Homegoing

Chapter 15

At this time, half a century after Star Wars, there are 90,000 trackable objects in Low Earth Orbit. Most of them are too small to survive reentry when, at last, they fall to the surface of the Earth. So they aren’t likely to do anyone on the surface much harm. They range from the size of a monkey wrench to the size of a beach-ball, and when they deorbit they are almost sure to burn up from the friction of the air. All they will contribute to anything on the surface is to add an undetectable additional patter to the steady infall of meteoric dust that has drifted onto the Earth for four and a half billion years. Seventy-two thousand of the Earth-orbiting objects are in that size range . . . but there are eighteen thousand others. These can’t be ignored by the people below. They range in size from kitchen refrigerator to railroad locomotive; some are even bigger. And when one of these chunks of metal decays out of its orbit it will surely strike the ground—at least in fragments—at speeds of several miles a second, with an impact that can level buildings. Nor is that the worst. Unfortunately, some of these big ones still have internal power sources. The sources are generally nuclear, and when they strike it is not merely the kinetic energy of the fall that can kill.

The phone rang as Sandy was on his way to Polly’s room to see if she was up yet. It was Marguery Darp. “Sandy? I’m in the lobby, but I thought I ought to tell you that the meeting has been postponed for an hour because of the deorbiting. Yes, it’s supposed to happen on this orbit. You can go over with me to watch it at Lamont-Doherty, or I’ll come back and get you later. Whichever you want.”

“I’ll be down in a few minutes,” he told her, and knocked on Polly’s door.

She was up, all right. She was squatting before the desk in her room, making notes. When he told her about the delay she gave a resentful twitch. “What fuss these Earth humans make about possible damage and loss of life to one city. They have thousands of cities! No, go if you wish, I will remain here.”

“All right,” Sandy said. “Polly? Do you remember when the ship was at Alpha Centauri?”

She grimaced in annoyance. “You have asked me that, Lysander. Why do you ask it again?”

“I don’t remember it at all. Do you?”

She looked up at him. Then she did what he expected her to do. She continued making notes at her table for a moment. Then she gave a superior twitch. “This is no proper occasion to ask silly questions about ancient Hakh’hli history, Lysander. I am too busy and have not time for such things, since I must prepare my address. There will be some surprises in it; I will give them solution to their little problem.”

“What solution do you mean?”

“You will hear when I give it,” she said, weeping a small self-satisfied tear. She returned to her notes—all of them upside-down to Sandy as he stood—with one double-thumbed hand over the top of them so that he couldn’t read what she was writing. As though there were any reason to keep them from him! How annoying she could be!

“You’re not a Senior,” he told her. “Don’t treat me like a child. What problem are you talking about?”

“I am talking about this deorbiting question, which Earth human beings cannot deal with themselves,” she said frostily. “I am talking, as well, about many other things of importance. For these things I have had complete instructions from ChinTekki-tho, in private.”

“In private again!”

She emitted a faint, disdainful belch. “Yes, in private, since this is a matter for Hakh’hli and not Earth persons.

That took Sandy by surprise. “Cohort-mate! Am I not Hakh’hli?”

“Of course you are not Hakh’hli, Lysander,” she said, patiently reasonable. “You are Lysander John William Washington, and if you are not Earth human you are nothing at all, are you? Now leave me, Lysander. I have much to do.” She slapped her stubby tail against the carpeted floor for emphasis. Then, as he was almost at the door, she stopped him by adding. “However, your statement is almost correct and not entirely wrong, Lysander.”

She was looking at him with malignant pleasure, and he had no idea what she was talking about. “What statement is that?” he asked.

“The statement that I am not myself Senior. I would add only one word to make that statement accurate. The word is, yet.”

Sandy was quiet on the way to the meeting hall. He was tired of talking. Every conversation he had seemed to turn up questions he couldn’t answer, and that those who could answer annoyingly wouldn’t. Imagine Polly treating him like a child! Imagine her thinking she might some day be a Senior!—when it was she whose behavior was so childish!

