Days later other aliens aboard Tekar found a few moments to visit with him. An Arrik Attack Commander named T’Set T’Say consented to a few stiff discussions with him. Most of the female Arrik’s questions related to Human war-making capabilities and attitudes toward war. Jack got the impression this Arrik felt quite paranoid about the militaristic history of humanity.
The Gosay sextuped called Lord Tarq had been much more agreeable. The experience of talking to an armadillo-like, six-legged torso that had a gaping mouth but no head was at first unnerving. But once he focused on talking to the four cone-supported eyes in the middle of Tarq’s back, he began to feel more comfortable. Jack even learned to ignore Tarq’s wholesale bolting of ten-kilo chunks of raw meat with his hinged, shark-like mouth. Lord Tarq struck him as a very sharp person who missed no nuance of human actions and beliefs. The alien sounded like some human sociobiologists he’d met at Columbia and MIT. Jack often realized after their encounters that he, not Tarq, had done most of the talking.
The buzzing of his Sanyo wrist TV jerked him out of past memories and into the present. There was a very special event he didn’t want to miss.
“Colleen, wake up! We’re on final approach to Hekar. And the asteroid 10 Hygiea. Look!” he almost shouted, pointing a finger at the giant holos that floated in the central aisle.
Colleen opened one bleary green eye and glared back at him. “Jack Harrigan, you strain my love for you! I need my rest. Playing cheerful hostess to alien beasties is tiring.” She closed the open eye, then both shot open. “Uh—did you stay final approach?”
“I did. Take a look.
His redhead partner did just that, sitting up and leaning forward to focus on the closest holo. Ahead and to either side, other humans also fixed on the aisle holo nearest to them.
At first, Jack saw l0 Hygiea as a dark, low albedo disk which rapidly grew to occupy one-tenth of the screen. Then they were swinging around it to see that which had been hidden behind it—the Compact starship Hekar.
Hekar looked to Jack like a fat cylindrical spider sitting at the center of a gossamer web. The web strands, Persa had told them, were the sensor strands that reported back to the Command Deck. Farther out from Hekar itself he saw the brief metallic reflections of a picket shell of fighter spacecraft. They englobed Hekar out to a radius of 1,000 kilometers. Lying between the picket shell and Hekar, there moved were several small magpulse craft. They carried crew and supplies to the free-floating, ten-kilometer square, solar-cell array which sucked in photons from the Sun and spat them out as compressed microwaves to a small rectenna attached to one side of Hekar. Nearer to the starship, he noticed the 20 kilometer-wide globe of Zikhope. Its interior was being carved up by glaring raw coherent plasma beams emitted by blocky ships. The beams carefully probed, sliced and tractor-pulled out kilometer-wide blocks of nickel-iron from the asteroid’s interior.
As Tekar came closer to Hekar, the l60 kilometer-long starship appeared as a Jacobi ellipsoid with a four main drive funnels at one end. The giant asteroid’s surface was studded here and there with the large habitat domes of the eight member species of the Compact. As the ellipsoid grew to fill the screen, Jack and Colleen noticed other, smaller domes on the surface. Most of those domes were randomly scattered across Hekar. There were, he noticed, two curving lines of small, 20 meter-wide blisters carefully arranged in equatorial and polar Great Circles which met in the middle of the asteroid. He heard some military types near his seat speculating the blisters might be weapons emplacements.
“Jack—look! We’re almost there,” Colleen said, gripping his hand tightly.
“We sure are.” Jack watched as Hekar filled the screen. They were heading for a massive airlock centered in the asteroid’s middle. Giant clam-shell doors slowly opened as they neared the surface. A vast tubular tunnel speared through the thick rock, with lights glowing at the far end.
He swallowed. They were finally going to do it. They were about to visit the home of the aliens!
♦ ♦ ♦
Henri Duvalier sat in his seat aboard Tekar, tightly gripping the armrests of the peculiar couch-seat. His fellow Europeans thought he was simply excited. But he was nervous for a different reason.
He had a mission to perform.
But he was afraid. The horrible, alien visions in the aisle holo both drew him—and repelled. Could he hold out long enough? Could he follow through on his vow? He prayed to his God that he would lend Henri Duvalier strength.
