by Larry Niven
“Correct, Sigmund. Barring vocabulary shortfalls, of course.”
“Good. Send this: We wish to meet first with those who invited us.”
Kirsten squirmed in her crash couch.
“Something on your mind, Kirsten?” Sigmund finally asked.
“No. Well, yes. We know who on the ice moon contacted us. I backtracked the laser.”
So why not land near there, she meant. And if that’s a trap? “Who initially asked for our help and who contacted us when we arrived might not be the same.”
“Besides whoever used our beacon, who knew to look for us?” she countered.
Even those Sigmund had trained seldom thought to consider spies and traitors, comm taps, or the general perversity of the universe. He couldn’t not think of them. His gift. His curse. “It could be—”
“A reply,” Jeeves interrupted. “The signal is from the same ice-moon surface peak that sent the greeting.”
A holo opened in a secondary display. Sigmund couldn’t decide if this Gw’o was the one they’d seen in the earlier message. Its skin tone differed, but that told Sigmund nothing. Even over short comm sessions the colors ebbed and flowed.
Gw’oth communicated in sound bursts, not unlike dolphin speech, and like a dolphin the acoustic organs were internal. Sigmund wasn’t surprised that the figure in the holo didn’t look like it was speaking. The transmission’s audio subchannel sounded—the part, anyway, low-pitched enough for Sigmund to hear—like a whale crossed with a click beetle.
Sigmund read, “Greetings again, visitors. We are those who asked for your help.”
Assertion was hardly proof. The mention of “help” was encouraging—Sigmund’s message had said “invited”—but hardly conclusive. “Respectfully,” Sigmund began. How should he phrase this?
“Sorry. I can’t translate ‘respectfully,’ ” Jeeves said.
The Gw’o had not finished speaking. New text appeared in the holo. “But I ask myself, how can you know that?” (Sigmund had an answer for that—not foolproof, but an answer. He waited to see what the Gw’o would say.) “We should meet where you left your beacon, although the radio itself has since been moved to a more convenient location. You will know that we know the spot.”
At the beacon: That was the solution Sigmund had envisioned. Tanj, but these Gw’oth were fast.
Baedeker was monitoring from his cabin. “Sigmund, tell these Gw’oth to arrive first. If they follow us or extrapolate our course, their arrival near the beacon would prove nothing.”
“Agreed, Baedeker. I’ll give it a minute to be sure our new friend is done.”
It wasn’t. “We will launch from this location, arriving before you. When we meet, you will also know that we control the beacon area.”
Anticipating another possible objection. Implying, if not proving, that these Gw’oth were those who first found the beacon. “Acknowledged,” Sigmund said.
Very tanj fast.
THE GAS GIANT HAD FOUR MOONS, all tidally locked to their primary. Explorer had left its beacon on the outermost moon, on the outermost side, on an airless, stony plain forever invisible from the ice moon. From space, however, the laser-carved X could not be missed.
A ship sat near the crossed lines, in a shallow depression seared by fusion flame. Spectral analysis of the dim sunlight reflecting from the hull suggested steel and ceramics. Don Quixote’s instruments had tracked the Gw’oth vessel from an electromagnetic launcher on the third moon to its landing here.
A low dome rose from the plain half a mile from where the alien vessel now sat. Electromagnetic railguns around the dome made a point: The Gw’oth in the ship had come with the consent of those who controlled this area. Probably additional railguns remained hidden in camouflaged emplacements.
Don Quixote was in a high orbit around the moon, where it would remain until Sigmund decided a landing was safe. The Gw’oth ship would disappear soon below the horizon.
Those on the ground saw that, too. A Gw’o appeared in the main bridge comm display. “Again, we thank you for coming. We have much to discuss. Will you join us?”
Sigmund studied the tactical display. The railguns did not represent any threat to a General Products hull. At worst a volley from the surface might rock Don Quixote a bit. Nothing else nearby seemed threatening.
He polled his crew. Eric and Kirsten wanted to land immediately. Baedeker proposed they continue by radio, now that they had eliminated any appreciable light-speed delay. And Sigmund considered the message that had summoned them: “Friends, come at once. Something is rushing our way. Something very dangerous.”
