Starbridge

by A. C. Crispin

  "beneath."

  The picture stayed the same again for several minutes, then they were descending through the upper ionosphere toward the planet. "Is that what they want us to do?" Joan wondered. "Land? But we can't!"

  "No, I think they know that," Raoul said. "They built this docking cradle, didn't they? They're just showing us where the presentation is taking us."

  The atmosphere thickened as the picture plunged deeper, heading for the planet's surface. "Blue sky, almost like Earth's," Yoki observed.

  "Bit of a turquoise tint," Paul said, "but pretty."

  Mahree stared, fascinated. Any blue sky appeared odd to her; Jolie's was a soft rose-violet.

  They were through the clouds now, floating gently downward. They passed over one of the huge lakes, glimmering aquamarine, and one of the savannahs. "Look, a herd of animals!" Jerry cried, and they could all make out dark specks that must have been grazing beasts.

  Then the scene was filled with the improbably dark green vegetation. "Those trees are huge," Paul said, awed. "Bigger than sequoias back on Earth."

  The picture moved closer to the ground, and now they saw something else located on the fringes of the forest. "Artificial structures?" Joan asked.

  "Looks like," Raoul murmured.

  They rose from the ground perhaps two or three hundred meters into the air, pyramid-shaped structures with flattened tops, some gleaming white, others the same silvery blue of the space station, still others rose, pale green, and yellow. All had black rooftops. "Solar collectors?" guessed Jerry.

  "I'd put money on it," Paul said.

  Each of the four sides of the pyramid buildings was covered with a spidery lattice of curved interlinking shapes. "You think those overlaying trellis things are decorations?" Yoki asked.

  "They could be anything," Paul said.

  "There are footpaths down there," Mahree said excitedly. "But I don't see any roads."

  "Isn't that a park in the center of that group of buildings?"

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  Yoki asked. ""Look, there's a stream running through, with an arch made of those interlocking curliques over it.''

  "A bridge?" Raoul asked.

  "Not one that we could use," Joan said.

  The picture made a slow circuit of the entire city, giving them ample opportunity to study the buildings, courtyards with accompanying gardens, and many parks. "It's pretty," Yoki said. "Reminds me in some ways of Japan."

  "It's more like Mexico City," Ramon Garcia's voice came over the intercom.

  "All those flat-top pyramids are like the old city of Teotihuacan."

  "Don't see any slums," Raoul said.

  "If you were preparing a travelogue to introduce aliens to your world, would you show slums?" Jerry asked dryly.

  "Maybe they don't have any," Mahree said hopefully.

  The picture descended until it was only a few meters above the pale rose paving in the courtyard next to the largest of the blue-silver buildings, then it stopped moving, giving them a nearly ground-level view. "Now what?" Joan wondered.

  "They've shown us their world and their homes," Jerry said. "Now I suspect they're going to show us themselves."

  Mahree and the others watched, scarcely daring to blink. After a minute or two a being came into view.

  They had no way to judge scale ... the creature could have been tiny or huge. It moved toward them on four legs, with a swinging, somehow bold stride. Two piercing violet eyes gazed directly at them. It wore no clothing, and needed none, for it was covered with fur the color of flame. A heavy mane rose into an upstanding crest on its head and cascaded down over powerful shoulders, reaching to the middle of the almost-level back. A short, top-knotted tail was held straight up as it moved.

  "A lion!" Paul Monteleon muttered. "Sort of."

  "More like a monkey," Jerry whispered. "Two eyes, one nose, four limbs ...

  no matter how different it looks, it's obviously evolved along the same lines as we have. It's a primate."

  "But look at the way it walks!" Joan pointed out. "Like a big dog!"

  Mahree had never seen any of those animals except in holovids, and to her the creature resembled nothing she'd ever seen before.

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  Its face, beneath the upstanding crest of hair, had an outthrust muzzle with powerfully muscled jaws. The nose was broad and flat, the mouth almost lipless. The cheeks and forehead were covered with short fur, but the pale orange muzzle was smooth- skinned. The ears were small and triangular, close-set to the sides of the creature's head.

