A World of Difference Read online

  “Let us see how well he does in Minervan weather,” Lopatin said. “Him and the Americans both.” He chuckled nastily and mimed a shiver.

  Tolmasov nodded. After Smolensk, no. winter held much in the way of terror for him.

  But Rustaveli had come back. “About the Americans I do not know, Oleg Borisovich,” he said, exquisitely polite as always, “but I will do well enough. If I should have trouble, perhaps Katerina will keep me warm.”

  It was Tolmasov’s turn to frown. Russians credited Georgians with legendary success with women. Shota did nothing to downplay the legend, and even though he and the doctor had quarreled, the way her eyes followed him made Tolmasov wish she looked at him like that. She gave herself to Tolmasov these days, and he was sure she enjoyed what they did together. Still, somehow it was not the same.

  “Is your boasting all you want to tell us?” the pilot asked stiffly. “We have more important things to do than listening to it.”

  “No, no,. Sergei Konstantinovich.” Rustaveli sounded wounded. “I just wanted to remind you that the odds are it will not matter in the long run whether you talk with Athena or not.”

  “And why not?” Tolmasov fought for patience. Maybe, once Rustaveli got the jokes out of his system, he would settle down for a while.

  For the moment, the Georgian did not seem to be joking. “Because, very probably, Moscow has the code broken and will send us what it says.”

  “Hmm.” Tolmasov and Lopatin looked at each other.

  “Something to that,” the KGB man said after a brief hesitation, even here, so many kilometers from home, he wondered who might be listening.

  “I am glad you think so, Oleg Borisovich,” Rustaveli said. He lifted a finger, as if suddenly reminded of something. “I almost forgot-Yuri wants to see you.”

  “Me? Why?” Lopatin sounded suspicious, but only a little. Yuri Ivanovich Voroshilov spent as much time as he could in his laboratory. The chemist, Tolmasov thought, found things easier to deal with than people. It was quite in character for him to treat Rustaveli as nothing more than a biped carrier pigeon.

  Smiling, the Georgian sank his barb. “He’s all out of ice, and wants to borrow your heart for a few minutes.”

  “Why, you!” Lopatin grabbed for the buckle of the safety harness that held him in his seat.

  Tolmasov brought his hand down on top of the KGB man’s. “No brawling,” he snapped. Lopatin kept struggling for a few seconds to open the harness, then subsided. Tolmasov turned his glare on Rustaveli. “I will log this incident. You are reprimanded. There will be no repetitions.”

  “Yes, Comrade Colonel.” Rustaveli clicked his heels, a gesture only ludicrous in freefall. “Reprimand all you like. But it means nothing.”

  “You will think differently when you get back to Earth,” Tolmasov ground out. “Are you a mutineer?” He was a military man; he could not think of anything worse to calm Rustaveli.

  “No, merely practical,” the biologist answered, quite unruffled. “If we get back to Earth, I will be a Hero of the Soviet Union, reprimand or no. If we don’t, the reprimand certainly will not matter to me. Truly, Sergei Konstantinovich, you should think things through more carefully.”

  The colonel gaped at him. The worst of it was that Rustaveli even made a twisted ‘kind of sense.

  “There, there,” the Georgian said, seeing his popeyed expression. “To please you, I will even accept the reprimand- provided you also log the KGB man, for mocking my people.”

  Lopatin let out a scornful laugh. He knew how likely that was. So did Tolmasov. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the KGB might have been made to answer for misconduct. Too bad Gorbachev had only lasted nine months. Tolmasov still wondered if his cerebral hemorrhage had been of the 5.54mm variety.

  “You’ve talked yourself out of your bloody reprimand,” the colonel told Rustaveli. “I hope you’re satisfied. Now go away.” Grinning, the biologist sailed off.

  The male shoved Fralk toward the bridge. “Go on,” he said harshly. “Never let us see you on this side again.”

  See me you shall, Fralk said, but only to himself. He stepped out onto the cables of the bridge.

  “Once you are across, we will cut it,” the male told him. “If you do not hurry, we will not bother to wait.”

  Fralk hurried. His toes wrapped around the lower rope; his fingerclaws gripped the upper one. He walked out over empty space. On the eastern side of the gorge, the one he was leaving, the males of Reatur’s clan grew smaller.

