by Ben Bova
He held his breath as the backpack glided into the glow of energy, then passed through it with no discernible effect.
“Did you see that, Nikolai?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Right. Good.” Stoner licked his lips. “Now it’s my turn.”
“Cameras are recording. Television transmission is working.”
Stoner touched the controls at his belt and felt the thrusters push against the small of his back, gently, for just a flash of a second, like the encouragement a schoolteacher gives a reluctant child. He glided toward the golden, pulsing light.
“Almost there…”
The glow seemed to be all around him for a moment, there was a brief sharp crack! in his earphones, and then he was clearly inside the screen. He twisted around for a view of the Soyuz.
“I’m through it! Can you hear me?”
“Da.”
“It’s like being inside a gold-tinted observation dome. I can see through it. Doesn’t obscure my vision much.”
“I see you also.” Federenko’s radio voice was as strong as ever, although a slight background hum now accompanied it.
Stoner could feel his heart pumping. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to…going aboard it.”
“Be careful, Shtoner.”
The extra backpack, still drifting at the end of its tether, bumbped into the curved side of the spacecraft and bounced harmlessly off it.
“It’s cylindrical,” Stoner reported into his radio microphone, “with tapered ends. Sort of like a fat cigar. Light tan in color. Looks like metal. No protuberances, no antennas that I can see. Very smooth finish. About twenty, twenty-five meters long; five or six deep.”
He was coming close to it. The craft loomed before him, dominating his vision. Stoner’s lips felt dry. His innards burned.
“Kind of light brown in color…I said that already, didn’t I? Looks like metal. Definitely metal. Well machined. No sing of rivets. No seams. Like it was made whole, cast out of a mold or something. No markings. Hasn’t been pitted at all—like it’s brand new. That screen must eat up micrometeoroids and any other junk it’s encountered…”
As he reached the curving side of the massive spaceship, Stoner instinctively put his hand out. He touched it, rebounded slightly, and with his other hand pulsed the thrusters that gently pushed him against the craft’s hull again.
“Yeah, it’s got to be metal. Feels like metal.”
He planted his boots against the ship’s hull. They clung.
“Hey! I think it’s magnetized! My boots are sticking to it.” Stoner pulled one boot free; it took only a slight effort.
“Boots are non-magnetic,” Federenko said flatly.
“Well, something’s holding them,” Stoner answered.
He stood erect on the curving hull, a lone visitor on a world twenty-five meters long. He took one step, then another. It felt tacky, as if he were walking across a freshly painted surface that hadn’t quite dried.
“Going forward,” he said. “At least, I think it’s forward. Could be aft—this thing looks the same at both ends.”
Carefully, Stoner planted one booted foot in front of the other.
And felt the breath rush out of him.
A line of light suddenly glowed the length of the ship and his earphones gave out a low-frequency whining hum. Not loud enough to hurt, just loud enough to make certain that it could not be ignored.
The line of light flickered through every color of the spectrum. It was like watching a rainbow rippling under a stream of water.
“It’s color!” Stoner shouted, describing it. “Then it goes dark…I think it goes into the infrared and ultraviolet, beyond human vision.”
The whining in his earphones also wavered up and down in pitch and Stoner realized that he could only hear it during the few seconds when the line of light was off.
“It’s going through the whole electromagnetic spectrum! Visible light, radio frequencies…must be putting out pulses of x-rays and gamma rays, too. Can you hear me, Nikolai?”
The cosmonaut’s voice came through despite the background noise. “I hear you. The high-energy detectors on instrument panel are silent.”
Stoner watched the flickering light, fascinated, almost hypnotized. “It’s saying, ‘Welcome aboard,’ in all the colors of the rainbow.”
Federenko’s unruffled voice replied, “Switch to radio frequency two. Perhaps hum is not there.”
They went through all four channels on the suit radio. The whine persisted on all of them, running up and down the scale in contrapuntal rhythm with the line of light.
