The core of a Gate.
"... a First Team went through, via Outbound Alpha-CeeGate . . ."
Forget for a moment the fact that all Contact Service Teams consist of highly trained, extremely dedicated professionals. Forget that they fly an unusually heavily fueled scout, with an extra deetee tank. Forget all the technology that goes into keeping air in, the vacuum out, and the scout moving.
Forget all that. Just think of a First Team—either a Contact Service First Team, or an old United Nations Exploration Group, which was part of the UN Navy—as a pair of hands, linked to a set of ears, eyes, and a nose. They fly through, and then the hands proceed to build a Gate on the other side of the hole. They do that very carefully, because if the Gate doesn't work, nobody is going home. Ever.
Then the ears listen. They listen for any regular or quasiregular sound on the twenty-one-centimeter band. They listen for any regular or irregular emissions of neutrons or neutrinos, protons or positrons—anything.
And the eyes look. They take constant parallax shots of the sky around them, looking for planets. If there are any that might be habitable, they take up an orbit around them and take pictures.
And the nose sniffs. Space isn't a vacuum, after all. It isn't done with a nose, after all, but it's still sniffing. The Team shuts off its scout's drive and waits for its ever-so-light effluvium to be washed away by light pressure. And then it extends sensitive probes into the vacuum and . . . smells. Usually, there's only the heavy background of hydrogen with the light trace of helium and the almost imperceptible background of heavier elements that mark an active star. There's almost never anything else to smell, not in quantity.
More than one hundred and fifty years ago, before there was a separate Contact Service, a UNEG Team smelled something else: boron.
Which they shouldn't have. Not in free space, not in any quantity. Boron, after all, while a light element, is by no means as common as hydrogen or helium.
What they did smell was a warning; a hint that someone had taken the idea of a boron fusion-fission drive, and made it work.
You take an atom of boron-11—the isotope of boron with the extra neutron—and plop a proton squarely in its nucleus. It goes into a long series of changes—no Krebs cycle or Stellar Phoenix, granted, but long enough, long enough—that ends up in four helium-4 atoms.
Now, while all the protons and neutrons add up to the same total before and after, there is some extra energy left over—five and a third million electron volts per atom of helium—which comes out as heat, giving you very hot helium; hot fast-moving, not hot radioactive.
That's theory. Now, in practice, if you actually took a few pounds of boron and bathed it in a stream of protons, you wouldn't hit every atom of boron; most of matter is space, and the nucleus of an atom is an awfully small target.
What you would get is a very hot mixture of very hot helium and very hot gaseous boron.
Hot gases. Very hot gases. And very hot gases are handy things to be pushing out the rear end of a rocket engine. In fact, all rocket designs—solid-fuel chemical, liquid chemical, NERVA, DUMBO, ion, fission bottle, transitional fission—are designed to do just that: produce some very hot gas.
At least in theory, a boron drive could do that very well.
And in practice, it seemed to work just fine, for the Xenos. Which bespoke a dangerously high level of technology, maybe even higher than ours. Possibly, whoever was using a boron drive hadn't worked out some of the tricks that we had—Gates, for example—but certainly they had made practicable one trick that we hadn't: boron drive.
The UNEG team should have Dropped it. They should have flown back through the Gate, leaving a small fusion bomb behind to destroy the Gate and seal the singularity. They should have. . . .
They didn't. Instead, they found a habitable planet and put the scout into orbit around it, then began hailing by radio and laser, trying to make contact.
Three years later, ten percent of the human race was dead. Just a tenth.
That wasn't much, of course.
Only two billion people.
". . . Now, as I understand it, Murphy's First Team picked up traces of boron. Which means either that this particular star is putting out weird quantities of the stuff, or—vastly more likely, given that a dogshit-simple spectrograph would pick up on that, in which case the word would go out to send for the astronomers, not the Service, and in which case nobody would be getting their peckers out of joint—"
"All that's classified information, Major."
"—there are Xenos in the system, or, last possibility, which would be too much to expect, there's someone else using a boron drive." The Dutchman smiled. "Questions, class?"
