Part 22 (1/2)
The outer door of an airlock cycled open. The ramp descended. The robots trotted down the incline and arranged themselves in an arc that faced a quintessentially human building: a hideously ugly box with
huge doors. It was meant, obviously, as housing for the freaks' simple aircraft. Today it held instead a collection of Earth's primitive arts and crafts.As always when the Consensus visited, the humans diverted their airplanes to other airfields. No humans were yet in evidence. That was good-the stars.h.i.+p had visited Was.h.i.+ngton often enough that curious
crowds no longer rushed to meet it. And an intimate ceremony befitted Rualf's sense of aesthetics.
A short door inset in an aircraft-sized portal swung open. The American delegation exited. As the humans approached across the concrete, Rualf whispered orders to position the robots into a slightly different configuration.
”Welcome back to Was.h.i.+ngton, H'ffl.” A silver-haired human extended an arm in greeting. ”Please accept the President's apologies for his unavoidable absence. He felt his presence would draw too much attention to this meeting.”
The text window in Rualf's helmet provided an unnecessary reminder: Britt Arledge. H'ffl reached out one of its arms, gravely performed the human ritual. ”It is good to see you again, Mr. Arledge. Please tell President Robeson that we understand.”
”It would be a much happier occasion if we were about to join the Galactic Commonwealth. But that is not to be.” Arledge peered directly into one set of H'ffl's ”eyes”: a perfect close-up. ”The people of Earth have foolishly shown ourselves too immature. Perhaps the steps we are about to take are unnecessarily cautious. I pray that is so . . . but I dread it is not.
”The F'thk share your hopes and fears,” lied Rualf. ”We accept your treasures in trust, to show with
honor across the galaxy, and, we hope, to return to you someday.”
”Our cargo vehicles are loaded.” Arledge pointed to the building that housed Earth's trinkets. His head bobbed in some signal, in a grotesque parody of the articulate fluency of which Krulchukor sensor stalks were capable. ”So let us begin.”
* * * With the abundant energy from a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p's fusion reactor to run bioconverters and maintain an environment, stranded Krulirim could hope to survive in almost any solar system long enough to be rescued-if their need for recovery could be made known. That was why the Consensus, like most s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps, carried amongst its provisions a collection of emergency buoys, and why its computers held directions for fabricating more. Standard practice, upon arrival at an unpopulated solar system, was to pre-deploy some buoys in case of later need.
The buoys were essentially freestanding interstellar signaling stations. That purpose required the ability to generate and store energy, to receive from a marooned crew the specific details of the call for help, to convert those specifics and that acc.u.mulated energy into coherent microwave pulses, and to aim the message pulses precisely at a distant target star. Each buoy was a solar-powered satellite, with a powerful onboard computer, a remote-control interface for programming by the presumed stranded crew, and precision sensors for aiming.
Point that powerful maser downward at planetary targets, rather than across interstellar distances, and the buoy was an enormously destructive weapon. The Consensus had ringed the Earth with two three-squares and three of such weapons.
Grelben straddled the squat padded cylinder that was his command seat. Displays encircling the bridge showed a panoramic view of the landing site and the unfolding of Rualf's climactic scene. Other displays updated him regularly as to which masers had a line of sight to this airport. Parking a few buoys in synchronous...o...b..t would have eliminated that tedious task, but the humans had that near-Earth region filled with their own satellites. Keeping his buoys secret had meant putting them in inconvenient orbits, where they could not hover over a fixed terrestrial location. Keeping the satellites secret had also required making them invisible to radar, and grafting radar-canceling mechanisms to the buoys had made his hybrid devices sporadically unreliable. To be certain of killing a target, he had to a.s.sign several buoys.
He periodically glanced at the unfolding ceremony. ”Some of my people's greatest accomplishments await within those trucks,” a gray-topped human was saying. Grelben wondered whether these Earth mementos could somehow be sold-as movie props and souvenirs, of course, not as real artifacts. There would be time to sort that out on the long trip home.
”And now we commit our treasures to Earth's new friends . . .” The Consensus had never landed this near to buildings-he had always insisted on wide separation, the better to escape from potential surprises by an emergency launch-but Rualf's ”artistic integrity” for this scene dictated a cozy, confidential setting. Can we move this along? fumed Grelben to himself. He felt exposed down here. Alas, the onboard lasers could only fire forward, since in s.p.a.ce the s.h.i.+p was only at risk from junk overtaken in flight. So here he sat, watching anxiously in all directions for he knew not what, tracking the buoys as they orbited in and out of line-of-sight. If a threat did materialize, and none ever had, he would have to select a target, pinpoint its location, and uplink those coordinates to a satellite. It was also hard to know in advance with what maser frequency to strike. s.h.i.+p's sensors would monitor his target for scattered energy; if too little energy were being absorbed he would have to reprogram the attack frequency.
