THE FLYER SPED LOW OVER THE SURFACE OF TITAN, GUIDED through the darkness by forward-scanning radars that felt the landscape with their electronic fingers and translated its contours into binary number-streams that the flight-control computers could understand. In the right-hand side of the cockpit, his thick mustache transformed into a gaping slash across a face thrown into eerie reverse-relief by the subdued glow from the instrument panel, Otto Abaquaan stared silently out at the blackness, absorbed in his own thoughts.
Over twenty years had passed since the serendipitous courses that he and Zambendorf had been following through life happened to collide in Frankfurt, West Germany. Abaquaan had been working a stocks-and-bonds swindle at the time. Overconfident and careless after a three-month run of easy pickings from wealthy dowagers along the French Riviera, he hadn’t bothered to check up on Zambendorf thoroughly enough before selling him a portfolio of phony certificates, and it wasn’t until his contact-man was arrested and Abaquaan was forced to flee the country hours ahead of the police that he discovered Zambendorf had paid for them with phony money. Soon afterward, Zambendorf had managed to track him down again—apparently without too much difficulty—not to moralize or crow over the lesson Abaquaan had been taught, but to express interest in the scheme and compliment Abaquaan on his style. A partnership had developed, and the rest of the team had appeared one by one in various circumstances over the years since.
During those years with Zambendorf he had wound up in some unexpected places, been mixed up with some strange people, and found himself involved in all kinds of bizarre affairs, including being paid a quarter of a million dollars by a Chinese industrialist for communicating with several generations of honorable ancestors; setting up an ESP-based military espionage system for a West African government; selling information from an almanac to a fashionable Italian horoscope writer at exorbitant rates; and prospecting for strategic metals over the estates of a Brazilian landowner. And now to top it all, they were on one of Saturn’s moons, of all places, stage-managing a mechanical Jesus Christ and starting a new religion among a race of intelligent robots. And what was strange was that nothing about the situation really struck Abaquaan as being so strange at all. He was a long time past that. Nothing that involved Zambendorf was capable of seeming strange anymore.
After consulting with Joe Fellburg and Andy Schwartz, the captain of the surface lander on unofficial loan from NASO, Zambendorf had accepted that parachuting down over the built-up area of Padua would be a risky enough business for anyone, let alone untrained Taloids, and had therefore abandoned his original plan to repeat the performance that had played so successfully before Henry’s army in the desert. Instead, Clarissa and Abaquaan had flown Moses to a point just outside the city, from which he would make his way into the metropolis on foot and begin to preach the Revelation during the busiest trading period in the central marketplace. On receipt of a radio signal from Moses’ transmitter, the lander would make a dramatic descent into the heart of the city, accompanied by lights, voices, and special effects, and disembark a specially rehearsed celestial troupe consisting of Lord Nelson and a supporting act of Druids. The result would be instant conversions of Paduans by the drove, Zambendorf had predicted confidently; Henry would be deposed; Genoa would be saved; the Taloids’ future would be assured; and the war against unscrupulous Terran business tycoons and politicians would be won. It was one of Zambendorf’s strengths as a leader—and a source of some of the biggest problems that came from working with him—that he always made everything sound too easy.
The most recent developments, however, were causing Abaquaan misgivings. First, twenty-four hours or so before, Massey had called from the Orion to advise that Caspar Lang would probably use a ruse to warn Zambendorf off from any intention he might have of reproducing his desert spectacular over Padua city.
Sure enough Lang had come through a couple of hours later and issued a solemnly worded warning containing all the points that Massey had predicted. Zambendorf had put on an impressive act of trying desperately but not quite successfully to hide his dismay as he listened, and mumbled about needing time to rethink the whole situation. Then, roaring with laughter after Lang was off the line, he had told the team jubilantly, “This has to mean we’re over the last hurdle! Thanks to Massey we’ve bluffed the bluffers with their own bluff. Lang and the rest of them will just be sitting up there in the Orion, waiting for us to call back while we’re going in over the city. They won’t expect a thing!”
