Illustration by Vincent Di Fate
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Should one look a gift horse in the mouth?
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PROLOGUE
"T minus five minutes, and holding."
It wasn’t even ten in the morning, but the day was already hot. Kyle Gustafson squirted another dollop of sunscreen into his palm, then rubbed his hands together. Smearing it over his face and neck, he grimaced: he reeked of coconut oil. He made a mental note to avoid all open flames until he showered.
Kyle had a Scottish-American mother and a Swedish-American father, a combination that Dad called industrial-strength WASP. He didn’t belong below the forty-fifth parallel, let alone outside beneath Cape Canaveral’s summer, sub-tropical sun–but he never missed an opportunity to witness a launch. His job helped: who better than the presidential science advisor to escort visiting foreign dignitaries to Kennedy Space Center?
"You could wear a hat, my friend."
I look really stupid in hats, Kyle thought. Turning towards his Russian counterpart, he suppressed that answer as impolitic. Instead, he changed the subject. "Sorry for the delay, Sergei. The hold is built into the schedule to allow time for responding to minor glitches."
"T minus five minutes, and holding."
His guest said nothing. Sergei Denisovich Arbatov was tall, wiry, and tanned. He’d been born and raised in the Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula once popularly called the Russian Riviera. That nickname had gone out of vogue when the USSR self-destructed, and an independent Ukraine had made it clear that ethnic Russians were no longer welcome. In 1992, Sergei had moved his family to Moscow, where he’d moved up rapidly in the new, democratic government. It wasn’t clear to Kyle how Sergei avoided the Muscovite’s traditional pallor–unless it was by finagling trips to Florida.
"T minus five minutes, and counting."
The single-word change in the announcement made Kyle’s pulse race. Across the plain from their vantage point at the VIP launch viewing area, Atlantis shimmered through the rising waves of heated air.
The shuttle on Launch Pad 39B stood 184 feet tall, the dart-like body of the orbiter dwarfed by the solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank to which it was attached. All but the tank were white; the expendable metal tank, once also painted white, was now left its natural rust color to reduce takeoff weight by 750 pounds.
"T minus four minutes, thirty seconds, and counting."
Kyle continued his standard briefing. "The gross weight of the shuttle at launch is about 4.5 million pounds, Sergei. Impressive, don’t you think?"
"Apollo/Saturn V weighed a half again more." The gray-haired Russian smiled sadly. "We never made it to the moon, and you Americans have forgotten how. I don’t know who disappoints me more."
Kyle had been thirteen the night of the first moon landing. Afterward, he’d lain awake all night, scheming how he, too, would sometime, somehow, make a giant leap for mankind. The idealist in him still shared Arbatov’s regrets. Many days, only that boy’s dream sustained Kyle through Washington’s game-playing and inanity. Someday, he told himself, he would make it happen.
Someday seemed never to get closer.
"T minus four minutes, and counting."
Nervously, Kyle ran his fingers through hair, once flame-red. Age had banked the fire with ashes, for a net effect beginning to approach salmon. Too late, he remembered the sunscreen that coated his hands. "We’ll go back, Sergei," he answered softly, speaking really to himself. "Men will walk again on the moon. We’ll visit other worlds, too." He shook off the sudden gloom. "First, though, we’ve got a satellite to launch."
"T minus three minutes, ten seconds, and counting." Loudspeakers all around them blared the announcement.
The Earth’s atmosphere is effectively opaque to gamma radiation. In 1991, to begin a whole new era in astronomy, Atlantis had delivered the Gamma Ray Observatory to low Earth orbit. After years of spectacular success, the GRO had had one too many gyroscopes fail. NASA had deorbited it in 2000, in a spectacular but controlled Pacific Ocean crash.
Now another Atlantis crew was ready to deploy GRO’s replacement. Major Les Griffiths, the mission commander, had proposed that the mission badges on the crew’s flight suits read, "Your full-spectrum delivery service." The suggestion was rejected as too flippant. A mere three missions into the post-Columbia resumption of shuttle flights, American nerves remained raw.
"Da." Arbatov turned to the distant shuttle. He sounded skeptical. "Then let us watch."
The remaining minutes passed with glacial slowness. Finally, a brilliant spark flashed beneath Atlantis. Golden flames lashed at 300,000 gallons of water in the giant heat/sound-suppression trench beside the launch pad, hiding the shuttle in a sudden cloud of steam. Kyle’s heart, as always, skipped a beat, anxious for the top of the shuttle to emerge from the fog. A wall of sound more felt than heard washed over them. Faster than he could ever believe possible, no matter how often he saw it, the shuttle shot skyward on a column of fire and smoke. Chase planes in pursuit, it angled eastward and headed out over the ocean. The sound receded to a rumble as he shaded his eyes to watch.
"Kyle!"
The American reluctantly returned his attention to his guest. Arbatov still stared at the disappearing spacecraft, one of the mission-frequency portable radios that Kyle’s position had allowed him to commandeer pressed tightly to his ear. Kyle’s own radio, turned off, hung from his wrist.
"Nyet, nyet, nyet!" shouted the Russian.
The presidential advisor snapped on his own radio. "Roger that," said the pilot. "Abort order acknowledged." The hyper-calm, hyper-crisp words made Kyle’s blood run cold.
A speck atop a distant flame, the shuttle continued its climb. The far-off flame suddenly dimmed; the three main engines had been extinguished. What the hell was happening? "Shutdown sequence complete. Pressure in the ET"–external tank–"still rising. Jettisoning tank and SRBs." Unseen explosive bolts severed the manned orbiter from the external tank; freed from the massive orbiter, the tank and its still-attached, non-extinguishable, solid-fuel rocket boosters quickly shot clear. The manned orbiter coasted after them, for the moment, on momentum.
