by Clyde Key
* * *
Evan Saxon, Hank Halloran, and Lawrence Jantzen had just driven the 60 kilometers from Aeropuerto Internacionale de San Juan to Arecibo. They stopped at the gate and introduced themselves to the guard.
“Buenos dias, Senores,” said the guard, who wore a military uniform. “We have been expecting you. Our president waits for you at the control room.”
“Thank you,” said Jantzen. “Do we need an escort here or do we just drive over there.”
The guard smiled. “No escort is necessary for our friends. However, Corporal Garcia has been assigned to help you find your way.” He waved to a young soldier who had been standing at parade rest beside the guard building.
“This way, Senores. You may park your auto over there, and I will walk with you to the control room.”
It was a long walk to the control building, and Garcia led them along at a brisk pace. Saxon and Halloran kept up well enough, but Jantzen was soon huffing and falling behind.
“I think we’re losing Jantzen,” said Halloran.
Garcia looked back. “Sorry.”
When Jantzen caught up, Garcia started again, but at a slower pace. It still took a few minutes before they arrived at the control building, an old stone structure that looked as if it dated from colonial times.
“Doesn’t look like much,” said Halloran.
“No,” said Jantzen, “but it has ambiance. What delightful ambiance.”
“It’s old,” said Garcia. “But it is secure and it serves our purposes.”
The inside of the building belied the musty exterior. A waiting room in front was finished lavishly, and furnished with excellent antique chairs and tables. Spanish art lined the walls.
“Eh. What do you think?” asked the corporal.
“Very nice,” said Jantzen. “I’m impressed. One certainly would not expect all this from the outside.”
Garcia beamed, obviously proud.
“Good morning! Welcome to Arecibo!”
They all turned to see who was speaking. President Duran smiled and waved his arm with a big flourish. “You like our facility, I take it?”
“Yes. Very much,” said Saxon. “I’ve never been to the observatory, but I certainly didn’t expect this!”
“Our presidente spends much time here, now that Arecibo is so important in matters of the universe. Naturally, it had to be furnished better than for peons, eh?” said Garcia.
“I bring greetings from President Rogers,” said Jantzen. “He sends his warmest regards.”
“Warmest regards, eh?” said Duran. “Now he knows who I am at last!”
“Um... Ah... I can assure you that President Rogers holds you in the highest... ah,” Jantzen stammered, at an uncharacteristic loss for words.
Duran smiled at Jantzen’s discomfort. “It was just a little joke, Jefe. It meant nothing.”
“Certainly. No problem,” said Jantzen.
“I’m really anxious to see the facility, Mr. President,” said Halloran. “From what I hear from Saxon, it must be really something.”
“Ah, yes. We must have a tour,” said Duran. “Really, you North Americans should be proud since you supplied much of this equipment. But we are proud also, because we have refined it and extended its capabilities so much. I don’t know that we would ever have been able to receive the alien signals if we had not increased the sensitivity of the receiver to microwaves.”
“I’m sure Sexon and Halloran know all about that,” said Jantzen. “I don’t, though. I’m just here to represent our president.”
“Follow me, if you will.” Duran led them through a doorway that was flanked by two military guards. One of them stood at attention while the other opened the door for the group to pass.
Inside they found a very large room with screens across two adjacent walls. Duran waved to a technician, and the lights dimmed in the room. The room became inky dark at first, before lights began to gleam from the screen. Then they also saw the screen on the other wall but only a few lights appeared on it.
“This is a very important room,” said Duran. “The screen to your left shows a panoramic view of a portion of the sky for any particular wavelength that you might wish. It is set now for visible light, such as you would see from a common reflecting telescope, although we can program the display to show radiation of any wavelength. I show you that because it is the most familiar view to us humans, eh.”
“Yes, quite,” said Saxon, “although the Arecibo facility is most important for its pioneer work in radio astronomy.”
“Now on this other screen, we show a cross section of space, as if it were viewed from a position perpendicular to our view. Do you see this?” asked Duran.
“Yes. This is fabulous,” said Halloran.
“I agree,” said Saxon. “Viewed from a point perpendicular would put us on that plane, wouldn’t it?”
