He didn’t look happy. Jenny had overheard an argument between Jack’s boss and the President. “Mr. Dimming, I appreciate your concern, but I have told the country I would watch from the Oval Office, and by God that’s where I’ll be, so there’s an end to it,” President Coffey had said.
Selected newspeople were invited, which meant the Secret Service people as well. They knew them all, reporters and camera crew, and Jack looked as relaxed as he ever did when on duty, but Jenny could see that he was worried. They had wanted the President in a bomb shelter.
But we’re here. Jenny thought. Here and waiting, in the most famous office in the world, but we’re only spectators. It’s the Soviets’ show. All the computer projections showed the alien craft arriving at Kosmograd. Only the time was uncertain.
She glanced at her watch. It was very late, well past midnight. The aliens were due and past due. Coffee service was available in the hall outside, but someone would probably take her chair if she went out. Better to wait—
The television monitors blanked momentarily, then showed the dark of space. In the far distance something flickered and flashed.
Heretofore the telescopes on Earth and in Earth orbit had seen only a long, pure blue-white light and the murky shadow at its tip. Now, as the tremendous half-seen mass approached Kosmograd, something changed. Twinkling lights flashed in a ring around the central flame, round and round, chasing their tails like light bulbs in a bar sign.
The communications lounge was crowded. Eight present, four crew busy elsewhere. Wes watched the picture being beamed from the telescope to a screen half the size of the wall. The ship was minutes away. Wes tried not to think what would happen if it came a bit too fast. It was decelerating hard. Those extra engines hadn’t been needed until now. Sixty or seventy tiny engines—
Symmetrical. Sixteen to a quadrant. Wes Dawson grinned in delight. Sixty-four engines: the aliens used base-eight arithmetic!
Or base four, or binary digits … engines much smaller than the main engine, and probably less efficient. Fission or fusion pulse engines, judging by the radiation they were putting out. Why hadn’t the alien slowed earlier? It still hadn’t replied to any message.
It had grown gigantic in the telescope field. A blaze of light washed out the aft end: Wes saw only the long flame and the ring of twinkling jets. He made out bulges around the cylindrical midsection. He saw tiny fins and guessed at landing craft spaced out around the hull. A knob on the end of a long, jointed arm: what was that, a cluster of sensing devices? It was aimed at the station.
“We have some shielding,” Arvid said without being asked. “We can handle this much radiation, but not for too much longer. I hope they have some way of maneuvering with chemical rockets.”
Wes nodded. He thought, You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred, but nobody aboard would have understood the reference. He said, “This may be a violation of the Geneva Convention.”
It sparked laughter. Arvid said, “Use tact when you tell them. Nikolai, that’s enough of the telescope. Show us a camera view from—” and interrupted to strain forward.
Wes’s hands closed hard on the arms of his chair.
For the alien ship was sparkling like a fireworks display. Four of the twinkling jets expanded outward, away from the drive flame; then four more. Those pulse-jets were the main drives for smaller spacecraft! Showers of sparks flowed from the hidden bow end. Missiles? Missiles in tremendous number, then, and this was starting to look ominously like a Japanese movie. Not first contact, but space war.
The picture flickered white and disappeared.
Arvid was out of his seat and trying to reach God knows what, and Wes was checking his seat belt, when the whole station rang and shuddered. Wes yelled and clapped hands over his ears. The others were floating out of their seats — free-fall? He swept an arm out to push Giselle back into her seat, and she clutched the arms. He couldn’t reach anyone else.
Free-fall? How could that be? The connecting tunnel must have come apart! Nikolai was screaming into a microphone. He stopped suddenly. He turned and looked around, stunned, ashen.
Behind Wes the wall smashed inward, then outward. The buckle on Wes’s seat harness popped open. Wes grabbed instinctively, a death grip on the arm of his chair, even before the shock wave reached him. The Nigerian snatched at Wes’s belt and clung tight. He was screaming. Good! So was Wes. Hold your breath and you’d rupture your lungs.
For the stars were glaring in at them through the ripped metal, and the air was roaring away, carrying anything loose. Giselle Beaumont flapped her arms as if trying to fly. Her eyes met Wes’s in pure astonishment — and fly she did, out into the black sky and gone. Shit!
