“They’re not giving it the straight stuff anymore. Houston says the President clamped down on them.”
Nigel grimaced. “Perfectly predictable.”
“Just you cripple it, Nigel, and we’ll be picking its brains.”
“Um hum.”
“But remember, go for the big nuke if it looks like it’s getting away. That’s what Houston says.”
“Sure, that’s what Houston says.”
“Huh?” Thin thread of surprise in the voice. “A finger in the eye.”
“I didn’t track you on that one.”
“Did you ever think how old it must be?” Nigel said, his words clipped. “Our lives are so short. To Snark we must look like bacilli. Whole eras and dynasties snuffed out in an instant. It looks at us with its microscope and makes lab notes, while we try to poke a finger in its eye.”
“Uh, yeah. Well, you’re coming out of radio shadow. We’d better shut up. I’ve already squirted your LogEx corrections.”
“Check.”
He was moving into the white sun’s glare again. The cabin popped and pinged and snicked as it warmed. A plaster of Paris crater below lay bisected by the moon’s terminator, its central cone perfectly symmetrical. The rim seemed glazed, smooth, above four distinct terraces that marched down to the floor.
Snick, went his cabin. Snickersnee, he thought, waiting at the edge of infinity. On the serene shore of the ocean of night, marking the minutes until the winged stranger arrives. An actor, not knowing his lines. Ready to go onstage for his big scenario.
Maybe he should have been an actor, after all. He’d tried it once at university, before engineering and systems analysis and flight training gobbled up his hours. He’d really wanted to be an actor, once, but he’d talked himself into becoming a Nigel Walmsley instead.
He warmed a tube of tea and sipped it, as well as anyone can sip from a squeeze bottle. The sun streamed in. Tea was like an unexpected warm hand in the dark. Reeling with Darjeeling, he thought, and maybe, after all, I did become an actor, finally. Icarus had been a straight bit of acting, with Providence kindly providing a busy coda of Significance at the end. And here he was for his next engagement, carefully primed, all the props in place. Opening night coming up, all the Top Secret Clearance audience clustered about their 3D sets. Best of all (until there’s a leak, anyway): no critics. This actor, a well-grounded student of the Method School, is noted for his wholehearted interest in and devotion to his performance. His previous work, while controversial, has won him some notoriety. He prefers to work in productions which seem to have a moral at the end, so the audience will believe they understood it all along.
He smiled to himself. A man with his finger on the trigger can afford a few cosmic thoughts. Politics becomes geometry, and philosophy is calculus. The universe winds about itself, snakelike, events plotted along coiled coordinates with a fine, tight geometry, the scrap paper of a mad mathematician.
He raised an eyebrow at the idea. I wonder what they put in this tea, he thought.
“Walmsley?” They had called him several times, but he was slow to answer.
“I’m busy.”
“Got your systems repped and verified?” Lewis spoke quickly, slurring one word into another and making it hard to piece together the sentence. “We received that squirt from your onboard diagnostics on your last pass. No serious trouble. A little overpressure on the CO2 backup tanks, but Houston says it is within tolerable operating limits. It looks like you’re cleared, then.”
Nigel turned off the inboard reading lamps before replying, bathing the cockpit in the deep red of the running lights. For a moment he registered only blackness, and then his eyes adjusted. He had seen this warm red glow thousands of times before, but now the sight seemed fresh and strange, portending events just beyond the point of articulation. Dante, he thought, has been here before me.
Well, he would give them what they wanted. He thumbed over the transmit.
“I verify, Hipparchus. Staging timetable is logged. LH2/LOX reading four oh three eight. Servitor inventory was just completed and LogEx reports all subsystems and backups are functional.” There, you maniacs, in your own tongue.
“I have to relay for you.” “What?”
Through the hiss of static came a smooth, well-modulated voice:
“This is Evers. I asked Hipparchus to patch me through to clear up any last-minute—”
“Simply let me deal with things. The warhead is a last resort, agreed? I’m going for a look-see, to make educated guesses from the Snark’s appearances. Then maybe contact. But I’m staying concealed as long as—”
“Yes,” Evers said slowly, voice dropping an octave. “However, we are sure the Snark will never register you. You will have the sun at your back all the way in on your run. There isn’t radar in the world that can pick you up against that background.”
“In the world. Um.”
“Oh, I see. Well”—Evers gave a small, self-deprecating chuckle—“it’s just a phrase. But our people here feel strongly that there are certain rules of thumb about detection equipment that hold true in every situation, even this one. I wouldn’t worry about it.” Pause. “But the reason I’m taking up your time—and I see there are only a few minutes left for this transmission window—is to impress you with your obligations on this mission. We down here cannot predict what that thing is going to do. The final decisions are up to you, although we will be in contact as soon as we are sure that the Snark has detected you—if it ever does, that is. To be sure, that might be long after the time for any effective action on your part is past. We will do all we can from this end, of course. For the last few hours we have been transmitting a wealth of cultural information on mathematics, science, art and so on. Ex-Comm hopes this will serve as a diversion to the computers in the Snark, though we have no way of knowing for certain. Meanwhile, our satellites circling the moon will monitor radio transmissions to keep us in touch. Silence is essential; do not broadcast on any band until the Snark shows unmistakable signs of having seen you.”
“I know all that.”
“We just want you to have these things clear in your mind,” said the voice that knew tapes were running. “You have two small missiles with chemical warheads; if they are not sufficient to cripple the Snark’s propulsion, then the nuclear—”
“I’ve got to go check out something.” Evers’s words ran on for a few seconds, until the time lag caught up with Nigel’s interruption.
“Oh. I see.” It was obvious a prepared speech had been interrupted. The beauty of Nigel’s situation was that radio silence meant no one could tell from telemetry whether he had something to do or not.
“One last thing, Nigel. This alien could be inconceivably dangerous to humanity. If anything seems to be going wrong, kill it. No, that’s too strong. The thing is just a machine, Nigel. Intelligent, yes, but it is not alive. Well, good luck. We’re counting on you down here.”
The sputter of static returned.
“We have a burn.”
He whispered it to himself through slitted white lips. There was no one at Mission Control to do it for him; it was an archaic form, really, but Nigel liked it. The canonical litany: they had a burn. He would fly the bird.
The rocket’s magic hand now pressed him into geometrical flatness, and though he breathed shallow short breaths off the top and concentrated on timing them precisely, the pain the pain would not stop shooting through the soft liquid organs of his belly. He felt sudden fear at this new vulnerability, a spreading sharp ache. He closed his eyes to find a red haze awaiting him and in the rumble of the rocket imagined himself a sunbather pinned to the hard sand, vaguely conscious of the distant gravid voice of the surf.
The fist went away. He blinked, located a toggle switch, saw a light turn green. First booster separation. The fist returned.
