by Trevor Wyatt
Jeryl
“So,” said Professor Guss, “let’s take the problem of how many technical civilizations may live in the galaxy and put that aside for now, and look at a more complicated issue. How will we recognize intelligence when we see it?”
The students looked at one another. Trick question? Jeryl wondered. At last, one of the other cadets raised his hand.
“They’ll have machines,” he said. “You know—instrumentality.”
The professor nodded. “Extensions of their natural capabilities,” he said. “But be careful, here. We humans have built ourselves a complicated technical infrastructure to support us, almost like an exoskeleton supports an insect. He can’t live without. At this point, neither can we.”
Again, the students looked at one another.
“That’s not to say that others can’t,” Professor Guss said. “As a species, we’re somewhat blinded by our accomplishments. Granted, it’s no small thing to land on the Moon, abolish diseases, harness electricity, or disseminate ideas via printing or electromagnetic waves. As a result of our cleverness, we’ve come to judge the intelligence of our fellow earth species by how closely it resembles our own.”
Blank looks were all around, but for Jeryl, he was beginning to see where Guss was headed.
“We have studied the sound patterns of whales. Their ‘songs’ are recognized as being a method of communication. We still don’t know what they’re saying, but on some level, they’re exchanging information and ideas. That’s very close to intelligence.”
“Ants do that,” a dark-haired female cadet said. “And bees. I know ants use pheromones to lay down trails to food for their fellows, but that’s still information exchange. And bees communicate the location of flowers to other bees in their hive by a dance.”
“But those are both evolved behaviors,” said Guss. “You’re not claiming that ants and bees are intelligent, are you?”
“Well, no; but they do both build complicated structures to house themselves.”
“Termites, too,” someone else put in.
Guss nodded. “Good, and we’ll have to be careful not to mistake behaviors like that for true intelligence, if and when we run into extraterrestrials. Coral animals build huge structures as well—vast reefs. But no one would argue they are intelligent in any way.”
Another cadet raised his hand.
“Ants and bees won’t be building spaceships,” he said, and laughter rippled across the lecture hall.
Professor Guss smiled as well.
“True enough,” he said. “But we know of other tool-using animals on Earth. Crows and chimpanzees, for example, are widely regarded by scientists as being capable of rudimentary tool use. Other studies have shown that the extinct elephants had amazingly complex societies. They mourned their dead, for example. And once we get up to the level of primates, we start to see even more complicated social organizations.
Guss looked around the lecture hall.
“But—those animals—and let’s lump dolphins in there—are they intelligent?” The dark-haired girl, whose name was Ashley Gavin, said, “I believe we have to say that they are. But without hands, they would never be able to give concrete form to their ideas or to conduct experiments that would prove or disprove any hypothesis they develop.”
She spoke slowly, articulating her ideas very carefully.
“Clearly we evolved from primate stock...if we were to disappear, the apes might develop intelligence again.”
She paused, but Guss motioned for her to continue.
Speaking with more confidence now, she said, “The problem faced by, um, super-intelligent dolphins, for example, in a world where Man doesn’t exist, is that they live in the ocean, and have no fire.
“They would not be able to smelt metals that they could use to build machines, like say an airplane; and they lack the hands to do the building anyway. So I think, therefore...I think that their intelligence will always be limited by their own physical incapabilities and their environment.”
She heaved a deep sigh and sat down.
“That’s very good,” Guss said, “but you’re still using your own humanness, if you will, to judge other species. I can imagine a race of intelligent dolphin-like creatures in the ocean of Europa, for example, even though we don’t think there’s anything like that down there, who have become symbiotic with a creature like an octopus. There are your hands.
“Perhaps the octopus creature began as a parasite, stealing nutrients from the dolphin’s blood. But it used its arms to secure food that the dolphin would devour over time, a symbiosis develops.”
He waved a hand. “And we may well find something like that somewhere in space. Taken separately, neither species could do what they can do together.”
The general air of the lecture hall relaxed and became casual. None of the students, including Jeryl, took the silly gut course very seriously; there was no way to fail it, because it was purely speculative.
But he was starting to understand that the professor’s purpose was to get them to examine their biases and prejudices. They couldn’t go out into space believing that any aliens they met would look or act like them. Yes, it was possible—if the underlying assumption of the Drake Equation held, intelligence was more likely to arise on worlds like Earth, with liquid water, and a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, and a relatively clement environment. There would be enough food available to allow for the existence of a cooperative social order.
This would, in turn, allow for the development of beings that were fully capable of analyzing its resources so that it could be exploited for its betterment. Which was where they had gone with on Earth, before the overpopulation, warfare, hatred, and oppression.
And so Jeryl had to wonder; how could any species, anywhere, get past those barriers?
He had been thinking of the upcoming meeting in his office, and had thought back to that lecture by Professor Guss about intelligence. In this case, Jeryl bloody well knew that that black, triangular starship housed some sort of intelligence, so that wasn’t the question.