“Hold everything!” Stoner yelled. “It’s…something…”
Up at the nose of the craft the line of flickering light suddenly split into two parallel lines, then looped around to form a circle. The metal of the hull inside the circle seemed to brighten.
“Something up at the nose.” Stoner described the circle. “Maybe it’s a hatch.”
“Be careful, Shtoner.”
“I’m going up there.”
Trembling, throat dry, too excited to be afraid, Stoner stepped slowly toward the glowing circle.
He stood at its edge as the whine in his earphones worked its way up to a shrill screech and then cut off completely. The line of light cut off too. But the circle of metal continued to glow dully, almost as if heated from within.
“It’s glowing,” Stoner reported. “Could it be radioactive? A nuclear heat source? Maybe I’ve cooked myself.”
“No radiation counts from detectors here,” Federenko replied.
“Maybe the screen blocks it.”
Federenko said nothing.
But the glow was subsiding now and Stoner saw that the metal inside the circle was becoming milky, translucent. He strained his eyes at it.
“I think I can see something…”
Slowly he got down on his hands and knees and put the visor of his helmet against the hazy surface.
“You look like religious pilgrim,” Federenko called, “at prayer.”
Ignoring him, Stoner reported, “It’s clearing up. It’s becoming transparent. I can see inside…not much light down there, but…”
He peered through the glassy surface, forcing himself with sheer willpower to see what was inside. Then it hit him with the power of a physical blow.
“Oh, my god in heaven,” he whispered. “It’s a sarcophagus.”
* * *
MANHATTAN
Deep inside the windowless bowels of the ABC News building, the FCC official shook his head in wonder.
“A sarcophagus? What the hell’s he mean?”
The network vice-president, a bright, dazzlingly intense young black man wearing a maroon cashmere jacket, answered, “Whatever it is, we’ve got to get it on the air. Now.”
Hugh Downs was on the monitor screen, anchoring the ongoing coverage of the space mission. An image of the alien spacecraft as seen from the Soyuz’s cameras was displayed behind him.
“On the air? Live?” The FCC man blanched.
“Got to.”
“No! Too risky. Suppose he finds something…awful? The panic…”
The network VP jabbed a finger toward the monitor screen. “Half the country is already scared stiff of this thing and the other half don’t really believe it exists at all! We got to put it on live, man, let them see for themselves. Otherwise nobody’s going to believe it!”
“I’m not sure…”
“Well, I am.” He picked up the phone and gave the necessary orders.
The FCC man said gloomily, “If you do it, the other networks will go to live coverage too.”
“Good. Long as the Russians are feeding it to us live, we oughtta put it out on the air live. This delay crap is for the birds.”
“But I don’t have the authority to allow live broadcast! I shouldn’t be involved…”
“Listen,” the VP snapped. “Why do you think the network brass put me on this hot seat? Part of their affirma
tive action program? I get paid to make decisions, man! If this works, I’m a genius, I’m on my way to the top of the heap.”
“And if it doesn’t work? If there’s a panic or some kind of reaction from Washington?”
“Then I’m on my way back to Philadelphia, with my death certificate in my hand.”
* * *
CHAPTER 44
“I can see right through the metal,” Stoner said into his helmet microphone. “The metal’s become transparent.”
“He is dead?” Federenko asked.
“Must be. Or frozen. Maybe he’s just preserved…you know, cryonically.”
Stoner’s pulse was racing and he felt sweat trickling along his skin, inside the pressure suit. It was difficult to make out details of the alien’s form—he saw a long, very solid-looking body stretched out on a bed or bier of some sort. There was a head, shoulders, two arms. He couldn’t see the lower end of the body.
“Speak!” Federenko commanded. “What do you see? Your words go straight to Tyuratam.”
“Okay, okay…”
Stoner pressed his visor close to the transparent hatch again, to get a clearer view. And there was no hatch. His helmeted head sunk an inch or two below the rim of metal that framed the circular hatch.
