Second Contact (c-1) by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_fantasy
ISBN: 0345430220
Publisher: Del Rey Books
Published: 1999-03-19T05:00:00+00:00

12

Glen Johnson studied Peregrine ’s radar screen. More than anything else up here, including his bare eyes, it told him what he needed to know. Everything was, or seemed to be, as it should have been. He didn’t know exactly what all the targets he saw were, but he hadn’t known that for some time: all three spacegoing human powers and the Lizards kept right on changing the orbits on their weapons installations.

He sighed. Everyone should have cut that crap out after whoever it was struck at the colonizing fleet. Down on Earth, somebody was laughing himself silly because he’d hit the Lizards a good lick and got away with it.

But that stunt could not work twice. The Lizards had made it very plain they wouldn’t let it work twice. Looking at things out of their eye turrets, Johnson couldn’t blame them. If anyone struck at them now, everyone would regret it. That made all the maneuvering out here seem pointless at best, provocative at worst. It went on even so.

“Stupid,” he muttered under his breath, and stupid it undoubtedly was. That didn’t mean it would stop. Who’d said, Nobody ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the American people? He couldn’t recall, but it was true, and not only of Americans.

His low, fast orbit meant he kept passing things traveling in higher, slower paths around the Earth. Several Falcon — class ships were in orbit at any given time, to make sure they kept a close eye on everything that was going on. When Johnson spotted the large target on his radar, he thought for a moment that it was a ship from the colonization fleet. But the orbit was wrong for that. Moreover, by its transponder signal, it didn’t belong to the Lizards at all. As a matter of fact, it was as American as the Peregrine.

He whistled softly and thumbed on his radio. “Peregrine to Space Station. Peregrine to Space Station. Over.”

The signal came back a moment later: “Go ahead, Peregrine. Over.”

“That thing is really going up there, isn’t it?” Johnson had to remember to add, “Over.”

He got laughter back. “Sure is, Peregrine. Any day now, we’re opening up our own supermarket.”

“Damned if I don’t believe you,” he said. “My last flight up, you weren’t anything special at all on my radar. This time, first thing I thought was that you belonged to the colonization fleet.”

That won him more laughter. “Pretty funny, Peregrine. We’ve got a lot we’re going to be doing up here, that’s all, so the place has to get bigger.”

“Roger that,” Johnson answered. “But what do the Lizards think about you? They don’t like anybody coming up here but them.”

“Oh, they don’t worry about us,” the radio operator on the space station said. “We’re a great, big, fat target, and we’re too damn heavy to do much in the way of maneuvering. If real trouble starts, you can call us the Sitting Duck.”

“Okay,” Johnson said. He didn’t ask what sort of weapons the space station carried.

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