The ship could be full of liquid in which floated something like Guss’s octopus/dolphin pair. But it didn’t matter. What they needed to know was, if they posed a danger to The Seeker. Were these the people who had destroyed The Mariner,?
And if so, why? Why would an otherwise intelligent species take such a destructive step without bothering to learn the nature of those aboard our research vessel?
Then, just as he was at the door of the CNC, Mary broke into his thoughts.
“Captain? Y-you might want to take a look at this.”
He caught the uncertainty and doubt in her voice.
“What is it, Lieutenant?” He asked, turning back to her station.
“I decided to test for scanning wavelengths that are less common,” she said. “Because we don’t know what their instruments are capable of, and I was wondering what could cause the energy signature we saw in The Mariner’s debris. I remembered something from one of my classes in neutron tomography, which is the basis for the long-range scanners we use aboard The Seeker.”
Jeryl nodded. He knew this. A good captain knew his ship’s capabilities, even if he wasn’t entirely capable of explaining them. He didn’t know exactly how radio worked, but he knew you could talk to people on the moon with it.
Taylor said, “Neutron tomography sometimes has an unfortunate side-effect, depending on how strong the scanning beam is. Imaged samples can end up being radioactive if they contain appreciable levels of particular elements.”
That was an easy implication to catch.
“You’re saying that a neutron beam of some kind destroyed The Mariner?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but it’s possible. Or neutrinos, which have even more penetrating power.”
“We don’t have neutrino-based scanners,” said Jeryl.
“No. We don’t. But they may; and a neutrino scanning beam could easily be modulated to become a weapon.”
She pointed at one of the smaller screens on her console. “See this? There’s a flutter in this wavelength. I think it’s the main wavelength in a carrier wave, and this flutter indicates...I’m not sure what.”
“Do you think that’s our neutrino wave?”
She shrugged and shook her head. She didn’t know.
“Fair enough,” Jeryl said. “So why wasn’t this discovered sooner?”
Taylor went on the defensive. “Well, I wouldn’t have found it now if I hadn’t thought to scan on a finer scale than we usually do. Sir. And it just popped up now.”
“At ease, Lieutenant,” said Jeryl, with a smile. “I'm not accusing you of anything. I simply want to know what’s happening here.”
“The Mariner might not have had enough time to make a fine-spectrum scan before she was destroyed,” Taylor said. “They’re a research ship, and they don’t have scanners as sophisticated as ours. They might have inadvertently made a gesture that was interpreted as hostile by the alien. Hell, Sir, excuse me, but they might never have even seen the alien.”
“And so now here we are, nosing around, and maybe they’re realizing they made a big mistake,” he said, rubbing his chin.
Would the aliens apologize, or compound their error by attacking them? And if they did attack, could their shields stand up to a beam as powerful as the one that destroyed The Mariner?
“The wave is modulated,” Taylor said again. “That’s the flutter we see. It could be that they’re trying to talk to us.”
Jeryl remembered Professor Guss’s course. Just because they used radio, there was no reason to assume that other forms of intelligent life did.
“Very well,” he said after a moment. “Run it through the computer, see if you can decipher it. Get the AIs online if you need ’em. Not Gunny. The other two.”
Taylor nodded. “It may take a couple of hours to figure it out.”
“Fine. Keep me apprised.”
Jeryl looked around the CNC.
“Let’s cancel that meeting,” he said to his crew. “I want to see what we come up with as far as communication from that ship.”
He left CNC and headed toward mess hall.
Their coffee is crap, he thought, but I want a cup. Badly.
Ashley
Ashley left CNC a short time later and followed after Jeryl to the mess hall. It was one of her favorite places in the ship. There were windows there, not video screens, so she could get the full experience of looking out into space. This didn’t work so well when the ship was in hyperspace, though, much to Ashley’s dismay, because there was nothing at all visible outside.
How inevitably disappointing, Ashley always thought, for anyone who grew up watching old movies—or even new ones. All they would have to do was think for a moment; faster-than-light means faster than light; as in, nothing was visible at all because light couldn’t bring it to your eyes. The force bubble surrounding the ship and shielding it from the stress and energy fluxes of FTL travel rendered the outside universe invisible.
All navigation was done by computer. In the early days of FTL travel, a lot of ships had gone missing before the energy levels required to go a given distance were properly measured. Most of them still hadn’t been found.
She found Jeryl sitting with a cup of coffee off to one side, tapping at his tablet. He didn’t look up when she entered. Ashley went to the resequencer and ordered a coffee for herself with a comm badge scan and tapped the BLACK 1 CREAM NO SUGAR combo.
Cadets were invariably surprised when they find out they had to pay for food and drink aboard a starship. Ashley was, too, the first time. But when she had thought about it, it made sense. A starship was a closed system. While it was in space, nothing comes out and nothing comes in. This meant that any food and drink that they needed was either carried, or else synthesized along the way.
