♦ ♦ ♦
Nine minutes later the international wire services and the European vid-networks all broke the news. They reported the vidcast, which had died in the middle of the CNN broadcast, was still being received through low orbit direct broadcast comsats. The numerous geosync TV and voice communications satellites that normally routed both commercial and private communications were also carrying the broadcast. The fact the interview was being received in most parts of the planet in one of the major human languages was avidly noted, commented upon and speculated about. So far, no national government had commented on the broadcast.
♦ ♦ ♦
Ten minutes later a harried optics technician at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s satellite control facility in Pasadena received the transmitted results of the mid-infrared scan search of the region of 10 Hygiea. Six minutes earlier he’d told the old, reliable James Webb Space Telescope to begin scanning the Asteroid Belt. Looking at the results of the spectrum analyzer, polarization calibration and photo-multiplier imaging system as relayed from the 6.5 meter wide scope, he whispered “Holy Mother of God!” and picked up a scrambled green satphone that connected directly with the Pentagon’s National Military Command Authority center. The technician spoke succinctly, quickly and with great animation to an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel at the other end who held an M.A. in astrophysics from Cal Tech. During the talk, he punched in a series of search and analyze program commands for the infrared-sensing telescope that would occupy the instrument for the next 30 minutes.
♦ ♦ ♦
Thirteen minutes later the SITREP began. President McDonnell, National Security Adviser Edward Luttwak, National Science Adviser Amy Sung, Secretary of Defense Harold Smith, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Lucius Kelsey Whitehead, Vice President Alexander Kinsey, CIA Chief Loretta King and miscellaneous National Security Council staff sat looking at each other. They were in a double-walled, self-contained, self-powered, l0 by 20 meter room, located 15 meters below the East Wing. Several participants arrived at the meeting covertly following the broadcast with ear buds and Sanyo wrist TVs.
McDonnell looked around at the seated group, glanced at a wallscreen showing a silenced continuation of the broadcast and asked, “Is this somebody’s fancy trick or is it for real? I want to know now because in fifteen minutes I go on the Hotline to talk to Premier Ling Ping and then to President Arkady Bochtov! Well?”
Everyone was quiet for a moment until lanky, balding Harold Smith stood up. A former chairman of an aerospace conglomerate that had profitably participated in the Lordman-McDonnell Strategic Defense Initiative largess, he headed the Defense Department. With a nod to McDonnell he reverted to the non-Washingtonian, no-nonsense candor that had helped him tame the government’s largest organization.
“Madame President, it’s for real,” Smith said. “The Pentagon NMCA post just reported to me that JPL managed to aim the James Webb Space Telescope at this asteroid 10 Hygiea.” Smith’s eyes blinked from behind gray contact lenses. “Normally a signal traveling from there at the speed of light would reach our current position in 21.2 minutes. JPL reports a massive infrared light pulse in that area of the sky that looks like the sun coming up over Kansas. A true-light image of that spot showed a big asteroid coming into view. A rock not in our Asteroid Belt inventory. Blue-white flames were seen coming from one end of the rock. Someone timed those actions to coincide with this vidcast.” Smith paused, letting the implications sink in. “The sat-vid signals for this ‘interview’ are all coming from geosync and low orbit comsats that we do not control. There was only a brief effect on the worldwide CNN signal from the Air Force’s shutdown of their comsats. And I’m told CNN restarted the vidcast and sent it nationwide by way of fiber optic cable. Somebody else is sending it worldwide with subtitles and major language overlays. Folks, we’ve got visitors.”
“What about our Goddard space station people?” O’Donnell asked. “Have they seen anything? And what about your Air Force Space Command,” she said, looking at the Joint Chiefs of Staff admiral, “they say they can spot a baseball at 20,000 miles out! Can’t they find this damn alien spacecraft!”
Admiral Lucius Whitehead leaned forward and placed his sea-weathered hands on the top of the giant desk. “No, Madame President, the Space Command at Peterson has not detected any sign of an alien spaceship from geosync down to low orbit. And the Goddard station people do not see anything unknown near them. If the alien spacecraft is up there, and sending out this sat-vid interview to the other comsats, then it has a stealth ability we cannot penetrate.”
