Voyagers I (30 page)

“That’s the fourth time in the past hour you’ve told me,” Stoner replied. “It’s worrying you, isn’t it?”

“No, no. Is no problem.”

“Something’s bothering you, Nikolai.”

The Russian’s unshaven face sank into a dark frown. “Not worry, Shtoner. But I see problem.”

“The tanker?”

“Da. We must link with it before attempting to rendezvous with alien, according to flight plan.”

“I know.”

“But latest radar shows tanker is not in best position for us. Trajectory is deviating from plan.”

“We can still reach it, can’t we?”

Federenko nodded somberly. “But will take more maneuvering fuel than planned. Leaves less fuel for making rendezvous maneuvers with alien.”

Stoner thought a moment. “We could let the tanker go and save our maneuvering fuel for the rendezvous.”

“And have no propellant left for return to Earth,” Federenko said.

“They could send up another tanker.”

With a grim laugh, Federenko said, “In how long? Two days? Two weeks?”

“They’ve got a backup at Cape Canaveral; they were holding it in case the first tanker didn’t get off okay.”

“By the time backup tanker is launched we would be on same trajectory as alien—heading out of solar system. Second tanker not reach us at all.”

“Shit.”

“We must link with tanker,” Federenko said firmly, “even if it means no rendezvous with alien.”

“Christ, Nikolai! We’ve come all this way to make contact with that bird!”

“Is true,” the Russian replied calmly. “But I have no desire to meet alien and never return to Earth. Do you?”

Stoner did not answer.

“Don’t worry,” Markov said. “They can easily reach the tanker. They have plenty of fuel for that, according to the mission controllers.”

He was sitting next to Jo at the dining table in the common room of their barracks. Maria sat on his other side, spooning cold borscht to her lips. Across the table one of the Chinese physicists picked at his dinner.

“But they won’t have enough fuel left to make contact with the alien,” Jo said. Her bowl of borscht sat in front of her, untouched.

Markov shrugged and said lightly, “So they will get as close as they can, take a few thousand photographs and then return home. If that’s the best they can do, then that is what they will do.”

But Jo could feel cold tendrils of fear tracing along her veins. “Keith won’t settle for that. He wants to get aboard the alien spacecraft.”

“Federenko is an experienced cosmonaut,” Markov insisted. “He won’t allow anything that would jeopardize their safety.”

“But Keith…”

“What can he do?” Markov asked, gesturing. “Overpower Federenko and steer the Soyuz to the alien? That’s nonsense.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Jo said.

“Besides,” Markov tried a different tack, “Federenko is a fine pilot. The pride of the Soviet cosmonaut corps. I’ll bet you that he links their ship with the tanker and still has plenty of fuel afterward for their rendezvous with the alien.”

“I hope you’re right,” Jo said, not believing a word of it.

Markov sat by the bedroom window, smoking ceaselessly as he watched the long summer twilight give way to darkness.

It was cloudy out there, and would probably begin to rain soon. It made no difference. Even on a clear night the floodlights surrounding their barracks made it impossible to see the stars. And the spaceships were all so far away that they couldn’t be seen from Earth anyway.

The first drops hit the windowpane and trickled down across the reflection of Markov’s long, brooding face. He took a fresh cigarette and lit it with the end of the butt in his lips. The fire glowed bright red for a moment, reminding him instantly of the devilish machine that Maria had back on Kwajalein.

Where is she? he wondered. She had gone out right after dinner and hadn’t come back yet.

Restlessly, Markov glanced at his wristwatch. Six hours to go before they rendezvous with the tanker.

Jo was right, he knew. Stoner would never settle for anything less than physical contact with the alien spaceship. Not without a struggle.

He sighed, then pulled deeply on the cigarette. The rain was spattering down now in big, fat drops. In the reflection of the window Markov saw that he was tugging at his beard again. Annoyed with himself, he got up from the chair and paced across the little room, jamming his right hand into his trousers pocket.

He heard Maria’s clumping footsteps out in the hall and went to the door. Opening it, he saw that the rain had caught her. She looked soaked and bedraggled, hair dripping down across her face, uniform hanging soggily on her stocky body.

And then he saw her eyes.

“Marushka, what is it? What’s wrong? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

She came into the room and shut the door tightly, then leaned against it.

“I have,” she whispered, her voice strangely harsh and breathless. “Two of them.”

“What do you mean?” Markov asked, lowering his own voice unconsciously.

“Federenko and Stoner,” she whispered. “They are both dead.”

“What?”

“Not yet,” she said, raising both hands to quiet him. “But they will be. In six hours.”

