The Stalk

by Janet Morris

  He had good reason to be frightened. The Unity aliens could move Threshold for the UNE. Provide alternate power at the orbit beyond Pluto. What else could they do? Might they do? Would they do. if thwarted? What would happen if Croft simply said "Thanks but no thanks" to the whole thing, now? Broke off diplomatic relations, such as they were, entirely? Declared Unity representatives personae non gratae? Forgot the Unity, if the Unity would allow itself to be forgotten? Dropped South’s “keys to the kingdom" down the nearest sewer grate and walked away?

  Just how powerful were these aliens? From Joe South and Riva Lowe's report, the Unity was either omnipotent, in human terms, or damned close. Too close for comfort, in Mickcy Croft’s opinion. Way too dose.

  So he had to do something. Fast. Issue a policy statement to give the UNE government staff some guidance. Create a strategic plan that encompassed both his new knowledge and his crystallized fears. And do it before, through his own indecisiveness. Threshold began the long journey to Pluto's orbit, found itself in trouble, and had to ask the Unity for help to survive.

  Of all he'd learned from Ambassador Lowe and Commander South, the thing that chilled Croft's bones the most was the idea that the UNE might be forced to request Unity aid. The United Nations of Earth was not some backwater underdeveloped empire, some feudal state or charity case.

  Yet the very fact that the Secretary General of the UNE had called a meeting of senior Secretariat, Consolidated Space Command, and Consolidated Security personnel belied a siege mentality at the highest levels. He felt as if he were some tinhorned dictator presiding over a military junta as he seated himself at the head of a long u-shaped table covered with the traditional green cloth.

  The staff had been assembled long since, from the look of them. At each place were identical drinking glasses, notepad computers, and wan-faced men and women behind them. Bottled waters, tea and coffee, and biscuits were precisely aligned within easy reach, down the center strip. Copies of Lowe and South's report glowed from pocket data-readers by each place.

  Mickey Croft entered from the rear of the room and took his place at the head of the table next to Remson without a word.

  Vince Remson said, 'Thank you, sirs and madams, for rearranging your busy schedules to join us here today. The purpose of this emergency session of the Joint Planning Staff is to evaluate new data brought back from Unity space by Ambassador Lowe's party and to formulate recommendations for a contingency action plan to be implemented in the event that United Nations of Earth forces are called upon to defend Threshold from Unity aggression en route to its new site beyond Pluto's orbit—or thereafter/'

  A buzz of voices began among the seated Joint Staff and rose in pitch as if someone had disturbed a swarm of bees to defend their hive.

  Remson sat back, wry amusement playing at the corners of his mouth, waiting for the hubbub to subside. "You all have data readers in front of you that contain both abstracts and details of the first UNE mission to Unity space. We'll have time to go through the report, page by page, later in this session. Right now, the Honorable Michael Croft, Secretary General of the United Nations of Earth, will give us an overview of Secretariat policy guidance as it applies to the breaking situation. Secretary Croft...."

  Mickey let his gaze roam the room, making eye contact with General Granrud from ConSpaceCom Logistics, with Dr. E.E. Smith from Secretariat Intelligence, and others before he started to speak. "I'm going to keep this brief. After due deliberation, it has been determined that the policy of the United Nations of Earth toward the confederated species calling themselves the Unity must be one of caution and vigilance against any and all forms of aggression, overt or covert. We must be wary, but must continue to gather information about the capabilities of this powerful new force. In the twentieth century, nations of Earth were guided by the Churchillian doctrine of considering any state big enough to pose a potential threat as a real threat." Churchill's words didn't fit the situation, but his reasoning did. "We must do likewise. We are confronted with an alien cultural matrix possessed of science and technology that is arguably superior to our own. We are faced with a group of species with unknown goals and needs, and an inexplicable interest in humanity. We would be derelict in our duty to the United Nations of Earth not to prepare for possible conflict with these Unity species, even while we are evaluating opportunities for peaceful cooperation."

