seventeen

At first sight, the lights were disappointing. Because the fleet was travelling roughly eastwards, the blue and darker blue bands which represented day and night on other parts of Orbitsville were arcing across the sky from side to side. The lower one looked in the eastern sky the narrower and closer together the bands appeared to grow, until they merged in the opalescent haze above the upcurving black horizon. Even when Braunek had shown him where to look Garamond had to scan the darkness for several seconds before he picked out a thin line of yellowish radiance, like a razor cut just below the edge of a cardboard silhouette.

Delia Liggett, who was at the controls, raised her face to him. “Is there any chance that… ?”

“It isn’t Beachhead City,” Garamond said. “Let’s get that clear.”

“I thought there might have been a mistake over distances.” “Sorry, Delia. We’re working on a very rough estimate of how far the Bissendorf travelled, but not that rough. You can start looking out for Beachhead City in earnest a couple of years from now.” There was silence in the cockpit except for the insistent rush of air against the sides of the ship.

“Then what is that?”

Garamond perversely refused to admit excitement. “It looks like sky reflections on a lake.”

“Wrong colour,” Braunek said, handing Garamond a pair of binoculars. “Try these.”

“It has to be an alien settlement,” Garamond admitted as the glasses revealed the beaded brightness of a distant city. “And it’s so far from the entrance to the sphere.”

At that moment Cliff Napier’s voice came through on the lightphone. “Number Two speaking — is that Vance I can see in the cockpit?”

“I hear you, Cliff.”

“Have you seen what we’ve seen?”

“Yeah — and are you wondering what I’m wondering?”

Napier hesitated. “You mean, what’s an alien city doing way out here? I guess they got to Orbitsville a very long time before we did. It might have taken them hundreds or thousands of years to drift out this far.”

“But why did they bother? You’ve seen what Orbitsville’s like — one part is as good as another.”

“To us, Vance. Aliens could see things a different way.”

“I don’t know,” Garamond said dubiously. “You always say things like that.” He dropped into one of the supernumerary seats and fixed his eyes on the horizon, waiting for the wall of daylight to rush towards him from the east. When it came, about an hour later, sweeping over the ground with thought-paralysing speed, the alien settlement abruptly became an even less noticeable feature of the landscape. Although it was now within a hundred kilometres, the ‘city’ was reduced in the binoculars to a mere dusting of variegated dots almost lost in greenery. During the lightphone conversations between the aircraft there had been voiced the idea that it might be possible to obtain new propeller bearings or have the existing ones modified. Garamond, without expressing any quick opinions on a subject so important to him, had been quietly hopeful about the aliens’ level of technology — but his optimism began to fade. The community which hovered beyond the prow of his ship reminded him of a Nineteenth Century town in the American West.

“Looks pretty rustic to me.” Ralston, the telegeologist, had borrowed the glasses and was peering through them.

“Mark Twain land?”

“That’s it.”

Garamond nodded. “This is completely illogical, of course. We can’t measure other cultures with our own yardstick, but I have a feeling that that’s a low-technology agricultural community up there. Maybe it’s because I believe that any race which settles on Orbitsville will turn into farmers. There’s no need for them to do anything else.” “Hold on a minute, Vance.” Ralston’s voice was taut. “Maybe you’re going to get those bearings, after all. I think I see an airplane.”

Numb with surprise, Garamond took the offered binoculars and aimed them where Ralston directed. After a moment’s search he found a complicated white speck hanging purposefully in the lower levels of the air. The absence of any lateral movement suggested the other plane was flying directly away from or directly towards his own, and his intuition told him the latter was the case. He kept watching through the powerful, gyro-stabilized glasses and presently saw other motes of coloured brightness rising, swarming uncertainly, and then settling into the apparently motionless state which meant they were flying to meet him head-on. Ralston gave the alert to the six other ships of the fleet.

“It’s a welcoming party, all right,” he said as the unknown planes became visible to the naked eye, “and we’ve no weapons. What do we do if they attack us?”

“We have to assume they’re friendly, or at least not hostile.” Garamond adjusted the fine focus on the binoculars. “Besides — I know I’m judging them by our standards again-but that doesn’t look like an air force to me. The planes are all different colours.”

“Like ancient knights going out to do battle.”

“Could be, but I don’t think so. The planes seem to be pretty small, and all different types.” A stray thought crossed Garamond’s mind. He turned his attention back to the city from which the planes had arisen, and was still scanning it with growing puzzlement when the two fleets of aircraft met and coalesced.

A green-and-yellow low-wing monoplane took up station beside Garamond’s ship and wiggled its wings in what, thanks to the strictures of aerial dynamics, had to be the universal greeting of airmen. The alien craft had a small blister-type canopy through which could be seen a humanoid form. Braunek, now at the controls, laughed delightedly and repeated the signal. The tiny plane near their wingtip followed suit, as did a blue biplane beyond it.

“Communication!” Braunek shouted. “They aren’t like the Clowns, Vance — we’ll be able to talk to these people.”

“Good. See if you can get their permission to land,” Garamond said drily.

“Right.” Braunek, unaware of the irony, became absorbed in making an elaborate series of gestures while Garamond twisted around in his seat to observe as many of the alien ships as he could. He had noted earlier that no two were painted alike; now he was able to confirm that they all differed radically in design. Most were propeller-driven, but at least two were powered by gas turbines and one racy-looking job had the appearance of a home-made rocket ship. In general the alien planes were of conventional/universal cruciform configuration, although he glimpsed at least one canard and a twin-fuselage craft.

“A bit of a mixture,” Ralston commented, and added with a note of disappointment in his voice. “I see a lot of internal combustion engines out there. If that’s the level they’re at they won’t be much use to us.”

“How about supplies of fossil fuel?”

“There could be some about — depends on the age of Orbitsville.” Ralston surveyed the ground below with professional disgust. “My training isn’t worth a damn out here. The ordinary rules don’t apply.”

“I think it’s okay to go down,” Braunek said. “Our friend has dipped his nose a couple of times.” “Right. Pass the word along.”

As the fringes of the alien settlement began to slide below the nose of the aircraft Braunek sat higher in his seat and turned his head rapidly from side to side. “I can’t see their airfield. We’ll have to circle around.”

Garamond tapped the pilot’s shoulder. “I think you’ll find they haven’t got a centralized airfield.”

The aircraft banked into a turn, giving a good view of the ground. The city wheeling below the wing was at least twenty kilometres across but had no distinguishable roads, factories or other buildings larger than average-sized dwellings. Garamond’s impression was of thousands of hunting lodges scattered in an area of woodland. Here and there, randomly distributed, were irregular cleared areas about the size of football pitches. The brightly coloured alien planes dispersed towards these, crossing flight paths at low altitude in an uncontrolled manner which brought audible gasps from Braunek. They landed unceremoniously, one to a field, leaving the humans’ ships still aloft in the circuit.