Analog SFF, January-February 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  A commotion behind him, and Zheng He saw crewmen staring into the sky in disbelief. His gaze followed theirs, and it took him a moment to admit the reality of what he saw:

  Merabor's mother had taken to the skies again, her blue wings that never flapped spanning half the length of his treasure ship as she hovered to its rear.

  The very sight of her threatened to cripple Zheng He's reason, and the moment lingered until he made himself turn back toward his crewmen, intending to issue a command. That he had no concept of the nature of that command did not worry him—not Zheng He! His faith in himself told him the words would come.

  When he completed the turn, however, he found Merabor towering over him, silhouetted against a series of lightning bolts.

  Zheng He admits words left him at this moment, and he cursed his own failure more than he did the dragon or the storm.

  Merabor's words rumbled louder than the thunder: “You have much wisdom, Zheng He. But you have found its limits."

  Now words released themselves into Zheng He's mouth again: “You dare insult me?"

  "Not at all,” the dragon said. “You said it properly: ‘Only a civilized man may decide who deserves the title of barbarian.’ Yet I have seen how you would bring civilization to me.” Merabor held his arms up and indicated the storm all around them. “See how I bring it to you, instead!"

  Then Merabor's arms reached down, quick as a viper, to grasp Zheng He by the shoulders. The time has arrived, the admiral thought. Finally the flame or the crushing hands.

  Merabor used neither. He lifted Zheng He up before him, the admiral determined not to show fear even with his arms pinned to his sides, his feet dangling. The dragon brought him close to his face and spoke in as quiet a voice as Zheng He had ever heard: “Barbarian."

  Then Merabor tossed him to the deck, but Admiral Zheng forced himself to his feet just in time to see Merabor dive off the rear of the observation deck. Zheng He never saw him strike the water—a series of lightning flashes and Merabor disappeared.

  The admiral thought the lightning had incinerated Merabor in mid jump. But the dragon's mother took this moment to rise higher into the sky, and Zheng He knew she would never abandon him so easily—somehow she had absorbed her son into herself again.

  The admiral stood there as the dragon mother vanished into the low clouds. Those clouds soon dissipated, and within moments Admiral Zheng found his fleet sailing across calm waters beneath blue skies, and he heard his crewmen offering up prayers to the Celestial Consort, Tianfei, whose protection had saved them all.

  When Zheng He turned from those smooth seas and clear skies and rushed down to the hold, he found the dragon's cage shattered like kindling and the archers lying unconscious. When he went to inspect the dragon's egg, he found it reduced to dust.

  Zheng He did not travel on the second voyage of the treasure ships. Instead, he remained in China and traveled to the birthplace of Tianfei, the goddess of seafarers, to repair her temple. After all, the admiral's crewmen believed the violent flashes of light that consumed Merabor represented a “magic lantern” whose illumination banished the storm. Western sailors call such a light “Saint Elmos's fire,” and believe only natural forces and not supernatural ones create it.

  Zheng He believed neither explanation. “I held a complete lack of faith regarding Tianfei's intervention,” he told me. “I also realized my own error in believing a natural form of lightning had struck. My intellect, informed by my emotions, told me that Merabor's mother had generated that lightning—the spark of life, indeed!"

  Once again, during his last voyage, Admiral Zheng insisted every word of his tale represented utter truth. But only now could he force himself to tell it.

  I asked again the question I'd posed earlier: “What makes this that time?"

  "A tale,” he said, “should carry a moral. This one does not. I had hoped you would find one within it."

  Yet I have not. Zheng He's exploits numbered so many, yet those of silver and silk, tea and wine, diplomacy and burning pirate ships did not consume his thoughts as did this single tale.

  The proverb tells us a bird does not sing because it has an answer—it sings because it has a song. What then, constitutes Zheng He's song?

  Only this—despite his failure to bring Merabor to the emperor, despite having to hear the unwarranted insult in Merabor's last word to him, a single fact remained, a single accomplishment no other man could claim.

  Once Zheng He captured a dragon.

