“There is one thing that we can do immediately,” Benedetto countered. “With your permission, of course, Your Holiness.”
“And what is that?”
“The Americans are inviting the Russians and scientists from many other countries to join them in a co-operative research program, to study these signals and attempt to make contact with the alien artifact.”
“Yes?”
“So our people in Washington tell me,” Benedetto said, a bit smugly, Von Friederich thought.
“What has this to do with us?” the Pope asked.
“We should send a scientist to join this group, if the Americans actually are sincere in their words.”
“A scientist from the Church? Now, who…”
“We have just the man,” Benedetto said, with the air of a magician pulling a rabbit from his hat. “A Dominican lay brother in a monastery in Languedoc. He was a world-renowned cosmologist who received the Nobel Prize for his theories…”
Von Friederich interrupted, “A cosmologist who received the Nobel and then retired to a Dominican monastery?”
Benedetto spread his hands in an Italian gesture of regret. “He wished to get away from the world. He had a problem with alcohol. There were also other rumors…about carnal excesses…”
“This man should represent the Vatican?”
“He is much older now,” Benedetto said. “The monastic life has purified him.”
“Will he be able to face the temptations of the outer world, beyond his monastery’s walls?” the Pope wondered.
Smiling, Benedetto answered, “At some scientific research station? I should think so.”
“What is his name?”
“Reynaud. Edouard Reynaud.”
“I never heard of him,” Von Friederich muttered.
“He is a very famous scientist.”
“Very well,” said the Pope. “Ask his Order for his services. He should come here first, to discuss the matter with you in detail.”
“Yes, Your Holiness.” Bendetto bowed his head meekly.
Von Friederich gathered his strength and said firmly, “But we will make no public announcements. We must not alarm the faithful.”
The Pope nodded. “I agree, my Lord Cardinal. If the Americans and Russians remain silent, we must keep silent, also.”
The pain washed over him, but with it Von Friederich felt a profound sense of relief, almost gratitude. At least I have accomplished that much, he thought. I’ve stemmed the Italian tide one more time. I’ve protected Christ’s Vicar on Earth from making a fool of himself.
Even through the red haze of his suffering, Von Friederich relished the look of discomfort on Benedetto’s swarthy face.
Chapter 17
REVIVALISTS, UFO FANS CLASH
SAN DIEGO: A near riot broke out at an outdoor revival meeting in Marineland of the Pacific last night as followers of Urban Evangelist Willie Wilson clashed with UFO fans who had infiltrated Rev. Wilson’s meeting.
More than six thousand persons were jammed into the outdoor meeting grounds, police estimate, to hear Rev. Wilson preach his “watch the skies” message. Shortly after he began speaking, an organized band of UFO enthusiasts began heckling, booing and waving protest signs. Several scuffles broke out, but police armed with riot gear quickly quelled the disturbances.
“He’s a phony,” said Fred W. Weddell, a local UFO expert, of Rev. Wilson. “He’s trying to scare everybody with an end of the world sermon. We all know that UFOs are friendly, peaceful.”
Rev. Wilson declared, “My message is one of peace and hope. It has nothing to do with UFOs. I’m merely warning people that a Great Change is coming to this world, and we should all be watching the skies for it.”
Seventeen persons were injured in the fighting, including two who were hospitalized. Police arrested eight…
A storm was coming.
Stoner had lived in New England long enough to know the warnings. The eleven o’clock news on television—two bland men so alike they might have been clones, in their gold blazers, teamed with a carefully coiffed Hispanic woman who traded inane small talk with them—had given a weather forecast of “clear and colder, with an overnight low around zero, winds from the west light and variable.”
But now, just past midnight, the wind was moaning and roaring outside the New Hampshire house. A look through the dining room windows showed clouds scudding across the face of the Moon. Trees were swaying and clacking their frozen branches together. The house began to creak like an old wooden ship laboring through heavy seas.
Cavendish, who now shared the house with Stoner, shivered as he stared out the window. “My god, to think that the Puritans faced this kind of weather. They must have been totally unprepared for it.”
Stoner laughed to himself. This is the winter that Big Mac was going to save us from. The winter we were going to spend in Puerto Rico.
As he sat at the dining room table, surrounded by Big Eye photographs of Jupiter and computer printouts, Stoner studied the Englishman. Cavendish was smoking a pipe. He wore a sweater beneath his tweed jacket. He turned back from the window and peered from beneath his bushy brows at the photos strewn across the table.
Tapping at the pinpoint of light at the center of one photo, he asked, “You’re really quite certain that this thing is from beyond the solar system?”
Stoner said, “Yes.”
“Mathematically certain?”
“Check the numbers yourself. It’s a tourist, a visitor, from outside this solar system.”
“H’mm.” Cavendish puffed a cloud of smoke ceilingward. “And the radio pulses have stopped.”
Nodding, “It’s been nearly a week now. Nothing.”
“Just abruptly…turned off, eh?”
“That’s what Jeff Thompson told me. And now the spacecraft is spiraling out from Jupiter, moving away from the planet.”
“Moving away? Really?”
“That’s what the numbers from the computer show. It’s taken a look at Jupiter, and now it’s going away. Maybe it’s heading back home.”
Cavendish said nothing for a few moments. The pipe smoke smelled pleasant to Stoner, comforting.
“Nothing close enough to us to be a reasonable home for the beast, is there?” the Englishman asked.
Stoner shrugged. “Alpha Centauri’s more than four light-years away, but there’s no evidence of planets there.”
“Quite. Nearest star with planets is Sixty-one Cygni, isn’t it?”
“Barnard’s Star,” Stoner corrected, “if you accept Van de Kamp’s work. Not quite six light-years out.”
“Really?” Cavendish puffed reflectively for a few moments, clouds of smoke rising slowly to the low, sagging ceiling of the dining room.
Stoner pulled his chair over to the computer terminal, perched on the far end of the dining room table. His fingers played over the keyboard briefly.
“Where’s the blasted thing heading?”
“That’s what we’d all like to know. The computer’s chewing on it now. Seems to be aiming out of the solar system entirely. If we extend its present velocity vector, it’ll climb way up above the ecliptic and head back out into deep space.”
“You think it’s going back home, do you?”
“Or off to another solar system.”
“But out of our solar system entirely,” Cavendish said.
“Right.”
“Without visiting us.”
Stoner looked up from the keyboard. “We’re not that important to it, I guess. It’s an alien craft. It entered our solar system, went to the biggest planet it could find, sniffed around, and now it’s leaving. Maybe it flew by Saturn before we discovered its presence, I don’t know. But whoever sent it probably came from a giant planet, like Jupiter or Saturn, I would guess. They probably can’t imagine life existing on a small, hot world like Earth.”