Footfall (2 page)

She looked great. He hadn’t seen her since — since when? Only twice since she’d married Edmund. And of course he’d been at her wedding. Linda’s mother had cried. Damn near cried myself, Roger thought. How did I let her get out of circulation? But I wasn’t ready to marry her myself. Maybe I should have…

The trouble was, he wasn’t getting any story he could understand. People were excited, but they didn’t say why. The regular science press people weren’t telling. They all knew each other, and they resented outsiders at big events like this.

Roger doodled, looking up when anyone called a greeting, hoping nobody would want his attention. He hadn’t asked for this assignment.

He heard, “Haven’t you ever seen three earthworms in love?” and looked. A clump of science-fiction writers stood beneath a screen that showed… yeah, three earthworms in love, or a bad photo of spaghetti left on a plate, orjust noise. He wrote, “F ring: Three earthworms in love,” and tapped Linda’s shoulder. “Linda? Save my seat?”

“Where’re you going?”

“Maybe I can get something from the science-fiction writers.” Nobody else was trying that; it might get him a new slant. At least they’d talk English. “It looks like things are starting.”

Frank Bristow, the JPL newsroom manager, had taken his place at the podium. Roger had met him briefly when signing in. The regular press corps all seemed to know him as well as each other. Roger didn’t know anyone.

Bristow was about to make his opening statement. The Voyager project manager and four astrophysicists were taking their seats at a raised table. Brooks sat down again. He wished he were somewhere else.Roger Brooks was approaching thirty, and he didn’t like it. There were temptations in his job: too much free food and booze. He took care to maintain the muscle tone when his lifestyle didn’t. His straight blond hair was beginning to thin, and that worried him a little, but his jaw was still square, with none of the, softening he saw in his friends. He had given up smoking three years ago, flatly, and suffered through horrid withdrawal symptoms. His teeth were white again, but the scars between the index and middle fingers of his right hand would never go away. He’d been taken drunk one night in Vietnam , and a cigarette had burned out there.

Roger Brooks had been just old enough to cover some of the frantic last days in Vietnam , but he had been too late to get anything juicy. He had missed Watergate: his suspicions were right, but he was too junior to follow them up. Other reporters got Pulitzer prizes.

Something had changed in him after that. It was as if there were a secret somewhere, calling to him. Little assignments couldn’t hold his interest.

“He missed one chance to be played by Robert Redford,” one of his ladies had been heard to say. “He isn’t about to miss another.”

This was a little assignment. He wondered if he should have taken it, even for the chance to get to California , even though half the Washington newsroom staff would have sold fingers and toes for the chance. But nobody was keeping secrets here. Whatever Voyager One told them, they would shout it to the world, to the Moon if they could. The trick was to understand them.

No big story, maybe, but the trip was worth it. He glanced at Linda and thought: definitely worth it. — He twisted uncomfortably as old memories came back. They’d been so inexperienced! But they’d learned, and no sex had ever been as good as his memory of Linda that last time. Maybe he’d edited that memory. Maybe not. I’ve got to stop thinking about that! It’ll show … What in hell am I going to write about?

Another group was clumped beneath the full-size model of the Voyager spacecraft. They had to be scientists, because most of them were men and they all wore suits. A couple of the sciencefiction writers stood with them, more like colleagues than press. No reporters did that. Would that make an interesting angle? The sci-fi people didn’t pretend to be neutral. They were enthusiasts and didn’t care who knew it, while the reporters tried to put on this smug air of impartiality.

The briefing began. The Program Director talked about the spacecraft. Mission details, spacecraft performing well. Some data lost because it was raining in Spain where the high-gain antennae were located — was that a joke? No, nobody was laughing.

“Three billion miles away, and they’re getting pictures,” somebody said on his right. A pretty girl, long legs, slim ankles, short bobbed hair. Badge said Jeri Wilson, some geological magazine. Wedding ring, but that didn’t always mean anything. Maybe she’d be here the rest of the week. She seemed to be alone.

