Out in the deeper water there rose four large dorsal fins, each riding on the top of a massive gray-furred sharklike body, the top of which was occasionally revealed as the wave troughs passed over them. A multitude of eyes gazed in seeming malevolence from the massive sharklike heads. What made the gazes even more evil-looking was that some of the monsters seemed to have had their eyes gouged out, for all that was left was an empty socket!
As prepared as the Solarians were by their briefings on the physiology of the aliens, Win and Orson were still unnerved by the strangeness of the alien eyes. To Laura, however, the massive shapes of the Jollys, the lethal-looking ranks of weresharks, and the strange colors of the flouwen in the shallows seemed to blend harmoniously with the relaxed but watchful humans. The human children, shining with health and youth, stared back at the Solarians with eager, unafraid curiosity.
The Edenites, mindful of the audience they would have, had planned that this first meeting would be controlled as far as possible by themselves. It would be as formal as barefoot Reiki could make it, and as amicable as the Solarians would permit.
Reiki took three steps forward, bowed deeply, and began to speak—loudly and clearly—fervently hoping the man before her would not interrupt. Fortunately, he found her words too surprising to do so.
"As duly elected President of the United Species of Eden, I welcome you to Eden! All here give you welcome! I am honored to speak for our friends, the Jollys, whom you see on my right. I am honored to speak for our friends the flouwen, whose colors and eyes are visible in the water beside you. And I am honored to also speak for our friends the weresharks, resting in the deeper waters of the lagoon. We shall all become known to each other more fully as your visit progresses." She took a deep breath and changed her tone slightly. "First, however, it is my duty to ask you for your passports. Please present them at this time to our customs officer to be stamped."
Dirk, wearing an official-looking sash over his bare chest, stepped forward, holding out one hand for the passports, while the other hand held an inked stamp carved from a piece of wood.
"What? Passports! Wha'in Orion are you ..." Win was stunned, but with reflexive formality he adjusted to this strange situation and responded, carefully slowing his own speech to do so, while at the same time trying to regain control of the situation.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am. Our government—which is also your government, I may remind you—did not provide us with passports as such. But I assure you—"
Reiki had not interrupted anyone for years, but she did so now, firmly.
"That was remiss of your government, indeed. But we are quite willing to grant you temporary visas for the duration of your stay. Your possessions and equipment—in point of fact, everything which you have brought with you both today and which you may see fit to bring here during your visit, including your robots—are subject to customs regulations. Our regulations require that they must be taken with you on your departure. There can be no exceptions to this, unless mutually agreeable between all parties. All items will, of course, be tagged for identification, and you understand that you must not trade or sell them while you are in residence."
There was a silence. Then Win said slowly, "If I understand you, ma'am ... President?"
Sweetly Cinnamon intervened. "That is correct. Reiki is the duly-elected President of Eden. She is our first, we trust, of many. And now you shall have the privilege of being the first Solarians to hear our cherished Declaration of Independence!"
She motioned to Richard, who stepped forward, gave a low bow, and rose again to his full height, unrolled a long scroll, and proceeded to read it in loud and firm tones.
"When in the course of events, it becomes necessary for the peoples of a planet to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another planet, and to assume the separate and equal station to which they are entitled, a decent respect to the opinions of all concerned requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all intelligent species are created equal ..."
"... and for the support of this Declaration, we, the United Species of Eden, mutually pledge to each other our lives, our possessions, and our honor."
Richard concluded these ringing words with another deep and formal bow, which struck the astounded Solarians as even more alien than the startling document they had just heard. The precious piece of barkcloth on which they had all worked so carefully bore strange signatures and marks, and was displayed proudly to the gaze of the Solarians before being rolled tenderly into a scroll and carried away by Eve.
"This is ridiculously unnecessary, ma'am," said Win. "No one from Sol is proposing to tax your tea. What was the purpose of this absurd exercise?"
