Liberty: Zamael, Gabriel 16, c.y.3 / 1906
The comet had appeared a couple of weeks earlier, in the last few days of Hanael before the winter solstice that marked the end of the Coyote year. At first it was little more than a hazy white splotch that hovered just above the southeastern horizon after sundown, and no one in Liberty paid much attention to it until its nimbus grew brighter and a distinct tail began to form. Eighteen nights later, its luminescence was rivaled only by Bear, until the superjovian rose high enough to eclipse the comet so that it couldn’t be seen again until it made a brief reappearance in the northwestern sky a couple of hours before dawn.
Like everyone else in Liberty, Robert Lee notices the comet; lately, though, he’s given it little more than a passing glance. As chairman of the Town Council, other matters rank higher on his list of priorities. The last of the autumn crops are in, and although the colony won’t have to worry about food shortages this winter, swampers discovered the corn stored in one of the silos shortly before they went into hibernation; the tunnels they dug beneath the refurbished Alabama cargo module threaten to undermine its foundation and eventually topple it. Two more colonists have come down with ring disease; it isn’t contagious and is easily treated with antibiotics, but Kuniko Okada has privately warned him that the drug supply is running dangerously low. One of the aerostats was toppled two weeks ago by a severe windstorm; if it’s not rebuilt soon, the council will have to start rationing electrical power.
And then there’s the storm that’s been forming a few hundred miles east of the Meridian Sea, slowly gathering force as it creeps eastward along the Great Equatorial River. It’s still on the other side of the planet, so it’s possible that it might die off, but if it doesn’t it’ll soon rip across the southern plains of Great Dakota and slam straight into New Florida.
Tonight, though, the sky is clear: no clouds, no wind, the stars serene in their crystalline beauty. As Lee marches across the light snow covering the frozen mud of Main Street, he spots a small group of people gathered outside the grange. They’ve built a small fire within a garbage barrel and clustered around it to keep warm, yet their eyes are turned upward. It’s not hard to figure out what they’re watching.
"Evening, folks," he says. "Comet keeping you busy?"
Everyone looks around. Smiles, murmured greetings: "Evening, Mr. Mayor," "Hi, Captain," "Hello, Robert," and so forth. Now he can make out individual faces, shadowed by the parka hoods and downturned cap bills: Jack Dreyfus, Henry Johnson, Kim Newell, and Tom Shapiro. Tom, Jack, and Kim are former Alabama crrew members, of course, Henry was once a civilian scientists, yet people seldom make such distinctions any more. Lee’s the only person anyone still addresses by his former rank, and then only out of habit.
There’s a child among them: Marie Montero, almost nine. No doubt there’s other kids inside, but she’s always been shy, preferring the company of Tom and Kim, her adoptive parents. It seems as if ages have passed since Tom was Alabama’s First Officer and Kim was a Liberty Party loyalist who had to be held at gunpoint while the ship was being stolen from Highgate; now they’re married, and the bulge beneath Kim’s parka shows that it won’t be much longer before they add another member to their family.
"Looked at it lately, Mr. Mayor?" This from Jack Dreyfus, standing on the other side of the barrel. "We’re trying to figure it out."
"Looks like a horn!" Marie proclaims. "A big friggin’ horn!"
"Marie! Language!" Kim gives the child an admonishing glare, then looks at Tom. "She’s spending too much time with grownups. Look what she’s picking up."
"Yup," Tom mutters, "helluva shame." Chuckles from all around, but Lee barely hears this as he gazes up at the sky. The comet’s tail is very long now, stretching almost halfway to the edge of Bear’s rings as the giant planet slowly rises above the horizon. Yet it doesn’t taper down to a point, the way a comet’s tail normally would, but fans outward instead, forming an elongated cone as seen from profile. Beautiful, yet discomforting in its strangeness.
"Y’know, she’s right," Jack says. "Kind of looks like a trumpet." He grins. "Gabriel’s Trumpet. Good name, kid."
Marie blushes, hides behind Tom. "Beats hell out of me." Henry murmurs. "Sorry, guys, but I can’t figure this one out."
"What do you mean?" Lee asks. Before he turned to farming, Henry Johnson was an astrophysicist. If anyone here should be an expert on comets, it would be him.