The mission planning people left the podium and the scientists, Brad Smith and Ed Stone and Carl Sagan, came up to tell what they thought they were learning. Roger listened, and tried to think of an interesting question. In a situation like this, the important thing was get yourself noticed, for future reference, then try for an exclusive. He jotted useful phrases:

“New moons are going to get dull pretty soon.”

“Not dozens of rings. Hundreds. We’re still counting.” Long pause. “Some of them are eccentric.”

“What does that mean?” someone whispered.

The sci-fi man in the khaki bush jacket answered in what he probably thought was a whisper. “The rings are supposed to be perfect circles with Saturn at the center. All the theory says they have to be. Now they’ve found some that aren’t circles, they’re ellipses.”

Other scientists spoke:

“May be the largest crater in the solar system in relation to the body it’s on …”

“There isn’t any Janus. There are two moons where we thought Janus was. They share the same orbit, and they change places every time they pass. Oh, yes, we’ve known for some time those orbits were possible. It’s a textbook exam question in celestial mechanics. It’s just that we never found anything like it in the real universe.”

Brooks jotted down details on that one; it was definitely worth a mention. Janus was the moon named for the two-faced god of beginnings—

He whispered that to Linda, and got an appreciative nod. The Wilson girl wrote something too.

“The radial spokes in the rings seem to be caused by very tiny particles, around the size of a wavelength of light. Also the process seems to be going on above the ring, not in it.”

Radial spokes in the rings! They ought to disappear as the rings turned, because the inner rings were moving faster than the outer rings. They didn’t disappear. Weird news from everywhere in Saturn system. Some of Brooks’ colleagues would understand the explanations, when they came…

Yet the press conference offered more than Brooks had expected. He had interviewed scientists before. It was the lack of answers that was interesting here.

“We don’t know what that means.”

“We wouldn’t like to say yet.”

“The more we learn from Voyager, the less we know about rings.”

“If we fiddle with the numbers a little we can pretty well explain why Cassini’s Divide is so much bigger than it ought to be.” Dramatic pause. “Of course that doesn’t explain why there are five faint rings inside it!”

“If I’d had to make a long list of things we wouldn’t see, eccentric rings would have been the first item.”

“Brad, what about braided rings?”

“That would have been off the top of the paper.”

Everyone up there looked happy, Brooks noted. Fun things were going on here. If Brooks didn’t have the background to appreciate them, who did?

A newsperson asked, “Have you got any more on the radial spokes? I’d have thought that violated the laws of physics.”

David Morrison from Hawaii answered, “I’m sure the rings are doing everything right. We just don’t understand it yet.” Brooks jotted it down. “Where I want to be,” Roger said, “is in a motel room with you.” They were walking the grounds of JPL: lawn, fountains, vaguely oriental rock gardens, a bridge, all very nice.

“That was years ago,” Linda said. “And it’s all over.”

“Sure?”

“Yes, Roger, I’m sure. Now be good. You promised you would. Don’t make me sorry I came with you.”

“No, of course I won’t,” Roger said. “It really is good to see you again. And I’m glad you’re happy with Edmund.”

Are you? Linda wondered. And am I? Of course I am. I’m very happy with Edmund. It’s when he goes off and leaves me to take care of everything and I’m alone all the time and I see these goddam romantic perfume ads and things like that that I get unhappy about Major Edmund Gillespie. I wonder if the feminists did us any favors, letting us admit we get horny just like men!

She grinned broadly.

“Yeah?” Roger demanded.

“Nothing.” Nothing I’d tell you. But it’s nice to see I could have some company if I wanted.

Lunch was in the JPL cafeteria. Roger and Linda were made welcome at the science-fiction writers’ table, but the writers didn’t know any more than Roger did. They were having fun with not knowing.

Someone passed a cartoon down the table. It showed hanging off to one side, either the Star Wars Death Star or Saturn’s moon Mimas, Saturn huge across the background. In the foreground a spacecraft used mechanical arms to twist the F-ring into a braid. The caption: “You’ve a wicked sense of humor, Darth Vader!”

