Ted was up the ladder first. I bumped into him as he did a sudden stop in the door. The pilot was an impeccable-looking redhead in jumpsuit and major's insignia, Army Air Corps. I wondered if she was friendly. She looked through us as we climbed aboard with the specimen cases. "Secure those boxes in the back, then get out. I'm in a hurry." No, she wasn't.
"Uh-" I said, "-we're coming with."
"Forget it-I don't carry passengers." She booted my duffel casually out the door.
"Hey!" I yelped, but she was already turning to Ted.
He was unbuttoning his pocket. He handed her our orders. She didn't even bother to look, just snapped, "I said, `Forget it.' " Ted and I exchanged a glance
Duke called up, "What's the matter? What's going on?" and I shouted back, "No problem. We're just going to have to find some other transportation, that's all. Come on, Ted-I'll get the eggs, you unstrap the cages."
"Hold it, Charlie!" she barked.
"Just hold it yourself!" I barked right back. "We have a job to do too!" It worked. She stopped-but only for a moment. "You'd better read our orders," I said, very calmly.
She took them from Ted and scanned them quickly. "Pinks!" she snorted, handing them to me. "Doesn't mean a thing. Those are just advisories."
"Right," I said. I kept my voice innocent as I carefully refolded and pocketed our papers. "We're advised to deliver these specimens. And you're advised to take us."
"Uh uh." She shook her head. "Nobody told me about it. I'm only taking those." She pointed at the cages.
"No way." I cleared my throat and prayed that my voice wouldn't crack. "If we don't go, they don't go. Duke, hand me that duffel?"
She looked at me, then really looked. I glared right back. She had very bright blue eyes-and a very dark expression. She flicked her glance briefly over Ted, then back to me again. I was already stowing my bag. She said a word, a not-very-ladylike word, then, "The hell with it-I don't care! Fight it out with Denver. How much do you turkeys weigh?"
"Seventy-three kilos," grunted Ted. He didn't look happy. "Sixty-four," I said.
"Right." She jerked her thumb at me. "You sit on the left." To Ted: "Secure that box on the other side. Both of them. Then belt up." She didn't even wait to see; she pulled the door shut behind us with a slam, secured it and climbed forward again. She checked to see that Duke was clear-I just had time to wave; he nodded back-and punched us up into the air.
The mountain dropped quickly, then angled off and slid sideways as we described a sharp sweeping turn. The acceleration pressed me against the wall of the cabin. We had hardly leveled off-I had to trust my eyes for that; my stomach was no longer speaking to me-when the jets cut in and a second press of acceleration forced me deep into my seat. The cabin tilted steeply and my ears popped as we climbed for height.
There was nothing to see out the window except clouds; the stubby wing of the copter blocked my view of the ground and the bulge of the jet engine was not enough to hold my interest. The scenery in the distance, what little of it I could see, was too far away to be impressive.
I realized the pilot was speaking to us: "-be in the air a couple hours. If you're hungry, there's a ration box plugged into the wall. Don't eat all the chocolate ice cream."
Ted was already rooting around in it. He came up with a couple of sandwiches and a container of milk. Grinning hungrily, he went forward and plopped into the copilot's seat.
The redhead eyed him. "You got a certificate?"
"Well, no-but I am licensed." He gave her what he probably hoped was a friendly smile; it came out as a leer.
"Jeezus! What is it with you guys? Go sit in the back with the rest of the passengers."
"Hey, I'm only trying to be friendly."
"That's what stewardesses are for. Next time, take a commercial flight."
"And, uh-I wanted to see how this thing flew," he added lamely.
She did something to the control panel, set a switch and locked it in place. "Okay," she shrugged. "Look all you want. Just don't touch." Then she unstrapped herself and came aft. The tag on her jumpsuit said L. TIRELLI.
"What's in the boxes?" she asked. She nudged the insulated one with her foot.
"Eggs," I grunted. "And in here?"
"Bugs," I said. "Big ones."
She looked disgusted. "Right. Bugs and eggs. For that they cancel my leave. Oh, yeah. I always get the good ones." Still muttering, she turned her attention to the ration box. "Damn! Clot-head took all the chicken." She pawed through the remaining sandwiches sourly.