"Well, for one thing, the tail’s going in the wrong direction." He points to the comet. "Shouldn’t be doing that. Solar wind from Uma would be blowing dust off the nucleus, sure, but away from the sun, not toward it. And spreading it out like that. . . ?" He shakes his head. "Might happen if the dust is being deflected by Bear’s magnetosphere . . . but if that’s the case, then it’s a lot closer than we think."
"It’s not going to hit us, is it?" Kim’s voice is low, concerned.
"Oh, I doubt that. Bear’s gravity will probably pull it in long before it comes close enough to be any sort of threat. One of the benefits of having a gas giant for a neighbor . . . sort of a huge vacuum sweeper for comets and rogue asteroids." Henry gives the others a reassuring smile. "Don’t worry. We’re just going to have a light show for another week or so."
The group laughs, albeit nervously, and shuffles their feet in the snow. "Well, have fun," Lee says, and ruffles Marie’s hair as he walks past. "Don’t stay out too long, or you’ll catch cold." The little girl favors him with the salute that she’s seen her guardians and other former crewmen give him on occasion. Lee dutifully responds in kind; even after nearly four Earth years on Coyote, he’s still regarded as captain by most people. He supposes he should be honored, although he prefers to think of himself as an elected public official rather than a commanding officer.
He opens the heavy front door, steps into the foyer, takes a minute to remove his parka and hang it next to the other coats and jackets. Warm air rushes across his face as he opens the inside door; someone has stoked a fire in the wood stove, and the meeting hall is nice and toasty. The grange has become the center of Liberty’s social life, particularly during the long months of winter. There’s probably a dozen or so people hanging out at Lew’s Cantina; every so often Lee will spend an evening there himself, but generally he prefers the more placid ambiance of the grange. Chairs have been pushed aside to make room for card tables; there’s a couple of bridge games going on, but a few people are also playing chess or backgammon, and some of the younger children are huddled around a Parcheesi board. Dogs lounge on the blackwood floor, showing only slight interest in the mama cat nursing her kittens in a nearby box. A platter of home-fried potato chips and onion dip has been laid out on the side table beneath a watercolor painting of the Alabama; a pot of coffee stays warm on the stove in the center of the room, itself fashioned from an old oxygen cell salvaged from one of the habitat modules.
And there’s music. A three-man jug band–the Crab Suckers, a private joke no one else understands–is on the raised platform at the front of the room, where the council usually sits when the monthly town meeting is in session. With the exception of Ted LeMare’s antique Hammond harmonica, brought with him from Earth, their instruments were hand-made by Paul Dwyer, the bassist, and their repertoire mainly consists of twentieth century blues and country standards. But they’ve been working out some original material lately; as Lee walks in, Barry Dreyfus, Jack’s boy, is singing:
Morbid, yes, yet then Lee notices Wendy Gunther sitting nearby. Her legs crossed, her left toe tapping the floor beneath her long catskin skirt, as she bounces baby Susan on her knee. Wendy’s another member of the expedition; the last line of Barry’s song refers to her near-death experience, but if she thinks it’s in bad taste, there’s no indication. Susan smiles in delight, babbles something that may be a compliment.
We’ve raised a tough generation, Lee thinks. Almost four Earth years, and the kids are hard as nails.
He can’t decide whether he likes that notion or not. Wendy’s just turned eighteen, yet not only is she now a mother, but in the last election she managed to get herself voted onto the Town Council, replacing Sissy Levin when she unexpectedly resigned. Wendy ran for office on the platform that Liberty’s younger generation needed a voice in the colony government, and since then she’s carried out her responsibilities well. Lee can’t complain about her performance, yet whenever he sees her, he feels a twinge of long-suppressed guilt. Her father . . .
Enough. There’s another reason he’s ventured out into the cold Gabriel night. Taking his coffee mug with him, he crosses the hall, briefly nodding or waving to everyone whose eye he meets, until he reaches a door off to one side of the room.
A narrow corridor takes him past the council meeting room, the armory, and the records room. His office door’s shut, but there’s light under the crack; he hears Beethoven’s "Moonlight Sonata" from within. He quietly opens the door, steps inside. Dana Monroe is seated at his blackwood desk, studying the screen of his comp; she doesn’t look up as he comes up behind her, but smiles as he leans over to give her a kiss on the cheek. "Wondering when you’d get here," she murmurs. "What took you so long?"
