Voyagers I

by Ben Bova

  “What is the cloud?” Zworkin asked.

  Stoner said, “So far, spectral analysis has given us nothing more than a reflected solar spectrum. Whatever that cloud is composed of, it’s reflecting sunlight almost like a perfect mirror.”

  “A fuzzy, pulsating mirror,” Cavendish mused.

  Stoner made his way back to his seat, tapped his projector control button again. The screen went blank and the overhead fluorescent panels went on again.

  “It is an enigma,” Zworkin said.

  “It’s a comet,” insisted McDermott.

  “Too small…”

  “A cometary fragment,” said Big Mac. “We’re sitting here thinking we’re looking at an alien spacecraft and all the time it’s just a chunk off a comet.”

  Markov shook his head. “I cannot believe that.”

  “Look at it!” McDermott thundered. “It’s a ball of gas surrounding a chunk of metallic rock.”

  “It doesn’t behave like a comet,” Stoner said. “There’s no coma, no tail. It’s much too small. It doesn’t have the spectrum of a comet.”

  “It’s an anomalous chunk that was spit off by a bigger comet,” said McDermott. “Remember Kohoutek, back in seventy-three? Supposed to be the ‘the comet of the century,’ and it never developed into much of anything. This thing is just a chunk of rock with some gas around it. We’re on the trail of a red herring.”

  Zworkin glanced puzzledly at Markov, who explained in Russian what a red herring was.

  “I do not agree,” Zworkin said at last. “But even if you are correct, Professor McDermott, we must study this object very carefully. Even if it is a natural body, it can still tell us much about the nature of the solar system.”

  “Hard to justify spending this kind of talent and money on a little cometary fragment,” McDermott replied.

  “It’s not a comet!” Stoner snapped. “No comet ever outgassed a cloud that reflects sunlight like a polished mirror. No comet ever changed course after flying past Jupiter—not that abruptly.”

  McDermott shrugged. “The course change was probably the result of some outgassing—the thing burped a little gas, which caused a jet action and set it on a course toward us. We all jumped at the conclusion that it was purposefully aiming at us.”

  “Ockham’s razor,” Thompson muttered to himself.

  “It’s not actually coming that close to Earth,” McDermott went on. “It’ll pass us about four times farther out than the Moon’s orbit, won’t it, Stoner? Am I right?”

  “If it doesn’t change course again.”

  “What, and land on the White House lawn? Want to make any bets on that?”

  “What about the radio pulses from Jupiter? What caused them?”

  “Coincidence,” McDermott said easily. “The Jovian radio signals were a natural phenomenon, and when you looked in that direction with Big Eye you discovered this bitty hunk of a comet and got all flustered about extraterrestrial spacecraft.”

  Stoner slumped back in his seat and glared at the old man.

  McDermott looked around the table, daring anyone to challenge his conclusions.

  “All right, then,” he said. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. It seems to me that it’s too early to report to Washington that this object is natural in origin. We just might be wrong about that, and Project JOVE would be stopped in its tracks.”

  Markov tapped his fingertips on the tabletop. “If there is even the slightest chance that this object is indeed a visitor from another civilization, we would be criminally negligent to abandon this project. Even if the chance is microscopically small, why disband, when in another few weeks, another few months at most, we will definitely know, one way or the other? Why not continue to study the object with every means at our disposal, on the chance that it is an intelligent visitor, and that it will respond to our signals? If we abandon this work now, the thing may pass us by and we will lose our one chance to make contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization. That would be criminal!”

  McDermott picked up his pipe, toyed with it. “I’m willing to give it another few weeks. If it’s intelligent, if it’s alive, it’ll respond to our signals in some way. But if it isn’t, there’s no sense indulging in wishful thinking.” He focused his gaze directly on Stoner. “Or planning.”

  So that’s what he’s after, Stoner realized, his mouth compressing into a hard thin line, his insides turning to ice. The old bastard wants to shoot down the rendezous mission.