Markov felt as if a tiger had clawed out his guts. “What do you mean? What are you saying?”

“The tanker,” she said, glancing all around the room, as if she could see a microphone if one had been planted. “The one launched from America. It’s been rigged to explode…”

“The
Americans
did this?”

“No.” She shook her head impatiently. “Our own people, a faction, very high up…”

“They’re going to kill our own cosmonaut? And Stoner too?”

Maria looked frightened, terrified. “You don’t understand, Kir. It’s a power struggle. Inside the Kremlin, they are fighting for control. We’re only pawns to them, Kir. Less than pawns.”

“When will the tanker explode?” he demanded.

“When they make contact with it. The timer was set by one of our technicians just before the tanker was loaded aboard the American shuttle.”

Markov sank onto the bed. “Maria…to kill them, kill them both, because of their power games…it’s monstrous.”

“I didn’t think they would kill Federenko too,” she said. “I never thought they would do that.”

He buried his face in his hands. The cigarette fell from his fingers to the bare wooden floor, glowing in the shadows.

Maria went to him, knelt by his feet. “I’m sorry, Kir. I risked my neck to find out for you, and now I’m sorry that I did.”

“It’s not your fault, Marushka.” His voice came out muffled, tearful.

“There’s nothing we can do,” she said. “Nothing.”

But Markov put his hands down and straightened his back. He looked down into his wife’s eyes.

“Yes, there is,” he said firmly.

“Kir…”

“There
is
something we can do, Maria. We can warn them.”

“But then they’ll know that I…Kir, they’ll kill us both.” She was beyond terror; the absolute certainty of it made her voice flat with hopelessness.

“Then we’ll die together,” he said. “Better that than letting those two be killed in space.”

“You are sulking,” said Federenko.

Stoner pulled his attention away from the computer screen and looked at the cosmonaut sitting beside him.

“You don’t look so happy yourself, Nikolai.”

“How can I be? To come all this way and miss the alien…it is not happy.”

“I’ve been checking the computer figures against the latest data on the tanker’s trajectory. We can still make it—if you can dock us with the tanker on the first pass.”

Federenko closed his eyes for a moment, as if rehearsing the problem in his head. “Not easy, Shtoner.”

“You want me to try it?”

The Russian laughed. “You? You are not pilot; you are passenger.”

“Then it’s up to you,” Stoner said flatly.

The laugh died. “I see,” Federenko said. “You make trap for me, eh?”

“I want you to understand how important this is. You’ve got to dock us with the tanker on the first try. Otherwise we miss the alien.”

Federenko nodded unhappily. “Hokay, Shtoner. You make point. I dock with tanker on first pass. You watch!”

Breaking into a grin, Stoner said, “See? I wasn’t sulking at all.”

Blindly Markov raced through the rain, his long legs propelling him by instinct toward the command center. Zworkin. The old man had not been in his bedroom when Markov had pounded on his door. He must be in the command center, Markov told himself. He must be.

Maria was somewhere behind him as he raced along the gravel path that led to the command center’s massive windowless building. The rain lashed at him and he slitted his eyes against its cold sting.

Zworkin is the only one who can save them now, Markov thought as he ran. If I try talking with the security police I’m lost. Zworkin! And through him to Bulacheff.

Stoner couldn’t understand the babble of Russian coming through the radio speaker, but from the expression of Federenko’s deeply lined face he knew it was bad.

The cosmonaut spoke almost angrily back to ground command, and more urgent words burst from the radio.

Stoner turned to the radar screen, a small orange-glowing disk on the panel between their two seats. It showed a strong blip almost dead ahead of them. He stretched slightly to search through the observation port and—yes, there it was. A silvery crescent of metal against the starry blackness.

The tanker. Close enough to see it.

But Federenko’s gloomy frown sent a chill of apprehension through Stoner. He looks as if he’s just been ordered to attack the whole Chinese Army with his bare hands.

“What is it, Nikolai?”

Federenko turned toward him, defeat smoldering his eyes. “The tanker. We must not go near it. Malfunction.”

“What?”

“Very strange, they tell me. Malfunction in tanker self-destruct circuit. It can explode, they think.”

The cosmonaut’s hands reached for the stubby levers that controlled the Soyuz’s maneuvering jets.

“Wait!” Stoner yelped. “If we don’t link up with the tanker we can’t complete the mission!”

“If we do link with tanker—boom!”

Stoner sagged inside his restraining harness. “I don’t believe it. How could…?”