Vitelli nodded his head. "I see that you've been nosing around."
The Dutchman snickered. "I don't like to be kept in the dark, and after you've spent a couple of decades in the Service, you do tend to have some connections. When I tried to get in touch with my old buddy Rafe Murphy and found that some brainless security feeb had slapped a top secret over his assignment on the where board, I got suspicious, and went on the earie. I do have connections; it didn't take all that long. The only thing I can't figure out is why you."
"Eh?"
"Why an ambassador? Why just the Maggie? Why not just call out the whole fucking fleet, and then blow the whole fucking Xeno homeworld into microscopic traces? That's why we have a fleet, after all—it's not just to put down local insurrections and give you Navy faggots a place to play drop-the-soap."
Visibly ignoring that last, Vitelli shook his head. "How do you know it's the Xeno homeworld, Major? It isn't the same system, after all. And how do you know the aliens are even Xenos—the Xenos? Remember, we never captured any of them in the Xeno War. Other than the fact that they're psi-neg, all we know about them is how their attack ships performed more than a hundred years ago."
"We took them then. Not easily. But we took the bastards. We can do it again."
"Only if necessary, Major."
There is and was a school of thought that says that all we ought to do, as we expand the globe of human habitation, is blow sapients into very small bits.
Retail killing is one thing; a lot of Contacts involve some of that. Doing a bit of slightly wholesale killing might be another, if we ever run into the Xenos again. But doing it on a grand wholesale really wouldn't put us in a good position, once we run into a really powerful alien race. They might think of it as a precedent we'd established.
Norfeldt blew smoke into the air. "So we open contact?"
"We try, Major. More precisely, you try."
* * *
Norfeldt looked over at me. "Well, Emmy?"
"You asking my opinion, or are you telling me?"
"I'm asking."
"Lieutenants don't have opinions."
"Then I'm telling you—cut out the bullshit." Norfeldt smiled. "Seriously, what do you think? Maybe we ought to take our chances with a court-martial instead?"
"Nah." Look, there's no point in failing to give out with a bit of bravado when it doesn't make any difference. The Dutchman wasn't seriously asking my opinion; that wasn't the way Norfeldt operated.
"Bar-El?"
"As long as I have written orders, Major," he said carefully.
"You know what the chances are, don't you?"
Bar-El nodded. "Yes, sir."
"And you don't give a rat's ass, do you?"
"With all due respect, that's not properly your concern, sir."
"Fuck you very much, jewboy." The Dutchman chuckled. "I can't remember being told to go to hell so nicely—two hours' fatigue, shithead. Okay, Emmy, what is it?"
I drew myself up straight and looked Vitelli in the eye. "Ave, Imperator, nos—"
"Can the German—"
"That's Latin, Major."
"Shut up. Bar-El, you—"
"Wait." Vitelli spoke up.
"Shuddup, Dom. Do it my way, or forget it." The Dutchman got to his feet. "You and Emmy ca
n finish up the barfing. C'mon, you ugly Jewish ape, we're gonna report to the provost. Call ahead, Dom: either they can slap the cuffs on me, or they can have orders for the Hebe cut by the time we get there. Emmy, if the little dago decides to go for the orders, we'll meet at the shuttle up to the Maggie in, say, two hours. If not, see if you can hire me a good civvie lawyer."
He beckoned Bar-El to his feet. "Your play, Dom. Oh, and make sure you bring that cute little . . . aide of yours aboard the Maggie. Gotta make sure there's something to distract me on the trip."
The two of them walked out of the room, Bar-El gently closing the door behind them.
Vitelli turned to me, his thin, dark face displaying the expression that I've always thought of as Chief Executive Officer Basic; Father always used it when he was negotiating with someone outside Mark Airways. It's every bit as stylized as a kabuki mask, sort of halfway between a deadpan stare and a lifted-eyebrow show of interest.
"You know this better than I do, Lieutenant von du Mark—"
"Emile, please." I smiled. Someone had to establish some sort of communication with the ambassador; once through the Gate, Norfeldt—and by concatenation, Bar-El and I—were going to be under his orders.
