A Grey Moon Over China

by Day, Thomas, A.

  As they talked I watched the passing mud flats stretching out into the shallows. They were like the backs of brown, sleeping animals in the water. The surface was a burnished silver. The sky glared white with high clouds, and now and then wild-looking swirls of grey scudded across it, while hot gusts of wind whipped across the water and rocked the fishing boats lying on the mud. Where the sky touched the horizon the clouds were grey, with sheets of heat lightning rippling through them. It seemed to add to the heat.

  Like all of the colonies, Lowhead was poor. Over the years it had become even poorer, and hopes of keeping succeeding generations from sliding into poverty and ignorance had dwindled.

  With the shrinking economic base, ongoing attempts to find technological solutions had come to consume a greater and greater portion of diminishing resources, in the end robbing the very poorest of the last of their surplus goods, condemning their children to the very same full-time work in the boats that they’d sought to avoid.

  Long before any of us had even considered migration from Earth, colonization planners had run calculations on the minimum gene pool and industrial base needed to sustain a colony. A sufficient gene pool was needed to ensure hereditary divergence instead of convergence, and a sufficiently broad base to the industrial hierarchy was needed to support, down through subsequent levels of manufacturing, the most complex product the colony needed to be self-sustaining.

  But on that second count the planners had been wrong. Staggering numbers of products and skills used to fuel Earth’s industry had been taken for granted, and had come to light only when the colonists had found themselves without them. Each product or skill thus lost left some link missing in the industrial infrastructure, a problem compounded when individual workers were forced into subsistence activity as a consequence, thus falling out through the bottom of the industrial hierarchy altogether.

  None of this had meant that productive and dignified life in the colonies wasn’t possible. It simply meant that the dream of a post-industrial, technologically sustained civilization had faded even before the advent of the alien ships. An agrarian life with adequate cultivation of livestock, fish, and grains was possible, but it wouldn’t be for many generations, if ever, that the colonies would be producing gene therapy equipment or even penicillin, or weather computers or asteroid mining ships. And what little was left of those commodities now was falling into fewer and greedier hands.

  Along the shoreline lay rusted bits of space vessels turned to use as rude shacks, and, now and then, big oxygen scrubbers propped up on logs, being used for nothing more than to blow air across the fish-drying racks. On the other side of the road lay cultivated fields, occasionally with spaceship docking winches staked to the edges of the plots, dragging plows across them on cables while the farmers followed with sacks of seed, bobbing on the backs of burros. Stands of tough Eucalyptus dotted the fields, with low, spiky rows of specially-tailored Loblolly Pine between them. Gusts of hot wind whipped up top soil. The sky pressed lower.

  “The wolf-like creatures weren’t the only kind of animal involved in the attack,” Dorczak was saying. “There were reports of some kind of bird, although no one got a very good look at them. Same charcoal-grey color, silent, no weapons. Maybe just watchers. Colonel Becker says there was something really big, too, in the background outside the hangar, although it never came in among the attackers.”

  “Didn’t your people do them any damage at all?” said Penderson. “You must have some pretty good troops out on that base.”

  Allerton leaned forward and poked a finger at him. “Abso-damned-lutely We took those mindless little bastards one-for-one, I tell you, and I’ll have the hide of anyone who tells you different.”

  “We lost, Bart,” said Dorczak. She shifted in her seat as the car left the shoreline and bounced onto the rutted road leading inland. “Harry, it’s true that these things were pretty easy to put out of commission, but when they were hit with any kind of cutting weapon they just absorbed all the heat, then overheated and collapsed. Impact weapons worked, too, but again they didn’t break the skin—the animals just went skidding around and smashed into things. The labs are still going through the blood, but so far it’s all human. The alien carcasses are gone—these are pretty tidy animals. And Bart, it’d probably be a real good idea if you didn’t confuse headless and mindless just yet.”

  “Carolyn,” I said, “if they’re so tidy, how come they left this one behind?”