  Mickey paused for dramatic effect, took a deep breath, scanned the table around which no one moved or even blinked, and continued. "Therefore, I am directing you today to develop and provide all possible means of defense of the United Nations of Earth against aggression from Unity forces. Starting today, Consolidated Space Command and Consolidated Security Command will prepare, with support from all necessary agencies, the strategic plan of attack which must be part of any prudent defensive capability."

  They muttered among themselves. He held up his hand for silence, and continued. "Do the best you can. If there's any sign of aggression during the long trip to Pluto's orbit, or after, we must be ready to respond. And we must field a show of force to provide a psychological deterrent to any Unity interests who may, now or in future, contemplate aggression against UNE assets, habitats, or outposts henceforth. No one needs to be reminded that deterring aggression mounted by a superior force is not an easy task. We have already ruled out canceling the move to coordinates beyond Pluto's orbit: we must not show weakness. Therefore, we must demonstrate strength, steadfastness, and our territorial sovereignty in such a way that we are neither provocative nor an attractive target. At the sites of the alien constructions referred to as the Ball and the Unity Embassy, deep inside our sovereign territory, we will institute new security procedures which will provide an obvious deterrent and which promise a quick and deadly response to any sign of aggression on the part of the Unity."

  He paused one final time and said into the silence made by thirty-two pairs of staring eyes, "In short, ladies and gentlemen, Consolidated Space Command and Consolidated Security must be ready, willing, and able at a moment's notice of foul play, to obliterate these Unity aliens on the spot." Mickey stood up and stepped away from the table.

  People began to talk, to reach out to one another, to raise their hands. Remson said, "That's it, ladies and gentlemen, you've got your mission definition. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for taking time to personally give us such clear direction."

  Mickey was already headed for the door that would take him to his waiting flagship, and from there, under guard, back to his sanctum in the Stalk. In one more carefully staged and orchestrated act, he said over his shoulder, "It would be my pleasure, Mr. Remson, were the circumstances not so grave. By the way, I believe that General Granrud of Logistics already has a 'Plan B' in his back pocket. Perhaps you'd better start with him."

  The doors before him slid back, revealing his personal bodyguards. He stepped through smartly, and the doors closed on the Joint Staff meeting in progress. Croft's part was now complete, for the nonce. History had just taken a new bearing. It was up to the Unity to convince all the three hundred colonies of the UNE that it posed no threat, now or in the future.

  The high state of readiness that Mickey had just decreed would be implemented throughout the UNE worlds. A text of his speech was already being transmitted to every Secretariat mission, ConSpaceCom command headquarters, Con-Sec commissioner, and national government leader on the emergency communications network.

  As he was hustled by two Secretariat bodyguards down a narrow security tunnel toward his waiting flagship, Mickey wondered how it had come to this, despite everyone's best intentions at the outset. He tried to conjure up just one comforting memory from his meetings with the Interstitial Interpreter and the honor guard. But he couldn't. The honor guard's smoking pots seemed in retrospect to be filled with narcotic gasses that had lulled him and made him complacent. The self-replicating, self-sustaining images that had corrupted and infected his psychometric modeler now seemed like a warning shot across his bow which
he had failed to take to heart.

  Too long had he been complacent in the face of unquantifiable risk. But not now. While he was making his way through this tunnel, technicians were cleansing the psychometric modeler—and every network component that could have been infected by the modeler—of all suspect data.

  If necessary, they would shut down Threshold's life-support and central management control systems, one at a time, and scrub every one for incipient infection. Any latent or present virus must be eradicated before it spread through the artificial intelligence that controlled Threshold—before the trip to a new orbit began.

  As with the modeler and the threat of infection by unseen Unity forces, so with the entire United Nations of Earth. Perhaps he was overreacting, creating metaphors of destruction and similes of disaster, but act he must, to preserve the life and liberty of the union under his care.

