Homeward Bound (61 page)

The ship had a swarm of antimissiles that were supposed to be a hair better than the best the Race could fire. She also had close-in weapons systems—a fancy name for radar-controlled Gatling guns on steroids—to knock out anything the antimissiles missed. Put that together and it wouldn’t keep the
Admiral Peary
alive. It wasn’t supposed to. But it was supposed to keep her alive long enough to let her get her own licks in.

“What do you think?” Johnson asked Mickey Flynn. “Are we ready for Armageddon?”

Flynn gave that his usual grave consideration. “I can’t say for sure,” he replied at last. “But I do know that Armageddon sick and tired of worrying about it.”

Johnson groaned, as he was no doubt intended to do. Mickey Flynn looked back blandly. Johnson was sick of worrying about it, too, which didn’t mean he wasn’t doing his share and then some. “What do we do if the balloon goes up?” he said.

This time, Flynn answered right away: “Well, it will be over in a hurry, anyhow.” That was what the Lizards would have called a truth. By the way he said it, he thought Johnson was a damn fool for asking the question. After only a short pause, Johnson decided he’d been a damn fool, too.

In the background was the radio chatter among the Lizards’ spaceships and orbiting stations and shuttlecraft. Johnson didn’t know how much good monitoring that would do. Nobody was likely to give the attack order in clear language. It would be encrypted, so the Americans wouldn’t realize what it was till things hit the fan.

Even so, the traffic was often fun to listen to. Lizards—and the occasional Rabotevs and Hallessi—bickered among themselves hardly less than humans did. Their insults revolved around rotten eggs and cloacas rather than genitals, but they used them with panache.

All at once, everything stopped. For about fifteen seconds, the radio waves might have been wiped clean. “What the hell?” Johnson said, in mingled surprise and alarm. He and Mickey Flynn had been talking about Armageddon. Had they just listened to the overture for it?

But then the Lizards returned to the air. Everybody was saying the same things: “What is that?” “Do you see that?” “Where did that come from?” “How did that get there?” “What could it be?”

Flynn pointed to the radar. It showed a blip that Johnson would have sworn hadn’t been there before, about two million miles out from Home and closing rapidly. “What have we got here?” Johnson said, unconsciously echoing the Lizards all around the
Admiral Peary.
“Looks like it popped out of thin air.”

“Thinner vacuum,” Flynn said, and Johnson nodded—the other pilot was right.

The Lizards started sending messages toward the blip: “Strange ship, identify yourself.” “Strange ship, please begin communication.” And another one, surely transmitted by a worried member of the Race: “Strange ship, do you understand? Do you speak our language?”

Speed-of-light lag for a message to get to the strange ship—where the devil
had
it come from? out of nowhere?—and an answer to come back was about twenty-one and a half seconds. That, of course, assumed the answerer started talking the instant he—she? it?—heard the Lizards, which was bound to be optimistic.

“Do you think we ought to send something, too?” Johnson asked. Mickey Flynn was senior to him; it was Flynn’s baby, not his. The other pilot shook his head. Johnson waved to show he accepted the decision. He found a different question: “Do you think it’s a good thing we’re at top alert?” Just as solemnly, Flynn nodded.

Close to a minute went by before the strange ship responded. When it did, the answer was in the Lizards’ language: “We greet you, males and females of the Race.” The individual at the microphone had a mushy accent. Even as Johnson realized it was a human accent, the speaker went on, “This is the starship
Commodore Perry,
from the United States of America. We greet you, citizens of the Empire. And we also greet, or hope we greet, our own citizens aboard the
Admiral Peary.
”

Johnson and Flynn both stabbed for the
TRANSMIT
button at the same time. Johnson’s finger came down on it first. That was his only moment of triumph. Flynn, as senior, did the talking: “This is the
Admiral Peary,
Colonel Flynn speaking. Very good to have company. We’ve been out here by ourselves for a long time.”

Again, there was a necessary wait for radio waves to travel from ship to ship. During it, Johnson wondered,
What’s in a name?
The
Admiral Peary
recalled an explorer who’d pitted himself against nature and won. The
Commodore Perry
was named for the man who’d gone to Japan with warships and opened the country to the outside world no matter what the Japanese thought about it. The Lizards might not notice the difference, especially since
Peary
and
Perry
were pronounced alike even if spelled differently. But Johnson did. What did it mean?

