Mission to Minerva

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Freskel-Gar advised that the aircraft carrying the two national leaders was on its way to a safe landing ground, and he had received a message of compliments and respects from them to pass on to the Shapieron. They would receive a deputation from the ship jointly, possibly in Cerios, as soon as their own revised itinerary was put in order. In the meantime, a preparatory meeting at Melthis would facilitate arrangements greatly, and the landing there should proceed as he had suggested. It was neither Calazar's nor Caldwell's style to insist on being involved in every stage of every decision. The strategy for the mission had been set, and it was up to the people on the spot to determine the best way of implementing it. Frenua Showm sent a report to Control at Thurien via the primary beacon on the latest happenings, and turned her attention to preparing for the meeting with Freskel-Gar.

They made the descent in one of the Shapieron's general utility shuttles-a craft larger than the reconnaissance probe that had rescued Jissek, but smaller than a surface lander, which would have been too large for the helipad area inside the Agracon complex, where the Lambians had directed them. Eesyan and Showm were the principal Thuriens, accompanied by a small staff; Hunt and Danchekker represented Earth; Monchar and two of the ship's officers went too, on behalf of Garuth. The Shapieron moved closer in to launch the shuttle but remained within the Moon's cone of visual eclipse from Minerva. It seemed fitting to let the planet's governments announce the vessel's presence to the population in their own time, rather than have it revealed prematurely by an outbreak of pandemonium among the astronomical community.

Hunt was quiet as he sat in the cabin of the shuttle, watching the orb of Minerva enlarging on one screen, while the Moon, which they had passed close by, slowly shrank on another. His mind went back five years to the discovery of "Charlie"-the spacesuited corpse on the Moon that had been the first trace of the Lunarians to come to light. The subsequent investigation, orchestrated mainly by Gregg Caldwell while the rest of the UNSA chiefs were trying to draw lines between who should do what, was what had first brought Hunt and Danchekker together. One of their first major achievements had been the reconstruction of Charlie's world from information contained in documents found on his person and other evidence that had shown up later. That was when they had christened it Minerva. Hunt's group had built a six-foot-diameter model of it in his laboratory at Houston, from where the UNSA investigations had been coordinated. He remembered spending long hours gazing at that model, trying to bring to life in his mind the picture of a lost world that had existed fifty thousand years ago. He had gotten to know every island and coastal outline, the mountain ranges and the equatorial forests, the inhabited areas and major cities sandwiched between the advancing ice sheets. What he was seeing on the screen now looked entirely familiar. But this wasn't a model in a lab or a computer's reconstruction. It was real, and it was out there. They were on their way down to its surface.

The Moon, on the other hand, presented an unfamiliar countenance-one that was smoother and with less features than the pictures he had known from science books and encyclopedias since childhood. The Moon that looked down on the unfolding saga of human history, the emergence of its various races, the struggles of their earliest ancestors to survive, had carried the scars of the ferocious battle fought across its surface in the final days of the war before it was obliterated by billions of tons of debris when Minerva broke up. But those events were twenty years in the future yet. The Moon that attended Minerva was still unsullied and serene.

"A strange, circular course of events, don't you think?" Danchekker's voice said from nearby. Hunt looked away from the screens. "Long ago, Minerva's orphaned Moon traced its solitary course to Earth, bringing the ancestors of our kind. Now here we are, the descendants of fifty thousand years later, returning to where it all started. Rather in the manner of paying homage to our place of origins; a pilgrimage, as it were." Danchekker had evidently been entertaining similar thoughts of his own.

"A bit like salmon," Hunt said.

Danchekket clicked his tongue. "You really can be quite Philistine at times, you know, Vic."

Hunt grinned. "Probably a touch of New Cross coming through," he said. That was the area of south London where he had grown up. "'Every inch a working man, an' proud of it,' my dad used to say. He didn't have a lot of time for high-falutin fancy stuff. 'The 'igher a monkey climbs, the more of an arse 'e looks to the rest of us,' was another one. He could never fathom the kinds of things I got into. Said the only thing I'd be good for was going off into other worlds. I suppose he was right enough about that." Danchekker blinked through his spectacles, not quite sure how to reply.

Monchar and the two crew officers from the Shapieron were silent. They alone among all those in the descent party had actually seen Minerva before. They were not Thuriens. For them it was the lost home they had departed from millions of years ago-somewhere over twenty years by their own reckoning-magically restored once again.

The shuttle broke through a high layer of cirrostratus. Below, Hunt recognized part of the southern Lambian coastline showing intermittently against the gray ocean between patches of lower cloud. "You've got company coming up," ZORAC observed, speaking from the Shapieron but reading the shuttle's radar via a probe positioned off to one side of the Moon. The screens showed interceptor jets rising and spreading out into an escort formation around the descending craft-whether as an honor guard or to keep a wary eye on it was impossible to say. They were swept deltas design mounting side-by-side engines in a flattened fuselage beneath twin tail fins-uncannily like some of the Terran designs of the turbulent period around the late twentieth century. As with things like sharks and dolphins, shapes that worked were probably restricted within quite narrow limits and likely to be found universally, Hunt guessed.

