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“I agree.”

“Have we any idea at all where these aliens come from or their military potential?”

Bartok’s expression was doleful as he shook his head. “None.”

“Then we’d best keep this under wraps until we’ve learned more.”

“Is that wise? The newsers will cut us to pieces when they learn we’ve been holding out on them.”

“That can’t be helped. Do you have any conception of what it will do to the body politic if they start going to bed every night afraid they’ll wake up dead in the morning?”

“I think you are exaggerating, Madam Coordinator.”

“I wish I were, Anton. You should read more. The surest way to bring about psychosis in the human animal is to give him something to fear that he does not understand. I can cite you chapter and verse from history if you like.”

Nadine Halstrom had begun her career as a professor of history and had only gotten into politics through a fortuitous series of accidents. Her field of specialization had been the ultra-violent twentieth century. In many ways, that century had been an aberration, a detour into mindless destructiveness. It had been an era when the question of national survival had turned logic on its ear. How else to explain the fifty-year stalemate that had dominated much of the last half of history’s bloodiest century? Eastern and western power blocs had both threatened to annihilate their foes if attacked, all the while professing their devotion to the cause of peace. For more than two generations, people had lived in fear of death raining down from the skies and it had warped them. To think that the same thing could happen in her century sent a shiver up her spine that had nothing to do with the temperature.

“Very well,” Bartok replied, “we’ll keep the alien a secret.”

“How do you propose to do that, Anton?”

Despite the lightness of her tone, it was obvious to the survey director that his job might well hinge on his answer. He considered the problem for a few seconds while alternately puffing out his cheeks and sucking them back in. It was a mannerism of which he was totally unaware.

“Standard procedure calls for holding the alien in quarantine aboard High Station until the biologists can clear him. Obviously, we cannot do that. High Station is too public for a secret of this magnitude to last very long.”

“You aren’t suggesting that we break quarantine!”

“No, of course not. What we need is someplace out of the way where we can perform the necessary tests, somewhere we are able to control access.”

“Any suggestions?”

“What about PoleStar? The weather directorate owns it outright and there is virtually no traffic to and from the habitat.”

Nadine Halstrom looked pensive, and then flashed a smile familiar to billions of holovision viewers.

“Hmmm, not bad ... not bad, at all! It is remote and in a conveniently difficult orbit for everything in the equatorial plane. I will see to it that the weather directorate cooperates. What problems are there in turning it into a base of operations?”

“We’ll need to duplicate High Station’s laboratory facilities, of course, and man them with specialists. If we start moving people and equipment from High Station, someone will talk.”

“Then we don’t do it. You can use
Magellan
’s specialists for most things. Those extra scientists we need, we will recruit here on Earth. Same with the equipment. That way no one will have enough view of the full picture to realize what is going on. To further obscure things, have
Magellan
’s flight plan pulled from the Sky Watch computer. We may not be able to obscure the fact that the ship is home, but by God, we can make it difficult for anyone trying to find it.”

Bartok scribbled a note on the face of his pocket computer before continuing. “Then there is the problem of the people who were killed. We’ve notified their next of kin.”

“Any problems?”

“The families are in shock at the moment. I think we can handle them well enough if they start to ask too many questions. The scout pilot was independently wealthy. So is her brother. He is at headquarters right now making inquiries into how his sister died.”

“I suppose you have arranged a plausible cover story.”

Bartok nodded. “My assistant is explaining to him that his sister ran into an errant piece of space junk.

That should satisfy him. We will also send someone to help with the funeral arrangements. I figure if we are helpful enough, he will soon give up rooting around for details.”

“It sounds like you have things well under control, Anton. Now, then, what do you make of the fact that these aliens attacked our scout and starship without warning?”

“Obviously, they’re warlike.”

“I thought species who have achieved interstellar travel were supposed to be long past the war stage. In fact, I once wrote a thesis to that effect.”

“Apparently, your thesis is in need of revision.”

“They must be very confident,” she mused. “The speed with which they attacked the scout indicates that they didn’t consider
Magellan
a threat.”

“How could they know whether it was or wasn’t?” Bartok asked. “They’d never seen a human ship before.”

“Paranoid?”

“Possibly. Still, the fact that they attacked us without provocation is less disturbing than what our people found onboard that derelict. You saw the bodies. Did they look like the same species to you?”

“No, of course not.”

“The survivor represents a third species, and those who destroyed our scout, a possible fourth.”

“Where does that leave us?”

“In a very precarious position, Madame Coordinator. The evidence suggests that somewhere not far from here, there are two interstellar civilizations at war with one another. One of these civilizations contains at least three stars, probably more. Possibly, a lot more! Maybe they both do.”

“Does that necessarily follow?” Nadine asked as she stared at the director over steepled fingers. “After all, if someone boarded one of our starships, they’d find humans, dogs, cats, parakeets, cockroaches, and a dozen other species.”

“You haven’t had time to read Captain Landon’s report,” the director said as he held aloft a report marked
Stellar Survey Confidential
. “
Magellan
’s biologists autopsied several of the corpses. The six-legged aliens developed under a star cooler than our own, a K5 stellar type to judge from the construction of their oculars. The second species of dead aliens came from a hotter star, probably one in the F-class. The survivor comes from a star very like our own. In addition, the scientists say the survivor and the six-limbed species have blood chemistry based on iron, same as human. The insectoid had a magnesium-based circulatory fluid. The three could not possibly have come from a single biosphere.

Human beings and oak trees are more closely related.”

“So we face a minimum of three star systems and two contending interstellar associations --”

“Or a single association infested with space pirates.”

“That doesn’t cheer me up any.”

“No, Ma’am. Still, there is one bit of good news. They don’t know where we live.”

