Moonstruck. Part 6

Executive Office Building. The room had a table, two chairs, a PC, and no orbs. "Thanks for bearing with me.""Telling me my office is bugged is a surefire way to get my attention." Britt sat on the edge of the table.

"So who's bugging it, and how do you know?"

"The F'thk, that's who. And you won't like the 'how' any better. The orbs are recording devices."

"Which would mean that every officeholder of any significance in this town is bugged, starting with the

President."Kyle didn't care for the skepticism implicit in would mean. Instead of commenting, he popped a CDROM into the computer. The PC was Tempest-rated, specially designed to suppress the electromagnetic emissions that-in an ordinary computer-would allow skilled eavesdroppers to recreate the monitor image. On-screen, Hammond Matthews summarized a series of experiments upon orbs.

Every orb that the lab had tested showed the same behaviors. If immersed in an actively changing

environment-people moving, music playing-the crystalline depths of an orb also changed quickly. When triggered by the proper microwave interrogation pulse, the stimulated orb had a lengthy response. The same orb, observed by videocam in an empty and silent room, changed its appearance very slowly; when interrogated, it had a short response. The experiment was repeated with consistent results using orbs labeled Washington, Tokyo, Moscow, Beijing, and London-units that Darlene had had emba.s.sy staff obtain overseas and ship home by diplomatic pouch. Everyone was being spied upon, whatever their political school.

Britt tugged an ear thoughtfully. "If I'm following, these devices are usually inert, pa.s.sively recording the images and sounds that impinge on them. Only when they get this interrogation signal are they active."

"Right. The recording portion, the crystalline globe, needs no power. Think of it as very advanced, electronically readable film. The readout-and-reply portion in the base, beneath the bowl-shaped antenna, is externally powered-it takes its energy from a microwave interrogation signal. Now that we know to look, we've detected such interrogation signals. Orbs are routinely probed in and around all major national capitals-everywhere a 'Friendship Station' was left.

"Better, we can triangulate back to the origins of the triggering signals. Those sources turn out to be

satellites. They're radar stealthed, which is why NORAD hadn't noticed them as part of the routine tracking of orbital s.p.a.ce junk. They're also very dark, which makes them hard to detect visually even when you know where to look. Still, the satellites soak up a lot of energy from the sun. Infrared instruments on NASA satellites can spot these satellites easily."

"Can we be sure these aren't Russian or Chinese, or other Earth-originated satellites? Someone working

with the F'thk?"

Kyle popped the CD from the computer. "There are no stealth launches-when something blasts off from anywhere on Earth our spysats know it. These birds had to have been deposited directly into orbit from s.p.a.ce, not launched from this planet."

"Which brings us to more pressing issues, like the escalating mortality rate of our spysats.""Related issues. We know instantly when our birds get fried, because we're in constant communication. We don't have such immediate knowledge of Russian satellites. It turns out, though, that their spysats are starting to tumble in orbit, as if out of control. More and more of their birds are acting just like our known dead ones."

The tiny room fell silent as Britt struggled to absorb the enormity of these discoveries. At long last, he

shook his head sadly. "So the F'thk go from capital to capital spreading suspicions. With bugging devices by the millions spread across the great capitals of the world, they know what b.u.t.tons to push, and they watch how we all react when our b.u.t.tons are pushed. They're disabling everyone's spysats, which has us and the Russians escalating our strategic alert status-which keeps feeding the distrust. The Chinese don't trust either of us, and now they're on heightened alert, too."

"Yup, that pretty much sums it up."Britt gave him a hard look. "So why, exactly, are you smiling?""I'm just glad to have friends in high places who share my sense of the danger."

* * * The video, shot from a distance with a telephoto lens, was grainy and jerky. The voice-over, apart from the raw emotion in the narration, was unintelligible. Neither distraction diminished the horror.

The footage of the spectacular launch and even more spectacular explosion of a Russian Proton 2 rocket had been captured by an enterprising Korean journalist. Debris rained down on the sun-baked steppes surrounding the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Kyle could not see the enormous fireball blossom without recalling the Atlantis, without a lump forming in his throat.