  “No one knows. It did get trapped behind some debris in one of the storage rooms. And it must have lost its weapon, because we couldn’t find it, so it couldn’t cut its way out. But if the others could find every last dead animal, you’d think they could have found a live one. Maybe it’s something about the spot it’s trapped in, I don’t know. Is that why you insisted we leave it where it is, Ed?”

  “You were going to move it?” said Penderson. “Why?”

  “Well, Bart here wanted it off the base so bad his eyes were bulging pink”—Allerton shot her a look—“but then Ed got pretty nasty with him about it.”

  “What kind of weapon?” I asked.

  “Cutting tool. Looks like a lumpy barbell, apparently. Black. Not very impressive-looking, by all accounts. They just hold them in their hands and poke around with them.”

  “Hands?” I said. “You mean forepaws?”

  “No, hands. Four paws, two hands. The arms are attached near the bulge on their backs. No head.”

  Paws and hands? For a moment I was stunned; there was something very wrong with this description. “That’s impossible,” I said finally. “You didn’t tell me about the hands.”

  “Well, yes I did, Ed. Maybe you’re still picturing something else. I know someone said it looks like a wolf.”

  “No, that’s not it.” I turned to the window and watched as the car followed the rising plains, a sea of gravely sand and spiky shrubs stretching to the horizon. The wind gusted across the surface in dusty swirls and buffeted the car, while overhead wild streaks of grey gathered over the glare. The air in the car grew oppressive.

  “Are all your troops accounted for, Carolyn? Do we know the attackers didn’t take prisoners?”

  “We’re sure they didn’t. In fact, it seems they couldn’t have cared less about humans.”

  I looked at Penderson and back at Dorczak. “I don’t understand. Why else were they here?”

  “I’ll let Becker answer that.” She folded her arms and turned to look out her own window, frowning into the glass. She would say no more. Penderson and I glanced at each other, then suddenly something hard struck the window next to me.

  A horse had reared up and was struggling out of the car’s path. With a crash of hooves it scrambled up the lip of the road, twisting and rearing up again as the rider turned to look at us. Dotting the landscape behind her were other horses and riders among the cattle, kicking up swirls of dust as they turned to watch us pass.

  We were finally approaching the low silhouette of the base perimeter where it hugged the higher ground. A scattering of vehicles patrolled the scrub land around it, adding their own trails of dust to the horses’, which the wind whipped into funnels reaching up toward the clouds. Tracing the horizon to the east lay the low line of Allerton’s wall.

  The car crunched to a stop a hundred yards from the gate. The driver remained in his seat with the engine running. Allerton and Dorczak twisted around in their seats to look out the front, where guards from the base were trying to disperse a group of nervous horses and their riders from the middle of the road. When I reached for the door handle Allerton put a hand on my arm.

  “Now, Ed. As long as you’re here I’m responsible for your safety, so you just wait right here in the car. I’m sure we’ll be through in no time.”

  “I appreciate your concern.” I got out and swung the door closed.

  The wet scent of horses hung in the air, mixed with the unmistakable smell of dry soil before a rain. Eddies of dust swirled across the road and
whipped around my feet as I walked forward past the car. The hot, jittery wind tugged at my shirt.

  A confused shuffling of hooves filled the air. From the horses’ nostrils came muted snorting like a whisper all around me, mixing with the dung and the dry smell of rain while the wind backed and shifted. Grey clouds slid by overhead with uneasy speed, rolling and twisting like shadows, while heat lightning flickered in the east, soundless beyond Allerton’s wall.

  Dust caked up inside my boots and sweat trickled down my back. Muffled voices came from the milling riders and the guards reaching for them. A car door creaked behind me.

  Suddenly a spray of foam hit my face amid a crash of hooves and a blast of hot breath, as a tremendous, pale grey horse reared up next to me with a trumpet of protest. His head snapped from side to side and he fought the bit with a wild look in his eyes. He was almost pure white, with only a few flecks of grey near his mouth and mane. The rider’s craggy features and thick beard were silhouetted against the glare of the sky and his face was in shadow, but his deep-set eyes watched me steadily as he forced the beast back off the road.