Zambendorf’s enthusiasm had infected the lander’s NASO crew, who were gradually being won over by a combination of his magnetism and his explanations about the Orion mission and its real purpose. The team had effectively acquired another four members and was all set to launch the final phase of the operation that would make its task complete. The situation could hardly have been more favorable. In fact it was too favorable. Everything was going too well, Abaquaan felt. Buried somewhere deep down in the whole intricate pattern was something that didn’t quite fit—something still too subtle for him to raise to the level of conscious awareness, but his instincts had detected it. Twenty years earlier Abaquaan had learned the dangers of overconfidence; a premonition kept telling him that at long last Zambendorf’s turn had arrived to learn the same lesson.
An annunciator on the instrument panel bleeped suddenly, and a symbol on a display screen began to flash on and off. In the seat next to him, Clarissa glanced down, flipped a switch to reset the audio warning, punched commands into the pilot’s touchpanel, and took in the data that appeared on another display. “We’ve just triggered the outer approach marker,” she murmured as she throttled back on power and banked the flyer round to line up for landing. “Open up a channel to ground, and let’s have a profile check.”
Abaquaan selected an infrared view of the terrain ahead and used another screen to conjure up images of a series of flight instruments. “Steepen to one-eight-zero, rate five-four, reduce speed to four-twenty, and come round onto two-five-nine,” he instructed. “Autoland lock-on programmed at ten seconds into phase three of glidepath.”
“Descent monitor and systems?” Clarissa queried.
“Green one, green two, and ah...all positive function.”
The flyer came round an invisible mountaintop and straightened out onto its final approach and descent into the narrow, sheer-sided valley where the surface lander was hidden. The valley floor was a sprawling mess of alien industrial constructions, tangled machinery, and derelict plants, and would blur any radar echos to overflying reconnaissance satellites sufficiently to conceal the outline of the lander, which as an extra precaution had been copiously draped with aluminum foil and metalized plastic. The site was showing no lights, and electronic transmissions were being restricted to low-power local communications and ground beams aimed at satlink relays. Abaquaan pressed a button and spoke into the microphone projecting from his headset. “Hornet to Big Bird. Do you read? Over.”
The voice of Hank Frazer, the lander’s Communications Officer, replied a few seconds later: “Reading you okay, Hornet. The landing area is clear here. How’d it all go?”
“Hi, Hank. Mission accomplished,” Abaquaan replied. “Moses is on his way. No hitches. How have things been back there?”
The flyer slowed to hover in the darkness, and Clarissa quickly scanned graphics displays presented by the flight computers. Moments later the vehicle began sinking vertically. “I think we may have problems,” Frazer’s voice answered. “Dave Crookes called down from the ship. It seems like he overheard a couple of army officers up there talking about infantry missiles being issued to the Paduans specifically for use against the lander if Zambendorf tried any more tricks with it. Crookes didn’t know what to make of the conversation, but it sounded serious and he figured we ought to know. In other words it looks as if Henry may really have those weapons after all.”
In the semidarkness of the flyer’s cockpit, Clarissa and Abaquaan exchanged ominous glances. “Have they talked to Massey about it?” Clarissa murmured, tight-lipped. Outside, the tops of fractionating towers and steel pylons, indistinct and ghostly in Titan’s feeble light, were drifting slowly into view from below. The flyer’s engine note rose as the computers increased thrust to absorb the last remaining momentum of its descent.
“Has Karl talked to Massey about it?” Abaquaan asked.
“He couldn’t locate him, but he’s trying again right now,” Frazer answered.
“Does Karl still think Lang was bluffing?”
“He doesn’t know what to think.”
The flyer gave a final lurch on its shock absorbers, and something deep down in Abaquaan’s stomach lurched with it. The engines fell to idling speed, and the computer displays switched to a series of postflight test routines. “We’re down,” Abaquaan said. “We’ll be over in a few minutes. Talk to you then. Out.”
Clarissa leaned forward to scan the ground ahead of the nose, and a few seconds later a light appeared from among the shadows. The figure of Joe Fellburg, clad in an EV suit and carrying a flashlamp, an M37 automatic infantry assault cannon slung across his shoulder, moved forward and guided the vehicle out of the open and into its parking area beneath the girder-lattice roof supports of what had once been a building of some kind. More forms took shape in the gloom behind him as some of Moses’ followers from the Taloid encampment nearby came closer to watch.
“What do you think?” Abaquaan asked, reaching for his helmet as Clarissa cut the engine.
“I don’t know what to think either,” she said as she proceeded quickly through the systems shutdown sequence. “It doesn’t sound too good.”