"Emile." He nodded. "You know this better than I do, Emile, but that man is . . . slime."
"You're too kind to him."
"Possibly, possibly." He returned my smile. "Would you like a cup of coffee?"
Someday, I may meet a pilot who doesn't drink coffee, but it won't be when I look in a mirror.
"Definitely," I said.
"Even if Janine wasn't as good an aide as she is, I'd keep her around just for her coffee." He reached over and pushed a button. "Two cups, Janine—make it three, if you care to join us."
"I just finished making it, Dominic," the slightly metallic voice answered from his desk. She was at the door in just a few seconds, a coffee tray easily balanced overhead on the palm of her right hand.
"Nicely done," I said as she smoothly set the heavily laden tray on the desk and then poured and handed the ambassador and me each a cup. I took a sip, then added cream and sugar until it looked like tan milk.
Way back when, I used to drink it black, being a purist at heart. Purity doesn't last around the Dutchman.
"Thank you," she said, smiling. "I put myself through college waiting tables at the Playboy Club, if you can believe that."
"I've swallowed larger improbabilities. Like the sun rising in the east."
"Mmm. Nice man."
"Business, Janine. You can seduce Lieutenant von du Mark some other time." His brow furrowed for a moment, and he gave the slightest of shrugs.
"En route?"
"No. You're not going."
She looked me straight in the eye. "Pity."
The tone of their exchange made me suspect that the Dutchman's loudly voiced suspicions were wrong; if the two of them were carrying on in private, they'd be more careful in public.
(Not that it makes any difference, but I later found out both that I was right and that Ambassador Vitelli's own preferences made Janine's prettiness irrelevant to him, except abstractly.)
"Tell me, how did that . . ." Vitelli's voice trailed off.
"Bastard? Son of a bitch?" I supplied. "Poor excuse for a human being?"
"... ever become an officer?" With long, aristocratic fingers, he smoothed down the front of his tunic, his hand pausing at the gold-and-green medallion resting against the center of his chest.
"Damned if I know." Once I'd figured out how to work the CS system without leaving an obvious audit trail, I'd tried to break into the Dutchman's Personnel records, but without any luck. Pers records are tough. "But I do know how he gets away with it, Ambassador."
"Oh?"
"There's an unwritten law in the Contact Service, Ambassador. It goes like this: 'if you're good enough, you can get away with anything.' The Dutchman thinks he's the best officer that the Service has ever had, and that he can, therefore, get away with anything. The minor reason he puts on the show is to prove that to himself. And to everyone else, maybe."
I wasn't sure about the last. I don't think the Dutchman ever gave a damn about what anyone else thought.
Janine raised an eyebrow. "Minor reason? What's the major reason?"
I smiled at her, making a mental note to have some flowers sent to her. Red roses might be a bit much—orchids, perhaps? I've always liked beautiful women, and I've a particular affection for anyone who will throw me that kind of straight line.
"Because he is a bastard, of course."
"Of course."
II
I caught up with Bar-El and the Dutchman at the New Anna shuttle pad.
A quick glance at the lift board showed me that it was another two hours until the next personnel shuttle up to Magellan, although there was a cargo shuttle taking off in a few minutes.
Norfeldt waved me to a seat. "Take a load off, Emmy. Bet five quid you didn't get her phone code."
"Done. But that was a sucker bet, Major." I pulled the slip of paper out of my pocket and waved it, just out of reach. "If I didn't have her number, I wouldn't have bet."
The Dutchman nodded as he reached for his wallet. "Good point. I'll take it off you later, at poker."
I ignored the attempted distraction. "What are you really up to, Major?"