A flash caught his eye and they both craned toward the observation ports. In total silence the tanker blew apart, a trio of small flashes followed quicker than an eye-blink by an enormous fireball that nearly blinded them.

Stoner squeezed his eyes shut. Federenko growled something too low for Stoner to catch.

The fireball faded into darkness, leaving a burning afterimage against Stoner’s eyes. There was no shock wave, no noise, no debris pattering around them. It was as if they had been watching a silent picture. Stoner couldn’t believe it was real.

“Gone,” Federenko said heavily.

Stoner rubbed at his eyes, then looked out through the port again. Nothing but the unutterably distant stars.

“Gone,” he admitted. “And where does that leave us?”

“We are dead men, Shtoner. Without propellants from tanker, we cannot get back to Earth.”

It took a few moments for the realization to sink in. Finally Stoner heard himself say, “But we have enough fuel to make the rendezvous with the alien, don’t we?”

Federenko gave him a long, solemn look. “Da,” he said at last. “Plenty maneuvering fuel now.”

“Then let’s do it!” Stoner said. “That’s what we came out here for, isn’t it? Let’s do it!”

Federenko’s bearded face almost smiled. “I knew you would say that, Shtoner.”

“What else is there?” Stoner asked, feeling strangely excited. “Let’s go!”

The communications center on Kwajalein was in an uproar. Even the technicians at their consoles were yelling at one another in confusion.

Jeff Thompson, standing beside Ramsey McDermott’s chair, was hollering into the old man’s ear, “We can’t let them go on! The farther out they go toward the alien, the more impossible it’ll be to get them back!”

McDermott’s jowls sagged. He had lost ten pounds and aged a decade in the months since he’d first seen the aurora mocking him. His shirt collar gaped around his wizened neck. His hands shook uncertainly. His eyes had lost their fire.

Edouard Reynaud, his arm no longer in its sling, gripped Thompson’s arm. “You must call them back. You must make them come back!”

“Can’t…” McDermott croaked.

“But they can retrofire into a lunar orbit,” Reynaud insisted. “I have the numbers in my head. They should have enough fuel for that.”

Thompson brightened. “Right! If they can get themselves back into an orbit around the Moon we might be able to send something up there to ferry them back to Earth.”

But McDermott shook his head weakly. “Stoner won’t listen…”

“QUIET!” an amplified boice roared.

Everything stopped. People froze where they were. The room went silent, except for the electrical hum of the communications consoles and the buzz of the air conditioners.

Lieutenant Commander Tuttle was standing on a desktop, microphone in hand. He gazed around the room and, satisfied that all attention was on him, let the hand holding the mike drop to his side.

“This is a Navy project,” he said, voice sharp and loud enough to be heard across the stilled room. “And I am the Navy officer in charge.”

Thompson stared at the little lieutenant commander. For the first time since he’d met the man, Tuttle was making his uniform look good.

“The goal of this project is to make contact with that alien spacecraft. Stoner and the Russian are on their way to do just that. So you will all get back to your jobs and stop the yakking.”

“But they won’t be able to return to Earth!” Reynaud shouted, his chubby face going red with either anger or embarrassment, or perhaps both.

“That’s a problem that we’ll have to tackle,” Tuttle snapped. “Stoner is aware of it. He’s the only one of you who’s kept his head. If he’s willing to risk his life to make contact with the alien, the least we can do is see to it that whatever he discovers is received here and properly recorded so that the whole human race can study it. Now
get to work
!”

They moved. Numbly, sullenly, with grumbles and whispers they turned back to their jobs.

Reynaud, trembling in his perspiration-soaked white shirt, glared across the big room at Tuttle as the Navy officer climbed down from the desk. For the first time in many years, Reynaud knew real anger. He also knew that Tuttle was right.

“There it is!” Stoner shouted. “I can see it!”

Federenko took his eyes from the radar screen and leaned across to look through Stoner’s observation port.

“It glows,” he whispered.

They had come up on the alien craft with the Sun at their backs. The radar image had been fuzzy, almost nebulous, at the longer wavelengths. But when Stoner turned on the microwave radar the image cleared up and showed a smaller but much sharper blip.

Now he saw the spacecraft itself.

It glowed with a strange, eerie, golden light, like a shimmering aura that surrounded the solid craft. The spacecraft was imbedded in the glowing light. From this distance it was still too far away to make out details, but it appeared to be roughly oblong in shape, with a smooth surface and rounded corners.

“No wonder it looked like a comet to the ground radars,” Stoner realized.

“What is the light?” Federenko asked.

“A screen of some kind?” Stoner guessed. “A screen of energy like a magnetic field, maybe. To protect it against cosmic radiation. Maybe a shield against micrometeors, too.”

