Of course, the doctors told her that he had not
suffered, that it had been a quick and painless death. That
made it no easier for her to accept, but she thought it
seemed to allow the doctors to sleep better at night.
Or am I just angry? Carolyn-Lane Leefield nodded
numbly as the words filed into her mind, and forced a polite
smile before the surgeon drifted away into Project
Skyscraper's temporary hospital module. One of her crew had
been killed, and she didn't know why or by whom. She would
have been prepared for Leonard's death-- though she would
have been no happier, at least it would have made some
sense. Harry had done nothing except get too close to
someone's booby trap. He had done nothing wrong, nothing
offensive, nothing hostile, and still he had died.
Her hands shook as she made her way back down the main
corridor of the half-completed station, missing every other
handhold. A storm of emotions tossed unanswerable questions
around inside her head. Len, tell me you're coming home,
please, you can't go, not so soon...
The fear she felt was worse than any grieving would
have been, since she could never come to terms with the
intangible. Carolyn had a way of dwelling on things she
could not control and wondering how she might deal with some
imagined tragedy or another, usually involving somebody's
death. Her work had occupied her mind for the past few
weeks, but now the old habit was returning, and she could
see Leonard's face much too clearly.
Death had never made sense to her. She had lost a
parent and a sibling to outer space, and venturing into the
Torus had been her way of confronting the anger and fear
brewing within her. Both deaths had been accidents, without
moral foundation, and she had struggled to understand why
her father had been taken from her, and why her brother had
later joined him. Her world had made sense before that; she
had been taught right and wrong, and she was twelve when her
father died, too young to know how cruel life can be. But
she learned that soon enough.
David-Gann Leefield had been killed by a construction
robot which had malfunctioned and caused a space station
scaffold to collapse, crushing fifteen people. Howard,
Carolyn's brother, had been a passenger on the only Ad Astra
cruiser ever to crash into an asteroid, due to an
intoxicated pilot. She had joined Ariane Odyssey as an
Earthbound consultant, quickly moving up the ranks to
manager, and when Project Skyscraper was made a reality, she
had become too attached to let others take it out of her
hands. So she talked to the company psychiatrists, went
through months of training and simulations, and endured her
mother's endless wailing.
It had taken only a week for her to realize that the
stars were in her blood, and she would never be happy living
on a planet again. She had nearly been overcome with nausea
on her first day in zero-gravity, aboard Ariane's slow boat
to Luna, but she endured and adapted, clinging madly to
memories of her father and brother. About halfway through
the trip, she realized that she had come into space as an
act of defiance, to show that she could survive here, that
she was not trapped in the cradle of her birth. Where there
was no reason, she had supplied her own.
She had vowed to never again let death cloud her
vision. How could she have forgotten that? Her pale
reflection scolded her from the faceplate on her pressure
suit helmet. Life-- and outer space-- had been hard on her,
cold and unfeeling and chaotic, but it would not break her.
When she stepped out of the airlock, the familiar, chiseled
face had returned, and her eyes only once wandered upward in
the direction of Saturn.
Jack Harlanni and Moran Gupta were waiting for her at
Quad Alfa Zero Two Nine, their faces matching their dour,
sluggish movements. The two men had removed all the panels
covering the mass of circuitry and wiring that formed the
quad, one of the corners of the unfinished station's frame,
revealing dozens of interconnected equipment modules. A
blackened smudge covered most of one panel, dangling to one
side and attached to the quad by a thin cable. Leefield
stopped its spiraling and examined the blast residue.
"Fusion bomb," Gupta reported. "Very small. Easily
concealed in the radio module."
"Everything else looks fine, chief," added Harlanni.
"Good. Check it again." She pushed the panel aside and
pulled herself in.
"We'd have to take all of Alfa Zero Two off line for
anything more thorough."
"Do it."
"Yessir." Harlanni switched his suit radio to the
control band and gave the order.
Gupta maneuvered himself to the other side of the quad,
using the surrounding framework as a handhold. "Why would
anyone want to do this?"
"What, bug our radios?" Harlanni reached his arm deep
into the quad, searching for the power switch. "I can think
of a dozen flatfoot agencies who wouldn't think twice about
it."
Leefield looked up from her perusal of the quad. Bug
the radios? Who said anything about eavesdropping devices?
And who said anything about Earth?
