By the time they all made it back to the surface, there was more news.
"Five-Oh-Two-Three Eris, this heah's ASF Fleet Admiral Dan Delacroix aboard the flagship ASSR John Reed. I wanna speak with, uh . . ." The drawling voice paused as if its owner were reading from a memo. "Gennul Horatio Z. Gutierrez. You-all copy down theah?"
"This is Gutierrez." From the excavation site he'd hurried around the little world into the treetops over the nautiloid settlement and out through a ribbed plastic tube connecting 5023 Eris with his ship. Innocent as yet of any newly arrived fleet, the sky held only stars shining down on an unending mustard plain of polymerized leaves. Work crews swarmed over all three vessels, preparing them for another unanticipated mission. Sam and Eichra Oren were with Gutierrez on the command deck. They still wore their suits and had been warned to seal them again while the hull was penetrated for installation of another nautiloid-designed control system. Workers overhead made pounding and drilling noises. The general bent the suit mike to his lips.
"I've heard of you, Admiral." What he'd heard was that Delacroix made a deceptive and dangerous enemy. Behind his carefully cultivated Louisiana accent, he concealed a ruthless shrewdness honed at Harvard and Annapolis. "I don't know of any John Reed. I thought I had our only three spaceships here. Over."
"That's what you s'posed to believe, Gennul. The USSR ain't the only power buildin' spaceships. I'm told you got a fourth y'self, that the whole damned asteroid's artificial! Ovah."
My tax dollars at work, he thoughtfor the KGB. "Yes, Admiral, I've just returned from an initial survey of the interior. 5023 Eris is some kind of ancient space vessel. Over."
The man paused as if absorbing an unlikely truth. The noise conducted through the hull grew worse. Added to changes in engines and fuel systems which had made the asteroid capture possible, something was now being done about their ability to defend themselves. It had taken Gutierrez five minutes to consider and approve the plan.
"Then we-all got ourselves a problem, Gennul. Mah orders're t'prevent anybody else takin' 5023 Eris or learnin' its secretsincludin' ouah Russian friends. I'm here t'seize it, or see it destroyed. It's all up t'you folks down theah. Y'all copyin' me, Gennul? Ovah."
Dazzling against a star-flecked backdrop of blackest velvet, a space-suited figure made signals at him through the windshield. He should seal his helmet and gloves. Eichra Oren complied, helping Sam. Gutierrez shook his head and made stalling motions. "Not altogether, Admiral. Over."
The radio crackled. "Horatio, like we say back in Baton Rouge, it's time t'fish or get off the pot. Yo' earlier orders're rescinded. Yo' people will return t'Earth, to a hero's welcome an' substantial raises in pay and benefits, if they'ah willin' tohold on a minute."
Again the radio fell silent. Inside his helmet, Eichra Oren blinked in response to a sudden implant message. He put a hand on Gutierrez's shoulder. The general closed the end of his mike tube with his thumb. "What is it?"
"Mister Thoggosh asks me to inform you that there are now three armed fleets in orbit, Russian, American, and Chinese. An Admiral Hoong Liang is talking with him now, from his flagship, the Dee Jen Djieh."
This time the name of the ship seemed vaguely familiar. Gutierrez had no more than nodded before Delacroix was back. "Horatio, it's gettin' crowded out heah. May be hard t'keep that promiseamnesty, a hero's welcome, pay an' benefitsshockin' how little store folks set by international treaties. I asked this heah Chinaman to explain himself, an' he said he's savin' his explanations for `the Elders.' That make any sense to you? Ovah."
It should have made sense to Delacroix, or he should fire his Intelligence people. Gutierrez explained that the Elders were their nonhuman hosts. Outside, signals to seal his suit grew more frantic or irritated, depending on how much respect he believed was being accorded his rank. Delacroix thanked him in ominous, gracious tones, replying that with two hostile fleets to watch now, he had "choahs." He'd recontact the "gennul" as soon as possible.