Another writer looked up and yawned. “Oh. It’s just another goddam spectacular picture of Saturn.” That earned him appreciative laughter.

But no one knew, which made it a frustrating lunch. Saturn had secrets, maybe, but he wasn’t telling them, and the writers didn’t have any logical guesses about the strange pictures.

Halfway through the lunch Linda called to someone. “Wes. We didn’t expect to see you here!”

He was a trim athletic man in a faded baseball cap. Linda introduced him around the table. “Wes married Carlotta,” she told Roger. “You remember Carlotta. She was my best friend in school.”

“Sure,” Roger said. “How are you?”

One of the writers looked thoughtful. “Wes Dawson… You’re running for Craig Hosmer’s old seat.”

“Right.”

“Wes has always been for the space program,” Linda said. “Maybe you fellows will vote for him?”

“Not our district,” Wade Curtis said. “We live north of there. But maybe we can help. We’re always interested in people who’ll promote space.”

It was late afternoon when they got back to the house. Roger pulled into the driveway.

“You might as well come in and meet Jenny,” Linda said. “Remember her?”

“Sure I remember The Brat. I had to bribe her to leave us alone!”

“Well, she’s grown a bit now.” Linda led the way to the house and unlocked the door. It was strangely silent inside. She went to the kitchen and found a note held to the refrigerator by a tomato-shaped magnet. Roger was standing behind her, scanning over her shoulder, as she read it.

“She’s a freshman at Long Beach State . Anthropology. But she took up scuba diving in a big way. Her curient boyfriend is at Scripps.” Linda shook her head in dismay. “Mother will kill me if she finds out I let her go to an all-night party.”

Roger shook his head. “The Brat’s in college? Jeez, Linda, she can’t be more than, what, fifteen?”

“Seventeen.”

Roger sighed. “I guess it’s been longer than I thought.”

“Yes, it has been. Want some coffee?”

“Sure.”

She got out the filters and put water on. Roger hadn’t said anything, hadn’t done anything, but she could feel the vibes. Had Jenny planned this? But no, she didn’t know Roger was in/town, and she wouldn’t if she had. She’d always liked Roger, but she liked Edmund more. No, Jenny wouldn’t have deliberately ananged to leave her alone with a lover from the past.

It had been a long time, but she remembered every detail. Pampered Georgetown University freshman dating the reporter from the Washington Post. They’d planned it, a weekend together in her parents’ Appalachian cabin. It had been summer, and no one was using the place. The weather in the mountains had been perfect. There’d been a delicious thrill of anticipation as they drove up the twisting highway. She hadn’t had that feeling since.

Edmund was different. Edmund was older too, and more glamorous. Fighter pilot. Astronaut. Everything a hero should be. Everything but a great lover… That’s not fair, not fair at all.

There’d been anticipation when she met Edmund. It lasted all during their courtship — and died on their wedding night.

I’d forgotten all this, but I feel it now. Just as I did then. But — the coffee machine was set up and there wasn’t any reason to watch it any longer. She turned. Roger was standing very close to her. She didn’t have to move very far to be in his arms.

The lush tropical growth of the Kona Coast ended abruptly. Suddenly the passionflower vines and palm trees were gone, and Jenny was driving through barren lava fields. “It looks like the back side of the Moon,” she said.

Her companion nodded and pointed toward the slopes off to their right. “Mauna Loa . They say it’s terrible luck to take any of the lava home.”

“Who says?”

“The Old Hawaiians, of course. But a surprising number of tourists, too. They take the stuff home, and later they mail it back.” He shrugged. “Bad luck or no, so far as anyone knows, she — Mauna Loa is always she to the Old Ones — she’s never taken a life.”

Captain Jeanette Crichton expertly downshifted the borrowed TR-7 as the road began another steep ascent. The terrain was deceptive. From the beach the mountains looked like gentle slopes until you tried climbing them. Then you realized just how big the twin volcanoes were. Mauna Kea rose nearly 14,000 feet above the sea — and plunged 20,000 feet downward to the sea bottom, making it a bigger mountain than Everest.

