“If I may, Ms. President,” der Heer interrupted haltingly, with evident reluctance. “I beg your pardon, but there are some international implications that I think have to be raised now.”
The President merely exhaled, acquiescing.
Der Heer continued. “Tell me if I have this right, Dr. Arroway. Every day the star Vega rises over the New Mexico desert, and then you get whatever page of this complex transmission—whatever it is—they happen to be sending to the Earth at the moment. Then, eight hours later or something, the star sets. Right so far? Okay. Then the next day the star rises again in the east, but you've lost some pages during the time you weren't able to look at it, after it had set the previous night. Right? So it's as if you were getting pages thirty through fifty and then pages eighty through a hundred, and so on. No matter how patiently we observe, we're going to have enormous amounts of information missing. Gaps. Even if the message eventually repeats itself, we're going to have gaps.”
“That's entirely right.” Ellie rose and approached an enormous globe of the world. Evidently the White House was opposed to the obliquity of the Earth; the axis of this globe was defiantly vertical.
Tentatively, she gave it a spin. “The Earth turns. You need radio telescopes distributed evenly over many longitudes if you don't want gaps. Any one nation observing only from its own territory is going to dip into the message and dip out—maybe even at the most interesting parts. Now this is the same kind of problem that an American interplanetary spacecraft faces. It broadcasts its findings back to Earth when it passes by some planet, but the United States might be facing the other way at the time. So NASA has arranged for three radio tracking stations to be distributed evenly in longitude around the Earth. Over the decades they've performed superbly. But…” Her voice trailed off diffidently, and she looked directly at P. L. Garrison, the NASA Administrator. A thin, sallow, friendly man, he blinked.
“Uh, thank you. Yes. It's called the Deep S[ace Network, and we're very proud of it. We have stations in the Mojave Desert, in Spain, and in Australia. Of course, we're underfunded, but with a little help, I'm sure we could get up to speed.”
“Spain and Australia?” the President asked.
“For purely scientific work,” the Secretary of State was saying, “I'm sure there's no problem.
However, if this research program had political overtones, it might be a little tricky.”
American relations with both countries had become cool of late.
“There's no question this has political overtones,” the President replied a little testily.
“But we don't have to be tied to the surface of the earth,” interjected an Air Force general. “We can beat the rotation period. All we need is a large radio telescope in Earth orbit.”
“All right.” The President again glanced around the table. “Do we have a space radio telescope?
How long would it take to get one up? Who knows about this? Dr. Garrison?”
“Uh, no, Ms. President. We at NASA have submitted a proposal for the Maxwell Observatory in each of the last three fiscal years, but OMB has removed it from the budget each time. We have a detailed design study, of course, but it would take years—well, three years anyway—before we could get it up. And I feel I should remind everybody that until last fall the Russians had a working millimeter and submillimeter wave telescope in Earth orbit. We don't know why it failed, but they'd be in a better position to send some cosmonauts up to fix it than we'd be to build and launch one from scratch.”
“That's it?” the President asked. “NASA has an ordinary telescope in space but no big radio telescope. Isn't there anything suitable up there already? What about the intelligence community? National Security Agency? Nobody?”
“So, just to follow this line of reasoning,” der Heer said, “it's a strong signal and it's on lots of frequencies. After Vega sets over the United States, there are radio telescopes in half a dozen countries that are detecting and recording the signal. They're not as sophisticated as Project Argus, and they probably haven't figured out the polarization modulation yet. If we wait to prepare a space radio telescope and launch it, the message might be finished by then, gone altogether. So doesn't it follow that the only solution is immediate cooperation with a number of other nations, Dr. Arroway?”
“I don't think any nation can accomplish this project alone. It will require many nations, spread out in longitude, all the way around the Earth. It will involve every major radio astronomy facility now in place—the big radio telescopes in Australia, China, India, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, and Western Europe. It would be irresponsible if we wind up with gaps in the coverage because some critical part of the message came when there's no telescope looking at Vega. We'll have to do something about the Eastern Pacific between Hawaii and Australia, and maybe something about the Mid-Atlantic also.”
“Well,” the Director of Central Intelligence responded grudgingly, “the Soviets have several satellite tracking ships that are good in S-band through X-band, the Akademik Keldysh, for example. Or the Marshal Nedelin. If we make some arrangement with them, they might be able to station ships in the Atlantic or the Pacific and fill in the gaps.”
Ellie pursed her lips to respond, but the President was already talking.
“All right, Ken. You may be right. But I say again this is moving too damn fast. There are some other things I have to attend to right now. I'd appreciate it if the Director of Central Intelligence and the national Security staff would work overnight on whether we have any options besides cooperation with other countries—especially countries that aren't our allies. I'd like the Secretary of State to prepare, in cooperation with the scientists, a contingency list of nations and individuals to be approached if we have to cooperate, and some assessment of the consequences. Is some nation going to be mad at us if we don't ask them to listen? Can we be blackmailed by somebody who promises the data and then holds back? Should we try to get more than one country at each longitude? Work through the implications. And for God's sake”— her eyes moved from face to face around the long polished table—”keep quiet about this. You too, Arroway. We've got problems enough.”
CHAPTER 7
The Ethanol in W-3
No credence whatever is to be given to the opinion… that the demons act as messengers and interpreters between the gods and men to carry all petitions from us to the gods, and to bring back to us the help of the gods. On the contrary, we must believe them to be spirits most eager to inflict harm, utterly alien from righteousness, swollen with pride, pale with envy, subtle in deceit…
That Heresies should arise, we have the prophesie of Christ; but that old ones should be abolished, we hod no prediction.
She had planned to meet Vaygay's plane in Albuquerque and drive him back to the Argus facility in the Thunderbird. The rest of the Soviet delegation would have traveled in the observatory cars. She would have enjoyed speeding to the airport in the cool dawn air, perhaps again past an honor guard of rampant coneys.
And she had been anticipating a long and substantive private talk with Vaygay on the return. But the new security people from the General Services Administration had vetoed the idea. Media attention and the president's sober announcement at the end of her press conference two weeks before had brought enormous crowds to the isolated desert site. There was a potential for violence, they had told Ellie. She must in future travel only in government cars, and then only with discreetly armed escorts. Their little convoy was wending its way toward Albuquerque at a pace so sober and responsible that she found her right foot of its own volition depressing an imaginary accelerator on the rubber mat before her.