McDonnell, who’d earned her re-election partly on the basis of building a full-scale ABM system for CONUS, allegedly to protect from a Russian cruise missile and ABM attack, scowled at them all. “Well, someone get hold of this Jack Harrigan. I want him here, in the Oval Office, sooner than yesterday!”
♦ ♦ ♦
Fourteen minutes after the broadcast start, Sargon sat in a makeshift Command seat in the Control globe of the Strelka courier ship. Life-Who-Is-Song lay coiled up in the Control Nexus basin, his sensorium strip taking in all forms of EMF emissions. The top globe of the four-globe ship felt crowded by new arrivals. Corin sat nearby at a Comlink block, ready for his share in First Contact, as did Kagen, Sola and Magen at their own Comlink blocks. Wise Lorilen occupied a Library Node at one end of the Control deck, while his sister Grethel worked busily below-decks in her Biomedical lab, preparing who knew what kind of analysis of the Probe team’s bio-samples. In the two other globes, seven Horem from four other Clans, in addition to a few Gosay, some Zik, and Eeess the Thoranian did journeyman duty at other instrument blocks. Back up in the Control Room, the Arrik female T’Set T’Say stood before her Defense block, fulfilling both a necessary duty and acting as T’Klose’s personal representative for the Military Compound. Life-Who-Is-Song controlled his dismay at the crowded room and stayed tightly coiled in his basin, his upper body elevated and receiving a variety of inputs from the encircling bank of screens.
Lorilen looked at him from across the mix of sapient bodies, ancient yellow eyes alight with amusement. “The planet’s energy radiation flux and communications flow density has markedly increased, nephew,” she said, smiling with her headcrest. “You have certainly stirred them up!”
He spoke over the roar of five other conversations. “True. But I like this Harrigan—I hope more are like him. What is the Library’s sociopolitical prediction?”
“Dynamic stability,” she said, glancing aside to her own block screen that showed multiple waveforms. “For awhile, at least.”
“Good.” Sargon turned back to his own Comlink screen, which was linked to his Liaison’s comdisk. He watched Harrigan and his CNN coworkers as they watched the vid-interview. Soon would come the next step in First Contact.
He wished calmness on the Humans below.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“ . . . feel free to ask your questions.”
“Well, the first question is, where are you and the other aliens from—what stars?” Jack asked Sargon.
“We’re from a variety of stars ranging from 20 to 180 light years from Earth,” Sargon said as he sat back in his chair. “I belong to a race called the Horem, which is also the name of our home planet. We evolved on a planet drier and with a thinner atmosphere than Earth. Our sun Acherex is an F0V, main sequence white star located farther out on the Orion Arm of this galaxy.” The Watch Commander looked over his shoulder in a very human gesture. “My pilot here belongs to a species called the Strelka, who evolved on the planet Lifenest under the K5V, orange-red star Clet. The nearest Compact race to you are the Arrik, a two-winged, two-armed and three-eyed species who evolved on one of the six planets of the G8V main sequence star you call 82 Eridani. They’re located about 20 light years from you in the direction of the star 64 Eridani. Which is the home, by the way, of the Compact’s Thix-Thet species, a silicon lifeform.” The werewolf grinned with true friendliness, ignoring Jack’s shocked look
. “Most of us are oxygen-breathing, carbon-based lifeforms. But the Compact also includes a vacuum-evolved crystalloid species called the Thoranians, an amphibious crustacean species called the Ziks, and a monosexual, water-breathing aquatic lifeform called the Sliss.”
“Well, uh, uh—” said the video image of Jack, trying to recover his poise. “Why did you come to Earth? To our solar system? We’ve only colonized the Moon and Mars while you’ve traveled from star to star. Why us?”
