In such a climate, the cautionary voice of Terra Nostra would go completely unheard and he, Vasloff, would see a lifetime of fighting to keep humanity at home rendered irrelevant overnight. If he followed his natural inclination and spoke out in opposition, he risked being branded a crackpot. That did not bother him. He had been called “crackpot” before. It was the impotency that would accompany the charge that he hated.
No, the discovery of intelligent beings beyond Earth required him to be both clever and subtle ... and more than a little dishonest. His opponents might have been surprised to learn that last necessity bothered him to the depths of his soul. Still, as a legendary actor had once observed, “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do!”
There was a quiet knock on his door. He opened it to find a young woman standing there. She wore the survey uniform.
“Mr. Vasloff, Director Bartok would like to see you if that is convenient.”
“Most convenient,” he replied. Years of practice in masking his emotions stood him in good stead. None of the seething feelings was evident in his tone or manner as he slipped from his posh prison and followed the young woman at a staid pace.
Bartok occupied an office-bedroom suite much like the one in which they had imprisoned him, Vasloff observed. The director received him at the door, then ushered him to a couch before taking his own place on the opposite end.
“Coffee or tea?”
“No thank you.”
“Something stronger, perhaps?”
“Nothing.”
“Very well. Merilee, you may excuse yourself.”
The woman guide bowed slightly, then turned, and left the suite, closing the door behind her. Vasloff did not need to hear the lock snick into place to know that it had. The air within the room had that dead quality that signifies an anti-eavesdropping field in full operation.
Bartok stared for a long moment, perhaps hoping that Vasloff would speak first. When the older man failed to comply, the director sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Mr. Vasloff, I have been an admirer of your work for many years. I am pleased to finally meet you.”
“An admirer, Mr. Director? I hardly think so.”
“It’s true. One must admire the skill of a worthy adversary even if you cannot agree with his position. I only wish we had you on our side instead of against us. Frankly, I confess to having difficulty understanding your objections to our starships.”
“I think I’ve made that clear enough over the years. I object to you people wasting our species’ scarce resources pursuing that which does not exist, namely other Earthlike worlds.”
“How do we know they don’t exist unless we go look for them?”
“The improbability of our form of life coming into being somewhere else in the universe is well known in scientific circles, Mr. Director.”
“What would you say if I told you that we’ve recently found a truly terrestrial world?”
“Is that where you found the aliens?”
“No comment,” Bartok said. “I understand that you might be willing to cooperate on the matter of our, shall we say, guests? What do you propose, sir?”
Vasloff repeated the offer that he had made to Mark Rykand and Lisa Arden.
“And your status in this affair?
“My status will be whatever you wish, Director Bartok. You hold the more powerful hand in this game.”
“How do I know that your people on Earth won’t make trouble once we’ve allowed you into our little group?”
“You have my word, sir.”
“That hardly seems enough.”
Vasloff shrugged. “Nevertheless, it is the only guarantee that I have to give.
Bartok chewed his lower lip for a moment, and then said, “Very well. Here are our terms—”
Mikhail listened carefully as the director laid out his conditions. They were harsh, but not unexpectedly so. He, Vasloff, was to be formally employed by the project aboard PoleStar and under their authority. He would be held effectively incommunicado and would be given no opportunity to pass a message to his people on the ground unless approved by the project director. Finally, he would be forced to sign a secrecy agreement with monetary penalties equivalent to three lifetimes’ earnings should he break his oath. In exchange, Vasloff would be given access to all data concerning “the specimens being studied and reasonable access to said specimens to conduct his own investigations.”
“What do you say?” Bartok asked after finishing his litany.
“If I agree, when do I get to meet the aliens?”
“As soon as you sign the contract, you will depart for Sahara Spaceport with Mr. Rykand and Miss Arden. They will accompany you to PoleStar where all of your questions will be answered.
“Very well. I accept your terms. You have the contract, I presume.”
Bartok’s response was to stand, walk to the desk across the room, and pull a voluminous stack of plastic sheets from the drawer. They were, Vasloff noted, very official looking.
Chapter Twenty Three
Anton Bartok stood at the podium and watched people stream into the main ballroom of the Al-Hoceima resort. As each person entered, he or she would halt, sweep the room with their gaze, and then stride directly for whichever empty seat was closest to the dais. Long years spent arranging public hearings had taught Bartok that people usually fill churches and auditoriums from the rear – the “back pew effect.” The fact that they were not doing so today indicated their interest in this special plenipotentiary session. He, too, was looking forward to Captain Landon’s presentation. It would be his first opportunity to learn the details of the latest expedition to the New Eden system.
Bartok watched as the last few stragglers made their way through the guarded door. Virtually every one of the conference’s sixty-five scientists had asked to attend this session. The guard officer flashed the count to the director using two quick hand signals, then snapped to attention and saluted. A moment later, he was gone through the double doors, which closed behind him.