Clutching their radios, Kyle and his guest leaned together for reassurance. "Pressure still increasing."
Light glinted mockingly off the sun-tracking Astronaut Memorial, the granite monolith engraved with the names of astronauts killed in the line of duty. It seemed all too likely that the list was about to grow by five more names.
"Pressure nearing critical." He recognized the voice from Mission Control. "Report status."
What pressure? In the ET? Was it about to blow? Two Sea-Air Rescue choppers thundered overhead as he did a quick calculation. The ET must still contain at least 250,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen!
"Beginning OMS burn."
The distant speck re-grew a flame–had the orbital-maneuvering-system engines ever been fired before inside the atmosphere?–and began banking towards the coast. Unaided by SRBs, its main engines unusable without the ET, the orbiter seemed to lumber, seemed mortally wounded. "Suggest my escorts make tracks."
"Pressure at critical. Crit plus ten. Crit plus twenty. Twenty-three. Twenty-four."
An enormous fireball blossomed above the escaping orbiter. From miles away, Kyle saw the craft stagger as the shock wave struck. "Tell Beth that I love her." The distant flame pinwheeled as Atlantis began to tumble. Moments later, the roar and the shock wave of the blast reached the Cape, whipping Kyle and Sergei with a sudden gale of sand and grit. The distant spark extinguished as safety circuits shut down the tumbling craft’s rocket engines.
The orbiter began its long plunge to the sea, with both chase planes diving futilely after it.
Like its mythical namesake, the orbiter Atlantis slipped beneath the silent and uncaring waves to meet its fate.
CHAPTER 1
Without warning, the Toyota pickup swerved in front of Kyle. He tapped his brakes lightly–this near the I-66 exit to the Beltway, such maneuvers were hardly unexpected–and gave a pro forma honk. The yahoo in the pickup responded with the traditional one-fingered salute. The truck’s rear bumper bore the message: Have comments about my driving? Email: biteme@whogivesashit.org.
Such is the state of discourse in the nation’s capital.
Sighing, Kyle turned up his radio for the semi-hourly news summary. There was no preview of this morning’s hearing. That was fine with him: he’d never learned to speak in sound bites. If the session made tomorrow’s Washington Post, his testimony might rate a full paragraph of synopsis.
The good news was: today’s topic wasn’t the Atlantis.
Reliving the disaster in his dreams was hard enough; the science advisor’s presence had also become de rigueur for every anti-NASA representative or senator who wanted to use the disaster to justify ending the manned space program. Challenger, Columbia, and now Atlantis . . . after three shuttle catastrophes, they spoke for much of the country. By comparison, today’s session about technology for improved enforcement of the Clean Air Act would be positively benign.
As traffic crept forward, he tried to use the time to further prepare for the senatorial grilling. He knew the types of questions his boss would have posed to ready him: What would he volunteer in his opening statement? What information needed to be metered out in digestible chunks? Whose home district had a contractor who’d want to bid on the program? Who was likely to leave the session early for other hearings? All the wrong questions, of course, when Kyle wanted to talk about remote sensing technology and computing loads. There was too little science in the job of presidential science advisor.
In any event, he had to swing by his basement cranny in the OEOB for last-minute instructions. He turned off his radio, which was in any event unable to compete with the bass booming from the sport ute in the next lane.
The Old Executive Office Building was as far as Kyle got that day–or the next one. About the time he’d traded witticisms with the driver of the Toyota pickup, the emissaries of the Galactic Commonwealth had announced their imminent arrival on Earth by interrupting the TV broadcast of A.M. America.
The White House situation room held the humidity and stench of too many occupants. Men and women alike had lost their jackets; abandoned neckties were strewn about like oversized, Technicolor Christmas tinsel. Notepad computers vied for desk space with pizza boxes, burger wrappers, and soda cans.
In clusters of two and three, the crisis team muttered in urgent consultation. A few junior staffers sat exiled in the corners, glued to the TV monitors. Everything was being taped, but everyone wanted to see the aliens’ broadcasts live. Watching a new message, even if it differed not a whit from the last twenty, provided momentary diversion from the many uncertainties.
Neither Kyle’s Palm Pilot nor the remaining pizza had wisdom to offer. He looked up at the entry of Britt Arledge, White House chief of staff and Kyle’s boss and mentor. The president’s senior aide could have been a poster child for patricians: tall and trim, with chiseled features, icy blue eyes, a furrowed brow, and a full head of silver hair. Within the politico’s exterior sat a brilliant, if wholly unscientific, mind. Arledge’s forté was recognizing other people’s strengths, and building the right team for tackling any problem.
Kyle wondered whether his boss’s legendary insight extended to the Galactics.
"So what have we got?"
He parted a path for them through the crowded room to the whiteboard where he’d already summarized the data. The list was short. "Not much, but what we do have is amazing.
"The moon now has its own satellite, and it’s two-plus miles across. Not one observatory saw it approaching. Once the broadcasts started and people looked for it, though, there it was."
Arledge had raised an eyebrow at the object’s size. The NASA-led international space station, two orders of magnitude smaller, was still only half-built. "But they can see it now."
Kyle nodded. "It’s big enough even for decently equipped amateur astronomers to spot." Far better views would be available once STI, the Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore, finished computer enhancement of various images. Too bad the super-sensitive instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope would be struck blind if it looked so close to the moon. "To no one’s great surprise, it doesn’t look like anything we’ve ever seen. Or ever built. The way that it simply appeared suggests teleportation or subspace tunneling or some other mode of travel whose underlying physics we can’t begin to understand."
"What else?"