Yes, he would have been far happier with what had become a routine landing: in the center of a human airfield, far from any possible hazard. Grelben had no reason to doubt that the humans, who had never in any way threatened his s.h.i.+p, had no intention of making trouble today. Rualf kept a.s.suring him that the humans were entirely intimidated by the light show made manifest near Earth's moon. The freaks should be overawed by it, even if the main cause for fear and dread had yet to be manifested. But it would. . . .
* * * From the shadow beneath a retractable pa.s.senger walkway, Andrew Wheaton surveyed the idle runways of Reagan National Airport. A Baltimore Orioles cap, bought that day as camouflage, shaded his eyes. His FAA ID tag from St. Cloud Regional dangled from his coat zipper. He ambled to the traffic noise from the nearby George Was.h.i.+ngton Parkway, trying to project a casualness he did not feel, onto the deserted field. The top of the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p peered over a line of hangars. Chewing an unlit cigar, he sauntered to the fuel depot and a row of parked tanker trucks. With air traffic diverted for the aliens' visit, the drivers had the afternoon off. In Andrew's pocket was the heavy ceramic ashtray he'd taken from a workers' lounge. He threw the ashtray through the driver's window of the end tanker. Reaching through the shattered gla.s.s with a gloved hand, he unlocked the door.
Andrew had rewired the farmhouse twice; hot-wiring an ignition did not faze him. The truck was already rolling when someone burst from the depot to check out the noise. The watchman receded rapidly in Andrew's rearview mirror. Cold wind spilling through the broken side window whipped the cap from his head.
Those F'thk b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who had stolen his family would now pay.
* * * A cargo van, supposedly the first of many, approached the awaiting stars.h.i.+p. Kyle was the van's pa.s.senger. His heart pounded as they started up the ramp into the gaping airlock. F'thk watched silently from the concrete; others of the robots awaited in the airlock itself, to a.s.sist with the expected unloading.
”Ready?” Col. Blake drove one-handed, his other hand resting on the parking-brake lever. He was of the ”I won't ask my men to do anything I wouldn't do” school. Oddly, Blake saw no inconsistency in hinting
Kyle was a few beers short of a six-pack for accompanying him.What would Blake do if I answered no, wondered Kyle. They were nearing the top of the ramp. ”Let's do it.”
”Okay.” The commando slammed on his brake pedal and yanked the emergency brake lever. They squealed to a halt with the van's tail hanging out of the airlock. ”Sit tight.” The advice was unnecessary.
The F'thk in the airlock were being torn apart by a hail of bullets from hidden snipers-and from the Uzi Blake had retrieved from the glove box to fire through the winds.h.i.+eld. The same fate befell the more exposed robots on the ground. As if in slow motion, the outer airlock hatch clanked impotently against the reinforced van. ”Go, go, go.”
They flung open their doors. The control panel was right where Swelk had said it would be, its b.u.t.tons labeled in spidery characters reminiscent of the keypad on her computer. Familiarity was not enough; two human hands did not begin to have the dexterity of the nine fully opposable digits at the end of a Krul limb. Grinding his teeth, Kyle tried again and again to press precisely the sequence of key cl.u.s.ters he had memorized.
It didn't help that Blake, who was applying plastic explosives to the inner hatch, kept b.u.mping into him.
One way or another, they were going to get inside, because only a crew held hostage could disable whatever doomsday devices they had deployed.
* * * ”Take off!” screamed Rualf. The edge in his voice came partially from simple desire for instant obedience, but mostly from irrational terror. The rich data stream from the robotic control suit gave an illusion of reality that while normally a convenience had without warning become a near-death experience. Rualf had just suffered the tearing apart of H'ffl's body and the final spasmodic misfirings of dying sensors. ”Grelben! Get us out of here.”
From the computer in Rualf's pocket came a shouted reply. ”I can't take off. The outer door is jammed, and the ramp is designed not to retract with the airlock open. I have someone trying to override the interlock. And these freaks you promised would never attack? They radioed a demand for our surrender.”
With s.h.i.+pboard sensors Rualf saw that all the outside robots were down. A camera viewing outward from the airlock showed two busy humans inside and more vehicles converging. Only the inner airlock hatch separated him and his troupe, all struggling to extricate themselves from the teleoperations suits,
from their a.s.sailants. The hatch suddenly seemed a very flimsy and inadequate defense. ”Grelben! Use the satellites. Blast them.”
”Blast what? Our own s.h.i.+p?” came the angry answer. There was a pause. ”Maybe I can use the masers
on nearby buildings, or parked airplanes, to create a diversion. Get ready to drive out an unblocked
airlock and tow the . . . oh, s.h.i.+t.”
”What!?” Rualf was finally free of his suit. Fleeing the cargo bay, he could not put from his mind the humans at the airlock controls. How could they possibly expect to find the command sequence? As he waited for the zoo hold's inner airlock hatch to cycle, he interrupted Grelben's cursing. ”What's wrong?”
”Get a Hovercraft out now.” The captain's voice was grim. ”The buoys are under attack.”