  As they watched, the being walked up and down, presenting them with frontal, rear, and sideways views of its body. Its fore and hind feet had long, mobile-looking digits. "Six," breathed Jerry. "I counted six, front and back."

  There were no recognizable sex organs evident, but the area between the alien's hind legs was shadowed as well as furred. In contrast, the hair over the buttocks was so thin that they could discern the orange-colored skin beneath it. Dapples of a deeper chestnut color marked the being's back and haunches.

  Finally it paused and sat up on its hind legs, exactly as a human would squat. It made a complicated but graceful gesture with its right forelimb, touching its eyelids, muzzle, chest, then holding out its paw (hand?) toward the camera, fingers curled in. At the same time it ducked its head, eyes lowered.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Raoul asked.

  " 'Greetings,' " Jerry guessed, trying the gesture on for size, then repeating it, trying to capture some of the alien's flowing grace.

  The first alien was now joined by others, some much smaller, only two-thirds the size of the others. "Females?" Joan wondered.

  "That would be true if they were dogs, lions, or monkeys," agreed Yoki. "But they could also be a slightly different race, like pygmies."

  All the creatures faced the camera and made the gesture. " 'Greetings,' it's got to be!" Jerry cried.

  The scene shifted abruptly back to the space station, and they saw eight small ships escorting a bigger ship whose outlines were only too familiar.

  "Desiree!" Raoul exclaimed.

  They followed the image of their own docking maneuver, then, suddenly, the photographic image of Desirie was replaced by a simple line drawing of the freighter's outline. "Huh? Why the change?" Paul asked.

  "I don't know." Jerry sounded mystified.

  Mahree sat straight up with excitement, and for once didn't care that her voice went squeaky. "I've got it! Up to now

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  they've shown us past events. What we're seeing here is the future, so they couldn't photograph it, they had to draw it!"

  From the wall of the space station a blackness suddenly yawned, then there were spacesuited figures swarming around it. Slowly, a flexible-looking rectangular extrusion was constructed, reaching from the space station toward the outline of the Terran freighter. Like a tube with squared-off sides, Mahree thought.

  The next view showed the forward airlock drawn onto the line sketch of Desiree. The "tube" was clearly aiming toward it.

  "They had all this waiting," Jerry said, sounding awed.

  "Yeah, but why?" Joan said tersely. "If you were starving, you'd couldn't wait to encounter a herd of nice juicy rabbits."

  "My, aren't we cynical," Raoul said lightly, but there was a warning note underneath. Mahree stole a quick glance at her aunt and saw her flush, then clamp her lips tightly together.

  As they watched, the tube extension reached the opening of the freighter's airlock, and the workers sealed it tightly. The scene then shifted to a corridor, lit so brilliantly it dazzled human eyes. The view inside the tube, Mahree realized.

  A silvery blue, spacesuited figure appeared in that too-bright white expanse, moving three-legged, carrying some kind of orange bag or satchel. The figure reached the drawn-in outline of Desiree's airlock, then tapped. One ...

  one-two ... one-two- three ...

  The airlock door vanished, and a small cubicle was drawn in beyond. It looked nothing l
ike a human-built airlock, but naturally the alien artist had no idea what was inside Desiree.

  The spacesuited figure moved inside the "airlock," then rummaged in its satchel for several instruments. It moved them around, then held each up to its helmet, appearing to study them as the outer airlock door reappeared on the image.

  The spacesuited alien made the "greetings" gesture again-- then abruptly the picture winked out.

  "What was that all about?" Joan asked.

  "I think they'd like us to let them into our airlock to test our air," Jerry said.

  "Determining whether we can breathe each other's air would be the first order of business, seems to me."

  "Yeah, Rob said something like that," Yoki said.

  Rob! Oh, my God, he'll never forgive me for letting him sleep through all this!

  Mahree thought, jumping up in confusion.

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  Fortunately everyone was still too intent on their discussion of the alien presentation to notice.

  She elbowed her way through the crowded corridor leading from the bridge to the galley, then, abruptly, she was alone again. Racing down the hall to her cabin, she keyed the door open. As she stepped inside, she ordered up the light level, and the doctor raised himself up on his elbow, blinking.