"You’ve seen the broadcasts, obviously." At Britt’s shrug, Kyle continued. "That’s a pretty alien-looking alien. Also, White Sands, Wallops, Jodrell Bank, and Arecibo all confirm direct receipt from the moon of the signal that keeps preempting network broadcasts. Overriding network satellite feed, to be precise.
"So far, that’s it. I suspect we’ll know a lot more soon."
"Commercial," called one of the exiles.
At the burst of typing that announced redirection of the signal, everyone turned forward to the projection screen. A famous pitchman vanished from the display almost so quickly as to be subliminal (it was enough to make Kyle think of Jell-O), to be replaced with the increasingly familiar visage of the Galactic spokesman. No one could read the expression on the alien’s face, not that anyone knew that the aliens provided such visual cues, but Kyle found himself liking the creature. What wonderful wit and whimsy to present their announcements only during the commercial breaks.
"Greetings to the people of Earth," began his(?) message. "I am H’ffl. As the ambassador of the Galactic Commonwealth to your planet, the beautiful world of which we were made aware by your many radio transmissions, I am pleased to announce the arrival of our embassy expedition. We come in peace and fellowship."
Kyle studied the alien’s image as familiar words repeated. The creature was vaguely centaurian in appearance: six-limbed, with four legs and two arms; one-headed; bilaterally symmetric.
Any resemblance to humans or horses stopped there. His skin was lizard-like: faintly greenish, hairless, and scaled. The legs ended in three-sectioned hooves; the arms in three-fingered claws better suited to fighting than to making or manipulating tools. A wholly unhorselike tail–long, muscular, and bifurcated, with both halves prehensile–appeared to provide counterbalance to the elongated torso. The head had four pairs of eyes, with a vertical pair set every ninety degrees for 360o stereoscopic vision. A motionless mouth and three vertically co-linear nostrils appeared directly in the torso. The best guess was that H’ffl both spoke and heard through tympanic membranes atop the head.
"Our starship has assumed orbit around your moon. Two days from today, at noon Eastern Standard Time, a landing craft will arrive at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC."
The control-tower radar at Reagan National tracked the spacecraft from well off the Atlantic coast to touchdown. The blip was enormous: the "landing craft" was larger than an Air Force C-5 cargo carrier. (That heavy-lift air transport had been dubbed the Galaxy . . . how ironic, Kyle thought.) Fighters scrambled from Andrews AFB reported a lifting-body configuration: a flattened lower surface in lieu of wings. The turbulence behind the spacecraft, visible to weather radars, suggested powered descent.
The spacecraft swooped into sight, following the twists of the Potomac River as agilely as a radio-controlled model plane. The Air Force officer to Kyle’s right scowled. "What’s the matter, Colonel? You’d rather they fly over the city?"
"I’d rather that their ship wasn’t so maneuverable."
Comparing capabilities? Kyle recalled the enormity of the mothership in lunar orbit, and stifled a laugh.
Civil air traffic had been diverted to Dulles International; the Galactic vessel shot arrow-like to the center of the deserted field, settling onto the X of two intersecting runways. A mighty cheer arose from the throng that nothing short of martial law might have kept away. The shouts faded into an awkward hush as thousands realized that nothing was happening.
Kyle hurried to the tower elevator, descending to join the coterie of welcoming dignitaries. They were already boarding the limos that would drive them to the Galactics’ vessel. He wound up in the last car, between a deputy under-secretary of state and an aide to the national security advisor. The woman from Foggy Bottom studied papers from her briefcase.
Stepping from the car, Kyle obtained some new data: the concrete beneath the landing legs of the spacecraft was broken. That thing was heavy. The shout of greeting must have drowned out the report of the runway cracking.
The welcoming party formed two concentric arcs facing the spacecraft, heavy hitters up front, aides and adjutants in back. Kyle took a spot in the second tier, vaguely pleased with his position: his craning at the ship was less obtrusive this way.
Away from the crowd, only the creaks and groans of the ship cooling down from the heat of reentry broke the silence. The sun beat down unmercifully. Kyle tried to memorize details of the ship–shape and proportion, aerodynamic control surfaces, view ports, thrusters and main engines, antennas–even though photographers around the airport and in helicopters overhead were busily capturing everything with telephoto lenses. Sensors hastily installed in the limos were measuring and recording any radiation from the ship.
His overriding impression was one of age, that this ship had been around for a while. Why? After a moment’s thought, he focused his attention on the skin of the ship. Under the cloudless noon sky, not a bit of surface glinted. He wasn’t close enough to be sure, but the shadowed underbelly of the ship seemed finely pitted. How many years of solar wind had it withstood? How many collisions with the tenuous matter of the interstellar void? Beside him, the diplomats were absorbed in their own unanswered, perhaps unanswerable, questions.
And then, at long last, with soundless ease, a wide ramp began its descent from the underside of the alien ship.
CHAPTER 2
The ramp struck the concrete runway with a solid thunk. The walkway faced about twenty degrees away from the crowd, a shallow enough angle that no one moved. Necks twisted and craned slightly towards the shadowed opening. An inner door–an airlock port?–remained closed.
Kyle snuck a peek at the meter in his pocket. The counter showed an increase in radiation levels since the ramp had descended, but not enough to worry about. Still, he chided himself for losing the argument that the welcoming party wear dosimeters. That battle lost, he’d done the best he could: the meter in his coat would beep if his cumulative exposure exceeded a preset threshold.
Inference one, he thought, eyeing once more the cracked runway. Radiation plus massive weight, enough weight for a major amount of shielding, denote nuclear power. Then a sharp intake of breath from the diplomat beside him returned Kyle’s attention to the ramp. As he watched, the airlock door cycled silently open.