  Copyright © 2008 Dave Creek

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  Novelette: TO LEAP THE HIGHEST WALL by Richard Foss

  Some things transcend national borders—but that doesn't mean the borders can or should be ignored.

  The coffee mug embossed with the NASA seal danced as Dan Mc Cauley banged his fist on the Mission Control instrument panel. “Three months! Another three months and we would have beaten them there. Ten years we've been racing the Soviets to the Moon, and they beat us by three months.” He turned away from the panel and started to pace angrily, pausing only to kick a chair that rolled away on rubber wheels.

  "We ran a good race, Mac,” said Frank Conley in a slow Georgia drawl. The lanky chief engineer stubbed a cigarette out in the ash tray that sat atop an instrument console, looked in the coffee mug, and grimaced at the layer of sludge on the bottom. “Matter of luck, partly. We hadn't had that fire on the launch pad back in ‘67, we'd have been on the Moon last July. Our technology's better, no question on that. Their designers build a cat, it would have three hind legs."

  "Three hind legs must be what's needed, because right now their guys are in lunar orbit and we aren't."

  Frank scratched his head thoughtfully. “D'know. If there are, they're keepin’ quiet. The spooks say they're pretty sure this bird is manned, but who can tell with the Russkies? Even if there are guys in that tin can, we don't know if they're going to land or not. Doesn't matter much anyway. I won't be happy if Leonov or one of his boys is the first to walk on the big green cheese, no sir, but bein’ first isn't everything. I hear tell that Vikings were the first to sail to America, but last I noticed there's a real shortage of them around here now.” With that, the southerner ambled to a nearby workstation where a technician was fiddling with a meter and looking concerned.

  "I always thought the first man on the Moon would be an American,” Mc Cauley muttered at his back. He paced for a moment, then kicked the radar console. The coffee cup trembled again, and the nearby communications specialists looked up from their instruments, not sure what to do when their boss flew into a rage. Embarrassed, Mc Cauley retreated into his office and started shuffling through some paperwork, only to have some of it fall to the floor. As he knelt to gather it up, a shadow fell over him.

  "Can I have a word with you, Mac?” Conley asked softly. Mc Cauley followed him through the two doors and past a security station, and the humidity hit them like a stifling blanket as they went outside. They walked out on a grassy area, and the cicadas that had been calling into the Houston night fell silent. The engineer gazed into the distance, inhaled deeply, and then let his breath out in a long sigh. “Ahhhh, a perfect April evening. Nine thirty P.M., ninety degrees, and 95 percent humidity. Jes’ like home. I do dislike that canned air in there."

  Mc Cauley relaxed a bit, unable to stay mad while talking to his calm, easygoing friend. “The computers like it cool and dry. If it gets hot in there, your boys will be crawling through cabinets of electronics replacing transistors."

  "Integrated circuits, these days. A hundred transistors on one chip, do you believe it? My daddy's still listenin’ to the news on a tube radio that heats up the whole corner of the room. The old stuff runs hot and slow, the new stuff runs cold and fast, but it doesn't make me like the cold any better. Like a hospital or a morgue in there, and I make it a policy to stay out of both places.” He paused for a moment and turned to face Mc Cauley. “You've been runnin’ a little hot yourself the last few days, an
d I'm not the only one who's noticed. You got a responsibility to your crew there—a man's boss stays angry, complains all the time about us losin’ to the Russkies ... well, it's bad for morale. Makes it hard to focus on things that go right, longer term goals. More than that. If there's really three guys up there, they aren't the ones who are our enemies. They're probably a gaggle of hotshot pilots just like our rocket jockeys, and they'd ride with anybody who might give them a lift. Us, the French, the British if they ever get their Black Arrow booster working. Heck, they'd take a ride from the Chinese on the back of a skyrocket."

  Mc Cauley laughed at the idea of a Chinese space program. “Hope they don't confuse the main boosters with New Year's fireworks."

  "Well, the Russkies and us have sent up a few fireworks ourselves,” reminded Conley somberly. “Some good men went up and didn't come back down."