“You’ll turn left at the next actual road,” Richard Owen said. “It’ll be a way. Mind if I doze off? I had a late night.”

“All right by me,” she said. She drove on.

Not very flattering, she thought. Picks me up in Kona, gets me to drive him up the side of a volcano, and goes to sleep. Romantic.

She ran her fingers along her shoulder-length hair. It was dark brown with a trace of red, and at the moment it couldn’t be very attractive since it was still damp from her morning swim. She hadn’t much of a tan, either. Sometimes her freckles ran together to give the illusion of a tan, but it was too early in the spring for that. Damp hair, no tan. Not really the popular image of a California girl.

Her figure was all right, if a bit athletic; the Army encouraged officers to run four miles a day, and she did that although she could get out of the requirement if she really wanted to. The medium-length skirt and T-shirt showed her off pretty well. Still, it couldn’t be looks that attracted this astronomer to her, any more than she was overwhelmed by his appearance. All the same, there’d been some electricity earlier. Now it was nearly gone.

He was up all night, she thought. And will be again tonight. Let him sleep. That should liven him up. God knows what I’d be like if I had to live on a vampire’s schedule.

They drove through alternate strips of pasture and lava fields. At irregular intervals someone had made crude stacks of lava rocks. Three or four rocks, each smaller than the one below, the bottom one perhaps two feet across, piled in a stack; she’d been told they were religious offerings made by the Old Hawaiians. If so, they couldn’t be very old; Mauna Loa erupted pretty often, and certainly this field had been overflowed several times during the twentieth century.

She turned left at the intersection, and the way became even steeper. The TR-7 labored through the climb. There were fewer fresh lava fields here; now they were on the side of Mauna Kea . “She” was supposed to be pretty thoroughly dormant. They drove through endless miles of ranchlands given by King Kamehameha to a British sailor who’d become the king’s friend.

Richard Owen woke just as they reached the “temporary” wooden astronomy base station. “We stop here,” he said. “Have some lunch.”

There wasn’t much there. Long one-story wooden barracks in a sea of lava and mud, with a few straggly trees trying to live in the lava field. She pulled in alongside several GMC Jimmy fourwheel-drive vehicles. “We could go on up,” she said. “I don’t really need lunch.”

“Regulations. Acclimatization. It’s nearly fourteen thousand feet at the top. Pretty thin air. Thin enough here at ten thousand It’s not easy to do anything, even walk, until you get used to it.”

By the time they reached the clapboard barracks buildings she was ready to agree.

There were half a dozen observatories on the lip of the volcano. Richard parked the Jimmy in front of the NASA building. It looked like an observatory in a Bugs Bunny cartoon: a square concrete building under a shiny metal dome.

“Do I get to look through the telescope?” she asked.

He didn’t laugh. Maybe he had answered that one too often. “No one looks through telescopes anymore. We just take pictures.” He led the way inside, through bare-walled corridors and down an iron stairway to a lounge furnished with chrome-steel office tables and chairs.

There was a woman in the lounge. She was about Jeanette’s age, and she would have been pretty if she’d washed her face and put on some lipstick. She was frowning heavily as she drank coffee.

“Mary Alice,” Owen said, “this is Jeanette Crichton. Captain Crichton, Army Intelligence. Not a spook, she does photo reconnaissance and that sort of thing. Dr. Mary Alice Mouton. She’s an asteroid specialist.”

“Hi,” Mary Alice said. She went on frowning.

“Problem?” Owen asked.

“Sort of.” She didn’t seem to notice Jeanette at all. “Rick, I wish you’d come look at this.”

“Sure.”

Dr. Mouton led the way and Rick Owen followed. Jeanette shook her head and tagged after them, through another corridor and up some stairs, past an untidy computer room. All mad, she thought. But what did I expect?

