Eschaton 2 - THE SIEGE OF ETERNITY

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Hilda Morrisey got a few hours sleep on the plane to Guyana, needing it. The night with Wilbur Carmichael had been really pleasant, but it might have been a mistake. Was she getting too fond of the man? Should she have promised to see him again as soon as she got back? It had certainly cost her sleep that she could have used. But it was a mistake she would have been glad to repeat, because Wilbur had been fine.

She woke at dawn, just as the aircraft was circling the town of Kourou. All she could see from the air was the giant new Holiday Inn between the lights of the Pizza Hut and the all-night casino, but with the dark solid green of the jungle just outside the town limits. The plane swooped out to sea to come in for a landing from the east, and there, a kilometer or so from the town itself, was the starkly floodlighted launch area, ancient gantries still standing in spite of rust and time, the liquid fuel plants steaming away, the hideous barracks blocks where most of the base's personnel lived.

When she got out of the aircraft the heat hit her. Kourou was hot and wet, and there were bugs. The zappers electrocuted a few thousand of them every hour, but there were always thousands more coming up out of the rain forest, thirsty for Hilda Morrisey's blood.

It was not, it seemed, going to be a comfortable assignment. Hilda wondered if it was going to be a safe one; she had never signed on to be an astronaut. It wasn't just that people got killed in space. She had long come to terms with the possibility of early death, because in Hilda's line of work people got killed from time to time just about everywhere she'd ever been. The hard part was the thought that in a few days she would be climbing into that ancient and ugly-looking LuftBuran space vehicle that was squatting on its hardstand at die end of the runway and then she would be departing in it from the planet she belonged on. When was the last time the damn Europeans had fired one of the things? Would it still work? Her skin crawled in ways she had never experienced before as she thought about all the questions.

On the other hand, Kourou had one very great advantage for Hilda Morrisey. It wasn't the Bureau's hated Arlington madhouse.

Here in Kourou she was the senior American officer present, at least until the deputy director got there for the actual launch. So she had no boss at all. She certainly didn't take orders from Colonel du-Valier-although, in spite of the fact that she clearly outranked him, he did his best to give them.

If Hilda put up with the colonel at all it wasn't because he was chief pilot and commander of the expedition to Starlab. He had something more interesting going for him. He was not only a well-built man but a Frenchman, and something in Hilda's brain was telling her that, satisfactory though Wilbur was, it was about time to change her luck. Although Hilda's few experiments with French males had not been very encouraging, there was that old rumor that they were the ultimate in lovers. Well, sure, they went to a lot of trouble to foster the rumor themselves. But still.

As a matter of fact, it was apparent that the personnel roster at Kourou was heavily weighted with rather good-looking men. Not only that, but men who were either single or-just as good-married to someone who was thousands of kilometers away. There were the Belgian, Bulgarian and Danish astronauts, for instance. They weren't in a very good mood, because they'd been bounced from the launch to make room for Hilda, the Chinese commander Lin and most of all that great, silent, smelly creature, the Doc. Hilda sympathized with the rejects. They might well need a little consolation, and, if things happened to go that way, Hilda had an open mind about supplying it for them.

She had plenty of time to think about such matters, because the preflight "training" she was supposed to be going through was a clear waste of time. They were not going to have to wear spacesuits. She wasn't going to be allowed anywhere near the controls of the giant LuftBuran spaceship that would carry them into orbit. All Hilda was really going to have to do was make sure American interests were protected when at last they did dock with Starlab, and when it came to the protection of American interests Brigadier Hilda Morrisey had received all the training she needed long before.

Hilda's first day was spent listening to briefings she didn't really care about. The launch controller, a dour Welshman who hated Kourou's jungly heat, kept talking about launch windows and trip times; pointless, in Hilda's view. Starlab sailed around the Earth in its Low Earth Orbit every eighty-eight minutes; it hugged Earth's equator, and so the windows that were best for rendezvousing with it, allowing for the Earth's own rotation, occurred just about every eighty-eight minutes as well. When that boring lecture was done the Portuguese who was their combat instructor went over and over the weaponry they were to take along against the outside chance that some Scarecrow troops had somehow managed to sneak back in. But what had some Portuguese to tell Brigadier Hilda Morrisey of the National Bureau of Investigation about weaponry?

