McNolan rose slowly. “All right. But at least let me take a few simple precautions.”

“Precautions?”

“We need to have some weapons handy. Just in case our visitors turn out notto be friendly.”

“Whatweapons?” Zafirah asked. Vanguard wasn’t exactly a military installation, after all.

“Some of the rock-boring and digging equipment will do in a pinch,” McNolan said. “And a few of the construction beamjacks even have target pistols. It’ll only take a few minutes to get them ready.”

Zafirah got the distinct impression that this was because McNolan had already made a few surreptitious calls; he’d probably gotten started the moment the alien ship had been identified as an alien ship.

The director’s mouth became a grim slash. “Absolutely not.”

McNolan approached her. “Director, a smile and a few kilos of mining explosives will always get you a lot farther than just the smile.”

He was notsmiling, however. His eyes remained hard, his resolve clearly immovable.

“Amen,” said Baruch.

After a seeming eternity, the director averted her gaze from Baruch. She looked about the room to measure the opinions of everyone present. The dozen people in the room seemed split down the middle on the issue.

Then Mizuki trained her probing gaze squarely on Zafirah. “And where do youstand, Zaf?”

Zafirah swallowed hard. Visions of rock-hurling teens and suicide bombers flashed across her mind’s eye. She knew in [88] her heart that distrust was not a productive path to follow. But as she tried to tame her own mounting fear, she found it nearly irresistible. Allah forgive me. Did you not create these alien visitors as well as us?

“I think Kerwin and Avi have a point,” she said finally. “Maybe we should consider keeping some armed people behind the welcoming party. Discreetly.”

“ ‘Trust, but with verification,’ ” Baruch said, no doubt quoting some ancient Cold Warrior from the previous century.

Norman Arce, the construction foreman, was studying the image of the alien ship displayed on the monitor. Bright lights flashed intermittently between the vessel’s hull and the asteroid’s nickel-iron-marbled surface. “Better make a decision soon. They’re cutting a doorway.”

Dr. Mizuki sighed, then nodded her grudging consent to McNolan’s proposal. As she followed Claudia and the director into the corridor, Zafirah felt relief that pragmatic realpolitikwas evidently as important to the director’s job as was raw idealism.

But her fear remained, to her enormous shame.

The alien boarding party consisted of four creatures whose robust-looking sidearms and long, sheathed knives were immediately apparent. Zafirah’s heart pounded; she hoped that the visitors’ open display of weaponry signaled mere caution rather than naked aggression.

Zafirah stood beside Mizuki, Hakidonmuya, and McNolan on the rough metal surface of Vanguard’s lowest, highest-gravity level. The members of the welcoming committee were empty-handed, with the exception of McNolan, who carried a small, unobtrusive radio transceiver that he’d left patched into the main control center.

All of their eyes were trained on the aliens who strode purposefully toward them. The hole through which the visitors had gained ingress was visible some twenty meters [89] behind them. The lack of so much as a breeze indicated that they had done Vanguard’s residents the courtesy of installing an airlock of some kind on their way in.

They’re not monsters,Zafirah told herself silently and repeatedly. Just like the Israeli soldiers, they were merely the products of a different culture.

As well as, obviously, a different biology. Although the quartet of creatures provided living proof that the general humaniform template was not unique—each of the newcomers possessed two arms, two legs, and a head that harbored something roughly analogous to a face—they were clearly like nothing human beings had ever before encountered. They were all large, broad across the shoulders, and perhaps two-and-a-half meters in height. Their hair was shaggy and black, and hung past their bulky shoulders in untidy mullets that were adorned with bushy topknots and uneven, dreadlocklike braids. Their garments were motley and loose-fitting, predominantly blousy shirts, baggy jackets, and pantaloonlike leg coverings that brought to mind the pirates of the Barbary Coast, or her own people’s legends of djinn.

But it was the aliens’ faces that Zafirah found to be their most arresting feature. Their skin was dusky, their eyes obscured by multiple folds of wrinkled flesh. Nose and mouth converged in a single, snoutlike projection, bordered by a sharp chaos of sharp tusks and fangs.

They’re not monsters,inshallah.

When only a handful of meters lay between the two groups of sentients, the visitors came to a halt.

The being at the front of the group raised a single meaty hand. “Be’huh laku fraken Nausicaa,”it said, its voice deep and booming. Zafirah wondered if it was identifying itself, or its species, or its intentions.

We’ll find a way to speak to them,Zafirah told herself. These creatures have had to contend with the same laws of[90] physics we do just to get so far out into space. We have at least that much in common already.

The lead alien tipped its head, apparently expecting a response. Zafirah recalled the sixteenth-century Spanish explorers who had read proclamations to the indigenous people of the Americas, then slaughtered them when they failed to make a satisfactory reply.

But they’re not humans,Zafirah thought, hoping that the director’s instincts would win out over McNolan’s. They won’t necessarily behave the way we humans have always behaved.

Director Mizuki spread her hands in a gesture of peace. She stepped forward, and away from the rest of the group, closing the distance between herself and the alien leader to a gap of about a meter.

Zafirah suddenly realized she was holding her breath.

“I am Kuniko Mizuki,” the director said. “I am in charge of this facility. It is my honor to welcome you to the Vanguard colony.”

The director bowed respectfully.

The alien before her bellowed, “Kak Nausicaa!”In a blur of motion, it unsheathed a long, evil-looking serrated blade.

Almost too quickly to see, the blade rose, then swept across the back of the director’s still-bowed head.

A scream escaped from Zafirah before she could find the will to squelch it.

“No!” Hakidonmuya shouted.

McNolan cursed, then barked a single terse order into his handheld transceiver unit.

The director’s head fell from her body, landing on the rough-hewn rock-and-metal floor with a sickening wet crunch. Frozen across her broad features was an expression of pure, unadulterated surprise.

PART 3

SECRETS

Chapter 9

Damn it!Sulu thought, instantly on his feet and moving toward the wounded Tholian ambassador. The pungent odor of sulfur permeated the conference room, as did a gabble of shouting human voices.

None of the Tholians uttered a sound.

Smoke and other superheated gases quickly roiled through the room, making the air uncomfortably hot. The sounds of coughing filled the air as an alarm shrilled. His eyes already stinging, Sulu drew and held a deep breath of what he hoped was clear air; it was already redolent with the acrid stench of rotten eggs. He heard the roar of the emergency fans as the environmental system struggled to get the room’s atmosphere back into class-M equilibrium. The smoke and vapor swiftly began to recede.

Kasrene’s aide, Mosrene, had already backed away from the evidence of his dirty work—he had apparently applied some sort of crude patch to the rent in Kasrene’s enviro-suit, no doubt for the benefit of the humans present—and made no further threatening moves toward his superior. The remaining three members of the Tholian diplomatic party took up similar poses at Mosrene’s side, all of them behaving as though they had just witnessed a genteel debate rather than an act of possibly mortal violence.