He got out when Marguery parked the car, looking up at the building they were about to enter. It was perched on the edge of the Palisades, tall and glass-walled, and the sign over its entrance gave its name:

LAMONT-DOHERTY SCIENCE CENTER

“Who were these Lamont and Doherty people?” he asked.

“It’s just a name. This used to be a geology center, until they began moving other things into it out of New York City.” She looked around, getting her bearings. They were almost alone in a large terrazzo-floored hall. The few others around were hurrying toward a flight of stairs. “They’ll be watching the deorbit in the auditorium. This way—”

But as they climbed the stairs they heard a sudden outburst of laughter and cheers from the room they were going to. Marguery tugged him ahead. Over the stage was a great screen. It was a television picture, apparently taken from the deck of a ship—it seemed to sway disconcertingly, and sometimes Sandy could get glimpses of what looked like masts and antennae. But the picture wasn’t of the ship. It was of the sky. It was filled with lancing lines of fire stabbing down, like a meteor shower.

Marguery caught the arm of a stranger standing next to her. “What’s happening?” she demanded.

“It’s down. It missed,” he said, grinning. “It started reentry near Madagascar, and it was pretty well broken up twenty minutes ago. That’s the last of it. It’s just about all down now, and it’s still way out in the Indian Ocean. Perth won’t be touched.”

“Thank God,” she said sincerely. She turned and looked at Sandy almost with surprise, as though she had forgotten he was there. “Oh,” she said. “Well, the show’s over. Want to get a cup of coffee?”

“If you like,” he said. And then, curiously, he asked, “Marguery? Did you have friends in Perth?”

“Friends? No. Not that I know of, anyway. I’ve never even been in Australia.”

“But you looked worried,” he pointed out.

She stared at him. “Jesus, Sandy, you say some funny things,” she told him. “Of course I was worried. They’re human beings in Australia, too, aren’t they? And anyway, who knows where the next one might come down? It could be right on top of us!”

He thought of Polly’s promise of mysterious surprises and wondered if he should mention them to Marguery. But he didn’t really know what they were going to be. Instead, he said seriously, “The statistical chances of any particular person being hit are quite small, Marguery.”

“Chances! Sandy, what do you know about it? You haven’t lived your whole life under a slow-motion blitz. It makes you nervous. Come on, let’s get the coffee.” And then as he followed her back into the hallway she softened. “I’m sorry if I bit your head off, Sandy.”

“Bit my head off?” And, while he was asking, he added, “And what’s a ‘blitz’?”

She laughed. “I keep forgetting you’re new around here, Sandy,” she said. She explained while they were waiting in line to get to the coffee table and then she said, “Look, we’ve still got some time now. Do you see what’s down there?”

She was pointing to the end of the hallway. All he saw was a door marked Sky Survey Monitors. “What is it?” he asked.

“It’s what it says it is. It’s where they keep tabs at this installation on everything in near-Earth orbit—including the Hakh’hli ship. Would you like to take a look at it?”

There were people working in the room, but Marguery talked to one of them in a low voice. The woman nodded and pointed to a work station. Marguery sat down, frowned over the keyboard for a moment, and then began to tap out codes.

“I guess an InterSec cop can do pretty much anything she wants,” Sandy observed from behind her.

“She can if she has you with her,” Marguery said, studying the screen. “Especially if she used to be in the astronaut corps herself. Here, take a look.”

On the screen a picture began to form—a bright, small object like a soup can, far away.

“We’re watching in the infrared,” Marguery told him. “These are the same kind of telescopes that were tracking the reentry. You’ll see a streak across the picture now and then. Pay no attention to them, they’re just space junk in Low Earth Orbit, like the piece that just fell in the ocean. Here, I’ll zoom in a little closer.”

Sandy stared. It was the Hakh’hli ship, all right! It seemed to glow with its own light. It was stark and clear, and he had never seen it thus. Every detail showed. As it slowly turned to even the heating from the sun, even the little welt on its surface that had been the cradle of his own landing craft was clearly visible.

