“Dr. Calhoun is famous for jumping to conclusions,” said Smathers sharply.
O’Brien was grinning from ear to ear—he evidently hadn’t expected to get an impromptu Siskel and Ebert of science. “But, as I was about to say, if there are alien beings aboard, then I expect them to be at least vaguely familiar in body plan, and—”
“You’re hedging now, Woody,” said Clete. “Couple years ago, I heard you give a talk arguing that the humanoid body plan would be adopted by purty near any form of intelligent life, and—”
Smathers was growing red in the face. “Well, yes, I did say that then, but—”
“But now that we’re actually goin’ to meet aliens,” said Clete, clearly enjoying himself, “you ain’t so sure no more.”
“Well,” said Smathers, “the human body plan might indeed represent an ideal for an intelligent lifeform. Start with the sense organs: two eyes are much better than one, since two give stereoscopic vision—but a third eye adds hardly any value over two. Two ears likewise give stereophonic hearing, and they’ll obviously be on opposite sides of the body, to give the best possible separation. You can go right down the human body from head to toe, and make a case why each part of it is ideal. When that spaceship opens up, yes, I’ll stand by my contention that we’ll probably see humanoids inside.”
The Clete on the TV set looked positively pained. The one sitting next to Frank aboard the Kitty Hawk shook his head. “Peckerwood Smathers,” he said under his breath.
“That’s hooey, Woody,” said the TV Calhoun. “Ain’t nothin’ optimized about our form—y’all only get optimization when you’ve got an ultimate design goal in mind, and there wasn’t one. Evolution takes advantage of what’s handy, that’s all. You know, five hundred million years ago, durin’ the Cambrian explosion, dozens o’ different body plans appeared simultaneously in the fossil record. The one that gave rise to us—the ancestor of modern vertebrates—weren’t no better than any of the others; it was just plum lucky, is all. If a different one had survived, nothin’ on this planet would look the way it does today. No, I bet there’s some critter inside unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.”
“Clearly we have some differing points of view here,” said O’Brien. “But—”
“Well, that’s the whole point, ain’t it?” said Clete. “For decades, guys like Woody been getting grants to think about alien life. It was all a good game till today. It wasn’t real science—you could never test a one of their propositions. But now, today, it all goes from being a theoretical science to an empirical one. Gonna be pretty embarrassing if everything they’ve been saying turns out to be wrong.”
“Now, hang on, Clete,” said Smathers. “I’m at least willing to put my cards on the table, and—”
“Well, if you want to hear my—what? Crying out loud, hon, can’t you see I’m on TV?”
A muffled female voice, off camera; Frank recognized it as Clete’s secretary, Bonnie: “Clete, it’s the White House.”
“White House?” He looked directly into the camera and lifted his red eyebrows. The shot widened, showing more of Clete’s cluttered study.
Bonnie crossed into the frame, holding a cordless phone. Clete took it from her. “Calhoun here. What—Frankie! How good to—no, no. Sure, yeah, I can do that. Sure, sure. I’ll be ready. Bye.” Clete put down the phone and looked into the camera again. “I gotta go, Miles—sorry ’bout this. They’re sending a car for me. I’m off to rendezvous with the alien ship.” He undipped his microphone and moved out of the shot.
Cut back to O’Brien. “Well, obviously we’ve lost Dr. Calhoun. We’ll continue our conversation with Dr. Smathers. Doctor, can you—”
Clete hit the remote, and the TV went dead.
*2*
There was indeed a Russian submarine present by the time the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk reached the splashdown site, and the Brazilian cruise ship was visible on the horizon, coming closer. The Kitty Hawk held station one kilometer from the alien ship, the hull of which was still flashing through the colors of the rainbow. The Russian sub was slightly farther away on the opposite side.
The alien ship seemed to be about two-thirds submerged in the water, but it was bobbing enough that intermittently most of its upper surface was visible. Frank, Clete, and a young Navy pilot boarded one of the Kitty Hawk’ s SH-60F Seahawk helicopters and took off from the aircraft carrier for a flight over the vessel.
“It sure is streamlined,” shouted Clete, over the noise of the chopper’s rotor.
Frank nodded. “It must be just a landing craft,” he shouted back. Since the ship had first been spotted entering Earth’s atmosphere, NORAD had been scanning the heavens, looking for any sign of the mothership. Meanwhile, Canaveral was readying Atlantis for flight. No American or Russian Shuttle was currently in orbit; Atlantis was the next one scheduled to fly, but it wasn’t supposed to go up for another eighteen days.
The alien ship’s hull seemed to be one continuous piece. It had neither the riveted metal plates that made up the Kitty Hawk’ s exterior nor the ceramic tiles that covered a Space Shuttle. There were four mirrored surfaces that might have been windows across the pointed end of the shield, and there was something in grayish green that might have been writing going down one side of the upper hull, but it was difficult to make out, especially with the background constantly changing color.
“I bet they see into the infrared,” shouted Clete. “It’s probably still changin’ colors while it seems to be black before turning red, but we just can’t see it.”
“Perhaps,” said Frank, “but—”
“Look at that!” shouted the chopper’s pilot.
A narrow cylinder was rising out of the center of the spaceship’s hull. At its apex was a bright yellow light that was winking on and off. Blink, pause, blink-blink, pause, blink-blink-blink.
“Counting,” said Clete.
But the next sequence was five blinks, not four, and the one after that was seven blinks. And then the sequence started cycling over and over again: one, two, three, five, seven; one, two, three, five, seven.
“Prime numbers!” said Frank. He shouted at the pilot, “Does this copter have a searchlight?”
The man shook his head.
“Get us back to the aircraft carrier as fast as possible. Hurry!”
The pilot nodded and took the chopper through a wide, banking turn.
Frank looked over at the Russian sub. It was already returning the signaclass="underline" the first five prime numbers in sequence, cycling repeatedly.
The pilot was wearing a radio headset. Frank shouted at him. “Get the Kitty Hawk to use its searchlights. Tell it to blink out a reply at the ship. The first five prime numbers, over and over.”
The pilot relayed the message. It seemed to take forever—with Frank fidgeting through each second—but eventually a large searchlight just below the carrier’s radar antenna started flashing out the sequence.
The yellow beacon sticking up from the lander went dark.
“Could we have said the wrong thing?” asked Clete.
The Seahawk touched down on the flight deck. As the rotor was twirling down, Frank got out, the wind from the blades whipping his hair. Clete followed a moment later. Hunching over, they hustled away from the chopper. The captain, a bald-headed black man of about fifty, was waiting for them just inside the base of the conning tower. “The Russians are still signaling the same thing, too,” he said.