  "Huh?" he mumbled. "Mahree? What're you doing here?"

  "You're in my bunk," she explained tersely. "You fell asleep after I brought you the aspirin. You okay now?"

  He sat up, rubbing the back of his neck gingerly. "Better."

  "In that case, on your feet. We just watched a film the aliens made to introduce themselves."

  He leaped up so suddenly that Sekhmet landed on the floor with an offended squawk. "You saw them?"

  "Don't worry, Jerry recorded it all. Come on!"

  "That's the fourth time you've watched that thing, Doc," Jerry said.

  Rob stretched until his back creaked, then rubbed his eyes gingerly. "Are they still showing it over and over on the wall of the space station?"

  "Yeah. We're lucky we could see it the first time they ran it. Since then, they've altered it so it would be visible to people having everything from ultraviolet- to infrared-based vision."

  "Maybe they showed it first in their own vision range."

  "Makes sense. Their sun and Sol aren't all that different."

  "I can't believe how similar these people are!" Rob shook his head. "After all the wild possibilities I imagined, this is almost like finding human beings out here."

  "They may be more alien inside than they are outside," Jerry cautioned, watching Rob stand up. "Where are you going?"

  "Down to my lab. I'd started on an atmosphere-analysis kit of my own, and I'd better get it together. I don't think it'll be long . before we hear that knock on the airlock door.''

  Jerry glanced at the left viewscreen. "Yeah, they're coming right along on that airlock extension they're building."

  Spacesuited figures swarmed over the flexible-appearing extrusion, just as they had in the alien "film."

  Rob yawned so widely his jaw hurt. "I wonder if I'll ever get eight hours in the sack again?"

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  "We'll have months to sleep on our way home," Jerry said. "I'll call you if anything happens."

  "Thanks." The doctor turned to leave, then glanced over at the copilot's seat, where Mahree lay, curled up. "Poor kid, she's out like a light. Should I carry her down to her cabin?"

  "No, she'll probably wake up if you do," Jerry said. "I'll just dim the lights in the forward section."

  Rob stood for a moment looking down at the girl's shadowed face; she had turned on her side, her cheek cuddled into the bend of her arm. Her long hair had come loose from its braid and spilled over her shoulders, hanging off the armrest. The doctor experienced a sudden rush of tenderness that surprised him. "She's a good kid," he said softly, remembering the matter-of-fact way she'd produced the aspirin and orange juice. "She's holding up better than most of us."

  "She's a smart kid," Jerry said respectfully. "She seems to intuitively grasp things about these aliens."

  "You're pretty good at that yourself," Rob said. "How does that greeting gesture go?"

  Jerry demonstrated. "I just hope we're reading it right."

  "Well, at least we know that they can see, and that their vision is fairly close to our own. That's likely to mean their computers have optical scanners, like ours."

  "Which reminds me, I've got to finish up the last of the programming and set up a portable terminal with a scanner," Jerry said. "I just hope we can get our computers to interface with whatever they've got."

  "Sounds like a tall order," Rob said.

  "I'm not so sure." Jerry pushed his hair back behind his ears, a sure sign that he was thinking hard. "When you break human computers down to their most elemental level, binary boils down to two possibilities . . . 'on' or 'off,'

  right?"

  Rob nodded, and the Communications Chief continued, "Well, that's such a simple concept--so simple that it seems to me that aliens might well utilize it, also. And if they do, we should be able to develop a mapping algorithm that will allow us to interface."

  "Makes sense to me," Rob said. "Guess I'd better get busy in the lab. See you later."

  After he'd been in the lab for an hour or so, Simon came down and offered his help. Rob, pleased that the Bio Officer

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  seemed to be adjusting to their situation, accepted gratefully, and after that the work went twice as fast.

  Two hours later, Raoul's voice emerged from the intercom.

  "Doc? You finished yet?"

  "Just a few more minutes," Rob said.

  "Well, hustle." The Captain's voice was taut with repressed excitement. "It looks like they're sealing that tube around our airlock."

  "Look!" Paul's voice reached the doctor faintly. "Before it ) looked as flexible as thin plastic or cloth, but now it's stiffening!"