She hadn’t known what to expect at all. This was her first trip to Hawaii , courtesy of an engineering association meeting that invited her to speak on satellite observation. That conference was over and she was taking a couple of days leave, swimming the Big Island’s reefs and enjoying the sun. She didn’t know anyone in Hawaii , and it had been pretty dull. Jeanette began to make plans to visit Linda and Edmund before going back to Fort Bragg .

Then Richard Owen had met her at the reef. They’d had breakfast after their swim, and he’d invited her to come up to see the observatory. She’d brought a sleeping bag; she didn’t know whether Owen expected to share it with her, but from little things he’d said at lunch and on the drive up after lunch she was pretty sure he’d make the offer. She’d been trying to decide what to do when he did.

Now it was as if she weren’t there at all.

She followed them into a small, cluttered room. There was a big viewscreen in one corner. Dr. Mouton did things to the controls and a field of stars showed on the screen. She did something else, and the star field blinked on and off; as it did, one star seemed to jump back and forth.

“New asteroid?” Owen asked.

“That’s what I thought,” Dr. Mouton said. “Except … take a good look, Rick. And think about what you’re seeing.”

He stared at the screen. Jeanette came closer. She couldn’t see anything strange. You take the pictures on two different nights and do a blink comparison. The regular stars won’t have moved enough to notice, but anything that moves against the background of the “fixed stars,” like a planet or an asteroid, will be in two different places on the two different photos. Blink back and forth between the two plates: the “moving” body would seem to jump back and forth. That was how Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto. It was also a standard photo reconnaissance technique, to see what had changed in the interval between two satellite photos.

“What’s the problem?” Owen asked.

“That’s moving too far for the interval.”

“It’s close …”

“Not that close,” she said. “I got the plates from a few weeks ago. Rick, I had to trace back damn near night by night, it’s moving so fast! It’s in a hyperbolic orbit.”

“Come on, it can’t be!”

“It is,” Dr. Mouton said.

“Excuse me,” Jeanette said. They both turned to look at her. They’d obviously forgotten she was there. “What’s a hyperbolic orbit?”

“Fast,” Owen said. “Moving too fast for the sun’s gravity. Objects in a hyperbolic orbit can escape from the solar system altogether.”

She frowned. “How could something be moving that fast?”

“Big planets can make it happen.” Richard said. “Disturb something’s orbit …”

“It’s under power,” Mary Alice Mouton said.

“Aw, come on!”

“I know it’s silly, but it’s the only explanation I can think of. Rick, I’ve followed that thing backward for weeks, and it has decelerated most of the way.”

“But …”

“Jupiter can’t do that. Nothing can.”

“No, of course it — Mary Alice?”

“The computer plot fits perfectly if you assume it’s a powered spacecraft.” Dr. Mouton’s voice had taken on a flat, dry note. “And nothing else does.”

An hour later. Two more astronomers had come in, looked at the plates, and left shaking their heads. One had insisted that whatever else they found, the early plates were genuine; he’d taken them himself. The other hadn’t even admitted seeing anything.

Owen used the telephone to call Arizona . “Laura? Rick Owen. We’ve got something funny here. Did any of your people happen to get pictures looking south of Leo the past few weeks?” He read off a string of coordinates and waited for a few moments.

“Good! Looked at them? Could you please go look? Yes, now. I know it’s not convenient, but believe me, it’s important.”

“You don’t really believe that’s a powered ship, do you?” Jeanette asked.

Mary Alice looked at her with haunted eyes. “I’ve tried everything else, and nothing fits the data. And yes, I remember the pulsars!” which meant nothing to Jeanette.

They drank coffee while Owen talketh. Finally he put down the phone. He looked flightened. “Kin Peak has seen it,” he announced. “Chap named Tom Duff, a computer type, spotted it. They didn’t believe it. It’s just where we saw it. Mary Alice, you may have a problem about credit for discovery.”

“Bother the credit, what is it?” Dr. Mouton demanded. “Rick, it’s big, and it’s under power, and it’s coming here.”