  Looking around the table at the others’ faces, alternately glum or reluctantly nodding agreement, Stoner saw that McDermott had accomplished his goal. They’ll let him get away with it. Rather than have him recommend shutting down the whole project, they’ll go along with dropping the space flight mission.

  Too angry to trust himself to answer Big Mac, Stoner sat in smoldering silence as the meeting adjourned.

  Cavendish walked past him, patted him on the shoulder and murmured, “Too bad, old man.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” Stoner demanded, getting to his feet.

  Cavendish shook his head. “Your McDermott is determined to stop the rendezvous mission.”

  “It would have helped if you’d spoken up.”

  “Quite…” Cavendish seemed confused for a moment, disoriented. “I…really, I haven’t been feeling too well lately. I’m sorry…”

  Stoner saw that his face was gaunt, eyes hollow.

  “Are you sick?” he asked.

  Cavendish half smiled. “I really don’t know.”

  “You ought to see a doctor.”

  “Yes,” he said vaguely. “Quite.” And he left Stoner standing there as he wandered out of the conference room.

  Markov was by the doorway, a frown on his long face. “Professor McDermott is wrong,” he said as Stoner came up to him. “We must be prepared to send a cosmonaut to inspect this spacecraft. It is not a natural object. I feel this in my bones.”

  “Feelings don’t count in this business,” Stoner said. “Evidence does.”

  “But why is McDermott so stubborn about this?”

  “Because he knows if there’s a manned space mission, I’ll be the logical choice as the man to go. And he hates my guts.”

  “That is no reason.”

  “It is for him,” Stoner said.

  “We must not let him get away with that. We must be daring. Revolutionary!”

  Stoner leaned against the doorjamb, feeling suddenly tired, worn down. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Markov said, “We must bypass McDermott and start our own space program.”

  With a laugh, Stoner asked, “And how do we do that?”

  “I’m not sure,” Markov answered honestly. “But we can begin with the two of us, and recruit others. We will create a revolutionary underground movement.”

  He was serious, behind his bantering tone, Stoner could see. “We’ll need somebody from computing to keep us up to date on the spacecraft’s track,” he said.

  Markov smiled. “I have just the person. An American, Jo Camerata.”

  “Jo?” Stoner looked sharply at the Russian. “No, she wouldn’t work with me.”

  “Ah, but she would with me,” Markov said.

  A sudden rush of anger surged through Stoner. Surprised at his own reaction, he fought it down.

  Finally he managed to say, “Okay. You work with her.”

  Markov studied the American’s face intently. “So you are the one.”

  “One what?” Stoner asked tightly.

  “You care for her.”

  “No.” He shook his head.

  “Then why do you look as if someone has just stabbed a knife into your liver?”

  “Look, Markov…”

  “Kirill.”

  “Okay, Kirill—Jo and I had something going months ago. But it’s all over now. Dead.”

  “And yet you have the power to hurt each other deeply.”

  “Each other? She’s feeling hurt?”

&
nbsp; Markov nodded gravely.

  “Because of me?”

  “Apparently so.”

  Stoner tried to assess this new piece of data, but it didn’t seem to fit inside his head. “I don’t understand it,” he muttered.

  “Neither do I,” said Markov, with a heavy sigh. “I am madly in love with her, you know, but I can see that it will do me no good. I think perhaps you are madly in love with her too, but you haven’t admitted it to yourself.”

  Stoner said nothing. His brain seemed to be short-circuited: no output.

  “Well”—Markov made a rueful smile—“I will ask her to join our revolutionary underground. At least it gives me a legitimate reason to speak with her.”

  He left Stoner standing in the doorway, puzzled, doubtful, wondering.

  * * *

  The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is an idea whose time has come. A decade or so ago only a handful of scientists were active in this area; actual searches were almost nonexistent and few people had heard of SETI. But today hundreds of scientists are actively involved, a dozen radio observatories around the world are carrying out actual searches, and much serious thinking is being devoted to SETI….

