“Why would you think that?”
“You haven’t exactly been this expedition’s biggest booster, now have you?”
Instead of growing angry, the Russian put his head back and laughed. When he stopped, he said, “I have never heard a statement made more diplomatically, Miss Arden. Perhaps I should recruit you for my little cabal of fanatics.”
“I’ve never called them ‘fanatics,’ Mr. Vasloff.”
“You are about the only one in the Stellar Survey who has not. But then, you aren’t really Stellar Survey, are you?”
“No, sir. I was recruited specifically for this job.”
“Then, you can probably understand my position better than anyone. I am going along to make sure that the more … shall we say, enthusiastic? ... that the more enthusiastic members of our party don’t take leave of their senses.”
“How so?”
“By revealing the location of Earth to these aliens, of course.”
“No one would do that.”
“Not intentionally. Still, we cannot know precisely what information we are divulging just by revealing the fact of our existence. Surely any reasonably knowledgeable Orphean biologist will be able to divine what sort of star we evolved under.”
Lisa nodded. The human body was a veritable signpost to the fact that Sol was a G2 yellow-white star. It telegraphed that fact merely from the wavelength of light at which human eyes focus most sharply. There was no telling what other secrets their bodies might reveal to an alien who knew what to look — or sniff — for. The human body odor must reveal facts about the chemical composition of their home world. How that would also give the aliens clues to the location of Earth, Lisa could not imagine. The problem was that an alien might prove to have a better imagination.
“So how do we know what we are revealing to them?”
Vasloff shrugged. “We don’t. Alien capabilities are, by definition … alien. That is why I am coming along. I will be more on guard than the rest of you. I will see to it that no unnecessary chances are taken.”
“In that respect, we all want the same thing, Mr. Vasloff.”
“Of course. We all want the same things; we just go about it differently. I have no desire to offend, Miss Arden, but perhaps I can explain my point better with an example.”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you like Sar-Say?”
The question took a moment to consider. In fact, she did like Sar-Say. He had ceased being a research subject more than a year earlier. He was a quick study and had empathy for human ways of looking at things. Besides, he could be very funny when he put his mind to it. She remembered how devastated she had been during that day and night she had watched over him in the infirmary. It had seemed as though she was losing a child.
“Yes, I suppose I do.”
“Then you would be more likely to believe something he tells you than not?”
Lisa thought about her answer for a moment and then said, “We’ve never caught him in a lie, but that doesn’t mean he tells us the truth, I suppose.”
“Isn’t that what this entire expedition is about? Determining whether Sar-Say has been telling us the truth?”
“We would be fools to take his word for something as big and bad as he says the Sovereignty is.”
“But if he were going to lie about it, wouldn’t he put a happier face on it?”
“That seems logical.”
“Yes, it does. To a human. However, is it logical to a Taff? That is why I am coming along. Like the rest of you, I plan to learn all I can about the Orpheans and the Broa, but I will learn through the eyes of a skeptic, not an advocate.”
“Well, Mr. Vasloff, whatever your motives, it is good to have you along.”
At that moment, a speaker mounted on the rock wall announced that the orbital shuttle to the Ruptured Whale was ready for boarding. They gathered up their meager belongings, and Vasloff ushered her through the portal leading to the docking tube.
A few minutes later, they were spaceborne.
#
Chapter Thirty Four
The yellow star in the viewscreen might have been a twin of Sol were it not for the great cloud of gas and dust that lay beyond. The Sky Flower Nebula was not the same universe-spanning wall as in the Hideout System, but it was still the most prominent feature in the sky. In one respect, the Broan conquest of humanity had already begun. Already, bits of trade talk were infiltrating the crew’s daily conversation. It seemed fitting to call the nebula by its Broan name while here in Broan Space.
Dan Landon sat at his station and considered what lay ahead as he sipped tea from a microgravity bulb. The Crab/Sky Flower Nebula was the unofficial boundary between human space and Broan, at least until they knew better how far the Sovereignty extended along the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way.
Nor was the name they called the supernova remnant the only evidence that they were in Broan space. Around Landon, the bridge crew was checking and rechecking their instruments, all of which had been converted to the dot-dash script of the overlords. A great deal of the symbology used on the screens had been changed as well. Nor were the screens the only things tagged with Broan script. On the long trip out from Earth, virtually all interior markings had been changed over until there were no Latin letters or Arabic numerals visible anywhere a casual observer might spot them. Even the ship’s name had been changed, although she was still officially The Ruptured Whale to her crew. Her camouflage name was Wanderer, or the Broan trade-talk equivalent. While in orbit about Brinks, a work party had carefully stenciled the name on the hull in patterns of meter-high dots and swirls. They had done everything they could to make the Whale appear a trading vessel from a distant region of the Sovereignty.