"It was simply the first step in the logical, legal development of this world for the benefit of all its citizens. In addition to the Declaration of Independence, which you have just heard, the United Species of Eden also has a Constitution, witnessed and agreed upon by representatives of all known intelligent lifeforms on the planet. It's a very simple document, flexible and general enough to provide mutual cooperation for us here and protection for all of its citizens, no matter what species they may be. More important for you to know, however, is that you four are not citizens here."
Win had listened to enough of this farce. He lost his temper and exploded. "I may not be a citizen of this goddamn planet, but all of you goddamn humans are still citizens of Earth, and are still bound by Earth laws and Solar Worlds laws—despite what is written in that goddamn ridiculous Declaration of Independence." Reiki tried to object, but Win just bellowed louder. "I was sent here to rescue you and take you back to Earth, and I'm going to do just that ... whether you like it or not!"
"I'm not going!" exploded Mirth.
Dirk lay a restraining hand on his daughter's shoulder, but the seven-year-old shrugged it away and stepped forward boldly. With arms akimbo she looked up undaunted into Win's face as he towered over her.
"You can't make me!"
Win exploded. "I have not come halfway across the goddamn galaxy on a mission for the Solar Worlds Congress just to be told by a spoiled child that I will not be allowed to carry out my mission!" he bellowed. "I have my orders and I mean to carry them out!"
"You have not come halfway across the galaxy, you have come six lightyears, just as we have," said Cinnamon. Her gray hair was starting to come loose from its braid and fly in wisps around her brown wrinkled face. Win's upper lip curled in disgust at the ugly creature. "We signed on for a mission that would last our lifetimes, and as long as one of us has a breath left in us, it is our mission that is going to be carried out."
"You people asked for this rescue," said Orson, trying to defuse the situation. "All that we're doing is answering your request."
"And we appreciate the rescue," said Reiki to Orson. "And there are those among us who do want to go back. But things have changed since we first called for help—here, and on Earth. We have stumbled onto a planet that is full of amazing discoveries. It has given us a home, for ourselves and for our children. We owe it our allegiance and we intend to stay and see that it is properly respected and nurtured, just as it has nurtured us these last twenty-five years."
"These last twenty-five years, while you have been playing in the surf and making babies," Win sneered, "the Solar Worlds Congress has been spending trillions of credits and millions of personyears on a rescue mission! This rescue mission! We are not the goddamn bad guys! We come in peace, goddamnit! We don't intend to hurt your pla—this planet, or these Bug-Eyed Monsters, but you humans are going to get into our ship and you are coming back to the Solar system and that's all there is to it!"
"We have told you that this planet had declared its independence!" said Reiki, almost starting to lose her temper. "These species have never been under the authority of the Solar Worlds Congress and we humans here have just seceded!" She saw no need to explain now that in fact many of them h
ad decided to retain their Earth citizenship. For the moment it was best that they appear united. "You have no authority in our nation, General Winthrop, and unless you respect the wishes of our citizens, I'm afraid I'm just going to have to declare you persona non grata."
It took a moment for Win's computer link-up with the lander to translate Reiki's last remark and it reminded him that if threats were being made, he could make a few of his own.
"Madam President. You might consider yourself the representative of the United Idiots of Eden, but with a twelve-year comm lag between here and Sol, I, as the highest ranking officer, represent the Solar Worlds authorities and have their full powers invested in me. It is up to me just how our state will deal with your defection." He touched his wrist-communicator and a cargo door slid open on the distant landing rocket. Out came a large swarm of androids, who started trotting across the sand toward them in military formation. "You have twenty-four hours to pack. These androids will insure that you are back here in time for the liftoff."
"Dad!" said Freeman, looking up at Richard. "Can he do that?"
"I'm afraid so, son," said Richard, looking at the phalanx of metal bodies trotting across the sand, each larger and infinitely stronger than he was—the strongest human on Eden.
Just then, a loud click, followed by a hissing sound, came from the "totem pole" on the hill. Win turned to look at it in surprise. The hissing grew louder.