Abaquaan unbuckled his harness, hoisted himself from his seat, and moved into the forward cabin to put on his helmet. Clarissa followed, and they exited through the main lock. Fellburg was waiting for them outside. “Good night?”
“It went fine,” Abaquaan said. “Moses is on his way into the city.”
“It’s a pity we can’t bring him back. There might be problems.”
“Yeah—you mean about what Dave Crookes heard. Hank told us.”
“Drew thinks we’ll have to call off the whole operation.”
“What about Moses?” Clarissa’s voice asked, sounding clipped. Fellburg threw out a heavily gauntleted hand. “It’s tough, but what can you do?”
Just then, something scurried furtively in the shadows below one of the flyer’s wings. Fellburg snapped on the flashlamp, and the beam caught a silvery, insectlike machine, about the size of a kitchen chair, with an elongated, tapering head, a body covered by sliding, overlapping plates, and six slender, segmented legs, in the act of stretching one of its sensory appendages to investigate the flyer’s extended landing pad. A piece of metal hurtled from the darkness and bounced off the creature’s flank, and a moment later two Taloids rushed forward waving their arms wildly to chase it away; the creature had fled before Fellburg’s gun was even half unslung. As they resumed walking toward the black silhouette of the lander, Fellburg swung the lamp from side to side to pick out the bullet-riddled remains of a half dozen or so similar machines. Another flashlamp shone briefly some distance ahead of them where Clancy Baker was patrolling on the far side of the lander. “Looks like some of these overgrown tin bugs are partial to NASO-specification alloy,” Fellburg grunted. “But they’re learning pretty quick that getting too close ain’t all that healthy.”
Inside the lander, Zambendorf and Drew West were standing in front of one of the screen consoles on the flight deck, with Andy Schwartz sitting to one side. Across the aisle, Mike Glautzen sat in the flight engineer’s seat, which was reversed to face them. Hank Frazer and Vernon were watching from in front of the doorway leading aft into the main cabin. “We managed to get hold of Massey a few minutes ago,” Frazer murmured as Clarissa and Abaquaan arrived from the midships lock.
“I’m not sure what to believe, Gerry,” Zambendorf was saying to the screen. “Do you think that what Dave Crookes overheard could have been deliberate—a plant intended to scare us off?”
“Who knows? It’s possible,” Massey replied.
“But how could Lang have known that Crookes would pass the information on?” Glautzen queried from behind.
“Easily,” Zambendorf said over his shoulder. “He was one of the few among the scientists who were solidly behind Gerry in protesting the mission’s policies. Also Dave is a communications specialist.”
“The other possibility is that it could have been you who was fed wrong information,” Drew West said to Massey. “Perhaps the Paduans have been given smart missiles. The story that it’s a bluff might really be a double bluff aimed at persuading us to persuade ourselves that there isn’t any risk.”
“Yes, that’s also possible,” Massey admitted. He sounded far from happy.
Andy Schwartz shook his head and tossed his hands up helplessly. “I’m confused,” he protested. “What is all this? The management doesn’t want us doing the same thing at Padua that we did to Henry’s army—right? If that’s so, they’d want us to believe what Lang said, wouldn’t they—whether the Paduans really possess any missiles or not. So why would they set Gerry up to tell us Lang was bluffing? Either way it makes no sense.”
Drew West bit his lip for a moment, then said, “Unless they wanted us to get shot down.” The cabin became very still as everyone tried to tell himself West hadn’t meant what they knew he’d meant. After a pause West went on, “It would get rid of their number-one problem permanently. No Terrans need be directly involved since the Paduans would have done everything necessary through a contrived accident...And Leaherney’s people would have gone on record as having tried to do the civilized thing and warn us, even after we hijacked their lander.” He shrugged. “So how would it look to an investigating committee afterward? A bunch of hotheads insisted on flying an illegally acquired vessel into the home territory of heavily armed aliens of known warlike disposition despite attempts to warn them, and got themselves killed—a clear verdict of death by misadventure. All parties in authority get exonerated. Some recommendations would be filed for tightening up security precautions against similar seizures in future. And that would be it. Case closed.” West turned from the screen and moved away to stand staring moodily down at the empty captain’s couch.
