“But why?”
“As an ambassador!” The answer hit Stoner’s conscious mind as he pronounced the words. “Of course! As an ambassador! What better way to make contact with unknown intelligent races scattered across thousands of light-years?”
“Ambassador?”
“Yes!” Stoner knew he was right. “He’s saying to us, ‘Here, I want you to see me, to know that I exist, my civilization exists. You aren’t alone in the universe. Take my body. Study it; study the artifacts I’ve brought along with me. Study my ship. Learn from me.’ What better way to share knowledge? To show that his intent is totally peaceful, benign?”
Federenko was silent, thinking.
Stoner went back to his description. “He’s got a jaw that looks like it hinges the same way our own jaws do. No ears, but there’s a couple of circular patches on the sides of his head…they look almost like outcroppings of bone. Not horns, they’re flat. Sense organs of some kind.”
“What sexual organs?” Federenko asked, then added, “Biologists want to know.”
Stoner grinned. “They would. Nothing visible in the usual place, but there’s some kind of protuberance halfway down his torso. And his fuzz is slightly different color around there, more yellowish.” Christ, it looks like he died with a hard-on, Stoner thought.
“Wait,” Federenko said. “We are getting a transmission from ground control.”
Stoner walked around the raised platform, bobbing in the zero gravity as his boots clung slightly to the spongy flooring. There were more artifacts on the alien’s other side. A straight edge, a square covered with dots that were connected by thin lines. An astronomical map? he wondered. This ark is a damned treasure house; he’s brought his whole civilization with him.
Federenko’s voice interrupted his musings. “Switch to frequency two, Shtoner.”
Stoner clicked the suit radio switch on his wrist and the Russian’s voice said, “Shtoner, this frequency is for private talk. Not for broadcast.”
“Okay.”
“Ground command is working out new course for us, to get us back. New tanker is being launched.”
“I knew they’d figure something out,” Stoner said.
“We will fire retro-rockets to break present course. Very soon.”
A tingle of alarm went through Stoner. “How soon?”
“Computers working on it. But you must be ready to return to Soyuz when I give command.”
“Sure,” Stoner replied.
“Photograph everything now,” Federenko said. “Time is short.”
“Yeah, okay. I’m switching back to frequency one now. I want everybody to hear what I’ve got to say.”
Federenko grunted. “Tyuratam estimates more than one billion people hear your voice.”
Good, Stoner thought. Now they’ll know.
Unhooking the bulky 35 mm stereo camera from its case at his belt, Stoner said for broadcast:
“I think it’s clear now that this alien has come in peace. He’s offering us his body and his treasured possessions, giving them to us, for us to study. He’s telling us that we have nothing to fear—that there are other intelligent races scattered among the stars. We’re not alone. The universe is filled with life, and it’s civilized, intelligent life.”
He was starting to babble and he knew it, but his hands clicked away with the camera while he chattered on:
“We have nothing to fear! This isn’t the end of our world, it’s just the beginning! Do you realize what that means? Intelligent civilizations don’t wipe themselves out with wars or pollution or overpopulation—not always, not inevitably. We have a future ahead of us as wide and bright as the stars themselves, if we strive for it, if we work together, all of us—the whole human race as a species, as a family, as one family unit in the great interstellar community of intelligent civilizations…”
In Rome, St. Peter’s Square was thronged with tens of thousands who stood in awed silence, watching the giant TV screens that had been set up there by the government. Finally the Pope appeared, not at the usual balcony, but at the head of the cathedral’s steps, flanked by red-robed cardinals and the colorful Swiss guards.
The mammoth crowd surged toward the Pontiff, its roar deafening. He smiled and nodded and gave his blessing to them all.
In Washington the President watched the rendezvous with the alien spacecraft in the privacy of his family room, with his wife and children clustered close around him. Downstairs in the West Wing the staff watched, too, and for at least a few hours all thoughts of the upcoming national conventions were suspended.
In Moscow, Georgi Borodinski phoned the commander of the Red Army missile forces and personally told him to deactivate the pair of hydrogen-bomb-tipped missiles that had been ready to intercept the alien spacecraft.
A few blocks away from the Kremlin, the Minister of Internal Security picked a small pistol from his desk drawer and, with a sardonic smile twitching at his lips, he placed its muzzle against his temple and pulled the trigger.
At the control center in Tyuratam, Jo’s face lit up as she watched the readout glowing on her computer screen.
Turning to Markov, who still stood by her side, she said, “It’ll work! We can get them back! They’ve got to break their current orbit within the next half hour. If they do that they can coast until the new tanker reaches them.”
Markov whooped and lifted Jo out of the chair and kissed her. One of the uniformed guards behind them twitched at the sudden noise and leveled his gun at them.
“I love you like a sister!” Markov proclaimed loudly, as the guard’s partner silently pushed the muzzle of the machine pistol down toward the floor, with a reproving frown.
Oblivious to what was going on behind him, Markov added in a whisper for Jo’s ear, “I never did believe in that silly taboo against incest, you know.”
Stoner was hoarse, his throat raw, but still he talked, minutely describing each artifact arranged along the alien’s sides as he snapped stereo photos. Questions were flooding up from Tyuratam and Kwajalein.
“No, no sign of other life forms,” Stoner answered, his throat rasping. “No plants or seeds or other animals. Maybe they’re in other compartments of the spacecraft.
“I’ve tried to get into the rest of the ship, but it’s no go. Just a smooth blank wall that won’t open up. It’s going to take a lot of study to figure out how they work their entrances and exits.
“The biggest discovery among the artifacts, I think, is this star chart. At least, I think it’s a star chart. I don’t recognize any of the constellations, but there’s writing on it…looks like writing, a lot of circles and curlicues.”
Federenko’s heavy voice broke in. “Shtoner, we have new trajectory data. Tanker is being sent to meet us. We must retrofire in eleven minutes.”
“Eleven minutes?” Stoner’s heart stopped in his chest. His voice nearly cracked.
“Ten minutes, forty-eight seconds, to be exact.”
Stoner’s gaze flashed to the alien resting on his bier. He’s spent thousands of years to get here and I have to leave in ten fucking minutes?
“No,” he protested. “We need more time. We can’t…”
“No more time,” Federenko said flatly. “Come back to Soyuz now. There is no other way.”
“Nikolai, I can’t! Not yet!”
“Now, Shtoner.”
He looked through the transparent hull of the sarcophagus, toward the distant stars. Then at the shrunken Earth, so far away, and finally at the stubby Soyuz.
“Nikolai, please…”
“We must go, Shtoner. Or die here.”
Stoner’s lips were dry and cracked. He felt the chill of death breathe on him, and he turned to stare once again at the alien. All the distance you’ve come, to offer us your body, your knowledge, everything that you are and you represent. So much to learn from you…