“You know,” Eric said, “having Amy along has really added something to the trip.”

MacAllister smiled wearily. “Indeed it has.”

THEY WENT INTO orbit around Romulus. “The planets in this system,” Valya said, “are quite young. Like their sun. They’re still undergoing the formation process.”

“What does that actually entail?” asked MacAllister.

“Mostly, they get plunked by a lot of debris, Mac. There are no giants close in to clear out the rocks and pebbles, so it’ll go on for a long time.”

MacAllister saw one or two streaks in the atmosphere below.

“Anybody want to go down and look?” she asked.

That brought another burst of enthusiasm from Amy. Eric said yes, of course he would go.

“How about you, Mac?”

“You say there’s nothing alive down there?”

“Nope. Nothing at all. Not so much as a microbe.”

He wondered about earthquakes and volcanoes. The worlds were so close to each other, he suspected there were all kinds of disruptions. He was more cautious since his experience at Maleiva III. But he couldn’t back off again. “Okay,” he said. “Sure. Why not?”

Valya reviewed e-suit procedures, and they all put on the harnesses. They did a checkout routine, went below, and climbed into the lander.

Minutes later the launch doors rolled back and they looked out at the night sky. It was studded with stars and dominated by the two planets, both half in daylight. “You want to say the word, Mac?” she asked.

Amy nodded encouragement.

“I doubt I’m a very reliable pilot, Valya.”

“Bill will take care of the heavy lifting. Just tell him to go.”

“Okay,” he said. “Sure. Take us to the surface, Bill.”

“As you wish, Mac,” said the AI.

The vehicle lifted off and drifted gently through the doors. A million stars looked down on them. The center of the Milky Way lay off to their left, and the silver and blue planets floated, one below, one overhead. It was, for MacAllister, a good moment. He was glad he’d come.

THE LANDER SLIPPED into lower orbit and Remus dropped below the horizon. They crossed the terminator onto the night side, kept going for a long time, and finally eased into the atmosphere. Bill took them down through scattered clouds. The ground was dark. Mac couldn’t even tell whether they were over land until Valya switched on a display that relayed sensor images. Probably infrared. It was ocean, with scattered islands, and a storm to the south.

Valya took control from Bill and set down on one of the islands. She handed out oxygen tanks, and they ran another drill. How to breathe, for God’s sake. And be careful: Gravity is only 0.8.

MacAllister was seated in the rear, with Eric. He looked out across a stretch of sand. The surf was high, and the ocean moved gently beneath the starlight. The interior of the island was composed mostly of frozen mud. There were a few scattered hills.

“Okay,” Valya said, “activate the suit.”

MacAllister punched the big blue button on his belt and the Flickinger field formed around him. Air began to flow.

“Everybody okay?” Her voice was coming in over the commlink now.

They all checked in. Valya turned on a couple of the navigation lights so they’d be able to see. “Mac,” she said, “tell Bill to decompress the cabin.”

Feeling silly, but not wanting to make a fuss, he complied. “Bill,” he said, sounding as bored as he could, “decompress.”

He heard the hiss of air. Then the hatch opened and, with Amy in the lead, they climbed out and stood on the sand. It was hard as rock.

There was always something surreal in people wearing casual clothes standing around on the frozen surface of another world. He had gray slacks and a blue-and-gold Mariners hockey shirt with number seventeen and the name LEVINS on the back. The shirt had been a Christmas present from a cousin, intended as a joke because of his public stance that hockey was a game for idiots. Levins apparently played for the Mariners, who were one of the Canadian teams. He wasn’t sure which one. But it was comfortable and seemed to fit the mood of the evening’s jaunt.

Valya was in a Salvator jumpsuit. Eric wore workout clothes, with a top that read PROXMIRE ACCOUNTING. It was Amy who set the trend. She had a blue pullover, blue shorts, and loafers. The wind howled around her, and the temperature must have been thirty below. MacAllister felt cold just looking at her.

He increased the heat in his suit and wondered how long it would take to freeze if the electronics went down. The e-suits themselves were not visible, save for a brief shimmer around the wearer when the light hit them just right.

They started toward the water. The waves, probably energized by the mass and proximity of Remus, came pounding in. It was, in a bleak way, an extraordinarily beautiful place. This was his first visit to a sterile world. It was unsettling to look out at the ocean, which could have been the Atlantic, and know there was no shell along any of its beaches, no seaweed, not so much as a living cell anywhere.

