Moonstruck. Part 16

With bad luck, they'd all soon glow in the dark. Kyle took a deep breath. "Understood. I believe there is a way to determine, once and for all, whether the mother s.h.i.+p is real. We'll have only one shot at the test, and-you won't like this-the experiment must involve the Russians."

As the silence stretched, he suddenly realized that Britt, Erin Fitzhugh, and Ryan Bauer were grinning.

Britt gestured at Erin.

"Oh, we trust the Russians right now," she said. "Iran is a Russian client, and guess who gave us the lead to locate the Iranian nuclear-weapons factory."

CHAPTER 23.

The galaxies were unimaginably distant, their violent, slow-motion collision unleas.h.i.+ng equally unfathomable energies. Millions of years later, the tiniest fraction of that energy streamed past Earth. Ironically, after traveling so incredibly far, the X-rays produced by that intergalactic encounter were absorbed by Earth's thin skin of atmosphere.

"Your request surprised me, my friend." Sergei Denisovich Arbatov stood beside Kyle in the cluttered astronomic-studies lab at the University of Helsinki. Sergei's hairline had receded shockingly in a few months' time. Could stress do that? Some things hadn't changed: the twinkle in the Muscovite's eyes and, despite the onset of winter, his trademark deep tan. "NASA has several instruments capable of observing the object you selected. Your failure to comment why I would be interested also intrigued me." The personal delivery by the American amba.s.sador of Kyle's letter might also have engendered some curiosity.

There was a time when research satellites were operated by large teams of technicians from gleaming control rooms arrayed with phalanxes of consoles. Such extravagance for mission control now applied mostly to manned s.p.a.ce flights-of which there were none, with the shuttle fleet grounded and the Russians broke-and bad sci-fi movies. An entry-level workstation with Internet access to a steerable antenna sufficed. The PC on the dented wooden lab bench was, just barely, adequate.

Tarja Nurmi, the instrument controller there to a.s.sist them, half sat, half leaned on the lab stool in front of that PC. Her back was to Kyle and Sergei. Her tattered and too-large sweats.h.i.+rt was incongruously emblazoned with a Virginia Tech seal. Her pale blond hair, common enough in this corner of the world, brought Andrew Wheaton guiltily to mind. The grim confirmation Kyle could provide-that the site of his family's disappearance had seen an alien landing-would do Wheaton little obvious good, while possibly endangering Earth's underground resistance.

Focus, Kyle directed himself sternly. The names the young astrophysicist had been given for her visitors were aliases. If she wondered why, in a world possessed of a ubiquitous Internet, those guests insisted on observing in person, she made no comment. Language differences didn't stop her-she and the Russian and French coprinc.i.p.al investigators for whom she usually toiled all communicated in English. Those co-PIs were ticked off and several time zones distant, fuming at the unexplained preemption by Rosaviacosmos of their long- scheduled viewings. Sergei, as science advisor to President Chernykov, had arranged the retasking of the Russian s.p.a.ce agency's...o...b..ting X-ray observatory. Surely the Russian had a.n.a.lyzed Kyle's unexpected request before doing so. The American briefly inclined his head toward the Tarja's back. I must be discreet. "Yes, we have X-ray instruments in orbit. None has this exact viewing angle just now." The need to use a Russian satellite was actually fortunate. It should make Sergei much less likely to question what-Kyle fervently hoped-they would soon see. He was not about to verbalize why exactly now was so important, or that the biggest supercomputer at Franklin Ridge had number-crunched for days to identify this not-soon-to-be-repeated opportunity. "Are we ready, Tarja?"

"We're locked on now." With casual grace, she moused open a new window. A scatterplot popped onto the PC monitor, colored dots richly strewn across a black background, the many hues representing X-ray frequencies invisible to the human eye. The small blinking square at the window's exact center enclosed the blazing dot that was tonight's target. In the lower-right corner, a frequency-vs.-energy histogram summarized the radiation from the cras.h.i.+ng galaxies. In the lower left, a real-time clock counted in milliseconds.