Ashley knew that even back then, early space explorers brought everything with them in terms of food, but even back then, they recycled their urine for water. These days, however, with advanced 3D resequencer technology, a wider range of food and drinks were available, as well as other items.
Some of them required chemical compounds that must be carried in the ship’s supply stores. It was not unreasonable for Ashley to be charged for more for a latte than it was for a simple drink of water. But it wasn’t cheap, so she didn’t often splurge on lattes.
The plain-vanilla coffee, so to speak, was nothing to write home about, but it was better than no coffee at all—marginally.
Ashley just wished it wouldn’t take so damn long for the resequencer to work its magic. Smart folks put their orders into a queue while they were still in their quarters, but people on duty had to catch theirs on the fly, like Ashley was. And it could take up to five minutes.
While she was waiting for the thing to gather its molecules, she thought back to how she was here now. So far, so fast. It was crazy because she joined the Armada when all she wanted was the Armada to pay for school. She had every intention of becoming an astrophysicist, but before she could, she had to put in three years of mandatory space service. She forgot about astrophysics after a couple of months.
The thrill of actually being aboard a Union starship washed all of that away. Ashley ended up becoming a career officer and joining the Academy, rising in the ranks. She never regretted it. She’d seen things and been to places that a career in the sciences would never have given her.
Finally, the machine was done. It beeped at her and Ashley withdrew her cup from the slot. Jeryl was still tapping at his tablet, so she went over and sat down at his table.
“So what do you think?” she asked.
He grunted: I don’t know.
“I’m getting sick of playing chicken with these people, though, I can tell you that.”
“Do you think they’re going to...you know. Hit us with what they used on The Mariner?”
Another grunt. “I just sent a notice to Engineering to keep EngPrime ready for emergency thrust,” he said.
“At the first hint of them powering up that ship of theirs, he’ll kick us into FTL. I don’t care if it removes us from the scene, we’ll be safe in the drive bubble. Not even a particle beam can get through that.”
He swirled his coffee in its cup, and frowned down into it.
“Ashley,” he said after a moment. “This is a game-changer, you know.”
“You mean, the aliens?”
“Yeah. So now we know for a fact we’re not the only intelligent life in the universe.”
“It’s historic,” said Ashley. She couldn’t help but feel a little thrill at her own words. “This is it, Jeryl. People will remember our names. Like Neil Armstrong.”
He growled. “You know whose names they ought to remember? The crew of The Mariner, that’s who. They’ve already had First Contact.”
He scowled into his coffee. “And we know how well that went.”
“You’re right, of course,” Ashley said. “I’m just glad we were able to get those reports sent back to Edoris Station.”
“So am I, but I’m not sure what’ll ever become of them.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
He let out an ironic chuckle. “Flynn’s a good guy, but if he takes those reports up to Armada Command on Earth, and they think it looks embarrassing, they’ll bury it.”
All Ashley could do was look at him for a moment. She didn’t think she had ever heard him say anything so cynical. “Is that really true?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “We’ve been out in space for what, a hundred and fifty years? Forty-five billion human beings spread out over 198 colony words. Another 4 billion human beings in the Outer Colonies. How is it we’ve never found another trace of anything like this?”
He inclined his head toward the screen, and the image of the alien vessel. “That’s a sophisticated ship.”
“I don’t know,” Ashley said. “Maybe they don’t like Earth-type worlds. Suppose they�
�re from a place like Titan, hellishly cold with a methane atmosphere. Not all star systems have worlds like that...they would have no reason to visit a system with Earth-like planets but none of their preferred type.”
He tapped two fingers on the tabletop, repeatedly, still frowning. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Or, I dunno—how about this? The Union has been so focused on restoring Earth to environmental health that we simply didn’t pay close enough attention. We might have missed something. We’ve been completely occupied with looking for suitable ores and so on...and the scientists have been kept busy enough with the vegetable life we’ve found, and microbes. We couldn’t spend the money and time digging down into each planet looking for fossils or artifacts.”
“I had a professor at the Academy,” he said. “He had this course in First Contact.”
Ashley nodded.
“Professor Guss, I never took the course; it was an elective and it seemed like a waste of time to me. But I’ve heard of him.”
She kept to herself what most people thought of Guss—eccentric, Ashley thought, to put it kindly.
“His whole point was that we might not recognize intelligence if we found it. We judge other species by our own standards, and we think that there are only two states of being: asleep or awake, alive or dead, conscious or unconscious, intellectual or material. But what if it’s a spectrum, like autism? There might be degrees, and we might miss something simply because we’re not capable of recognizing it.”
Ashley could only shrug. “Well, that ship out there is a pretty plain indication that whoever is inside it is intelligent.”
“Agreed; but we’ll know that only because we have the evidence of the ship itself.” He shook his head. “All I’m saying is, we have to be very careful not to judge them by our standards.”
Ashley looked at him for a moment, and felt a surge of—something she would rather not call love. Jeryl was a thoughtful man, and she found that attractive. She frowned, banishing away the thoughts.
“Are you afraid?” he asked her.