Missile Gap

He sighs. "A primary survey of an entire continent. Nobody, but nobody, even bothered looking into the local insect ecology here. There're virtually no vertebrates, birds, lizards, what have you — but back home there are more species of beetle than everything else put together, and this place is no different. Did you know nobody has even sampled the outback fifty miles inland of here? We're doing nothing but throw up shacks along the coastline and open-cast quarries a few miles inland. There could be anything in the interior, absolutely anything." When he gets excited he starts gesticulating, Maddy notices, waving his hands around enthusiastically. She nods and smiles, trying to encourage him.

"A lot of what I'm doing is the sort of thing they were doing in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Take samples, draw them, log their habitat and dietary habits, see if I can figure out their life cycle, try and work out who's kissing-cousins with what. Build a family tree. Oh, I also need to do the same with the vegetation, you know? And they want me to keep close watch on the other disks around Lucifer. 'Keep an eye out for signs of sapience,' whatever that means: I figure there's a bunch of leftovers in the astronomical community who feel downright insulted that whoever built this disk and brought us here didn't land on the White House lawn and introduce themselves. I'd better tell you right now, there's enough work here to occupy an army of zoologists and botanists for a century; you can get started on a PhD right here and now if you want. I'm only here for five years, but my successor should be okay about taking on an experienced RA…the hard bit is going to be maintaining focus. Uh, I can sort you out a subsistence grant from the governor-general's discretionary fund and get NSF to reimburse him, but it won't be huge. Would twenty Truman dollars a week be enough?"

Maddy thinks for a moment. Truman dollars — the local scrip — aren't worth a whole lot, but there's not much to spend them on. And Rob's earning for both of them anyway. And a PhD…that could be my ticket back to civilization, couldn't it? "I guess so," she says, feeling a sense of vast relief: so there's something she's useful for besides raising the next generation, after all. She tries to set aside the visions of herself, distinguished and not too much older, gratefully accepting a professor's chair at an ivy league university. "When do I start?"

Chapter Nine: On the Beach

Misha's first impressions of the disturbingly familiar alien continent are of an oppressively humid heat, and the stench of decaying jellyfish.

The Sergei Korolev floats at anchor in the river estuary, a huge streamlined visitor from another world. Stubby fins stick out near the waterline, like a seaplane with clipped wings: gigantic Kuznetsov atomic turbines in pods ride on booms to either side of its high-ridged back, either side of the launch/recovery catapults for its parasite MiG fighter-bombers, aft of the broad curve of the ekranoplan's bridge. Near the waterline, a boat bay is open: a naval spetsnaz team is busy loading their kit into the landing craft that will ferry them to the small camp on the beach. Misha, who stands just above the waterline, turns away from the giant ground effect ship and watches his commander, who is staring inland with a faint expression of worry. "Those trees — awfully close, aren't they?" Gagarin says, with the carefully studied stupidity that saw him through the first dangerous years after his patron Khrushchev's fall.

"That is indeed what captain Kirov is taking care of," replies Gorodin, playing his role of foil to the colonel-general's sardonic humor. And indeed shadowy figures in olive-green battle dress are stalking in and out of the trees, carefully laying tripwires and screamers in an arc around the beachhead. He glances to the left, where a couple of sailors with assault rifles stand guard, eyes scanning the jungle. "I wouldn't worry unduly sir."

"I'll still be happier when the outer perimeter is secure. And when I've got a sane explanation of this for the comrade General Secretary." Gagarin's humor evaporates: he turns and walks along the beach, towards the large tent that's already gone up to provide shelter from the heat of noon. The bar of solid sunlight — what passes for sunlight here — is already at maximum length, glaring like a rod of white-hot steel that impales the disk. (Some of the more superstitious call it the axle of heaven. Part of Gorodin's job is to discourage such non-materialist backsliding.)

The tent awning is pegged back: inside it, Gagarin and Misha find Major Suvurov and Academician Borisovitch leaning over a map. Already the scientific film crew — a bunch of dubious civilians from the TASS agency — are busy in a corner, preparing cans for shooting. "Ah, Oleg, Mikhail." Gagarin summons up a professionally photogenic smile. "Getting anywhere?"