A large circle dominated one side of the window, part glowing crescent and the rest a lightlessness interrupted by a faint dusting of pinpoints. "The big disk is the moon, of course." The young Finn tapped the screen. "The crescent is what Earth sees right now of the sun-facing side. We're seeing directly reflected solar X-rays. What appears to be the dark side of the moon is blockage by the moon of the sky's X-ray background."

Sergei frowned. "Why are there any spots on the dark side?"Tarja yawned and stretched before answering. Fair enough: it was 2:37 a.m. by local time. "Sorry. Those stray dots on the dark side come from the scattering of solar X-rays from all around the solar system.

Reflections from planets and asteroids."

"Will the clock stay on-screen if you zoom in?" asked Kyle.

"It can." She yawned again. "Sorry." She keyed a new scale factor and the window was redrawn. The

targeting square and the dot it encompa.s.sed lay near the dark edge of the moon.

Kyle crouched over Tarja's shoulder. The clock display, reading out in Coordinated Universal Time, was scarcely a minute from the instant he'd memorized. Forbidding himself to blink, he watched the dot creep closer and closer to the moon. A side of the targeting box kissed the limb of the moon, slid over

the moon. Sergei, on his right, exhaled sharply seconds later as the multigalactic dot abruptly winked out, eclipsed by the moon.

"Get what you needed?" Stifling yet another yawn, she handed them diskettes containing the session's

observational data. Before the American could overcome his own sympathetic yawn, Sergei replied. "Yes, my young friend. We have." Tapping Kyle on the shoulder, the Russian added, "Perhaps it would be best if we took a walk." * * *

The campus grounds were dark, deserted, and bitterly cold. The deserted aspect of those circ.u.mstances was good. "Interesting that you answered Tarja for me, Sergei." Kyle's breath hung in front of him.

Sergei hunched his shoulders against an icy gust. "You were very specific as to when a fairly

unremarkable astronomical object must be observed. Such insistence, it makes one ponder."

The stars sparkled like diamonds. The crescent moon they had so recently "seen" by its X-ray reflection shone down with a cold white light. "Were your musings rewarded?"

"I had to wonder, as perhaps young Tarja would, were she more awake, why one would schedule an

observation certain to be interrupted. Could it be, I asked myself, that I'm not here to see what my friend said he wanted to show me?" An eddy of snow swirled past them. "Was it only a coincidence that you wanted to look so near to the moon?"

"Go on." Did Sergei really know, or was he bluffing?"There is something important in the vicinity of the moon."Kyle scrunched his neck, in a vain attempt to shelter more of his face and head within his upturned collar. And he'd thought Minnesota was cold."Exactly on schedule, the edge of the moon hid our celestial X-ray source. But that eclipse was not what you brought me to see, was it?" Sergei grasped Kyle's coat sleeve. "More interesting, I think, is that our observation went uninterrupted until the moon blocked our view."It is time, tovarich, to explain why you expected the Galactic mother s.h.i.+p to be transparent to X-rays."

The glaring political incorrectness of that Soviet "comrade" showed just how overwrought Sergei was.

"And does such transparency mean, as I believe, that there is no mother s.h.i.+p?"

CHAPTER 24.

Roosevelt and Churchill held several secret summits in the depths of World War II. Less often, both met with Stalin. It was a.s.sumed that the Axis Powers had spies in all the Allied capitals, but the leaders still managed to sneak away and meet.

Kyle searched for solace in that imperfectly remembered bit of history. Alas, the one war-time conference he knew by name was the infamous, arguably failed Yalta. He hoped that catastrophic encounter wasn't an omen.

He was one of a handful of Americans in the summit delegation. A Russian contingent of similar size was across the table. The table in question resided in a private estate an hour's drive outside Ankara. As far as the rest of the world knew, this was a gathering of oilmen to discuss new pipeline routes for Caspian Sea crude. The cover story excused secrecy amid tight security.

