by Clyde Key
* * *
Evan Saxon found the headline on page three of the next day’s Washington Post. Then he read the story about Lawrence Jantzen’s proposal to form the Extra?Terrestrial Communication Commission, and his subsequent appointment to head that commission.
Later that morning Saxon received a call from Jantzen, requesting that he serve ETCC in an advisory capacity. “We’re holding a preliminary meeting tomorrow to get things started. Can we expect you at the Hawkins meeting room in the Smithsonian at 10 am?” he asked. “And, by the way, could you write up your ideas for communicating with these Martians?”
“Yes. Of course.” Saxon already could see that his first challenge would be Jantzen’s education.
3
April 28, 2112 Early Afternoon
“We have to make contact,” said Ed. “No. That’s not quite right. It’s my responsibility to make contact.”
“I’m frightened,” said Marilee. “If we just leave, they can make contact somewhere else.”
“Marilee! They are out of the ship! They are going to make contact with somebody here whether we are prepared or not! It has to be me!” Ed lowered the floater to a few inches above the ground and set it to autohover. “Be ready! If anything happens to me, you take off! Get back to Flagstaff on the double and report to Camp David!”
Ed opened the gullwing door and stepped out on the ground. Then he turned back to Marilee. “Leave the door open just a little. If I get in trouble, activate the lock and get away from here as fast as you can,” said Ed, as he turned to face the aliens who did not seem to have noticed him yet.
Six aliens milled about the charred desert between the two spaceships nearest Ed. Not only did they seem to wander about without direction, it was not even immediately obvious which way they faced. There was no part of the alien anatomy that resembled a face or was definitely identifiable as a head. They might even be watching me, Ed thought, and I’d never know it.
Then the dogs that had been roaming near the rockets saw the aliens. One dog, a large gray male with no obvious pedigree, ran to confront the strange beings. It growled as it circled two of the aliens who were nearest Ed, and it was soon joined by a couple of its smaller packmates. Then it occurred to Ed that the dogs might attack the aliens, sparking the first ever hostility between Earth and extra-terrestrials. He decided he’d have to chase away the dogs, even if it meant personal danger. Ed ran toward the pack leader waving his arms, and yelling, “Shoo! Scat! Get out of here!”
The dogs ran back about twenty meters and retrenched. Four of them were snarling at Ed and the aliens, and a couple more stood back watching. Then the aliens began to move around Ed, flowing it seemed since they had no legs or feet, until they surrounded him in a circle of perhaps three meters. Ed heard the humming sound of the floater then and hoped that meant Marilee was leaving as he had instructed. She didn’t, however. She brought the floater up a few feet above the ground and made a pass at the pack of excited dogs, scattering them in all directions. Then she made another pass, frightening away a couple of dogs that had run nearer to Ed and the aliens. Now she’ll go back to Flagstaff, Ed thought, but she didn’t. She maneuvered the floater about five meters from Ed and the aliens, and let it hover a few centimeters above the ground.
It’s now or never, thought Ed. He raised both hands in symbolic gesture and spoke to the aliens. “Welcome to Earth! I am Ed Halloran and I am an authorized representative of the government of the United States of America, on whose portion of the Earth’s surface you have landed. I wish to speak to your leader.”
Ed was greeted by silence. He stood in the middle of the circle wondering if they were trying to communicate, unable to make sounds that he could hear, or if they regarded him as some kind of a lower being unworthy of communicating with them. Certainly they must have detected his presence because they had surrounded him. But what were they thinking?
He decided to try again. “I insist! You must announce me to your leader!” There was still no response. The aliens had become still. And Ed didn’t know if they were facing him, facing away from him, or had no concept of ‘facing’ toward anything, since their anatomy seemed to have no provisions for it. He was considering making a break for it when he heard the floater’s hum become louder. Then he saw the floater rise a few feet above the aliens and came directly over him. It began descending then and he heard Marilee whispering loudly. “Grab a strut! I’ll get you out of here!”
When the floater was low enough, Ed reached up and grabbed a parking strut. “Got it!” he yelled. “Let’s get out of here!” Marilee took the floater straight up about ten meters and then accelerated across the desert. “Hey! Watch it!” he screamed. “Are you trying to splatter me?”
When the floater had reached a constant speed, Ed half considered pulling himself up and through the gullwing door that was still ajar. Then he saw the charred desert racing along at 170 kmh thirty feet below and he thought better of it, even though his arms were beginning to ache. He looked up again at Marilee and yelled, “I can’t hold on here!”
