Saturn Run

by John Sandford

  He looked at Crow for a few seconds, then said, “Sonofabitch, you’re real? I thought you were a spammer.”

  Crow began, “Maybe you should have—”

  “Give me a minute. I just started sautéing the tomatoes and I don’t want them to burn. Take that green wooden chair there—not the red one, that’s for the cat.”

  The air was faintly blue with smoke, and smelled of cumin, pepper, oregano, and marijuana. Crow picked up a copy of Nature that was sitting on the green chair, sat down, looked for a place to put the magazine, and finally put it on the cat’s chair. Crow’s stomach rumbled; he hadn’t had a decent meal since Darlington had taken him to a Mexican restaurant in Pasadena.

  He said, “So . . . do you usually assume the Office of the President of the United States is a spammer?”

  “Well, wouldn’t you?” Clover asked. “You’re sitting in a restaurant in the French Quarter, your mouth is open, you’re about to stick the most delicate cream puff into it, with the flakiest butter crust, your computer dings, and it says, ‘Greetings from the President of the United States.’ What would you do? I deleted it and ate the bun.”

  “I see a certain logic in that,” Crow admitted, “which is why we have authentication certificates.”

  “Yeah, well, my neighbor boy could produce one of those in about five minutes.”

  “Anyway, Mr. Clover—”

  “Call me John.”

  “We’d like you to go to Mars with us.”

  Clover didn’t say anything, but turned and gave Crow a long, steady look, then said, “Bullshit.” And, “One more comment like that, I’ll kick you out of here and eat by myself. So don’t lie to me anymore. Just tell me the truth about what you want, and we’ll work from there.”

  Crow crossed his legs and said, “That was the truth.”

  “Bullshit . . . well, hmm. Give me a minute. What you’re telling me is, the reason the Chinese are going to Mars is that you’ve all found out that Deimos is a hollow shell left there by the LGMs, and so the race is on.”

  “What’s Deimos? What’re LGMs?”

  “Deimos is the smaller of Mars’s two moons and has some oddities. LGMs are Little Green Men. If you really don’t know what Deimos is, then you were lying to me. Actually, you’re lying to me either way—either you know about Deimos, or you don’t want me to go to Mars.”

  “You’re confusing me here.”

  “You don’t look confused. By the way, do you have a badge?”

  “Sure.” Crow took an ID out of his pocket, held it up. Clover had a wrist-wrap on the kitchen counter and picked it up, waved it toward the ID, and a line in the wrap turned green. The ID was real.

  “Okay, you’re something,” Clover said.

  “Tell me why I’m lying,” Crow said.

  “Because there are two things I’m known for. The first is my studies of ancient Mayan hydraulic technology. It’s brilliant work, if I do say so myself—and I often do. But it wouldn’t be of much interest to the President of the United States.” Clover took another sip of the jambalaya, swirled it in his mouth, swallowed, and continued. “The second is my entirely hypothetical work on how technologies and cultures might develop in alternate ways from ours, especially given different starting points, culturally, psychologically, and even physically. In other words, how alien civilizations might turn out. Mars has no LGMs. Mars doesn’t even have living bacteria, as far as we know. We’ve mapped everything on the surface bigger than a baseball, and there are no hatches, doors, portals, ducts, or discarded pizza boxes. So there’s no reason for an anthropologist to go there.”

  “All right.”

  Clover picked up the remnants of a joint, touched it to a flame from a burner, took a drag, adding to the mix of aromas in the room. “So what do you want, Mr. Crow?”

  “We want you to sign a bunch of security regs that say you’ll go to prison if you talk about what we tell you. Believe me, if you talk, you go to prison. If you don’t talk, you become, in due time, the richest and best-known anthropologist on Earth.”

  “Wait: something popped out of the ice in Antarctica . . .”

  “No. Nothing popped out of any ice.”

  “You found something on the sea floor?”

  “No.”

  “Shit. I don’t need the money—I mean, what could be better than this place?—but I wouldn’t mind being famous,” Clover said.