Four aliens cantered down the incline, their scales iridescent in the sunlight. The ramp boomed under thudding hooves, with a tone that reminded Kyle of ceramic. The creatures halted on the runway at the base of the ramp. For clothing, each wore only a many-pocketed belt from which hung a larger sack like a Scottish sporran. Only slight variations in skin tone, all shades of light green, differentiated them. Each had about twelve inches on Kyle, himself a six-footer.
The aliens didn’t turn towards the human dignitaries. If rude by human standards, the position nonetheless made sense: a face-to-face stance would have given a good view to only one pair of eyes. They’re not human, Kyle reminded himself. For them to act like us would be strange.
One of the aliens walked slowly towards the awaiting humans. Pads on the bottom of his hooves rasped against concrete. Extending both arms, hands open, palms upward, the alien stopped directly in front of Harold Shively Robeson.
"Thank you for meeting me, Mr. President," said the creature, the bass voice rumbling eerily from the top of his head. "I am Ambassador H’ffl. I bring you greetings from the Galactic Commonwealth."
The president reached out and clasped one of the alien’s hands. "On behalf of the people of America and planet Earth, welcome."
So many mysteries; so little time.
Kyle stood in the White House basement command post of the science-analysis team. There was no place on Earth he’d rather be, except possibly upstairs in the Oval Office where the president and sundry diplomats met with the F’thk themselves. Should he be here, helping to make sense of what data they already had, or there trying to gather more? The obvious answer was: yes.
"How’s it going?"
He’d been staring at a wall covered with Post-It notes. Each paper square bore, in scribbled form, one comment about the aliens. As he turned to the doorway where Britt Arledge had appeared, one of the drafted wizards from DOE did yet another reshuffle of the stickies. Two more squares, green ones, denoting inferences, appeared between the rearranged yellow factoids. One of the relocated squares, its adhesive dissipated by too many moves, fluttered to the floor. A secretary scurried over to rewrite its content on a new sheet.
Kyle gestured over his red-eyed boss, wondering who looked more exhausted. "We’re learning."
Britt nodded; it was all the encouragement Kyle needed. "For starters, our guests have a fusion reactor aboard their landing craft. That technology alone would be invaluable."
"Is that so?" The response was nearly monotonic; Arledge seemed singularly unimpressed. "The F’thk didn’t mention that."
"Gotta be." Kyle warmed to his subject. The meter he’d taken to National hadn’t differentiated between types of radiation, but the gear he’d had stowed aboard the limos was far more sophisticated. The drivers, following his instructions, had parked the cars in positions well-spaced around the spaceship. "There’s definite neutron flux at the back of the ship and magnetic fringing like from a tokamak quadrupole."
"Uh-huh."
"Magnetic-bottle technology to contain the plasma, and lots of shielding to protect the crew. Tons and tons of shielding, Britt. You saw what their ship did to the runway."
"Okay."
"On our own, we may have practical fusion in fifty years." Thinking, suddenly, of the distant mothership, two-plus miles across, he nervously ran both hands through his hair. "Momma must have one big fusion reactor aboard."
"Oh, I doubt it," said Britt, a cat-who-ate-the-canary grin lighting his tired face. "My friend H’ffl says it uses matter-to-energy conversion. He wondered if we have antimatter."
Antimatter! No wonder Arledge was so unimpressed by his own news. "Fleetingly, for research, and then only a few subatomic particles at a time. Nothing you could power a spaceship with." Or a light bulb, for that matter. A flurry of new Post-It notes suggestive of more progress distracted him. "What was that?"
"I asked, is antimatter dangerous? H’ffl says it’s standard practice to park antimatter-powered vessels in the gravity well of an uninhabited moon when near an inhabited planet. Something about protecting against the remote likelihood of a mishap. Does it make sense for them to keep the mothership out by the moon?"
"Yes, it’s dangerous, and I don’t know. Equal amounts of matter and antimatter do convert totally to energy, at efficiencies far greater than fission or fusion. Orbit just a thousand miles above Earth, though, and there’s no atmosphere whatever. No friction. Even without engines, a ship would circle forever. If, for some reason, it blew up, there’d be beaucoup radiation, but nothing–I should do some calculations to confirm this–nothing the atmosphere wouldn’t effectively block.
"So, no, I don’t see any reason to stay a quarter-million miles away. Then, what do I know? It’s not like Earth has technology remotely like theirs."
The chief of staff persisted. "Is the mothership a danger where it is? What if it crashed on the moon?"
"A really big crater, as if one more would matter. The point is that won’t happen. The moon has no atmosphere. Any orbit higher than the tallest lunar mountain should last forever." Kyle had fudged a bit for effect: given enough time, he suspected, gravitational perturbations from lunar mascons or other planets, or tidal effects of the Earth, or solar wind would have disastrous effects on an orbit that low. None of which applied, in less than geological time, to the altitude at which the F’thk ship actually orbited the moon. One glance through a telescope had convinced him that the mothership wasn’t ever meant to land.
"The president will be relieved."
When had the Post-It notes stretched around to a second wall? "What else can I tell you?"
"Nothing, really–I was mostly making conversation. I actually came by to invite you to dinner." He waved off Kyle’s protest. "A state dinner, upstairs, tonight at eight. Perhaps Ambassador H’ffl or one of his companions can enlighten you on F’thk orbital preferences."
Something was odd about the ballroom, thought Kyle, something other than the green aliens making chit-chat with Washington’s elite. What was it? He settled, at last, on the absence of hors d’oeuvres. The F’thk would not eat in public: they said that trace elements in their food were toxic to terrestrial life. White House protocol officers had then decreed that the humans wouldn’t eat either.
Some dinner! He wished someone had mentioned this decision before he’d arrived. He’d gone home to change into a tux; any nuke ’n puke meal from his freezer, if not up to White House banquet standards, still would’ve beaten fasting.