“Oh no…” He pulled back, then ran his gloved fingers around the rim of the circle. It was open, as if the metal that had been there moments earlier had dissolved.
“Nikolai,” he called, fighting to keep his voice from climbing too high. “The hatch—first it went transparent, now it’s disappeared altogether.”
“Disappeared?”
“Gone. Vanished. Just an open hole where solid metal was a minute and a half ago.”
Federenko asked unbelievingly, “It is open?”
“Yes. I’m going inside.”
“Wait. I check with ground control first.”
Stoner shook his head inside the fishbowl helmet. At their distance from Earth it was taking nearly six seconds for Federenko’s messages to reach Tyuratam, and another six for their responses to get back to the Soyuz. Plus the time in between while they screw around trying to make up their minds, Stoner thought.
“I’m going in,” he said.
“Wait, Shtoner.”
But he already had his hands on the hatch’s rim and started gingerly lowering his legs through the opening.
“I’m halfway through. No problem.”
“Shtoner, it could be dangerous.”
“I don’t think so.”
He floated down inside the craft and touched his boots to the soft flooring. They stuck gently, just as they had on the outside of the hull.
He turned slowly in a full circle, taking in the interior of the alien spacecraft.
“I’m inside,” he said, his voice unconsciously hushed. “Can you hear me?”
“I hear you.” Federenko’s voice in his earphones was weaker, streaked with sizzling static, but clear enough to understand easily.
“It’s a lot smaller in here than the ship’s exterior dimensions. This must be just one compartment. All the machinery’s hidden behind bulkheads.” He shivered. “And it’s cold in here. Colder than outside. How can that be?”
“What do you see?”
Stoner turned to the elevated bier and the creature resting on it. He took a step toward it, then stopped.
The curved walls of the compartment were starting to glow. Not like molten metal, but like the soft radiance of a moonlit sky. As Stoner watched, slack-jawed, the hull turned milky white, then translucent, and finally as clear as glass.
“Shtoner! Answer!” Federenko was bellowing. “Can you hear me?”
“I can see you, Nikolai,” he answered, awed. “The whole damned hull has turned transparent. Just like the hatch did. I can see right through it!”
A pause. Then Federenko grumbled, “It is the same as always from here. Dark metal. Not transparent.”
“A one-way window,” Stoner mused. “Christ, what’d that be worth to Corning?”
“Who?”
Stoner giggled as he stood beside the bier and looked across the hundred or so meters of vacuum to the Soyuz. It looked squat and ugly to him now, a primitive artifact from a primitive world.
“They have one helluva grasp on materials sciences, I’ll say that for them.”
“Describe, Shtoner. All is being transmitted.”
He swallowed hard and looked down at his gloved hands. They were trembling.
“Shtoner, talk.”
“This whole section of the interior is about four meters long—say, twenty-five feet. Almost the full five meters wide, but only two and a half, three meters high. The floor is solid and opaque. So’s the back wall of the compartment. But the nose and side walls are perfectly transparent. As if there weren’t any hull there at all. I can see right through it.”
He stepped to the edge of the floor and put his hand out, timidly. The gloved fingers touched the invisible hull; it felt spongy, giving.
“Hull’s still there, though. Hasn’t vanished completely, the way the hatch did. And it’s very cold in here, as if energy can go out through the hull, but none can get in. This thing must’ve been designed by Maxwell’s demon.”
Turning back to the alien, Stoner took a long look in the dim starlight. Then he remembered the lamp hooked to his belt and turned it on.
He leaned over the alien’s body. It was very long, but thin, emaciated, desiccated.
“He’s more than two meters tall, I’d say. No clothing. Very slim, plenty of ribs showing. Body’s covered with some kind of orange-brown fuzz. Not hair, really. Looks more like a nap on velvet. Almost.”
“The figure is human?” Federenko asked.
“Sort of. Two arms, one head. Body’s much longer than ours…legs start where our knees would be. And there are four of ’em, four legs. Little knobby ones with round hoof-like pads at the ends.”
