by Jerry Oltion
"Oh," Allen said. "It's upside down."
Judy rolled her eyes, then braced her feet against the wall, took him by the shoulders, and rolled him 180 degrees. "There. Now it's right side up." She pointed at the Earth again. "Asia and Australia are on the night side. We'll have to wait for them to swing around into daylight before we can pick targets for them, unless you want to use your engines to light up the night side of the planet the way you did back at Zork."
"Zork?" Tippet asked.
"My name for the trees' planet."
"Oh," Tippet said. He fluttered his wings a time or two. "We could do that. If we only stayed for a few seconds, it should be safe enough. Perhaps that would be a better course of action than throwing rocks anyway. It would prove we were real without causing damage."
"Never underestimate the human capacity for denial," Judy said. "But yeah, it's worth a try." This time they prepared the drive for use before they fired it up. It only took fifteen minutes or so, during which time Judy recorded another message. When everything was ready, Tippet had her and Allen move to the aft end of the communications room, then said, "Here we go." There was the moment of disorientation, followed within a couple of seconds by thrust. It was only a tenth of a gee or so, just enough to push them gently to the floor, but when Judy looked up at the monitor she saw the Earth suddenly blaze with light. She whistled softly. It was brighter than sunlight. The Overlord growled, "Hoax, are we? Perhaps we should roast you slowly and see how long it takes you to decide we are real. But we feel magnanimous today; we will will give you one more chance. Disarm yourselves, and you will be allowed to join the rest of the galactic federation. Continue to bicker among yourselves, and you will die!" That much was true enough, anyway. The drive went out with her last word, and a moment later they were back in the asteroid belt. Judy pushed herself up to the command center and pointed out the Persian Gulf, the Bay of Bengal, and the Australian outback in the image they had recorded during their demonstration. A flash photograph of a planet, she thought. That was a cool trick. The next relay satellite brought them the result: Television and radio reports from all over the world showed the bright new sun in the sky and the hysteria it had caused on the ground. Nobody called that a hoax, but the Arab nations still accused the U.S. of masterminding the whole situation, and a panel of scientists from the European Coalition agreed that it might have been nothing more than a thermonuclear explosion in space. It had only lasted for a few seconds, after all, and the Galactic Overlord had spoken English.
The U.S. denied everything, accusing first Russia and then France of using the confusion over the hyperdrive to maneuver for global control, and vowing to keep their military on red alert. Japan broadcast a reply to the Federation: "Hey, don't look at us; we've got no military." In the middle of it all, one tiny voice suggested banding together to fight the invaders. Judy nearly swallowed her tongue when she heard the report from the United Nations: Cuba, of all places, had taken the bait.
As usual, they were ignored. As the hours passed and world tension continued to escalate, Judy and Allen reluctantly agreed: it was time to knock some sense into people. The butterflies had already picked their weapons and their targets. The chosen asteroids were only fifty meters across—big enough to make a big bang when they hit the atmosphere, but small enough to vaporize before they hit the ground—and they were in the right position in their orbits that they could be shifted into a collision path with Earth with a minimum of maneuvering. It took a couple of hours to pick them up and set them into the right trajectory, timing them so they would all arrive at the same time. While that was being done, Judy recorded one more message.
"What part of 'disarm' don't you understand?" she demanded, crossing her arms in front of her chest. The Overlord would be writhing his tentacles at that point. "You try our patience. We hear your petty squabbling, and we see your weapons aimed at one another. Very well, then; fire them! We will help you along. Here, let this be the first shot in your demise!"
When Tippet lowered the camera, she burst into a fit of laughter. Allen, hovering near one of the workstations and helping calculate the asteroid vectors, looked over at her and said, "What's so funny?"
"It just hit me. Dumb dreams do come true; just not the way you expect them to. I actually am Captain Gallagher of the Imperial Space Navy, but I'm fighting for the wrong empire. If anybody ever finds out what we're doing, we'll both be executed for treason."
