John Maddox Roberts - Spacer: Window of Mind (10 page)

The first of the aliens appeared at the top of a tonguelike ramp that extruded from the alien ship to touch the landing pad. Distance was too great to make out detail, but it was erect, two-legged, and approximately human-sized. More moved in behind it as it walked down the ramp. There were at least twenty by the time the ramp pulled back into the ship and the split closed.

About halfway between ship and shuttle, the aliens walked out of their ship's masking field. It was a startling effect, as if someone fiddling with sighting controls had all at once hit the right combination and the subject suddenly jumped into sharp focus.

The aliens were not human, but neither were they so different that it was difficult to think of them as a spacegoing species. Their walk was not quite that of humans, although it was difficult to place just where the difference lay. They had knees and elbows in roughly the same places as humans. Their skin was blue, and they had a lot of it showing. Except for boots and close-fitting helmetlike caps, they wore only a harness of straps to support tools and small pouches. Nothing showed externally to determine gender. They had short, vestigial tails which twitched continually.

Their faces had a basic similarity to the human norm; two eyes, two nostrils, one mouth. The mouth had no lips, and the nose was a perfunctory, slightly raised bar of flesh. The eyes were rectangles with rounded corners, above boldly protruding cheekbones. The eyeballs were slate gray, with horizontal, slit pupils running almost the entire width of the ball.

Plainly, these creatures could not share the accepted body language of humans, but some things seemed to be the common property of upright, bipedal life forms. These aliens seemed to be cautious and wary, but their every move radiated confidence to the border of arrogance.

Nagamitsu noted the dangling straps and clips on the harnesses of the approaching aliens. "They've disarmed to meet us."

"Not all of them," said Izquierda. "The one in the lead had a long, daggerlike weapon in his waist belt."

"Neither did I," said Nagamitsu, touching the long sword in his sash. "They wear obsolete weapons for ceremonial purposes. That gives us some common grounds." He turned to the sergeant of the guard. "Sergeant, give us an open crescent and present arms."

"Aye aye, sir!" The sergeant turned to his men and spoke softly into his throat mike. The circle opened as two wings split and the men trotted smoothly into crescent formation with the open side toward the aliens. They snapped to present arms and held the pose effortlessly. The alien in the lead raised a six-fingered hand and made a waving motion, taking in all of the marines.

"I think he just returned the salute," Torwald said. "This doesn't look so good."

"At least we have some basis for communication," Michelle said. "I was afraid they'd be so alien it'd take us years just to figure out how to say hello."

"Yeah," Torwald said, "but everything about these people says military."

"They are a fighting species," said K'Stin. "The Clan and the Folk must hear of this."

"Sshh," hissed the skipper. "Let's hear what's going on."

Pierce stepped forward and strode to within three paces of the alien. He bowed stiffly and said: "I bring greetings from the Confederated Planets, and their wishes for a long, prosperous, peaceful, and mutually beneficial relationship." He smiled and waited. He was an experienced diplomat and was prepared to hold the smile indefinitely.

The lead alien began to speak. At least, its lips moved. From time to time they would hear a sound, but mostly there was silence. Whatever the alien had to say, it was brief. Its lips stopped moving and the sounds ceased.

"Homer," said Nagamitsu, "they're all yours." The little crustacean stepped forward and launched into his repertoire of languages. This occupied some time, since Homer knew many hundreds of tongues. As Jhe minutes dragged on, Kiril began to fidget.

"This is going to take a while, Kiril," said the skipper. She lit up a stogie. "No need for you to stand around here doing nothing. Why don't you wander around? Nobody'd notice you,

andd you might hear something interesting. Like over there where Izquierda and the admiral and those other high-rankers are

Right," said Kiril, glad to have something to do. This was something she was experienced at. She had cultivated eavesdropping early in life as a valuable skill. The knot of exalted personages had drawn together a little apart from the rest. Kiril wandered in their direction. As the skipper had predicted, none of them paid her the slightest attention.

