Voyagers I (15 page)

He brushed her hand away as he would swipe at an annoying insect. “We’re here to make contact with that spacecraft.”

“I know that.”

“How’s it going to look if we let the damned thing get away from us?”

“We won’t,” Jo said.

“You’ve got it all figured out, do you?”

“No.” She shook her head. “But I know you. You’ll figure it out, one way or another. You’ll make Mac look good doing it, too.”

“And it won’t hurt your career, either, will it?”

“Why do you think I’m here?”

“Because Mac brought you with him,” Stoner snapped.

For an instant she looked sad, betrayed. “If you only knew,” she said softly.

“You’ll have to tell me about it sometime. Or better yet, put it into your résumé. It’ll impress the hell out of NASA.”

“Keith, you can be a real sonofabitch when you want to be, you know that?”

“It’s the heat. It’s got me down.”

“Go to hell.”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t already rewritten your resume. I know the way your ambitious little brain works.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. I can see it now, right up on the top of the page, where you list your accomplishments: ‘Research assistant, Project JOVE. Worked with elite international research team, in top-priority program to establish first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life form.’ ”

With a satisfied smile, Jo said, “Sounds terrific. How many girls can include that in their
curriculum vitae
?”

“I thought you wanted to be called women, not girls.”

“I can say girls,” Jo answered. “You have to call us women.”

“Yeah,” he said tightly. “Figures.”

Her face serious, Jo asked, “Keith, you’re not still sore at me, are you?”

“Are you still sleeping with Big Mac?”

“Oh, Christ! You’ll never figure it out, will you?”

“I’ve already figured you out, Jo.”

Her fists clenched in frustration, she said, “I don’t give a damn about Mac! Don’t you understand that?”

“Of course I understand that,” he said, icy calm, frigid with anger. “That’s what makes it so goddamned rotten.”

She started to reply, hesitated, let her hands drop to her sides. Without another word, Jo brushed past him and continued on her way toward the administration building.

Toward McDermott, Stoner told himself, as he stood alone in the middle of the dusty street and watched her walk away from him.

Jo shivered in the darkness. As she unhooked her bra and slid her panties down her long legs, she asked McDermott, “Why do you keep it so cold in here?”

From the bed, his bullfrog’s voice croaked, “So that you’ll have to huddle close to me to stay warm.”

She was glad that he kept the lights off and the drapes pulled tightly across the trailer’s windows. He couldn’t see the expression on her face. The damned bunk’s not big enough for a fatass like him by himself, Jo grumbled silently, let alone the two of us.

Still, she padded over to the bunk, pulled the covers aside and squirmed onto the few inches of tough rubbery mattress beside Big Mac. This is ruining my back, Jo thought.

“And how’s my sweet young thing this evening?” McDermott asked, reaching for her breast.

The same line, the same approach, as predictable as sunrise. But McDermott’s own rising was beyond prediction. He needed lots of Jo’s help to raise an erection. And many times nothing she did could help him.

Jo worked on him calmly, dispassionately, a graduate student working on an experiment in order to get a good grade from the professor. She could feel the tensions easing out of McDermott’s body as she massaged and fondled him.

“You’re doing fine,” she cooed. “Big, strong daddy is going to fill me up, aren’t you?”

McDermott was moaning softly, lying on his back, arms at his sides. Bending over him, Jo whispered:

“That’s a good boy…You’re getting big and strong for me…”

Finally she straddled him, rocking back and forth until he came. When she stretched out beside him again, he was whimpering. Tears wet his face.

“What’s the matter?” Jo whispered, genuinely surprised. “Are you all right?”

“They want to take it away from me,” McDermott snuffled. “It’s
my
project, I’m in charge, but they want to go and turn it into some kind of space cadet circus.”

“Nobody’s going to take it away from you,” she soothed. “You’re the director of the entire project.”

“It’s that Stoner.” His voice was high and quavering, like a little boy’s. “He’s after me all the time. He wants to fly out there and meet the alien spacecraft.”