This time, the person at the radio—a woman—replied in English: “Hello, Colonel Flynn. Good to hear from you. I’m Major Nichols—Nicole to my friends. We were hoping we’d find you folks here, but we weren’t sure, because of course your signals from Home hadn’t got back to Earth when we set out.”

“I hope you’ve been picking up some of them as you followed our trail from Earth to Home,” Flynn said. “And if you don’t mind my asking, when
did
you set out?”

That was a good question. Here on the
Admiral Peary,
Johnson didn’t feel like too much of an antique, even if he had been in cold sleep longer than most. But
these
whippersnappers might not even have been born when Dr. Blanchard put him on ice. How much of an antique would he seem to them?
Do I really want to know?

He had time to wonder about that again. Then Major Nichols’ voice came back: “About five and a half weeks ago, Colonel.”

Mickey Flynn drummed his fingers on his thigh in annoyance, one of the few times Johnson had ever seen him show it. “Five and a half weeks’ subjective time, sure. But how long were you in cold sleep?” Flynn asked.

Johnson nodded: another good question. If the
Commodore Perry
was still slower than Lizard starships, that said one thing. If she matched their technology, that said something else—something important, too. And if she was faster, even a little bit . . .

The wait for radio waves to go back and forth felt maddening. After what seemed like a very long time, Major Nichols answered, “No, Colonel. No cold sleep—none. Total travel time, five and a half weeks. There’ve been some changes made.”

Johnson and Flynn stared at each other. They both mouthed the same thing:
Jesus Christ!
The Lizards were bound to have somebody who understood English monitoring the transmission. The second that translator figured out what Major Nichols had just said, the Race was going to start having kittens, or possibly hatchling befflem. Johnson pointed to the microphone and raised an eyebrow. Flynn gave back a gracious nod, as if to say,
Be my guest.

“This is Colonel Johnson, junior pilot on the
Admiral Peary,
” Johnson said, feeling much more senior than junior. “I hope you brought along some proof of that. It would be really useful. Things are . . . a little tense between us and the Race right now.” He almost added an emphatic cough, but held back when he realized he didn’t know how people of Major Nichols’ generation would take that. After sending the message, he turned to Mickey Flynn. “Now we twiddle our thumbs while things go back and forth.”

Flynn suited action to word. He said, “Why don’t they have faster-than-light radio?” His thumbs went round and round, round and round.

“They do, in effect,” Johnson said. “They’ve got the ships—if those are what they say they are. Einstein must be spinning in his grave.”

“Colonel Johnson?” The voice of the woman from the
Commodore Perry
filled the control room again. “Yes, we have proof—all sorts of things that we know and the Race will hear about as its signals come in from Earth over the next few days and weeks. And we have a couple of witnesses from the Race aboard: a shuttlecraft pilot named Nesseref and Shiplord Straha.”

“Oh, my,” Johnson said. Even imperturbable Mickey Flynn looked a trifle wall-eyed. Straha had lived in exile in the USA for years. He’d been the third-highest officer in the conquest fleet, and then the highest-ranking defector after his effort to oust Atvar for not prosecuting the war against humanity vigorously enough failed. And he’d got back into the Lizards’ good graces by delivering the data from Sam Yeager that showed the United States had launched the attack on the colonization fleet.

“I’d like to be a fly on the wall when Straha meets Atvar again,” Flynn said.

“
Admiral Peary,
do you read me?” Major Nichols asked. “Are you there?”

“Where else would we be?” Flynn asked reasonably. “Ah, forgive me for asking, Major, but is the
Commodore Perry
armed?”

“That is affirmative,” Nicole Nichols said. “We are armed.”
She
used an emphatic cough, which answered that. “We did not know for certain that you had arrived when we departed, and we did not know what kind of reception we would get when we entered this solar system. Can you please summarize the present political situation?”

“I do believe I would describe it as a mess,” Flynn said, a word that summed things up as well as any other for Glen Johnson. Flynn went on, “You’ll need more details than that. I can put you through to Lieutenant General Healey, our commandant, and he can patch you through to Sam Yeager, our ambassador.”

That produced a pause a good deal longer than required by speed-of-light. “Sam Yeager is your ambassador? Where is the Doctor?” Major Nichols asked. She used interrogative coughs, too.

