handed.

  “Yes, it is. Now I know why the Horem and other aliens consider their lasers and electron beam weapons to be obsolete!” Horrible thoughts occurred to him. “Colleen, that kind of weapon could burn holes in the crust of a planet. And the superheated winds generated by the beam’s passage would set forests aflame.” He paused, a horrific image of Earth with dark red sores spotted across its surface arising in his mind’s eye.

  “Oh.” Colleen blinked as if the same imagery was occurring to her.

  “Any more details?” he asked, wondering just what reason the chief Arrik’s Life-Mate had for intentionally leaking this little bit of info. The aliens didn’t do anything without a reason. And he knew they had their own politics, just like humans. Not every species, he’d heard, had voted to visit Earth. One of the eight had voted against the visit, according to the open histories he’d looked through during the 17 months since the setting up of the Human Compound.

  “Just a few.” Colleen poked at her own ham and pancakes, looking a bit more relaxed now that she had shared what was obviously a heavy burden. “T’Say said not every Compact ship has this weapon—a four centimeter beam, she called it. She said only the larger Horem ships, like the four kilometer long Sarenflex and Horemhold, carry such weapons.”

  “How often did they use it?” He sipped pseudo-coffee.

  “Once. During the Arrik Contact.”

  Double, double damn! Jack had heard enough. While they would continue their Liaison work on the Moon, this info had to get back to NORAD and a certain Japanese general he’d met in Afghanistan. The Big Eight and everyone else had damn well better take care not to give the Compact aliens any excuse for gunboat diplomacy. Maybe the CIA’s spooks could find Hartman before the man did real damage.

  “Mr. Harrigan—care for a drink?” asked a sultry voice from behind him. Jack looked up and around, startled out of his planning. He saw Amanda Wernke and a black-haired, white-skinned Slav type standing next to their table. Colleen looked at him expectantly, licking syrup off her lips.

  “Sure—I could use a wake-up shot. Have a seat folks.” The two pulled out plastic seats on the other side of their small round table. “Colleen, this is my recent Earth-Moon seatmate, Dr. Amanda Wernke and—I don’t know your name, sir,” Jack said, giving Amanda’s guest a chance to introduce himself.

  “Academician Alexei Tikhonov, Liaison Harrigan,” said the thirtyish Slav, smiling nicely. “I’m from Akademgorodok. Do you care for vodka?”

  “Only if it’s Stilichnoy brand, but it’s too early for me. Some Jack Daniels Black Label straight up for me. Colleen?”

  “Orange juice—I don’t have Jack’s cast iron stomach,” she said with a smile at Amanda and Alexei. “What do you folks do?”

  “I recently apprenticed to a Fusion Pulse Drive Systems training course with the Horem,” said the seated Tikhonov, brown eyes quite serious, as Amanda entered their drink orders into the table top. “While Dr. Wernke here will leave out in a few hours for pure research into quasi-stellar objects and Cepheid variables. She’s an astronomer with—”

  “That’s enough, Alexei,” interrupted a grimly smiling Amanda. “You forget we Western women can do our own talking. Anyway, “she said, relaxing in the bucket seat, “Mr. Harrigan here knows about me already. But we don’t know a lot about him. You’re the Liaison, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Why didn’t you come chat with me on the flight here?”

  Amanda smiled, nodding toward Colleen. “Simple courtesy—I figured you needed your privacy.”

  Colleen arched her eyebrows, hands wrapped around her coffee cup. Alexei watched alertly. Amanda waited patiently. What was everyone waiting for?

  Looking about, Jack saw that a small audience had slowly crystallized around their table. A mix of construction workers, techs, researchers, bulk food traders, a few military types and others he bet were covert spooks, now formed a penumbra of listeners around their co
rner table. He recognized the shoulder patches of at least twenty nationalities, including the Big Eight who had space travel at the time of Contact. Jack didn’t like being in a corner with his back to the wall, but this group at least looked friendly.

  “Call me Jack. I’m also a vid-interviewer for CNN International, which is how I got that first live interview with Sargon.” He nodded to his Life-Mate. “My girlfriend here is Colleen McIntyre, a sat-vid producer who works with me on my assignments. What’s up?”

  “That’s actually what we wanted to ask you, sir,” Amanda said, her expression serious. “It’s rumored you have the inside track with the Compact aliens about their plans. True?”

  “Only partly, Dr. Wernke,” he replied truthfully. “And I’m no more their ‘first buddy’ than the Brazilians or Chinese are. You’re both scientists,” he said, focusing upon his table partners as they sipped their recently delivered drinks, “and you know we’ve got eight different cultural systems to deal with, some of which have absolutely no analog to our human experience. The watchword here is patience, a thousand times over.”

  “Perhaps, Liaison Jack Harrigan,” Tikhonov said in a rumbling voice. “But isn’t your job a two-way street? Aren’t you supposed to present our human concerns to the aliens, not just from them to us?”

  “You’re absolutely right, Alexei.” Jack smiled his best politician smile. “And that’s why Colleen and I are here. We’re your sounding board and I promise to tell Arix Sargon Arax every real complaint you may have. Anybody want to lead off?”

  “Me first!” shouted someone in the bar crowd.

  “What about the rights of Third World countries?” A black-skinned tech said. Was he a Zambian?

  “Hey—don’t shove!” said a Romanian woman who wore jumpsuits adorned with the red helix emblem of Biomedical.