He sipped his wine; the F’thk with whom he and a gaggle of civil servants were talking held tightly to a glass of water. The micro-cassette recorder in Kyle’s pocket was hopefully catching the entire conversation. If not, well, he’d handed out others.
"You’ve been very quiet, Dr. Gustafson. I’d expected more curiosity from a man in your position."
Kyle needed a moment to realize that the comment had come from the alien. Earth’s radio and TV broadcasts had served not only as beacons but also as language tutorials–lessons the F’thk had learned extremely well. "Lack of curiosity is not the problem, K’ddl." Despite his best efforts, a hint of vowel crept into the name. "Quite the opposite. I have so many questions that I don’t know where to begin."
"Oh, God," whispered a State Department staffer behind him. "He’s going to babble in nanobytes per quark volt."
Kyle ignored the crack, his mind still wrestling with the afternoon’s conversation about the mothership. "I’m puzzled about one thing. Why keep the F’thk mothership in lunar orbit? It seems excessively cautious."
Swelling violins from the chamber orchestra–Mozart, Kyle thought–drowned out the alien’s response. He shrugged reflexively, realizing even as he did it how foolish it was to expect the alien to understand the gesture.
Except K’ddl did. "I said, it’s not F’thk. The mothership is Aie’eel-built. They fly it, as well." The alien made a periodic rasping noise which, Kyle decided, must be a form of laughter. "You thought it coincidental that the Commonwealth’s representatives were so humanlike? You would consider the Aie’eel so many headless, methane-breathing frogs. The Zxk’tl and the #$%^&"–Kyle couldn’t even begin to organize that last sound burst into English letters–"and other crew species aboard the mothership would seem less human still.
"We F’thk were chosen as the emissary species because we so closely resemble you. We are accustomed to similar gravity, temperature, sunlight, and atmosphere." He hoisted his still filled glass and took a drink. "We are even both water-based."
That was when too much wine on an empty stomach betrayed Kyle. The room spun. His ears rang. Visions of . . . things . . . too inhuman even to lend themselves to description assailed him. All thought of orbits and exotic energy sources fled. He missed entirely the last comment K’ddl made before turning his attention to another White House guest.
The tape recorder in Kyle’s pocket, however, was made of sterner stuff. K’ddl had added, "I do not wish to offend, but no F’thk would ever invent such dark nights or such a paltry number of moons."
Two sandwiches and four cups of coffee later, Kyle felt almost himself again. He ignored the disapproving sniffs of the White House chef. It was unclear, in any event, whether the criticism dealt with Kyle’s plebeian taste for peanut butter or his part in that afternoon’s delivery to the kitchen of so much bulky equipment. So many instrument-covered counters . . . perhaps it was just as well that dinner for three hundred had been canceled.
A Secret Service agent turned waiter for the evening came through the double doors, a single half-empty glass on his tray. "One of the aliens set this down. K’ddl I think, but I can’t really tell ’em apart yet. Sorry it wasn’t any fuller."
Kyle nodded his thanks. "Doesn’t matter. It’s more than we need." He tore the sterile wrapper from an eyedropper, then extracted a few milliliters from the alien’s glass. The sample went into an automated mass spectrometer.
The analyzer beeped as it completed its tests. The color display lit up, chemical names and their concentrations scrolling down the screen. Water. Very dilute carbonic acid: carbon dioxide in solution, basic fizz. Traces of calcium and magnesium salts. Kyle compared the list to a sample taken before the aliens had arrived. As best he could tell, the glass contained pure Perrier.
"Kyle?"
He turned to the casually dressed engineer, a friend from the nearby Naval Research Labs, who’d spent the evening in the kitchen. "Yeah, Larry?"
"The air samples are different." To an eyebrow raised in interrogation, Larry added, "Check the plots yourself."
Kyle rolled out two strip charts, one annotated "6:05 p.m." and the other "9:00 p.m." Spikes of unrecognized complex hydrocarbons appeared on only the later sheet. If what passed for alien saliva held no trace of metabolic toxins, apparently their exhalations did. Still, the nine-o’clock spike seemed somehow familiar.
Ah.
"Can I bum a cigarette, Lar, and a match?" He lit up clumsily, almost choking as he inhaled. Waving away the suddenly solicitous engineer, he took a more cautious drag. He directed part of this lungful into a test tube, which he quickly stoppered.
Larry, catching on quickly, ran the latest sample through the mass spectrometer. The resulting strip chart, marked "10:11 p.m.", soon lay beside the others.
The evening’s addition to the White House air was simply tobacco smoke. Whatever toxins the aliens ate didn’t appear in their breath, either.
Kyle poured a fresh cup of coffee, only in part to wash the unaccustomed and unwelcome smoke residues from his mouth. He also hoped for a caffeine jolt to settle jangled nerves. First, the conundrum about the aliens’ inconvenient orbit around the moon; now, undetectable toxins.
He wondered when, or if, his study of the aliens would begin to make sense.
CHAPTER 3
Aides scurried around the enormous conference table, double-checking the placement of name tags, distributing glasses and pitchers of ice water, straightening network taps and power cords for laptop PCs, and setting out pencils and pads of paper. The secretaries were silent; the considerable noise within the room all came from the milling crowd on the opposite side of the closed double doors. From, that was, the press and the commission members. . . .
The chairman of the Presidential Commission on Galactic Studies scowled at the totally anachronistic pads of paper, and at the inclusion of so many committee members apt to use them. He’d turned out to have less authority than expected–far less, for example, than the president’s chief of staff. Kyle could name as many staffers as he wished; the commissioners were to be chosen more for their political correctness ("A diversity of viewpoints," Britt had gently rephrased Kyle’s complaint) than for any insight they were likely to have.