"My turn to wash up after dinner, remember?" Lee finds the spare chair, pulls it over next to the desk. "That stew you made was pretty good. What’d you put in it?"
"My secret ingredient." She notices the annoyed expression on his face. "Okay, it’s what I didn’t put in. You told me you don’t like garlic, so I left it out this time. Better?"
"Much. Thank you." Dana had been a better Chief Engineer than she was a cook; when she moved in with him last summer, one of the things she had to learn was that her new mate was surprisingly temperamental about what he ate. Otherwise, they have an easy relationship; although Lee has officiated at nearly a dozen civil ceremonies and Dana’s helped Dr. Okada deliver four babies, neither of them was in any rush to get married and start a family. Let someone else be fruitful and multiply; their job is managing the colony. "So what’s the forecast?"
"Hmm . . . not good." There’s a close-up image of the storm on the screen; the time-stamp shows that it was captured by Alabama’s cameras as it passed over Coyote’s eastern hemisphere an hour and a half ago. She taps the keypad, and now there’s a more distant view: a dense swirl of white clouds, shrouding the Equatorial River about five hundred miles east of the Meridian Sea. "Looks like it’s picking up moisture off the river," she murmurs. "Still a long way off, but it’s growing. Unless something changes in the next day or two it’s coming our way."
Lee nods. For the most part, the Alabama colonists made the right decision by establishing a settlement close to the equator. Winter on New Florida isn’t as brutal as it is in the northern and southernmost latitudes, and they have the advantage of longer growing seasons, from early spring through late autumn. Nonetheless, Coyote’s global climate is cooler than Earth’s, and Bear’s tidal pull frequently plays havoc with wind patterns. Their first winter was relatively mild; it only figures that the colony would eventually have to deal with a major snowstorm.
"There’s still a couple of large mountains in the way," Dana says. She points to the major range that straddles Great Dakota, the continent west of New Florida. "Probably won’t stop it, but they may blunt the worst of it."
"So we can hope," Lee says. "At least we’ve got some advance warning. If we can. . . ."
The comp chimes just then, as a small window opens in the center of the screen:
03.12.2304 / 1512 GMT
SAT TRANSMISSION / ALABAMA / PRIORITY 1A
CODE 1893: PROTOCOL ETW-1B
CLASSIFIED / COMMANDING OFFICER’S EYES ONLY
AUTHENTICATION: PASSWORD _____
"What the. . . ?" Dana’s eyes narrow. "That’s from the ship." She looks over her shoulder at Lee. "And what’s this protocol? I don’t remember anything like that."
A chill sensation runs down Lee’s back. It’s been so long since he programmed the subroutine into the Alabama AI, he’s nearly forgotten it existed. Now it’s suddenly become active. But why. . . ?
Then he remembers the comet. Gabriel’s Trumpet, as Jack Dreyfus called it just a few minutes ago.
"Robert? What’s going on?" Dana searches his face. "Do you want me to leave?" she adds, her voice low as she starts to rise.
"No . . . no, stay with me, Chief," he says quietly. "You ought to know about this . . . but let’s keep it between us. At least right now, okay?"
"Sure. Okay." Dana settles back into her seat. She knows this is serious, not only from the tone of his voice, but also because this is first the time he’s addressed her as chief in a long time. They may be partners now, but once again he’s the captain of the Alabama and she’s one of his senior officers. Old habits die hard.
Lee turns the comp toward him, picks up the keyboard, types in the password: helix. A few moments pass while the uplink is established, then the window disappears and a new image appears on the screen. Now they’re peering into the heart of the comet, as seen by Alabama’s onboard navigational telescope. The shape is hazy and ill-defined, yet it’s obviously not a natural object: a long, cylindrical form, with a white-hot flare erupting from its aft end.
"That’s a starship." Dana’s voice is nearly a whisper.
"Uh-huh. I know." Lee hesitates. "Go find the council members. Don’t tell them what you saw, just get ’em here. We’ve got a situation."