Also as far as rest of the world (and, hopefully, the aliens) knew, President Robeson and his senior advisors were on retreat at Camp David . . . but when Marine One, the presidential helicopter, had returned to its base in Quantico, Virginia, the summiteers were on board. A low-key motorcade that had to have made the Secret Service cringe took the entourage to the general-aviation section of Dulles International Airport outside Was.h.i.+ngton. Their Russian counterparts arrived in Turkey by equally circuitous, and, it was hoped, confidential means.

The room had been swept for bugs by the protection details of two presidents. Sergei, whom Kyle was glad but unsurprised to see, accompanied him on another inspection. This was one meeting most definitely not staged for hidden observers. Completing their rounds, they eyed the sumptuous buffet left by their absent host. Kyle hurried to his seat, pausing only to fill a mug with strong, muddy Turkish coffee. No time would be spent coddling the jet-lagged.

"Dmitri Pyetrovich, how are you?" began President Robeson. Dark bags beneath his eyes belied a light

tone.

"Fine, fine." President Chernykov impatiently waved his interpreter to silence. A former KGB apparatchik, his English was excellent. "You, me, the bug-eyed monsters, we are all great. Is merely a vacation of old friends." The cigarette trembling in his hand underlined the sarcasm.

"I take your point, Dmitri. We cannot be out of the public eye for long, and we have much to do.""I hope we can agree on something to do."Kyle summarized America's findings, Sergei from time to time interjecting corroborative data from the Russian investigations. Kyle tried to be brief, but there were enough new players in the two delegations that much give-and-take was required. When he at last retook his chair, utterly drained, he was hopeful that the gist had been successfully conveyed.

The Galactic orbs, those supposed symbols of peace and unity so freely dispensed by the F'thk, were spying devices. The systematic destruction of the satellites each nation relied on for detecting ballistic missile launches, losses that gave credibility to the innuendoes spread by the aliens on their travels. The many peculiarities of the F'thk visitors. The anomalies of the mother s.h.i.+p: none of the expected gamma radiation, its complete lack of detail when viewed with microwaves, its transparency to X-rays. Human disappearances at sites marked by the signs of a F'thk lifeboat landing-often months before the

announced arrival of the aliens. And the piece de resistance: the alien defector whose shocking explanation-"it's only a movie"-explained every known fact.

A movie intended to climax in the nuclear self-annihilation of Earth.Chernykov's expression grew uglier and uglier. None of this could have been new to him, but the succinct totality was intense. "d.a.m.n these aliens. d.a.m.n them. I want to strike. Enough, I say, of science projects." He snarled something in Russian.

General Mikhail Denisovich Markov, Chernykov's military advisor, sat ramrod straight in his chair, looking ill at ease in his civilian clothes. A jagged scar angled down his left cheek. He reddened at his president's words.

"Who speaks today about how we will destroy these evil creatures?" said the American translator.

Something in the delivery suggested a serious toning down of Chernykov's comment.

A muttered Russian response. Chernykov cut off the translator. "My military feels we cannot attack. The once-proud Russian armed forces cower from a movie company on a rundown cargo s.h.i.+p."

Kyle's fingers dug into the padded arms of his chair. This was no time for macho c.r.a.p. Britt might later tear him a new one, but Kyle had to speak. "This movie company has a stars.h.i.+p at its disposal. They have a fusion reactor. I've seen their incredibly powerful masers-microwave-frequency lasers-destroy a s.p.a.ce shuttle. We know they can fry satellites with X-ray lasers. Swelk, our defector, says the stars.h.i.+p uses lasers to blast s.p.a.ce junk. If they can vaporize objects hurtling at them at an appreciable fraction of light speed, do you think anything we launch at them can matter? We d.a.m.n well should be afraid of attacking."

His words tumbled out, faster and faster. "Suppose we attack and do succeed? Will the fusion reactor blow up? Will the stardrive, about which we haven't a clue, explode? How big a crater will be made if that s.h.i.+p does go boom?"

Chernykov, his upper lip curled, studied faces turned ashen at Kyle's outburst. "I thought we had come here to prepare to act. They have blown up your shuttle Atlantis. They have cost each of us one of our finest submarines. Will you ask them, 'Please, go home now' ?"

