Voyagers I

by Ben Bova

  “There is one thing,” Cavendish said slowly.

  “What?” Schmidt asked.

  “A thousand years from now, when human history is written, your name will go down as the first man to make contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial race.”

  Stoner put his drink to his lips, saying silently to himself, No. Schmidt may have discovered the radio pulses, but I am going to be the first man to make actual contact with that alien. Or I’ll die trying.

  Schmidt’s little-boy pout deepened. “What makes you think there will be a human race to write its own history a thousand years from now? Or even a hundred years from now?”

  “Well, of course…”

  “Suppose,” Schmidt went on, “that this spacecraft is an invader, the first scout for an alien invasion fleet that will wipe us out? How will my name be written then?”

  “That’s rather farfetched, don’t you think?”

  Stoner, in the middle of another swallow of his scotch, sputtered laughter into the drink. “Here we are,” he said, blinking tears from his eyes, “sitting on a godforsaken atoll in the middle of the Pacific, waiting for an alien spacecraft to get close enough for us to study it in detail, and you’re talking about something being farfetched? This whole business is farfetched!”

  “H’m. Quite. But still, I don’t believe that an intelligent species goes batting about the universe with rape and pillage on its mind, do you? That’s strictly funny-book stuff.”

  “Who knows?” Stoner said. “Can’t plot a trend with only one data point.”

  Cavendish smiled, a bit uneasily. “Datum, dear boy. Datum is the singular of the word.”

  “I stand corrected.”

  The old man put his empty glass on the bar. “Getting rather late for me. I believe I’ll toddle off.” He pulled a balled-up dollar bill from his pocket and left it on the bar. “Good night.”

  And just that abruptly he left Stoner and Schmidt standing at the bar. Stoner felt awkward with the younger man, who seemed content to plunge into solitary gloom.

  Cavendish has stuck me with baby-sitting this kid, Stoner realized suddenly. That dirty old man!

  He scanned the club, seeking a friendly face. The big room was filled with smoke and men. Noisy, drinking, laughing men who waved cigarettes and cigars at each other, playing cards, telling stories and clustering around the few women who were present. Kwajalein’s normal complement of military and civilian technicians had been tripled by the influx of Project JOVE’s scientists and staff, but the ratio of men to women was still huge.

  The local merchants vote in favor of the alien, Stoner thought. The bartender isn’t worried about being invaded. Not as long as the tips keep coming.

  He spotted Markov sitting at a table across the smoky room, surrounded by a mixed crew of Americans, Europeans and Russians. They seemed to be enjoying themselves.

  I ought to get to know Markov better, Stoner told himself.

  Glancing back at Schmidt, who was staring morosely into his second glass of beer, Stoner said, “Come on, let’s join that gang over there.”

  Wordlessly the Dutch astronomer followed him.

  “…so she then informs me,” Markov was saying, his eyes bright and both hands toying with a tumbler of vodka, “that she wishes to go for a midnight swim.”

  Stoner pulled an empty chair from the next table and joined the circle. Schmidt remained standing behind him.

  With barely a blink of a hello, Markov went on, “Obviously she is an American, and quite good-looking. When I told her I had no swimsuit, she introduced me to a new American word: ‘skinnydipping.’ ”

  It struck everyone as funny and they all laughed. Except Schmidt. Stoner wondered who the Russian was talking about.

  “Naturally, when she explained what ‘skinnydipping’ means, I joined her with enthusiasm!”

  They roared.

  “Then, once we were in the water, she tells me that the lagoon is filled with sharks, especially at night.”

  “That’s true,” said one of the Americans.

  “Moray eels, too.”

  “But, she added, we would be perfectly safe as long as we stayed in the shallow water. The only sharks we would bump into would be little ones.”

  Looking up, Stoner saw that Schmidt hadn’t yet cracked a smile. Hopeless case, he thought.

  “What did you do?”