Zamael / 2021
Carlos Montero expected to find a crowd at Lew’s Cantina, and he was right; it’s Zamday night, the middle of the three-day weekend, and Lew Geary’s place is the best (and only) watering hole in Liberty. He hasn’t come here to drink, though, as much as he’s tempted to do so; he’s had a long day at the boat house, finishing the longboats he and his crew have been building for the last few months. There’s one quick errand that needs to be done before he goes home to Wendy and Susan, but the moment he spots Chris Levin, he knows it’s not going to work out that way.
Not that he isn’t welcome at the cantina. For the first few weeks after he returned from his solo journey down the Great Equatorial, he was shunned by quite a few people in town. Although most realized that David’s death was accidental, nonetheless they blamed him for persuading David and the others to steal a couple of canoes and run away from Liberty. Before they left, they’d pilfered supplies from all over the colony, including irreplaceable items like riffles and a satphone. Almost everything they had stolen was eventually returned, yet Carlos soon discovered restoring someone’s flashlight was much easier than restoring their trust. Yet over the course of the last four months–a solid year, by Gregorian reckoning–he had gone out of his way to make amends with all the people that he’d offended or wronged, until by the end of c.y. 2 he was back in good graces with everyone.
Nearly everyone. . . .
Chris is seated on a stool at the far end of the blackwood bar, a mug of sourgrass ale parked in front of him. Carlos ignores his sullen gaze as he moves through the packed room, greeting friends he encounters along the way. Bernie and Vonda Cayle are sitting by the fireplace; they’re old friends of his late mother and father, and never gave up on him even in his darkest hour, yet although Bernie tries to wave him over for a drink, Chris shakes his head. He made a promise to Wendy before he left home this morning, and he doesn’t want beer on his breath when she comes back from the grange.
There’s an amused expression on Lew’s face as Carlos approaches the bar. "Ah, so. Mr. Montero, the famous explorer," he says, looking up from the ceramic mug he’s washing. "What brings you here this evening? Your usual?"
"If you’ve got it, please." Carlos hasn’t taken off his parka; he props his elbows on the bar and nods politely to Jean Swenson and Ellery Balis standing nearby. Jean gives him a smile, but Ellery scowls and looks away. Little wonder; as the colony’s quartermaster, Ellery is responsible for the safe-keeping of all the firearms, and he’s still irritated at Carlos for having stolen the key to the armory. Carlos tried to make up for the theft by stocking the armory with the bows he learned to make while fending for himself on the river; they’ve helped the blue-shirts fend off the creek cats and swampers without wasting any more rifle bullets, but Carlos knows Mr. Balis is one of those who will never completely forgive nor forget.
Lew walks to the door behind the bar, pushes aside the curtain. "Carrie! A jug of your best for Carlos!" He glances back at him. "One’ll do it, or you want more?" Carlos shakes his head and Lew holds up a finger to his wife before returning to the bar. "Sure you don’t want anything else? It’s a cold night, son. . . ."
"I’m sure. Thanks anyway." Carlos digs into the pocket of his parka, pulls out a dollar. He drops the wooden coin on the bar, but Lew shakes his head and quietly slides it back across the counter to him. No words are spoken between them; Carlos nods gratefully as he picks up the dollar, but the gesture hasn’t gone unnoticed.
"Yeah, hey . . . heroes drink for free, don’t they?"
Chris’s voice is loud enough to carry across the room. From the corner of his eye, Carlos sees people glancing up from their conversations. Everyone knows there’s bad blood between them. Not only that, but ever since the Town Council formally introduced the currency system a couple of months ago, no one has managed to cadge a drink from Lew . . . or at least not without scrubbing the kitchen, repairing the roof, or cleaning out the goat pen out back.
"It’s not what you think," Lew says quietly. "Let it go."
"Okay, sure. None of my business." Chris raises his hands in mock apology. He picks up his mug, looks at Carlos. "Hey, c’mon over and have a drink."
"No thanks." Carlos gives him a wary smile. "Just dropping by for a minute."
"A minute? Just for a minute?" Chris’s face expresses bafflement. "You can’t do better than that? Come on, we’re ol’ fishing buddies. . . ."