The list of private-sector members on which he and Britt had finally converged was simultaneously top-heavy with CEOs from New New Economy companies and light on technologists: more campaign contributors than researchers. Kyle could at least hope that these executives would tap their organizations’ expertise, and he’d had some success in holding out for execs whose firms did relevant R&D. As to the Wall Street and Hollywood types, he could only hope that the deliberations would put them to sleep. Would it be unseemly to ask his token clergyperson to pray for that?
The next largest group of members was drawn from mid-tier executives of key federal agencies and departments: EPA, Energy, NASA, Homeland Security, DoD, Commerce–and State. He smiled, recalling a rare victory: Darlene Lyons was one of "his" diplomats.
The smallest set of slots was for practicing scientists and engineers. With only ten member spots to work with, he’d scoured academia and the federal labs for twenty-first century Renaissance people. Damn! He needed biologists, physicists, and engineers of every type; astronomers; psychologists and sociologists; organic and inorganic chemists; economists . . . the list seemed endless, and ten seats didn’t begin to cover it. After considerable anguish, he’d filled the few experts’ positions. Time would tell what happened when seven Nobel laureates focused on one problem.
The hubbub outside was rising to a crescendo; he caught the eye of Myra Flynn, his admin assistant. She did a final scan of the facilities, then nodded: the room was ready. He nodded back, dispatching her to open the doors.
Let the Galactic games begin.
Squinting under the onslaught of massed videocam lights, Kyle studied the faces arrayed around the table. Despite his earlier misgivings, he had to admit it: the hearing room was packed with achievers and over-achievers, great Americans all. For this mission, it was impossible to be too competent.
It was time to stimulate their thinking. He took a sip of water while he tried yet again to vanquish his stage fright.
"Fellow commissioners." The words came out as a croak. Another sip. "You have all been invited, and have graciously accepted the call, to serve your country at a time when great issues must be addressed. Great issues, indeed." He tapped the keyboard built into the lectern. An image popped up on the projection screen beside him, and onto the display of every PC whose owner had logged onto the committee-room network. The still picture was a close-up of the Galactics’ highly impressive landing craft. "This is the tip of the iceberg."
Click. A second picture appeared, a telescopic close-up of the two-mile-wide mothership. H’ffl said it was named S’kz’wtz Lrrk’l, which he’d translated as Galactic Peace. "This is the iceberg. The civilization capable of building this vessel represents opportunities and risks which, I am convinced, we cannot yet even begin to fathom. It is our responsibility to explore those opportunities, to investigate those risks, and to chart a prudent course between them."
Click. An aerial photo appeared of the Washington Mall, with any trace of grass obscured by the myriad of people patiently awaiting the arrival of the Fellowship Station. "The people of America . . ." Click. A montage of aerial shots of major capital cities around the globe, each showing a sea of citizens greeting the Galactics. ". . . And of the world now look to their leaders in hope."
Click. For the first time, sound issued from the projection system: xenophobic rantings. After a few seconds tightly focused on the contorted face of the charismatic speaker, the camera panned back to reveal a few dozen rapt faces, then hundreds, then thousands. Kyle muted the harangue. "Or they look in fear. Fear of the unfamiliar. Fear of the unknown."
Click. A back-lit close-up of an orb, the instantly famous symbol of galactic unity, the crystal slowly, subtly, hypnotically changing colors and texture. The larger-than-life image emphasized the variations occurring throughout the sphere’s crystalline depths: a thing of beauty beyond words. Kyle noticed, for the first time, that several commissioners had brought their own orbs to the session. "Our task, and it is a most challenging one, is to advise the president on whether, and how, to respond to an offer from the Galactics, should one be forthcoming.
"Let us all be up to that challenge."
Chords crashed. Arpeggios rippled their way up and down the keyboard. Speakers all around Kyle poured out music so pure that his fingers imagined the stiff bounce of each key; his shoulders and arms tensed in sympathy with the pianist’s.
As the Saint-Saëns second piano concerto enveloped him in its lengthy crescendo, he peered into a Galactic orb. Colors shimmering and swirling throughout its depths drew him ever inward. A lava lamp for the twenty-first century, whispered some quirky corner of his mind.
He’d never seen the orb transform so rapidly. Colors flowed one into another. Textures waxed and waned, one blending imperceptibly into the next. Patterns formed and faded before a merely human intellect could capture their meaning.
The final chords, and some epiphany, seemed to hang in the air, tantalizingly just beyond his reach. As the music stopped, so, too, did the changes within the orb. Sighing, he picked it up from the coffee table. Not for a lack of trying, all that he, or anyone, had learned was that the galactic unity icon responded to light and sound. Like snowflakes, no two orbs were ever quite the same, nor had any orb ever been seen to repeat itself. Fellowship stations kept manufacturing them on demand, requiring only occasional re-deliveries of raw material from the F’thk.
From its cabinet across the living room, the red power LED of the stereo amplifier stared unblinkingly at him like a cyclopean eye. Setting the orb back down, he took up the remote control in its stead. He aimed the remote at the entertainment center. Zap.
A sea of sound once more immersed man and orb, changing both in ways too subtle to be immediately understood.
Piles of reports lined the back of Kyle’s desk; a floor-bound stack leaned precariously against a crammed bookcase. Even today’s mound of executive summaries, precisely centered on his blotter, was daunting.
Sweeping sandwich crumbs from the top report, he read the title: Economic Repercussions of a Switch to a Fusion Economy. Below that he found Passive Infrared Analysis of the F’thk Anatomy, Means for the Analytical Substantiation of Antimatter Power Systems, On the Efficacy of the F’thk Visual Apparatus: a Follow-Up Investigation, and Speculations on Interstellar Trade Modalities.