  They both were silent a moment, remembering a flare in the sky and the brief screams in the last transmission from Apollo 8. “God rest their souls,” said Mc Cauley quietly.

  "Their guys and ours, even if theirs didn't believe in God,” replied Conley.

  "They knew it was dangerous, all of them. Now we've retrofitted our capsules with better escape systems and added fuel cutoff valves, and blown a two-year lead doin’ it. D'know what they've done over there. The way they've kept launching, probably just gave their guys a couple of extra pillows for hard landings."

  "You really think this one's manned, instead of another test?"

  "Yeah, I do. Friend of mine who teaches political science in Savannah has been predicting something like this for a while, on account of the Soviets are just nuts on commemorating anniversaries. Lenin was born on April twenty-second of 1870, and they want a great big hundredth birthday present to prove he's still god. I figure this is it. At the very least, they're going to have some guys up there to sing ‘happy birthday, dear comrade.’ If they can upstage the capitalists by landin’ somebody on the Moon tomorrow, they will. It's dead certain they're gonna try."

  "With their lousy equipment."

  "It's primitive compared to ours, but it does work sometimes. For now, all we can do is watch and see if it does this time. We gotta go back in there and observe, and even help with telemetry data if Moscow asks us nice. The stakes are high, and not just for the flyboys up there. If someone on the duty crew slacks off and doesn't record everything that happens, I think I can imagine which Mission Control officer would have his ass in a sling for not catchin’ it. Anyway, the day will come when the shoe is on the other foot and it's our guys up there and them watching from the ground. We're building better stuff than they are, and you know it."

  "They sure seem to be able to do some things right.” Mc Cauley replied, gesturing toward the rising Moon. The haze tinted it a light orange, but the dark patches of the Mare Imbrium were still clear.

  "Well, I see it as our turn to do some things right for a change. Things had gone a little different, it'd be an Apollo rather than Soyuz up there. Heck, if Congress hadn't gotten in the act demanding investigations and redesigns, it'd be our guys circling the Moon. If the Soviets go for the gold this time, it's still a human getting off the planet, and we'll run laps around them puttin’ a base up there. The long term, we got ‘em beat. For now, let's prove that we can handle our part of it."

  "Fair enough.” Mc Cauley checked his watch. “Maybe we can overhear some transmissions and prove there's someone in that capsule. Let's get to it."

  The southerner nodded. “Let's go run a railroad. We'll ride it later."

  Even before the two men made it all the way inside the cavernous mission control center, they could hear the sound of a loud argument.

  "You can't tell them that! That's revealing capabilities they don't know we have!” barked one voice.

  "It's standard procedure to reply as soon as we receive any distress signal!"

  "From a friendly or neutral, not the enemy!"

  "What's going on here?” Mc Cauley interrupted as he strode through the door. He saw two men almost nose to nose, a tall, bulldog-faced man with a graying crew cut facing off against a shorter man who glared at him intensely. Mc Cauley pointed at the smaller of the two. “Bob Butler, isn't it? What's this about?"

  "We have received a message from the spacecraft, asking to talk to the head of NASA about plans for an emergency landing if needed."

  "From the spacecraft? You're sure?"

  "It came in on our highest-gain receiver just as the communications window to their orbiter was disappearing. They were just about to go behind the Moon."

  "For us. Asking about emergency recovery. Not from Moscow."

  Conley moved to his elbow. “Moscow hasn't confirmed that it's a manned launch yet,” he said softly. “At least, not as I've heard. This could be on their own."

  "You sure this wasn't a message for Moscow? What did they say, something like ‘Houston, we have a problem?’”

  The sarcasm had no effect on the small man. “It came in on our emergency frequency, not one they use. It recorded automatically, and I listened as soon as I saw that there was activity. I have it right here.” He stabbed at a button, and they strained to hear a heavily accented voice through layers of crackle and static.

  "To NASA Houston, this is Volkov of Soyuz 11. Please advise ability to recover capsule from parachute landing in California or Arizona desert. Will await communication ninety minutes from now for reply, this frequency. Over."

