by Hogan, James
lights, voices, and special effects, and disembark a specially rehearsed
celestial troupe consisting of Lord Nelson and a supporting act of Druids. The
result would be instant conversions of Paduans by the drove, Zambendorf had
predicted confidently; Henry would be deposed; Genoa would be saved; the
Taloids' future would be assured; and the war against unscrupulous Terran
business tycoons and politicians would be won. It was one of Zambendorf's
strengths as a leader—and a source of some of the biggest problems that came
from working with him—that he always made everything sound too easy.
The most recent developments, however, were causing Abaquaan misgivings. First,
twenty-four hours or so before, Massey had called from the Orion to advise that
Caspar Lang would probably use a ruse to warn Zambendorf off from any intention
he might have of reproducing his desert spectacular over Padua city.
Sure enough Lang had come through a couple of hours later and issued a solemnly
worded warning containing all the points that Massey had predicted. Zambendorf
had put on an impressive act of trying desperately but not quite successfully to
hide his dismay as he listened, and mumbled about needing time to rethink the
whole situation. Then, roaring with laughter after Lang was off the line, he had
told the team jubilantly, "This has to mean we're over the last hurdle! Thanks
to Massey we've bluffed the bluffers with their own bluff. Lang and the rest of
them will just be sitting up there in the Orion, waiting for us to call back
while we're going in over the city. They won't expect a thing!"
Zambendorf's enthusiasm had infected the lander's NASO crew, who were gradually
being won over by a combination of his magnetism and his explanations about the
Orion mission and its real purpose. The team had effectively acquired another
four members and was all set to launch the final phase of the operation that
would make its task complete. The situation could hardly have been more
favorable. In fact it was too favorable. Everything was going too well, Abaquaan
felt. Buried somewhere deep down in the whole intricate pattern was something
that didn't quite fit—something still too subtle for him to raise to the level
of conscious awareness, but his instincts had detected it. Twenty years earlier
Abaquaan had learned the dangers ofoverconfidence; a premonition kept telling
him that at long last Zambendorf's turn had arrived to learn the same lesson.
An annunciator on the instrument panel bleeped suddenly, and a symbol on a
display screen began to flash on and off. In the seat next to him, Clarissa
glanced down, flipped a switch to reset the audio warning, punched commands into
the pilot's touchpanel, and took in the data that appeared on another display.
"We've just triggered the outer approach marker," she murmured as she throttled
back on power and banked the flyer round to line up for landing. "Open up a
channel to ground, and let's have a profile check."
Abaquaan selected an infrared view of the terrain ahead and used another screen
to conjure up images of a series of flight instruments. "Steepen to
one-eight-zero, rate five-four, reduce speed to four-twenty, and come round onto
two-five-nine," he instructed. "Autoland lock-on programed at ten seconds into
phase three of glidepath."
"Descent monitor and systems?" Clarissa queried.
"Green one, green two, and ah ... all positive function."
The flyer came round an invisible mountaintop and straightened out onto its
final approach and descent into the narrow, sheer-sided valley where the surface
lander was hidden. The valley floor was a sprawling mess of alien industrial
constructions, tangled machinery, and derelict plants, and would blur any radar
echos to overflying reconnaissance satellites sufficiently to conceal the
outline of the lander, which as an extra precaution had been copiously draped
with aluminum foil and metalized plastic. The site was showing no lights, and
electronic transmissions were being restricted to low-power local communications
and ground beams aimed at satlink relays. Abaquaan pressed a button and spoke
into the microphone projecting from his headset. "Hornet to Big Bird. Do you
read? Over."
The voice of Hank Frazer, the lander's Communications Officer, replied a few
seconds later: "Reading you okay, Hornet. The landing area is clear here. How'd
it all go?"
"Hi, Hank. Mission accomplished," Abaquaan replied. "Moses is on his way. No
hitches. How have things been back there?"
The flyer slowed to hover in the darkness, and Clarissa quickly scanned graphics
displays presented by the flight computers. Moments later the vehicle began
sinking vertically. "I think we may have problems," Frazer's voice answered.
"Dave Crookes called down from the ship. It seems like he overheard a couple of
army officers up there talking about infantry missiles being issued to the
Paduans specifically for use against the lander if Zambendorf tried any more
tricks with it. Crookes didn't know what to make of the conversation, but it
sounded serious and he figured we ought to know. In other words it looks as if
Henry may really have those weapons after all."
In the semidarkness of the flyer's cockpit, Clarissa and Abaquaan exchanged
ominous glances. "Have they talked to Massey about it?" Clarissa murmured,
tight-lipped. Outside, the tops of fractionating towers and steel pylons,
indistinct and ghostly in Titan's feeble light, were drifting slowly into view
from below. The flyer's engine note rose as the computers increased thrust to
absorb the last remaining momentum of its descent.
