Could this really be a messenger from some alien civilization? Gerald had always pictured first-contact happening the way it did in movies and virts-via some spectacular starship, with enigmatic beings stepping down a ramp… or else through a less lurid, but still exciting blip on some radio telescope’s detector screen.
“Actually,” Saleh had explained at one point, “this method always seemed a lot more likely to many of us.”
When Gerald and Ganesh asked him to, the Malaysian astronaut let his body float horizontal, and explained. “About forty years ago, two New Jersey physicists, Rose and Wright, calculated that it would generally be cheaper for advanced civilizations to send messages in the form of physical tablets, inscribed with vast amounts of information, than beaming radio to faraway planets.”
“How can that be?” Ganesh protested. “Radio waves have no mass. They travel at lightspeed. But a physical object needs vast energy input, just to reach a tenth of that velocity. And it takes much longer to arrive.”
“That only matters if time is an issue-say, if you want a two way conversation,” Saleh had replied. “But suppose distance precludes that. Or you just want to send lots of information one-way, say as a gift? Then message bottles have big advantages.”
“Like what?”
“Total energy expended, for example. Radiation spreads out as it travels through space, diluting the signal below detection levels unless the beam is both powerful and coherent to begin with. Wright and Rose calculated that just beaming a brief radio signal strong enough to be detected ten thousand light-years away would take a million billion times as much energy as shooting the same data, embedded in coded bits upon a little pellet.”
“Assuming you don’t care when it arrives.”
“Oh but the physical message is better even with regard to time! Sure, it arrives later. But if it’s targeted right, to be captured by the destination star system, it might linger in orbit for centuries, even eons, long after any radio message passed onward to oblivion. Picture such a message tablet, silently orbiting on and on, waiting for the day that someone happens along to read what it has to say. Greetings from a distant race.”
“You’re talking about the lurker scenario,” Gerald had commented. “It’s been discussed for almost a century. Machines waiting out there for the Earth to develop life forms capable of-”
“I would’t exactly call the Wright-Rose message-tablet a ‘machine.’ And the word ‘lurk’ has an active, even malevolent connotation. What we’re talking about is a yoohoo memo, inscribed on a tiny lump of matter. Come on. What harm could something so passive and innocent possibly do?”
Only now, Gerald pondered Saleh’s explanation for this object on his lap. His suit instruments got no more response than Ganesh managed to provoke aboard the station, drawing sporadic bursts of mysterious symbology. Prompting brief glimpses of enigmatic globes, or hints of shrouded figures-sometimes approaching in groups of two or three-only to fade again, dissolving into a fog.
And yet, this time there was some difference. A warmth, now that the cylinder lay on his thigh, rather than a cool workbench. Even more interesting, patterns seemed to gather under the portion that he gripped with his gloved hand. As the reentry capsule juttered and shook, meeting higher pressure air, he clutched the Artifact tightly-
– and saw what seemed like technicolor pressure waves ripple round where he clasped. They appeared to pulse with urgent purpose, as if plucking at his fingers, attempting to peel something away.
Peel away what? My grip?
Or the glove?
How long did he stare, getting lost in patterns, abandoning both fear and time? Seconds? Minutes? One, at most two… enough to bridge the worst part of reentry. The fearsome bronco ride eased, no longer rattling Gerald’s joints and teeth, letting them unclench at last. Fluorescent flames receded from the narrow window…
The drogue parachute fired free with a pop, followed by a thud that jerked his seat straps…
… and where there had been starry blackness, then fierce flame, he now saw blue of sky. And status displays shone optimistic green.
But those weren’t the colors drawing him now. Rather, he kept his gaze upon the glistening thing that he had hooked and pulled in from the depths of space.
Or was he hooked, instead?
It’s heat and touch sensitive, Gerald noted. But not in ways we tried on the bench. One thing we left out-
Clutching the Artifact with both knees, he fumbled, using the fingers of his right hand to release the wrist catch on his left glove, letting a rising sense of excitement draw him toward yet another violation of rules. What he had in mind wasn’t kosher. Direct, personal contact could lead to contamination. Always a concern with samples recovered from space.
Except.
In moments, the main chute would deploy. Then-with luck-a VSTOL recovery bird would appear, to snag him out of the air for the brief trip to NASA Marti Space Center, in Havana. Whereupon, who knew when there would ever be another chance?
This is not professional, a part of him chided, as he contemplated his bare left hand.
True enough. But I haven’t felt “professional” in years.
Bare fingertips hovered over the translucent surface, causing ripples to flow, as if preparing to meet him at the point of contact. Whatever lay within… it somehow knew. It sensed the nearness of living flesh.
What if it really is alien? And dangerous?
He couldn’t help suddenly imagining the oblong ovoid-gripped between his thighs-as something out of science fiction. A cuckoo’s egg. Perhaps a Trojan horse. “Contamination” could work both ways. Might it be a terrible mistake to touch the thing?
And if the tech people think that way, in Havana, it might never be tried. They could study it for decades behind glass, without ever getting around to this one, simple test.
Another sudden jolt bounced his little craft as the main parasail popped from its canister, rapidly unfolding and then auto-warping in order to steer the descent. His little capsule began swaying to a jaunty rhythm, as one less failure mode lay between Gerald and terra firma. The crazed gyrations of Mars Needs Women gave way to more stately, steady, and moralistic passages, from the score of Batman.
Was the ai trying to say something? About responsibility?
All right then. Let’s have a compromise.
“Akana Hideoshi,” he said, adding a tooth click for TRANSMIT.
It didn’t take long for her face to reappear, this time free of static, filling a quarter of the tiny cabin, in holographic detail.
“Sorry about that, Gerald. There’s been a distraction. Some rich doofus crashed his suborbital phallus, not far from here. Had to fend off demands from his lawyer, his mother, and a whole aristo-bestiary, that we drop everything and search for the trillie-clown.”
She tossed off a derisive shrug.
“Okay then. You’re on target. The osprey will snag you in…”
Akana blinked, finally taking in the sight of Gerald, with his hand poised over the Artifact on his lap.
“Wait a second. What do you think you’re… Now just hold on there, Gerald. Don’t do anything you’ll…”