  The earth is mankind’s cradle and although we are a very young, emerging civilization and still in our cradle, we are now adolescent enough to look beyond that cradle and acquire a cosmic perspective. Only by achieving a true view of ourselves as we relate to the planets and stars of our galaxy and the universe beyond can we attain maturity. SETI is a first step toward the growing up of mankind….

  ROBERT S. DIXON AND JOHN KRAUS

  Editors, Cosmic Search

  Vol. 1, No. 1

  January 1979

  * * *

  CHAPTER 26

  Jo was going down the stairs from her office to the main floor of the computer building when she saw Dr. Cavendish standing listlessly at the bottom of the stairwell.

  With a shock, she realized that he looked older than he had when they had first arrived at the island, only a few weeks earlier. His body was gaunt, the clothes hung on his frame limply. His face was deeply etched with sleeplessness, his eyes were dark and sunken.

  “Dr. Cavendish, are you all right?” she asked him.

  He blinked and peered at her. “Ah, yes…Miss…” His voice trailed off.

  “Camerata. Jo Camerata. I’m with the computing section here.”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Cavendish said. “How stupid of me not to recognize you.”

  “Is there something I can do for you?”

  He shook his head slightly. “I’ve just come out from the weekly meeting with Professor McDermott, and I was gathering my strength before going out into the hot sun again.”

  “It is more comfortable in here,” Jo agreed.

  “It’s not true about mad dogs and Englishmen, you know. I hate the heat. I think it’s affecting my health, actually.”

  “Isn’t your office air-conditioned?”

  “Oh yes. They’ve wedged me into a splendid little nook over in the electronics building. Brand-new air conditioner sitting in the window, puts frost on my tea when I turn it all the way up. But it’s the getting there that’s bothersome. I’ll have to walk half a mile in that sun…”

  Thinking swiftly, Jo said, “Why don’t you work in my office for the next hour or so, until the sun goes down a bit and the afternoon breeze cools things off outside?”

  “In your office? Oh, I couldn’t. All my papers and things…”

  Jo took him by the arm and started walking slowly up the steps with him. “The data you’re working on is in the central computer, isn’t it? You can use my terminal and work just as easily here as at your own desk.”

  “I never thought of that.”

  She smiled at him. “You’re accustomed to working with paper. My generation is accustomed to working with electronics. Anything you need can be called up on the computer terminal’s readout screen.”

  “Yes, but I’ll be dispossessing you of your own office.”

  “I can work anywhere,” Jo said as they climbed the stairs. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll be a lot more comfortable here.”

  “It’s awfully good of you,” Cavendish said.

  They reached her office. Jo sat the old man down at her desk and showed him how to summon up his own work on the computer terminal.

  “Marvelous,” Cavendish said, smiling.

  “I even have a teakettle here, if you don’t mind drinking American tea.”

  His smile lost a notch. “From tea bags?”

  Jo nodded. “If you need anything, I’ll be down on the main computer floor, in the Pit.”

  “The Pit?”

  “That’s what the programmers call the central well of the building: the Pit.”

  Cavendish’s shaggy brows rose. “Is there a Pendulum also?”

  “A pendulum? Like on a clock?”

  “Edgar Allan Poe’s story, ‘The Pit and the Pendulum.’”

  With a shake of her head, Jo admitted, “I don’t think…oh, wait, wasn’t there a Vincent Price movie by that name?”

  American education, Cavendish thought sadly.

  After a few more words, Jo left him and headed back downstairs, feeling like a good daughter. Cavendish played delightedly with the computer for a few minutes, but then the headache came back with blinding force and he nearly collapsed on the desk.

  It was nearly midnight in Washington. The offices in the West Wing of the White House were still lit. The national monuments were aglow, even though the downtown streets were empty. Don’t go out at night, tourists were told, and they stayed in their hotels until the sunrise drove the pimps and muggers off the streets.