Then she began to decelerate the floater, slowly so she would not sling Ed from the machine, and lowered it until his feet touched the ground. He turned the strut loose and stepped back a couple of meters until she hovered the floater a few centimeters above the ground, then he jumped in through the open gullwing.
“You could’ve killed me back there! I was barely hanging on!”
“I’m sorry but I didn’t know what our visitors were going to do. I thought we should get away fast!”
“They weren’t doing anything! They were just standing there!”
“Not those visitors!” Marilee pointed behind them. “These visitors!”
Ed turned to see three luminous globes that had followed them from the landing site. Each globe rode a tail of fire that was almost too bright to view. He took a deep breath. “It does look like they’re going to make contact with us.”
The globes were coming, obviously faster than the 200 kmh the floater could travel. “There’s no point in trying to get away,” said Marilee. “Those things are fast.”
Shortly, the globes arrived. They stopped in a row about five meters from Ed and Marilee, each balanced atop a thin flame that heated a small spot of desert sand to a yellow, sparking glow. An alien globe was just about large enough to hold one adult human, seated. There were no portholes, though. Maybe the aliens didn’t need them, since the ones Ed and Marilee had seen didn’t seem to have eyes. As they watched, the center sphere settled to rest on the ground, and its flame disappeared.
Ed stepped from the floater and raised his hand in greeting. “Welcome. I am Ed Halloran, authorized representative of our government. I must speak with your leader.”
Then a round hole appeared in the front of the center sphere. It grew larger until it was more than half a meter across, but inside the sphere was dark.
“They obviously are trying to make contact,” said Marilee. “But how do we talk to them?”
“You don’t,” said Ed. “You stay in the floater and try to get back to Flagstaff if anything goes wrong. I’m going to approach the sphere.”
With both hands outstretched so they could see he had no weapon, Ed walked slowly to the middle sphere. He stared at the hole in the sphere, but even as he grew near, his eyes could not penetrate the darkness inside. He stepped close enough to touch it, but could not discern that there was anything alive about or in it. “I repeat,” he said, “I must speak with your leader. Rather, I must communicate, if you do not speak in the manner that humans do. We wish you no harm, but we must communicate.”
There was no response. Curious, Ed reached out to touch the sphere, and he was drawn roughly into the hole. Then it closed abruptly, and Ed was swallowed in darkness.
4
Nov. 18, 2025
The Smithsonian Hawkins Meeting Room was a pretentious place to hold a small meeting, but Lawrence Jantzen did not think small. So as Jantzen presided, Evan Saxon and
the five other people sat on the front row of the great hall to wait their turns to contribute.
“I’ve already spoken with President Rogers this morning and I want you all to know that this project has his enthusiastic support. The president assures me that we will be able to function as an independent scientific agency, free from political intrusion of any kind—and I told him that was the only way I’d consider working on this commission. Fortunately, President Rogers believes this nation’s—this planet’s—future depends on our capacity to solve problems technologically. Therefore, this commission will have funding sufficient to do anything we may deem necessary, and we will have the commitment of the Rogers administration to provide any other resources we may find necessary, including additional clerical and technical personnel.
“But enough of that! Let’s get started. I’ve asked Mr. Sexton to prepare an outline of his ideas for communicating with the aliens, but before he comes up to address us, I think introductions would be in order. I’m Larry Jantzen, and I’m sure you all know I’m White House Chief of Staff. I also get assigned to many of these little projects of the President’s. Now if each of you would be so kind as to stand and state your name and the qualifications that brought you to this commission, I’m sure it would be helpful to the rest of us.”
First, Evan Saxon introduced himself and mentioned only that he was a mathematician at Bennett University, and that he was involved in the initial discovery of repetitive sequence of the alien signal.
Then there was Helen Norden, anthropologist from Yale. Certainly, aliens must have some kind of body, some physical presence, some culture that could be equated to the human existence. She saw developing that tie as her ultimate purpose on the commission. She would be the Margaret Mead of outer space.
Linda Chelsea was a linguist on sabbatical from Stanford. Intelligent aliens would have some kind of a language, wouldn’t they?
Arnetta Alexander stammered as she tried to think of some qualifications she might have for being on the panel. At length, she called herself an activist. Everyone knew she contributed much to Rogers’ campaign funds, although not quite enough to buy a prestigious ambassadorship to a European country. Therefore, they all knew she was being rewarded with a position where she could make some headlines despite no real contribution. It took her about ten minutes to get around that point.
