The Last Starfighter (23 page)

“See, that’s my mom and my dad before he died. The one with the wrinkled face and the dumb expression is my little brother Louis. The girl, that’s Maggie.”

“Your wife?” Grig’s interest was genuine as he glanced up and back toward the picture.

“Uh, no, just a friend. A very close friend.” Alex swallowed hard. “My family lives above ground in a mobile home cave that goes anyplace you want it to. Only we never went anyplace.”

Grig nodded politely. Alex wondered if the gesture stood for the same thing among his people or if, having seen Alex utilize the gesture, the Navigator was simply displaying his courtesy through the use of it.

“A mobile cave that never went anywhere. Fascinating, if something of a contradiction in terms. Why call it mobile if it never goes anywhere?”

“That’s our fault, not the trailer’s,” Alex explained. Aware he’d been staring at Maggie’s face for a long time, he removed the picture from his wallet and placed it on a nearby console, copying a gesture learned from watching old black-and-white war movies. The familiar snapshot was an island of sanity among all the smooth Rylan technology. He put the wallet back in his pocket.

“We do have caves, though. Some of them are pretty big. People used to live in them a lot. A few still do.”

“Ah, then we are not so very different.”

“No, I guess not. We have a lot of below-surface caves near our trailer park. Me and Louis used to play hide and seek in them.”

“Hide and seek?”

“A kid’s game. You’ve probably played it yourself, only you call it something else. Or else it’s not translating properly. See, one person or more runs and hides and . . .” He hesitated, thinking.

“Hide and seek,” he mumbled again.

“Alex, what is it?”

“Oh, nothing, Grig. Nothing.”

“Tell me. Anything worth labeling nothing has to be composed of something.”

“Yeah, right. I was just thinking, though. We could hide inside this asteroid and let the Ko-Dan armada pass by on its way to Rylos. It would shield us from their detectors just like those Xurians were trying to hide from us. Then after they’ve gone by we could come out fast and hit them from behind.”

Grig nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, it would give us the necessary element of surprise. It might actually have worked. I do not think the Ko-Dan would run an extensive survey of all the asteroids. Any such survey would surely exclude time-consuming internal examinations. The rock here is more than thick enough to block out their sensors. Yes, it might well have worked. What a pity there are no Starfighters left to carry it out.”

“Yeah, but we . . .”

“Please. It is a waste of time to discuss plans one has no intention of putting to use, and I am not in the mood to discuss tactical theory when reality is at stake. I will take you home now, Alex.”

The gunstar accelerated very slightly. Grig was turning toward another exit. The instant they reached the broken upper lip of the crater the cockpit came alive with half a hundred warning lights.

Neither of them had to resort to instruments to see the Xurian ships resting on the surface of the planetoid. At the same time their presence was detected by the five vessels they had surprised.

“A Xurian base!” Grig exclaimed. “This must be one of their rendezvous points with the Ko-Dan, or else I was wrong and they’re checking out the asteroids after all.” The gunstar rocked as the first wave of fire from the ships below passed close by. The Xurians were too startled by the unscheduled appearance of a stranger in their midst to take accurate aim.

Alex’s fingers flew over the fire controls. Grig had not yet deactivated the ship’s weaponry and the Xurian vessels exploded silently in sequence. Two of them rose just far enough from the surface for their debris to be scattered out into emptiness.

It was all over so quickly, the fire control computer responding flawlessly to Alex’s directions. Now he sat back in his seat as Grig moved them away from the asteroid. Expanding gases burned themselves out. Once again the only external light came from the stars and Rylos’s sun.

“That was superbly done, Alex.” Grig was as unperturbed as ever. “Even taking into account the fact that we caught them unawares and resting on a solid surface, your reaction to their fire was all that could have been expected. Please accept my compliments.”

“I didn’t mean . . .”

“Of course you did,” Grig said, correcting him before he had a chance to finish. “They were shooting at us. They would have destroyed us without a second thought, so you did not permit them second thoughts. Or yourself, either.

“Now that we are safely away, I will program a course for Earth. We will make the jump before any other Xurian or Ko-Dan craft can detect our presence.”

Alex had gone quiet. He was remembering. Remembering the Rylans he’d talked to, the room full of Starfighters who’d never had the chance to fight. Remembering the faces of Grig’s offspring, small alien images that came and went in joyful, rapid succession on a strip of plastic. What would their lives be like under Ko-Dan rule?

“Say, Grig?”

“What is it, Alex?”

He was wonderfully calm now that he’d made the decision. He knew he was going to die. Of that he was confident. The knowledge gave him an inner peace he’d never felt before. He was going to shake hands with death. Knowing that the meeting was inevitable, it no longer concerned him. It wasn’t important. Grig had told him that. It was only a question of time.

Still, he’d do his damndest to put off the meeting as long as possible. He would . . . and he had to smile to himself . . . he would make a game of it.

“Maybe,” he finished, “there
is
a Starfighter left.”

Grig did not turn to look at him, did not smile. Not outwardly, anyway.

“Am I to understand that you are changing your mind again? You do not wish to return home at this time?”

“No, not just yet. You know, it’s strange. All of you have such confidence in me: Starfighter command, Centauri, yourself. I figure it’d be a real waste if I never found out if that confidence was justified or not.”

“A terrible waste,” Grig agreed, nodding.

Alex looked past him, staring out past the fire control screen at the strange constellations. So far from home. He was so far from home.

“Let’s find out if Centauri was right or wrong.”

“As you wish, Alex.” Grig jubilantly reprogrammed the ship’s course.