  One of his bodyguards said, "Ready, sir? Right this way," and leaned forward to open a door responsive to his palmprint. Beyond it, a secure slipbay and his flagship, the GEORGE WASHINGTON, loomed from the shadows. Beyond that, the unknowable consequences of moving Threshold closer to the stars.

  "Ready," Croft said.. It was too late to turn back now.

  CHAPTER 25

  Orders

  When Reice got his destroy-on-warning orders, he was sitting on station in the BLUE TICK, playing solitaire on his fire control computer. He off-loaded the game guiltily and sat still, lemon donut half-eaten in one hand, staring out at the Unity embassy and the Ball nearby.

  His donut was suddenly unappetizing. He threw it in the decomposition hopper by his knee. You had to have spit in your mouth to eat. He didn't even lick his fingers. He wiped the powdered sugar absently on his pressure suit's leg.

  It didn't look any different out there. What the hell had happened?

  You go from traffic cop to frontline soldier in a heartbeat, and everything looks the same? It didn't figure. He imported every possible scan of the Unity Embassy that his sensors could upload in real time. No little green men in flying saucers could be seen. No monsters flapped their clawed wings in vacuum. The embassy looked just like it always looked: Like a shark's fin cutting the waterline, like a kid's toy that a truck had run over, like an incipient headache in eleven dimensions.

  With a curse, Reice dumped his embassy scans and brought up the Ball. It was probably the Ball that had caused this red alert. It was always the Ball, wasn't it? The damned Ball was Reice's personal nemesis, his bad luck charm.

  But there sat the Ball, silvery, spherical, and smug: no change there, either.

  So maybe it was a change of heart, somewhere in the Threshold bureaucracy. Or a failure of nerve.

  Whatever had happened, it wasn't up to Reice to question the wisdom of authority. He had real specific orders about what to do next.

  He'd been ordered to arm the BLUE TICK'S formidable arsenal, run precision-targeting programs on both the Ball and the Unity embassy, light all the ready lights on his fire control grid until they blinked, and sit there with his finger on the buttons.

  He had to go to the head, first. Being ordered to that state of readiness designated "Fire on Warning" had a way of curing even the most stubborn constipation. At least in the head, he wouldn't be watching the potential targets.

  In the electronics-free environment of the tiny sanitary facility, he sat and stared at his boots, thinking hard. Why hadn't he heard rumors of this shake-up? He'd been on the right hand of the demigod Remson so long that he'd gotten accustomed to knowing what the Higher Orders had in mind.

  But then South had come back, and Sling had gotten involved, and Reice's honeymoon with the Secretariat had abruptly ended. Not with a bang, but with radio silence. They didn't require him at their Spacedock Seven planning sessions anymore. Even though he'd basically put that team together out of nothing, done the lion's share of the work, provided the creative spark and operating engine of the Logistical Task Force, he was now out of the loop permanently.

  These new orders proved that. Remson hadn't been at all happy with Reice the day that South and Ambassador Lowe had come cruising out of the Ball, with no apparent warning or prior notification to the Secretariat. Not that Reice was at fault. But he'd shown some initiative, involved Sling, a civilian, and generally been present and accounted for at the wrong time.

  It didn't take much to get yourself sidelined, not with the Secretariat. Any sign of not being thoroughly controllable, any hint of trouble, any question of loyalty or dependability, or even inadvertent involvement in some action or reaction that wasn't squeaky clean and by the book, and the folks on top simply lost your number.

  They didn't call you. They didn't include you. They didn't inform you. And you ended up eating too many jelly donuts. The thing that burned Reice's butt the worst was that somebody else was obviously getting credit for all the work that Reice had done, putting together the Logistical Task Force Report and the infrastructure that was now handling follow-on actions.

  He'd always known that fat lab rat was after his slot. As he pulled up his pants and consigned his waste products to vacuum with a roar of plumbing, he remembered how welcome and integral to the team he'd felt the day on Y Ring when General Granrud had congratulated him for work well done.

