by Ben Bova
A tingle of alarm went through Stoner. “How soon?”
“Computers working on it. But you must be ready to return to Soyuz when I give command.”
“Sure,” Stoner replied.
“Photograph everything now,” Federenko said. “Time is short.”
“Yeah, okay. I’m switching back to frequency one now. I want everybody to hear what I’ve got to say.”
Federenko grunted. “Tyuratam estimates more than one billion people hear your voice.”
Good, Stoner thought. Now they’ll know.
Unhooking the bulky 35 mm stereo camera from its case at his belt, Stoner said for broadcast:
“I think it’s clear now that this alien has come in peace. He’s offering us his body and his treasured possessions, giving them to us, for us to study. He’s telling us that we have nothing to fear—that there are other intelligent races scattered among the stars. We’re not alone. The universe is filled with life, and it’s civilized, intelligent life.”
He was starting to babble and he knew it, but his hands clicked away with the camera while he chattered on:
“We have nothing to fear! This isn’t the end of our world, it’s just the beginning! Do you realize what that means? Intelligent civilizations don’t wipe themselves out with wars or pollution or overpopulation—not always, not inevitably. We have a future ahead of us as wide and bright as the stars themselves, if we strive for it, if we work together, all of us—the whole human race as a species, as a family, as one family unit in the great interstellar community of intelligent civilizations…”
In Rome, St. Peter’s Square was thronged with tens of thousands who stood in awed silence, watching the giant TV screens that had been set up there by the government. Finally the Pope appeared, not at the usual balcony, but at the head of the cathedral’s steps, flanked by red-robed cardinals and the colorful Swiss guards.
The mammoth crowd surged toward the Pontiff, its roar deafening. He smiled and nodded and gave his blessing to them all.
In Washington the President watched the rendezvous with the alien spacecraft in the privacy of his family room, with his wife and children clustered close around him. Downstairs in the West Wing the staff watched, too, and for at least a few hours all thoughts of the upcoming national conventions were suspended.
In Moscow, Georgi Borodinski phoned the commander of the Red Army missile forces and personally told him to deactivate the pair of hydrogen-bomb-tipped missiles that had been ready to intercept the alien spacecraft.
A few blocks away from the Kremlin, the Minister of Internal Security picked a small pistol from his desk drawer and, with a sardonic smile twitching at his lips, he placed its muzzle against his temple and pulled the trigger.
At the control center in Tyuratam, Jo’s face lit up as she watched the readout glowing on her computer screen.
Turning to Markov, who still stood by her side, she said, “It’ll work! We can get them back! They’ve got to break their current orbit within the next half hour. If they do that they can coast until the new tanker reaches them.”
Markov whooped and lifted Jo out of the chair and kissed her. One of the uniformed guards behind them twitched at the sudden noise and leveled his gun at them.
“I love you like a sister!” Markov proclaimed loudly, as the guard’s partner silently pushed the muzzle of the machine pistol down toward the floor, with a reproving frown.
Oblivious to what was going on behind him, Markov added in a whisper for Jo’s ear, “I never did believe in that silly taboo against incest, you know.”
Stoner was hoarse, his throat raw, but still he talked, minutely describing each artifact arranged along the alien’s sides as he snapped stereo photos. Questions were flooding up from Tyuratam and Kwajalein.
“No, no sign of other life forms,” Stoner answered, his throat rasping. “No plants or seeds or other animals. Maybe they’re in other compartments of the spacecraft.
“I’ve tried to get into the rest of the ship, but it’s no go. Just a smooth blank wall that won’t open up. It’s going to take a lot of study to figure out how they work their entrances and exits.
“The biggest discovery among the artifacts, I think, is this star chart. At least, I think it’s a star chart. I don’t recognize any of the constellations, but there’s writing on it…looks like writing, a lot of circles and curlicues.”
Federenko’s heavy voice broke in. “Shtoner, we have new trajectory data. Tanker is being sent to meet us. We must retrofire in eleven minutes.”
“Eleven minutes?” Stoner’s heart stopped in his chest. His voice nearly cracked.
“Ten minutes, forty-eight seconds, to be exact.”
Stoner’s gaze flashed to the alien resting on his bier. He’s spent thousands of years to get here and I have to leave in ten fucking minutes?
“No,” he protested. “We need more time. We can’t…”
“No more time,” Federenko said flatly. “Come back to Soyuz now. There is no other way.”
“Nikolai, I can’t! Not yet!”
“Now, Shtoner.”
He looked through the transparent hull of the sarcophagus, toward the distant stars. Then at the shrunken Earth, so far away, and finally at the stubby Soyuz.
“Nikolai, please…”
“We must go, Shtoner. Or die here.”
Stoner’s lips were dry and cracked. He felt the chill of death breathe on him, and he turned to stare once again at the alien. All the distance you’ve come, to offer us your body, your knowledge, everything that you are and you represent. So much to learn from you…
“Shtoner.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I’m not coming back with you, Nikolai.”
“Shtoner…”
“I’m going to stay here, with him. Maybe in another few million years some other civilization will find the two of us.”
And he turned off his suit radio.