12

The moon was close and full as it sat on the mirror of the lake’s surface. It wasn’t much of a desert lake compared to such giants as Powell or Mead, but it was big enough to fish in, to ski on and, most importantly, to the clustered teenagers lying on its best beach, to romance on.

The cars remained parked well back of the wooden sign that said Silver Lake. Nevertheless, it was an accepted axiom that before the night was through, some idiot would end up sticking his vehicle in the sand and would have to endure the ignominity of being towed out.

Jack Blake’s fancy pickup was one of the assembled cars. It stuck out from the battered Chevys and mini-pickups like a cabbage among brussels sprouts. From below the parking area whispers and giggles were interspersed with the sound of the lake lapping against the yellow sand.

The police cruiser that pulled into the lot moved slowly, running on parking lights only. They were extinguished as soon as the driver located a parking place. The engine died as the single trooper inside surveyed the silent ranks of vehicles.

Then he checked to make certain his radio was off and his gun was secure in its holster. He opened the door and stepped out. When he closed the door he held down the lock button on the handle to make sure there wouldn’t be any noise.

Eyeing pickup beds as well as interiors, he commenced a careful check of each vehicle. A couple of the cars were locked and he had to fiddle with the doors before they would open.

In one car the two occupants were wrapped up in each other on the back seat. They didn’t notice the trooper’s approach, did not look up when he peered in on them. They noticed only each other.

The trooper concluded his inspection and turned his attention toward the beach.

Jack Blake let his fingers do the walking as the cheerleader moaned softly next to him. The sleeping bag that enveloped them was without its removable goosedown lining and the thin nylon threatened to rip on the gravelly sand. Blake didn’t care. If it tore he’d just buy a new one.

His hands functioned independent of his thoughts. They were on another shape enclosed by another sleeping bag. He kept trying to pick out the shape and the other bag in the dim light, but it was difficult to see much of anything in his present position and the confining bag he was in wouldn’t let him raise his head very high. Neither would his companion.

Maggie and Alex had settled in farther up the beach, away from everyone else. Had he been able to see better, Blake would have been grinding his teeth at the sight of Maggie lying on top of Alex, working her tongue in his ear.

Except that it wasn’t Alex underneath her. It was an anxious, quietly desperate simulacrum whose earlier confidence was ebbing rapidly. A hasty programming had included nothing about how to deal with its present situation. The Beta knew Maggie’s actions were designed to stimulate pleasure, but how much pleasure he wasn’t certain. Furthermore, the entire ongoing procedure appeared to involve a good deal of on-the-spot improvisation. Though versatile, the Beta still relied heavily on preprogrammed information.

Obviously a ticklish confrontation. One wrong move could wipe out his original’s relationship with this forceful female. As a professional, the Beta wanted desperately to do the right thing by Alex.

But what was the right thing? He didn’t know, and rather than make a wrong move he lay quietly and allowed the female to do as she pleased. Evidently this wasn’t the correct reaction, however, since after several minutes of this Maggie rolled off him and straightened her clothing. The Beta had grown sufficiently sensitive to the nuances of human behavior to sense that she was not pleased. Had he reacted incorrectly by not reacting at all?

This was terribly confusing.

“What’s wrong?” he asked innocently. “Should I put my tongue in your ear?”

She shook her head sadly, staring down at him. “Don’t bother. It’s like you’re a million miles away, Alex.”

He started, then realized she was speaking metaphorically. Besides, she was more than a few miles off with her guess.

“It’s just that I’m kinda new to these gland games.”

“What?”
(Uh-oh . . . wrong thing to say. He was making it worse every time he opened his insufficiently programmed mouth). “Hey, Earth to Alex. You’re not even paying attention to me.”

“I’m sorry, Maggie. It’s just that I’m a little preoccupied tonight.”

“A
little?
Alex, you’re as cold as a machine.”

“I am not!” he protested, aware that she had to be ignorant of that casual slur.

There had to be a way out of the quandry in which he found himself. The Beta glanced to his right. That big young male down there, he didn’t seem to be having any trouble making the proper social connections. He and his partner were whispering without pause, communicating fluidly. Beta listened to their conversation carefully.

“Darling, forgive me,” said the larger human. His name was Blake, Beta remembered. He thought the apology reeked of insincerity.

Not that it appeared to make any difference to the female writhing beneath him. From the information his sensors conveyed, the Beta determined that her thought processes at the moment not only were indifferent to the man’s tone, they verged on the unfocused.

Nothing ventured, nothing retained, Beta decided as he turned back to Maggie. “Darling, forgive me.”

To his considerable surprise, she smiled warmly. Surely she could see through his words the feeble attempt at manipulation? Surely the female of this species was more perceptive?

Apparently not. She moved suggestively against him. The Beta Unit filed this new information emotionlessly. It was not his function to judge the social reactions of other species. Besides, he didn’t have the time to render opinions. He was too busy doing his job. He concentrated on the words and accompanying movement of the couple nearby.

Just now they were rolling about on the sand. The Beta promptly began rolling with Maggie. She giggled, which if not the same reaction as the other young female below, at least was not hostile.

“You’re my Juliet, my Venus,” Blake murmured to his cheerleader.

Higher on the sand the Beta whispered throatily, “You’re my Juliet, my Venus.”

Maggie sighed beneath him, her eyes closed tight. This struck Beta as most peculiar, since it seemed logical that now would be just when these creatures would want to see each other. He held off asking Maggie about it, deciding rightly that this would be imprudent.

This was easy, he decided. All he had to do was keep mimicking the words and actions of young Blake, who just then was biting his lady’s ear.

This further confirmation of the primitive nature of the human species did not surprise the Beta. He was careful to note the intensity of the bite before duplicating it, reasoning correctly that it would not be appreciated if he drew blood.