Gutierrez unhooked his carrier from the console, plugged it in inside his collar, and had just settled his helmet when another voice sounded in his ears: "Greetings to the expeditionary party on 5023 Eris. This person is Admiral Hoong Liang of the Celestial Fleet of the People's Republic of China. Have I the honor to address General Horatio Gutierrez?"
Unable to resist peering out for a sign of the latest arrival (he saw none), Gutierrez replied in the affirmative. Through repeaters set up in camp, thirty-odd other humans listened. At news of a coming fleet, they'd debated the course they should follow while Gutierrez's party was still underground. They'd failed to reach a conclusion, nor would they have been entitled to act if they had. He'd given no one except Sebastiano and Ortiz, who must pilot the other ships, his reasons for allowing the shuttles to be armed. They'd agreed as he'd known they would and now sat in the lefthand seats of their own craft, John Galt and Geronimo, awaiting orders.
"I've explained to Mister Thoggosh," Hoong replied, "that my government, unlike certain others, is satisfied merely to keep the great ship you've discovered out of the exclusive hands of its potential enemies."
Gutierrez was suspicious. "You're saying you don't want it?"
"Only the knowledge it represents." Hoong was amiable. "I am confident that the Elders will someday share their own technology with us, whatever they find here. Perhaps they can be persuaded to establish regular trade with the Chinese People's Republic. In any event, as long as no nation has a monopoly on that knowledge and technology, we are content."
"Meaning what?" Both overhead observation windows chose that moment to pop from their frames, the round-cornered panes fielded by Eichra Oren as they drifted to the deck. This was the reason for insisting that they suit up inside the Laika, although no more than a heartbeat passed before the windows were replaced by mounting plates for the new weapons systems. Workmen trooped inboard and heavy cables soon extended into the command-deck computers.
"Meaning," replied Hoong, "that the Elders and your expedition are free to do what they wish without interference. I am authorized to help guarantee that freedom, should you desire it." Admiral Hoong would be unaware that Mister Thoggosh's mining equipment, basically electromagnetic cannon firing plasma "torpedoes" of unthinkable brilliance and heat, was a better guarantee than any he could offer. It had failed to penetrate the secrets of 5023 Eris, but that didn't keep it from being installed on the shuttles and used as weaponry more effective than any Earth had yet developed.
"I'm impressed," Mister Thoggosh's voice was on the line, "with your expression of self-interest, Admiral, so refreshing coming from a human. I daresay I haven't the faintest interest in trading with any Chinese People's Republic. I might, however, be persuaded to trade with Chinese people."
Chinese people, Gutierrez noted, not the Chinese people. He, too, was amazed by the admiral's offer, although he remained wary. The PRC was a mystery to generations of Americans. In an odd way it was a reversal of her classical policy of closing out the world. The worldat least its leading Marxist nationshad closed her out. Nobody in Soviet America was supposed to know what went on there, any more than what was happening in Switzerland, NeoIsrael, or South Africa, all polities which had refusedin terms expressible at times in body counts or megacuriesto join the United World Soviet.
"Mister Thoggosh," Hoong replied, "I am humbled by your"
Whatever else he had to say was drowned in static as, through the shuttle window, Gutierrez watched a new star flare to life and wink out. No one was ever certain who had launched it, but a missile of about a kilotonne's yield had been fired at the Dee Jen Djieh.
The instant its blip appeared on that vessel's radar, a dozen or more computer-controlled Gatling guns spewed tens of thousands of projectiles at it, in this instance failing to destroy it, but slewing it off course. When the missile's warhead, fused for impact, struck something solidprobably a chunk of orbiting debrisand ignited, it was hundreds of kilometers off-target. Fortunately, it had missed 5023 Eris, as well. The asteroid's organic canopy, where radiation rained down upon it, turned blue-purple for an instant, then slowly returned to its original butter yellow again, absorbing furious energies and protecting the asteroid's many tenants.
