The Sails of Tau Ceti (8 page)

“All right,
Starhopper
. You are free to descend,” the chief controller radioed.

“Thank you, Control,” came the voice of the Phobos’ most experienced approach pilot. “Beginning the descent now!”

There were a series of sparks low on the western horizon where the pyramid shaped interstellar booster hovered. For a long time nothing seemed to happen. Slowly, the gap between booster and horizon began to grow. Over the next ten minutes,
Starhopper
climbed the sky. The sparks came again as the booster was silhouetted against the ruddy orb of Mars. Attitude control jets fired from a dozen places around the body of the main booster, giving the impression of a set of anti-collision lights flashing in unison. The two hundred-meter wide truncated pyramid rotated about its yaw axis in response.

Kit had a momentary case of the jitters as she found herself gazing directly into the gaping maw of the booster’s powerful engines. Should those light off, everyone within line-of-sight would be instantly vaporized. Kit shook off the morbid thought. Tory Bronson knew all there was to know about the booster and she was standing calmly not ten meters away.

The small reaction jets flared again and
Starhopper
began its descent. With the red planet as a backdrop, the booster was enormous.

Starhopper
continued its slow descent. The port pilot was taking no chances with the only vessel in the Solar System able to catch the alien starship. Three times, he fired the reaction jets to slow the pyramid’s fall. Then, two meters above the field, he fired them for a few seconds. Blue-white exhausts splashed down onto Phobos’ rocky surface. Then the jets were silent and
Starhopper
began to fall.

It took all of five minutes for the booster’s landing feet to contact the field. As it grounded, a slight shiver went through the structure. Throughout the landing, the general comm circuit had been unnaturally quiet. The silence was suddenly broken as dozens of spectators exhaled heavily and resumed breathing.

“All monitors. Secure the booster,” the chief controller ordered. “Let’s get it tied down now!”

Atop the instrument package, a single vacsuited figure unstrapped and began to clamber down the structure like a child moving across a jungle gym. This was the port pilot. He carried with him the control box that had allowed him to manually operate the booster’s attitude jets. He ignored the vacuum monkeys who were busily tying down the craft.

“All secure,” came the report from the chief monitor after cables were slipped through padeyes inset into the rocky plain and made taut. A moment after the announcement, other figures went to work unbolting the small instrument package from the two massive booster stages below it.

CHAPTER 6

Professor Elias Guttieriz had finished teaching for the day. It had been difficult to concentrate on ancient Phoenician dialects and their effect on the speech patterns of North Africa when he had so much else on his mind. Still, Guttieriz had only lost his place once while wading through the prepared lecture. He considered that an accomplishment. He was halfway to his office when he was overtaken by an excited student aide from administration.

“Sir, the chancellor wants to see you in his office right away!” the breathless student exclaimed.

Guttieriz, who had been expecting the summons, merely nodded. He gestured for the student to lead the way and both of them moved off in the gliding motion that is the most efficient means of locomotion on Luna. Guttieriz was a small man with black hair, a neatly trimmed mustache, and an incipient paunch. He knew his looks were far from impressive. It was enough that several influential papers on the fundamental structure of human language had earned him his reputation as the Solar System’s preeminent linguist.

“Ah, Eli!” the chancellor exclaimed as Guttieriz entered his office. “Come in and sit. Drink?”

Guttieriz moved to the chancellor’s couch. “Whiskey if you’ve got it, Hal.”

The chancellor poured amber liquid into two long stemmed, low gravity glasses and handed one to Guttieriz. He then sat on the opposite end of the couch.

“Have you made your decision, yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Time is getting short.”

“How can I make a decision when I haven’t even been tendered a formal invitation?”

“You’ve been asked if you would consent.”

“That isn’t the same as actually being invited.”

The chancellor removed a message flimsy from his pocket. “You’ll have your invitation this afternoon. I just received this from Jorgensen. He says that the board has reviewed the qualifications of several eminent linguists and has decided that you are most qualified to go out to meet these aliens.”

“I could have told them that.”

