T PLUS 3 DAYS 15 HOURS 5 MINUTES
SHERMAN “I can see it! There’s a half moon profile out there—sidelighted by sunlight. It has to be a globe. How’s the quality of the picture?”
MISSION CONTROL “There’s a bit of glare. Will you move the camera over to the right?”
SHERMAN “How about this?”
MISSION CONTROL “That’s better. We see it now.”
DALTON “What’s it transmitting right now?”
MISSION CONTROL “The movie of the Manson Musical. A New York station put it out last week. No, wait a second. That transmission’s just stopped… They’re transmitting our rendezvous diagram now—yes it’s the rendezvous diagram, check. Now it’s stopped. It’s coming again… no—they’ve changed it now. A new diagram. It shows your flightpath intersecting with theirs. Diagram’s changed again. The scale’s large now. There’s Leapfrog and the Globe. The Globe is a perfect circle. Leapfrog’s a small triangle of dots. A dotted line connects you both.”
DALTON “Do we cut along the dotted line?”
MISSION CONTROL “Another change—new diagram. Showing Leapfrog sitting on the very outside of the Globe. They want you to land on them. Distance is five miles now, relative velocity fifty… forty-nine—”
SHERMAN “Good visuals now. How do you read the pictures?”
MISSION CONTROL “Fine. Will you prepare to land on manuals?”
SHERMAN “Wilco. The Globe’s shining as if it’s made of metal. A high albedo. No apparent irregularities. Not a rock body I’d say—so the idea of a hollowed-out asteroid is a no-no.”
MISSION CONTROL “Landing plan’s being rebroadcast. No fresh developments. Distance is three miles, Relative velocity thirty… twenty-nine—”
TSERBATSKY “It makes me feel like a flea. Such size, and moving under its own power!”
SHERMAN “Houston? I’m going for a short burn to slow down the rate of closing. A point-five second burn… now.”
MISSION CONTROL “Telemetry reads your distance as two miles, Leapfrog. Relative velocity now nine—now eight point five.”
T PLUS 3 DAYS 15 HOURS 28 MINUTES
SHERMAN “Landing probes making contact—now. We’re down.”
TSERBATSKY “It’s metal—a great metal sphere. The horizon is a perfect circle round us. The surface slightly pitted—a texture like sandpaper. But no big dents or cracks. I can see great circle lines running to the horizon. It’s put together like an orange.”
DALTON “Smooth parking, Paulus—like in your own driveway. I guess it’s a free ride home from here.”
MISSION CONTROL “Not all the way home, boys. For God’s sake get them persuaded into a high parking orbit. The Soviets will announce an inflatable comsat to coincide with their arrival. That thing will be like a new star in the sky.”
TSERBATSKY “And supposing it wishes to land, Gentlemen?”
DALTON “That thing, landing? It would break apart! What does it sit down on?”
TSERBATSKY “HOW about water?”
MISSION CONTROL “That’s true, Tserbatsky. If they plan on landing that thing, we’ll have to scrap the Nevada Desert plan.”
TSERBATSKY “The American lakes are too public. Canada is no use in winter. How about the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan?”
DALTON “Aussieland might be better. One of those lakes in the Outback?”
TSERBATSKY “They’re seasonal lakes. Empty at the moment. And too shallow anyway.”
MISSION CONTROL “Don’t you boys worry yourselves about the politics of it, we’ll work that one out down here. You concentrate on that Globe.”
T PLUS 3 DAYS 16 HOURS OO MINUTES
MISSION CONTROL “Boys, we’ve reached a compromise on the landing zone—if that thing’s going to land. The obvious place is the Pacific. Will you copy the co-ordinates? It’s a lagoon in the Marshall Islands, southeast of Eniwetok. North seven degrees fifty-two minutes. East one-sixty-eight degrees twenty minutes. Of course, the Globe is unlikely to land—most likely it carries a scout ship on board. In which case Nevada is the prime choice.”
TSERBATSKY “I request verbal confirmation of the Mar-shall Islands decision from Dr Stepanov.”
MISSION CONTROL “Fair enough.”
DIMITRI A STEPANOV (USSR CO-ORDINATOR, HOUSTON; TRANSLATED FROM RUSSIAN)
“I confirm the Pacific location, Petr Simonovich. But try to keep that thing in the sky. The Nevada Desert for any scout-ship.”
DALTON “There’s a hole opening up in the skin about a hundred metres off.”
SHERMAN “A cylinder shape is rising out of it. It’s about ten metres high by thirty across. Maybe it’s an airlock?”
TSERBATSKY “A broad opening appearing in the cylinder side.”
MISSION CONTROL “Leapfrog? The landing plan they were broadcasting has stopped. We’re receiving a new diagram now. It shows you on the outside of the Globe—with a dotted line moving from you to the inside of it. They want you to go inside. Better get suited up, Sherman and Tserbatsky. Dalton will watch the store.”
T PLUS 3 DAYS 16 HOURS 50 MINUTES
DALTON “They’re getting close to the airlock now. You okay, Paulus?”
SHERMAN “We’re fine. You read us, Houston?”
MISSION CONTROL “Fine—good visuals.”
SHERMAN “The inside of the cylinder is empty. There’s a large round chamber. Some sort of sensors and controls at the rear. We’re stepping inside together.”
DALTON “Two great steps for mankind? Hey Houston! The door’s closing! That thing’s shutting on them.”
TSERBATSKY “Doors are designed to close, my friend. We’re—” (LOSS OF SIGNAL)
DALTON “The door’s tight shut now. The cylinder is retracting back into the skin. Can you hear me, Paulus? Paulus! Houston, the contact’s been lost. Can you still hear me, Houston?”
MISSION CONTROL “We hear you loud and clear, Leap-frog.”
DALTON “Something’s blanketing their transmissions then.”
T PLUS 4 DAYS 06 HOURS 35 MINUTES
DALTON “Houston! That cylinder’s on the move again. It’s coming up… The door’s opening… There they are in the doorway. Paulus? Tserbatsky? Do you read me?” SHERMAN “Yes Mike, we read you. But we’re tired.”
TSERBATSKY “Houston?”
MISSION CONTROL “Houston to Leapfrog. Sherman, Tserbatsky. Welcome back. What happened?”
SHERMAN “I guess you could say that the ball’s in their court now…”
TSERBATSKY “Paulus—have you no sense of destiny! Intelligent beings have crossed the deeps of space to communicate with us. They open the door to the Universe. Let us never wittingly let it shut!”
DALTON “Great speech, Ivan, but what the hell do they look like?”
TSERBATSKY “Oh that. Appearances. They’re bipeds—two arms and two legs like ourselves—only they’re much taller than us, about three metres tall. They’ve got skinny frames, with powdery grey skins. No body hair visible on them. They have this broad single nostril in the middle of their faces—a vast flat saddle nose like you see in hereditary syphilis. And their eyes—these are set further round the sides of the head than ours. They must see through a hundred and eighty to two hundred degrees—the eyes bulge like the eyes of Pekinese dogs. Their ears look like crinkly grey paper bags—and are continually inflating and deflating. I could see small cartiliginous teeth in their mouths and the mouth itself was a bright orange colour, except for the tongue which was long and dark and red—and very supple, like a butterfly’s tongue.”
SHERMAN “They analysed our air and fitted out a sort of reception room for us made out of glass—for us to take our helmets off inside of. We gave them the language videotapes and microfilm. They put them through some machine—decontamination I guess—and huddled round them. They had the language tapes on a screen within ten minutes. Two of them scanning fast and listening, ignoring us. Another of them brought a communication screen we could write on.”