"Ortiz, Sebastiano, heads up!" Mindful to avoid the asteroid's unnamed artificial moon, Gutierrezwith the old fighter pilot's sizzle in his veinsordered his ships aloft, their blunt noses aimed (the actual calculation was more complicated) at his estimate of the missile's launch-point. Eichra Oren slammed into the right hand seat, assisting as if born to it. Asteroids are wonderful, Gutierrez thought, for all the things they don't have, like significant gravity. Shuddering dramatically, which only made the overall effect that much better, the Laika took off horizontally, just like the rocket ships in an old Flash Gordon serial.
The word "orbit" had been abused to describe the locus of Earth's spacefleets, but the gravity of 5023 Eris was too negligible for that. The flotillas were disposed about the asteroid at roughly 120 degree intervals, keeping their eyes on both the surface and their rivals, but fuelreaction mass, he reminded himself, these ships were fusion-poweredwas being expended to keep them there. He didn't know whether the missile had been Russian or American. His copilot informed him that the Elders didn't know; everyone had been rattled by that first shot. As his own ship clawed its way into the sky, he expected to be blasted any second and thanked somebody's lousy reaction time when it didn't happen.
"This is the Erisian Space Patrol," he told his mike and got a grin from Eichra Oren (he'd been looking forward to saying that for hours). "All alien fleets will withdraw to a distance of one hundred thousand klicks or be destroyed." He'd had no idea of tactics when he'd ordered the launch, just a pilot's reflexive need, with their base under attack, to get his planes off the deck. Might as well be hung for a sheep, he thought, as for a lamb.
Delacroix had the same preference. John Reed chose that moment to fire several missiles. Gutierrez suspected that they were going to MIRV into dozens of smaller nuclear-tipped weapons. He couldn't tell whether they were aimed at the asteroid or at the shuttlecraft. He nudged the attitude control to drop the nose and slew it to starboard, lined up crosshairs painted on the windshield, and slapped a panel duct-taped to his seat arm.
A ball of eye-searing brilliance flashed toward the American fleet at a respectable fraction of the speed of light, catching the incoming missiles before they could disperse and enveloping them in a cloud of incandescent gas. As the wave front, attenuated by an intervening fifty kilometers, caught the Laika, he knew the critics were wrong to nitpick space operas for their battle scenes. Explosions in a vacuum are perfectly audiblewhen they create their own temporary atmosphere. His ship buffeted by a man-made storm, he wrestled with the attitude controls and primary thrusters.
Whenever his makeshift sights brushed across the fleet again, he stood his thumb on the trigger-panel and bore down. Distracted and confused, which was perfectly normal in combat, he never felt the blade sink into his neck until Eichra Oren leaped up to grapple with the assassin. Imprisoned by his seatbelt and unable to leave the controls in any event, the general could only watchand listenas whoever had attacked him caromed off the walls of the command deck with the Antarctican and his dog.
Sam couldn't use his teeth. Handicapped by his suit, he had to settle for springing from wherever he found himself, crashing into the struggling men, hitting Eichra Oren as often as the killer he fought. Eichra Oren, hampered by his clumsy NASA outfit, wasn't up to his martial best. It was all he could do to control the long, slim knife, still slippery with the general's blood.
The general's attention was elsewhere. So far, the intruding fleets had not engaged each other further, but were concentrating their energies on the three ancient but far from helpless shuttles. Gutierrez, one hand on the flight controls and the other on the firing panel, couldn't check to see how badly he was cut. He had to keep both eyes on the sky. Outside, one of Earth's ships exploded, spewing air and broken bodies.
He shook his head to clear it, which didn't produce any better results than it ever did. His own wound was beginning to hurt now as air whistled from his punctured suit into a cabin that was only partly repressurized. The blade had glanced off the metal ring which formed the suit's collar and had entered, almost at right angles to the original thrust, driving between his collarbone and shoulder. Deep enough and he might lose a lung.