“Even if he does”—she stroked his chest—“you’ll still be head of the project. So what if he flies off into space…”

She felt his whole body shudder. “Go out and meet it? Touch it? Suppose it’s carrying disease germs? Suppose it’s some kind of slimy, horrible
…thing
?”

“No, no. It won’t be. Everything will turn out all right. You’ll see. It’ll be all right.”

“It could be evil…dangerous. It’s alien…not like us.”

“There, there. It’ll all work out. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Try to relax and get some sleep.”

It seemed like hours, but finally Big Mac was snoring peacefully, his white-haired chest rising and falling in calm rhythm. Jo slipped gratefully out of the bunk, glanced toward the shower stall. It’d wake him up, she knew. Pulling on her shorts and blouse, she decided to take a dip in the lagoon before returning to her own room at the hotel.

“But it’s a good idea,” Markov was saying to his wife. “A necessary idea!”

It was dark outside as they sat in the front room of their little bungalow. The Americans had given married couples each a tiny cement house of their own. Maria had spent their first two hours in it searching for hidden microphones.

They sat with two trays of precooked dinners—soggy American vegetables and thin slices of unidentifiable meat—resting on their laps. Markov’s was almost untouched.

“A good idea,” Maria mumbled, her mouth stuffed with a buttered soft white roll.

“Yes,” Markov replied.

His wife glared at him from her upholstered chair. “Technically, perhaps it is a good idea. But not politically.”

“Politically?”

Maria finished the roll of butter. As usual, she seemed both annoyed and disappointed with her husband.

“Don’t you understand why the Americans brought up this idea of meeting the alien spacecraft?”

“To capture it and bring it close to Earth for study,” said Markov.

“And who would make this thrilling capture?”

Markov shrugged. “Stoner is a former astronaut. I suppose he would want to be in on it…”

“Exactly! An
American
astronaut.”

“But we’re all working on this together, aren’t we?”

“Hah! There is together and together.”

Markov glanced down at his tray and decided that he couldn’t face another bite of the bland food. Maybe she’s right, he thought. Certainly we can’t trust the Americans to feed us.

Maria continued, “All through this project the Americans have tried every trick they know to keep the knowledge of this alien spacecraft to themselves.”

“So have we,” Markov protested weakly.

Maria ignored him. “Now the one astronaut they have on their team suggests that we go out into space and bring the alien ship into orbit around the Earth.”

“But it’s a good idea!” Markov insisted.

“And how will they do this thing?” she retorted. “With the American Space Shuttle, and American launching facilities, and American astronauts.”

“They will share the information with us.”

“How do we know that? How do we know they will share
all
the information with us that they obtain?”

“Zworkin feels the idea has merit.”

“Zworkin!” Maria almost spat. “That Jew! He’s probably in league with the capitalists.”

“Maria!”

“It’s true,” she insisted. “Our task is to make certain that if anyone reaches this spaceship it will be Soviet cosmonauts. We cannot allow the Americans to steal this alien spaceship for themselves. And we cannot allow the Soviet Union to be betrayed by naïve scientists and unconscious traitors.”

Feeling pitifully weak in the blast of his wife’s hot fervor, Markov said weakly, “I’ve already told Zworkin that I will serve on the committee that will examine Stoner’s suggestion.”

“H’mph. And have you befriended Stoner himself, as you were ordered to do?”

Ordered? Markov’s brows went up. Now she is giving me orders? To his wife, he replied, “I have met him twice; both times in groups with other people. We have said hello to each other, nothing more.”

“Nothing more,” she repeated sullenly.

“But Zworkin has accepted me for the committee, so I should see a good deal of Stoner in the near future.”

Maria’s scowl eased slightly. “See to it that any rocket adventures we enter into are done by Soviet cosmonauts.”

With a sad shake of his head, Markov got up from his chair and headed for the kitchen with his unfinished tray.

“Where are you going?” Maria called after him.

“Out for a walk. I’m not sleepy yet.” Even though there were twin beds in the bungalow’s one bedroom, the thought of sleeping in the same room with Maria was becoming unbearable to Markov.