The top and bottom reports presumed that Earth and the F’thk reached a meeting of minds, and were light years outside his area of expertise. He set those aside to review at home that evening. The middle three showed more promise.
Speed-reading its abstract quickly revealed that Means for Analytical Substantiation was an elaborate plea for replacing the replacement Gamma Ray Observatory. He snorted. He hardly needed a presidential commission to tell him that the fingerprint of matter/antimatter energy conversion was gamma-ray production, and that the atmosphere blocked gamma rays. The good news was that a substitute for the satellite lost in the Atlantis explosion might possibly, if money were no object, be quickly constructible from the lab prototype. The bad news was that such an orbital observatory, even more than its huge and ungainly forebear, would need the services of a massive booster–the shuttle–for delivery to space.
Oh, the irony of a grounded shuttle fleet when the Galactics came a-calling. The Russians weren’t flying manned missions either, although in their case the stand down was due to an ever imploding economy. He wanted so badly for Man to be a spacefaring race, even if only skimming the top of its own atmosphere, when dealing with the F’thk. Sans shuttle, the International Space Station had been vacated via its emergency lifeboat.
A fireball in a clear blue Florida sky returned, unbidden, to his mind’s eye. One more horrible image, like the glowing streaks of the disintegrating Columbia, he knew he could never forget. He set aside the report, grabbing another for distraction.
The IR study of the F’thk was crisp and factual: just what he needed. Several conference rooms used for meetings with the aliens had, at the commission’s direction, been instrumented with hidden infrared sensors. Satisfaction with the report faded, however, as he completed the introduction and moved into results. Computer-enhanced images from the sensor data revealed little more than sporadic hot spots in ambient-temperature bodies. Since the visitors seemed equally energetic and equally clothes-free in all Earthly climates, this apparent cold-bloodedness was yet another puzzle.
The low-resolution pictures provided the only anatomical data he had–the F’thk consistently declined all suggestions that they provide biological/medical information. Kyle’s rationale for the request, that such data were necessary to avoid any inadvertent endangerment of either species, was politely dismissed. H’ffl asserted full confidence in his guidance from the Commonwealth’s scientists. The possibility of a biological incident seemed to amuse him. Beyond keeping their own knowledge to themselves, the F’thk also refused requests to be examined by X-ray, ultrasound, or any other active imaging technique. When pressed, they invariably answered, "Information is a trade good."
Flipping pages impatiently, Kyle encountered more excuses than derived anatomical data. The report ended with the predictable request for supercomputer time for additional image enhancement. "Approved," he scrawled, and tossed it into his OUT basket.
One down.
Visual Apparatus was full of minutiae about F’thk viewing angles and stereoscopic vision. He was about to add this tome to the OUT basket unread when his thumbing-through uncovered a section on separate day-and-night vision systems. "The dilation of F’thk pupils," he read, "indicates that the upper eye of each pair is optimized for day vision, the lower eye for night vision." He reached reflexively for his coffee cup as he began studying the report more closely.
The night-vision data was the result of one of Kyle’s suggestions. The F’thk did not approve X-ray imaging–and certainly could carry sensors to tell if their wishes had been ignored–but planning could widen the range of achievable passive observations. After the surreptitious tripping of a circuit breaker, low-light video cameras in a rigged room had caught the pupils of F’thk night eyes dilating with extreme rapidity. Pupil dilation–substantially wider than occurred when lights had been dimmed for a viewgraph presentation–was still in progress when the windowless room had become too black for the high-sensitivity CCD videocams to function.
Faugh. The coldness of the coffee finally registered; he emptied the dregs into the potted plant beside his desk. Pouring a fresh cup from the brewer on the credenza, he wondered what was bothering him. Obviously, their night vision was suited to a moonless world . . .
Moonless. Was that the problem?
The text-search program needed only a few seconds and some keywords to find the transcript; K’ddl’s words at the White House reception were as he’d remembered. "I do not wish to offend, but no F’thk would ever invent such dark nights or such a paltry number of moons."
He shut his eyes in concentration, a finger marking his place in the report. How likely was it for such ultra-sensitive night vision to have evolved on a planet with several moons?
He didn’t know, but that’s why the commission had a biologist.
A delightful aroma–basil and rosemary? Kyle speculated–wafted down the State Department hallway. It was, happily, no longer considered necessary to fast in front of the aliens. One week into the commission’s existence, a commissioner had fainted mid-session. An amused ambassador, upon learning the cause of the commotion, insisted that the F’thk did not consider it rude for the humans to dine whenever they wished. The aliens themselves needed to eat only once for each of their days, about thirty Earth hours. Rather than impede progress by suspending meetings for meals, they would be happy to continue while the humans ate. Really.
A group of commissioners and F’thk strolled slowly down the hall towards one of State’s many dining rooms. Kyle’s stomach rumbled as they approached the food, though from nerves rather than hunger. He was, for the first time, deviating from the visitors’ explicit wishes. His right hand, hidden in his pants pocket, fondled a tiny ultrasonic beacon; the gadget, when triggered, would pulse once at a frequency to which a previous test had shown the aliens unresponsive. The isolation of a suitable frequency had required some experimentation–it had turned out that the F’thk communicated among themselves by modulated ultrasound, using a language human scientists had made zero progress in analyzing.
The hall narrowed where two china closets had been retrofitted. Behind the wooden doors on both sides of the cramped passageway were the newest and most sensitive ultrasound imagers that money could buy. A F’thk named Ph’jk was in the lead; as he entered the space between the hidden instruments, Kyle squeezed the hidden signaling device.
