Voyagers I

by Ben Bova

  “Language, psychology, call it whatever you want. But the fact is that we’ll be going out to meet something, or somebody, that has no point in common with any language or race or culture on Earth.”

  “You don’t think that thing has people on it, do you?” Tuttle’s eyes were widening.

  “I doubt it,” Stoner admitted. “If it’s come all the way from another star, another solar system, it would have to be gigantic to hold a crew. Even one man would need all sorts of supplies, fuels, life support equipment…”

  “How could they keep a crew alive for thousands of years?” Thompson asked.

  “Freeze ’em,” said Stoner. “Then thaw them out and revive them automatically when they come close to their destination.”

  “Their destination?” Tuttle asked in a hollow tiny voice. “You think they’re coming here deliberately?”

  Stoner shook his head. “No. I don’t see how they could have picked out our planet over interstellar distances, any more than we could find theirs.”

  “But they’re here. They found us.”

  “True enough.”

  “They could have aimed for a star like their own,” Thompson suggested. “A nice, stable, G-type yellow star.”

  “If they themselves came from a G-type star.”

  “Chances are that they did.”

  “Maybe. But look at how that spacecraft behaved when it entered our solar system,” Stoner pointed out. “First, it headed for the biggest planet in the system, the one with the strongest magnetic field wrapped around it.”

  “Hey, that’s right!”

  “And after swinging around it for a while, they took off for the inner planet with the strongest magnetic field.”

  “Earth,” whispered Tuttle.

  “So that’s what they’re looking for,” Thompson said. “They must come from a world that’s got a good-sized magnetosphere, and they figure that only worlds shielded by strong magnetic fields can support life on them.”

  “Could be,” said Stoner. “Sounds logical.”

  “But is it a manned ship or is it automated?” Tuttle demanded. “Does it have a crew aboard or not?”

  “My guess is that it’s not manned,” Stoner said. “Why send a crew on a one-way mission into the unknown? It’s obvious they’re just sniffing around, looking for signs of life.”

  “We’ve been broadcasting radio and television out into space for more than seventy-five years,” Thompson said. “They could have picked up our broadcasts from dozens of light-years away.”

  Stoner chuckled. “Somehow I don’t see an interstellar mission being sent out on the strength of ‘I Love Lucy.’”

  “You never know.” Thompson grinned back. “Maybe there’s an interstellar FCC that wants us to stop polluting the ether.”

  “Now, that makes sense,” Stoner agreed.

  “But if they do have a crew aboard,” Thompson mused, growing more serious, “think of the technology they must have to keep people alive and functioning over interstellar times and distances.”

  “It can’t be!” Tuttle blurted. “It’s got to be unmanned. It’s got to be!”

  “Is it very painful?” Cavendish asked.

  Hans Schmidt’s eyes looked heavy, sleepy, rather than pained. He turned his head slightly on the pillow and gazed out the hospital window.

  “Can you hear me? Am I bothering you? I’ll go away if you like,” said Cavendish.

  “No, it’s all right,” Schmidt said. “I…it’s just that I don’t know what to say.”

  Schmidt could not understand the suffering that had turned Cavendish’s face into a bone-tight mask of tension. To the young astronomer, the Englishman was merely an old man with red, sleepless eyes and a nervous tic in his cheek.

  “You’ve had a bad time of it,” Cavendish said, his voice strained, harsh.

  “It’s my own fault,” said Schmidt.

  “Hardly,” Cavendish made himself say. “Someone sold you the drugs. An American, I’ll wager.”

  “Several Americans.”

  “You see?”

  Schmidt’s eyes closed. Drowsily, he said, “You’re the only one who’s come to visit me, other than Dr. Reynaud. He’s just down the hall. I broke his arm, you know.”

  “It’s a minor fracture, actually,” Cavendish said, “and Reynaud’s told everyone that he did it himself, falling over your bed.”

