Starbridge (10 page)

Mahree found herself on the outskirts of the crowd, after a long succession of toasts and congratulations and having to relate over and over again how she and Jerry had "seen the light." Azam Quitubi whirled her around until she was dizzy, then set her down. Mahree stumbled back, giggling, only to bump hard into someone else and nearly fall. She turned and froze when she saw Rob's face, eyes dark and shadowed beneath tousled hair. He had half slid an arm around her shoulders to steady her; with a jerk she pulled away.

"Rob!"

He put a hand up imploringly. "Do you all have to
yell
so loud? Just what the hell is going on?''

Mahree's mouth twitched. "Forgot to take something for the hangover before you went to sleep, huh? You need something to eat. I could scramble you some nice ersatz eggs."

He gulped. "Sadist. C'mon, what's happening?"

Mahree explained.

When she was finished, Rob began cursing under his breath. ". . . and like a jackass I missed it all!
Damn!"
He shook his head fiercely. The motion was obviously a mistake, for the next second he was groaning and clutching his temples. Sekhmet, who was sitting at his feet, meowed plaintively.

"Come in here," Mahree said, grabbing his arm. She led him down the corridor and into her cabin, dimmed the lights, then pushed him onto the bunk. The cat jumped up beside him and sat like an ebony statue, tail curled around her tiny forefeet.

Rob made an abortive effort to sit up, then subsided with another groan.

"What an asshole."

"I agree. Stay still," Mahree ordered, and went to get a cold compress for his forehead. "Where'll I find the hangover

60

A. C. Crispin

medicine? In your office? Or in the infirmary?" She smoothed the damp towel into place.

"In the infirmary, but it's locked, of course," he muttered, relaxing with a resigned sigh. "Aspirin'll do."

Mahree produced two, and, after a minute, a cup. "Here, it's orange juice.

Potassium, right?"

"Yeah." He gulped them, then sank back onto the pillow. "Be better soon.

Thanks, kiddo."

Moments later, Mahree heard a distinct snore. She sat gazing down at him in the dimness, and her heart lurched within her. Hesitantly, she reached down and touched his hand.

"You watch him, Sekhmet," she told the cat.

By the time Mahree reached the control room again, she was weary but completely composed ... or so she thought. Jerry took one look at her and drew her over to the pilot's section. "What's wrong, honey?"

"Nothing," she said. "I've missed out on another night's sleep, that's all."

Greendeer eyed her measuringly. "Whatever you say. Myself, I--" He broke off, staring intently over her shoulder at the rightmost viewscreen, which currently showed what was directly in front of the ship.

Mahree wheeled around to follow his gaze.
Desiree
was lodged bow-first in the docking cradle; the silvery blue wall of the alien station was approximately ten meters from the tip of her nose. On that wall a blue light was flashing--
one, one-two, one-two- three . . .

"They're signaling again!"

She turned back to see that Jerry had already activated the recorders; he switched the image onto the main viewscreen. A bright white light, like the one they'd seen earlier, splashed out onto the station's wall, just below the flashing blue signal,

"Now
what?" muttered the Captain. He switched on the intercom. "All hands, you might want to watch the viewscreen in the galley."

After a few minutes the white light was replaced by a picture. Star-studded blackness, with tiny spheres revolving around a large, blazing one. Mahree began counting planets.

"It's their solar system!" Paul Monteleon exclaimed.

The system representation held steady for several minutes. "They're orienting us," Jerry said. Even as he spoke the picture

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altered, began to close in on the sixth planet. Finally the picture duplicated the scene outside ... the monstrous space station, the slowly turning world

"beneath."

The picture stayed the same again for several minutes, then they were descending through the upper ionosphere toward the planet. "Is that what they want us to do?" Joan wondered. "Land? But we can't!"

"No, I think they know that," Raoul said. "They built this docking cradle, didn't they? They're just showing us where the presentation is taking us."

The atmosphere thickened as the picture plunged deeper, heading for the planet's surface. "Blue sky, almost like Earth's," Yoki observed.

"Bit of a turquoise tint," Paul said, "but pretty."

