Strangers from the Sky
Page 10
homage. "But this species oryza saliva
rice?" Yoshi nodded, dumbstruck at the extent
of the young Vulcan's knowledge "is unknown to us."
"Maybe because it has to be grown in water,"
Yoshi suggested. "If, as you say, your planet
is mostly desert . . ."
The human was hungry for details, plied the
Vulcan with endless questions. He had dredged up the
few
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
astronomy books he owned and Sorahl had
shown him the precise location of his world, using his
navigator's skills to sketch
enlarged-scale starmaps from the perspective of
both worlds.
Tatya simply watched, speechless. She could not
take her eyes off the young alien,
memorised his every gesture, watched the
movement of his long muscles beneath the thin sweater
Yoshi had lent him, poured him endless cups of
tea, which he drank hot and strong and without any
sweetener.
"Species theraceae," he observed between sips.
In a human it might have been showing off.
"Specifically camellia sinensis, I believe.
We cultivate similar varieties on
Vulcan, though we prefer the use of herbs."
"We drink herb tea also," Tatya said
excitedly. "i just didn't have any on hand. When
the Whale gets here I'll order whatever you his
She stopped herself, horrified. What was she
thinking of? She saw fleeting panic on Yoshi's
face, saw that Sorahl was watchful, waiting, but
did not ask her what she meant.
"You must be tired," she said quickly. "You really
should rest."
"I cannot," the young Vulcan demurred. "I must
keep the watch for T'Lera."
He did not elaborate, and they did not dare
ask. There were so many other questions to ask first.
"It's amazing," Yoshi said, holding his long
hair out of his eyes, watching the rain sheeting against the
port, the grumbling flare of distant lightning.
Tatya, exhausted, dozed in the beanbag chair, but
the two males were beyond sleep. "Your ships have been
out there,
watching us, for how long?"
"Saver my grandfather was witness to your last two world
wars," Sorahl said, watching Yoshi's
eyes widen.
"But you're talking over a hundred You said he was
with you on this voyage. How old his
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"At his death he was 221.4, as measured in your
years," Sorahl said softly. This memory, too,
was part of him. "While he did not expect
to survive the voyage, neither did he expect
to meet death as he did."
"Your people live much longer than mine," Yoshi
observed. It was yet another difference he must
adjust to. But there was more here, some larger concept he
was too fatigued, too wired up, to grasp. He
sat beside Sorahl again, drawn to him. There was no
longer any fear, and the strangeness diminished with each
passing hour. In the dim light of a single lamp,
all his human eyes could tolerate this long without
sleep, they might have been brothers. Except for
those ears, and a thousand nuances of cultural
difference they'd only begun to explore. "And you
say it was an accident that brought you here? You had
orders to self-destruct rather than be seen? I
don't understand."
"It was to avoid the situation which, because of
our presence, now exists," Sorahl said. He
too experienced the kinship, beyond the logic of
biology or accident of birth, belonging more to the
realm of IDIC, to a diversity so
all-encompassing as to become similitude.
"We did not wish to frighten, to create controversy.
It would seem we have done both. How soon do you
estimate your authorities will come for us?"
Yoshi flinched. A human might have
bargained, threatened, pleaded for his mother if not for
himself. There was none of that here. Another difference between
them.
"Don't worry about it. We'll think of
something," he said vaguely, not half believing it.
At least if they kept talking he could put it out of
his mind for a few more hours, and maybe by some miracle
he would come up with
something. "Tell me how it happened. The acci-
dent. It's important."
Sorahl understood. The human still required reas
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surance that these aliens, these century-iong
watchers, meant them no harm.
"Our scoutcraft are equipped with four
retrm thrusters," he explained. "They are
designed to work in tandem, so that as many as one on either
side can malfunction without radically impairing
ship's function. However, if two on the same
side malfunction, and the odds against this are
approximately 4,323.6 to one . . . His
"Retro Three on blue line," Helm
T'Preth had reported, sealing their doom with a
whisper. "Downspiral estimated in nineteen
seconds mark."
The downspiral alone need not have
necessitated self destruct; these small
scoutcraft were incredibly maneuverable and could coast
unscathed through atmosphere to touch down on land or
water. Given a more favorable
position they might have come to Earth in some obscure
spot, repaired their retros, and de- parted
unseen. But they were in the most
cluttered of the satellite lanes and would soon be
visible to any of half a dozen tracking stations. It
was precisely this set of
circumstances that Savar's Prime Directive
had provided for, and every member of the crew was aware of
it.