The crew’s looks had changed as well. During the outbound voyage, every crewmember had gone into a shower cubicle, to emerge with skin the color of a ripe orange. A few minutes under a hood had finished the job by dying their hair electric blue. The transformation had triggered numerous jokes, many off-color; and cohabiting couples reported taking a great deal of time to check the completeness of their partners’ skin dye. The masquerade was not supposed to make humans look like any particular race of the Sovereignty. Rather, it was to make identification difficult should the Broa later become suspicious and request data on the ship full of strangers that had briefly visited the Orpheus System.
Dan Landon wondered if the subterfuge was worth the trouble. After all, though a large change in human eyes, he doubted aliens would notice anything as trivial as the color of their skin.
It had been a month since the Whale and her consorts, Magellan and Columbus, had dropped sublight deep within Orpheus’s Oort cloud. Because Orpheus III was currently on the far side of the star from the nebula, they had circled around and approached the system from directly opposite the Galactic Center. Thus, they had the star between themselves and the nebula. Having safely reached the outskirts of the system, the two accompanying starships resumed their long-range eavesdropping while the Ruptured Whale started its long fall into the inner system.
The orbit they adopted would make them appear a comet, although one moving substantially above local escape velocity. If spotted, they hoped the local astronomers would take them for a rare bit of debris from out of interstellar space. In any event, imitating an intrasystem comet was out of the question since such an orbit would take years before it delivered them to the stargate. As it was, it had taken three weeks for them to dive into the heart of the Orpheus System using a hyperbolic approach orbit. In another few hours, they would begin decelerating to intrasystem velocity such that when they reached the vicinity of the stargate, they could pretend to be a newly arrived trading vessel.
#
“Report!”
“Stargate is 200,000 kilometers ahead, Captain. We are closing at 60 kps. Deceleration is holding steady at 2.5 gravities and will continue for two more minutes. Closest point of approach to the stargate is in two hours.”
“Very we
ll. Keep me posted.”
Dan Landon’s words were labored by the heavy weight dragging him down. All over the ship, bodies made soft by months in microgravity lay in acceleration couches while their owners labored to breathe and counted the seconds until the sandbags would be lifted from their chests.
“I have a contact, Captain!” the sensor operator announced.
“What sort of contact?”
“It looks like a ship headed for the stargate.”
Landon frowned. A ship was the last thing they needed to encounter in the last phase of their approach, when they were most vulnerable to premature discovery. During the long fall from the Oort cloud, they had looked like an extra-system rock. In a few hours, they would be well into their masquerade as a trading vessel from beyond the stargate. Now, however, they were engaged in a very "un-cometary" maneuver, decelerating at 25 meters per second squared. Any ship that spotted them now would know that they were 1) not a natural phenomenon, and 2) coming in from the outskirts of the star system. If they were spotted before they were ready, they would have to abandon the mission and try again in another star system.
“Range?”
“No way to tell other than to note it is approaching the gate. Do you want me to power up the radar?”
“Negative. Maintain electromagnetic emissions blackout. Continue to track visually.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“What do you make of it, Sar-Say?” he asked. The Taff was seated in the observer’s chair and was having as much trouble breathing as the humans. Somehow, his comical figure looked a little less comical as he struggled to turn his head toward Landon. Despite his discomfort, he gazed at the captain with wide-eyed excitement. He had been excited during the entire approach. Even those who had not had much contact with the alien recognized the change in him.
“I would say that it is routine traffic, Captain. This particular stargate is the only one in the system. All shipping must converge on this point.”
“Right. We will continue the approach then. Sensors! Stay alert to any sign that he has spotted us.”
A ship in the vicinity was a complication he did not need, but it was not the source of the sudden feeling that he had forgotten something important. Landon disliked having the hair on the back of his neck standing up in the middle of the most important approach orbit of his life. He took a few moments to prod his subconscious for the stray thought. Suddenly, he knew what it was that was bothering him and a sick knot formed in the pit of his stomach.
“Damn!”
“What is the matter, Daniel?” his first officer asked.
“Gravity wave!” he answered. “We’ve overlooked the damned gravity wave!”
“I beg your problem.”
“Don’t you see? Even if that ship fails to spot our approach, the locals will know we did not come through the stargate. Our arrival will not be accompanied by a gravity wave!”
Raoul Bendagar, who was operating the science console two places down from Landon, grimaced. “You are right! How could we have possibly forgotten something so elementary?”
“It is one hell of a time to think of it now. Sar-Say, your opinion.”
The Taff had been observing the humans, wondering at their sudden agitation. When addressed, he shrugged. “I do not believe it important, Captain. The planet’s gravity masks the waves and it is unlikely that anyone monitors them closely.”
“Raoul, do you agree?”
Bendagar also shrugged. “No data on which to form a conclusion. I propose that we go with Sar-Say’s evaluation.”
Landon pondered the problem. Instead of making a decision, he snapped, “Sensors. How far is that ship from the gate?”
“As I said, we can’t get its range unless we ping it with radar.”
“That isn’t what I mean. What is its angular separation, and how fast is that separation closing?”
“Uh, about half a degree. It has closed perceptibly while I have been watching it.”
