«You take care of yourself now, y’hear?» the FBI man said, getting into the car. He flipped up the visor with its OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT BUSINESS card tacked to it, and slid behind the steering wheel.
The car settled heavily on its springs, as though a ton of load had just been dumped on the front seat. He slammed the door. It was badly sprung.
«Too bad we couldn’t use him,» the FBI man said, staring out of the car at Brillo, illuminated through the precinct house doorway. «But … too crude.»
«Yeah, sure, I’ll take care of myself,» Polchik replied, one exchange too late. He felt his mouth hanging open.
The FBI man grinned, started the car, and pulled away.
Polchik stood in the street, for a while.
Sometimes he stared down the early morning street in the direction the FBI man had taken.
Sometimes he stared at the metal cop immobile in the muster room.
And even as the sounds of the city’s new day rose around him, he was not at all certain he did not still hear the sound of an electric watch. Getting louder.
ANSWER, PLEASE ANSWER
The Cold War is over, and good riddance to it. «Answer, Please Answer,» however, was written when the Cold War was at its bitterest and most dangerous: in 1961, when the Soviet Union and the U.S. were building hydrogen bombs and missiles as fast as they could, the Berlin Wall was going up, the Bay of Pigs was going down, and the Cuban Missile Crisis was on its way.
You might think that a fifty-some-year-old story would be dated, but I believe that the basic message of «Answer, Please Answer» is more relevant today than ever. The knowledge of how to build terrible weapons of mass destruction has not evaporated with the end of the Cold War. While the former Soviet Union and the U.S. are presently scrapping most of their missiles and H-bombs, other nations are building missiles and developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weaponry. The ability to destroy ourselves utterly is now part of the human store of knowledge: it will never go away. We will have to police our destructive impulses forever.
Science fiction is uniquely qualified to make points like that. Only in science fiction can we use an extraterrestrial civilization from a distant star to show how permanently dangerous is the world we have created for ourselves.
To make that point as strong as possible, it was necessary to strip the story of everything else. Every possible distraction had to be removed. So the characters are the bare minimum: two. The setting is as uncomplicated as possible: the two characters are alone in a remote Antarctic base. There is a good deal of astronomy thrown at the reader, for two reasons: one, to help the reader to understand what the characters are trying to do; two, to mask the approach of the final denouement.
A simple story, with no frills. But some depth, I think.
We had been at the South Pole a week. The outside thermometer read fifty degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. The winter was just beginning.
«What do you think we should transmit to McMurdo?» I asked Rizzo.
He put down his magazine and half-sat up in his bunk. For a moment there was silence, except for the nearly inaudible hum of the machinery that jammed our tiny dome, and the muffled shrieking of the ever-present wind, above us.
Rizzo looked at the semi-circle of control consoles, computers, and meteorological sensors with an expression of disgust that could be produced only by a drafted soldier.
«Tell ’em it’s cold, it’s gonna get colder, and we’ve both got appendicitis and need replacements immediately.»
«Very clever,» I said, and started touching the buttons that would automatically transmit the sensors’ memory tapes.
Rizzo sagged back into his bunk. «Why?» He asked the curved ceiling of our cramped quarters. «Why me? Why here? What did I ever do to deserve spending the whole goddammed winter at the goddammed South Pole?»
«It’s strictly impersonal,» I assured him. «Some bright young meteorologist back in Washington has convinced the Pentagon that the South Pole is the key to the world’s weather patterns. So here we are.»
«It doesn’t make sense,» Rizzo continued, unhearing. His dark, broad-boned face was a picture of wronged humanity. «Everybody knows that when the missiles start flying, they’ll be coming over the North Pole… The goddammed Army is a hundred and eighty degrees off base.»
«That’s about normal for the Army, isn’t it?» I was a drafted soldier, too.
Rizzo swung out of the bunk and paced across the dimly-lit room. It only took a half-dozen paces; the dome was small and most of it was devoted to machinery.
«Don’t start acting like a caged lion,» I warned. «It’s going to be a long winter.»
«Yeah, guess so.» He sat down next to me at the radio console and pulled a pack of cigarets from his shirt pocket. He offered one to me, and we both smoked in silence for a minute or two.
«Got anything to read?»
I grinned. «Some microspool catalogues of stars.»
«Stars?»
«I’m an astronomer … at least, I was an astronomer, before the National Emergency was proclaimed.»
Rizzo looked puzzled. «But I never heard of you.»
«Why should you?»
«I’m an astronomer too.»
«I thought you were an electronicist.»
He pumped his head up and down. «Yeah … at the radio astronomy observatory at Green-belt. Project OZMA. Where do you work?»
«Lick Observatory … with the 120-inch reflector.»
«Oh … an optical astronomer.»
«Certainly.»
«You’re the first optical man I’ve met.» He looked at me a trifle queerly.
I shrugged. «Well, we’ve been around a few millenia longer than you static-scanners.»
«Yeah, guess so.»
«I didn’t realize that Project OZMA was still going on. Have you had any results yet?»
It was Rizzo’s turn to shrug. «Nothing yet. The project has been shelved for the duration of the emergency, of course. If there’s no war, and the dish doesn’t get bombed out, we’ll try again.»
«Still listening to the same two stars?»
«Yeah … Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. They’re the only two Sun-type stars within reasonable range that might have planets like Earth.»
«And you expect to pick up radio signals from an intelligent race.»
«Hope to.»
I flicked the ash off my cigaret. «You know, it always struck me as rather hopeless … trying to find radio signals from intelligent creatures.»
«Whattaya mean, hopeless?»
«Why should an intelligent race send radio signals out into interstellar space?» I asked. «Think of the power it requires, and the likelihood that it’s all wasted effort, because there’s no one within range to talk to.»
«Well … it’s worth a try, isn’t it … if you think there could be intelligent creatures somewhere else … on a planet of another star.»
«Hmph. We’re trying to find another intelligent race; are we transmitting radio signals?»
«No,» he admitted. «Congress wouldn’t vote the money for a transmitter that big.»
«Exactly,» I said. «We’re listening, but not transmitting.» Rizzo wasn’t discouraged. «Listen, the chances—just on statistical figuring alone—the chances are that there’re millions of other solar systems with intelligent life. We’ve got to try contacting them! They might have knowledge that we don’t have … answers to questions that we can’t solve yet.
«I completely agree,» I said. «But listening for radio signals is the wrong way to do it.»
«Huh?»
«Radio broadcasting requires too much power to cover interstellar distances efficiently. We should be looking for signals, not listening for them.»