They waited for half an hour. Nothing happened. They got out of the HERC and stretched. Mazer ordered them to take sleep-shifts. Two would stay awake and two would sleep in two-hour shifts.
A hand shook Mazer awake. It was dawn. Sunlight dappled the ground around them, shining through the tree canopy overhead. Fatani said, "Something's happening."
Mazer pulled on his helmet and switched on his HUD. There was the alien ship. Only now the stars around the ship were shimmering, like heat rising off a stretch of asphalt in the summer sun. At first it seemed like a glitch in the broadcast. Then the alien ship began to rotate, turning its nose away from Earth, and Mazer understood. The ship was emitting something, radiation perhaps, or heated particles, using the expulsion of the emissions to change its position.
It turned ninety degrees then stopped, with its profile now facing Earth.
"What's it doing?" said Fatani.
Slowly the ship began to spin on its axis. At first Mazer didn't notice; the surface was so smooth. Then a giant ring of light appeared on the side of the ship at the bulbous end, as if the surface of the ship had cracked and was emitting light from inside.
"What is that?" asked Fatani. "What's that circle?"
The ship continued to rotate. Once. Twice. Three times.
Another circle of light appeared on the bulbous end beside the first one. Then a third circle appeared. The alien ship continued to spin. Around. And around. And around. Then, moving in unison, the three giant circles began to rise upward like columns from the ship.
"I don't like this," Fatani said.
Then, in an instant, one of the columns broke free, slung down toward Earth by the spinning motion, leaving a massive recessed hole in the side of the ship.
It's not a column, Mazer realized. It's a wheel. Tall and metallic and enormously wide, with flat sides and a turtlelike top that had been part of the skin of the ship. It was shooting straight toward Earth.
"The hell it that?" said Fatani. "A weapon? A bomb?"
As Mazer watched, the second wheel broke away, slung to Earth, chasing the first. Then the third wheel followed, right behind the other two.
"What are they?" said Patu.
"Whatever they are, they'll burn up as soon as they hit the atmosphere," said Reinhardt. "They're huge."
"They won't burn," said Mazer. "They can generate fields. They'll deflect the heat." He spoke Chinese then. "Computer, digitize the sat feed into a holo that includes Earth and the three alien projectiles. And do it to scale."
A construct appeared in the holofield. Crudely made. A white sphere representing Earth and three small wheel-shaped projectiles quickly approaching it.
"Skin the Earth's surface to match current time zones and the Earth's rotation in relation to the position of the projectiles."
The surface of the Earth appeared on the sphere. Oceans, continents, atmosphere, all slowly spinning on an axis.
"Can you determine the speed of the three projectiles based on what we see from the sat feed, perhaps using the starfield as reference?"
"Affirmative."
"Are they decelerating?"
"Negative. Speed is constant."
"Vector their trajectory," said Mazer.
In the holofield, a dotted line extended from the wheels, hitting Earth at a sharp angle, as a reentry vector should.
"I don't think they're bombs," Mazer said in English. "Look at their approach. Coming in at that sharp of an angle. I think they're landers."
In Chinese Mazer said, "Computer, can you guess what their deceleration would be as they hit the atmosphere?"
"Insufficient data."
Mazer figured as much. Fine. He would make do with the information he had.