Bartok glanced down in time to see a row of icons change shape and color on the screen inset into the sloping surface of the podium. The readouts indicated that several security systems had just come online. When all indicators showed good, he reached out and tapped the small tympanic surface built into the podium. From unseen speakers in the ceiling came the amplified sound of a gavel pounding wood.
“All right, let’s get this session going,” he announced as he waited for them to come to order. The conversations halted with gratifying swiftness. When the scientists were silent, Bartok cleared his throat and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, without further delay, I give you Captain Daniel Landon, commanding officer of Survey Ship Magellan.”
Dan Landon rose from his seat and moved to stand behind the podium. He noted sixty or so faces wearing various expressions of impatience.
“Screen, please.”
A holoscreen descended from the ceiling to his left. Occasional sparkles of light in the interior showed that the screen was energized, but not yet displaying any picture. A moment later, the overhead lights dimmed and the screen lighted to show the Ruptured Whale silhouetted against a black backdrop with a sprinkling of stars surrounding it.
“This is the alien derelict as we left it—” he said. He went on to describe their cautious approach to the ship, the reboarding operation, and their subsequent explorations. As he spoke, he worked through a series of holographs taken inside the damaged craft, including several showing the additional alien corpses they had discovered. Finally, he displayed the cutaway diagram of the derelict compiled from information garnered during a thousand person-hours of explorations. The cutaway showed not only the basic construction of the Whale, but also the modifications that had brought it to a state of minimal space worthiness. The damage sustained during the running fight with the Broan warship was marked in red.
“As you can see, the Whale is a squat cylinder designed to haul cargo.” He manipulated the control th
at moved a glowing arrow inside the holocube, marking three large volumes inside the alien ship. “We found these holds filled with what can best be described as ‘general goods.’ We did our best to catalog the ship’s cargo, but we lacked the people or time to do a thorough job. That will be the job of some of you bound for Luna. What will emerge from that cataloging will be the best picture we can obtain of the Broan civilization short of going there.
“Here you see the ship’s living quarters. Though a cargo vessel, the Whale had accommodations for a few passengers. Passengers and crew lived together, although each species seemed to have its own section. Whether this was due to clannishness, different life support needs, or a caste system aboard ship, we were unable to determine. Perhaps it was as simple as the fact that the members of the crew objected to each other’s body odor.
“The ship’s engines occupy this large volume near the center of the ship. The generators the Broa use to warp space operate on essentially the same principles that ours do, although the implementation is somewhat different. In fact, much of what we found aboard was recognizable as being similar to our equipment. The one overriding impression I had of the ship is that it wasn’t nearly advanced enough to have come from a spacefaring civilization as old as the Sovereignty.” Dan went on to recount Laura Dresser’s theory that the Broa were afraid to introduce new technology lest it destabilize their empire.
One by one, he outlined the expedition’s findings. He told the audience about the safety doors that had opened simultaneously through some disastrous malfunction at the precise moment a maintenance hatch had blown away. He reviewed the condition of the computers as they had found them – operative, but with vast holes in their memory. He showed view after view of the stern where the Avenger’s beams had seared the hull plates. Finally, after nearly two hours in which no one said a word save for a few muttered oaths, he finished by saying; “The damage to the ship was much less extensive than we feared. In fact, patching up the wreck was the easiest task that faced us. It was much more difficult to install the stardrive and fusion generators and ensure that we had an unbroken conductive surface through which to transmit the drive field. In the end, the Ruptured Whale proved herself a good ship. We were able to make it back across one hundred light-years without incident. Now then, if there are any questions, I will be glad to answer them.”
#
In daylight, the verandah of the restaurant of the Al-Hoceima resort provided diners with a panoramic view of the Mediterranean. At night, the open dining area was an island of light at the edge of a stygian sea, the blackness made more intense by the faint sky glow emanating from the opposite shore far below the horizon. Here and there, specks of white light punctuated the darkness where vessels passed en route to and from the Strait of Gibraltar. Dan Landon sat in a wicker chair beneath an umbrella no longer needed as protection against the vanished desert sun and watched the brilliant speck that marked a Mediterranean cruise ship as it slid slowly from view. He wondered if its captain ever became bored with voyaging around what was, after all, merely a glorified lake. The thought was enough to trigger claustrophobia in one who had recently crossed a hundred light-years of vacuum.
“I think it went well today, Captain,” Anton Bartok said from across the table. The director of the Stellar Survey was idly chasing an olive around his martini with a crystal stirrer as he, too, decompressed from what had been a tough couple of days. The flickering candle at the center of the table illuminated Bartok’s face with a red-orange glow. The candlelight improved his sallow complexion while softening the worry lines that were beginning to be etched permanently into his countenance. “Do you agree, Doctor Bendagar?”
“Quite well,” Magellan’s chief scientist said. “I was surprised at how good a shape the Whale is in.”
