Second Contact

Kassquit watched the American ship-space station no longer. But for the exhaust, she could not have proved it moved. The motion she saw might as easily have come from the camera.

“We have sent urgent queries to President Warren, leader of the not-empire known as the United States,” the commentator said. “Fine details of his reply are still being translated, but he asserts that the ship was built for no warlike purpose, but solely for the exploration of this solar system.”

“How can we trust that?” Kassquit said, as if someone were standing beside her insisting that she trust it. “They built the ugly thing without telling us what they were up to.”

“Their ship is too slow and ungainly to make a likely weapons platform.” The commentator might have been answering her. “It is also moving away from Tosev 3. But investigation will continue until its nature may be precisely ascertained.”

“Its nature should have been ascertained a long time ago,” Kassquit said. “Security has done a slipshod job.”

Again, she was arguing with the commentator. This time, he did not even seem to pay attention to her. He said, “Fleetlord Atvar of the conquest fleet and Fleetlord Reffet of the colonization fleet have issued a joint statement affirming that there is no cause for alarm in this new development, and expressing relief that this ship does appear to be no more than an oversized exploration vessel, as the ruler of the not-empire known as the United States has declared.”

“And if we start blindly accepting a Big Ugly’s word, where will we be?” Kassquit answered her own question: “In trouble, nowhere else.”

But the commentator sounded convinced everything was fine. “The subject of the American space station has been on the minds of males and females in recent times, as the computer discussion areas show,” he said. “Now we see that much of the anxious speculation was misinformed, as anxious speculation commonly is.”

“How do you know we see anything of the sort?” Kassquit demanded, as if the male could hear her.

The U.S. spacecraft disappeared from the screen, to be replaced by a graphic showing its projected course. “As you can observe, the craft is headed for none of the major planets of this solar system. It is not heading toward Home or any other world of the Empire. And, with its feeble acceleration, it must lack the fuel capacity to be a starship. Its most likely destination appears to be one of the many useless and insignificant rocks orbiting between Tosev 4, a small world, and Tosev 5, a gas giant larger than any in Home’s system. The American Big Uglies have previously sent chemically powered exploration rockets out among these minor planets, as the Tosevites term them. Now it appears they are visiting them on a larger scale. As far as the Race is concerned, they are welcome to them.”

There, for once, Kassquit agreed with the noisy male. Here as in so many other ways, the star Tosev’s solar system was different from those of other stars in the Empire: it held far more such debris. No one was sure why; speculation centered on Tosev’s greater mass.

How typical of Big Uglies, she thought, to spend so much time and so many resources going off to examine what is not worth examining in the first place. Feeling obstreperous (and hoping that feeling was not a product of her own Tosevite heritage), she decided to send Sam Yeager a message. So this, then, is what so concerned you, she wrote. A large, clumsy spaceship that was not worth being kept secret.

I agree, he wrote back a little later. It was not worth being kept secret. In that case, why was it?

Who can tell, with Tosevites? Kassquit answered.

This time, Yeager did not reply. She wondered if she’d insulted him. She didn’t want to do that by accident. When she offended, she aimed to get full value from it.

Then she began to wonder if he’d been trying to tell her something else, something she would miss if she weren’t paying attention. If the American space station or spaceship or whatever it turned out to be had been kept so secret without there being any need for that, all that implied was that Big Uglies were fools, a notion Kassquit was prepared to take on faith.

But not all Big Uglies were fools all the time. She didn’t like believing that so well, but the conclusion was inescapable. Tosev 3, or some parts of Tosev 3, had come too far too fast for her to doubt it. Suppose the American Tosevites had had good reason to keep their project secret. What then?

Then, by logic inescapable as that of geometry, their spacecraft wasn’t so harmless as it now seemed. They had to have something in mind beyond what the Race was seeing.

“But what?” Kassquit wondered aloud. “Their atomic motor?”

Maybe. The idea appealed to her. Having fought the Race with explosive-metal bombs, the American Tosevites had to know the Race would be less than delighted at their using nuclear energy in space. Before the space station turned into a ship, the United States could have shouted its peaceful intentions as often as it liked, but it would have had a hard time convincing the Race it was telling the truth.

Was the United States telling the truth now? Had the Big Ugly named Sam Yeager, the Big Ugly who was and was not Regeya, hinted otherwise? Or was Kassquit reading too much into what he had written? And even if she read him aright, was he really in any position to know?

Those were good questions. Kassquit wished she knew the answers to all of them. As things were, she didn’t know the answer to any of them. She sighed. As she came into adulthood, she was discovering that such frustrations were part of life.

20

Fotsev’s head came up sharply. His eye turrets swung now this way, now that, as he prowled through the streets of Basra. “Something is wrong here,” he said in a voice that came out flat because he forced all the nervousness from it. “Something does not taste the way it should.”

“Truth,” Gorppet said. His eye turrets were moving u

“Everything seems quiet to me,” Betvoss said.

“I wish you seemed quiet to me,” Gorppet told him.

Betvoss liked to contradict for the fun of contradicting. Fotsev had seen that before. But, this time, the other male’s words helped Fotsev see where the trouble lay. “Everything does seem quiet,” he said. Gorppet gave him a reproachful look till he went on, “Everything seems too quiet.”

“Yes, it does.” Gorppet used an emphatic cough. “That is it exactly! Not many Big Uglies on the street, not even many of the cursed yapping creatures they use for pets.”

“Not many weapons, either.” Betvoss kept right on contradicting. “Usually the local Tosevites have about as much firepower as we do. If anyone thinks I am sorry to see something different for once, he is an addled egg.”

“If something is different, that is likely to mean something is wrong,” Fotsev said. His opinion sprang partly from the i

Gorppet made the affirmative hand gesture. “If things go quiet all of a sudden, you always wonder what the Big Uglies are hiding. Or you should.”

“And it could be anything,” Fotsev said gloomily. “It could be anything at all. Remember the riots we had to put down when the colonization fleet started landing? If I never hear one more Big Ugly wrapped in rags screaming ‘Allahu akbar!’ I will be the happiest male on the face of this planet.”

Betvoss didn’t argue with that. Fotsev didn’t see how even Betvoss could have argued with that. Another male on patrol said, “Hardly any of the little half-grown beggars around today. And if that does not prove something is wrong, what would?”