“What will be your answer?”

Elias shrugged. The hunching of the shoulders imitated the motion by which one climbs out of a moonsuit. To a Lunarian, that particular gesture represented a desire to escape the suffocating feeling that comes from a dilemma with no easy solution.

“To tell you the truth, Hal, I dislike being the subject of this … this … cattle show! If they want me, why didn’t they just ask me? I will not present myself like some prize pig down in the farm tunnels. Frankly, I have half a mind to turn them down.”

“You mustn’t!”

“Why not? Because the President won’t like it?”

“Precisely.”

“Then the President can step out the nearest airlock without a suit.”

The chancellor sighed. Not for nothing did Eli Guttieriz have a reputation for being difficult. Still, the man was a genius in his field. “Look here, Eli. This alien business is important for the whole human race. These beings have crossed twelve light years of space. Think of what they know that we do not.”

“I have thought about it.”

“Have you really? What industries will their knowledge make obsolete? Who will gain power from their arrival, who will lose it? What will be the effect on those of us here in Luna?”

“What the hell do I care? I’m a scholar.”

“Let us not be coy, Eli. We both know that you have a soft spot in your heart for your adopted world.”

“A soft spot in my head, you mean. I like it here because the people are not quite as rude as at home in Liverpool. Although, I do miss the English rains.”

“The Martians have already snapped up two berths, and the terrestrials have a man in command of the expedition. You are Luna’s last hope. If you turn it down, then the offer goes to Hayward Wilson.”

Guttieriz, who had been enjoying his position of power, was suddenly scandalized. “That poor excuse for a scholar? You can’t be serious, Hal!”

The chancellor shrugged. “He scored rather highly on the board’s health evaluation.”

“Especially the muscle between his ears, I imagine.”

The chancellor’s expression clouded. “I need your answer, Professor Guttieriz. Will you accept or reject the offer?”

“You are asking me to ignore the humiliation to which I have been subjected and do it for good old Luna?”

“Screw the humiliation! Think of what this will do for your reputation. It won’t harm the reputation of this university, either.”

Guttieriz drained his whiskey and set the glass down on the end table. “If the invitation comes this afternoon, I will communicate my acceptance by early evening.”

“Excellent.” the chancellor said. “I’ll get to work arranging transportation. Thank you, Eli. I was afraid we were going to have to draft you into the navy and order you to go.”

Eli laughed. He could just see himself sent out to do battle armed with a copy of
Hamad’s Encyclopedia of Phonemes
.

#

“So what did you think of our ship?” Van Zandt asked Kit Claridge. He, Kit, and Tory were seated in Phobos’s premier (and only) drinking establishment. The work crews had finished mounting the corvette atop the
Starhopper
booster that afternoon and the three of them had toured their future home.

“Impressive,” the doctor replied.

“What about you, Tory? Just another day at the office?”

“Any day that gets me away from my terminal is a good day.” Tory sat sideways in a booth while her two shipmates shared the opposite side. She’d put in a particularly long shift the day before and was feeling lethargic. She had been yawning throughout the tour of the ship.

“What word on our fourth?” Kit asked.

“The board finally stopped frittering. They selected Elias Guttieriz to join our little band.”

“Has he accepted?”

Garth nodded. “He should be here late next week. We’ll start full crew training the day after.”

“Is it certain they aren’t going to add a fifth slot?” Tory asked.

“I convinced them that it wasn’t wise. I know the calculations say we can get away with another crewmember, but damn it, you do not go out on something like this without a margin of safety. I’d hate to run out of food a month before we return.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kit said lazily. “That never bothered the Donner party.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. It was a bad joke.”

Tory, who had let her eyes fall to half-staff while listening to the by-play, idly keyed the reference into her implant. That brought a history of the Colorado Administrative District of the North American Directorate, and the history of Donner Pass. Kit was right. It was a
very
bad joke. She sat up, drained her drinking bulb with a quiet slurping noise, and said, “Well, see you!”

“Where are you going?”

“Back to work. Lots to do!”

“Like what?”