Perhaps not to meet was more dangerous than meeting.
“We’ll be right down,” Sigmund said.
. . .
THE AIR LOCKS OF THE GW’OTH SHIP and dome stood no taller than Baedeker’s knee. No one from Don Quixote could enter even if they wanted to—which he certainly did not. The humans, though, were clearly disappointed.
But neither did Baedeker want to see any Gw’oth aboard Don Quixote.
“We cannot permit them aboard this ship!” he shouted. He and the humans had crowded into the relax room. “They will see things. They will ask questions. Who knows what they will discover about our technology.”
Eric and Kirsten exchanged glances. Recalling their first and only visit to the General Products orbital facility and the secrets Nessus had carelessly let slip? A deflated minor chord escaped Baedeker at the memory.
“We haven’t much of a choice,” Sigmund said. “We wouldn’t fit inside their facilities, even if we felt like swimming, nor do I care to give them potential hostages. We can’t stay on the surface for any length of time because of the radiation. That leaves Don Quixote.”
“And radio,” Baedeker reminded.
“We’ll take precautions,” Sigmund said. Tone of voice declared the subject closed.
Baedeker pawed nervously at the deck. A paranoid’s precautions might keep them physically safe, but that was not enough. “Then we must control what any visitor can learn. We have seen no evidence that the Gw’oth know about hyperwave radio or hyperdrive shunts, or of deep radar.” Of course, within his lifetime they had not known fire. These aliens were very quick. Too quick. “We cannot even allude to the existence of such technology.”
Sigmund nodded. “Fair enough. They’re small; some of them and a couple of us can meet in this room. We’ll move or cover the few stepping discs between the main lock and here. No access to the engine room, so they won’t see the hyperdrive shunt. What else?”
“No bridge access,” Eric suggested. “A glimpse of the controls might imply things about all sorts of systems, from propulsion to the emergency protective force fields for the crash couches.”
Baedeker made an unfamiliar sound, part whinny and part whistle. Nerves? “We cannot hide the hull, but we do not mention its properties or how it is made.”
“We paint over the few clear areas of the hull,” Kirsten contributed. “And we don’t show or allude to our computers. Given that the Gw’oth compute biologically, they may not suspect what can be done with hardware.”
Sigmund nodded. “Jeeves, when our friends come aboard, don’t speak unless spoken to. You’re a crewman. We can say you’re on watch on the bridge.”
“Yes, Sigmund.”
“Good,” Sigmund said. “What else?”
Baedeker had a stasis-field generator in his luggage for medical emergencies. It was locked in his cabin, secured behind a biometrically controlled lock he had installed. He had not admitted to having it, and he would not now, but—“We should not mention stasis technology.”
The length of the eventual list did nothing to assuage Baedeker’s doubts.
PARANOIA HAD ITS USES, Baedeker had to admit.
It did not matter that a Gw’o was only two feet across, or that only one would come aboard for this first meeting. Sigmund saw no certain way to distinguish between a pressure suit and battle armor, or between instrumentation and wea
pons.
And so, before they opened the outer air-lock hatch for the tiny figure scuttling across the arid plain, Sigmund set into place a final safeguard.
Unless one of Don Quixote’s crew periodically reset the failsafe, the hyperdrive shunt would activate. If Jeeves decided the crew was acting under duress, it would activate the shunt. Either way, the ship would be forever beyond the reach of the Gw’oth.
The precaution was Eric’s idea, and he had the decency to look embarrassed when he suggested it.
15
Despite the motorized exoskeleton of his pressure suit, the trek to the alien ship left Er’o exhausted. A trace of memory from Ol’t’ro condescended about how easy Er’o had it. Early pressure suits had been only garments made from the tough hide of deep-sea creatures, trailing hoses to leather-bag “pumps” kneaded by helpers who remained beneath the ice.
The echo of memory did not dwell on how many had died in their explorations.