A flash of light somewhere behind him put an abrupt stop to the wrestling noises. Gutierrez risked a brief glance. Eichra Oren had his fusion pistol in his hand and a torn thigh pocket to go with it. Half the assassin's body lay against the deck. The lower half was missing. Where it had been was a waist-thick cauterized stump.
Gutierrez turned his attention to the battle again, just in time to sear another flock of missiles.
With effort, Eichra Oren pried the helmet from the attacker's head.
"Alvarez," Sam said. "I've been keeping an eye on him. What'll you bet he's Iron Butterfly, the one who probably summoned that fleet out there?"
"No bets," the general answered over his shoulder. "Take a look at that!"
One of Gutierrez's automatic follow-up shots had fetched the John Reed a glancing blow on her starboard wingtip. He could see her now, along with a pair of escorts, hypersonic aerospace planes considerably larger than the shuttles, a fanciful design once meant to carry more than a thousand paying passengers across the Pacific at many times the speed of sound. To his knowledge, the idea had been abandoned as pointlessly expensive and the craft never built. Now here they were, three of themprobably more out of sightfitted up as warships and carrying a swarm of smaller craft which they'd released just before the John Reed was hit. The plasma explosion had vaporized half a wing and set the Soviet American flagship spinning like a badly balanced top about her yaw axis.
"They seem to have skimped on attitude controls," Sam observed as the ship failed to slow and began breaking up with centrifugal stress. Ignoring her, the smaller ships, lifeboats or landing craft, the general wasn't certain which, began jetting for the asteroid. Getting handier with the plasma cannon, he picked as many off as he could until the angles changed and the asteroid was within his field of fire. The defenders on the surface were about to get very busy.
Gutierrez had ordered Sebastiano's John Galt toward the five-ship Russian fleet. To him they were mere dots on radar, which, after a single multimissile salvo and a mass launch of their own small vessels, began to withdraw. Sebastiano's cannon, spectacular even at this distance, batted the attack aside. The colonel's victory whoopwhich he'd have expected sooner from Ortizrang in the general's ears, but Gutierrez didn't have the heart to reprimand him. One errant missile, still intact, seemed to impact without harm on the asteroid's borrowed moon.
Another volley, similar to that which had destroyed the John Reed, was less successful. The Russians had observed that the plasma weapons' speed far outstripped the reaction time of human or computerized gunners. They'd begun firing their Gatlings in the direction of Sebastiano's ship the instant they released their missiles. The resulting stream of projectiles was only partly effective at breaking up the ball of plasma streaking their way, but it saved the Russian flagship and the Banker with it. Damaged, the Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria withdrew at top velocity.
Gutierrez, one hand holding his ripped suit closed now, thought about picking up survivors from the John Reed, but the remaining American ships beat him to it. He thought about examining his own wound, but pushed it out of his mind. Ortiz, following a longer assigned course toward the PRC fleet, demanded attention. "Don't look now, fellow space cadets," he remarked, "but we're flanked!"
The major was correct. Instead of firing missiles, the Dee Jen Djieh and three auxiliaries stooped on the asteroid like birds of prey, releasing hundreds of smaller objects. The Yaqui officer described them as spacesuited figures who landed on the surface and disappeared. They seemed to have some easy means of penetrating the canopy. Mister Thoggosh denied via implant having anything to do with it. His property was being invaded, he told Gutierrez through Eichra Oren, and he was sending security forces to deal with the intruders.
Before the general could give Eichra Oren a reply, a harsh light flared in the sky again. An unexpected interaction had occurred. Mister Thoggosh's unbeinged orbital station, with its automated neutrino-detector, was ablaze with dazzling white-hot thermonuclear fire. The nearby burst of a Russian atomic bomb had somehow ignited the little moonlet.
The bizarre result was that a tiny, artificial sun now brightened the sky of 5023 Eris.