The Lure

by Bill Napier

  There was a long silence, eventually broken by Shtyrkov. ‘How much time does this represent?’

  ‘The first minute of the transmission.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘It’s only three per cent of the message. We have another thirty-six minutes to analyse.’

  Gibson said again, ‘Oh, man.’

  Freya said, ‘They gave us this up-front for a reason.’

  ‘Yes,’ Shtyrkov said. ‘They didn’t want us to miss it. That’s their starting point. They’re saying, “Hey, we’re life forms just like you.”’

  ‘Is this a hoax?’ Gibson asked hoarsely.

  Petrie looked up. ‘If it is, you’re not in on it, Charlie. You’re as white as a sheet.’

  ‘Look at us all,’ Freya said.

  ‘No, I mean someone monkeying with the equipment. Or something.’ But Gibson’s voice trailed off as the absurdity of his own suggestion got through to him.

  ‘Hey, Charlie, the lake glowed.’ Svetlana was speaking quietly, as if all emotion had now been drained out of her.

  ‘An external input of some sort? From a satellite? Look – I know it’s stupid.’

  ‘No, no, you’re right, Charlee. We have to think it through,’ Shtyrkov said. ‘We must eliminate everything, even stupid ideas. Keep them coming.’

  ‘What sort of particles were these?’ Petrie asked. ‘Can you tell?’

  Svetlana pointed to a far corner of the lake. ‘Can you zoom into that?’

  Petrie obliged.

  ‘Now go back to the original trajectories, not the points.’

  A cluster of parallel lines appeared.

  ‘Now turn them. Look at the lines face-on.’

  The lines shrank, turned back into points.

  ‘Right. Absolutely straight, no curvature. In that corner, Tom, about twenty metres under the water, we have a dipole magnet that weighs half a ton and gives us forty thousand gauss. If we swam anywhere near it with anything metal we’d be pulled under. If the particles were charged their tracks would bend near the magnet.’

  ‘And they don’t.’

  ‘Exactly, so they’re not cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are charged, they’d be deflected. We have half a dozen magnets like that under the water and we can do more checks if you like.’

  ‘Okay, Svetlana, if they’re not cosmic rays, what then?’

  ‘This time yesterday I’d have called them dark matter.’

  ‘And today?’

  ‘A neutral particle penetrating half a mile of rock? Unknown.’

  ‘A vast surge of them,’ Gibson reminded her. ‘Double unknown.’

  ‘Unknown to us,’ Svetlana said.

  ‘Which safely rules out some clown playing games with satellites.’ Petrie was having trouble holding his head upright.

  Freya said, ‘The particles could have penetrated the lake from below.’

  ‘You mean they came clean through the Earth?’ Gibson asked.

  ‘Or from some accelerator on the surface of the Earth. Therefore it still might be a trick.’ Svetlana was saying the words with every sign of disbelieving them.

  ‘Total fantasy,’ Shtyrkov said. ‘A flux of this magnitude is thousands of years in the future even if we were dealing with a known particle type, which we’re not.’ He struggled out of his chair. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we can securely eliminate both a natural source and a human one. Tom is right.’

  ‘You were right, Vash,’ said Petrie loyally. ‘Your intuition saw this.’

  Shtyrkov brushed the compliment aside. ‘Lunacy has its compensations.’

  ‘If that was just their opener, what about the rest of the message?’ Charlie asked, his voice greedy. ‘What’s in it?’

  Petrie said, ‘If I don’t get some sleep I’ll crack up.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ Gibson didn’t seem to be joking. He was jiggling around excitedly.

  ‘Ignore him, Tom. Go to bed,’ Vashislav ordered. ‘We’ll play around with this. And, Tom – congratulations.’

  Unexpectedly, Freya gave Petrie a hug. ‘A signal from another world. This is the dream of poets.’

  Petrie hadn’t thought of it that way; but he thought the Norwegian woman had a terrific smile.

  Svetlana said, ‘I’ll make you my great-aunt’s pyzy when you get up.’

  ‘The cleaners!’ Gibson was suddenly horror-struck. ‘They mustn’t see this. They come at eight.’

