by Janet Morris
What else did you say?
Reice got every damned dirty, boring, risky job in the universe. There was nothing new about that.
There was no use pointing out to Remson that Reice had called in the historic message, had been the first on-site, and therefore ought to be doing more than sitting around in his cruiser presiding over jurisdictional debating teams made up of ConSpaceCom officers from various nations who wanted their piece of the pie—and Reice's hide—on this mission.
If you could call it a mission. The realtime view out Reice's forward monitor reminded him more of a traffic jam caused by gawkers at an accident than a security cordon. Everybody with the clout to arrange it was out here in a division flagship or a private yacht.
Coordinating a bunch of protocol-conscious heavyweights was nothing new to Reice. He belayed every attempt to muscle him and went strictly by the book.
But there was no entry in the book for "Initial Encounter with RealLive Aliens From A (Probably) Superior Culture."
And there was plenty new about coordinating an "honor guard" trying to surround three teardropshaped alien vessels of unknown provenance and manufacture.
Plenty.
The vessels weren't cooperating, although they weren't failing to cooperate either. They were parked exactly where they'd chosen to come to rest, around the damnable Ball.
The twenty-five ConSec and Space Command ships armed to the teeth that were standing off at a "safe" distance didn't seem to bother the visitors. That was something, anyway.
All you needed was one of those alien craft spitting a peppermint-striped ray that disintegrated the Chinese SpaceCom flagship, Ancestral Cloud, or the Imam, or the Diego Garcia.
Reice licked his lips at the thought of aggression from the mysterious teardrop craft. According to Remson, Croft was "safe" inside UFO-1 and that was all anybody knew.
UFOs 1, 2, and 3 were politely ignoring all of ConSec's displayed might, as if Reice's security contingent really was the honor guard it was trying fitfully to resemble. Even the big guns of ConSpaceCom's "peacekeeping" vessels didn't seem to faze the aliens.
These aliens knew what they were doing. They'd sent a weird-ass dinghy to pick up Croft, despite Reice's objections to Vince Remson himself that you didn't give up a hostage when you didn't know how you'd go about getting that hostage back.
Not when the hostage was your Secretary General.
But nobody had listened to Reice's warnings. Not that he'd expected to be listened to. He stretched out his legs on the bumper of his console and flexed the long muscles in his thighs, which were aching with suppressed tension.
Official complaint's were meant to be ignored, Reice knew. You logged them so you were on record if you turned out to be correct. Standard procedure for a screw-up in the making, right?
Right. But this was no standard screw-up in the making, here. This was genuine history, parked out there before his very eyes. Reice had never been very good at history.
It was boring. It was, more than anything, over with. Dead as yesterday's dinner.
Reice could only hope that Mickey Croft didn't get that dead. Vince Remson was way out on a limb this time.
Reice got up from the Blue Tick's console and slapped at his auxiliary monitor bank. No use pretending that he wasn't worried. It was his job to worry.
It was bad enough pretending that he hadn't been slighted. After all, he'd been the first to encounter the alien craft, hadn't he?
It still rankled that he wasn't over there on the Washington with the brass, consulting, rather than out here with his finger on a trigger nobody was going to want him to squeeze.
Reice knew all about standoff. You displayed your power, because you couldn't be allowed to use it. If those aliens sent back Mickey Croft all ground up, arranged into a patty, and lying on a bun with lettuce and tomato, nobody was going to let Reice and his ConSec contingent open fire.
Not when you didn't know what those teardrops could do to Threshold. The Trust Territory of Threshold was sitting back there, with two hundred fifty thousand arguably innocent souls on her, going about their daily business. And nobody knew enough about these alien teardrops to be able to guess whether they were armed. Or if they were, whether the Trust Territory of Threshold was in range of whatever kind of weapons those teardrops might be sporting.
It was just one of those situations that couldn't be quantified. The element of surprise, of the unknown, was always the most dangerous. You couldn't tell how much was underreaction, how much was overreaction.
