Norman Pacey was waiting for her when she reached the U.S. delegate's offices a few minutes later. He seemed to be having trouble in containing his excitement over something. "News!" he exclaimed without preamble as she entered. Then his expression changed abruptly. "Hey, you're looking pretty mad about something. Anything up?"
"It's nothing. What's happened."
"Malliusk was here a little while ago." Gregor Malliusk was the Russian Director of Astronomy at Bruno and one of the privileged few among the regular staff there who knew about the dialogue with Gistar. "A signal came in about an hour ago that isn't intended for us. It's in some kind of binary numeric code. He can't make anything out of it."
Heller looked at him numbly. It could only mean that somebody else, either somewhere on Earth or in its vicinity, had begun transmitting to Gistar and wanted the reply kept private. "The Soviets?" she asked hoarsely.
Pacey shrugged. "Who knows? Sverenssen will probably call a special session, and Sobroskin will deny it, but I'd stake a month's pay."
His voice didn't carry the defeat that it should have, and what he had said didn't account for the jubilant look that Heller had caught on his face as she entered. "Anything else?" she asked, praying inwardly that the reason was what she thought it might be.
Pacey's face split into a wide grin that he could contain no longer. He scooped up some papers from a wad lying in front of the opened courier's bag on a table beside him and waved them triumphantly in the air. "Hunt got through!" he exclaimed. "They've done it via Jupiter! The landing is already fixed for a week from now, and the Thuriens have confirmed it. It's all arranged for a disused airbase in Alaska. It's all fixed up!"
Heller took the papers from him and smiled with relief and elation as she scanned rapidly down the first sheet. "We'll do it, Norman," she whispered. "We'll beat those bastards yet!"
"You've got a recall to Earth from the Department so you can be there as planned. You'll be getting space-happy with all these lunar flights." Pacey sighed. "I'll be thinking about you while I'm holding the fort up here. I only wish I was coming too."
"You'll get your chance soon enough," Heller said. Everything looked bright again. She lifted her face suddenly from the papers in her hand. "I'll tell you what—tonight we'll both have a special dinner to celebrate . . . a kind of farewell party until whenever. Champagne, a good wine, and the best poultry the cook here's got in his refrigerator. How does that sound?"
"Sounds great," Pacey replied, then frowned and rubbed his chin dubiously. "Although . . . would it really be a good idea? I mean, with this unidentified signal coming in only an hour ago, people might wonder what the hell we're celebrating. Sverenssen might think it's us, not the Soviets, who are being underhanded."
"Well we are, aren't we?"
"Yeah, I guess so—but for a good reason. That's different."
"So let them. If the Soviets think the heat's on us, they might get a false sense of security and not move too fast." A look of grim satisfaction came into Heller's eyes as she thought of something else. "And let Sverenssen think anything he damn well likes," she said.
Clad in a standard-issue UNSA arctic jacket, quilted over-trousers, and snowboots, Hunt stood in the center of a small group of muffled figures stamping their feet and breathing frosty clouds of condensation into the air on the concrete apron of McClusky Air Force Base, situated in the foothills of the Baird Mountains one hundred miles inside the Arctic Circle. The ground fog of the previous day had thinned somewhat to become a layer of overcast through which the washy blob of the sun was just able to impart a drab mix of off-white and grays to the texture of the surrounding landscape. Most of the signs of life among the huddle of semiderelict buildings behind them were concentrated around the former mess hall, which had been hastily patched up and windproofed to provide makeshift accommodation and a command post for the operation. A gaggle of UNSA aircraft and other vehicles parked among a litter of supplies and equipment along the near edge of the apron, and a team of handpicked UNSA personnel positioned in the background with cameras and microphone booms set up ready to record the impending event, completed the scene. The command post had landline links into the area radar net, and a homing beacon had been set up for the Ganymean ship. A strangely tense silence predominated, broken only by the intermittent cries of kittiwakes wheeling and diving above the frozen marshes beyond the perimeter fence, and the humming of a motor generator supplying power from one of the parked trailers.