  ‘Okay, Charlee, don’t panic. We’ll keep the cleaning ladies out of here. We don’t want them to look at the screen and say, “Hey, here’s a picture of DNA sent by extraterrestrials.”’

  * * *

  Petrie was wakened by sunshine in his eyes. His watch said 3.30 p.m. and his bladder was bursting. He relieved himself, stared at the unshaven hobo staring back at him out of the mirror. He ran a shower, shaving in the flow of warm water. Then he dried himself and rummaged in his holdall. He put on jeans and a white T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of pieces on a chessboard; to the cognoscenti, it showed the board at the moment the computer Deep Blue finally crushed Kasparov. When asked, he liked to explain that it symbolised the triumph of the machine over the human spirit; the reaction was always fun.

  Svetlana was standing by the stairs on the floor below. She beckoned, and Petrie followed her along the corridor and into the refectory. A single place had been set with what looked like Hapsburg silverware. The pyzy turned out to be small, hot dumplings served with sausages. They were spicy and delicious, and had a warming effect which seemed to go beyond their heat capacity.

  ‘I think Freya has found something,’ she said.

  Petrie washed down the last dumpling with hot tea.

  ‘Come and see.’ She extended her hand and Petrie took it; it was thin and warm. She led him to the corridor, down the stairs and into the administrator’s office.

  ‘Ah, the Kraken awakes,’ Gibson said obscurely. ‘Come and see what Freya has found.’

  Freya was at a terminal. There was an empty chair next to her and she patted it. Gibson breathed garlic over them. Shtyrkov, taking up an armchair, waved at Petrie without looking up from a wodge of papers. Svetlana settled down at a terminal on another desk.

  Petrie looked at the screen: there was what seemed to be a white shoebox traversed by parallel red lines. ‘Tom, this is near the beginning of the signal.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She tapped at the keyboard. ‘And this is a slice near the middle.’ A set of parallel blue lines appeared. ‘And here we have a slice from near the end of the transmission.’ A third set of lines, in green. Petrie shook his head.

  ‘Look closely.’

  ‘I don’t see anything.’

  ‘Okay. Now let me take the average direction of the red lines, and then the blue ones, finally the green.’ She tapped on the keyboard.

  ‘Ha!’ Petrie exclaimed in delight. Three large circles – red, blue and green – showed on the screen, red to the left and green to the right.

  ‘Exactly.’ Freya was unable to keep a touch of pride out of her voice. ‘The direction of the source changed with time.’

  ‘The source was moving?’

  ‘No, we were. The lines stayed parallel in space while the Earth was turning. The rate and direction match the Earth’s rotation exactly.’

  Shtyrkov called over from his armchair. ‘So, we can rule out a satellite as a source, or anything on the Earth. Whatever the source, it’s in deep space.’

  Freya agreed. ‘Deep space it is.’

  ‘And you now have the position of the source in the sky?’

  ‘Two possible positions, depending on whether the signal came down or up through the lake.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Give me a chance, Tom, I’ve only just discovered this. I need to carry out an error analysis to shrink these big circles to tiny spots. When I’ve done that I’ll download star charts and catalogues and see what we’ve got.’

  ‘Well, get on with it,’ Gibson said impatiently.

  Freya turne
d, smiled sweetly at Gibson and said, ‘Dra til helvete.’ Then she returned to the keyboard.

  Petrie turned to Gibson. ‘Okay. We’re all agreed that the signature is extraterrestrial, and the source is intelligent. What now?’

  Gibson pulled up a chair and picked up papers from a desk. ‘There’s an outfit called the Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics and they’ve set up a protocol. Vashislav’s going through the small print now.’

  ‘Let’s hear it.’

  Gibson waved the papers. A slightly pompous tone was creeping into his voice. He read: ‘“Declaration of principles concerning activities following the detection of ET.” Principle number one. “Any individual, public or private research institution, or governmental agency that believes it has detected a signal from or other evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence should seek to verify that the most plausible explanation for the evidence is the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence rather than some other natural phenomenon or anthropogenic phenomenon before making any public announcement.”’

