“It reminds me of Ganymede Main,” Hunt replied. “All we need is helmets on and a few Vegas around. What a way to start a new era!”
On Hunt’s other side, Lyn, looking lost in the outsize, fur-trimmed hood pulled closely around her face, thrust her hands deeper into her jacket pockets and ground down a block of slush with her foot. “They’re about due,” she said. “I hope they’ve got good brakes.” Assuming all was on schedule, the ship would have left Thurien, over twenty light-years away, just about twenty-four hours earlier.
“I don’t think we need entertain any fears of ineptitude on the part of the Ganymeans,” Danchekker said confidently.
“If they turn out to be Ganymeans,” Hunt remarked, even
though by this time he no longer had any real doubts about the matter.
“Of course they’re Ganymeans,” Danchekker snorted impatiently.
Behind them Karen Heller and Jerol Packard, the U.S. Secretary of State, stood motionless and silent. They had persuaded the President to go ahead with the operation on the strength of the implication that the aliens, Ganymean or not, were friendly, and if they were wrong they could well have committed their country to the worst blunder in its history. The President had hoped to be present in person, but in the end had accepted reluctantly the advice of his aides that the absence of too many important people at the same time without explanation would be inviting undesirable attention.
Suddenly the voice of the operations controller inside the mess hall barked over the loudspeaker mounted on a mast at the rear. “Radar contact!” The figures around Hunt stiffened visibly. Behind them the team of UNSA technicians hid their nervousness behind a frenzied outbreak of last-minute preparations and adjustments. The voice came again: “Approaching due west, range twenty-two miles, altitude twelve thousand feet, speed six hundred miles per hour, reducing.” Hunt swung his head around instinctively to peer upward along with all the others, but it was impossible to make out anything through the overcast.
A minute went by in slow motion. “Five miles,” the controller’s voice announced. “It’s down to five thousand feet. Visual contact any time now.” Hunt could feel the blood pumping solidly in his chest. Despite the cold, his body suddenly felt clammy inside his heavy clothing. Lyn wriggled her arm through his and pulled herself closer.
And then the wind blowing down from the mountains to the west brought the first snatch of a low moaning sound. It lasted for a second or two, faded away, then came back again and this time persisted. It swelled slowly to a steady drone. A frown began forming on Hunt’s face as he listened. He turned and glanced back, and saw that several of the UNSA people were exchanging puzzled looks too. There was something wrong. That sound was too familiar to be from any starship. Mutterings started breaking out, then ceased abruptly as a dark shape materialized out of the cloud base and continued descending on a direct line toward the
base. It was a standard Boeing 1227 medium-haul, transonic VTOL.-a model widely used by domestic carriers and UNSA’s preferred type for general-purpose duties. The tension that had been building up around the apron released itself in a chorus of groans and curses.
Behind Heller and Packard, Caldwell, his face dark with fury, spun around to confront a bewildered UNSA officer. “I thought this area was supposed to have been cleared,” he snapped.
The officer shook his head helplessly. “It was. I don’t understand. . . . Somebo-”
“Get that idiot out of here!”
Looking flustered, the officer hurried away and disappeared through the open door of the mess hall. At the same time voices from the control room inside began pouring out over the loudspeaker, evidently left inadvertently live in the confusion.
“I can’t get anything out of it. It’s not responding.”
“Use the emergency frequency.”
“We’ve already tried. Nothing.”
“For Christ’s sake, what’s happening in here? Caldwell just chewed my balls off outside. Find out from Yellow Six who it is.”
“I’ve got ’em on the line now. They don’t know, either. They thought it was ours.”
“Gimme that goddam phone!”
The plane leveled out above the edge of the marshes about a mile away and kept coming, heedless of the volley of brilliant red warning flare~ fired from the top of McClusky’s control tower. It slowed to a halt above the open area of concrete in front of the reception party, hung motionless for a moment, and then started sinking toward the ground. A handful of UNSA officers and technicians ran forward making frantic crossed-arms signals over their heads to wave it off, but fell back in disarray as it came on down regardless and settled. Caldwell strode ahead of the group, gesticulating angrily and shouting orders at the UNSA figures who were converging around the nose and making signs up at the cockpit.