The Wanderer

The Wanderer Page 14

Paul Hagbolt faced Major Buford Humphreys through the beach gate of Vandenberg Two. Margo stood beside him holding Miaow. The ten saucer students were crowded around them. The edges of all their shadows made purple and golden flecks on the silvery mesh of the gate.

There were gold and purple flecks in the Pacific behind them as well, where the Wanderer, still rather high in the sky, had begun a coasting descent toward the placid ocean. It still showed the face Rama Joan had called the mandala, though now the western yellow spot was growing and the eastern one shrinking as the orb rotated. It cast a strong twilight across the scrubby coastal landscape and turned the sky a slate gray through which only five or six stars showed.

The jeep that had brought Major Humphreys down the gully from the heights still growled behind him and stared with its unnecessary headlights. One of the two soldiers with him sat at the wheel, the other stood at his side. The heavily-armed soldier on guard at the gate stood outside the fence in the dark doorway of the guard tower. His eyes were on the major. His submachine gun was in shadow except for a purple ring showing on the muzzle.

Major Humphreys had the thoughtful eyes and downturned mouth of a schoolteacher, but right now his dominant expression was the same as that of the soldier on guard  -  tension masking dread.

Paul, his soft, handsome face firmed a bit by the responsibility he felt, said: "I was hoping it would be you, Major. This saves a lot of trouble."

"You're lucky, because I didn't come on your account," Major Humphreys retorted sharply, then added in a rush: "A few others of the L.A. section made it before the Coast Highway went. We're hoping the rest will arrive by the Valley  -  over Monica Mountainway or through Oxnard. Or we'll lift them out by 'copter  -  especially Cal Tech. Pasadena really got it in the second quake." He checked himself with a frown and a headshake, as if irritated at having impulsively said that much. Then he continued loudly, speaking over the flurry of exclamations from the saucerites. "Well, Paul, I haven't got all night  -  in fact, I haven't got a minute. Why'd you come by the beach gate? I recognize Miss Gelhorn, of course - " He nodded curtly toward Margo  -  "But who are the others?" His gaze flickered across the saucer students, pausing doubtfully at Ross Hunter's full brown beard.

Paul hesitated.

Doc, looking like a long-faced, modern day Socrates with his hairless dome and thick glasses, cleared his throat and prepared to risk all by rumbling: "We are clerical members of Mr. Hagbolt's section." He suspected that this was one of those moments when a large white bluff is essential.

But Doc had hesitated a fractional second too long. The Little Man, pushing to the front between him and Wojtowicz, fixed the major with a benign stare. A confident smile nestled under his brush mustache as he said with lawyer-like glibness: "I am secretary and we are all members in good standing of the Southern California Meteor and UFO Students. We were holding an eclipse symposium at the Rodgers beach house, having signed permission from the Rodgers estate and  -  although it was not strictly needed  -  approval from your own headquarters."

Doc groaned, fringe-audibly.

Major Humphreys froze. "Flying saucer bugs?"

"That's right," the Little Man retorted sweetly. "But please  -  not bugs  -  students." His left arm was jerked back and he rocked onto his heels as Ragnarok, in a flurry of uneasy effacement, tugged at the leash.

"Students," Major Humphreys echoed doubtfully, looking them up and down, almost, Paul thought, as if he were going to demand to see their college registration cards.

Paul said earnestly: "Their cars were buried in a landslide along with mine, Major. Miss Gelhorn and I would hardly have got here without their help. There's nowhere for them to go now. One of them has had a heart attack and one is a child."

Major Humphreys' gaze hesitated at Rama Joan, who was standing behind Hunter. She stepped forward around him and showed all of herself  -  her shoulder-length, red-gold hair and her white-tie evening clothes  -  then smiled gravely and made a little bow. Ann, with her matching red-gold braids, came forward beside her. They looked as strangely beautiful and as insultingly perverse as an Aubrey Beardsley illustration for The Yellow Book.

"I'm the child," Ann explained coolly.

"I see," Major Humphreys said, nodding rapidly as he turned away. "Look, Paul," he said hurriedly. "I'm sorry about this, but Vandenberg Two can't possibly take in quake refugees. That question's already been explored and decided. We have our own vital work, and an emergency only tightens security regulations."

"Hey," Wojtowicz broke in. "You're saying the quakes were really big in L.A. County?"

"You can see the fires, can't you?" Major Humphreys snapped at him. "No, I can't answer questions. Come in through the tower, Paul. And Miss Gelhorn  -  by herself."

"But these people aren't ordinary refugees, Major," Paul protested. "They'll be helpful. They've already made some interesting deductions about the Wanderer."