  “That could happen,” Crow said.

  “You want some jambalaya?”

  “Yes.” Crow did; his meal schedule was leaning heavily on McDonald’s.

  “You want a hit on the joint?”

  “No.”

  Clover carefully stubbed out the joint, saving the best for last. “Although Louisiana is one of only six states that outlaws weed for anything but medicinal purposes, I want you to know, I don’t use weed for medicinal purposes. I use it strictly to get stoned.”

  “That confirms our research in choosing you for the Mars trip,” Crow said. “We’ve got a specific slot for a weeder. Without that qualification, we’d have approached Jeb Rouser.”

  Clover bristled. “That charlatan? Let me tell you about Mr. Rouser, Mr. Crow. Anthropologically speaking, Rouser couldn’t find his own asshole with both hands and a searchlight. He thinks—”

  “He’s the Morton K. Brigham Professor of Anthropological Research at Yale University.”

  “Fuck Morton K. Brigham and Yale University,” Clover said. “You ever been to that place? You have to have a pole stuck up your ass before you’re allowed to walk on campus. Seriously, they have a booth with poles. Before they hire you for a job, they stick a second pole up there.”

  “We were told you were perhaps the better choice, but there was an argument—”

  “I’m better by a very wide margin, especially if this involves LGMs,” Clover said. “But enough about me.” The jambalaya smelled so good that Crow thought he might faint. “Give me what I need to sign, and fill me in.”

  Crow reached into his inside jacket pocket, extracted a mini-slate, and pushed it across the table to Clover.

  “You can read them if you want, but I gotta tell you, they’re pretty boring.”

  Clover was already flipping pages, dating and thumbing them. “Doesn’t matter. I want to hear the whole story, and you know I want to hear the whole story, and if I don’t sign our little tea party never happened and you don’t exist. Anything else important?”

  “Nope. That’s about it.”

  “It’ll be a while before the jambalaya is just right,” Clover said. “I’ve got some chairs in there, somewhere.” They moved into the other room, where Clover made another overstuffed chair appear out of the clutter. “So what’s up?”

  They sat down and Crow laid it out. Fifteen minutes later, Clover pushed himself out of his chair and asked, “You want a large bowl or a gigantic bowl?”

  “Gigantic.”

  “Good man.”

  —

  Clover came back two minutes later with the jambalaya and two bottles of beer, and said, “If I didn’t miss anything, the short version goes like this: something you think is a starship came and stopped in Saturn’s rings and rendezvoused with some kind of ‘whatever.’ You haven’t had any evidence of communication between your starship and the ‘whatever.’ Neither of these artifacts has made an attempt to contact or communicate with us—”

  “We don’t know that,” Crow interrupted. “We don’t know if we’d recognize an attempt to communicate.”

  “They haven’t. At their level of tech, they could if they wanted to. In any case, you don’t have an indication that there are any alien beings at Saturn, all you know is that the visitor’s apparently extra-solar and artificial. You want my considered opinions? Of course you do, that’s why you’re here.”

  “And I’m listening closely,” Cr
ow said. The jambalaya was really good. Clover might be goofy, but he could cook.

  In the other chair, Clover fired up the remnant of the joint, took a drag, and said, “My first opinion is that if there actually are aliens there, they don’t want to talk to us. Showing up on their doorstep might not go over real well. I mean that as understatement. What little information you’ve got—the fact that there was already a station at Saturn—suggests that they are not new to this game, which means they’ve probably got good reasons, from their perspective, for what they’re not doing. Like communicating with us.”

  He continued: “My second opinion is that there probably aren’t aliens there, that it’s just a space probe. No LGMs, no ‘take-me-to-your-leader.’”

  Crow was getting a contact high from the dope; either that, or from the jambalaya. “Okay. Our problem is, sooner or later, this cat is going to get out of the bag. We know for sure that these . . . beings . . . are more technologically advanced than we are. We don’t know by how much, but we do know that we don’t want that tech falling into the hands of the Chinese before we get it.”