What of the five crew on that shuttle, or the hundreds on those subs? The never-distant image of the fireball above Cape Canaveral blossomed anew in Kyle's mind. How many millions had to join them? A hand was suddenly squeezing Kyle's forearm. A warning from Britt . . .

"Dmitri." President Robeson's voice oozed calm reason. Kyle had learned over the past few months that the icy calm masked bottled anger. At whom this anger was directed was not obvious. "We concur on the need to act. That agreement leaves many questions. What are the aliens' vulnerabilities? How can we exploit such weaknesses? When and where can we strike?"

"This is better, Harold. Please tell me more."

"General Bauer will explain, Dmitri."

Ryan went to the head of the table. "Dr. Gustafson raises pertinent points about the complexity of an

attack on the aliens."

Chernykov frowned but held his peace.

"The aliens' laser weapons would be a factor in any attack on the s.h.i.+p in flight. We must a.s.sume, as the

good doctor suggests, that the ETs can acquire and destroy targets quickly. Our bombs and missiles would be nothing more than slow-moving s.p.a.ce junk, easily killed."

A burst of Russian words stopped Bauer. The American translator rendered Markov's interruption. "Certainly, General, the stars.h.i.+p must handle an occasional meteor. Would it handle many targets at once? Perhaps we can overwhelm their defense with a ma.s.sed attack."

Bauer's forehead creased in thought.

This was madness-but could he raise another objection without being escorted from the room? Kyle began drumming on the table; as people looked his way in annoyance, he managed to catch Sergei's eye. "Quite ingenious," said Sergei, taking the hint. "Still, I hope you will indulge a physicist's view of the problem. Our fastest missiles go only a few kilometers per second. In CIA debriefing notes I have been shown, this Swelk claims their s.h.i.+ps approach light speed. As you know, the speed of light is three hundred thousand kilometers per second. That's how fast their s.h.i.+p overtakes s.p.a.ce junk that's more or less stationary. At even one-hundredth that speed-which rate they surely exceed, or else a trip between even the closest stars would take centuries-they are accustomed to targets moving orders of magnitude faster than anything we can fire."

Britt leaned forward. "Dr. Arbatov, I don't follow you. You discuss the speed at which their s.h.i.+p travels.

The issue relates to their ability to counter a ma.s.sed attack by our missiles." "Excuse me. I will make the point more directly. Imagine the alien stars.h.i.+p overtaking a pebble in s.p.a.ce at a thousand times the speed of our rockets. They must spot it, track it, shoot and destroy it, all in an instant. May not their defenses handle each slow Earth-fired missile, one by one by one, each with ease?" He smiled disarmingly at the American general. "Your fine navy has Aegis cruisers that can shoot down missiles traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. How many hang gliders must an a.s.sailant deploy to overwhelm an Aegis cruiser?"

* * * Swelk came awake with a whimper, the world whirling around her. At least the spinning tended to stop after her eyes had been open for a while. Why could she not sleep soundly?

Guilt, loneliness, a fault in the bioconverter on which her life entirely depended . . . she had many theories. Perhaps confinement. Perhaps nothing more than the intermittent bonging of the angular ugliness that Darlene called a grandfather clock. A recess of Swelk's mind insisted it had recently heard four bongs.

Climbing shakily to an erect position, she began to prowl yet again what little she was allowed to experience of her adoptive world. The only humans around this late were her guards, outside on patrol or else in their trailer. Enough moonlight filtered through the curtains for her to forego Earth's unpleasant artificial illumination.

Four rooms upstairs, four down. Compared to her cabin on the Consensus, these chambers were luxuriously s.p.a.cious, but there was no denying her situation. She had traded her own kind's open hostility for the less obvious, but no less real, distrust of the humans.

She was not allowed outside the building. What little news she was given of Earth's peril-due, she could not help reminding herself, to her own gullibility-was highly selective. Her many questions were deflected with polite evasions. And Kyle, the human to whom she had fled in hope and guilt and desperation, had disappeared without explanation.