“Don’t wake me up when you come in,” she growled.

Once outside, in the sighing night breeze and the friendly whisper of the palms, Markov could breathe again. She overpowers me, he knew. It’s a battle for survival between us, and she’s winning it.

He threaded his way through the little cluster of bungalows and made it to the beach, glowing white in the moonlight. He took off his shoes to stroll in the sand. It was still warm from the day’s sun. The water lapped gently a dozen meters away. Out in the night, along the invisible reef, he could hear the surf breathing like a restless sea god.

Markov stood alone on the sand and stared out at the moonwashed night. How long before the ocean wears away these islands? How long before Maria and I tear each other apart?

He laughed out loud. How dramatic you are! Tear each other apart! She’d snap you like a twig, but you couldn’t even muss her hair, no matter how hard you tried.

He thought again of those few moments in their apartment, when Maria had gloatingly told him how she had destroyed Sonya Vlasov’s life. Even then, Markov said to himself, even in full fury, you know better than to try to fight her.

Something made him look back up the beach and he saw a woman walking toward him. An apparition. Aphrodite, come out of the sea, tall, long-legged, with the slim waist and full bosom of a goddess. A white blouse, ghostly in the moonlight, was tied around her middle. Shorts clung lovingly to her hips.

Markov stared as she calmly approached him, smiled to him and said in English, “Good evening.”

His heart spun around. He was instantly, hopelessly, in love.

“A good evening to you, beautiful lady. I have been waiting for you all my life.”

She laughed. “You’re one of the Russians, aren’t you?”

“Does it show?”

“I’ve seen you with the other Russian scientists,” Jo said.

“And why have I not seen you? Have I been blind, or have you kept yourself invisible, goddess that you are?”

“Goddess? Wow!”

“Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty. I am your humble servant, Kirill Vasilovsk Markov, ready to follow you across deserts and mountains.”

Jo laughed. “I’m afraid I’m not Aphrodite. My name is Jo Camerata, and I’m an American. But there
is
some Greek blood in my ancestry, come to think of it.”

“You see?” Markov said. “The goddess exists in you.”

Jo laughed.

“And what is such a lovely young lady doing in this romantic setting, all alone? Are there no handsome young men to escort you?”

With a shake of her head, she replied, “No. No young men.”

“That is sad.”

“Yes…” She smiled again. “But you’re here.”

“Ah, the moonlight must be playing tricks on your eyes, fair one. I am neither young nor handsome.”

“I can see perfectly well,” Jo said. “I came here for a swim. Would you like to go in with me?”

“Swimming? Now? At night?”

“Sure. The water’s warm.”

“Intriguing.”

“Wouldn’t you like to try it?”

“But I have no swimsuit.”

She laughed. “Neither do I. We can skinnydip. Nobody else is around.”

“My English…” Markov couldn’t believe she was saying what he thought she was saying. “You mean—in the nude?”

“Sure. Just leave your clothes here and wade in.”

She stripped quickly and ran for the water. Markov fumbled with his clothes, his eyes on the glowing curves of her naked body. Finally he stepped cautiously into the bath-warm water. It felt good, relaxing, inviting.

“Tell me,” he called to her as he waded in up to his chest, “were you going to go swimming all alone?”

“Yes, but it’s always safer to go with somebody else,” Jo answered. “Especially at night. The sharks come into the lagoon at night.”

“Sharks?” Suddenly the water felt cold and dangerous to Markov.

The day was slowly dying.

Stoner had eaten dinner with Jeff Thompson at one of Kwajalein’s three government-owned restaurants. The food was cheap and about as appetizing as its price would indicate. It was still bright daylight outside when he finished, so he returned to his office and went over the latest batch of photographs from Big Eye.

Even in the orbital telescope’s best magnification the approaching spacecraft looked like nothing more than a featureless blob of light, a tiny smudge on the picture, a whitish thumbprint set against the sharp, unchanging patterns and endless blackness of eternity.