The last thing Carlos wants to do to have a drink with Chris, no matter how many times they used to pull redfish out of Sand Creek. Not that he hasn’t already tried to patch things up with him. Twice before, they’ve sat together at this same bar, two young men barely eighteen, putting away one mug of sourgrass ale after another. Each time, it was a disaster; the first occasion, Chris got pissed off and tried to throw a punch at Carlos before Lew grabbed him and threw him out the door; the second time, Chris became a maudlin drunk, inconsolably sobbing about his lost brother before attacking Carlos again, managing to put a mouse under his eye before a blue-shirt hauled him away to the stockade for the night. Lew barred Chris from the cantina after that, and let him back in only after he promised never again to pick a fight in his establishment.
Perhaps this isn’t a prelude to another incident, yet there’s no warmth in Chris’s invitation. His hostility toward Carlos goes beyond his brother’s death. His mother suffered a severe breakdown a few weeks after Chris returned to the colony; first she’d lost her husband, then her younger son; she eventually recovered, but she’s battled depression ever since, often staying in their house for weeks at a time. Then Chris proposed to Wendy shortly before Susan was born, and she turned him down. Carlos moved in with her not long after he returned, and although she hasn’t agreed to marry him either, if only because she’s still uncertain of their relationship–indeed, their home is just a two-room addition their friends built onto Kuniko Okada’s house–Chris has never gotten over that either.
Once again, Carlos observes how much Chris has changed. His face has become swollen from drinking; his blond hair hangs lank around his face, and there’s a suggestion of a beer gut at his midriff. He knows that Chris has fallen to holding down odd jobs around Liberty, keeping them only until he screws up again and gets shunted off to a new duty generously supplied by another foreman. At age eighteen, Chris is well on his way to becoming the town drunk.
"Sorry, man." Carlos tries to keep things as cordial as possible. "Got something else going on. Maybe another time." He turns away, hoping Chris will take the hint, yet he can still hear him muttering about how his oldest friend doesn’t want to be seen with him anymore. Which isn’t far from the truth. . . .
Hearing the front door open, Carlos looks around, sees Dana Monroe come in. Pulling back the hood of her catskin cape, she glances around the room as if searching for someone. Spotting Bernie and Vonda Cayle, she begins to ease through the crowd. Odd to see her here; she almost never visits the cantina.
Carrie Geary picks that moment to emerge from the back room. "Here you go," she says, holding up a large brown jug. "From our private stock. Want me to put it on the tab?"
"Already got it covered." Her husband takes the jug from her, starts to pass it to Carlos. "Tell Wendy . . ."
"Oh, yeah, hey! Check this out!" Chris points to the jug. "Son-of-a-bitch won’t drink with an ol’ buddy, but he can always carry home some of their private stock!" A few more people pay attention now; colony law clearly states that all liquor produced at Lew’s Cantina must be consumed on the premises. "Guess there’s a double . . . double-standard for famous explorers, right?"
Carlos closes his eyes, embarrassed not so much for himself as for Chris. Yet if Lew’s angered by the accusation, he hides it well. "Uh-huh, you’re right. Caught us in the act, that you did." He steps closer to Chris. "Tell you what," he murmurs, his tone conspiratorial. "If you promise to drop it, I’ll let you try some. On the house."
Chris stares greedily at the jug, not noticing that some of the patrons are chuckling behind his back. "Umm . . . all right, sure. Bring it on."
Lew picks up Chris’s half-empty mug. He uncorks the jug, but briefly turns his back to him as he pours. "Here y’go," he says, handing the mug back to Chris. "Our best stuff."
"Thanks, Lew. You’re a gentleman." Chris gives Carlos a smug wink as he raise his drink. "To your wife," he adds. "A real fine lady."
Silence falls across the room. There’s no mistaking what he means by that remark. Carlos says nothing as he watches Chris takes a deep slug. A moment passes, then Chris’s face screws up in disgust. For a second, it seems as if he’s going to spit it out.
"Oh, no you don’t!" Carrie snaps. "Puke in my place and you’re mopping the floor!"
"She’s right!" Lew yells. "You drink it, you swallow it! Rules of the house!"
Everyone’s cracking up, but Carlos doesn’t laugh. He catches a glimpse of the anger and humiliation in Chris’s eyes as he lurches from his stool and quickly staggers across the room, his hand clasped over his mouth. He nearly collides with Dana as he stumbles through the front door; she stares after him, then reaches over to escort Vonda through the uproar.