“I didn’t know you could see the ship from Earth,” he said numbly.

“Well, hell of course we can see you,” she said, cross. “Do you think we’re ignorant savages? We’ve been watching you for nearly two months.”

“Two months?”

She made an impatient gesture. “Just because we can’t go into space doesn’t mean we don’t keep looking. They found the gamma-ray emission weeks ago in a routine sweep. The source was obviously moving pretty fast, so naturally they followed up on it. The gammas came from your drive, I believe.”

She touched a few more keys, and the image grew larger still. “Your ship was still out of the plane of the ecliptic, more than a billion miles out. We couldn’t get decent optics at first. Then, after you came around the Sun, we followed you on radar.”

“Radar?”

“Radio beams,” she explained. “We bounce them off things and pick up the reflections.”

“Ah,” he said, gratified that one point at least was coming clear to him. He nodded. “ChinTekki-tho said there were transmissions from Earth, but the Hakh’hli didn’t exactly know what they were. They didn’t seem to carry information.”

“Not on the way out, they don’t,” Marguery agreed, “but we could see you very clearly from the reflection. Then we could get you optically, too, at least in the infrared—your ship soaked up so much solar heat at perihelion that it sticks out like a light bulb. Sandy? Do you see those lumps on the side of the ship? What are they for?”

He peered at the screen. “Those five in a row, there? They’re other landers. The ship has half-twelve of them, altogether—you can see that landing craft is gone. That was ours.” Then he glared at her. “You watched us coming?”

“Of course we did. Wouldn’t you?” she asked patiently. “We kept a pretty close eye on you. We were listening on all frequencies, too, to see if you would send a signal to let us know who you were. You didn’t, though.”

“Well,” Sandy apologized, “the Major Seniors weren’t sure of what kind of people you were, you know.”

She shrugged. “We weren’t sure of you, either. As soon as you launched the lander we tracked its landing orbit. You didn’t have to wander around in the rain, Sandy. If you had just stayed put, we would have come to you as soon as the storm was over.”

“But why didn’t you tell us?”

“Well, I’m telling you now.” Then, unwillingly, she added, “The fact is that I wasn’t supposed to, before. It’s just been cleared.”

“I see,” Sandy said bitterly. “You are now permitted to share some truths with me. But not all, I suppose?” She scowled at him, not answering. “So besides being my jailer, now you are permitted to give out certain little crumbs of information, to see what I’ll make of them?”

“I’m not your jailer, Sandy!”

“Then what do you call it?”

“The term,” she said primly, “is ‘escort.’ ”

“But you’re a policeman. Woman, I mean.”

“InterSec is not police. Not exactly police, anyway. Oh, hell,” she flared, “what do you expect? It was just a precaution. Naturally we have to make sure of what we’re getting into, so we—” She stopped. She glanced at the ceiling, then said stubbornly, “So we keep an eye on you. Just as you did on us.” She changed the subject. “Do you want some more coffee?”

“Is that what my ‘escort’ takes me to do next?” he asked bitterly. “Then what am I required to do after that to satisfy your natural concern?”

She gave him a look he couldn’t translate. “That’s up to you,” she said.

“Oh, but surely you have instructions,” he persisted.

She stared into space for a moment. Then she sighed and looked at her watch. “It’s almost time for Polly to speak,” she said.

“Then, of course, we have to go there, don’t we? To carry out your instructions for me?”

She didn’t answer that. He turned to leave, but she put a hand on his arm. She glanced at the other people in the room before she spoke. “Sandy,” she said, almost whispering. “You told me you might like to visit the old New York City. We can do that this afternoon, if you want to.”

The tone of her voice was odd, but Sandy was not mollified. “Of course,” he snarled. “I will want to do exactly what you say. What choice do I have, after all?”

Polly was late. Nearly everyone in the audience was already seated when she made her entrance, splatsplatting down the center aisle in the long, galumphing Hakh’hli strides, with Hamilton Boyle grimly keeping up beside her. He lost her when they got to the first row. Boyle pointed politely to the stairs that led up to the side of the stage, but Polly was having none of that. As Boyle turned toward the steps Polly gave him a disdainful look. Then she launched herself in an easy jump onto the platform. By the time he got to her she was already squatting before the podium, studying her notes.