It happened too fast to register. Ph’jk reared up on his hind legs, lashing out with his front hooves at the right-hand doors. K’ddl galloped forward, squeezing into the narrow space to shatter the doors to the left. Within seconds, slashing claws and pounding hooves reduced wood and electronics alike to splinters. Ignoring the sparks and wisps of smoke rising from the wreckage, the F’thk continued wordlessly into the dining room. Splintered wood crunched beneath their hooves as they crossed the wrecked area. Dazedly, the humans followed.
H’ffl set a claw, talons retracted, on Kyle’s shoulder and squeezed. "Information is a trade good," he said. "We trust you will not attempt again to steal it."
Kyle wiped a swatch of condensed steam from his bathroom mirror. The long, hot shower hadn’t done much for his shoulder or his mood; he scowled at his bruised reflection. A sore shoulder was all he had to show for yesterday’s escapade.
The ultrasound equipment had been ruined beyond hope of recovery of any internal images of the aliens. Should’ve networked the damn machines, he thought, hours too late. The data would’ve been out of their reach before they had the chance to react.
Or maybe not. Over his first cup of morning coffee, he called the commission staff desk to confirm his suspicions. Passive sensors also hidden in the hallway had revealed three other ultrasound sources to have been present: each of the F’thk had apparently carried a jammer. It wasn’t a big surprise: the immediate response proved that they’d been carrying detectors; why not jammers, too?
He’d brooded all night for nothing. There had been no lost opportunity to have spirited away stolen imagery by network before the alien reaction. Sighing, Kyle headed to his office and the staff’s overnight report on the incident, at once eager and reluctant to read what else he’d missed.
The private-sector commission members had largely disappeared with the opening session’s TV lights–to return when the cameras did. Glory came of being named to the commission, not in serving on it. Staffers were more than happy to fill in for the vacant members.
The latest gathering in the committee room resembled the colloquium of scientists, engineers, and policy makers he’d expected in the first place. For at least the hundredth time since joining the administration, he decided Britt was dumb like a fox. He was also, to Kyle’s unspoken chagrin, sitting in today–bosses have prerogatives. So far, Britt had been a silent observer.
"Here’s what we’ve got." Kyle gestured at nothing and no one in particular. "Clean, essentially limitless, fusion power, the technology for which they’ll swap before they leave in return for downloads from our public libraries–if we’ve voted to join the Commonwealth. They will sell only to governments, who can then license fusion to power-generation companies. Their reasoning is that government control will minimize disruptions to the economy.
"Point two. If a . . ."
"Wait," called Darlene. "Why not license fusion just once, through the UN?"
Fred Phillips from Commerce rolled his eyes. "Give it a rest. The Galactics choose not to deal with the UN, and they don’t want to talk about it. Besides, I like the precedent: we have far more to dicker with than most countries."
"And it doesn’t strike you as odd that a galactic commonwealth, talking planetary membership, is practicing national divide and conquer?"
"Objection noted," interrupted Kyle. He agreed with Darlene, but knew no one else did. Majority opinion, led by Commerce, was that bypassing the UN eliminated a human cartel. Just shrewd business.
"Point two. If a majority of nations," he gave Darlene a warning look, "ask to join the Commonwealth, the F’thk say they’ll submit Earth’s petition. Membership, as far as any of us can tell, appears simply to regularize the trade relationship."
Krulewitch from MIT spoke without looking up from his palmtop computer. "I thought we were still being evaluated."
"We are." Kyle fidgeted with the laser pointer someone had left on the lectern. "The petition will be accompanied by their own report about our suitability."
"Then isn’t the fusion-for-library-access trade a conflict of interest? And they won’t let us send our own ambassador?"
"Yes, and no way. Not only can’t we send an ambassador, we can’t set foot on the landing craft, let alone the mothership." Kyle rubbed his cheek ruefully. "I’ve asked for that privilege a dozen times. They always change the subject."
"Antimatter production?" asked Krulewitch.
"A flat no. K’ddl suggested that a species stuck on one planet shouldn’t use the stuff." Playing the Galactic, Kyle changed the subject, ignoring the MIT physicist’s knowing grin. K’ddl’s answer rubbed salt in a still open wound. "Point three: there are lots of loose ends and seeming contradictions, none of them having any obvious bearing on whether this august body recommends a US vote for joining the Commonwealth."
He rattled off some of the more vexing observations. The apparent over-conservatism of the mothership’s lunar parking orbit. The ducking of most questions. The unwillingness to let human biologists examine the F’thk. The inexplicably good F’thk night vision. The absence of trace toxins around the F’thk, despite the claimed toxicity of their food. The failure of air filters to capture any hint of the F’thk organic chemistry. The . . .
"Their playing countries off one another," piped in Darlene.
"Point four," called out an under-secretary from Energy. She gave a nasty edge to her voice.
Kyle set down the borrowed pointer. He paused to make eye contact with everyone in the room. "Three points are all. Trade is a good thing, and they know things we’d like to learn. Commonwealth membership would help us trade. The longer we study them, the less I, for one, understand them."
Britt Arledge spoke for the first time that session. "Then I should anticipate the full commission recommending an application for membership?"
Across the room, heads of commissioners and staffers alike bobbed yes. All heads but two: his and Darlene’s.
What was so bothering him that he’d pass up the secret of practical fusion power? That he’d risk never knowing what marvels Earth and the aliens could next agree to share? Even if he could convince the commission to say no, what was his justification?
"Kyle?"
Feeling that he’d failed, but not knowing how or why, Kyle was reluctant to meet his boss’s gaze. Instead, he found himself peering into the galactic orb that sat on the table in front of Arledge. Not sure to which of them he was speaking, Kyle finally and unhappily answered. He willed his voice to be firm.
"So it would appear."
To be continued!