McClusky was about as far from population centers and major air-traffic lanes as it was possible to get without going outside the U.S., but like every other point on the Earth's surface it was still subject to satellite scrutiny. In an attempt to mask the landing, UNSA had given notice that tests of a new type of reentry vehicle would be conducted in the area during that week, and had requested airlines and other organizations to reroute flights accordingly until further notice. To accustom the region's radar controllers to an abnormal pattern of activity, UNSA had also been staging irregular flights over Alaska for several days and altering their announced flight plans at short notice. Beyond that there was little they could do. How anything like the arrival of a starship could be kept secret from terrestrial observers, never mind an advanced alien surveillance system, was something nobody was quite sure of. Whoever was sending the messages through Jupiter had seemed satisfied with the arrangements, however, and had stated that they would take care of the rest.
The last message to go out via Jupiter had given the names of the persons who would make up the reception party, their positions, and a brief summary of what they did and why each was included. The aliens had reciprocated with a reply advising that three of their members would be prominent in conducting their dealings with Earth. The first was "Calazar," who was described as personifying the government of Thurien and its associated worlds—the figure nearest to a "president" that the planet seemed to possess. Accompanying him would be Frenua Showm, a female "ambassador" whose function had to do with affairs between the various sectors of Thurien society, "and Porthik Eesyan, who was involved with policies of scientific, industrial, and economic importance. Whether or not more than just these three would be involved, the aliens hadn't said.
"This is all a striking contrast to the
Shapieron
's arrival on this planet," Danchekker muttered, surveying the scene around them. That event on the shore of Lake Geneva had been witnessed by tens of thousands and shown live over the news grid.
"It reminds me of Ganymede Main," Hunt replied. "All we need is helmets on and a few Vegas around. What a way to start a new era!"
On Hunt's other side, Lyn, looking lost in the outsize, fur-trimmed hood pulled closely around her face, thrust her hands deeper into her jacket pockets and ground down a block of slush with her foot. "They're about due," she said. "I hope they've got good brakes." Assuming all was on schedule, the ship would have left Thurien, over twenty light-years away, just about twenty-four hours earlier.
"I don't think we need entertain any fears of ineptitude on the part of the Ganymeans," Danchekker said confidently.
"
If
they turn out to be Ganymeans," Hunt remarked, even though by this time he no longer had any real doubts about the matter.
"Of
course
they're Ganymeans," Danchekker snorted impatiently.
Behind them Karen Heller and Jerol Packard, the U.S. Secretary of State, stood motionless and silent. They had persuaded the President to go ahead with the operation on the strength of the implication that the aliens, Ganymean or not, were friendly, and if they were wrong they could well have committed their country to the worst blunder in its history. The President had hoped to be present in person, but in the end had accepted reluctantly the advice of his aides that the absence of too many important people at the same time without explanation would be inviting undesirable attention.
Suddenly the voice of the operations controller inside the mess hall barked over the loudspeaker mounted on a mast at the rear. "Radar contact!" The figures around Hunt stiffened visibly. Behind them the team of UNSA technicians hid their nervousness behind a frenzied outbreak of last-minute preparations and adjustments. The voice came again: "Approaching due west, range twenty-two miles, altitude twelve thousand feet, speed six hundred miles per hour, reducing." Hunt swung his head around instinctively to peer upward along with all the others, but it was impossible to make out anything through the overcast.
A minute went by in slow motion. "Five miles," the controller's voice announced. "It's down to five thousand feet. Visual contact any time now." Hunt could feel the blood pumping solidly in his chest. Despite the cold, his body suddenly felt clammy inside his heavy clothing. Lyn wriggled her arm through his and pulled herself closer.
And then the wind blowing down from the mountains to the west brought the first snatch of a low moaning sound. It lasted for a second or two, faded away, then came back again and this time persisted. It swelled slowly to a steady drone. A frown began forming on Hunt's face as he listened. He turned and glanced back, and saw that several of the UNSA people were exchanging puzzled looks too. There was something wrong. That sound was too familiar to be from any starship. Mutterings started breaking out, then ceased abruptly as a dark shape materialized out of the cloud base and continued descending on a direct line toward the base. It was a standard Boeing 1227 medium-haul, transonic VTOL—a model widely used by domestic carriers and UNSA's preferred type for general-purpose duties. The tension that had been building up around the apron released itself in a chorus of groans and curses.
