"Yes."
"Are you at the top?"
"No. Kelkad is at top."
"He’s the captain of your ship?"
"Comparable."
Frank took a drink of water from a glass. He found himself coughing. Clete came over to thump him on the back, but Frank held up a hand and coughed some more. "Sorry," he said, his eyes red. "It went down the wrong way."
Clete waited a moment to make sure Frank was okay, then went back to his chair.
"Who should speak to our United Nations?" asked Frank, once he’d regained control.
Hask’s topknot was moving in strange patterns; it was apparent he had no idea what to make of the coughing fit. But at last he answered. "Kelkad."
"Will he come down from ship?"
"I will go get him and others."
"In your landing craft?"
"Yes."
Clete piped up from across the room. "Can I go with you?"
Hask didn’t have to turn around; he had eyes in the back of his head. If the question struck him as impertinent, there was no way to tell. "Yes."
Frank shot an angry look at Clete. If anyone were going to go up, it should be Frank. But they’d agreed to minimize any signs of human conflict — Hask hadn’t understood Sergei’s exchange with Frank out on the flight deck at the time it had occurred, but the alien had doubtless recorded it and played it back now that he had an English vocabulary. They still didn’t know why the Tosoks had come to Earth, but if it was what Frank was hoping — to invite Earth to join the community of intelligent races in this part of the galaxy — then the last thing they wanted to do was emphasize humanity’s inability to get along. It was bad enough that the rendezvous with the alien lander had been performed by a military aircraft carrier and a nuclear sub.
Still…
"Can I go, too?" asked Frank.
"No room," said Hask. "Lander built for eight; only room for one more."
"If your ship has a crew of seven, why was the lander built for eight?" asked Frank.
"Was eight. One off."
"One dead?" asked Frank.
"One dead."
"Sorry."
Hask said nothing.
*4*
The inside of Hask’s lander was simple and elegant. Frank and Clete had been hoping for a glimpse of some fantastically advanced technology, but clearly almost all aspects of the lander’s operations were automated. There was a single control console with a few cross-shaped keypads similar to the one on Hask’s handheld computer. There were also some recognizable mechanical devices, including cylinders with nozzles that were most likely fire extinguishers.
The most intriguing thing were the Tosok chairs, which were shaped something like tall, sideways saddles. Hask sat on one. As he did so the raised sides rose up to — well, to his "leg-pits" might be the appropriate term: the hollows beneath where his long legs joined his shoulders. The sides seemed to be spring-loaded. As Hask lowered his weight into the chair, the sides compressed, then snapped into place at just the right height to support him.
There were indeed eight chairs: two in the front row, then two additional rows of three chairs apiece. Clete tried to sit in one of the chairs, but found it excruciating. Hask went over to the wall, which was pale green and waxy in appearance. He touched it, and a hatch popped open. Hask reached in and pulled out a device that looked a bit like a screwdriver, although no part of it seemed to be metallic. He then dropped down to the floor — it was a strange, fluid movement, his long legs folding in three places, and his front arm helping to support his weight. He ended up lying on his front, and his rear arm reached up with the tool held in his four-fingered hand. He did something with it and the front part of the saddle seemed to come loose.
Clete surged forward and grabbed that part of the chair before it toppled onto the Tosok.
Hask then rose to his feet. "Suitable?" he said.
Clete sat down sideways on it, leaning back against the remaining projection from the curving seat. He smiled at Frank. "Ain’t no La-Z-Boy, but it’ll do the trick."
"When are you going to leave?" Frank said to Hask.
"Whenever Clete is ready."
"Can I bring my video camera?" asked Clete, indicating an equipment bag sitting on the lander’s floor.
"Yes."
"All right," said Clete. "Then let’s go."
Frank left the spacecraft, and the airlock door slid shut behind him.
It was three in the afternoon. The sky had been whipped by contrail lashes: dozens of media and government airplanes had flown over the area to get glimpses of the alien ship. The sea was reasonably calm; waves slapped softly against the Kitty Hawk’s hull.
All the arrangements had been made. Hask and Clete would fly up to the mothership, get the rest of the Tosoks, and then land in United Nations Plaza. There was going to be some delay aboard the mothership — Hask lacked the vocabulary to explain exactly why that was — so they would not be returning for about twenty hours.
Frank, meanwhile, would be flown by fighter jet direct from the Kitty Hawk to Washington, where he’d brief the president, who was already miffed that the meeting was taking place at the UN rather than on the White House lawn, as fifties SF films had predicted. They would both then fly to New York; other world leaders were making their way there is well. All in all, Frank was pleased: humanity was handling first contact much better than he’d expected.
The alien lander lifted off the flight deck, its deep green form stark against the pale blue sky. Frank waved as it rose higher and higher. Two F-14s provided an escort — as well as an opportunity to observe the alien ship in flight.
Inside the lander, Clete was getting it all on videotape. No live transmission was possible, unfortunately — the lander was shielded against radio waves, preventing Clete from broadcasting out, and there was no way of using the equipment on hand to interface his camera with the communications system employed by the Tosoks.
Although the four mirrored squares along the pointed bow of the shield-shaped craft did indeed turn out to be windows, Clete found he got a much better view through the wall display inside the ship. The lander rose up, higher and higher; the Atlantic Ocean receded beneath them, and the sky quickly changed from blue to purple to black. Soon Clete could see the east coast of Central America, and then the west coast of Africa as well. He was literally shaking with excitement — his whole life he’d wanted to go into space, and now it was happening! Adrenaline coursed through his system, and when he caught sight of his own reflection in the wall monitor, he saw that there was a huge grin spread across his face.
The lander continued to rise, and soon it passed over the terminator, into Earth’s nightside. Above, the real stars were rock steady; below, the constellations of city lights twinkled with interference patterns.
Soon the ship was in orbit, and the invisible hand stopped pressing against Clete’s side — he was, after all, sitting sidesaddle. He felt himself grow weightless, and his heart pounded even harder with excitement.
And then, there it was — floating majestically in front of them.
The mothership.
It was indeed gigantic. Almost all parts of it were flat black, making it hard to see against the backdrop of space. It seemed to be baton-shaped, with a bulbous habitat module at one end and what appeared to be an engine at the other. That the engine and the living quarters were so far apart suggested to Clete that the power source was nuclear. He’d have to get his colleagues to look over starplates they’d made in the last year or so; in all likelihood, the alien ship had come toward Earth tail first. Most ideas Clete had seen for starflight proposed a continuous acceleration to the halfway point, turning the ship around, then continuously decelerating until the destination was reached. Astronomers might well have inadvertently recorded the fusion exhaust of the braking starship — and from its spectra, something could be gleaned about Tosok technology.