  Other horses pounded away after him and Penderson’s hand closed around my arm. The horses dispersed from the gate and the guards walked back to their posts, then Penderson dropped his arm.

  “You okay?” he said.

  “What do you suppose all that was about?”

  “Interesting, wasn’t it?”

  The car pulled abreast of us at the gates, where we got in and were joined in the back seat by another man who squeezed in between Pender-son and me.

  “Sammy Becker.” He twisted one way and then the other to shake hands. He was a pudgy man with wiry grey hair, and thick glasses perched low above a bristly mustache. He said nothing more, but sat back and watched out the front while we drove across the complex.

  The base was nearly deserted. A number of buildings and vehicles had burned to the ground, while others sat askew or severed. Hobbled, as Bolton had said. A few air and space vessels stood out on the aprons, being rebuilt in a hurry by ground crews. Allerton was clearly under pressure to get a semblance of defense back into place. Long, razor-thin burn marks scarred the aprons, and a familiar, bitter odor seeped into the car.

  “Power cells?” I said.

  “They got every one of them,” said Becker, still watching out the front.

  “Tell us about the attack, Colonel.”

  “Sure. Why not? Easy. I’m standing with a crew in the crane hangar up there, the big one that’s still standing, trying to figure out how to rebuild induction coils, okay? For the love of God we can’t build the things anymore, with the shortage of—”

  “Cut to the chase, Sam.” Allerton folded his arms across his chest and watched Becker with a steady gaze, brooking no argument.

  “Right, fine. Okay. So whatever. So suddenly we look up and the hangar is full of animals. Four legs, trunk, nothing else. Hands. Not quite waist high. You think that’s strange, or what? Just wandering around. The crew bolts for it, but these things pay no attention. Me, I’m standing there pissing in my shorts, and one of them bumps into me. Just sort of bump, and then it turns aside. Starts burning through the coil we’re working on with this black thing it’s got. I hear screaming, I don’t know from where.

  “Then I see Topsky. She’s on the seat of the tow-motor, terrified. It won’t start, see. A couple of these things just wander past it, then one of them starts cutting through it. The cut goes up through the motor and then up through the wheel and then up through her face, and then the son of a bitch walks across the pieces of her head and wanders off. Some of the guys are coming back into the hangar with incendiary rounds and fléchettes, and maybe they get pieces cut off of them sooner than the others, but maybe not. This goes on an hour, two. I’m standing there saying Kaddish ten thousand times when I look around and they’re gone. The place is filled with smoke and I’m standing in an inch of blood with pieces of my friends floating in it. So tell me, what do you think of that, hm? I ask you, what do you think of that?”

  Dorczak put a hand on his arm, but none of us answered. Penderson looked out the far window, tapping a fingernail against his teeth while Dorczak watched him.

  The car pulled up to a side door of the hangar Becker had referred to. The five of us got out and stood in the gusty wind. Visible in the distance between the buildings, outside the perimeter fence, lay a rise of ground where the riders sat on their mounts and watched.

  Allerton swung up a locking bar on a metal door, then a gust of wind tore it out of his hands. It snapped inward to bang against the wall. Echoes trailed away through the hangar.

  Becker was the last in. Just as I made out a single lighted area on the far side of the hangar, he reached around behind the door and snapped up breakers. Bank after bank of spotlights flared on.

  “This way,” said Allerton. He herded us across the enormous hangar at an angle toward the back wall, past occasional piles of debris and cleaning tools, heading for a section built out into the hangar with temporary walls and drop ceilings. Otherwise the building was empty with the exception of the far wall, which had already been lit when we came in. There, heavy green canvas curtained off the entire wall of the hangar. Figures came and went from an opening in the canvas, dropping something into a box as they left. They were watched by uniformed troops with guns across their chests. Evidently this area had nothing to do with the captured alien.

