TSERBATSKY “They treated us in a brisk brotherly way. As fellow intelligences. They were very busy. We were the tourists. They talked with a very wide range of sounds. Going up very high-pitched sometimes. I heard the top C that shatters Opera House chandeliers. And a dull low bass at other times. With a very fast shuttling between the two extremes.”
SHERMAN “We negotiated with two of them by way of this blackboard screen. We drew with our fingers and images appeared. It’s agreed they’re going into parking orbit. They’ll send a small vehicle down to the Nevada site. We asked for and got a transpolar orbit on the twenty west, one-sixty east longitude. The only land that passes over is Siberia, Antarctica, Reykjavik in Iceland, and a few bits and pieces in the Pacific. Okay?”
TSERBATSKY “Imagine, Gentlemen, we have met our brothers from the stars. And we are going to hide them away where no one sees! I am still filled with the wonder of it!”
STEPANOV (SPEAKING RUSSIAN, A PROVERB WHICH CAN LOOSELY BE TRANSLATED AS)
“Brothers is, as brothers does, Petr Simonovich!”
SHERMAN “I’m goddam tired. We’re coming aboard to sleep now.”
MISSION CONTROL “One thing more, Leapfrog. Did you find out why they’ve come?”
SHERMAN “Nope. Apart from the orbital and landing data, it was all one big language lesson to me. All taken up with checking out the speech tapes we brought. We didn’t get down to personalities or purposes.”
MISSION CONTROL “Don’t worry, Paulus—I guess they got their priorities straight. How do we communicate with them if not by words?”
After he’d read the transcriptions, Sole stared at the bright red cover of the xeroxed sheets, which had been flown in direct from Houston to Fort Meade, the autofax system apparently being distrusted for the conveyance of sensitive material of this order. Tax Freaks’ had been operating in the States for at least a year now, making it their sometimes profitable, sometimes anarchistic hobby to extract autofaxed documents from the coded signals in the public telephone system, even when scramblers were in use. There had already been one major scandal in the past twelve months, about nuclear waste disposal procedures, traceable to this particular source—amateur guerrilla technology. There were tales of industrial espionage from the pharmaceuticals industry, and rumours of phoney government memos being slipped into the system, somewhere between the State Department and the Pentagon. The personal courier had emerged from the world of autofax technology, unscathed and even with a new importance.
This cover sheet read:
SECRET THIS IS A COVER SHEET Basic Security Requirements Are Contained In AR 380-5
THE UNAUTHORIZED DISCLOSURE OF THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THE ATTACHED DOCUMENT(S) COULD RESULT IN SERIOUS DAMAGE TO THE UNITED STATES…
There was a full page of warning instructions, ending with the information that the Cover Sheet was not in itself secret, provided no secret document was attached to it. Plain to see that the National Security Agency had thought long and hard about the mad logic of secrecy.
Sole tossed the document back across the desk to Tom Zwingler.
Initially, while he cooled his heels in the National Cryptological Command, he had fretted about Vidya. Latterly, the possible impact of the arrival of these aliens had begun to preoccupy him, generating a mood of semi-euphoric pessimism.
“So you’re orbiting them entirely over oceans?”
“Well—that orbit passes over a lot of shipping and right over Iceland’s capital, but otherwise we’re in the clear. The Soviets are announcing the launching of an expanding balloon reflector on that orbit. We’ll confirm the announcement.”
“Tom, you’ve got to be joking. How many people know already? And how many more will make educated guesses?”
“By the latest count the number in the know is pushing nine hundred fifty. That’s not so huge, considering. It is an unbelievable kind of a secret, after all.”
Sole glanced out of the window at the twilit woods outside. These insulated the buildings from the outside world like another Haddon Unit. Only, this place was so much vaster, so much more technologically hip, so much more secure.
Getting through the security net into the NCC was more than a matter of fitting a couple of keys in a couple of doorways. Now Sole was wearing an identity tab with coded data conveying voice and retina prints as well as his photograph.
Zwingler grinned, catching some of the comparison Sole was making, from the look in his eyes.
“The most elaborate computer system in the world, Chris. Breaking codes and ciphers and inventing them, is kids’ play here. We’ve some of the finest linguists and cryptanalysts and math wizards—”
“I’m flattered,” smiled Sole.
“Ah well, one thing we do lack is any little aliens running round in our basement…”
Zwingler meditated a while, then said thoughtfully:
“It’s always been a way-out possibility, this. Statistically, so many solar systems have to exist out there. If only it could have put off happening for another century! Still, if we can keep it under wraps—”
“What makes you think we would be any better prepared next century? The most you could hope for by then would be a small base on the Moon. A few landings on Mars. Maybe on one of Jupiter’s moons. There’s no essential difference between that, and the state we’re at now—compared with say a century ago. Now seems as good a time as any to sail in here playing our TV shows back at us. Letting Caliban see his features in the mirror. It’s just our particular sickness that we worry about it. How would the Elizabethans have handled it? Probably written epic poems or magnificent new King Lears.”
“I resent it, Chris. I feel like an atheist confronted by the Second Coming in the grand style—angels blowing silver trumpets in the sky.”
“Yes, but you aren’t a disbeliever in that respect. You just said yourself there must be so many other solar systems out there.”
“I still resent it.”
Sole listened to the noise of the building. The muted clatter of a printout. Footfalls. The flatulent bubbling of the water cooler.
“How are you going to stop them flying down to Nevada via Los Angeles, just to take a look at a city? Give all the saucer spotters a field day—”
“Oh, Sherman made it pretty plain which way we want them coming in—a DEW line approach. They’ll see some of the other equipment in orbit—realize what a lot of nuclear tripwires there are in our skies…”
“So we’re the big boys still,” smirked Sole acidly. “Honour restored?”
“That’s as may be,” the other said didactically. “But we can’t afford any loss of cultural confidence, can we? The world’s in a pretty volatile state nowadays.”
The phone burbled softly and Zwingler spoke into it briefly.
“Our plane’s waiting, Chris. Orbiting should start about four hours from now. Leapfrog has just leapt off—NASA didn’t want our frog in a transpolar orbit. Transfer to the Skylab Shuttle system’s a bit awkward from that angle. Oh, and they tell me the Russians are flying to Nevada in their SST. The Concordski thing.”
“That’s bound to attract attention.”
“No, it shouldn’t. Nevada is mostly desert and mountains. We’re not asking these aliens to land in Las Vegas you know.” He smiled dubiously. “Howard Hughes wouldn’t have liked it.”