In California it would be three in the morning. Linda heard the phone ring three times, then the sleepy voice. “Yes?”

“Linda, this is Jenny.”

“Jenny? But — well, hello, is something wrong?”

“Kind of, Sis. I need to talk to your husband. Fast.”

“What?” There was a pause. “All right.”

“And get him some coffee,” Jenney said. “He’s going to need it.”

Presently she heard the newly awakened voice of Major General Edmund Gillespie. “Jenny? What’s wrong?”

“General, I have something strange to report …”

“General. Are you being official?”

“Well … formal. Yes, sir. I’ve already called my colonel, and he agreed that it would be a good idea to call you.”

“Just a second, Jenny. Linda, where’s that coffee? Ah. Thanks. Okay, shoot.”

“Yes, sir.” As she spoke, she tried to imagine the scene. General Gillespie sitting on the edge of the bed, growing more and more awake. His hair probably looks like his head is exploding. Linda pacing back and forth wondering what in the world is going on. Maybe Joel had been awakened. Well, there wasn’t any help for that. A lot of people were going to be losing sleep.

“Jenny, are you seriously suggesting that this is … an alien ship? Men from Mars and all that?”

“Sir, we both know there can’t be any men from Mars. Or anywhere else in the solar system. But this is a large object, it’s moving faster than anything that could stay inside the solar system, it has been decelerating for weeks, and it appears to be coming here. Those are facts, confirmed by three different observatories.” Suddenly she giggled. “Ed, you’re an astronaut. What do you think it is?”

“Damned if I know,” Gillespie said. “Russian?”

“No,” Jeanette said.

There was a long silence from the other end. “You’d know, wouldn’t you? But are you that sure?”

“Yes, sir. I’m that sure. It is not a Soviet ship. It’s my job to know things like that. I’ve been monitoring the Soviet space program for ten years, and they can’t build anything like that. Neither can we.”

“Jenn-Captain, if this is ajoke we’re all going to be in trouble.”

“For God’s sake, General, why would I joke about this?” she demanded. “I told you, I already got my colonel out of bed! He’s going through channels, but you can imagine what’s going to happen to a UFO report.”

“I can think of people to call,” Gillespie said. “I’m just having trouble believing it.”

“Yes, sir,” Jenny said dryly.

“Yeah, I know, so must you,” Ed Gillespie said. “But I see your point. If it’s an alien ship, we’ve got some preparing to do. Jenny, who is your C.O.?”

“Colonel Robert Hartley G-2 Strategic Army Command, Fort Bragg . Here’s the phone number.”

Linda watched as her husband put the phone down. He looked worried. “What’s my kid sister done now?”

“Maybe earned herself a medal,” Edmund said. He lifted the phone and began dialing.

“Who are you calling now?” Linda asked. “This is crazy!”

“Hello, Colonel Hartley? General Ed Gillespie here. Captain Crichton said you’d be expecting my call … Yeah. Yeah, she’s always had a level head. Yeah. Yeah, I believe her too. Okay, so what do we do about it?” This is crazy, Linda thought. Absolutely crazy. My kid sister discovers flying saucers. I don’t believe it. I will not believe it. Only … Only Jenny never pulled a practical joke in her life. She doesn’t drink, she doesn’t take drugs, and … Aliens? An alien ship approaching Earth?

She saw that Edmund had put the phone down. “So now what?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Hard to think. Have to let people know. Have to let the President know. I’m not sure how to do that.”

“Wes Dawson could do it,” Linda said.

“By God!” He looked at his watch. “After six in Washington . Wes might be up. I’ll wake him up. You got his home number handy?”

David Coffey had always thought of himself as a night person, but that wasn’t possible now. The President of the United States couldn’t sleep late. It just wasn’t done.

He couldn’t even insist on being left alone for breakfast, although he tried. As he sat down on the terrace to enjoy the lovely spring day in Washington , the Chief of Staff said, “Wes Dawson. California—”

“I know who he is.”