  Markov shrugged elaborately. “What could I do? Faced with the dilemma of meeting a shark or leaving her in the lagoon alone and unprotected, I did the correct thing.” He paused dramatically. “I ran up onto the beach as fast as I could and started putting my clothes on!”

  Stoner laughed with the rest of them. But suddenly it struck him that the Russian might be talking about Jo.

  “She called to me from the water, ‘Don’t be afraid! These little sharks don’t bother anyone!’ I called back, “You are wrong. They do bother someone. Me!”

  One of the Russians said, in heavily accented English, “A man has much more to lose to a shark than a woman.”

  “It was quite an experience,” Markov went on. “She came right out of the water behind me and started to berate me for my cowardice. Have you ever been castigated by an angry young woman who happens to be naked and dripping wet, under a tropical moon? Nerve-racking!”

  He took a long pull on his vodka.

  “So you went home full of sand and water,” someone said.

  “I would have preferred to go to her quarters—to wash up, if nothing else,” Markov explained. “But she is living in the hotel with the rest of the single women, and it is impossible to get past those guards after midnight.”

  “Too bad.”

  Markov sighed. “I have my hopes. The Post Exchange sells shark repellant, I hear.”

  “There are swimming pools, you know,” someone said. “Here at the Officers’ Club, at the hotel and another one at the BOQ.”

  “Yes, I understand. But you see, it isn’t actually the swimming that interests me.”

  The rest of them roared with laughter, but Stoner thought, Jesus Christ, I’ll bet it is Jo he’s talking about. Sounds like her kind of stunt. He realized he didn’t like the idea of the Russian making jokes about her, but at least Markov didn’t identify her by name. Probably he doesn’t even know her name.

  The men swapped stories for another hour or so, then the group around the table started to break up. As he got up from his chair, Stoner saw that Schmidt had already disappeared. He frowned, wondering how long ago the youngster had walked off.

  “Dr. Stoner,” Markov said to him.

  “You tell a good story,” Stoner said.

  Markov shrugged modestly and they started out toward the door.

  “I never got the chance to tell you how much I appreciated your kind letter to me.”

  “You wrote a good book.”

  “Thank you,” Markov said, his voice so low that Stoner could barely hear it over the hubbub of the club. “But you must understand that your letter revealed to our government that you were working on the radio pulses from Jupiter.”

  “I know. That’s why I wrote it. I figured, if you didn’t know about the pulses the letter wouldn’t mean anything to you. But if you did know about them, well…we should be working together on this, not in competition with each other.”

  They reached the door and stepped through, into the quiet of the night. “I was afraid that you would be arrested by your security police, once they found out about the letter.”

  “I was. Do you think I’d be here if they hadn’t forced me to come?”

  In dead earnest Markov replied, “Of course you would be here. You would steal a submarine and sneak in here under cover of darkness if there were no other way to get in. This is the only place for a man like you, and don’t try to hide that obvious fact, especially from yourself.”

  Stoner stopped in his tracks, under the streetlamp outside the club’s entrance, and stared at Markov. After a moment, he admitted, “You’re right. D
ammit, you’re right.”

  Markov broke into a boyish grin.

  “But how did a linguist get dragged into this? Don’t tell me my letter got you into trouble?”

  “No, not at all. If anything, it enhanced my stature among the guardians of the people’s safety.” He started walking slowly along the street, and Stoner followed alongside him. “No, I have been bitten by the same bug that has infected you.” Markov raised his eyes to the starry sky. “I want to know!”

  Nodding reluctantly, Stoner said, “Yeah. If there’s only one Project JOVE, then this is the place where we have to be.”

  “Of course. Knowledge is the important thing, the only thing that lasts. Discovery—ahh, that is the thrill. Better than women, I tell you.”

  “Better than some women,” Stoner corrected.

  Markov threw his head back and roared laughter. “Yes, yes! I agree! Better than some.”

  Glancing at the luminous digits of his wristwatch, Stoner asked, “Want to come over to the radar center? They’re going to try to make contact with the bird tonight.”

