DS02 Night of the Dragonstar (3 page)

More questions were hurled at the pair. Questions about the reactions of fundamentalist religions to the implications of life on Earth formed from an alien pattern. Questions as to the meaning of the Dragonstar to IASA Deep Space Exploration. Questions concerning the possibility of the alien architects of the Dragonstar (and by implication, human life on Earth) returning to visit. Kemp and Thalberg fielded them all expertly, referring any complex issues to either the upcoming documentary or the official report to be issued the following year by the IASA.

To Kemp, the proceedings seemed to go incredibly fast; to Thalberg, who enjoyed public attention much less than did her former lover, it seemed interminable. She didn’t even know why she had involved herself, wishing now that she had kept to her promise to herself to continue her work as biomedical specialist on Copernicus Base, the IASA lunar colony. But something unfinished had nagged her into finally agreeing with Kemp to assist on his program.

“Well, that was quite a show,” Kate Ennis said, stepping up onto the platform. Impetuously, she kissed Kemp on the cheek, then shook Becky’s hand. Kemp smiled, a little dazed by her perfume. “I can see you have political designs, Colonel Kemp,” she said playfully.

“Political? No, no, I’m afraid not. And just call me Phineas, please.”

“Don’t be so hasty, Phineas,” Becky said, observing with mixed feelings the producer’s clear interest in her former boyfriend. “I’m sure you’d make a fine PTA president someday.”

Kate Ennis held her hand against a spray of ruffle emerging from her sharp suit and laughed charmingly. “Now, you must come and partake of the spread that your IASA Media Relations have prepared. I’ve seen it, and it’s not bad.”

“P
â
t
é
modeled after an alien cylinder, perhaps?” asked Becky as they walked to the back of the room, where the media people who had not rushed to their terminals were chowing down.

“Nothing so phallic, I’m sure.” Kate lifted an amused eyebrow. “Am I interrupting anything here?”

“No, of course not, Kate,” Kemp said, picking a glass of white wine off a tray after the women had taken theirs. “As a matter of fact, I wanted to talk to you. I like your style. Have you had any experience in documentaries?”

“I used to be a field producer for
Ninety Minutes.
I’ve no special contract with NBC and I happen to have some leave coming up, and I’d love to help you with your show. Here’s my card. Perhaps we can have dinner while you’re in town.” She flashed a smile. “Now you must excuse me.” And she was off.

“Miss Jaws, 2028,” Becky said, laughing. “I do believe she has her eyes on you, Phineas, so watch out. They tell me that Swedish girls lock errant boyfriends in saunas to sweat out their sins.”

“Do I hear a faint note of jealousy?” Kemp asked. Their conversation was interrupted by a number of media folk who had noticed their arrival and wanted to continue the press conference on a less formal level.

Several glasses of wine and much ego-stroking later, Phineas found himself seated, a plate of cold cuts and olives on his lap, for a blessed time alone.

Becky saw him and had to smile. He looked like a kid at a church social, struggling with his cup of punch and chicken salad sandwich. She excused herself from the boring conversation in which she was engaged and carried her own wine glass and hors d’oeuvre over his way.

“Hey, sailor,” she said.

Kemp smiled up at her, mouth full of sandwich. “’Lo, Becky.”

“Track Dragonjaws down again?”

“Uh ... yeah. Dinner tomorrow night.”

“Wonderful.”

“Turns out she did a Moon story and she’s got her shots and permit. Damned fine credentials, too.”

“I’m sure. What are we eating this crap for? This is my college town
—
let me take you out to a wonderful place I know in Georgetown
—
my treat. For old times’ sake. What do you say?”

“What do I do with my limo?”

“Send it back to the garage. I guarantee you there won’t be any Saurie Friends at this place.”

“Sounds wonderful to me.” Kemp drained his glass. “I trust this place has good wine.”

“Finest vintage, Phineas. A lot better than you can get on the Moon, let me tell you.”

“Just don’t let me get drunk,” Kemp said, getting up.

“Moi?”
Becky said innocently.

THE OLD MAN
drank from his Jack Daniels bottle, belched resoundingly, then turned on his computer, keying in the dictation mode.

“The Dragonstar Adventure,” he said in his rattly but resonant baritone, “by John T. Neville, King of the Hard Science Fiction Writers and the best damned lay in the universe!”

Neville chuckled to himself as he watched the phosphorous words appear on the CRT screen. His secretary would process that last bit out, of course, but it always gave him a charge to hear it and see it in print. He slurped some more from the bottle as he gazed serenely over his patio to the walls that guarded his hilltop mansion. He wished for the umpteenth time that the stuff he drank was really whiskey, but he hadn’t been able to drink that wonderful nectar since his liver transplant thirty years ago, and he missed it every single day.

