by James Gunn
“They read from the right. Look, one, three, five, or maybe that's the way this message writes one, three, five....”
“Of course,” MacDonald said, exultation growing in his voice, “why should we expect them to read from the left, why not the right, like the Japanese, or from the bottom up?”
“This is ridicu—” Jeremiah began.
“But what are those symbols on the left-hand side?” MacDonald asked. “And on the right-hand side of the sun?”
“Measurements?” someone suggested.
“Formula?” said another.
“Words?” suggested a third.
“Maybe words,” MacDonald said. “Numbers on the right, printed horizontally, words on the left with a vertical component. It looks like they're building up a vocabulary of numbers and words.”
“Legs,” Jeremiah mustered. “Feet.”
“Yes,” MacDonald said. “Long legs, and a body, arms—more than one set of arms, and over there at the right—what?”
“If those are words on the left,” someone said, “then one of them is repeated three times.”
“Must be important,” someone else said. “It looks like the creature is pointing at two of them.”
And then the picture was complete. Olsen pressed a key. The printer stopped. The computer stopped. In silence they stared at the picture.
“If that's a sun in the lower left, then that's another sun in the upper right,” someone said. “Of course. Two suns. Capella.”
“And that set of dots below it,” MacDonald said, “—a large planet, perhaps a super-Jovian, with four satellites, two of them larger, perhaps Earth size, and the being is pointing at one of them with one of his four arms.”
“Not arms,” Jeremiah muttered. “Two are wings.”
“But what's that thing on its head?” someone asked.
Jeremiah put his hands together in front of him and lowered his face to them, his eyes closed. “Forgive me,” he said. “Forgive me for doubting. It is a message from God.”
“What is he talking about?” Mitchell said to Thomas.
“Quiet!” Thomas said softly.
The others in the room quieted, too, their comments dwindling one by one until the room once more was silent.
Finally Jeremiah lifted his head from his hands. “I will not stand in your way,” he said to MacDonald. “I will tell my people that I have seen the Message and the Message is from God. I do not know what it says, but this much I know. It is up to you to read the rest of it.”
“I am as much surprised as you are,” MacDonald said.
“I believe that. It would not have happened this way had you planned it. This is an angel. It has a halo.”
“A halo,” Mitchell echoed.
“It could be a helmet,” MacDonald said gently. “Or earphones. Or a bird with a large head.”
“You may speculate as you wish,” Jeremiah said. “But it is a halo. If you do not deny it is angel, speculate as you will, I will not deny that the message is from God, that there are other beings, that we call them angels.”
“You may call them angels,” MacDonald said as if expressing a formal agreement. “I will not say you are mistaken. There is much to speculate about and little that we can be sure of.”
“Come, Judith,” Jeremiah said.
“Father,” Judith said, “Bill has something he wants to say.”
“I misjudged you, sir,” Mitchell said. He had been wrong about the old man. He was not a phony. He faced a difficult job, going back and reinterpreting the message to his followers, but he did not flinch. He had seen the truth and changed. Perhaps, Mitchell thought, he himself had been wrong about some things.
“I have felt that you were bad for my daughter,” Jeremiah said, “that you did not like people.”
“I am beginning to like them better,” Mitchell said.
“Well,” Jeremiah said, turning toward the door, “we will see.”
“I'll drive you—” Mitchell began.
“Not yet,” Judith said, giving his hand a squeeze as she joined her father. “In time. If you wish.” And she followed her father's stiff back through the doorway.
“What luck!” Mitchell said to MacDonald. “What magnificent luck! Or was it luck?”
Thomas looked at Mitchell and then at MacDonald. MacDonald was looking at the picture drawn by the printer. He had not heard the question.
“One thing you've still got to learn,” Thomas said to Mitchell, “is that no two people are alike. To understand Mac you must understand that he wouldn't cheat.”
“Not even to save the Project?” Mitchell said skeptically. “Not even to do tremendous good for man and Capellan? Not even to counteract stubborn mysticism and ignorance?”
“It sure looks like a big bird,” someone said.
“If it's a bird,” someone else said, “maybe that dot under its feet is an egg.”
“One of the three identical words on the left, if they are words, is opposite the egg, if it is an egg,” Olsen said.
“Not even then,” Thomas said. “Not because he wouldn't be tempted, not even because he would be found out, but because of what he is and because he can't be what he is and be expedient and because he knows it.”
“Look,” someone said, “the two suns are different.”
MacDonald did not move from the spot where he could look directly down upon the print-out. The conversation flowed around him, but he did not seem to hear it. He looked as if he too had seen an angel.
Mitchell watched the others in the room. Each one was reacting differently; each one, like Jeremiah, was seeing the same message but reading it with his own particular interpretation.