The Dutchman eyed me slyly. "Moi? Nothing in particular, Emmy. Just getting ready to be the sacrificial lamb." He took a deep breath. "I'm going to get myself and my special team the hell on Magellan, and we're going to take a ride out via SolGate to AlphaCeeGate and then the new Gate—for once not being locked up as though we're contagious—after which, you, the big Hebe, and I are going to climb into our scout, and peacefully go out to meet the Xenos, and then get our asses fried to a crisp, which will prove to the TW Council and the Navy beyond a doubt that there's no way to open communication with the Xenos, which will trigger a second Xeno War that humanity just might win, and will at least attempt to cover humanity's collective butt when we do run into some superior civilization." He leaned back against the wall. "Why do you ask?"
"Just curious." I looked over at Bar-El. "You're going along with this?"
"I . . . don't make those kinds of decisions, Lieutenant." Bar-El shook his head. "Not my department, sir."
"Second lieutenants don't sir first johns, jewboy." The Dutchman spat. "And you don't try to mess with Bar-El's head, Emmy. He's only provisional—his oath is to Metzada, not the Thousand Worlds. As long as he obeys orders and doesn't make any trouble, his paychecks and/or his Service life insurance goes to paying Metzada's trade deficit."
"Correct, Lieutenant." Bar-El nodded slowly. "I wouldn't want there to be any misunderstanding."
"Understood."
"Two hours to liftoff." The Dutchman stood, pulling a deck of cards out of his tunic pocket. "Let's get aboard, see if there's some money around. At least we don't get isolated on this one, thank God."
"Huh?"
The Dutchman handed the flimsy back to me. "Reread the orders, Emmy. Looks like Dom didn't want to either leave us alone for the voyage out or get locked in with us—suspending of nonintercourse rules doesn't mean you get to bed the girl. All it means is that we're human, for once."
III
There may be places where a Service officer is made to feel less at home than in a Navy battlecruiser's wardroom, but, if so, I don't want to know about them.
Part of it is prejudice. Perhaps on both sides: we tend to think of the Navy as a bunch of pasty-faced, soft-bellied, effete automatons; they think we're crude and rude past understanding or forgiveness.
Mmm . . . maybe that isn't prejudice, after all.
I think, though, that we put each other on, at least a bit. Sitting at the first officer's table, I decided that under normal circumstances, this assortment of ensigns, j.g.s, and full lieutenants wouldn't wear that much cologne; after just a couple of weeks, it'd surely foul Magellan's air conditioning.
But I did say
it goes both ways.
"More roast?" Ferret-faced Lieutenant Hardesty smiled with patently false geniality, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. "You seem to be dreadfully hungry, Lieutenant von du Mark, almost to the point of . . . oh, never mind." Since Commander Bender was on watch, the head of the table had gone to Hardesty, along with the obligation to try to make me uncomfortable under the guise of being a good host.
There really isn't a lot of precedent for social protocol between Navy and CS people aboard a Navy ship, but we were improvising just fine, thank you, to the credit of both services.
"Why, thank you, my dear Hardesty," I said, lifting my plate to accept his unintended offer to carve. "If you would, a bit of well-done? Blood-rare beef is so . . . dreadfully, dreadfully barbaric. Wouldn't you say?" Since the Navy was going to treat me like something that crawled out from the gutter, I had two options: either be sloppy enough to nauseate them, or even more after-you-my-dear-Alphonse than they were.
Now, while I can be messy, the Dutchman was holding up the Service's dignity from that end: over at the captain's table—as senior CS officer present, his status was with-but-after Captain Arnheim and the ambassador—puffing on a cigar, the Dutchman was hacking away a piece of roast with one of the spare Fairbairn knives. Not his own knife; you use your own assault knife only on something living you want to make dead in a hurry.
With a shadow of a scowl, Hardesty took up the carving knife and started slicing.
I guess I just could have let it all slide. Akiva Bar-El didn't care. He just eyed me soberly, with perhaps a hint of amusement, while he continued putting away enough calories to power a small city. Occasionally he'd let himself go enough to shake his head and mutter something suspiciously like goyisher kopf, but nobody chose to acknowledge that. Safer? Not really; the big man wasn't in the service to take offense at a few words and end up cashiered for fighting. But he didn't find it necessary to advertise that fact, and I didn't see any need to point it out to the Navy folks.
Emile and the Dutchman Page 8