♦ ♦ ♦
Sargon stood on a transit disk, quietly moving toward the arrival of Tekar at port hangar J6. His duties hung heavy on him, but crystal-clear memories of the last month kept rising up in front of his mind’s eye, both worrying and encouraging him.
The Human nation-Clans, he’d reported to the Compact Council, had fairly quickly adjusted to the new reality of Hekar and the Compact. While the Russians, Chinese, Brazilians and Americans were displeased by his decision to visit Japan first rather than meet officials at their primitive Transit stations, they had been mollified later when he visited each of their capitols.
In New York City, a visit to the “United Nations” building and his later address before the General Assembly had been anything but reassuring. The UN’s Space Authority and its control of nine orbital battlestations had warranted the visit. But the visit failed to be what he expected. Sargon recalled being asked to boycott the industrialized nations, to trade weapons, to sell only to industrialized clans, to discriminate against this or that group, to “donate” all Compact technology to certain Third World nations and to convert to a variety of supernatural deities. The fact the demands were mutually contradictory had no impact on the Humans making them. Life-Who-Is-Song was forced to leave, retreating back to the courier globeship along with his fellow Strelka. The miasma of emotional radiation contained within that single building had made every Strelka sick in each of their six stomachs.
Later, after short visits to The Hague, Geneva, Beijing, Brasilia, Melbourne, and New Delhi, and various Human universities, he and the Contact team had retreated to the blessed normalcy of space. Before leaving orbit they’d made brief courtesy calls on Tsiolkovsky, Tiangong 4, Amaterasu and Goddard Transit stations. The initial Contact phase was over, with no problems other than quickly suppressed attempts by Christian zealots in America and Hindu zealots in Delhi to throw organic refuse at them during their public travels. The Strelka, always mentally alert to the emotional radiation around them, at several stops detected murderous emotions aimed at them. But the thinkers kept away from their near vicinity and did not attempt to bother them. Still, it was unnerving to be told by the Strelka that a particular Human was mentally picturing him torn to pieces by large, horned quadrupeds, after which his remains were set on fire below a large, cross-shaped pole surrounded by Humans in flowing white robes and peaked white hats. Or, in India, an image of him being thrown bodily onto a pile of wood and trash which was then set aflame. After the Earth visit, Sargon found it comforting to return to the familiar, the normal, the reassuring feel of Hekar. He even found himself feeling affection for Conflict Commander T’Klose and his paranoid fixations. T’Klose had insisted on following Kagen’s suggestion of parking a few fighter ships in the L4 and L5 positions—just in case. A choice Sargon had heartily supported.
After the required report to the Compact Council, which endorsed his actions and T’Klose’s balancing security measures, Sargon had retreated to the Horem habitat and a subdued welcome at his subterranean home. Bethrin had been there, along with Corin, Corin’s wife Smelan, their children, pregnant Persa and her mate, aunt Lorilen, and his black-furred mother Peilan—fresh from Farm work. Grethel was also there along with Maran, still fulfilling his duties as Clan Coordinator for all the Horem. His father Salex . . . his father had died only a week ago, at 157 years of age—but not before hearing of his son’s First Contact success. Sargon hoped Peilan had been pleased with the funeral rites performed by Maran in his absence. He just wished h
e could have been there—the ache he felt was indescribable.
At the subdued Clan Conclave, Sargon had described to them his special friendship with the Human Liaison Harrigan and Friend McIntyre, his second interview with Harrigan at Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel, and his ship’s monitoring of the American, Russian, Chinese and Japanese defense establishments. They heard about the quick side trip to the beaches of American Samoa where the Zik had gone wild at the opportunity to sense true tidal currents in a suitably saline ocean. There had also been the visits of Thoranians and Arriks to various nation-Clan universities for absorbing discussions with Humans on genetic engineering, microbiology, non-carbon based life systems, fusion reactors, and evolutionary selection as affected by planetary processes and environments. Everyone in the Contact team had debated the watchfulness of Human military groups, the amusing antics of various Human intelligence and counterintelligence services as they covertly tried to gain knowledge and advantage from the Compact visit, and the usefulness of having Strelka colleagues present at various functions to covertly read the true emotional thoughts and desires of the Humans—a talent Sargon had failed to mention to any Human.