“It’s a big ship,” Landon replied. “It looked to me like the Broan Avenger was trying to disable it rather than destroy it outright.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Good question. I am afraid I do not have the answer. Perhaps we should put the question to Sar-Say again. Or maybe the scientists will be able to tell us after they’ve had time to study the derelict and its cargo.”
“I doubt they will have much of an opportunity,” Bartok muttered as he stared at the fuzzy image of the candle flame inside its small sphere of red tinged glass. The smell of hot wax was evident in the night breeze that blew directly into his face.
“What do you mean?” Bendagar demanded.
The director gazed at the scientist, then sighed audibly. “I wonder if either of you recognize the fact that we’ve had it easy up until now? Only a few people know about Sar-Say and those of us who do are largely in agreement as to our course of action. Even the scientists at this conference tend to be of one mind ... an amazing phenomenon when you consider the arguments that usually break out at these things.
“Unfortunately, all of this is about to change. We have kept this secret about as long as it is possible to keep any secret. Soon, possibly tomorrow or the next day, our little conspiracy is going to break wide open. When that happens, the excrement is going to hit the ventilator! The public is going to go positively ape when they start hearing what Sar-Say has been telling us. They are going to feel very frightened and demand that their elected representatives do something. Parliament will react as it always does, namely by calling hearings and demanding that the civil servants explain why they have let this mess get out of control. And, of course, they’ll blame everyone involved because they weren’t let in on the secret in advance.”
Bartok drained his drink and looked first at Bendagar and then at Landon before continuing. “It is going to be a political zoo, gentlemen, and we are going to be in it up to our necks. We will be hosting visiting dignitaries aboard PoleStar so often that we won’t be able to get any work done ... if they let us continue at all.”
“Why would they stop us?”
“Control, Dr. Bendagar. Have you ever known a politician to give up control of anything? They will all want to ensure that we make them look good to the voters and science be damned. If they come to believe they can’t control us, then they will get rid of us and bring in those they can control.”
“Then we had best keep the lid on until we discover the truth of Sar-Say’s allegations ourselves.”
“Easier said than done. The circle of people who know at least some part of the secret is growing rapidly. It is only a matter of time before some newser gets wind of what is going on and puts it on the infonet. In fact, we have already had our first incident.”
“What happened?”
“Mikhail Vasloff happened.” Bartok went on to explain the surprise that had been awaiting Mark Rykand and Lisa Arden at the end of their tour of Gibraltar.
At the end of his explanation, Landon swore under his breath. “If the secret is that close to leaking, I think we had better advance our timetable.”
“Timetable to do what?” Bartok asked. The slurring of his speech indicated that he was beginning to feel the effects of the drinks that he had consumed.
“I’ve studied Raoul’s plan to go out and find this Zzumer. I propose we spend a month getting Magellan stocked for the expedition, then head out before the news breaks.”
“I am afraid that is impossible. Coordinator Halstrom has forbidden any more expeditions.”
“Why, for God’s sake?”
“The coordinator refuses to take even the tiniest risk that we will be discovered. Frankly, I agree with her.”
“A good policy, Mr. Director,” Bendagar said, “but hardly viable for the long term. Is the human race going to cower here in our own system for the next thousand years while we wonder whether there is truly an evil empire lurking out there among the stars? You know we do not think like that. Curiosity is built into our genes. Someone will be going out to look, and probably not too long after the news breaks. So why shouldn’t it be us?”
“Raoul’s right,” Landon agreed. “How many wo
uld-be Columbus types will discount Sar-Say’s horror stories and go off in search of the riches to be had from a spacefaring civilization?”
“Parliament will forbid it.”
“When did that ever stop anyone when money was involved?”
Bartok looked skeptical.
“Look, boss, if even one-tenth of what Sar-Say says is true, we are going to have a serious decision to make. We dig a hole, crawl in, pull it in behind us, and hope they do not stumble across us – the Mikhail Vasloff approach – or else, we figure out some way to deal with the Broa. In either case, we do not dare remain ignorant. We have to go out and see what is out there. I say that we do it as quickly as we can, before events get away from us.”
Bartok frowned. “Let’s say we let you go, Dan. What will you do when you get there?”
“We will look the place over from a light-year out, then work our way closer in several stages. If it looks practical to do so, we will make contact and see if they’ve ever heard of this Broan Sovereignty of Sar-Say’s.”
“Don’t you think they will report you to the Broa the moment you arrive? After all, you will be a shipload of aliens no one has ever seen before.”
Landon shook his head. “According to Sar-Say, the Broan yoke is lightly held so long as no one revolts. There are not enough Broa to keep their eyes on everything. They are lightly spread, usually keep to a central administrative world in any given sector, and generally leave their subjects alone so long as they pay their taxes on time. Hell, the stargates are not even manned! They are fully automated. You fly your ship up to one and jump to the next star in the chain.
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