Footfall

Nikolai said, “I thought the top ranks would wear uniforms. They all wear those harnesses with the backpacks. The colors and patterns, could those—”

“Yes, insignia of rank. Dawson believes that we will not see clothing on any alien. With those bulky bodies they will have trouble shedding heat.”

“I would not have thought of that.”

The room darkened. One wall seemed to disappear, and Arvid realized that he was in a motion picture theater.

Rogachev recognized the huge Invader spacecraft, a cylinder about as wide as it was tall. The aft rim was spiky with smaller craft, and some had not been moored in place yet. An arc of worldscape, blue and white, might have been the Earth, though Arvid could not pick out any detail of landscape. A polished sphere nearby… a moon? No, it was drifting slowly.

Takpusseh was talking. Arvid caught a word here and there, and translated freely to “Watch, don’t move. You see… trip (chtapt) to (Earth?). Build… Thuktun Flishithy.” Arvid smiled. He had thought that was their name for the mother ship, and sure enough, that was what they were putting together onscreen.

He watched and didn’t move. The aliens around him were silent, motionless.

The last of the smaller craft were moved into place in seconds. This was time-lapse photography. A length of stovepipe, a little wider than Thuktun Flishithy, drifted in from the edge of the screen and was moored in place behind the ring of smaller craft.

The shiny sphere was moved into place at the fore end of the mother ship. It was bigger than all of the rest of the ship combined. A pod, perhaps a cluster of sensing instruments, reached out on a snakelike arm to peer around it.

Something fell inward from the edge of the picture: bright flames of chemical rockets around… something rectangular. It dwindled to a dot, headed straight for the ship. “Put Podo Thuktun in Thuktun Flishithy,” Takpusseh said.

That word: thuktun. He had thought it meant skill or knowledge, but-Fistarteh-thuktun? A mate for that one had not been named. Was that particular fi’ married to the ship?

All in good time. Arvid glanced at Dawson; Dawson’s eyes were riveted to the screen. That left Arvid free to covertly observe the aliens.

Five of the fithp showed signs of a lingering illness: an illness that left loose skin and wounded-looking eyes. It didn’t seem to be a matter of age — Pastempeh-keph and K’turfookeph (Admiral and mate) were not youths, but they hadn’t had the sickness either. The sick ones tended to cluster. They looked to be about the same age; the rest varied enormously.

The Admiral’s advisor and his mate were among the sick ones. Another sick one was trying to talk to them, while a female rather unsubtly tried to prevent it.

A division among the aliens might be usefuL

Wes Dawson was watching a planet recede… a world colored like Earth, blue with clotted white frosting — He spent no more than a few seconds trying to make out the shapes of continents. None were familiar. Of course not.

The Invader ship had been on camera for only a minute or so. The camera that filmed that would have remained behind. But Thukiun Fllsljithy was more than the cylindrical warship that had reached Earth. A sphere rode the nose, a tremendous fragile looking bubble in contrast to the warship’s spiky, armored look. Fuel supply, of course. And the ring — He was looking aft along Thuktun Flishithy’s flank, past a massive ring like a broad wedding band, watching a sun grow smaller. A second sun moved in from offscreen. Both shrank to bright stars: white stars, the light not too different from Earth’s own sun. He’d anticipated that from the color of the lights in his cell.

The cameras showed a steady white light behind the ring. Wes saw-and wasn’t sure he saw-the drive flame go dim, and a faint violet tinge emerge from the black background.

Wes Dawson wouldn’t have noticed a bomb going off in the theater. With a fraction of his attention he tried to track what the Instructor was saying. “Thuktun Flishithy must move very fast before we use the (long word). Saves—” something. “Halfway to Earth-star” — Earth’s sun? — “we begin to slow down. This is difficult.”

But the pictures made more sense than the words.

Time onscreen speeded up. The drive flame brightened, then died-and the background violet glow he thought he’d seen wasn’t there. Tiny machines and mote-sized aliens emerged to dislodge the bubble at the nose; the stars wheeled one, hundred and eighty degrees around; the drive flamed again, and dimmed, and the stars forward were embedded in violet-black-so he hadn’t imagined it-and Thuktun Flishithy surged past the abandoned fuel tank and onward.

The way the film jumped, a good deal of it must have been missing. Perhaps it would have shown too much interior detail. Wes took it for granted that prisoners would not learn much of the interior detail of Thuktun Flishithy. The next scene was a timelapse view of an ordinary star becoming a bright star, and brighter, until it virtually exploded in Dawson’s face. He cursed and covered his eyes, and immediately opened them again.

They must have dived within the orbit of Mercury. Somewhere in there, the white glow of the drive had brightened… and the ship’s wedding band had vanished. Dawson hadn’t noticed just when it disappeared. Now he grunted as if he’d been kicked in the stomach.

Takpusseh stopped talking, and his eyes flicked Dawson with the impact of a glare. Nobody else noticed.

The camera looked along the mother ship’s nose while Earth’s sun shrank. There were long-distance telescopic photos of Mars and Jupiter, then Saturn growing huge. The great ship moved among the moons, neared the rings, still decelerating. Wes picked out the three classic bands of the ring, separating into hundreds of bands as the ship neared. The F-ring roiled and twisted as the ship’s fusion exhaust washed across it.

Ships departed Thuktun Flishithy, launched aft along rails. The cameras didn’t follow. A telescope picked out something butterfly fragile but not as pretty. Freeze-frame. Takpusseh pointed and made noises of interrogation.

“Voyager,” Dawson said. He tried a few words of the Invader language. “We made it. My fithp. United States of America !”

“Did it come to—” garble. The instructor tried again. “To look on us? Did you know of us?”

The word must be spy. “No.”

“Then why?”

“To see Saturn.” An anger was building in Wes Dawson, and he didn’t understand it. They had come in war and killed without warning, but he’d known that for days. What new grievance — They had used Saturn! Deep in his heart Dawson felt that Saturn belonged to Earth-to mankind-to the United States that had explored Saturn system, to the science establishment and science fiction fandom. Goddaminit, Saturn is ours!

He kept his silence. The film started again, and jumped. They’d skipped something: they’d skipped most of what they were doing in Saturn system. Two crescents, Earth and Moon, were growing near. Wedge-shaped markers pointed out the United States and Soviet moon bases, artifacts in orbit, weather satellites, Soviet devices of unknown purpose, the space station…

“Question, time you know we come,” Takpusseh said. Then louder: “Time you know we come!”

“One sixth part of a year,” Arvid said in English. “A year is—” His hands moved, a forefinger circling a fist, while he spoke alien words: “Circle Earth around Earth-star.”

“You slow to fight. You know we come. Why slow?”

Why had Earth’s defenders responded so slowly? Wes said, “Earth fithp, chtaptisk fithp maybe not fight.”

“You fight,, you not fight, two is one. Earth fithp is chtaptisk fithp. Sooner if Earth fithp not fight.”

The last time Wes Dawson had felt like this, he had put his fist into a Hell’s Angel’s mouth just as far as it would go. “You came to make war? Only to make war?”