Strangers from the Sky
Page 15
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.""
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"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.
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"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
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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
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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,