Homer Philips was the astronomer in the group. He had worked at McDonald Observatory and at Arecibo before it was turned over to Puerto Rican scientists. Like Saxon, Philips was unassuming and ill-at-ease in the public’s attention.
Hank Halloran was also an astronomer, but in a slight way. He had worked at Palomar Mountain before the cloud rendered it useless. Then he became a public servant, an advisor to government agencies that operated in the scientific realm.
“Mr. Sexton, you may address the group now, if you please,” said Jantzen, after the last introduction.
There was a pause, an awkward silence when no one spoke before Evan Saxon saw Jantzen’s irritated stare and realized that Jantzen meant for him to speak. Saxon got up and stepped to the lectern. “I’m sorry. My name is Saxon and I thought you said Sexton. I should have realized.”
Saxon arranged several pages of notes on the lectern, drawing a murmur of disapproval from the small group. “I have a handout prepared for each of you,” he said. “If Mr. Halloran will please pass them down, each of you will get a copy. I’m just going to touch on the high points.
“First, I wish to make the point that we have already communicated with the aliens. We accomplished that when we responded to their transmission with our own and it was acknowledged. So far, the only information that can definitely be said to have been communicated is our acknowledgment that we know they exist, and their acknowledgment of our existence. That may not seem like a lot, but its total impact may not be known for centuries.
“The next point is that although we may know nothing of them, other than that they exist, they may know a lot about us. It is entirely conceivable that they have been monitoring radio, television, and radar signals from earth for nearly as long as we have been transmitting. If they have discovered the operation of television signals, and how to decode them into the information they represent, they may know a lot about us. It’s even possible they may know most earth languages
“The third point is that these beings are at such a tremendous distance that travel between here and there is essentially impossible. It would take several lifetimes, even if it were possible to build craft to travel that distance, which it is not. The astronomers here know this already, but I mention it for the rest of you.
“The fourth point is that we have no common language. Therefore, we will primarily be trying to decode their messages with supercomputers. This will be no small task, since we have no common basis for words, or digits, or blips or whatever form of communication the aliens use. For all we know, they may talk among themselves by magnetic waves—radio—and have no concept of sound. Or sight either, although it’s hard to imagine that beings advanced enough to beam signals across the universe haven’t at least the tools that we have.”
Linda Chelsea waved her hand in the air and Saxon nodded to her. “Yes. You wish to make a point, Miss Chelsea?”
“That’s Ms.” Chelsea frowned at him. “Are you telling me they invited a linguist to be on this committee and there isn’t even a language to study?”
“That’s not exactly true,” said Saxon. “There is definitely a language. This 47 hour repetitive sequence is a language. The problem is that it isn’t a human language, so nobody knows it.”
“Then it’s going to be hard for me to make a contribution, isn’t it? I sure wish I’d known it before I turned down the job at State.”
Jantzen stood up and spoke. “It will be difficult for each of us to make a contribution, Ms. Chelsea. But this is an historic opportunity for our president, the United States, and the world, so it is worth our effort.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jantzen,” said Saxon. “That’s a point well taken. Now back to the program.
“The last point I’d like to make is that it is going to be at least as important to decide what to say to the aliens as it is to discover how to talk to them. One major part of our job here should be to decide what information should be communicated. There shouldn’t be any great hurry to it though. I can’t imagine it won’t take years for the big computers to break down what we’ve been receiving already into something useful.”
“Years!” Arnetta Alexander shrugged her shoulders in exasperation. “Why do I get myself into these things. I should have taken the post in Uruguay! How bad could it have been?”
“The text I’ve prepared for you has considerably more information than I’ve covered today. It goes into the history of radio astronomy and the search for extra-terrestrial life, including the discovery at Arecibo. Also, there is a synopsis of the work at Bennett University, and my ideas for development of the project. I’d suggest you read it at your leisure, and then get your own ideas down for the rest of us to consider. And that’s all I have, unless there are questions.”
“From what I’ve heard today, I don’t think you’re ready for anybody in my field yet. Maybe I could drop out of this for a while, until you technical people get the communications lines set up. But if you guys would hurry, this does look like something that could get me published.” Helen Norden smiled at that last thought. “Forget I said anything. I’m going to stick with it.”
Linda Chelsea waved her hand again. “What do you want me to do?”