  The western side, though, the lands of the Skarmer clans, did not seem any closer. Even down close to its bottom, the gorge was too wide to yield him sight of progress so soon. And with one wall visibly receding while the other appeared fixed in place, Fralk had the eerie feeling that the canyon was stretching itself like a live thing as he traveled, that he might never reach the far side.

  The wind whistled around, above, below. Over the heart of the gorge, Fralk let an eyestalk turn downward, and another up. The other four, as usual, looked all about. Only the thin lines of the rope bridge, extending in the direction he had come and toward his destination, gave his vision a clue he was not a mote suspended in the center of infinite space.

  The sensation was so daunting that he stopped, forgetting the male’s threat. If the gorge were infinitely wide, how could movement matter? He looked down and down and down, to the boulders far, far below. For a giddy moment, he thought they were calling to him. If he let go of the ropes, for how long would he fall?

  ‘That reminded him he might indeed fall, regardless of whether he let go. The Omalo males would know how long someone took to cross the bridge and surely would allow him no excess time, not when they knew he and his wanted to supplant them. Telling that to Reatur had perhaps been less than wise. But then, Fralk had reckoned there was a fair chance the domain master would yield. How little folk on one side of a gorge understood those on the other!

  Fralk hurried onward. Every tremor of the bridge in the wind set him to quivering with fright, thinking he was about to be pitched into the abyss.

  At last the far side of the gorge began to appear closer, while the one from which he had come seemed frozen and distant in space: the reverse of the stretching he had nervously imagined before. The males he could see were his own solid Skarmer budmates, not scrawny easterners.

  They helped pull him off the bridge and clustered around him. “What word, eldest of eldest?” called Niress, the commander of the crossing.

  Fralk gave it to him: “War.” A moment later, as if to underscore it, the bridge jerked like a male who had just touched a stunbush. Then, like that same imaginary male a moment later, it went limp and hung down into the gorge. Fralk feared its stone supports would give way now that it was not attached to anything on the far side, but they held.

  Niress’s eyestalks wriggled with mirth. “As if cutting the bridge will stop us,” he said. He and Fralk began the long climb up to the top of the gorge.

  The red numbers on the digital readout spun silently down to zero. “Initiate separation sequence,” Emmett Bragg said.

  “Initiating.” His wife flipped a toggle.

  Strapped in his seat, Irv Levitt heard distant metallic bangs and rattles different from the ones he no longer consciously noticed. After a while, Louise said, “Separation sequence complete.”

  We’re on our own, Irv thought. As if to emphasize the point, Athena’s monitor gave him an image of the rocket motor package that had accompanied the ship to Minerva. While he watched, the motors slowly grew smaller as they drifted away. They would wait in orbit while the hypersonic transport that was Athena proper went down to the planet and-if everything worked exactly right-returned to rejoin them for the trip back to Earth.

  He glanced over at his wife, whose seat was next to his in the cabin. Sarah’s answering smile was forced. “Just another flight to a new research lab,” he said, trying to cheer her by coming out with the most ridiculous thing he could think of.

  “I ha
te them all,” she said. “I don’t like being in any situation where I don’t have full control of things, and I can’t do that in an airliner-or here,” she added pointedly. “Once we’re down, I’ll be all right.”

  He nodded. A lot of doctors he knew felt that way, some of them much more than Sarah. That was, he supposed, why so many of them flew their own planes. He smiled. Sarah would get her chance at that.

  Athena:

  “Thank you, Sergei Konstantinovich,” Bragg said. “The same to you and Tsiolkovsky. Give our regards to Comrade Reguspatoff.”

  “To whom?” Puzzlement crept into the Russian colonel’s precise voice.

  “Nichevo, “Bragg replied. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “As you wish,” Tolmasov said: an oral shrug. “We will see you on the ground, then. We also are about to uncouple.”

  “Expected as much,” Bragg said. “We’ll both be busy for a while, so I’ll say goodbye now. Athena out.” He cut the transmission.

  “Reguspatoff?” Frank Marquard asked. He made a good straight man.

  “Registered-U.S. Patent Office,” Bragg explained with a grin that looked more like a wolf’s lolling-tongued laugh than any gentler mirth. “Or do you think Tsiolkovsky looks so much like Athena just by accident?”

