Houston, Houston, Do You Read?

by James Tiptree Jr.

  Lorimer pushes back, staring at the spark in the window. It has to be Spica. But is it elongated, as if a second point-source is beside it? Impossible. An excitement is trying to flare out inside him, the women's voices resonate in his head.

  "Playback," Dave says. "Houston will really like to hear this."

  They listen again to the girl calling Judy, the woman saying she is Loma Bethune. Bud holds up a finger. "Man's voice in there." Lorimer listens hard for the words he thought he heard. The tape ends.

  "Wait till Packard gets this one." Dave rubs his arms. "Remember what they pulled on Howie? Claiming they rescued him."

  "Seems like they want us on their frequency." Bud grins. "They must think we're fa-a-ar gone. Hey, looks like this other capsule's going to show up, getting crowded out here."

  "If it shows up," Dave says. "Leave it on voice alert, Bud. The batteries will do that."

  Lorimer watches the spark of Spica, or Spica-plussomething, wondering if he will ever understand. The casual acceptance of some trick or ploy out here in this incredible loneliness. Well, if these strangers are from the same mold, maybe that is it. Aloud he says, "Escondita is an odd name for a Soviet mission. I believe it means `hidden' in Spanish."

  "Yeah," says Bud. "Hey, I know what that accent is, it's Australian. We had some Aussie bunnies at Hickan. Or-stryle-ya, woo-ee! You s'pose Woomara, is sending up some kind of com-bined do?"

  Dave shakes his head. "They have no capability,: whatsoever."

  "We ran into some fairly strange phenomena back there, Dave," Lorimer says thoughtfully. "I'm beginning to wish we could take a visual check."

  "Did you goof, Doc?"

  "No. Earth is where I said, if it's October. Virgo is where it would appear in March."

  "Then that's it," Dave grins, pushing out of the couch. "You been asleep five months, Rip van Winkle? Time for a hand before we do the roadwork."

  "What I'd like to know is what that chick looks like," says Bud, closing down the transceiver. "Can I help you into your space-suit, Miss? Hey, Miss, pull that in, Asst-psst-psst! You going to listen, Doc?"

  "Right." Lorimer is getting out his charts. The others go aft through the tunnel to the small day room, making no further comment on the presence of the strange ship or ships out here. Lorimer himself is more shaken than he likes; it was that damn phrase.

  The tedious exercise period comes and goes. Lunchtime: They give the containers a minimum warm to conserve the batteries. Chicken AL la king again; Bud puts ketchup on his and breaks their usual silence with a funny anecdote about an Australian girl, laboriously censoring himself to conform to Sunbird's unwritten code on talk. After lunch Dave goes forward to the command module. Bud and Lorimer continue their current task checking out the suits and packs for a damage-assessment EVA to take place as soon as the radiation count drops.

  They are just clearing away when Dave calls them. Lorimer comes through the tunnel to hear a girl's voice blare, "-dinko trip. What did Loma say? Gloria over!"

  He starts up the Lurp and begins scanning. No results this time. "They're either in line behind us or in the sunward quadrant," he reports finally. "I can't isolate them."

  Presently the speaker holds another thin thread of sound.

  "That could be their ground control," says Dave. "How's the horizon, Doc?"

  "Five hours; Northwest Siberia, Japan, Australia."

  "I told you the high gain is fucked up." Bud gingerly feeds power to his antenna motor. "Easy, eas-ee. The frame is twisted, that's what it is:"

  "Don't snap it," Dave says, knowing Bud will not.

  The squeaking fades, pulses back. "Hey, we can really use this," Bud says. "We can calibrate on them."

  A hard soprano says suddenly "-should be outside your orbit. Try around Beta Aries."

  "Another chick. We have a fix," Bud says happily. "We have a fix now. I do believe our troubles are over. That monkey was torqued one hundred forty-nine degrees. Woo-ee!"

  The first girl comes back. "We seen them, Margo! But they're so small, how can they live in there? Maybe they're tiny aliens! Over."

  "That's Judy." Bud chuckles. "Dave, this is screwy; it's all in English. It has to be some U.N. thingie."

  Dave massages his elbows, flexes his fists; thinking.:; They wait. Lorimer considers a hundred and forty-nine degrees from Gamma Piscium.