“They couldn’t revive him from cold sleep,” Flynn said.

“I . . . see. How . . . unfortunate,” Major Nichols said. “Well, yes, please arrange the transfer, Colonel, if you’d be so kind. Whoever the man on the spot has been, we’ll have to deal through him.”

Flynn fiddled with the communications controls. Lieutenant General Healey said, “It’s about time I get to speak for myself, Colonel.” Whatever he said after that, he said to Major Nichols. Johnson and Flynn shared a look. If the commandant hadn’t liked what the pilots were saying, he could have interrupted them whenever he pleased. But what really pleased him was complaining.

“Five and a half weeks from Earth to Home. Five and a half
weeks.
We can go back,” Johnson said dizzily.

“Maybe we can go back,” Flynn said. “If it’s not weightless aboard the
Commodore Perry,
I wouldn’t want to try it.”

Johnson said something of a barnyard nature. That hadn’t occurred to him. “I wonder how they did it,” he said, and then, “I wonder whether I’d get it if they told me.” Would his own great-grandfather have understood radio and airplanes? He doubted it.

Understood or not, though, the
Commodore Perry
was there. The Lizards were still trying to call it, a rising note of panic in their voices. One of them must have figured out what Major Nichols had said. And how would they like
that
?

A
tvar awaited the shuttlecraft descending from orbit around Home with a sinking feeling in his liver. He made the negative gesture. No, that wasn’t true. As a matter of fact, his liver felt as if it had already sunk all the way down to his toeclaws. Even in his wildest nightmares, he had never imagined a day like
this
might come.

And Straha had. Of all the males of the Race the Americans might have picked to rub Atvar’s snout in his own failings, Straha was the prize example. Did they know that? Atvar laughed bitterly. Of course they did! They had to.

Faster than light! The Big Uglies could travel faster than light! The Race had decided that was impossible even before Home was unified, and hadn’t worried much about it since. Some Tosevite physicist had come to the same conclusion, and the Big Uglies had believed him . . . while Atvar was on Tosev 3, anyhow. Unlike the Race, the Tosevites had kept worrying at the idea, though. The Race had got a scent of some of their earliest experiments, but. . . .

Yes. But,
Atvar thought bitterly. The difference between what the Race had and what the Big Uglies had was the difference between a scent and the beast it came from. And the Big Uglies’ beast was a starship.

Now what?
the fleetlord wondered. Blasting the
Commodore Perry
would have been tempting—if another American starship might not be only days behind, might escape, and might bring word of war back to the United States long before the Race’s colony on Tosev 3 could hope to hear about it. That was a recipe for disaster.

Preventive war seemed to have gone up in smoke. Too late, too late, too late. Again, how could you hope to attack someone who knew the bite was coming long before your teeth sank in—and who could bite you whenever he pleased? Home, at least, could defend itself. What about Rabotev 2 and Halless 1? If the Big Uglies wanted to, they could smash the Empire’s other worlds before Home warned them they might be in danger.

Too late, too late, too late. The words tolled again, like a mournful gong inside Atvar’s head.

After a moment, he realized not all that noise was internal. Some came through his hearing diaphragms. The terminal at the shuttlecraft port was efficiently soundproofed. All the same, the braking rockets’ roar penetrated the insulating material and filled the building.

The windows facing the fire-scarred landing field were tinted. Even so, nictitating membranes flicked across Atvar’s eyes to protect them from the glare. The shuttlecraft settled smoothly onto the concrete. Crashes were vanishingly rare; computer control made sure of that. Atvar wouldn’t have minded seeing one of those rare, rare accidents now. No, he wouldn’t have minded a bit. Watching Straha cook . . .

Didn’t happen. The shuttlecraft’s braking rockets cut off. Silence returned to the terminal. Atvar didn’t quite let out a disappointed hiss. He hadn’t really hoped the shuttlecraft would crash—or, if he had, he hadn’t really expected it to.

Down came the landing ladder. The female who descended first wore the body paint of a shuttlecraft pilot. That would not be the pilot of this craft, but Nesseref, the traveler from Tosev 3. Behind her came a male of about Atvar’s years. Straha had at least not had the effrontery to wear a shiplord’s body paint, but rather the much plainer colors of an author. Last off the shuttlecraft was the Halless who’d brought it down from the
Commodore Perry.
Atvar forgot about the Halless right away; his attention was all on the newly arrived members of the Race.

