Homeward Bound Read online

  “You must!” the Lizard exclaimed. “You must! I will go mad—utterly mad, I tell you—if I do not get what I need.”

  “Police!” the guide shouted. Hissing out a string of curses, the Lizard who wanted drugs scurried away. Trir said, “Please ignore that male’s disgraceful conduct. It is abnormal, depraved, and altogether disgusting. You should never have been exposed to it.”

  “We know about the Race and ginger,” Karen said. “The problem on Tosev 3 is far larger and far worse than it is here.”

  “Impossible!” Trir declared, proving Lizards could be parochial, too.

  “Not only not impossible, but a truth,” Karen said, and tacked on an emphatic cough. “Remember—on our home planet ginger is cheap and easily available. A large number of colonists there use it. In fact, it is beginning to change the entire society of the Race there.”

  “A drug? What a ridiculous notion. You must be lying to me on purpose,” Trir said angrily.

  “She is not.” Now Jonathan Yeager used an emphatic cough. “Remember, ginger brings females into their season. If females are continuously in season, males also come into season continuously. On Tosev 3, the Race’s sexuality has grown much more like ours.”

  The guide’s tailstump quivered in agitation. “That is the most disgusting thing I have ever heard in my life.”

  “Which does not mean that it is anything but a truth,” Karen said. “A little investigation on your computer network will prove as much.”

  “I do not believe it,” Trir said in a voice like a slamming door. Karen did not believe the Lizard would do any investigating. Among the Race as among humans, clinging to what one was already sure of was easier and more satisfying than finding out for oneself. Trir pointed. “And here is the hotel.” Here is where I can get rid of you and your dangerous ideas.

  “There’s no place like home,” Karen said in English. Her husband and the de la Rosas laughed. Trir was bewildered. Since Karen was annoyed at her, she didn’t bother translating, and left the Lizard that way.

  The scooters aboard the Admiral Peary easily outdid the ones the Lewis and Clark had carried. The little rockets had the advantage of thirty years’ development in electronics, motors, and materials. They were lighter, stronger, faster, and better than the ones Glen Johnson had used in the asteroid belt. They carried more fuel, too, so he could travel farther.

  In principle, though, they remained the same. They had identical rocket motors at front and back, and smaller maneuvering jets all around. Get one pointed the way you wanted it to go, accelerate, get near where you were going, use the nose rocket to decelerate the same amount, and there you were. Easy as pie . . . in theory.

  Of course, lots of things that were easy in theory turned out to be something else again in reality. This was one of those. Even with radar, gauging distances and vectors and burn times wasn’t easy. But Johnson had started as a Marine pilot flying piston-engined fighters against the Race. He’d been shot down twice, and still carried a burn scar on his right arm as a souvenir of those insane days. If he hadn’t been recovering from his wounds when the fighting stopped, he would have gone up again—and likely got shot down again, this time permanently. Life for human pilots during the invasion had been nasty, brutish, and almost always short.

  And Johnson had done as much patrol flying in Earth orbit as any man around before . . . joining the crew of the Lewis and Clark. And he’d taken a scooter from the Lewis and Clark to one rock in the asteroid belt or another, and from rock to rock as well. If any human being was qualified to fly one while orbiting Home, he was the man.

  He discovered spacesuit design had changed while he was in cold sleep, too. The changes weren’t major, but the helmet was less crowded, instruments were easier to read, and there were fewer sharp edges and angles on which he could bang his head. All of this was the sort of thing the Lizards would have done automatically before they ever let anybody into a spacesuit. People didn’t work that way. If things weren’t perfect, people went ahead regardless. That was why the Admiral Peary had got to the Tau Ceti system—and why the Doctor hadn’t.

  “Testing—one, two, three,” Johnson said into his radio mike. “Do you read?”

  “Read you five by five, scooter,” a voice replied in his ear. “Do you read me?”

  “Also five by five,” Johnson said. “Ready to be launched.”

