"Almost there, Orofan," Pliij said, gazing out the forward viewport. "Almost there."
"Yes, my friend." Orofan touched the viewport gently with one of his two long tentacles, feeling the vibration of the fusion drive and a slight tingle from the huge magnetic scoop spread hundreds of pha ahead of them. Nothing was visible; the viewport was left uncovered only for tradition's sake. "Do you suppose the sleepers will believe us when we tell them we carried them hundreds of star-paths without seeing any stars?"
Pliij chuckled, his short tentacles rippling with the gesture. "The rainbow effect through the side viewports is nice, but I'm looking forward to seeing the sky go back to normal."
"Yes." Orofan gazed into the emptiness for a moment, then shook himself. Back to business. "So. The course change is programmed. Are the scoop and condensers prepared?"
"All set. Thistas is running a final check now."
"Good." Nine aarns to go. Six of those would make for a good rest. "I'll be in my quarters. Call me if I'm not back here two aarns before insertion."
"Right. Sleep well."
"I certainly will." Orofan smiled and left the bridge.
—
It was, General Sanford Carey thought, probably the first time in history that representatives from the Executor's office, the Solar Assembly, the Chiron Institute, and the Peacekeepers had ever met together on less than a week's notice. Even the Urgent-One order he'd called them with shouldn't have generated such a fast response, and he wondered privately how many of them had their own sources at the Peacekeeper field where the tachship had landed not three hours ago.
Across the room a Security lieutenant closed the door and activated the conference room's spy-seal. He nodded, and Carey stepped to the lectern to face his small audience.
"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming here this afternoon," he said in a smooth, melodious voice—a voice, he'd been told, which contrasted violently with his craggy appearance. "Approximately three hours ago we learned that there is a large unidentified object rapidly approaching the solar system."
Only a third of the nine men and women present kept tine impassive—if tense—expressions that betrayed prior knowledge. The rest displayed a kaleidoscope of shock, wonderment, and uneasiness as Carey's words sank in.
He continued before the murmurings had quite died down. "The object is traveling a hair below lightspeed, at about point nine nine nine cee, using an extremely hot fusion drive of some kind and what seems to be an electromagnetic ramscoop arrangement. He's about eight light-days out—under fourteen hundred A.U.—and while we haven't got his exact course down yet, he'll definitely pass through the System."
" 'Through,' General?" asked Evelyn Woodcock, chief assistant to the Executor. "It's not going to stop here?"
"No, his drive's still pointing backwards," Carey told her. "Decelerating to a stop now would take hundreds of gees."
From their expressions it was clear they weren't sure whether to be relieved or insulted by the Intruder's disinterest. "Then why is it coming here?" Assembly-Prime Wu-sin asked.
"Reconnaissance, possibly, though that's unlikely. He's coming in at a steep angle to the ecliptic—a poor vector if he wants to see much of the System. He could also be trying for a slight course correction by passing close to the sun; we'll know that better when we get more accurate readings on him. It's even possible the Intruder doesn't yet know we're here. At the speed he's making, the sun's light is blue-shifted into the ultraviolet, and he might not have the proper instruments to detect it."
"Unlikely," Dr. Louis Du Bellay of the Chiron Institute murmured. "I would guess they've done this before."
"Agreed, Doctor," Carey nodded. "It's a very remote possibility. Well. The Intruder, then, is not likely to be of great danger to us, provided we keep local traffic out of his way. By the same token, he's not likely to advance our store of knowledge significantly, either. With one exception: we now know we're not alone in the universe. You'll appreciate, I'm sure, the importance of not springing this revelation on the System and colonies without some careful thought on the part of all of us. Thank you for coming here; we'll keep you informed."
Carey stepped from the lectern and headed toward the door as his audience came alive with a buzz of intense conversation. As Carey passed him, Dr. Du Bellay rose and fell into step. "Would you mind if I tagged along with you back to the Situation Room, General?" he asked. "I'd like to keep close tabs on this event."
Carey nodded. "I rather expected you'd want to. I've already had you cleared for entry." He raised his hand warningly as the Security man reached for the spy-seal control. "No talking about this, Doctor, until we're past the inner security shield."
It was only a short walk to the central section of Peacekeeper Headquarters, and the two men filled the time by discussing Du Bellay's latest trip to the ancient ruins at Van Maanen's Star. "I heard about that," Carey said. "I understand it was your first solo tachship run."
"Yes. The Directorate at Chiron's been encouraging everyone to learn to fly—it's cheaper than always having to hire a pilot along with a tachship. Fortunately, they haven't yet suggested I do all my own digging as well."
Carey chuckled. "That's what students are for. Are those ruins really as extensive as people say?"
"Even more so. We've barely scratched the surface, and there's at least one more civilization under the one we're working on."
They passed the security shield to the clickings of invisible security systems, and the topic abruptly changed. "How in blazes did a tachship stumble across something moving that fast?" Du Bellay asked.
"Pure dumb luck," Carey said. "A merchantman coming in from Alpha Centauri had dropped back into normal space to do a navigational check. They'd just finished when this thing went roaring past."
"They're lucky they weren't fried by the ramscoop fields," Du Bellay commented.
"They damn near were. A few million kilometers over and they probably would have been. Anyway, they recovered from the shock and got a preliminary reading on his course. Then they jumped ahead the shortest distance they could and waited the sixteen minutes it took the Intruder to catch up. They got another decimal in his course, confirmed he was heading toward Sol, and hightailed it here with the news."
"Hmm. Ironic, isn't it, that the great search for intelligent life should be ended by a puddle-jumping business whip whose navigator didn't trust his own computer. Well, what's next?"
"We've sent out a dozen tachships, strung along the Intruder's route, to get better data. They should be reporting in soon."
The Peacekeeper Situation Room was a vast maze of vision screens, holotanks, and computer terminals, presided over by a resident corps of officers and technicians. Halfway across the room was the main screen, currently showing a map of the entire solar system. From its lower right-hand corner a dotted red line speared into the inner system.
A young captain glanced up from a paper-strewn table as they approached. "Ah, General, he greeted Carey. "Just in time, sir: Chaser data's coming in."
"Let's see what you've got, Mahendra."
Mahendra handed him a computer-printed page. Carey scanned it, aware that Du Bailey was reading over his shoulder.
The Intruder was big. Compensating for relativistic effects and the difficulty of taking data at such speeds, the computer judged the alien craft at well over fifteen hundred meters long, two hundred meters in diameter, and massing near the two-hundred-million-ton mark. Its cone-shaped ramscoop fields spread out hundreds of kilometers in front of it. The drive spectrum showed mainly helium, but with a surprisingly high percentage of other elements.