More interesting were her colleagues. It was the first time the entire crew of the LuftBuran had been in one place. Hilda looked around and chose to sit between the two most interesting of them. One was Jimmy Lin-the formerly captive Jimmy Lin, along because he had firsthand knowledge of what the Scarecrow materiel on Starlab looked like; the other was the Floridian General Delasquez, along because he knew it from its unaltered state. Both had been recently debugged for the purpose of the launch, but if Hilda had hoped for any interesting tidbits from either of them she was disappointed. When she tried to strike up a conversation with the Chinese astronaut, he shot an agonized glance at his PRC guard, standing stiffly at the back of the room, and shrank away. The Floridian merely ignored her.

Stop the Space flight!

Save our planet! Save our country! Every launch produces tons of hydrochloric acid which destroys living things! We, the people of Guyana, well remember the effects of the poisonous Ariane 5 rocket which killed or damaged plants and animals as far as ten kilometers from Kourou. We will not tolerate a resumption of these deadly launches. Our priceless natural resources must be protected! This project must be abandoned!

(Signed) Pou d'Agouti

Besides themselves and, of course, the Doc-stolidly waiting in his little holding cage on the outskirts of the base, and not invited to the briefings-there were four others: the two Germans, the female French lieutenant whose main duty was to be to remain in the shuttle in case of disaster and Colonel duValier, who listened irritably to the briefings, grumpy because he knew it all and because the briefings were being given in English.

It took the Portuguese weapons man nearly half an hour to explain why the handguns they would be issued were to carry a reduced charge-"Because there is much danger of ricochet if fired"-while the carbines would be loaded with armor-penetrating rounds in case of dire necessity. Judging by the expressions on her crewmates' faces, none of them was learning anything more than Hilda herself. She cast a sidelong glance at General Delasquez, who appeared unaware of her existence, and another at Commander Lin on her right. Hilda was not unaware of Lin's reputation. According to gossip of the Pats he had harped incessantly on the sexual wisdom of his great ancient ancestor, some two-thousand-year-old sage named Peng-tsu, though none of them would admit to having experienced any of Lin's expertise for themselves. There might be an additional possibility there, she thought, and allowed her forearm to slip onto his side of the armrest between them.

That produced nothing but a sudden jerk away from her, the man's attention doggedly fixed on the speaker. She sighed and did her best to pay attention to the lecture on the sheath knife and crowbar.

All things ended in time; even this lecture. When they got up to go Hilda's fleeting notion of trying to get Lin aside for a little chat evaporated when the Chinese officer whisked him firmly away. Evidently Commander Lin was not in the good graces of his government.

Her second choice was General Delasquez, but the chance of that diminished when Hilda saw that her aide was waiting for her outside the briefing room. Tepp saluted smartly. "Three messages from headquarters, ma'am. First, Colonel Makalanos reports that the X-ray screening is complete and no bugs were found. Second, Agent Dannerman thought you might want to know that Dr. Adcock-the pregnant one, ma'am-is having some sort of emergency. She's in the hospital, but they give her condition as fair, not critical. Third, Vice Deputy Fennell advises that the deputy director is making arrangements to come here in person as soon as your mission is on its way back from the orbiter."

To oversee the distribution of the spoils, of course, Hilda thought. "Thank you. How's our Doc?"

Tepp's expression didn't change, but there was a touch of strain in her voice. "Apparently doing just fine, ma'am. Do you want me to look in on him?"

"No," Hilda decided; no reason to push the woman to do something she hated. "I've got time before lunch to do it myself. What I'd like you to do is make friends among the permanent-party junior officers here, see what sort of gossip you can pick up. And meet me again after the afternoon briefing."

"Ma'am," Merla Tepp acknowledged as she saluted. She looked relieved. As Hilda turned toward the Doc's pen she wondered if she were being too indulgent. Not really, she thought. For now, at least, Tepp could be more useful functioning as an extra ear than making herself sick in the presence of the space freak. Whether that meant she might need to be replaced sometime in the future was another question. Maybe not, Hilda thought. Maybe things would go so well on the mission to Starlab that they might once and for all be relieved of the burden of caring for the aliens.

She glanced up at the tall, rusting shape of an old Ariane 5 rocket, memento of Kourou's early pioneering days, and then caught sight of the man who was studying it.

General Martin Delasquez. Sometimes your luck was good, Hilda thought, and turned to join him. "How did you like the briefing, General?" she asked chattily.