Tory listed the subroutines she was debugging.”

“I thought Vance Newburgh had already checked those out.”

“He did. I’m running an independent analysis.”

“Do you have reason to suspect the quality of his work?” Garth asked, his manner suddenly serious.

“No, of course not. Vance is one of the best we’ve got.”

“Have you found any errors?”

“Not so far.”

“Then why double check Newburgh’s results?”

“Because I’m the one getting in that ship, not Vance.”

Garth gestured for her to sit. “Let’s talk. You listen to this too, Kit. We need to get a few things straight.”

Tory sat. She felt like she was a little girl again, about to be lectured by her father. This was evidently one of those times when Van Zandt felt the need to play captain.

“Look, people, we’ve all been working hard to get ready for launch. That is good. It is not good if we wear ourselves out doing it. Tory, how much sleep did you get last night?”

Tory told him.

He swore softly. “You will not go back to the office tonight. I want you to go home and get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Doc, can you give her something?”

Kit reached into her medical pouch and withdrew a small white pill. “Here, take this when you get home. It will relax you.”

She pouched it, but not before giving Van Zandt a dirty look.

He continued without pause. If he saw the look, he chose to ignore it. “Let’s say you find a mistake in Newburgh’s work and fix it. What is the probability that you have taken a perfectly good piece of software and ruined it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Eighty percent, according to the studies on fatigue we’ve done in the Navy. That is why I want you fresh when you are working. It could mean the difference between a successful mission and blowing up.”

“All right, I’ll get a good night’s sleep.”

“You’ll do more than that. When was the last time you saw your family?”

“I don’t know. Last year sometime.”

“Anyone who is about to embark on a three year mission has to have time to get their life in order. If you don’t, you will be worried about things at home and not concentrating on your job. I want you headed down to Mars within the next seventy-two hours. I don’t care what you do, but you are to avoid thinking about that damned booster and its software. Report back here on the 22nd. Guttieriz arrives that day. I want you bright eyed and alert, and ready to work your butt off.”

“What about all the things I have backed up on my desk?”

“Turn over your duties to Newburgh and the programmers, then forget us.”

“But…”

“That’s an order, Chief Engineer.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

“Good. Now sit still while I order another drink. We are here to celebrate getting
Austria
mounted. Kit, ready for another?”

“Aye aye, sir,” the older woman mimicked.

Soon the three of them were chuckling at one of Van Zandt’s stories and already Tory could feel the weight begin to lift from her shoulders. Maybe the Old Man … did they really call the captain the Old Man anymore? … knew what he was doing.

#

Tory felt her pulse pounding in her ears as she trudged up the sloped side of the mountain. Besides her own ragged breathing, the whir of a ventilation fan on high was loud in her ears. Pea-size globules of perspiration beaded on her forehead before breaking loose to run down into her eyebrows, only to be captured by the headband of her helmet. Without that necessary accessory, she would be blind.

She trudged the last few meters to the flat spot she had been aiming at for more than an hour. As she reached it, she turned to look down slope to where Ben Tallen was towing the equipment sledge behind him. Her eyes followed the snakelike track of their ascent in the ocher dust to the vanishing point, and then beyond to the rented Mars rover they had left parked at the base of the mountain. The big vehicle looked like a child’s toy from her vantage point.

“How’s this, skinker?”

“High enough for me, frump!” came back the gasping reply.

She waited for Ben to climb to her level before taking the towrope from him and hauling the sledge onto the flat area that had been carved by the thin Martian wind. By silent consent, the two plopped down on the large bundle secured atop the sledge to catch their breaths. Tory gazed out across the spectacular panorama as she rested.

Due east, its base invisible below the steeply curved horizon, was Olympus
Mons.
The upper third of the volcano’s shield was in view, silhouetted against the nearly black sky. The mountain on which Tory sat was a small volcano at the edge of the Plain of Amazons. They were some twenty kilometers lower than Olympus’s peak, making it impossible to see the caldera, but by squinting hard, it was just possible to make out the threadlike vertical form of The Aerie.