"Here you go," Lew says, slapping the cork back in the jug before he hands it across the bar to Carlos. "Two quarts of fresh goat’s milk. Tell Wendy there’s plenty more where that came from . . . unless Chris wants another round, of course."
You didn’t have to do that, Carlos thinks, yet he doesn’t say this aloud. Ever since Wendy stopped breast-feeding, the Gearys have provided Susan with pasteurized milk from their goats. It’s clear that Lew doesn’t care much for Chris, though, and there’s no worse contempt than that of a bartender for a drunkard.
"Thanks, I’ll do that." Carlos tucks the jug beneath his arm, turns toward the door. With any luck, Chris will be so sick that he won’t be able to start any trouble outside.
He’s halfway across the room, though, when Dana stops him. "Are you going home?" she asks softly, and shakes her head when he nods. "No. Follow me back to the grange and pick up Sue. Wendy needs you to babysit for awhile."
After this, taking care of their daughter would be a pleasure. Nonetheless, Carlos is surprised by the request. "Why, what’s going on?"
Dana glances over her shoulder, making sure they’re not being overheard. "Emergency council meeting. Everyone’s being called in." Before he can ask, she shakes her head again. "Can’t tell you more than that. Just come with me."
Outside the cantina, the wind has picked up again. Thin clouds scud across the sky, shrouding the comet. Carlos joins the two older women for the short walk back to the center of town, their boots crunching softly against the packed snow. They’ve barely gone a few steps, though, when he hears someone behind them.
He turns to see Chris slumped against the cantina. He’d left his parka behind; shivering in the cold, he holds his arms together as he leans unsteadily against the log wall. There’s a small puddle of vomit at his feet, already freezing solid.
"Chris . . ." Carlos hesitates; behind him, Dana and Vonda have stopped. "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to . . ."
"Get lost," Chris mutters, not looking up at him.
"Do you want me to get your coat? I can go back in, get it. . . ."
"Just go away." Chris’s voice is as chill as the wind; masked by shadows, his face is unreadable. "Lemme alone."
Carlos turns back to Dana and Vonda. Nothing more is said as they continue walking toward town, but after a while Vonda slips her hand through his elbow. There’s little comfort she can give him, though, for now he knows the truth.
He’s lost his oldest friend. Chris is now his enemy.
Zamael / 2052
"No question about it . . . that’s the plume of a fusion engine." Henry Johnson examines the image on the council room’s wall screen. "Given the size of the ship, I’d say it’s firing at about one gee, sufficient to decelerate from relativistic velocity."
"And how. . . ?" Sharon Ullman involuntarily yawns. " ’Cuse me . . . how far away do you say it is?"
Lee consults his pad. "According to Alabama, its current position is just within the orbit of Snake, about three hundred thousands miles from us." Before Sharon can ask, he answers the obvious next question. "And, yes, it’s on an intercept trajectory with Coyote. It should arrive within the next twenty-seven hours. I think we can safely assume that it’ll make orbit at that time."
Seated around the blackwood table, the members of the Town Council glance at one another. Fortunately, it hadn’t taken long to gather them for an emergency session; Tom, Paul, Wendy, and Henry were already at the grange, and Dana found Vonda at the cantina. Only Sharon had to be woken out of bed; she still looks half-asleep, but Dana brought in a pot of coffee before she left the room, shutting the door behind her. She’s not a council member, so she’s not privy to their discussions.
"It doesn’t give us much time," Lee continues, "but at least we’ve got some advance warning. If we work quickly, we can figure out an appropriate course of . . ."
"Pardon me." Like a shy student interrupting her teacher, Wendy raises her hand; Lee nods in her direction. "I’m sorry, but there’s just one thing I don’t . . . what I mean is . . . how did the AI figure out this was a ship and know to contact us?"
"Good question." Tom Shapiro looks from her to Lee. "I don’t remember anything like an early warning system being written into the AI." Across the table, Sharon nods in agreement. As the Alabama’s former senior navigator, she’s familiar with the AI’s major subroutines, particularly those controlling the navigation telescope. Nothing like this was programmed into the AI before the Alabama left Earth.
Lee drums his fingers on the table. He knew this question would eventually be raised: better now than later. "I’ve got something to show you," he says at last. "Nobody here has seen it before now, so I’m going to have to ask that it not leave this room . . . or at least not until we’re ready to divulge it to the rest of the colony. Understood?"