"So you're laughing. Ooo-kay." He turned back to his work, and she pushed off to watch the video tech graft the overlay to her performance. Maybe it wasn't funny after all. When the asteroids were all in position, they jumped to another spot only a few light-minutes out to broadcast the challenge, timing its arrival so people would have about five minutes to wonder what the Overlord was talking about before the rocks hit. Allen wanted to cut the time down to just a few seconds, but Judy argued against it. "We need to give them time to stand down from launch-on-warning status. Otherwise it really will trigger the war."
Earth and Moon appeared in the window again when they jumped. Three times in a row wasn't coincidence. At first she thought the butterflies must be orienting the ship that way just for her, but then she realized they probably liked to see who they were talking to as much as she did. The message started playing. That meant the rocks were only a few thousand kilometers from the atmosphere. They were probably showing up on radar now, but it would be way too late to do anything about them. Laser satellites might melt the top few meters as they flashed past, but that wouldn't make a bit of difference. A nuclear bomb might fragment one, but it would take a direct hit, and their high relative velocity—the rocks were coming from all directions at about 70,000 kilometers per hour—made that practically impossible.
Judy imagined the scramble that must be going on in war rooms all over the globe. Presidents and generals would be arguing whether it was a trick or a real threat from an authentic extraterrestrial government. They would be making frantic phone calls to observatories and science advisors, and probably a few priests and imams as well. Nobody would know what to do; all they would know for sure was that they couldn't afford to be wrong.
There was only one logical choice. To shoot at each other meant certain death, and nobody had had enough time to set up a viable off-planet colony yet. There were probably dozens of attempts being made, but nobody could know for sure that their people would survive, not this early in the game. Not even a tin-pot dictator could be insane enough to start a war now, but Judy found herself holding her breath as her latest ultimatum played out. Counting on politicians and military leaders to make a logical decision was a dangerous gamble. She half expected to see mushroom clouds sprout from the planet like roll-up party whistles.
But the Earth floated on, a serene lapis sphere against the star-spangled velvet of space. The flash came from much closer, and off to the left, toward the aft of the ship. The ship lurched, and Judy had just enough time to wonder why the butterflies had lit the engines again before the entire outer wall, window and all, flexed inward and slapped her across the room.
46
She awoke in another spherical garden, this one mercifully warmer than the others. Her head hurt, and her tongue felt like a dry sponge wedged in her mouth. She raised her right hand to rub her temples, but her arm wouldn't bend at the elbow, and when she tried to turn her head to see why, sharp pain shot through her neck and shoulders.
This was when the doctor was supposed to say, "Don't move," and then proceed to tell her that she was all right, but it would take a few days for the superficial wounds to heal. Judy waited, but nobody seemed to have noticed that she was awake. She turned her head to the side, wincing at the pain, but she didn't see anyone there. Just green and violet bushes, turquoise grass or moss or some such, and a cat-sized creature that looked like a Frankenstein surgical project involving spoiled potatoes and a turkey's head. It shied away from her when she moved, and blinked its single eye.
"I hope you're not
their equivalent of a buzzard," she said, her voice barely a whisper. She turned her head the other way, slowly, so it wouldn't fall off, but there was nobody on that side of her, either. Just more greenery, a small pond, and a window with black space beyond. The cratered curve of the Moon took a nip out of the lower edge of the window's view. No, not the Moon. The curve was too tight, and the surface way too dark and rough. This was an asteroid. She breathed in as deeply as she could before her chest began to protest, then said loudly, "Hey! Is there anybody here?"
The maybe-buzzard squeaked and leaped across the room, doing a mid-air somersault, and disappeared from sight. She reached back with her left arm and pushed herself forward just enough to see that there was a doorway down past her feet a ways, then a few seconds later a butterfly flew through it and hovered a few feet over her face.
"Tippet?" she asked.
He didn't reply. Then she heard Allen's voice from outside, coming from quite a distance. "Tell her I'm on my way! I don't care how you—oh. Never mind." A few seconds later there was a thump and a curse, then Allen stuck his head up through the doorway.