He gave her an unwelcoming look. "It was certainly a complete waste of time for me. I was stationed here at Kourou for months, and there is nothing they can tell me that they haven't already told many times."

She gave him an apologetic chuckle. "Our fault, I'm afraid; they want to make sure we new guys get all the dope. I know being stuck with us is an inconvenience, but I hope you won't hold it against me personally… General? Since you have actually been on Starlab and I haven't, I was hoping you could tell me something about what to expect when we get there."

"And how could I do that, when those creatures tampered with my memory?" he demanded.

It seemed like a good time to offer sympathy. "That must be awful for you," she said.

He glared at her, then shrugged. "What I remember is an abandoned astronomical observatory. There was no gravity, so it was difficult to move about, and the air smelled stale-because, I thought, it had been unused for so long, but perhaps it was the natural aroma of these creatures from space. But I didn't see any sign of them."

"Haven't you seen the Doc?"

He looked at her with what might have been amusement-at last, a human sign! "This one, no. I did see quite a bit of its-brother?- when it removed that device from my brain. But I was not in a position to study it carefully."

"Well, General," she said sunnily, "I'm on my way there now. It isn't time for lunch yet, so you have the opportunity if you want it. Would you care to look in on the damn thing?"

Hilda's interest in the Floridian was not particularly sexual. She certainly did not exclude that possibility. However, General Delasquez represented a force in the world with which she had little personal experience, that is, the kind of semi patriotism which marked the people of the breakaway State of Florida: adamant on running their own state as though it were a sovereign nation, yet unwilling to, or perhaps too sensible to, provoke the military retaliation that would come with any attempt at outright secession. The Floridians were not ignorant of history, and they were well aware of the outcome of the War Between the States.

Outside the Doc's shed an armed guard was crouched over a news screen, but he was alert enough to forbid them to enter. "What's so interesting?" Hilda asked the man in a friendly way. He shrugged.

"There's an object coming pretty close to the Earth. For a while they thought it might hit, but it's going to miss us by about fifty thousand klicks." Then, more obligingly: "I can't let you go in, but you can look at the damn beast through the door if you want to. It won't disturb him."

The Doc looked as though nothing at all would disturb him, as a matter of fact. The creature was standing motionless, half-turned away from them, not bothering to look around to see who had come to look at him. Delasquez looked at the Doc in silence for a moment, then said wonderingly, "Excuse me, but is this the one that made the pictures of the interior of Starlab?"

"The very one."

"It doesn't look capable of that kind of work."

"I know," Hilda agreed. "The story is that they come from a very high type of civilization, but the Scarecrows conquered them and planted some sort of controls in their brains. It doesn't affect their intelligence, but now they can't make any decisions on their own- especially to rebel against the Scarecrows."

He gave her a sardonic look. "How useful that would be for your country, for dealing with people like myself."

"Oh, but we would never do anything like that, General," Hilda protested-as a matter of form; knowing that that wasn't true, knowing that the General was well aware it wasn't.

"Of course not," he agreed, as duplicitous as herself. "Shall we go to lunch now, Brigadier? I've seen all I need, and the creature does smell unpleasant."

"Of course," Hilda said, cozily slipping her arm into his as they turned away; thinking about how the general was going to feel when they were stuck in the confined space of the LuftBuran with the Doc. "You know," she said, "I've always thought of Florida as a good experiment in cooperation: you have all the advantages of being part of the United States, but the freedom to follow your own principles."

He looked at her in amusement, but without removing her arm. "Yes, that is true. I wonder, though, how well the experiment would work if we Floridians did not have our own National Guard and Air Force."

Brigadier Morrisey would have preferred a quiet table for two, but there weren't any tables like that in the Kourou officers' mess. They wound up at a table for six, sharing it with Colonel duValier and some people on the launch controller's staff. They seemed to be old friends of General Delasquez, though there was something in their gently mocking tone that Hilda did not quite understand. Then Colonel duValier explained: "When our friend Martin was here before it was under something of a cloud, Brigadier. We borrowed him from the Floridians to brief us on what we could expect when we visited your Starlab, since he had been there himself. Of course, then we discovered that there was not much truth in what he told us."

Delasquez said stiffly, "I told you what I thought was so. I did not know that my mind had been tampered with."