At Britt's gesture, Kyle muted the sound on the CNN feed. An aide was whispering into the President's ear, something about President Chernykov. Moments later, the Moscow hotline connection was active and on speakerphone. The pleasantries were perfunctory and abrupt.

"Dmitri Pyetrovich, we had hoped that a joint scientific project would help to diffuse the recent tensions.

Needless to say, today's fiasco will not contribute to this aim.""Fiasco?" The booming accompaniment was probably a hand slapping an unseen desk in emphasis. "An American fiasco, I say. Your shuttle carried the first version of this satellite, and it blew up. Now one of our most reliable rockets carries a hurriedly upgraded lab model of the same observatory-and again there is an explosion. If you look to a.s.sign blame, look to your own people."

"My people tell me it was a launcher failure . . . ""Your spies, you mean." Another background rumble punctuated the Russian's intense voice. "Our experts are still a.n.a.lyzing telemetry, and have released nothing."President Robeson scowled at the speakerphone. "Calm down, Dmitri.""Don't tell me to calm down. Judging from past incidents, the Kazakhs are likely to demand some sort of penalty payment from us for supposed environmental damages. The cosmodrome immediately suspended all further launches of the Proton 2 until they complete an investigation, which shuts down our commercial delivery business for heavy comsats." There was whispering in the background. "One of my aides wonders if you wanted this disaster, even arranged it, to favor your own aeros.p.a.ce companies and their launch-service businesses."

Accusations and veiled insults flew. Leaders of the two great nuclear powers growled and fumed. At last, the President had had enough. "I think we can agree continuing this conversation is not to anyone's advantage. But before we end the call, perhaps you will tell me this, Dmitri. Have your experts found anything surprising in the telemetry?"

There was impatient finger tapping, and an unseen Russian sighed. A new voice, that Kyle recognized as Sergei Arbatov, spoke up. "No. Nothing unexpected. It is all a mystery."

* * * "d.a.m.ned Russians," snapped President Robeson for the benefit of the orb on his desk. "I need to stretch my legs. Walk with me." He stormed from the well-wired Camp David office, followed by Britt, Kyle, and a Secret Service retinue. Without further comment, he led them into the moonlit Catoctin Mountain woods. The house was soon hidden from sight by the trees. "Give us some s.p.a.ce," the President told the chief of the protection detail. The agents faded into the woods, their attention turned outward. "Good show, Kyle." "Thank you, sir." His mind's eye kept flashing back to cataclysmic fireb.a.l.l.s. "I wish I'd been wrong." "But you weren't," said Britt. "You were right all along the line. The Galactics targeted the Baikonur launch, as you predicted. The arrangements were made by phone and Internet-and surely many of the relevant details were arranged out of range of the d.a.m.ned orbs-so your theory that they can monitor all of our electronic communications is apparently also right."

Kyle retrieved and began to fidget with a pine cone. "When the opportunity arises, thank Sergei." Sergei who had somehow expedited the launch. Sergei whose theatrical tone of resignation disguised the agreed upon code phrase: nothing unexpected.

For the Galactics had no reason to suspect what the conspiring human scientists now expected: microwaves. Steerable microwave beams from stealthy satellites, beams that converged on the Proton's fuel tank. Enormous energies focused onto the metal sh.e.l.l of the rocket, metal that instantly conducted the energy as heat to the liquid hydrogen within. Kyle pictured a sealed metal container of gasoline in a microwave oven. First, the liquid heated, expanding and evaporating, until the pressure burst open the container. The pressure-driven spray rapidly mixed with air, to be exploded by the first spark.

Nothing unexpected . . . but microwave-borne sabotage was expected. That meant the sensors Sergei was to have secreted on the Proton had, before the explosion halted telemetry, reported back in some innocuous guise the presence of strong incident microwave radiation. Russian-placed sensors read out by Russian telemetry equipment-the latest evidence would surely allay any doubts President Chernykov might have had.

"Dr. Gustafson. Sir?"

He shrugged off the reverie into which excited exhaustion had taken him. A Secret Service women had

emerged from the woods. "Yes?"

"Call for you, sir." She handed him a cell phone.

"Sorry, sir," he told the President. To the phone, he added, "Gustafson."

"h.e.l.lo, pardner." The voice was Hammond Matthews's. They exchanged a few pleasantries and touched

on some routine business, projects on which they didn't mind the Galactics eavesdropping. "Too bad you missed the barbecue."