The alien hatch controls were intuitive enough but above Er’ o’s reach, and he waited for those inside to cycle the access mechanisms. The outer hatch shut and he got his first surprise. Gas, not water, gushed in. The pressure leveled off at a very low value. Without his protective gear, he would burst before he could suffocate.
Soon enough, the inner hatch opened into a long, dim, curving corridor. Two immense creatures, disturbingly asymmetrical in all but one plane, waited within. They towered over him. Somehow they balanced on two limbs. Loose coverings obscured most of their bodies, which glowed in far-red.
One of the humans stepped forward. A slit opened and closed in its top/central mass (some sort of sensory pod?). Er’o felt low-pitched, unintelligible sound. With his amplifiers set at maximum, he heard without understanding what the alien was saying.
Sound rumbled from a device grasped by an alien limb. “Welcome. I am . . .”
A translation device of some sort. No wonder they spoke so poorly. Er’o knew seven languages and was about to learn an eighth. He wondered why anyone would bother with a translator. The untranslated noise burst, Sigmund, might be a name.
So: introductions. Er’o modulated his voice to the frequency range Sigmund had used. The sound would not carry far through water, but it did not need to: A transducer in his suit captured his speech and an external transducer repeated it. If need be, the speech would be routed to his suit radio.
“I am Er’o. Welcome.” For now that exhausted his vocabulary of humanish, so he let the humans’ translator deal with, “Thank you for answering our call.”
The other, Eric, introduced itself. Together they moved deeper into the ship. Er’o chose a tripedal gait, bearing two tubacle tips aloft, the better to observe ahead and behind. Somehow the humans managed to move on two curiously rigid lower limbs.
They came to a large interior chamber. At Eric’s self-explanatory upperlimb gesticulation, Er’o climbed onto a four-limbed structure (another untranslatable term, chair) and from there up to the table. The humans folded onto chairs and Er’o did not feel quite so tiny.
And so it began.
BEHIND THE LOCKED DOOR OF HIS CABIN, Baedeker listened over the intercom. He observed via security cameras. Through Jeeves, he monitored life-support sensors for subtle treachery. And he trembled, plucking at his mane.
The procession finally reached the relax room. Er’o, wearing a transparent, mechanically assistive suit, sprawled across the table. Inexplicable instruments hung from its harness. Eric and Sigmund, seemingly without a care in the universe, took seats on either side of the table, inches from the Gw’o.
How did they do it? How could they bear it?
Baedeker permitted himself for the first time to marvel: How did Nessus and the very few like him bear to scout for Hearth?
HALF AN HOUR WITH ER’O and Sigmund had begun to feel dim-witted.
Within a day Er’o could be speaking English like a native. The Gw’o never needed to hear a word or a conjugation more than once. It caught on immediately to grammar rules. Every so often it would get into a heated argument with Jeeves, speaking through Sigmund’s comm, about fine points of translation. Within minutes Er’o had been teaching Jeeves more than the other way around.
“We can begin,” Er’o said abruptly.
Sigmund had just been thinking that. “All right. Why did you contact us?”
“For most of our history, the roof of the world was ice. Then we discovered that the universe is a much bigger place. Ever since, the sky has fascinated us, and we have put considerable effort and resources into”—quick consultation with Jeeves in Tn’hoth—“astronomy. Perhaps we would watch less if, like you, we could travel faster than light.”
Eric blinked. Sigmund hoped with little conviction that Er’o would be slower to master body language than the spoken variety.
“How do they know?” Baedeker yelled from the safety of his cabin. “We must find out!”
The howl went straight to Sigmund’s earplug speaker. He put a finger up to his ear, pretending to scratch. The pressure cranked down the amplification.
How was a good question, and Sigmund would follow up. First, though, he wanted an answer to his own question. “And what have your astronomers seen?”
“Something unusual moving through space, more or less toward us. At sublight speeds, but fast.”
“The Fleet?” Baedeker asked, loud despite the lowered setting of Sigmund’s earplug.
Maybe, Sigmund thought. Five worlds accelerating through space looked scary enough to him. “Can you describe it, Er’o? Better, are there images we can see?”
