Footfall

Rogachev’s office was roomy enough, by station standards. Much of its furniture looked like afterthoughts: the hot plate, the curved sofa that had replaced a standard air mattress; even the window, shuttled from Earth and welded Into a hole sawn in the hull: a thick-walled box, two panes of glass sandwiching a goop that would foam and harden in near vacuum. But it let light through, so that Station Commander Arvid Pavlovlch Rogachev could see the stars.

They flowed past, left to right, while Arvid mixed powdered tea with boiling water in a plastic bag. The station was equipped for free-fall, in case of emergencies. He served the tea into two cups, and passed one to his second in command.

“The station will house twelve,” Arvid said. “Twelve are aboard. Four are foreign observers. No more important event has occurred aboard any spacecraft, and it will happen while Kosmograd is both crowded and shorthanded.”

“Not quite so bad as all that,” said Aliana Aleksandrovna Thtsikova. “Recall that there is nothing to be done about the alien ship. We don’t have to go to meet them; we don’t even have a motor.”

“Neither drive nor weapons. We could not flee either.”

“Exactly. It will come, we are privileged to watch. I suggest that we are doing fairly well.”

“Perhaps we are.” Arvid smiled. “It helps that our guests cannot talk to each other well”

“Their dossiers said that”

Arvid didn’t entirely trust any dossiers but Aliana knew that. He said, “I’ve watched them exercising their language deficiencies.

“Do you see a security problem?”

“From them? No. It is my habit to make threat estimates. Shall we? As a game?”

“My mother would call it gossip.”

“Let us gossip, then. Which of our guests do you find interesting?”

“The Nigerian. He’s the blackest man I’ve ever seen. I actually have trouble looking him in the face.”

“Really? What will you do when aliens are aboard?”

“Perhaps I’ll hide in your office.” She lost her smile. “Comrade Commander, I have an irrational fear of spiders and insects.”

“Then we must hope that the approaching guests will be neither.” But they will not be shaped like men, Arvid thought; and Aliana could not even see all men as men. She would be of little help to him if aliens came aboard. He had not suspected this weakness in her. It was well he’d learned it now.

She said, “The Nigerian speaks English and three native languages. . which must make him effectively retarded. There are forty-three languages active within the borders of Nigeria. Educated in England, then Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, but he learned little Russian. He favors economic independence for Nigeria,”—

“We won’t cure that here. He spends all his time with Dmitri Parfenovich and Wes Dawson. That would be good, except that Dmitri has been trying to convert Dawson to his own views, whereas Dawson sometimes takes the time to try to tell George what’s going on. Dawson is good at explaining complex matters.”

“Could you have a word with Dmitri?”

Arvid laughed. “Do you want me to tell our Political Commissar how to convert the heathen? Aliana, I do not seek converts.”

She laughed. Officially, Dmitri Grushin was Deputy Commander and Information Officer for the station, but he was so little qualified for either job that his KGB origins showed clearly. “We may find ourselves seeking converts among people with nightmare shapes,” Aliana said. “If so, Dawson is the one to watch. Nigeria and France would be no threat to us—”

“His nation made a good choice there, I think. The Honorable Wes Dawson is frantic to meet aliens.”

“Wasn’t it politics that—”

Rogachev shrugged. “Certainly his dossier suggests that he forced himself aboard. Even so, although I know little of American politics, I would not think a mere congressman could force the American President too far in a direction he did not wish to go.”

Aliana grinned. “Dawson is more qualified than Dmitri. Surely they have similar positions?”

Rogachev shrugged. “I do not think so, but it hardly matters.”

“Dawson’s dossier calls him politically liberal.”

“A lazy agent wrote that. ‘Politically liberal’ — he copied that out of some newspaper! Dawson has invariably favored the American space program.” Rogachev’s face twisted into a look he didn’t show to many people: a distinctly guilty grin. “I have closely watched the Honorable Wes Dawson. He has been sick with envy since he came aboard. He does not even care much for the design. Indeed, he knows precisely how he would rebuild the station if it were his. But as it is not, it is killing him!”

Aliana smiled back. “If we had the funding, wouldn’t we make improvements too? Very well. Dr. Beaumont has been a French communist for two decades. We can count her an ally. She has a kind of beauty, wouldn’t you say?”

“Classic and severe, but yes.”

“Have you made advances?”