Pixelated thoughts cohered into solidity and hardness. “The Return? Not the Friendship? What were Lieutenant Li’s exact words?”
“‘For immediate emergency relay to Colonel Jenner, priority one: Contact by an alien ship calling itself the Return and claiming to be carrying Americans and coming from World. I have not responded. Do not know if the message is connected with the drone attack. Please advise.’”
It could be a trick by New America. Get a detachment of soldiers outside the dome, mount a second drone attack. Although New America had tried something similar before, and had not succeeded. Jason rose from his desk and scanned the sky through the clear top of the dome.
The missiles had spent themselves uselessly against the domes and then ceased, leaving debris lying around the cleared zone but no fires, not this time. As soon as the drones stopped coming, perimeter patrol had returned outside, although staying close to the airlock and ready for snipers. Jason squinted into the distance.
Overhead a hawk soared, dark against the clouds.
A breeze stirred the treetops, a hundred yards away and level with the top of the dome.
At the edge of the trees, a deer appeared, startled, and vanished.
Sergeant Hillson waited.
The alarm still sounded: blatt blatt blatt.
“Tell them to turn off the alarm, but don’t sound the all clear. Get Major Duncan up here.”
“Yes, sir. Sir… Corporal Olivera.”
Jason turned. Rosa Olivera, assigned to patrol, held out a tiny data cube. “Sir, Lieutenant Li sent this. A longer message from the spaceship. The lieutenant relayed it to record for you.”
Jason popped the cube into his wrister. A male voice said, “Come in, Earth. This is the World ship Return, Captain Branch Carter. We are coming from World—Kindred, I mean—the planet that the Friendship left Earth for twenty-eight years ago. Some of that original mission are aboard here, including me. We’re coming home.”
Jason’s forehead wrinkled. The message sounded in no way military. He touched his finger chip to his wrister and said, “Identity, Branch Carter, Friendship mission, text only.”
Carter continued, “A lot has happened to tell you about, but right now we just want permission to land. Last night we didn’t see any city lights from space, which sort of concerns us. Also, no one has responded to our hailings. I don’t really know how to direct this communication very well, it’s not our ship and I’m not really an engineer, but—”
BRANCH CARTER scrolled across the small screen on Jason’s wrister. Member of Friendship diplomatic mission, lab technician. MS from Yale, employed at CDC from—
A lab tech? As captain? Jason turned off the wrister.
“—but we’re relaying this message through what looks like an American comsat. I think. If you give us coordinates to land, latitude and longitude, I think I can get this system to recognize those enough so we can set down. I hope.”
He hoped? What kind of Mickey Mouse operation—
Then, with surprising dignity, “I know this message must sound strange. There was time dilation that we didn’t know about—and I guess you probably don’t, either—both going to and coming from World. Twenty-eight years, total. There are only ten of us aboard here, and to us, it’s like we’ve only been gone a few months. We’re five Terran and five Kindred, and none of us understand the ship. We are doing the best we can.”
Corporal Olivera blurted out, “Five aliens?” She turned a mottled red. “Sorry, sir.”
Jason was thinking faster than he had since the Collapse. It could still be a trick and “Branch Carter’s” voice a pretense. The Friendship, he remembered, had been equipped with classified alpha-beam weapons capable of firing ship-to-ground; this ship, if indeed there was an actual ship, could also carry that ordnance. If he denied permission to land, what would the ship do? If it was permitted to land, it could carry various forms of contamination. Or, given that Kindred was so much more advanced than Terra, the ship could contain incredibly valuable tech. Or it might hold both: contaminants and advanced tech. But then why didn’t this Branch Carter seem to know anything about the ship, and why weren’t the alleged aliens aboard the ones captaining her? They had invented the technology! That argued for a trick. But—
Then another voice sounded on the recording, and the probability waves in Jason’s mind collapsed into certainty.
“This is Dr. Marianne Jenner, from the Friendship. I’m a scientist; I worked in the Embassy with the original team for the spore cloud. My son Noah and nine others left on the Embassy for Kindred, and he is still there. May I speak to the president, or to his or her representative, or maybe to the UN? I also want to say that we have with us a virophage that counteracts Respirovirus sporii.”
No one spoke.
Then Jason said to Hillson, “Equip two FiVees. One goes to the ship with J Squad, to rendezvous at Point Tango Delta. Bring ten extra esuits. Pick up all star-farers for transport to the signal station, it’s closer. The other FiVee to transport me to the original station with doctors Ross and Yu. No, not Yu”—the chief scientist was too old—“Dr. McKay. Orders are that if anything impedes transport progress, shoot it.”
Major Elizabeth Duncan, Jason’s second in command, strode into the command post. Jason said to her, “Major, we have a situation. Brief you in a minute.” And to Hillson, “Go!”
“Yes, sir.”
It was the first time Jason had ever heard the veteran sergeant’s voice tremble. Jason hoped that his own had not. But—
A spaceship. And what did you say to a grandmother who left for the stars when you were eleven, twenty-eight years ago?
“Why aren’t they answering?” Branch said. “Why isn’t anybody answering?”
Marianne said wearily, “Are you sure you’re doing it right?”
“Of course I’m not sure I’m doing it right! None of us knows what we’re doing!”
Jane looked from one Terran to the other. They were tired—everybody was tired—and they did not have bu^ka^tel to guide their behavior, as any Worlder would. She said softly in her still-slow English, “You did this thing wonderful well by now. We are here, and they maybe will answer soon.”
Marianne smiled at her, a smile so full of anxiety and exhaustion that Jane longed to take some of the burden off the older woman’s shoulders.
They stood on the bridge of the vast Return, all ten of them. Mason Kandiss wore his armor and carried all his weapons, although Jane did not understand why. Kayla lay asleep on a mat in the corner. The five Worlders stood behind Marianne, Branch, and Claire, who clustered around a screen filled with a huge planet.
Terra. Blue and white, incredibly beautiful. And so much land! Thirty percent of the surface was land, Branch had said. Unimaginable room—except that it held an equally unimaginable and terrifying population of over seven billion people. Or by now, Marianne had said, even more.