By the time he left his office the sun was throwing spectacular swaths of red and orange across the tropical sky. Stoner walked alone down the main street, past the cinder block government buildings, heading in the general direction of the Officers’ Club.

He wondered where Jo might be, what she was doing, and an image of her in bed with McDermott filled his mind. He tried to shut it away, to forget it, to think of something else instead. He quickened his pace toward the Officers’ Club; he knew he needed company, conversation, something to erase those pictures from his mind.

“Ah, Stoner!” Cavendish was standing at the doorway of the club with a lanky, flaxen-haired, sullen-faced young man.

“I want you to meet Hans Schmidt, of the Netherlands Radio Observatory at Dwingeloo.”

Stoner put his hand out automatically. Schmidt’s grip was lukewarm.

“Dwingeloo,” Stoner said, his memory tweaked. “I saw a report a few days ago that said Dwingeloo picked up the radio pulses from Jupiter last summer.”

“That was my work,” Schmidt said in British English. “But it was classified secret by NATO.”

The young man was slightly taller than Stoner, youthfully thin. But his face was still soft with baby fat. The forehead was high, the eyes a bit puffy, the lips set into a pout. He’ll be bald before he’s thirty, Stoner thought, but he’ll still look like a kid.

“Welcome to the club,” Stoner replied. “My work got stamped secret, too.”

“Quite,” said Cavendish, laying a hand on each man’s back and gently urging them into the Officers’ Club. “Schmidt here may actually have priority on discovering the radio pulses, you know. When did your group first pick them up?”

“It wasn’t my group,” Stoner said. “I was just hired on as a consultant. You want to talk to Jeff Thompson about that.”

They went to the crowded bar and ordered. Cavendish had a brandy, Stoner a scotch and water, Schmidt a Heineken’s. The club was noisy, smoky, the best and only bar on the island. After fifteen minutes of talk, Stoner agreed that Schmidt had probably recognized the strange nature of the radio pulses earlier than Thompson had.

“So you’ll get the recognition,” Cavendish said, “once all this comes out into the open.”

That seemed to make Schmidt even more morose. “By the time all this comes into the open I’ll be an old man.”

“Oh come now, you still have a ways to go, you know.”

Schmidt drained the last of his beer and looked as if he wanted to cry.

“They’ve pushed you around, haven’t they?” Stoner said.

He nodded slowly. “I was to be engaged…. Now who knows how long I’ll be here?”

“Me too. They’ve been shoving all of us around like a pack of animals. You know how I celebrated Christmas? They let me make a phone call to my kids. One call. Like a prison inmate.”

“Couldn’t they fly your girl out here?” Cavendish asked.

“They wouldn’t let her come. And she wouldn’t do it, anyway. I asked her, but she said no. I can’t blame her…to leave her home and family and go to the end of the Earth.” He shook his head sorrowfully.

“Damned bad show,” Cavendish murmured.

“First, they destroy my thesis with their secrecy laws,” Schmidt went on, staring into his glass, “and now they exile me to this island. If I had murdered someone I would be treated better than this. If I became a terrorist and captured a train or threatened to blow up an airliner they would treat me better than this.”

Stoner said grimly, “But you’re not a terrorist. You’re a scientist. They know they can kick us around and all we’ll do is beg for another chance to do our work.”

“There is one thing,” Cavendish said slowly.

“What?” Schmidt asked.

“A thousand years from now, when human history is written, your name will go down as the first man to make contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial race.”

Stoner put his drink to his lips, saying silently to himself, No. Schmidt may have discovered the radio pulses, but I am going to be the first man to make actual contact with that alien. Or I’ll die trying.

Schmidt’s little-boy pout deepened. “What makes you think there will be a human race to write its own history a thousand years from now? Or even a hundred years from now?”

“Well, of course…”

“Suppose,” Schmidt went on, “that this spacecraft is an invader, the first scout for an alien invasion fleet that will wipe us out? How will my name be written then?”

“That’s rather farfetched, don’t you think?”

