by Steve White
"I am afraid not," the voice resumed. "All your questions will be answered here. You will, of course, find our shipboard environment quite safe. Please enter through the airlock we have illuminated." Levinson touched his arm and pointed at the magnified image of the UFO. A blinking exterior light had awakened on that unbroken surface. He was gazing at it when Farrell looked up.
"The signal has been broken off, Colonel. They're not accepting any further transmission."
"Damn!" DiFalco turned to the XO. "Jeff, could that voice have been artificially generated?"
"In theory, yes," Levinson replied judiciously. All state-of-the-art computers could accept vocal input, and the more sophisticated ones could provide simple "spoken" output. But you knew damned well it was a machine talking, and there was no question of carrying on a conversation. Chatty computers still belonged to the realm of science fiction. For that matter, so did UFOs.
DiFalco gazed a moment longer at the image in the screen, with its somehow impudent winking light. Then he unstrapped and shoved himself up from the acceleration couch.
"XO, have GP shuttle number two readied. And have Sergeant Thompson meet me at the docking bay."
"Holy shit, Eric!" This was pushing the limits of informality even for the Space Force, but Levinson looked like he was past caring. "You're not actually going over there, are you? I mean, we don't know . . ." He sputtered into speechlessness.
"That's right," DiFalco said quietly. "We don't know anything. And we're not going to find out, sitting here staring at them and hoping they'll resume radio communications. And I want very badly to find out, Jeff. Call it curiosity or anything else you like, but there's no way I could not accept this invitation. Anyway," he continued with a slight smile, "if they wanted to zap us, I have this strange feeling that we'd all be dead by now." He moved toward the hatch. "You have the con, XO."
Levinson made one last try. "Colonel, we only have the word of some robot or some bug-eyed monster that it's safe in that ship! How can they even know what's safe for us?"
DiFalco turned toward him with an odd expression. "You know, Jeff, that's one of the things that makes me so curious about all of this. Remember when he told us that?" Levinson nodded. "Well . . . why should the suitability of their environment for us be an 'of course'?"
* * *
Andy J. was still visible as an elongated dumbbell (DiFalco had vetoed Levinson's suggestion that the ship be realigned so as to aim the particle accelerator at the alien) when the lighted airlock became visible as a faint outline on that curving wall of unidentifiable alloy.
Piloting the little interorbital shuttle toward it, DiFalco stole a glance at his companion's black face, frowning with concentration as he checked out, not for the first time, his recoilless launch pistol. Not that the little rocket gun would be likely to do much good, even if the colonel let him use it. Since he had no real intention of doing so, he wondered why he had even brought the sergeant. Purely as a ceremonial bodyguard, he supposed—the Marines performed shipboard duties for the Space Force similar to those they always had for the Navy, although their EVA role was a new wrinkle for them. Anyway, having him along made DiFalco feel better.
Gunnery Sergeant Joel Thompson, USMC, was not a particularly huge man. In fact, he was only slightly bigger than the six feet and one hundred eighty pounds maintained by DiFalco, who worked at keeping in shape—largely, as he admitted to himself, because he was reaching the age at which a flat stomach was an emblem of self-discipline. But vanity had nothing to do with the sergeant's unrelieved musculature, without an ounce of efficiency-impairing fat. He was not an easy man to know, but he was as formidable and dependable as he looked. And his stubbornness was a force of nature.
A faint boom sounded through the shuttle as it made airlock-to-airlock contact with the UFO's hull and instruments confirmed magnetic seal attachment. For a moment, the two of them sat in silence as if awaiting something, then exchanged quick, sheepish smiles and proceeded to don their vac suit helmets. DiFalco's mounted a videocam whose continuous transmission to Andy J. would, he guessed, be of some interest to Levinson and everyone else who could contrive an excuse for being near a screen. Like their helmet communicators, it would be relayed by the shuttle's more powerful comm equipment; they shouldn't be out of contact with the big ship, barring intentional jamming by the . . . aliens, he supposed he had to call them. Concentrating grimly on the the concrete and the routine, he led the way to the airlock.