Tapping a single key, he told the computer not to take down his next words. He screwed the cap back on the bottle, which actually held a specially concocted geriatric preservation formula he brewed in his basement, and settled his old frail bones back in his composing chair, conveniently close to the life maintenance equipment that he kept in every room. His gaze drifted casually across the shelves holding all four hundred and fifty-nine of his science fiction and popular science books (no goddamn fantasy!) to the enshrined picture of a crew-cut, bespectacled middle-aged man smoking a cigarette in a long holder.

“What do you think about this, John?” he said to the picture.
“Omni
called me last night for a special article on this Dragonstar business. Aliens, you old bugger. Aliens! Remember the talks we used to have about aliens, you with your goddamned homosapiencentric view of the universe! I told you we probably were just the gunk some alien race scraped off their shoe, and I was
right,
blast you! And you didn’t have the grace to live long enough to buy me that drink we bet.”

Neville shrugged and smiled sardonically to himself. Not that he could drink it now. And there he was, staring down at him, still with his smug smile: John W. Campbell, Jr., himself, father of modern science fiction. Neville had been all of thirteen years old when he had taken the bus from New Jersey to Manhattan and plopped his first manuscript on the great man’s desk. Younger than Asimov. Better, too. Yep, John T. Neville had sprung up right in the middle of the golden age of
Astounding
magazine, when the likes of Heinlein and Sturgeon, de Camp and van Vogt were forging the vital alchemy of a great literature. A truly useful literature, peering as it did into the future with the verve and excitement of possibility, yet with the dark edge of prophetic warning. A psychological mirror of the times and a damned fine way to teach the real stuff, hard science, more intoxicating than hard liquor. Hard science made man the master of his universe!

And now, all this.

“It’s our vindication, John. Shit,
your
vindication.” He glanced happily over at his trophy case of awards—Hugos and Nebulas, humanitarian awards, honorary doctorates, bowling trophies—and grinned, showing even white surgically implanted teeth. “I got mine. But you other guys—hell, the real pioneers always get reviled.”

That was it, he thought happily. That would be the slant for his article. The Dreamers Vindicated! SF Slans Victorious! We were better than all you stupid, mundane
Untermenchen
all along!

“And
I’m
going to write the definitive article, Hagar, you stupid shit!” he said to his autographed picture of Dr. Amos Hagar, the media darling who had been some lucky dinosaur’s breakfast. He gave a Bronx cheer to the picture
—
never had liked that guy
—
and laughed so hard he began coughing and the warning buzzer went off on his LM unit.

His nurse scurried in almost immediately.

“Mr. Neville! Whatever are you doing?”

“Hell, I’m laughing. No harm done.” He controlled his cough, and his blood pressure immediately lowered. “You don’t have to treat me like a baby, damn it.”

“Mr. Neville,” the attractive young nurse said, “you’re ninety-eight years old. You’re certainly no baby, but you’re much too vigorous for someone of your age and previous history of workaholism coupled with debauchery.”

“You ought to at least try the latter sometime.” He reached over and patted her rump. “Gave me some fine ideas for my books.”

“Now, now, Mr. Neville, we want that keen mind of yours fixed on science.”

“Hell, biology has always been my favorite science. I think I even got a degree in it somewhere.”

After checking the equipment, Nurse Jane Wilkins was satisfied that the spry life she was charged with would rant on a while longer. “What are you working on, Mr. Neville?”

“Call me ‘Doctor’ today, dear. I’ve just remembered about my degrees.”

“Certainly, Doctor.” She glanced at the CRT. “Oh, the Dragonstar.” Her eyes shone. “Aren’t those Sauries cute?”

“Cute! Bunch of smart lizards, that’s all they are. Stupid public is making them out to be Jesus’s babies or something, when they’d probably eat you soon as look at you.”

“Now now, Mr... . Dr. Neville. That’s hardly the attitude you’ve promoted in most of your books concerning extraterrestrials. Certainly you’ve had any number of antagonistic aliens, but you’ve always explored the possibility with an open mind
—
and the sharpest mind in science fiction.”

“Goddamn it, woman, I’m old, and I deserve to be cranky and cantankerous if I want. Now, I’m not going to die before I finish this article, so you can just leave me be.”

Nurse Wilkins made sure the sensor field keyed to Neville’s vital functions was fully operational, then departed.

Neville took another drink of his vitamin-packed brew, then rekeyed for dictation.

He started his essay off with his usual “This reminds me of the day I ...” anecdote, this one concerning his first first-contact story, “Streaking Eyeballs of Neptune,” for
Thrilling Astounding Tales,
an instant classic, then proceeded to narrate the story of the Dragonstar, Neville-style, intending to finish the article up with his lengthy opinion on the subject.

“We almost had a ‘Boucher’s comet.’

“That’s what the young IASA fellowship student Robert Boucher thought late one night at the Copernicus Base Observatory. The lunar telescopes had been running routine measurements on the Tarantula, the Great Looped Nebula in the Magellanic Cloud in the constellation Doradus, diameter eight hundred lightyears, which is mighty big, folks.

“The observatory project was in photometric analysis. An array of aligned photometers was focused on a nebula feature, comparing hard UV to near infrared radiation with a three-micrometer cutoff, each photometer covering a small arc of the sky.

