Footfall

“I’d think it was a Bussard ramjet,” someone interrupted.

Ransom waved it away. “It almost doesn’t matter. They dropped something they needed to get here. They probably pla

Burnham jumped on it. “A Bussard ramjet wouldn’t be any use inside the solar system. You need a thousand kilometers per second to intercept enough fuel-or there are some alternate versions, but you still—”

Ransom rode him down. “We can’t figure out what it was yet and we don’t care. They used it to cross, and then they dropped it. Either they figure to make someone build them another one, or they’re not going home. You see the problem?”

Something icy congealed in Je

Meanwhile, the meeting was degenerating into isolated clumps of conversation. Je

“Just a shot in the dark. It’s the three closest stars in the sky, and two of them are yellow dwarfs, stars very like ours.”

“Stars?”

“Yes. What we call Alpha Centauri, meaning the brightest star in the Centaur constellation, is really three stars: two yellow ones pretty close together, and one wretched red dwarf.”

“Our own sun’s a yellow dwarf,” Curtis said.

“Interesting,” Lieutenant Sherrad said. “Our astronomers say the object came from the Centaur region. Is Alpha Centauri really a good prospect?”

The meeting came apart again. This time Je

Two hands went up.

“Who hates it?”

Three hands. And three undecided.

“Sherry? Why don’t you like Alpha Centauri?”

“Wade, you know how many other choices there are! There are almost a dozen yellow dwarf stars near us; and we don’t know they came from that kind of star anyway!”

“Bob? You like it.”

The wide white-haired man with the gaudy vest laughed and said, “I didn’t at first it’s trite. But, you know, it’s trite because it got used so much, and it got used so much because it’s the best choice. Why wouldn’t they go looking for the closest star that’s like their own? And, Sherry, there aren’t many yellow stars in that direction. That clump centers around Procyon and Tau Ceti and—”

“That’s what I was getting at,” Dr Curtis said. “It’s trite. As I see it, the way to bet is that they came from Alpha Centauri, or else they came a hell of a long distance — And if they dropped half their ship-you see?”

Burnham said, “It’d be their first trip. They won’t be very good at talking to us. Chances are they’ll want to watch us from high orbit.”

“Maybe it’s good the Soviets can’t go after them. They might run.”

“It still isn’t good. We should have met them around Saturn, just to get a little more respect—”

“Could have had a hotel on Titan by now—”

“Proxmire—”

They were at it again. Out of the babble she heard Curtis say, “One thing’s suit. They came from a long way off. So the next question is, what do they want?”

Rogachev’s office was roomy enough, by station standards. Much of its furniture looked like afterthoughts: the hot plate, the curved sofa that had replaced a standard air mattress; even the window, shuttled from Earth and welded Into a hole sawn in the hull: a thick-walled box, two panes of glass sandwiching a goop that would foam and harden in near vacuum. But it let light through, so that Station Commander Arvid Pavlovlch Rogachev could see the stars.

They flowed past, left to right, while Arvid mixed powdered tea with boiling water in a plastic bag. The station was equipped for free-fall, in case of emergencies. He served the tea into two cups, and passed one to his second in command.

“The station will house twelve,” Arvid said. “Twelve are aboard. Four are foreign observers. No more important event has occurred aboard any spacecraft, and it will happen while Kosmograd is both crowded and shorthanded.”

“Not quite so bad as all that,” said Aliana Aleksandrovna Thtsikova. “Recall that there is nothing to be done about the alien ship. We don’t have to go to meet them; we don’t even have a motor.”

“Neither drive nor weapons. We could not flee either.”

“Exactly. It will come, we are privileged to watch. I suggest that we are doing fairly well.”

“Perhaps we are.” Arvid smiled. “It helps that our guests ca

“Their dossiers said that”

Arvid didn’t entirely trust any dossiers but Aliana knew that. He said, “I’ve watched them exercising their language deficiencies.

“Do you see a security problem?”

“From them? No. It is my habit to make threat estimates. Shall we? As a game?”

“My mother would call it gossip.”

“Let us gossip, then. Which of our guests do you find interesting?”

“The Nigerian. He’s the blackest man I’ve ever seen. I actually have trouble looking him in the face.”

“Really? What will you do when aliens are aboard?”

“Perhaps I’ll hide in your office.” She lost her smile. “Comrade Commander, I have an irrational fear of spiders and insects.”

“Then we must hope that the approaching guests will be neither.” But they will not be shaped like men, Arvid thought; and Aliana could not even see all men as men. She would be of little help to him if aliens came aboard. He had not suspected this weakness in her. It was well he’d learned it now.

She said, “The Nigerian speaks English and three native languages. . which must make him effectively retarded. There are forty-three languages active within the borders of Nigeria. Educated in England, then Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, but he learned little Russian. He favors economic independence for Nigeria,”—

“We won’t cure that here. He spends all his time with Dmitri Parfenovich and Wes Dawson. That would be good, except that Dmitri has been trying to convert Dawson to his own views, whereas Dawson sometimes takes the time to try to tell George what’s going on. Dawson is good at explaining complex matters.”

“Could you have a word with Dmitri?”

Arvid laughed. “Do you want me to tell our Political Commissar how to convert the heathen? Aliana, I do not seek converts.”

She laughed. Officially, Dmitri Grushin was Deputy Commander and Information Officer for the station, but he was so little qualified for either job that his KGB origins showed clearly. “We may find ourselves seeking converts among people with nightmare shapes,” Aliana said. “If so, Dawson is the one to watch. Nigeria and France would be no threat to us—”

“His nation made a good choice there, I think. The Honorable Wes Dawson is frantic to meet aliens.”

“Wasn’t it politics that—”

Rogachev shrugged. “Certainly his dossier suggests that he forced himself aboard. Even so, although I know little of American politics, I would not think a mere congressman could force the American President too far in a direction he did not wish to go.”

Aliana gri

Rogachev shrugged. “I do not think so, but it hardly matters.”

“Dawson’s dossier calls him politically liberal.”

“A lazy agent wrote that. ‘Politically liberal’ — he copied that out of some newspaper! Dawson has invariably favored the American space program.” Rogachev’s face twisted into a look he didn’t show to many people: a distinctly guilty grin. “I have closely watched the Honorable Wes Dawson. He has been sick with envy since he came aboard. He does not even care much for the design. Indeed, he knows precisely how he would rebuild the station if it were his. But as it is not, it is killing him!”