“Images would be best,” Er’o said. It unclipped one of the devices that dangled from its harness. “This is at the limits of resolution of our instruments.” A hologram appeared, ghostly faint. “My apologies. This projector is designed for use under water, not in air.”
Sigmund dimmed the relax-room lights nearly to off. His eyes adapted and details emerged. Stars, all in shades of red. Lurid dust clouds. Here and there, momentary sparkles. The projection was some sort of time-lapse graphic, because the clouds seemed to change.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t the Fleet. It wasn’t New Terra.
“I don’t recognize the starscape.” Eric rapped once on a leg of his chair, addressing his comment to Jeeves, then twice more in quick succession.
The double tap signified Kirsten, sitting unhappily on the bridge at the launch controls. And at the weapons console. Sigmund didn’t trust Baedeker to use the laser if a reason arose—or not to run for home without reason.
“Me, either,” Kirsten said, sounding embarrassed by the admission.
“I’ll see if I can match it,” Jeeves said into Sigmund’s earplugs. “It may take a while.”
Meanwhile, Sigmund thought, there were other things to clarify. “Er’o, you said, fast. How fast?”
The Gw’o had flattened itself on the table, and Sigmund guessed it must miss the effective weightlessness of the ocean. It raised a limb tip and wiggled it about. “There is no single answer, Sigmund. Local variations span the range from rest to four-fifths light speed.”
“What about overall?” Baedeker asked in Sigmund’s earplugs.
Sigmund repeated the question.
The Gw’o waved the tentacle tip again. “In the short time we have been watching, the overall phenomenon has been propagating at about two-fifths light speed. Modeling of the turbulence is inconclusive.”
Sigmund was feeling dim-witted again, like Dr. Watson to an alien Sherlock Holmes, when Jeeves interrupted.
“I’ve matched stellar configurations,” Jeeves announced via earplug. “As for why the image looks so odd, Gw’oth appear to be blind across most of what humans consider the visible spectrum. I’ll send an adjusted version.”
Gw’oth cities hugged the hydrothermal vents. Life on their world sought heat, not light. Sigmund guessed the aliens were sensitive mostly to infrared.
An image formed on his contact lenses. Stars shifted color. Dust clouds,
and the turbulence within them, took clearer shape. The phenomenon, whatever it was, loosely suggested a rippled, steep-sided cone. The tip of that cone was truncated, lost in the distance.
Jeeves, helpfully, had superimposed grid lines in the coordinate system learned by Puppeteer and New Terran pilots.
Baedeker made no comment. Rolled into a tight ball, comatose, Sigmund guessed.
Something was erupting from the galactic center. The disturbance was light-years deep, light-years across, and spreading.
Before reaching the Gw’oth, it—whatever it was—would overtake the Fleet of Worlds and New Terra.
16
Sealing his pressure suit, preparing to exit the dubious protection of an inflatable emergency habitat, Baedeker groped for reasons to venture onto the ice. He tried logic: The Gw’oth had no reason to harm him. And the greater good: What he might accomplish here could safeguard the herd. Even cowardice, after a fashion, helped: He would die painlessly, his hearts stopped by autonomic conditioning, if the Gw’oth used coercion to obtain Concordance secrets.
Mostly, though, an epiphany propelled him forward. He finally understood how Nessus, and other scouts like him, did it. One quivering step at a time.
Kirsten exhibited neither doubts nor rational prudence. She was fairly bouncing with impatience. Of course bouncing took little effort here. The Gw’oth home world—Jm’ho, Er’o had called it—massed less than a quarter what Hearth or New Terra did.
Bending his necks this way and that, Baedeker gave his pressure suit a final front-to-back, top-to-bottom inspection. Everything looked proper. A small, flickering light reported that the suit’s sensors were active and recording. He tongued an electronics self-test. All systems functional, his heads-up displays declared. Clearing the HUDs brought up Me, too. As uneasy as artificial intelligence made Baedeker, he would not forgo an onboard translator. That had meant downloading a Jeeves subset into his suit computer.