  “Ahh . . .” Clover blew smoke toward the ceiling. “I’m beginning to see.”

  “And it’s probably not a probe. We’ve had some people thinking about that, and the ship’s simply too big to be a probe, for beings that advanced. Right now, we could build a computer and sensory package not much bigger than a soccer ball, stick it in a probe, run out to the Centauri system in a couple of decades, and the computer would radio back everything we need to know about the system. No need to build a starship the size of an asteroid.”

  Clover shrugged. “Well, I’ve told you what I can, at this point. If you get more information, I’ll be happy to advise—and I’ll think about what you’ve told me so far, and get back to you with some ideas. If you get out there, and get more information, I will look forward to hearing about it. With more information, I can probably give you better opinions and better evaluations of what your options are. Leastwise, I can probably keep you from making boneheaded mistakes.”

  “John, I didn’t actually want to throw this out there before I heard your opinions. . . . The President would like you to join the crew on the Saturn run.”

  Crow took some small pleasure in the surprise on Clover’s face.

  “You mean . . . go out in space?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Jesus, Crow, who’d take care of my cat?”

  It took Crow a moment to realize that Clover was serious.

  “John, we’ve got bigger problems than your cat.”

  “Maybe you do, but I don’t. Mr. Snuffles is sixteen years old. He’s been my best friend all that time. I mean, we’ve dug in Mayan ruins together. We’ve fought snakes, mano a mano. No way in hell I’m going to leave him now. He’s only got a couple of years left.”

  Crow took a second to rub his forehead. “Let me check to see if the cat could go.”

  Clover leaned back: “That would put a different complexion on it. If the cat could go, well, yeah, I could see making the trip. It’s still a crappy idea. I don’t trust aliens.”

  “You don’t know any aliens.”

  “Yeah, and they don’t know me. Seems like a hell of a good reason for not trusting them.” He took a hit on the joint. “What are the chances of getting back?”

  “Don’t know. Assuming the aliens don’t turn out to be hostile, probably ninety-nine percent. The other one percent, everybody dies.”

  “You mean, some massive failure.”

  “Yeah.” Crow leaned forward. “John, the last thing we want to do is get anyone killed. That would defeat the whole purpose of going out there. As far as the aliens go, our Pentagon people don’t think there’s any reason that they might be hostile.”

  Clover shook his head. “Your Pentagon people are piss-ignorant. They don’t know anything about the aliens, if there are any aliens. And that cuts both ways. The aliens might not know anything about us. Or maybe they only know the big stuff: Hiroshima, Vietnam, the Oil Wars, 9/11, the Tri-Border Fight, the Houston Flash. You think that might worry them? Crazy people, coming to visit? First contact—it’s gonna be dangerous no matter how you cut it.”

  “All right.”

  “And then, we could get out there, find that they are a bunch of beautiful spiritual Zen people, ready to give us the secret to eternal life, and the Chinese show up and throw a nuke at us.”

  They sat staring at each other for a moment, then Crow said, “If you can take the cat?”

  Clover waved a heavy hand at him: “I’ll think about it. Probably say no. But I’ll think about it.” He inhaled, held it. “I don’t believe my pot would be a good idea, given a recirculating ventilation system, but I’d want to take a few gallons of Old Horseshoe to get me through it.”

  “Let me know soon as you can, or we’ll have to talk to somebody else,” Crow said. “We’ll stick you on a large retainer, until you say no, anyway. We’ll want to see you in D.C. in a week to meet with our study group. Bring every idea you’ve got on this.”

  “I can do that,” Clover said, as Crow got up to leave.

  Clover watched Crow as he walked down the crooked sidewalk to a waiting car. When he was gone, Clover looked at his cat: “Tell you what, Snuff: I’ve got a feeling that I might say ‘yes.’ But it’s possible that we should stick with the Mayans, and let the aliens go.”

  9.

  Three weeks after the alien ship was spotted, Sandy was going up.

