John Maddox Roberts - Spacer: Window of Mind Page 7

  "Why's that?" Kiril asked.

  "Because we're always on the lookout for planets just like this one. In fact, we almost never set up housekeeping on any other kind unless it has something really valuable that we want. Why knock yourself out taming a hostile environment when (here's planets like this where you can move right in without a lot of terraforming and atmosphere suits?"

  "Makes sense," Kiril said. She could just make out the shapes of the two tremendous ships in the far distance. They had left the hold of the TFCS as soon as they had reached this system. It made them feel safer, for no particular reason

  "When does the fun begin?" asked Finn.

  "We're supposed to wait for orders to land," the skipper said. "The navy's tried to establish communication, but so far no answer on any frequency. That's not surprising. Then they send in a scoutship to check for hostility. If it's all clear, the civilian party and higher-up navy people will go down in a shuttle from the Supernova. Eventually, maybe they'll remember us and invite us down."

  "Are the navy ship and the Supernova going to land?" Kiril asked.

  "Neither of those monsters is designed to land," Torwald said. "They'll stay in orbit and try to look impressive."

  "Any signs of alien activity so far?" Michelle asked.

  "None we've detected or been informed of," said the skipper. "Come on, let's go back to the bridge and see what the screens tell us."

  The main screen showed the alien base much as they had seen it before, hazed as if by intervening atmosphere. No magnification gave them any clearer idea of what they were looking at. A brilliant point of light appeared, descending toward a dark, blank area near the buildings.

  "That's the navy probe going in," said Torwald. "We should be getting word before long."

  They heard sooner than expected. Less than eight hours after the navy probe had landed, the Space Angel was notified to stand by for landing.

  They waited in the cargo bay as the ramp lowered. The Space Angel stood on her landing shock absorbers in the shadow of the Supernova's shuttle. Ten ships the size of the Angel could have stood on the shadow. The wide expanse of the alien landing field was deserted except for a party of the human mission gathered around the base of the huge shuttle.

  "Why didn't they just bring us down in that thing?" Torwald said. "If they want to impress these aliens, you'd think they'd want to keep the poor old Angel out of sight."

  "We'll probably find out all too soon," said the skipper. "If Izquierda's behind it, and he most likely is, then we won't like the reason. No sense stalling. Let's go join them."

  They descended the ramp, their eyes nervously scanning about, but there was no movement from the distant structures. They had been ordered to carry no weapons, for fear of provoking an incident with the aliens, if and when they should arrive. It did give them some comfort to have the Vivers along. When they reached the Supernova's shuttle, an officer passed them through the cordon of Spacer Marines that surrounded the party, their beam rifles at port arms.

  "How come these jarheads can carry guns when nobody else can?" Kiril asked.

  "They won't fire except on the admiral's orders," said Torwald. "There isn't a man among 'em who doesn't have ten years of psychdiscipline behind him."

  "Quiet, you two," said the skipper. "I do all the talking until we know where we stand." They went to the knot of people surrounding Nagamitsu. All the navy and line officers were in full dress uniform. Nagamitsu's outfit was identical to that of his fellow officers except for his collar insignia and a long, two-handed Japanese sword thrust edge-upward through his sash. Its handle was braided with black silk tape. He was Hanked by Pierce and Izquierda.

  "Nothing so far, Captain HaLevy," said Nagamitsu. "If there were going to be hostile action, it probably would have happened by now. We'd like your personnel to be here when they make their move. Especially Homer."

  "Homer," said the skipper, "front and center. Admiral, what do you want the rest of us to do . . ." She trailed off as Nagamitsu's face took on a distant look, as if he were listening to some faraway voice. "Alien vessel coming in for a landing," he said.

  "How's he know that?" Kiril asked Nancy in a whisper.

  "Receiver implanted behind his ear," Nancy said absently, her eyes scanning overhead. Kiril looked up, too. The air was suddenly crackling with tension.

  "Damn!" Torwald said. "I thought they'd send out a party from the base. This is inconsiderate, if you ask me."