“Ah, yes. You are quite right,” said Duran. “Watch when I turn on the indicator. Over on the right hand side of the screen.”
As they watched a red point of light began to flash at the edge of the screen. A thin red line now bisected the first screen vertically.
“Perhaps you have guessed already that the second screen indicates the points within a small range of the cursor on the first screen. That is why there are fewer points displayed, since it only shows those features that are on the line. Also, the indicator shows the position of our own solar system on the map.”
“My, my!” said Jantzen. “I didn’t know space got so much more crowded the farther out you go!”
“Ah, but that is an illusion!” said Duran. “Space is so large that is almost impossible to comprehend, so we make the screen display distances logarithmically. That means that distance is compressed the farther out you go, so the smaller the distance is shown. Understand, Jefe?”
“Uh, yeah. I think so,” said Jantzen, “but I’m sure my colleagues understand perfectly, which is all that matters.”
“Would you like to operate the controls, any of you?”
“Yes, I would,” said Halloran. “This is exciting. I’ve never even been around anything like this.”
“El raton?” asked Duran.
“Pardon. My Espanol is not good. You said something about a rat, I thought,” said Halloran.
“A small rat, Senor Halloran! A mouse actually,” said Duran. “I have installed a mouse on the controls, an old fashioned computer mouse, like in the old days.”
Halloran smiled suddenly. “Yeah, I remember that! That used to be the handiest thing on the small computers!”
“Exactly.” Duran handed a control to Halloran. “Use the mouse to find a star, if you wish.”
Halloran played with the device, and soon had a red flashing ‘mouse’ zipping around on the screen. Soon he stopped with it pointed to a moderately bright point, and the thin red line scrolled across the screen until it intersected the point of light that he had chosen. The other screen went dark for a few seconds, and then lights began to appear randomly across it. One red light in the middle of the screen flashed rapidly.
“You see over here,” said Duran. That is the point you have selected. Though you cannot see it on the large screen, the feature you have chosen, which is a star in our own galaxy, is identified on a monitor back at the control desk.”
Duran took a few minutes to explain the displays of stars and galaxies and other more exotic features to the group, and he showed them how to scroll the giant display across and through the universe in any direction and any plane. Then to Jantzen in particular, he explained why the display didn’t show planets in any of the solar systems, after Jantzen volunteered that the USA would build him another more sensitive system that would show all the planets in each system. Saxon and Halloran were each embarrassed by Jantzen’s ostentatious display of ignorance, but Duran patiently overlooked it.
“This is something! This is really something!” said Jantzen. “Just to think that you can work little controls in here, and huge telescop
es start spinning around out there so we can see all this!”
Duran tried hard not to smile. “Oh no! There are no telescopes attached to this. This is only a computer display of outer space. It is a very large three-dimensional map and it contains data that has taken many years to assemble and enter. This information comes from observatories all over the world. Also, much information has been supplied by the various space telescopes that are in orbit, although most of the minor material is suppressed here to keep this display from becoming too crowded to comprehend.”
“Oh.” Jantzen’s face took on a distant gaze as he thought about what he had been seeing.
“Perhaps we could see the radio astronomy lab,” said Saxon. “This is all quite interesting, but contact with the aliens is most important to us right now.”
“Of course,” said Duran. “But let me show you one more thing here. I am going to superimpose some maps of selected microwavelength radiation over the visible light map. Microwave radiation, 50 mm. wavelength in this case, is shown in blue light.”
Within seconds, the huge display glowed with strange patterns of blue lights in addition to the gleaming white dots.
“Now watch the ‘mouse’, please.”
They watched as the flashing red ‘mouse’ pointer moved across the screen with its point on a bright blue dot in the center of the screen. Then at Duran’s direction, the blue display of microwave radiation faded from the screen, and there was no corresponding dot for visible light. On the other screen, there was no display for a considerable distance in any direction.
“This is what you scientists already knew, but perhaps Mr. Jantzen did not. This point represents the source of the alien transmissions. There is no known star within half a light year of the place from which the aliens seem to be transmitting. We know the direction because that is where we aim our antenna to receive it.”