The frozen sand crunched beneath his feet. They walked out into the surf, and MacAllister felt it break against his shins and try to suck him out. It was a pleasant sensation.

Valya pointed to a glow on the horizon, out over the water. “We timed it pretty well,” she said.

Eric went out until the waves were breaking past his hips. Remus was rising.

They stood for several minutes, talking about nothing in particular, watching the golden arc push out of the sea. It was magnificent.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” said Amy.

This was no small, barren moon rising above the ocean. It was a brilliant shimmering yellow world, with oceans and continents and rivers, surrounded by the soft haze of an atmosphere. “It looks different than it did from the ship,” Eric said.

Valya pushed out and stood beside him. “It’s all expectations. You’re on the ground, like back home, and you expect to see a moon. Instead, you get that.”

“You know,” said Amy, “my father thinks he’s seen this. He’s watched the sims. But you really have to be here.”

Eric nodded. The light caught his protective field, and it shimmered, providing a spectral effect. “Maybe,” he said, “you could bring him here eventually.”

“No. He wouldn’t want to get this far from Washington.” She shook her head. “I wonder how life on Earth might have been different if we’d had a moon like that, and if it had had cities that we could see.”

MacAllister made a mental note to keep an eye on the kid. If she didn’t become a pilot, he’d offer her a job with The National. Maybe —

“Look!” Eric was pointing in the opposite direction, back across the hills. A streak of light raced down the sky.

“More moonriders,” said Amy.

Valya put a hand on her shoulder as the object exploded into a shower of sparks. “I don’t think so, hryso mou. It’s just a meteor. They get a lot of them here.”

Government sources revealed today that an Academy ship experienced an encounter with a moonrider in the Ophiuchi system, about twenty light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, at a velocity of approximately 300,000 kilometers per second. The moonrider is reported to have diverted an asteroid onto a course that would bring it down on Terranova, the first living world found outside the solar system.* The intersection, however, is not expected to happen for almost two decades. Scientists close to the Academy say that a similar event on Earth would probably end civilization and would, in any case, cause mass extinctions. No one seems able to offer an explanation why the aliens would want to do this. Jasmine Allen, a prominent physicist attached to the Air and Space Museum, says that it sounds to her like pure vindictiveness. “If these things are really there,” she said, “and they actually did this, then I’d say we’ll want to stay as far from them as we can.”

— The Black Cat Network, Saturday, April 11

ARNSWORTH: BEEMER HAS REASON TO FEAR HELL

Announces Prayer Crusade on Assailant’s Behalf Pullman Helps Kick Off “Reclamation Effort”

Why is it that people want so desperately to shake hands with otherworldly beings? That people will even insist they have seen visitors from Spica hovering above their backyards? In other times it was ghosts and fairies and goblins, and voices in the night. Is the company of our own species so dull that we need to invent the Other? On the other hand, maybe that explains it.

— Gregory MacAllister, “The Galactic Coffee Shop”

The National consisted primarily of political and social commentary. It also carried book reviews, an occasional piece of short fiction, a science column, a column by a professional skeptic, and a few cartoons. At the present time, it was home to a family of correspondents, and a substantial number of periodic contributors. It bore the imprint of its editor. It didn’t trust government, didn’t trust people in authority generally, and carried as its maxim Ben Franklin’s warning: “…we have given you a republic — if you can keep it.”

The National’s causes were all over the place. It favored a health-care system for everybody on the planet. It championed efforts to strengthen the World Council. It wanted programs to see that nobody went hungry and everybody had a place to sleep. It also favored balanced budgets, reduction in the size of government, and the return of the death penalty. People across the political landscape insisted that there was no way to do all those things. MacAllister proudly responded that, once you make that decision, you’re necessarily right.

They did not come close to having the widest circulation in the field, but they liked to feel — and loudly proclaimed — that the people who made things happen, or those who might have but stalled around until the dam broke, all read The National. By and large they found a lot in it not to like. MacAllister and his legion routinely called into question the integrity of politicians, the good sense of academics, the single-mindedness of the religious establishment, and the taste of the general public.

Because The National limited itself to commentary, it wasn’t concerned with day-to-day topicality. Wolfie Esterhaus got the news about the moonriders at Ophiuchi from Mac bare minutes before it broke for the rest of the world. But he had an eyewitness account that had arrived just in time to plug into the upcoming issue. He’d want more than what the boss could give him. The real issue, aside from the nature of the moonriders themselves, was the reaction at high levels.