  They stood in silence for a moment, listening to background hiss on the tape. “It's a trick!” announced Butler suddenly. “That signal came in on a system that is better than anything they have, better than anything they're sure we have. If we reply, they know our capabilities."

  The larger man broke his silence. “I was in the Navy for six years, and we learned a few things. You don't ignore a distress call, not ever. You don't make a frivolous distress call, not ever, or real ones get ignored. The North Koreans didn't do it back during the war. Even the Nazis didn't do it. The Russkies would be fools to break that protocol now. We have to treat this as real!"

  Butler looked ready to argue with him again, but Mc Cauley held up his hands to shush them both. “This is too big for us. I'm going up the chain. Transcribe that message and log it, and give me a copy within five minutes. Nobody in this room is to leave this building, and outside lines are to be shut off now. Got that?” Both men nodded. “I'm getting on the phone to Washington. Frank, you come with me."

  The two men walked rapidly into Mc Cauley's cramped, cluttered office. “Thoughts?” asked Mc Cauley after a moment.

  "Got lots of ‘em. Bet you do too."

  "Some kind of equipment failure. Tight window for the return trip, maybe fuel too low to make an extended burn. They have to land wherever they're aimed."

  "And Moscow hasn't told us because they're real bad at admitting when things go wrong. Brezhnev's boys probably don't think they'll make it, so they'd rather have us think their bird is empty."

  "Fits with something else."

  "What?"

  "They sent the message just before they go behind the Moon, out of contact with us and Moscow for about an hour. They know we have to contact Washington, and they're probably going to be in contact with Moscow. If Moscow doesn't have a solution, they'll want to know if they can land here as a last resort."

  "So we have about ninety minutes to figure out if we're willing to have some very unwelcome temporary guests,” Mc Cauley finished. “Not much time to get a decision from the politicos. I'm calling Washington now."

  Conley turned to leave. “Reckon I don't have the security clearance to listen to this call, much as I'm dyin’ to."

  "Sit down, Frank. You know too much already to go anywhere, and anyway, I want you in on this.” He picked up the phone and told the operator, “Administrator Low, top priority, secure line."

  "That's actin’ administrator, isn't it?"

  Mc Cauley covered the phone with his hand. “Yeah, I'm sure he wants to b
e reminded of that. He and Von Braun don't get along, or he'd be confirmed by now. I hear President Nixon has a permanent appointment in mind, but...” He sat up straighter in his chair and stopped covering the handset. “Hello, Administrator Low, this is Dan Mc Cauley in Mission Control, Houston. We've received a transmission from the capsule the Soviets launched a few days ago ... Affirmative, sir, there is strong evidence that it is manned. No, sir, they're not gloating, we think they may be in trouble. They've asked about assistance in case of an emergency landing on US territory. Affirmative, sir, they mentioned the California desert. We suspect that they had to make some unexpected maneuver that used up fuel, and their only landing window is somewhere on the West Coast. We're plotting out their orbits right now to see when they'll be lined up for that region. Transmission was very brief, and they're out of contact now. They expect an answer in about ninety minutes. The President? At this time of night? Yes, sir, I'm aware that this could be an international incident. Will do, sir."

  He hung up the phone, looking slightly dazed.

  "Well?"

  "Don't just sit there, start doing what I told him we're already doing."

  "Checkin’ trajectories, right. Anything else?"

  "Coffee. Real coffee, which means somebody other than you making it."

  "Awww, Mac, you cut me deep. I'm on my way."

  * * * *

  The next twenty minutes was a flurry of paperwork and phone conversations—the report received and double-checked, confirmation calls from State Department functionaries with increasingly impressive titles, some of whom had obviously been rousted out of bed, and the consumption of a full pot of very bad coffee. If Conley hadn't made it himself, he had managed to find someone else with an equal lack of skill. Mc Cauley was ready to kid him about it until he saw the look on Conley's face when he entered the office again.

  "It's more complicated than we thought,” he said without preamble. “If they're just gonna orbit, they can go around one more time and slingshot back clean as you please to a hunk of Siberia that they've used for landings before. Next straight shot to California after that isn't for almost a day."