  “It’s bigger,” Frank said. “Why don’t we copy their rockets?”

  “I wish we would,” Bragg said. “Well, we do what we can with what we’ve got. Not too bad, I suppose: we’ll be down ahead of them.”

  His wife broke in. “Or maybe we won’t. Radar shows two images from Tsiolkovsky. I’d say that means they have uncoupled from their engine pack.”

  The mission commander’s head jerked toward the screen. “Son of a bitch,” he said softly. He picked up the mike, punched the Transmit button, and started speaking Russian. “Athena to Tsiolkovsky.”

  “Tsiolkovsky here: Lopatin.” The engineer’s English was accented but easy to follow.

  “Tell your boss he’s a sandbagging bastard.”

  “Sandbagging? I do not understand this word,” Lopatin said:

  Bragg had left it in his own language. A moment later, Colonel Tolmasov came on. He sounded like a man fighting laughter. “I do, Emmett. That is uncultured.” “You should talk.”

  “You will excuse me if I lack time for casual conversation, Brigadier. We are, as you said, rather busy at the moment. Tsiolkovsky out.”

  The radio crackled to life. “Tolmasov here. Good luck, Athena.”

  “Thank you, Sergei Konstantinovich,” Bragg said. “The same to you and Tsiolkovsky. Give our regards to Comrade Reguspatoff.”

  “To whom?” Puzzlement crept into the Russian colonel’s precise voice.

  “Nichevo,” Bragg replied. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “As you wish,” Tolmasov said: an oral shrug. “We will see you on the ground, then. We also are about to uncouple.”

  “Expected as much,” Bragg said. “We’ll both be busy for a while, so I’ll say goodbye now. Athena out.” He cut the transmission.

  “Reguspatoff?” Frank Marquard asked. He made a good straight man.

  “Registered-U.S. Patent Office,” Bragg explained with a grin that looked more like a wolf’s lolling-tongued laugh than any gentler mirth. “Or do you think Tsiolkovsky looks so much like Athena just by accident?”

  “It’s bigger,” Frank said. “Why don’t we copy their rockets?”

  “I wish we would,” Bragg said. “Well, we do what we can with what we’ve got. Not too bad, I suppose: we’ll be down ahead of them.”

  His wife broke in. “Or maybe we won’t. Radar shows two images from Tsiolkovsky. I’d say that means they have uncoupled from their engine pack.”

  The mission commander’s head jerked toward the screen. “Son of a bitch,” he said softly. He picked up the mike, punched the TRANSMIT button, and started speaking Russian. “Athena to Tsiolkovsky.”

  “Tsiolkovsky here: Lopatin.” The engineer’s English was accented but easy to follow.

  “Tell your boss he’s a sandbagging bastard.”

  “Sandbagging? I do not understand this word,” Lopatin said:

  Bragg had left it in his own language. A moment later, Colonel Tolmasov came on. He sounded like a man fighting laughter. “I do, Emmett. That is uncultured.” “You should talk.”

  “You will excuse me if I lack time for casual conversation, Brigadier. We are, as you said, rather busy at the moment. Tsiolkovsky out.”

  “Temperature is up a little,” Louise said. “We’re starting to get into the atmosphere.”

  Her husband glanced at the gauge, then at the radar altimeter. “Still well inside specs. The carbon-fiber matrix can take more than shuttle tiles, and having a machine with a skin all in one piece means we don’t need to worry about spending our Minerva time gluing those little suckers back into place.”

  Now there, Irv thought, was a really alarming notion.

  A thin whistle began to fill the cabin and rose toward a shriek.

  “I thought by now I knew every noise Athena could make,” Pat Marquard said nervously.

  “It isn’t Athena,” Frank answered. “It’s Minerva-the wind of our passage.” His voice held awe. Irv understood why. No one but they-and half a dozen Russians, some unknown number of miles away-had heard the wind of another world.

  His wife thought of something else. “I wonder what the Minervans will make of our noise coming down.”

  “When the shuttles landed at Edwards, we’d hear the boom in L.A.,” Pat said. “And that’s without the noise from the ramjet and turbojet sections of our motor.”

