"Have you seen the ones," hissed a voice which had been born to gossip, "that look like giant spiders?"
Aerospace Force Brigadier General Horatio Z. Gutierrez looked up from the tiled floor he stared at into the small, porcine eyes of Arthur Empleado, KGB(ASSR). Having been brought up properly, he promptly glanced away again. Pacing this brightly lit area for what seemed hours, worried about his friend, preoccupied with a dozen other trains of thought, he was vaguely aware that he'd been wondering, all along, why a corridor should be forty meters wider than the suburban streets of Walton Beach, the Florida-panhandle bedroom community for nearby Humphrey Field (also known as Engels Auxiliary #9) where he and his family had lived the last six years. Despite Empleado's audible enthusiasm, the general's concerns of the moment didn't include a zoological catalog of the inhabitants of 5023 Eris.
The general opened his mouth. "Art, don't—"
"Spiders have eight legs, Comrades," another voice interrupted before he could finish. "These have six, although appendage-counting's the last item one thinks of in their presence. I take it you don't mean the major's friends, Arthur. Toya says they're marine crustaceans."
The portal Gutierrez paced in front of (no human architect would have designed a door two meters high and five wide) had evaporated without a sound. Rosalind Nguyen stood before him, incongruous and unmedical in hospital-like surroundings wearing her frayed and faded ship-suit. Like his own, it had served during the months they'd traveled to this place, only to discover that someone—something—had gotten here first. Already it seemed days, rather than six short hours, since two of his people had dissolved into the surface. Two more had been lost before rescue could be mobilized and one victim had relayed an alien invitation to come in from the cold of interplanetary space. He'd refused to consider it without the return of the major, the colonel, and Empleado, their unfettered presence serving as assurance—frail, since the aliens intended keeping Kamanov, ostensibly to treat his injuries—that they weren't walking ("sinking" might be a better term, or "being sucked") into a trap.
Handing him the first of many new riddles, the major had returned under her own power, Empleado and a catatonic Richardson in tow. In the view of nonhuman therapists, the latter wouldn't regain sanity in their company. Rising from the muck she'd vanished into, the major had used a reaction pistol to pull her party to the waiting shuttle. The bird-being who named himself "the Proprietor's assistant" had apologized for the inconvenience, explaining that his group on 5023 Eris possessed no spacecraft. But if that were true, how the flaming hell had they gotten here? Asked the question (in more diplomatic tones), Aelbraugh Pritsch had begged Gutierrez to hold his inquiries for the Proprietor. One of many items on the general's crowded mental agenda was an appointment with that individual an hour hence.
"Sir." Dr. Nguyen didn't wait for an answer from Empleado, whose four oddly assorted henchmen stood nearby as usual, trying unsuccessfully to look like casual loungers. "You can see Dr. Kamanov, now. I assured myself they did a good job with him."
Gutierrez blinked down into her exotic features. Neither he nor Empleado was a big man, but both loomed over the little Vietnamese. This silly mission, he thought—remembering that it was a good thought to keep to himself—consisted of every obsolete loser and disposable misfit the ASSR could find room for (an iconoclastic brigadier, for example, who never kept his mouth shut at inopportune times), but it also included, by accident he was sure, some of the most beautiful women he'd ever known. It was a toss-up, he'd long since decided, whether the doctor, with her delicate face and flawless skin, or the major, with her striking combination of Irish and Mexican attractions, was easier on the eyes.
As always on such occasions, he reminded himself of the darkly beautiful woman he'd wed thirty-two years ago, more Indian than Spanish in appearance, whom he loved with whatever heart and soul the service left him, and with whom he'd raised eight splendid children. His second eldest, Danny, happened to be a junior officer aboard the McCain. As always on such occasions, he tried not to think of his eldest, blown to radioactive vapor in a recent, less-than-successful attempt to bestow the benefits of American Marxism upon the benighted denizens of South Africa who had jettisoned their Marxist government and were determined to keep it that way.
"Thanks, Doctor," he answered, "I'll see him now." Followed by Empleado, who left his sinister cohort behind, he headed for the wall where the door had been, too conscious of his dignity in the presence of the KGB to approach it with caution. He hoped the damn thing would remember to go away before he broke his nose on it.
"Horatio!" At the sight of his old friend, Kamanov propped himself up on an elbow. He lay on a platform extruded from the floor, as far as the general could see, which grew more resilient the closer it came to the skin. He was covered, in homely contrast, by a worn blanket from one of the shuttles.
"Pete." The general glanced around the chamber, failing to find a flat surface (except for the floor and the bed) or a straight edge. The room's plan was kidney-shaped. Soft light glowed from every centimeter of the low, domed ceiling. A meter away, in a sort of corner where a sort of chair had been created the same way as the bed, Pulaski, whom Dr. Nguyen often drafted as an assistant, sat at rigid attention. To the general's surprise, Kamanov smoked one of the Cuban cigars which had seemed almost an appendage back in the premission planning days in Florida. Near one wall lay the twisted cellophane of its wrapper. Gutierrez stooped to pick it up. "I'm surprised," he observed, "they let you smoke that thing in here."