Sorahl, beside T'Preth at the helm
as she made her announcement, would remember her
utter calm all his days.
"Acknowledged," T'Lera said simply, sitting
back in her chair. "Stop engines."
T'Preth did so. All was silence. A dozen
hands ceased their tasks and folded themselves into waiting
configurations. A dozen eyes sought those of their
commander, and the message in all was the same.
T'Lera's eyes sought Savar's.
"We are prepared."
It should have been simplicity itself. T'Lera had
merely to activate the self-destruct timer and
signal to
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Savar to open the airlock. The sudden outtake of
oxygen would implode their lungs instantly, even as
the scoutcraft itself imploded, literally turning itself
inside out with a minimum of visible "flash," reducing
itself to fragments so small that should any survive the
atmosphere, they would reach Earth as unidentifiable
bits of charred metal.
It should have taken less than the nineteen seconds
T'Preth had bequeathed them, except that for reasons
as inexplicable as the failure of two
tandem retros (and, with the loss of the craft, forever
indete
rminable), the self-destruct mechanism also
failed, locking in
midcountdown and refusing to respond to
override.
"Kaiidth!" T'Lera said, as if it were nothing,
though for her and one other it would mean the greatest
sacrifice a scoutcraft's crew could make.
"PK-AHR Savar, implement manual."
"Affirm, Commander," Savar said immediately. If his
voice quavered, age was the cause and not emotion.
He slid the pressure bolt on the airlock; the
slightest outward pressure would unseal it. "At
your command."
Ten eyes now looked to T'Lera; Savar alone
had turned his eyes inward. As the physically
weakest link in the chain, as the motive force behind the
Prime Directive, it was doubly logical that
he be the first to commit himself to the void beyond the
airlock. Of the others, one must remain to assist the
commander in destroying her vessel. They waited for
T'Lera to choose.
"Status, Helm?"
"Orbit decaying, Commander. Downspiral
commencing."
Screens had gone dark and could not be
brought back up; whoever operated the craft from here
on must fly blind, on instruments only, and half of
them were frozen by the aborted countdown. T'Lera
allowed herself the space of a breath, and chose.
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There was a certain logic by which she might have
selected T'Syra to remain, for they were lifelong
companions and could read each
other's thoughts. But by what right separate the
pale-eyed one from her bond to Selik, even for a
moment? No. Far-searching eyes sought pale eyes,
and the choice was made in silence. T'Syra joined
Selik and Savar at the airlock.
Stell also moved, not needing T'Lera's
command. His usefulness had ended with the retro
shutdown, and if T'Lera required T'Preth
to remain, he would do what he must without her.
But with a glance T'Lera released T'Preth
to join her consort. Sorahl, seeing that the choice
had fallen to him, tried to interject. He would
willingly give his life that any one of these might have
a few moments more.
"Commander his
"Kroyhah!" T'Lera hissed without looking at
him. "Terminal implement now!"
She had flung herself into T'Preth's chair as the
downspira! became more pronounced,
locking her seat restraint and Sorahl's with a
single motion. Sorahl hesitated for a heartbeat
before reaching down two oxygen packs and handing one
to his mother.
Neither looked back. Sound told them
everything. With a violent sucking rush three
hurtled into the void: the frail Savar, steeled
by his conviction, the noble Selik, embracing the
universe with outstretched arms, while beside him
T'Lera felt the link with T'Syra snap with a
pain that was physical. Her son heard her gasp and
dared not witness, stayed riveted to his
instruments, honoring her privacy.
For himself, he desired to make some brief
farewell to the two who still remained, but to divert them
from their task or himself from his was not only illogical
but dangerous. His duty consisted of one thing only,
to find a place in one of Earth's vast oceans where
two
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Vulcans and a scoutcraft could disappear
without a trace.
"Holdl" T'Lera cried, her voice muffled
by the oxygen mask.
She need not have spoken. The powerful
Stell, his hands literally frozen to the airlock
mechanism (it was very cold in space) knew
intimately every conceivable sound a craft could make.
He too had sensed the dying impulse flux in
Retro Three, the one nearest the airlock. If
it fired under these circumstances the craft would flare
up like a comet immaterial to its inhabitants,
committed to death at any rate, but making it far too
visible from the planet below. By main strength a mere
accident that he was the strongest of the seven Stell
wrenched the pressure bolt shut, but too late.