Saxon started to speak but Jantzen interrupted. “I’ll handle that one. What we need each of you to do is to supply ideas. Our mandate from the President is to find a way to communicate effectively with the Martians. We don’t know how to do that yet, but we’re hoping that we all may contribute in some way to accomplish our goal.”
“Yes. I understand that,” said Chelsea, “but what do you want me to do?”
“Let me get
back to you on that,” said Jantzen. “Now, does anyone else have a question for Sexton?”
When no one else responded, Jantzen said, “Thank you for your input. I must say it’s amazing how closely your ideas parallel my own. I guess it must be true what they say, that great minds work in the same directions, huh?”
“Yes. Quite,” said Saxon before he sat down.
Homer Philips spoke next. “I’m glad this is a small group. I’m not generally comfortable with public speaking.” Philips fumbled with a large display stand before he managed to get some large posters not to fall off. “I was also not sure of what my contribution should be, but I have prepared some charts here. There are also some individual copies, too. If somebody would hand them out, please.
“What I have here is a map of the southern sky, with an X marking the direction where we received the alien signals from. That’s page one of your handout. Now on this chart—and page two of your handout—we have a cross section view of a portion of the universe, on a plane that intersects our own solar system. Again, X marks the spot where the alien transmissions would have to have originated at a distance of two and a fourth light years.
“Excuse me,” said Halloran. “But I don’t see any solar system of any kind where you have marked. And I’m not aware of any systems in there. Are you certain of your positions?”
Philips looked a bit miffed at the question. “Yes. We are quite certain of the positions. But you are right. The signals do seem to be originating from some very empty space.”
“How do you explain that?” asked Halloran.
“I can’t, except that there’s a lot we can’t see in the universe. Some stars are too dim, too small, or too far away. But we detect more faint stars every day. You know that’s what an astronomer does. However, it is an interesting point that when the radio signals were discovered, we started looking for stars there, with the best equipment on earth, and we simply haven’t found a star closer than half a light year from where these signals are coming.”
“Is it possible these signals are being bent, that they’re originating somewhere else?”
“Yes, we’ve considered that, but the consensus is that it isn’t so. I believe there must be a system there, of some sort, but that we just can’t detect it. I’m sure it’s going to be an interesting topic until it can be proved for sure.”
Philips had other charts prepared, but it was soon obvious that most of the group had neither the inclination nor ability to understand them, so he decided quickly not to discuss them. “Look them over, and I’ll be glad to talk about them outside this meeting, if anybody is interested.”
When the other members of the commission declined to speak, Jantzen said, “We’ve probably covered all we need to for now. Certainly, we all have much new information to process before we go any farther. So I’m going to close this meeting for now and call another for one week from today right here at the same time. The next meeting won’t be technical, though. What we need next is to discuss budget and staffing levels. This is a government agency, you know, so we will be spending money!”
“All right!” said Arnetta Alexander. “Finally we’re getting into my specialty!”
5
April 28, 2112 Evening
“What do you mean Ed is gone? Are you saying they abducted him?” The questioner was Arlene Sisk, vice administrator of AABC in charge of the western region, and two levels superior to Ed Halloran in rank—which placed her at three levels above the very nervous Marilee Sharp. Seated in Sisk’s office was grim?faced Lane Everett, Ed’s supervisor at AABC.
“I don’t know if they abducted him. All I know is he was going to make contact and he’s gone. It all happened so fast!”
“I might have expected something like this,” said Sisk. “I should have fired Halloran years ago. We shouldn’t have had an old codger like him around to screw up the program!”
“Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with Ed,” said Everett. “Sure, he doesn’t always go along with everything in the program, but maybe there ought to be questions raised sometimes. Why should we all just accept everything the commissioner says? Why can’t we think for ourselves sometimes?”
“Ed Halloran does not think for himself or for anybody else! The man is a reactionary—a throwback to the twentieth century!”
“I think Ed is a nice old fellow, and he certainly always looks out for me. Like a father,” said Marilee. “Anyway, this is not his fault. The aliens contacted us, and Ed had no choice except to respond.”
“You should have been looking out for Halloran. I thought I made it perfectly clear that your job was to prevent something like this!”
“That was not written in her job description, Ms. Sisk, and anyway, she reported to Ed and not the other way around,” said Everett. “But the question now is: what do we do next? Do we send someone else to make contact, or do we wait? For all we know, Ed may have made contact and has everything under control.”
Sisk grimaced. “Not likely. Not Ed Halloran.”