"Was it big?"

A chuckle. "We had five grills running hot. You would have loved it."Translation: five stealthed Galactic satellites with a line of sight to Baikonur at the time of the Proton launch had flared on infrared sensors. Which meant they were generating far more power than usual. Pumping out weapons-grade microwave beams, presumably.

"Sorry I had other commitments. But I need to run." He returned the phone to the agent, who disappeared back into the woods.

He brought his walking companions up to date on the final test and confirmation.

Robeson gave him a hard look. "This must be what happened to the Atlantis.""Yes, Mr. President." He kept his voice flat. "They appear determined to keep us from making gamma-ray observations."

"I have my own observation to make," said the President. "There's a term for the situation where others attack your national a.s.sets, where they kill your citizens. "We call it a state of war." * * *

It would be a strange war, a conflict unlike any Earth had ever known. The Galactics had yet to reveal a credible motive for their hostility. Like so much of what the humans thought they had learned about the F'thk, the aliens' behind-the-scenes hints were contradictory and apparently part of their inscrutable plot. Amba.s.sador H'ffl had also confidentially told the Russians of the authoritarian and individualist factions among the Galactics-but in this version, the F'thk were socialists in the authoritarians' camp, worried about an anarchist mole in their midst.

The war against the aliens must also remain hidden, for no one could fathom why, if the Galactics wanted to destroy humanity, they did not simply do it. The gigantic mother ship orbiting the moon, regally indifferent to any direct communication from Earth, was never far from anyone's mind. Perhaps nothing but rationalization or a sense of squeamishness separated Earth from direct annihilation by the aliens-reticence that could give way to resolve if the humans were not seen to be playing their a.s.signed roles. Earth would fight its war for survival as its antagonists had inexplicably begun it: through subterfuge.

And so the F'thk, and the vast majority of the people of Earth, would be encouraged to believe that great and foolish powers were edging ever closer to the nuclear brink . . . while the few human leaders and scientists in the know were riddled with doubts. How dangerously easy it would be for the appearance of imminent global warfare being so realistically maintained to become cataclysmic reality.

Unless and until that catastrophe occurred, Earth's best minds would-when their disappearance from Galactic orbs and compromised global communications could be justified-work to unravel the mysteries and to imagine any possible defense against the Galactic powers already revealed.Silver light angled through the leafy canopy. As three men reached a small clearing, one paused. He glanced overhead to the full moon, his lips moving silently.

"What's that, Kyle?""A bit of poetry, Mr. President." He jammed his hands into his pockets. "I've always known that somehow, someday, I'd go to the moon. It's what drew me to physics in the first place. The day I met Sergei, moments before the Atlantis disaster, I told him I was sure that man would return there. The key to all this is the Galactics' mother ship-out there, circling the moon. If we're to succeed, we must go there."

"So what's the poetry?" asked the President.

Kyle tipped his head back, the better to observe the world that had for so long held his fascination.

Feeling strangely like an oracle, he spoke crisply the words he had earlier been moved to whisper. "I'll come to thee by moonlight, though h.e.l.l should bar the way."

" 'The Highwayman'? Unless you're an incurable romantic, that poem doesn't exactly have a happy

ending."

Kyle's eyes did not leave the beckoning moon. "I'm an incurable realist. I'll do what I must, go where I must, to achieve a happy ending."And that's where I think it will be."

A FOOLISH SYMMETRY.

CHAPTER 8.

"A generally unrecognized contributor to the worldview of the Krulirim," dictated Swelk, "is the symmetry of the Krul body shape." Outside her cabin a raucous comment, followed by bellows of laughter, defeated the computer's attempt to pa.r.s.e her words. She repeated the sentence. Immersion in her longtime studies was a distraction from brooding about the work she should have been doing-and from which she was so inexplicably barred.

Her latched door quivered from the impact of something heavy-or rather, someone, because he spoke.