“How do you know it’s right there?” asked Jantzen. “See, if you go out quite a bit further, there is a star that is about in line with it.”
“Yes, but it is far enough out of line that we can definitely tell that star is not the source of the transmission. We establish that distance from here by measuring out half of the four and a half years it took for them to acknowledge our transmission.”
“Is that the only way we can determine the distance?” asked Halloran.
“There would be other ways to measure the distance if it were visible light,” said Duran. “But radio wavelengths, even microwaves this short, simply do not have the sharpness of light, so we can’t use the usual triangulation methods.”
“Then what if their change in the message wasn’t a response at all, but they simply decided to change recordings and it happened to work out to be four and a half years? What if they weren’t signaling to us at all?”
“Oh no!” cried Jantzen. “You’re saying this could be a hoax? Rogers won’t like this at all!”
“It’s definitely not a hoax,” said Saxon, “but I think it’s possible they may have taken some time to come up with a new message after they picked up our response. Say, if they worked on a response for three months before they changed the message, then it would only work out that they were two light years away, instead of two and a fourth.”
“That is quite true,” said Duran. It is also true that if this is a response, the only way we could be in error is if they were actually closer than what we’ve calculated.”
“And on the other side, if it were only by chance that they changed their message at this particular time, then they might be clear across the known universe,” said Saxon.
“That also means that response time has to be longer,” said Halloran. “If you think about it, twenty light years away would make a forty year wait for a response. And fifty light years would mean we can just write it up in the history books and wait for our grandchildren to get the answer.”
“Oh, oh!” said Jantzen. “I don’t like what I’m hearing, and Rogers certainly isn’t going to like it!”
12
April 30, 2112
Ed Halloran and Robin Wylie took the high level floater, and an interaction agent from Southeast named Richie Taylor followed them in a fast standard floater. They started back to Needles just after sunrise the morning after Ed returned to Flagstaff. They planned for Ed and Robin Wylie to scout the area around the rocket fleet from a safe distance while Taylor remained back at the city park and kept in contact via the secure comphones in the floaters. His job was to report back to Flagstaff if anything happened to Ed and Wylie. Then at Ed’s direction, squads of interaction agents would follow later in the morning and deploy at intervals around the rocket fleet and the armada of globes.
When they first arrived, there was no sign of any activity around the rocket fleet. There was a great difference, though, in the appearance of the desert. The wind had moved the desert sand so that now there were only a few long streaks of the black charred top showing between great drifting dunes. The wind was still blowing hard and sand filled the air so much that the sun’s light was reduced to a reddish brown glow.
“I wonder if those things ever saw a dust storm like this before?” asked Robin.
“I doubt it,” said Ed. “Not unless they carried some sand with them on the rockets. They were in space so long that all these aliens probably were born along the way.”
“Yeah. Or hatched, maybe. From what I’ve studied, the aliens have always chosen not to send any information about themselves, even though Earth has been spilling our collective guts for years to them—like we had some sort of compulsion.”
“Yeah. I never thought it was wise, but Sisk was in charge. But even if we’d forced them to swap information about themselves for information about us, we don’t know that they would have been truthful.”
Then the comphone buzzed so Ed hit the answer button. “Yeah. What’s up, Taylor?”
“Do you want me to look around here for the Burris boy’s floater while I’m waiting for you? I’d stay close to the park and maybe wander around the side roads this side of town.”
“Yeah. That’s a good idea? Got the description of the floater?”
“Right here somewhere. Yes. Ten year old Chrysler. It was green matte finish until it faded, and it has a polarized tinted dome. Vehicle ident AZ399265B.”
“That’s good, Taylor. Buzz if you need us. There’s not any visible activity out here so we’re going to check out the ravine where I was taken before.”
Ed took the floater on a wide swing south of the rocket fleet and circled around toward the ravine. This time he saw none of the globes, but he went on past before turning north. Then they came back toward the ravine a couple of miles north of the area where they had been. There was no sign of aliens or their globes.
Wylie pushed the call button on the comphone. “Just checking in, Taylor. No sign of Visitors in the gully. Have you found anything yet?”
“No. No, wait! I see something out there! I don’t believe it!”
