"I can’t get anything out of it. It’s not responding."

"Use the emergency frequency."

"We’ve already tried. Nothing."

"For Christ’s sake, what’s happening in here? Caldwell just chewed my balls off outside. Find out from Yellow Six who it is."

"I’ve got ’em on the line now. They don’t know, either. They thought it was ours."

"Gimme that goddam phone!"

The plane leveled out above the edge of the marshes about a mile away and kept coming, heedless of the volley of brilliant red warning flare fired from the top of McClusky’s control tower. It slowed to a halt above the open area of concrete in front of the reception party, hung motionless for a moment, and then started sinking toward the ground. A handful of UNSA officers and technicians ran forward making frantic crossed-arms signals over their heads to wave it off, but fell back in disarray as it came on down regardless and settled. Caldwell strode ahead of the group, gesticulating angrily and shouting orders at the UNSA figures who were converging around the nose and making signs up at the cockpit.

"Imbeciles!" Danchekker muttered. "This kind of thing should never happen."

"It looks as if Murphy’s back from vacation," Lyn said resignedly in Hunt’s ear. But Hunt only half heard. He was staring hard at the Boeing with a strange look on his face. There was something very odd about that aircraft. It had landed in the middle of a sea of watery snow and slush churned up by the activity of the last few days, yet its landing jets hadn’t thrown up the cloud of spray and vapor as they should have. So maybe it didn’t have any landing jets. If that were so it might have looked like a 1227, but it certainly wasn’t powered like one. And there didn’t seem to be much response from the cockpit to the antics of the people below. In fact, unless Hunt’s eyes were deceiving him, there wasn’t anybody in the cockpit at all. Suddenly his face broke into a wide grin as the penny dropped.

"Vic, what is it?" Lyn asked. "What’s funny?"

"What’s the obvious way to hide something in the middle of an airfield from a surveillance system?" he asked. He gestured toward the plane, but before he could say any more a voice that could have belonged to a natural-born American boomed out across the apron from its direction.

"Greetings from Thurien to Earth, et cetera. Well, we made it. Too bad about the lousy weather."

All movement around the craft ceased instantly. A total silence fell. One by one the heads on every side jerked around and gaped at each other speechlessly as the message percolated through.

This was a starship? The Shapieron had stood nearly half a mile high. It was like having a little old lady show up at Tycho on a bicycle.

The forward passenger door opened, and a flight of steps unfolded itself to the ground. All eyes were riveted to the open doorway. The UNSA people up front drew back slowly while Hunt and his companions, with Heller and Packard a pace behind, moved forward to close in behind Caldwell and then slowed to a halt again uncertainly. Behind them the expectant cameras focused unwaveringly on the top of the steps.

"You’d better come on in," the voice suggested. "No sense in catching colds out there."

Heller and Packard exchanged bemused glances; none of their talks and briefings in Washington had prepared them for this. "I guess we just ad-lib as we go," Packard said in a low voice. He tried to summon up a reassuring grin, but it died somewhere on its way to his face.

"At least it’s not happening in Siberia," Heller murmured.

Danchekker was fixing Hunt with a satisfied look. "If those utterances are not indicative of Ganymean humor at work, I’ll accept creationism," he said triumphantly. The aliens could have warned them about the ship’s disguise, Hunt agreed inwardly, but apparently they had been unable to resist making a mild joke out of it. And they obviously had little time for pomp and formality. It sounded like Ganymeans, all right.

They began moving toward the steps with Caldwell in the lead while the UNSA people opened up to let them pass through. Hunt was a couple of paces behind Caldwell as Caldwell was about to step onto the first stair. Caldwell emitted a startled exclamation and seemed to be lifted off the ground. As the others froze in their tracks, he was whisked upward over the stairway without any part of his body seeming to touch it, and deposited on his feet inside the doorway apparently none the worse for wear. He seemed a trifle shaken when he turned to look back down at them, but composed himself rapidly. "Well, what are you waiting for?" he growled. Hunt was obviously next in line. He drew a long, unsteady breath, shrugged, and stepped forward.

A strangely pleasant and warm sensation enveloped him, and a force of some kind drew him onward, carrying his weight off his legs. There was a blurred impression of the steps flowing by beneath his feet, and then he was standing beside Caldwell, who was watching him closely and not without a hint of amusement. Hunt was finally convinced-this was not a 1227.

They were in a fairly small, bare compartment whose walls were of a translucent amber material and glowed softly. It seemed to be an antechamber to whatever lay beyond another door leading aft, from which a stronger light was emanating. Before Hunt could take in any more of the details, Lyn sailed in through the doorway and landed lightly on the spot he had just vacated. "Smoking or nonsmoking?" he asked.

"Where’s the stewardess? I need a brandy."

Then Danchekker’s voice shouted in sudden alarm from outside. "What in God’s name is happening? Do something with this infernal contraption!" They looked back down. He was hanging a foot or two above the stairway, flailing his arms in exasperation after having apparently come to a halt halfway through the process of joining them. "This is ridiculous! Get me down from here!"

"You’re crowding the doorway," the voice that had spoken before advised from somewhere around them. "How about moving on through and making more room?" They moved toward the inner doorway, and Danchekker appeared behind somewhat huffily a few seconds later. While Heller and Packard were following, Hunt and Lyn followed Caldwell into the body of the craft.

They found themselves in a short corridor that ran twenty feet or so toward the tail before stopping at another door, which was closed. A series of partitions extending from floor to ceiling divided the space on either side into a half-dozen or so narrow cubicles facing inward from left and right. As they moved along the corridor, they found that all the cubicles were identical, each containing some kind of recliner, luxuriously upholstered in red, facing inward toward the corridor and surrounded by a metal framework supporting panel inlays of a multicolored crystalline material and a bewildering layout of delicately constructed equipment whose purpose could have been anything. There was still no sign of life.

"Welcome aboard," the voice said. "If you’d each take a seat, we can begin."

"Who’s doing the talking?" Caldwell demanded, looking around and overhead. "We’d appreciate the courtesy of your identifying yourself."

"My name is VISAR," the voice replied. "But I’m only the pilot and cabin crew. The people you’re expecting will be here in a few minutes."

They were probably through the door at the far end, Hunt decided. It seemed odd. The voice reminded him of his first meeting with the Ganymeans, inside the Shapieron shortly after it had arrived in orbit over Ganymede. On that occasion, too, contact with the aliens had been through a voice functioning as interpreter, which turned out subsequently to belong to an entity called ZORAC-a supercomputer complex distributed through the ship and responsible for the operation of most of its systems and functions. "VISAR," he called out. "Are you a computer system built into this vehicle?"