Flashing orange lights caught his eye as he approached the tunnel’s exit where he could catch a gravtube upward to the hangar. Shortly his Clan, all Horem and all the other habitats would have their first opportunity to see-sense-taste-know Humans in person. His old transport craft Tekar even now neared the hangar with two hundred male and female Humans from thirty-seven nation-Clans.
The Humans, he recalled as he stepped into the gravtube, were a highly varied lot. They included Jack and Colleen along with a few other print and sat-vid journalists, a large number of biologists, botanists, physicists, psychologists and astronomers from various nation-Clans, and even a few religious leaders. The Earth leaders had insisted on sending the faith leaders once they learned the Compact members had no belief system remotely similar to the various faiths. The Horem God of Trade was the closest deity concept to Human belief patterns. There were also diplomats, trade delegates, several spies, assistant undersecretaries for obscure functions, a few multinational corporate leaders, a few acknowledged military representatives, and a sprinkling of synthesist types who fit no common label but who had managed to get nominated to the Trade negotiation group by one means or another.
The gravtube exit whooshed open and Sargon stepped out into the six kilometer-long, two kilometer-wide and high rock cavern of hangar J6. Giving thanks for the gravplates that kept his feet stuck to the metal floor of the hangar, he plowed through the controlled confusion of eight different lifeforms who walked, flew, floated and lumbered about their business in the giant chamber. He was looking for Life-Who-Is-Song and the rest of the Contact Team from Brilliant-Green-Sky. Above him, Compact members soared weightless through the hangar airspace on errands to free-floating courier ships and to deuterium transport craft recently arrived from Europa. Several reaction tubes were preparing to transport workers to Zikhope.
He spied Life, Corin, the rest of the Probe team, Lord Tarq, T’Klose himself, Life’s mate Sparkling-Yellow-Thoughts, Thinker Clorek, and many others gathered in a loose cluster near the center of the hangar. He headed toward them just as the inner lock opened, revealing the newly arrived Tekar.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Jack—look!” Colleen shouted, pointing at the aisle holo.
He hadn’t stopped looking since that first signal of his vidwatch. “I see it, honey. But what are we seeing? Which way is up?” he asked. None of his nearby seat companions answered.
Jack, Colleen and Tekar floated high above a rectangular floor. Looking closely he saw the chamber had three function areas. On the left side of the cavern were the open ends of docking tubes. They contained, Sargon had told him, Arrik, Horem, Gosay, Strelka, Sliss and Thix-Thet spacecraft, their exotic shapes partially visible. In the middle and below their entry tunnel was a solid floor being used by people, although the central part was taken up by the armored windows of a Traffic Control bubble embedded in the “floor.” On the right side of the chamber were a series of round portals of varying sizes. Were they outlets for refueling? Could they be openings to tunnels for cargo transport?
Colleen giggled. “Wherever your feet stick tells you which way is up! See Sargon and the others down there? There must be some of these gravplates on the chamber floor. Elsewhere, it’s freefall.”
“You’re right.”
For Jack, seeing aliens standing on the floor, while other aliens moved horizontally through the upper chamber in a second vector was disconcerting. But, he supposed, it simply reflected the utility of local artificial gravity fields that could be turned on, off, or varied at will according to the species and the need.
♦ ♦ ♦
Joining his friends, Sargon looked up. Spotting the roof above them were small blisters that contained sensors, pressors, tractors, masers, traffic control lasers, proximity radar and Defense weapons. Below the roof was the giant airlock tunnel that linked to Hekar’s outer skin. Out of it came the flat tube shape of Tekar, which drifted in the null-grav zone. As they watched, the transport ship was slowly tractored down to a soft landing on its six landing legs. As the 400 meter-long ship came close to the floor, the local gravplates were switched off, leaving Sargon and the recently arrived Contact team members to brief reliance on the magnetic fibers woven into their footware, or the magnetism of their mobile habitats.
Hekar Core, monitoring the scene through a local sensor cluster, quickly reestablished a compromise gravity of eight-tenths Earth gee. Low enough, he knew, to not harm low gravity dwellers such as the Arrik and the Sliss.