Izquierda was saying, "We have here a clear and present danger to humanity. That vessel"—he pointed to the fantastic alien ship—"is a violation of every known law of physics. Who knows what other powers these aliens control? I counsel that we take the utmost precautions to prevent a sneak attack on ourselves and to safeguard the locations of all human-occupied worlds and installations." Kiril could recognize the sound of a man playing to an audience, and she could see that the words were having the desired effect. The look among the gathered notables was one of agreement. For some reason, Izquierda wanted to be on record as saying these things. Recording instruments were picking up every detail of the historic occasion.

"It shouldn't be necessary to point out. Director," said Nagamitsu, "that you are not here for the purpose of counsel. I have taken every precaution necessary to protect this expedition. Believe me, they are considerable. As for the protection of human space, that is provided for under old regulations, as you perfectly well know. The records will self-destruct unless approached with proper coding. Even so, I've had the fail-safe systems checked and rechecked."

"Even on that ship?" said Izquierda, pointing at the
Space Angel.

"Captain HaLevy has surrendered all tapes, chips, charts, and other materials pertaining to the locations of human systems. They'll be destroyed along with the rest, should it become necessary. Why all this concern. Director?"

"I'm a cautious man," Izquierda answered.

"That's what your record says," Nagamitsu said, his face expressionless. Izquierda glared at the admiral for a moment, then whirled and stalked off.

"Hello, there." There was a touch on Kiril's shoulder and she spun on her heel, hands automatically going for her daggers before she remembered that she had been forced to leave them aboard ship. It was Izquierda's nephew, Huerta.

"I didn't mean to startle you, please forgive me."

"It's all right," Kiril said, slightly flustered. "You just kind of sneaked up on me."

"I thought I was making sufficient noise," said Huerta with a faint smile. "Perhaps your attention was otherwise engaged."

"Uh, yeah, maybe so," she said lamely. "What do you think of them?" She gestured with her chin towards the aliens. She was less interested in his opinion than in changing the subject.

"I must agree with my uncle. I think the danger they represent far outweighs any cultural or scientific advantage we might gain from them."

"A lot of people seem to hold otherwise."

"True. Perhaps they're right. Let's hope so, in any case. Your friend over there doesn't seem to be having much success in communicating with them."

"He didn't think that he would. Homer told me he's spent most of his life near the center of the galaxy. The chances that a species out this far towards the rim would recognize a language he knows are millions to one, he said. But if they give him any kind of clue, he'll figure theirs out faster than a computer."

"A valuable creature to have along," said Huerta. He gave Homer a long, calculating look. They watched for a few minutes longer, until Homer's recitation ended.

"Any luck?" called Nagamitsu.

"None," Homer replied. "At least, they haven't responded to any speech I know."

"Between you and our computers, maybe we can figure something out," Nagamitsu said.

Izquierda had returned, his former anger completely gone or at least smothered. "Did anything in their attitude impress you as belligerent, Homer?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"I understand you're a peaceful creature, Homer," Izquierda said "Perhaps you put too pacific an interpretation on things,"

"Possibly," said Homer. "It is true that in all my life I've found few species as suicidally warlike as you humans while-still being intelligent. Ordinarily, the two qualities do not appear together."

"Belligerent or not," Nagamitsu said, "I'm betting that they'll play cautious. We're as much an unknown quantity to them as they are to us-. They've seen that we have two different species on this mission. They have no way of knowing that we acquired Homer somewhat by accident. They may take the Vivers for a third species. For all they know, we represent some sort of muitispecies alliance. Even the most warlike of beings wouldn't precipitate action against a foe of utterly unknown strength and capabilities."

Pierce joined them. The aliens were now walking back towards their ship. "It looks as if proceedings are over for the day," said the diplomat. "Now we'll put our computers to work on our scant data, and I'll wager that they will be doing exactly the same thing."

