By the time they landed the inside of the shuttle was thick with the smell of airsickness, and six-year-old Jeromolo Bill was sickest of all. But he got them there.
Aunt Eve pulled herself together and stood up.
"We're going out now," Jeron guessed, watching her face.
Eve looked around at her corps of hardened adventurers — average age, nine; average height, not much over four feet. She smiled and shook her head.
"Not just yet," she said. "We're going to be good guests. We're going to stay right here in the lander until something happens outside, to give our hosts time to get ready for us."
24
IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND IT HAD STOPPED raining. The President's Press Secretary was grateful for the latter, if not the former. She had been up all night printing the President's announcements, and now had the job of hand-delivering them before daybreak. There were only about eight that really had to be delivered, because their recipients were the important ones. But you never knew which eight were important in the President's eyes. So she had to deliver them all, forty identical little white envelopes, each containing a card that said:
THE PRESIDENT of The United States Takes pleasure in inviting
To attend the Reception of our Visitors from Alpha Cent. R.S.V.P.
As she bicycled along the broad, empty avenues she could see lights in some of the windows. A whickering from the stables of the Pennsylvania delegation, where the lordly Amish had deigned to interrupt their sleep. Everyone knew. Everyone could see. Any minute now— Yes! There it was! The storm past, the skies had cleared, and the news was there in the sky for all to see, a great new golden star that swung through the constellations at the rate of four degrees a minute, the width of the full Moon every eight seconds. She slipped an envelope under the door of Blair House (yes, lights there, too, as the people from Puget talked among themselves about the great event), and headed out toward the less important stops by the mosquito-ridden margins of the river—the homes of the Supreme Court justices, the lesser Cabinet members, the so-called "delegations" with suspect credentials who had turned up for the advertised Tenth Anniversary gala, and found themselves present for something far greater.
The satellite was almost out of sight again at the far horizon by the time she had finished the last of them and walked her bicycle to the top of the levee for the easy ride home, and there was the lander. A great gold marble. Sitting there across the river and waiting for morning.
It was not cold, but she shivered.
By dawn the city was wide awake. "They're getting ready to come out!" everyone was shouting to everyone else, but each time the rumor was false. There was a spotter leaning out the windows at the top of the Washington Monument with Army field glasses and a battery-powered walkie-talkie, and he kept everyone posted on what was happening. Which, so far, was nothing—fortunately, in the opinion of the Vice President, trying to get things ready for company. Half the Marine guard had been impressed into peeling potatoes for the great welcoming banquet planned for the evening, and the other half was sewing buttons on its uniforms for the grand dress parade on the White House lawn; and, in the middle of it all, the President sat like a stone.
"Oh, Jimbo," his wife cried as she came breathless into the Oval Office and found him unmoving there. "Can't you get yourself going?" She felt his coffee pot and found it was cold, nodded to the orderly for a refill. "What a day, honey! I been down to the levee to see them. Jimbo, that thing is big. And it's got no wings. All it looks like to me is the darlingest big flying pumpkin you ever saw—but please get yourself dressed, will you?"
She sat down happily, pulling off her galoshes. Even with the sandbags all around and the dikes along the banks of the river, the White House grounds stayed soggy. "You know, honey, this is going to be the nicest time we ever had! Better than your Second Inaugural. Better than when the wine ship got stuck down by the Kennedy Center. Better than anything!"
Her. husband shook his head. He said, "We weren't bothering them. What they got to bother us for?"
The Vice President scratched the soles of her feet, studying her husband. "It's going to be all right, honey. You'll see. Whatever it is you got on your mind. Now, you got to get out of that thing and get yourself dressed up." He was still sitting in his robe. It was made of pure silk and it had the Presidential seal on its breast, but it did not close across his belly; it had been made for a much smaller man. "Come on, Jimbo! What's the matter?" she demanded.
He said bitterly, "What should be the matter? I hear you got troops around the spaceship."
"Well, sure, Jimbo. Just Cousin Buzz's company. They look real nice, and you could look at it like they're a kind of guard of honor for them."
"I hope you don't get them sore at us."
His wife sighed. "If they're not sore now," she said reasonably, "I don't really see what we could do to make them that way. Now change your clothes. The gray suit's clean, and you've got some nice white shirts in the closet that I brought down from Virginia." She picked up his desk clock and shook it, then decided it was running. "You have time to take a shower, honey. Company won't be here for a couple hours, easy."
The President nodded thoughtfully, moving over to the window. His face was somber. He stared toward where the spaceship was, though of course it was not in sight—too many buildings, too many overgrown trees. "Everybody been told they got to dress up for this?" he demanded.
"Course they have, honey." His wife came up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. "Listen, put your happy face on, Jimbo. This is a party. We're going to give these folks the nicest damn formal reception this town's seen in twenty years. The fire department's got three big pumpers ready, and they're going to squirt hoses in the air, and that skinny little chick from Puget said she got some fireworks for us."
"Fireworks?" said the President, smiling for the first time.
"You bet. And we're going to have a real fine state banquet. Smell the cooking?" He nodded, but did not turn around, and the Vice President said softly, "What is it, Jimbo? Something to do with that fellow you buried a couple-three weeks ago? Is that it?" He shrugged morosely. "You been real edgy ever since then," she persisted. "You want to tell me who he was?"
The President turned and looked at her, then shook his head. The President was not a bad man. He wasn't a particularly good one, either—you couldn't be altogether good and still do what you had to do to rise to the top in the yeasty bubble of the world as it was—but he tried to deal fairly with everyone. Usually. And a little more than fairly with his Vice President-and-wife.
He threw off the brocaded robe and scratched his chest for a moment before heading for the shower. "Let it lay, honey," he said. "You're better off if you don't know."
The skinny little chick from Puget, whose name was Darien McCullough, was busy deploying her forces. She had come to Washington with a party of five—you hardly traveled across a continent with fewer than that these days—and every one of them had a job. The present job of the two strongest of them was to carry the load of skyrockets and Roman candles she had picked up in York State on the way down to the White House. Another was being wired for instant communication, as Darien was herself, and the fifth was given the job of staying home and keeping an eye on things while Darien gave in to her curiosity.