  Emmett Bragg chuckled. “They’ll be hiding under their beds, if they have beds. And speaking of ramjets-“ He checked the altimeter again and Athena’s velocity. “We’re low enough and slow enough to fire it up and save our liquid oxygen for the trip back up. I’m shutting down the lox pump, Louise.”

  “Acknowledged,” she said. A moment later, she added, “First time I ever heard Mach six called slow.”

  “Next to what we’ve been doing, honey, it’s just a mosey in the park.”

  Irv sided with Louise. Mach six was no mosey, so far as he was concerned. Despite aggressive soundproofing, the noise was up, too. The pump was no longer thumping and clacking away, but the shriek of Minervan air coming in through the ramjet inlet more than made up for that. It reminded Irv of a dentist’s drill the size of Baltimore. His teeth cringed at the very idea.

  His seat was padded and contoured, but he still felt as though he weighed tons. “Are we really sure Minerva’s gravity is only a couple of percent higher than ours?” he asked plaintively. “Or are we still decelerating?”

  “Yes, we’re sure and yes, we are,” Emmett replied, but before Irv had a chance to be relieved, the mission commander went on. “But not enough to do anything about our weight.” He sounded amused.

  Irv groaned. So did Frank.

  Sarah felt strong enough to raise an arm and point to the monitor. “We just passed something big. A castle, a temple, a barracks-”

  “Could be anything,” Irv agreed. “I wish we knew more about where the Minervans are technologically. They don’t have atomic energy and they don’t have radio, but there’s a lot of difference between where we were in 2000 8.c. and in 1890.”

  “Or in 22,000 B.C.,” Emmett put in. He enjoyed sticking pins in people to make them jump.

  This time it didn’t work. Irv had the facts to shoot him down. “No big buildings in 22,000 B.C.,” he said smugly. Then he shut up as another what-ever-it-was went by on the screen. Clouds blurred the view, but he still recognized the pattern on the ground surrounding the building. “Those are fields down there!”

  “You’re right,” Pat said. “You see those grooved circles in the middle of nowhere when you fly over irrigated farms in desert country.”

  “But the lines-plow marks, would those be, Irv?” Sarah said.

  “On Earth, sure. Here, who knows?” he answered.

 
“The lines aren’t straight,” she observed. “What does that mean?”

  “Maybe contour plowing. Maybe the Minervans don’t know what straight lines are. That’s what we’re here to find out.”

  Emmett said, “Yeah!” as Athena flew over a pair of volcanoes with glaciers snaking down from their peaks. “Those are Smaug and Ancalagon,” he added. “Now I know where we are. We need to head just a touch further east.” He made the adjustment.

  They flew lower and lower, slower and slower. As they dropped below 45,000 feet and Mach one, Emmett cut in the turbines. The engines went from a shriek to a full-throated roar. “This is your pilot speaking,” Bragg said. “Thank you for flying Minerva Air. The cabin attendants will be starting the movie shortly. Please keep your seat belts fastened.”

  “Athena does sound just like a T4T now, doesn’t she?” Irv said; the mission commander’s deadpan, dead perfect delivery made him realize consciously what he had been feeling in his bones. Not even a first-class seat on a big jet, though, had the padding and room this one did. On the other hand, airline passengers didn’t need so much, either.

  “How’s she handle, Emmett?” Frank asked. He had flownlight planes before he went into astronaut training, and T38 jet trainers since. If anything happened to Bragg, he would try to get Athena home. Neither he nor anyone else relished the prospect.

  Bragg thought for a moment before he answered. “Depends on what you’re comparing it to. It’s no fighter, but it’s a long way from being a mildly aerodynamic brick like the shuttle, too.”

  “More like fun, or more like work?” Marquard persisted. “In space it’s fun. Here it’s work, but not pick-and-shovel work. White collar, you might say. I’m not really dressed for it.” Grinning, he ran his hand down the front of the blue NASA coverall.

  “Where’s Tsiolkovsky?” Pat asked.

  Louise Bragg checked the radar. “Well west of us, and a couple of miles higher.”

  Everyone in the cabin whooped-none of them wanted the Russians to beat them down. “In Baikonur our name is cursed, when they find out we landed first!” Irv sang, mangling Tom Lehrer in a good cause.

  “I wonder what they think of our bearing,” Louise said.