Brind’s face hardened. “When I was young, we used to call what you do gunrunning. Although I don’t suppose that’s how you think of it yourself.”
The remark caught Madeleine off guard. “No,” she said. “I’m a pilot. All I ever wanted to do is fly; this is the best job I could get. In a different universe, I’d be—”
“An astronaut,” Frank Paulis said.
The foolish, archaic word got to Madeleine. Here, of all places.
“We know about you, you see,” Sally Brind said, almost regretfully. “All about you.”
“There are no astronauts anymore.”
“That isn’t true, Meacher,” Paulis said. “Come with us. Let us show you what we’re planning.”
Brind and Paulis took her out to Launch Complex 41, the old USASF Titan pad at the northern end of ICBM Row. Here, Brind’s people had refurbished an antique Soviet-era Proton launcher.
The booster was a slim black cylinder, fifty-three meters tall. Six flaring strap-on boosters clustered around the first stage, and Madeleine could pick out the smaller stages above. A passenger capsule and hab module would be fixed to the top, shrouded by a cone of metal.
“Our capsule isn’t much more sophisticated than an Apollo,” Brind said. “It only has to get you to orbit and keep you alive for a couple of hours, until the Gaijin come to pick you up.”
“Me?”
“Would you like to see your hab module? It’s being prepared in the old Orbiter Processing Facility…”
“Get to the point,” Madeleine said. “Where are you planning to send me? And what exactly is a burster?”
“A type of neutron star. A very interesting type. The Gaijin are sending a ship there. They’ve invited us — that is, the UN — to send a representative. An observer. It’s the first time they’ve offered this, to carry an observer beyond the Solar System. We think it’s important to respond. We can send our own science platform; we’ll train you up to use it. We can even establish our own Saddle Point gateway in the neutron star system. It’s all part of a wider trade and cultural deal, which—”
“So you represent the UN?”
“Not exactly.”
“We need somebody with the qualifications and experience to handle a journey like this,” Paulis said. “You’re about the right age, under forty. You’ve no dependents that we can trace.” He sighed. “A hundred years ago, we’d have sent John Glenn. Today, the best fit is the likes of you. You’ll be well paid.” He eyed Madeleine. “Believe me, very well paid.”
Madeleine thought it over, trying to figure the angles. “That Proton is sixty years old, the design even older. You don’t have much of a budget, do you?”
Paulis shrugged. “My pockets aren’t as deep as they used to be.”
Brind prickled. “What does the budget matter? For Christ’s sake, Meacher, don’t you have any wonder in your soul? I’m offering you, here, the chance to travel to the stars. My God — if I had your qualifications, I’d jump at the chance.”
“And you aren’t truly the first,” Paulis said. “Reid Malenfant—”
“ — is lost. Anyhow it’s not exactly being an astronaut,” Madeleine said sourly. “Is it? Being live cargo on a Gaijin flower-ship doesn’t count.”
“Actually a lot of people agree with you,” Paulis said. “That’s why we’ve struggled to assemble the funding. No one is interested in human spaceflight in these circumstances. Most people are happy just to wait for the Gaijin to parachute down more interstellar goodies from the sky…”
“Why don’t you just send along an automated instrument pallet? Why send a human at all?”
“No.” Brind shook her head firmly. “We’re deliberately designing for a human operator.”
“Why?”
“Because we want a human there. A human like you, God help us. We think it’s important to try to meet them on equal terms.”
Madeleine laughed. “Equal terms? We limp into orbit, and rendezvous with a giant alien ramjet capable of flying to the outer Solar System?”
“Symbolism, Meacher,” Paulis said darkly. “Symbols are everything.”
“How do you know the Gaijin respond to symbols?”
“Maybe they don’t. But people do. And it’s people I’m interested in. Frankly, Meacher, we’re seeking advantage. Not everybody thinks we should become so completely reliant on the Gaijin. You’ll have a lot of discretion out there. We need someone with… acumen. There may be opportunities.”
“What kind of opportunities?”
“To get humanity out from under the yoke of the Gaijin,” Paulis said. For the first time there was a trace of anger in his voice, passion.
Madeleine began to understand.
There were various shadowy groups who weren’t happy with the deals the various governments and corporations had been striking with the Gaijin. This trading relationship was not between two equals. And besides, the Gaijin must be following their own undeclared goals. What about the stuff they were keeping back? What would happen when the human economy was utterly dependent on the trickle of good stuff from the sky? And suppose the Gaijin suddenly decided to turn off the faucets — or, worse, decided to start dropping rocks?
Beyond that, the broader situation continued to evolve, year on year. More and more of the neighboring stars were lighting up with radio and other signals, out to a distance of some thirty light-years. It was evident that a ferocious wave of emigration was coming humanity’s way, scouring along the Orion-Cygnus Spiral Arm. Presumably those colonists were propagating via Saddle Point gateways, and they were finding their target systems empty — or undeveloped, like the Solar System. And as soon as they arrived they started to build, and broadcast.
Humans knew precisely nothing about those other new arrivals, at Sirius and Epsilon Eridani and Procyon and Tau Ceti and Altair. Maybe humans were lucky it was the Gaijin who found them first, the first to intervene in the course of human history. Or maybe not. Either way, facing this volatile and fast-changing future, it seemed unwise — to some people — to rely entirely on the goodwill of the first new arrivals to show up. Evidently those groups were now trying, quietly, to do something about it.
But Madeleine’s first priority was the integrity of her own skin.
“How far is it, to this burster?”
“Eighteen light-years.”
Madeleine knew the relativistic implications. She would come back stranded in a future thirty-six years remote. “I won’t do it.”
“It’s that or the Gulf,” Brind said evenly.
The Gulf. Shit. After twenty years of escalating warfare over the last oil reserves the Gulf was like the surface of Io: glassy nuke craters punctuated by oil wells that would burn for decades. Even with biocomp armor, her life expectancy would be down to a few months.
She turned and lifted her face to the Florida Sun. It looked like she didn’t have a choice.
But, she suspected, she was kind of glad about that. Something inside her began to stir at the thought of this improbable journey.
And crossing the Galaxy with the Gaijin might be marginally safer than flying Sängers into N’Djamena, anyhow.
Paulis seemed to sense she was wavering. “Spend some time,” he said. “We’ll introduce you to our people. And—”
“And you’ll tell me how you’re going to make me rich.”
“Exactly.” He grinned. He had very even, capped teeth.
She was flown to Kefallinia, the Ionian island that the Gaijin had been granted as a base on planet Earth. From the air the island looked as if it had been painted on the blue skin of the sea, a ragged splash of blue-gray land everywhere indented with bays and inlets, like a fractal demonstration. Off the coast she spotted naval ships, gray slabs of metal, principally a U.S. Navy battle group.