  “Make contact?”

  “Bounce a radar beam off it,” Stoner explained.

  “But it’s still farther away than Mars, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but the radar guys think they might be able to get a signal bounced off it. They’re itching to try.”

  “I will go with you,” Markov said, nodding eagerly. “I’ve never seen this done before.”

  “Neither has anybody else,” Stoner said. “And we might not see it done tonight. The damned thing is a helluva long way off.”

  The two men walked side by side down the empty street, through the warm, humid darkness, oblivious to the scent of flowers and salt spray on the air.

  Academician Bulacheff sat uneasily in the stiff-backed chair. Borodinski’s desk was raised on a little dais, so that visitors had to look up at him. It was an old trick, but Borodinski carried it off well. He had greeted the academician brusquely, waved him to the chair in front of the desk and then bent his balding, neatly bearded head to the paperwork on his desk.

  It’s true, Bulacheff said to himself. The General Secretary is dying and we’re going to have to put up with this young pup. I wonder if he’s deliberately trying to make himself look like Lenin?

  As if he could read minds, Borodinski looked up at precisely that moment.

  He smiled paternally. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Academician Bulacheff, but the press of urgent business has been almost overwhelming these days.”

  Bulacheff hesitated a moment, then asked, “The Comrade Secretary? He is well?”

  “Oh yes, quite well.” Borodinski’s smile waned. “But extremely…busy. You must excuse him.”

  “I had expected to see him personally. We have always discussed this matter between ourselves, face to face…”

  “For security reasons, I know. But our friend has asked me to meet with you today.”

  “I see.” Bulacheff wondered how far he could trust this younger man.

  “The reports coming from Kwajalein indicate that it may be desirable to send a team of cosmonauts to meet the alien spacecraft,” Borodinski said. “Are preparations being made toward this end?”

  He knows, Bulacheff realized. No sense trying to stall him off. “The appropriate departments of the Academy are keeping track of the spacecraft and preparing the necessary navigational plans for a rendezvous mission.”

  “Good.”

  “It is not within our jurisdiction, however, to force the Army to allocate the necessary rockets and cosmonauts.”

  “I understand.” Borodinski nodded. “These steps are being taken, I assure you. What we need from you, for now, is continuously updated tracking information for an interception flight.”

  “Interception?”

  “If the spacecraft is hostile, or about to fall into unfriendly hands…”

  “You would destroy it?”

  Borodinski flicked both hands upward. “Poof! With an H-bomb. Didn’t our friend tell you of that possibility?”

  “He mentioned it once, yes, but…”

  “Then you understand that we need the necessary tracking data. Only your long-range radio telescopes have the power to provide such data, I’m told. The Army’s anti-missile radars haven’t the required range.”

  “Of course.”

  Borodinski smiled pleasantly and fingered his trim little beard.

  “Comrade…” Bulacheff began, then hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “There…have been rumors…of arrests, interrogations. Is the General Secretary safe and well?”

  The younger man’s eyes narrowed and the slightly smug smile left his lips. “Comrade Academician, I assure you that the General Secretary is safe, and well, and most vitally interested in this alien visitor. As for rumors of…changes within the Kremlin—don’t let that bother you. It does not concern you, I promise.”

  Still, Bulacheff felt an old familiar weight pressing against his heart.

  Rising from behind his desk, Borodinski said, “All you have to worry about, my dear Academician, is the tracking data we require.”

  “For making rendezvous with the spacecraft.”

  “Or for intercepting it with a missile.” Borodinski pointed a forefinger toward the scientist. “We will either board that spacecraft or blow it out of the sky.”

  Cavendish was having the nightmare again. The tropical weather seemed to leach all the energy out of his frail body, and he had been going to bed earlier and earlier each night since he’d arrived on Kwajalein. But his sleep was far from restful.