  Schmidt shook his head slowly. “I demolished the room. They told me about it. I have no memory of it.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Cavendish insisted. “You mustn’t blame yourself.”

  “Who then?”

  Cavendish started to reply, but the words wouldn’t come out. He got up from the little wooden chair on which he was perched, walked stiffly, painfully, to the window and looked out. Perspiration beaded his brow.

  They’re making you do this, a part of his mind shouted silently at him. They’re forcing you to do it. But you can fight against them. You don’t have to obey.

  His breath caught. He gasped with pain.

  “I can’t,” he muttered.

  “What did you say?” Schmidt asked from his bed.

  Turning back to face the astronomer, Cavendish could feel his legs shaking beneath him, his stomach wrenching with the pain.

  “It…it’s not your fault,” he repeated, and the pain eased a little. “The Americans…they forced you to come here, pulled you away from your home, your studies…”

  “My girl, too.”

  “Yes. You see?” It was easier if he just kept talking; the pain faded while he spoke to Schmidt. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened. It’s the bloody Yanks who’ve called the tune all along.”

  Schmidt agreed with a nod, “I could have been home and happy. I never touched anything stronger than pot in my whole life until I came here.”

  Woodenly, like a marionette jerked along by invisible strings, Cavendish stepped back to the chair beside Schmidt’s bed. Instead of sitting in it, he leaned both bony hands on the chair’s back.

  A wave of pain washed over him and his knees nearly gave way.

  “Stoner!” he blurted.

  “What?”

  Looking toward the young astronomer through pain-reddened eyes, Cavendish said, “It’s Stoner who’s at the bottom of all this.”

  “Stoner? The American?”

  “Yes…” Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Cavendish went on, “We’d all be home now if it weren’t for him. McDermott wanted to finish the project and send us all home, but Stoner insisted on pressing on.”

  “He wants to get all the credit, doesn’t he?” Schmidt said, the old sullen pout returning to his lips.

  “Yes.” It was more of a whimper than a word.

  Schmidt finally noticed the old man’s pain. “What’s wrong? Are you ill?”

  “Headaches,” Cavendish grated out. “I…get headaches.”

  “Shall I call a doctor?”

  “No. No, I’ll be all right.” Cavendish fished in the pockets of his trousers and pulled out a small plastic bottle. “They gave me pain-killers. Quite good, actually.”

  Schmidt had propped himself up in the bed on one elbow. “They won’t let me have anything for the pain,” he said. “Nothing stronger than aspirin.”

  Holding the bottle in front of the youngster, Cavendish repeated, “These are quite good. Non-narcotic. Non-habit-forming.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” the old man lied.

  “It gets worse at night,” Schmidt said. “The pain.”

  Straightening up, Cavendish said, “Perhaps it would be all right if I let you have a few of these…”

  Schmidt nodded as Cavendish unscrewed the cap and shook out four pills into his trembling palm.

  “You’re sure you can spare them?” Schmidt asked.

  “I…can get more…”

  Schmidt accepted the ovate yellow capsules, held them in his hand and looked down at them.

  Cavendish’s whole body w
as on fire. “Try one,” he croaked. “It…will keep the pain…away.”

  Schmidt hesitated only a moment, then took the cup of water next to his bed in one hand and popped a capsule into his mouth with the other. He drank and swallowed.

  Within a few moments he was leaning back on the bed, glassy-eyed.

  Cavendish, twitching as if electric currents were being applied to his nerve centers, came over to the bed and whispered into Schmidt’s ear:

  “It’s all Stoner’s fault. If you can get up from this bed and find Stoner, you can go home again and be happy. Stoner wants to hurt you. Stoner wants to kill you. You’ve got to stop him before he kills you.”

  Cavendish’s eyes widened at the words pouring from his lips. It was as if someone else were speaking, using Cavendish’s mouth as a transmitter, a machine totally disconnected from his own control.

