by Ben Bova
Cardinal Benedetto, the Vatican Secretary of State, has been holding the line against the more conservative members of the Curia ever since the news of the approaching alien burst upon the stunned world, in April. The papal Secretary spearheaded his Pope’s position that the alien spacecraft presents “no spiritual threat” to the souls of Roman Catholics. (See “The Pope Speaks Out,” page 22.)
Rumors have reached Rome that millions of Catholics around the world are panicked at the thought of an “anti-Christ” arriving from outer space. Reports have been heard of nightly rituals ranging from Catholic Masses to grisly pagan rites. From the Third World, tales of human sacrifices have been reported, and even in American cities church attendance has skyrocketed since the alien’s presence was announced….
Newstime magazine
* * *
CHAPTER 39
Stoner sat hunched over the gray sheet of paper, ballpoint pen hesitating in midair. So far he had written:
Mr. Douglas Stoner
28 Rainbow Way
Palo Alto, CA 94302
Dear Son:
How are you? If you’ve been following the news at all, I guess you know by now that I’m in Russia, about to take off on a space mission to meet the alien spacecraft—if that’s possible. The Russians have made us very comfortable here. They put us up in a kind of barracks—sort of like a dormitory. We each have a small room to ourselves. Not that I spend much time in it.
For the past few weeks I’ve been working very hard with the Russian cosmonauts and launch team. You should have seen them trying to fit me into one of their pressure suits! I’m taller and slimmer than most of the cosmonauts and they had to do some fast custom tailoring to fit me. And their medical people have been all over me; you might think I was the alien the way they’ve been checking me out!
Everyone here has been very good to us although we are restricted to this barracks building and the few other buildings where we do our work. The Russians don’t like us roaming around. I suppose we would be equally careful with foreign visitors at Kennedy SFC in Florida.
There are eleven other foreign scientists here, in addition to
He put the pen down. What difference does that make? he asked himself. Doug wouldn’t be interested in it.
Stoner pushed his chair back and stretched his arms over his head.
What the hell is Doug interested in? he wondered. He realized that he didn’t know his own son; the boy was a stranger to him. And his younger daughter he knew even less.
With a snort of self-disgust he slammed the pen down on the wooden desk, got up and headed for the door. He walked slowly down the narrow hallway. All the other doors were closed. It was not late; dinner had ended less than an hour earlier.
But tomorrow’s the big day, Stoner told himself. The final countdown. The launch.
Everything seemed unnaturally quiet. His previous launches, in America, had been livelier, busier. There were constant meetings, press conferences, get-togethers even late at night, news photographers poking their cameras at you.
Not here, he realized. No reporters. No photographers.
He went downstairs to the common room, where they ate their meals. One of the Chinese physicists was sitting in the leather chair in the corner, under the wall lamp, reading a book in Russian. Stoner nodded to him and the Chinese smiled back politely. His interpreter was gone and they could not converse.
Stoner looked over the round table in the middle of the room, scanned the mostly empty bookshelves, prowled restlessly toward the door of the kitchen and pushed it open.
Markov was bending over in front of the open refrigerator, peering into it.
“You had two helpings of dessert,” Stoner said.
Markov straightened up. “So? Spying on me? Well, I can’t help it. When I’m nervous, I eat. I must keep up my blood sugar, you know.”
“It was damned good baklava,” Stoner admitted. “At least the cooking here is first-rate.”
“Do you want some? That is, if there’s any left?”
“No.” Stoner shook his head. “When I’m nervous I can’t eat.”
Markov looked at him. “You, nervous? You look so calm, so relaxed.”
“I’ve got the jumps inside.”
With a disappointed sigh Markov closed the refrigerator. “It’s all gone,” he said. “Strange, I could have sworn there was some left.”
“Like Captain Queeg’s strawberries,” Stoner said.
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
They drifted back into the common room. The Chinese physicist had left, but one of the Russians had taken the leather chair and turned on the radio on the bookshelf. Classical piano music filled the room.
“Is that Tchaikovsky?” Stoner asked.
Markov gave him a stern professorial glance. “That,” he said firmly, “is Beethoven. The ‘Pathétique Sonata.’”
Stoner refused to be cowed. “Tchaikovsky wrote a Pathétique too, didn’t he?”
“A symphony. It requires at least a hundred musicians and almost an hour’s time. Really, Keith, for a civilized man…”
“I just thought a Russian station would play only Russian composers.”
Markov began to reply, then realized that his leg was being pulled. He laughed.
“Come on,” Stoner said. “Let’s see if we can find some coffee.”
“Aren’t you supposed to refrain from stimulants tonight?” Markov asked. “I thought the medical…”
Stoner raised a finger to silence him. “That muscular fellow sitting in the corner is one of your medical team,” he said in a pleasant lighthearted tone. The Russian paid no attention to them. “He’s going to stick a needle in me the size of the Alaska Pipeline, right at eleven o’clock. But until then, I’ll eat and drink what I want.”
“I have vodka in my room,” Markov said.
“That’s going too far. Coffee won’t blur me tomorrow. Vodka could.”
