Ben Bova - Voyagers

“Of course I broke! And I swore to them that I’d be a good Soviet spy for them. It took a lot to convince them, you know. They’re very thorough.”

Stoner just stared at him, waiting for more.

“Well, once I got home and my head cleared a bit, I went to British Military Intelligence and told them the entire story. They were delighted. MI told me that I could be a double agent, pretending to work for the Reds but actually working for the Crown.”

“Christ Almighty.”

“Quite. I didn’t want to work for any of them, but I’ve been doing both ever since. The reason I’m here, actually, is because both the KGB and British MI want me here.”

“You’re joking!”

“I wish I were. The Russkies have their own people puzzling over the radio pulses, but they don’t have a telescope in orbit that can give them data on the spacecraft. I’m supposed to funnel your Big Eye data to them.”

“Does the Navy know about this?”

“Your Navy? No. Neither does NATO, I believe. MI are curious about what you chaps are up to, you realize. Your Navy people haven’t shared their information fully with their NATO colleagues, as yet.”

“Cloak and dagger,” Stoner muttered.

“Indeed. In this business a man has no friends, you know. Absolutely none. Anyone could turn out to be your enemy. Anyone could turn out to be an assassin.”

“Assassin?” Stoner echoed. “You mean somebody might try to kill you?”

For the first time, Cavendish laughed. It was a thin, harsh, humorless sound. “Not me, dear boy. You. I’m merely a cog in the machine that both sides are working. If there’s an assassin lurking in the bush, he’s after your head, not mine.”

Stoner gaped at him. Slowly, he asked, “Are you trying to warn me, or…?”

The computer terminal suddenly erupted into clattering life. Stoner and Cavendish both bolted from their chairs by the fireplace and rushed into the dining room, where the typing unit was pounding away madly. Line after line of numbers sprouted on the long accordionfolded sheets of paper that passed through the machine’s roller.

“What is it?” Cavendish asked, the brandy snifter still in his fingers. “What’s it saying?”

“The latest fix on the spacecraft…” Stoner yanked the paper up so that he could read the first rows of figures at eye level without stooping over the chattering typewriter.

He gave a low whistle. “No wonder the computer had to chew on the data all night. The damned thing has changed its course.”

“What?”

“It’s accelerating.”

“Can’t be!”

“Look at this.” Stoner pointed to the numbers. “Here. And here again.”

Cavendish snapped impatiently, “It might as well be Sanskrit! I don’t know your language!”

“The spacecraft put on a burst of thrust,” Stoner explained. “Here and here.”

“It’s maneuvering? Changing course?”

“Yes.”

“Then there must be a crew on board!”

“Or a damned smart computer.”

“But where is it heading? What’s its new course?”

With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Stoner bent over the typewriter. Just as abruptly as it had started a few moments earlier, it stopped.

“Well?”

Stoner stared at the final row of figures. He didn’t need to check a reference table. He had memorized that set of numbers weeks earlier, because he had feared, or hoped, or maybe dreamed that they would show up to face him, inevitably.

“Where is the bloody thing heading?” Cavendish demanded.

“Here,” Stoner said.

Cavendish’s mouth fell open. “Here,” he finally managed. “You mean Earth?”

Stoner nodded. “It’s finished looking at Jupiter. Now it’s heading for Earth.”

The General Secretary stared gloomily out the window of his limousine at the gray snowy morning.

“You know,” he said in a low, heavy voice, “that I am dying.”

Georgi Borodinski gasped. “Comrade Secretary! You mustn’t say such a thing.”

The General Secretary turned awkwardly to face his aide. Both men were wrapped in heavy dark coats and fur hats, despite the limousine’s heating system.

With a halfhearted grin, the General Secretary asked, “Why not? It is the truth.”

“But still…”

“You’re afraid the car is bugged. My prospective heirs might get a little overanxious and try to put me out of misery?” He laughed: a dry, rasping sound.

Borodinski said nothing. By the standards of the Kremlin’s inner elite he was a youngish man, only slightly past fifty, his receding hair still dark, his flesh still firm. He had risen from the ranks of Party functionaries by steady hard work, unspectacular, uninspired, seemingly unambitious. But he had recognized his one chance for advancement twenty years earlier, and had attached himself with the dogged faithfulness of a loyal serf to the man who was now General Secretary of the Party and President of the Soviet Union.

Now Borodinski stood on the verge of becoming General Secretary himself—if he could survive the struggle that would inevitably follow the death of his master.

“Do you know why we are riding through the cold and snow, instead of staying warm and comfortable in my office?” asked the General Secretary.

“I think I do,” Borodinski answered.

Gesturing toward the driver on the other side of the bullet-proof glass partition, the Secretary explained, “A Tartar, from beyond Lake Baykal. He checks the car every day before I step into it. We are safe from eager ears.”

“Yes.”

“I must live like an ancient Roman Emperor, surrounded by my Palace Guard—all foreigners, barbarians, loyal to me personally and not to anyone or anything else. A fine state of affairs for the leader of a Marxist state, isn’t it?”

“Every great leader has enemies, Comrade Secretary. Within as well as without.”

The Secretary’s heavy brows inched upward. “But if everyone within the Kremlin is a good Marxist, why should I require such protection?”

Borodinski saw where he was heading. “They are not all good Marxists. Even some in the Presidium and the Inner Council have their…failings.”

The Secretary nodded grimly. “Now then,” he said, “about this latest offer from the American President…”

Puzzled by the abrupt shift in their conversation, Borodinski blurted, “But what has that to do with…?”

The General Secretary slapped the younger man’s knee and laughed heartily. “You don’t see it, eh? You still have a few things to learn about the art of ruling.”

His laughter turned into a wheezing cough. Borodinski sat still, waves of sadness and fear washing through him. And impatience. But he sat unmoving as his master slowly won his struggle to breathe normally.

“I was saying,” the General Secretary resumed, after wiping his lips and chin with a linen handkerchief, “the American President has made what appears to be another generous offer.”

Borodinski nodded. “They’ve invited us to send a team of scientists to their base in the Pacific. Kwajalein Atoll, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” the Secretary said. “According to all available intelligence, the American offer seems genuine. Their President wants to use this—this alien spaceship—as a symbol to build stronger ties of co-operation between our two nations.”

“Despite everything they’ve done over the past few years?”

“Perhaps because of everything they’ve done over the past few years. They may have finally realized the futility of their so-called ‘get tough’ policies.”