“Your problem, Abner Gold,” Mirelle declared, “is that you have no faith in people. And if you have no faith in human people, how could you ever make friends with nonhuman people?” Suddenly, as if shocked by her own words, she glanced into Titus’s sunglasses, weighing, measuring.
“Friends with an alien?” scoffed Gold, but Mirelle kept staring at Titus.
Titus entertained the paranoid notion that she knew he was exactly such an alien as Project Hail sought to contact. With her skills, she might have seen something unhuman in him. Was that what all her flirting was about? Testing me?
He recalled another of Connie’s admonitions: The only live elderly agents are thoroughly paranoid agents. On the other hand, certain human women were attracted to his kind.
“Why would anyone want to make friends with an alien?” asked Gold. “Trade, maybe, but friends?”
Mirelle stared at Gold, and shrugged, “Why not?”
Titus focused on Mirelle as he prepared to break the promise he had made to himself when he’d discovered his power—never to use it against a defenseless human. He’d known, when he took this mission, that he’d have to set aside his scruples, but now that the moment was on him, he shuddered.
He hadn’t realized his shudder was visible until Gold grinned. “So you finally see it! If they’re aliens they can’t be friends. The best we can hope for, even if our message is received, is some very expensive trading and a nonaggression pact. But friends are best made at home.”
“Au contraire. I have found some of my best friends—and more than friends—very far from home. Titus only just realized how reluctant he is to break a promise.”
She’s reading my mind! Titus swallowed his panic. Stage magicians used muscle reading to simulate telepathy and muscle reading was a primitive version of Mirelle’s science. He focused his Influence on her, suggesting that he was just an unremarkable human, not worth such close scrutiny.
He expected a facile rationalization as her interest was shunted aside. Instead, she continued speculatively, “I am most curious—break what promise, Titus?”
“Oh, nothing much.” He redoubled his effort to Influence her, assuming she was a Resistive, a human difficult to Influence. A puzzled look flitted across her face. For no apparent reason she glanced over her shoulder.
“Titus, look over there. That reporter—the one in the red hat—is photographing us!” She waved sunnily, posing beside Titus, then she dragged him toward the press box, and in that instant, he knew.
She was a susceptible. She’d already been Influenced heavily, but not marked to warn off others of his blood. She was being used—certainly without her knowledge. He could hardly control the disgust that twisted his lips at this abuse. All thought of his own safety was wiped from his mind as he focused all his strength to free her of that control.
She smiled and chattered brightly, grabbing Titus’s hand and towing him toward the reporter—who now slipped under the rope barricade, pointing his video unit at them.
As he came closer, Titus felt the unmistakable throb of Influence and knew the reporter was controlling Mirelle. Older, more powerful than Titus, he was mockingly declaring himself an enemy, a member of the Tourist faction who didn’t consider themselves of Earth at all.
Titus focused on one of the W.S. guards, an older man with a ruddy complexion and beefy jowls, and attracted his attention. The man took out his phone.
Sensing the use of Influence on the guard, the Tourist grinned knowingly at Titus and played his role to the hilt, calling out. “Doctors, do you think it friendly to ‘hail’ an alien civilization from a false location?”
All of earth had been debating that ever since the Project Hail compromise had been announced—to send an instrument package out of the solar system to a remote point from which it would signal the aliens and wait for a reply in order to establish contact without revealing Earth’s location.
“Don’t answer him, Mirelle,” commanded Titus, with Influence. “Look at the press pass in his hat band. You don’t want to be quoted in that....”
It almost worked. The Tourist chuckled and said, his words so veiled in Influence that to nearby humans they were inaudible, “Titus, you and all of Connie’s Residents can’t stop us. So you may as well save yourself the ordeal of starving on the moon.”
It wasn’t the words so much as the friendly tone that got to Titus. The man believed Titus couldn’t stop the Tourists’ agent from sending their SOS out with the humans’ message, an SOS that would reveal Earth’s location and ask for rescue. To underscore Titus’s helplessness, the Tourist reporter wrenched control of Mirelle from Titus and she replied to the reporter’s question, speaking right toward the Tourist’s microphone. “It’s a terrible duplicity, and when the aliens discover what we’ve done, they may never trust us.”
Infuriated, Titus blasted a shaft of Influence at the guard, summoning the man as if there were a riot brewing.
The guard ran, a hand on his sidearm holster. To Titus’s surprise, the Tourist didn’t try for control of the guard. The guard barked at the reporter waving his phone, “The last press conference was this morning! Get back or I’ll have your pass lifted!” Then he added courteously to the scientists, “Look there! You’re about ready to board now.”
Titus, still trying to break through the superior Influence controlling Mirelle, gasped as it cut off. With a grin, the Tourist turned back to the press box and became lost in the crowd, saying to Titus alone, “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting in out of this sun before it fries me.”
Mirelle yielded to Titus’s guiding hand. He plucked up his bag from beside hers and Gold’s, still shaking.
A cart had pulled up to the scientists and a Project transport officer stood beside it with a tablet and a bullhorn. “Compartments one through ten, rear cabin, now boarding. When you arrive at the skybus, please step to the inspection station. This will be your last formal inspection, folks, so please be patient with us.”
People consulted their boarding cards, while some translated the barely intelligible, amplified words for those who hadn’t understood. The flight bags were heaped on the rear deck of the vehicle. Titus gingerly placed his in a side nook, and then sat where he could keep an eye on it.
They rolled smoothly out across the tarmac to where the gantry still surrounded their skybus. The bright light glancing off the brilliant hull nearly blinded him. His skin, even under layers of clothing, felt singed. He yearned for the shade around the skybus.
The bus would lift them to the Luna shuttle. In a few days, they’d be on the moon and working at Project Station, the lab built around the crashed starship. In a few moments, he’d be beyond the reach of his friends, beyond his supply lines. He still hadn’t identified his adversary, the Tourist who would try to send that SOS to the home planet of his kind.
As they got off the cart, Titus edged to the front of the line, stopping only when two others glared at him. Mustn’t be conspicuous. He took a place just behind Mirelle and braced against more exposure to the sun.
Titus wondered if his adversary was an Influenced human. A suggestion to plant the Tourists’ device in the humans’ instrument package could lie dormant in a human mind until the right moment. He could not control a shiver of disgust at the idea of using a human to destroy human civilization. When the Residents had called on him, he’d pledged to die rather than allow the Tourists’ SOS to be beamcast, but perhaps his life wouldn’t be enough. He couldn’t get the reporter’s pitying certainty out of his mind.
The line filed along a bright red carpet that led through a sensor arch, past a long white counter, then on to the gantry’s elevator. A smartly uniformed Sovereignties space marine guarded the elevator. The official photographer stood by to take pictures as each of them