Guards surrounded them and escorted them into the terminal. Straha said something to one of them. Her mouth fell open in a laugh. Straha had always been charming. That made Atvar like him no better.

Nesseref bent into the posture of respect as soon as she saw Atvar. “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” she said.

“And I greet you,” he replied as she rose.

“Hello, Atvar,” Straha said. “Well, now we know—it
could not
have turned out worse if I had been in charge.” He added a sarcastic emphatic cough.

Atvar’s fingerclaws started to shape the threat gesture one male used against another in the mating season. He forced them to relax. It wasn’t easy. Neither was keeping his tone light as he answered, “Oh, I am not so sure of that. You might have lost the war against the Big Uglies instead of managing a draw. Then we could have had this to worry about even sooner.”

Straha glared at him. “Do not project your incompetence onto me.”

“I do not need to,” Atvar said. “You have plenty of your own.”

“Excuse me, superior sirs,” Nesseref said, “but quarreling among yourselves will not help solve the problem the Race faces.”

“Neither will
not
quarreling among ourselves,” Straha replied, “and quarreling is much more fun.”

“No, the shuttlecraft pilot speaks truth,” Atvar said. “I thank you, Shuttlecraft Pilot. I need to know first of all how you are certain of the Big Uglies’ claims about the speed of their starship.”

“We were conscious throughout the flight,” Nesseref said.

“Could you not have been drugged while asleep, put into cold sleep, and then revived the same way?” Atvar knew he was desperately searching for any escape from the Race’s predicament.

Nesseref made the negative gesture. “I do not believe so, Exalted Fleetlord.”

“Forget it, Atvar,” Straha said. “For one thing, the Big Uglies already have word of things that will just be reaching Home now. Even as we speak, researchers here will be corroborating what they say. For another, when they go back to Tosev 3, they are willing to take more members of the Race along and then return them to Home. They are not willing to let them communicate with the colonists in any way, for fear you might do something foolish like order an attack, but if the males and females get there and come back here in something less than a large number of years, that should convince even the stubbornest—perhaps even you.”

Atvar had not thought his liver could sink any lower. He discovered he was mistaken. Straha’s sarcasm did not bother him. He and Straha had despised each other for many years. Each occasionally had to respect the other’s competence, but that did not and would not make them friends. But the message about the American Tosevites’ confidence that Straha delivered was daunting. They not only had this technique, they were sure it worked well.

“How do they do it?” Atvar asked. “
How
do they do it?”

“Neither one of us is a physicist,” Straha said. Nesseref made the affirmative gesture. Straha went on, “They talk about doing things with space-time strings, about maneuvering or maybe manipulating them so that points normally distant come into contact with each other. What this means or, to tell you the truth, whether this means anything is not for me to say.”

“Here I agree with the shiplord,” Nesseref said. “They are very glib, as Big Uglies often are. But whether they told us these things to inform us or to mislead us, I am in no position to judge.”

“I see.” Atvar thought about telling them that the Race’s physicists had begun work that might eventually let them catch up with the Big Uglies—assuming the Big Uglies hadn’t moved on still further by then, which was not necessarily a good bet. He started to, yes, but his tongue did not flutter. Nesseref and Straha might blab to the Tosevites. They might be monitored by the Tosevites. Who could guess how far the Tosevites’ electronics had come these days? Better to keep quiet.

“How is this world these days?” Straha asked. He then answered his own question, which was very much in character: “Not much different, or I miss my guess.”

“In most ways, no. That is as it should be, in my opinion,” Atvar said. “But you will see some things you would not have before you left: young males and females wearing false hair, for instance, and some of them even wearing wrappings.”

“Really? Is that a truth?” Straha laughed. “So just as the Big Uglies on Tosev 3 have imitated us, we have also begun to imitate them? I had not thought we possessed even so much imagination as a species.”

“The young are always unfathomable.” Atvar did not mean it as a compliment.

“They think the same of us. Do you not remember when you could hardly wait for the old fools ahead of you to hop on the funeral pyre so
you
could hatch the egg of the world? It was all out there waiting for you, and you wanted to grab with all ten fingerclaws. Is that a truth, or is it not?”