  He’d been allowed two packs—a big one for equipment, a small one for clothing and personal effects. At eight in the morning, he popped the door on his condo, hauled the bags outside, sealed the door, jacked the alarms to the highest settings, and carried his bags and a paper cup of coffee through the complex gates and out to the curb, to an empty bus bench.

  The sky was light gray: the marine layer hadn’t burned off yet, so the L.A. basin hadn’t had a chance to heat up. Sandy sipped his coffee and kicked back a bit. Might as well relax and enjoy the moment.

  He lived in a condo complex built around an enormous swimming pool, and populated by affluent, good-looking people. Most affluent people were good-looking, not because they inherited the right genes, but because the surgery was so good and painless and safe.

  From outside, the apartment complex might have been a tropical jungle: something painted by Winslow Homer on one of his Caribbean trips, he thought. The complex also had tight security, another benefit: he’d once been dropped off by a drunk friend, drunk himself and mostly naked, and when he’d tried to cross the wall, he found himself surrounded by armed guards in about six seconds.

  They hadn’t been fooling around; they’d run a DNA check on him before they let him back in his apartment. He didn’t live in a place where you just dropped in.

  Sandy hadn’t had that many moments to relax in the two previous weeks. After making his deal with Crow, he was flown to Maryland, to the Defense Information School at Fort Meade, where he was turned over to a harsh, hawk-nosed marine gunnery sergeant named Cletus Smith, who didn’t care for Jesus hair or burnt-orange GnarlyBrand pants or RhythmTech overshirts.

  The gunny was not happy: “I don’t know exactly what’s up, Dingleberry . . .”

  “That would be Darlington . . .”

  “. . . Darlington, but I don’t like it. It wasn’t done right. I got some freshly made West Point asshole shoving security papers down my throat, I got the sergeant major yapping at me, my schedule’s screwed for the next six months, I was supposed to start an advanced vid class . . .”

  The gunnery sergeant was wearing the usual uptight marine camo uniform, which had some kind of special marine name that Sandy didn’t remember, and as ex-army, really didn’t care about. He reached forward and slipped two fingers inside the placket on the sergeant’s shirt, and gave it a tug.

  “Gunny, gunny, gunny,” he sa
id, leaning toward the sergeant until their noses were only six inches apart. “Nobody gives a shit what you think or how inconvenient it is, or what Mrs. Cletus or the Cletus rug rats think. But you should give a shit what I think—because if you don’t have me up to Ultra Star vid status in two weeks, Major General Harrington will be down here with a fuckin’ power mower. Guess whose ass gonna be grass?”

  Few marines had ever had their placket tugged; Smith was not one of them, and his nose turned white. “Get your fingers the fuck outa my . . .”

  Sandy broke in: “. . . and if you ever give me any serious shit, I will personally take your skinny, ignorant peckerwood Marine Corps ass outside and stomp a new mudhole in it, to replace the mudhole you already got.”

  Smith stared at him for a moment, then showed a very tight grin: “They didn’t tell me you’d been in the service, and the hair fooled me. Argentina?”

  “The whole cruise,” Sandy said. The whole cruise was insider code for those who had been shot up.

  “I was on that boat,” Smith said. He took a step back. “All right. You can call me Clete. Let’s take a look at your gear. . . .”

  Ten straight days of hard work—and a Marine Corps haircut: Jesus hair didn’t work all that well in weightless conditions.

  Maybe he wasn’t Ultra Star when he finished, but Sandy was two thousand percent better than he had been, and he hadn’t been bad to begin with. Cletus Smith had been a combat videographer, and had actually filmed himself being shot down in a Marine Blackfoot IV helicopter; he rode the vid right into the ground, with commentary, although the commentary had been suppressed for the good of the Corps. Smith said, at the end of their last day, “Y’all come back: I got more.”

  “Clete, I wish I could take you with me,” Sandy said, as they slapped hands. “Once I get some space under my feet, I’ll be looking for ideas.”