Mahree stared, fascinated. Any blue sky appeared odd to her; Jolie's was a soft rose-violet.

They were through the clouds now, floating gently downward. They passed over one of the huge lakes, glimmering aquamarine, and one of the savannahs. "Look, a herd of animals!" Jerry cried, and they could all make out dark specks that must have been grazing beasts.

Then the scene was filled with the improbably dark green vegetation. "Those trees are
huge,"
Paul said, awed. "Bigger than sequoias back on Earth."

The picture moved closer to the ground, and now they saw something else located on the fringes of the forest. "Artificial structures?" Joan asked.

"Looks like," Raoul murmured.

They rose from the ground perhaps two or three hundred meters into the air, pyramid-shaped structures with flattened tops, some gleaming white, others the same silvery blue of the space station, still others rose, pale green, and yellow. All had black rooftops. "Solar collectors?" guessed Jerry.

"I'd put money on it," Paul said.

Each of the four sides of the pyramid buildings was covered with a spidery lattice of curved interlinking shapes. "You think those overlaying trellis things are decorations?" Yoki asked.

"They could be anything," Paul said.

"There are footpaths down there," Mahree said excitedly. "But I don't see any roads."

"Isn't that a park in the center of that group of buildings?"

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Yoki asked. ""Look, there's a stream running through, with an arch made of those interlocking curliques over it.''

"A bridge?" Raoul asked.

"Not one that we could use," Joan said.

The picture made a slow circuit of the entire city, giving them ample opportunity to study the buildings, courtyards with accompanying gardens, and many parks. "It's pretty," Yoki said. "Reminds me in some ways of Japan."

"It's more like Mexico City," Ramon Garcia's voice came over the intercom.

"All those flat-top pyramids are like the old city of Teotihuacan."

"Don't see any slums," Raoul said.

"If
you
were preparing a travelogue to introduce aliens to your world, would you show slums?" Jerry asked dryly.

"Maybe they don't have any," Mahree said hopefully.

The picture descended until it was only a few meters above the pale rose paving in the courtyard next to the largest of the blue-silver buildings, then it stopped moving, giving them a nearly ground-level view. "Now what?" Joan wondered.

"They've shown us their world and their homes," Jerry said. "Now I suspect they're going to show us themselves."

Mahree and the others watched, scarcely daring to blink. After a minute or two a being came into view.

They had no way to judge scale ... the creature could have been tiny or huge. It moved toward them on four legs, with a swinging, somehow bold stride. Two piercing violet eyes gazed directly at them. It wore no clothing, and needed none, for it was covered with fur the color of flame. A heavy mane rose into an upstanding crest on its head and cascaded down over powerful shoulders, reaching to the middle of the almost-level back. A short, top-knotted tail was held straight up as it moved.

"A lion!" Paul Monteleon muttered. "Sort of."

"More like a monkey," Jerry whispered. "Two eyes, one nose, four limbs ...

no matter how different it looks, it's obviously evolved along the same lines as we have. It's a primate."

"But look at the way it walks!" Joan pointed out. "Like a big dog!"

Mahree had never seen any of those animals except in holovids, and to her the creature resembled nothing she'd ever seen before.

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Its face, beneath the upstanding crest of hair, had an outthrust muzzle with powerfully muscled jaws. The nose was broad and flat, the mouth almost lipless. The cheeks and forehead were covered with short fur, but the pale orange muzzle was smooth- skinned. The ears were small and triangular, close-set to the sides of the creature's head.

As they watched, the being walked up and down, presenting them with frontal, rear, and sideways views of its body. Its fore and hind feet had long, mobile-looking digits. "Six," breathed Jerry. "I counted six, front and back."

There were no recognizable sex organs evident, but the area between the alien's hind legs was shadowed as well as furred. In contrast, the hair over the buttocks was so thin that they could discern the orange-colored skin beneath it. Dapples of a deeper chestnut color marked the being's back and haunches.

Finally it paused and sat up on its hind legs, exactly as a human would squat. It made a complicated but graceful gesture with its right forelimb, touching its eyelids, muzzle, chest, then holding out its paw (hand?) toward the camera, fingers curled in. At the same time it ducked its head, eyes lowered.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Raoul asked.