They went back into the kitchen and Stoner started a pot of coffee brewing. The strains of Beethoven filtered through the kitchen door.
“I have been thinking,” Markov said as he sat at the kitchen table, chin in hand, “about a British philosopher—Haldane.”
“J. B. S. Haldane? He was a biologist, wasn’t he?”
“A geneticist, I believe. And a Marxist. He was a member of the British Communist Party in the nineteen-thirties.”
“So?”
“He once said, ‘The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than we can imagine.’ ”
Stoner frowned, turned to the coffeepot perking on the stove, then looked back at Markov.
“Don’t you see what it means?” the Russian asked. “You’re going to risk your life tomorrow and fly off to this alien spacecraft. But suppose, when you reach it…”
“If we reach it,” Stoner heard himself mutter. It surprised him.
“If and when you reach it,” Markov granted, “suppose it’s something beyond human comprehension? Suppose you can’t make head or tail of it?”
Stoner took a potholder and pulled the coffeepot off the stove. He stepped over the table and poured coffee into the two strangely delicate china cups that seemed to be the only kind the kitchen stocked. Beethoven’s Pathétique flowed into its second movement.
“Do you hear that?” Stoner asked, gesturing with the steaming coffeepot.
“The music? Yes, of course.”
“A human being created that. A human mind. Other human minds have played it, recorded it, broadcast it over the air so that we can hear it. We’re listening to the thoughts of a German musician who’s been dead for more than a century and a half.”
“What has that to do with the alien?” Markov asked.
“An alien mind built that spacecraft…”
“A mind we may not be able to comprehend,” said the Russian.
“But that spacecraft follows the same laws of physics that we do comprehend. It moves through space just like
any spacecraft that we ourselves have built.”
“And sets off the Northern Lights all around the planet.”
“Using electromagnetic techniques that we don’t understand—yet. But we’ll learn. We have the ability to understand.”
“I wonder if we do.”
Stoner put the coffeepot down on the table.
“Don’t you see, Kirill? We do. We do! Why do you think I want to go out there? So I can be overawed by something I can’t fathom? So I can worship the goddamned aliens? Hell no! I want to see, to learn, to understand.”
“And if you can’t? If it’s beyond comprehension?”
Stoner shook his head stubbornly. “There is nothing in the universe that we can’t understand—given time enough to study it.”
“That is your belief.”
“That is my religion. The same religion as Einstein: ‘The eternal mystery of the universe is its comprehensibility.’ ”
Markov grinned at him. “Americans are optimists by nature.”
“Not by nature,” Stoner corrected. “By virtue of historical fact. The optimists always win in the long run.”
“Well, my optimistic friend, I hope you are right. I hope that this alien is friendly and helpful. I wouldn’t want to have to bow down to someone who isn’t even human.”
They walked back into the common room, coffee cups in hand. The Russian medical technician sitting in the corner looked up at them, pointed to his wristwatch and said something to Markov.
“He wants to remind you that you get your shot at eleven.”
Stoner made a smile for the technician. “Tell him I appreciate his sadistic concern and I’d like to take his needle and stick it up his fat ass.”
The technician smiled and nodded as Markov spoke to him in Russian.
Beethoven ended and the little oblong radio on the bookshelf started playing chamber music: gentle, civilized strings, abstract, mathematical.
“Bach, isn’t it?” Stoner asked, taking one of the leather chairs that flanked the room’s only couch.
Markov sighed. “Vivaldi.”
The outside door banged open and Jo stamped into the room, making annoyed brushing motions across her arms.
“Mosquitoes,” she said. “Big as jet fighters.”
“One of the joys of the countryside,” Markov said.
Jo wore jeans and a light sweater. She ran a hand through her hair as she complained, “They have those damned floodlights all around the building. You can’t see the sky at all, and they won’t let you walk past the lighted area.”
“But look on the positive side,” Markov suggested. “The floodlights attract the mosquitoes.”
She laughed, despite herself, and came over toward the sofa. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight. Too keyed up.”
“Would you like some coffee?” Stoner asked.
“That’d just make it worse.”
“A glass of hot tea, perhaps?” Markov offered. “Or some vodka.”
“No alcohol. I’ve got to keep my head clear for tomorrow, even if they won’t let me actually get my hands on any of the hardware.”
“Perhaps we could get our medical friend here to give you the shot he’s going to give Stoner. It puts you into a deep, relaxing sleep and then lets you wake up the next morning clear as a mountain lake.”
“So they claim,” Stoner put it.
“No thanks,” Jo said. Looking at the technician, she asked, “Does he understand English?”
“No,” Markov said. “Only Russian.”
“Where’s he from?”
Markov asked the technician, who smiled hugely for her, revealing a picket fence of stainless steel inlays, and answered with a long string of heartfelt words.
“He comes from a little village near Leningrad,” Markov translated, “the most beautiful little village in all of Russia. He would love to show you how beautiful it is, especially in the springtime.”
Jo smiled back at him, asking, “He’s really a Russian, then? Not a Ukrainian or a Georgian or a Kazakh.”
Markov glanced at the overweight, red-haired, fair-skinned medical technician. “He is quite Russian, I guarantee it. But why this interest in our federated nationalities?”