“Because, Jack, we’re greedy. Greed, or the desire to gain something valuable for a low cost, is universal among all lifeforms. Which is why we seek Trade with you Humans.” Sargon crossed short-furred legs, looking totally relaxed, while the video Jack sat on the edge of his chair, looking anxious but determined. “The sapients we’ve encountered to date share basic mental qualities no matter how varied our forms. All are curious, creative, competitive and highly adaptive. The Compact began 414 ship years ago as the joint endeavor of the Horem and Strelka species.” The image of Jack slowly sat back in his chair. “As we find new species we find more new partners in the great challenge of exploring a small part of this spiral arm and in Trading among ourselves. Simply put, while intelligent life is more common than some of your scientists think, it is so vastly different—due to unique evolutionary and biochemical developments—that we have found sapience to be a precious commodity well worth the time and effort of First Contact.”
“What about your feelings, your emotions?” cried a hearty female voice from off-camera. He recalled Colleen’s impulsive interruption. “Do you experience love?”
Sargon, an indefinable expression on his face, looked out the starry portal for a second before answering.
“Yes, of course we experience love Ms. McIntyre,” growled Sargon. “In your Earth Human sense, love is an emotion recognized in various forms by nearly all Compact sapients. My mate, my two children and my grandchildren are aboard Hekar, along with others of my Clan, and they are deeply loved.” Sargon’s feathery headcrest rippled in a strange pattern. “While some Compact species have social or ideological systems totally alien to the path followed by we Horem or you Humans, they are no less emotionally sensitive because of these differences. As our Strelka brethren say—we are all Brothers-In-Thought.”
The onscreen Jack posed a new question. “What are your intentions toward the nations of Earth? Some philosophers say advanced alien beings will be all-good and will put an end to war. Others say humanity will be dominated the way Europeans dominated Amerindians. What will you do?”
Sargon smiled, showing too many incisors. “We will not put an end to your wars, Jack. You Humans are free to vaporize your planet any time you are irrational enough to do so. Nor will we take over your Earth and run things. One of your generals said last century ‘you break it, you own it’. Well, we have no intention of owning your world.” In the sat-vid image, Sargon’s yellow eyes grew bright. “We will deal with your United Nations Space Authority, your major nation-Clans and any other nation-Clan that seeks peaceful and productive Trade.” The Horem looked unusually serious. “Your internal conflicts are of your own making, and our visitation is neither the coming of the angels nor of the devils. Also, we will not Trade advanced weapons to any Human group, but we will use our weapons in self-defense.” Sargon paused, looked sideways at the off-camera Colleen, then back to Jack. “You Humans should realize our starship is located far from Earth. If Trade contact is refused, we can obtain our fuel isotope supplies from elsewhere in your solar system.”
“What’s this Trade you speak of?” the vidcast Jack asked. “What could we possibly have that would be of value to you?”
“Many things. And Trade is what our Compact is all about,” Sargon said eagerly. “We travel from star to star not just in search of intelligent life, but mainly in search of the new ideas, technology and biologicals which each species and each world produce from your long evolutionary trials.” Sargon lifted both hands, gesturing—like his smile, it needed some improvement. “Just as the physical shapes containing intelligence vary, so too do the minds that contain self-awareness. While the physical and natural world is the same for all, our ways of perceiving it, of exploring it, of thinking about it are often very different. We have found frequent cases of synergy where the combined resources of two or more races result in wondrous discoveries.” Sargon smiled. “An example is our fusion pulse stardrive that uses antimatter as an accelerant. It enables us to move among the stars at ninety percent lightspeed.”
“Wow, that’s fast,” Jack said. “Our Mars ships take 90 days for a one-way trip.”
Sargon nodded. “Your spaceships use either the VASIMIR magnetoplasma drive or your deuterium/helium-3 fusion pulse space drive to travel to other worlds of this system. Either drive takes 90 days to get to Mars. The magpulse drive of this courier and our antimatter-supplemented Horem shuttles can make the trip in three days.” The werewolf grinned toothily. “I suspect your multinational corporations will be interested in acquiring our magpulse drive.”
The onscreen Jack looked thoughtful. “I’m sure they will. How does this Trade process of yours work?”
