Strangers from the Sky

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Strangers from the Sky Page 15

by Margaret Wander Bonanno


  Ukrainian in case anyone was listening.

  "Listen, I have a story to tell you. A scoop.

  But you must promise me you'll sit on it

  unti tilde unless something happens to me or

  Yoshi...."

  "Assurances," Jason repeated, pleased that

  Yoshi seemed unthreatened by his presence. "And

  what might those be?"

  Yoshi inhaled sharply, as if he'd been

  rehearsing this in his head for hours; he probably

  had.

  "For starters I need to know what your orders are in

  regard to what Tatya and I recovered yesterday."

  Nyere chuckled softly. He'd never have

  thought the younger man capable of such

  temerity. These aliens 130

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  must be something remarkable indeed to evoke such

  protectiveness.

  "You know I'm not supposed to tell you that."

  "I know." Yoshi grinned for the first time. "But you

  win. Because you're my friend. And

  because otherwise I'll stall you under Right of

  Salvage."

  Nyere shook his head in amazement.

  "You've got this all thought out, haven't

  you? WeHave, I'll tell you: you can count on the first

  only up to a point," he cautioned the younger man.

  "And the second doesn't apply to human was I te

  stopped himself, realized how foolish it

  sounded, didn't know how to make it right. "You know

  what I mean, Yoshi. Whoever they may be, they have

  as many rights as we do."

  "That's exactly what I'm trying to say,

  Jason," Yoshi said emphatically. "I don't

  want to see these people hurt."

  "Neither do 1, son," Jason Nyere tried

  to convince him. "Neither do 1."

  Tatya had scarcely begun her breathless tale

  to her aunt when a shadow presence cast itself over her

  like a physical chill. She jumped, looked up from

  the screen to see T'Lera. The Vulcan had not

  touched her, yet Tatya felt as if the

  temperature in the room had dropped ten

  degrees. She murmured something to her aunt about

  putting her on how, and the screen went to snow.

  "W-what is it?" she asked the alien presence

  in a voice smaller than any she'd known she

  possessed.

  "You have communicated our presence to

  offers."" It was not a question. T'Lera

  did not need to understand the language Tatya spoke

  to understand her purpose. "It would have been preferable

  had you not done so."

  "It's insurance!" Tatya said fiercely, finding

  her voice. "Somebody has to make sure none of

  us disappears or "forgets.""

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  "Is that a likely outcome?" the Vulcan

  wanted to know.

  "You see that ship out there?" Tatya

  demanded. "Did you suppose they came all this

  way just to exchange greetings?"

  "If it is their purpose to remove what they

  consider a threat to your people . . ." T'Lera began.

  "Over my dead body!" Tatya said, not for the first

  time. A sudden burst of interference from the comm screen

  made her pounce on it, but too late. It went

  suddenly dead. No question in her mind who was

  responsible for that.

  She glared at Delphinus. "They've been

  listening in," she seethed. "Arm they've cut me

  off!"

  Melody Sawyer had been so absorbed in

  taking infrared readings on the agrostation

  she'd forgotten all about monitoring

  communications.

  "What're they doing now, Henry?" she called

  to Moy over the intercom. She'd closed the

  spectrography booth off from the rest of the bridge.

  She was alone except for Lieutenant Patel, the

  scanner tech; she could hear her boots on the

  metal decking as she made her morning rounds

  "Just sitting, sir," Moy reported from the

  starboard rail, where he was leaning on his elbows

  to keep the binoculars steady. "Just the captain and

  Yoshi sitting out there shooting the breeze.

  Doesn't seem to be any worry about radiation.

  Wonder why they don't go on inside?"

  "Don't wonder, Moy, just report,"

  Melody snapped. "See anyone else over there?

  Has Tatya turned up at all?"

  "No sir was Moy started to say, but Sawyer had

  begun to curse and cut him off.

  She lunged out of the spectra booth and clear across

  the bridge to the dead comm screen, nearly knocking

  little Patel flying in her haste. She'd shut the

  screen

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  down herself when she hit the sack around 0200 last

  night; God knew how much activity she might have

  missed in those few hours.

  "Sorry, Reeta," Sawyer called over her

  shoulder, homing on Agro IlI's band.

  "Didn't mean to mow you down."

  "No harm, sir," Patel replied, but

  Mebely never heard her. She was mesmerised by the

  conversation between Tat ya Bi lash and a handsome

  Slavic-iooking woman in what sure as hell

  looked like the city room of a mapr news service.

  "What the hell language is that?" Melody

  demanded of no one in particular. Reeta Patei,

  thinking the grit was addressing her, puzzled over it.

  "None I am familiar with, sir. Perhaps

  something Slavic?"