There was a faint titter from the audience.

It was a typically Polly sort of thing to do—no, Sandy corrected himself, a typically Hakh’hli thing. Polly looked up, acknowledging the chuckle with a pleased tear. From Sandy’s seat in the first row, with human beings all around, he looked at her through Earthly eyes, and he had no doubt that to them she looked comical.

While Hamilton Boyle introduced her, Polly preened herself. She looked up, twitching in annoyance, as Boyle pressed a button and a screen descended behind them, and when he finished by saying, “So our distinguished guest will show us some of the astronomical records her people have acquired in their long voyage,” she turned on him.

“Must I?” she demanded.

Boyle looked astonished. “But I thought you wanted to. That’s what you were invited here for,” he reminded her.

She twitched irritably. “Oh, very well. Let’s get that part over with, then. Is this the picture control?” Impatiently she allowed Boyle to show her how to use it, then snatched it away from him. “All right, have the lights turned out,” she ordered, craning her neck to see the screen. Before the room was fully dark she began clicking rapidly. “These are some of your nearby stars,” she said, as the pictures flicked by, half a second apart. “This first series is what you call Gamma Cephei and its two planets—not very interesting; they are what you call ‘brown dwarf’ objects, of no use to anyone. We were leaving the Gamma Cephei system en route to what you call Alpha Centauri when we detected your radio signals and passed here, some fifty of your years ago. Now, this is Alpha Centauri. It does not have any sizeable well-formed planets, only a great many objects which most resemble comets or asteroids. Here they are. Now we come to your own system—why are you interrupting me, Boyle?”

The InterSec man had put a hand on her forearm. He said politely, “Don’t you think you could go a little slower?”

“What for? All these pictures now are in your files, and I have more important things to get to. This is your Sun, and here are some of your planets—” Sandy blinked. The pictures were coming faster than he could take them in, and he could hear people grumbling around him. Polly paid no attention. “Earth, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Mars. The interesting part to you, I suppose, is that these are mostly polar views—taken from north of the ecliptic as we came in from Gamma Cephei, south of it on our trip to Alpha Centauri. There are many other pictures, of course, which will be made available to you later. That is enough on that subject. Lights!” she called peremptorily, and gazed complacently out at the muttering audience as the overheads went on again.

“Now,” she said, “let me get to the more important part of what I have to say today.” She broke off, peering at a man near Sandy, who had his hand up. “Do you want something?” she asked.

“I just want to know if we’ll have a chance to ask questions,” the astronomer called.

“I suppose so, but not until I have finished. Please pay full attention now, all of you. I have been instructed by my superior, ChinTekki-tho, to inform you that you should begin construction of a magnetic-impulse thruster—what you call a ‘railgun’—at once. We have identified two suitable sites. One is on the island you call Bora Bora, the other is the peak you call Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. Our specialists are now completing detailed plans for construction, which will be transmitted to you shortly, and we are prepared to land two teams of specialists, one for each thruster, to supervise the construction and then the operation of the machines. The most important use of the thrusters will be to launch needed raw materials to replenish the stores of our interstellar ship, but ChinTekki-tho has decided that, as a special favor, several of the first launches will be to put self-propelled objects into Low Earth Orbit. These will be used to collide with, and thus decelerate, some of the objects that are likely to deorbit in the near future, so that they can be caused to descend in whatever parts of their orbit you think least dangerous to any of your installations or people. Thus,” she finished triumphantly, “we have solved one of your great problems for you. Now you may ask questions if you wish to—but, please,” she added, glancing at her watch, “not for very long, as it is nearly time for my midday meal.”

To Sandy’s surprise, there weren’t any immediate questions. The audience was silent. It surprised Polly, too; she was twitching resentfully as she waited. Then at last she pointed to a man midway back. “Ask,” she ordered.