  “Roger.” The outer door to the air lock opened. Johnson used the maneuvering jets to ease the scooter out of the lock and away from the ship. Only after he was safely clear of the Admiral Peary did he fire up the rocket at the stern. It gave him a little weight, or acceleration’s simulation of weight. He guided the scooter toward the closest Lizard spaceship.

  “Calling the Horned Akiss,” he said into his radio mike. An akiss was a legendary creature among the Race—close enough to a dragon for government work. Horned Akiss made a pretty good name for a military spacecraft, which that one was. “Repeat—calling the Horned Akiss. This is the Admiral Peary’s number-one scooter. Requesting permission to approach, as previously arranged.”

  “Permission granted.” A Lizard’s voice sounded in his ear. “Approach air lock number three. Repeat—number three.” To guide him, red and yellow lights came on around the designated air lock. The Lizard continued, “Remember, you and your scooter will be searched before you are permitted into the ship.”

  “I understand,” Johnson said. The males and females aboard the Lizards’ ship weren’t worried about weapons. If he tried a treacherous attack on the Horned Akiss, the rest of the Race’s ships would go after the Admiral Peary. What they were worried about was ginger smuggling.

  The radar and computer would have told Johnson when to make his deceleration burn and for how long—if he’d paid any attention to them. He did it by eye and feel instead, and got what was for all practical purposes the same result: the scooter lay motionless relative to the air lock. When the outer door opened, he eased the scooter inside with the maneuvering jets, the same way as he’d brought it out of the Admiral Peary’s air lock.

  Behind him, the outer door closed. The Lizard on the radio said, “You may now remove your spacesuit for search.” Before Johnson did, he checked to make sure the pressure in the air lock was adequate. The Lizard hadn’t been lying to him. Even so, he was cautious as he broke the seal on his face plate, and ready to slam it shut again if things weren’t as they seemed.

  They were. The air the Race breathed had a smaller percentage of oxygen than the Earthly atmosphere, but the overall pressure was a little higher, so things evened out. He could smell the Lizards: a faint, slightly musky odor, not unpleasant. The Horned Akiss’ crew probably didn’t even know it was there. When he got back to the Admiral Peary, he’d smell people the same way for a little while, till his nose got used to them again.

  The inner airlock door opened. Two Lizards glided in, moving at least as smoothly weightless as humans did. “We greet you,” one of them said. “Now—out of that suit.” He added an emphatic cough.

  “I obey,” Johnson said. Under the suit, he wore a T-shirt and shorts. He could have gone naked, for all the Race cared. The Lizards in charge of security had long wands they used to sniff out ginger. One went over the spacesuit, the other Johnson and the scooter. Only after no alarm lights came on did Johnson ask, “Are you satisfied now?”

  “Moderately so,” answered the one who’d examined him. “We will still X-ray the scooter, to make sure you have not secreted away some of the herb in the tubing. But, for now, you may enter the Horned Akiss. If you prove to be smuggling, you will not be allowed to leave.”

  “I thank you so much!” Johnson exclaimed, and used an emphatic cough. “And I greet you, too.”

  Both Lizards’ mouths fell open in silent, toothy laughs. Johnson was laughing, too. He’d visited the Race’s spacecraft before. Their searches were always as thorough as this one. They didn’t know whether the Admiral Peary had ginger aboard. They didn’t believe in taking chances,
though.

  Together, they said, “We greet you. We like you. If you are carrying the herb, we will like you too well to let you leave, as we have said. Otherwise, welcome.”

  Except for that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play? Johnson thought wryly. “I thank you so very much!” he repeated, tacking on another emphatic cough. For good measure, he also bent into the posture of respect.

  That made the Lizards laugh again. “You are more sarcastic than you have any business being,” one of them said.

  “Oh, no.” Johnson used the Race’s negative gesture. “You are mistaken. This is normal for Big Uglies.”

  They laughed one more time. “No wonder your species is so much trouble,” said the one who’d spoken before.

  “No wonder at all,” Johnson agreed. “Now, come on—take me to your leader.” He did some laughing of his own. “I always wanted to say that.”

  Neither of the Lizards got the joke. But they understood irony as well as he did. Both of them assumed the posture of respect. They chorused, “It shall be done, superior Big Ugly!”