  "Never mind!" Sawyer barked. "I know what

  she's up to. Hellfire, if I cut her off,

  her contact'll get paranoid. If I let her

  spill the whole thing damnation, where's my head?"

  She saw the sender's had of the screen go to holci,

  saw the unidentified newswoman relax at her

  desk, waiting, and seized her chance. She hit the

  intercept, grinning evilly as the entire screen

  blanked. Tatya would probably assume

  it was a malfunction.

  But Tatya was not so easily fooled. She was on

  Melody's frequency within seconds.

  "Get out of the way of the screen!" she'd ordered

  FL-ERA without thinking, then realised to whom she was

  speaking. T'Lera was not one to whom one gave

  orders. "I'm sorry! Move away from the

  screen, pleaser I know what I'm doing."

  Her logic of no use, T'Lera complied.

  "Agro hi to Delphinus: come in, please!"

  Tatya called tightly, fighting to keep the fury

  out of her voice. "Agro 111 calling Dest --

  his

  "Delphinus here." Melody Sawyer's voice

  went from 133

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  molasses to icicles. "Not smart, Bilash.

  Don't do that again."

  Tatya opened her mouth, but Sawyer cut her

  off.

  "Listen up," she said, leaning into the screen for

  emphasis. "Your contact hails back, you tell

  her everything's all right. You speak to her in Standard,

  and you make sure she goes away happy, or

  I'll by God take this fish under that weed and

  on top of you like the one that ate Jonah. Do you

  copy?"

  She didn't expect acknowledgment, flicked off

  at once. Had she waited a second long
er she'd

  have learned all the Ukrainian she'd ever need.

  "You talk to your guests," Jason Nyere told

  Yoshi, neither of them aware of the Sturm and Drang

  raging over the airwaves around them. "Tell them

  I'm under orders to observe them. That I have to have them

  checked out for

  contamination. If they're interstellar, they'll

  understand that. Tell them it's what I have to do."

  Yoshi hunched his shoulders, nodded

  miserably.

  "Jason, I'm scared!"

  "I know you are." The older man squeezed his

  shoulder paternally. You think you're scared! he thought.

  Your part of this is a cakewalk

  compared to what I have to do!

  Captain Nyere lowered himself into his ship's

  skiff and started its small purring motor. He

  looked up at the young agronomist one last time.

  - "Don't fight me, Yoshi. You think I'm

  soft, and you're right. The worst I'd do is

  requisition your supplies and starve you out.

  But my superiors might not be as patient as I

  am. Whoever

  replaces me is bound to be someone who

  prefers more direct action."

  "Captain's on his way back, Commander!"

  Ensign Moy called over the intercom

  to Sawyer, who'd holed up in Spectro again,

  leaving the bridge to a bewildered Lieutenant

  Patel.

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  "As you were, Moy," Sawyer barked, all

  calm, cool, and collected again. "And lose the

  binoculars, will you? I get four body readings

  on the infrared, Captain sub," she announced as

  soon as she heard Nyere's boots on the bridge

  behind her. "And two of 'em are real -- weird!"

  Nyere glanced reluctantly at the monitor.

  "I gave no order for infrared."

  "I know you didn't," Melody snapped back.

  "But you got it anyway. What're you planning to do

  now?"

  "Aside from slapping you in the brig for

  insubordination? Not a damn thing!"

  Jason Nyere had begun to sweat again.

  He wiped the cold trickle from his temple and

  tried to tear his eyes from the infrared screen. They were

  different, Yoshi had said. Different but somehow

  similar. Better, different, indescribable. Within

  the hour, Jason Nyere would find out for himself.

  "Turn that damn thing off, will you?" he growled at

  Melody, as transfixed as she by the alien body

  readings moving about on the

  monitor, but suddenly protect five of their

  privacy. Monitoring the station's

  communications before they'd known what they were looking for

  was one thing, but now "Pack the counters and the scanners

  and go powder your nose. We're going visiting."

  Some instinct nagged at Sawyer to tell him about the

  comm leak to Kiev, but she ignored it. She was

  confident she'd scared Tatya but

  good, and Jason had enough on his mind.

  "Yessuh, Captain sub!" She was on her

  feet at once.

  "Oh, and Melody?" Jason called after her.

  "Leave the pearl-handled Colts at home,

  okay?"

  Melody started to squawk.

  "Don't protest, dammit!" Nyere said.

  "That's the price of admission. The

  hardware stays here or you do. Which is it?"

  Muttering, Melody clattered down the stairs.

  Jason

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  intercepted her a second time, coming out onto the

  stairs so Patel wouldn't hear him.

  How's offduty wardrobe?"

  It was an odd question.

  "Shirts and jeans mostly. Gerunds stuff,"

  Melody replied. "You know the kind of thing I

  wear. Would've packed my crinolines, but didn't

  think I'd be needing them this time out, Captain sub.