"You're awake!" he said.
"Yeah," she croaked. She might as well have been gagged with a dirty sock, the way her tongue felt. She tried again: "Got any . . . water?"
"Yeah. Here." He reached to his belt, where a softball-sized yellow gourd—or something very much like one—was clipped next to the walkie-talkie. He pulled it free and held the stem to her lips, then squeezed a glob of water into her mouth. She swallowed greedily.
"More."
She still felt like she was talking around a wad of cotton, but it was loosening up. She drank the whole gourdful, feeling the cool water slide all the way down her throat. She hadn't been aware how much her stomach had been hurting, either, until the knot started to loosen.
"That's better," she said at last. "Thanks. How long was I out?"
"Almost two days," Allen said.
"Two days! Holy shit, what happened?" She reached out with her left hand and took his hand, pulling herself around until they were both oriented the same way. It was easier to talk when their heads were on the same level, and she didn't feel quite like such an invalid as she did when he was looking down at her.
"They nuked us," he said. "Tippet figures they must have salted the entire volume of space around the planet with relays a couple of light-minutes apart, just waiting for us to jump in to broadcast another message. As soon as one picked up our signal, it popped home with our location, and they spit a bomb back at us."
"Who's 'they'?"
"Who knows? Every nation on Earth is claiming credit for it, even the ones who didn't have the bomb." He reached up to scratch his head, and she realized he had a big gash between his right eye and ear.
"You're hurt!"
"Tell me about it. So are you. You've got a broken arm, two broken ribs, and a concussion, but Tippet swears you'll live. I damned near pulled his wings off for not letting me take you home to a real hospital, but he's right; there's no way we could get you to the ground without killing you even if we didn't get shot down trying."
That would explain why her elbow wouldn't bend. She raised it and saw a brownish cast from wrist to shoulder, then suddenly what he'd told her soaked in. "We actually survived a nuclear strike?" she whispered.
"Yeah. The only reason we're alive is because they didn't account for the ship's mass. The bomb went off about a quarter kilometer behind us. The aft section took most of the blast, and the rest of the ship actually flexed with the impact, so that helped, too, but the main engines are toast and the ship is metamorphosing to rebuild what it can with what's left. It's a real mess."
"And Earth?"
Allen laughed softly. "Well, we managed to divert their attention. They're strutting around like a bunch of sailors after they've busted up a bar, slapping each other on the back and bragging about how tough they are. Tippet and the rest of the hive are starting to have second thoughts about letting us loose on the rest of the galaxy."
"I don't blame them."
The radio at Allen's hip hissed softly, then Tippet said, "Are you serious, or was that sarcasm?"
"I—I don't know. Are you serious?"
"We don't know either. We're not happy with the situation. Your species seems congenitally insane. Allen didn't tell you that they bombed themselves as well as us."
A little shiver ran up her spine. "They did? Who?"
Allen said, "Just who you'd suspect. India and Pakistan. Israel and Palestine. And of course somebody tried to drop a bomb on New York City, but they didn't correct for the rotation of the Earth, so New York moved out from under it before it hit. It wound up in western New Jersey instead."
"That's still not good," Judy said.
"No, it's not, but it could have been a lot worse."
Tippet said, "Not to the inhabitants of western New Jersey."
There was no denying that. "Do they know who did it?" Judy asked. Allen shook his head. "No. From the trajectory, we know it came from about a hundred degrees around the globe to the east of where it hit, give or take about twenty degrees." Judy had orbited the planet enough times to know where that was, and how big the margin of error was. "That means it could have come from anywhere in the mid-East or Europe. That's helpful." Allen snorted. "Well, in a way it is, because the U.S. doesn't know who to shoot back at." She closed her eyes. Jesus, it had been close. And they weren't out of the woods yet. Now that people on Earth thought they'd killed the Galactic Overlord, the situation was right back where it had started.