  "Nobody asked you, Tor," the skipper said. "Now pipe down."

  Now they could see it; a black network of spheres and struts, globular instead of circular like the one in Ng's holos. It was plummeting like a stone. "Something's wrong," muttered Nagamitsu. "She's out of control." They braced themselves for the shock with gritted teeth. The more experienced threw themselves to the ground and covered their heads. Alarm sirens began shrieking from the shuttle.

  Abruptly, twenty meters above the pad, the ship halted. There was no deceleration. One instant the ship was dropping in an uncontrolled fall, the next it was at rest. The ground party began picking themselves up and dusting off their clothes.

  "What's holding it up?" asked someone.

  "Flying carpets, for all I know," said the skipper. "But if they wanted to impress us, they sure accomplished it."

  "Splendid beginning for negotiations," said Izquierda, a faint, sardonic smile on his lips. He had remained standing throughout the incident and his uniform was immaculate.

  "We don't know yet that there's anything to be negotiated," the skipper pointed out. "They may not even be interested in us." Three hundred meters away the fantastic vessel settled to the pad.

  "Something will have to be agreed upon," Izquierda said.. "Our two species have now impinged upon each other's space. This is only the first encounter. There will be many more. Interested or not, they have to establish whether relations between us are to be friendly or hostile."

  "I'm here to offer them a lasting peace," said Nagamitsu. "We'll deal from the best position of strength we can, but we can't risk precipitating conflict. Humanity simply can't afford another war at this time."

  "Amen to that," said Pierce, resplendent in striped trousers, swallowtail coat, and topper.

  "Peace for now, perhaps," Izquierda said. "But if they're an expanding race, as we are, we'll come into conflict sooner or later."

  "No need to borrow trouble, Director," said Pierce. "However, friendly or hostile, we would do well to learn as much of them as we can."

  "I still don't see how that thing hangs together," Torwald said. By unspoken consent, the Space Angel's crew had drawn a few paces away from the brass. "It doesn't look like structural metal. No welds or rivets that I can make out, and everything's so irregular. Maybe it's some kind of plastic or synthetic." He took out a folding viewer from a tunic pocket and scanned the alien ship. After a minute he refolded the viewer and put it back in his pocket. "No good. That masking works even this close."

  "We'll just have to wait until they trust us enough to give us a close look," Ham said.

  "Something's happening," the skipper said. "It's opening up."

  A split had opened in one of the larger spheres, widening toward the bottom. The babble of conversation hushed, and people began to arrange themselves in some kind of order, with Nagamitsu and Pierce to the fore. The marines continued to stand in their protective circle, as they would until ordered to do otherwise or death overtook them.

  The first of the aliens appeared at the top of a tonguelike ramp that extruded from the alien ship to touch the landing pad. Distance was too great to make out detail, but it was erect, two-legged, and approximately human-sized. More moved in behind it as it walked down the ramp. There were at least twenty by the time the ramp pulled back into the ship and the split closed.

  About halfway between ship and shuttle, the aliens walked out of their ship's masking field. It was a startling effect, as if someone fiddling with sighting controls had all at once hit the right co
mbination and the subject suddenly jumped into sharp focus.

  The aliens were not human, but neither were they so different that it was difficult to think of them as a spacegoing species. Their walk was not quite that of humans, although it was difficult to place just where the difference lay. They had knees and elbows in roughly the same places as humans. Their skin was blue, and they had a lot of it showing. Except for boots and close-fitting helmetlike caps, they wore only a harness of straps to support tools and small pouches. Nothing showed externally to determine gender. They had short, vestigial tails which twitched continually.

  Their faces had a basic similarity to the human norm; two eyes, two nostrils, one mouth. The mouth had no lips, and the nose was a perfunctory, slightly raised bar of flesh. The eyes were rectangles with rounded corners, above boldly protruding cheekbones. The eyeballs were slate gray, with horizontal, slit pupils running almost the entire width of the ball.

