“Is this everything?”
He checked his clipboard. “This is the only listing we have for the Cassandra Project, sir.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
There was no lock. He raised the hasp on the box, lifted the lid, and stood back to make room. He showed no interest in the contents. He probably did this all the time, so I don’t know why that surprised me.
Inside, I could see a rectangular object wrapped in plastic. I couldn’t see what it was, but of course I knew. My heart was pounding by then. The object was about a foot and a half wide and maybe half as high. And it was heavy. I carried it over to a table and set it down. Wouldn’t do to drop it. Then I unwrapped it.
The metal was black, polished, reflective, even in the half-light from the overhead bulb. And sure enough, there were the Greek characters. Eight lines of them.
The idea that Plato was saying hello seemed suddenly less far-fetched. I took a picture. Several pictures. Finally, reluctantly, I rewrapped it and put it back in the box.
“So,” said Frank, “what did it say?”
“I have the translation here.” I fished it out of my pocket but he shook his head.
“My eyes aren’t that good, Jerry. Just tell me who wrote it. And what it says.”
We were back in the office at Frank’s home in Pasadena. It was a chilly, rainswept evening. Across the street, I could see one of his neighbors putting out the trash.
“It wasn’t written by the Greeks.”
“I didn’t think it was.”
“Somebody came through a long time ago. Two thousand years or so. They left the message. Apparently they wrote it in Greek because it must have looked like their best chance to leave something we’d be able to read. Assuming we ever reached the Moon.”
“So what did it say?”
“It’s a warning.”
The creases in Frank’s forehead deepened. “Is the sun going unstable?”
“No.” I looked down at the translation. “It says that no civilization, anywhere, has been known to survive the advance of technology.”
Frank stared at me. “Say that again.”
“They all collapse. They fight wars. Or they abolish individual death, which apparently guarantees stagnation and an exit. I don’t know. They don’t specify.
“Sometimes the civilizations become too vulnerable to criminals. Or the inhabitants become too dependent on the technology and lose whatever virtue they might have had. Anyway, the message says that no technological civilization, anywhere, has been known to get old. Nothing lasts more than a few centuries—our centuries—once technological advancement begins. Which for us maybe starts with the invention of the printing press.
“The oldest known civilization lasted less than a thousand years.”
Frank frowned. He wasn’t buying it. “They survived. Hell, they had an interstellar ship of some kind.”
“They said they were looking for a place to start again. Where they came from is a shambles.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It says that maybe, if we know in advance, we can sidestep the problem. That’s why they left the warning.”
“Great.”
“If they survive, they say they’ll come back to see how we’re doing.”
We were both silent for a long while.
“So what happens now?” Frank said.
“We’ve reclassified everything. It’s top secret again. I shouldn’t be telling you this. But I thought—.”
He rearranged himself in the chair. Winced and rotated his right arm. “Maybe that’s why they called it Cassandra,” he said. “Wasn’t she the woman who always brought bad news?”
“I think so.”
“There was something else about her—.”
“Yeah—the bad news,” I said. “When she gave it, nobody would listen.”
Jack McDevitt, who Stephen King describes as “the logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke,” is the author of sixteen novels, nine of which were finalists for the Nebula Award. His novel Seeker won the Nebula in 2007, and Other award-winners include his first novel, The Hercules Text, which won the Philip K. Dick Special Award, and Omega, which received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel. McDevitt’s most recent books are Time Travelers Never Die and The Devil’s Eye, both from Ace Books.
A Philadelphia native, McDevitt had a varied career before becoming writer, which included being a naval officer, an English teacher, a customs officer, a taxi driver, and a management trainer for the US Customs Service.
He is married to the former Maureen McAdams, and resides in Brunswick, Georgia, where he keeps a weather eye on hurricanes.
Spotlight: Jack McDevitt
What inspired “The Cassandra Project”?
SETI has been trying to pick up signs of technological civilizations for more than half a century. I can remember thinking when they first started that it wouldn’t take long. Too many stars out there. (And I’d read too much science fiction.) But here we are, a couple of generations later and we haven’t heard so much as a hiccup. Why not? One possibility is that technological civilizations don’t last long. Maybe anything that can handle a screwdriver eventually heads down the atomic road, from which there might be no turning back. Maybe it happens everywhere. Build a printing press and expect bigger bombs. At least, that was what it looked like for a while.
Now 1960 seems like a simpler time. Technology continues to move along at a good clip and we’re still here. But the world has become increasingly dangerous. Not only because we have more efficient weapons, but because even at its best, technology creates conditions that might inevitably lead to instability. E.g., who in 1960 would have believed that local thugs could gain a voice, organize with other local thugs, and produce a flash mob? Or that televised lunatics could be taken seriously by growing segments of American society? That a technology that theoretically should increase enlightenment could lead to militant ignorance? (Shouting matches and verbal attacks sell better than discussions.) Or that in the Middle East, a mother would proclaim herself proud of a child who’d just blown himself up, along with two dozen innocents?
