by Clyde Key
* * *
Early next morning Marilee took Everett out to the location where Ed was last seen. There was no one, alien or human, in the area but there were three charred spots on the ground to mark the location where the three globes had hovered on tails of fire.
“I hope they don’t think they’re going to use rockets for local transportation,” said Everett. “We haven’t done anything this damaging to the environment for over a hundred years. And we certainly can’t allow The Visitors to do that, either.”
“This is nothing compared to the retrorockets,” said Marilee. “I wish we’d never heard of them. I wish we could have shot them out of space before they ever arrived.”
This was not AABC approved conversation, thought Everett. But on the other hand, he felt much the same way. Still, the whole purpose for AABC and the end to which he had trained for half his life was to promote respect and good will for The Visitors. He knew he shouldn’t even be thinking such negative thoughts toward them now, but he couldn’t help it.
Then Everett saw something on the ground. “What’s that?”
“Oh! That’s Ed’s shoe! They jerked him into the globe so fast he came right out of his shoe!” Shaking, she picked up the shoe and put it in the floater.
“What are you going to do with that?” asked Everett.
“I’m going to keep it. If I never see him again, I want this memory.”
Privately, Everett didn’t think that was such a good idea but he didn’t protest. After all, Marilee already had suffered a terrible experience in the loss of her mentor and close friend. “Why don’t you show me where you were when you saw the globes,” he said.
“Okay, I suppose. But what will we do if they appear again?”
“Play it by ear, I guess. We’ll just do what seems to be called for at the time.”
“Like Ed was doing.”
“Yes, precisely. But what else? Nothing like this has happened to mankind before so there is no precedent. We can only pray that we don’t cause an incident that endangers all of humanity.”
Marilee guided the floater across the desert so they could see the spaceship fleet. She stopped it a few hundred meters away from the nearest ship.
Everett gaped at the huge craft. “I had no idea!”
“That’s the ship where the first aliens emerged,” she said.
“Where are they now? I don’t see any of them out.”
“You’re lucky.” Marilee guided the floater to the place where Ed had first tried to contact the aliens. “Look! You can see the trails of slime where they slithered around.”
“Slithered?”
“That’s as good a description as any,” said Marilee.
“Yes, probably it is, but it has negative connotations. Now, more than ever, don’t use any terms that are not respectful, positive, and ennobling. Quit calling them aliens, too. They are Visitors.”
“Standard AABC line! Treat them with respect and dignity and they’ll respond the same way. Pretend they’re human!”
“Marilee!”
“Sorry. It won’t happen again.” At least not around AABC administrators, she thought.
She set the floater on autohover a few centimeters off the ground and they stepped out to look at the scene. “There were stray dogs running around here looking like they might attack the aliens—visitors, I mean—and Ed was afraid they would spark an incident so he tried to run them off. That was just before the globes appeared, from that direction.” She pointed to the northwest, toward the center of the huge fleet.
“Stray dogs, you say?” Everett had found something a few feet away, and was inspecting it closely. It was a pile of small bones. Nearby, there was another pile. And another. “Do these look like dog bones to you?” asked Everett.
“They are! I’m certain of it,” said Marilee. “Oh my God! What are they going to do to Ed?”
6
April 29, 2112
Marilee Sharp and Lane Everett retreated back to the Needles City Park, some distance away from the fleet of huge spacecraft but not out of sight. Marilee parked the floater at the edge of the park where they faced the aliens’ rockets. They were alone in the paved expanse. The park was usually filled with sounds of campers pitching tents, or breaking camp, or of children playing games, but now the park was deserted like the rest of the city of Needles and the desert around the park was eerily quiet.
“Why don’t they come out?” Everett wondered aloud. “Why don’t they show themselves?”
“We’d be better off if they never came out,” said Marilee. “I wonder if there’s a way we could make a preemptive strike, some way to knock them out before they can get to us?”
“Marilee!”
“Sorry!” Marilee was not sorry for the thought, but for not being able to express her feelings about the loathsome creatures she had seen emerge from the rocket. And she was sorry that the government—and AABC—was of a mindset that precluded serious consideration of potential threats from aliens.
“The whole country is afraid of them,” said Marilee. “The rest of the world is probably as frightened as we are.”
“Marilee, you have to get over your negative feelings or your usefulness to AABC will be lost. Think about this: There has never been a greater opportunity to expand the knowledge base of the human race. The world from this time forward is necessarily on a different course, but that direction will be determined by how we react to The Visitors, how we interact with them.”
“Don’t you ever quit reading the book?”
“No, I don’t. And it’s obvious that you need a refresher course. I understand there’s quite a strain for you with Ed’s disappearance, but Ed was much too independent. Nothing would’ve happened to him if he’d waited for orders before he approached The Visitors.”
“In Ms. Sisk’s office, it sounded like you were taking up for Ed, but now it’s different. Why are you being so critical of him now?”
“Because Sisk has wanted to dismiss Ed for a long time, but I never thought it was warranted. I believe a little honest discussion—and dissent—can be good, but it has to stay within AABC. But if we don’t even seem to agree with each other in the public light, then we can’t expect citizens to become accepting of our Visitors.”
“Maybe I should quit then. I can’t be accepting of them until I know what’s happened to Ed. And if they’ve harmed him, I’ll never accept them.”
“It won’t be necessary for you to quit,” said Everett. “I’m putting you on indefinite suspension. As of right now, you don’t work for AABC.” He held out his hand. “I want your ID badge and your filekey now.”
She handed the items to Everett without comment.
“Now, take me back to Flagstaff,” said Everett. “I’ve had quite enough of this.”
“No,” said Marilee, simply.
“What do you mean, no? That’s a direct order!”
“Direct orders don’t mean anything to me. I don’t work for you any more.”
There was a full minute of awkward silence before Everett spoke again. “Okay. If that’s the way it’s going to be, move over and I’ll drive.”
“No. You come around.”
Everett raised the gullwing door and stepped out on the pavement. Then the floater shot straight up ten meters. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
Marilee tipped the floater so she could see Everett out of the open gullwing. “I don’t have any idea what I’m doing but I’ll guarantee you I’m going to do something! I’m not going to sit around waiting for that slime to show!”
As a surprised Lane Everett watched, Marilee sped away to a far corner of the park where she put the floater on autohover and slid across and shut the open gullwing. Then she guided it slowly, deliberately across the desert to the fleet of alien ships.
What to do now was the question. What would Ed do? She giggled nervously to herself when she remembered that Ed had already done what Ed would do, which was to make contact with the ali
ens. But how should I make contact? And how will I communicate when I contact them?
She circled slowly among the alien fleet, looking for any sign of aliens or Ed Halloran. The charred desert held no life because everything there, both plant and animal, had been incinerated by the rockets’ flame. Lower, centimeters above the ground, she guided the floater between the great fins that supported one of the craft. She was looking for a port like the one where they had seen the aliens emerge before.
Then she saw the trail. Starting at a point a few meters away from one of the fins, there was a trail leading away from the spacecraft. It looked like something had been dragged bouncing across the desert sand, and it was noticeable because the trail was lighter in color, the charred topsoil having been brushed aside, exposing the undamaged soil underneath. Away from the rocket, the trail diverged into two, then three, and then several distinct trails heading in the same direction. She followed a trail and it passed near another ship, where others joined it. Then she saw that similar trails led away from each of the alien rockets. The aliens, or at least some of them, were out. But where were they going?
AABC should know about this, she decided. She turned the floater around and went back to the park where she soon found Lane Everett walking back toward the city of Needles, muttering to himself. Marilee stopped the floater near Everett, and she raised her gullwing door slightly, and yelled. “They’re out! You should get word back that the aliens are out of their ships!”
“How? It’ll take me days to get back—if I don’t die in this heat!”
“Use a comphone in town. There’s bound to be one still working. And they’ll send somebody back for you.”
“But what are you going to do?” yelled Everett.
“What Ed would have done. I’m going to make contact!”
“But you have no idea what you’re doing! You don’t know what they might do to you! And you certainly don’t know how to communicate with them?”
“Do you have a better idea? Other than going back to Flagstaff and sitting on our behinds while they do whatever they’re going to do with Ed?”
Everett hesitated, and then spoke. “Bring the floater down. I’m going with you.”
Dare I trust him? Marilee decided that as long as she controlled the floater, it was Everett who would have to trust her. She moved down and unlocked the gullwing so he could slide in on the passenger seat. Then she took the floater up several meters and raced out toward the alien ships before he could change his mind. He wisely snapped his door shut.
She slowed the vehicle when they reached the first of the alien rockets and guided it over the same course where Everett could see the trails, which were already becoming nearly invisible because they were almost covered by the drifting burned desert sand. Everett watched the trail intently.
“Maybe we should contact The Visitors. They’re probably afraid of us and they’re waiting until we make the first move. If you think about it, we have the advantage here. We’re familiar with the planet and they’re not. They’re probably scared to death.” The quiver in Everett’s voice betrayed his brave assessment, and Marilee knew he was as frightened as she at the thought of encountering aliens.
“What’s that ahead?” she asked suddenly.
“What’s what?” asked Everett. “I don’t see...” Then he saw what she had seen, an odd silvery glow in a ravine that lay ahead at the end of the trail they were following.
Neither spoke again until they came close enough to see that the ravine was filled with luminous globes like the ones that had spirited Ed away. When they were closer, they saw that the ravine was a dry riverbed, stretching for miles. And it was filled with the globes as far as they could see.
“I don’t see aliens,” said Everett. “These globes—are these like what got Ed?”
Marilee nodded.
“These must be some sort of transportation vehicles, I’d guess. I don’t believe these things are The Visitors themselves, but rather their equipment.”
That’s right. When they followed us before, it was obvious they were propelled by some kind of rocket or jet engine and they were very fast. They have a flame exhaust, too.”
“Uh oh!” said Everett. “We’ll have to suggest—strongly, of course—that rockets are incompatible with our environment. I’m sure they’ll be glad to develop something a little more earth friendly.”
Then one of the globes rose from the ravine riding on a thin tail of flame. It passed to one side then stopped directly behind them about thirty meters. Then others filed from the ravine and a line of globes quickly circled around them.
“I don’t like the looks of this!” said Everett. “Let’s get out of here!”
Marilee took the floater up to its maximum altitude, ten meters. She spun the vehicle around and accelerated back the way they had come, but globes quickly came up and repelled the floater back. Then no matter which direction she tried to go, globes stopped her progress.
“It looks as if we’ve been captured,” she said. “We have to make contact now.” She took the floater back to the center of the circle and let it settle to rest on its struts.
More globes rose from the ravine and formed another circle atop the first. Then globes kept coming until Marilee and Everett were completely closed inside a dome formed of the silvery glowing spheres. Marilee gasped when she saw Everett’s frightened face, deathly pallid in the strange glow, and she wondered if she looked the same to him.
Now there was only to wait and pray, until they met the aliens.
7
Nov. 23, 2025
It was about a week after the second meeting of the ETCC that Hank Halloran stopped by to see Evan Saxon at the university. After Hank had called earlier in the day, Evan cancelled his afternoon appointments.
Halloran settled his large frame into a chair in Evan’s office, then took a pipe from his pocket and proceeded to fill it with tobacco. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Not at all after you leave here,” said Evan.
“Thanks. Lots of folks are getting crazy about a little tobacco smoke nowadays.” Then Halloran realized what Evan had said and grinned sheepishly as he returned the pipe to his pocket.
“You said you wanted to talk about ETCC when you called this morning,” said Evan. “What’s on your mind?”
“This guy Jantzen, the White House Big Chief or something like that, he doesn’t actually know much about space or astronomy or anything like that, does he?”
“Lawrence Jantzen is White House Chief?of?Staff. And, no, he really isn’t scientifically inclined. He’s probably good to have on the commission because he has a lot of clout, but we’re going to have to work pretty hard to keep this thing focused on the science issues.”
“That’s what I gathered,” said Halloran. “All those people he’s got on the committee want to go off and spend a lot of money on this or that and hire a big staff, but I don’t think we’re ready for it just yet. Not before we have a little better plan of what we’re going to accomplish.”
“You have a suggestion, I take it?”
“Sort of. I think we ought to get Jantzen to cool it with the meetings for a while until the technical-minded ones of us have a chance to think out the directions we ought to take. Actually, I think you ought to suggest it because Jantzen seems to listen more to you than the rest of us.”
“I tend to agree with you about the planning,” said Evan, “but I don’t think Jantzen is very impressed with me. He hasn’t even got my name straight yet.”
“You think. But I know his type. That thing about calling you Mr. Sexton is just his way of putting you down because it makes him feel a little bigger. If you notice, though, he hasn’t come up with an original thought yet but he’s claimed every one of your good ideas.”
Evan mulled over Halloran’s assessment. “He doesn’t do that to everybody.”
“No. You’re the only one he feels threatened by, intellectually.”
“Perhaps, but I hadn’t noticed
it. Anyway, I’ll give him a call about it. Maybe I’ll suggest that he breaks us up into subcommittees. The science people could work together and the others could stay out of our hair while they’re doing whatever they’re going to do.”
“Good. I brought some notes over that I had jotted down on my ideas. Maybe you can look them over at your own leisure and I won’t take up any more of your valuable time.”
“Oh, don’t worry about my time. I don’t have any appointments for the rest of the afternoon anyway.” Evan picked up the sheaf of papers and started looking through them. “It looks like you’ve given this quite a bit of thought already.”
“Quite a bit, yes. But the main thing I think is that if these aliens are really intelligent, maybe we shouldn’t spend so much effort on trying to understand what they’re saying at first but let them try to interpret our communication. Let’s concentrate on composing a message in English, maybe along with some math or something that might be universal, and transmit it back on that same frequency.”
“How about something their computers might decode—assuming they have something like computers. Something simple like monochrome pictures of objects along with English nouns for those objects and perhaps interspersed with those same words recorded.”
“Maybe you have something there. We could work something up to transmit back to them. I gather nothing has been sent to them except recordings of their transmissions to us so far. Is that correct?”
“That’s about the size of it,” said Evan. “It wouldn’t take a government agency to work something up. I’ll start work on it with a couple of my best graduate assistants tomorrow and I’ll bet we can have it ready in a couple of days.”
“But can you get it transmitted?” asked Halloran.
“I’m sure I can. I keep in touch with the people at Arecibo. This sort of thing seems to transcend borders and politics.”