Robinson had given up looking to Thomas. The admiral was willing to just sit there and listen. "I'm afraid I had just come to the same conclusion. Talk with me afterwards and well put together a team. Obviously, Lieutenant Calder should be on it, if you feel up to it, lieutenant."
"I've been assuming that I'd go back. You'll need an interpreter, Mr. Gesseti."
/ need a drink, Pete thought, but said nothing.
"Very well. Krebs, you get them organized after we're done here. But now we must move on to your other news about this Guardian officer, Gustav Johnson. Can he be trusted?"
Lucy opened her mouth to speak, shut it again, played with a pencil for a moment. "Johnson is a good and honorable man, but you must understand his viewpoint," she said finally. "He is a citizen of Capital, and his planet is at war with us. He makes a very clear distinction between the planet Capital and the political association called the Guardians. He hinted to me once or twice about an illegal opposition group called Settlers, but I don't know much about them. He doesn't want the League here. I don't think he actually wants the League to win. But he has concluded that those persons in power, the Central Guardians, have gotten Capital into a hopeless situation. Capital will lose. He sees that as inevitable. He wants to make that defeat as painless as possible. He believes that the use of bioweapons can only make the League more eager for revenge.
"I should emphasize that Johns—that Gustav—is in a very delicate situation. I have had no contact with him for months. He may be dead. He may have been drugged and tortured into revealing every plan he and I made. The CIs on Ariadne might be dead by now, or simply transferred to another posting. So the situation cannot be trusted. But, if he lives, Gustav Johnson can be. If we receive any transmissions from Ariadne, you must judge for yourself who is sending them."
"And at this range, we can't possibly be certain that a laser link would be secure," Robinson said thoughtfully. "We can't risk talking back to them. Somehow, this seems like a very new land of war, and a very old kind, both at once.
"Meeting adjourned. We all have a lot to think about."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Eagle, Hangar Deck
' Lucy has a point," Joslyn said. "A ship needs a name."
Mac grunted and stared up at the thing. The covert lander was an ungainly arrowhead, a dingy gray aerodynamic lump. It looked like a blob of clay some giant had half formed into an airplane shape before he got bored and went away. She had been pulled in from her usual outside-of-hull docking to be checked out. Mac slapped his hand on the hull and it felt like crumbly concrete mixed with Styrofoam. "How about the Sick Moose?"
"A real romantic, that's you, Mac," Lucy said. "A true sense of history. How's Sick Moose going in the books side by side with your name to the unborn generations?"
Joslyn laughed and twined her arm through her husband's. "I was on your side until you said that, Luce. Think of all the school kids that are going to have to write dull reports about the First Contact for history class. Let's make it Sick Moose and give them some comic relief."
Lucy shrugged, grinned, and kicked the lander's hull. "Sick Moose it is, then. I must say that I expected a little more sense of awe and wonder and fewer dumb jokes from you two on the subject of meeting aliens."
"I don't think either of us really quite believes it all yet," Mac said softly. "You've had a long, long time to get used to it. We found out an hour ago, when Pete said he had volunteered us to pilot this thing down to Outpost. I want to laugh and cry at the same time and then hurry there to meet C'astille. I'm scared to death—not just for me personally, but with the idea that I'll be the one to make the dreadful mistake that wrecks our relations with them for all time. And dumb jokes are the best cover we have for all that. But let's change the subject before we bog down for hours discussing the Wonder of It All. George, you're the only real engineer here. Is this thing really going to work? Can we get through without being spotted?'
George Prigot shrugged. "I'm not going along, so I don't have the same stake in the answer you do. But it should. Their radar isn't going to be geared to watch for an all-ceramic ship, and even if it was, it'd be hard to get a decent echo off it."
Joslyn snorted. "They won't be looking for it because no one has ever been enough of a damn fool to make a glass ship before."
"It's not glass," George objected. "It's more like a clay pot, though it should be a lot tougher."