Turning back to Markov and Stoner, Jo answered, “I’ve been talking with some of the people around here—you know, guards, clerks, ordinary people.”
“Not astronomers or linguists,” Markov murmured.
Ignoring him, Jo went on, “A lot of the Russians here are kind of worried about the Kazakhs, and other non-Russian ethnic groups.”
“Worried?” Stoner asked.
“The tide of Islam,” Markov said in a bored tone. “Ever since Iran and Afghanistan, the major topic of gossip is the possibility of a native uprising. It’s quite impossible, you know.”
“An uprising,” Jo said. “But what about sabotage? Suppose the people who used Schmidt use some Kazakh technician to tamper with the rocket booster tomorrow?”
Markov shook his head and raised his hands toward the ceiling. “No, no, no! Impossible. That’s one thing that our security people have checked quite thoroughly. No one but Russian nationals has been allowed near the boosters. That, I promise you.”
“Am I safe from all the Russian nationals?” Stoner asked.
For an instant, Markov did not answer. Then, one hand stroking his beard, he said very seriously, “Yes, you are. I am certain of it.”
The two men looked at each other, eye to eye, for a long wordless moment.
“I think I would like some of that tea,” Jo said, breaking their wordless moment.
“Allow me.” Markov was instantly heading for the kitchen. “I will make you a glass of tea that will soothe your nerves and invigorate your spirit. Not like that dreadful sludge they call coffee. Phah! How can anyone drink that stuff regularly?”
Stoner laughed as Markov went through the kitchen door. He’s leaving the two of us alone, he realized. Jo sat on the couch next to the shuttered window. The Russian technician stayed at his chair in the corner. Stoner went over and sat next to Jo.
“My last night on Earth,” he said. Then he added, “For a week or so.”
“Aren’t you nervous?”
“Hell yes.”
“You don’t look it. You look perfectly calm.”
“On the outside. Inside, everything’s twitching. If you took an x-ray picture of me, it’d come out blurred, unless you used a stop-action shutter on the camera lens.”
Jo laughed softly.
“I always get nervous before a flight, especially the last few minutes before lift-off. My heart rate goes way up.”
“That’s understandable,” she said. Her face grew somber. “You can still back out of it, you know. The Russians have cosmonauts in reserve who…”
“I know,” he said.
“You’re not afraid of them trying to—to stop you?”
“Kirill’s been watching over me like a St. Bernard.”
“That’s not enough…”
“And so have you,” he added. “I’ve been watching you poking around, getting mosquito bites while you’re checking out everybody around here.”
She looked surprised. “I haven’t…well, the two of us aren’t enough of a bodyguard for you.”
He reached out and clasped the back of her neck. “I appreciate it, Jo. I understand what you’re doing and I appreciate it, really I do.”
“Sure you do.”
“I do. I hope you understand why I’m being so stubborn about all this.”
Nodding, she answered, “Yes, I do understand, Keith. That’s what frightens me. I’d be doing exactly the same thing, in your place. But I hate the fact that you’re doing it, you’re taking the chances with your life.”
“That’s the way it is,” he said softly.
“And there’s no changing it,” she replied. “I know.”
Markov came back into the room, holding a steaming glass of tea in each hand. The glasses were set int
o silvered holders. He hiked his eyebrows at the sight of Stoner and Jo side by side on the couch.
“Star-crossed lovers,” he sighed. “How I envy you.”
Stoner pulled his hand away from Jo and she reached for the handle of the glass that Markov offered her.
“Thank you, Kirill.”
“For you, beautiful one, I would conquer China so that you would be assured of the best tea whenever you desired it.”
She grinned at his flattery.
As Stoner sipped at his cooling coffee, the medical technician studied his wristwatch, hauled himself out of his chair and clicked off the little radio. The three of them watched him lumber back into the tiny office on the other side of the common room. Through the office window they could see him unlocking a medicine cabinet.
“Your hour has come,” Markov said solemnly.
Stoner glanced at Jo. She was watching the technician as he removed a black plastic case from the cabinet.
“Nobody’s been able to substitute poison for the tranquilizer they’re going to give me,” Stoner heard himself say.
Jo flicked her dark, anxious eyes to him. “I’ve been checking the cabinet all day. They’ve kept it locked.”
Markov frowned but said nothing.
The four of them went up to Stoner’s room, the technician in the lead. Stoner sat in his creaking desk chair and rolled up his shirt sleeve while Markov and Jo hovered beside him.
With elaborate care the technician fitted the syringe together and tested it. Stoner stared down at the unfinished letter to his son. Hastily, he scrawled:
I’ve got to go now. You’ll probably see the flight on TV. I hope to see you and Elly soon. Please write, and ask your sister to write, too. I love you both very much.
He signed his name, folded the letter and stuffed it into the envelope he had already addressed. Handing it to Markov, he asked, “Would you mail this for me, Kirill?”
Markov nodded.
The technician came up, swabbed Stoner’s bare arm just above the elbow. Markov turned his head. So did Stoner. He felt the faintest prick of the needle, and then the technician was pressing a cotton swab on his arm.