“Don’t believe what?” asked Ed.
“There’s a pile of your globes up here maybe a kilometer off the highway on a side road. It’s just a very big perfect hemisphere dome. It looks like they ought to roll off!”
“What’s your location?” asked Ed.
“Highway Forty, about half way between the park and town. The globes are south of the highway.”
“We passed that way coming,” said Wylie. “Why didn’t we see them?”
“I guess we just weren’t observant,” said Ed. “Once you get out of Needles, those big rockets grab your attention and you don’t notice things off to the side.”
Ed took the floater back to the highway and they joined Taylor at the intersection. Ed pulled up beside Taylor where they could see each other, but they still used the comphone to talk.
“We don’t seem to be getting any reaction from them,” said Taylor. “Have we got a plan for this?”
“Yes, we have,” said Ed. “It’s not very well developed but we do
have a plan. We make contact.”
Wylie gulped and stared at the globes. “We? You said we make contact?”
“Me, actually. I want you to get into Taylor’s floater and you both observe from the highway. If anything happens to me, you get on the long distance comphone, not the security channel. And get back to Flagstaff as fast as you can.”
Wylie didn’t argue. He left Ed’s vehicle and joined Taylor. Taylor then raised his floater to three meters which was its maximum altitude so they could see better. Up until then, he’d been creeping around with his floater only centimeters above the road. Ed brought his high level floater up to five meters, which was the altitude at which it would travel at its top speed.
Ed brought the floater slowly onto the side road and gazed at the dome formation of globes ahead. Then he turned the forward repeller to full power. “Now we’re going to make contact one way or another,” he said as he pressed the accelerator all the way down. The floater fairly snapped as it accelerated toward the globes, and Ed held his breath.
He half expected the formation to disperse, shoot, or take some other defensive action before he got there, but the globes didn’t move. The force of the repellers riding at something over 200 kmh scattered globes like a billiards break. It also sent Ed’s floater spinning away like a toy top. Fortunately for Ed, the vehicle’s drive computer regained control and stopped it a few hundred meters down the road, and let it settle gently on autohover. However, Ed did not regain control of himself immediately, because the spin left him quite dizzy. When he did recover his equilibrium in a couple of minutes, he turned the floater around to see what he had done.
Most of the globes had dispersed, although some of them—perhaps a fourth—were now joined in a smaller dome formation and it was obvious that some of them had left the area completely, Several of the globes lay in pieces on the ground like shattered Christmas tree ornaments. And where the formation had been was a battered old green floater. Ed yelled into his comphone. “I’ve found the Burris kid’s floater! The globes had him surrounded.”
Wylie called back. “Can you tell if he’s alright?”
“Don’t know,” said Ed. But while he watched, the green floater slowly rose a couple of meters above the roadway and sped somewhat unsteadily back to Highway Forty. “I think we can now say that’s affirmative,” said Ed. “You guys follow him until he gets away from here a safe distance. Then stop him and see if he’s okay.”
“Okay,” said Wylie. “But I think the answer is going to be that he’s not hurt but he’s real scared from the way he just shot by here!”
Ed watched for a minute as Wylie and Taylor started after the green floater, then he turned his attention back to the globes. Since he had the high level floater that could travel off-road, he moved cautiously over to the nearest broken globes. Each had held an alien, he saw, and now each alien was scrambled into a putrid mess. Some were still half inside the broken shells, but others were splattered across the ground. And Ed wondered if he had just started a war.
The globes did not regroup, at least not in the immediate area. All but a few of the unbroken globes rose on tails of flame and shot off in a hundred directions, but none of them came near Ed’s floater. Ed raised the vehicle to its full ten meter altitude where he could best see, turned it slowly as he surveyed the desert. The air was thick enough with blowing sand that it obscured the horizon, but there was no sign of the globes for the two or three kilometers he could see. There were perhaps ten globes laying randomly in the area and Ed wondered if those were disabled, or if perhaps the globes were functional but the aliens inside them had been injured or killed.