Mitchell shook his head and saw the stuffed ostrich in the corner. He walked to it and looked into its black pupils. “You're the only one I really understand,” he said. And he turned and looked at the room and all the people clustered about the Message, and he thought about all the equipment and personnel and time that had gone into receiving the Message. His vision broadened to include the steerable radio telescope outside cocked to the night sky and the big array in the valley catching stardust, and he imagined himself traveling across great, dark infinities alone in space for long years, and he shivered.
“Who,” he thought desperately, “will understand me?”
Computer Run
Life has a status in the physical universe. It is part of the order of nature. It has a high place in that order, since it probably represents the most complex state of organization that matter has achieved in our universe. We on this planet have an especially proud place as men; for in us as men matter has begun to contemplate itself....
George Wald, 1960-61
Incarnation is unique for the special group in which it happens, but it is not unique in the sense that other singular incarnations for other unique worlds are excluded.... Man cannot claim to occupy the only possible place for Incarnation.... The manifestation of saving power in one place implies that saving power is operating in all places. ...
Paul Tillich, 1957...
It might well be the case that the universe has produced and will continue to produce countless millions of ... histories analogous to human history.... To attempt to draw ultimate conclusions about God and the universe from a few episodes of the history which has been enacted on this planet would seem to be a most hazardous if not impossible proceeding....
John Macquarrie, 1957...
Our ignorance and our prejudice should not inhibit our thoughts from transcending our earth and our history and even our Christianity....
Paul Tillich, 1962...
Far and few, far and few
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue;
And they went to sea in a sieve....
edward lear, 1846 ...
citizens held in some form of detention in the united states have decreased in total numbers by more than ninety per cent in the past fifty yea
rs, the bureau of education announced today. fifty years ago the bureau of prisons was abolished and the bureau of education took over administration of the criminal rehabilitation program. bu ed pointed out that decrease has occurred in spite of a vastly increased rate of arrest and conviction due largely to new computerized methods of surveillance, detection, and testimony.
the bureau ascribes the decrease in the detained population to new breakthroughs in chemical learning and behavioral reinforcement, and predicts that soon the detention centers themselves may be eliminated in favor of neighborhood analysis and treatment centers, much as the drug problem was solved some thirty years ago by redefinition and local reeducation.
In the blackness a phosphorescence was apparent. It rippled and rose in the dark with the pulsing beat of the jelly-like mass. And through it were showing two discs. Gray at first, they formed two black staring eyes.... Out of the mass shot a serpentine arm. It whipped about him, soft, sticky, viscid—utterly loathsome....
Charlie W. Diffin, 1930...
did you see the picture they received from some star the other day?
picture? what kind of picture?
you know—a kind of crossword-looking picture, black and white squares like.
yeah, now you mention it, i remember something like that.
what do you think? think there's really people there?
people where?
this star.
you know what i think? i think they just made it up. how could people live on a star? and if they did, how could they send us a bunch of black and white squares?
yeah...
the respen concept applied to the learning situation has been acclaimed an outstanding success by educators who have studied experimental results from installations in schools located in brooklyn, topeka, kansas, montgomery, alabama, and oakland, california....
The essential characteristic of the Integrated World is extensive and successful world organization for progressive and welfare purposes, with a subordination of politics and ideology to pragmatism.... Large amounts of capital can be accumulated within the underdeveloped nations by the year 2000. If we assume that it takes about $4 of capital to generate an income of $1 per capita, then $1 trillion of additional capital is sufficient to increase the income of one billion people by an additional $250 per capita (over the $100-$300 otherwise to be expected). Thus by the year 2000 there could be enough capital available to put most of the underdeveloped nations over $500 per capita and ail of them over $300 to $500 per capita....
Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener, 1967...
nebula...
nebulus...
nebulosity...
bubble nebula in cepheus
ring nebula in lyra
veil nebula is cygnus
and ngc 3242 in hydra...
trifid nebula in sagittarius
owl nebula in ursa major
crab nebula in taurus
and the nebulous cluster m16 in serpens...
planetary...
diffuse...
dark...
horsehead nebula in orion
cone nebula in monoceros
lagoon nebula in sagittarius
and the north american nebula in cygnus
coal sack nebula in crux
horseshoe nebula in sagittarius
tarantula nebula in the large magellanic cloud
and the helical planetary nebula in aquarius...
gas...
dust...
bang...
holovision today became a reality as general electric unveiled the first commercial model in the new products display at madison square garden. the price is not yet established, but it is expected to be in the tens of thousands of dollars and only government and industry will be able to afford it for the first year. after that, if past experience is a guide, the price will drop rapidly and old-style television will become obsolete. certainly the display today was breathtaking, and the three-dimensional quality and the absence of apparatus—how it is done is still a commercial secret—is far superior to any projection system yet developed....
