The Black Cloud

by Fred Hoyle

“No, but we can be in a couple of days, if we work night shifts. I had a sort of presentiment that I wasn’t going to see my bed tonight. Come on, chaps, let’s get started.”

  Leicester stood up, stretched himself, and ambled out. The meeting broke up. Kingsley took Parkinson on one side.

  “Look, Parkinson,” he said, “there’s no need to go gabbling about this until we know more about it.”

  “Of course not. The Prime Minister suspects I’m off my head as it is.”

  “There is one thing that you might pass on, though. If London, Washington, and the rest of the political circus could get ten-centimetre transmitters working, it’s just possible that they might avoid the fadeout trouble.”

  When Kingsley and Ann Halsey were alone later that night, Ann remarked:

  “How on earth did you come on such an idea, Chris?”

  “Well, it’s pretty obvious really. The trouble is that we’re all inhibited against such thinking. The idea that the Earth is the only possible abode of life runs pretty deep in spite of all the science fiction and kids’ comics. If we had been able to look at the business with an impartial eye we should have spotted it long ago. Right from the first, things have gone wrong and they’ve gone wrong according to a systematic sort of pattern. Once I overcame the psychological block, I saw all the difficulties could be removed by one simple and entirely plausible step. One by one the bits of the puzzle fitted into place. I think Alexandrov probably had the same idea, only his English is a bit on the terse side.”

  “On the bloody terse side, you mean. But seriously, do you think this communication business will work?”

  “I very much hope so. It’s quite crucial that it should.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Think of the disasters the Earth has suffered so far, without the Cloud taking any purposive steps against us. A bit of reflection from its surface nearly roasted us. A short obscuration of the Sun nearly froze us. If the merest tiny fraction of the energy controlled by the Cloud should be directed against us we should be wiped out, every plant and animal.”

  “But why should that happen?”

  “How can one tell? Do you think of the tiny beetle or the ant that you crush under your foot on an afternoon’s walk? One of those gas bullets that hit the Moon three months ago would finish us. Sooner or later the Cloud will probably let fly with some more of ’em. Or we might be electrocuted in some monstrous discharge.”

  “Could the Cloud really do that?”

  “Easily. The energy that it controls is simply enormous. If we can get some sort of a message across, then perhaps the Cloud will take the trouble to avoid crushing us under its foot.”

  “But why should it bother?”

  “Well, if a beetle were to say to you, “Please, Miss Halsey, will you avoid treading here, otherwise I shall be crushed,” wouldn’t you be willing to move your foot a trifle?”

  Communication Established

  Four days later after thirty-three hours of transmission from Nortonstowe the first communication from the Cloud came through. It would be idle to attempt to describe the prevailing excitement. Suffice it to say that frenzied attempts were made to decode the incoming message, for message it obviously was, judging from regular patterns that could be discovered among the rapid pulses of radio signal. The attempts were not successful. Nor was this surprising, for, as Kingsley remarked, it can be difficult enough to discover a code when the message has initially been thought out in a known language. Here the language of the Cloud was entirely unknown.

  “That seems good sense to me,” remarked Leicester. “Our problem isn’t likely to be any easier than the Cloud’s problem, and the Cloud won’t understand our messages until it’s discovered the English language.”

  “The problem’s probably a great deal worse than that,” said Kingsley. “We’ve every reason to believe that the Cloud is more intelligent than we are, so its language — whatever it may be — is likely to be a lot more complicated than ours. My proposal is that we stop bothering trying to decipher the messages we’ve been receiving. Instead I propose we rely on the Cloud being able to decipher our messages. Then when it’s learned our language it can reply in our own code.”

  “Dam’ good idea. Always force foreigner to learn English,” said Alexandrov to Yvette Hedelfort.

  “To begin with, I think we should stick as much as possible to science and mathematics because these are likely to be the best common denominator. Later on we can try sociological stuff. The big job will be to record all the material we want to transmit.”

  “You mean that we ought to transmit a sort of basic course in science and mathematics, and in basic English?’ said Weichart.

  “That’s the idea. And I think we ought to get down to it right away.”

  The policy was successful, too successful. Within two days the first intelligible reply was received. It read:

  “Message received. Information slight. Send more.”

  For the next week almost everyone was kept busy reading from suitably chosen books. The readings were recorded and then transmitted. But always there came short replies demanding more information, and still more information.

  Marlowe said to Kingsley:

  “It’s no good, Chris, we shall have to think up a new idea. This brute’ll soon exhaust the lot of us. My voice is getting as hoarse as an old crow with this constant reading.”

  “Harry Leicester’s working on a new idea.”

  “I’m glad of that. What is it?”

  “Well, it may kill two birds with one stone. The slowness of our present methods isn’t the only trouble. Another difficulty is that a great deal of what we’re sending must seem shockingly unintelligible. A whole multitude of words in our language refer to objects that we see and touch and hear. Unless the Cloud knows what those objects are I don’t see how it can make sense of a great deal of the stuff we’re churning out. If you haven’t ever seen an orange or come in contact with an orange in some way, I don’t see how you could possibly know what the word “orange” means, however intelligent you were.”