Decompression completed, their outer door slid open to reveal, as he had more than half expected, the UFO's airlock similarly open to vacuum. They floated from one chamber into the other, and the strange door sealed behind them. There. That was it. Shouldn't I have said something historical before stepping across?
"Can you hear me, XO? Are you getting this?"
"Barely." Levinson's voice came faintly. "The transmission sucks. Swing a little to your left, will you . . . there! I wanted to get those instructions, or whatever they are, on the wall . . . shit!" The light that awakened just above the odd, cursive lettering startled DiFalco almost as much as it did Levinson, whose picture it momentarily overloaded like a flash bulb.
Immediately, DiFalco began to feel the return of outside air pressure.
Sergeant Thompson studied a readout on the bulky equipment he was carrying. "Skipper"—it was one of the things DiFalco had stopped trying to break him of—"pressure is almost up to one bar. And the initial reading shows nitrogen and oxygen in the right percentages."
"Did you copy that, XO?" Levinson confirmed, and Difalco continued. "All right. I am going to open my faceplate." Ignoring Thompson's disapproving frown, he did so, holding his breath. The air was a little warmer than Andy J.'s. He was preparing to take an experimental breath when the light went out and the inner door slid open. Lightheaded as he was, nothing else seemed to register. He expelled his breath and pushed himself across the threshold into the passageway beyond . . . .
The universe fell on him, slamming him to the deck.
Lying there, he heard Levinson's shouts and Thompson's bellows as if from a great distance, for reality had, for him, suddenly narrowed to two impossible facts. One was that he had just floated directly from free fall into a gravity field that had absolutely no business being there. (How strong was it? Two gees, surely. No, make it three.)
The other was the pair of feet, in utilitarian-looking boots of some unfamiliar material, planted on the deck a few inches from his face. His eyes travelled up the legs and body, the videocam travelling with them . . . and Levinson's frantic voice trailed off. DiFalco got slowly to his feet (maybe the gravity was only around one gee after all), groping for something to say.
He finally managed it. "You . . . look human." So much for history.
The elderly gentleman—he reminded DiFalco of one of his maternal uncles—looked miffed. "Thank you," he said dryly. "So do you."
One of the group behind him, a striking-looking young woman clad like all of them in a kind of jumpsuit, stepped forward and spoke rapidly to the oldster in an utterly unfamiliar language of many liquid vowel combinations and few hard consonants. DiFalco knew a scolding when he heard one. The man smiled in acknowledgment and turned back to his guest.
"Forgive me," he said with his faint accent. "I should have warned you about the internal artificial gravity field. One takes things for granted. Oh, by the way, ah, Colonel—is that it?—could you possibly speak to your subordinate?" He gestured rather fastidiously toward the airlock. DiFalco turned and saw that Sergeant Thompson had also entered the passageway but had managed to land in a crouch, from which he now had the scene covered with his launch pistol. His hand and his expression were both rock-steady, but beads of sweat were visible on his brow behind his faceplate.
"Sergeant," DiFalco spoke carefully, "stand up and lower your gun. I think we're among friends. And you might as well open your faceplate—I seem to be doing okay, under the circumstances."
"Aye aye, sir." Thompson grim
ly obeyed. He still looked very watchful.
DiFalco turned back to the man who had no more right to be here than the gravity that kept them both standing on the deck. He didn't really look much like Uncle Dick, or any other member of any of Earth's racial groupings, although he could probably have walked down a street in any large Western city and attracted no more than occasional glances of mild curiosity as to his origin. He was tall and spare, his hair and thinnish VanDyke-like chin beard of a silvery gray that contrasted with his skin, which was a rather coppery brown. His cheekbones were wide, his nose prominent and straight, and his eyes a brown so dark as to be virtually black. The people behind him showed about as much individual variation in size, features and coloring as you would expect in a group made up of members of one moderately heterogeneous nationality on Earth. The common denominators seemed to be a tendency toward height and slenderness, and a coppery quality to the skin tone.
