Alan Dean Foster

by

ALAN DEAN FOSTER

Based on the screenplay by

ROCKNE S, OMANNON

VA

A Warner Communications Company

WARNER BOOKS EDITION

Copyright 0 1988 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

Warner Books, Inc.

New York, N.Y. 10103

CA Warner Communications Company

Printed in the United Stores of America

First Printing: August, 1988

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This one's dedicated to James and Gole Anne, Who are having a lot of fun and sharing it.

Those who saw it called it spectacular, and not a one of them failed to underestimate it.

The Ship hung suspended in a cloudless sky of Mojave blue, immense beyond belief, a cityscape in metal and plastic and god knew what else. It materialized above the dry dead lake bed and hung motionless, a silvery sculpture pinned against the backdrop of the rain-deprived ribs of the southern Sierra Nevadas.

The first human beings to set eyes on the visitor were the McCoys, of Lancaster, California. They were on their way up to Bridgeport for a week of hiking and fishing when Mark McCoy leaned out the window of the family Ford and yelled "Holy Begeesus, Dad-take a look at that!" Words now as firmly set in human history as "Veni, vidi, vici" and "One small step for a man, one giant step for mankind." His sister Mandy was the second human to see the Ship, but her words are neither remembered nor recorded.

A trucker with a load of dead beef on his way to L.A. was the next. He was followed by a member of the California Highway Patrol who spent ten minutes stating at the apparition before remembering to respond to his radio, which by that time was going berserk. Reports were starting to come in from all over Southern California and Nevada as others noticed the intruder in their sky. Awestruck citizens in I

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both states could see it because the desert air that morning was so clear.

Also because the Ship was six miles long.

The Army demonstrated its efficiency by completely surrounding and isolating the site within twenty-four hours of the first sighting.

Unfortunately, in its haste to mobilize, three civilians and half a platoon of soldiers were killed in separate accidents. Beyond the actual touchdown site, however, there was plenty of room for sightseers. You can't hide a six-mile-long spaceship. The Army tried, though, sealing off US 395 and the secondary highways, emplacing roadblocks on dirt tracks, and keeping Apache attack helicopters on rotating patrol to discourage private pilots from approaching too close. The Air Force got into the act with flights of everything from AH-C's to F-16's. The fighter pilots got dizzy quickly from having to fly constant tight patrol patterns. Civilian air traffic was rerouted all the way south over Yuma and north no lower than Fresno. Meanwhile Soviet spy satellites altered their orbits and took all the closeups the Kremlin needed.

Nothing could prevent people from coming out to see the Ship for themselves. They arrived in cars and campers, BMW's and Jeeps, Winnebago and GM motor homes. Families set up picnic tables and boom boxes and playpens and unfurled portable satellite receiving dishes to entertain children too young to be impressed by six-mile-long spaceships. Good Sam members mingled freely with Yuppies ftoin West Los Angeles who set up beach chairs and broke out wine coolers full of fruit juice. Blue-collar types from the Valley sipped Budweisers and munched Fritos, partied and made love and played cards.

Meanwhile the media, a second arriving army, showed up in elaborate vans and hastily aligned their Ku-band transmitters to relay pictures of the Ship all over the world.

Duncan Crais had been one of the first reporters on the scene. His report was notable for its brevity and for the feeling of excitement he managed to inject into every sentence. He was older now, gray at the temples. His work

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in covering the Arrival had landed him a cushy anchorman's job down in Atlanta at six figures per annum.

Presently he was narrating a documentary on the Arrival for channel six local. Those assembled in the bar recognized the familiar tense voice as it recounted the events which had forever changed their world.

"That was the scene in California's Mojave Desert three years ago today, the historic first television images of the Newcomer ship upon its dramatic and wholly unexpected arrival. As with the assassination of John E Kennedy, who among us does not remember exactly where he was and what he was doing that October nineteenth morning when the news first broke: that people had landed. People ftom. another star system."

Those who saw the bar called it depressing, and not a one among them failed to stay for a few minutes at least.

It was crowded and dark. Something about big-city bars makes them seem darker inside than out, even at night. The lights that lit the counter from above and behind appeared to suck the life out of the air. Small bulbs, animated beer advertisements that crawled endlessly from right to left or top to bottom, and forlorn cigarettes that danced in the hands of the still alert like fireffies in the depths of a Louisiana bayou all contributed to the feeling of frantic unease.

While the Hollowpoint Bar was grimmer than most, it was also livelier than many. Gallows humor was prevalent among the regular clientele, a reflection of their work in the profession of law enforcement. Much of the laughter that filled the air nightly was corroded with bitterness.

The single flat-plate television mounted above the far end of the bar continued to spew forth Duncan Crais's florid reminiscences of the Newcomer Arrival. Most of the patrons ignored his voice as well as the accompanying images. Only a few who actually clung to the far end of the counter like bats hanging from the roof of their cave occasionally spared a glance in the direction of those ringing tones.

Somewhere in the center of the floor, country-western clashed with hard rock, two tonal galaxies colliding without

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mixing. No one objected to the resulting cacophony. Most of them were too busy objecting to more important matters, like their superiors, or their mates, or their day's duty assignment.

Conversation was liberally sprinkled with four-letters words and a vile street terminology never encountered in what passed outside the Hollowpoint for "polite" society. The two men seated at the middle of the counter did not belong to polite society. It was their job to protect those who did belong from individuals only a little less disreputable than themselves.

They were cops. More precisely, detectives. Down, dirty, and very good at their jobs. Right now they were also a little drunk.