"What did our rocks do?" she asked.
"Nothing," Allen said. "Which was just what we planned, of course. They made nice big flashes and loud bangs when they vaporized in the atmosphere, and the concussion rattled a lot of windows, but that was it. They didn't scare anybody for more than a few minutes, because the news after that was all about the bomb that killed the alien ship."
Judy could feel her injuries starting to catch up with her. She hurt everywhere, and she felt as tired as if she'd been working out all day. Her body probably had been, just not the usual way. It took energy to heal.
Zero-gee was a rotten place to feel sick. Fluids accumulated in the upper body, and your stomach always felt close to heaving. She wanted to sleep again, but she forced herself to concentrate. "You should have thrown more rocks afterward," she said. "Shown them we're not dead yet." Tippet said, "We would rather they weren't looking for us."
"Oh. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. But what are we going to do, then?" Neither Allen nor Tippet answered right away. Finally Allen said, "Well, that's kind of up to Tippet. I've suggested—"
Tippet said, "Another 'demonstration' from our fictitious overlord would be counterproductive unless we caused actual damage this time. Believe me, we are contemplating just that, but if we do, we won't stop the bombardment until your species is truly extinct. We have our own survival to consider." Judy felt her skin prickle at his words. That was the trouble with enlisting aliens for allies. Hell, that was the trouble with any allies: they always had their own agenda. She closed her eyes again. The ship had been nuked, she was busted up bad enough to hurt two days later, Earth was still on the brink of war, and now Tippet—and by extension his entire hive mind—was pissed as well. "Is there any good news?" she asked. Allen grinned. "People are slipping through the cracks like sand out of a fist. In another couple of days, it'll be too late to stop us."
Another couple of days, Judy thought. In post-hyperdrive time, that was practically an eternity. Or it could pass in the blink of an eye. She suddenly realized part of why she felt so awful; she probably hadn't eaten in two days, nor bathed. Nor peed, by the pain in her abdomen.
"Is there anything remotely like a bathroom on this ship?" she asked.
"I'm sorry," Tippet said. "We haven't had time to create one for you."
"They did give us some jugs to put . . . ah . . . stuff in," Allen said. "And we can give you a sponge bath right here."
/> "Oh, joy," Judy said. "How about food?"
"There's still plenty left in the Getaway," he said. "That's right next door. Want me to get you something?"
"Yeah," she said. Then she remembered something else. "Hey, how's the tree?" Tippet said, "Asleep. We turned the lights on. It was injured, too, and it heals best while it's photosynthesizing."
"Oh. I guess I don't have to ask what it thinks about humanity breaking out of the cradle, do I?"
"Actually, it's ambivalent. It likes the idea of sharing its world with other trees that consume oxygen and excrete fertilizer, but at the same time, it very much dislikes the idea of chainsaws." She didn't blame it. Nor could she blame Tippet for his attitude, either. She wished she could think of some way for humanity to redeem itself in the aliens' eyes, but at the moment she wasn't feeling all that charitable herself.
Of course, she would probably bite the head off a nun right now, the way she felt. "I need something to eat," she said.
"I'll get it." Allen was gone before she could even ask him what was left. While he was away she used the empty water gourd for a chamber pot and splashed cold water on her face from the aft-wall pond, and by the time he returned she felt almost human again.
He brought a can of chicken soup and a butterfly-built gadget that looked like a thermos bottle. He opened the can and held it next to the thermos, then spun around a couple of times to centrifuge it across from one container to the other. He added water from another gourd, shook the thermos to mix it up, and held down a button on the side with his thumb, holding the thermos at arm's length and spinning around slowly to provide artificial gravity to hold everything inside. A minute or so later, steam wafted out of the top, and he handed it to her.
Her mouth watered at the aroma. Food!
"Careful, it's hot."
She shook a shimmering glob of it out into the air and blew on it softly, guiding it back toward her face with the fingers of her left hand until it was cool enough to swallow. For the moment, at least, all her problems faded into the background.