"I was talking about the explosive," said Gupta
cautiously, studying the other man.
The power supply cut out, and Harlanni pulled himself
back up, eyes flashing. "What the hell do they care about
us?"
His gaze wandered, meeting Leefield's, and she found
herself looking deeply, searching in vain for the source of
his hatred. She couldn't order him to stop thinking
conspiracy, and even if she could, there would always be
more like him, whispering and pointing fingers. Not knowing
what else to do, she made a mental note to mention it to one
of the administrators. Suspicions were a destabilizing
influence, and rumors could flare into violence.
"Let's take it apart," she ordered, extending her arm
between the two men.
Light.
Too much light. Too bright. Sun? Sun-- hot. No heat.
Breathing. No suit. Not in space.
Open eyes...
Ai! Much too bright.
Where...?
Gravity. How much? Move arm... oh, jick, don't move
arm.
Damn. That hurt. Legs? Move legs... can't...
What was I thinking?
Right. Gravity. Feels light... Asteroid? Which
one? Big, has to be...
We were at Saturn...
The ship... the-- alien-- Target One...
The blast...
God, Nina...
This isn't-- what happened? We must have been
rescued... Somebody...
I'm alive. Must be a hospital. Sounds! Listen for
sounds.
Drat, must be Recovery. Quiet as a jicking tomb.
Tomb. Yeah, hilariously ironic.
Talk-- maybe somebody'll hear--
Dammit, why do they wait until after you wake up to
give you water?
Maybe I should try the arm again...
Jick jick jick.
Tired.
Len, you'd better be alive...
"I'll be fine."
Jacob Quinn frowned, in an almost fatherly way, and his
eyes dropped back down to the sling which held up Leonard
McBride's broken left arm. The older man was, in some way,
thankful for the distraction: Leonard had just charmed his
way out of Recovery, and wanted to join the conference now
forming among the surviving, ambulatory members of the chase
group. Since they had landed at Japetus, Tony Galza had
spoken little with his voice but volumes with his glares,
and Tabowitz and Price had been excitedly discussing the
aliens' tactics. Golino had suffered a mild concussion and
was being forced to stay in bed. UNSF was debriefing the
Marines in another section of the military base.
"You need rest, Len." Stay out of this, Jacob tried to
say with his face.
"So do we all. Why should I get special treatment?"
You need me on your side, Leonard managed to convey through
a thick grin.
Jacob sighed. "Try not to bleed on anyone."
He led the way down a well-lit corridor to a small
lounge, apparently not often used by the hospital. Leonard
imagined it was probably a staging area for security forces
during visits by government officials or other Distinguished
Guests. Anthony Galza sat next to a comm station sunken
into one wall. Price and Tabowitz were gesturing at a map
displayed on the facing wall, which Leonard quickly
identified as a schematic of the encounter with Target One.
The rest of the room was hospital white, and even the pale
plastic furniture seemed empty.
The three men turned to look as Quinn and McBride
entered. "Leonard's been allowed to join us," Jacob
announced. Price nodded, Tabowitz pulled up another chair,
and Galza turned his glare on a new victim. McBride feigned
ignorance briefly, then beamed an impish grin in response.
"How is your arm?" asked Tabowitz.
"I've had worse," Leonard replied slowly.
"We've been discussing the incident," Price said,
either unaware of or already numbed to Galza's seething
hostility. "From a tactical view. Andrei thinks that Target
One was a pulled punch."
"Say again?"
"It's an old expression; comes from boxing," explained
Price uselessly. None of the other men in the room had
written a doctoral thesis on The Organized Societal
Sublimation of Instinctual Aggression in Great Britain, A.D.
1882-1914. "Boxing. A twentieth-century sport. Two guys
with gloves, in a ring-- forget it.
"Pulling a punch means you don't put the full possible
force into the blow. You pull your fist back before it
connects, so the impact isn't as hard."
Leonard concluded, "They could have done more damage."
Tabowitz nodded vigorously. "Yes. They could have
incinerated the entire chase group if they had wanted to.
Simply fill the shuttle with deuterium, disconnect all the
safety features on the fusion drive, and ignite the engine."
"They could have done it. So why didn't they?"
Leonard sighed thoughtfully. "Either we surprised them,
or they didn't really want to kill us all, or they didn't
know how to do it."