  In thirteen minutes the voice from Earth says, "Judy; call the others, will you? We're going to play you the conversation, we think you should all hear. Two min-utes. Oh, while we're waiting, Zebra wants to tell Connie the baby is fine. And we have a new cow."

  "Code," says Dave.

  The recording comes on. The three men listen once -j more to Dave calling Houston in a rattle of solar noise. The transmission clears up rapidly and cuts off with the woman saying that another ship, the Gloria, is be. hind them, closer to the sun.

  "We looked up history," the Earth voice resumes. "There was a Major Norman Davis on the first Sunbird flight. Major was a military title. Did you hear then – say 'Doc'? There was a scientific doctor on board,. Doctor Orren Lorimer. The third member was Captain-that's another title-Bernhard Geirr. Just the:' three of them, all males of course. We think they had an early reaction engine and not too much fuel. The point is, the first Sunbird mission was lost in space. They never came out from behind the sun. That was about when the big flares started. Jan thinks they must have been close to one, you heard them say they were damaged."

  Dave grunts. Lorimer is fighting excitement like a… brush discharge sparking in his gut.

  "Either they are who they say they are or they're" ghosts; or they're aliens pretending to be people. Jan says maybe the disruption in those super-flares could: collapse the local time dimension. Pluggo. What did, you observe there, I mean the highlights?"

  Time dimension… never came back… Lorimer's mind narrows onto the reality of the two unmoving; bearded heads before him, refuses to admit the words he thought he heard: Before the year two thousand. The language, he thinks. The language would have to have changed. He feels better.

  A deep baritone voice says, "Margo?" In Sunbird eyes come alert.

  "-like the big one fifty years ago." The man has the accent too. "We were really lucky 'being right there when it-popped. The most interesting part is that we confirmed the gravity turbulence. Periodic but not waves. It's violent, we got pushed around some. Space is under monster stress in those things. We think France's theory that our system is passing through a micro-black-hole cluster looks right. So long as one doesn't plonk us."

  "France?" Bud mutters. Dave looks at him speculatively.

  "It's hard to imagine anything being kicked out in time. But they're here, whatever they are, they're over eight hundred kays outside us scooting out toward Aldebaran. As Loma said, if they're trying to reach Earth they're in trouble unless they have a lot of spare gees. Should we try to talk to them? Over. Oh, great about the cow. Over again."

  "Black holes." Bud whistles softly. "That's one for you, Doc. Was we in a black hole?"

  "Not in one or we wouldn't be here." If we are here, Lorimer adds to himself. A micro-black-hole cluster… what happens when fragments of totally collapsed matter approach each other, or collide, say in the photosphere of a star? Time disruption? Stop it. Aloud he says, "They could be telling us something Dave."

  Dave says nothing. The minutes pass.

  Finally the Earth voce comes back, saying that it will try to contact the strangers on their original frequency. Bud glances at Dave, tunes the selector.

  "Calling Sunbird One?" the girl says slowly through her nose. "This is Luna Central calling Major Norman Davis of Sunbird One. We have picked up your conversation with our ship Escondita. We are very puzzled as to who you are and how you got there. If you really are Sunbird One we think you must have been jumped forward in time when you passed the solar: flare." She pronounces it Cockney-style, "toime."

  "Our ship Gloria is near you, they see you on their radar. We think you m
ay have a serious course problem because you told Lorna you were headed for Earth and you think it is now October with Earth in Pisces. It is not October, it is March fifteen. I repeat, the Earth date"-she says "dyte "is March fifteen, time twenty, hundred hours. You should be able to see Earth very close to Spica in Virgo. You said your window is damaged. Can't you go out and look? We think you: have to make a big course correction. Do you have enough fuel? Do you have a computer? Do you have enough air and water and food? Can we help you? We're listening on this frequency. Luna to Sunbird, One, come in."

  On Sunbird nobody stirs. Lorimer struggles against internal eruptions. Never came back. Jumped forward; in time. The cyst of memories he has schooled himself to suppress bulges up in the lengthening silence. "Aren't, you going to answer?"

  "Don't be stupid," Dave says.

  "Dave. A hundred and forty-nine degrees is the difference between Gamma Piscium and Spica. That', transmission is coming from where they say Earth is."

  "You goofed."

  "I did not goof. It has to be March."

  Dave blinks as if a fly is bothering him.

