Impact

92

A half-hour later, with a huge relief, Abbey could begin to make out the lights of the Earth Station, winking on and off through curtains of rain. The yacht, its superstructure battered but still seaworthy, ploughed into the calmer waters of the well-protected anchorage that served Crow Island. The big white bubble itself loomed into view, illuminated by spotlights, rising from a cluster of buildings on the barren, windswept crown of the island.

From a long-ago school trip Abbey vaguely remembered a couple of nerdy technicians lecturing them about what the Earth Station did and how they lived on the island and kept it running. Inside the huge white bubble was a huge, motorized parabolic antenna that she remembered could be rotated to point at any number of telecommunications satellites or even used for deep-space communications with spacecraft. But its primary function was to handle overseas telephone calls--or at least that was what she remembered.

She hoped it could be moved to point at Deimos--and that Deimos, in its orbit around Mars, hadn't gone around the backside of the planet where it would be cut off from radio contact with Earth.

The yacht slowed as it came into the harbor. It was well sheltered by two high, rocky arms of land that encircled the harbor like an embrace. A pair of concrete piers, old and cracking, jutted into the water below the Earth Station. A few boats were moored in the harbor but the ferry slip was empty.

Her father throttled down and brought the yacht into the ferry berth, easing it toward the landing.

Abbey checked her watch: four o'clock. She gazed up at the huge dome.

"So what's the message?" Jackie asked.

"I'm working on it." How could she even begin to understand the purpose of the alien weapon--if it even was a weapon--and what it wanted?

"If it's a weapon," Jackie said, "why didn't it destroy the Earth already?"

"Perhaps habitable planets like Earth are hard to find. Or maybe it didn't want to destroy the human race but instead do something else with us. Warn us, kick a little ass, intimidate with its power, enslave us."

"Enslave?"

"Who knows? Perhaps their psychology is so unreachable that we'll never hope to understand it."

The engines backed as the yacht shuddered to a halt against the platform.

"Tie up," her father ordered tersely.

Abbey and Jackie hopped out and secured the boat. They stood on the dock in the howling storm, the rain lashing down. Abbey was so wet and cold that she hardly felt it. Looking at her father and Jackie, she realized they looked a fright, faces smeared with engine oil, clothes smelling of diesel.

Abbey glanced up at the dome and felt incipient panic; what should she say? What could she say that would save the Earth? Suddenly her plan seemed half-baked, even idiotic. What was she thinking--that she could talk this alien machine out of destroying the Earth? On top of that the machine might not even be able to interpret English--although she felt certain an artifact that advanced would surely be capable of listening in on communications, translating and interpreting what it picked up.

Whatever. It was worth a try--if she could only think what to say.

Her father tucked the gun into his belt. "Follow my lead, stay cool--and be nice."