They were closing fast on it. Stoner floated out of his seat and wormed his way back to the orbital module of the Soyuz. Taking the stubby, compact telescope from its clips on the equipment rack, he focused on the alien ship through the nearest observation port.

“If it’s come all this way from another solar system it must have been in space for hundreds of thousands of years, at least,” he called, loudly enough for Federenko to hear him on the other side of the open hatch. “But its surface looks smooth and clean. No meteoric erosion. No pitting.”

“What is color?”

Squinting through the telescope, Stoner said, “Hard to say. The light around it makes everything look kind of golden.”

“Are cameras recording?”

Stoner glanced at the equipment monitor panel. The camera lights were on. So were the video transmitter lights. “Yes,” he called.

Stoner watched for what seemed like an hour as they glided closer to the spacecraft’s surface and Federenko spoke to ground control. The spacecraft’s surface was absolutely featureless, and as smooth as the skin of a supersonic aircraft. Not a rivet, not a seam, not even a line of decoration.

Then he realized that they were not getting any closer. Leaving the telescope hanging weightlessly, he ducked halfway through the connecting hatch.

“You can get us a lot closer, Nikolai. It won’t bite us.”

“No closer,” Federenko said firmly.

“Come on, we…”

“Orders from ground control. They are working on new course for us, get us back to Earth.”

“Terrific. But in the meantime we’re
here
!”

“Not to use maneuvering fuel,” Federenko said. “Take photographs, describe spacecraft for radio and tapes.”

“But we can rendezvous with the thing!” Stoner insisted. “For Chrissake, it’s only a stone’s throw away!”

“Too long a throw. You are Olympic champion, maybe?”

“Come on, Nikolai!”

“Must not use maneuvering fuel,” the cosmonaut replied stubbornly. “Orders. Our lives depend on this.”

Stoner pulled back into the ovoid orbital module and peered out the observation port at the alien craft. It was close enough now to make out clearly with the naked eye. It hovered against the stars, tantalizingly near, its golden energy screen glowing, pulsating slowly, like the deep eternal breath of God.

They seemed to be at rest now compared to the alien vehicle. They rode alongside, about a hundred meters off its flank, riding silently against the stars, close enough to touch, too far away to touch. Stoner knew that their placid, seemingly motionless encounter was an illusion. Both craft were hurtling away from Earth, flying farther from safety each second. The alien was heading out of the solar system, back into the the unthinkable gulf between the stars, and unless they broke away and took up a new trajectory, Stoner knew that he and Federenko would also leave Earth’s grip forever.

He stared hard at the alien spacecraft, knowing that a million miles away, men and women were working frantically to find a way to bring them back home safely.

“Fuck it,” Stoner muttered. He reached for his pressure suit, hanging limp and lifeless on the opposite wall of the orbital module.

“What you do, Shtoner?” Federenko called from the command module.

“I’m going out,” Stoner said, yanking on the pressure suit leggings. It was no simple matter in zero gravity. “I’ll use the backpack maneuvering jets to get to it.”

“Not enough fuel in backpack. Alien is too far away.”

“Nudge us a little closer, then. Close enough for me to reach it.”

“No.”

“You’ve got to, Nikolai!”

Federenko appeared at the hatch, his dark face set in a solemn frown. “I want to save our lives, not kill us foolishly.”

The exertion of wriggling halfway into the pressure suit made Stoner bob weightlessly across the orbital module. He put a hand against the ceiling to steady himself; his feet dangled inches from the floor.

“Sit down, Shtoner,” Federenko said. “Calm yourself.”

“Listen. I could take both backpacks—yours and mine. One to ride me out there, the other to get me back.”

“Foolishness.”

“But it’d work!” he said. “There’s enough fuel in the two of them to make it okay, isn’t there?”

Federenko turned away from him.

“
Isn’t there?
” Stoner grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Yes,” said the cosmonaut. “But I forbid it.”

Stoner went back to struggling into the pressure suit.

“Shtoner, I am in command.”

“And I’m a third-degree black belt,” he said, reaching down for his boots. “Are you going to help me or do we fight?”

“You will kill yourself.”

“Nikolai, if we get back to Earth I’ll have to live with myself. Do you think I could, knowing that we got this close and didn’t go the rest of the way? That sonofabitch has traveled
light-years
to reach us! The least I can do is cover the last hundred meters to meet him.”

Federenko said nothing. He solemnly watched as Stoner pulled on his boots and began zipping up the suit.