  Terrified at what was happening, he jerked away from the bed. A glance out the window told him that it was still late afternoon outside. Cavendish shambled out of Schmidt’s room, heading away from the hospital as fast as he could. He never noticed that out in the peaceful lagoon an outrigger canoe with two people in it abruptly capsized.

  * * *

  CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

  Billed as the “UFO Event of the Year”…UFO ’79 offered the same old cliches to an audience long familiar with the pros and cons of ufology….

  Walter H. Andrus, international director of the Mutual UFO Network…told [us] that four types of aliens are looking in on us: dwarflike humanoids, human-appearing beings comparable in size to ourselves, animallike creatures, and robots….

  Alan Holt, astrophysicist training supervisor at NASA…described the interaction between magnetic and electrical fields and the theory of space-time curvature as it relates to gravitational propulsion….

  To sum up UFO ’79: All the papers presented seemed to cry out for the scientific community to accept UFOs. Yet despite the efforts of people like Holt, rational scientific inquiry had clearly taken a backseat to promotion by those UFO groupies who sell the notions of visitations by alien beings.

  HARRY LEBELSON

  Omni magazine

  April 1980

  * * *

  CHAPTER 32

  They were already soaked from the first time the outrigger had overturned. Markov paddled furiously, battering the water with uneven, choppy strokes, while Jo sat up in the bow and tried not to laugh.

  “Watch out now,” she warned, “we’re getting into another channel between islands…”

  Before she could finish the sentence the current caught the canoe and it started to tilt over. Markov watched helplessly as the outrigger pontoon swung up over his head and the two of them were dumped again into the bath-warm water.

  He stood waist-deep in the water and felt his pockets. If anything’s lost, it’s lost forever, he knew. Then he remembered his wristwatch. It was dripping water and the crystal was fogged over, but the sweep-second hand still seemed to be moving.

  “Come on, help me right it,” Jo called.

  With a heavy sigh, Markov grabbed the pontoon struts and pushed the canoe right side up again. It was full of water. Laughing, Jo motioned for him to tilt the canoe enough to let most of the water out.

  “I thought,” Markov said, grunting with the effort, “that these boats could not turn over. Isn’t that what the outrigger is for?”

  Jo just laughed. He helped to push her back into the canoe, making certain to get a good handful of her backside in the process. Firm yet tender, he appraised.

  Still grinning at him, Jo stuck out a hand. “Come on, climb back in.”

  Markov surveyed the distance to the empty beach nearest them. “No thank you, I’ll walk. It’s safer.”

  “Walk?”

  “Wade. In fact, I will propel you to a safe harbor.”

  “I thought you were afraid of sharks.”

  He looked down into the perfectly clear water. “If I see a shark coming, I’m sure I can outrun him to the beach.”

  He got behind the canoe and started pushing it through the water like an oversized child’s toy.

  Jo clutched the gunwales and beamed at him. “My hero! Just like Humphrey Bogart in ‘The African Queen.’”

  “Who?” Markov asked, sloshing through the thigh-deep water.

  She gaped at him. “You never heard of Humphrey Bogart?”

  “Wasn’t he Vice-president of the United States?”

  As he nudged the outrigger up onto the beach, the sky darkened and unloaded another shower. Jo hopped out of the boat and helped him push it safely up on the sand. Then they ran for the cover of the trees up the beach and collapsed on the sand, wet, laughing, breathless.

  “I don’t believe that I was meant for the outdoor life,” Markov observed.

  “Whatever makes you say that?” Jo countered.

  “I am a civilized man. That means I belong in a city, not out in this wilderness.”

  “Moscow?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Moscow would look very good to me right now. Providing you were there to share it with me, of course, dear one.”

  “What’s it like?” Jo asked. “I’ve never been there.”

  “It is a city,” Markov answered, shrugging. “Not as beautiful as Paris, nor as large as London. Not as crowded as Tokyo. The sun shines there for two whole minutes each year. Everyone rushes outdoors to witness the phenomenon. Then it gets cloudy again and it snows for the rest of the year.”

