“I am talking about this deorbiting question, which Earth human beings cannot deal with themselves,” she said frostily. “I am talking, as well, about many other things of importance. For these things I have had complete instructions from ChinTekki-tho, in private.”
“In private again!”
She emitted a faint, disdainful belch. “Yes, in private, since this is a matter for Hakh’hli and not Earth persons.
That took Sandy by surprise. “Cohort-mate! Am I not Hakh’hli?”
“Of course you are not Hakh’hli, Lysander,” she said, patiently reasonable. “You are Lysander John William Washington, and if you are not Earth human you are nothing at all, are you? Now leave me, Lysander. I have much to do.” She slapped her stubby tail against the carpeted floor for emphasis. Then, as he was almost at the door, she stopped him by adding. “However, your statement is almost correct and not entirely wrong, Lysander.”
She was looking at him with malignant pleasure, and he had no idea what she was talking about. “What statement is that?” he asked.
“The statement that I am not myself Senior. I would add only one word to make that statement accurate. The word is, yet.”
Sandy was quiet on the way to the meeting hall. He was tired of talking. Every conversation he had seemed to turn up questions he couldn’t answer, and that those who could answer annoyingly wouldn’t. Imagine Polly treating him like a child! Imagine her thinking she might some day be a Senior!—when it was she whose behavior was so childish!
He got out when Marguery parked the car, looking up at the building they were about to enter. It was perched on the edge of the Palisades, tall and glass-walled, and the sign over its entrance gave its name:
LAMONT-DOHERTY SCIENCE CENTER
“Who were these Lamont and Doherty people?” he asked.
“It’s just a name. This used to be a geology center, until they began moving other things into it out of New York City.” She looked around, getting her bearings. They were almost alone in a large terrazzo-floored hall. The few others around were hurrying toward a flight of stairs. “They’ll be watching the deorbit in the auditorium. This way—”
But as they climbed the stairs they heard a sudden outburst of laughter and cheers from the room they were going to. Marguery tugged him ahead. Over the stage was a great screen. It was a television picture, apparently taken from the deck of a ship—it seemed to sway disconcertingly, and sometimes Sandy could get glimpses of what looked like masts and antennae. But the picture wasn’t of the ship. It was of the sky. It was filled with lancing lines of fire stabbing down, like a meteor shower.
Marguery caught the arm of a stranger standing next to her. “What’s happening?” she demanded.
“It’s down. It missed,” he said, grinning. “It started reentry near Madagascar, and it was pretty well broken up twenty minutes ago. That’s the last of it. It’s just about all down now, and it’s still way out in the Indian Ocean. Perth won’t be touched.”
“Thank God,” she said sincerely. She turned and looked at Sandy almost with surprise, as though she had forgotten he was there. “Oh,” she said. “Well, the show’s over. Want to get a cup of coffee?”
“If you like,” he said. And then, curiously, he asked, “Marguery? Did you have friends in Perth?”
“Friends? No. Not that I know of, anyway. I’ve never even been in Australia.”
“But you looked worried,” he pointed out.
She stared at him. “Jesus, Sandy, you say some funny things,” she told him. “Of course I was worried. They’re human beings in Australia, too, aren’t they? And anyway, who knows where the next one might come down? It could be right on top of us!”
He thought of Polly’s promise of mysterious surprises and wondered if he should mention them to Marguery. But he didn’t really know what they were going to be. Instead, he said seriously, “The statistical chances of any particular person being hit are quite small, Marguery.”
“Chances! Sandy, what do you know about it? You haven’t lived your whole life under a slow-motion blitz. It makes you nervous. Come on, let’s get the coffee.” And then as he followed her back into the hallway she softened. “I’m sorry if I bit your head off, Sandy.”
“Bit my head off?” And, while he was asking, he added, “And what’s a ‘blitz’?”
She laughed. “I keep forgetting you’re new around here, Sandy,” she said. She explained while they were waiting in line to get to the coffee table and then she said, “Look, we’ve still got some time now. Do you see what’s down there?”
She was pointing to the end of the hallway. All he saw was a door marked Sky Survey Monitors. “What is it?” he asked.
“It’s what it says it is. It’s where they keep tabs at this installation on everything in near-Earth orbit—including the Hakh’hli ship. Would you like to take a look at it?”
There were people working in the room, but Marguery talked to one of them in a low voice. The woman nodded and pointed to a work station. Marguery sat down, frowned over the keyboard for a moment, and then began to tap out codes.
“I guess an InterSec cop can do pretty much anything she wants,” Sandy observed from behind her.
“She can if she has you with her,” Marguery said, studying the screen. “Especially if she used to be in the astronaut corps herself. Here, take a look.”
On the screen a picture began to form—a bright, small object like a soup can, far away.
“We’re watching in the infrared,” Marguery told him. “These are the same kind of telescopes that were tracking the reentry. You’ll see a streak across the picture now and then. Pay no attention to them, they’re just space junk in Low Earth Orbit, like the piece that just fell in the ocean. Here, I’ll zoom in a little closer.”
Sandy stared. It was the Hakh’hli ship, all right! It seemed to glow with its own light. It was stark and clear, and he had never seen it thus. Every detail showed. As it slowly turned to even the heating from the sun, even the little welt on its surface that had been the cradle of his own landing craft was clearly visible.
“I didn’t know you could see the ship from Earth,” he said numbly.
“Well, hell of course we can see you,” she said, cross. “Do you think we’re ignorant savages? We’ve been watching you for nearly two months.”
“Two months?”
She made an impatient gesture. “Just because we can’t go into space doesn’t mean we don’t keep looking. They found the gamma-ray emission weeks ago in a routine sweep. The source was obviously moving pretty fast, so naturally they followed up on it. The gammas came from your drive, I believe.”
She touched a few more keys, and the image grew larger still. “Your ship was still out of the plane of the ecliptic, more than a billion miles out. We couldn’t get decent optics at first. Then, after you came around the Sun, we followed you on radar.”
“Radar?”
“Radio beams,” she explained. “We bounce them off things and pick up the reflections.”
“Ah,” he said, gratified that one point at least was coming clear to him. He nodded. “ChinTekki-tho said there were transmissions from Earth, but the Hakh’hli didn’t exactly know what they were. They didn’t seem to carry information.”
“Not on the way out, they don’t,” Marguery agreed, “but we could see you very clearly from the reflection. Then we could get you optically, too, at least in the infrared—your ship soaked up so much solar heat at perihelion that it sticks out like a light bulb. Sandy? Do you see those lumps on the side of the ship? What are they for?”
He peered at the screen. “Those five in a row, there? They’re other landers. The ship has half-twelve of them, altogether—you can see that landing craft is gone. That was ours.” Then he glared at her. “You watched us coming?”
“Of course we did. Wouldn’t you?” she asked patiently. “We kept a pretty close eye on you. We were listening on all frequencies, too, to see if you would send a signal to let us know who you were. You didn’t, though.”
“Well,” Sandy apologized, “the Major Seniors weren’t sure of what kind of people you were, you know.”
She shrugged. “We weren’t sure of you, either. As soon as you launched the lander we tracked its landing orbit. You didn’t have to wander around in the rain, Sandy. If you had just stayed put, we would have come to you as soon as the storm was over.”
“But why didn’t you tell us?”
“Well, I’m telling you now.” Then, unwillingly, she added, “The fact is that I wasn’t supposed to, before. It’s just been cleared.”