  “I can see that. What d’you propose to do?”

  “It was Harry’s idea. He thinks he can use a television camera. Luckily I got Parkinson to lay some in. Harry thinks he can hook one up to our transmitter, and what’s more he’s pretty confident that he can modify it to do something like 20,000 lines instead of the miserable 450 or so lines of ordinary television.”

  “That’s because of the much lower wave-length?”

  “Yes, of course. We ought to be able to transmit an excellent picture.”

  “But the Cloud doesn’t have a television tube!”

  “Of course not. How the Cloud decides to analyse our signals is entirely its own business. What we must make sure of is that we’re transmitting all relevant information. So far, we’ve been doing a pretty poor job and the Cloud’s been quite right to complain.”

  “How do you propose to use the television camera?”

  “We’ll start by going through a whole list of words, demonstrating various nouns and verbs. This will be preliminary. It’s got to be carefully done but it shouldn’t take too long to go through about five thousand words — perhaps a week. Then we can transmit the contents of whole books by scanning the pages with the camera. It should be possible to deal with the whole Encyclopaedia Britannica in a few days by this method.”

  “That certainly ought to satisfy the brute’s thirst for knowledge. Well, I suppose I’d better get back to my reading! Tell me when the camera’s going to be ready. I can’t estimate how glad I’ll be to get rid of this chore.”

  Later Kingsley could be seen in contact with Leicester. “I’m sorry, Harry,” he said, “but I’ve got some other problems.”

  “Then I hope you’ll keep them to yourself. We’re right under the surface here in this department.”

  “I’m sorry but they concern you, and I’m afraid they’ll mean more work.”

  “Look here, Chris
, why don’t you take your coat off and start doing some real work instead of interrupting the good intentions of the proletariat? Well, what’s the trouble? Let’s hear it.”

  “The trouble is we’re not giving enough attention to the receiving end, to us here as the receiving end, I mean. Once we start to transmit with the television camera we shall presumably get replies in the same form as we transmit. That’s to say a received message would appear as words on a television tube.”

  “Well, what’s the matter with that? It’ll be nice and easy to read.”

  “Yes, that’s all right so far as it goes. But remember that we can only read about a hundred and twenty words a minute, whereas we’re hoping to transmit at least a hundred times faster than that.”

  “We shall have to tell Johnny Boy up there to slow down the speed of his replies, that’s all. We’ll tell him that we’re such dimwits that we can only deal with a hundred and twenty words a minute, instead of the tens of thousands that he seems capable of gobbling up.”

  “All very good, Harry, I’m not quarrelling with anything you say.”

  “Only you’re wanting me to do more work, eh?”

  “That’s right. How did you guess? My idea is that it’d be nice to hear the Cloud’s messages acoustically, as well as to read ’em off a tube. We’ll get much more tired reading than listening.”

  “To quote Alexis, I think it’s a bloody awful idea. You realize what it involves?”

  “It means you’ll have to keep sight and sound equivalents. We could use the electronic computer for that. We’ve only got to store about five thousand words.”

  “Only!”

  “I don’t see it’s going to mean very much work at all. We shall have to go over individual words quite slowly to the Cloud. I’m reckoning about a week for it. As we show off each word we put some key part of our T.V. signal on to punched tape. That shouldn’t be difficult. You can also put the sound of the words on to punched tape, using a microphone, of course, to get the sound into an electrical form. Once we’ve got it all on tape we can put it into the computer any time we like. There’ll be quite a lot of storage needed so we’ll use the magnetics. It’ll be easily fast enough. And we’ll put a conversion programme in the high-speed store. Then we can either read the Cloud’s messages on a television tube or hear ’em over a loud-speaker.”

  “I’ll say this for you, Chris. I never knew anyone who was better at finding work for other people. I take it that you’ll write the conversion programme.”

  “Of course.”

  “A nice armchair job, eh? Meanwhile us poor devils can slave away with our soldering irons, burning holes in our trousers and heaven knows what. What voice shall I use for the sound?”

  “Your own, Harry. That’s your reward for having all those holes burned in your trousers. We shall all be listening to you for hours on end!”

  As time went on, the idea of a conversion of the Cloud’s messages into sound seemed to commend itself more and more to Harry Leicester. After a few days he began to go around with a more or less permanent grin on his face, but nobody could discover the joke.

  The television system turned out highly successful. After four days of transmission a message was received that read:

  “Congratulations on improvement of technique.”

  This message appeared on the television tube since the sound-conversion system was not yet working.

  The transmission of individual words proved rather more difficult than had been expected, but eventually it was accomplished. The transmission of scientific and mathematical works turned out a simple matter. Indeed it soon became clear that these transmissions were only serving to acquaint the Cloud with the state of human development, rather as a child shows off its attainments to an adult. Books dealing with social issues were then run through. Their choice was a matter of some difficulty and in the end a large and rather random sample was televised. It became clear that the Cloud was having more difficulty in absorbing this material. At length the message came, still read on the television tube:

  “Later transmissions appear most confused and strange. I have many questions to ask, but would prefer to deal with them at some future time. Incidentally your transmissions are interfering very seriously, on account of the proximity of your transmitter, with various external messages that I wish to receive. For this reason I am providing you with the following code. In future always use this code. I intend setting up an electronic shield against your transmitter. The code will serve as a signal that you wish to penetrate the shield. If it is convenient you will be allowed to do so. You may expect to receive a further transmission from me in approximately forty-eight hours from now.”

