Kosoff stirred in his desk chair and opened his eyes. His eyelids felt gummy, heavy.
I must have drifted to sleep, he realized.
Littlejohn was sitting in the chair to one side of his desk, head flung back, mouth hanging open, snoring lightly.
Kosoff remembered Abbott leaving the office, practically bouncing with self-satisfaction at having found how the big cats crossed from Beta to Gamma.
I must have drowsed off, Kosoff thought, watching MacDaniels killing the cats, trying to save the Gammans from extinction. Breaking all the rules and irretrievably destroying everything the Gammans believed in.
He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs from his mind.
Those egg things the cats use to ride from Beta to Gamma, he remembered. They’re not natural. They can’t be. An incubation system that’s also a spacecraft. It’s got to be the product of a high technology. A technology higher than our own, he thought. It’s got to be. But whose? Surely the cats themselves couldn’t have produced such a technology. It’s somebody else, a species we haven’t met yet. They’re hiding from us on Beta.
Who? How? Why? The questions tumbled through Kosoff’s mind.
Then he realized that the holotank was dark. At the bottom of its display area a message blinked, SIGNAL LOST. SIGNAL LOST. SIGNAL LOST.
Kosoff immediately called out, “Emcee, what’s happened to the signal from Gamma?”
The master computer’s avatar appeared and calmly answered, “Transmission from Gamma was interrupted seventeen minutes ago. Attempts to regain the signal have been unsuccessful, so far.”
Staring at the avatar’s totally calm image, Kosoff felt real fear for the first time in his adult life.
* * *
Huddled under the table with the two Gammans, Brad punched out the code for fault analysis on his wrist keyboard with trembling fingers.
The suit’s computer flashed its message on the inner surface of his helmet. SIGNAL LOST.
Signal lost? Brad asked himself. The signal from Alpha, from the ship? What’s happened to it? Is Felicia in danger? Hurt? Killed?
Then he took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. Think rationally, he demanded. The ship’s in orbit around Alpha, thirty-some million klicks from here. These storms can’t bother it. If the signal’s lost, it must be from this end.
He got a vision of his shelter being scooped up by the storm winds and sent flying, like one of the eggs from Beta in reverse.
I should have weighted it down somehow, he thought. Then he added, Good thinking, after the fact.
“A monster!” Mnnx shouted from behind him.
Still sitting beneath the table, Brad whirled around, banged the top of his helmet against the table above him, then ducked to lie prone beside Mnnx and Lnng. Crouched on the roofline was one of the cats, all six of its paws gripping the edge of the opening where the shattered remains of the roof poked out their broken, soggy limbs.
The cat was looking down at them as it teetered uncertainly on the roof’s edge.
How does it know we’re in here? Brad wondered as he slowly, carefully took aim. It can’t see us from outside the building. Does it have a super sense of smell? Some other sense that we don’t know about? Or is it simply programmed to go through every building it sees?
No time for speculation. The cat was bunching its muscles, tensing before leaping to the floor. Brad squeezed the pistol’s trigger and the red laser beam hit the beast in the throat. Greenish blood spurted and the animal gave out a strangled roar, then fell to the floor with a thud that shook the building.
“Is it dead?” Mnnx whispered. “Truly?”
Brad nodded inside his helmet as the green blood spread across the rain-soaked floor. The monster was sprawled in a heap; it shuddered convulsively, then stopped breathing.
“Truly,” he said.
The downpour was definitely slackening, Brad realized as he stared at the dead beast. Looking up from beneath the table, he saw that the sky was brightening. Gray clouds were still scudding by, but the wind sounded softer, weaker.
I think we’re going to make it, he said to himself.
He thought about the silence of his communications link. Transmissions go from the suit to the shelter, then up to a commsat in orbit. The satellites must have been torn away by the close passage of Beta. But the equipment in the shelter should be able to reach the ship on its own. If it’s still functioning. If its antenna hasn’t been ripped off or bashed to pieces.
The day brightened slowly, but eventually the rain stopped and warm sunlight lanced through the scattering clouds.
“The storm is over,” said Lnng. Brad thought the translation sounded happy. Why not? he asked himself. They’ve lived through their version of doomsday. They’ve survived.
One of the Gammans from downstairs climbed up to their level and said, “It seems safe to go outside now, Brrd. May we go?”
Scrambling out from under the table, Brad replied, “I think so.” He stretched and heard vertebrae pop; it felt good.
Mnnx asked, “Will you go with us, Brrd? There might still be monsters outside.”
Checking the charge in his pistol’s power pack, Brad said, “Yes. I need to find my shelter and see how it got through the storm.”
“You can sleep with us, Brrd,” Lnng offered. “You can have Drrm’s place.”
Inside his suit’s helmet, Brad grimaced. The idea of sleeping with these aliens filled him with something close to disgust. Careful, he warned himself. You don’t want to be elected chief.
As they started down the steps toward the ground floor, Brad saw that the floodwaters were already receding, no more than ankle deep. Mithra’s bright light made the world look warmer, safer.
Mnnx called out to his fellow Gammans, “Brrd and I are going to search for his shelter. Who will go with us?”
Practically every one of the nearly five dozen Gammans raised their hand in a very human gesture. They want to be near my gun, Brad thought, grinning inside his helmet.
“All right, then,” he said. “Let’s go.”