"Uh-I'm sorry," I offered.
"Forget it. Everybody's an asshole. Here, have a sandwich." She picked one at random and tossed it at me before I could say no. She took another one for herself and dropped into the seat opposite. "What's so special about your bugs and eggs?"
"Uh-I don't know if I'm allowed to-" I looked to Ted. "Are we top secret?"
"What've you got-more Chtorrans?" To my startled look she said, "Don't worry about it. It's no secret. I carried a live one into Denver a month ago."
"A live Chtorran?"
"Uh huh. Just a small one. They found it in Nevada, dehydrated and weak. I don't know how they caught it. I guess it was too sick to fight back. Poor little thing, I felt sorry for it. They didn't expect it to live, but I haven't heard if it died."
Ted and I looked at each other. "Some scientists we are," I said. "They don't tell us anything."
"Well, there goes our big claim to fame," he added. "We thought we had the only live specimens around."
"That's a pity," she said, around a mouthful of sandwich. "But don't worry about it. They wouldn't have let you take the credit anyway."
"Thanks for the encouragement."
She wiped at her mouth with a napkin. "Don't thank me. It was free. Worth exactly what you paid for it. I'd have done the same for anyone."
She started to go forward again, but I stopped her. "What's the L for?"
"Huh?"
I pointed at her name tag. "Oh-it's Liz. Short for Lizard."
"Lizard?" I raised an eyebrow.
"I come by it honestly. You'll find out."
"I think I already have."
"Just eat your sandwich," she said. "You're getting skinny." And then she climbed forward and back into her pilot's seat. Ted smiled hopefully, but she just jerked her thumb rearward and paid him no further attention.
He sighed and came back, and strapped himself into the chair where she had been sitting. "Whew!" he whispered. "I remember her. She bumped into the Titanic once and sank it."
"Oh, I don't know. I think she's terrific!" I didn't think she had heard me, but the tips of her ears turned pink. At least, I think they did.
Ted merely grunted, curled up sideways in his seat and went to sleep.
I finished my sandwich and spent the rest of the trip thinking about a tall spiky anomaly at fifty-nine hundred angstroms. I wished I had a terminal so I could study the data first hand instead of in my memory. Something about the millipedes' behaviorsomething so obvious I couldn't see it-was staring me right in the face. It was frustrating as hell-because I couldn't not think about it! It was a bright red vision, a blood-colored room with a table in the middle, and sitting on the table, a cage full of skittering active millipedes. Why? I leaned my head against the window and studied the clouds and thought about rose-colored glasses.
The chopper banked then and the sun flashed in my eyes, leaving a brilliant afterimage. I put my hand over my eyes, closed them and watched the pulsating blob of chemical activity on my retinas. It was white and yellow for a while, then it was crimson and it looked like a star-I decided it was Chtorr, and wanted to blow it up. After a while, it started turning blue and faded away, leaving me with only its memory and another dozen questions about the possible origin of the Chtorran invasion. I also had a niggling suspicion about something. More than ever, I wanted to get back to a terminal.
The chopper banked again and I realized we were coming in toward Denver. And Major Tirel
li was about to demonstrate a "stop and drop."
She'd brought us straight over the Rockies without bothering with a descending glide path-and now that we were over the city there wasn't room for one, at least not without a long swing over eastern Colorado to shake off ten kilometers of altitude. So instead, she cut in the rotors, baffled the jets down and let us fall. The technique had been developed eight years earlier, but never used; the army had wanted a way to boost men and supplies quickly over enemy territory, never coming low enough to be in range of their portable ground-to-air missiles. It was one more thing to be grateful to the Pakistan war for. Even if your nerves forgave you for such a landing, your stomach never would.
"Wow," gasped Ted when he realized what she was doing; we'd been dropping for several decades, even though my watch insisted it was only two and a half minutes. "Either she's a real hot shot, or somebody wants to see us in an awful hurry."
"Both," she called from up front. She was downchecking the auto-monitor.
