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reached Earth. A sphere rode the nose, a tremendous fragile
looking bubble in contrast to the warship's spiky, armored look.
Fuel supply, of course. And the ring- He was looking aft along
Thuktun Flishithy's flank, past a massive ring like a broad wedding
band, watching a sun grow smaller. A second sun moved in from
offscreen. Both shrank to bright stars: white stars, the light not
too different from Earth's own sun. He'd anticipated that from the
color of the lights in his cell.
The cameras showed a steady white light behind the ring. Wes
saw-and wasn't sure he saw-the drive flame go dim, and a faint
violet tinge emerge from the black background.
Wes Dawson wouldn't have noticed a bomb going off in the
theater. With a fraction of his attention he tried to track what the
Instructor was saying. "Thuktun Flishithy must move very fast
before we use the (long word). Saves-" something. "Halfway to
Earth-star"-Earth's sun?-"we begin to slow down. This is difficult."
But the pictures made more sense than the words.
Time onscreen speeded up. The drive flame brightened, then
died-and the background violet glow he thought he'd seen wasn't
there. Tiny machines and mote-sized aliens emerged to dislodge
the bubble at the nose; the stars wheeled one, hundred and eighty
degrees around; the drive flamed again, and dimmed, and the stars
forward were embedded in violet-black-so he hadn't imagined it-and
Thuktun Flishithy surged past the abandoned fuel tank and onward.
The way the film jumped, a good deal of it must have been
missing. Perhaps it would have shown too much interior detail. Wes
took it for granted that prisoners would not learn much of the
interior detail of Thuktun Flishithy. The next scene was a timelapse
view of an ordinary star becoming a bright star, and brighter, until
it virtually exploded in Dawson's face. He cursed and covered his
eyes, and immediately opened them again.
They must have dived within the orbit of Mercury. Somewhere
in there, the white glow of the drive had brightened. . . and the
ship's wedding band had vanished. Dawson hadn't noticed just
when it disappeared. Now he grunted as if he'd been kicked in the
stomach.
Takpusseh stopped talking, and his eyes flicked Dawson with
the impact of a glare. Nobody else noticed.
The camera looked along the mother ship's nose while Earth's sun
shrank. There were long-distance telescopic photos of Mars and
Jupiter, then Saturn growing huge. The great ship moved among
the moons, neared the rings, still decelerating. Wes picked out the
three classic bands of the ring, separating into hundreds of bands
as the ship neared. The F-ring roiled and twisted as the ship's
fusion exhaust washed across it.
Ships departed Thuktun Flishithy, launched aft along rails. The
cameras didn't follow. A telescope picked out something butterfly
fragile but not as pretty. Freeze-frame. Takpusseh pointed and
made noises of interrogation.
"Voyager," Dawson said. He tried a few words of the Invader
language. "We made it. My fithp. United States of America!"
"Did it come to-" garble. The instructor tried again. "To look on
us? Did you know of us?"
The word must be spy. "No."
"Then why?"
"To see Saturn." An anger was building in Wes Dawson, and
he didn't understand it. They had come in war and killed without
warning, but he'd known that for days. What new grievance- They
had used Saturn! Deep in his heart Dawson felt that Saturn
belonged to Earth-to mankind-to the United States that had
explored Saturn system, to the science establishment and science
fiction fandom. Goddaminit, Saturn is ours!
He kept his silence. The film started again, and jumped. They'd
skipped something: they'd skipped most of what they were doing in
Saturn system. Two crescents, Earth and Moon, were growing
near. Wedge-shaped markers pointed out the United States and
Soviet moon bases, artifacts in orbit, weather satellites, Soviet
devices of unknown purpose, the space station...
"Question, time you know we come," Takpusseh said. Then
louder: "Time you know we come!"
"One sixth part of a year," Arvid said in English. "A year is-"
His hands moved, a forefinger circling a fist, while he spoke alien
words: "Circle Earth around Earth-star."
"You slow to fight. You know we come. Why slow?"
Why had Earth's defenders responded so slowly? Wes said,
"Earth fithp, chtaptisk fithp maybe not fight."
"You fight,, you not fight, two is one. Earth fithp is chtaptisk
fithp. Sooner if Earth fithp not fight."
The last time Wes Dawson had felt like this, he had put his fist
into a Hell's Angel's mouth just as far as it would go. "You came to
make war? Only to make war?"
"Make war, yes," Takpusseh said, as if relieved to be
understood.
Wes barely felt a large hand closing on his arm, above the
elbow. "What can you take, move to fithp world?" What could they
possibly hope to steal? They'd dropped too much of their craft;
they'd be lucky to return home themselves!
"Earth is world for chtaptisk fithp," Takpusseh said.
Warriors had come at Takpusseh's bellow. The humans were gone
now. Fathisteh-tulk helped Takpusseh to his feet. "Are you
injured?"
"My pride hurts worse than my eye-and snnfp. Dawson
surprised me entirely. They look so fragile!"
"They don't know when to fight and they don't know how to
surrender," the Herdmaster's Advisor said. "One would think that
would be good news for the invasion, but I wonder."
"Dawson is mad," Breaker-One Raztupisp-minz said. "His
behavior tells us nothing. Must we keep him?"
"He is a puzzle that needs cracking. He speaks English as his
native language, and we will need that too until the others know the
speech of the fithp a srupk or two better."
"They must surrender, at once, formally," Raztupisp-minz
stated. "We should have taught them how, and much earlier, so
that they can teach future prisoners."
The memory flashed in Takpusseh's mind; it hurt worse than
his eye. Takpusseh realized why he had delayed this crucial step.
"Of course you're right, Breaker-One. I want to visit the medical
section. I'll meet you afterward, above the restraining cell."
It hurt to breathe, but he had to breathe. Hands were on him,
probing a stabbing agony in his ribs. Wes gasped and fought to
open his eyes. Red mist. . . gradually clearing. . . the shapes
around him resolved into human faces...
"What happened?"
"You attacked the teacher, Takpusseh. I tried to stop you."
Dmitri said. "Do you remember?"
Seeing red.. . but his mind must have been working well on
some level. He hadn't just swung a fist. He'd lunged forward and
reached between the branches of Takpusseh's trunk, closed his
fingers hard in Takpusseh's nostril, and pulled back savagely to
keep himself moving. The teacher screamed; his digits had whipped
around Wes's rib cage. With his ribs collapsing and the air sighing
out of him, Wes Dawson reached along the trunk and slid his
thumb under Takpusseh's thick right eyelid-was he flying?-and did
his damnedest to twist it off. He didn't remember any more.
"Why did you do it?"
"They never had the least intention of negotiating anything,"
he said. "They came to take the Earth away from us."
Dmitri Grushin took Dawson's chin in his hand and twisted it
to put them eye to eye. "Do not attack them again. You would kill
us all for nothing. For nothing."
They were quiet for some time. Then Arvid and Dmitri began
to talk. Wes, with too little Russian, quickly lost track. He was more
interested in the pictures in his own mind.
Presently he asked, "Did you notice? They threw away half
their ship."
"Yes," Arvid said. "The external fuel tank, and the massive
looking ring."
"I think it was a modified Bussard ramjet."
"Explain."
"It's a way of reaching the stars. Fusion drive, but you get
your fuel by scooping up interstellar hydrogen."
Arvid dismissed that. "Certainly nobody has ever built a
Bussard ramjet. How would you recognize one?'
"After they got going they changed something. It made a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]