The history of the human race is a continuous struggle from darkness toward light. It is therefore of no purpose to discuss the use of knowledge—man wants to know and when he ceases to do so he is no longer man....
Fridt Jof Ansen, early twentieth century...
Once a civilization made contact with another world its own life expectancy would be greatly increased; for, through the knowledge that others have weathered the crisis and, perhaps with guidance as to how this was done, the new member of the galactic community would be able to solve its problems better. ...
Sebastian Von Hoerner, 1961...
Even radio contact with a superior civilization would lead to profound upheavals....
committee on long-range studies of nasa, 1960...
Anthropological files contain many examples of societies, sure of their place in the universe, which have disintegrated when they have had to associate with previously unfamiliar societies espousing different ideas and different life ways; others that survived such an experience usually did so by paying the price of changes in values and attitudes and behavior.
Since intelligent life might be discovered at any time via the radio telescope research presently under way, and since the consequences of such a discovery are presently unpredictable because of our limited knowledge of behavior under even an approximation of such dramatic circumstances, two search area can be recommended:
1. Continuing studies to determine emotional and intellectual understanding and attitudes—and successive alterations of them if any—regarding the possibility and consequences of discovering intelligent extraterrestrial life.
2. Historical and empirical studies of the behavior of peoples and their leaders when confronted with dramatic and unfamiliar events or social pressures....
committee on long-range studies of nasa, 1960...
If two or more stable societies have made contact once somewhere it may have initiated a chain reaction, with new civilizations being located and saved before they destroyed themselves. Those who have tasted the excitement of speaking to another world might be inspired to long and patient efforts to broaden the network of cosmic wisdom....
Sebastian Von Hoerner, 1961...
Such studies should consider public reactions to past hoaxes, “flying saucer” episodes and incidents like the Martian invasion broadcast. They should explore how to release the news of an encounter to the public—or withhold it, if this is deemed advisable. The influence on international relations might be revolutionary, for the discovery of alien beings might lead to greater unity of men on earth, based on the oneness of man or on the age-old assumption that any stranger is threatening....
committee on long-range studies of nasa, 1960...
pittsburgh—a man returned home in the midst of the broadcast and found his wife, a bottle of poison in her hand, screaming, “i'd rather die this way than like that.”
san francisco—one excited man called oakland police and shouted, “my god! where can i volunteer my services? we've got to stop this awful thing!”
brevard, north carolina—five brevard collegestudents fainted and panic gripped the campus for a half-hour with many students fighting for telephones to inform their parents to come and get them.
indianapolis—a woman ran into a church screaming, “new york destroyed; it's the end of theworld. you might as well go home to die. i just heard it on the radio.” services were dismissed immediately.
atlanta—reports to newspapers from listeners in the southwest had it that a planet struck in new jersey, monsters, almost everything, and anywhere from forty to seven thousand people reported killed.
boston—one woman told the Boston Globe that she could “see the fire” and that she and many others in her neighborhood were “getting out of here.”
kansas city—one telephone informant said he had loaded all his children into his car, had f
illed it with gasoline and was going somewhere. “where is it safe?” he wanted to know....
This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that the War of the Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theatre's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo!...
The orange knives of the sun
are chopping off my hands.
The cosmic temples, fallen,
are crushing my shoulders.
Light abandons us.
Earth pulls us back
into darkness and east
as horizons retreat
and our tilting hearts tip
into the eyes
of the frightened stars.
Kirby Congdon, 1970...
Biggest motion picture hit of the year, says daily variety, is newest one hundred million grosser “under two suns.” With sales to television—or holovision, if the producers decide to hold off for a bigger price when the new development takes over—and the merchandising of capellan toys, masks, helmets, t-shirts, and interstellar communication sets yet to come.
Creatures in which we are interested, besides having minds, must be able to move about and to build things. That is, they must have something comparable to hands and feet. They must have senses, such as sight, touch, and hearing, although the senses that evolve on any given planet will be determined by the environment.... Creatures fulfilling such requirements might bear little resemblance to man....
Walter Sullivan, 1964...
They may be blue spheres with twelve tentacles....
Philip Morrison, 1960...
The semanticist had evidently made a good guess in alien psychology, for no hostile move was made toward the machine. The natives lay there studying it, making occasional guarded gestures to each other. They stiffened as the next picture flipped into view. It was a Terrestrial family with two children. It was the picture Stuart kept beside his bunk, and was the best thing he could think of to put across the concept of a peaceful people....