  ‘That’s why I’m here,’ Petrie proposed. ‘Okay, so Freya and I have confirmed it.’

  ‘And you can exclude any possibility of error?’ Gibson said in an interrogatory tone. ‘With such confidence that you are prepared to face the world and say, “These people have discovered ET”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why “these people”? Why exclude Freya and Tom?’ Vashislav called over, without looking up from his papers.

  Gibson ignored the comment. ‘Okay. Proceed to principle number two. “The discoverer should inform his or her relevant national authority.”’

  ‘Our respective governments. But you must have told HMG already.’

  ‘Yes and no. I naturally assumed Vashislav here was raving. You know, a lifetime of vodka. But yes, I did make a precautionary phone call.’

  ‘To?’

  ‘The President of the Royal Astronomical Society. I made it clear that it was an extremely long shot, not to be taken too seriously at this stage. My guess is he fired it up to the President of the Royal Society or even the Minister of Science.’

  ‘My invitation came from Downing Street,’ Petrie said. ‘Did you ask for me specifically?’

  ‘Yes, Tom. As I said, I heard you at Uppsala last year. All that chaos theory and pattern recognition. You were a natural, just the man to check out Vashislav’s ravings. You’re a rising star.’

  ‘And being junior, I’m easily controlled. Less likely to steal the limelight than some big name.’

  Shtyrkov gave a deep belly laugh. Gibson pouted.

  Petrie continued: ‘But they didn’t route it through GCHQ.’

  Shtyrkov said, ‘The government would bring ridicule on itself if they got caught up in a false alarm.’

  ‘Who cares? I asked for you and I got you.’

  ‘Then I got this warning at Heathrow.’

  ‘I don’t understand that,’ Gibson admitted. ‘And I don’t like it.’

  ‘And Freya? Where does she come into it?’ Petrie asked.

  ‘We need to know where the signal’s coming from. You’ll find that out for us, won’t you, Freya?’

  The Norwegian girl carried on typing.

  Petrie pointed to the paper on Gibson’s lap. ‘Okay, Charlie, what’s next?’

  ‘Principle number three. Wait for it, I love this one. “A confirmed detection of ET should be disseminated promptly, openly, and widely through scientific channels and public media. The discoverer should have the privilege of making the first public announcement.” Since I’m the PI, that means me.’ Gibson smiled a smile of great happiness.

  ‘You’ll be on CNN around the world within hours. I can see the flashbulbs reflecting in your eyes already. Even horsemen in Mongolia will know your name.’

  Gibson continued to radiate beatitude. ‘And that’s about it, Tom. The rest is just stuff about protecting signal frequencies and distributing data.’

  ‘Okay, Charlie. So the protocols say you first inform HMG and then Joe Public. How? Do you just phone up the Prime Minister?’

  ‘I’ll feed it through the RAS President like before. Let him handle the problem. What about you, Vash?’

  ‘It’s not a problem for me. Friends in high places.’

  ‘And then we tell Joe Public straight away.’

  ‘No, Charlie.’ Svetlana turned round in her chair. ‘Wait until we can name the source of the signal.’

  ‘We can’t wait for that. We can’t risk some civil servant upstaging us.’ Gibson’s face was dark. ‘I make the announcement today.’

  Shtyrkov said, ‘Our governments will not make any announcement without thoroughly checking out the story. That will take them days, maybe weeks.’

  Petrie said, ‘There’s a message for humanity in that signal. We don’t even know if that DNA is human. It’s far more kudos for us if we, rather than some other group, tell the world what the signallers are saying.’

  The argument had an immediate effect on Gibson. ‘You know, Tom, I think you’re right. If some other outfit interpreted the message it could draw attention from us.’

  Petrie drove the point home. ‘People would think we just hit it lucky but they were the real gurus. The high priests interpreting the sacred text.’

  ‘My God, yes.’ Gibson looked as if he had just stepped back from the edge of a chasm. ‘What day is this?’

  ‘Wednesday afternoon,’ Freya said. ‘I need as much time as you can give me.’

  Gibson scowled. ‘But the longer we delay, the bigger the risk of a leak.’

