Page 109 of Aftershocks (Colonization 3)

Flynn shrugged. “If you think you’re going to make me give way to unbridled optimism, you can think again. Either that, or you can put on a bridle and go horse around somewhere else.”

With a snort more than a little horselike, Johnson said, “I wonder what will happen when the Lizards do find out.”

“That depends,” Mickey Flynn said gravely.

“Thank you so much.” Johnson tacked on not an emphatic cough but another snort. “And on what, pray tell, does it depend, O sage of the age?”

“Vocative case,” the other pilot said in something like wonder. “I haven’t heard a vocative case, a real, living, breathing vocative case, since I escaped my last Latin class lo these many years ago.” Johnson had never heard of the vocative case, but he was damned if he would admit it. Flynn went on, “Well, it could depend on a lot of different things.”

“Really? I never would have guessed.”

“Hush.” Flynn brushed aside his sarcasm like an adult brushing off a five-year-old. He started ticking points off on his fingers: “First off, it depends on how soon the Race does figure out what’s going on.”

“Okay. That makes sense.” Johnson nodded. “If they work that out day after tomorrow, they have a better chance of doing something about it than if they work it out year after next.”

“Exactly.” Flynn beamed. “You can see after all.”

Now Johnson ignored him, persisting in his own train of thought: “And things will be different depending on whether they find out on their own or if we have to rub their snouts in it.”

“This is also true,” Flynn agreed. “If the latter, they will probably be trying to rub our noses in things at the same time. That creates the need for a lot of face-washing, or else a mudbath-I mean, a bloodbath. See, for example, the late, not particularly lamented Greater German Reich.”

Johnson shivered, though the temperature in the Lewis and Clark never changed. He felt as if a goose had walked over his grave. “What happened to the Hermann Goring could have happened to us this past summer, too. The Lizards made damn sure the Nazis weren’t going to get themselves a toehold in the asteroid belt.”

“It didn’t happen to us because it happened to Indianapolis,” Mickey Flynn said. “Thanksgiving is coming before long. Do we give thanks for that, or not?”

“Damned if I know,” Johnson said. “But I’ll tell you something I heard. Don’t know whether it’s true, but I’ll pass it along anyhow.”

“Speak,” Flynn urged. “Give forth.”

“I’ve heard,” Glen Johnson said in low, conspiratorial tones, “I’ve heard that the Christopher Columbus has some turkeys in the deep freeze, to cook up for a proper Thanksgiving. Turkey.” His gaze went reverently heavenward-which gave him nothing but a glimpse of the light fixtures and aluminum paneling on the ceiling of the Lewis and Clark’s control room. “Do you remember what it tastes like? I think I do.”

“I think I do, too, but I wouldn’t mind testing my hypothesis experimentally.” Flynn raised an eyebrow at Johnson. “If you’d known you’d spend the rest of your days eating beans and beets and barley, you wouldn’t have been so eager to stow away, would you?”

“I didn’t intend to stow away, God damn it,” Johnson said, for about the five hundredth time. “All I wanted to do was get my upper stage repaired and go home, and our beloved commandant hijacked me.” He stuck to his story like glue.

“Anyone would think he’d had some reason to be concerned about security,” Flynn said. “A preposterous notion, on the face of it.”

“I wasn’t going to tell anybody, for Christ’s sake.” That was also part of Johnson’s story, and might even have been true.

“Brigadier General Healey, in his infinite wisdom, thought otherwise,” Flynn replied. “Who am I, a mere mortal, to imagine that the commandant could ever be mistaken?”

“Who are you, one Irishman, to give another one a hard time?” Johnson shot back.

“Shows what you know,” Flynn said. “Quarreling among ourselves is the Irish national sport. Of course, we have been known to put it by-every now and again, mind-when a Sassenach comes along.” He fixed Johnson with a mild and speculative gaze, then sighed. “And we’ve also been known not to put it by when a Sassenach comes along. If it weren’t for that, I suspect the history of Ireland would have been a good deal happier. A good deal more Irish, too, and less English.”

