There was a hiss at that from the boss alien and he waved it away, spitting, clicking and gabbling in apparent anger.
Bill showed the scenes with Nyarowlll again and then waved at the pictures. Then he held up a hand and shrugged. It was anything but a universal gesture, but the alien, the Adar, seemed to get the point. Humans had been bitten once, that was going to make them shy.
The aliens waved their arms at each other for a bit, then the boss reached out carefully and touched one of the controls on the laptop, starting the footage. He ran it forward to the nuclear blasts and stopped at the mushroom clouds.
“Dreeen.”
“Human,” Bill said. “We did that.”
“Adoool,” the alien said. “Adoool.” He pointed around at the tanks. “Adoool.”
“Soldiers?” the French woman in the environment suit said. “War?”
“Actually,” Bill replied. “I think it’s more like ‘smart’ or ‘good damned job.’ ”
The alien reached up and manipulated some latches on his neck at which one of the others waved a hand. He waved back and then took off his helmet, snuffling at the air.
He wasn’t pretty. There were three eyes, one on either side of its head and one placed more or less where a human forehead would be. Just below it was an opening and below that was a wide beak, flat and round. Its skin was a pale bluish color.
“Tchar,” the alien said through the snout; his mouth remained closed. “Tchar,” he added, tapping his chest. Then he pointed at Bill. “Bill. Tchar.”
“Hello, Tchar,” Bill said. “Pleased to meet you. I hope.”
“The Adar appear to be about fifty, maybe a hundred, years advanced upon us. They use neural implants, their primary air method of transport is suborbital rockets that work off of laser launch technology, they have very advanced computing devices and the guns that they were carrying seem to be some sort of plasma-toroid generator. They’re not super guns, but they’d probably take out a Bradley Fighting Vehicle from the pictures Tchar showed me. They do not appear to be friends with the Titcher or Dreen as they call them. They’ve showed us pictures of their planet, had one team over on a suborbital rocket from which a large area was visible, and appear to get the point that we’re not going to just fall for the friendly alien thing. Once bitten twice shy and all that but this time the aliens appear to be friendly.”
“That’s good,” the President said. “If true.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Bill replied. “If true.”
“Most of the time the Adar team on Earth have been using their communicators,” the national security advisor said. “They appear to be radios, they’re giving off RF emissions, but we haven’t figured out exactly how they’re broadcasting or what is being said. So we haven’t been able to get much of their language. Dr. Avery from the State Department, however, has been communicating with some of their people on the other side, we don’t know if they’re leadership or not, and he’s making headway. He thinks he’s gotten about a five-hundred-word vocabulary so far.”
“Avery’s amazing,” the secretary of defense said to the President. “He can pick up an Earth language just listening to it for a couple of hours. If anyone can decipher their language he can.”
“They’re being helpful in that as well,” the national security advisor said, biting her lip. “I’m inclined, this time, to side with them being friendly. As friendly as could be expected. They appear to have a couple of internal gates open as well and the means to move them; they apparently had the theory of wormhole formation and then started making bosons. And Dr. Weaver will be gratified to learn that the way they move them is by using very large Van Der Graff generators.”
“Yes,” Bill said. “Maybe we can buy a couple off of them.”
“I still want a full analysis this time,” the President replied. “As much as we can determine of their economy and order of battle. I don’t want to be fooled again. It’s not good for politics and it’s not good for America. Dr. Weaver, any idea when the Titcher gates might open?”
“No, Mr. President,” Bill replied. “Tchar took me to what they call their Dreen gate. It’s in the same area as the one that connects to us, a big open desert area with some mountains in the distance. Except for some of the colors it looks a lot like Groom Lake. They have the Dreen gate surrounded by their tanks inside a large hole in the ground that they can fire downwards into. And there’s a big device right opposite it. Again, this was all pantomime, but I get the impression that it’s got something like a nuke in it that they can trigger if their gate stabilizes. It wasn’t stable, though; it was rippling just like ours. I tried to get some idea if they knew how long they stayed down but that was just too complicated. If Tchar knew what I was talking about, he couldn’t answer me. Among other things, sir, they don’t have our clock, obviously. Their planet seems to have about a thirty-hour day and I have no idea what their year might be. I started to try to get him to count it out in Planck seconds since every physicist in this universe would know what that is… but for the life of me I couldn’t think of how to pantomime ‘what is the time delay if you count that in the smallest possible time increment allowed in this universe?’ I’m open for suggestions on that one.”
“Ask Dr. Avery to concentrate on that question,” the President said to the national security advisor.
“I will, sir,” the NSA said, then temporized. “The thing is, they might take it as a request to find out about their nuclear capability. We’ll have to know things like the yield of their weapons and delivery methods. If they started asking us those questions, I’d be uncomfortable.”
“Tell him to explain why we’re asking, first,” the President said. “I’m sure they’ll understand in that case.” He frowned and then shook his head. “They seem to have a point, though. Don’t we have some artillery-fired nukes? Is there any reason we can’t fix up something like that at all the sites?”
“I don’t think we have any left in inventory…” the secretary of defense said.
“We don’t,” the national security advisor said, definitely. “But there ought to be some way to set up a launcher on a standard Mark 81 MIRV warhead, and we have a bunch of those in inventory.” She smiled for a moment and shook her head. “We’re supposed to come up with things like that, Mr. President. What do you want to do, work us out of a job?”
“No, but I do want to make sure the Titcher stay on their side of the gate,” the President answered. “Get that set up as soon as possible. Not just at the open gates but at the inactive particles as well. I don’t want to be caught with our pants down again. Then there’s the inactive particles. Dr. Weaver, Columbia is taking far too much time in opening them.”
“I have to take the Fifth on that one, Mr. President,” Bill replied, formally. “It’s not my department and the one time I brought it up I was reminded of that fact.”
“Well, I’m not afraid to bring it up,” the President said, somewhat angrily.
“I’ll call Kevin Borne over at Columbia,” the secretary of defense said. “I know they’ve got some issues but I’ll point out that they really don’t want to get us upset with them. I’ll be pointed about that fact, rest assured, Mr. President.”
“Just get it done,” the President said.
“There’s the point that there is still only one gate generator,” Bill pointed out. “It takes a skilled team about ten hours to set up, then there’s transportation time. Even if they had gotten on the ball right away, and ignored arguments about which gates should open where, there wouldn’t be many linked, yet. There is a firm that was scheduled to build some more, but I don’t know the status of that project.”