Stoner, in the middle of another swallow of his scotch, sputtered laughter into the drink. “Here we are,” he said, blinking tears from his eyes, “sitting on a godforsaken atoll in the middle of the Pacific, waiting for an alien spacecraft to get close enough for us to study it in detail, and you’re talking about something being farfetched? This whole business is farfetched!”

“H’m. Quite. But still, I don’t believe that an intelligent species goes batting about the universe with rape and pillage on its mind, do you? That’s strictly funny-book stuff.”

“Who knows?” Stoner said. “Can’t plot a trend with only one data point.”

Cavendish smiled, a bit uneasily. “Datum, dear boy. Datum is the singular of the word.”

“I stand corrected.”

The old man put his empty glass on the bar. “Getting rather late for me. I believe I’ll toddle off.” He pulled a balled-up dollar bill from his pocket and left it on the bar. “Good night.”

And just that abruptly he left Stoner and Schmidt standing at the bar. Stoner felt awkward with the younger man, who seemed content to plunge into solitary gloom.

Cavendish has stuck me with baby-sitting this kid, Stoner realized suddenly. That dirty old man!

He scanned the club, seeking a friendly face. The big room was filled with smoke and men. Noisy, drinking, laughing men who waved cigarettes and cigars at each other, playing cards, telling stories and clustering around the few women who were present. Kwajalein’s normal complement of military and civilian technicians had been tripled by the influx of Project JOVE’s scientists and staff, but the ratio of men to women was still huge.

The local merchants vote in favor of the alien, Stoner thought. The bartender isn’t worried about being invaded. Not as long as the tips keep coming.

He spotted Markov sitting at a table across the smoky room, surrounded by a mixed crew of Americans, Europeans and Russians. They seemed to be enjoying themselves.

I ought to get to know Markov better, Stoner told himself.

Glancing back at Schmidt, who was staring morosely into his second glass of beer, Stoner said, “Come on, let’s join that gang over there.”

Wordlessly the Dutch astronomer followed him.

“…so she then informs me,” Markov was saying, his eyes bright and both hands toying with a tumbler of vodka, “that she wishes to go for a midnight swim.”

Stoner pulled an empty chair from the next table and joined the circle. Schmidt remained standing behind him.

With barely a blink of a hello, Markov went on, “Obviously she is an American, and quite good-looking. When I told her I had no swimsuit, she introduced me to a new American word: ‘skinnydipping.’ ”

It struck everyone as funny and they all laughed. Except Schmidt. Stoner wondered who the Russian was talking about.

“Naturally, when she explained what ‘skinnydipping’ means, I joined her with enthusiasm!”

They roared.

“Then, once we were in the water, she tells me that the lagoon is filled with sharks, especially at night.”

“That’s true,” said one of the Americans.

“Moray eels, too.”

“But, she added, we would be perfectly safe as long as we stayed in the shallow water. The only sharks we would bump into would be little ones.”

Looking up, Stoner saw that Schmidt hadn’t yet cracked a smile. Hopeless case, he thought.

“What did you do?”

Markov shrugged elaborately. “What could I do? Faced with the dilemma of meeting a shark or leaving her in the lagoon alone and unprotected, I did the correct thing.” He paused dramatically. “I ran up onto the beach as fast as I could and started putting my clothes on!”

Stoner laughed with the rest of them. But suddenly it struck him that the Russian might be talking about Jo.

“She called to me from the water, ‘Don’t be afraid! These little sharks don’t bother anyone!’ I called back, “You are wrong. They do bother someone. Me!”

One of the Russians said, in heavily accented English, “A man has much more to lose to a shark than a woman.”

“It was quite an experience,” Markov went on. “She came right out of the water behind me and started to berate me for my cowardice. Have you ever been castigated by an angry young woman who happens to be naked and dripping wet, under a tropical moon? Nerve-racking!”

He took a long pull on his vodka.

“So you went home full of sand and water,” someone said.