"The last option is out. They know how to pilot the
shuttles. They must know how the technology works," stated
Tabowitz.
"And I don't buy the surprise theory." Price leaned
forward. "They must have known we'd be coming after them.
They wouldn't have been that stupid."
"The thing is," Jacob interjected, "we're still talking
about them like they were human. They're not. `Stupid' is
only applicable in a human context, as a comparison of
humans to other humans."
Price raised an eyebrow and looked at McBride.
Tabowitz rubbed his chin.
Quinn rolled his eyes and continued. "We ought to be
thinking about more basic things. Why they were here at
all, what they were trying to accomplish."
"How about where they went?" came Galza's gravelly
voice. "That's pretty basic."
The other four men turned around slowly. Jacob said,
"I've got every telescope available looking for them. No
word yet."
Eerily misplaced laughter emerged from the Ariane CEO,
and he stood up with a jolt, swaying slightly and favoring
his left leg. "Jesus, Jac, practice what you preach.
They're not human. Let's stop talking about human behavior,
human technology, human psychology."
"Alright. Talk." Quinn's look was both challenging and
encouraging, in that peculiar way which no one else could
imitate. Leonard remembered it well from the long nights at
Project Theory.
Galza began pacing, with a noticeable limp. "We're not
going to find them. Did you take a good look at that ship?
No thrust ports, no exhaust vents. It couldn't have been
using a simple rocket drive. But why not?" His cobalt blue
eyes, their gleam bordering on madness, turned to pin his
seated audience. "You're not going to find a more efficient
drive system than plain old action-reaction, pumping hot gas
out of a long aiming tube. At least, not in normal space."
Leonard frowned. "You think it was an interstellar
vehicle?"
A fist connected with the wall, bouncing off to become
a finger pointing at McBride. "I know it was an interstellar
vehicle! That ship is gone, into hyperspace or subspace or
whatever, maybe even home already. I don't know where
exactly, but it is gone, and so are the other two shuttles.
We should be sweeping that area with radiation and particle
scanners, though it probably won't make any difference
because we don't know what the hell we're looking for."
Tabowitz cleared his throat. "Respectfully, why-- how
do you know this?"
Galza nodded and reached into a pocket, producing a
small data disc. He shuffled over to the wall screen, each
step causing his right leg to scream with pain, and pushed
the disc into a receiving slot. A few more presses on the
wall, and the navigational schematic disappeared, replaced
by a digital reproduction of a photograph taken less than
two hours earlier.
"You're kidding," Leonard blurted after recovering his
voice.
"No." Galza actually smiled, albeit crookedly and a bit
too broadly. "Io Station found it on the same trail where
Gramble and Millen were floating. A hunch, you might say.
We recovered it six hours ago, and it's at Star Ithaca right
now, still frozen. I'd like to order an autopsy, but I
thought I'd ask you Project Theory types first. You did
write the proverbial book on first contact, didn't you?"
There was still a hint of scorn in the last question.
Jacob Quinn chose to ignore it and concentrate on the image
before him: A bipedal organism-- just under two meters
long, according to the measuring stick next to it-- sporting
a large green head studded with dark brown spots and two
bulging, reptilian eyes, shocked into opening at the moment
of death and now glazed with ice. The alien was encased in
a wrinkled orange spacesuit, not unlike standard UNSF suits
except for the three-fingered gloves, unnaturally long and
double-jointed legs, and unfamiliar lettering down the left
side of the torso. There were no other markings on the
suit.
Jacob squinted at the sight, trying to remember what it
reminded him of. Then it came to him-- the alien looked
like a giant toad. An anthropomorphized amphibian. He
found himself imagining the parallel evolution on the
alien's home planet, possibly with even less land than
Earth, species living in an environment totally dominated by
water. But land would offer the best opportunities for
toolmaking and other construction, for building a
civilization which would eventually develop space travel.
Amphibious life forms would have the advantage, being able
to move between their watery cradles and their futures on
dry ground. That much, at least, made sense; but what that
civilization was, and how it had grown, remained a mystery.
The creature was half again as wide as an average
human; it measured nearly a meter and a third at the
shoulders, which also doubled as the neck, or lack thereof.
