Distant Atmospheres Daily 1000

"You Going to Drink that Thing or Not?"

At the far end of the room, a door slid open and then closed.

The door was not silent, but it was quiet, and its operation was so routine as to have entered into that portion of the minds of the four figures at the other end of the room of sounds which could be, and were, ignored. If the air system alarm had gone off, or if there had been a call from Central Control informing them of an impending visit, these sounds would not have been ignored, but the door was.

The figures were crowded around a single small computer monitor, engrossed in its presentation.

The man who had stepped through the door stood just inside it as he surveyed the scene. He wore plain pants and shirt, belt and shoes, all the same industrial-grade boring brown; his head was bare as were his hands. On his shoulders, gold-embroidered epaulettes glinted as they reflected the dim light.

A moment of pause; a moment of decision; the man turned on his heel. The door whisked open again; the man stepped through; it closed. He strode down the passage and, turned the corner, and nearly collided with Lt. Cmdr. Donovan Stubblefield, United States Navy. Only the commander's nimble and brisk movement away from the admiral avoided a collision. As dictated by his training, he flattened himself against the side of the passage so that the admiral could pass. But the admiral did not pass.

"Stubblefield!" he fairly shouted. "What the hell are they doing in there?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Hmmphf," the admiral snorted. He had barely paused as he spoke, and he was already several steps away from the younger man. "Come along with me," the admiral said without turning around.

"Aye, sir," the commander said. He took several fast steps to catch up to the older man, who was moving surprising quickly. As the two of them made their way away from the alien containment area of the boat and towards the areas which were normally crewed, several sailors going about their own business on the boat responded to the approach of the boat's executive officer and the visiting admiral in the same way Stubblefield had responded: they flattened themselves against the bulkhead so that the two officers, one senior and the other very senior and actually legendary, could pass.

The admiral had been retired for many years, and was only present on the ship as a result of a special Presidential decree--president as in President of the United States. There had been a good deal of handwringing in Congress, but in the end, President Torres issued an order and the military honored it, despite the fact that the order itself and the action which it directed violated about twenty different codes, policies, and procedures. "Well, what's the difference, Bob?" the senior senator from Kentucky had said to his old college buddy and now Secretary of the Navy Robert Curtis Fischer. "That poor old bastard won't be able to remember anything he sees on Shasta for more than 20 minutes anyhow."

Fischer stirred his gin and tonic with a plastic straw and frowned. "Don't underestimate him, Roger," he said.

The senator noticed that his friend had been stirring the drink for some time. "You going to drink that thing or not?"

"I am not." Fischer pulled the straw out and laid it delicately on the napkin that the glass was resting on. "I'm not even sure the old bastard can talk to those creatures anyway."

"Of course he can. He's the only one who ever could."

"That's a bunch of crap, Roger," Fischer said. "Forty years ago, one of those alien whatevers put a bug in a captain's head and now we've got to entertain the nonsense of an 85-year-old megalomanic who thinks he's Douglas McArthur? I don't buy it."

The senator shrugged. "You can buy it or not buy it, Bob. All I know is that when he communes or whatever it is that he does with those creatures, he's able to tell us what to do to make them cooperate."

Fischer frowned and picked up the glass. "What do we do if he keels over, then?" He tipped the contents of the glass into his mouth, swallowed, and put the now-empty glass back down.

"I don't know. We've got people working on the language."

"We've had people working on it for 40 years. Those people have made just about zero progress."

The senator shrugged. Then he looked up, over Bob's head, and motioned to one of the several youngish men and women who were orbiting a judicious distance away from their table--and their conversation. "Stay here as long as you want, or one of my people will drive you back to the EOB."

"No, I'm going home," Fischer said.

The youngish man who had responded to the senator's beckoning was now standing next to him, his head craned to receive instructions. "George, you get the car and take Secretary Fischer anywhere he wants to go."

"Ah, yes, sir," the youngish man said. Fischer noticed that the nametag he wore on his gray suit jacket said "P. Conley." Not George.