A newsreel preceded the feature film on the Qantas flight to Melbourne, projected over the heads of passengers onto a tiny screen. Arthur looked up from his disk reader and open ring binder. Beside him, an elderly gentleman in a gray herringbone wool suit dozed lightly.
A computer-animated graphic of Australia Associated Press News Network filled the screen, backed by a jaunty jazz score. The rather plain, rugged middle-aged face of AAPN anchor Rachel Vance smiled across the darkened seats and inattentive heads. “Good day. Our lead story today is, of course, still the Centralian extraterrestrials. Yet another conference was held yesterday between Australian scientists and the robots, familiarly known as Shmoos, after comic artist Al Capp’s remarkably generous characters, which they resemble in shape. While the information exchanged in the conference has not been released, a government spokesman acknowledged that scientists are still discussing theoretical physics and astronomy, and have not yet begun discussions on biology.”
The spokesman appeared, a familiar face already. Arthur half listened. He had heard it all by now. “We have received no information about the density of living things in the galaxy; that is, we still do not know how many planets are inhabited, or what types of creatures inhabit them…”
His picture faded to a shot of the three Shmoos in motion down a dirt path to conference trailers set up in fields of dry spinifex grass near the huge false rock. The robots’ floating propulsion was still eerie, deeply disturbing. In that motion could be signs of an immensely advanced technology…or of some sort of visual trick, a show for the primitive natives.
Vance returned, her smile warmly fixed in stone. “The Washington Post and The New York Times reported today that the remnant of an old volcano near Death Valley, California, has been closed off to the public. The Post makes a connection between this closing and the disappearance of three men and a woman, all allegedly held by military authorities in California.”
Nothing new, but closer…perilously closer. Arthur leaned back in his seat and stared out of the window at the ocean and clouds passing in review tens of thousands of feet below. Immense, he thought. It seems to be all there is. Ocean and clouds. I could spend my entire life traveling and not see all of it. This did not necessarily demonstrate the size of the Earth, but it did put his life and brain in perspective.
He tried to nap. They would be in Melbourne in a few hours, and he was already exhausted.
The Rock, still unnamed, stretched for half a mile across the horizon in the early morning light, gloriously colored from the bottom up in layers of purple and red and orange. The sky overhead was a trembling dusty blue-gray, hinting at the heat to come. It was spring here, but there had been little rain. There was hardly a breath of wind. Arthur jumped down from the bulky, big-tired gray Royal Australian Army staff vehicle into red dust and stared across the golden plain at the Rock. The science advisor, David Rotterjack, stepped down behind him. Less than a dozen meters away, the first circle of razor-wire-topped hurricane fence began, curving in broad scallops through silver-gray mulga scrub and spiky spinifex.
Quentin Bent walked with a short-legged, almost eager waddle along the red dirt path to the edge of the road. Bent was in his mid-forties, heavy and florid-faced, with a forward-swept bush of gray hair, an easy smile, and sharp, pessimistic blue eyes. He extended his hand to Rotterjack first. In another Army vehicle, Bent’s assistants, Forbes and French, accompanied Charles Warren, the geologist from Kent State.
“Mr. Arthur Gordon,” Bent said, shaking Arthur’s hand. “I’ve just finished reading the draft American task force report. Your work, and Dr. Feinman’s, largely, am I correct?”
“Yes,” Arthur said. “I hope it was clear.”
“All too clear,” Bent said, lifting his chin as if smelling the air, but keeping his eyes on Arthur. “Very disturbing. Gentlemen, I’ve received a message from our Shmoos — we all call them that now, they can’t really be offended, can they? — and we’re scheduled to have a meeting with them at noon today in trailer three.” Almost breathlessly, he said, “Each day…they travel from the Rock to our conference trailer. They never leave the vicinity of the Rock. Before then, we will have breakfast in the mess trailer, and then a tour of the site, if you’re up to it. Did you get enough sleep, Dr. Gordon, Mr. Rotterjack, Dr. Warren?”
“Sufficient,” Rotterjack said, his eyes dark.
Bent flashed a smile and waddled into place ahead of them. “Follow me,” he said.
Arthur fell in step beside Warren, a man of middle height and build with wispy, thinning brown hair brushed across a bald spot and large eyes above a long nose. “What does it look like?” he asked.
“A lot like Ayers Rock, only smaller,” Warren answered, shaking his head. “It’s less convincing than the cinder cone in Death Valley. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find it at Disney World.”
The breakfast went smoothly. They were introduced to several of the scientists measuring and analyzing the Rock, including the head of the materials team, Dr. Christine Carmichael. She explained that the minerals making up the Rock were all clearly earthbound — none of the surrounding “camouflage” material had arrived from space. Arthur tried to visualize the construction of the Rock, away from all human witnesses; he could not.
Other discussion was brief. Bent asked only three questions: how they planned to release the news (Rotterjack replied that at present there were no such plans), how they interpreted the Guest’s story about planet-eating spacecraft (it seemed straightforward), and whether they believed there was a connection between the Death Valley cinder cone and the Rock. Rotterjack was unwilling to commit himself. Warren did not believe he had spent enough time on the project to render a useful opinion. Arthur nodded once; there was a definite connection.
“Can’t have too many interstellar visitors in one year, eh?” Bent asked.
“It seems very unlikely,” Arthur said.
“But not impossible?” Bent pursued.
“Not beyond possibility, but difficult to conceive.”
“Still, we’re all quite ignorant about what’s out there, aren’t we?” Forbes asked, smoothing back his white-blond hair with one hand.
“There could have been a wave of machine migrations, finally reaching this vicinity,” French added. “Perhaps whole civilizations have grown up along an evolutionary timetable, and like rain precipitating out of a cloud, the time has come …”
Bent leaned over his now empty plates of steak, eggs, and fruit. “We’re an optimistic bunch, Dr. Gordon. Our nation is younger than yours. Let me say, right out, that we have an interest in this being a good thing. The P.M. and the Cabinet — not to mention the Reverend Mr. Caldecott…” He glanced around, grinning broadly. Forbes and French mimicked his grin. “We all believe this could lift us into the forefront of all nations. We could be a center of immense activity, construction, education, research. If the Furnace is something horrible, which it seems to be, we might still cling to the notion that the Rock is different. Whether it serves us ill or not. Am I clear?”
“Perfectly clear,” Rotterjack said. “We’d like to agree with you.” He glanced at Arthur.
“We can’t, however,” Arthur said.
“For the moment, then, amicable disagreement and open minds. Gentlemen, we have a helicopter waiting.”
In the late morning light, the Rock’s colors had been subdued to a bright russet mixed with streaks of ocher. Arthur, looking through the concentric networks of tiny scratches in the helicopter’s Plexiglas windows, shook his head. “The detail is astonishing,” he shouted above the whine of the jets and the thumping roar of the blades. Warren nodded, squinting against a sudden glare of sun. “It’s granite, all right, but there’s no exfoliation. The banding is vertical, which is entirely wrong for this area — more appropriate to Ayers Rock than here. And where are the wind features, the hollows and caves? It’s a reasonably convincing imitation — unless you’re a geologist. But my question is, why go to all the trouble to disguise the Rock, when they knew they’d be coming out in the open?”