James P Hogan. Giant’s Star. Giant Series #3

“Imbeciles!” Danchekker muttered. “This kind of thing should never happen.”

“It looks as if Murphy’s back from vacation,” Lyn said resignedly in Hunt’s ear. But Hunt only half heard. He was staring hard at the Boeing with a strange look on his face. There was something very odd about that aircraft. It had landed in the mid-

die of a sea of watery snow and slush churned up by the activity of the last few days, yet its landing jets hadn’t thrown up the cloud of spray and vapor as they should have. So maybe it didn’t have any landing jets. If that were so it might have looked like a 1227, but it certainly wasn’t powered like one. And there didn’t seem to be much response from the cockpit to the antics of the people below. In fact, unless Hunt’s eyes were deceiving him, there wasn’t anybody in the cockpit at all. Suddenly his face broke into a wide grin as the penny dropped.

“Vie, what is it?” Lyn asked. “What’s funny?”

“What’s the obvious way to hide something in the middle of an airfield from a surveillance system?” he asked. He gestured toward the plane, but before he could say any more a voice that could have belonged to a natural-born American boomed out across the apron from its direction.

“Greetings from Thurien to Earth, et cetera. Well, we made it. Too bad about the lousy weather.”

All movement around the craft ceased instantly. A total silence fell. One by one the heads on every side jerked around and gaped at each other speechlessly as the message percolated through.

This was a starship? The Shapieron had stood nearly half a mile high. It was like having a little old lady show up at Tycho on a bicycle.

The forward passenger door opened, and a flight of steps unfolded itself to the ground. All eyes were riveted to the open doorway. The UNSA people up front drew back slowly while Hunt and his companions, with Heller and Packard a pace behind, moved forward to close in behind Caldwell and then slowed to a halt again uncertainly. Behind them the expectant cameras focused unwaveringly on the top of the steps.

“You’d better come on in,” the voice suggested. “No sense in catching colds out there.”

Heller and Packard exchanged bemused glances; none of their talks and briefings in Washington had prepared them for this. “I guess we just ad-lib as we go,” Packard said in a low voice. He tried to summon up a reassuring grin, but it died somewhere on its way to his face.

“At least it’s not happening in Siberia,” Heller murmured.

Danchekker was fixing Hunt with a satisfied look. “If those utterances are not indicative of Ganymean humor at work, I’ll ac

cept creationism,” he said triumphantly. The aliens could have warned them about the ship’s disguise, Hunt agreed inwardly, but apparently they had been unable to resist making a mild joke out of it. And they obviously had little time for pomp and formality. It sounded like Ganymeans, all right.

They began moving toward the steps with Caldwell in the lead while the UNSA people opened up to let them pass through. Hunt was a couple of paces behind Caidwell as Caldwell was about to step onto the first stair. Caldwell emitted a startled exclamation and seemed to be lifted off the ground. As the others froze in their tracks, he was whisked upward over the stairway without any part of his body seeming to touch it, and deposited on his feet inside the doorway apparently none the worse for wear. He seemed a trifle shaken when he turned to look back down at them, but composed himself rapidly. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he growled. Hunt was obviously next in line. He drew a long, nil-steady breath, shrugged, and stepped forward.

A strangely pleasant and warm sensation enveloped him, and a force of some kind drew him onward, carrying his weight off his legs. There was a blurred impression of the steps flowing by beneath his feet, and then he was standing beside Caldwell, who was watching him closely and not without a hint of amusement. Hunt was finally convinced-this was not a 1227.

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