“Stardrive,” the American repeated, filing the remainder of the statement to be considered at some other time. Wun, space travel’s something I’m paid to know about. We’re still talking chemical rockets here, unless you mean the monocle ferry – and that’s a low-orbit system, pure and simple.”
“The researchers at Cambridge University who are responsible for the discovery,” Wun replied, “still think they are working with time travel. We know better, however, and that is sufficient for those to whom we must report on the progress of our oversight. Without that, Mr. Kelly, we could not have attempted to immobilize the members of the Service; and I could not now be talking to you.”
“Okay,” said Kelly, pressing his hands firmly against his face, fingertips to forehead. The tight skin over his nose and cheekbones crinkled and lost some of the numbness that the tension and cool rain had brought. His coat was soaked across the back. “Okay. But you’ll have to get me there, all the way. I doubt I can get outa Diyarbakir the way things are. There’d be too many people to convince. Christ, there’s like as not a scratch order out on me right now. And my chances of even getting a message out, much less listened to, when I’m in West Bumfuck and there’s been nukes going off in ConUS – zip, zed, zero.”
He pointed toward the dark sky. “If you need me, Wun, you carry me all the way in your ship.”
“Our ships are not on Earth. We cannot carry you to them as we are carried, because you – were not there already, Thomas Kelly,” the alien said.
Wun was shivering, though his seeming face and bare hands were motionless. Wun’s arms and torso quaked beneath the dark overcoat, however. “Whatever message you need to pass, we can pass for you – to anyone, anywhere. For now, you must move yourself on your own world and from it.”
“You did leave a message on my tape,” Kelly said “Told me you had to see me or like that. It wasn’t in my head; I was really hearing it through the earphones?”
Wun nodded. “Yes,” he said, “of course. We dared not leave a longer message for you then until you had seen us in person.”
Kelly laughed. “You know,” he said, “I was thinking there was no way you’d be able to get into the Tank . . . and maybe there isn’t. But if you can punch my message through to the heart of the Pentagon, then it’s going to save a whole lot of time. Because even if they don’t believe me – which they won’t, not after some of what’s gone down lately – they’ll damn well hop to meet whoever can play games that way with their codes.
“Come on,” he added, striding back toward the truck. “You may not need this written out, but I need paper to compose it. There’ll be a destination sheet and a clipboard in the pickup, and we’ll just use the back of that.”
The funny thing was, Kelly thought, that he felt pretty good. Oh, he’d been in better physical shape than he was now – but hell, he was functional, and that was a long sight better than he’d felt in the recent past. Hurt didn’t matter; he’d been hurt before.
And he was in the middle of something that was either going to work or it wasn’t – but it wouldn’t fry its circuits just because the folks he depended on for support made a policy decision to do something else. He trusted Wun in a way that he had never trusted a human in a suit or an officer’s uniform. Partly, that was crazy; and a gut reaction was, by definition, irrational.
But he could find reason to justify the way he felt. They’d come a very long way to lie to Tom Kelly, if they were lying, and what Wun had just told him about Fortress was exactly what the veteran had extrapolated from Gisela’s words.
The aliens didn’t have to be altruists – they could want Earth for themselves, for any damn reason you cared to name. If they managed to save the place from a bunch of Nazis with H-bombs, then what else they wanted could be dealt with in its own good time.