  ‘So how long are you giving me, Charlie?’ Freya asked.

  Gibson counted up to three with his fingers. ‘Okay. There’s a balance. The longer HMG has this, the bigger the risk of a leak, but at the very least we need to tell people where the signal came from. However, with or without the source, I go public with this on Monday. We daren’t delay any longer than that.’

  Svetlana, at her terminal again, said in a startled voice, ‘Oh, my goodness. What’s this?’

  11

  The Bishop and the Chorus Girl

  ‘It can only be a hoax. I mean, what else can it be?’

  David Maddox, President of the Royal Astronomical Society, twirled spaghetti on to his fork. ‘The genuine article?’

  Lord Sangster, Minister for Science, gave a sceptical smile. ‘David, let’s keep our feet on the ground here. Let me look at it again.’

  A red London bus roared noisily past the restaurant door. Maddox waited until it had passed, and handed the paper over. ‘It was securely encrypted.’

  ‘Not against our friends in the NSA, if they got to know of it.’ Sangster put down his fork and read the e-mail, carefully, for the fifth or sixth time:

  Dear Professor Maddox,

  (1) In my communication of three days ago I forewarned you that we may have picked up an intelligent extraterrestrial signal with our Tatras cave facility. I requested that cryptanalytic expertise be arranged in the form of Dr Thomas Petrie, whose abilities in this area are outstanding.

  (2) He arrived yesterday, and after an overnight session confirmed my opinion that such a signal has, in fact, been received by us. We are in the process of identifying the source of the alien message.

  (3) We have so far decrypted only a tiny fraction of the signal. The information to this point is of a biological nature.

  (4) In accordance with the SETI League protocol, paragraph 2, I request that news of this discovery now be passed on to HMG.

  (5) Once we have identified the home planet, I will proceed to paras 3 and 4 of the protocol, hopefully within the next three or four days. As principal investigator, I claim the right to make the first public announcement.

  Yours sincerely,

  C.T. Gibson

  Sangster looked up, glanced again around the shabby little restaurant, its walls studded with paintings of rural Tuscany, and dust-covered Chianti bottles along the shelves. Near the bar, at the far end, an old man was picking
at a plate of fish soup. Two waiters – elderly men with grey waistcoats and faces, napkins over arms – were standing dutifully, looking like extras in The Godfather. ‘What’s your opinion, David?’

  ‘A SETI signal? And from an underground dark matter facility rather than a radio telescope? It hardly seems credible.’

  ‘Can we ignore it, then?’

  Maddox wrinkled his nose. ‘Suppose we ignore Gibson’s message and the signal turns out to be real…’

  Sangster said, ‘The tabloids would crucify us.’

  ‘And if we declare the signal to be genuine and it turns out a mistake?’

  ‘The tabloids would crucify us, and come election time we’d be laughed out of office.’ Sangster sipped at his Sicilian wine and made a face. ‘Quite native, I would say. Tell me, David, this SETI League…’

  ‘A league of respected bodies, the International Academy of Astronautics chief amongst them, but their SETI protocols have no legal force. They want the state that discovers the signal to inform the Secretary General of the United Nations as well as the public and international community.’

  ‘But, as you say, the protocols have no legal force.’

  ‘No, Simon. I looked into this. They would have to be endorsed by the United Nations and that hasn’t yet happened.’

  ‘So the game plan is still open.’ Sangster finished his spaghetti al sugo and looked thoughtful. ‘Biological information, David. I don’t like the sound of that, not one little bit. What sort of information?’

  ‘Maybe something about their life history, or panspermia. I really can’t say.’

  His lordship said, reflectively, ‘Fee fi fo fum, look out humans here we come. Coffee?’

  ‘No thanks, I ought to be getting back. I’m chairing a meeting.’

  Sangster said, ‘David, I think we have to be very careful with something like this. There are all sorts of things to be taken into consideration.’

  The RAS President looked at Sangster with a tinge of apprehension. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Leave it with me. I’ll get someone out there to check the whole thing from A to Z. Meantime, the tightest security is called for. Nobody – nobody – must know about this.’