" 'Should be' are the very words I'm worried about," Joslyn said. "And I say she's a glass ship because radar will see right through—and she'll shatter if you drop her hard. I'd love to know more about the propulsion system, though. Supposed to be some sort of cross between magneto-hydrodynamics and a linear accelerator. Extremely secret. She uses straight liquid oxygen for boost-mass. Not as efficient as fusion, but just try spotting the thrust plume."
George walked to the stern of the Moose and looked up into the engine bells. "Neat. It must jet the oxy at only a couple hundred degrees. Very hard to detect if you're watching for fusion plasmas."
"Neat it is. But I'd trade it for a hull you couldn't smash with a hammer."
Pete came through a hatch into the hangar bay and wandered into earshot as Joslyn was speaking. "Say, you're just the sort of pilot that inspires confidence in a passenger."
"Hello, Peter," Joslyn said with a smile. "What's the situation?"
"Well, this is a top secret operation, so I only had to clear it with ten departments instead of twenty. They dug up a biologist, a South African kid by the name of Charles Sisulu. Civilian kid who knows a lot about bio-engineering. They brought him along to work on the bioweapons, so he might as well go straight to the source. So with Mac, Joz, Lucy, this Sisulu character and me, we have five and this crate can carry six. Any suggestions for the empty slot?"
"I've got one," Joslyn said. "Madeline Madsen. She's a Royal Britannic Navy second lieutenant, a pilot. I know she's checked out on the covert lander, and she's a big outdoorswoman."
Lucy sounded unconvinced. "She have any ground-combat training?"
"Standard RBN basic training, I guess. Why do we need combat for this trip?"
"Because Outpost is a very nasty place. Any animal that sees us is likely to try eating us. And Mr. Gesseti, with all due respect, we're going to be in armored pressure suits for that same reason, for long hours at a stretch. Are you up to that?"
"I dunno, but I'm sure as hell in better shape than the other diplomatic types along for the ride. I'm fifteen years younger than any of 'em. One reason I volunteered.'
Lucy grunted. It was a motley crew, a hurry-up job, but maybe that was the best she dare hope for. "All right, Mr. Gesseti. That'll have to do. Any word about when we launch?"
"As soon as possible, they said, so I guess it's in your hands. Mac, how soon can we be ready?'
Mac hesitated for a moment, figuring loading and checkouts and a little extra for glitches. "We'll go in eighteen hours."
* * *
Lucy was ready long before that. Aside from getting fitted for a pressure suit, there really wasn't much for her to do.
The Eagle's purser put her up in a VIP cabin for her one night aboard. It was a kindly gesture, a welcome-back to the ex-prisoner who had to depart at once for a harsh and dangerous field assignment. A huge bed, plush carpeting on the deck, books she'd have no time to read, recorded music and films she'd have no chance to run—but still, it was good to at least be near such things again.
Lucy thought of C'astille and decided that she had to bring a gift back for her friend. Even as she had the idea of bringing a present, her eyes fell upon the perfect thing. A book, a great big, old-fashioned picture book lying on the coffee table of her stateroom. It was called Works of Our Hands: Humans Shape the Solar System. It was full of pictures of grand buildings and structures, old and new, and each was set against a glorious background. C'astille would love it.
Lucy felt only mildly guilty as she tucked it into her carrysack.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Aboard th
e Sick Moose
The long-range cameras tracked the great shape, brought it more frighteningly close than it truly was. "That's Nike," Lucy whispered. "She's big."
"That much we already knew," Mac replied in a whisper of his own. Logically, they could all be shouting at the top of their lungs and it wouldn't make any difference. But under the very nose of the huge military orbital command station, sneaking in past their radar, the desire to keep quiet went past the logical.
"Maddy, what can you see on passive detection?" Joslyn asked.
"Plenty enough," Madeline said, "and I've got everything cranked down to minimum power. But it looks to me that we should have Nike and Ariadne below our horizon when we hit the atmosphere."
"A bit of luck running our way," Joslyn said. "Even if this flying teapot is supposed to be invisible, I don't see any reason to experiment."