  In fifteen minutes the Luna voice runs through the whole thing again, ending "Please, come in."

  "Not a tape." Bud unwraps a stick of gum, adding j the plastic to the neat wad back of the gyro leads. Lorimer's skin crawls, watching the ambiguous dazzle of Spica. Spica-plus-Earth? Unbelief grips him, rocks him with a complex pang compounded of faces, voices,, the sizzle of bacon frying, the creak of his father's wheelchair, chalk on. a sunlit blackboard, Ginny's bare legs on the flowered couch, Jenny and Penny running dangerously close to the lawnmower. The girls, will be taller now, Jenny is already as tall as her mother. His father is living with Amy in Denver, determined to last till his son gets home. When I get home. This has toy be insanity, Dave's right; it's a trick, some crazy trick. The language.

  Fifteen minutes more; the flat, earnest female voice comes back and repeats it all, putting in more stresses. Dave wears a remote frown, like a man listening to a lousy sports program. Lorimer has the notion he might switch off and propose a hand of gin; wills him to do so. The voice says it will now change frequencies.

  Bud tunes back, chewing calmly. This time the voice stumbles on a couple of phrases. It sounds tired.

  Another wait; an hour, now. Lorimer's mind holds only the bright point of Spica digging at him. Bud hums.a bar of "Yellow Ribbons," falls silent again.

  "Dave," Lorimer says finally, "our antenna is pointed straight at Spica. I donut care if you think I goofed, if Earth is over there we have to change course soon. Look, you can see it could be a double light source. We have to check this out."

  Dave says nothing. Bud says nothing but his eyes rove to the port window, back to his instrument panel, to the window again. In the corner of the panel is a polaroid snap of his wife. Patty: a tall, giggling, rump switching red-head; Lorimer has occasional fantasies about her. Little-girl voice, though. And so tall… Some short men chase tall women; it strikes Lorimer as undignified. Ginny is an inch shorter than he. Their girls will be taller. And Ginny insisted on starting a pregnancy before he left, even though he'll be out of commo. Maybe, maybe a boy, a son-stop it. Think about anything. Bud… Does Bud love Patty? Who knows? He loves Ginny. At seventy million miles…

  "Judy?" Luna Central or whoever it is says. "They don't answer. You want to try? But listen, we've been thinking. If these people really are from the past this must be very traumatic for them. They could be just realizing they'll never see their world again. Myda says these males had children and women they stayed with, they'll miss them terribly. This is exciting for us but it may seem awful to them. They could be too shocked to answer. They could be frightened, maybe they think we're aliens or hallucinations even. See?"

  Five seconds later the nearby girl says, "Da, Margo, we were into that too. Dinko. Ah, Sunbird? Major Davis of Sunbird, are you there? This is Judy Paris in the ship Gloria, we're only About a million kay from you, we see you on our screen." She sounds young and excited. "Luna Central has been trying to reach you, we think you're in trouble and we want to help. Please don't be frightened, we're people just j like you. We think you're way off course if you want to reach Earth. Are you in trouble? Can we help? If x your radio is out can you make any sort of signal? Do you know Old Morse? You'll be off our screen R soon, we're truly worried about you. Please reply somehow if you possibly can, Sunbird, come in!"

  Dave sits impassive. Bud glances at him, at the port window, gazes stolidly at the speaker, his face blank. Lorimer has exhausted surprise, he wants only to reply to to the voices. He can manage a rough signal by heterodyning the probe beam. But what then, with them both against him?

  The girl's voice tries again determinedly. Finally she says, "Margo, they won't peep. Maybe they're dead? I think they're aliens."

  Are we not? Lorimer thinks. The Luna station: comes back with a different, older voice.

  "Judy, Myda here, I've-had another thought. These people had a very rigid authority code. You remember your history, they peck ordered everything. You notice._ Major Davis repeated about being commanding. That's called dominance-submission structure, one of them gave orders and the others did whatever they were told, we don't know quite why. Perhaps they were 1 frightened. The point is that if the dominant one is in shock or panicked maybe the others can't reply unless this Davis lets them."

  Jesus Christ, Lorimer thinks. Jesus H. Christ in colors. It is his father's expression for the inexpressible. Dave and Bud sit unstirring.

  "How 'weird," the Judy voice says. "But don't they know they're on a bad course? I mean, could the dominant one make the others fly right out of the system? Truly?"