Whenever Reice saw something new and unexpected, it was unwelcome. Like the image nosing into the viewscans on his supplemental monitoring screen.
Reice hated the unexpected.
He ported the view to his forward console, flopped down in his command chair, and slapped his com channel open. He could have voice-commanded the Blue Tick, but right now Reice didn't trust the identifiability of his own voice.
"What the hell makes you think you're invited to this party, ULD-1001?" he demanded, his fingers flying as he punched up a traffic report to further identify the interloper. Nobody got out here who wasn't cleared to be out here. Those were standing orders.
So what had happened? Who'd screwed up?
The comlink was scratchy: "ULD-1001 to ConSec Spacedock Control. I'm cleared for this, take a look. My invitation's in order. Sir."
The flip voice sounded familiar. The traffic schematic showed Reice the interloper's destination: the Washington. And of course nobody'd bothered to inform Reice, because if he'd been doing his normal job he wouldn't have been monitoring traffic approaching from the Stalk to begin with.
But still ...
"Who's this?" Reice demanded. "Who'm I talking to?" That voice was too familiar.
ULD-1001 answered with a different voice: "This is Micah Keebler, Spacedock Command. I got me a pers'n'l invite to this-here party, courtesy o' the Secretary Gen'ral hisself. You got some problem wit' that?"
"Checking," said Reice levelly, with all the control at his command.
Keebler. Here? Now? Was this somebody's idea of a joke? Reice's mind raced. If he identified himself, was it going to cause a flap on the comlink? Keebler probably didn't know Reice was the ConSec authority calling.
He toggled to another channel and spat at traffic control: "What the hell you doin', Jerry? Picking your teeth? I should have been informed that we were expecting a volatile visitor— a goddamned criminal visitor. Put an escort on that ULD-1001, and have four ConSec guards accompany Mr. Keebler everywhere he goes on the flagship—even to the head."
Then he got back to ULD-1001. This time, the respondent whose voice he heard was the first man he'd spoken to.
And Sling identified himself in a quavery voice, saying, "Look, sir, we don't want any trouble. I was asked to bring my passenger out here, and a piece of equipment or two. Commander South knows we're coming. It's all duly cleared. I really don't think we've done anything out of the ordinary. Anyway, Keebler and I made a bet: I bring us out here, to Spacedock Seven, and if that doesn't make me as rich and famous as Keebler himself, I win his ship. So you can't inter—"
"Your bet's off, called on account of ConSec, hotshot. And don't tell me what I can and can't do. You got a record, kid, of doing things out of the ordinary. And nothing like that's going to happen out here. Not now. Because I'll stay on your ass and see to it. That's a promise." Gordon Sling was an aftermarketeer, somebody who made his living in the gray areas of the law. Reice was tempted to push his advantage, because he was angry and because, at heart, he was a cop.
Cops are cops. But this wasn't a police situation. Not yet.
The nervous aftermarketeer stammered out his various permits and clearances, while Reice imagined the young operator twisting nervously on his pigtail.
Reice could deny all prior permits and keep Sling's ship from entering a ConSec-controlled area. He was tempted to do that, for fun. For instinct's sake. And because he hated like hell to have somebody�
�anybody—invoke Joe South's name like the Relic was some sort of trusted authority.
But then Keebler would find out that it was Reice who was hassling him, and Keebler had lawyers. It had been made clear to Reice just how determined the Secretary General's office was to avoid tangling with Keebler's lawyers, who were still contesting the confiscation of the Ball by Customs.
Keebler's voice came over the horn: "Ye can't stop me from visitn' the area of m' property. Fer an inspection. I know m' rights!"
Reice sighed. "Cleared for entry, ULD-1001. But you get your ass over to the mother ship, and you don't go anywhere else. You do your inspection eyes-only. Or we'll blow you out of existence. Got that? And no bets. No games. This is your single heads-up: Any deviation from course will result in punitive action without further warning."