“I would have preferred to go to her quarters—to wash up, if nothing else,” Markov explained. “But she is living in the hotel with the rest of the single women, and it is impossible to get past those guards after midnight.”

“Too bad.”

Markov sighed. “I have my hopes. The Post Exchange sells shark repellant, I hear.”

“There are swimming pools, you know,” someone said. “Here at the Officers’ Club, at the hotel and another one at the BOQ.”

“Yes, I understand. But you see, it isn’t actually the swimming that interests me.”

The rest of them roared with laughter, but Stoner thought, Jesus Christ, I’ll bet it is Jo he’s talking about. Sounds like her kind of stunt. He realized he didn’t like the idea of the Russian making jokes about her, but at least Markov didn’t identify her by name. Probably he doesn’t even know her name.

The men swapped stories for another hour or so, then the group around the table started to break up. As he got up from his chair, Stoner saw that Schmidt had already disappeared. He frowned, wondering how long ago the youngster had walked off.

“Dr. Stoner,” Markov said to him.

“You tell a good story,” Stoner said.

Markov shrugged modestly and they started out toward the door.

“I never got the chance to tell you how much I appreciated your kind letter to me.”

“You wrote a good book.”

“Thank you,” Markov said, his voice so low that Stoner could barely hear it over the hubbub of the club. “But you must understand that your letter revealed to our government that you were working on the radio pulses from Jupiter.”

“I know. That’s why I wrote it. I figured, if you didn’t know about the pulses the letter wouldn’t mean anything to you. But if you did know about them, well…we should be working together on this, not in competition with each other.”

They reached the door and stepped through, into the quiet of the night. “I was afraid that you would be arrested by your security police, once they found out about the letter.”

“I was. Do you think I’d be here if they hadn’t forced me to come?”

In dead earnest Markov replied, “Of course you would be here. You would steal a submarine and sneak in here under cover of darkness if there were no other way to get in. This is the only place for a man like you, and don’t try to hide that obvious fact, especially from yourself.”

Stoner stopped in his tracks, under the streetlamp outside the club’s entrance, and stared at Markov. After a moment, he admitted, “You’re right. Dammit, you’re right.”

Markov broke into a boyish grin.

“But how did a linguist get dragged into this? Don’t tell me my letter got you into trouble?”

“No, not at all. If anything, it enhanced my stature among the guardians of the people’s safety.” He started walking slowly along the street, and Stoner followed alongside him. “No, I have been bitten by the same bug that has infected you.” Markov raised his eyes to the starry sky. “I want to
know
!”

Nodding reluctantly, Stoner said, “Yeah. If there’s only one Project JOVE, then this is the place where we have to be.”

“Of course. Knowledge is the important thing, the only thing that lasts. Discovery—ahh, that is the thrill. Better than women, I tell you.”

“Better than
some
women,” Stoner corrected.

Markov threw his head back and roared laughter. “Yes, yes! I agree! Better than some.”

Glancing at the luminous digits of his wristwatch, Stoner asked, “Want to come over to the radar center? They’re going to try to make contact with the bird tonight.”

“Make contact?”

“Bounce a radar beam off it,” Stoner explained.

“But it’s still farther away than Mars, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but the radar guys think they might be able to get a signal bounced off it. They’re itching to try.”

“I will go with you,” Markov said, nodding eagerly. “I’ve never seen this done before.”

“Neither has anybody else,” Stoner said. “And we might not see it done tonight. The damned thing
is
a helluva long way off.”

The two men walked side by side down the empty street, through the warm, humid darkness, oblivious to the scent of flowers and salt spray on the air.

Academician Bulacheff sat uneasily in the stiff-backed chair. Borodinski’s desk was raised on a little dais, so that visitors had to look up at him. It was an old trick, but Borodinski carried it off well. He had greeted the academician brusquely, waved him to the chair in front of the desk and then bent his balding, neatly bearded head to the paperwork on his desk.

It’s true, Bulacheff said to himself. The General Secretary is dying and we’re going to have to put up with this young pup. I wonder if he’s deliberately trying to make himself look like Lenin?