The Wanderer (13 page)

At the bottom of Don's mind there was only an uneasy voice repeating: "The earth and sun
are
on the other side of that green-spotted black round to starboard. They set ten minutes ago; they'll rise in twenty.
I
have not traveled through hyperspace, only through the moon. I am
not
in the intergalactic dark, staring at a galaxy shaped like a sheaf or an hourglass, while seven pale green nebulas glow to starboard…"

Don was still in his spacesuit, but now he removed and secured the cracked helmet.

There should be a sound one in the locker. "Make and mend," he muttered, but his throat closed at the sound of his own voice. He unstrapped himself from the pilot's seat to push as close as he could to the spacescreen. The cabin was chilly and dark, but he turned on neither heat nor light—he even dimmed the control panel. It seemed all-important to
see
as much as possible.

He was gaining on the moon, all right, with his inside orbit: the sheaf of stars ahead was very slowly widening to port, as the black bulk of the eclipsed moon dropped back.

Suddenly he thought he saw, against the star-studded glow of the Milky Way, wraithlike black threads joining the top of the Wanderer—call it its north pole—to the leading rim or nose of the moon. Looping through space, the black strands were so nearly imperceptible that, like faint stars, he could detect them best by looking a little away from them.

It was as if, having snared and maimed the moon, the Wanderer were spinning a black shroud around it, preparatory to sucking it dry.

He shouldn't have started to think about spiders.

The voice kept repeating: "The sun and Earth
are
beyond the green-spotted black bulge to starboard. I
am
Donald Barnard Merriam, lieutenant, U.S. Space Force…"

Barbara Katz, her back to the other ocean bordering America 3,000 miles east of the saucer students, saw the mandala as a purple-spoked oxcart wheel. The huge wheel seemed to revolve a quarter turn as the planet touched the horizon.

"Gee, Dad, it's as if the Wanderer were lying down," she said, all at once feeling agonized and desperate because she wouldn't be able to see the next face the Wanderer showed, or to see the moon come out from behind it, either.

But it would all be on TV. Or would it?
Will there still be TV?
she asked herself, looking around incredulously. Everywhere the sky was paling with the dawn that would not reach the Pacific Coast for another three hours.

From beside Barbara, Knolls Kettering III said in a groggy voice she hadn't heard before: "I'm very tired…Please…"

She grabbed his arm as he swayed and leaned most of his weight on her—which wasn't a great deal. Inside the white suit his body seemed like the curved, brownish husk of an insect, while his face was as hollow-cheeked and crisscrossed with wrinkles as an Indian great-grandmother's. Barbara was almost shocked, but then she reminded herself that he was her own private millionaire, to preserve and to cherish. She made her grip more delicate on his shoulder, as if it were a shell she might crush.

The older Negro woman, dressed like the younger, in pearl gray with white collar and cuffs, came fussing up and took hold of him on the other side. This seemed to irritate him awake.

"Hester," he said, leaning away from her toward Barbara. "I told you and Benjy and Helen to go to bed hours ago."

"Huh!" she laughed softly. "As if we would leave you playing around with that telescope in the dark! You watch how you put your weight now, Mister K. Plastic in your hip get tired working all night, it break easy."

"Plastic can't get tired, Hester," he argued wearily.

"Huh! it not anywhere as strong as you, Mister K!" she said, putting him off. She looked across him questioningly at Barbara, who nodded firmly. Together they walked him across the thick, weedless carpet of the lawn, up three spotless concrete steps, and through a big cool kitchen with old, nickel-heavy fixtures that seemed to Barbara huge enough for a hotel.

Halfway up a wide stairway, he made them stop. Perhaps the vast, cool, dark living room next to the stairs took him back into the night, for he said: "Miss Katz, every heavenly body that seems to stand erect when it's high in the sky, appears to lie down when it rises and sets. It's true of constellations, too. I've often thought—"

"Come on now, Mister K, you need your rest," Hester said, but he fretfully shook the arm she was holding and said insistently: "I have often thought that the answer to the Sphinx's question of what goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at midday, and three legs at evening was not Man but the constellation Orion walking just ahead of the Dog Star, whose rising signaled the flooding of the Nile."

