Harry Turtledove - Second Contact

Warren smiled. Instead of answering directly, he turned to the man who’d brought in the box. “Open the lid.” As the assistant obeyed, Warren gestured to Sam. “Go on over and have a look.”

“I sure will.” When Yeager stepped up and peered into the box, he had to blink because he was looking at a couple of bare lightbulbs that put out a good deal of light and heat. They illuminated a pair of large eggs with speckled yellow shells. Sam looked back at the president. “It’s an incubator.”

“That’s right.” Earl Warren nodded.

Sam started to ask a question, then stopped. His mouth fell open. He came closer to losing his upper plate in public than he had for many years. Only one kind of egg could account for his being summoned from Los Angeles to Little Rock. “Those… came from a Lizard, didn’t they?” he asked hoarsely.

President Warren nodded again. “That’s right,” he repeated.

“My God.” Yeager stared at the eggs. “How did we ever manage to get our hands on them?”

“ How doesn’t concern you,” the president said crisply. “I am only going to tell you that once, and you had better get it through your head. It is none of your business. I hope you’ve learned your lesson about things that are none of your business.” He gave Sam a severe look.

“Yes, sir.” Sam wasn’t looking at the president as he spoke. His eyes kept going back to those incredible, sand-colored…

“All right,” Warren said. “How would you like to take those eggs back to California with you and raise the babies when they hatch? Raise them up like people, I mean, or as much like people as you can. Finding out just how much alike we and the Lizards are and how and where we differ will be very important as time passes, don’t you think?”

“Yes, sir!” Sam said-no polite acquiescence now but hearty, delighted agreement. “And thank you, sir! Thank you from the bottom of my heart!”

“You’re welcome, Lieutenant Colonel Yeager,” President Warren said, chuckling at his enthusiasm.

“Lieut-” Yeager stared, then snapped to attention and saluted. “Thank you again, sir!” He felt like turning handsprings. He hadn’t thought he’d ever see the oak leaves on his shoulder straps go from gold to silver. For somebody who’d started out as a thirty-five-year-old buck private, he’d turned out to have a pretty fair career.

“And you’re welcome again,” Warren answered. “You’ve done very well for us, and now you’re taking on another assignment that won’t be easy. You deserve this promotion, and I’m pleased to be able to give it to you. As a matter of fact…” He reached into a desk drawer and took out a jewelry box. “Here are your new insignia.”

Sam wondered how many lieutenant colonels had got their rank badges from the hand of the president of the United States. Not a whole lot, or else he was Babe Ruth. He paused, bemused. When it came to Lizards, he pretty much was Babe Ruth. His eyes slid back to the incubator. “How long till those eggs hatch, sir?”

Willy answered for President Warren: “We think about three weeks, Lieutenant Colonel, but we might be off ten days or so either way.”

“Okay.” Yeager knew a different sort of bemusement. “It’ll feel funny, being a new father again at my age.” President Warren and Willy both laughed. Then something else occurred to Sam. “Lord! I wonder what Barbara’s going to think of becoming a new mother again.” That was liable to be more interesting than he cared for.

But the president said, “This is for the country. She’ll do her duty.” He rubbed his chin. “And we’ll give her a civil-service promotion, too. You’re right-she’ll earn it.”

“That’s fair.” And Yeager thought Warren was right. Barbara would pitch in and help. Chances to learn about the Race like this didn’t grow on trees. Sam suddenly grinned. Jonathan would pitch in, too. He’d leap at the chance, where he’d run screaming from the idea of taking care of a human baby.

“You should have some fascinating times ahead of you-and busy ones, too,” Warren said. “In a way, I envy you. You’ll be doing something no one has ever done before, not in all the history of the world.”

“Yeah,” Sam said dreamily. But this time, when his gaze went back to the incubator, he turned practical again. “You’ll either need to fly that out to L.A. in a pressurized cabin or ship it by train. We don’t want to take any chances with those eggs.”

“No, indeed,” President Warren agreed. “And that has been taken care of. A military charter will get into Los Angeles an hour after your return flight. That should give you time enough to meet it and accompany the truck that will bring the incubator to your home.”

“Sounds good, sir,” Yeager said. “Sounds great, in fact. You’re a couple of steps ahead of me. Better that way than to find out you’re a couple of steps behind.”

“I don’t think anyone who serves the United States can care to an excessive degree about details-that is, there is no degree of care that could be too large,” the president said, with a precision of which Barbara would have approved.

“All right.” Sam didn’t want to leave the incubator even for a moment. He laughed at himself. After the eggs hatched, he’d be praying for free time. He remembered that from the days when Jonathan was a baby. He didn’t think two Lizards would be less demanding than one human had been.

After President Warren dismissed him, he left the new, not so white White House with so much spring in his step, he might have been walking six inches off the ground. A promotion, a new assignment that would keep him busy and fascinated the rest of his career if not the rest of his life… What more could a man want?

One thing looked pretty clear: once he got those eggs home, he wouldn’t have time to worry about the Lewis and Clark or much of anything else for quite a while. He paused and looked back toward the president’s residence. Could Warren have…? Sam shook his head and walked on down High Street, a happy man.

Glen Johnson had never gone to the moon. He’d never got out of close orbit around the Earth till he went up to have a look at the Lizard reconnaissance satellite and, not so coincidentally, the space station that had turned into the Lewis and Clark . Now, peering out one of the windows of the enormous, ungainly ship, he saw Earth and moon together in the blackness of space: matching crescents, one large, one small.

He couldn’t just float weightless by the window and gape to his heart’s content, as he might have done aboard Peregrine . Acceleration was ghostly; he couldn’t feel his effective weight of a bit over a pound and a half. But if he tried to hang in the air, he moved back toward the Lewis and Clark ’s distant motor-four inches the first second, eight the next, a whole foot the third, and so on. Up and down had meaning here, even if they didn’t have much. Papers needed to be clipped or held with rubber bands on any surface that wasn’t down in respect to the axis of acceleration… and on any surface that was, because air currents were plenty to send them fluttering off desktops under.01g.

The crew of the Lewis and Clark had already started inventing games suited to their unique environment. One involved spilling a stream of water at the top of a chamber, then hurrying down to the bottom to drink it when it finally got there. It took more skill than it looked; an error in judgment sent water droplets flying every which way, some in slow motion, others not.

One of those errors in judgment had sent water droplets flying into the Lewis and Clark ’s wiring. It had also sent a spate of orders flying from Brigadier General Healey. Their gist was that anybody who tried such a damnfool stunt again could see how he liked trying to breathe outside without a spacesuit. That hadn’t stopped the games, but it had made people more careful where and with whom they played them.