Footfall

He couldn’t see the expression behind the darkened glass of Ed Gillespie’s helmet. Gillespie waited.

“I’m fine! Fine!” Wes stayed uncertainly in the airlock. Space was wonderful, but there was so much of it! He felt bouncy, happy; he sounded that way too.

“Good.” The cosmonaut pushed into Dawson’s glove a device vaguely resembling pliers; the business end was already closed around the line. “If you will move out of the airlock—”

Wes grasped the line grip and moved out of the airlock door. Ed Gillespie came up beside him. Gillespie said nothing, but Wes was grateful: someone familiar, in this strange and wonderful place.

The airlock cycled again, and Greeley emerged. The cosmonaut handed him a line gripper. “Remember, there is no way to get lost. You need only jump. When you near the airlock, squeeze the handle and friction will slow you.” The Russian’s accent was noticeable even through the electronics of the suit radios.

“Fine.” They’d showed him most of it in briefings, but it wasn’t the same.

“You’re on your own, then,” Ed Gillespie said. “See you in Houston.” He clapped Wes on the shoulder and climbed into the airlock.

“Right. My regards to Linda.” he spoke automatically. He was watching the Soviet cosmonaut. Dawson took a deep breath.

The Russian jumped.

Dawson waited until the Soviet was across before he moved. It took nerve, for a man who was already falling. A good jump maybe a bit too hard…, airlock coming up fast…, he wasn’t slowing at all! Dawson braked too soon, left himself short of the airlock.

Greeley thumped into him from behind. Greeley was massive:

an Air Force Captain who had earned his letter in football as a halfback. His cheerful voicewas a bit ti

Several people waited beyond the airlock. One was a woman in her forties. A legless man floated toward Wes and deftly helped him to remove his helmet. No one spoke.

“Hi!” Wes said.

“Hello.” The woman spoke grudgingly.

The airlock opened, and the Soviet cosmonaut entered. The legless man assisted him in opening his helmet. The cosmonaut gri

“Ah! Thank you,” Wes said. “I hadn’t expected the commander himself to assist me—”

“I enjoy going outside,” Rogachev said. “I have all too few opportunities.”

The others seemed friendlier now.

“Allow me to introduce you, but quickly,” Rogachev said. “When we have removed these suits, you can be more properly Welcomed. This is First Deputy Commander Aliana Aleksandmvna Thtsikova. Deputy Commander Drnitri Parfenovich Gru shin. Station Engineer Ustinov.”

These three were lined up, Tutsikova closest to Wes. They all looked typically Russian to Dawson’s untrained eye. There were three more in the crowded corridor, including the legless man, but Rogachev made no move to introduce them.

It would be difficult to shake hands in zero gravity, and Wes didn’t try. The airlock door opened again, to admit Captain Greeley. The legless cosmonaut went to help remove his helmet. Rogachev was already leading the way down the corridor, and Wes had no choice but to follow.

“In here,” Rogachev said. “Mitya will aid you with your suit. He will then show you where we will await you.” His tone changed. “Nikolai.”

“I come,” the legless man said, and launched himself after Rogachev.

The compartment Vies was led into was small, but larger than he had expected. It had some gravity; hardly enough to notice, but sufficient that objects settled to one deck, and Wes could lie on that deck to allow his suit to be removed.

Mitya did not look like the others. He was small, almost tiny, and his face was very oriental, almost pure Tatar. He talked constantly as he assisted Dawson in getting out of the pressure Suit. Vies couldn’t understand a word, although Mitya seemed to understand English.

When they had the pressure suit off, Mitya produced a pair of dark blue coveralls. On the left breast was the name DAWS0N, in both Roman and Cyrillic letters. There was also a patch, with the stylized hammer-shaped symbol of Kosmograd. The station’s image was marked with a Red Star and the Soviet CCCP.

That’s why they said I needn’t bring my own clothes. They want me in their uniform. Vies gri

The Soviet was gri

Sergeant Ben Mailey was accustomed to shepherding VIPs, but he’d never seen a group quite like this one. Idly he listened to the chatter behind him. They’d put five passengers in a helicopter built for many more. The trip from the Colorado Springs airfield to Cheye

He had his share of tall this trip. Sergeant Mailey tended to notice that. Five feet five, wide and round, he dreaded what he would look like without the Army exercises they made him take. You’d want to roll him down a bowling alley. But three of his passengers were six feet or taller, and two of those were women. He glanced at the passenger list. That tall man playing tour

guide was Curtis, of Hollywood, California. It was easy enough to hear him, even over the helicopter motors. “That’s the Broadmoor Hotel. One of the world’s top hotels, and not built because of the Air Force Academy or NORAD or anything else. Remember the old Penrose machine? One of the younger sons got too rough even for that crowd, and they sent him out here about the turn of the century as a remittance man. Had nothing to do, so he built the world’s best hotel in the shadow of Pikes Peak.”

Which was interesting. Mailey had never heard that story before. Unfortunately, the guy knew more, and now he was revealing too many of the secrets of Cheye

Not that it mattered. They were all going inside, and maybe it wouldn’t be so easy to get out again…

Four of them had come in pairs, but the dark-haired woman had come alone, If you’d put her in Playboy — she was that pretty — you’d have had to use the centerfold. She was that tall. When Curtis shut up she said, “What I meant is, we ought to be the ones to greet the aliens!”

“Maybe we will. But, Sherry, Wes Dawson’s up there, and he’s a science-fiction fan. I mean serious. He was at the first Saturn flyby. You were there. Don’t you remember him? Congressional candidate in a baseball cap.”

“No.”

“Well, he was watching the screens instead of making speeches. That any help?’

“I—”

“In the meantime, if you were a government, who would you get to tell you about aliens? Us! I’d like to know who thought of it.”

The silver-haired woman’s laugh was a pleasant silvery tinkle. Her husband wasn’t in uniform, but from the ID he’d shown Mailey he could have bean, although it would make him the oldest lieutenant in the Navy. He had a head like a bullet and a mustache like a razor’s edge. The sheet on Mailey’s clipboard named them:

Robert and Virginia Anson, Santa C

They were to report directly to the National Security Council. Not even to General Deighton, who commanded NORAD and had taken up residence inside.