Reluctant murmurs of assent. Lee picks up an Alabama operations manual he’s brought over from his office, opens it. From the back pocket of the three-ring binder, he produces two sheets of paper: brittle and yellow with age, with ragged tears down one side. Carefully unfolding them to reveal faded handscript, he hands them across the table to Tom.
"You know what happened to Les Gillis, of course," Lee says. "Awakened from biostasis three months after we left Earth, spent the next thirty-two years alone aboard the ship. Wrote fantasy stories to pass the time. . . ."
"The Chronicles of Prince Rupurt." Wendy nods. "I’ve read it twice."
"Yes, well . . ." He takes a deep breath. "Before Les did that, he wrote something else . . . sort of an unofficial log entry, in the first ledger book he used for his stories. The time he spent aboard the Alabama wasn’t completely uneventful. Not too long after he woke up . . ."
"Oh, my God." Tom stares at the pages he’s been reading. "He spotted another ship."
"He saw a light . . . a moving star, as he describes it . . . from the wardroom window. He interpreted it as another starship passing the Alabama, heading in the opposite direction. He attempted to make contact but failed, and then the ship vanished. Never saw it again." Lee looks at Wendy. "I’ve read the Prince Rupurt stories, too. I think that’s what gave him the idea. Whether it really was another ship, though, I have my doubts. At any rate, he noted the sighting in his ledger, just before he began work on his book."
"But that’s not in . . ." Wendy says, then Tom hands her the pages and she notices their tattered edges. "You tore these out of the ledger?"
"Robert . . . why?" Tom looks bewildered. "Didn’t you trust us?"
"Trust wasn’t the issue, believe me." Lee clasps his hands together, gazes down at them. "Look, we’d come out of being in biostasis for two hundred and thirty years, with a hundred and three people aboard, half of whom weren’t trained for the mission, not to mention five URS soldiers who were on the verge of inciting mutiny. Our food and water reserves were low, and we didn’t know for certain whether Coyote was habitable. The last thing people needed to worry about was whether someone else was out there. I wanted everyone to stay focused upon survival, not watching the skies to see if aliens were about to land.
"I was the first person to read Gillis’s ledgers. When I saw this, I ripped out the pages and hid them. But just to be on the safe side, shortly before I left Alabama I programmed the AI to track any incoming objects through the telescope and alert me if it spotted anything that might resemble an approaching ship." Lee opens his hands, shrugs. "And that’s what it did . . . and so now you know. It wasn’t my intent to deceive anyone here. I just didn’t believe it was critical information."
All through this, he carefully avoids looking at Wendy. There’s more to the matter than this. Gillis left behind yet another note, one he destroyed long ago, lest she learn the truth about her father.
"Not critical information?" Vonda regards him with disbelief. "Captain, I can’t believe you’d . . ."
"Never mind that now," Paul says, cutting her off. "What’s done is done. What matters is where this leaves us. Assuming that it’s an alien ship . . ."
"I wouldn’t assume that," Henry says. "In fact, I’d call it unlikely."
Paul gives him a curious look. "Sorry, I’m not following you."
"What I mean is, we’re jumping to the most far-fetched conclusion without considering the facts." Henry points to the wallscreen. "Look, we already know this thing is coming straight here. That can’t be a coincidence. Why would aliens pick this one particular world . . . a moon of an ordinary gas giant orbiting an ordinary star . . . for a visit?"
"Because they know we’re here." Paul raises an eyebrow as if this is obvious fact.
Henry shakes his head. "There’s no reason to believe that Coyote is inhabited. We haven’t transmitted any radio signals since we first got here, and then only briefly . . . a message that, even if intercepted, could be coming from anywhere in space. Alabama can’t be detected from interstellar distances, and even if you were in low orbit above Coyote, you couldn’t tell there was someone down here. You’ve seen the orbital photos . . . Liberty is virtually invisible."
"Maybe they’re searching for a place to establish a colony themselves," Sharon says.
"Perhaps . . . but what are the odds of two different races wanting to settle the same planet at the same time? The galaxy is vast. . . ."
"And habitable planets are rare," Tom says. "That was established a long time ago."
