“Are you naive enough to think for one minute,” challenged a portly bearded young astronomer, “that the politicians are going to listen to what we say?”
Dubois had battled her way through glass ceilings in academia and government. She had no illusions, but she recognized an opportunity when she saw one.
“They’ll have no choice but to accept our recommendation,” she said, with one eye on the news reporters sitting in their own section of the big auditorium. “We represent the only uninterested, unbiased group in the country. We speak for science, for the betterment of the human race. Who else has been actively working to find extraterrestrial intelligence for all these many years?”
To her credit, Dubois had worked out a protocol with the International Astronomical Union, after two days of frantic, frenzied negotiations. Each member nation’s astronomers would decide on a question, then the Union’s executive committee—of which she was chair this year—would vote on the various suggestions.
By noon, she told herself, we’ll present The Question we’ve chosen to the leaders of every government on Earth. And to the news media, of course. The politicians will have to accept our choice. There’ll only be about seven hours left before the deadline falls.
She had tried to keep this meeting as small as possible, yet by the time every committee within the astronomy branch of NSF had been notified, several hundred men and women had hurried to Washington to participate. Each of them had her or his own idea of what The Question should be.
Dubois knew what she wanted to ask: What was the state of the universe before the Big Bang? She had never been able to accept the concept that all the matter and energy of the universe originated out of quantum fluctuations in the vacuum. Even if that was right, it meant that a vacuum existed before the Big Bang, and where did that come from?
So patiently, tirelessly, she tried to lead the several hundred astronomers toward a consensus on The Question. Within two hours she gave up trying to get her question accepted; within four hours she was despairing of reaching any agreement at all.
Brian Martinson sat in a back row of the auditorium, watching his colleagues wrangle like lawyers. No, worse, he thought. They’re behaving like cosmologists!
An observational astronomer who believed in hard data, Martinson had always considered cosmologists to be theologians of astronomy. They took a pinch of observational data and added tons of speculation, carefully disguised as mathematical formulations. Every time a new observation was made, the cosmologists invented seventeen new explanations for it—most of them contradicting one another.
He sighed. This is getting us no place. There won’t be an agreement here, any more than there was one in the Oval Office, five days ago. He peered at his wristwatch, then pushed himself out of the chair.
The man sitting next to him asked, “You’re leaving? Now?”
“Got to,” Martinson explained over the noise of rancorous shouting. “I’ve got an Air Force jet waiting to take me to Arecibo.”
“Oh?”
“I’m supposed to be supervising the big dish when we ask The Question.” Martinson looked around at his red-faced, flustered colleagues, then added, “If we ever come to an agreement on what it should be.”
The Dictator
“Arecibo is only a few hours from here, by jet transport,” the Dictator repeated, staring out the ceiling-high windows of his office at the troops assembled on the plaza below. “Our paratroops can get there and seize the radio telescope facility well before eighteen hundred hours.”
His minister of foreign affairs, a career diplomat who had survived four coups d’etat and two revolutions by the simple expedient of agreeing with whichever clique seized power, cast a dubious eye at his latest Maximum Leader.
“A military attack on Puerto Rico is an attack on the United States,” he said, as mildly as he could, considering the wretched state of his stomach.
The Dictator turned to glare at him. “So?”
“The Yankees will not let an attack on their territory go unanswered. They will strike back at us.”
The Dictator toyed with his luxuriant mustache, a maneuver he used whenever he wanted to hide inner misgivings. At last he laughed and said, “What can the Gringos do, once I have asked The Question?”
The foreign minister knew better than to argue. He simply sat in the leather wing chair and stared at the Dictator, who looked splendid in his full-dress military uniform with all the medals and the sash of office crossing his proud chest.
“Yes,” the Dictator went on, convincing himself (if not the foreign minister), “it is all so simple. While the scientists and world leaders fumble and agonize over what The Question should be, I—your Maximum Leader—knew instantly what I wanted to ask. I knew it! Without a moment of hesitation.”
The spacious, high-ceilinged palace room seemed strangely warm to the foreign minister. He pulled the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and mopped his fevered brow.
“Yes,” the Dictator was going on, congratulating himself, “while the philosophers and weaklings try to reach an agreement, I act. I seize the radio telescope and send to the alien visitors The Question. My question!”
“The man of action always knows what to do,” the foreign minister parroted.
“Exactly! I knew what The Question should be, what it must be. How can I rule the world? What other question matters?”
“But to ask it, you must have the Arecibo facility in your grasp.”
“For only a few hours. Even one single hour will do.”
“Can your troops operate the radio telescope?”
A cloud flickered across the Dictator’s face, but it passed almost as soon as it appeared.
“No, of course not,” he replied genially. “They are soldiers, not scientists. But the scientists who make up the staff at Arecibo will operate the radio telescope for us.”
“You are certain… ?”
“With guns at their heads?” The Dictator threw his head back and laughed. “Yes, they will do what they are told. We may have to shoot one or two, to convince the others, but they will do what they are told, never fear.”
“And afterward? How do the troops get away?”
The Dictator shrugged. “There has not been enough time to plan for removing them from Arecibo.”
Eyes widening, stomach clenching, the foreign minister gasped, “You’re going to leave them there?”
“They are all volunteers.”
“And when the Yankee Marines arrive? What then?”
“What difference? By then I will have the answer from the aliens. What are the lives of a handful of martyrs compared to the glory of ruling the entire world?”
The foreign minister struggled to his feet. “You must forgive me, my leader. My stomach…”
And he lurched toward the bathroom, hoping he could keep himself from retching until he got to the toilet.
The Radio Astronomer
At least the military was operating efficiently, Brian Martinson thought as he winged at supersonic speed high above the Atlantic. An Air Force sedan had been waiting for him in front of the NSF headquarters; its sergeant driver whisked him quickly through the downtown Washington traffic and out to Andrews Air Force Base, where a sleek swept-wing, twin-jet VIP plane was waiting to fly him to Puerto Rico.
Looking idly through the small window at his side, his mind filled with conflicting ideas about the aliens and The Question, Martinson realized that he could actually see the Gulf Stream slicing through the colder Atlantic waters, a bright blue ribbon of warmth and life against the steely gray of the ocean.