Its head seemed to flow directly into its barrel-shaped
torso, almost exactly like a frog's, but the arms were more
articulated, better muscled and apparently able to bend
around the entire torso forwards and backwards. The left
glove had been removed, revealing two unwebbed fingers and
one opposable thumb, the latter marking it as superior to
all other, thumbless, unremembering, uncivilized animals.
The legs were thick, all the way down to the large, flat
feet, and there was the hint of a tail extending from its
backside. All the signs of a long and hard-fought
evolution.
Silence fell over the group for a while. Only Leonard
McBride had even a vague concept of the chaos which would
ensue when the information left the room.
"This is our enemy," Tabowitz said quietly.
"Well, I don't know about that," Leonard remarked.
"`Enemy' is such a human concept."
Galza laughed as Quinn gave McBride a dirty look.
"Do you think he's jumping to conclusions?" asked
Jacob.
"Off a cliff," replied Leonard, his eyes fixed on Kyle
Jemison's sleeping form. The nurses had found him awake an
hour ago, tried to convince him to stay in bed, and finally
sedated him again. McBride was still trying to decide how
he would tell Kyle the bad news.
"Interstellar vehicle... but that was an alien life
form," Jacob muttered, mostly to himself. "Tony couldn't
have faked that. Why would he want to?"
"True enough. So what now?"
"We tell Gandalf, first of all." Quinn stood up and
walked over to his briefcase, which was resting on a table
by the window.
"Shouldn't he be dead by now?" Gandalf had been the
United Nations Intelligence Agency supervisor for Project
Theory, and McBride remembered him as being around eighty
years old when the Project first started.
"Gandalf isn't a person; it's a position." Jacob
retrieved his portable telecom unit and brought it back to
Jemison's bedside. "He was eighty-seven during the Project,
and he's fifty-two now. He'll probably be thirty in a few
years."
"Are we going to tell anyone else?"
Quinn looked up from the telecom handset, brow
furrowed. "Eventually."
Leonard nodded. "UNIA won't like that."
Jacob stopped tapping at the keypad. "Yes, and they'll
try to issue another directive to prevent it. We'll defeat
it. Now don't give me that look, Leonard; we're doing this
by the book. It's too important."
"Yes! Which is exactly why we can't keep it a secret."
"Alright." Jacob sat up and sighed. "Suppose we go to
CNN and give them the whole story. Project Theory, the
clones, the incident at Saturn, Tony's photos, all of it.
There are still people who believe in flying saucers and
pyramids on the Moon, and this whole thing will get out of
hand. They are going to start talking again, about Roswell
and Area 51 and all the other nonsense--"
"And if we suppress this, or allow it to be suppressed,
we are doing exactly what those people are so paranoid
about." Leonard leaned forward across the bed. "It's the
truth, and everyone deserves to know it."
"The public is not prepared to deal with this sort of
thing."
"And we're all children again. Listen to yourself,
Jac! This is exactly the sort of elitist attitude that we
moved to the Torus to avoid. We're all equals out here;
that's the point of being here."
"You are arguing principles. I am arguing a
situation."
"You're evading the issue."
"Sensitive information needs to be controlled or there
are problems."
"And important information needs to be made public. We
don't know where those aliens have gone; they could be
hiding behind Saturn again for all we know. They could be
at Earth or Venus or on the far side of the Sun. Everybody
in this Solar System deserves to know the truth."
Jacob made a fist with his left hand. "People could die
otherwise, right?"
Leonard waited until Quinn looked back up. "There's too
much at stake. Gandalf said the Top Secret rating was only
for the sake of expediency. Did he lie to us?"
"Is the sky black?" Jacob sighed, and there was defeat
in the sound.
"I will make this whole thing public, with or without
your support. Those files can be all over the Torus before
UNIA blinks. But I'd rather not have to fight you, Jac."
The two men stared at each other for a long moment,
breaking apart when Kyle shifted slightly. Leonard watched
as Jacob reached over to turn off the light above the bed.
"Sh'ang G'ang." Quinn shook his head, smiling and
thinking of a dead relative. "Call New Montana. Write it up
and prepare to send it out to every news service who'll
carry it."
"That would be all of them, I think," quipped Leonard,
grinning and heading for the door. "Give Gandalf my
regards."
Jacob grumbled as he punched his long-distance and
encryption codes into the telecom.
Copyright © 1996 Curtis C. Chen. All Rights Reserved.