"Established by whom? Us? We’d barely searched one small corner of space for only a couple of dozen years before we found 47 Uma. That doesn’t mean . . ."
"Gentlemen," Lee interjects, "this is an interesting debate, but it’s getting us nowhere. However, Henry’s got a point. The idea that this ship may be extraterrestrial is an unlikely explanation. If we accept that, then it leaves us with only one other possibility . . . it’s coming from Earth."
Everyone shuffles in their seats. No one speaks, but Lee notices that their eyes reflexively shift to the flag that hangs against one wall. Red and white stripes, with a single white star against a blue field: the symbol of the United Republic of America. Presented to him by the mission launch supervisor at Merritt Island just before he left Earth, Lee has never permitted it to be raised above town; he put it in the council room instead, as a silent reminder of the tyranny they left behind.
"If that’s the case," Vonda says quietly, "perhaps we should attempt to contact it. Let them know we’re here, where we are."
"And if it was launched by the Republic?" Tom asks. "Do you really want URS soldiers coming down on us?"
"Oh, come on. We left Earth . . . what, almost two hundred and thirty-four years ago? I have a hard time believing the Republic lasted that long."
"Doesn’t matter whether it’s still around or not," Tom says. "If it survived long enough to build another ship . . . a twin to the Alabama . . . then it could have been launched only three years after we took off. Which means it’d be arriving just about now."
"Then why use a fusion engine to decelerate?" Henry asks. "Alabama conserved fuel by using its magsail to brake itself. Why wouldn’t a sister ship do the same?" He holds up a hand before Tom can go on. "Besides, remember how long it took to build the Alabama? And how much? Ten years and a hundred billion, and the government wrecked the economy to do that. So how could they construct another ship just like it in such a short period of time?"
"I don’t know the answers." Tom’s beginning to look annoyed. "All I know is, I’d rather play possum until we know more."
Vonda opens her mouth to object, but Lee waves her off. "I tend to agree with Tom. We shouldn’t expose ourselves until we . . ."
A soft knock against the door interrupts him. Lee looks around. "Come in."
The door opens; Dana steps in. "Sorry to intrude, but . . ." She hesitates. "Alabama’s just received a radio transmission . . . and it’s in English."
Everyone is on their feet in an instant. Lee barely manages to beat everyone else out of the meeting room. He leads them into his adjacent office, where they crowd into every available corner. Taking his seat at his desk, he waits until Dana sits down in front of the comp, then motions for Paul to close the door behind them.
"Okay," he says, "show us what you’ve got."
"Well, first, there’s this." Dana leans across him to pick up the keyboard. "About five minutes ago, Alabama detected a change in the comet’s . . . I mean, the ship’s . . . condition."
The screen changes. Now the exhaust plume has vanished, leaving behind only a bright orange spot against the black background of space. "They shut down the main engine," Sharon says; she’s standing behind Lee, peering over his shoulder. "Probably don’t need it anymore, and they’d have to do so in order to transmit a radio signal."
"Makes sense," Lee says. In the back of his mind, he realizes that anyone outside the grange will have noticed that the comet has suddenly disappeared. "Go on, Dana."
"I was still trying to figure out what happened when we received this. . . ." She taps a command into the keypad. A tinny sound comes from the speaker; static courses through it until Dana cuts in digital filters and raises the volume. Now, in sharp and sudden clarity, a voice:
". . . if you are able . . . repeat, to URSS Alabama, this is WHSS Glorious Destiny. Please respond if you are able . . . repeat, to URSS Alabama, this is WHSS Glorious Destiny. Please respond if you are able . . . repeat, to URSS Alabama . . ."
Over and over again, like a ’bot reiterating the same prerecorded alert. Indeed, the voice has a certain artificial quality. "That’s all I’ve received so far," Dana says, looking over her shoulder at the others. "For what it’s worth, they’re signaling Alabama, not us."
"Guess that settles the argument," Henry says quietly. "It’s from home." Then he looks at the others. "Okay, so now what do we do?"
"We play possum." Lee glances at Tom; his former first officer gives him a slight nod. "We’ve found them before they found us. For the time being, we’re going to keep it that way. Total radio silence until we learn more about them."
"And how do you propose to do that?" Sharon asks.
"What you always do when new neighbors move in." Lee smiles. "Haul out the welcome wagon."