* * *
KWAJALEIN
The noontime sun beat down on the silent, deserted street. Inside the air-conditioned offices, bungalows, house trailers, every man and woman on the island sat transfixed before their television sets. The same scene showed on every screen: the alien spacecraft floating in the void. The same voice came from the alien craft: Stoner’s.
“No, I’m not coming back with you, Nikolai.”
In the bustling communications center, everything stopped. Men and women froze at their jobs and stared at their screens.
Only Reynaud reacted.
“No! No, he can’t do that! He mustn’t, it’s not necessary!” The cosmologist rushed across the room, red-faced and puffing, toward Tuttle.
“Let me talk to him!” Reynaud screamed. “Give me a link to him! In the name of Christ, let me talk to him!”
Everyone tore their attention from the communications screens to the florid, screeching madman. Tuttle put his hands out in front of him, as if to protect himself from the wild-eyed Reynaud.
“You want to talk to Stoner?”
“Yes! Quickly! Before it’s too late! I can save him! I know I can!”
* * *
CHAPTER 45
Stoner felt strangely calm. All the big decisions were behind him now. There was no more need to struggle. No need to worry. All his life had pointed to this ending, he realized. He would finish life alone, untouched by anyone, away from them all, lost in the starry wilderness with his member of an alien race.
Another loner, he thought, gazing down at the alien’s strange, immobile face. Were you like that in life? Is that why you chose this way to spend eternity?
In New York the FCC monitor was screaming, “Get him off the air!” while the ABC News vice-president grabbed at his flailing arms to keep him away from the master control panel. In Moscow the Soviet censor, livid with anger and fear, slammed his heavy fist into the button that cut the Soyuz transmission off the worldwide broadcast. TV screens all around the globe still showed the picture of the alien spacecraft as seen by t
he Soyuz cameras, but suddenly there was no voice transmission coming from space.
Stoner had relaxed into an almost fetal-like curl, hanging weightlessly a foot or so above the floor of the chamber. Through the transparent walls of the ship he could see the distant crescent of Earth and the Soyuz, still parked about a hundred meters away. It seemed to be staring at him accusingly.
Stoner flicked on his suit radio.
“…you must return,” Federenko was saying, with frantic determination. “That is an order. Only seven minutes remain…”
“Nikolai, I’ve just realized something,” Stoner said. The cosmonaut fell silent. “This spacecraft—this tomb—must have been built to seek out G-type stars, I’ll bet. Our friend here came from a star that’s similar to the Sun.”
“No time for philosophy, Shtoner.”
“And once it reached a G-class star, it searched for planets with strong magnetic fields. That’s got to be right! That’s why it headed for Jupiter first: the strongest magnetosphere in the solar system. And then toward Earth, the strongest magnetic field among the inner planets.”
“Six minutes and thirty seconds,” Federenko growled.
“The strong magnetic fields are targets for two reasons,” Stoner went on, ignoring him. “First, the spacecraft taps electromagnetic energy to recharge its batteries…or whatever it uses for energy storage. But far more important, it’s likely that only planets with strong magnetospheres can support life. Life needs a strong magnetic field to act as an umbrella that shields the planet’s surface from cosmic radiations!”
“Shtoner, stop this foolishness. Come back.”
“Did you get all that, Nikolai? Was it sent to Earth? It’s important.”
“Yes, yes. Now come back.”
At CBS News, Cronkite was putting on a bravura performance, talking over the static image of the alien spacecraft, filling in with facts, conjectures, history, opinion, while his top aides phoned frantically to Washington to see if there was any way to pick up the live radio transmission from the Soyuz again.
In the White House, the President had rushed down to the communications room, where the radio transmission was coming in over the private link from Moscow. A wide-eyed aide told the President that Walter Cronkite was on the phone. The President took it immediately, and frowned with disappointment that it was actually only Cronkite’s producer screaming incoherently into the phone.
A few calming words and Cronkite himself came on. They chatted hurriedly and the President agreed to have his technicians relay the words being spoken in space to CBS. Cronkite hesitated a moment, then asked that the same favor be done for the other networks, as well. The President smiled and nodded.
“Barbara’s going to love you, Walter,” he said.
It sounded to the President as if Cronkite sputtered. “Thank you, Mr. President,” said that famous voice. “If you’ll excuse me now, sir, I should get back to the cameras.”
“Certainly, Walter,” said the President. “God bless you.”
Jo sat stunned at her computer console. All through the vast control center everything seemed to groan to a halt, as if each of the hundreds of men and women working there had simultaneously stopped breathing.
She looked up at Markov’s stricken face.
“He’s going to kill himself.”
“You must stop him,” Markov said. “You must!”
“How can I…?”
“No one else can,” Markov said, bending over her, gripping her shoulder, speaking urgently. “He loves you. You are his only link with life. Speak to him! Quickly!”
Numbly, Jo answered, “But this console isn’t wired for transmission…”
Markov turned to Zworkin, fidgeting nervously beside him. “Do something! Please! She must get through to him!”
Zworkin licked his lips and glanced uncertainly at the guards around them. “I’ll try…”
“You’re all going to have to work together from now on,” Stoner was saying. “All the nations of the world. It can never be the same for any of you. There are others out there, other races, other intelligences—and they’re just as curious and brave as we are.”