Ted looked embarrassed; he hadn't realized she could hear us. She got on the radio then to warn them we were dropping in. "Stapleton, this is Tirelli. Clear the dime-I've got that high-pri cargo and I'm putting it right where I said I would."
A male voice answered immediately. "Negative, Tirelli. Your priority's been double-upped. They need the chopper for some brass. Veer off and drop it next door on Lowry. There's a truck waiting for you on north zero-six."
"Oh, hell," she said. But she began cutting in the jets, firing short bursts to bring us around and slow our descent. The deceleration was sideways. And bumpy.
"By the way," added the radio. "Tag your auto-monitor for inspection. We lost some of our remote metering just before you voiced in."
"Naw, that was me. I was downchecking."
"Damn it, Liz! You're not supposed to do that in the air."
"Relax, Jackie. You had me on your scopes. I saw the beeper. You didn't need the telemetry or the inertial probe anymore. And I'm in a hurry."
"Liz, those systems are for your safety-"
"Right. And worth every penny of it." She grinned. "I can't talk anymore, Jackie. I'm gonna drop this thing." She switched off the voice circuit. The auto-monitor continued to flash.
"Uh," I said, "maybe I don't understand-"
"You're right," she cut me off. "You don't." Without taking her eyes off her controls, she explained, "The excuse I gave him was a blind. What I'm really doing is cutting the control monitors. I don't want him knowing I'm not using noise abatement-it takes too much power from the engines."
"Oh," I said. "But what about the people below?"
"I try not to think about them," she said. And then added, "Would you rather be a considerate spot of red jelly on the runway-or rude and in one piece?"
"I see your point." I shut up.
"Besides," she continued, "anyone who lives that close to an airport deserves it-especially now, when half the city is empty." The copter was caught by a crossdraft then and we slid sideways. For a moment I thought she'd miscalculated and we were going to miss the runway, but she did nothing to correct our descent. Then I caught sight of the truck and realized that she'd even outthought the wind. We were being blown toward our landing spot.
A moment later we touched ground easily. It was the last easy thing in Denver. Even before the jets whined down to a stop, a ramp was slammed into place and the door was being pulled open.
It popped outward with a whoosh of pressurized air and slid sideways. Almost immediately, a hawk-nosed major with red face and beady eyes was barking into the cabin, "All right, Liz, where are the-"
And then he caught sight of me and Ted. "Who're you?" he demanded. He didn't wait for an answer, but snapped at Major Tirelli, "Dammit, Liz, there wasn't supposed to be any deadheading on this flight!" He was wearing a Sony Hear-Muff with wire mike attached. "Hold a minute," he said into it.
"We're not deadheading," Ted said. He blinked at us, annoyed.
Ted poked me. "Show him the orders."
"Orders? What orders?" To the mike: "Stand by. I think we got a foul-up."
I pulled the papers out of my jacket pocket and passed them over. He took them impatiently and scanned them with a growing frown. Behind him, two middle-aged privates, obviously tapped for the job of carrying the specimen cases, peered at us with the usual mixture of curiosity and boredom.
"What the hell," he muttered. "This is a bloody nuisance. Which one are you?"
"I'm McCarthy, that's Jackson."
"Right. McCarthy. I'll remember you." He handed our orders back. "Okay, grab your cases and lug them down to that cruiser." He turned and ducked out. "You two are dismissed. They sent their own flunkies." He had all the charm of a drill press.
Ted and I exchanged a glance, shrugged and reached for the boxes. Major Tirelli finished her power-down, locked the console, and squeezed past us toward the door.
As we stumbled down the ramp after her, I noticed that the two privates had parked themselves in the V.I.P. seats of the wagon, leaving the service seats for us. The major-already I disliked him-was standing by the hood, talking to an unseen someone. "Yeah, that must be it.... Well, find someplace to bed them down until we can figure out what to do with them-I don't care where.... What? ... I don't know. They look like it. Wait, I'll find out for sure." He glowered over at us. "Are you boys fairies?"
"Oh, honey!" Ted gushed at him. "When are you going to learn? The word is faggot! Don't they teach you anything at those fancy eastern schools?" Before I could react or step away, Ted had hooked his arm through mine. "Jimmy, we've got a lot of consciousness-raising to do here."