"Leave it, my friend, it is an experiment—they seem content to let me go to hell in my own way; notice that no trace of smoke or even of the odor remains—and the sergeant and I have been watching that wrapper creep toward the wall at a rate of about fifty centimeters per hour."
"What?"
"In an otherwise seamless surface, a fine line runs about the room a centimeter up the curve where floor turns into wall. This is what caught my eye: subduction, as on Earth, one tectonic plate flowing under another. The surfaces are self-sweeping, dust and litter carried by the `current' to disappear into the crack. The same mechanism provides a certain tackiness, allowing firm footing in almost nonexistent gravity. You, too, would slowly slide across the room if you stood motionless. Unless, like this nightstand, you wore small spikes which penetrate the surface, placing you in contact with the substrate. The surface then flows around you. Fascinating."
The general shrugged. "Ven Kamanov draws final breath," he intoned in a theatrical accent, "he vill dictate notes about it." He turned to the little sergeant, bestowing an imperative glance on Empleado, as well. "Take ten, Pulaski." She jittered out into the relative sanctuary of the corridor, perhaps unaware of the four awaiting her outside. There had been some kind of trouble between her and one of Empleado's men earlier in the voyage, although Major Reille y Sanchez had taken care of it and he didn't know the details. The KGB man gave his head a microscopic shake, intending to stay through Gutierrrez's conversation with the Russian. The American let out an exasperated breath and, despite the fact it had never been raised, changed the subject. "Glad to see you looking well. Rosalind said you'd pulled your arm out of the socket trying to rescue the major."
Kamanov grinned. "What man with testosterone in his blood would not?" His eyebrows suggested he excluded Empleado from that category—and that, if no one else did, he'd hold the man responsible for the behavior of his underlings. Assuming a frozen expression, Empleado sat in the seat vacated by Pulaski, feet flat on the floor, arms folded in front of him. The general remained standing.
"Trying to rescue myself, as well," Kamanov continued. "It was the Hatch that did the pulling. You know, the sound of a shoulder separating is worse than any pain." He shivered, shaking his head. "It's like the idea of sliding down a fifty-meter razorblade into a barrel of vodka." Across the room, Empleado squirmed. "Thanks to the dextrous manipulators of our esteemed hosts, however, I now feel fit and hale. I wish they would find it in whatever they use to encourage circulation to let me out of this place." He brushed the blanket from his shoulder. No scar or inflammation could be seen. "We have arrived, Horatio. I have work. And many, many questions to ask."
"Like everybody else aboard Earth's three best—and only—spaceships!"
"Except," Kamanov glanced at Empleado to observe whether he'd caught the general's unpatriotic complaint, "that everybody else, tovarich, has had the advantage of seeing all that has happened so far with his own eyes. While I have been occupied thus far—what is the expression? Making zees?"
Grinning, Gutierrez told Kamanov about the major's return. "The landing went pretty much as planned. Instead of mooring to the rings Corporal Owen manufactured, we used RCS thrusters, sinking into the surface as you did. Our hosts had suspended docking cradles to support the shuttles—made up in advance! That's something I want to know more about, Pete. We were expected, as soon as we left Earth under strict secrecy and radio silence. Like everything else about this place, it gives me a creepy feeling."
"And the colonel?" Kamanov asked. "I am told she is not here, in the infirmary, where they might help her."
"You're told correctly. Your multilegged doctors are afraid they'll drive her down even deeper, and I think they may be right. She's limp as a dishrag now, has been since you took her gun away—with one exception. She threw another fit when the shuttles were settling through the roof. Bloodied several noses, including mine, broke one wrist, not her own, and damned near ruined a couple of the crewmen for life."
"This reminds me, Comrade Doctor Kamanov." It was Empleado, speaking up for the first time. "Whatever became of Col. Richardson's weapon after you took it away? And the silencer? I haven't seen it since."
"An excellent question, Comrade Political Officer, but you ask it of the wrong individual. You tell me where they took my trousers, which I would like very much to have, and I will tell you where Col. Richardson's gun has gone." The Russian dismissed the KGB man and let his head swing from side to side. "I have seen this sort of thing before, Horatio. After a great fire or an earthquake. So have you, I suspect, in combat."
"It's like she's asleep," Gutierrez nodded, "only we can't wake her up. Rosalind says it's a simple retreat from reality, because she can't stand talking to Big Bird out there, or the sight of giant bugs with guns, or something."
"Possibly the worst case of culture shock on record, my friend. Our first contact with a nonterrestrial intelligence. Some will be affected worse than others. Some, like you and I, may even be immune. How is the rest of our little party standing up to it?"