“I was simply wondering why you didn’t photograph Uranus and Pluto?” he called.

Polly snorted in displeasure. “Why don’t you ask about the more important things I have said? We simply did not happen to observe Uranus and Pluto.”

“But if you missed them,” the astronomer persisted, “how do you know there weren’t some you missed at the other stars?”

“We did not ‘miss’ any planets,” she corrected him coldly. “We did not concern ourselves with possible objects that would be of no use to us, because they were too far from their sun. Of course, there are many more pictures. We Hakh’hli have visited some sixty-five stellar systems in this journey, and of course we have records of many other visitations by other ships.”

Another astronomer called, “Are you still getting them?”

“You mean reports from other ships?” Polly hesitated, then replied unwillingly, “Not at present.”

“How about the planets of your own original system?”

“We have no pictures to show of our own planets. Our ancestors knew it quite well. They had no need of photographs to remind them.”

“Can you at least identify your own star from our catalogues? You said it’s only eight hundred and fifty light-years away; if it’s as bright as the Sun, it should be at least a fourteenth or fifteenth magnitude object, and we’ve got all of them on our atlases.”

Polly hesitated. “It can be identified,” she said.

“By you?”

Unwillingly, she said, “Not necessarily by me, at present.”

“You mean you’re lost, don’t you?”

“We are not lost! It is simply that we have not yet reestablished contact with the home star, because of the great distance involved—as even you should know, to communicate over a distance of eight hundred light-years takes sixteen hundred of your years for a message to be sent and an answer received. When we have accomplished our mission we will notify the home planets.”

“What is your mission, exactly?”

She paused, then flared up. “Our mission is to explore and learn! Have you no better questions to ask than this?”

“Have you no better pictures than this?” an astronomer demanded. “These are just optical-band photographs! Don’t you have infrared, ultraviolet, X-ray, gamma ray observations to go with them?”

“It is not our custom,” Polly said sharply. She was obviously beginning to get angry. “Are not any of you going to ask questions about the magnetic launchers?”

There was a pause, then Hamilton Boyle leaned forward to the microphone. “I have one,” he said. “These plans you’re going to give us. Have you ever built a launcher from them?”

“I myself? Of course not.”

“Or anyone on your ship?”

“Not recently, no,” she conceded.

“So how do you know they’ll work?”

She glared at him, divided between astonishment and anger. “They are Hakh’hli plans,” she explained. “They have been approved by the Major Seniors! Of course they’ll work. Aren’t there any sensible questions?”

When it appeared there were not, Polly stormed off to her midday meal, refusing Hamilton Boyle’s offer to accompany her. As the meeting broke up, Boyle caught up with Marguery and Sandy. “Got any plans for lunch?” he asked amiably.

Marguery answered for both them. “We’re going to explore New York,” she said. “I think we’ll just get some sandwiches and eat them on the way.”

Boyle nodded, gazing shrewdly at Sandy. “Your friend wasn’t happy with us, I’m afraid,” he offered.

Sandy decided not to mention that Polly was seldom happy. “I think she was surprised that no one seemed to want to talk about the railgun offer.”

“Oh?” Boyle said, raising his eyebrows. “Was that what it was, an offer? It sounded like marching orders to me.”

“That’s just her way, probably,” Sandy said.

Boyle nodded. “Do you think it’s a good idea?” he asked.

Sandy looked at him in surprise. “Of course it’s a good idea. The Major Seniors wouldn’t approve it if it wasn’t. You can put thousands of capsules into orbit, very cheaply. And what about kicking some of that garbage out of orbit in safe areas? Don’t you want to save your cities from the kind of thing that almost happened to Perth?”

Boyle sighed. “Yes,” he said meditatively. “That certainly sounds very good, shoving the trash around so that it will miss cities. It’s the other side of that coin I’m thinking about.”

“I don’t understand,” Sandy said.

Boyle shrugged. “Well, if you can make an object deorbit to miss a city,” he said, “don’t you think it would be just as easy to make it hit one?”