As soon as he spoke that last word, the gold-and-purple orb, momentarily out of mind, was once again dominating their thoughts.

Major Humphreys' fingers gripped through the mesh as he drew his face dose to Paul's. In a voice in which suspicion, curiosity, and fear were oddly mixed, he demanded: "Wanderer? Where did you get that name? What do you know about the...body?"

"Body?" Doc cut in exasperatedly. "Any fool can see by now it's a planet. Currently the moon's orbiting behind it."

"We're not responsible for it, if that's what you're thinking," Rama chimed in lightly. "We didn't conjure it up there."

"Yes, and we don't know where the body was buried beforehand, either," Doc added zestfully. "Though some of us have notions about a cemetery in hyperspace."

Hunter kicked him surreptitiously. " 'Wanderer' is simply a name we gave it because it means 'planet'," he interposed soothingly to the major.

"Wanderer will do well enough, though the true name be Ispan." The Ramrod's voice boomed out hollowly from where his angular face, eye sockets and cheeks deep-shadowed, rose over Beardy's shoulder. He added: "Belike the imperial sages have but now touched down in Washington."

Major Humphreys' shoulders contracted as if he'd been stung between them. He said curtly: "I see." Then, to Paul: "Come on through. And Miss Gelhorn  -  without that cat."

"You mean you're turning these people away?" Paul demanded. "After I vouch for them? And one of them deathly ill?"

"Professor Opperly will have something to say about your behavior, Major, I'm sure," Margo put in sharply.

"Where is this heart case?" Major Humphreys demanded, his knee starting to jump as the guard's had.

Paul looked around for the cot, but just then Wanda pushed her considerable bulk forward between Hunter and Rama Joan. "I'm she," she announced importantly.

Doc groaned again. Wojtowicz looked at the fat woman reproachfully, rubbing the shoulder that had taken the strain on the cot corner.

Major Humphreys snorted. "Come on  -  the two of you, alone," he said to Paul, and turned back toward the jeep.

Hunter muttered to Margo: "Better take him up on it before he changes his mind. It's the best thing for you and Paul."

"Without Miaow?" Margo said.

"We'll take care of her for you," Ann volunteered.

That last did something to Paul's churning uncertainties. It might be the sheerest sentimentality to let the last straws of a cat and a child's unthinking generosity weigh down the balance. But: "I'm not coming!" he heard himself shout.

In a voice that tried not to be waspish, Major Humphreys called back: "Don't be melodramatic, Paul. You haven't the choice. You can't desert the Project."

Margo's free arm went around Paul and tightened encouragingly. Doc muttered in his ear: "I hope you know what you're doing."

Paul shouted: "The hell I can't!"

Major Humphreys shrugged and got into the jeep. The guard shut the tower door behind him and moved out toward the twelve standing in front of the gate. "Get moving, you people," he said edgily, wagging the muzzle of his gun. A heavy wire looped behind him from his left hand  -  the controls of his jump rockets.

Except for the Little Man, everyone stepped back from the gun  -  even Ragnarok, for the Little Man had dropped the leash as he stared through the fence in scandalized amazement.

"Major!" the Little Man called. "Your conduct is outrageous and inhumane, and I'll see to it that my opinion goes on record! I'll have you know that I'm a taxpayer, sir. My money supports installations like Vandenberg Two and pays the salaries of public servants like yourself whether they're in uniform or not, and no matter how much brass there is on that uniform! You will please reconsider - "

The guard moved toward him. It was clear he wanted this whole problem out of sight before he was alone again. He grated: "Shut up, you, and get moving!" And he lightly prodded the Little Man in the side with the muzzle of his gun.

With a growl like clockwork going out of control, Ragnarok shot from behind the group, leash flirting behind him, and launched himself at the guard's throat.

The guard's jump rockets blossomed  -  as if he had grown a second pair of legs, bright orange  -  and he lifted into the air, up and back. As he did so, he gave a remarkable demonstration of accurate shooting on the rise, sending four slugs crashing into his attacker. The big German police dog flattened and never moved again.

The group started to run, then stopped.

The guard sailed over the fence and dropped inside, his rockets blossoming briefly to cushion his landing.

The Little Man dropped to his knees beside the body of his dog. "Ragnarok?" He paused, uncertain. Then, "Why, he's dead," and his voice was full of bewilderment.

Wojtowicz picked up the aluminum cot and ran forward with it.

"It's too late for anything," the Little Man murmured.

"You can't leave him here," said Wojtowicz.

They heaved the dead dog onto the cot. The Wanderer was more than bright enough to show the color of blood.