"General Winthrop!!!" roared the totem pole in obvious anger. The last time Winthrop had heard that tone of voice was when he had broken a window at the family mansion with a baseball. For a second he felt ten again. Win then realized that the voice coming from the "totem pole" was that of Gudunov. General Gudunov, Win suddenly recalled.
"Yessir!" Win called back. He closed his eyes, pretty sure what he would hear next.
"What is the date of your promotion, General Winthrop?"
"April second, 2080," replied Win. "Sir," he added.
"Mine, as you well know, is the fourth of July 2056," said George. "I believe that I outrank you by nearly twenty-five years."
"Yessir."
"I therefore command that instead of invading this fledgling nation and returning these people back to Earth by force, that the exploration mission they are on be allowed to continue. They volunteered to come here, at great cost and risk to themselves, and they should be allowed to continue to carry on their assigned task—to explore the Barnard star system, its planets, and its lifeforms. Their task is not done—in fact, it will not be completed in their lifetimes. While you are in this system and under my command, you are instructed to assist them and any of Eden's citizens in any way that you can, including supplying transportation between planets. You still have an obligation to return to Sol. When you go, you will take those who wish to return with you."
"Yessir," replied Win. Inside, he was furious at the goddamn Gudunov. Yet he didn't dare rebel. He would soon be back in Sol at the head of a successful rescue mission, and Brigadier General in the Space Force was only the first step in what he knew could be an illustrious career that would reflect proudly on the Winthrop name. He would cooperate with the goddamn Gudunov, but he goddamn didn't have to like it, and one of these days Win would be glad to carry out grandpapa's wish and spit on that goddamn Gudunov's goddamn grave.
"Carry on, General Winthrop," said the totem pole, and with a loud click, it became silent.
Reiki stepped forward again. "General Winthrop," she said, smiling sweetly, "it would really be of great assistance to our exploration objectives if you could somehow arrange for transport between the various moons of Gargantua and to Rocheworld when it comes near us each season."
"Tha'll be easy," interjected Orson. "Gravity is low enough on these moons so that a tether transport system will be easy to set up. I'll have my robogangs get to work on it ..."
Adam strolled casually up to Laura and looked her up and down. Although she was considerably taller than he, she found herself standing straighter to widen the gap. He smiled, his teeth flashing whitely in his dark face, blue eyes twinkling up at her.
"Bug-Eyed Monsters?" he asked.
"Standard slang for all alien beings," explained Laura. "He wasn't trying to be insulting."
"Oh ... and I guess he didn't really threaten us with his robots either," said Adam.
Laura colored briefly. She hated being forced to defend the overbearing Win.
"Come on," Adam continued, "I'll show you around." He slipped an arm around her waist, and Laura could feel the heat of his lumpy arm muscles though the plastic.
Those oversized muscles would come in handy on this world, thought Laura. Besides, they were oddly attractive.
As if reading her thoughts, he added, "We'll find a place where you can get out of that isosuit ... someplace where Reiki won't catch us."
LEAVING
TWO YEARS later, Reiki was standing on the beach at one end of Crater Lagoon, watching the panorama of the now busy heavens. Standing around her were many from the settlement who had come with her to the beach, while in the waters offshore floated the flouwen. Floating among the flouwen was a canoe with Everett and Freeman at the paddles. Barnard was about to set, and in the clear evening twilight, all the new structures that had blossomed in space now were visible in the darkening skies. It was the time of the season when Rocheworld loomed large beyond Zouave on its once every three-orbit visit to the outskirts of the Gargantuan moon system. In the distant eastern sky, opposite the sinking Barnard, both Rocheworld and Zouave loomed bright in the sky with their glittering new attendants. The sphere of Zouave now sported a number of disk-shaped "wings": large thin-film mirrors levitated in space all around it. The light from Barnard reflected off the mirrors and produced warming spots of reddish light on the surface of the cold planet, awakening its inner volatiles in order to raise the dead planet from its ecological grave. In addition, the globe of Zouave, as well as both lobes of Rocheworld, now sported thin white "antennae" oriented at various angles above their surfaces. As Reiki patiently waited and watched, one of the lines above Zouave slowly touched down at the southern pole of the planetoid and lifted slowly off again. Similar lines were also visiting various spots on the rapidly rotating double-lobed planet of Rocheworld.
