Markov felt like a sailor returning home from a shipwreck. He was stiff-kneed with muscle strain, sticky with salt and sand, and sunburned painfully on his face and high forehead.
Every muscle ached. He had rowed the damnable outrigger canoe for hours while Jo sat grinning at him. If it hadn’t been for the brightness of the aurorae and the lights from the buildings on Kwajalein, Markov knew they would have drifted out to sea in the nighttime darkness and perished in the watery wilderness.
Now he clumped up the front stairs of his own little bungalow, crossed the uneven cement porch and pushed through the front door. It was not yet nine o’clock but it felt like four in the morning to Markov. Maria will be surprised to see me home so early, he thought.
She was not in the front room. He shrugged, and the movement under his shirt made him realize that his neck and shoulders were also sunburned.
With a sigh that looked forward to nothing more than collapsing face down on his bed, he opened the bedroom door.
Maria gaped at him, startled, shocked. The suitcase on her bed beside her was filled with strange electronic controls. A tiny glowing screen was flickering with a jagged trace of light, like an EKG.
But it was the expression on her face that stunned Markov. Guilt, anger, fear were all there. Her mouth was open but no sound issued from it. Her eyes stared at him and he could see all the way into her soul through them. She looked the way Lucifer must have looked when he realized that God had opened the pits of hell for him.
“What are you doing?” Markov bellowed. “What is this?”
All pain forgotten, he advanced on his wife. She got up from the bed, backed away from him, confusion and shame written across her face.
Markov looked from his wife to the suitcase of electronic gear. He grabbed the suitcase and raised it over his head.
“Don’t!” Maria screamed, and leaped at him.
He hurled the suitcase against the nearest wall. It split in two under the impact of the cement.
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” Maria screeched, clawing at him.
He pushed her away and she bounced onto the bed. Markov stepped over to the electronic equipment. One baleful red light was still on. In a cold fury he smashed his sandaled foot against it. Glass shattered and plastic buckled. Again and again he stomped the suitcase until nothing was left but unrecognizable shards of glass and circuit boards.
Maria was round-eyed. “You…you’ve destroyed a vital piece of state property.”
“Be silent, woman,” he growled, “and be grateful that I don’t do the same to you. I don’t know what that equipment was for, but it was for no good, I can see that much.”
Staring at the smashed equipment, Maria broke into sobs. “They’ll kill us both, Kirill. They’ll kill us both.”
“Then let them!” Markov snapped. “Perhaps we’d be better off dead.”
Chapter 33
I reject as worthless all attempts to calculate from theoretical principles the frequency of occurrence of intelligent life forms in the universe. Our ignorance of the chemical processes by which life arose on earth makes such calculations meaningless. Depending on the details of the chemistry, life may be abundant in the universe, or it may be rare, or it may not exist at all outside our own planet. Nevertheless, there are good scientific reasons to pursue the search for evidence of intelligence with some hope for a successful outcome…. The societies whose activities we are most likely to observe are those which have expanded, for whatever good or bad reasons, to the maximum extent permitted by the laws of physics.
Now comes my main point. Given plenty of time, there are few limits to what a technological society can do. Take first the question of colonization….
Stoner sat alone in the corner booth, feet up on the opposite bench, a half-empty bottle of champagne sitting in a plastic bucket on the table.
Some big night, he said to himself. You sure are having a wild time, old buddy.
The club was filling up with the after-dinner crowd. Somebody had put blaring disco music on the stereo, and people had to shout to hear themselves over it. A few people came over to Stoner’s table from time to time, but he quickly and firmly shooed them away.
Maybe I ought to go over to McDermott’s trailer and see if she’s really there, Stoner thought. But what if she is? Then what do you do? Drag her off by the hair of her head?
He yanked the bottle from its icy water and poured his plastic glass full. The champagne looked pretty flat. California stuff, he guessed, peering at the label. Christ, not even that: New York State. He dunked the bottle back into its bucket so hard that some of the ice water splashed on him. Blinking, Stoner swung his feet to the floor.
Hell, I can’t even get drunk when I want to.
The front door of the club banged open so hard that the crash made everyone jump. Stoner saw Schmidt standing framed in the doorway, shoulders hunched and head lowered as if he were going to ram a wall.
For a moment all conversations stopped. The disco music blared inanely on, and Schmidt’s heavy, open-mouthed breathing seemed to match the music’s thumping beat.
Stoner turned back to his champagne. The club filled with talk again. People moved, laughed, drank. But Schmidt, burning eyes fixed on Stoner, pushed his way past the crowd at the bar, heading for the corner booth.
“It’s all your fault,” he said to Stoner.
Stoner looked up at him.
“You can sit there and drink champagne,” Schmidt said, his words only slightly slurred, “and keep us here in this godforsaken hole.”
“What are you talking about?” Stoner asked.
“Sure, you drink champagne and wait for the Nobel Prize while the rest of us rot away!” the young astronomer said, his voice rising.
“Sit down,” Stoner said, “and stop making a fool of yourself.”
“I’ll show you who’s a fool!” Schmidt shouted.
He grabbed Stoner by the shirt and yanked him out of the booth as easily as a child lifts a toy. Stoner felt his shin scrape against the table’s edge and then he was completely off his feet and thrown to the floor.
Everything in the club stopped. Even the music.
“Champagne!” Schmidt screamed, slapping the bottle and its plastic bucket off the table.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Stoner bawled, scrambling back to his feet. No one in the club moved, they all stood frozen, wide-eyed, watching the two of them.
Turning on him, Schmidt roared, “It’s all your fault!” and leaped at Stoner, grabbing him by the throat. His thumbs were like steel against Stoner’s windpipe. Stoner gagged, couldn’t breathe.
Instinctively, Stoner locked his hands together and swung both arms hard inside Schmidt’s wrists, ripping the younger man’s hands away from his throat.
“You’re crazy,” he croaked raggedly.
But Schmidt, his eyes afire, screamed back, “You want to steal everything from me.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Stoner saw the club door swing open again and Jo stepped in, hair still glistening wet. Her mouth dropped open as she saw the two men confronting each other.
Schmidt swung at Stoner and he saw the punch coming but he was too surprised and slow to avoid it. The Dutchman’s heavy fist caught him on the cheek and spun him around. He crashed into the booth’s table and sprawled over it. Schmidt was on him before Stoner could turn over, both knees on his back, pounding his head and shoulders with bunched fists.