  Plainly, these creatures could not share the accepted body language of humans, but some things seemed to be the common property of upright, bipedal life forms. These aliens seemed to be cautious and wary, but their every move radiated confidence to the border of arrogance.

  Nagamitsu noted the dangling straps and clips on the harnesses of the approaching aliens. "They've disarmed to meet us."

  "Not all of them," said Izquierda. "The one in the lead had a long, daggerlike weapon in his waist belt."

  "Neither did I," said Nagamitsu, touching the long sword in his sash. "They wear obsolete weapons for ceremonial purposes. That gives us some common grounds." He turned to the sergeant of the guard. "Sergeant, give us an open crescent and present arms."

  "Aye aye, sir!" The sergeant turned to his men and spoke softly into his throat mike. The circle opened as two wings split and the men trotted smoothly into crescent formation with the open side toward the aliens. They snapped to present arms and held the pose effortlessly. The alien in the lead raised a six-fingered hand and made a waving motion, taking in all of the marines.

  "I think he just returned the salute," Torwald said. "This doesn't look so good."

  "At least we have some basis for communication," Michelle said. "I was afraid they'd be so alien it'd take us years just to figure out how to say hello."

  "Yeah," Torwald said, "but everything about these people says military."

  "They are a fighting species," said K'Stin. "The Clan and the Folk must hear of this."

  "Sshh," hissed the skipper. "Let's hear what's going on."

  Pierce stepped forward and strode to within three paces of the alien. He bowed stiffly and said: "I bring greetings from the Confederated Planets, and their wishes for a long, prosperous, peaceful, and mutually beneficial relationship." He smiled and waited. He was an experienced diplomat and was prepared to hold the smile indefinitely.

  The lead alien began to speak. At least, its lips moved. From time to time they would hear a sound, but mostly there was silence. Whatever the alien had to say, it was brief. Its lips stopped moving and the sounds ceased.

  "Homer," said Nagamitsu, "they're all yours." The little crustacean stepped forward and launched into his repertoire of languages. This occupied some time, since Homer knew many hundreds of tongues. As Jhe minutes dragged on, Kiril began to fidget.

  "This is going to take a while, Kiril," said the skipper. She lit up a stogie. "No need for you to stand around here doing nothing. Why don't you wander around? Nobody'd notice you,

  andd you might hear something interesting. Like over there where Izquierda and the admiral and those other high-rankers are

  Right," said Kiril, glad to have something to do. This was something she was experienced at. She had cultivated eavesdropping early in life as a valuable skill. The knot of exalted personages had drawn together a little apart from the rest. Kiril wandered in their direction. As the skipper had predicted, none of them paid her the slightest attention.

  Izquierda was saying, "We have here a clear and present danger to humanity. That vessel"—he pointed to the fantastic alien ship—"is a violation of every known law of physics. Who knows what other powers these aliens control? I counsel that we take the utmost precautions to prevent a sneak attack on ourselves and to safeguard the locations of all human-occupied worlds and installations." Kiril could recognize the sound of a man playing to an audience, and she could see that the words were having the desired effect. The look among the gathered notables was one of agreement. For some reason, Izquierda wanted to be on record as saying these things. Recording instruments were picking up every detail of the historic occasion.

  "It shouldn't be necessary to point out. Director," said Nagamitsu, "that you are not here for the purpose of counsel. I have taken every precaution necessary to protect this expedition. Believe me, they are considerable. As for the protection of human space, that is provided for under old regulations, as you perfectly well know. The records will self-destruct unless approached with proper coding. Even so, I've had the fail-safe systems checked and rechecked."

  "Even on that ship?" said Izquierda, pointing at the Space Angel.

  "Captain HaLevy has surrendered all tapes, chips, charts, and other materials pertaining to the locations of human systems. They'll be destroyed along with the rest, should it become necessary. Why all this concern. Director?"

  "I'm a cautious man," Izquierda answered.

  "That's what your record says," Nagamitsu said, his face expressionless. Izquierda glared at the admiral for a moment, then whirled and stalked off.