The general shrugged. "Certainly no more reactions as bad as Vivian's, but there's something like a flu bug, ugliness at both ends, going around. I suspect it's partly relief after being cooped up for so long, and partly tension on account of what we've found here. Or what's found us. We've already had to break up a couple of fistfights."
"You may eventually have to restrain me, if they will not let me out of here. You have seen everything. I missed by passing out like a schoolgirl. What is it like outside?"
"You've seen sequoia forests in California." Gutierrez shrugged. "It's like that, moist without feeling humid. Somber, but not depressing like you'd expect. The asteroid's covered with huge plants, Pete. I'm not sure they're trees. Thousands of them, a kilometer tall and the same distance apart, not arranged in any regular pattern. Remember the redwoods tunneled out for Model Ts? Some of these could accommodate a freight train. They spread at the top, fusing into an airtight, self-repairing canopy that forms the artificial upper surface of this place. It fills the area below with a diffuse yellowy-green light, and retains, probably even manufactures, oxygen and water vapor for a worldwide shirtsleeve environment."
Kamanov nodded again. "This much I managed to learn from Rosalind and Toya. As I understand it, even yet we are not on the surface?"
"Within a dozen meters. They use more than the surface of this world, Pete. The hanging baskets—they're down with us now, by the way—weren't invented for our benefit. This area of the asteroid's full of platforms, catwalks, what you might call `treehouses,' all the way to the canopy. A dozen living and working environments for use by at least as many species."
Again Kamanov glanced at Empleado, but for what reason, besides polite acknowledgement of his existence or an unconscious effort to include him in the conversation, Gutierrez couldn't guess. "Tell me about them."
"You saw Aelbraugh Pritsch, a kind of bird or reptile. And the lobsters, soldiers of some kind. The place reminds me of a cross between a paleontology exhibit and a cartoon where the animals wear trousers."
"White, three-fingered gloves." Kamanov chuckled. "In cartoons, trousers are optional. I have seen the insect folk, the ones who fixed my shoulder."
"Okay, so far I've seen a big rubber flower, yellow and red, and a walking quilt made of gray plastic covered with a half-invisible film that's silvery at an angle. I wouldn't have known it was intelligent, except that it was pushing a cart with wheels roweled like a vaquero's spurs. Now I know why—the creeping floor. It offered me a cup of coffee in perfectly unaccented Spanish."
"Coffee?" Kamanov's expression was almost greedy.
"Something that smelled like coffee, and a doughnut! I turned it down, politely as I could, until Dr. Nguyen tests a sample. It wasn't easy. I could use a cup of real coffee. Have you eaten?"
Kamanov made a sour face. "Rations, from the ships."
"Probably all to the good. I asked this blanket creature why—call it `she'—with all the mechanized wonders surrounding us, she was stuck pushing a cart. She replied that in convalescent circumstances, the `human' touch was more to be desired than efficiency. That's what she was providing."
"Hmmm."
"Hmmm, indeed." Gutierrez was reluctant, but needed his friend's advice. "There's more. While I had her attention, I asked after the Proprietor, what he's like, what species he belongs to. A long pause, during which I'm sure she stared at me with an expression of profound pity and amazement, although I don't know how I know it. I certainly didn't know what part of her to watch in order to see it. She said, in words approaching religious awe, that the Proprietor's one of the `Elders.' Pete, I've got a bad feeling—"
"One bad feeling at a time, Horatio. What happened after you docked?"
"The Dole was last. We were met at the platform by a squadron of wingless aircraft like the one that brought you here."
The icy blue eyes twinkled. "Tell me what that was like. I missed it."
Gutierrez sighed. "Like an amusement-park ride, flattened spheres four meters in diameter, each a different color. Open tops, padded floors and walls. No controls, no seats, either, I suppose because they accommodate a variety of species with equal discomfort. I thought they had antigravity, but they turned out to be fanless hovercraft, operating, so Aelbraugh Pritsch said, by ion exchange. I didn't tell him I don't know what that means, but I asked him other questions. He gave up and told me I should see his boss, which I'm planning to do in about twenty minutes."
"I see." The Russian scratched his chin thoughtfully. "We could always send Arthur in your place." He grinned at Empleado, who ignored him.
Gutierrez shoved his hands in his pockets, looked first at Empleado, then at Kamanov. "Aelbraugh Pritsch told me an odd thing before he shut his beak and referred further inquiries to the Proprietor. I thought I'd figured it out. Despite how well they're established here, the place has a new feel to it, as if they'd just arrived themselves. Having read some science fiction, I figured it was sort of an advance base for an interstellar expedition. You know, a galactic federation of races from many different worlds?"
"And?" Kamanov raised bushy white eyebrows.
"I offered my deduction to Aelbraugh Pritsch," his friend told him, "who replied, `But General, we're all from the planet you call Earth.' "