Reiki looked back toward the fading red glow in the west, where, rising up from where Barnard had set, there grew a spear of light that had a "red-white" luster in contrast to the deep red sky glow. The spear grew longer and longer, and as it approached the zenith, the tip seemed to slow as it tilted down toward where she was standing. This was the eastward-traveling rotating space tether, the "rotovator", coming down in one of its periodic visits to this part of Eden.
Just offshore from the beach there was the noise of splashing water. Rising up out of the waves was a large metallic platform, coming up from its normal stowed position on the top of a submerged seamount—hidden underwater so its presence wouldn't spoil the view from the beach. The warm ocean waters of Eden dripped rapidly off its water-repellant and barnacle-proof shell-like cover, which opened like a flower to reveal a landing pad. In one corner of the landing pad was a futuristic-looking control building, while near the center sat an object as big as a bus, with heavy glass portholes in the front and back and along the sides. From the four corners of its base there projected four squat landing skids, while from its top corners there extended four heavy grappling rings. This was one of the many space capsules that the rotovator and its similar counterparts moved from place to place in the Barnard system.
Normally, when there was no need for their services, the rotovators just touched their tips down high in the upper atmosphere as they passed over. This time, however, they had a cargo to be delivered. Long before the actual tip end of the rotovator had arrived at its lowest point, the space capsule at the end of the tether had been released on the end of its own failsafe multistrand tether made of strong, heat-resistant polymer fiber. By using a combination of rocket jets to speed up, and braking on the tether
to slow down, the space capsule reached the upper atmosphere long before the tip of the cable, and slowed down enough to penetrate the air at speeds and acceleration levels well within the safety margins for both the capsule and the tether material.
As the rotovator structure itself continued its ponderous rotation overhead, it seemed to shrink in length as it started to point down directly at the observers standing near the landing point. They first heard the sonic booms of the capsule entering the skies above them, then shortly afterward they could see the space capsule itself, brightly lit not only in the light from the setting sun but also from the glare of its polynitrometahelium jets. The observers could now see that the capsule was hanging from a complex grappling mechanism that contained the jets and the large reels that released or pulled in tether as needed during the landing maneuvers. The capsule and its grappling mechanism initially seemed to be dropping downward at a terrifyingly dangerous speed, but with a combination of jets and tether reel control, the robots running the system brought the incoming capsule smoothly down to a halt next to the outgoing capsule that was waiting there. The grapple mechanism hovered, supporting itself by pulling in tether as fast as it came down from above, then carefully released the incoming capsule while at the same time picking up the outgoing capsule so that the load on the end of the tether never changed. The grapple mechanism, with its new load, then took off again, its reels pulling in cable ever faster as it accelerated upward toward the top of the atmosphere, where the momentum of the gigantic rotovator would take over to lift the capsule up from the planet, until it was high overhead. Then, at just the right time, it would sling it at high speed to an intermediate "momentum-bank" rotovator in orbit elsewhere in the Barnard-Gargantua system, which would pass it on to a rotovator around one of the other planetoids in the system.
Even as the capsule landed, Freeman and Everett were paddling in the canoe toward the landing pad to pick up their arriving guest. The Edenites had allowed the Solarians to set up high-technology landing pads at selected points around Eden for storage and servicing of the rotovator capsules and the other pieces of high-tech equipment, such as spacesuits, that the humans and flouwen required for operating in space or on planetoids with dangerous atmospheres. They wanted to keep Eden the way it was as much as possible, however, so instead of allowing helicopters and motorboats, even low-noise ones, they insisted on providing their own transportation. As a result, their guest, who had arrived in a supersonic metal space capsule, would be slowly paddled ashore in a wooden dugout canoe.
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