  An intricate pattern of lights flashed across the television tube. They were followed by a further message:

  “Please confirm that you have received this code and can use it.”

  Leicester dictated the following reply:

  “We have made a recording of your code. We believe that we can use it but are not certain. We will confirm at your next transmission.”

  There was a delay of about ten minutes. Then the reply came:

  “Very well. Good-bye.”

  Kingsley explained to Ann Halsey:

  “The delay is due to the time required for the transmission to reach the Cloud and for the reply to get back here. These delays are going to make short speeches rather unprofitable.”

  But Ann Halsey was less interested in the delays than in the tone of the Cloud’s messages.

  “It sounded just like a human,” she said, wide-eyed with amazement.

  “Of course it did. How could it have done otherwise? It’s using our language and our phrases, so it’s bound to sound human.”

  “But the “good-bye” sounded so nice.”

  “Nonsense! To the Cloud “good-bye” is probably just a code word for ending a transmission. Remember that it’s learned our language from scratch in about a fortnight. That doesn’t look very human to me.”

  “Oh, Chris, you’re exactly what the Americans call a “sad sack”. Isn’t he, Geoff?”

  “What, Chris a sad sack? I should just say he is, ma’am, the biggest god-almighty sad sack in Christendom. Yes, sir! Seriously, Chris, what did you think of it?”

  “I thought the sending of a code was a very good sign.”

  “So did I. Very good for our morale. Heaven knows we need it. This last year hasn’t been easy. I think I feel better than I’ve felt since the day I picked you up at Los Angeles airport, and that seems at least a lifetime ago.”

  Ann Halsey wrinkled her nose.

  “I can’t understand why you go all goofy over a code, and why you poured cold water on my “good-bye”.”

  “Because, my dear,” answered Kingsley, “the sending of the code was a reasonable rational thing to do. It was a point of contact, of understanding, quite unconnected with language, whereas the “good-bye” was only a superficial linguistic gloss.”

  Leicester walked across to join them.

  “This two-day delay is rather fortunate. I think we can get the sound system working by then.”

  “How about the code?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s all right, but I thought it’d be best to be on the safe side.”

  * * *

  Two days later in the evening the whole company assembled in the transmitting lab. Leicester and his friends busied themselves with last-minute adjustments. It was nearly eight o’clock when preliminary flashes appeared on the tube. Words soon began to appear.

  “Let’s have some sound,” said Leicester.

  There were broad grins and laughter as a voice came over the loud-speaker, for it was the voice of Joe Stoddard that spoke. For a minute or so most people thought of a hoax, but then it was noticed that the voice and the words on the tube were the same. And decidedly the sentiments were not those of Joe Stoddard.

  Leicester’s joke had some advantage. Of necessity he had not been given sufficient time to include
voice inflexions: each word was always pronounced the same way, and the words were always spoken at the same rate, except at the end of sentences where there was always a slight pause. These disadvantages of the sound reproduction were to some extent compensated by the fact that in natural speech Joe Stoddard did not show much inflexion anyway. And Leicester had cleverly timed the rate of delivery of the words to agree pretty closely with Joe’s natural speech. So although the Cloud’s speech was obviously an artificial imitation of Joe, the imitation was quite a good one. Nobody ever really got used to the Cloud speaking with the easy slow burr of the West Country, and nobody ever quite got over the indescribably comic effect of some of Joe’s mispronunciations. Ever afterwards the Cloud was known as Joe.

  Joe’s first message ran roughly as follows:

  “Your first transmission came as a surprise, for it is most unusual to find animals with technical skills inhabiting planets which are in the nature of extreme outposts of life.”

  Joe was asked why this should be so.

  “For two quite simple reasons. Living on the surface of a solid body, you are exposed to a strong gravitational force. This greatly limits the size to which your animals can grow and hence limits the scope of your neurological activity. It forces you to possess muscular structures to promote movement, and it also forces you to carry protective armour against sharp blows — as for instance your skulls are a necessary protection for your brains. The extra weight of muscle and armour still further reduces the scope of your neurological activities. Indeed your very largest animals have been mostly bone and muscle with very little brain. As I have already said, the strong gravitational field in which you live is the cause of this difficulty. By and large, one only expects intelligent life to exist in a diffuse gaseous medium, not on planets at all.

  “The second unfavourable factor is your extreme lack of basic chemical foods. For the building of chemical foods on a large scale starlight is necessary. Your planet, however, absorbs only a very minute fraction of the light from the Sun. At the moment I myself am building basic chemicals at about 10,000,000,000 times the rate at which building is occurring on the whole entire surface of your planet.