Footfall

He was late to open his bubble. The flexwing popped and the struts began to expand before it was clear. Harpanet shrieked. He was falling toward a rippling white landscape, vast in extent, and his collapsed bubble was still tangled around his flexwing. He clawed his way up the suspension harness and forced his digits under the fabric against the resistance of the inflated struts, and pulled. The planet’s white face came up to smash him.

It was nothing. He fell through it without resistance. He was still clawing at the bubble fabric, and suddenly it was floating loose above him. He had to nerve himself to let go of the flexwing; and only then did it begin to drag at the air until he was flying.

It was some time before he recovered enough to look for other flexwings.

He found a swarm of midges far away. Away from the sun. It is late in the day. The planet turns away from the star. My warriors are spinward.

The octuples under his command had steered toward their place on the rim of the great circle on the Herdmaster’s map. The circle would converge. Defenses would be erected. Digit ships would presently pick them up and return them to the darkness, the immensity, the security of space.

A rise of land blocked his view of the other wings. Undulations of yellow fur streamed beneath him, terribly fast, and Harpanet had seconds in which to learn to fly. Through his terror came a single memory, that lifting the fore edge of the flexwing would cause him to slow and rise. He slid back in the harness. The wing rose, and slowed … and hovered, and dropped, and picked up speed, and hurled him against the dirt. He rolled. The harness rolled with him; the flexwing wrapped around him; one of the struts hissed in his face as his bayonet punctured it. When he finally managed to disentangle himself, his radio was dead. One knee was twisted, so that he could walk on three legs only. Gravity pulled at him.

It was an experience he would never want to remember. But he was sixty-fours of makasrupkithp to antispinward from his assigned landing point.

Jenny woke with a start. A duty sergeant was standing over her. He chattered excitedly. “Right now, Major. The Admiral wants you in the war room now; it’s an emergency. There’s an invasion.”

“Invasion? She sat up. “All right, Sergeant. I’m coming.”

“Now, Major—”

“I heard you. Thank you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She dressed quickly, putting on combat fatigues. He hadn’t said anything about sidearms. We’re at war, but surely they weren’t invading Colorado Springs !

When she reached the war room she wasn’t so sure.

* * *

Admiral Carrell, still in civilian clothes, was in one of the balcony offices overlooking the control room. Jenny stood outside the door, wondering what to do.

“Come in, Major.” Carrell pointed to the big screens below. They showed Kansas and southern Nebraska dotted with red flashes and hand-drawn gray squares. Jenny stared for a moment, trying to understand.

“We don’t have symbols for a parachute invasion of Kansas ,” Admiral Carrell said. “So we had to draw them in. Not that it means much, since we don’t know all the places they’re landing.”

“Are all those red marks nuclear strikes?” Jenny asked.

“Probably none of them,” Carrell said. “So far they haven’t used nukes. They haven’t had to.”

“No, sir.” Kinetic energy weapons. Throw big rocks.

An Army lieutenant general bustled in. He wore combat fatigues and he’d buckled on his pistol.

“You’ve met General Toland,” Carrell said. “No? General, Major Crichton is my assistant. What’s the score, Harvey?”

“Damned if I know. Thor, this doesn’t make sense. They can’t possibly be invading Kansas . I don’t care how goddam big that ship is; it can’t hold that many troops.”

“Then what are they doing?”

General Toland shook his head.

Carrel said, “Jenny, I want you to get those sci-fi gentry together and get them working. You can use the big briefing room. Get TV monitors set up, get maps, get coffee, get whiskey, hell, get them prostitutes if that’s what they want, but get me some explanations!”

Harry lay in the wheat field and sweated. There was a hot wind and bright sun, but he’d have sweated in a blizzard.

He couldn’t see the road, but he heard a vehicle on it. The motor didn’t sound like anything Harry had ever heard before.

Now there were sounds in the wheat. Someone — something — was coming.

The wheat was too thick to see through. His world had shrunk to five yards or less. He could just see Melissa’s bright head scarf. Should have told her to take it off. Too late now. Not that we can hide anyway.

The sounds came closer. They were all around him.

What the fuck do I do? The pistol held no comfort for him. He wasn’t a good shot. He remembered a merc who’d served in Africa telling him about elephants. They were hard to stop, harder to kill. You had to hit them just right. A .45 probably wouldn’t even bother one, not unless he hit a vital spot—

They aren’t elephants. Maybe they’re not as tough. And maybe I don’t know where the vital spots are.