“Boucher noted an unexpected series of peaks at regular intervals. He called in Professor Andre Labate, Director of the Observatory. It didn’t take long for Labate to figure out what was going on.

“Since the photometer array was aimed so far off the ecliptic, Labate knew it couldn’t be an asteroid. The possibility of a new comet arose, since the object was following a nearly parabolic orbit, but spectrographic analysis showed Fraunhofer absorption lines. Doppler shift on sodium D line was checked, and the spectrum proved to be only slightly shifted from the solar spectrum, which meant that solar radiation was being reflected off a spinning object, heading down the gravity well toward the sun.

“By the time Colonel Phineas Kemp, Chief of Operations on Copernicus Base, was called in, Labate and Boucher had the specifics.

“The large unidentified body was entering the main plane of the solar system at an oblique angle near the orbit of Jupiter, approximately forty degrees to the ecliptic. Measurements revealed that it had a cometary orbit with a period of about two hundred and ten years, and a velocity of thirty kilometers per second, increasing as the object approached perihelion, its closest position to the sun.

“Measurements also showed the object was not a comet but a cylinder sixty-five kilometers in diameter and three hundred and twenty kilometers in length.

“Sure as hell, nobody from Earth had shot that thing up there, and it
was
a spaceship of some kind.

“Because of the delicate political situation on both the Earth and the Moon, Kemp immediately put a top-secret classification on the information. The closest ship available for interception proved to be one of the IASA mining vessels working the asteroid belt.

“Kemp selected the
Astaroth,
which immediately dispatched a surveying/prospecting craft nicknamed a snipe, manned by Peter Melendez and Charles O’Hara. These pilots guided the small vessel along an intersect course with the approaching object, armed with an arsenal of cameras and analytical instruments. Upon close approach, they discovered that the object was an immense cylindrical spacecraft turning on its longitudinal axis. Colonel Kemp ordered the snipe to touch down on the surface of the alien vessel. This maneuver triggered defensive mechanisms that destroyed the snipe, killing its crew.

“Attempts to initiate communication with any possible beings inside the vessel, now called Artifact One, proved fruitless. Aside from the destruction of the snipe, the alien vessel was silent. All telemetered data from the snipe’s analysis were studied to determine the best ways to overcome Artifact One’s defenses and enter the ship.

“With the approval of the IASA’s joint directors, an expedition was prepared and the deep space probeship
Heinlein
was dispatched to intercept Artifact One and attempt entry. The mission was successful, and while Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Fratz and First Lieutenant Michael Bracken stayed aboard the ship, the remainder of the crew, a landing party of six, entered Artifact One.

“Inside they discovered an encapsulated world of jungle, forest, rivers, and plateaus illuminated by a thick rod that floated in zero gee along the central axis of the gigantic cylinder. The flora and terrain appeared to be an exact model of the Earth’s environment during the Mesozoic Era. Ian Coopersmith, a tactical engineer whose specific mission was to neutralize Artifact One’s defensive systems and gain entry into the ship, was in charge of the landing party. He placed communications officer Alan Huff by the entrance hatch and led the others on a short exploratory mission.

“They quickly learned that the alien vessel was filled not only with plant life but with dinosaurs as well. The crew was astonished to discover various species wandering about the terrain. While they watched a herd of Iguanodons feed near the edge of a lagoon, their radio helmets picked up Alan Huff’s cries for help. They returned just in time to see the crewman torn to pieces by two meat-eating dinosaurs called Compsognathus.

“The scent of blood soon attracted larger, more ferocious carnivores, and tile landing party was scattered. My esteemed colleague, Dr. Amos Hagar, world-renowned exobiologist, was consumed by an Allosaurus. I’m sure my dear friend, well known for his after-dinner speeches, delivered a
very
short address on the occasion. Two other crew members, Thomas Valdone and Dr. Gerald Pohl, were killed by two Gorgosaurus, leaving only Captain Coopersmith and Dr. Rebecca Thalberg, a biomedical specialist, alive. They escaped into the thick forest, unable to gain the hatch due to the continued presence of predators. They remained hidden until the illuminating rod grew dim, creating an artificial night. Nocturnal dinosaurs drove them deeper into the primordial forest, and they became lost.

“Colonel Kemp, understandably shocked
—”

The door opened.

Keying out of dictation mode, the old man turned to see who his new visitor was.

A beautiful woman, large-breasted and sleepy-eyed, walked into the room, wearing only a nightgown. Her long red hair was mussed. She yawned.

“Oh, Long Jack,” she said, stretching. “Last night was wonderful. I’m sooooo happy I met you. Thanks so much for inviting me to visit you here at Neville Base Alpha.” She went over to kiss him.

Neville grinned. “They don’t call me a hard science fiction writer for nothing.” He winked over at a picture of him standing with his buddies Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, and Pohl, all passed over into that great Valhalla reserved for brilliant SF writers. “Eat your hearts out, guys.
”