"Got it, ConSec Control," Sling said breathlessly, with a grunt at the end and a muffled sign-off, as if he were struggling to keep Keebler from grabbing the com mike.
Reice shut down his com channel and reconsidered the protocol problems he'd almost started. Irritation was sheeting over him as if he'd stepped into a charged field; his whole body was slightly itchy. He scratched at his chest.
Damned South. "Commander" South, these days. South was always where he didn't belong.
In Reice's face. And Reice, especially now, didn't need the grief.
He tried getting South on the horn, but the Washington's comlinks were all busy. He found himself on interminable hold.
And that gave Reice time to cool down. He was antsy, that was all. He and South were trying to get along these days, and marginally succeeding.
It was the three teardrops from the ends of creation that were making Reice so twitchy this time.
And the fact that Croft was aboard UFO-1 wasn't helping.
But whoever had thought up the bright idea of inviting the Scavenger out to Spacedock Seven ought to be spanked. The fool was dangerous. A hostage-taker. A certifiable crazy.
Keebler was the very certifiable crazy who'd brought the Ball to Trust Territory in the first place.
For all Reice knew, the Scavenger was going to go down in history as a modern-day Pandora—as the man who brought the seeds of humankind's eradication into its midst. As the guy who decided to haul the Trojan Horse inside the walls.
Reice's hands began to sweat. He should have shot Keebler when he'd had the chance. Should have killed him stone-dead. There'd been enough pretext. Then none of this would be happening.
Well, some of it would. But at least the man who had started all the trouble would have been punished.
Reice had gone into ConSec because he liked to punish evildoers. Right now, for his money, Micah Keebler was looking like the greatest evildoer in history.
Of course, to believe that the aliens' purpose was unfriendly you had to see things Reice's way.
And sometimes the brass could never be convinced to see things Reice's way.
But that didn't mean you couldn't keep trying. Or even, if things went from bad to worse, manage to personally see that justice was done.
Reice decided, there and then, that if Mickey Croft didn't come out of that UFO-1 safe and sound, he was going to blow Keebler to smithereens.
He might have done it anyway, right then, if Keebler's ship hadn't been so close to the diplomatic flagship George Washington.
He ran the targeting lock-on sequence, just to be sure that Sling's ULD-1001 was too close for comfort.
When he'd proved that to himself, Reice settled down to wait for an opportunity to trash the ship that Keebler had rode in on.
It was the least that Reice could do for history. As for the purportedly innocent aftermarketeer who might die along with the Scavenger, Reice knew in his heart that Sling had committed untold crimes, which an overworked Threshold policing apparatus simply hadn't been able to pin on the proper perpetrator.
Finally, as he concocted a way to destroy Keebler's ship when it debarked from its berth at the Washington's side, Reice began to feel better.
The unendurable sense of waiting for an alien shoe to drop left him—to be replaced by a sensual, almost sexual, excitation that came over Reice only when he was stalking prey.
And Keebler—the hostage-taker, the junk collector, the dizzy beachcomber who'd found the Ball at some benighted white hole and dragged it in here—was clearly the right prey to soothe Reice's jangled nerves.
Who the hell did Keebler think he was, anyhow? Look at this mess. Around Reice, in his monitors, ships sparkled in hovering profusion.
Keebler and his damned aliens had brought the whole of Threshold's normal life to an abrupt halt.
Everybody who was anybody was out here. At home, on the Stalk, the rank and file of the United Nations of Earth were all holding their collective breath.
That fool Keebler might have signed mankind's death warrant.
If he hadn't, Keebler had at the very least changed things irrevocably.
Nothing would ever be the same. Could ever resume its familiar shape. Mankind's fate had been permanently changed, from the moment Reice first saw that huge teardrop. Maybe from before that—maybe from when the damned Ball had first been towed in to Spacedock Seven.
With a jerky motion and a curse, Reice wiped all his monitors. He didn't want to look at anything right now. He reached above his head and told the Tick to alert him when Keebler's ship left the safety of the flagship vessel's side.