  “Now this is real engineering, Ed.” Allerton swept his hand around the hangar. “We built this less than five years after landfall, when the first storms started to come up. I was the one who told people we really could do a quarter-mile freestanding arch, if we just believed—where are you going?”

  I was heading toward the area shielded by the canvas.

  “You’ll be wasting your time over there, Ed.”

  “That’s all right. I’m not in a hurry.”

  “No, really, Ed, it’s just logistical stuff. Not worth the time of someone important like you, believe me. It’s off limits, anyway, as a matter of fact, and we really should make a show of following the rules. What do you say? Looks better for the troops, hm?”

  Colonel Becker muffled a rude noise behind us. Allerton had come after me, trying not to look as though he was hurrying, one hand still in his pocket as he gestured with the other.

  I didn’t turn around. “Off limits to whom, specifically, Bart?”

  The guards had seen us coming and now raised their guns.

  “We have agreements with your people,” said Allerton, “with Polaski, Ed, that involve certain courtesies, a mutual respect between equally powerful allies. I’m sure a man like you can understand how critical it is that we observe protocol at a time like this.” He reached out a hand to turn me toward him, his face hard despite his words.

  But I’d already seen the radiation badges in the box.

  “That’s a restricted area, Torres! You don’t have access! Now let it go, or I’ll have to—”

  “You’ll have to what?” I spun around. “You listen to me, Allerton. Right now I have access anywhere in this system I damn well please, so save your ‘equally powerful allies’ crap for your ranchers out there. You survive here by my good graces, you pompous bastard, and I intend to have a good look at whatever stupidity you’re hiding in there because I’m willing to bet your ass it has something to do with why you were attacked. And you’d better think twice before you let your grunts unload those bear guns at us, because that would leave only one level head standing between you and the aliens and that’s the woman behind you who runs your colony when you’re not looking. And I don’t think that’s something you could stomach, is it, Allerton? Now until I’m back you don’t even move, is that clear?”

  “Now, listen, Ed—”

  “Is that clear?”

  He clamped his jaw shut and glared at me.

  I pushed aside the gun barrels and elbowed my way through the canvas flap—then for a long, uneasy minute I thought I
’d made a bad mistake.

  The bay was filled with nothing more than debris and equipment cradles, all of it having been pushed off the main floor into hasty piles against the wall.

  But then I realized that the cradles were all of a telltale size—the size of a vessel that was just a little too small for a crew, to be specific, and much too small to be a mining or cargo robot.

  The people in the bay were near the far end, working around the shattered remains of a row of RAICs—remote arm isolation chambers, otherwise known as beefed-up glove boxes. What the boxes had been used for almost didn’t matter anymore—explosives, enhanced radiation, biologicals . . . something.

  Dorczak was beside me then, standing with her hands in her pockets and surveying the scene, her lips pursed.

  “No shit,” she said. She was looking at the RAICs, too.

  But there was something else she hadn’t seen. Against the back wall, sandwiched in behind rows of cabinets, lay a number of immensely long, translucent tubes. Nearly eight feet in diameter, laced with complicated ribbing.

  They were power masers. Like lasers, but used to project intense, coherent microwave radiation over long distances.

  Ordinary masers were used in communications, but power masers were intended for transmitting electrical power over a great distance, either from the surface out to distant robot ships, or from orbiting collectors down to the surface.

  Or from space, aimed at domes on the black planet. Signs of lattice dissolution in the glass, the lab had said, from focused microwave radiation.

  Allerton.

  “I’ve seen enough,” I said.

  Why Allerton had done it was unimportant. Probably to cripple us at a time when the blame would inevitably fall to the aliens. He would never risk Polaski’s wrath or mine with an outright attack.

  Allerton was waiting where I’d left him, rocking up and down on his toes with his arms across his chest.