"But of a certainty," the colonel agreed. "We did not know that you were transmitting information to our enemies, either. We did not even know that we had enemies! Or else we would have put you in a cage like the one this malodorous Doc we are taking with us is in."

"Dr. Artzybachova says the only way to be sure the Docs aren't transmitting information is to make sure they don't get any," Hilda put in. "Of course, that policy got blown when they were at the UN."

General Delasquez sniffed. "Dr. Artzybachova," he said in a dismissing tone.

"You don't like her?"

"I have no opinion at all about the woman. I saw her briefly on the launch, and then she died."

"That one died, right," Hilda said, nodding. "But the one that's here now, she says you-the other you-and she were great friends as captives of the Scarecrows."

Delasquez looked uneasy. "I have thought about that," he admitted. "But since that other copy of myself is not here, I am not bound by any relationships he may have assumed. She is a type of woman I do not care for."

"What type is that?" Hilda asked. He shrugged without answering, but she didn't really need an answer. She had already diagnosed General Delasquez's own type: authoritarian male, which meant sexist pig. It was a type that she had always enjoyed encountering, on official business or in the boudoir.

The woman from the controller's staff diplomatically changed the subject. "So, Brigadier Morrisey, are you ready to explore outer space?"

Interoffice Memo: The Eurospace rocket. Classified.

The "LuftBuran" was built from a German design with German money, but using Russian facilities and labor. The French didn't like the name. They wanted to call it the "Ariane 9," but when that was turned down they settled for naming a French astronaut as chief pilot.

"Of course," Hilda said, politely enough. "In fact, I wish it would happen. How long are we going to have to wait here?"

"That's not my decision. The LuftBuran is nearly fueled, and all the supplies are already stowed. As soon as the crew is ready we can go."

"I'm ready now," Hilda declared, digging into the fish course that one of the waiters had placed before her. She didn't recognize the fish. There were two of them, quite tiny, but delicious; evidently Colonel duValier had made his wishes known to the kitchen staff.

They had reached the cheese course when carryphones began beeping all over the mess hall. "What is happening?" Delasquez asked irritably.

The woman from the controller's staff was already answering hers, and when she turned to look at them her face was pale. "That object that was approaching Earth? It is a spacecraft. It has been observed to make a burn, and its new course will impact the Earth."

The cheese boards sat abandoned on every table, rounds of perfect Camembert, slabs of bleu and Brie.

There was no one left in the room to eat them. Everyone had flown to the briefing room, where Colonel duValier had a phone to his ear and an eye on the wall screen.

Hilda stared at the pictures. After all the searching, not one of Earth's giant telescopes had had its instruments bearing on the incoming object. That was left to the smaller ones, and so they had been the ones that were dazzled when the object emitted a stream of fire. Beside her Martin Delasquez muttered something in Spanish, but when she asked he said it in English for her benefit. "It is a braking burn," he said. "They are preparing for reentry."

"But what is it?" someone asked. No one tried to answer. Everyone was thinking the same thoughts, though, for they had all heard the stories the captives brought back of Scarecrow vengeance that dropped KT-type asteroids on the planets of their enemies, wiping them out as thoroughly as the sixty-five-million-year-old impact not far from where they were standing had wiped out the dinosaurs.

Hilda could not help a small shudder. Then someone cried, "Look at the other screen!"

It was displaying a series of numbers-orbital elements, Hilda supposed, though the digits meant nothing to her. Then the screen provided a graphic, a globe of the Earth, with a great oval of pink light overspreading a west-to-east area from Baja California almost to the African coast.

"That is its landing footprint," Delasquez said tautly. "When it makes final course corrections it can strike anywhere in that area. If you notice, we are inside it here in Kourou."

Everyone in the room had noticed that. Colonel duValier was gabbling with the controllers. Then, grim-faced, he seized the microphone.

"It is my belief," he said, his voice taut and his accent thickening, "that these Scarecrows are aiming this missile directly at us in order to keep us from accomplishing our launch to the Starlab orbiter. I do not intend to let them do that. Our next launch window is in eighteen minutes; we can't make that one, but we can make the one after that. I order refueling topped off and the alien creature to be brought aboard. It is now a little after thirteen hundred hours local time; the remainder of the crew will board the spacecraft by fourteen ten, for possible liftoff at fourteen fifty-seven."