His voice wavered on the last words, and his head drooped, and he permitted himself to be led upward again. Barbara, feeling his weight on her arm—more than he was putting on Hester, she was pleased to note—thought:
I
guess I can see why you're
thinking of three legs at evening, Dad
—
or four.

They laid him down on a big bed in a dark bedroom bigger than the kitchen. Hester whisked something from the pillow into a drawer, then changed her mind and let Barbara see it

It was a slim, black-haired fashion doll about ten inches high, dressed in black lace underwear and black stockings and long black gloves.

Knolls Kettering III muttered thickly: "For midday, read midnight"

Hester looked up from the doll to Barbara's long black foot-gloves and playsuit and black hair, and she grinned.

Barbara couldn't have stopped herself from grinning back, even if she'd wanted to.

Paul Hagbolt faced Major Buford Humphreys through the beach gate of Vandenberg Two. Margo stood beside him holding Miaow. The ten saucer students were crowded around them. The edges of all their shadows made purple and golden flecks on the silvery mesh of the gate.

There were gold and purple flecks in the Pacific behind them as well, where the Wanderer, still rather high in the sky, had begun a coasting descent toward the placid ocean. It still showed the face Rama Joan had called the mandala, though now the western yellow spot was growing and the eastern one shrinking as the orb rotated. It cast a strong twilight across the scrubby coastal landscape and turned the sky a slate gray through which only five or six stars showed.

The jeep that had brought Major Humphreys down the gully from the heights still growled behind him and stared with its unnecessary headlights. One of the two soldiers with him sat at the wheel, the other stood at his side. The heavily-armed soldier on guard at the gate stood outside the fence in the dark doorway of the guard tower. His eyes were on the major. His submachine gun was in shadow except for a purple ring showing on the muzzle.

Major Humphreys had the thoughtful eyes and downturned mouth of a schoolteacher, but right now his dominant expression was the same as that of the soldier on guard—tension masking dread.

Paul, his soft, handsome face firmed a bit by the responsibility he felt, said: "I was hoping it would be you, Major. This saves a lot of trouble."

"You're lucky, because I didn't come on your account," Major Humphreys retorted sharply, then added in a rush: "A few others of the L.A. section made it before the Coast Highway went. We're hoping the rest will arrive by the Valley—over Monica Mountainway or through Oxnard. Or we'll lift them out by 'copter—especially Cal Tech.

Pasadena really got it in the second quake." He checked himself with a frown and a headshake, as if irritated at having impulsively said that much. Then he continued loudly, speaking over the flurry of exclamations from the saucerites. "Well, Paul, I haven't got all night—in fact, I haven't got a minute. Why'd you come by the beach gate?

I recognize Miss Gelhorn, of course—" He nodded curtly toward Margo—"But who are the others?" His gaze flickered across the saucer students, pausing doubtfully at Ross Hunter's full brown beard.

Paul hesitated.

Doc, looking like a long-faced, modern day Socrates with his hairless dome and thick glasses, cleared his throat and prepared to risk all by rumbling: "We are clerical members of Mr. Hagbolt's section." He suspected that this was one of those moments when a large white bluff is essential.

But Doc had hesitated a fractional second too long. The Little Man, pushing to the front between him and Wojtowicz, fixed the major with a benign stare. A confident smile nestled under his brush mustache as he said with lawyer-like glibness: "I am secretary and we are all members in good standing of the Southern California Meteor and UFO

Students. We were holding an eclipse symposium at the Rodgers beach house, having signed permission from the Rodgers estate and—although it was not strictly needed—approval from your own headquarters."

Doc groaned, fringe-audibly.

Major Humphreys froze. "Flying saucer bugs?"

"That's right," the Little Man retorted sweetly. "But please—not bugs—students."

His left arm was jerked back and he rocked onto his heels as Ragnarok, in a flurry of uneasy effacement, tugged at the leash.

"Students," Major Humphreys echoed doubtfully, looking them up and down, almost, Paul thought, as if he were going to demand to see their college registration cards.

Paul said earnestly: "Their cars were buried in a landslide along with mine, Major.

Miss Gelhorn and I would hardly have got here without their help. There's nowhere for them to go now. One of them has had a heart attack and one is a child."