“Five minutes, Shtoner!”
“Five minutes, five hours…it doesn’t make any difference, Nikolai. It doesn’t.”
“Wait…communication from ground. On frequency two.”
“No,” said Stoner. “I don’t want to talk with them.”
“A personal message, from a woman. Miss Camerata. She sounds very upset, Shtoner.”
He debated within himself for half a moment, then pressed the button for frequency two.
“Keith! Can you hear me?” Her voice was shaking with anxiety.
“Yes, Jo, I hear you.”
Silence. Stoner realized it would take nearly twelve seconds for her answer to reach him. I’m already so far away that it’s impossible to hold a normal conversation with her.
“Please don’t do this! Don’t be a fool, Keith! Come back, please!”
“I can’t do that, Jo. Not now. If I stay here, I can send you more details about this ark, about our visitor. It’s a treasure house of knowledge. I can’t just leave it after a few lousy minutes and allow it to sail away from us forever.”
He stared hard at the distant blue-white crescent of Earth as his words sped to her and her answer came back.
“But you’ll kill yourself!”
“I’ll have more than an hour’s time before Federenko gets too far away to pick up my suit radio and relay it to you. I can describe everything in this chamber in detail.”
He waited, counting the seconds, preparing what he would say next.
“And then you’ll die!” Jo said. “You’ll die up there!”
“That’s not such a terrible thing. My life hasn’t meant very much to anyone.”
It was better this way. He had time to think, time to get ready for her voice, to freeze his emotions and guard against hers.
“Your life is important, you damned idiot! You can’t throw it away!”
“I’m content to die out here, Jo,” he said. “It’s not such a bad way to go.”
He noticed that frost was forming on the edges of his visor again, despite the suit heater’s highest setting. The cold was seeping into him; he could taste its metallic bitterness.
“No, Keith, no!” There were tears in her voice. “Come back! Come back to me! You have so much to live for…”
“No, I don’t, Jo. This is the climax of my life. This is what it’s all been leading up to. What would I do for an encore?”
“You can’t throw away your life like this! We have our whole lives ahead of us!”
“You have your life, Jo. You’re young, the whole world lies ahead of you.”
The time stretched, and then, “But you said that the world can never be the same now that we’ve contacted the alien.” Her voice was fever-pitched. “We’re not the same! I’m not and you’re not. It’s a new world, Keith. We need you here. I need you here, to be with me.”
“Three minutes, Shtoner.”
Before he could answer either one of them, a new voice spoke in his earphones:
“Switch to frequency three. Priority message from Kwajalein.”
Almost glad to get away from Jo’s voice, Stoner clicked on frequency three as if cutting an umbilical cord.
“Go ahead Kwaj,” he said flatly.
“Dr. Stoner!” The voice was breathless, familiar. “This is Dr. Reynaud, from Kwajalein.”
For a moment Stoner felt almost giddy. He wanted to laugh. Reynaud, our chubby monk. Is he going to try to save my soul?
“Listen to me, please!” Reynaud shouted in his earphones. “I’ve examined the plot the computer has made of the alien spacecraft’s course. It will not be irretrievably lost once you leave it. Do you understand me? It will not be irretrievably lost!”
“You mean we’ll be able to track it on radar?” Stoner asked. “What good is that?”
“That is very im
portant! Vital!” Reynaud’s voice was shrill with excitement. “We can go out and reach it again. We can recapture it and bring it back into an orbit near the Earth!”
Stoner shook his head inside his helmet. “It would take years to build the hardware to retrieve this craft. We just barely got this far and it took six months of planning. And we screwed it up anyway.”
“But we have years!” Reynaud insisted. “The alien will slow down as it moves outward, away from the Sun. We have perhaps five years before it reaches the orbit of Pluto…”
“Five years,” Stoner echoed.
“We can recapture the alien,” Reynaud repeated. “There’s no need for you to stay there.”
Federenko’s heavy voice interrupted. “Two minutes, Shtoner. I must start automatic sequencer now.”
“Yeah…”
“Bring back camera,” Federenko commanded. “Must return photographs to Earth. They are too valuable to throw away.”
“We can recapture the alien ship,” Reynaud said again.
Jo’s voice broke in on the same frequency. “Come back to me, Keith. Please come back.”
And Markov’s. “Keith, dear friend. Don’t be so stubborn. Dead heroes are of no value to anyone. From what Reynaud is saying, you can fly back to our visitor within a few years.”
Shuddering from the growing cold, Stoner realized he still held the stereo camera in his hands.
“The photographs, Shtoner. Now.”
He reached out and touched the spacecraft’s bulkhead, pushing himself toward the hatch. Where the hell is it? he asked himself. The entire hull was so transparent…
He felt it, a circular rim, open to space. Clipping the camera to his belt, he started to pull himself up and out of the alien ship.
Markov was still talking, “We can build new rockets and train new crews. And you will be the natural leader of such a program. You must come back and lead us. We all need you.”
“Please, Keith,” Jo’s voice pleaded.