The complaint was drunken, slurred and indistinct, but the word "freak" was clear enough. "The Krul body is commonly described as triform, as most of its components occur in threes. Within the largely spherical central ma.s.s, internal organs are triplicated. Three limbs, s.p.a.ced equidistantly around the torso, are equally adapted for locomotion and manipulation. Each limb ends in a three-part extremity, which in turn bears three digits. Limbs, extremities, and digits are all opposable, providing three progressively finer levels of physical control. Sensory stalks near the top of the central ma.s.s are also triplicated, providing multiperspective audio and video imagery at all points in a full circle around the Krul.

"Despite the understandable descriptive focus on triplication, the effective symmetry of the Krul form, which favors no specific direction, is radial. So complete is this effective radial symmetry that a Krul observer does not and cannot locate a physical object solely by reference to her body. Distance from the observer may be so defined, but the second geometric parameter needed to localize an object within a plane requires a reference external to the body. The magnetic sense of the Krul provides this external reference, by defining a line between her and the nearest magnetic pole. An angle with respect to this line of external reference can then be combined with the bodycentric radial distance. . . ."

Nonreaction sometimes discouraged those outside. Not this time. Impacts continued to rattle her door, and yelling to scramble her dictation. The frequency of the interruptions showed it was once more open season on misfits. How would those outside react, Swelk wondered, if told their successful adaptation to life on a s.p.a.ceship showed they were freaks? Most Krulirim could not function outside a planetary-scale magnetic field-the inconstancy of the shipboard artificial field, its orientation noticeably changing with every few steps taken, induced nausea and confusion.

Not well at all, she decided. She checkpointed the computer and tucked it into a pocket. Any work she got done today would have to be accomplished someplace more secluded. The same was likely true of any sleep she might hope for. Taking a deep breath, she flung open the door to run the gauntlet to somewhere hopefully quieter.

"Swelkie, you monstrosity. Weirdo. Abomination." Taking tones of voice into account, the taunts ranged from condescending affection, as one might address an ugly but familiar pet, to open hostility. The captain presumably intended no permanent harm to befall Swelk-she remained an occasional resource to the project from which she was so aggravatingly excluded, not to mention a paying pa.s.senger-but the crew, to whom her quasi-confinement had been entrusted, did not necessarily understand the intended limits to their abuse. The scientist within her recognized with cool detachment that they might lack the self-restraint to overcome ages of social conditioning and temper their mistreatments. "h.e.l.lo, Froll. How's it going, Brelf?" She was unable to extend all her placative greetings before the hara.s.sment began. It's not personal, it's not personal, she told herself silently. She dodged a flung partially eaten piece of fruit, only to trip over something thrust between her limbs. A delighted roar greeted the splat of her graceless landing, followed by gales of laughter as Brelf, ever the ringleader, dumped on her a cup of something pungent. The cackling intensified as Swelk slipped in a pool of the liquid while trying to stand up.

"So where are you going, beautiful?" Brelf's witticism set them all off to t.i.ttering. "To clean up, I think." Her uncomplaining acceptance of their pranks seemed to satisfy them; they did nothing more as she struggled, with more care this time, to an erect position. They let her pa.s.s, content to guffaw at her clumsy progress down the corridor, her lame limb trembling, before returning to whatever drunken game of chance the sorry fact of her existence had so unjustly distracted them from. * * * Her lame limb trembling. My curse in a phrase, thought Swelk, limping to a quieter part of the ship. And if my disability weren't enough, they blame me for adding perhaps two three-cubes of years to this voyage. That reckoning was in Krulchuk years, of course, not ship's time, but whether a starfarer ever saw family and friends again depended on the pa.s.sage of time on the home world. Most people did not leave home.

"Swelk!"

She pulled herself to full height, bearing most of her weight on the good limbs, aware that she still

dripped soup. "Yes, Captain."

"My officers and I are too busy to deal right now with pa.s.sengers. Why are you out of your quarters?"

Translation: too busy to deal with her. The shreds of wet vegetable sticking to her body were suddenly

an a.s.set. "A mishap, sir. I came forward for cleaning supplies from ship's stores."

"Very well." Captain Grelben leaned slightly. Balanced effortlessly on two limbs, he pointed down the hall with the third. "Find your supplies, get cleaned up, and return to your cabin." Dropping to all threes, he strode away. He disappeared into the officers' lounge, through whose briefly open door could be seen not only several officers but also the ship's other pa.s.sengers. They were using the translation and cultural