"I trust I was telling the sergeant the truth," DiFalco said. "About being among friends, that is."
"Of course, Colonel. And I apologize for our seeming secretiveness. Let me begin to try to answer some of the questions I know you must have. My name is Varien hle'Morna. My companions and I come, as you have undoubtedly surmised, from another planetary system. And you may rest assured, the fact that you belong to the same species as ourselves is as inexplicable to us as it is to you. We have merely had a little longer to become accustomed to it. We—"
"Excuse me," Di Falco cut in, about to OD on unreality, "while I communicate with my ship." Varien made a gesture which presumably signified gracious assent. "XO, are you getting all this?"
"Affirmative." Levinson's faint voice came after a slight pause. "I've been keeping quiet because I didn't want to distract you—and because I'm in a state of shock like everybody here."
"You and me both," DiFalco muttered. "I'm just coping from second to second. Stand by." He raised his voice. "Uh, Mister . . ."
"Simply 'Varien' is sufficient, Colonel," the stranger said indulgently.
"All right, uh, Varien." DiFalco plowed grimly ahead. "You obviously know a lot more about us—our language, for starters—than the zero we know about you. Your radio message was less than informative . . . ."
"Again, I apologize for that, Colonel. That message was sent using specially constructed equipment which was not up to visual transmissions—our own communications devices are incompatible with yours. And, candidly, we were also motivated by security considerations; we wished to minimize signalling that might possibly be picked up at random." He paused thoughtfully. "I know this is all very overwhelming for you, Colonel," he continued in a slightly patronizing way. (Was it DiFalco's imagination or did the young woman roll her eyes heavenward?) "But I am going to have to decline to answer many of your questions at present, in order to avoid repeating myself later, when we reach the asteroid I believe you call 'Phoenix Prime,' your present destination. You see, I have approached you to solicit your aid in arranging a secret meeting with whoever is in ultimate authority there."
"So," DiFalco said faintly, "you want me to . . . take you to our leader?"
Varien brightened. "Yes. That's it. Well put. If you wish, I will gladly accompany you back to your ship, as a gesture of good faith." Does he think we primitives are into giving and taking hostages? DiFalco wondered. Varien motioned the young woman forward. "Or, if you prefer, I will send my daughter, Aelanni zho'Morna, who has full authority to make all arrangements."
DiFalco heard a low moan from his helmet comm. "What is it, XO?" Varien and the others politely did not listen.
"It had to happen," Levinson groaned. "Why am I even surprised?"
"What are you talking about, Jeff?"
"The mad scientist has a beautiful daughter!"
Chapter Three
The potato-shaped asteroid known as Phoenix Prime turned slowly on its long axis. Its interior, hollowed out by lavish use of clean, laser-detonated fusion devices, was little more prepossessing than its rugged surface—none of the parklike spaciousness visualized for asteroid habitats by space-colonization advocates of the last century. It merely provided the basics of habitability for those who labored, in shifts, to prepare the large ice asteroid called Phoenix for the journey that was its destiny.
DiFalco had often reflected that Phoenix was misnamed. The Phoenix of myth had arisen from the ashes. Its namesake would descend to the surface of Mars at interplanetary velocity and impact with the force of a billion average fusion bombs, blasting the planet's original atmosphere into space and triggering the seismic and volcanic cataclysms that would give it a new, dense one. In less than a generation, after the molten surface cooled, oceans would form and microorganisms would be introduced by the humans who would again be able to set foot on the surface. After another generation, a major human presence, and some oxygen-producing plants, would have taken hold and terraforming would enter a new stage. Less than a century after the initial impact, atmospheric oxygen should suffice for the formation of an ozone layer and large-scale soil fertilization would be underway. After another half-century, oxygen pressure would have reached Earth-like levels and simple genetically engineered animals would be released.
