by Trevor Wyatt
Again, we looked at each other.
“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 I was starting to see where Guss was going with this.
He said, “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.
“But—those animals—and let’s lump dolphins in there—are they intelligent?” He looked around the lecture hall.
The dark-haired girl, whose name was Ashley Fires, 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 handicaps 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 was relaxed and casual. None of us took this silly gut course very seriously; there was no way to fail it, because it was purely speculative. But I was starting to understand that the professor’s purpose was to get us to examine our biases and prejudices. We couldn’t go out into space believing that any aliens we met would look or act like us. 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 with enough food available to allow for the rise of a certain type of cooperative social order. This would in turn allow for the development of beings who could spend their time trying to figure out the way the world worked so that it could be exploited for the betterment of all.
Which was where we’d gotten to on Earth, before we overpopulated ourselves almost into extinction through warfare, hatred, and oppression.
You had to wonder; how could any species, anywhere, get past those barriers?
* * *
I had been thinking of the upcoming meeting in my office, and had flashed back to that lecture by Professor Guss about intelligence. In this case, well, we bloody well knew that that black, triangular starship housed some sort of intelligence, so that wasn’t the question. For all we knew, it could be full of liquid in which floated something like Guss’s octopus/dolphin pair. It didn’t matter. What we needed to know was, did they pose a danger to The Seeker? Were these the people who had destroyed The Mariner, thereby murdering her entire crew?
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 I was at the door of the CNC, Mary breaks into my thoughts.
“Captain? Y-you might want to take a look at this.”
I caught the uncertainty and doubt in her voice. “What is it, Lieutenant?” I 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.”
I nod; I know this. I know our scanners work even though I don’t know the physics. A good captain knows his ship’s capabilities even though he may not be able to explain them. I don’t know exactly how radio works, but I know you can talk to people on the moon with it.
Taylor says, “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’s an easy implication to catch. “You’re saying that a neutron beam of some kind destroyed The Mariner?”
“I don’t know,” she says, “but it’s possible. Or neutrinos, which have even more penetrating power.”
“We don’t have neutrino-based scanners,” I say.
“No. We don’t. But they may; and a neutrino scanning beam could easily be modulated to become a weapon.” She points 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 shrugs and shakes her head. She doesn’t know.
“Fair enough,” I say. “So why wasn’t this discovered sooner?”
She gets 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,” I say, with a smile. “No need to be defensive; I'm not accusing you of anything. I simply want to know what is happening here.”
Taylor relaxes. “The Mariner might not have had enough time to make a fine-spectrum scan before she was destroyed,” she says. “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 are realizing they made a big mistake,” I say, rubbing my chin. Would the aliens apologize, or compound their error by attacking us?
And if they do attack, can our shields stand up to a beam as powerful as the one that destroyed The Mariner?
“The wave is modulated,” Taylor says again. “That’s the flutter we see. It could be that they are trying to talk to us.”
I remember Professor Guss’s course. Just because we use radio, there’s no reason to assume that other forms of intelligent life will. “Very well,” I say 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 nods. “It may take a couple of hours to figure it out.”
“Fine. Keep me apprised.” I look around the CNC. “Let’s cancel that meeting,” I say to my crew. “I want to see what we come up with as far as communication from that ship.” I leave CNC and head toward mess hall. Their coffee is crap, but I want a cup. Badly.
Ashley
I leave CNC a short time later and follow along after Jeryl to the mess hall. It’s one of my favorite places in the ship. There are windows there, not video screens, so you get the full experience of looking out into space. This doesn’t work so well when the ship is in hyperspace, because there is nothing at all visible outside. This is inevitably disappointing for anyone who grew up watching old movies—or even new ones. All they’d have to is think for a moment, and they’d realize that faster-than-light means faster than light; as in, you can’t see anything because light can’t bring it to your eyes. The force bubble surrounding the ship and shielding it from the stress and energy fluxes of FTL travel render the outside universe invisible.
All navigation is done by computer. In the early days of FTL travel, a lot of ships went missing before the energy levels required to go a given distance were properly measured. Most of them still haven’t been found.