Ed took the floater on a large sweep near each of the intact globes so he could have a closer look. Only a couple of them had damage he could see. For a moment he thought about getting out of his floater for a closer investigation, then reconsidered. However, he did travel a few hundred meters away, stopped, and picked up several medium-sized stones. Ed left the gullwing door slightly ajar and moved back to a few meters away from one of the globes. Cautiously then, he raised the door about half way and threw one of the stones at the globes. It bounced off with a metallic ching. Then he went to another and tossed another stone with the same result. On the third try, when the stone struck, it cracked the globe. As Ed watched, that globe split completely apart, like an eggshell into two jagged halves. Inside was an alien, apparently quite alive. Ed figured it was probably also quite angry.
Then Ed decided it would be wise to leave these aliens alone and rejoin Wylie, Taylor, and the Burris boy. He turned the floater around and started back to the road. But just as he reached the road, he detected movement in his rear-view screen. One of the globes had been reactivated and was now following him at high speed.
Ed pushed his comphone on and yelled. “I’ve got some activity here! You guys get back to Flagstaff!”
Then Ed turned the floater so that he faced the oncoming globe. He again turned his repeller to full power and accelerated toward the globe. Just before he got close enough for the repeller to have effect, the globe veered sharply upward on a brilliant stream of fire. For just a moment, Ed lost sight of the globe as he went past, but then he saw it in his rear-view screen. It was coming fast and right at him. Just when it looked as if it would surely collide, Ed spun the floater around again to face the globe and raised it quickly to ten meters above the roadway. With the repeller still on full power, the alien globe was deflected downward onto the pavement where it shattered, leaving gooey alien body substances smeared along the road among the fragments.
Ed turned on his comphone again. “Are you guys okay? Are you on your way back to Flagstaff?”
“We’re okay,” came Taylor’s reply. “We are into Arizona already, with no more contact.”
“Good,” said Ed. “I’ll join you when I can, but I’m going to take a quick swing north of the highway first.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” asked Robin Wylie.
“On the contrary. I’m sure it’s not wise, but it’s what I’ve got to do.”
Ed took the same road north from the highway for several kilometers, riding along slowly at ten meters so he could see the country around him. Then he saw the other globes. It was another domed formation of globes just like the one he’d just broken up. At first, he started to turn around and race back to Flagstaff with his colleagues, but then he thought of Marilee Sharp and Everett Lane. Were they being held here just as was Denny Burris across the highway?
Ed decided he had to risk another confrontation, so he turned his floater facing the globe formation and set the repeller on full, before zooming across the desert straight at them. The other group must have contacted these aliens, though, because globes shot off in every direction just before he reached them. None of these globes were wrecked as in the other confrontation and they also did not race away. Globes flitted about on their thin flames some two or three hundred meters away.
Then Ed saw the other floater! It had been caught inside the formation just exactly like the Burris floater. Ed pushed the code for Lane’s comphone and yelled at them. “Marilee! Lane! Is that you?”
At first there was no answer, but the floater rose slowly and turned about. Then he heard Marilee yelling. “Ed! You got away! How?”
“Never mind! Let’s get away from here before they come back.”
“We’re on our way!” It was Lane’s voice.
Ed waited until they were past him, and then fell in behind them. “Soon as you’re on the road where it’s safe, you’d best get a move on! I’m coming right behind you.”
When the floaters reached the roadway, they accelerated until the floaters were going at maximum speed. They slowed down barely enough to get on Highway Forty, and then resumed their frantic pace back to headquarters. Ed checked the rear-view screen frequently, but he didn’t see anything until they were at the Arizona border.
“We have Visitors,” he announced. “They’re following us, but not very closel
y. They’re a couple of kilometers back.”
“Yes. I see them too,” said Marilee. “I don’t think it’s all of them, though. It doesn’t look like more than a dozen.”
“They don’t seem to be gaining on us, but keep it moving just the same. Don’t slow down.” Ed figured that advice was probably unnecessary.
The aliens dropped out of pursuit somewhere between Needles and Kingman but they still didn’t slow down. Once they were past Kingman, Ed managed to reestablish contact with Wylie and Taylor. “I have great news,” said Ed. “Marilee and Lane have escaped. They’re just ahead of me.”
Wylie, Taylor, and Burris responded with an ear-splitting cheer.