"Well, for what it's worth, we have now sailed through at least six different radars without being spotted."
"Mac, how are we, as far as the beacon signal?"
Mac was riding the comm station, which left him without much to do besides watch the beacon. He had gotten caught up on his reading this trip. "Right on the money. No change in its position since we picked it up. So do your bit and land us right on top of it."
The Sick Moose's one small cabin was crowded with six people forced to sleep and eat in each other's pockets for several rather long and uneventful days, but the two civilians had managed to carve out a small corner for their own. Charles Sisulu had taken advantage of the long trip and methodically skinned Pete Gesseti's hide in four kinds of card games. Now Pete was grimly trying to win it all back in chess, fifty Kennedy dollars a game. Even with chess, his strong suit, Pete was just about holding his own. If he was even managing that, he thought, as he sadly watched his second bishop join its ancestors. "Charlie, isn't there any game you're not good at?"
Charlie grinned as he collected the bishop. He was a short, pudgy young man, perfect white teeth set off against his dark-skinned face. His hair was trimmed very short, and his rounded features and alert eyes suggested a quick and clever mind working behind the laughter and smiles. "If there was, why should I tell you? I figure you've paid for a month's vacation on Bandwidth already."
"And on what a diplomat makes. You should be ashamed of yourself. Seriously, though, how'd you get so good?"
'Easy. It's how I worked my way through college. My part of South Africa used to be one of those phony homelands. Technically not under South African law, which banned gambling among other things. The Afrikaaners'd come in to make a killing at roulette and we'd skin 'em alive. After the Rebellion, a hundred years ago, we got pulled back into the nation, but we had the smarts and the luck to hang onto our special exemption to the gambling laws. The marks might come in a different color but they still come, and we still clean 'em out and send 'em home. During the southern winter, that is the northern summer, I stayed home with the folks and played poker for a living. Or played anything. I'd just learn the odds and bet with them. When September rolled around I'd fly to America and live off my earnings while I studied at the University of California. If I got short of money, I spent a weekend at Las Vegas. Later on, when I started research at Wood's Hole, I'd go to Atlantic City."
"That's the last time I play with anyone before I check their resume," Pete said, pulling his queen back into what looked like a safer position. "So how do you like our odds here?"
Charlie shrugged. "No way to calculate them. But I'm a biologist! The stakes are so high. When they waved the foam worms at me, I signed every security agreement in sight—I had to work on that, top secret or no. And now I'll get to talk to someone who designs living things, from scratch! For a biologist, that's like a chat with God." Charlie moved in his own queen, took Pete's, and grinned. "Check. Mate in two moves. I'll take an IOU."
When they were about two hours from atmosphere, Mac called a meeting of all hands, which simply meant that everyone turned around in their chairs and faced the center of the tiny cabin. "All right," Mac said, "let me go over the situation one more time. So far the Guard radars haven't picked us up, but that could change at any time. This ship might be invisible to radar, but she's slow, she's hard to maneuver, and she's unarmed. And I don't care if she's made out of special-purpose ceramics or prune danish, when she hits the atmosphere, the light and heat of atmospheric entry are going to be detectable. We're going in on the daylight side, at a time when the bigger stations can't see our entry window. But we still might get spotted.
"Obviously, if we use our own radar, the Guards will spot us immediately, so that's out. But that means we're relying on inertial tracking and on visual. Those aren't really good enough for precise navigation in this situation. We don't have this system very well charted yet, we don't have maps of Outpost's surface, and we don't really know enough about the performance of this ship. There s some degree of uncertainty about where and when we'll hit air.
We've exhausted our fuel already, as you know. That was planned. In theory there's nothing to worry about. Once we do hit air, this thing is a glider, and it should be a good enough one to get us where we're going.