"Has Karl talked to Massey about it?" Abaquaan asked.
"He couldn't locate him, but he's trying again right now," Frazer answered.
"Does Karl still think Lang was bluffing?"
"He doesn't know what to think."
The flyer gave a final lurch on its shock absorbers, and something deep down in
Abaquaan's stomach lurched with it. The engines fell to idling speed, and the
computer displays switched to a series of postflight test routines. "We're
down," Abaquaan said. "We'll be over in a few minutes. Talk to you then. Out."
Clarissa leaned forward to scan the ground ahead of the nose, and a few seconds
later a light appeared from among the shadows. The figure of Joe Fellburg, clad
in an EV suit and carrying a flashlamp, an M37 automatic infantry assault cannon
slung across his shoulder, moved forward and guided the vehicle out of the open
and into its parking area beneath the girder-lattice roof supports of what had
once been a building of some kind. More forms took shape in the gloom behind him
as some of Moses' followers from the Taloid encampment nearby came closer to
watch.
"What do you think?" Abaquaan asked, reaching for his helmet as Clarissa cut the
engine.
"I don't know what to think either," she said as she proceeded quickly through
the systems shutdown sequence. "It doesn't sound too good."
Abaquaan unbuckled his harness, hoisted himself from his seat, and moved into
the forward cabin to put on his helmet. Clarissa followed, and they exited
through the main lo
ck. Fellburg was waiting for them outside. "Good night?"
"It went fine," Abaquaan said. "Moses is on his way into the city."
"It's a pity we can't bring him back. There might be problems."
"Yeah—you mean about what Dave Crookes heard. Hank told us."
"Drew thinks we'll have to call off the whole operation."
"What about Moses?" Clarissa's voice asked, sounding clipped. Fellburg threw out
a heavily gauntleted hand. "It's tough, but what can you do?"
Just then, something scurried furtively in the shadows below one of the flyer's
wings. Fellburg snapped on the flashlamp, and the beam caught a silvery,
insectlike machine, about the size of a kitchen chair, with an elongated,
tapering head, a body covered by sliding, overlapping plates, and six slender,
segmented legs, in the act of stretching one of its sensory appendages to
investigate the flyer's extended landing pad. A piece of metal hurtled from the
darkness and bounced off the creature's flank, and a moment later two Taloids
rushed forward waving their arms wildly to chase it away; the creature had fled
before Fellburg's gun was even half unslung. As they resumed walking toward the
black silhouette of the lander, Fellburg swung the lamp from side to side to
pick out the bullet-riddled remains of a half dozen or so similar machines.
Another flashlamp shone briefly some distance ahead of them where Clancy Baker
was patrolling on the far side of the lander. "Looks like some of these
overgrown tin bugs are partial to NASO-specification alloy," Fellburg grunted.
"But they're learning pretty quick that getting too close ain't all that
healthy."
Inside the lander, Zambendorf and Drew West were standing in front of one of the
screen consoles on the flight deck, with Andy Schwartz sitting to one side.
Across the aisle, Mike Glautzen sat in the flight engineer's seat, which was
reversed to face them. Hank Frazer and Vernon were watching from in front of the
doorway leading aft into the main cabin. "We managed to get hold of Massey a few
minutes ago," Frazer murmured as Clarissa and Abaquaan arrived from the midships
lock.
"I'm not sure what to believe, Gerry," Zambendorf was saying to the screen. "Do
you think that what Dave Crookes overheard could have been deliberate—a plant
intended to scare us off?"
"Who knows? It's possible," Massey replied.
"But how could Lang have known that Crookes would pass the information on?"
Glautzen queried from behind.
"Easily," Zambendorf said over his shoulder. "He was one of the few among the
scientists who were solidly behind Gerry in protesting the mission's policies.
Also Dave is a communications specialist."
"The other possibility is that it could have been you who was fed wrong
information," Drew West said to Massey. "Perhaps the Paduans have been given
smart missiles. The story that it's a bluff might really be a double bluff aimed
at persuading us to persuade ourselves that there isn't any risk."
"Yes, that's also possible," Massey admitted. He sounded far from happy.
Andy Schwartz shook his head and tossed his hands up helplessly. "I'm confused,"
he protested. "What is all this? The management doesn't want us doing the same
thing at Padua that we did to Henry's army—right? If that's so, they'd want us
to believe what Lang said, wouldn't they—whether the Paduans really possess any
missiles or not. So why would they set Gerry up to tell us Lang was bluffing?
Either way it makes no sense."