  Why?"

  Something about the situation was beginning to tickle

  Jason Nyere, lighten the load that had been

  pressing him between the shoulder blades since this time

  yesterday. The thought of the thousand little ordinary details

  that would have to be gotten through in order to accept these

  aliens on any terms . . .

  "Well, considering that they lost everything when their

  ship sank, and all they have left is the uniforms on

  their backs," he began, as if it were elementary that

  "they" could wear human clothes without extra heads

  or limbs getting in the way. "Yoshi

  says the male's about his height, but I gather the

  female's closer to your size than Tatva's."

  His hands involuntarily formed melon shapes at

  chest level, and Melody burst out laughing.

  Tatya was on the generous side.

  "Sexist swine!" Melody snorted, before the

  impact of what he was saying truly hit her.

  "One of them's a female?"

  Jason nodded as if to say, How about that?

  "Commander of their ship, as a matter of fact.

  Why, Melody, I thought you knew the facts of

  life. If there were no little green women, where do you

  suppose the little green men come

  from?"

  "Petunias." Melody sat on the cold

  metal steps and looked up at him, shaking her

  head. "Was it Sagan who said they'd look like

  petunias?"

  "He only meant they probably couldn't

  crossbreed with us," Jason said after he'd

  figured out what she was babbling about.

  "Come on, Sawyer, don't fold on 136

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  me now. Throw some things together and

  meet me at the boat in fifteen

  minutes."

  "Sure thing," she said vaguely as he passed

  her on the steps. Twenty-four hours ago she

  hadn't believed in little green men. Now she was being

  asked to make up a Goodwill box for them.

  "Petunias!" she said, again,

  incredulous. "The whole tt tilde ing's

  impossible!"

  tilde 5 tilde

  He's impossible! Tran Van Ky thought,

  holding her breath as her commanding officer loomed over

  her comm console.

  "There has been no response to my

  transmission as yet?" Spock asked his

  communications "officer."

  Tran tried to keep her voice from quavering,

  wondered if this was yet another test.

  "Negative, sir," she managed crisply.

  She'd wondered two days ago at Captain

  Spock's sending a coded personal message

  to a private transceiver on Earth at his own

  expense rather than using ship's normal frequency like

  everyone else. Either this was an extremely personal

  message, or it was yet another challenge

  to Tran's abilities, like everything else

  on this voyage.

  There had been one shift where the computer fed her

  several dozen incomings of all

  classifications simultaneously, without bothering

  to inform her it was only a drill. Tran had

  fielded every last one of them in the proper order without

  screwing up or losing her cool and the captain had

  noted her down for a commendation, one of only three

  he'd given to the entire class
all year, but

  Tran swore she'd aged six years in as many

  weeks and wondered if it was worth it. Whatever

  else they might be, training cruises with Captain

  Spock were never dull.

  "Interesting," he was saying now, hovering behind her

  comm station in a way that always made her distinctly

  nervous. "Opinion, Mr. Ky?"

  "I'm not sure, sir," she said, treading

  eggshells. "The

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  turnaround time is less than a day at this distance,

  and even if there was no one at the receiving end, there should

  at least have been a computer answerback. Unless that

  transceiver is no longer operative. That's the

  only answer I can come up with, sir."

  "So noted," Spock said, giving her no

  indication as to whether or not he found that answer

  satisfactory. "You will inform me immediately, on the

  odd chance that there is any response."

  "Aye, sir," Tran said, relaxing at last.

  How simple their lives are at this age,

  Spock mused, watching her, knowing her to be

  preoccupied with nothing more serious than the

  approval of her commanding officer. Some of us have never

  found life so simple, though perhaps we are the stronger

  for it. His thoughts returned to his most immediate concern.

  Ensign Ky's evidence indicated that Jim

  Kirk's private transceiver was presently

  inoperative. Only Starfleet Command or the of

  ricer himself could deactivate a flag officer's

  transceiver. In view of what Spock knew,

  there were several reasons why either might have done

  so.

  His logic had yielded this much: he and Jim

  Kirk were being subjected to a series of

  subconscious impressions, masquerading as

  dream, threatening insanity unless some action were taken.

  Had Kirk, compelled by his very nature, already

  acted, and what had been the outcome?

  Enterprise was less than six days from

  Earth. Would it arrive too late to help?

  When he returned to the realm of light, Kirk

  found himself sitting upright on a narrow ledge against a

  cliff face, squinting into an early morning sun.

  His hands rested loosely on his knees, which were

  drawn up almost to his chest, and his head was tilted

  back against the cliff. He blinked against the light,

  felt a dryness in

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  his throat, wondered where he was. And where was

  Galarrwuy?

  His host sat cross-legged beside him, leaning against

  the same harsh red rock, smiling pleasantly,

 

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