T'Preth screamed; Stell was permitted a
single hoarse cry. The pain of becoming a living
torch was more than even a Vulcan could shield against
in time. The impulse flux, feeding on the outrushing
oxygen, had hurled a roaring tongue of flame through
the closing airlock, immolating them both. Their
charred, still-smoking bodies fell backward into the
craft like so much dead wood.
T'Lera closed her eyes and thought a
mourning chant. There was nothing else she could have
done.
Sorahl, who was yet young and lacking in the full
mastery of the Vulcan, whose own life was measured in
minutes, gripped the controls to keep his hands from
shaking.
Retelling the tale, Sorahl saw that they were
shaking still. Summoning all of his control, he made
them stop.
"The reentry heat must have been ferocious,"
Yoshi said after a time. "We saw what was left of
your ship."
"We are more acclimated to extremes of
heat," Sorahl said quietly. His burns
spoke for themselves. "And the oxygen packs spared our
lungs."
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"And you managed a controlled splashdown Trough
all of that?" Yoshi asked, wondering if he would have
had the courage. "Fantastic!"
"It was thought your Pacific Ocean would provide
the optimum place of concealment," Sorahl
explained. "Owing to its va/s and sparsity of
population. We could not know that the locus of
our splashdown would coincide so precisely with the
boundaries of your station."
"Kismet," Tatya said drowsily, shaking off
sleep and pulling herself out of the beanbag chair. She
had been silent so long the others might have forgotten
about her.
"I beg your pardon?" Sorahl gave her his
full attention, although he seemed to do that with whoever was
speaking.
"Karma. The power of fate," she explained
lamely, wondering what kind of rumpled mess she
must look to this stranger. She didn't usually bother
about her looks, but suddenly it was important.
"Different words for the same concept. It means there's
a purpose to your being here. Some kind of pattern.
Everything you've told us, all those instrument
failures and bizarre coincidences, mean there's some
special reason you were brought here, to us."
"Tatya, for crying out loud his
"Perhaps so," Sorahl said not unkindly, though he
might have argued the issue. "Though I for one do not
subscribe to such fatalism."
"His grandfather and the rest of the crew died for that
'special reason"!" Yoshi snapped. "You're
talking nonsense! If it was just to spare us
the truth," he said to Sorahl, "you could have trusted
us. Most people on Earth believe we're not alone out
here."
"Yet confronted with such truth, your response
is at best ambivalent," Sorahl observed,
remembering his own insistence upon contact. His mother
had been correct. Theory was one thing, practical
application
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
quite another. "Even now you are uncertain what
action to take."
"See?" Tatya said off Yoshi's chagrin.
"What will you do now?" Yoshi asked,
disturbed that his uncertainty was that obvious.
"We've seen you, talked to you. You've shared a meal
with. We can't exactly pretend you don't exist."
"That will be for my commander to decide," Sorahl said
quietly, looking down at his hands.
As if on cue, there was a noise from the sleeping
room a hoarse, strained gasping that to Tatya's
practiced ears sounded like someone suffering from lobar
pneumonia and struggling for breath. She moved toward
the sleeping room, but Sorahl was ahead of her.
He had to wake his commander from the
healing trance. "Permit me," he said, not quite
touching Tatya's arm. Tatya nodded, but
followed him anyway, curious.
In the pink light of a rain-washed false dawn,
T'Lera writhed on the alien waterbed, her head
thrown back, fists clenched, gasping. Sorahl
moved over her like a shadow and struck her, hard.
Tatya tried to throw herself between them, but Yoshi
caught her by the shoulders and held on. Sorahl
struck his mother again, and again. Tatya struggled as ff
it were she who was being attacked.
"He'll kill her!" she shrieked, trying to get
free.
"He knows what he's doing!" Yoshi hissed in
her ear with a conviction he only half felt. "Stay
out of itl"
Sorahl struck again. Tatya turned away,
clutching at Yoshi, who had his eyes closed. Had
they been wrong? Had all Sorahl's talk of his
logical, peaceful people been nothing but lies? Was this
his way of wresting control from his commander, saving his own
skin?
Then it was over. Neither human actually saw
T'Lera boa upright and seize her son's arm with a
strength equal to his own, but both heard the
authority with which she spoke.
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"Sufficient," she said curtly, and proceeded
to assess her surroundings and her hosts with those
farsearching eyes as if nothing untoward had happened.