Drew West bit his lip for a moment, then said, "Unless they wanted us to get
shot down." The cabin became very still as everyone tried to tell himself West
hadn't meant what they knew he'd meant. After a pause West went on, "It would
get rid of their number-one problem permanently. No Terrans need be directly
involved since the Paduans would have done everything necessary through a
contrived accident . . . And Leaherney's people would have gone on record as
having tried to do the civilized thing and warn us, even after we hijacked their
lander." He shrugged. "So how would it look to an investigating committee
afterward? A bunch of hotheads insisted on flying an illegally acquired vessel
into the home territory of heavily armed aliens of known warlike disposition
despite attempts to warn them, and got themselves killed—a clear verdict of
death by misadventure. All parties in authority get exonerated. Some
recommendations would be filed for tightening up security precautions against
similar seizures in future. And that would be it. Case closed." West turned from
the screen and moved away to stand staring moodily down at the empty captain's
couch.
Hank Frazer was shaking his head and looking appalled. "You're kidding!" he
gasped. "Are you saying they'd deliberately set us up to be shot down? But
they're our own people! . . . All over some lousy robot religion? I don't
believe it. The whole thing's insane."
"This operation might be worth millions to them—billions, probably," West said
without turning his head. "And on top of that it could be curtains for the
Soviets. With stakes like that, who knows what they might do?"
"I have to agree with Drew," Abaquaan told Zambendorf from the cabin doorway. He
knew now what had been bothering him: After Massey's attempt at organizing a
formal protest, Lang wouldn't have confided in him over something like this. The
leak had been planned.
"They wouldn't think twice about it," Clarissa declared flatly. "I've seen 'em
waste more people over peanuts. It just depends on how much somebody decides he
wants the peanuts."
"They're right," Andy Schwartz agreed morosely.
A heavy silence descended once again. Zambendorf brought a hand up to his brow,
emitted a long, weary sigh, and moved a couple of paces toward the door. There
was nothing more that any of the others could add. Zambendorf was going through
the motions of tussling with a difficult decision, but Abaquaan, West, and
Clarissa, who had worked with him for a long time, knew already that there was
no decision for him to make; as bitter as it would be for him to have to concede
defeat —and to cap it all, defeat in the final round after winning every round
that had gone before—he would never ask them to risk their lives for any cause,
and wouldn't for a moment consider risking the crew, even if they were to
volunteer. It had been a good fight, but it was over. All that Zambendorf was
really looking for now was a way to climb down gracefully. The lander's crew
could sense it too, and while they sympathized with his predicament, none of
them was particularly disposed to help make it any easier. After all, being
hijacked to help a worthy cause was one thing; going on suicide missions was
something else. They remained silent and avoided one another's eyes
uncomfortably.
Then Massey turned his head suddenly to look somewhere offscreen. "There's
somebody at the door here," he said. "Just a second while I see who it is." He
leaned away and vanished from sight for a few seconds, then reappeared once more
and announced, "It's Thelma. I've let her in. She said something about having
important new
s."
Zambendorf frowned and moved up to the screen. Drew West came back from the
forward end of the flight deck to stand next to him. In front of them, Massey
moved to one side to make room for Thelma. She looked worried. "Have you sent
Moses into Padua yet?" she asked without preliminaries.
Zambendorf nodded. "Yes—as scheduled. Why? What's happened?"
Thelma groaned. "You can't go through with it. Larry Campbell got me a copy of
the cargo manifest for the latest arms shipment down to Henry. Those missiles
are there, Karl. The list includes twenty-four Banshee Mark Fours, half with
training warheads and the rest of them live. They could blow you out of the sky
from up to eleven kilometers away. There's no chance that going in there could
achieve anything now except get everyone down there killed. You have to call the
whole thing off."
For a long time nobody moved and nobody spoke. Schwartz and Glautzen stared down
at the floor, while on the screen Thelma waited pale-faced and Massey kept his
eyes averted woodenly. At last, Zambendorf gave a single curt nod, turned away,
and stumbled unsteadily forward between the pilots' stations. He sank down
heavily into the captain's seat and sat staring out through the windshield with
unseeing eyes, his frame hunched and his shoulders sagging as if he had just
aged twenty years.
Drew West moved round to bring himself full-face to the image of Massey and
Thelma. "I think Karl sees the way it is," he told them quietly. "Look, you've
done all you can for now. It'd probably be best if you left things with us for a
while. We'll talk to you later, okay?"
Thelma was about to say something more, but Massey checked her with a warning
touch on the shoulder and shook his head. "Okay, Drew," he murmured. "I guess it
was a good try, huh?" The screen went blank.
Abaquaan looked from one to another of the subdued faces around him. "What about
Nelson and the Druids outside?" he asked in a low voice. "They're all ready for
the grand entry into Padua. What do we tell them?"
Nobody had any answers, or seemed to care all that much. At length West said,
"Well, perhaps that's something we ought to talk about." As the others looked at
him, he motioned with his head to indicate the direction of the door. Andy
Schwartz got the message and nodded silently; he got up from his seat, waved a