Fedorchuk's ancestors might've been cossack&--or the serfs they persecuted.

He was big and sloppy and his suits never fit quite right. He was also never late for check-in and never sick, traits which endeared him to his superiors if not his colleagues. Not that he was especially dedicated or devoted to his profession. It was just that he had nothing else to do, and he knew it. So he went to work. He'd been a good street cop and he made an adequate detective. In the eyes of his superiors, his punctuality more than compensated for his lack of intuition.

His partner Alterez was quieter, which in comparison to Fedorchuk didn't mean much. Alterez was one of the boys, a classification he took pride in.

For a former horneboy he'd accomplished a lot, striving to make himself indistinguishable from the Anglos he worked with. As a result, he'd acquired many of his paler colleagues' bad traits instead of the good ones.

Not that there were many good ones to pick up at the station house. He and Fedorchuk were ponderous, unimaginative, foul-mouthed, and efficient. They suited one another.

Fedorchuk bent over his drink and sipped from the widemouthed glass without using his hands to steady it as he gazed up at the flickering TV. His brows drew together when he lifted his head.

"I remember where I was. You don't forget something 5

like that, right? I was pissing off my balcony at the neighbor's dog! "

Since all those seated at the bar near Fedorchuk were of a similar mindset and attitude toward life, they found this pious reminiscence uproariously funny. Alterez only smiled. He was used to his partner's witticisms.

Instead of commenting or replying to the joke, he turned his attention to the brightly lit TV. It did not matter that Duncan Crais couldn't hear him.

What mattered to Alterez was that he could hear himself.

"Get to the goddamn ball scores!"

"You tell 'em, partner." Fedorchuk's eyes narrowed as he devoted all his attention to his glass. Locating the rim with his lips alone was always a trying challenge. He prided himself on accepting challenges, particularly those which were self-imposed.

A glance upward revealed that Crais had metamorphosed into a middle-aged professor from Cal Tech. She looked uncomfortable in her starched blue suit, her movements suggesting that her natural habitat was a white lab smock. But all bowed down to and complied with the demands of the all-powerful television tube. She was willing to sacrifice for science.

Fedorchuk found himself wondering what she looked like beneath the suit.

"From the time mankind first gazed up at the stars there had been speculation about a visit by people from 'out there.' How ironic that when the first contact was finally made, the two hundred and sixty thousand occupants aboard the starship were as surprised as we were about their arrival. They awakened from frozen hibernation, a kind of extended deep sleep, only to find that a malfunctioning autopilot had landed them on our world by mistake. They were many degrees off course and many hundreds of light-years from their intended destination."

She looked as though she might have more to say, but something offiscreen caught her attention and she went silent. The man seated on Alterez's left made a rude noise. Crais reappeared, taking the scientist's place. He was rr-6

laxed, immaculately coiffured, secure in his position and fame.

"These 'Newcomers,' we soon learned, were genetically engineered people, created to perform hard labor under difficult environmental conditions.

It would not be appropriate to call them slaves, but they had been given no choice in their future. Their destiny had been determined elsewhere, without their consent. Destiny, however, did not count on a malfunctioning autopilot. Instead of their intended planetfall, they found themselves stranded here on Earth, their vessel's peculiar and so far incomprehensible fuel system exhausted, with no way to return where they came from nor to contact those who had sent them on their way so long ago. . . ."

Beer glasses rattled noisily nearby. Annoyed, a couple of the patrons glanced in the direction of the busboy, as quickly forgot his clumsiness to return to their own conversations, or to the documentary running interminably on the overhead screen.

In the interval, Crais had once more been replaced, this time by a woman in her mid-forties. She was standing on the front porch of a house with the sun shining heavily behind her. A dog ran through the picture in the background, chased by a boy of eight. Fedorchuk wondered cynically if both boy and dog had been acquired from Central Casting, or if they actually belonged to the woman smiling at the camera. Probably a second assistant director was standing somewhere offscreen left, tempting the dog with a steak and the boy with a fiver.

The detective downed the rest of his drink and left the empty glass where the bartender would see it. The tender here knew him and his partner well. The glass would magically refill without him having to make a request.

"When the Newcomers were first let out of their ship," the woman was saying, "they were quarantined in a camp not ten miles from the town here. " She smiled. An uncoached smile, Fedorchuk decided, feeling a little better about Duncan Crais and his crew. "You can imagine how the people around here felt about that. But once they were processed and studied by the scientists and finally released from the 7

camp and we got a chance to know them, we saw what nice, quiet people they really are."

Someone nearer the TV muttered something coarse. A couple of other patrons laughed. The man who'd spoken rose and fumbled with the channel buttons for a moment. A half-hearted cheer went up as another news program filled the screen. It wasn't the scores, but it was less boring.

Fedorchuk looked back down at his glass. Sure enough, when he wasn't looking it had acquired another inch of pale golden liquid and two fresh ice cubes. His lips frozen in a perpetual thin smile of servitude and understanding, the bartender nodded once in Fedorchuk's direction. The detective smiled thankfully in return.

The bartender ignored the hulking figure hard at work behind him. The busboy was like all the rest of the Newcomers: massive, humanoid, difficult to tell from a normal human being at first glance except for his size. Only when he turned did the telltale marking pattern on his bald skull and the absence of external ears become apparent. He could have crushed the bartender with a single false step, but instead the alien functioned smoothly around him, always giving ground when it was contested, always making way. He held two full racks of beer glasses without strain.