The problem with increasing technology seems to be that maturity does not advance with it.
Much of your work includes ‘First Contact’ scenarios and strong mystery elements. What is it about those themes that keeps bringing you back to them?
I love a mystery. Not necessarily the whodunnit kind, but the type that leaves us wondering, not who killed the victim, but what in God’s name happened? I’ve always been a devotee of the locked-room murder. It’s the type that’s found most frequently, in my experience, in Gilbert Chesterton’s Father Brown stories. The man who lives alone in a twentieth-floor apartment, with a clear view of the horizon, is found with an arrow in his chest. The British general, now long dead, renowned during his lifetime for his caution and the care he took of his troops, on one occasion and for no apparent reason, leads a suicidal charge against a strongly fortified position, losing three-quarters of his men. Why?
As to first contact, I’ve always been fascinated by the possibility of shaking hands with an alien. I was in grade school in 1947 when the UFOs began showing up around the country. We had a vacant lot at the north end of our South Philadelphia street, and I can remember how all the kids hoped that a flying saucer would notice it, and conclude it would make an ideal landing spot.
If there actually were a demonstration that someone else was out there, an artifact found on the Moon, or a radio intercept, or whatever, how would we react? What advantage would politicians take of it? How would the approximately 50% of Americans who think the universe is only 6000 years old respond? Would it show up on cable for a few days until the next celebrity cheating scandal drove it offscreen? Would large segments of the population refuse to accept the evidence, even as they now refuse to acknowledge that global warming is happening?
For a fiction wri
ter, first contact has endless possibilities. And it’s the ultimate kind of romance. If we could actually talk to an alien, what would the conversation be like?
What was your reaction to the proposed cancellation of the Constellation program? Is returning to the moon something we need to do?
I’m not surprised that we are backing away from NASA. You can’t run the country over a financial cliff, as we’ve done during this decade, and then talk seriously about a space effort. I don’t expect to see any movement until we get the Treasury back into decent shape. That sounds like a long time.
As for returning to space, I can’t imagine that we’d be content to simply sit here indefinitely at the water’s edge for the next thousand years. If we do that, then we probably shouldn’t be allowed out in the dark anyhow.
Your story ends with a grim warning, but also a tiny bit of hope. Do you think that it’s inevitable that technology will be the end of us? Where do you see the gravest danger coming from? What do you think our focus should be, in order to avoid our own destruction?
Technology makes us more vulnerable. If we were to come back and look around in, say, 700 years, I think it’s probable the USA will still be here. We’re probably smart enough to get through, in spite of the fact that so many of us don’t pay attention to things that matter on a national scale. But maybe not. I have no doubt, though, that Afghanistan will still be in operation.
The most pressing danger is precisely that modern communications technology leads us into a Demosthenes syndrome. It’s too easy to win adherents with a smooth delivery. Too easy to ramp people up, to persuade them that someone out there is trying to destroy the faith, take over the country, demolish free enterprise. When I was in grade school, my teachers loved Demosthenes. He overcame a speech defect by putting pebbles in his mouth, they said. He practiced speaking against the roar of the incoming tide. The result was that he became a brilliant orator. Able to persuade his fellow Athenians to see things his way. They didn’t tell us, as the radio guy used to say, the rest of the story.
The problem is that eloquence does not necessarily equate to intelligence. Either Demosthenes didn’t have a brain in his head, or he only cared about what would advance his own political influence with no regard for the city that he theoretically served. He eventually succeeded in persuading the Athenians into starting a war with Alexander.
I’d like very much to see a major effort in the schools, and at home, to teach our kids to think for themselves. To recognize that they have a natural instinct to hold opinions that their friends hold, to bow to authority. The reality is that parents and teachers —and I’ve been both— don’t really want what’s best for the kids. We want them, instead, to be like us. Which is not likely to be the same thing. If we succeed in that effort, the main thing we’ve taught them is to get on board. Let’s hope we aren’t talking about the Titanic.
What do you think society’s reaction would be if we discovered something like this to be true—if we knew that the odds were against us and we were not far from our own destruction, despite all of the ways that technology has improved our lives?
You mean, e.g., that we discovered we’re using too much fuel, reproducing too much, putting too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? It depends on the nature of the process, I suppose. We were pretty scared of the possibility of a nuclear war during the fifties and sixties. If the kind of event you describe moves more slowly, giving us time to adjust, maybe for a generation or two, I think we’d probably deny it. Make jokes about the Cassandras. And go on drinking the lemonade.
Is there anything else you’d like us to know about your story or the ideas behind it?
I think that a discovery like the one in “The Cassandra Project” would be kept quiet if it could be managed. But I also suspect that it would not ultimately matter. It would become old news fairly quickly. If the western branch of the human race is good at anything, it’s moving on. You worry too much, Cassandra. Everything will be fine.