Then, for a reason he didn't understand, he called over there on a voice-only channel, and asked for Commander South.
It took a little while. Then South said, "Yeah, Reice? What's up?"
"I called to ask you that."
Reice could almost see the Relic test pilot's deeply circled eyes narrow as South's careful voice said, "Waiting to find out what Mickey wants us to do next, is all. Everything's well within normal limits here."
The Relic was learning the language of bureaucracy. Reice should have expected it. "Commander" South of Customs was Riva Lowe's protégé, the Titanium Lady's personal pet.
"Same here," Reice assured him. "But I was wondering how come you folks asked the Scavenger and that aftermarketeer out here, after what happened at the Spacedock...."
There was a silence on the other end of the line. Reice hadn't asked a direct question and South, a military type, wasn't going to volunteer an opinion.
Reice kept quiet, too. The verbal game of chicken on the comlink made the silence on the line deafening.
Finally South broke and spoke, very slowly, with long pauses between his carefully chosen words: "We're hoping to . . . control . . . this . . . situation, that's all. It wasn't my idea. And Keebler was bound to get as close as he could. So they told him where to report."
"They?" On whose damned authority, anyhow?
"The SecGen's office isn't leaving anything to chance," said South, as if reading Reice's mind.
"Which is what you're doing there, I expect," said Reice, pushing for information way beyond what he had any right to demand.
South knew what Reice was doing, and why, and his discomfort was clear as the Relic pilot said, "Look, thanks for your concern. I really think we can handle whatever comes up. If we can't, it's good to know you're out there keeping tabs on things. South, out."
South, out:, an ancient convention; a habit from the misty past. The comlink went dead, and took with it every iota of good feeling that Reice had been able to squeeze out of his determination to murder the Scavenger.
The Relic was telling Reice that things weren't any better than Reice had thought. Maybe things were worse, if South was telling Reice that South was glad to have him around.
A cold spot began forming in Reice's stomach, eating it up and reaching outward to engulf his chest and groin, sending icy tendrils through his arms, his legs, his face. South was scared.
He knew the Relic too well not to have gotten the message.
And now, shorn of busywork and sitting alone in a ship, shut away from all outside stim
uli, Reice was scared, too.
For the first time the utter and complete enormity of being visited by a possibly superior race swept over him.
He felt as if he were drowning, asphyxiating.
Reice croaked an override and all of his monitors came to life in response to the verbalized command. There were the stars, twinkling comfortingly. There was all the might of ConSec and ConSpaceCom, ranged around the visitors.
But there too, in his monitors, was the Ball, silent and smug and gleaming from the midst of the scaffolding that anxious, curious men had built around it.
Around the Ball were the three alien, teardropshaped ships.
And then there were two teardropshaped ships.
UFO-1 disappeared.
Blinked out of existence.
And all hell broke loose on the coms.
Reice leaned so far over his console he seemed to be hugging it. He was talking as fast as he could on four channels in close succession, screaming, "Hold your fire!" and "Signature scans!" and "Clear this channel, damn you!" and whatever else needed to be said to restore order and clear the com jam.
Reice had to keep anybody from shooting or jumping to conclusions while he tried with all his might to get through to Vince Remson on the George Washington, to find out what Remson wanted to do now.
Somebody had better tell him, and the people under him, what to do. And fast.
Otherwise, somebody was going to do something—just because something clearly had to be done.
"Remson, where the hell are you?" Reice muttered to himself, still crouched over his console, when all attempts to raise the SecGen's XO had failed.
On his monitors, proof was there in infrared, in electro-optical, and in ultraviolet that UFO-1 was gone.
Two of the teardrops still remained.
Two targets.
What the fuck?
Reice started handing off targeting data and apportioning tactical fire positions to his ConSec ships.
For all Reice knew, Remson wasn't in any shape to give orders. Maybe Remson had been abducted too, right out of the Washington, from under their very noses.