  As a matter of fact, by their body paint and his own eagles, Johnson did outrank them. It was pretty damn funny any which way. And they did take him to their leader.

  The corridors in the Horned Akiss were narrower and lower than those aboard the Admiral Peary. Not surprising, not when Lizards were smaller than people. The handholds were of a slightly different shape and set at distances Johnson found oddly inconvenient. But he managed with minimal difficulty. The laws of the universe operated in the same way for the Lizards as they did for mankind. The differences between spacecraft were in the details. The broad brush strokes remained the same.

  Medium Spaceship Commander Henrep’s office even reminded Johnson of Lieutenant General Charles Healey‘s. It had the same sense of carefully constrained order. Henrep looked even more like a snapping turtle than Healey did, too, but he couldn’t help it—he was hatched that way. Fixing Johnson with both eyes, he asked, “What is the real purpose of this visit?”

  “Friendship,” Johnson answered. “Nothing but friendship.”

  “An overrated concept,” Henrep declared—yes, he did have a good deal in common with Healey.

  Johnson used the negative gesture again. “I think you are mistaken, superior sir. The Race is going to have to learn to get along with wild Tosevites, and wild Tosevites are going to have to learn to get along with the Race. If we do not, we will destroy each other, and neither side would benefit from that.”

  Henrep remained unimpressed. “The Race can certainly destroy your species. Just as certainly, you cannot destroy us. You can, no doubt, ruin Tosev 3. You can, perhaps, damage Home. You cannot harm Halless 1 or Rabotev 2. The Empire would be wounded, yes. But even at the worst it would go on.”

  “That is the situation as we here know it now, yes,” Johnson replied. “But how do you know my not-empire has not sent starships to Rabotev and Halless to attack their inhabited planets in case of trouble elsewhere between your kind and mine? Are you sure that is not so?”

  By the way Henrep glowered, the only thing he was sure of was that he couldn’t stand the human floating in front of him. His tailstump quivering with anger, he said, “That would be vicious and brutal beyond belief.”

  “So it would. So would destroying us,” Johnson said. “We can do each other a lot of damage. That is why it would be better to live as friends.”

  “It would have been better to destroy you before you had any chance of threatening us,” Henrep said angrily. He not only acted like Lieutenant General Healey, he thought like him, too.

  “Maybe it would—though I would not agree with that,” Johnson said. “But it is much too late to worry about that now. And so, superior sir . . . friendship.”

  A phone on Henrep’s desk hissed before he could tell Johnson just where to put his friendship. The Lizard listened, spoke a quick agreement, and hung up. One of his eyes swung back to Johnson. “You have no ginger.” He sounded almost as accusing as if the human had tried to smuggle twenty tons of the herb.

  “I could have told you that. I did tell you that.”

  “So you did. But you are a Big Ugly. That makes you a liar until proved otherwise.” Henrep’s second eye turret moved toward Johnson. “How long do you think your slow, homely excuse for a ship could survive if we really went after it?”

  “Long enough to smash up your planet, superior sir.” Johnson turned what should have been a title of respect into one of contempt. “And if you do not believe me, you are welcome to find out for yourself.”

  Henrep sputtered like a leaky pot with a tight lid over a hot fire. Johnson swallowed a sigh. So much for friendship, he thought.

  Jonathan Yeager held up a hand. The guide waggled an eye turret in his direction to tell him he might speak. He asked, “How old did you say that building back there was?”

  “Why did you not pay closer attention when I spoke before?” Trir snapped.

  “Well, excuse my ignorance,” Jonathan said.

  In English, Karen said, “What’s her problem? She’s supposed to be telling us what’s what. That’s her job. If we want to find out more, she should be happy.”

  “Beats me,” Jonathan said, also in English.

  That didn’t seem to suit Trir, either. The guide said, “Why do you not speak a language a civilized person can understand?”

  “Maybe I will,” Jonathan answered, returning to the Race’s tongue, “when I see you acting like a civilized person.”

  Trir sputtered and hissed indignantly. “That’s telling her,” Tom de la Rosa said in English. His wife nodded.