So, he reflected, maybe the name wasn't so inappropriate after all. A new, living world would arise from the wreck of the old, lifeless one. It was incomparably the greatest engineering project in human history, conceived in the heady decades after the turn of the century when Communism had fallen and free enterprise seemed to have taken a new lease on life in the young republics of Eurasia and on the high frontier of space.
It was the era into which DiFalco had been born—the full high tide of the Third Industrial Revolution—and he had often wondered, with an uncomprehending inner hurt, what had gone wrong with it.
* * *
With a beard and the right clothes, Brigadier General Sergei Konstantinovich Kurganov would have looked like an Eastern Orthodox saint. He was a Russian of the tall, slender sort, with a long, triangular face and a broad brow from which the gray-brown hair was beginning to recede. His English was only slightly accented—indeed, he spoke it better than most victims of American public education. And it was a source of constant embarrassment that he knew far more of the history of DiFalco's own nation than the American himself.
He came aboard Andy J. with full military formality, after which they proceeded to DiFalco's cabin and cracked a bottle from the latter's private stock of Scotch. (The general had once admitted, in strictest confidence, that he had never liked vodka.)
"Well, Eric," Kurganov began, "what is it you have brought me?"
"I can hardly wait to find out," DiFalco replied feelingly. "Believe it or not, what I sent you before our arrival represented all I know. This Varien—he's the only one of them I've actually spoken to except his daughter, and her English isn't as good as his—is playing it very close to his chest. He came over to this ship for part of the trip, and was insufferable about how delightfully quaint it all is, but told me essentially nothing." He shook his head slowly. "I'll never forget the first time he and I left his ship to transfer to our shuttle; he just stepped into the airlock wearing the skintight one-piece outfit they all wear shipboard. I was sure he was mad as a hatter. Then he proceeded to put on gloves and pull this clear plastic hood over his head from a flap behind the neck . . . and opened the airlock! The hood puffed out into a fishbowl helmet, but otherwise the suit still looked like a body stocking. He must have seen the look on my face; he condescendingly explained that they have heavy-duty vac suits for long-term or hazardous-labor EVA, but that this thing suffices for brief jaunts." He shook his head again and took a pull on his Scotch.
"But now," Kurganov prompted after a moment, "he wants to meet with both of us aboard his ship?"
"Right. It's parked in easy shuttle range, behind an asteroid—God knows why. Their stealth technology . . . well, the only reason we detected that ship was because they wanted us to. They can't defeat the Mark One Eyeball, but you
know how much use that is in deep space."
"Indeed." It was Kurganov's turn to muse and sip. "Clearly, Varien is being very circumspect about approaching our governments. Thank God for that. It makes me wonder if he may have some inkling of what is happening on Earth." He turned grim, and set his glass down. "I must tell you, Eric, that we just received word that the Social Justice Party in America has held a special mid-term conclave in the wake of the recent Congressional election, and announced its intention of terminating the Project as the first stage in eliminating all private-sector activity in space . . . and, eventually, all activity of any kind. The resources are, it seems, to be turned to 'socially useful' ends."
DiFalco was momentarily without the power of speech. So this is what it's like to go into shock, he thought with an odd calmness.
"'Socially useful'?!" he finally exploded. "Jesus H. Christ! What do they call the powersats that provide eighty percent of Earth's energy without polluting anything? What's going to replace them? And do they plan to go back to strip-mining Earth for the minerals we're now getting from the asteroids?"
"I doubt if the irrationality of their proposal will prevent the victory that the media has decreed for them in the presidential election year after next," Kurganov said dryly. "Any more than will their declaration that the election after that may have to be postponed, and the Constitution suspended, 'until the political process has been cleansed of capitalist and Zionist influence.' There was a time when that statement would have made them unelectable in America. Not now, of course. And Russia will, as always, follow along."
For a long moment, DiFalco sat stunned. When he spoke, his voice held a plaintive tone that no one but Kurganov was ever permitted to hear.
"Sergei, what the hell happened? How did we screw up? It wasn't supposed to be like this, you know. When you people kicked out the Communist regime two generations ago, everybody thought the Totalitarian Era was over!"