"The main point is that we're literally going in on a wing and a prayer. But while this will be a somewhat hairier landing than most, all of this was taken into account when we planned this flight. We should be all right. Mostly I want to tell this last to Pete and Mr. Sisulu, but it can't hurt for us rough-and-ready pilot types to be reminded too—when we go in, things might look worse than they really are. Relax and hang on, and the hottest pilot I know will pull this one off. Right, Joz?"
"Oh, sure. Mac's just trying to make it sound hard so when we come in you won t think it was too easy." Joslyn tried to sound chipper, and even brought it off, but she knew Mac had told it straight. Sometimes, though, the truth wasn't the best thing for a pilot to hear when she needed her confidence up.
Mac played it very conservatively. He had them all in pressure suits, strapped into crash couches and secured half an hour before they expected to hit air. He felt justified when the first feint quivering and thrumming sounded against the hull, fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. Now they were in Joslyn's hands. Mac had already watched Madeline enough to wish he were in the backup pilot's station. Maddy was good, but she wasn't seasoned, she didn't have that air of being calmly ready for disaster that combat pilots gained if they lived long enough. But it was too late for second guessing, and Mac couldn't think of anything that could take Joslyn out without killing the rest of them anyway.
Joslyn was trying to get the feel of the Moose. She seemed to be a pretty clumsy thing so for, and Joslyn was already worried about cross-ranges. Every second in atmosphere slowed them down, stole kilometers from the distance they could travel. There was enough fat in the landing program to cover the current situation, but just barely. She fought an impulse to tighten her grasp on the stick. This was her show, she had to keep calm and loose, ready for whatever the gods threw at her. She threw switches and let the computer handle the initial entry while she got a look around and tried to track that beacon. The planet's rotation had swung it out of their line-of-sight, but—hah! There she was, happily blinking away, and still within range of what the on-board computers were figuring was their likely glide-radius.
Then the Moose hit thicker air, and re-entry, and rode long minutes cut off from the outside world by a sheath of ionized air molecules and heat-shield ablation. This was the dangerous moment, when the Moose could not see, but was most easily seen. If there were any ships orbiting above them, and anyone aboard happened to look planet-ward, the Moose would be a blazing fire streaking across the dawn sky. No one aboard the Moose spoke as the computer dully went through its paces, maintaining ship's attitude at the right heading, keeping the shielding between the hull and disaster.
They went in, surrounded by a ball of flame that thundered through the skies of sunrise. The Moose shuddered and groaned, and the hull pinged and clicked as it absorbed th
e heat.
Slowly, the ball of fire guttered down, and the Moose, her hull still faintly glowing, coursed through the skies of Outpost. Joslyn pulled control back from the computer and took a look around. They were still nearly a hundred thousand meters up, still had line of sight on the beacon, though they might lose it as they glided lower. But they were in, and safe—
"Joslyn," Mac called. "I'm not up on reading Outpost weather, but it looks to me as if that beacon is right in the middle of one hell of a storm."
Joslyn's eye jumped from the beacon display to the pilot's window and back, mentally combining the two into one. "Damn! Mac, you're right. I wish to hell there had been time to put some decent viewing gear on this bird. I
0can't really get a good fix on where the beacon is, compared to the cloud cover."
"We've got the gear," Mac said, "it's just that we can't use it without giving our position away."
"Then I wish they had yanked it out so this thing'd be light enough to glide. We've got to go straight through that muck to get where we're going."
In the rear seats, Pete and Charlie Sisulu exchanged nervous glances. This might get to be too exciting a trip.
The Moose glided onward and down, Joslyn stretching every horizontal meter she could out of the clumsy craft. The storm clouds came up around them, engulfed them, the dark cobalt blue of the upper atmosphere vanishing into a witch's caldron of angry, writhing gray clouds that grabbed at the Moose and flung her to and fro. Lightning flashed about them, thunder exploded at deafeningly short range, and Joslyn wrapped both hands around the stick, braced her arms as best she could to retain control of the bucking, rearing ship. The interior lights flickered once, twice, and then came back on, and the hull rattled and clattered as hailstones and wind-driven rain slammed into it.
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