  Karen said, “I think we all need to behave ourselves better.” She used the language of the Race, and looked right at Trir.

  The guide made a gesture Jonathan had not seen before, one obviously full of annoyance. “You Big Uglies have to be the most foolish species ever to imagine itself intelligent,” she said. “Do you not even understand what is going on around you?”

  All the humans exchanged confused looks. “It could be that we do not,” Jonathan said. “Perhaps you would be generous enough to explain the situation—whatever the situation is—to us?”

  That produced an exasperated snort from Trir. “That such things should be necessary . . .” she muttered, and then, reluctantly, used the affirmative gesture. “Oh, very well. There does seem to be no help for it. Can you not sense that, along with other females in this region, I am approaching the mating season? This is its effect on my behavior. Before long, the males’ scent receptors will start noting our pheromones, and then life will be . . . hectic for a little while.”

  “Oh,” Jonathan said. The Lizards went through mating seasons on Earth, too, but there were so many ginger-tasters there that the rhythm of their life wasn’t so well defined as it was here on Home. He went on, “Apologies. I did not know it. Your pheromones mean nothing to us, you know.”

  “Tosevites,” Trir said, more to herself, he judged, than to him. She gathered herself. “Well, that is the situation. If you cannot adjust to it, do not blame me.”

  She still sounded far more irritable than Lizards usually did. Jonathan said, “We will try to adjust. Perhaps you should do the same, if that is possible for you.”

  “Of course it is possible.” Trir sounded furious. “How dare you presume it is anything but possible?”

  “Well, if it is, suppose you tell me once more how old that building back there is,” Jonathan said.

  “If you had been listening—” But the Lizard caught herself. “Oh, very well, since you insist. It was built in the reign of the 29th Emperor Rekrap, more than seven thousand years ago—fairly recently, then.”

  “Fairly recently,” Jonathan echoed. “Oh, yes, superior female. Truth.” Seven thousand of the Race’s years were about thirty-five hundred of Earth‘s. So that building wasn’t older than the Pyramids. It was about the same age as Stonehenge. Old as the hills as far as mankind was concerned. Nothing special
, not to the Race.

  Tom de la Rosa asked, “What are the oldest buildings in this city?”

  “Here in Sitneff?” Trir said. “Most of the construction here dates from modern times. This is a region with some seismic activity—not a lot, but some. Few of the structures here go back much beyond twenty-five thousand years.”

  All the humans started to laugh. Frank Coffey said, “Even dividing by two, that’s not what I call modern.” He spoke in English, but tacked on an emphatic cough just the same.

  And he wasn’t wrong. What had people been doing 12,500 years ago? Hunting and gathering—that was it. They were just starting to filter down into the Americas. The latest high-tech weapons system was the bow and arrow. They might have domesticated the dog. On the other hand, they might not have, too. No one on Earth knew how to plant a crop or read or write or get any kind of metal out of a rock.

  And the Race? The Race, by then, had already conquered the Rabotevs. Lizards were living on Epsilon Eridani 2 as well as Tau Ceti 2. Life here on Home had changed only in details, in refinements, since then.

  They’re still doing the same things they did back then, and doing them the same old way, pretty much, Jonathan thought. Us? We got from nowhere to here, and we got here under our own power.

  Trir looked at things differently. “It is because rebuilding is sometimes necessary in this part of the world that Sitneff enjoys so few traditions. It is part of the present but, unfortunately, not really part of the past.” As the humans laughed again, the guide’s eye turrets swung from one of them to the next. “Do I see that you are dubious about what I have said?”

  Laughing still, Jonathan said, “Well, superior female, it all depends on what you mean by the past. Back on Tosev 3, our whole recorded history is only about ten thousands of your years old.”

  That made Trir’s mouth drop open in a laugh of her own. “How very curious,” she said. “Perhaps that accounts for some of your semibarbarous behavior.”

  “Maybe it does,” Jonathan said. He thought Trir’s rudeness was at least semibarbarous, but he was willing to let it pass. This wasn’t his planet, after all.