  File it in the mental scrapbook, son. He should have realized before now that he was back on the BLUE TICK for good. "So what?" he muttered aloud, but his feelings were hurt.

  They had no business issuing "destroy on warning" orders to every beat cop in a ConSec uniform. Not with the number of hotdogs out here. Not with the traffic back and forth to the Stalk still so thick. Not when you weren't even sure you could destroy either the Ball or the Unity Embassy, no matter what kind of firepower you engaged.

  There was a world of difference between the command to his ship's artificial intelligence to "Fire on Warning," like the enabled button said, and the cocksure directive "destroy on warning."

  What was going to happen if the Ball, or the Unity Embassy, decided to fight back? Nobody knew what the Ball was made of, yet, let alone the proper way to destroy an alien construct that only poked a small part of itself into your universe.

  Back at his pilotry station, Reice slumped into position and looked at his fire control indicators. Dear oh dear, this was going to get sticky, if somebody actually implemented those orders and started shooting.

  Reice suddenly realized he ought to be real sure he wasn't in the way of any line-of-sight beams or missiles that were fired at the Ball or at the Unity Embassy, or of any backspill or transient radiation effects that might ricochet off at an angle and fry him and BLUE TICK through some unintended fratricide.

  Who'd thought up this stunt, anyway? Reice asked for and received a head count of the weapons-carrying UNE vessels within shooting distance of the Ball or the embassy.

  One hundred and twenty-three.

  One hundred and twenty-three chances to get accidentally killed by your own side if fighting broke out. One hundred and twenty-three sources of friendly fire.

  He asked the BLUE TICK to show him a breakdown, ship class by ship class, of what kind of firepower was out here, plus how many and what kind of weapons were on each ship. Order of battle data came up in long streams of disturbing complexity.

  If anybody started shooting out here, the chances of destroying one another and/or Spacedocks One through Seven were at least as good, if not better, than those of destroying either the Ball or the Unity Embassy.

  Reice said, "TICK, find us a set of coordinates where we're least likely to be hit by friendly fire and yet are still obeying our mission parameters." There was always an edge to be had, a safety precaution you could take, a hedge on your bets, if you were smart enough to look for it and determined enough to find it.

  That computation would take a while. As he waited for the numbers to come up, he composed a notification of change of station for a better field of fire. When that was done, and the TICK was still working the problem of finding a saf
e place to hunker down if and when all hell broke loose out here, all he could do in the interim was worry.

  Maybe the Unity Embassy was showing some signs of aggressive activity. Reice looked at the eye-teasing form, all curves, dapples and dimples in the errant starlight. Nope. Looked just the same. Maybe the original configuration of the embassy construct had been revealed as a threat in and of itself.

  The thought raised his hackles. He'd wanted to blast the Ball out of existence numerous times since it had first arrived. He could attest to its inexplicable capabilities. But today it wasn't doing anything different, or special. It wasn't opening up. It wasn't gobbling up the heavy freighter traffic and military convoys tirelessly circuiting from Threshold to Spacedock Seven and back.

  The Ball was just being the Ball, as usual. If Reice was forced to choose a target, the Ball would be his first pick. But his orders had deployed his firepower evenly between the two constructions, and he couldn't change those orders. He could only modulate his responses for the greatest personal survivability.

  Having taken a second long look at the problem, he liked his situation even less. He waited for the TICK to give him the most survivable coordinates with his heart pounding, expecting to be ordered to shoot up the Ball or the Unity Embassy, at any second.

  He was so tense he jumped in his seat when the TICK put up new coordinates for him. He looked at them a long time before he sent his repositioning data to Traffic Control.

  The BLUE TICK wanted to sit right "under" the Ball, at what Reice had come to think of as the Ball's south pole. The good news was that the new coordinates gave him an entire alien Ball's worth of protection from the sphere of conflict. Another advantage was that, in any line-of-sight engagement, the Unity Embassy was "between" him and Spacedock Seven, from which the heavy firepower and reinforcements must come in any real shooting war.