Major Humphreys' gaze hesitated at Rama Joan, who was standing behind Hunter.

She stepped forward around him and showed all of herself—her shoulder-length, red-gold hair and her white-tie evening clothes—then smiled gravely and made a little bow. Ann, with her matching red-gold braids, came forward beside her. They looked as strangely beautiful and as insultingly perverse as an Aubrey Beardsley illustration for The Yellow Book.

"I'm the child," Ann explained coolly.

"I see," Major Humphreys said, nodding rapidly as he turned away. "Look, Paul," he said hurriedly. "I'm sorry about this, but Vandenberg Two can't possibly take in quake refugees. That question's already been explored and decided. We have our own vital work, and an emergency only tightens security regulations."

"Hey," Wojtowicz broke in. "You're saying the quakes were really big in L.A.

County?"

"You can see the fires, can't you?" Major Humphreys snapped at him. "No, I can't answer questions. Come in through the tower, Paul. And Miss Gelhorn—by herself."

"But these people aren't ordinary refugees, Major," Paul protested. "They'll be helpful. They've already made some interesting deductions about the Wanderer."

As soon as he spoke that last word, the gold-and-purple orb, momentarily out of mind, was once again dominating their thoughts.

Major Humphreys' fingers gripped through the mesh as he drew his face dose to Paul's. In a voice in which suspicion, curiosity, and fear were oddly mixed, he demanded: "Wanderer? Where did you get that name? What do you know about the…body?"

"Body?" Doc cut in exasperatedly. "Any fool can see by now it's a planet. Currently the moon's orbiting behind it."

"We're not responsible for it, if that's what you're thinking," Rama chimed in lightly.

"We didn't conjure it up there."

"Yes, and we don't know where the body was buried beforehand, either," Doc added zestfully. "Though some of us have notions about a cemetery in hyperspace."

Hunter kicked him surreptitiously. " 'Wanderer' is simply a name we gave it because it means 'planet'," he interposed soothingly to the major.

"Wanderer will do well enough, though the true name be Ispan." The Ramrod's voice boomed out hollowly from where his angular face, eye sockets and cheeks deep-shadowed, rose over Beardy's shoulder. He added: "Belike the imperial sages have but now touched down in Washington."

Major Humphreys' shoulders contracted as if he'd been stung between them. He said curtly: "I see." Then, to Paul: "Come on through. And Miss Gelhorn—without that cat."

"You mean you're turning these people away?" Paul demanded. "After I vouch for them? And one of them deathly ill?"

"Professor Opperly will have something to say about your behavior, Major, I'm sure," Margo put in sharply.

"Where is this heart case?" Major Humphreys demanded, his knee starting to jump as the guard's had.

Paul looked around for the cot, but just then Wanda pushed her considerable bulk forward between Hunter and Rama Joan. "I'm she," she announced importantly.

Doc groaned again. Wojtowicz looked at the fat woman reproachfully, rubbing the shoulder that had taken the strain on the cot corner.

Major Humphreys snorted. "Come on—the two of you, alone," he said to Paul, and turned back toward the jeep.

Hunter muttered to Margo: "Better take him up on it before he changes his mind. It's the best thing for you and Paul."

"Without Miaow?" Margo said.

"We'll take care of her for you," Ann volunteered.

That last did something to Paul's churning uncertainties. It might be the sheerest sentimentality to let the last straws of a cat and a child's unthinking generosity weigh down the balance. But: "I'm not coming!" he heard himself shout.

In a voice that tried not to be waspish, Major Humphreys called back: "Don't be melodramatic, Paul. You haven't the choice. You can't desert the Project."

Margo's free arm went around Paul and tightened encouragingly. Doc muttered in his ear: "I hope you know what you're doing."

Paul shouted: "The hell I can't!"

Major Humphreys shrugged and got into the jeep. The guard shut the tower door behind him and moved out toward the twelve standing in front of the gate. "Get moving, you people," he said edgily, wagging the muzzle of his gun. A heavy wire looped behind him from his left hand—the controls of his jump rockets.

Except for the Little Man, everyone stepped back from the gun—even Ragnarok, for the Little Man had dropped the leash as he stared through the fence in scandalized amazement.