somehow buried itself or tunneled out of the grove. That seemed contrary to everything we knew. And those prints were not from the claws of a digging animal. But Wunderland was not Earth… I got the car then and we examined the site from the air. The car's ground effect obliterated the trail as it went but we filmed it first. The track from the grove to the spot where the monks had seen the creature became obvious, as did the track back to the grove, and the wide circular disturbance of the ground and bushes there. It appeared plain that the creature had left the grove and proceeded to higher ground near the monastery as if to observe the buildings.
There was no indication of how it had entered the grove in the first place or where it had gone. There was no disturbance to indicate a tunnel or burrow. This was not the cave country of the limestone ranges, there were no cracks or sinkholes, and radar had charted the location of all the shallow local caves long ago. We flew over the swamp's margins, and saw nothing new. Even the normally teeming flying and swimming creatures of the swamp seemed unusually silent and scarce.
The monks and the abbot seemed almost apologetic, but any biologist learns to bear with frustration and delay in fieldwork. I asked them to keep their eyes open and not to hesitate to call me if they saw the odd creature, or any other odd creature, again, and then I flew back to Munchen. But if I was reasonably philosophical about it, some disappointment remained. To have captured an unknown species of large animal, carnivore or otherwise, would have been a very big thing.
And the monks had been good witnesses that there had been something there. Something big and catlike. I was sure they were telling the truth to the best of their ability. Before leaving I had examined them separately and their accounts remained consistent. I wondered if I would ever see one. The voicemail on the instrument panel lit as I approached the city. I thought it might be the Monastery calling to say they had seen anything new, but it was something that struck me as a good deal odder: the mayor's office. They wanted me right away.
Chapter 3
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
'I'm frankly somewhat embarrassed to have called you like this, Professor,' Deputy-Mayor Hubertstein said. 'I understand you've been on a field trip today.'
'Not much of a trip. But I can't think what this is about.'
'We're setting up rather a rushed conference to put a number of experts in the picture, including a biologist.
'A bit of a possible problem has come up. I've got to tell you straight away, though: this meeting and its… subject matter… are, well, potentially embarrassing at the moment. I know you are a responsible man. You'll keep secret about this?'
'I still don't know what 'this' is, but yes, I suppose so.'
'All right. Come this way, please.'
There was Police Chief Grotius, Captain von Thetoff and another, more senior, officer of the Meteor Guard, with both spacer and Herrenmann written all over him. Others joined us in the capsule that took us up to the Lesser Hall. Most of the seats there were already filled.
A string of my colleagues from different departments of the university. There was Herrenmann Kristin von Diderachs, spokesman (dictator, some said) to the City Council for the Nineteen Families, smooth, confident, plump and complacent, radiating pride and authority, who I had been presented to but who would hardly have deigned to acknowledge me. There was van Roberts, his opposite number for the Progressive Democrats. Some other politicians had cross-party friendships but I knew these two hated each other and were said to be barely on speaking terms even in the Council.
Others I recognized as political figures and industrialists. And in a majority of them the dress, features, and unmistakable body language of the Nineteen Families.
There was The Markham, there was Freuchen, there was Thor Mannstein, there was a representative of the Feynman clan, and there were others: Montferrat-Palme, of an old family coming down in the world, Talbot with his defiantly symmetrical beard, The Dunkley of Dunkley, Schleisser, The Argyl, Mannteufel, Franke, Johnston, Buxton, von Kenaelly, Lufft. Golden or flaxen hair and those mobile ears. A more than usual number of asymmetrical beards with their own subtle identifications and codings of status. But there were other people too: as well as professionals of nebulous status like me (our beards asymmetrical but not blatantly so), there were a couple of obviously wealthy and successful prolevolk and a good number of the new declasse. Also a man who I knew slightly as one of the town librarians.
I had been vaguely annoyed at having my evening interfered with, and further by being sworn to secrecy by someone like Hubertstein. I hadn't had anything like that done to me before.
As we entered the hall annoyance gave way to curiosity. Not just because of the caliber of those present. With modern communications, any sort of large face-to-face meeting like this was rare. And there was something in the body language of some of those already gathered: Grotius, who called us to order, and Mayor Larsen, who took the podium.
I had met the mayor socially a few times. I had even heard her speak formally before. But never like this. She opened new buildings and presided at civic banquets. She was another mouthpiece for the Nineteen Families. Her speeches were as a rule long on sonorous bromides and short on content. She normally began by working through the titles of the more or less distinguished ones present. This time she did not.
'We have had a warning from Sol system about hostile aliens in space. They have been attacking Sol ships.'
There was a long moment of echoing silence.
'It seems the aliens have no interest in negotiation or communication. They have some kind of gravity control that gives them acceleration and maneuverability which no conventional ship can match. They have matched velocities with ships travelling at. 8 lightspeed.'
There was a brief hubbub of exclamations. She waited for it to subside before continuing to state the obvious.
'Of course, this message is more than four years old.'
The hall was on a column, high above nearly all of the city lights, and had a plexidome for a roof. The designers wanted to make the most of Wunderland's sky. Sol was there, easy to pick out as part of a constellation in the new Wunderland zodiac, the Tigripard, made principally from the great 'W' of Cassiopeia.
Both Alpha Centauri B and Wunderland's prime moon had set, so that the sky above us was as dark as it ever got. There was the white point I knew was Sol, and Earth was somewhere hanging in that blackness. A blackness that was suddenly strange. Somebody spoke.
'What are these aliens like?'
'Something like big cats. We have pictures.'
The mayor clicked a switch and a holo appeared.
'This was sent back by a colony ship called the Angel's Pencil. It encountered one of them-one of their smaller scout ships, Earth now thinks, and got lucky with a drive mounted in tandem with a big comlaser. It escaped and destroyed the alien ship.' She clicked through other holos. 'These pictures have come a long way. They've deteriorated a bit, but you get the general idea. This is the wreckage of the alien.'
She paused. There was a thick, heavy silence as the pictures stood there. Not shock, not horror, I think, not then. We were simply finding ourselves, too suddenly, in the presence of something too large and strange to understand.
'What does a whole ship look like?' That was von Thetoff.
Grotius answered. 'We've got that.' The holo changed and flowed into a red near-ovoid thing. 'But I guess that if you see something coming at you at. 8 light and making inertialess turns, you won't have to ask.'
There was another dead silence in the hall. Whatever we had been expecting, it was nothing like this. Then a