" 'Greetings,' " Jerry guessed, trying the gesture on for size, then repeating it, trying to capture some of the alien's flowing grace.

The first alien was now joined by others, some much smaller, only two-thirds the size of the others. "Females?" Joan wondered.

"That would be true if they were dogs, lions, or monkeys," agreed Yoki. "But they could also be a slightly different race, like pygmies."

All the creatures faced the camera and made the gesture. " 'Greetings,' it's got to be!" Jerry cried.

The scene shifted abruptly back to the space station, and they saw eight small ships escorting a bigger ship whose outlines were only too familiar.

"Desiree!"
Raoul exclaimed.

They followed the image of their own docking maneuver, then, suddenly, the photographic image of
Desirie
was replaced by a simple line drawing of the freighter's outline. "Huh? Why the change?" Paul asked.

"I don't know." Jerry sounded mystified.

Mahree sat straight up with excitement, and for once didn't care that her voice went squeaky. "I've got it! Up to now

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they've shown us past events. What we're seeing here is the
future,
so they couldn't photograph it, they had to draw it!"

From the wall of the space station a blackness suddenly yawned, then there were spacesuited figures swarming around it. Slowly, a flexible-looking rectangular extrusion was constructed, reaching from the space station toward the outline of the Terran freighter.
Like a tube with squared-off sides,
Mahree thought.

The next view showed the forward airlock drawn onto the line sketch of
Desiree.
The "tube" was clearly aiming toward it.

"They had all this waiting," Jerry said, sounding awed.

"Yeah, but why?" Joan said tersely. "If you were starving, you'd couldn't wait to encounter a herd of nice juicy rabbits."

"My, aren't we cynical," Raoul said lightly, but there was a warning note underneath. Mahree stole a quick glance at her aunt and saw her flush, then clamp her lips tightly together.

As they watched, the tube extension reached the opening of the freighter's airlock, and the workers sealed it tightly. The scene then shifted to a corridor, lit so brilliantly it dazzled human eyes.
The view inside the tube,
Mahree realized.

A silvery blue, spacesuited figure appeared in that too-bright white expanse, moving three-legged, carrying some kind of orange bag or satchel. The figure reached the drawn-in outline of
Desiree's
airlock, then tapped. One ...

one-two ... one-two- three ...

The airlock door vanished, and a small cubicle was drawn in beyond. It looked nothing like a human-built airlock, but naturally the alien artist had no idea what was inside
Desiree.

The spacesuited figure moved inside the "airlock," then rummaged in its satchel for several instruments. It moved them around, then held each up to its helmet, appearing to study them as the outer airlock door reappeared on the image.

The spacesuited alien made the "greetings" gesture again-- then abruptly the picture winked out.

"What was that all about?" Joan asked.

"I think they'd like us to let them into our airlock to test our air," Jerry said.

"Determining whether we can breathe each other's air would be the first order of business, seems to me."

"Yeah, Rob said something like that," Yoki said.

Rob! Oh, my God, he'll never forgive me for letting him sleep through all this!

Mahree thought, jumping up in confusion.

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Fortunately everyone was still too intent on their discussion of the alien presentation to notice.

She elbowed her way through the crowded corridor leading from the bridge to the galley, then, abruptly, she was alone again. Racing down the hall to her cabin, she keyed the door open. As she stepped inside, she ordered up the light level, and the doctor raised himself up on his elbow, blinking.

"Huh?" he mumbled. "Mahree? What're you doing here?"

"You're in my bunk," she explained tersely. "You fell asleep after I brought you the aspirin. You okay now?"

He sat up, rubbing the back of his neck gingerly. "Better."

"In that case, on your feet. We just watched a film the aliens made to introduce themselves."

He leaped up so suddenly that Sekhmet landed on the floor with an offended squawk. "You
saw
them?"

"Don't worry, Jerry recorded it all. Come on!"

"That's the fourth time you've watched that thing, Doc," Jerry said.

Rob stretched until his back creaked, then rubbed his eyes gingerly. "Are they still showing it over and over on the wall of the space station?"