Looking around, Sargon saw that all was in readiness for the Humans. A repulsor-suspended bin held comdisks for translation, AV imaging and a direct link to the AI. Next to the comdisks was a second bin. It held injectable tracking chips, which allowed any sensor of Hekar to instantly plot the three-dimensional location of each visiting Human. The chips were already encoded with the basic biochemical and nation-Clan data pertinent to each Human. The comdisks would guide each Human to their assigned housing in a Recreation chamber or Compact habitat. Appointments had been scheduled with Compact specialists in biologicals, fuels, topological mathematics, crystalline growth structures, sub-atomic physics, philosophy, esthetic objects, chlorine compound corrosives, xenoculture and other areas of mutual interest. Finally, host guides from each Compact species stood ready to receive their decapod of Humans. All was in readiness.
Sargon felt a sense of anticipation, of expectation such as he had not experienced in many decades. Not since the Contact with the Arrik. And this time, it was he who had overcome his father’s objections, he who had convinced the Council it was worthwhile to visit the Humans. And it was he who still stood in jeopardy should T’Klose’s worries turn into reality. The presence of the Conflict Commander worried Sargon—he just hoped everything would go smoothly. T’Klose had been too quiet lately. What was he working on?
The mid-body airlock of Tekar opened. An exit ramp extended outward and down to the hangar floor. He heard over his comdisk that the Humans were starting to disembark. Sargon, positioned 20 meters from the foot of the ramp, stood next to Life-Who-Is-Song and Sparkling-Yellow-Thoughts, their flexarms intertwined with each other. T’Klose stood stiffly on the opposite end of their short, four-sapient receiving line. The Compact hosts were just behind them. A small All-Hailer globe floated three meters above the deck at the base of Tekar’s ramp. It would convey his instructions to the arriving Humans. He practiced his smile.
♦ ♦ ♦
Henri Duvalier stood in the central aisle of Tekar, impatient to exit, but knowing it was best to be near the end of the line. Let the rest of the idiot researchers surge ahead and distract his opponents. Let him have just a few seconds, unattended. His gray eyes stared sightlessly down the transport ship’s aisle, not seeing the serried ranks of other people. He saw only his mission. Nothing else mattered.
♦ �
� ♦
Colleen McIntyre looked over at her big bear of a lover, wondering for the umpteenth time what it was about this man that so attracted her. Jack Harrigan was famous, but so were a lot of others. He was quite sensitive, and passionate. She stepped forward in line, carrying her duffle bag, her sat-vid unit already on her left shoulder. She looked at Jack’s medium length black hair. The strange white light of the Horem spaceship glared off his hair with a unique sheen. What else, she wondered, would change from the common-place into the unusual, the mundane into the incredible during their visit?
It felt wonderful to be in partnership with Jack on this Liaison thing. She felt she could really contribute. And, half the human race was female. But at what cost? How would this whole unique event affect hers and Jack’s relationship? What was Bethrin, Sargon’s wife, like? What were Horem women in general like? Their children? Their homes? Persa had shared some stuff about the Horem during the four days of the trip to the Asteroid Belt. But she had so many more questions! She smiled to herself. Some things are eternal. Like love, curiosity and hope. Colleen looked ahead as she stood among the other humans waiting to leave the ship. She felt confident in Jack, in herself and in her ability to give CNN International the kind of vid-interviews that would appeal to every human.
♦ ♦ ♦
The disembarking Humans reached the ramp bottom by the time Sargon decided to address them. With a step forward, he began the next stage of First Contact.
“Fellow sapients, welcome to Hekar,” he said. “I am Watch Commander Arix Sargon Arax, whom some of you already know. Please proceed toward us for receipt of your comlink disks, monitor chips and host assignments.” He paused, looking out at the raggedy line of Humans, of aliens in mass. Now came the test. “If anyone has had a change of mind and does not wish to accept our monitoring conditions for entry into Hekar, please return to the ship behind you. We will take you back to Earth. Liaison Harrigan and Ms. McIntyre, please come forward and wait beside me. You will be my guests at the Horem habitat.”
Retread Shop 1: First Contact Page 25