  NASA’s sleek, modern headquarters building was almost entirely dark. Only a few office lights still burned. One of them was the office of the Deputy Director for Manned Space Flight, Dr. Kenneth Burghar.

  Jerry White pushed that door open without knocking and grinned down at his boss, who was sitting at his desk, awash in paperwork.

  “Christ, I thought I was the only kook in this outfit who burned the midnight oil,” White said cheerfully.

  “Budget cuts,” Burghar muttered. “OMB wants to slice another twenty million from the budget.”

  White’s grin turned sour. “Here, take my left arm. I need the right one to sign my unemployment checks.”

  “It isn’t funny, Jer.”

  “I wish to Christ it was,” White said fervently.

  Burghar pushed his chair away from the desk slightly, leaned back and rubbed his eyes. His tie was gone, his shirt sleeves rolled up. The remains of a slice of pizza decorated one corner of the desk, next to a half-empty paper cup of black coffee.

  “What are you doing here at this hour?” he asked White.

  “Same as you,” White replied, plopping down on the plastic couch along the side wall of the office, “trying to do the work of the guys who’ve already been laid off.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it. If they don’t give a shit over at Budget and on the Hill, why the hell do we knock ourselves out?”

  “Because we’re dedicated, committed men.”

  “We ought to be committed—to a funny farm.”

  White shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “You didn’t come in here to discuss fiscal policy, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t.” White pulled a one-page memorandum from his jacket pocket and handed it over to his boss.

  “What’s this?”

  “From the Office of Science and Technology Policy: Sally Ellington and those West Wing geniuses must be puffing pot again.”

  Burghar scanned the memorandum. “A manned mission that goes four times farther than the Moon’s orbit? What the hell is this all about?”

  “Search me. The White House wants a quickie study on the problem and a report, right away.”

  Burghar huffed. “Thank god they don’t want hardware. It’d take ten years.”

  “Ken, I don�
�t even have the people to do a paper study! Where’m I going to find the manpower to…?”

  “Person power,” Burghar corrected wearily. “Affirmative action, remember? And when the memorandum comes from the White House, you find the persons.”

  “But what’s it for? All they say is a manned rendezvous mission with an unspecified target.”

  Burghar shrugged. “They’re being secretive. Probably it’s for some military operation.”

  “It’s just another goddamned idiot study that’ll go into their files and gather dust. Why the hell should we do it?”

  “What can I say?”

  White leaned closer to his boss. “Ken…there’s one thing. I’ve been hearing rumbles about some kind of alien spacecraft that’s been spotted in deep space. Could this be it?”

  Burghar ran a hand through his scant hair. “Go ask OSTP. They won’t tell me anything, but maybe they’ll like you because your tennis game is better.”

  “Sure. And Sally Ellington’s hot for my body.” White didn’t grin. “Seriously, Ken, what kind of a half-ass study can I get done without the manpower? And what’s the point of it? We don’t have the hardware to send a manned mission four times farther than the Moon!”

  “We sure as hell don’t. So do the usual kind of half-ass study and give them the report they want, when they want it. Don’t get flustered about it.”

  “It’s not an alien spacecraft, huh?”

  “Oh, crap,” Burghar moaned. “Next thing you’ll be seeing flying saucers out the window.”

  “Okay, okay…I’ll put Sally baby’s request into the old paper mill, with all deliberate speed.”

  “Good. Do that. And learn to say personnel, not manpower. Save me a lecture, will ya?”

  Cavendish picked listlessly at his dinner, finally gave it up. The headaches came in waves, unpredictably, and nothing seemed to help them. He had staggered from Jo’s office to the medical center and spent nearly two hours being tested and examined by a young Navy medic.

  “Migraines are often caused by emotional stress,” the earnest young man had said with the look of a funeral director on his tanned face. “Perhaps you’re working too hard.”