The lander continued to rise, and soon it passed over the terminator, into Earth’s nightside. Above, the real stars were rock steady; below, the constellations of city lights twinkled with interference patterns.
Soon the ship was in orbit, and the invisible hand stopped pressing against Clete’s side—he was, after all, sitting sidesaddle. He felt himself grow weightless, and his heart pounded even harder with excitement.
And then, there it was—floating majestically in front of them.
The mothership.
It was indeed gigantic. Almost all parts of it were flat black, making it hard to see against the backdrop of space. It seemed to be baton-shaped, with a bulbous habitat module at one end and what appeared to be an engine at the other. That the engine and the living quarters were so far apart suggested to Clete that the power source was nuclear. He’d have to get his colleagues to look over starplates they’d made in the last year or so; in all likelihood, the alien ship had come toward Earth tail first. Most ideas Clete had seen for starflight proposed a continuous acceleration to the halfway point, turning the ship around, then continuously decelerating until the destination was reached. Astronomers might well have inadvertently recorded the fusion exhaust of the braking starship—and from its spectra, something could be gleaned about Tosok technology.
Hask said the Tosok home world had a higher gravity than Earth, but the mothership, of course, was in microgravity now, although during its starflight its constant acceleration would have provided a sensation of normal weight.
Clete was still having trouble maintaining his composure. Flying through space was enough in and of itself to qualify as the greatest thrill of his life, but to have that coupled with actually being in the presence of an extraterrestrial lifeform was almost too much to bear. He’d been grinning so much that his cheeks hurt, and he felt positively giddy.
And weightlessness! My God, it was everything Armstrong and the other astronauts had told him it was! Once, for his PBS show, Clete had flown aboard the Vomit Comet—the KC-135 jet that NASA used to train astronauts. That had been fun, but this—this was spectacular!
Space travel.
Alien life.
Starships.
He’d come a long way from his poor upbringing in the hills of Tennessee.
He was famous, a celebrity, rich, a frequent guest on The Tonight Show.
But he’d always said he would trade all of that to go into space, to know for sure that life existed elsewhere.
Clete had guessed correctly: the lander was indeed fully automated; Hask never once touched the controls. But as the lander maneuvered along the baton’s boom, something caught Clete’s eye. Although it was hard to know what Tosok technology was supposed to look like, a portion of the ship seemed damaged. Clete pointed at it.
“Yes,” said Hask. “An impact, as we entered your solar system. To our surprise, much junk at the edge.”
“How far out?” said Clete.
“Perhaps fifty times Earth’s orbital radius.”
Clete nodded to himself. The Kuiper belt—the source of comets with orbital periods of twenty years or less. “Is the damage severe?”
“Must be repaired,” said Hask. “Your help needed.”
Clete felt his eyebrows rising. “Of course. I’m sure we’ll be glad to.”
The lander continued to approach the mothership, which Clete estimated was three hundred meters long. If its hull had been more reflective, it would have easily been visible from the ground.
Finally, the lander connected with the mothership’s hull, clamping onto it just behind the bulbous habitat module; Clete could hear the clanging of docking clamps connecting with the ship. No clamshell-doored hangar deck like on the original starship Enterprise. Clete had always found that unbelievable anyway—it required pumping so much air in and out. Three other landers—two just like the one he was in now, plus one more that was much longer and narrower—were already clamped onto the hull. There was also one additional, unused docking port.
“Is the other empty port a spare, or is a ship missing?” asked Clete.
“Ship missing,” said Hask. “One was knocked loose during the impact; we were unable to recover it.”
Hask floated forward, and both the inner and outer doors of the air lock slid aside, revealing the interior of the mothership. The lighting was yellow-white, and rather dim. If the color matched that of sunlight on the Tosok world, then they must come from a G-class star. In the local stellar neighborhood, besides Earth’s sun, only Alpha Centauri A and Tau Ceti were Gs.
It was cool inside the starship—perhaps fifty degrees Fahrenheit. The weightlessness was utterly intoxicating; Clete indulged himself with a few barrel rolls while Hask watched, his head tuft moving in a way that might indicate amusement. Soon, though, Hask floated down a corridor, and Clete followed, trying to maneuver while keeping an eye on his cam-corder’s small LCD screen. Since the Tosoks had apparently been traveling for two hundred and eleven years, Clete had expected the ship to be roomy on the inside, but there didn’t seem to be much in the way of open spaces, and so far they had yet to see another Tosok.
“Where are the others?” asked Clete.
“This way,” said Hask. Every few meters he gave a gentle push off the wall with his back hand to continue him on his way. It was clear which part of the corridor served as the floor and which as the ceiling when the engines were on: the ceiling had circular yellow-white light fixtures set into it at regular intervals. In between those were tiny, much dimmer, orange lamps, which Clete thought might be emergency lighting.
The floors were covered with—well, at first Clete thought it was deep-pile carpet, but as he pushed his own hand against it to propel him along, he realized it was some sort of plant material, with purple leaves. It wasn’t grass; rather, it was more like a quilt of soft Brillo pads. Various possibilities ran through Clete’s mind: that the plant carpeting was responsible for sucking up carbon dioxide, or some other waste gas, and replenishing it with oxygen; that it represented a food source for the Tosoks; or that they just liked the sensation of walking with their bare reet through it. Although he wouldn’t presume to guess much yet about Tosok psychology, anything that helped them get through a multicentury voyage was doubtless to the good.
They finally arrived at the room Hask had been heading for. The door opened, and a puff of condensation billowed toward them, along with a blast of air so cold it gave Clete gooseflesh. He hoped it hadn’t fogged his camera lens.
Inside the tiny room were six other Tosoks, strapped to special slabs, and mostly covered over with red plastic blankets. There were two empty slabs, with their blankets removed; one was presumably Hask’s, and the other must have belonged to the eighth crew member, who Hask had said had passed away. On these, Clete could see that there was a trough running down the slab’s length to accommodate an arm. Clete couldn’t tell if the other Tosoks were lying on their fronts or their backs; so far, the only difference between the two sides he’d noticed in Hask was in the interior of his mouth, the color of his eyes, and the robustness of the front arm—and these Tosoks had their mouths and eyes closed, and the arm that was up was covered by the blanket.
“What are they doing?” asked Clete.
“Sleeping,” said Hask.
All of them at once? Surely the crew would work in shifts, and—
And then it hit him—they hadn’t just been sleeping for a few hours. Rather, they’d been sleeping for years—for centuries. This is how the Tosoks endured the long spaceflight: in hibernation.