The Sails of Tau Ceti (14 page)

No one spoke for nearly a minute. Except for the recording symbol that had replaced the telephone icon on the screen, it would have been easy to convince Tory that what had just transpired was a case of mass hypnosis.

#

When he had regained control of his thinking, Garth punched for the audiovisual the aliens had sent them. It was a diagram showing the light sail with its two conical zones of danger — one forward and one aft — an hourglass shape into which they must not stray. As they watched, a stylized booster/corvette combination moved slowly toward the cylindrical starship. Glowing alphanumerics showed position and velocity vectors for every moment of the approach. A broad three-dimensional highway of glowing light marked the approach lane. The symbology the aliens were using was right out of the
Space Pilot’s Handbook
.

Garth froze the display on the screen. “Can we feed this into the autopilot?”

Tory consulted the raw data in the computer. “No problem. They’ve followed standard database format precisely.”

“Then set it up.” Garth keyed the display back to life.

The cylindrical starship continued to grow on the screen. At ten kilometers, the icon representing the human spacecraft halted and split in two. An alien voice announced that it would be necessary to separate their propulsion and crew modules at that point, leaving
Starhopper
in station keeping mode until it could be taken under tow. The unseen alien was apologetic, but explained that the big booster would not fit through
Far Horizons
’s ship lock. It also represented too great a safety hazard to be taken aboard the starship.

“Anyone have a problem with separating from the booster?” Garth asked after the short announcement concluded.

“It will take half an hour to unplug everything. The engineers made it possible to separate, but not easy.”

Eli muttered, “If anything goes wrong, we’ll be helpless in there.”

“We’re helpless right now,” Tory reminded him. “All they need do is shine that laser in our direction.”

“Kit?”

“I agree with Tory,” the doctor replied. “We came here to learn all we can. Let’s get on with it.”

The display continued. After separation, the truncated cartoon spaceship moved along a gentle curve toward the forward end of the alien cylinder. There it halted while a rectangular hatch on the front face of the cylinder opened wide and the icon moved inside. The audiovisual ended as the hatch closed again.

Kit was the first to speak. “Does it strike anyone that these people know us entirely too well?”

“What do you mean?”

“They speak our language with absolute precision, they are conversant with our conventions for computer graphics and data storage formats, they imitate both our facial expressions and involuntary gestures. They even have a recording of me lecturing several years ago. Where did they get that and for God’s sake, why did they save it?”

Eli shrugged. “As refugees, it benefits them to know everything they can about us.”

“But is it to
our
benefit for them to know so much?”

#

Tory and Garth were alone in the control room again. Garth had shooed the two others back to their cabins and made them strap down as a precaution. The accelerations they were using during the approach were moderate, but he did not know when he might have to throw the ship into a violent maneuver.

Where most objects in space show a sharp demarcation between sunlight and shadow, the cylindrical craft glowed all over, as though from some inner light. The effect was due to one side being illuminated by a wan Sol while the other reflected the electric blue sheen emanating from the light sail. The ship was sheathed in glowing plasma. Streamers of St. Elmo’s fire hundreds of kilometers long danced up and down the shroud lines. The electric glow was surrealistic as they slowly drifted toward their rendezvous point.

As the cylinder rotated about its long axis, they were treated to an ever-changing panorama. The hull had the cluttered look of a junkyard. As Tory watched each new bit of alien technology come into view, she was reminded of a trip to the Olympus Museum of Science and Technology when she was sixteen.

The museum had featured a retrospective on humanity’s conquest of the air. The centerpiece of the exhibit had been an ancient bomber borrowed from the Smithsonian in New Washington. As Tory walked beneath the huge wing of the old aircraft, she had been impressed by the number and variety of objects protruding into the air stream. Having just finished a class in high school physics, she was aware of the need for streamlining. Whatever function these bumps and protrusions had served must have been important, or else the designers would not have compromised their flying machine so. Yet, she could think of no function they might serve.

So it was with the Phelan starship. Each mechanism on the outer hull obviously had a purpose of some kind. Precisely
what
purpose, no one could say. In spots, the alien cylinder looked as though it had been infested with a plague of piping. Other regions were swept as clean as a Martian plain after a dust storm. What function did those interlocking crosses of black and silver serve? Or the oversize metal Christmas tree? Or the small glass spheres jutting outward on thin stalks? There were many hatch-like openings in the hull. Were these access ports used during the ship’s construction, or sally ports ready to spew forth fighter craft to do battle with humanity’s small space navy?

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Garth asked. Tory turned her head to find him watching her

“‘Daunting’ is more like it.”

“Oh, I don’t know. We probably could do as well if we had to.”

“Are you suggesting that we could build
that
?” she asked, gesturing at the screen.

“Why not? If we knew decades in advance that the sun was going to nova, who knows what we might build?”

“I admire your optimism.”

“They aren’t that far ahead of us. If they were, we would not be able to recognize their machinery at all. As it is, our two species are at surprisingly comparable levels of development.”

Tory laughed. “So just because the damned thing is a kilometer in diameter and three kilometers long doesn’t hide the fact that it’s only a Starship Mark I.”

He reached across the divide between the acceleration couches to caress her arm. “Precisely, love. Do not let them overawe you. Remember, the eyes of a skeptic see more than those of an acolyte. They put their pants on one leg at a time.”

She tried to visualize a Phelan putting on a pair of pants and realized that she did not know enough about their anatomy to make an informed judgment. She had no idea what a Phelan looked like from the neck down. Still, Garth’s point was well taken. She was a professional observer on this trip. It was necessary that they all keep an open mind and a slightly jaundiced eye if their information was to be of use to the people at home.

“Range and velocity check!” Garth said, signifying that the time for philosophical discussion had passed.