"You're on course and looking fine," the Lambian ground controller who was seeing them down reported. "The landing area is clear."

"We have your approach beam," the Ganymean copilot acknowledged. "It's looking like just over three minutes."

"Check."

"Does it look familiar?" Eesyan asked Monchar and the two Shapieron crew officers.

"No," Monchar replied, staring at the images. "Everything has changed."

The city of Melthis took shape and resolved into progressively finer detail until a cluster of buildings that the descent radar identified as the Agracon steadied in the center of the view. They opened out and grew, transformed slowly into profiles of roofs and windowed facades sliding slowly upward on the screens showing the side views as the shuttle came down between them, and then were stationary. The mild humming that was all the shuttle produced to mark its exertions, died.

"Landed. Powering down. We are on the planet Minerva," the pilot announced.

"It's been a long time," ZORAC said, presumably for the benefit of the three original Ganymeans aboard. They seemed a bit too overcome to respond.

The views from outside showed that they were in an open space surrounded by high gray buildings that looked imposing and solid, with a scattering of gray, scrubby plants sprouting in beds by the wall and along paths across patches of gray lawn. Hunt was already forming the impression that this whole world might be a composition of grays, like an old black-and-white movie. Vehicles were parked around the edges of the area: an assortment of ground cars and trucks, and some helicopter-type craft crammed to one side as if they had been moved out of the way. The cars, like the buildings, looked solid and indestructible, but utilitarian and boxy. Detroit stylists would have despaired. The predominant colors seemed to be black, a kind of khaki… and shades of gray.

No Lunarians had been visible when the shuttle touched down. But after the engine cut, figures began appearing through what seemed to be the rear entrance of one of the larger buildings flanking the square and moved out toward the craft. For the most part, their garb was of the monotonous, tuniclike patterns that the Shapieron's previous visits had shown to be characteristically Lunarian, along with variations of common themes that suggested uniforms. A number of topcoats and hats were in evidence. "I think it might be cold out there," Hunt said.

"Nine-point-three Celsius," ZORAC supplied.

Frenua Showm and Eesyan moved up to stand facing the inner door of the shuttle's lock, with Hunt, Danchekker, Monchar, and the two Shapieron officers behind them. An indicator showed the lock pressures to be balanced. The inner door opened. They moved forward. Then the outer door opened. A wave of cool, damp air met them. It carried a hint of the odor of tunnels that pervades subway stations and was slightly pungent.

In a typically Thurien touch, Eesyan and Showm did not pause at the top of the ramp, where they would have eclipsed the two smaller Terrans squeezed in the lock chamber behind them, but descended at once to where there was space for all to spread out and be presented equally. Although basic information had already been exchanged via the communications connection, it seemed that the occasion required a few formal words. Showm gave the customary Thurien head-bow of greeting, introduced herself, and proceeded to name the others with her. The link back to ZORAC, via a relay connection in the shuttle, made it available as a translator, but the distance of the Shapieron created a turnaround delay of three to four seconds. Interacting was not as sophisticated as the methods developed later with VISAR. The party wore headbands carrying audio and video pickups, with information from ZORAC delivered through clip-on ear pieces and wrist screens. Showm concluded, "We have come from a world known as Thurien, a planet of the star that you know as the Giants' Star."

The central figure of the group facing them wore a uniform with lots of braid and a peculiar three-cornered hat-the uniforms were noticeably more ornamented than those that would come into use later, when the war got serious. He was of stocky, rounded build, and light brown in countenance like the others, with a flattened nose and narrow eyes that lent a vaguely Asiatic appearance. He held himself upright and replied stiffly. "Gudaf Irastes, Commanding General of the Household Forces to Crown Prince Freskel-Gar of Lambia and its dominions." Iraste hesitated, his eyes flickering uncertainly in the direction of his retinue. Then, evidently deciding his wasn't about to go through the list of all of them, "Greetings on behalf of Minerva. Freskel-Gar is waiting inside to receive you. If you will follow this way…"

They proceeded in through the entrance that the Lunarians had emerged from. Hunt noticed several figures in the background following them with what looked like movie or TV cameras. Inside, a short hallway brought them to an open vestibule area of marbled floor, surrounded by square columns going up to overlooking galleries. Corridors led away left, right, and ahead, between clusters of alcove spaces and doors. They went past the main staircase leading up to the galleries, and behind it passed through an archway to stairs leading down. At the bottom were sturdy double doors attended by guards. Beyond the doors, they followed a stone-floored corridor through surroundings that seemed severe compared to the halls above. The thought was just forming in Hunt's mind that this seemed an odd kind of setting in which to receive the first diplomatic delegation from an alien race of another star, when they entered a room where a number of uniformed Lambians were working at desks and consoles. It turned out to be an anteroom to a spacious, brightly lit area filled with screens and communications gear. Armed Lambian soldiers were stationed along the walls. More entered behind the party and took up stations inside the door. Prince Freskel-Gar was waiting with members of his staff at the far end. His expression was not that of a host about to welcome guests, but stony and hard.