  It's happened, Lorimer thinks; it has happened. I have to stop this. I have to act now, before they lose us. Desperate visions of himself defying Dave and Bud loom before him. Try persuasion first.

  Just as he opens his mouth he sees Bud stir slightly, and with immeasurable gratitude hears him say, "Dave-o, what say we take an eyeball look? One little old burp won't hurt us."

  Dave's head turns a degree or two.

  "Or should I go out and see, like the chick said?" Bud's voice is mild.

  After a long minute Dave says neutrally, "All right.

  … Attitude change." His arm moves up as though heavy; he stars methodically setting in the values for the vector that will bring Spica in line with their functional window.

  Now why couldn't I have done that, Lorimer asks himself for the thousandth time, following the familiar check sequence. Don't answer… And for the thousandth time he is obscurely moved by the rightness of them. The authentic ones, the alphas. Their bond. The awe he had felt first for the absurd jocks of his school ball team. `

  "That's go, Dave, assuming nothing got creamed."

  Dave throws the ignition safety, puts the computer on real time. The hull shudders. Everything in the cabin drifts sidewise while the bright point of Spica swims the other way, appears on the front window as the retros cut in. When the star creeps out onto clear glass Lorimer can clearly see its companion. The double light steadies there; a beautiful job. He hands Bud the telescope.

  "The one on the left."

  Bud looks. "There she is, all right. Hey, Dave, look at that!"

  He puts the scope in Dave's hand. Slowly, Dave raises it and looks. Lorimer can hear him breathe. Suddenly Dave pulls up the mike.

  "Houston!" he shouts harshly. "Sunbird to Houston, Sunbird calling Houston! Houston, come in!"

  Into the silence the speaker squeals, "They fired their engines-wait, she's calling!" And shuts up.

  In Sunbird's cabin nobody speaks. Lorimer stares at the twin stars ahead, impossible realities shifting around him as the minutes congeal. Bud's reflected face looks downwards, grin gone. Dave's beard moves silently; praying, Lorimer realizes. Alone of the crew Dave is deeply religious. At Sunday meals he gives a short, dignified grace. A shocking pity for Dave rises in Lorimer; Dave is so deeply involved with his family,
his four sons,. always thinking about their training, taking them hunting, fishing, camping. And Doris his wife so incredibly active and sweet, going on their trips, cooking and doing things for the community. Driving Penny and Jenny to classes while Ginny was sick that time. Good people, the backbone… This can't be, he thinks; Packard's voice is going to come through in a minute, the antenna's beamed right now. Six minutes now. This will all go away… Before the year two thousand-stop it, the language would have changed. Think of Doris… She has that glow, feeding her five men; women with sons are different. But Ginny, but his dear woman, his wife, his daughters – grandmothers now? All dead and dust? Quit that. -Dave is still praying… Who knows what goes on inside those heads? Dave's cry… Twelve minutes, it has to be all right. The second sweep is stuck, no, it's moving. Thirteen. It's all insane, a dream. Thirteen plus… fourteen. The speaker hissing and clicking vacantly. Fifteen now. A dream… Or are those women staying off, letting us see? Sixteen…

  At twenty Dave's hand moves, stops again. The seconds jitter by, space crackles. Thirty minutes coming up.

  "Calling Major Davis in Sunbird?" It is the older woman, a gentle voice. "This is Luna Central. We are the service and communication facility for space flight now. We're sorry to have to tell you that there is no space center at Houston any more. Houston itself was abandoned when the shuttle base moved to White Sands, over two centuries ago."

  A cool dust-colored light enfolds Lorimer's brain, isolating it. It will remain so a long time.

  The woman is explaining it all again, offering help, asking if they were hurt. A nice dignified speech. Dave still sits immobile, gazing at Earth. Bud puts the mike in his hand.

  "Tell them, Dave-o."

  Dave looks at it, takes a deep breath, presses the send button.

  "Sunbird to Luna Control," he says quite normally. (It's "Central," Lorimer thinks.) "We copy. Ah, negative on life support, we have no problems. We copy the course change suggestion and are proceeding to recompute. Your offer of computer assistance is appreciated. We suggest you transmit position data so we can get squared away. Ah, we are economizing on transmission until we see how our accumulators have held up. Sunbird out."