“Estimate as to when it will reach the gate?”
“An hour, maybe two.”
“Right. We may be in business. Pilot, reprogram the computer to adjust our deceleration. I want to arrive in the vicinity of the stargate as near as possible to the moment when that ship enters it.”
“The timing cannot be exact, Captain. Not without range data.”
“Understood. Just measure the closure rate of the ship’s image and change our decel accordingly.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you have in mind?” Bendagar asked.
“Simple, Mr. Chief Scientist. We slow to an intrasystem speed compatible with reaching the gate at the same time as that target vessel, and then we reveal ourselves a few minutes after he goes through the gate. That way, the Orpheans may mistake his departure for our arrival.
Sar-Say uncovered his teeth in a mock human smile. “Very clever, Captain. If I am wrong and they do monitor the ships by their gravity waves, they may mistake his jump wave for one that we would have produced as we came through the stargate.”
#
Two hours later, they had slowed to 28 kilometers per second and closed to within 20,000 kilometers of the stargate. The other ship, which appeared a dim star on the viewscreen, still had not jumped. Landon was beginning to wonder if that other captain were ever going to quit dawdling. He was about to swear under his breath when the image winked out and a clatter ran through the control room.
“Moderate-strength gravity wave detected, Captain,” the sensor operator announced. “It came directly from the stargate.”
Landon quietly let out the breath he had been holding, before asking, “Sar-Say, how long would a ship normally wait after arrival before it contacted Orphean approach control?"
“Between five and ten minutes, Captain. There are machines to tame and other duties to perform when arriving in a new system. The crew would do these things first before announcing themselves to those who control ship traffic.”
“Right. We will give them five minutes and then call in with our arrival announcement. We want our call to come immediately after they detect the gravity wave, assuming they bother to keep track. Thank you, Sar-Say; you have been a great help. Now, if you will please return to your cabin, we will start our preparations for contact.
“But I can help, Captain. Please let me stay.”
Landon frowned. Sar-Say’s request was not a new one, but he thought the alien understood the situation. He certainly did not need the distraction. “Miss Arden…” This last was spoken to thin air, or rather, to the ship’s computer, which routed the message to where Lisa was waiting out the approach.
“Yes, Captain?” her voice answered from the same thin air.
“Please come and help your charge back to his cabin. Report to me when things are secure in accordance with General Order Sixteen.”
“Yes, sir.”
General Order 16 covered first contact with any alien race of the Sovereignty. It ordered that Sar-Say be locked in his cabin and cut off from all means of communication with his compatriots. He was to have no contact whatever with them.
Lisa floated into the control room less than a minute later. She pulled herself to a position just in front of Landon’s station.
“Take Sar-Say back to his cabin, Miss Arden, and make him as comfortable as General Order Sixteen allows.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Taff unbuckled and scrambled toward the hatchway before Lisa could turn around. He paused in the hatch and looked back at her with his yellow eyes. She turned to follow.
“And, Lisa…”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Patch Sar-Say into the main command circuit. Let him monitor our progress. If he has any advice for us, I want you to pass it on. You are to do all of the communicating – not him. Understood?”
“Understood, sir. Sar-Say is to monitor and if there is anything he thinks you should know, I will relay it.”
“Good. Now get him out of here. I can�
��t open the circuit until I know he is safely locked up.”
“On my way, Captain.”
Landon watched her float back out of the control room, following the small hairy shape that was so much more skilled than any human was while maneuvering in microgravity. Then he forgot about Lisa and her alien charge as he turned his attention back to his task.
“One minute, Captain,” his communicator said.
Suddenly, the tension in the control room was palpable. It was a heavier weight than the 2.5 gravs they had undergone so recently. Unlike the deceleration, this pressure was mental.
At thirty seconds to zero, Lisa announced that Sar-Say was ensconced in his bunk and that the two of them were safely locked in the alien’s cabin. Landon glanced at his readouts. Sure enough, the security system showed all passages into and out of the alien’s area to be secure. The cabin would not have met the standards for a modern bank vault, but did not miss them by much.
“Ten seconds, Captain. Shall I count down?”
“No need to be dramatic, Mr. Peale.”
Even as he said it, Landon realized the incongruity of his statement. If there was ever a dramatic moment in human history, this was it. Suddenly, a lesson from his school days floated unbidden to mind.
They had been watching a documentary in tenth grade history about the first atomic weapon ever used in battle. It had been dropped, he remembered, on a Japanese city with a name that sounded like a sneeze, but one he could never remember. As the ancient bomber approached the city, the pilot had announced to his crew that everything was being recorded for posterity and that they should watch their language.
Symbolically, he was in much the same position as that long dead bomber pilot. Just as the world had never been the same after that first atom bomb, the human universe was about to change. Whether Sar-Say had told them the truth no longer mattered. However, the next few minutes turned out, the human race would not be the same afterwards. A galaxy empty of other intelligent species was on the verge of dying, and one crowded with sapients was about to be born. The moving finger, having writ, would move on.
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