“Well, then, here you are,” said Abner Gold as he slid the Bell over to Titus. “Took me eight tries to work yours, though. Forgot the quotation marks and kept getting the Southern Cross instead of the Big Dipper.” He glanced at Abbot and added jocularly, “The embarrassing part is that I couldn’t see the difference!”
Mirelle laughed at the strained joke, her voice ringing through Abbot’s glum silence as he nursed a Screwdriver he had no intention of drinking. Looking past Abbot, Titus saw Mihelich watching the bet settling ceremony with more than passing interest. As their eyes met, Mihelich turned away as if he hadn’t been watching them at all.
Mirelle said, “Okay, Abbot. Can you work my custom?”
With a slow smile, he poked at the controls, producing the Rosetta stone close-up she had shown them. Then he tapped another command. The image rotated. “Good enough?”
Abbot seemed genuinely amused by the human game. Titus marveled as he returned the Varian, sans its most vital component. But as Abbot accepted the gutted instrument, his eyes lingered on Mirelle, then measured Titus.
Self-consciously, Titus moved away from her. “Mirelle, let’s see what you can do with Abner’s Alter.”
“Nothing so fancy,” she said and put the instrument on the bar. Abbot moved her custom up next to Gold’s Alter.
With great concentration, she plucked out a combination and got a Periodic Table with the metals outlined in purple. “Is that right? I wouldn’t know if I got the wrong one.”
“There is only one,” assured Gold, not bothering to hide his disappointment. “The table is the basis of our message to the aliens, you know.”
“That’s not my part of the project,” she replied.
“No?” asked Abbot, searingly alert. “So why a linguist on this project? Your other communications skills won’t be much called for, so are you going to spend all your time translating at meetings?”
“Don’t you think that will keep me busy? And then there are all those documents on subjects I know nothing about.”
Her bored resignation rang false, and suddenly Titus wondered just why she was on the project. A medic who isn’t a doctor and a linguist who isn’t working on the message—Mihelich had cut himself off from others, and Mirelle had been dissembling so persistently it was hard to say who she really was. Titus glanced about and spotted other loners. Could there be something else going on besides Project Hail?
If the humans were up to something different from what had been announced, it was imperative that the Residents find out about it, and quickly. Mirelle had to be the key.
Just then a man’s voice announced, “Attention members of Project Hail. I am honored to present to you, the on-site director of the Project, Dr. Carol Colby.”
People turned toward a woman who stood on a chair, a microphone in one hand and an electronic clipboard in the other. She was wearing the same Project Hail uniform as the rest of them, an unprepossessing blue coverall with indigo piping. She had her flight jacket tied around her waist by the arms. Her sandy hair was cut short and flipped back, secured by a headband that held an earphone near one ear.
“There isn’t much time, so I’ll make this short.” Her pleasant contralto voice suggested a trained broadcaster or singer. She appeared no more than fifty, and was trim-figured, with pale skin. Titus saw a scattering of people move to a counter by the boarding ramp where translator headphones were plugged in.
“Everything is ready at Project Station, your quarters and labs. The servers are up and running, except for some networking. There’s no phone wireless service yet. Living will be primitive for a few months, but we’ve worked hard to reach this point so quickly, and I must now ask something even more special of you.
“As you know, having come directly from Earth today, sabotage has not been rare despite Project security. The controversy is so heated, the project could be canceled.
“You’re all volunteers, here because you believe in the Project, so I’m confident you’ll respond well when I ask you to work longer hours than you expected. Our supporters on Earth can give us another eight months at the outside to show results. So we launch in eight months, not fourteen. Can you do it?”
A roar of voices chanted “Yes!” in a dozen languages.
Titus noticed a small knot of men and women moving toward Colby, leading the chanting.
“Abbot?” asked Titus, nervously cloaking his words in Influence. “What are they up to?”
“I see no threat, only suppressed amusement.”
Titus wondered if he’d ever develop such powers. He forced his attention back to the director, who was saying, “Since this decision was taken only hours ago, we haven’t yet consulted heads of vital departments, so let me put you on the spot here and now. Dr. Nancy Dorenski?”
One of the group of chant leaders presented herself. She was a diminutive brunette.
“Dr. Dorenski, can you complete programming of the message in such a short time?”
“If nothing goes wrong,” came a tiny soprano voice, “we can make it.”
“Good.” Colby made a note on her clipboard with a light pen. “Dr. Shiddehara, Dr. Titus Shiddehara?”
“Here!” answered Titus. “Back by the bar.”
“Ah, you speak English!” Her own English had a slight French Canadian tang to it. “Can you locate the point of origin of the aliens in only eight months?”
“There’s no way to know, Dr. Colby. But if, as you say, the computers are ready and the crews working on the alien craft complete the analyses I specified, you can count on my department.” In truth, he expected that within a month or so he’d have verification of the luren tradition that identified their origin.
On the other hand, as with most legends devoutly believed in, this one might contain only a kernel of truth, embroidered for effect by storytellers impressing children.
Colby continued calling on department heads and all answered as Titus had. He caught Abbot eyeing him narrowly. How long would it take Abbot to make another targeting device? Had he counted on fourteen months? Suddenly the future didn’t look quite so bleak. If only Connie managed to get a decent quantity of blood through to the Station....
Titus’s brooding was interrupted when a member of the small group of chanters, a young woman who couldn’t be more than twenty-five, dragged a chair up to Colby’s and climbed up. “May I borrow your microphone for a moment, Doctor?”
Puzzled, the Director handed the instrument over, while the woman held out a packet wrapped in white tissue. “This is from the six technicians of the Air Scrubbing Plant—to help you maintain discipline.”
The Director unwrapped the package, unrolling a green cloth and holding it up. It was a T-shirt with the words BIG CHEESE on the front and a moon shaped slice of cheese balanced on a photograph of the moon. In silence the Director stared at it blankly, then she burst out laughing. She took off the jacket tied around her waist and pulled the huge T-shirt over her head. It went almost to her knees.
Colby took the microphone back, and said, “I’ll be the Big Cheese on the Moon if you folks remember that this Colby doesn’t crumble!” With that, she stepped down, leaving everyone cheering. The boarding announcement cut across the noise, and people lined up to board for the trip to the moon.
Abbot, Titus, and Mirelle rated private cabins far forward of the drive and so were funneled into the same line. Titus wanted nothing so much as to get away from Abbot, but he turned when Mirelle called, “Titus, wait!”