Sargon folded his hands. “The process is very simple and based on two principles—first, ‘you don’t get something for nothing’, and second, ‘deeds not words’ are relied upon. We haven’t come to Earth to solve all your problems, to freely give you our hard-won technologies, biologicals and industrial processes. We will barter Trade for ideas, biologicals and technologies of mutual interest.” Jack made a note on the LinkPad that sat in his lap. The camera view shivered a bit as Colleen expanded the screen image to a wide angle view of Life-Who-Is-Song at his Control Nexus pilot basin. The alien was touching several Control panels, which caused changes in nearby image screens. “What you do with our Trade products is your own responsibility. As for items of value to us, your scientists will shortly analyze the plasma flare of our primary drives and deduce that we need deuterium and lithium six—an isotope of silicate lithium—to replenish our fuel supplies.” Sargon gestured at the porthole image of Earth. “In addition, your jungles are a great reservoir of biologicals which will be of value to one or more Compact species—as sources for new drugs, activator proteins and DNA patterns. While most of your technologies are not far advanced, there are some items of interest to us. Your VASIMIR magnetopause space drive is new to us. It could be the subject of Trade negotiations.”
Jack tapped his LinkPad hurriedly, then looked up. “Sounds good. When do we start this Trading?”
“It’s already begun.” Sargon smoothed the folds of his yellow and white-striped toga. “Since we hold each sapient species owns the natural resources of its star system, you already are due some Trade value. Our Zik members have been converting a nearby nickel-iron asteroid into a colony ship for their planned colonization of Barnard’s Star.” The video Jack looked surprised. “Hekar has also mined small quantities of deuterium from Jupiter’s upper atmosphere and is currently bringing in several ice rocks from your Asteroid Belt,” Sargon explained. “So, there’s a basis for Trade already in existence.”
Sitting in Tommy’s office, he recalled how he’d been startled by Sargon’s admission the aliens had already expropriated some natural resources of Sol system. Even more shocking was the news that one Compact race planned to become humanity’s next door neighbors. But he’d overcome his initial deference to the Horem and had probed deeper. He was, after all, an investigative vidreporter, not a public relations drone.
“Watch Commander, what you just said would concern some people who might think you should have sought our permission to exploit the resources of Sol system,” Jack said, sitting forward. “Do you have a system of morals and ethics which guides your conduct—or are your amoral?”
Sargon’s brown-whiskered face creased with a look of concern. “Of course we are not amoral, Jack. Our morals exist, but they are very pragmatic,” Sargon growled. “First, as I said, Sol system is your property and the Compac
t will render fair value for what we need. Second, we do not lie on matters of Trade—which is why I have volunteered this data. Third, most Compact races subscribe to the concept that one should do unto others what you would have them do unto you. Fourth, we believe that those who work should benefit while those who only sit and watch are welcome to buy their needs at a fair markup.” Sitting between Tommy and Colleen, Jack grinned. Sargon’s pragmatic comment would surely flip out the Third Worlders, NeoMarxists and Caliphate types. “Fifth, we believe Trade must be of demonstrable value to both sides—not just one party. While a Compact race may drive a hard bargain with you, we will not cheat you of your right to a return. Neither will we give you something of value out of sentimentality.” Jack smiled. He could already see the Third World Caucus at the UN jumping up and down at Sargon’s failure to show proper guilt feelings. “Sixth, we judge a person, a nation-Clan and a species by its deeds, not its words. What matters to us in the end is a fair, profitable Trading venture with solid results, not a lot of rhetoric that distorts reality,” the Horem explained. After a pause, Sargon finished his explanation of Trade protocols. “Jack, each Compact race has struggled to achieve what it currently has and we’ve found the universe to be a marvelous but hard place in which to exist. If you Humans are willing to look at the outside world with the eyes of reality rather than the dreams of fantasy, our First Contact encounter will be good for all concerned.”
Jack nodded, and noticed how Lesley Ann and Tommy were also nodding slowly. Clearly they understood the Horem’s points. The onscreen Jack kept up the questions.
“You keep speaking of this Compact of alien species Sargon, but I’m not sure I understand it. What is the Compact and how does it relate to your starship Hekar?”
Retread Shop 1: First Contact Page 18