“I wish I knew more of what was going on,” he complained.
“Don’t we all? But what’s to tell? There was a Chinese submarine shadowing the tug with the capsule, but be warned them off from territorial waters and now they’re headed south. To Kourou, I guess. And there were a couple of Mexican frigates that got too close and had to be chased away-and, naturally, a lot of diplomatic complaints, but screw them. So everything’s under control … I hope. Now can I get back to dealing with all this crap, please?”
“I guess,” Makalanos said reluctantly. “Daisy? What are you doing with this Starlab stuff? I thought you were assigned to head up all the rest of the Bureau’s business?”
Unwarranted Exclusion of Peaceful Shipping
Federal officials in the Costa Rican Naval Department have announced that Costa Rican fishing and pleasure vessels have been driven out of international waters in the vicinity of the recent landing of the spacecraft from the “Scarecrows.” Our ambassador in Washington has asked for an appointment with the American State Department in order to file a protest against this high-handed act.
Tico Times, San Juan, Costa Rica
She gave him a wry look. “What other business? Haven’t you been paying attention? There isn’t any. It looks like all the subversives are* pulling their heads in. Right now this Scarecrow stuff is about the only action around.”
Agent Dannerman knocked and came in while Makalanos was channel-surfing the civilian news. “Dopey wants to talk to you, so Pat’s going to bring him along,” he reported.
“Talk about what?” Makalanos asked, glancing away from a late-breaking story about the English Prime Minister’s hurried visit to Cardiff, in Wales.
“About this idea he has that something’s happened to his Doc. He’s quieted down some, so it ought to be all right.” He was looking past Makalanos, at the news screen. “I guess that’s part of this Welsh thing,” he offered. And, when Makalanos looked perplexed, he added: “It was scuttlebutt going around in Arlington. The way I heard it, the Welsh nationalists were negotiating with MI 5 for a truce, and this Dawid ap Llewellyn guy? He was supposed to be surrendering to the police in Brownsville.”
“I hadn’t heard,” Makalanos admitted.
“It’s getting to be an epidemic. The Ukrainians, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Shining Path in, where is it, Peru? Even the Cambodian rebels and the Irish. I haven’t heard anything like that about our own nut groups, but all over the world there are these revolutionaries packing it in. Makes you wonder-ah, there he is.”
Dopey had waddled in, Pat One right behind him, as they were talking. The little alien seemed subdued-worried, Makalanos thought, although he had not learned how to read Dopey’s feelings from any expression on the cat face or hues of the great fantail. As Pat One lifted him onto a chair and began to work the controls of the screen, Dopey commented, “It is a common thing.”
Makalanos looked at him. “What is?”
“This submerging of differences. Many affiliated races have behaved so, in that time of fear and confusion before they came to accept the Beloved Leaders.”
“Or didn’t,” Dannerman said sharply.
“Oh, yes, Agent Dannerman, that is true. Some did not. With inevitably tragic results.” The thought seemed to cheer him up. He added politely, “One hopes your species will not necessitate extreme measures, but your actions must not give provocation. It is my bearer I am concerned with!”
From her position crouched beside the screen, Pat One interrupted. “Fight later, guys. I’ve got something.”
The news screen she had been working over now showed the face of Colonel Hugues duValier, clutching a bracket to keep himself from floating around, and proudly informing the world that he, Colonel duValier, had successfully completed his mission and they were preparing to return to the Kourou base as soon as they were in position for the reentry.
Then the camera panned around the ship. Makalanos saw Hilda’s face, peering into the camera, and the German astronauts, and the baffling bits and pieces of alien technology, and the giant, silent figure of the Doc, curiously wearing a sort of metal babushka, but obviously alive and well.
There was a startled shriek from Dopey.
Makalanos turned to him. “What’s the matter? He isn’t dead, is he? He’s all right-“
The little alien seemed stunned. He mewed to himself for a moment, seeming at a loss for words. Then he said: “He is not at all all right, Lieutenant Colonel Makalanos. It is worse than I feared! Something must be done at once!”
