Peter David - Battleship

Miss.

The two brothers are in the forest near their house, sitting opposite each other. They are both quite young, although the big brother has felt very old for a long timebecause he is the older brother, and as such has many important responsibilities. The most vital of these, as far as he is concerned, is to make sure that his kid brother remembers whos boss.

It is the younger brothers greatest failing that he never seems to remember that.

The older brother is sitting on a log, allowing him to look down upon his brother. This is, as far as he is concerned, what should be the natural state of things, the proper order of the universe. The younger brother is seated across from him, cross-legged on the ground, getting his pants filthy from sitting in the dirt and not caring about it. It is a crisp day and theyre both wearing light hoodies: the older brothers is white, the youngers is red.

They both have pads of lined paper on their laps, playing a game their father taught them called Broadsides. Theyve used pencils to draw vertical lines intersecting with the horizontal ones and thus created grids, which theyve then numbered. Theyre using the pads to have a simulated naval battle. Its natural that their father, a Navy man himself, would teach them how to play it, and claims to have played it when he himself was young.

It is the older brother who has just said Miss, and the younger brothers eyebrows both leap up on his forehead as if theyve come loose and are endeavoring to make a run for it.

Whattaya mean, miss, says the younger brother in irritation.

Its like a hit, but the opposite, the older brother says.

It cant be a miss!

Well, it was. D-7

No, wait, shut up. The younger brother stares at his smaller grid where hes keeping track of his hits. I said G-1.

And I said miss.

It cant be! That was the fifth hit on your aircraft carrier! Game over!

It wasnt and it isnt. D-7

Youre cheating.

The back of the older brothers neck starts to get red. I am not. You just cant stand that Im going to win a game

No, says the younger brother, getting into the elders face in that way that he has. You just cant stand that Im going to win AGAIN. You cant stand that I always win and that you always lose. Loser. Looooooser. Looooser loooooser looooser! He forms an L-shape from his thumb and forefinger and puts it against his head.

Shut up! The older brothers fury is rising. G-1 wasnt a hit. Live with it.

I dont believe you. Lemme see. He is up on his knees and he grabs for the older brothers pad of paper.

The older brother yanks it away. Forget it! If you look at it, the games over!

The games already over, loser.

The worst thing of all is that the older brother knows that this is true. He looks at G-1, where the prow of his theoretical aircraft carrier is sitting. He looks at the smug expression on his stupid little brother.

And suddenly long-simmering resentment boils up and over, and before his younger brother can get to him, the older brother tears apart the lined notepad in a paroxysm of fury. This game is stupid and youre stupid!

Youre stupid, loser!

The older brother doesnt want to run back to the house because he feels hot tears of mortification streaming down his face. And the last thing he needs is his father standing over him and demanding to know whats wrong. So instead he swings his legs over the log, gets to his feet, and starts running, shouting, Leave me alone!

Will not! says the younger brotherthe little idiot, the brainless turd.

The older brother is running through the woods now, and the younger is right after him, shouting at him, taunting him. He keeps moving, but the little brat is pacing him easily. How the hell does he do that when his legs are shorter? It should be impossible.

There is a river running through the forest just up ahead. Its too wide to ford, the boundary of their property. He cuts right, moving quickly along it. His younger brother is in pursuit, still taunting, still calling him names, and at that moment he has never hated anyone in his life more than he does his younger brother.

Suddenly he hears an alarmed shriek, and a skidding of feet on dirt. He spins just in time to see his younger brother tumble down an embankment, a section of dirt apparently having given way beneath his feet. His younger brothers head strikes a rock thats projecting sideways from the embankment, and the sound it makes when it hits is nauseating. The older brother sees, in horror, that there is fresh blood on the rock, and then his younger brother splashes into the river. Its not especially deep, but the current is quite strong lately thanks to the heavy rain. All the older brother can see now is a brief image of the back of his kid brothers sweat jacketa flash of red in the speeding watersand then his tormentor is washed away.

With a shriek of pure horror, he calls out his younger brothers name, Alex! and practically vaults down the embankment to the edge of the river. He sprints along it frantically, trying to catch up, hoping that on foot hes faster than the speed of the water. He closes the gap a little and then a massive fallen tree is blocking his path along the shoreline.

He has no choice.

He throws himself into the water and starts swimming for both his brothers life and his own.

The Himalayas? Are you serious? Are you kidding me?

That had been Doctor Abraham Nogradys original thought when he had first been approached about the Beacon International Project.

Nogrady was middle-aged, lean, with a perpetual stoop that had come from a lifetime of leaning over equipment and studying it with an almost demented intensity. He had a prominent nose and a head of curly black hair, with a bald spot developing like an island of flesh in the back of his head.

From Nogradys personal situation, the offer could not have come at a better time. His work at SETI had been defunded, thanks to the shortsighted fools in Congress who couldnt see the fundamental necessity of searching for extraterrestrial life. Bad enough that they had gutted NASA, woefully sighing that there was simply no point in focusing on building moon stations and such when we had so many problems right here. But they had literally laughed his SETI work right out of existence, with many snide comments and even a few reactionaries stating that the only way theyd fund searches for extraterrestrials was if Will Smith was put in charge so he would be able to fend off any resulting alien attacks.

Nogrady had wanted to get right into the faces of those smug bastards during the congressional budget hearing. Were they at all aware of the amount of modern technology, which they took for granted, that was a direct result of the space program? Did they ever consider that watching the skies would enable scientists to pick up on objects in space heading toward Earth on a collision course, enabling them to sound the alarm andwith any lucksee that countermeasures were taken? Did it occur to them that, on the off chance humanity managed to beat the odds and actually make contact with extraterrestrial life, it would be the single most important development for mankind since the discovery of fire and the invention of the wheel? How could you be so blind? That was what he had wanted to jump up and shout. But he had held his tongue, and the result had been his job flushed away by idiots and buffoons.