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“I want to know what you are doing,” Drucker answered stolidly. “For my country’s sake, it is my business to learn what you are doing.”
“It’s not your business,” the American said. “It never was, and it never will be.” He hesitated, then went on, “Looks like you’re going to pass about half a mile astern of our boom.”
“Yes,” Drucker said. “I will not to you lie. I want to see what you are at the end of it there making.”
“I noticed.” The radioman’s voice was dry. He hesitated again. “Listen, pal, if you’re smart, you’ll change your trajectory a bit, on account of if you don’t it won’t be healthy for you. You know what I’m saying? You don’t want to pass right astern of that boom, not unless you don’t have any family you care about.”
“Radiation?” Drucker asked. The radioman didn’t answer, as he hadn’t answered his last question about radiation. Drucker thought it over. Was he being bluffed? If it weren’t for radiation, he wouldn’t have been up here this far. “Thank you,” he said, and used his attitude jets to change course.
What the devil were the Americans doing? He couldn’t see as well as he would have liked, not even through the viewfinder of his camera with the long lens attached. One thing he did see: the boom looked very stiff and strong. He didn’t know what that meant, but he noted it-in space, nobody built any stronger, any heavier, than he had to.
The Geiger counter Drucker had along started chattering. He listened to it with pursed lips. Here he was off-axis to the unit at the end of the boom, and he was still picking up this much radiation? How much would he have taken had he gone right behind it, as he’d pla
He wasn’t sorry when his orbit took him away from the space station, but he did some furious calculating for a burn that would bring him back to its neighborhood as fast as possible. Spaceflight was like the rest of the Werhmacht in some ways. Hurry up and wait was one of them. He had to wait till the proper time to make the burn, and then again till his changed trajectory brought him toward the space station.
And, as he began the approach, he stared first at his radar and then out the window of the A-45’s upper stage-for the space station, far and away the biggest and heaviest human-made object in Earth orbit, was nowhere near where it was supposed to be.
To her surprise, Kassquit discovered she missed Regeya. No one came right out and told her, but she gathered he really was a Big Ugly. Because he was one, he had no place on the Race’s computer network. But the chatter about the American space station was less interesting without him. He’d known a lot, and he’d had a knack for asking interesting questions. After he was purged from the network, discussion faltered.
Not long after Regeya vanished, Kassquit got an electronic message relayed through the Race’s consulate in some city or another in the Tosevite not-empire known as the United States. I greet you, it read. I do not know that I much like you, but I greet you anyhow. Unless I am wrong, you are the one who figured out I was nothing but a miserable Big Ugly looking where he should not. Congratulations, I suppose. Even as a Big Ugly, I do have access to some of your network, which is how I am sending you this. Best regards, Sam Yeager.
She read the message through several times. Then, slowly, she made the affirmative hand gesture. Sam Yeager the Tosevite sounded exactly like Regeya, the purported male of the Race.
He still took her for a female of the Race. That gave her a certain amount-a large amount-of pleasure, pleasure of the same sort she’d known when she made the hateful researcher Tessrek back down. In those moments, life looked like a game, a game in which she’d just won a turn.
“How do I answer?” she murmured to herself. It wasn’t an easy question. She’d never exchanged words with a wild Tosevite before, not knowingly. If she kept doing it, would he realize she was a Tosevite, too? He was a clever male; she’d seen that. Could she stand being discovered? What would he think of her?
I greet you, she wrote in reply. Her back straightened. She stuck out her chin. No matter what the Tosevite thought of her, she was proud of herself. No, she wouldn’t let him know she was anything but a female of the Race. He wouldn’t find out anything different. She’d make sure he didn’t, by the Emperor. Your spying was doomed to fail, she went on. You ca
She studied that, then decided to transmit it. She did not think the wild Big Ugly would take it for undue familiarity. He might not belong to the Race, but he did show considerable understanding of it. He had, in fact, fooled males and females who truly came from eggs.
I hope we shall become friends, you and I, Yeager responded. Tosevites and the Race are going to be sharing this planet for a long time. I have said it before-we need to get along with each other. Kassquit made the affirmative gesture again. Then the Tosevite wrote, I have a question for you: why, when you thought I was Regeya, did you say you would not talk with me on the telephone?
Kassquit studied those words with dismay. No, this Tosevite was anything but a fool. He noticed discrepancies and put them together. And he knew she was a female, even if not of which species. She couldn’t say, for instance, that she was a veteran with a horrible scar she didn’t like to display on the screen.
Yeager sent another message while waiting for her reply. You would have found out for sure I was a Tosevite if we had talked on the telephone, he wrote. I speak the language of the Race pretty well, but there are some sounds I ca
“I know,” Kassquit whispered. “Oh, I know.” The language of the Race was the only one she knew, but she spoke it mushily, too. She couldn’t help it. Like this Yeager’s, her mouth was the wrong shape.
Again, she asked herself how she was supposed to answer that. Telephones are too spontaneous, she wrote at last. I might have given away something I should not have. And that was true-she’d have given away that she was a Big Ugly by birth. But Yeager would think (she hoped he’d think) she was talking about security.
All right, then, he replied. I hope whatever it is you ca
She was pondering her reply when a flashing red star appeared in the lower right-hand corner of her computer screen. That meant an urgent news flash. She gave up on her message-the Tosevite could wait. She wanted to find out what was going on.
The image that appeared on her screen when she switched to the news feed made her exclaim in surprise. She’d seen video of the American Big Uglies’ space station before, and had spent a lot of time discussing it on the network. Now here it was-and it was moving. She saw a faint glowing stream of expelled reaction mass emerging from the lump at the end of the new boom.
A commentator from the Race was saying, “-is the first known use by the Big Uglies of a motor powered by atomic energy. It appears to be a fission motor, not the far more efficient and energetic fusion reactors we have used for so long. Acceleration is feeble, hardly more than one part of gravity per hundred. Nevertheless, as you see, it moves.”