  "They must be in the final stages," Viorst said. "Won't be long now."

  Rob finished up hastily, then packed the equipment into a small duffel bag that resembled the one the alien had carried. He looked up at the Bio Officer.

  "Thanks for the help, Simon. I'd have never finished in time without it."

  The other man made a dismissive gesture. "You about had it sewed up when I came down. I only hope it works right."

  "Yeah, I wish we were as well prepared as they are," Rob said, then added,

  "They seem very welcoming."

  Viorst shrugged. "Yeah, they do. Maybe it's going to turn out all right."

  Rob smiled at him. "Sure it is."

  When the doctor reached the control cabin with his equipment, he found Raoul, Jerry, Joan, and Mahree waiting for him. "You all set, Doc?" the Captain asked.

  "It's ready." He glanced at each of them. "Who'll be doing the testing? I'll have to show you how."

  "You are, Doc," Raoul said. "We're going, you, Joan, and I."

  Rob's mouth went dry, even as he felt it widening into a huge, silly grin.

  "Me?" He glanced at Jerry and Mahree, saw the disappointment in their eyes, and felt a brief stab of guilt. They're the ones who worked so hard on the programming . . . especially Mahree. "You sure you want me?"

  "Yeah. Joan and I'll carry the computer hook-up, and I want you to handle the atmosphere testing personally. I only wish we had some kind of film about us to show to them."

  "Uncle Raoul?" Mahree tugged at her uncle's sleeve. "I thought about that, and I had the computer run off these flimsies

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  and fastened them into a sort of book." She held out a sheaf of what appeared to be photographs.

  "Huh?" Raoul flipped through them. Rob caught a quick flash of scenes from Earth, some in color, many in black and white, plus diagrams of the Sol system. "This is the kind of stuff I meant, Where'd you come up with this?"

  "My history text, the same place where I found the Pioneer and Voyager pictures." She managed to smile, though it was a bit s
haky. "These are the images they sent out on the Voyager disks. They're terribly dated, I know, but better than nothing. And each scene was carefully chosen by experts to tell the maximum number of things about Earth."

  Raoul gave her a warm smile and a quick hug. "I think it's entirely fitting that part of the message those folks sent out to the stars will finally get there, honey. This is great."

  "You did good, kiddo," Rob said. He gave her a thumbs-up sign and grinned.

  She tried to smile, but this time it didn't quite come off. Rob leaned over and whispered, "Stay up here on the bridge. I'll call you on the security channel.

  It'll be almost like you're there with us. Okay?"

  She nodded, biting her lip.

  Raoul took a deep breath. "Okay, I guess that covers everything. We'd better get suited up."

  "Why the rush?" Rob asked.

  For an answer Raoul flicked on the intercom, and Rob read the location ID

  above it. The forward airlock.

  A hollow thump reverberated, then two more, then three more.

  Then it came again. One . . . one-two . . . one-two-three . . .

  "They've been knocking for nearly five minutes," Raoul said. "It'd be rude to keep them waiting."

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  CHAPTER 6

  The Simiu

  Dear Diary:

  I'm sitting here in the control room all by myself. It was nice of Rob to promise to call me, but ... but, dammit, I'm tired of him treating me like his kid sister! I mean, he doesn't have to fall in love with me, but I'm not twelve!

  I get the feeling that he's sensitive about his own comparative youth, and that treating me like a little kid is one way of widening the gap between us ...

  I'm also pissed because I'm not going with them. Jerry and I developed those programs. One of us should be there, not Joan.

  This is it, this is really it. . . the something special, the thing nobody else has done. If only my--

  Wait a minute! The vid-cams just came on, presenting me with a view of three spacesuited figures in the airlock!

  . As the inner airlock door hissed closed behind him, Rob pulled on the gloves to his spacesuit, then sealed them. Taps sounded against the outer airlock door. One . . . one-two . . . one-two-three . . . Quickly he reached over and returned the signal. "Just hold on a minute, and then we'll open it," he muttered. He glanced over at Lamont, who was clamping his helmet into place, then hastily donned his own. Joan, too, was ready. "Radio check,"