Footfall

Selected newspeople were invited, which meant the Secret Service people as well. They knew them all, reporters and camera crew, and Jack looked as relaxed as he ever did when on duty, but Je

But we’re here. Je

She glanced at her watch. It was very late, well past midnight. The aliens were due and past due. Coffee service was available in the hall outside, but someone would probably take her chair if she went out. Better to wait—

The television monitors blanked momentarily, then showed the dark of space. In the far distance something flickered and flashed.

Heretofore the telescopes on Earth and in Earth orbit had seen only a long, pure blue-white light and the murky shadow at its tip. Now, as the tremendous half-seen mass approached Kosmograd, something changed. Twinkling lights flashed in a ring around the central flame, round and round, chasing their tails like light bulbs in a bar sign.

The communications lounge was crowded. Eight present, four crew busy elsewhere. Wes watched the picture being beamed from the telescope to a screen half the size of the wall. The ship was minutes away. Wes tried not to think what would happen if it came a bit too fast. It was decelerating hard. Those extra engines hadn’t been needed until now. Sixty or seventy tiny engines—

Symmetrical. Sixteen to a quadrant. Wes Dawson gri

Or base four, or binary digits … engines much smaller than the main engine, and probably less efficient. Fission or fusion pulse engines, judging by the radiation they were putting out. Why hadn’t the alien slowed earlier? It still hadn’t replied to any message.

It had grown gigantic in the telescope field. A blaze of light washed out the aft end: Wes saw only the long flame and the ring of twinkling jets. He made out bulges around the cylindrical midsection. He saw tiny fins and guessed at landing craft spaced out around the hull. A knob on the end of a long, jointed arm: what was that, a cluster of sensing devices? It was aimed at the station.

“We have some shielding,” Arvid said without being asked. “We can handle this much radiation, but not for too much longer. I hope they have some way of maneuvering with chemical rockets.”

Wes nodded. He thought, You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred, but nobody aboard would have understood the reference. He said, “This may be a violation of the Geneva Convention.”

It sparked laughter. Arvid said, “Use tact when you tell them. Nikolai, that’s enough of the telescope. Show us a camera view from—” and interrupted to strain forward.

Wes’s hands closed hard on the arms of his chair.

For the alien ship was sparkling like a fireworks display. Four of the twinkling jets expanded outward, away from the drive flame; then four more. Those pulse-jets were the main drives for smaller spacecraft! Showers of sparks flowed from the hidden bow end. Missiles? Missiles in tremendous number, then, and this was starting to look ominously like a Japanese movie. Not first contact, but space war.

The picture flickered white and disappeared.

Arvid was out of his seat and trying to reach God knows what, and Wes was checking his seat belt, when the whole station rang and shuddered. Wes yelled and clapped hands over his ears. The others were floating out of their seats — free-fall? He swept an arm out to push Giselle back into her seat, and she clutched the arms. He couldn’t reach anyone else.

Free-fall? How could that be? The co

Behind Wes the wall smashed inward, then outward. The buckle on Wes’s seat harness popped open. Wes grabbed instinctively, a death grip on the arm of his chair, even before the shock wave reached him. The Nigerian snatched at Wes’s belt and clung tight. He was screaming. Good! So was Wes. Hold your breath and you’d rupture your lungs.

For the stars were glaring in at them through the ripped metal, and the air was roaring away, carrying anything loose. Giselle Beaumont flapped her arms as if trying to fly. Her eyes met Wes’s in pure astonishment — and fly she did, out into the black sky and gone. Shit!

Vacuum! Dawson’s eyes and ears felt ready to pop. Giorge’s grip was growing feeble, but so was the wind; the air was almost gone. So. What have I got, a minute before the blood boils out through my lungs? I’ll never reach my million-dollar pressure suit, so where are the beach balls? I located them first thing, every compartment, the emergency pressure balloons, where the hell were they? If Americans had built this place they’d be popping out of the walls, because Ralph Nader would raise hell if they didn’t.

Nothing was popping out of the walls. Dawson’s intestinal tract was spewing air at both ends. His eyes sought … Rogachev, there, clawing at a wall. Dawson patted the shoulder at his waist and kicked himself toward Rogachev. Giorge hung on, in good sense or simple panic.

His throat tried to cough but it couldn’t get a grip.

Wes bounced against a wall, couldn’t find a handhold, bounced away. Losing control. Dying? The black man caught something. but kept one arm around Wes’s waist. Rogachev looked like a puffer-fish. He was fighting to tear open a plastic wall panel. It jerked open and he bounced away.

Bulky disks, four feet across, turned out to be flattened plastic bags. Wes skimmed one at Rogachev. He pulled another open, crawled inside and pulled the black man in too. Zipper? He zipped them inside. Tight fit. Some kind of lock at the end of the zipper. With his chin on the black man’s shoulder Wes reached around the man’s neck and flipped the lock shut, he hoped.

Air jetted immediately.

Reverse pressure in his ears. He pulled in air, in, in, no need to exhale at all. They were going to live. They were floating loose, and nothing to be done about it, because the pressure packages were nothing but balloons with an air supply attached. Rogachev’s too was bouncing about like a toy, but at least he’d gotten inside.

Wes’s passenger was begi

Nothing happened for a long time. Giorge discovered the blood pooling in his ears. He wailed. He fought his way around until he could look into Wes’s face, and then he wailed again. His eyes showed bloody veins, as if he’d been on a week-long drunk. Wes’s own eyes must look just that bad. His nose was filled with blood; a globule swelled at the tip.

He had no idea how much air there was in these things.

Something showed through the ripped wall, just for an instant: reflecting glass that might hide eyes, and a glimpse of what might be a tentacle, a real honest-to-God tentacle.

Giorge made a mewling sound and ceased struggling. Wes froze too. He hadn’t believed. He’d fought like a demon to be at this event, but somewhere inside him he’d been ready for disappointment.

There had been the pulsars: precisely timed signals coming from somewhere in interstellar space. Beacons for Little Green Men? He’d been in college when the pulsars were shown to be rapidly spi