Margo gave Miaow to Paul and took off her jacket and laid it over Ragnarok. The Little Man nodded to her dumbly.

Then the little cortege moved off the way it had come, through the twilight that was flecked with purple and gold.

Young Harry McHeath pointed up over the sea. "Look," he said. "There's a white sliver. The moon's coming out from behind the Wanderer."

Donald Merriam shivered as he saw the faint black threads joining the nose of the moon to the top of the Wanderer turn bone white  -  making them suddenly easy to see and more suggestive than ever of a spiderweb.

Then the nose of the moon turned almost glaringly bone white, too: a tiny white crescent that swiftly lengthened and widened. The white threads came out of the white moon-nose and then looped up.

A profoundly disturbing thing about the crescent: as it grew, it seemed to become too convex, as though the moon were tending toward the shape of a football. And this too-convex leading rim wasn't smooth against black, star-specked space, but just a bit jagged. The boundary between black moon and crescent was a bit jagged, too. Also, there were sharp cracks in the surface of the crescent, as if it were a moon in a Byzantine mosaic.

Suddenly a white glare erupted dazzlingly from starboard into the nose of the Baba Yaga. Reflection from the port rim of the spacescreen almost blinded Don.

He shut his eyes and groped on the rack for a pair of polarizing goggles, put them on and set them to max. Then, with a double puff of the vernier rockets, he swung the ship a shade to starboard.

There, just risen from behind the Wanderer, was the blazing dime beside a sooty dollar. Like the moon and the threads, the Baba Yaga had completed its first passage behind the Wanderer and emerged into sunlight again.

Don adjusted the goggle visors to block off the sun, then cut the polarization until he could see Earth's night side by Wanderer-light. The eastern third of North America had slipped around the righthand rim into day. All of South America was gone. The rest of the globe was Pacific Ocean, except where New Zealand had started to show on the lower lefthand rim  -  it would be nightfall there.

Don was startled at how much it warmed his heart to see Earth again  -  not lost on the other side of the cosmos, but a mere quarter of a million miles away!

New Zealanders and Polynesians ran out from their supper-tables and supper-mats to stare at the prodigy rising with the evening. Many of them assumed the Wanderer must be the moon, monstrously disfigured  -  most likely by American or Soviet atomic experiments gone out of control  -  the purple and the gold the aura of a moon-wide atomic blast  -  and they were hours being argued out of this conviction. But most of the inhabitants of Australia, Asia, Europe, and Africa were still going about their daytime business blissfully unaware of the Wanderer, except as a wild, newspaper-reported Yankee phenomenon, to be classified with senators, movie stars, religious fundamentalism, and Coca-Cola. The shrewder souls thought: Publicity for a new horror film, or  -  aha  -  pretext for new demands on China and Russia. No connection was seen  -  except by a few supersubtle psychologists  -  between the crazy news stories about the moon and the real enough reports of earthquake disasters.

The Atlantic Ocean was also on Earth's day side now, but there it was a different story, since most of the craft plying its shipping lanes and airways had observed the Wanderer during the last hours of the night. These furiously searched the static-disturbed wavebands for news and tried to get off reports and requests for advice to owners and maritime authorities. A few headed for the nearest ports. Others, with a remarkably knowledgeable prudence, turned toward the open sea.

The "Prince Charles" suffered a drastic transition. A group of fascistic Brazilian insurgents, with the help of two officers of Portuguese extraction, seized control of the great luxury liner. Captain Sithwise became a prisoner in his own cabin. The plans of the insurgents had been brilliantly conceived, but would probably never have been successful except for the excitement attendant on the "astronomical emergency." With a feeling almost of awe they realized that, at the expense of six men shot and three of their number wounded, they had gained control not only of a ship big as a resort hotel, but of two atomic reactors.

Wolf Loner breakfasted comfortably and went about his small morning chores as the "Endurance" wested steadily beneath the overcast. His thoughts occupied themselves with the great regularities of nature, masked by modern life.

Don Guiitermo Walker sped in the Araizas' launch out of Lake Nicaragua into the San Juan River, past the town of San Carlos, as dawn reddened the jungle. Now that the Wanderer was out of the sky, Don Guillermo was less inclined to think about it and about the volcanoes and earthquakes, and more inclined to dwell on his successful bombing of el presidente's stronghold in the tiny plane that now rested in the bottom of the lake. Sic semper all leftists! At last he had really graduated from the namby-pamby John Birch Society!...or at least that was how Don Guillermo thought of it.

He struck his chest and cried: "Yo soy un hombre!" One of the Araiza brothers, squinting against the rising sun, nodded and said: "Si," but rather unenthusiastically, as if being a man were not quite that grand a matter.