Lee had never seen anyone liquefy gasses, but it was clear that's what they were doing. They must be entirely crazy--like the Jonestown massacre, whole communities do go mad, and this little clump of madmen must think--but why did they think they could--
The anticipation grows, in the crew that waits below, in the silent burst of stars before the dawn.
Starfire! Starfire! We can know the promise of the stars…
Unless I stop it. I'm supposed to stop it.
She was still watching when the Green Police car drove onto the base.
The car glowed iridescent green like a bottlefly. It wound up the side of the hill toward Thunder Ridge. Harry dove into his saddlebags and came up with a pistol. Jenny produced one from her boot.
"No, dammit," C.C. Miller said. "Put the damn hardware away." He had to shout, almost to scream, to be heard over the sound of the compressor.
"They're police!" Harry said.
C.C. was bobbing and weaving to stay out of the line of Harry's weaving revolver. Harry hungover wasn't much better than Harry drunk. "Harry, we don't have time. Shut up and get yourselves under cover! We'll fix it!"
"We'll be watching," Jenny threatened. She pulled Harry into the blockhouse.
"So damned close," Hudson said. "Another couple of days--"
"Come and meet them."
"Oh, joy."
"Meet them on their own territory. At their car. It's supposed to be reassuring," Miller said.
The Green car pulled up and two men got out. C.C. Miller waved to one of them, a short man with a beard so black that it looked dyed. "Hello, Glen!"
"Hello. This is official. Captain Hartwell, Green Police. Dan, this is C.C. Miller. That's Gary Hudson. He's in charge here."
Hartwell was tall and thin. His look was grim as he stared at the let engine. "What is this?" he shouted.
Hudson indicated the office area. "It's quieter in there." He led them inside. With the door and windows closed they could almost talk.
"All right," Hartwell said. "What's going on?"
"Hydrogen economy experiments," Hudson said. "We're liquefying hydrogen and oxygen. Then well burn them. If we can increase the efficiency of hydrogen burning by ten percent, we can save enormous amounts of energy. Just enormous. And with the winters getting longer, and everything colder--"
"You mean the glaciers coming," Hartwell said.
"Well, yes, but I wasn't sure you guys believed in them," Hudson said. "I've talked to some--"
"Some fuggheaded Green Police," Hartwell said. "Yeah, but you can't judge us by them! Niven's law. No cause is so noble that it won't attract fuggheads."
"Well--yes," Hudson said. "But wouldn't expect you to believe that either."
"We're not all fools," Hartwell said. "Man, that noise pollution is savage, and the smoke isn't much better. If you can really justify this you'd better tell me, quick, because someone is sure as hell going to notice."
Just as well I didn't move, Captain Arteria thought. The Greens got there even faster than I'd have guessed. They'd have beat me in.
And now what? Call the helicopter, go down, and claim them. It's still an Air Force base. Wait… hell, now who's come to join the party? She swung the binoculars to the point of a dust plume just starting up the hill. More Greens? Oh, Lord, it's Earth First.
Black letters on the car's iridescent green flank read REMEMBER THE GREAT ALASKA OIL SPILL!
"They should change that bumper sticker," Sherrine said to C.C. "You knew one of them."
C.C. said, "Glen's ours, roughly speaking--" And then Glen Bailey had nearly reached them. C.C. yelled above the jet roar, "Where's your friend, Glen?"
"Hudson's still lecturing Hartwell. Some fur haters called in a violation in the Mojave, so I grabbed him and came. Hartwell was never in fandom, he just used to read the stuff, so I've got no strings on him, but he kind of caught the bug. He'd wipe out all the polluting factorties if we have to, but he'd rather put them in orbit and on the moon where they can't hurt anything and turn the Earth into a park like the good guys wanted to do in Spirals and--"
C.C. held, up both hands. "Okay, okay. Sherrine, what were you--"
"The bumper sticker," she said.
"So?"
"It looks… All right, the Great Alaska Oil Spill. I was in grade school," Sherrine said. "I remember my father shouting at the television and cutting his Exxon credit card into strips. He shouted in my face about greed and profit. The Sound was going to be polluted for years. So the next summer I asked him why the TV people didn't go back to Alaska and show people how polluted it still was. Daddy gave me a funny look and never mentioned it again. The Greatest Oil Spill in History, and it wasn't worth a one-year"later follow-up."
Glen was still looking at her. She said, "Then Saddam Hussein covered the Persian Gulf with oil and made it all moot. So our bumper sticker looks fairly silly, doesn't it, Inspector? And in ten minutes an Earth First police van is going to be up here and on our asses--"
C.C. was shaking his head and smiling while Inspector Bailey said, "You don't get it. Hussein doesn't listen. I mean he's dead, of course, but he didn't listen any better when he was alive, let alone to infidels from Satan's own United States. Why would anyone be yodeling in Iraq's ear when they don't listen? Corporations listen. McDonald's switched from paper to plastic even when it would hurt the environment, because the Greens told them to. Remember the boycotts against South Africa? The Soviets made them look like choirboys by any civilized standard, but they just didn't fucking listen, so what would be the point in-"
"Enough, Glen," C.C. said. "Did you get enough from Gary? Can you talk to Earth First about hydrogen experiments?"
"Yeah, have some faith, Cissy, I'll have them dying to put their support behind--"
"Yeah, good, good." Then they all ducked as the Earth First van pulled up in a wave of dust.
A boy and a girl, both tall and lean and dark-haired and well under twenty, spilled out of the van and pointed and jabbered. Noise! Smoke! See? See? Three uniformed Earth First cops, two women and a man, followed them out more slowly. Glen walked up to join them.
Sherrine said, "Those kids must be the ones who turned us in."
"Sherrine, I don't want to be recognized, but one of us should be there," C.C. said. "We don't want them thinking Glen's a flake."
"Perish the thought!"
"It's not like that. He's bright, but there's a glitch in his programming. Too much LDS in the sixties, like Mister Spock." Sherrine laughed, but C.C. went on earnestly. "He can't stop talking by himself. He has to be stopped."
Glen talked. The Earth Firsters nodded. The boy and girl listened, ready to offer what they knew.
Hudson and Hartwell came out of Hudson's office and sauntered toward the Earth First van.
The kids had moved closer to the compressors. The noise was horrendous, and the girl had put her hands over her ears as she stared at the spinning jet turbine. Sherrine watched as the girl moved around toward the front of the engine. The danger area was clearly marked off with a low rope barrier, but it would be easy to step over it. "Hey!" Sherrine screamed and ran toward the girl. "Stop!" The screen over the jet intake would keep out birds, but it might not be strong enough to hold a one-hundred-pound girl. Talk about mixed emotions! Sherrine thought.
The boy had moved closer to the exhaust, and now stood with his nose wrinkled as he held his hands over his ears. Eager to be offended. When he saw Hudson and the others gather near the police van, he got the girl and led her over. Good. They did not need an injured civilian.