Pat One, perched on the arm of Dopey’s chair, tried to soothe him. “Take it easy, will you? Look, they’ll be back soon, then you can see him yourself, so if you’re worried-“
“I am worried, Dr. Adcock! I am extremely worried! Can’t you see, the bearer has cut himself off from contact? It is an extremely dangerous situation, and-and-and there is no alternative. He must be destroyed. Please order him shot at once!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Back on the ground, Hilda Morrisey discovered that Kourou had changed. While she and her shipmates were looting the old Starlab the population of the Eurospace complex had exploded. Planes were landing every hour, bringing in more and more people. The planes weren’t just any old commercial jobs, either; these were official government aircraft, from forty or fifty different governments, and every one of them was packed with lawyers and high officials and whatever that government could scare up in the way of scientists and engineers to squabble over the loot as it came off the LuftBuran.
That wasn’t Hilda’s worry. She had done everything she was supposed to do on the orbiter-had prevented any of the others from pocketing any odd little bits of alien technology, had kept a sharp eye for dirty tricks. She had done her job, and now all she wanted was a bath and some clean clothes and a fast plane back to Arlington . . . but Marcus Pell turned out to have other ideas for her.
The deputy director’s plane had deposited him and fifteen others on Kourou’s landing strip before the LuftBuran touched down. It seemed to Hilda that he had brought enough manpower with him to do everything that still needed to be done, but Pell didn’t agree. “You’re one of our best agents, Hilda,” he told her benignly. “You’ve had a chance to get to know some of these people. You can talk to them. So talk. Circulate. Find out whatever you can. Leave the bargaining to us. Rest? You can rest later.” He paused, his nose wrinkling. “You’d better clean your teeth first, though.”
^^o Brigadier Morrisey did clean her
teeth-again; and rinsed her mouth four or five more times, too, until she was certain that her breath no longer showed any trace of her unfortunate spacesickness. Then she bathed the rest of her as well.
That, however, she was not able to do in the little room the base housing officer had assigned her during training, because that was now occupied by a pair of high-ranking diplomats from Sierra Leone. At that point Merla Tepp earned her pay. She had made friends among members of the spaceport’s permanent party while her brigadier was away and had been able to borrow a key to their barracks. Which had showers.
Cleaner, “So where do I sleep?” Hilda asked her aide, putting on a little of Tepp’s makeup before a mirror in the washroom.
Tepp seemed preoccupied with something. “Sleep?” she repeated. “Oh, sleep. On the deputy directors plane. I’ve staked out a couch in the lounge for you; I’ll have to sleep on the floor right next to it, if you don’t mind.” No surprise there. Kourou had run out of facilities for the influx. Now the LuftBuran’s longest landing strip, having served its main purpose when the spacecraft came down, was packed nose to tail with aircraft that had been kept on as emergency housing. The Argentinians were the best off, Tepp explained. They didn’t need an aircraft to sleep in. They had the luxury of a battle cruiser steaming in circles offshore, with their people helicoptering back and forth. Other countries had ships on their way to join the bedroom fleet. Some of the more important newcomers had rooms or even suites in the hotels of the old town of Kourou itself, a few kilometers down the coast. They commuted. Most of the influx were less fortunate. They were doubling and tripling up in rooms that didn’t have air-conditioning against the steamy equatorial heat, and might not even have windows, because they hadn’t ever been intended for sleeping in the first place.
It was nearly dark now, the Sun gone over the hills to the west with a sliver of a Moon following its descent. Out over the ocean there were quick illuminations of lightning, though too far away for the thunder to be heard. Over the spaceport itself there were patches of stars. They were obscured by the lights beating down on the little mounds of goods removed from the lander, but Hilda made out the familiar outline of Orion, queerly lying on his side because of their latitude. There was a constant bzzt-bzzt of insects frying themselves on the electrified mesh over the lights. Even so, people were slapping at bugs on their necks and arms.