The High Untresspassed Sanctity of Space: Seven True Stories about Eugene Cernan
Genevieve Valentine
1. In 1941, John Gillespie Magee, Jr. is nineteen. He has joined the ranks of the Royal Canadian Air Force as a pilot, and during his training that June he passes the time by writing poetry. He will be killed in action a few months later, on December 11, 1941, in a collision with a Royal Air Force plane.
One of his poems, “High Flight,” is published after his death.
“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings…
Where never lark nor even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
NASA astronauts adopt the poem as their credo. The poem itself will eventually go into space, carried by Gemini 10’s astronauts; the poem will be read at the funerals of others.
2. In 1961, Eugene Cernan is a pilot with the United States Navy. That May, President John F. Kennedy addresses Congress regarding the plan for manned spaceflight, already nicknamed “the space race.”
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”
The speech sets into motion an astronaut-recruiting program that will produce some of the most groundbreaking scientific missions of the modern age. In September 1962, the original “Mercury 7” astronauts are joined by the “Next 9,” who begin training for two-man missions aboard Gemini craft designed to test high-orbit maneuvers in preparation for missions to the Moon.
The Moon-bound project is named Apollo. A third wave of recruiting begins immediately.
In October of 1963, Cernan receives a phone call from NASA; he is the final of fourteen astronauts to be chosen with the idea of one day crewing Apollo.
3. In November 1965, Cernan is chosen as backup crew for the Gemini 9 mission.
On February 28, 1966, the primary crew, Elliot See and Charlie Bassett, die when their two-man plane crashes into McDonnell Space Center.
Eugene Cernan and Tom Stafford become Gemini’s primary crew, and take flight in Gemini 9A on June 3, 1966. Eugene Cernan becomes the second American to walk in space, during a two-hour EVA that, because of a lack of handholds on the outside of the craft, forces him to expend unexpected energy to perform even simple maneuvers. By the time he returns to the Gemini, he has zero visibility through his fogged visor, and his heart rate is 180 beats per minute. (During his post-flight checkup, it’s determined he lost thirteen pounds in three days.)
He and Stafford struggle for several minutes before the hatch can be closed, and the rest of the mission’s planned experiments are scrapped to preserve the tenuous health of the astronauts.
Months after the flight, Cernan discovers that Stafford had been under orders to disconnect him and return home alone if the EVA became unsustainable.
4. In January 1967, Eugene Cernan is in California, sitting in a replica of the Apollo 1 space capsule with the other members of his backup crew, Jim Young and Tom Stafford. The primary crew (Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee) are in Florida, running tests for the spacecraft set to take off in less than a month.
The California tests are shut down suddenly so Tom Stafford can take the call informing him that the primary crew of Apollo 1 has died. A fire consumed the capsule; within thirty seconds, transmission from the astronauts inside had ceased.
The space program is deeply shaken. It will be nearly two years before another manned flight is scheduled for launch, in October 1968 - Apollo 7. Apollo 1 never flies.
That year, Eugene Cernan debates quitting the program. Reading “High Fli
ght,” Cernan says, is what convinced him to stay and take the risk for the chance at space flight.
5. On December 11, 1972, Eugene Cernan and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt land their lunar module on the surface of the Moon.
Cernan is commanding the Apollo 17 mission, NASA’s last.
Schmitt is a civilian geologist, inserted into the crew when the Apollo 18 mission was scrapped and the window of opportunity to put a scientist on the Moon was closing.
They descend on a ladder that still remains at the landing site. A plaque attached to the ladder reads, Here Man completed his first explorations of the Moon. December 1972 AD. May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind.
This is Cernan’s third trip into space, and his second time in lunar orbit. As they start to set up the video camera that will record their moonwalk, Cernan calls Schmitt’s attention: “Hey, Jack, just stop. You owe yourself thirty seconds to look up over the South Massif at the Earth.”
“You seen one Earth, you seen them all,” Schmitt says.
“When you begin to believe that,” Cernan says, then allows the sentence to trail off.
Their work to connect the camera continues, a logistical back-and-forth. After several minutes, Schmitt begins to sing.
“Oh, bury me not, on the lone prairie, where the coyotes howl and the wind blows free…”
6. April 15, 2010.
President Barack Obama delivers an address at John F. Kennedy Space Center, outlining his plan for the space program.
Research and technology will be NASA’s new focus, with the goal of achieving heavy-lift aircraft to make deep-space travel more accessible. The current Constellation space shuttle program will be shut down. The focus of space travel will shift past the Moon.
“We’ve been there before,” Obama says. “There’s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do.”
Two days prior to the announcement, Cernan signed an open letter, alongside Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell, stating the “decision to cancel the Constellation program, its Ares 1 and Ares V rockets, and the Orion spacecraft, is devastating.”
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