the President himself flew to Ottawa to make a deal with the Prime Minister. Where's your cuz?'
'Pat went into the terminal to get warm.' Actually Dannerman was thinking of doing the same thing. There was a freezing wind coming across the bare space of the airport; he'd been lucky enough to have the anorak he was taken to the headquarters in, but even so his face was hurting from the cold. Pat hadn't been that fortunate. When she was arrested they picked her up indoors and she hadn't been out in the open air ever since. At the last minute one of the stews had found her a spare jacket that belonged to one of the pilots, but it was meters too big and did nothing for her bare legs.
What kept Dannerman out in the cold was the spectacle overhead. There were more stars than he had seen in years, and what looked like a handsome aurora borealis display off toward the horizon. But when he pointed it out to Hilda she said mildly, 'Asshole, that's the Sun getting ready to rise.' She paused to listen to the button in her ear, and then said, 'They've got through reentry all right. They say ETA in thirty-five minutes.'
Dannerman felt a sudden chill of a different kind. He was that close to seeing this person who claimed to be himself. He tried not to speculate-some bizarre alien creature that had duplicated his voice as a disguise?-but it was a queasy, unpleasant feeling all the same.
Hilda was squinting at the horizon. 'It ought to be broad daylight by then, and that's what they wanted-they didn't want to risk a night landing, but they wanted them to get down as fast as possible. But I dunno. I hope this Chinaman knows what he's doing. Isn't he going to be landing right into the Sun?'
'That's not how it works,' Dannerman said, out of the superior experience of somebody who had actually once made a return flight from orbit. 'They swing around to land from the east-it's to take advantage of Earth's rotation.' He looked to see if she was impressed. She wasn't. 'I think I'll go use the men's room while I can.'
When he was inside the warmth of the terminal seduced him into lingering. He spotted Pat, wanly hunched over a cup of coffee by one of the vast glass windows with her junior-agent minder alertly sitting just behind. He located the place where the coffee was coming from and, supplied, sat down next to her; she glanced up at him, fretfully curious. 'What are all the soldiers for?'
Looking out at the floodlit runway, he could see what she was talking about. The troop transport had nosed up to the hardstand next to the terminal. Its clamshell bow had opened and three personnel carriers, each filled with armed infantrymen, eased themselves down the ramp, followed by a company or more of commandos on foot. The newcomers were all in U.S. combat uniforms, but a pair of RCMPs were glumly watching the spectacle. 'I guess the Mounties don't want anybody interfering,' he said.
The minder cleared her throat to attract his attention. 'Can I get you anything, Agent Dannerman?'
When he took a closer look at her he recognized the woman: Merla Tepp, the one who had interrogated him. 'Since when are you a stewardess?'
'Since I volunteered for the flight, sir. You know how it is. You want to be promoted, you stay where the big brass can see you.'
'You'll go a long way,' Dannerman said absently, glancing toward the huge window. Something was moving. As it rushed past he identified it as another plane dropping toward the runway, and turned to the minder. 'Hey, is that-'
She shook her head. 'No, sir, it isn't the Starlab ACRV. That plane's from Ottawa; it's expected.'
'Maybe I should get back outside.'
Junior Agent Tepp touched her right ear, the one with the communications button. 'They'll let me know when it's time,' she offered. 'If you want to stay in the warm, there'll be a while yet.'
'Thanks,' he said gratefully, and then realized that it wasn't all generosity on her part. As long as he and Pat stayed inside she could, too. He yawned and sat down, suddenly aware that the warmth had made him sleepy. Drowsily he watched as the new plane slowed, turned off the landing strip and trundled toward the terminal; it had a familiar look to Dannerman, though he couldn't see its markings.
Airport crews were already rolling a flight of steps toward it, and the door was opening almost before the plane stopped. Three or four people got out and hustled toward the group with the deputy director. At least one of them also looked vaguely familiar to Dannerman, but he couldn't make out the face. He yawned and closed his eyes…
He didn't realize he had fallen asleep until he felt Merla Tepp shaking his shoulder.
'Show time, sir,' she was saying. 'They want us out there now.'
It was full daylight now, though not a whit less cold. But at least the bosses weren't standing out in the freezing winds anymore; someone had got smart enough to collect an airport bus, and they were all inside it, its heater going full blast, at the end of the runway. A squad of the commandos was deployed around it in full winter gear; all of them carrying weapons; but the soldiers waved them in when they saw the uniformed minder.
That was when Dannerman saw who it was who had just come from Ottawa. It was the Bureau director herself. The Cabinet officer. The woman whose pictures showed her always superbly coiffed, wearing what the latest fashion decreed, and perpetually busy on the highest of high-level affairs. Dannerman had not been physically in the director's presence since she addressed his graduating class.
When the American Congress got tired of passing laws that instructed their successors of a few generations later- but not themselves-to balance the damn budget once and for all, they took a different tack. They simply decided not to bother anymore. It was simpler just to borrow more money. Of course, that led to the problem of paying the interest on the money they borrowed. That was a cost of government they could not escape, nor could they avoid paying for more and more police. So everything else had to be cut- notably the space program.
– Ad Astro.
He could hear only fragments of what the director and the D.D. were talking about. 'Yes, Marcus,' the director was saying to her deputy, now suddenly deferential, 'the Prez squared it all. I wrote the Prime Minister's order to the Calgary people myself.' An unheard question from Marcus Pell, then an answer from the director almost as hard to hear, because she looked around and lowered her voice. She seemed to be saying that they'd promised something to the Canadians. Probably a share of whatever they got out of Starlab, Dannerman speculated, and amused himself by thinking about how much the Canadians would ever collect on that promise. If he knew the director, not a great deal.
'Here it comes,' somebody said.
Dannerman caught a glint of metal over the mountains to the west. As predicted, the ACVR sailed past them, far overhead but descending as it banked and turned. It grew larger, settling down toward the ground, wobbling slightly… and then it was touching down at the far end of the runway. Plumes of smoke erupted from its tires as they squealed against the runway. Then suddenly the thing was screeching past them, still going a hundred kilometers an hour or better on its stilty landing gear. Behind it ground vehicles began to give chase: two of the personnel carriers filled with troops, a fire truck, an ambulance. 'Get this thing moving!' the deputy director roared, and the bus driver obeyed.
The spacecraft was well ahead of them, still speeding. For a moment Dannerman feared that even the endless Calgary runway wasn't going to be long enough for this job. But it was-barely. By the time they reached the end of the runway the clumsy old antique was sitting there, its ancient ceramic tiles cracked and smoking, and two squads of riflemen had surrounded it-to protect it from any of those expected interlopers, Dannerman assumed, until he noticed that the ring of soldiers was facing in.
As they all piled out of the bus he could hear cracking sounds coming from it as it began to cool. 'Get those people out of that thing,' the director snapped.
One of the men with him cleared his throat. 'It's risky,' he said.
'The lander's still too hot to touch; we have to wait a minute-'
'So cool it off!'
The airport fire chief rubbed his chin. 'We could foam it, I guess,' he said, 'but I don't know if that would make much difference. And of course we can't use water.'
'Why can't you use water?'
The fireman looked surprised. 'It would crack the tiles. It might ruin the vehicle permanently.'
'Now, what difference do you think that would make? Listen, half the radars in the world have followed that thing down. We're going to have visitors in the next hour. Ruin the son of a bitch!'