I find Jeryl sitting with a cup of coffee off to one side, tapping at his tablet. He doesn't look up when I enter. I go to the resequencer and order a coffee for myself by scanning my comm badge and tapping the BLACK 1 CREAM NO SUGAR combo.
Cadets are invariably surprised when they find they have to pay for food and drink aboard a starship. I guess I was, too, the first time. But when you think about it, it makes sense. A starship is a closed system. While it’s in space, nothing gets out and nothing gets in. This means that any food and drink that we need is either carried with us, or else synthesized along the way. Early space explorers brought everything with them in terms of food, but even back then they recycled their urine for water.
These days, with advanced 3D resequencer technology, you can get a wider range of food and drinks, as well as other items, but some of them require chemical compounds that must be carried in the ship’s supply stores. It’s not unreasonable for me to be charged for more for, say, a latte than it is for a simple drink of water. But it isn’t cheap, so I don’t often splurge on lattes.
The plain-vanilla coffee, so to speak, is nothing to write home about, but it is better than no coffee at all. Marginally.
I just wish it wouldn’t take so damn long for the resequencer to work its magic. Smart folks put their orders into a queue while they’re still in their quarters, but people on duty have to catch theirs on the fly, like me today. And it can take up to five minutes.
While I’m waiting for the thing to gather its molecules I think back to how I’m here now. So far, so fast. It’s crazy because I joined the Armada when all I wanted was the Armada to pay for school. I had every intention of becoming an astrophysicist, but before I could I had to put in three years of mandatory space service. I forgot about astrophysics after a couple of months. The thrill of actually being aboard a Union starship washed all of that away. I ended up becoming a career officer and joining the Academy and rising in the ranks. I’ve never regretted it. I’ve seen things and been to places that a career in the sciences would never have given me.
Finally the machine is done. It beeps at me and I withdraw my cup from the slot. Jeryl is still tapping at his tablet, so I go over and sit down at his table.
“So what do you think?” I ask.
He grunts: 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 says. “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 swirls his coffee in its cup, and frowns down into it. “Ashley,” he says 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,” I say. And I can’t help feeling a little thrill at my own words. “This is it, Jeryl...people will always remember our names. Like Neil Armstrong.”
He growls. “You know whose names they ought to remember? The crew of The Mariner, that’s who. They’ve already had First Contact.” He scowls into his coffee. “And we know how well that went.”
“You’re right, of course,” I say. “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 gives 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 I can do is stare at him for a moment. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say anything so cynical. “Is that really true?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it,” he says, not meeting my 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,” I say. “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 taps 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 says. “He had this course in First Contact.”
I nod. “Professor Guss,” I say. “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.” I didn’t say that most people regarded Guss as eccentric, 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’s 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? T
here might be degrees, and we might miss something simply because we’re not capable of recognizing it.”
I can 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.”
I look at him for a moment, and feel a surge of—something I’d rather not call love. He is a thoughtful man, and I find that attractive. I frown myself, now, banishing those thoughts.
“Are you afraid?” he asks me.
I lift my eyebrows. “No,” I say honestly. “Excited, yes; apprehensive, nervous, yes. But afraid? Nope.”
“Good. Because I need you, Commander.” He stares deep into my eyes and what I read there makes me a little uneasy. There’s a spark...dammit, we’re about to make contact with a possibly inimical alien race, and I’m getting hot for him! This is not professional behavior, you knot head, I tell myself firmly. He needs you to be the First Officer of this ship.
I open my mouth to say something inane, but fortunately his communicator beeps just at that moment and he taps it.
It’s Mary Taylor at Comms. “The computer has deciphered the frequency.”
“All right,” he says. “My office, three minutes.”
“Sir.”
He looks at me, and that spark is gone, erased by determination and dignity. “All right, Commander,” he tells me. He drains his coffee and stands. “Let’s go see what they’re saying to us.”
Jeryl
Within a few minutes of me calling for a meeting, all my officers are seated around the table in the conference room adjoining the CNC. Present, besides Commander Ashley Gavin and myself, are Taft Lannigan, our Science Officer; Mary Taylor from Communications, Lieutenant Eiléan Docherty, head of Navigation, and Dr. Mahesh Rigsang, Chief Medical Officer. I’ve given Ferriero the helm. The engineering, navigation and armory AIs are present via commlink.