  She laughed. “You love it, don’t you?”

  Watching the rain gusting across the lagoon, Markov answered, “I suppose I do. I was born there. I imagine I will die there. My father died fifty kilometers to the west of Moscow, helping to hold off the Nazi invaders in nineteen forty-one. His father died in the civil war that followed the Revolution.”

  Jo bent over slightly and touched his cheek with her outstretched hand. “But you’ll live a long and peaceful life, won’t you?”

  He actually blushed. “I have every intention of doing so,” he said, trying to recover his composure.

  They waited as the shower drifted across the island and headed off to the west. The sun came out from behind the scudding clouds, hot and bright. In minutes the beach was dry again.

  Markov squinted at the sky. “Our clothes would dry faster if we spread them on the sand.”

  Nodding, Jo teased, “Then we could go skinnydipping again.”

  “I think I’ve been in the water enough for one afternoon,” Markov said.

  Jo thought it over for a few moments. “Maybe we’d just better let the sun dry us off, without stripping.”

  With a nod, Markov answered, “The better part of valor.”

  Jo smiled at him, then said, “I just hope we can get back to Kwaj before it gets dark.”

  It was midnight in Washington.

  Despite the tension he felt, Willie Wilson smiled easily and leaned back on the couch. The hotel suite was well furnished; the management had given him its very best, top floor and top prices.

  “You’re not from the insurance company?” Willie asked, spreading his arms across the back of the couch.

  The young man sitting on the chair facing him smiled. “No, sir, I’m not. I’m with the Department of Justice.”

  “Justice?” Willie glanced at his brother, who stood uneasily by the empty, unused bar, an almost scared look on his ruddy face.

  “Yes, sir,” said the young man. He was neatly dressed in a conservative gray suit and quiet maroon tie. He looks like a lawyer, Willie thought.

  “What do you want with me?” Willie asked him.

  “We want to prevent a tragedy from happening,” the young man said.

  “We?”

  “The Department. The Attorney General. The White House.”

  Willie gave a low whistle. “Heavy stuff.”

  The young man nodded.

  “What tragedy are you worrying about?” Willie asked.

  “The panic you’ve been spreading.”
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  “Panic? I don’t deal in panic. I’m just a simple minister spreading the Word of the Lord.”

  “Sir, you are frightening people. What happened at RFK Stadium could have been a colossal tragedy. It was only avoided by the narrowest of margins.”

  “By his quick thinking!” Bobby snapped, jabbing a finger toward his brother.

  “It was the Lord’s doing, not mine,” Willie said softly, still smiling.

  “Reverend Wilson, you are frightening people. It was bad enough when you were just telling them to watch the skies. But now—with these lights in the sky every night…”

  “That’s the message we’ve been waiting for,” Willie said.

  “People are scared! They think the end of the world is coming.”

  “I never said that.”

  “But that’s what people believe you’re saying,” the young man said earnestly. “All over the country.”

  “I’m just a simple minister of the Lord…”

  “You’ve become a powerful national figure, Reverend Wilson. And you’ve got to show some responsibility for that power.”

  “What do you mean, responsibility?” Bobby asked.

  “You’ve got to cool it.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve got to stop scaring people. You’ve got to tell them that the lights in the sky have nothing to do with God or the end of the world.”

  “I can’t do that,” Willie said flatly.

  “You’ll have to.”

  “Or else what?” Bobby asked.

  The young man turned slightly in his chair to face Bobby. “Or else the federal government will get very tough with you.”

  Willie’s smile never faded. He said, “I’ve met with the President, you know.”

  “Yes, sir, I know. He sent me here, Reverend. He asked me to remind you of the tremendous responsibility you hold in your hands.”

  “The President did?”

  “That’s right, sir. He could have sent someone from IRS. Or from FCC.”

  Willie’s smile became a shade tighter, just a little forced.

  “In other words,” Bobby grumbled, “we play ball or the government shuts us off from television and goes through our books with a hundred auditors.”