Hank Frazer was shaking his head and looking appalled. “You’re kidding!” he gasped. “Are you saying they’d deliberately set us up to be shot down? But they’re our own people!...All over some lousy robot religion? I don’t believe it. The whole thing’s insane.”
“This operation might be worth millions to them—billions, probably,” West said without turning his head. “And on top of that it could be curtains for the Soviets. With stakes like that, who knows what they might do?”
“I have to agree with Drew,” Abaquaan told Zambendorf from the cabin doorway. He knew now what had been bothering him: After Massey’s attempt at organizing a formal protest, Lang wouldn’t have confided in him over something like this. The leak had been planned.
“They wouldn’t think twice about it,” Clarissa declared flatly. “I’ve seen ‘em waste more people over peanuts. It just depends on how much somebody decides he wants the peanuts.”
“They’re right,” Andy Schwartz agreed morosely.
A heavy silence descended once again. Zambendorf brought a hand up to his brow, emitted a long, weary sigh, and moved a couple of paces toward the door. There was nothing more that any of the others could add. Zambendorf was going through the motions of tussling with a difficult decision, but Abaquaan, West, and Clarissa, who had worked with him for a long time, knew already that there was no decision for him to make; as bitter as it would be for him to have to concede defeat—and to cap it all, defeat in the final round after winning every round that had gone before—he would never ask them to risk their lives for any cause, and wouldn’t for a moment consider risking the crew, even if they were to volunteer. It had been a good fight, but it was over. All that Zambendorf was really looking for now was a way to climb down gracefully. The lander’s crew could sense it too, and while they sympathized with his predicament, none of them was particularly disposed to help make it any easier. After all, being hijacked to help a worthy cause was one thing; going on suicide missions was something else. They remained silent and avoided one another’s eyes uncomfortably.
Then Massey turned his head suddenly to look somewhere offscreen. “There’s somebody at the door here,” he said. “Just a second while I see who it is.” He leaned away and vanished from sight for a few seconds, then reappeared once more and announced, “It’s Thelma. I’ve let her in. She said something about having important news.”
Zambendorf frowned and moved up to the screen. Drew West came back from the forward end of the flight deck to stand next to him. In front of them, Massey moved to one side to make room for Thelma. She looked worried. “Have you sent Moses into Padua yet?” she asked without preliminaries.
Zambendorf nodded. “Yes—as scheduled. Why? What’s happened?”
Thelma groaned. “You can’t go through with it. Larry Campbell got me a copy of the cargo manifest for the latest arms shipment down to Henry. Those missiles are there, Karl. The list includes twenty-four Banshee Mark Fours, half with training warheads and the rest of them live. They could blow you out of the sky from up to eleven kilometers away. There’s no chance that going in there could achieve anything now except get everyone down there killed. You have to call the whole thing off.”
For a long time nobody moved and nobody spoke. Schwartz and Glautzen stared down at the floor, while on the screen Thelma waited pale-faced and Massey kept his eyes averted woodenly. At last, Zambendorf gave a single curt nod, turned away, and stumbled unsteadily forward between the pilots’ stations. He sank down heavily into the captain’s seat and sat staring out through the windshield with unseeing eyes, his frame hunched and his shoulders sagging as if he had just aged twenty years.
Drew West moved round to bring himself full-face to the image of Massey and Thelma. “I think Karl sees the way it is,” he told them quietly. “Look, you’ve done all you can for now. It’d probably be best if you left things with us for a while. We’ll talk to you later, okay?”
Thelma was about to say something more, but Massey checked her with a warning touch on the shoulder and shook his head. “Okay, Drew,” he murmured. “I guess it was a good try, huh?” The screen went blank.
Abaquaan looked from one to another of the subdued faces around him. “What about Nelson and the Druids outside?” he asked in a low voice. “They’re all ready for the grand entry into Padua. What do we tell them?”
Nobody had any answers, or seemed to care all that much. At length West said, “Well, perhaps that’s something we ought to talk about.” As the others looked at him, he motioned with his head to indicate the direction of the door. Andy Schwartz got the message and nodded silently; he got up from his seat, waved a hand for Glautzen to do likewise, and followed Abaquaan, Clarissa, and the others near the doorway through into the main cabin. Glautzen and West came next, closing the door quietly behind them to leave Zambendorf alone and unmoving, staring out into Titan’s perpetual night.