“It’s really not the same,” he whispered, his attention so rapt on the image in front of him that he could scarcely breathe.
“What isn’t?” asked Mike.
“I’ve been looking at that view of the Earth since Gemini, but seeing the poster and seeing the real thing… I just don’t have the words.” He swallowed hard, as if there was an obstruction in his throat.
“Parallax?”
“Huh? Oh, sure, out here it’s three-dimensional, but that’s not all of it. Not by a long shot.” He shook his head. “I can’t help thinking about Michael Collins.”
“Apollo 11.”
“Yeah. Aldrin and Armstrong got to the Moon, Collins stayed in orbit. Cart you think of anyone more alone than a man in orbit over the far side, out of radio contact with anybody? He wrote a book about it later, and I think Calliope missed a bet when Urania got him first.”
“This is very special to you, isn’t it?”
“Mike, this is where I’ve wanted to be all my life, ever since I found an issue of Astounding in my Uncle Rollo’s sea-trunk.” He touched the screen lightly. “All those covers, all those stories, and that unforgettable smell. All that led up to this.”
He cleared his throat, then turned back to Mike and smiled. “Hey, I knew if I clapped long and loud enough, Tinkerbell would make me fly.”
Mike crackled. “Some fairy. Think you can get us home by clicking your heels?”
“Maybe. Can’t guarantee Kansas, though.”
“I have several things on file that I’d like to ask you about, Bubba,” Hoss said. “Films that seem to have no purpose as teaching stories, but that are curiously enlightening nonetheless.”
“Hmph. You got a directory?” The Thunt spoke a command, and an almost endless list scrolled by on the screen. “Hotdamn, Hoss, where’d you get all this?”
“You’ve been broadcasting it for the past fifty years or more. Some of it is unintelligible, even given a study of your languages, but a lot of it is very Thuntic. I especially enjoy the films of Robert Clampett.”
Bubba blinked. “I’m a Tex Avery man, myself, but vintage Beany and Cecil is awful hard to beat.”
“Oh, dear,” Mike muttered. “Trapped in a small scoutship with cartoon fans. Shoot me now.”
“Ignore him, Hoss, he’s a barbarian. He don’t even understand roller derby—not that anybody does, I s’pose. You got One Froggy Evening or Bad Luck Blackie?”
“I have both. They seem to be human favorites. They’re certainly broadcast often enough.”
“Then settle back and I’ll try to explain.”
It was close to 4:00 P.M., Central Garage time, when they at last entered Thuntic space. Stars which had been slightly elongated and red/blue-shifted (looking more blurry than anything else, Bubba thought) came into focus. Bubba asked Hoss if he could pull up a schematic of the system on the viewer; Hoss could and did. There wasn’t a lot to see that Bubba didn’t have at home; several planets visible as tiny disks, at least one of which appeared to be ringed, and a star that looked smaller and brighter than Sol.
“Boy, Superman would love this system,” he thought.
Hoss spoke into a headset, (mostly low rumbles; Thuntic seemed to be modulated the same way human speech was, Bubba noted with interest. It was also, at least partially, a positional language; he heard sharp gutteral clicks that seemed to be pitched at the high-, mid- and low-ranges). There was no audible response but Hoss finally touched his forehead with the back of his hand in a gesture of what must have been acquiescence, and turned to Bubba.
“We’re being approached by patrols from the Presidio,” he said. “We are to proceed to the Governors’ Complex in the capital city. The Council will convene tomorrow for the Trial. We’ll be escorted there under guard.”
“Nice of ’em.”
“I doubt they’re guarding us, Bubba,” Mike corrected. “They’re more likely guarding against us.”
Bubba looked at Hoss, but the expression under the loose skin was unreadable. “ ‘Once more into the breach, dear friends,’ ” he misquoted, “ ‘for Grid, for Goofy, and Saint Walt!’ ” There was a slight nervousness in his voice.
Within an hour, they had reached Thuntun, and were being escorted by a pair of patrol ships. Obviously designed for operating both in and out of the atmosphere, they were sleek and powerful. No armaments were visible, but Bubba didn’t expect them to be; anything that looked like a gun would spoil the aerodynamics, and these were aircraft as well as spacecraft.
As they knifed into the atmosphere of Hoss’s home-world, escort still bracketing them, their destination quickly became visible through the clouds: a complex of buildings that sprawled in all directions, one side of which seemed to disappear into a jungle. There was also a flat, square expanse that contained several of the same sort of ships that were riding herd on them.
“Nice planet you got down there,” Bubba said. “I know I can breathe the air, since you didn’t have any trouble breathing ours, but what’s it like?”
“Thank you. There is a little more oxygen than you’re used to, but very few hydrocarbons. We burn no petroleum here. I can open a vent if you’d like a sample.” Hoss turned a valve, and air from outside hissed into the cabin. Bubba leaned close to sniff.
“Smells a little funny, but I’ve been to Urbanna for the Oyster Festival, and if I can eat that close to a fish processing plant, nothing here is gonna bother me.”
They landed soon after, and when Hoss opened the hatch, guards in full harness were standing at attention just outside. Hoss exited first, Bubba following with Mike slung around his neck on a camera strap.
As they walked towards the complex, Bubba noticed a slight lightheadedness, which he ascribed to the higher percentage of oxygen. He also noticed a briskness to his pace, and asked Hoss about Thuntun’s specific gravity.
“Not quite 90 percent of Earth’s. Be careful walking downstairs.”
“Gotcha.”
There were Thunts on either side of them, two leading, and one in the back. It seemed to be a largely ceremonial guard, since there were no visible weapons; all of them, however, looked more than capable of dealing with the trio bare-handed should any of them decide to raise a ruckus.
“What’s the agenda, Hoss?” Bubba asked.
“We’ll be shown to quarters. After that, the council will inform us of our status: prisoners, detainees, or guests. That will have been decided once they knew I was coming back; we won’t have long to wait.”
“OK. Any chance I can light up my pipe? It helps me think, but I don’t want to pester anybody with it.”
“Perhaps, if the Council has decided that we aren’t prisoners. Guest quarters have facilities to deal with the smoke.”
They reached the doors of the large building, which were opened by guards wearing what must have been uniforms: short, dark green vests and Sam Browne belts holding pouches. Again, no weapons were visible.
“Hoss,” Bubba said out of the side of his mouth, “none of these ol’ boys are packing heat. Is that standard operating procedure?”
“For these circumstances and at this place, yes. There are emplacements where we cannot see them, and you can be certain that we re under the scrutiny of the council, if not my Progenitors as well. By the way,” he added, aping Bubba’s prison-yard speech, “we three are the only ones present who speak your language. We don’t have to whisper.”