Behind Heller and Packard, Caldwell, his face dark with fury, spun around to confront a bewildered UNSA officer. "I thought this area was supposed to have been cleared," he snapped.
The officer shook his head helplessly. "It was. I don't understand. . . . Somebo—"
"Get that idiot out of here!"
Looking flustered, the officer hurried away and disappeared through the open door of the mess hall. At the same time voices from the control room inside began pouring out over the loudspeaker, evidently left inadvertently live in the confusion.
"I can't get anything out of it. It's not responding."
"Use the emergency frequency."
"We've already tried. Nothing."
"For Christ's sake what's happening in here? Caldwell just chewed my balls off outside. Find out from Yellow Six who it is."
"I've got 'em on the line now. They don't know, either. They thought it was ours."
"Gimme that goddam phone!"
The plane leveled out above the edge of the marshes about a mile away and kept coming, heedless of the volley of brilliant red warning flares fired from the top of McClusky's control tower. It slowed to a halt above the open area of concrete in front of the reception party, hung motionless for a moment, and then started sinking toward the ground. A handful of UNSA officers and technicians ran forward making frantic crossed-arms signals over their heads to wave it off, but fell back in disarray as it came on down regardless and settled. Caldwell strode ahead of the group, gesticulating angrily and shouting orders at the UNSA figures who were converging around the nose and making signs up at the cockpit.
"Imbeciles!" Danchekker muttered. "This kind of thing should never happen."
"It looks as if Murphy's back from vacation," Lyn said resignedly in Hunt's ear. But Hunt only half heard. He was staring hard at the Boeing with a strange look on his face. There was something very odd about that aircraft. It had landed in the middle of a sea of watery snow and slush churned up by the activity of the last few days, yet its landing jets hadn't thrown up the cloud of spray and vapor that they should have. So maybe it didn't have any landing jets. If that were so it might have looked like a 1227, but it certainly wasn't powered like one. And there didn't seem to be much response from the cockpit to the antics of the people below. In fact, unless Hunt's eyes were deceiving him, there wasn't anybody in the cockpit at all. Suddenly his face broke into a wide grin as the penny dropped.
"Vic, what is it?" Lyn asked. "What's funny?"
"What's the obvious way to hide something in the middle of an airfield from a surveillance system?" he asked. He gestured toward the plane, but before he could say any more a voice that could have belonged to a natural-born American boomed out across the apron from its direction.
"Greetings from Thurien to Earth, et cetera. Well, we made it. Too bad about the lousy weather."
All movement around the craft ceased instantly. A total silence fell. One by one the heads on every side jerked around and gaped at each other as the message percolated through.
This was a starship? The
Shapieron
had stood nearly half a mile high. It was like having a little old lady show up at Tycho on a bicycle.
The forward passenger door opened, and a flight of steps unfolded itself to the ground. All eyes were riveted to the open doorway. The UNSA people up front drew back slowly while Hunt and his companions, with Heller and Packard a pace behind, moved forward to close in behind Caldwell and then slowed to a halt again uncertainly. Behind them the expectant cameras focused unwaveringly on the top of the steps.
"You'd better come on in," the voice suggested. "No sense in catching colds out there."
Heller and Packard exchanged bemused glances; none of their talks and briefings in Washington had prepared them for this. "I guess we just ad-lib as we go," Packard said in a low voice. He tried to summon up a reassuring grin, but it died somewhere on its way to his face.
"At least it's not happening in Siberia," Heller murmured.
Danchekker was fixing Hunt with a satisfied look. "If those utterances are not indicative of Ganymean humor at work, I'll accept creationism," he said triumphantly. The aliens could have warned them about the ship's disguise, Hunt agreed inwardly, but apparently they had been unable to resist making a mild joke out of it. And they obviously had little time for pomp and formality. It sounded like Ganymeans, all right.