Footfall

“We agreed that the probe will find no trace of us. Message Bearer is tiny on this scale. Surely the probe is not seeking us: it was launched long before we arrived. But if there were something to see, yonder camera might have seen it by now. Some evidence of our presence, vivid in their receivers … and now comes a flash of light, then silence from the probe, ever after. Would that tickle your suspicions?”

“If you were Herdmaster, would you continue to worry?”

That was cruel. At the begi

“Were I Herdmaster,” the Advisor said placidly, “I would do as you have done. Rest quiet while the probe passes through. Make no attempt to move the ship, send no message to our work force on the Foot. Let the probe pass. When the second probe comes, we will be established on the Foot. Let them try to distinguish us against an unknown background.”

And he turned from the telescope screen, perhaps pointedly, to gaze on the great brown-patterned world and its vast rings.

The Herdmaster said, “I worry. For much of their history the prey must have studied this … great gaudy ornament in their sky. They would know what to expect better than we do after less than a year. What have we missed?”

Outside the broad main ring system, a narrower ring still roiled from the wake of Message Bearer’s drive.

As she closed the gate and automatically picked up a scrap of paper that had blown into the yard, Linda Gillespie realized that she was begi

But this couldn’t really be home. It was just a rented house, a place to stay during Edmund’s tour at the Space and Missiles Systems Organization in Los

Angeles. Now that he’d been assigned as a shuttle pilot, they’d move again. Back to Houston! That would be nice. Houston treated astronauts and their families very well indeed.

It was a gloomy Los Angeles November morning, chilly even through her cashmere sweater, with low clouds and fog. The air smelled damp, with a trace of the odor of smog. There was no sunshine, although by noon there would be. It wasn’t pleasant outside.

Inside was better. She poured coffee and sat at the kitchen table. Too early for Ed to call. He wouldn’t anyway. He never did when he was out of town. It’s all very well to be married to an astronaut hero, but it would be nice to have a husband at home once in a while. The Los Angeles Times lay on the table, and she thumbed through it.

She didn’t like to be alone at home, but she didn’t want to go anywhere, either. Ed could assure her she was perfectly safe, much safer than in

Washington, where she’d grown up, and she could believe him — but she knew

Washington, and Los Angeles was a mystery. One San Francisco columnist kept teasing Los Angeles about being invisible.

There was also the Hollywood Strangler, and a man alleged to be the Freeway Killer was on trial for the torture sex murders of a dozen young boys. Great place to raise children. She folded the paper. Time to wax the kitchen floor, she decided. Ed didn’t care much, but his colonel would come to di

Ed wouldn’t approve. Not now. She gri

That thought made her frown. Ed went all gooey over her pregnancy, but it turned him off! Maybe I’ll lose interest in a month or so. I sure hope so, the way he acts.

Linda poured more coffee. The telephone rang, startling her so that she dropped the cup. It was Corningware and didn’t break, but it clattered loudly on the floor, spilling coffee everywhere.

“Hello?”

“Linda?”

“Yes?”

“By golly, it is you! It’s Roger.”

“Oh. How are you, Roger?”

“Great. Glad you haven’t forgotten me.”

“No, I haven’t forgotten.” You don’t forget your first, she thought. First love, first sex experience, first-a lot of firsts with Roger, back in high school and just after. And what should I say? That he hasn’t called in a long time, but that’s all right because I didn’t want him to? “Roger, how did you get our number?”

“We reporters have our ways. Hey, I’d like to see you. What about a really unusual experience?”

She giggled. “Roger, I’m a married woman.”

“Sure. Happily?”

“Yes, of course!”

“Good. Good for you and Edmund, anyway. What I have in mind is in Edmund’s line. JPL. The Saturn encounter. Voyager is out there getting pictures nobody understands, and we can see them firsthand.” He paused a moment. “It’s this way. I’m here in Los Angeles covering the Saturn story. Not exactly Pulitzer Prize material, but I took the assignment to get away from Washington for a while. So I’m out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where the pictures come in. We get briefings from the scientists, and there’s science-fiction writers, and it’s a hell of a show. Let me pick you up on my way out, you’re almost on the way. I’ll have you home by di

And Ed was gone for a week. “It’s tempting. It really is, but I can’t.”

“Sure you can.”

“Roger, my sister is staying here!”

“So what? I’ll have you home before di

Linda thought about that. Je

“Yeah, I think so. Just a second, there’s a list — yeah, he’s there. Know him?”

“No, but Edmund likes his books. I bought one for his birthday. Think I could get it autographed?”

“An astronaut’s wife? Hell, those sci-fi types will turn flips to meet you.”

Nat Reynolds was hung over, and it was far too early to be up. It was a miracle he’d made it up the arroyo to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory parking lot and got the Porsche into the tiny slot the JPL guard had showed him.

There were cars parked for half a mile along the road leading to where JPL nestled in what had once been a lonely arroyo. The sweet immediately outside the press center was nearly blocked by TV vans, and a thick web of cables spa

The von Karman Auditorium was a madhouse. Nearly every square foot of floor space was covered by someone: scientist, public relations, press corps, most holding coffee cups or carrying bulky objects.

The press corps was divided. There were the working press and there were the science-fiction writers, and no doubt about who was who. The press was there to work. Some had fun, but all had deadlines. The SF types were there to gawk, and be part of the scene, and absorb the atmosphere, and maybe someday it would get into a story and maybe not. Their world was being created and they were here to see it happen.