  They were standing over him again with their needles and the lights. He was very small and he had been very wicked to resist them. They were giants and to resist them was not only foolish, but wicked. He could see the gold in their teeth when they smiled and he wanted to run, but his body was frozen and the needles were sinking into his flesh and he could feel the burning juices as they all bent closer over him…

  He sat up in bed, shivering with cold sweat. His head throbbed. The muscles of his neck were so taut he could barely turn his head.

  Alone in his single room in the Bachelor Officers Quarters, Cavendish pulled on his faded old robe, stuck his slippers on his bony feet and took a towel and a bar of soap from the rack by the room’s sink. He flap-flapped down the bare wooden hallway floor to the washroom.

  It was empty at this hour of the night. He got into a shower stall and stood under the taps for several minutes. The water was only lukewarm, more frustrating than relaxing.

  Back in his room, he stared at the rumpled, sweaty bed for long moments, then found himself pulling on an old shirt and a pair of slacks. He felt utterly weary; his eyes wanted to close. But mechanically he donned his only pair of sandals, buckled them across the instep and walked out of the BOQ like a sleepwalker, into the late night darkness.

  He went directly to the bungalow where the Markovs lived, went up the cement steps and opened the front door without knocking.

  Maria sat on the rattan sofa in the front room, an open suitcase beside her. Its innards were filled with knobs and dials. It hummed faintly, and a single red light glowered in it like an angry evil eye.

  Maria’s face was an anxious mixture of awe, disbelief and fear.

  “Dr. Cavendish?” she whispered, as if afraid of waking him.

  “Yes,” he said. Somewhere deep inside him Cavendish wondered who this woman was and what she wanted of him. Only one lamp was lit in the room, over by her, next to the open suitcase filled with electronic equipment.

  “Sit down,” Maria said.

  Cavendish took the easy chair and crossed his ankles. He folded his hands in his lap and stared ahead blankly.

  Maria licked her lips anxiously. She knew Kirill would be coming back soon; it had taken her hours to get the equipment to summon Cavendish—partly because she had been afraid to dial the power setting high enough, she realized now.

  “You will rem
ember nothing of this meeting tonight, will you?” she asked, her voice trembling slightly.

  “Not a thing,” he said calmly.

  “The reflexes are still there, even after all these years,” she marveled. “I was only a young girl when I first met you, Dr. Cavendish. You don’t remember me at all, do you? It was at a place called Berezovo.”

  “The…hospital…”

  “Yes, yes. You were a difficult patient. But you won’t be difficult now, will you? You won’t force me to…to do what they did…in the hospital.”

  “I won’t be difficult.”

  “You will be very co-operative, won’t you?”

  “Co-operative.”

  Maria sighed with relief. “Now then…about this American, Stoner.”

  “My orders were to find out how much he knew and then, if possible, to eliminate him.”

  “You did not follow those orders.”

  “I sent out the necessary information. Eliminating him proved impossible. We were constantly guarded.”

  “Is that the only reason?”

  Cavendish licked his lips. “I felt the orders were foolish. Why eliminate him when we can use what he knows, what he discovers?”

  “You did well, Dr. Cavendish.”

  His hands unclenched, his eyes brimmed with tears. “I want to do well. I really want to. Honestly I do.”

  Maria felt her stomach wrenching within her. She closed her eyes to blot out the sight of the weeping old man.

  It was well past midnight but neither Stoner nor Markov had left the electronics building. Outside, on a clear sweep of denuded, treeless land, two giant antennas pointed up into the windswept night.

  Stoner and Markov hunched over the back of the radar technician who sat at the main console. All three of their faces were reflected dimly in the faint green glow of the circular screen that dominated the console’s front panel. Other men and women had left their tasks and were crowding around them.

  “It’s a blip, all right,” the technician muttered. “Damned weak, though.”

  The screen sparkled and scintillated almost as if it were alive. Concentric circles of hairline-thin yellow made a sort of bull’s-eye against the screen’s sickly green background. High in the upper right quadrant of the outermost circle, a flickering orange dot glowed faintly.