The Gaea Messenger was finally launched toward Epsilon Eridani, along with its complement of three hundred men and women, including second-in-command Geraldine Fuchs. In ninety-five years—barring accidents, epidemics, and whatever other hazards might wait between the stars—more than two thousand descendants would establish themselves on the verdant fourth planet.
But before man could reach the stars—
The Messenger was barely beyond the orbit of mighty Jupiter, when the alien ship appeared as if out of nowhere and assumed exact polar orbit just above Earth’s atmosphere. The alien did not communicate, did not interfere with local space traffic, and did not react to close inspection by a dozen remotes sent out from Orbiting Complex Three.
The visitor was a 120-meter soap bubble; perfectly spherical, almost completely reflective, and apparently without inertia. When one of the remotes extended a manipulator to touch the sphere, the sphere simply floated away—as if indeed it were merely a thin skin enclosing a vacuum. Eventually men joined their machines at this orbiting mystery, where they applied everything from diamond drills to a fusion torch in fruitless attempts to obtain even a few molecules of the stuff comprising the silkily smooth curvature.
Perhaps it would have been better if there was a minimum reaction to the crude probing, like a man brushing away mosquitoes. At least it would be a recognizable display of irritability. Worse and completely demoralizing was the sphere’s indifference, as if mankind’s most advanced technology was as ephemeral as a puff of smoke in the wind.
It was on the fiftieth day after the sphere’s arrival that something finally happened. It started with a small bulge, which gradually expanded until it was a ten-meter miniature connected to the parent sphere by a narrow neck of glistening material. It remained that way for a few hours, during which men in their service pods gathered to watch this monstrous birth.
Suddenly the smaller sphere separated, wobbled, and began to descend toward the Earth.
When Gail and Degruton arrived at the Cape, the smaller sphere was already on the ground amid a ring of apprehensive dignitaries, scientists, and technical people.
“At least they had the sense not to use the military,” Gail muttered as she and her companion were ushered through the crowd to where Douglas Gruinne of the World Space Organization stood with Alexander Duvenov of the Physics Foundation. Duvenov, a small intense man whose genius as an administrator overshadowed his previous career in cosmology, glowered at Degruton, “It’s about time. If that thing starts popping at us, I want to be damn sure Frederick Degruton is in the line of fire!”
Degruton blinked. “I don’t understand.”
“Come on man, it didn’t come from the stars—we have enough detects scattered around the system to spot anything incoming half a light-year out! The monster, that—that—” Duvenov almost spluttered as he gesticulated at the gleaming ball which had touched down so delicately it had not even bent a blade of grass, “—thing came out of—shifted into our continuum just like the Francis Bacon once shifted out. Remember?”
Degruton felt Gail’s hand grope for his. The warmth of the contact steadied him. “You figured it out, did you?” “That someone might follow you back across the partitions to Prime?” Gruinne shook his gray, shaggy head. “No, not really. Only when Big Mother popped into existence, did we suspect Shift dispersion might have something to do with it.”
Degruton wanted to feel triumphant, instead felt an intense sadness.
It had happened.
Finally.
He doubted the visitors (presuming there was more than one) intended evil, or if they intended anything at all other than to satisfy their equivalent of curiosity. And he doubted they would be gone soon. Eons more evolved than humanity, they would not be bound by the tyranny of time. For them Earth was a zoo, with mankind the main exhibit. As far as man himself was concerned, the pride which had pointed him toward the stars would inevitably wither to dull acceptance of his subservience in the Universe.
Duvenov and Gruinne had obviously figured out part of the answer. But if they knew the whole story—
There was a concerted gasp from the crowd as the side of the sphere rippled and a being stepped out into the sunlight.
The being was neither beautiful or horrible.
It was simply—different.
Definitely humanoid, a little more than two meters tall, with a graceful body topped by a slender head with large golden eyes, the being walked directly to Degruton. At first the scientist thought it was naked, until he realized the silver-gray skin was a tight, form-fitting covering which left only the face exposed. Dominated by those golden eyes, the face had twin nostril slits, a thin lipless mouth and no chin. There was a faint rough texture to the greenish skin; perhaps all that remained of its dinosaur ancestry.
“You are Degruton.” The voice was contralto, without accent and no inflection.
“Yes,” Degruton replied. Gail’s hand tightened on his.
“You expected us.”
So there are more of them. How many aboard the mother ship? fust one? Or maybe a thousand?
Degruton glanced at the nearby gantry from which his and Gail’s shuttle had departed to rendezvous with the Francis Bacon. The being’s choice of landing spot was almost poetic.
“I—” He swallowed, “—think so.” “That is good. The circle is complete.”
“I do not—”
“Who created the conditions for what, small one? It is debatable. However we know what you did, and are grateful. Nevertheless there are alternates, and there are alternates within alternates. When we investigated the past history of our planet and determined the near miss of the asteroid, we wondered what the outcome would have been if the asteroid had indeed impacted. So we effected a minor readjustment.”
It was too much.
Frederick Degruton and Gail Sovergarde exploded into hysterical laughter.
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