“That is . . . some of a truth,” Atvar answered. “I do not believe I was ever quite so vain as you show yourself to be, but I have long since suspected as much.”

Straha irked him by laughing instead of getting angry. “You are still as stuffy as you always were, I see. Well, much good it has done you.”

“
This
did not happen while I was in charge on Tosev 3. No one can blame me for
this.
The ministers here on Home decided Reffet would do better on Tosev 3 than I could,” Atvar said. “That only shows how much they knew.”

“Well, yes.” Straha made the affirmative gesture. “Next to Reffet, you are a genius. This is not necessarily praise, you understand. Next to Reffet, a beffel smashed on the highway is also a genius.” That startled a laugh out of Atvar, whose opinion of the fleetlord of the colonization fleet was not high, either. Straha went on, “You should have seen him when he learned of the
Commodore Perry.
He acted as if he wanted nothing more than to crawl back into his eggshell. That would be the best thing for him, if anyone wants to know what I think.”

Nesseref said, “If anyone wants to know what
I
think, the best thing for the Race would be to stop all this vituperation and backbiting. We will have enough trouble catching up with the Big Uglies without that.”

“No doubt you are a wise female,” Straha said, but then he spoiled it by adding, “But you take a great deal of the enjoyment out of life.”

“We have to catch up with the Big Uglies, and quickly.” Atvar used an emphatic cough. “If we do not—”

“We are at their mercy,” Straha broke in with a certain oppressive relish. “Do you suppose they might be interested in revenge for what the conquest fleet did to them?”

“Superior sir, you are not making this situation any better,” Nesseref scolded.

“Truth. I cannot make it better, not now. No one can do that except possibly our physicists, and they have not done anything along these lines in the past hundred thousand years.” Straha seemed to delight in pointing out unpleasant truths. “All I can do is bear witness to what the Big Uglies have done, the same way as you are. At that, I think I am more than good enough.”

“I will bring you both to a hotel near the one where the American Big Uglies are staying,” Atvar said.

“Why not to that hotel itself?” Straha asked. “It will be good to see Sam Yeager again. A male of sense and a male of integrity—the combination is too rare.”

“I will not take you to that hotel itself because the American Tosevites can electronically monitor too much of what goes on inside,” Atvar answered unhappily.

“Well, I cannot say that I am surprised,” Straha said. “Even when their first starship set out, they were even or ahead of us in most electronics. That should have been a warning. They are further ahead of us now.”

“I thank you for your encouragement.” Atvar still had sarcasm as a weapon against Straha. But what weapons did he have now against the Big Uglies? None that he could see.

Ttomalss met Pesskrag at an eatery not far from the hotel where the wild Big Uglies dwelt. He hadn’t been accosted going out to make the telephone call to invite her here, as he had the last time he’d tried speaking to her from a public phone. So far as he knew, the American Tosevites had no idea this place existed, which meant they couldn’t monitor it.

“I greet you,” Ttomalss said when Pesskrag sat down across from him in the booth.

“And I greet you,” Pesskrag answered. “This is such an
exciting
time in which to have come out of the egg!” She used an emphatic cough. “And I owe you an apology, Senior Researcher. I did not believe what you told me about the Big Uglies’ relentless drive. I was mistaken. They must be all you claimed, and more.”

A server came up and gave them both printouts of choices, adding, “We also have a special on zisuili ribs in a sauce of peffeg and other southern spices. You will enjoy it if you care for something that makes your tongue sit up and take notice.”

“That will do very well,” Ttomalss said. Pesskrag made the affirmative gesture. Ttomalss just wanted to get the server out from under his scales. Sometimes such individuals made too much of themselves. This male, mercifully, gathered up the printouts and went away.

Pesskrag kept on gushing about the Tosevites: “They went from experiment to theory to engineering in the flick of a nictitating membrane. We would never have been so impetuous—never, I tell you.”

“We are going to have to be,” Ttomalss said. “The military advantage this gives them is truly appalling. Until our signals reach Tosev 3, we are at their mercy. They have years to organize defenses against us and prepare their own surprise attack. Rabotev 2 and Halless 1 would never know what hit them. Even Home is vulnerable, though less so than it was before the
Admiral Peary
arrived.”