  "Hello, there." There was a touch on Kiril's shoulder and she spun on her heel, hands automatically going for her daggers before she remembered that she had been forced to leave them aboard ship. It was Izquierda's nephew, Huerta.

  "I didn't mean to startle you, please forgive me."

  "It's all right," Kiril said, slightly flustered. "You just kind of sneaked up on me."

  "I thought I was making sufficient noise," said Huerta with a faint smile. "Perhaps your attention was otherwise engaged."

  "Uh, yeah, maybe so," she said lamely. "What do you think of them?" She gestured with her chin towards the aliens. She was less interested in his opinion than in changing the subject.

  "I must agree with my uncle. I think the danger they represent far outweighs any cultural or scientific advantage we might gain from them."

  "A lot of people seem to hold otherwise."

  "True. Perhaps they're right. Let's hope so, in any case. Your friend over there doesn't seem to be having much success in communicating with them."

  "He didn't think that he would. Homer told me he's spent most of his life near the center of the galaxy. The chances that a species out this far towards the rim would recognize a language he knows are millions to one, he said. But if they give him any kind of clue, he'll figure theirs out faster than a computer."

  "A valuable creature to have along," said Huerta. He gave Homer a long, calculating look. They watched for a few minutes longer, until Homer's recitation ended.

  "Any luck?" called Nagamitsu.

  "None," Homer replied. "At least, they haven't responded to any speech I know."

  "Between you and our computers, maybe we can figure something out," Nagamitsu said.

  Izquierda had returned, his former anger completely gone or at least smothered. "Did anything in their attitude impress you as belligerent, Homer?" he asked.

  "Nothing."

  "I understand you're a peaceful creature, Homer," Izquierda said "Perhaps you put too pacific an interpretation on things,"

  "Possibly," said Homer. "It is true that in all my life I've found few species as suicidally warlike as you humans while-still being intelligent. Ordinarily, the two qualities do not appear together."

  "Belligerent or not," Nagamitsu said, "I'm betting that they'll play cautious. We're as much an unknown quantity to them as they are to us-. They've seen that we have two different species on this mission. They have no way of knowing that we acquired Homer somewhat by accident. They may
take the Vivers for a third species. For all they know, we represent some sort of muitispecies alliance. Even the most warlike of beings wouldn't precipitate action against a foe of utterly unknown strength and capabilities."

  Pierce joined them. The aliens were now walking back towards their ship. "It looks as if proceedings are over for the day," said the diplomat. "Now we'll put our computers to work on our scant data, and I'll wager that they will be doing exactly the same thing."

  "All personnel," Nagamitsu announced, "prepare to up ship in one hour. We'll return tomorrow. Captain HaLevy, you'll return to orbit as well."

  "Why don't we just stick around, Admiral," Torwald said. "I'll bet Finn and I can entice them into a card game this evening. We've never failed before."

  "Captain HaLevy," Nagamitsu said patiently, "you and your talented crew will kindly up ship in one hour.".

  "Aye aye. Admiral," she said.

  Kiril was about to rejoin her shipmates when Huerta stopped her. "Miss, ah, Kiril, isn't it?"

  "Just Kiril."

  "Well, Kiril, I have a confession to make: I'm bored to death with navy and line people. I've lived among them nearly every day of my life. I think this friction between us and the free freighters is stupid, as well as depriving me of interesting company. Would you like to come up as my guest and let me show you the Supernova? She's the pride of the line."

  The shutters immediately snapped shut behind Kiril's eyes as her mind worked furiously to analyze this new situation. What was he up to? "What about the others?" she said, gesturing towards the rest of the Angel's crew.

  "Oh, they're all old spacers. They know all about ships. You'd be much more fun to show off for, and I could pretend to be an expert." His smile was disarming, but no smile had ever disarmed Kiril. Still,' it seemed to be worth a try, if only to find out what was behind all this. At least, she told herself, that was the reason.

  "Do you think your uncle would go for it?"