“Well, are you going to help me or are you going to just stand there and sulk?” Stoner taunted.

Scowling, Federenko pulled his own backpack from its rack and started adjusting its shoulder straps.

“You are killing me also,” he said. But he helped Stoner into the backpack.

The television screens at the front of the control center showed the alien spacecraft glowing against the star-flecked heavens. For long minutes now the Soyuz radio had been silent.

Jo sat at her computer console, every nerve tingling, stretched taut with tension, a headphone clamped over her glistening black hair.

“Go ahead, Houston,” she said into the lip microphone. “I can hear you clearly.”

Markov stood tensely behind her, and beside him Zworkin hovered like a protective mother hen. Uniformed security police armed with machine pistols stood a few yards off. Other men, bulky, hunch-shouldered, scowling men in dark suits prowled all through the huge command center, eying everyone suspiciously.

Jo watched her computer screen fill with data: numbers and symbols flashing across the tiny screen faster than any human eye could follow. She glanced up at the smaller wall screens flanking the main picture of the alien spacecraft. A new booster was being fueled hurriedly out on one of Tyuratam’s eighty working launch pads. A new tanker to be launched into a high-acceleration rescue trajectory. The Americans, with their faster and smarter computers, were working out the flight plan that would get the tanker to the Soyuz in time to save Federenko and Stoner. Jo had become the liaison link between Texas and Tyuratam.

The command center was astir with quiet, organized frenzy. Computers and humans were working their hardest. Markov gazed around the vast room and saw the security police, their steely eyes constantly moving, their hands never far from the guns they carried.

As if shooting up the place would help, he said to himself.

Zworkin had spent an hour on the phone with Bulacheff in Moscow. Great upheavals were taking place. Maria had been called off for questioning by her superiors. She’ll either be made a Hero of the Soviet Union for foiling the saboteurs or we’ll both end our days in prison, Markov knew. It all depends on who wins what in the Kremlin.

“Very good, Houston,” Jo said into her microphone. “The data’s coming through. Thank you.”

She yanked the headset off and let it clunk on the console’s desktop, then leaned back in her chair.

“They’ve got the big NASA computers working out the high-energy trajectory,” Jo said.

“Will that be enough?” Markov wondered. “Can they get the new tanker into position for them?”

Jo looked up at him, her dark eyes shadowed with fatigue and fear. “If they can’t, no one can.”

“What if ground command send up new orders, a new flight path that will get us back?” Federenko grumbled as he checked out Stoner’s suit. “You will be out there…”

“I’ll be in touch over the suit radio,” Stoner said.

“Da. And when I say to come back, you will say, ‘Not yet. One more photograph.’ ”

Stoner chuckled. Satisfied that the suit was sealed, Federenko handed him the helmet. Stoner pulled it on, locked it in place, slid down the visor and sealed it.

“I’ll come back when you tell me they’ve got us a new trajectory that’ll get us home,” Stoner said, his voice muffled inside the helmet.

Federenko looked unconvinced. He held up one finger, then squeezed back through the hatch into the command module and swung the hatch shut.

Stoner was alone now.

“Radio check,” the cosmonaut’s voice rumbled in his earphones. “Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Very good.”

Stoner glided over to the controls that pumped the air out of the orbital module. Nikolai’s giving me his backpack for this, he thought. If his rescue depends on going EVA, he’s just thrown his life away.

“Shtoner.”

“Yes?”

“Good luck, Shtoner.”

“Thanks, Nikolai. I appreciate…everything you’ve done.”

“Say hello to alien for me.”

Stoner laughed. “I will.”

He cycled the air out of the ovoid chamber and opened the outer hatch. Pushing the extra backpack out ahead of him, Stoner stepped out into nothingness. He drifted free of the Soyuz, then turned and surveyed the situation.

The Earth was far away. No longer a huge smear of awesome girth, it was now a crescent of blue and white hanging in the star-scattered dark. Stoner put out a gloved hand and covered the planet of his birth with an upraised thumb.

He could see the Moon, too, a smaller crescent. The Sun’s fierce blaze was over his left shoulder; he had no intention of looking in that direction, but he could see at the corner of his vision the glowing disk of the Sun’s zodiacal light: cosmic dust, rubble and debris left over from the formation of the planets, eons ago.

A slight soundless puff from the thrusters at his waist and he squarely faced the alien spacecraft. It floated serene and aloof inside its golden, pulsing aura of energy.

Slowly, tugging the spare backpack on its tether, Stoner approached the alien spacecraft.

“Nikolai, do you suppose that energy screen could do damage to a slow-moving object, like an astronaut?”