“Five kilometers distance, down to 50 kilometers per hour approach speed.” Tory answered after consulting three separate instruments. It would be a tragedy for the starship to cross 12 light years of emptiness only to end in a traffic accident this close to Sol.

As they closed to three kilometers and made directly for the front end of the cylinder, Tory noticed something that had not been visible before. Suspended nearly a kilometer in front of the cylinder was a much smaller sphere than the one behind. The new sphere was a dull ebon that matched the blackness of space. Nor did it provide much of a radar return. Extending forward from the sphere was a thin conductor with a highly negative electrical charge. This, then, was the device that swept up ionized hydrogen after the laser excited it. Tory reported her discovery to Garth.

“That sphere must be where they house the laser,” he said. “It has to be vibration isolated from the rest of the ship if they’re going to have any kind of pointing accuracy. What better place to put it than suspend it from a cable held taught by the ship’s deceleration?”

To confirm Van Zandt’s guess, Tory checked the surface temperature of the sphere. Sure enough, it was radiating considerable heat to space. The black coating gave the radiation signature a pure “black body” distribution, and made it likely that the sphere was the heat rejection device for the ionization laser.

“Velocity?” Garth asked as
Far Horizons
swelled to fill the screen. No longer were they approaching another vessel. The starship was now a planet-sized object hanging above them, poised to crash down on the unwary.

Tory announced their velocity. The attitude control jets hissed twice to further slow the ship. She held her breath as they crossed in front of the starship. The forward face of the great cylinder was as cluttered as its flanks.

“There’s the ship lock.”

In front of them was the opening in the starship’s hull. The port looked just as it had in the alien’s audiovisual. What hadn’t been obvious was the proximity of the ship lock to the cable from which the laser sphere was suspended.

“Tight fit,” Tory muttered.

Garth agreed and wondered aloud at the level of energy being fed to the ionization laser.

“Brush that cable and we’re liable to find out…”

Of necessity, the ship lock had been placed close to the giant ship’s axis of rotation. To do otherwise would have made it nearly impossible to dock with the rotating cylinder. Their screens went momentarily blank as the hatch opened to reveal a brightly lit interior. They regained their sight as the light amplification circuits adjusted for the sudden brilliance. There was little to see of the starship’s interior save for the brightly lit, cavernous compartment beyond.

“Eli!”

“Yes, Garth.”

“Tell Earth that they’re about to lose contact.”

“I already have. I don’t know whether they heard me. The plasma density is wreaking havoc with my signal-to-noise ratio.”

“Tell them again,” the captain ordered, “and keep telling them until we’re aboard the alien ship.”

“Aye, sir.”

Garth halted
Austria
with two quick bursts from the attitude control jets, and then waited for the open port to rotate into line with their prow. Thirty seconds later, with the rectangular port sweeping ponderously toward them and the axis cable but a few tens of meters over their heads, Van Zandt twisted his control stick again. This time a long burst from the jets sent them drifting forward.
Austria
’s nose turned white as it drifted across the threshold and into the lighted interior. Soon, the whole of
Austria
had passed through the open port.

“Damn!”

“What’s the matter?”

“There’s not enough room in here to rotate the ship. I’m just going to have to let her flop down onto the deck.”

“There can’t be much spin gravity this close to the axis.”

“We’re still liable to bend something. Can’t be helped, I guess.”

With that, he fired another burst to kill their forward velocity. A gentle hand seemed to grip
Austria
, pulling it toward the bright blue deck that made up one side of the compartment. The landing was more sensed than felt. Only when she found herself floating into her straps did Tory realize that they had grounded against the starship’s curved deck.

She switched the aft view onto the main viewscreen. She was just in time to see the oversize hatch swing ponderously into place. The black firmament became a ribbon, then a string, then nonexistent. Things that happen in vacuum do so in total silence. Even so, Tory wondered if the sound she heard in her mind was that of a cell door slamming shut.

#

Faslorn watched the strange craft float through the open hatch and then settle down. He had to admit that the humans seemed to know their business. The approach had been as smooth as anything a Phelan pilot could accomplish. He wondered if the computer had been allowed to control the ship, or whether Van Zandt had been flying it himself. He suspected the latter. The human psychologists aboard had spent generations refining their picture of the human psyche. Soon the accuracy of their deductions would be put to the test.

With the human ship safely aboard, Faslorn ordered the hatch closed. The order was passed on just as the technicians analyzing the communications signal the humans were broadcasting made her report. Their signal was in the millimeter band, with a respectable bandwidth. Faslorn wondered why they did not use the much more capable laser links that had given his eavesdroppers so many problems over the years. He resolved to ask them when he had the chance.

“Rosswin.”

“Yes, Faslorn,” his second in command responded over the ship intercom.

“Announce to all members of the crew that the humans are aboard. The masquerade begins now. Make that a Prime Message and demand acknowledgements from all sector heads.”

“That message has already gone out. Acknowledgements are coming in now.”

“What about our preparations to receive them?”

“Complete. I just finished checking them myself.”

“You are certain?”

The return gesture was a human affirmative rather than the flexed arm stance that served the same purpose among Phelan. “We have profiles on each of the crew and predictions of how they will react to any predictable stimulus, both singularly and in groups. They will be under full observation while they are aboard, and we will update our behavior predictions in real time.”

“What about our special need?”

“It’s far too early to make a recommendation, of course. I suggest that we concentrate on the two females for the time being. The biologists think they may be inclined to be more sympathetic to our cause than the males.”

Faslorn signed off and then moved to the high-speed lift that would take him up three levels to the axis transport system. From there, he would move to the forward end of the ship and the hangar where the humans had landed.

Excitement coursed through his two hearts as he hurried to the waiting lift. This was what he had trained for all of his life. He would soon know if all that training had been in vain.