Footfall

“What make you so sure it is a greenhouse?” George asked.

“Oh, come on, it’s been all over the radio,” Isadore said. “Anyway, what else could it be? They say they’re setting up a whole regional grain belt. They’ll renovate the harbor and dredge it because they need it to ship the grain out. Isn’t that great? After all the trouble we spent finding ourselves a sleepy little backwater town…”

“Yeah, I suppose,” George said.

Isadore nodded. “Another thing. Prices’ll go up. That’ll hit your dad, Kevin, but we can stand it. Rohrs should like it.”

“Things’ll get crowded. Tourists. Traffic jams.”

“Kevin?” Miranda called.

“Yeah?”

“Let’s take a break.”

“But …” When his sister had that edge in her voice, there was something to it. Even their father knew that. “Be right with you.” He slid down the ladder.

“What?” he asked when they got to the water bucket.

“I was out with Leigh last night…”

“Yeah, you sure were. You were out late enough to have Dad pacing the floor. Mother wasn’t too happy, either. She kept saying you had to be safe, you were out with a policeman, but she didn’t mean it. Something happen — something we need to tell them? — Did he propose? Are you pregnant?

“Well, maybe, but not that.” She giggled. “No, Leigh told me something. He’s seen an astronaut.”

“Astronaut?”

“Gillespie. The one who commanded the last Shuttle, the flight that took that poor congressman up to the Russian space station. Gillespie’s in charge of this big government project — and they’re setting up all kinds of guard stations, fences, everything.”

“For a greenhouse?”

“That’s what I wondered. Leigh says they told him it’s to protect the food.”

“That makes sense. Look at all the trouble Dad went to to protect ours!”

“Sure, maybe, but an astronaut? Why, Kevin?”

“I don’t know, Randy.”

“I don’t either, and I think we should tell Dad.”

Bill Shakes was toting up accounts with the help of his pocket computer. Kevin and Miranda waited until they saw him pause. Then Kevin said, “We’ve got an astronaut in Bellingham.”

Shakes looked up. “So?”

“Major General Edmund Gillespie. He went up to Kosmograd with Dawson. Now he’s here. Miranda found out about it yesterday.” He was careful not to say last night.

Miranda took up the tale. “Leigh spent day before yesterday and part of yesterday taking him all over Bellingham. I asked him where he was, and he told me all about it.”

“What’s he want? I mean Gillespie.”

“I don’t know. Leigh says he looked over everything. He looked at the harbor, he looked at the railroad, he toured the whole town. All that, for a government greenhouse?”

Shakes scowled. “So we’ve got a real live astronaut scouting Bellingham. We’re getting too damn conspicuous. The thing about being a survivalist is you keep your head down.”

“We have to,” Miranda said. “There’s no gasoline, and Leigh says they’re going to close off the highway except for essential traffic, to save maintenance.”

“Hmm.” It was easy to see what Bill Shakes was thinking. Bellingham lay between mountains and the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Restricting highway use was the same as not letting them leave town. “Not that there’s anyplace better for us to go to,” Shakes said carefully. “We’ve invested a lot here, and we can’t take it with us.”

“Well, we thought you should know,” Kevin said.

“Yeah. Yeah … why an astronaut? I suppose he doesn’t have much of anything better, with the snouts shooting spaceships out of the sky. Still… it doesn’t fit.” Shakes frowned. “You like this deputy sheriff, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. See more of him.”

Kevin suppressed an urge to giggle.

Jack Clybourne stood in the doorway, blocking the President’s path. “No, sir,” he said firmly.

“Mr. Clybourne,” Admiral Carrell said mildly.

“No,” Jack said firmly. “Before the President goes in there, you get that alien out, or you give me a hell of a lot more gun than this pistol, and that’s final.”

Admiral Carrell sighed.

“Jack …” Je

“You can’t do that,” Sherry Atkinson protested. “We can’t make Harpanet feel that we don’t trust him!”

“Damn it all. Mr. President!” Wade Curtis said.

“Yes, Mr. Curtis?” the President asked. He sounded as if he was suppressing a chuckle.

“Their top brass travel with armed guards. Harpanet won’t see anything unusual in having the President escorted by soldiers.”

“Do you think I will need them, Mr. Curtis?”

“No. But I see Jack’s point. If Harpanet decided to take on the President, he’d be damned hard to stop. Incidentally, if you’re going to do this, do it right. None of those dinky little Mattel toy rifles. Get a couple of thirty-ought-sixes.”

“And where will we find those?” Je

“There’s one in my room. Ransom’s got another,” Curtis said.

“That’s why, Mr. President.” Joe Ransom finished his presentation. The room, filled with writers and engineers and soldiers stood in silence, so that the only sound was the heavy breathing of the alien captive.

“Impressive,” President Coffey said. He looked bewilderedly around the room until his eyes met those of the alien. Harpanet stood thirty feet away, as far as Clybourne could put him, with four armed combat veterans between the alien and the President.

And still too close, Je

“What do you call him? Has he a title?” the President asked.

“Just Harpanet, Mr. President,” Robert Anson said. “Any title he might have had from his own people was lost when he surrendered, and we have not yet given him one.”

“Harpanet,” the President said quietly.

“Lead me.”

“Have you understood what was said here?”

“Yes.”

“Is it true? They will drop a large asteroid on the Earth?” The alien spread his digits.

“He says he can’t know,” Sherry interpreted.

“But your ship was to be — mated with a foot?”

“Yes.” The s sound fluttered.

“Is there anyone here who disagrees?” the President demanded. There was only silence.

President Coffey began to pace. “We’ll have to warn as many people as possible. Worldwide. God, I wish they hadn’t made such hash of our communications. Yes, Admiral?”

“I think we don’t dare.”

“Dare what? Warn the world? We’d be condemning millions! Tidal waves, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, it’ll be like a weeklong disaster movie festival!”

“And if we do issue a warning, we will certainly condemn thousands. Tens of thousands,” Admiral Carrell said. “They will flee from the coasts. All the coasts.”

“But it’s better than doing nothing!”

“Mr. President.” Robert Anson seemed to have aged ten years in months, but his voice was firm and insistent.

“Yes, Mr. Anson?”

“If you issue a warning, people will flee the coastal towns. Bellingham is a coastal town.”

“But …?”

“You dare not have people flee from every town except Bellingham,” Anson said.

“He is certainly correct,” Admiral Carrell said. “If you issue a warning, you will disrupt Project Archangel. Perhaps permanently.”

“And Archangel is the only goddam chance we have,” Curtis said.

The President sat heavily. His fingers drummed against the desk. After a few moments he looked up. “Thor, would you send Mrs. Coffey in, please? I’ll speak with the rest of you later. Thank you for your advice.”

Mrs. Carmichael had told Alice a story once. Later Alice had asked around, and everyone had heard it. The psychiatrists probably thought it did their patients good. Maybe it did.

A motorist finds himself with a flat tire on a back road, late at night. There’s a fence. Someone is peering through it, not doing anything, just watching. The motorist sees a sign in the headlights. He’s parked next to a mental institution.