"All personnel," Nagamitsu announced, "prepare to up ship in one hour. We'll return tomorrow. Captain HaLevy, you'll return to orbit as well."

"Why don't we just stick around, Admiral," Torwald said. "I'll bet Finn and I can entice them into a card game this evening. We've never failed before."

"Captain HaLevy," Nagamitsu said patiently, "you and your talented crew will kindly up ship in one hour.".

"Aye aye. Admiral," she said.

Kiril was about to rejoin her shipmates when Huerta stopped her. "Miss, ah, Kiril, isn't it?"

"Just Kiril."

"Well, Kiril, I have a confession to make: I'm bored to death with navy and line people. I've lived among them nearly every day of my life. I think this friction between us and the free freighters is stupid, as well as depriving me of interesting company. Would you like to come up as my guest and let me show you the Supernova? She's the pride of the line."

The shutters immediately snapped shut behind Kiril's eyes as her mind worked furiously to analyze this new situation. What was he up to? "What about the others?" she said, gesturing towards the rest of the
Angel's
crew.

"Oh, they're all old spacers. They know all about ships. You'd be much more fun to show off for, and I could pretend to be an expert." His smile was disarming, but no smile had ever disarmed Kiril. Still,' it seemed to be worth a try, if only to find out what was behind all this. At least, she told herself, that was the reason.

"Do you think your uncle would go for it?"

"Probably not, but then, Uncle Ramon doesn't always approve of everything I do. He has more important things on his mind just now. 1 doubt he'd even notice. The Supernova's a passenger liner, you know. It's got scads of unused cabins just now. I'll put you up in one of the luxury suites overnight and you can rejoin your ship when we come down for the next round of talks in the morning."

"This suite got a lock on the door?" she asked suspiciously.

He laughed heartily. He had a nice laugh, she thought. "You're a cautious one, aren't you? Yes, all our cabins are totally secure. Rich people always demand security."

She faked a moment of thought, then: "Sure, I'll come along. If I can convince my skipper. I'll go ask."

Kiril reported briefly on what she had overheard on her eavesdropping assignment first. "Izquierda tries to stir up trouble with every breath he takes," Torwald commented. "How come?"

"Maybe it's just his nature," said the skipper. "Come on, let's go back to the ship and get some chow before we up ship. Even in the midst of historical events, people gotta eat."

Then Kiril told them about the invitation. The skipper favored her with the kind of look reserved for the dangerously demented. "What?" she shouted, then, in a less public tone: "You accepted an invite from that human tick's nephew? Have you gone completely space happy?"

"Come on, Skipper," said Michelle, "how do you know Huerta's anything like his uncle? I'd hate to be judged by the way some of my relatives behave."

"Nor would I," Finn contributed. "Why, some of my family stayed sober and respectable all their lives."

"I don't like it, Skipper," Lafayette protested. "We can't let a girl go over there alone with all those line people." He glared at Kiril and she glared back.

"Who made you my guardian?" she demanded.

"Huerta's the director's nephew, you young idiot," said-Bert. "Nobody'd dare molest his guest, for fear of being sacked and beached for life."

"It's Huerta that worries me most," said Lafayette stubbornly.

"No worry," K'Stin rumbled. "Huerta touch this little one and she doesn't like it, he require surgery. She is tougher than him. Tougher than most of you." The Viver was a connoisseur of survival aptitude, so his opinion had to be taken seriously.

"I can take care of myself, all right," Kiril insisted. "I did pretty well the sixteen years of my life before you came along."

"And," said Torwald, "a spy in the enemy camp isn't a bad idea."

The skipper mulled it over for a minute. "All right," she said at last. "You can go. Keep your eyes and ears open, but don't go snooping on your own. Just smile, be nice, keep him at a distance, and whatever you do, don't attract Izquierda's attention. He kills people like disinfectant kills bacteria."