Johnson didn’t know much about the history of Ireland or, for that matter, the history of England. He knew the history of the United States from the patriotic lessons drilled into him in high school and from reading in military history since. He said, “The Irish aren’t the only ones to quarrel among themselves. My great-grandfathers wore blue. You listen to some of the folks here from Texas or the Carolinas and you’ll think the Civil War ended week before last.”

“My great-grandfathers wore blue, too,” Flynn said. “The Army was the only place that would give them anything close to a fair shake in those days. But over the past hundred years, America’s been a dull place. Every time we’ve fought, it’s been against somebody else.”

Before Johnson could answer that, the intercom started blaring his name:

“Lieutenant Colonel Johnson! Lieutenant Colonel Glen Johnson! Report to the commandant’s office immediately!”

“There, you see?” he said, unstrapping himself. “Healey’s been spying on us again.” He thought he was joking, but he wasn’t quite sure.

After swinging his way through the corridors of the Lewis and Clark and gliding past Brigadier General Healey’s adjutant, he caught himself on the chair across from the commandant’s desk, saluted, and said, “Reporting as ordered, sir.”

“Yes.” Healey’s bulldog countenance seldom looked as if it approved of anything. So far as Johnson could remember, the commandant had never looked as if he approved of him. Healey went on, “Have you ever heard of an officer named Sam Yeager?”

“Yes, sir,” Johnson answered. “He’s the fellow who pretty much wrote the book on the Lizards, isn’t he?”

“That’s the man.” Brigadier General Healey nodded. He leaned forward and glowered at Johnson. “Did you ever meet him?”

“No, sir,” Johnson answered. “What’s this about, if you don’t mind my asking?”

His own bump of curiosity itched. He’d never met Yeager, no, but he’d spoken with him on the phone. Yeager was another loose cannon, a man with a yen to know. Johnson had sometimes wondered if the Lizard expert had tried finding out who’d attacked the ships of the colonization fleet. He said zero, zip, zilch about that to Healey.

“That man is a troublemaker,” the commandant said. “You’re a troublemaker, too. Birds of a feather, if you know what I mean.”

“Sir, that’s not birds of a feather,” Johnson said. “That’s a wild-goose chase.”

“Is it?” Healey said. “I wonder. What would you have done, Lieutenant Colonel, if you’d found out that we were the ones who’d attacked the Lizards’ colonization fleet?”

“I can’t tell you, sir, because I really don’t know,” Johnson replied.

“That’s the wrong answer,” Brigadier General Healey growled, spearing him with the perpetually angry gaze. “The right answer is, ‘Sir, I wouldn’t have said a goddamn thing, not till hell froze over.’ ”

“What if I’d found out the Russians or the Germans did it, sir?” Johnson asked. “Wouldn’t I sing out then?”

“That’s different,” the commandant said. Before Johnson could ask how it was different, Healey spelled it out: “That’s them. This is us. Whoever spilled the beans to the Race has got Indianapolis’ blood on his hands, and President Warren’s blood, too. If I knew who it was…” He’d been out in weightlessness a long time. He could probably never go back to gravity again. If he could, he would without a doubt be permanently weakened. Somehow, none of that seemed to matter much. If he caught the bean-spiller, he would do horrible things to him.

“Sir…” Johns

on said slowly, “are you telling me you think this Yeager was the one who told the Lizards we’d done it?” That fit in with his own speculations unpleasantly well. And Healey had access to a lot more secret information than he did.

“I don’t know, “the commandant answered, his voice a furious, frustrated rumble. “I just don’t know, goddammit. Nobody knows-or if anybody does, he’s not talking. But plenty of people want to find out-you can bet your bottom dollar on that. Yeager’s a loose cannon. I know that for a fact. He was trying to find out about this place, for instance. I know that for a fact, too.”

“Was he?” Johnson knew damn well Yeager was, or had been. He wondered if Lieutenant General Curtis LeMay had raked Yeager over the coals, too. He could hardly ask.

---