“Wait…” Federenko said. “Tyuratam reports, your words being broadcast all across Soviet Union, Europe, America, Asia, many other places.”
“I’m on live, Nikolai? In Russia?”
Federenko hesitated, then replied, “In U.S.S.R., broadcast is delayed fifteen minutes so censors can make certain nothing harmful is let out.”
“And in the States?”
“Live, I think.”
“I’d better watch my language.”
Federenko said nothing.
Stoner turned back to the alien. “Arms are longer than ours. The hands have only two fingers each and the ends of the fingers look like suction cups—suckers, like on an octopus.”
“The head? The face?”
“Seems to have two eyes, but they’re closed. I don’t see a nose of any sort, but there’s a mouth—lips, at least. Wide and thin.” Stoner couldn’t bring himself to touch the creature, although he badly wanted to see what was behind those lips, those closed eyelids. “Same kind of nappy fur covers the whole face, even the eyelids. The head is rounded, large-domed, very smooth. I don’t see what he breathed with.”
“Is it breathing?”
“No,” Stoner said. “He’s dead. I can feel it. There’s no atmosphere in here. This chamber’s been in vacuum for millennia. Cold, too. Frost is forming on my visor.”
“Turn up suit heater.”
“Right. I’m doing that.” The miniaturized fan in the helmet’s collar hummed a bit louder.
As the tendrils of frost cleared from the edges of his visor, Stoner saw that there was writing on the bier alongside the alien’s body. And artifacts: a metal cup, a translucent sphere the size of a child’s ball, a rod of something that looked like wood. He tried to pick up the rod but it stuck fast to the surface of the bier. As he described it all into his microphone he tried to dislodge the other objects. None of them would move.
“This is a sarcophagus, Nikolai. A tomb. I know it is. This guy died a million years ago and had his body sent into space—like an Egyptain pharaoh. He had himself sent out in a sarcophagus.
”
“But why?”
“As an ambassador!” The answer hit Stoner’s conscious mind as he pronounced the words. “Of course! As an ambassador! What better way to make contact with unknown intelligent races scattered across thousands of light-years?”
“Ambassador?”
“Yes!” Stoner knew he was right. “He’s saying to us, ‘Here, I want you to see me, to know that I exist, my civilization exists. You aren’t alone in the universe. Take my body. Study it; study the artifacts I’ve brought along with me. Study my ship. Learn from me.’ What better way to share knowledge? To show that his intent is totally peaceful, benign?”
Federenko was silent, thinking.
Stoner went back to his description. “He’s got a jaw that looks like it hinges the same way our own jaws do. No ears, but there’s a couple of circular patches on the sides of his head…they look almost like outcroppings of bone. Not horns, they’re flat. Sense organs of some kind.”
“What sexual organs?” Federenko asked, then added, “Biologists want to know.”
Stoner grinned. “They would. Nothing visible in the usual place, but there’s some kind of protuberance halfway down his torso. And his fuzz is slightly different color around there, more yellowish.” Christ, it looks like he died with a hard-on, Stoner thought.
“Wait,” Federenko said. “We are getting a transmission from ground control.”
Stoner walked around the raised platform, bobbing in the zero gravity as his boots clung slightly to the spongy flooring. There were more artifacts on the alien’s other side. A straight edge, a square covered with dots that were connected by thin lines. An astronomical map? he wondered. This ark is a damned treasure house; he’s brought his whole civilization with him.
Federenko’s voice interrupted his musings. “Switch to frequency two, Shtoner.”
Stoner clicked the suit radio switch on his wrist and the Russian’s voice said, “Shtoner, this frequency is for private talk. Not for broadcast.”
“Okay.”
“Ground command is working out new course for us, to get us back. New tanker is being launched.”
“I knew they’d figure something out,” Stoner said.
“We will fire retro-rockets to break present course. Very soon.”