“Are you sure? One explanation for their quickness to attack a human starship is that they recognized it for what it is.”

“The fact that
Magellan
destroyed the attacker would argue against that,” Bartok insisted. “And if our ship was their target, why were they fighting the other vessel? No, I think we stumbled into someone else’s fight.”

“How do we confirm or refute that?”

“Two ways,” Bartok said, holding up a similar number of fingers for emphasis. “If we can learn to talk to the alien, he can tell us what is going on. For that, we will need a good linguist and knowledge of his psychology. We need to establish a baseline sufficient to tell when he is lying to us. Luckily, semantic analysis has developed into quite a science since the two of us were in school. Given time, we will be able to tell when he lies to us merely from analyzing the internal contradictions that creep into his story.

Luckily, no knowledge of alien physiological reactions will be required.”

“Not that we won’t use bio-monitoring as well, once we learn how he reacts.”

“Agreed, Madame Coordinator.”

“What are your immediate personnel requirements?”

“We’ll need a linguist and a psychologist to study the alien. Also, an astrophysicist. We can get him from
Magellan
’s crew.”

“Why an astrophysicist?”

“Because,” the director replied, “once he tells us where his star is located, we’ll need someone who can translate his coordinates into our own.”

“And if he won’t tell us?”

“Semantic analysis ought to help there, too. If we can get him talking about the sort of things he sees in the night sky of whatever planet he lives on, we may be able to triangulate the location of his home world.”

Nadine Halstrom nodded. “All right, the alien is the first approach. What is the second?”

“That one is a little more objective. Captain Landon wants to return to New Eden to salvage the alien hulk. We can learn a great deal about these people by studying their technology. Who knows, we might even come away with their star maps.”

“I don’t like that approach, Anton. As of now, they do not know where we live. However they got there, New Eden has been visited by two alien starships. What is to stop it from being visited again while we are trying to salvage that ship? They could follow
Magellan
home this time.”

“I believe the gain is worth the risk.”

“We’ll see. Before I approve any such expedition, I’ll want to see a detailed operations plan that reduces our exposure to a minimum.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“In the meantime, you can busy yourself getting the PoleStar operation moving. I must emphasize, Mr.

Director. I want this secret held very tight. No more are to learn of the alien than are absolutely necessary.”

“I understand.”

“I will also want someone there to look after things from a political perspective. Any objections to Dieter Pavel?”

“None.”

“Excellent. Whom will we get for our linguist? --”

#

Like the earliest space stations, Soyuz and the Space Station Freedom, Equatorial Station orbited low to keep beneath the Van Allen radiation belt. The relative lack of altitude contributed to a view that made the big triple-wheel a destination as well as a transfer point. The extra income from tourists nearly compensated for the cost of the additional reaction mass that had to be expended to counteract atmospheric drag.

Like everyone else, Lisabeth Arden paused at the viewport in the non-rotating station hub as she exited the transfer tube. Arden was petite blonde with a permanent tan and green eyes. Beyond the armor glass, the Earth slid quickly beneath them, a vast blue circle too large to encompass in a single glance. The station was just passing over the eastern coast of Ecuador. The South Atlantic stretched clear to the limb of the planet, with the Ivory Coast of Africa still fifteen minutes away over the curving horizon. The usual bands of clouds were dominated by a large spiral formation that was the beginning of a tropical storm.

Directly beneath them, the thin white contrails of aircraft marked the air route between Lima and Kinshasa.

Lisa was a professor of linguistics at the Multiversity of London. She had arrived at her office half an hour late that morning, not having gotten to sleep until the early morning hours before dawn. The first thing she noticed when she powered up her work screen was a summons to the chancellor’s office. The muttered oath that accompanied the discovery was one that had come down unchanged from Anglo-Saxon times.

As she hurried down the hall toward the lift, she ran over in her mind all of the possible infractions that might have earned her a visit to the chancellor’s office. There had been that expense report she had turned in for the seminar in Mombassa. Or possibly, she was over her budgeted allotment of time on the university’s library net. Still, neither matter should be important enough to be called before Chancellor Seaton.

“Come in, Lisa,” Seaton said when she entered his office. “Have a seat.”

“Thank you, sir.”

After sitting, she was surprised to note that Seaton appeared nervous. If so, she realized with a start, it was the first time she had seen him that way. “Before we go any farther, Lisa, I need your word that what I am about to say won’t go beyond this room.”

“You have it.”

“The Stellar Survey has asked me to recommend a linguist for a project they have going on in orbit.

Would you be interested?”

“Me? In orbit? Whatever for?”

“They didn’t give me the details. I can tell you that the World Coordinator has endorsed the request.

Whatever it is, you can expect that it will look good on your resume once you finish the job. It will also reflect well on the university.”

“Why me?” she asked.

“Because tolerance for microgravity degrades with age and you are the youngest person in the department. In addition, you are one of the best linguists I know. And, if you must have a third reason, they said they preferred someone who is not married.”

“What could they possibly want with a linguist?” Lisa mused, almost to herself. Then, when the comment about her marital status sank in, “Just how long will I be gone?”

“The coordinator only said that you could expect to be away for several months.”

“Who will take my classes?”

“Ardmore can handle most of them, and we’ll get Shipingdale to help out. Don’t worry, we’ll manage.”

“And you can’t tell me what I’ll be doing?”

“All I know is that it is a matter of some urgency.”

“This is silly, Chancellor! They really expect me to make up my mind without telling me anything about the project? I thought things like this only happen in historical holofilms.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Seaton agreed. “That, coupled with the coordinator’s interest, should give you some idea of the importance.”

“Or else the bureaucrats are merely playing their damned power games.”

“I am sure that if you find the assignment not to your liking, you can always resign. Nothing will be said if we find you back here in a week. Now then, your decision, please.”