But the sight that caused the arrivals to stop dead in disbelief, Thurien and Terran alike, was the group of figures framed in a large screen facing the floor. They were human, but not Lunarian. The leader standing at their head leered, his teeth showing white in a huge chin behind a short black beard as if he had been relishing this moment. ZORAC wasn't needed to translate his words. Hunt, Danchekker, and every Ganymean present were conversant with Jevlenese.

"Most obliging of you. My compliments go out to Calazar. I couldn't have planned this better myself," Broghuilio said. "I'm so sorry that I could not be there to receive you personally, but it would not have been convenient. However, I'm sure we will not be deprived of that pleasure for very long. We are not far away."

He looked aside and nodded to a Jevlenese wearing what looked the uniform of a ship's captain, who signaled affirmatively to somewhere. "Fire the lasers," a voice off-screen instructed.

Wearing shorts and a house robe, Caldwell sat on the arm of one of the chairs in the summer room of his home outside the city in Maryland, watching as dutifully as any grandfather would while his ten-year-old grandson, Timmy, tongue-between-teeth, produced a commendable rendition of Mozart's Drawing Room theme on the baby grand. It was one of those balmy summer days that were made for forgetting that organizations like UNSA and places like Thurien existed. Outside, Caldwell's daughter, Sharon, was with her husband, Robin, by the pool. Maeve was in the kitchen with Elaine, the housekeeper and cook, discussing ideas for dinner-or whatever else women discussed in kitchens.

Timmy finished with a flourish and emitted the breath he had been holding in his concentration. "Bravo!" Caldwell said, patting his palms appreciatively. "New York next season? Or will we have to wait a little longer?"

"I know all the scales too. Pick one-any one you like."

"How do I do that?" Caldwell was about as musical as a tin wash tub.

"Just pick a key then."

"Umm, okay… That one." Caldwell pointed at a black one.

"That's A flat. Now say major or minor."

"Oh, with me, I guess it has to be the major."

Timmy proceeded to run up the octave and back down. It sounded right, anyway.

Robin came in through the patio door. Clinking sounds from outside told of Sharon picking up dishes and glasses. "What's this? Showing off to grandpa, is he?"

"Sounds pretty good to me," Caldwell said. "I still think a crotchet's some kind of knitting."

"Are we having dinner in or going out? Have we decided yet?"

"The manager of that department is discussing it now."

Robin pulled a shirt over his shoulders and began buttoning it. "Sharon tells me you've got some kind of Open Day coming up at Goddard."

"Right."

"What's that all about?"

Caldwell raised his eyes. Even ten years previously, with secrecy and security still a hangover from the days of militarization, it would have been unthinkable. "Don't remind me. I was just enjoying my day off. It's on Tuesday. The powers that run our world have decided that since the public pays for most of what goes on at Goddard, the public has a right to see for itself. So we've got lectures, lab exhibits-you know, the usual kind of thing." A phone rang somewhere in the house.

"Sounds interesting. I might try and get along. Tuesday, you said?"

"If you don't mind hordes of tourists and kids taking over the staff dining room. It's a blessing Chris Danchekker isn't around right now."

"Gregg, it's for you." Maeve called from the next room.

"I'm incommunicado." Caldwell refused to carry a compad on his days off.

"It's Calazar. They put him through from ASD. He seems really serious."

"Oh. That's different… Excuse me, Robin." Caldwell went through to take the call.

Robin turned his head to Sharon, who was just coming in carrying a tray. "Calazar? Does he mean the Thurien leader?"

"That's right."

"Everyone knows that," Timmy put in.

Robin shook his head. "My father-in-law gets calls at home from other star systems? I'm never going to get used to this."

In the next room Caldwell moved around to face the screen. "Byrom, hello. What's up?"

"I've just got word from Gate Control. They've lost contact with the beacon. Everything went dead at once."

It was certainly strange for Thurien engineering to malfunction. But did it really warrant a call like this? "So we go to the standby unit," Caldwell said.

"That's dead, too. They both went out at the same time."

The implication was at once clear. Yes, it did warrant a call like this. The only explanation for both beacons going out together was that some agency had deliberately destroyed them-they had been spaced far enough apart to avoid simultaneous stray impact hazards.

But even worse, the beacons were VISAR's locator. They provided the only way to find that particular universe again. Without them, there was no way to bring the mission home.