“How far do you suppose we are from Skyfac?” I asked Tom.
He pursed his lips. “Not far. There hasn’t been much more than maneuvering acceleration. The damned things were probably attracted to Skyfac in the first place—it must be the most easily visible sign of intelligent life in this system.” He grimaced. “Maybe they don’t use planets.”
I reached forward and punched the audio circuit. “Major Cox.”
“Get off this circuit.”
“How would you like a closer view of those things?”
“We’re staying put. Now stop jiggling my elbow and get off this circuit or I’ll—”
“Will you listen to me? I have four mobile cameras in space, remote control, self-contained power and light, and better resolution than you’ve got. They were set up to tape Shara’s next dance.”
He shifted gears at once. “Can you patch them into my ship?”
“I think so. But I’ll have to get back to the master board in Ring One.”
“No good, then. I can’t tie myself to a top—what if I have to fight or run?”
“Major—how far a walk is it?”
It startled him a bit. “A couple of klicks, as the crow flies. But you’re a groundlubber.”
“I’ve been in free fall for most of two months. Give me a portable radar and I can ground on Phobos.”
“Mmmm. You’re a civilian—but dammit, I need better video. Permission granted.”
Now for the first idea. “Wait—one thing more. Shara and Tom must come with me.”
“Nuts. This isn’t a field trip.”
“Major Cox—Shara must return to a gravity field as quickly as possible. Ring One’ll do—in fact, it’d be ideal, if we enter through the ‘spoke’ in the center. She can descend very slowly and acclimatize gradually, the way a diver decompresses in stages, but in reverse. Tom will have to come along and stay with her—if she passes out and falls down the tube, she could break a leg even in one-sixth gee. Besides, he’s better at EVA than either of us.”
He thought it over. “Go.”
We went.
The trip back to Ring One was longer than any Shara or I had ever made, but under Tom’s guidance we made it with minimal maneuvering. Ring, Champion and aliens formed an equiangular triangle about five or six klicks on a side. Seen in perspective, the aliens took up about twice as much volume as a sphere the diameter of Ring One—one hell of a big balloon. They did not pause or slacken in their mad gyration, but somehow they seemed to watch us cross the gap of Skyfac. I got the impression of a biologist studying the strange antics of a new species. We kept our suit radios off to avoid distraction, and it made me just a little bit more susceptible to suggestion.
I failed to even notice the absence of a local vertical. I was too busy.
I left Tom with Shara and dropped down the tube six rungs at a time. Carrington was waiting for me in the reception room, with two flunkies. It was plain to see that he was scared silly, and trying to cover it with anger. “God damn it, Armstead, those are my bloody cameras.”
“Shut up, Carrington. If you put those cameras in the hands of the best technicians available—me—and if I put their data in the hands of the best strategic mind in space—Cox—we might be able to save your damned factory for you. And the human race for the rest of us.” I moved forward, and he got out of my way. It figured. Putting all humanity in danger might just be bad PR.
After all the practicing I’d done it wasn’t hard to direct four mobile cameras through space simultaneously by eye. The aliens ignored their approach. The Skyfac comm crew fed my signals to the Champion, and patched me in to Cox on audio. At his direction I bracketed the balloon with the cameras, shifting POV at his command. Space Command Headquarters must have recorded the video, but I couldn’t hear their conversation with Cox, for which I was grateful. I gave him slow-motion replay, close-ups, splitscreens—everything at my disposal. The movements of individual fireflies did not appear particularly symmetrical, but patterns began to repeat. In slow motion they looked more than ever as though they were dancing, and although I couldn’t be sure, it seemed to me that they were increasing their tempo. Somehow the dramatic tension of their dance began to build.
And then I shifted POV to the camera which included Skyfac in the background, and my heart turned to hard vacuum and I screamed in pure primal terror—halfway between Ring One and the swarm of aliens, coming up on them slowly but inexorably, was a p-suited figure that had to be Shara.
With theatrical timing, Tom appeared in the doorway beside me, leaning heavily on Harry Stein, his face drawn with pain. He stood on one foot, the other plainly broken.
“Guess I can’t… go back to exhibition work… after all,” he gasped. “Said… ‘I’m sorry, Tom’… knew she was going to swing on me… wiped me out anyhow. Oh dammit, Charlie, I’m sorry.” He sank into an empty chair.
Cox’s voice came urgently. “What the hell is going on? Who is that?”
She had to be on our frequency. “Shara!” I screamed. “Get your ass back in here!”
“I can’t, Charlie.” Her voice was startlingly loud, and very calm. “Halfway down the tube my chest started to hurt like hell.”
“Ms. Drummond,” Cox rapped, “if you approach any closer to the aliens I will destroy you.”
She laughed, a merry sound that froze my blood. “Bullshit, Major. You aren’t about to get gay with laser beams near those things. Besides, you need me as much as you do Charlie.”
“What do you mean?”
“These creatures communicate by dance. It’s their equivalent of speech, a sophisticated kind of sign language, like hula.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I feel it. I know it. Hell, how else do you communicate in airless space? Major Cox, I am the only qualified interpreter the human race has at the moment. Now will you kindly shut up so I can try to learn their language?”
“I have no authority to….”
I said an extraordinary thing. I should have been gibbering, pleading with Shara to come back, even racing for a p-suit to bring her back. Instead I said, “She’s right. Shut up, Cox.”
“But—”
“Damn you, don’t waste her last effort.”
He shut up.
Panzella came in, shot Tom full of painkiller, and set his ankle right there in the room, but I was oblivious. For over an hour I watched Shara watch the aliens. I watched them myself, in the silence of utter despair, and for the life of me I could not follow their dance. I strained my mind, trying to suck meaning from their crazy whirling, and failed. The best I could do to aid Shara was to record everything that happened, for a hypothetical posterity. Several times she cried out softly, small muffled exclamations, and I ached to call out to her in reply, but did not. With the last exclamation, she used her thrusters to bring her closer to the alien swarm, and hung there for a long time.
At last her voice came over the speaker, thick and slurred at first, as though she were talking in her sleep. “God, Charlie. Strange. So strange. I’m beginning to read them.”
“How?”
“Every time I begin to understand a part of the dance, it… it brings us closer. Not telepathy, exactly. I just… know them better. Maybe it is telepathy, I don’t know. By dancing what they feel, they give it enough intensity to make me understand. I’m getting about one concept in three. It’s stronger up close.”
Cox’s voice was gentle but firm. “What have you learned, Shara?”