The Siege of Eternity

Major General Martin Delasquez has unexpectedly returned to Florida after a tour of duty in Kourou, assisting the Eurospace Agency in preparation for a mission to the abandoned Starlab satellite. On arrival, the general scoffed at reports in the Anglo media that his tour was cut short for security reasons. "There is no truth to them," General Delasquez told reporters. "My task was completed, so I came home. That's all there is to it."

-El Diario, Miami

"Hilda!"

"Agent Dannerman," she said frostily, elevating herself to the height of her rank, "don't give me a hard time. Do you understand me?"

"I understand there's something I don't like here. Neither Pat nor I agree to any kind of surgery."

"Of course you don't, you've made that clear. And Dr. Evergood certainly won't perform any without a signed consent, so this isn't like that. There won't be any cutting into your heads. They think there's a chance they can get more dope on that thing in your skulls with some new X-ray thing-don't ask me what it is, all I know is it takes a long exposure and you can't wiggle. Have you eaten anything since you were in the Pit?"

"A couple of crackers, but-"

"That's too bad. It might slow things down."

Alarm bells went off in Dannerman's head. "Does that mean we get put to sleep?"

"Now, how would I know that? Sounds plausible, though, doesn't it? Some sort of tranquilizer, I think. Nothing big, I'm sure of that."

"Now, really, Hilda-"

"Really, Danno," she began, her voice suddenly harsher, "there's no sense arguing about it. I'm not asking for your consent. I'm just telling you what's going to happen because you don't have any ch-"

Then she stopped in mid-breath. She didn't even finish the word "choice." Her eyes went unfocused for a moment. Then she blinked and looked at them again. "You two stay here," she barked, and hurried out of the room.

Pat turned wonderingly to Dannerman. "What the hell was that all about?"

He gave her an abstracted look. "What? Oh, she got a message. In her private phone," he explained. "The little button in her ear; you probably didn't even notice it."

"What kind of message?" Pat demanded. He shook his head. "Dan! Tell me what's happening here! Do you think they're going to operate on us anyway? They can't do it without our signatures, can they?"

Dannerman considered the question. "That's what the law says," he said. And didn't add that the Bureau had its ways of getting around laws. And decided that if the next person through that door was carrying anything that looked like a hypodermic, then that would be the nine to get physical.

The next person who entered wasn't carrying a needle. He wasn't even hospital personnel. It was Deputy Director Marcus Pell himself. He nodded to Dannerman and spoke to Pat. "We haven't officially met, Dr. Adcock, but I've seen a good deal of you."

He was being courtly. Dannerman had no patience with that just at that moment. "What's going on?" he demanded.

The deputy director sighed. "I'm not sure I know," he said. "There's been a rather surprising new development. There has just been a new transmission from that satellite of yours, Dr. Adcock."

"But there's nobody there!" Dannerman said.

Pat had a different reaction. She caught her breath. "Do you think it's one of those funny-looking extraterrestrials?"

"Not this time," Pell said somberly, studying his agent. "It was from a human being, Dannerman. He said there were a bunch of people up there in orbit. He said they were going to come back to Earth in the orbiter's Assured Crew Return Vehicle, the emergency vehicle that's supposed to-"

"I know what it's supposed to do," Dannerman snapped.

"Yes. Well. The funny thing about it, Dannerman, is this guy on Starlab said he was you."

That took Dan Dannerman back as nothing else had. He goggled at the D.D. "He says he's me?"

"That's what the man claims. We didn't believe him, of course. So we checked his voiceprint, and by God he was right. He is."

CHAPTER FOUR

Colonel Hilda Morrisey liked orders that gave her some slack for interpretation, but this time she could have wished for a little less of it. The deputy director's parting order had been no more than, "Take care of those two and stick around." That was it. Nothing more specific. Especially nothing more informative, and then he was gone.

So when Dannerman demanded to know what was going on Hilda could only say, "I don't know any more than you do," wishing she did. She did turn on the screen in the van so he and Pat Adcock could hear the Bureau's recording of what the world had just heard. There was no secret about that! It had been a voice-only transmission, so the only picture on the screen was the legend Transmission received from Starlab astronomical satellite, 2041 hours, 9 December. Then the voice spoke, tinny, fuzzy, but definitely familiar: