by Ian Watson
DALTON “So we're moving nicely backwards? Maybe we can hitch us a ride the rest of the way home. Stick out your thumb, Petr!”
TSERBATSKY “I never can appreciate this transatlantic frivolity. This is perhaps the most significant moment in human history. The first meeting with extraterrestial intelligence.”
DALTON “Anybody making first contact by playing that nude auction show back at us has just got to be joking—”
MISSION CONTROL “Distance, ten nautical miles — closing at one-seventy-five . . . one-seventy-four . . . Cut the chatter, will you, Mike?”
• • •
T PLUS 3 DAYS 15 HOURS 5 MINUTES
SHERMAN “I can see it! There's a half moon profile out there — sidelighted by sunlight. It has to be a globe. How's the quality of the picture?”
MISSION CONTROL “There's a bit of glare. Will you move the camera over to the right?”
SHERMAN “How about this?”
MISSION CONTROL “That's better. We see it now.”
DALTON “What's it transmitting right now?”
MISSION CONTROL “The movie of the Manson Musical. A New York station put it out last week. No, wait a bit. That transmission's just stopped . . . They're transmitting our rendezvous diagram now — yes it's the rendezvous diagram, check. Now it's stopped. It's coming again . . . no — they've changed it now. A new diagram. It shows your flightpath intersecting with theirs. Diagram's changed again. The scale's large now. There's Leapfrog and the Globe. The Globe is a perfect circle. Leapfrog's a small triangle of dots. A dotted line connects you both.”
DALTON “Do we cut along the dotted line?”
MISSION CONTROL “Another change — new diagram. Showing Leapfrog sitting on the very outside of the Globe. They want you to land on them. Distance is five miles now, relative velocity fifty . . . forty-nine—”
SHERMAN “Good visuals now. How do you read the pictures?”
MISSION CONTROL “Fine. Will you prepare to land on manuals?”
SHERMAN “Wilco. The Globe's shining like it's made of metal. A high albedo. No apparent irregularities. Not a rock body I'd say — so the idea of a hollowed-out asteroid is a no-no.”
MISSION CONTROL “Landing plan's being rebroadcast. No fresh developments. Distance is three miles. Relative velocity thirty . . . twenty-nine—”
TSERBATSKY “It makes me feel like a flea. Such size, and moving under its own power!”
SHERMAN “Houston? I'm going for a short burn to slow down the rate of closing. A point-five second burn . . . now.”
MISSION CONTROL “Telemetry reads your distance as two miles, Leapfrog. Relative velocity now nine — now eight point five.”
• • •
T PLUS 3 DAYS 15 HOURS 28 MINUTES
SHERMAN “Landing probes making contact — now. We're down.”
ISERBATSKY “It's metal — a great metal sphere. The horizon is a perfect circle round us. The surface slightly pitted — a texture like sandpaper. But no big dents or cracks. I can see great circle lines running to the horizon. It's put together like an orange.”
DALTON “Smooth parking, Paulus — like in your own driveway. I guess it's a free ride home from here.”
MISSION CONTROL “Not all the way home, boys. For God's sake get them persuaded into a high parking orbit. The Soviets will announce an inflatable com-sat to coincide with their arrival. That thing will be like a new star in the sky.”
TSERBATSKY “And supposing it wishes to land, Gentlemen?”
DALTON “That thing, landing? It would break apart! What does it sit down on?”
TSERBATSKY “How about water?”
MISSION CONTROL “That's true, Tserbatsky. If they plan on landing that thing, we'll have to scrap the Nevada Desert plan.”
TSERBATSKY “The American lakes are too public. Canada is no use in winter. How about the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan?”
DALTON “Aussieland might be better. One of those lakes in the Outback?”
TSERBATSKY “They're seasonal lakes. Empty at the moment. And too shallow anyway.”
MISSION CONTROL “Don't you boys worry yourselves about the politics of it, we'll work that one out down here. You concentrate on that Globe.”
• • •
T PLUS 3 DAYS 16 HOURS 00 MINUTES
MISSION CONTROL “Boys, we've reached a compromise on the landing zone — if that thing's going to land. The obvious place is the Pacific. Will you copy the co-ordinates? It's a lagoon in the Marshall Islands, southeast of Eniwetok. North seven degrees fifty-two minutes. East one-sixty-eight degrees twenty minutes. Of course, the Globe is unlikely to land — most likely it carries a scout ship on board. In which case Nevada is the prime choice.”
TSERBATSKY “I request verbal confirmation of the Marshall Islands decision from Dr Stepanov.”
MISSION CONTROL “Fair enough.”
DIMITRI A STEPHANOV (USSR CO-ORDINATER, HOUSTON; TRANSLATED FROM RUSSIAN) “I confirm the Pacific location, Petr Simonovich. But try to keep that thing in the sky. The Nevada Desert for any scout-ship.”
DALTON “There's a hole opening up in the skin about a hundred metres off.”
SHERMAN “A cylinder shape is rising out of it. It's about ten metres high by thirty across. Maybe it's an airlock?”
TSERBATSKY “A broad opening appearing in the cylinder side.”
MISSION CONTROL “Leapfrog? The landing plan they were broadcasting has stopped. We're receiving a new diagram now. It shows you on the outside of the Globe — with a dotted line moving from you to the inside of it. They want you to go inside. Better get suited up, Sherman and Tserbatsky. Dalton will watch the store.”
• • •
T PLUS 3 DAYS 16 HOURS 50 MINUTES
DALTON “They're getting close to the airlock now. You okay, Paulus?”
SHERMAN “We're fine. You read us, Houston?”
MISSION CONTROL “Fine — good visuals.”
SHERMAN “The inside of the cylinder is empty. There's a large round chamber. Some sort of sensors and controls at the rear. We're stepping inside together.”
DALTON “Two great steps for mankind? Hey Houston! The door's closing! That thing's shutting on them.”
TSERBATSKY “Doors are designed to close, my friend. We're—” (LOSS OF SIGNAL)
DALTON “The door's tight shut now. The cylinder is retracting back into the skin. Can you hear me, Paulus? Paulus! Houston, the contact's been lost. Can you still hear me, Houston?”
MISSION CONTROL “We hear you loud and clear, Leapfrog.”
DALTON “Something's blanketing their transmissions then.”
• • •
T PLUS 4 DAYS 06 HOURS 35 MINUTES
DALTON “Houston! That cylinder's on the move again. It's coming up . . . The door's opening . . . There they are in the doorway. Paulus? Tserbatsky? Do you read me?”
SHERMAN “Yes Mike, we read you. But we're tired.”
TSERBATSKY “Houston?”
MISSION CONTROL “Houston to Leapfrog, Sherman, Tserbatsky. Welcome back. What happened?”
SHERMAN “I guess you could say that the ball's in their court now . . .”
TSERBATSKY “Paulus — have you no sense of destiny! Intelligent beings have crossed the deeps of space to communicate with us. They open the door to the Universe. Let us never wittingly let it shut!”
DALTON “Great speech, Ivan, but what the hell do they look like?”
TSERBATSKY “Oh that. Appearances. They're bipeds — two arms and two legs like ourselves — only they're much taller than us, about three metres tall. They've got skinny frames, with powdery grey skins. No body hair visible on them. They have this broad single nostril in the middle of their faces — a vast flat saddle nose like you see in hereditary syphilis. And their eyes — these are set further round the sides of the head than ours. They must see through a hundred and eighty to two hundred degrees — the eyes bulge like the eyes of Pekinese dogs. Their ears look like crinkly grey paper bags — and are continual
ly inflating and deflating. I could see small cartiliginous teeth in their mouths and the mouth itself was a bright orange colour, except for the tongue which was long and dark and red — and very supple, like a butterfly's tongue.”
SHERMAN “They analysed our air and fitted out a sort of reception room for us made out of glass — for us to take our helmets off inside of. We gave them the language videotapes and microfilm. They put them through some machine — decontamination I guess — and huddled round them. They had the language tapes on a screen within ten minutes. Two of them scanning fast and listening, ignoring us. Another of them brought a communication screen we could write on.”
TSERBATSKY “They treated us in a brisk brotherly way. As fellow intelligences. They were very busy. We were the tourists. They talked with a very wide range of sounds. Going up very high-pitched sometimes. I heard the top C that shatters Opera House chandeliers. And a dull low bass at other times. With a very fast shuttling between the two extremes.”
SHERMAN “We negotiated with two of them by way of this blackboard screen. We drew with our fingers and images appeared. It's agreed they're going into parking orbit. They'll send a small vehicle down to the Nevada site. We asked for and got a transpolar orbit on the twenty west, one-sixty east longitude. The only land that passes over is Siberia, Antarctica, Reykjavik in Iceland, and a few bits and pieces in the Pacific. Okay?”
TSERBATSKY “Imagine, Gentlemen, we have met our brothers from the stars. And we are going to hide them away where no one sees! I am still filled with the wonder of it!”
STEPANOV (SPEAKING RUSSIAN, A PROVERB WHICH CAN LOOSELY BE TRANSLATED AS) “Brothers is, as brothers does, Petr Simonovich!”
SHERMAN “I'm goddam tired. We're coming aboard to sleep now.”
MISSION CONTROL “One thing more, Leapfrog. Did you find out why they've come?”
SHERMAN “Nope. Apart from the orbital and landing data, it was all one big language lesson to me. All taken up with checking out the speech tapes we brought. We didn't get down to personalities or purposes.”
MISSION CONTROL “Not to worry, Paulus — I guess they got their priorities straight. How do we communicate with them if not by words?”
• • •
After he'd read the transcriptions, Sole stared at the bright red cover of the xeroxed sheets, which had been flown in direct from Houston to Fort Meade, the autofax system apparently being distrusted for the conveyance of sensitive material of this order. ‘Fax Freaks’ had been operating in the States for at least a year now, making it their sometimes profitable, sometimes anarchistic hobby to extract autofaxed documents from the coded signals in the public telephone system, even when scramblers were in use. There had already been one major scandal in the past twelve months, about nuclear waste disposal procedures, traceable to this particular source — amateur guerrilla technology. There were tales of industrial espionage from the pharmaceuticals industry, and rumours of phoney government memos being slipped into the system, somewhere between the State Department and the Pentagon. The personal courier had emerged from the world of autofax technology, unscathed and even with a new importance. This cover sheet read:
SECRET
THIS IS A COVER SHEET
Basic Security Requirements Are Contained In AR 350–5
THE UNAUTHORIZED DISCLOSURE OF THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THE ATTACHED DOCUMENTS) COULD RESULT IN SERIOUS DAMAGE TO THE UNITED STATES . . .
There was a full page of warning instructions, ending with the information that the Cover Sheet was not in itself secret, provided no secret document was attached to it. Plain to see that the National Security Agency had thought long and hard about the mad logic of secrecy.
Sole tossed the document back across the desk to Tom Zwingler.
Initially, while he cooled his heels in the National Cryptological Command, he had fretted about Vidya. Latterly, the possible impact of the arrival of these aliens had begun to preoccupy him, generating a mood of semi-euphoric pessimism.
“So you're orbiting them entirely over oceans?”
“Well — that orbit passes over a lot of shipping and right over Iceland's capital, but otherwise we're in the clear. The Soviets are announcing the launching of an expanding balloon reflector on that orbit. We'll confirm the announcement.”
“Tom, you've got to be joking. How many people know already? And how many more will make educated guesses?”
“By the latest count the number in the know is pushing nine hundred fifty. That's not so huge, considering. It is an unbelievable kind of a secret, after all.”
Sole glanced out of the window at the twilit woods outside. These insulated the buildings from the outside world like another Haddon Unit. Only, this place was so much vaster, so much more technologically hip, so much more secure.
Getting through the security net into the NCC was more than a matter of fitting a couple of keys in a couple of doorways. Now Sole was wearing an identity tab with coded data conveying voice and retina prints as well as his photograph.
Zwingler grinned, catching some of the comparison Sole was making, from the look in his eyes.
“The most elaborate computer system in the world, Chris. Breaking codes and ciphers and inventing 'em, is kids' play here. We've some of the finest linguists and cryptanalysts and math wizards—”
“I'm flattered,” smiled Sole.
“Ah well, one thing we do lack is any little aliens running round in our basement . . .”
Zwingler meditated a while, then said thoughtfully:
“It's always been a way-out possibility, this. Statistically, so many solar systems have to exist out there. If only it could have put off happening for another century! Still, if we can keep it under wraps—”
“What makes you think we would be any better prepared next century? The most you could hope for by then would be a small base on the Moon. A few landings on Mars. Maybe on one of Jupiter's moons. There's no essential difference between that, and the state we're at now — compared with say a century ago. Now seems as good a time as any to sail in here playing our TV shows back at us. Letting Caliban see his features in the mirror. It's just our particular sickness that we worry about it. How would the Elizabethans have handled it? Probably written epic poems or magnificent new King Lears.”
“I resent it, Chris. I feel like an atheist confronted by the Second Coming in the grand style — angels blowing silver trumpets in the sky.”
“Yes, but you aren't a disbeliever in that respect. You just said yourself there must be so many other solar systems out there.”
“I still resent it.”
Sole listened to the noise of the building. The muted clatter of a printout. Footfalls. The flatulent bubbling of the water cooler.
“How are you going to stop them flying down to Nevada via Los Angeles, just to take a look at a city? Give all the saucer spotters a field day—”
“Oh, Sherman made it pretty plain which way we want them coming in — a DEW line approach. They'll see some of the other equipment in orbit — realize what a lot of nuclear tripwires there are in our skies . . .”
“So we're the big boys still,” smirked Sole acidly. “Honour restored?”
“That's as may be,” the other said didactically. “But we can't afford any loss of cultural confidence, can we? The world's in a pretty volatile state nowadays.”
The phone burbled softly and Zwingler spoke into it briefly.
“Our plane's waiting, Chris. Orbiting should start about four hours from now. Leapfrog has just leapt off — NASA didn't want our frog in a transpolar orbit. Transfer to the Skylab Shuttle system's a bit awkward from that angle. Oh, and they tell me the Russians are flying to Nevada in their SST. The Concordski thing.”
“That's bound to attract attention.”
“No, it shouldn't. Nevada is mostly desert and mountains. We're not asking these aliens to land in Las Vegas you know.” He smiled dubiously. “Howard Hughes wouldn't have liked it.”
Sitting
on the plane flying West, Sole listened in on the seat earphones to the different stations whose airspace they were passing through, WBNS, Columbus Ohio. WXCL, Peoria Illinois. KWKY, Des Moines Iowa. KMMJ, Grand Island Nebraska.
Station KMMJ was playing some oldies from West Coast acidrock bands.
The Jefferson Airplane sang:
‘Hijack the Starship!
They'll be building it up in the air ever since 1980
People with a clever plan can assume the role of the Mighty
Hi-jack the Starship! And our babes'll wander naked thru the Cities of the Universe—’
The album was called Blows Against the Empire.
And yet, thought Sole, the Empire still stands strong. Intercepting the first real Starship. Orbiting it over oceans where none of the people, except a few frostbitten Icelanders and sailors on the high seas can see it. Flooding the Amazon. Funding through dummy foundations neurotherapy units in other lands.
He glanced at Zwingler. The American was sleeping like a prim babe in his seat. Wasn't it a fact that all those who were in the know wanted to get this embarrassing alien business cleared out of the way as quickly and clinically as possible, so that they could get back to their own obsessions again — whether these happened to be the breaking of Chinese codes, the flooding of Brazil . . . or the rearing of Indo-Pak refugee children to speak alien languages?
Zwingler was right. The visitation was as idiotic and annoying as a bout of flu — but maybe as potentially lethal as a dose of flu had been to isolated tribes in the South Pacific.
So the aliens had invited the Leapfrog crew into a cage of glass — and now this plane was heading for a man-made cage of sand hidden in Nevada. Which raised the question: who was quarantining who?
On Station KMMJ the Jefferson Airplane sang:
‘In nineteen hundred and seventy five
All the people rose from the countryside
To move against you government man
D'you understand?’
Sorry, Jefferson Airplane, murmured Sole, it's later than that already, and the Empire still stands firm.
Bored with the radio sounds, but unable to sleep, Sole hunted through his pockets till he found Pierre's letter. Idly, he recommenced reading it.