Larry Niven - Footfall

“I generally find that reassuring.”

“Too often it precedes an invasion. Not this time, perhaps. Mother Russia is about to greet the first visitors from interstellar space. They will come here first; intelligent creatures would not leave potential enemies above them when they land. And that coup will make the U.S. landings on the Moon look like a child reciting for his elders.”

“Must we have visitors to watch our triumph? It could be filmed.”

“We can guess at a second purpose. When the aliens arrive we will seem to represent the world… It doesn’t matter. Security is out of my hands. I can forbid our foreign visitors to enter parts of the station. I can forbid the crew to discuss technical matters. Information may leak through anyway; it usually does. But the blame will not fall on Arvid Rogachev.”

The little truck groaned up Coldwater Canyon. Harry clutched his twelve-string guitar and shivered in the wind-wake behind the cab. It was cold for May in Los Angeles. Lately all the nights had been cold. Cold or not, it beat walking. It was nice of Arline to duck her old man and come pick him up. Too damn bad she had five other people with her, so he had to ride in the back.

It had been a good evening in the Sunset Bar, where he played for free drinks and customer change. Once Harry had thought he’d be a real performer, but the auto wrecks had finished that. Twice within two weeks, in his own car and then his boss’s borrowed car, and neither had headrests! It went beyond bad luck. His head hurt, and his back hurt, and he cursed the two separate sets of sons of bitches who’d separately rear-ended him and left him part crippled. And the insurance companies and their goddam lawyers and — Ruby moved over to sit against him. A hundred and eighty pounds of fleshy cushion: her warmth felt good. “Want to come to my place?” she asked.

“Love to,” Harry said. And I don’t like to sleep alone. “But you know, I have this place I have to watch.”

“Take me with you, then.”

“Can’t do that, either,” Harry said. He didn’t want to. Ruby had been a nice, soft, affectionate partner, and not just in bed, ten years ago. Naive but nice. Maybe he’d been expecting her to grow up. God, how she’d changed! She’d grown out: forty pounds, maybe more. She’d been soft, then, but she hadn’t sagged! You noticed the lack of brains more now. Arline, now she’d be nice, but Jesus, she lives with her old man and he’d get sticky as hell.

For a moment Harry thought it over. Arline would come with him. She’d love the Dawson house. And— And word of honor on record. Heckfire. The truck was passing

Laurel Canyon on Mulholland. He tapped on the glass. The pickup pulled over. Harry climbed out. He waved to Arline. “Thanks,” he called.

“Sure this is all right?” she asked.

“Fine,” Harry said. He waited until she’d driven on up the hill and around a corner, then started climbing toward the Dawson house.

It’s good for me, Harry thought. It’s got to be. And, by damn, my legs are tightening up. He slapped his thigh-it did feel more solid than it had in a long time-and shifted the guitar from his left hand to his right.

The little .25-caliber Beretta was too heavy in his shirt pocket. He knew he ought to leave it at home. It wasn’t much of a gun, and even so, the cops would get soggy and hard to light if they caught him with it. But it was all the gun he had, and there were some bad people out there.

Not the only gun, he thought. He’d rooted around in the Dawson house-hell, Wes knew he’d do that, that’s why he told him about the money in the drawer behind the big drawer in the kitchen-and he’d found the Army .45, the one Wes bought for Carlotta on Harry’s advice, and damn all, she hadn’t taken it with her. But it wasn’t his gun, and Harry couldn’t carry it. It would really hit the fan if he was caught carrying a piece registered to a congressman.

Hell, he’d never carry that weight up this hill! It was always steeper. Every fucking night it got steeper.

It’s good for me. It’s really good for me. Oh, my, God, I have got to get that motorcycle fixed.

I’ve got enough for a deposit. They’ll fix the engine. Maybe if I sing at three places, the hell with the free drinks, get to places where the tips are good, I can scrape up enough to get it out, because I can’t go on climbing this hill! And there’s groceries. Jesus, I’m down to chili and cornmeal and NutriSystems. For the first week it had been easy. There had been food in the refrigerator. He ate vegetable omelets, then frozen stuff, then cans. But now he was down to the NutriSystem stuff Carlotta had bought years ago.

Diet stuff! Lord God. It tastes better than it ought to, and I could lose some belly, here. But opening the cans feels like opening cat food, looks like opening cat-food cans, and Carlotta went off the diet two years ago! Fry it with eggs, and it looks like cat food and snot! And I’m out of eggs…

He shifted the guitar to his other hand. Nothing left but breakfast cereal! I’m going to get that engine fixed.

Tomorrow, Harry thought. He shifted the guitar again. I can take the Kawasaki apart, but the engine has to be rebuilt. I’ll have to carry it in. Borrow Arline’s pickup again.

If you pulled a drawer in the Dawson kitchen all the way out, there was another drawer behind it, and a thousand dollars in fifties behind that. A good burglar would find it and go away, Harry thought, and that was probably its major purpose. Burglar bait, for God’s sake, and thank God he didn’t need it. He had enough for the deposit.

Jenny stood quickly as Admiral Carrell came into her tiny office in the White House basement.

“Sit down,” he commanded. “I’m just old enough to feel uncomfortable when ladies stand up for me. Got any coffee?”

“Yes, sir.” She took cups from her desk drawer and poured from a Thermos pitcher.

“Pretty good. Not up to Navy standards, of course. Navy coffee will peel paint. Did we get anything out of that zoo?”

“Yes, sir,” Jenny said.

“You sound surprised.”

“Admiral, I was surprised. I thought the exercise was a waste of time, but once those sci-fi types got going, it was pretty good.” She opened a folder that lay atop her desk. “This, for instance. When the alien ship came into the solar system almost fifteen years ago, a few telescopes including Mauna Kea happened to be pointed that way. . No one noticed anything then, but when we really looked—” She showed the photographs.

“It look like blobs to me.”

“Yes, sir. They looked like blobs to all of us. Maybe they are blobs. But the sc-fi people suggested that the alien ship dropped a Bussard ramjet.”

“A—”

“Bussard ramjet, Admiral.” She looked down at her notes and read. “Vacuum isn’t empty. There’s hydrogen between the stars. The ramjet is a device for using the interstellar hydrogen as a means for propulsion. In theory it will take ships-large ships-between the stars. It uses large magnetic fields for scoops, and—”

“You may spare me the technical details.”

“Yes, sir. The important point is that they dropped something massive, something they may need if they contemplate leaving our solar system.”

“Which means they intend to stay,” Admiral Carrell said mildly.

“Yes, sir—”

“Rather presumes on our hospitality. Almost as if they didn’t intend us any free choice.” He stood. “Well, we will know soon enough.”

“Yes, sir”

“My congratulations on your work with the advisors. Perhaps I can glean more speculations from them.”

“You’re going to work with them, sir?’

“I may as well. The President has decided that someone responsible must be inside Cheyenne Mountain when the aliens arrive. That someone, apparently, is to be me.”