"Ted!" I jerked away and stared at him angrily.
"Yeah, they are," the major was saying. "Put them somewhere out of the way. Let's not give our Fourth World friends any more ammunition. . . . Right. Out." He looked at the two privates. "Move it! Make room there for Major Tirelli!" To us, he just growled, "Stash those in the back! You'll have to crawl in with them; there's not enough room up front." He planted himself beside a weary-looking driver.
I scrambled in behind Ted and tried to make myself comfortable-Hah! That bus hadn't been designed for comfort. There must have been an army regulation against it. We bounced across the field toward a distant building.
"What was that all about?" I hissed at Ted.
Ted half-shrugged, half-grinned. "I don't know. Seemed like a good idea at the time."
"Not to me!"
Ted reached over and patted my arm affectionately. I glared at him. He said, "Jimbo, take a look around you. It's a beautiful day. And we are back in civilization! Not even the army can spoil that!"
"I'm not a fairy!"
"I know, dear-but the major was looking for a reason to dislike you and I didn't want to disappoint him. Wow! Look at that sky! Welcome to Denver!"
SIXTEEN
OUR FIRST stop was Specimen Section, ET-3. Ted and I pushed the cart down the long disinfectant-smelling hall of the section, while Major Bright-Eyes and his honor guard followed us -glowering.
At one point we passed a heavy steel door with a very tantalizing sign:
LIVE CHTORRAN OBSERVATION
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
I craned my neck as we passed, hoping to peer in through the windows in the doors, but there was nothing to see. And Major Shithead gave me a dirty look for my trouble.
We went all the way to the end of the hall through a pair of double doors marked SUPERVISION. The person in charge of the section was a surprisingly unmilitary little old lady, who peered at us over the tops of her half-frame spectacles. "Well, hello!" She gave us a twinkly-sweet smile. "What did you bring me today?" She took the clipboard from the major and peered at it, smiling and blinking as she did so. "Uh huh, yes ... yes, very good. . . ." She had rosy pink cheeks and shiny white hair piled and curled on top of her head. She was wearing a white lab coat, but where it was open at the neck I could see the collar of a green and blue flowered dress. Her nametag said M. PARTRIDGE, Ph.
D.
"Millipedes, yes ... uh huh, eggs ... uh huh, wall scrapings . . ." She thumbed through the rest of the specimen list, squinting carefully as each page flashed up on the clipboard. "What's this? Purple Coleus? Whose classification is that?"
"Mine." I raised my hand.
"Oh, yes." She blinked at me. "And you are-?"
"McCarthy, James. Special Forces."
"Ah, yes," she said. "Well, James, please don't classify specimens anymore. Leave that to those who are better qualified for the task. I know you were only trying to be helpful-"
"Excuse me," I interrupted. "But I am qualified."
"Eh?" She looked up at me. And blinked.
"I'm Special Forces, ma'am. Extraterrestrial Section. I gathered those specimens myself. At some risk. And I've had several days in which to observe them. I've also had access to the entire Scientific Catalog of the Library of Congress. `Purple Coleus' is an accurate description of that plant, regardless of the qualifications of the person pointing to it and saying, `That's a purple coleus.' " I looked at Ted, but he was busy admiring the ceiling. It was very well plastered.
The major was glaring at me. Dr. Partridge shushed him and turned to me. "James, we receive many, many specimens every week. I have no way of knowing whether this is the first time we've seen samples of this particular species or not. This may not even be a Chtorran species at all-"
"It was growing in a carefully cultivated ring all around the Chtorran igloo-" I started to explain.
"Yes, yes, I know." She held up a hand. "But please let us make that confirmation. If we accepted the classifications of every person who brought in specimens, we'd have fifty different descriptions of every single plant and animal." She patted my hand like a forgiving grandmother. "I know you'll remember that with the next batch of specimens you bring us."
"Uh, ma'am-" I fumbled my orders out of my pocket. "We've been reassigned here. We're detached from the Rocky Mountain Control District to function as independent observers in the National Science Center, Extraterrestrial Division."
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