"Haven't you seen the Doc?"
He looked at her with what might have been amusement-at last, a human sign! "This one, no. I did see quite a bit of its-brother?- when it removed that device from my brain. But I was not in a position to study it carefully."
"Well, General," she said sunnily, "I'm on my way there now. It isn't time for lunch yet, so you have the opportunity if you want it. Would you care to look in on the damn thing?"
Hilda's interest in the Floridian was not particularly sexual. She certainly did not exclude that possibility. However, General Delasquez represented a force in the world with which she had little personal experience, that is, the kind of semi patriotism which marked the people of the breakaway State of Florida: adamant on running their own state as though it were a sovereign nation, yet unwilling to, or perhaps too sensible to, provoke the military retaliation that would come with any attempt at outright secession. The Floridians were not ignorant of history, and they were well aware of the outcome of the War Between the States.
Outside the Doc's shed an armed guard was crouched over a news screen, but he was alert enough to forbid them to enter. "What's so interesting?" Hilda asked the man in a friendly way. He shrugged.
"There's an object coming pretty close to the Earth. For a while they thought it might hit, but it's going to miss us by about fifty thousand klicks." Then, more obligingly: "I can't let you go in, but you can look at the damn beast through the door if you want to. It won't disturb him."
The Doc looked as though nothing at all would disturb him, as a matter of fact. The creature was standing motionless, half-turned away from them, not bothering to look around to see who had come to look at him. Delasquez looked at the Doc in silence for a moment, then said wonderingly, "Excuse me, but is this the one that made the pictures of the interior of Starlab?"
"The very one."
"It doesn't look capable of that kind of work."
"I know," Hilda agreed. "The story is that they come from a very high type of civilization, but the Scarecrows conquered them and planted some sort of controls in their brains. It doesn't affect their intelligence, but now they can't make any decisions on their own- especially to rebel against the Scarecrows."
He gave her a sardonic look. "How useful that would be for your country, for dealing with people like myself."
"Oh, but we would never do anything like that, General," Hilda protested-as a matter of form; knowing that that wasn't true, knowing that the General was well aware it wasn't.
"Of course not," he agreed, as duplicitous as herself. "Shall we go to lunch now, Brigadier? I've seen all I need, and the creature does smell unpleasant."
"Of course," Hilda said, cozily slipping her arm into his as they turned away; thinking about how the general was going to feel when they were stuck in the confined space of the LuftBuran with the Doc. "You know," she said, "I've always thought of Florida as a good experiment in cooperation: you have all the advantages of being part of the United States, but the freedom to follow your own principles."
He looked at her in amusement, but without removing her arm. "Yes, that is true. I wonder, though, how well the experiment would work if we Floridians did not have our own National Guard and Air Force."
Brigadier Morrisey would have preferred a quiet table for two, but there weren't any tables like that in the Kourou officers' mess. They wound up at a table for six, sharing it with Colonel duValier and some people on the launch controller's staff. They seemed to be old friends of General Delasquez, though there was something in their gently mocking tone that Hilda did not quite understand. Then Colonel duValier explained: "When our friend Martin was here before it was under something of a cloud, Brigadier. We borrowed him from the Floridians to brief us on what we could expect when we visited your Starlab, since he had been there himself. Of course, then we discovered that there was not much truth in what he told us."
Delasquez said stiffly, "I told you what I thought was so. I did not know that my mind had been tampered with."
"But of a certainty," the colonel agreed. "We did not know that you were transmitting information to our enemies, either. We did not even know that we had enemies! Or else we would have put you in a cage like the one this malodorous Doc we are taking with us is in."
"Dr. Artzybachova says the only way to be sure the Docs aren't transmitting information is to make sure they don't get any," Hilda put in. "Of course, that policy got blown when they were at the UN."
General Delasquez sniffed. "Dr. Artzybachova," he said in a dismissing tone.
"You don't like her?"
"I have no opinion at all about the woman. I saw her briefly on the launch, and then she died."
"That one died, right," Hilda said, nodding. "But the one that's here now, she says you-the other you-and she were great friends as captives of the Scarecrows."
Delasquez looked uneasy. "I have thought about that," he admitted. "But since that other copy of myself is not here, I am not bound by any relationships he may have assumed. She is a type of woman I do not care for."
"What type is that?" Hilda asked. He shrugged without answering, but she didn't really need an answer. She had already diagnosed General Delasquez's own type: authoritarian male, which meant sexist pig. It was a type that she had always enjoyed encountering, on official business or in the boudoir.
The woman from the controller's staff diplomatically changed the subject. "So, Brigadier Morrisey, are you ready to explore outer space?"
Interoffice Memo: The Eurospace rocket. Classified.
The "LuftBuran" was built from a German design with German money, but using Russian facilities and labor. The French didn't like the name. They wanted to call it the "Ariane 9," but when that was turned down they settled for naming a French astronaut as chief pilot.
"Of course," Hilda said, politely enough. "In fact, I wish it would happen. How long are we going to have to wait here?"
"That's not my decision. The LuftBuran is nearly fueled, and all the supplies are already stowed. As soon as the crew is ready we can go."
"I'm ready now," Hilda declared, digging into the fish course that one of the waiters had placed before her. She didn't recognize the fish. There were two of them, quite tiny, but delicious; evidently Colonel duValier had made his wishes known to the kitchen staff.
They had reached the cheese course when carryphones began beeping all over the mess hall. "What is happening?" Delasquez asked irritably.
The woman from the controller's staff was already answering hers, and when she turned to look at them her face was pale. "That object that was approaching Earth? It is a spacecraft. It has been observed to make a burn, and its new course will impact the Earth."
The cheese boards sat abandoned on every table, rounds of perfect Camembert, slabs of bleu and Brie.
There was no one left in the room to eat them. Everyone had flown to the briefing room, where Colonel duValier had a phone to his ear and an eye on the wall screen.
Hilda stared at the pictures. After all the searching, not one of Earth's giant telescopes had had its instruments bearing on the incoming object. That was left to the smaller ones, and so they had been the ones that were dazzled when the object emitted a stream of fire. Beside her Martin Delasquez muttered something in Spanish, but when she asked he said it in English for her benefit. "It is a braking burn," he said. "They are preparing for reentry."
"But what is it?" someone asked. No one tried to answer. Everyone was thinking the same thoughts, though, for they had all heard the stories the captives brought back of Scarecrow vengeance that dropped KT-type asteroids on the planets of their enemies, wiping them out as thoroughly as the sixty-five-million-year-old impact not far from where they were standing had wiped out the dinosaurs.