President William D. Crockerman, sixty-three, was certainly one of the most distinguished-looking men in America. With his graying black hair, penetrating green eyes, sharply defined, almost aquiline nose, and lines of goodwill around his eyes and mouth, he might be equally the revered head of a corporation or some teenager’s favorite grandparent. On television or in person, he projected self-confidence and a trenchant wit. There could be no doubt that he took his job seriously, but not himself — this was the image portrayed, and it had won him election after election along his twenty-six-year career in public office. Crockerman had only lost one election: his first, as a mayoral candidate in Kansas City, Missouri.
He entered the Vandenberg isolation laboratory accompanied by two Secret Service agents, his national security advisor — a thin, middle-aged Boston gentleman named Carl McClennan — and his science advisor, David Rotterjack, soporifically calm and thirty-eight years of age. Arthur knew the tall, plump blond-haired Rotterjack well enough to respect his credentials without necessarily liking the man. Rotterjack had tended toward science administration, rather than doing science, in his days as director of several private biological research laboratories.
This entourage was ushered into the combination laboratory and viewing room by General Paul Fulton, Commander in Chief of Shuttle Launch Center 6, West Coast Shuttle Launch Operations. Fulton, fifty-three, had been a football player in his academy days, and still carried substantial muscle on his six-foot frame.
Arthur and Harry awaited them in the central laboratory, standing by the Guest’s covered window. Rotterjack introduced the President and McClennan to Harry and Arthur, and then introductions were made in a circle around the chairs. Crockerman and Rotterjack sat in the front row, with Harry and Arthur standing to one side.
“I hope you understand why I’m nervous,” Crockerman said, concentrating on Arthur. “I haven’t been hearing good things about this place.”
“Yes, sir,” Arthur said.
“These stories…these statements about what the Guest has been saying…Do you believe them?”
“We see no reason not to believe them, sir,” Arthur said. Harry nodded.
“You, Mr. Feinman, what do you think of the Australian bogey?”
“From what I’ve seen, Mr. President, it appears to be an almost exact analog of our own. Perhaps larger, because it’s contained within a larger rock.”
“But we haven’t the foggiest notion what’s in either of the rocks, do we?”
“No, sir,” Harry said.
“Can’t X-ray them, or set off blasts nearby and listen on the other side?”
Rotterjack grinned. “We’ve been discussing a number of sneaky ways to learn what’s inside. None of them seem appropriate.”
Arthur felt a twinge, but nodded. “I think discretion is best now.”
“What about the robots, the conflicting stories? Some folks in my generation are calling them ‘shmoos,’ did you know that, Mr. Gordon, Mr. Feinman?”
“The name occurred to us, sir.”
“Bringers of everything good. That’s what they’ve been telling Prime Minister Miller. I’ve spoken to him. He’s not necessarily convinced, or at least he doesn’t let us think he is, but…he saw no reason to keep everybody in the dark. It’s a different situation here, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” Arthur said.
McClennan cleared his throat. “We can’t predict what kind of harm might come if we tell the world we have a bogey, and it says doomsday is here.”
“Carl takes a dim view of any plans to release the story. So we have four civilians locked up, and we have agents in Shoshone and Furnace Creek, and the rock is off limits.”
“The civilians are locked up for other reasons,” Arthur said. “We haven’t found any evidence of biological contamination, but we can’t afford to take chances.”
“The Guest appears to be free of biologicals, true?” Rotterjack asked.
“So far,” General Fulton said. “We’re still testing.”
“In short, it’s not happening the way we thought it might,” Crockerman said. “No distant messages in Puerto Rico, no hovering flying saucers, no cannon shells falling in the boondocks and octopuses crawling out.”
Arthur shook his head, smiling. Crockerman had a way of coercing respect and affection from those around him. The President cocked one thick dark eyebrow at Harry, then Arthur, then briefly at McClennan. “But it is happening.”
“Yessir,” Fulton said.
“Mrs. Crockerman told me this would be the most important meeting of my life. I know she’s right. But I am scared, gentlemen. I’ll need your help to get me through this. To get us through this. We are going to get through this, aren’t we?”
“Yes, sir,” Rotterjack said grimly.
Nobody else answered.
“I’m ready, General.” The President sat straight-backed in the chair and faced the dark window. Fulton nodded at the duty officer.
The curtain opened.
The Guest stood beside the table, apparently in the same position as when Arthur and Harry had left it the day before.
“Hello,” Crockerman said, his face ashen in the subdued room light. The Guest, with its light-sensitive vision, could see them perhaps more clearly than they saw it.
“Hello,” it replied.
“My name is William Crockerman. I’m President of the United States of America, the nation you’ve landed in. Do you have nations where you live?”
The Guest did not answer. Crockerman looked aside at Arthur. “Can he hear me?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Arthur said.
“Do you have nations where you live?” Crockerman repeated.
“You must ask important questions. I am dying.”
The President flinched back. Fulton moved forward as if he were about to take charge, clear the room, and protect the Guest from any further strain, but Rotterjack put a hand on his chest and shook his head.
“Do you have a name?” the President asked.
“Not in your language. My name is chemical and goes before me among my own kind.”
“Do you have family within the ship?”
“We are family. All others of our kind are dead.”
Crockerman was sweating. His eyes locked on the Guest’s face, on the three golden-yellow eyes that stared at him without blinking. “You’ve told my colleagues, our scientists, that this ship is a weapon and will destroy the Earth.”
“It is not a weapon. It is a mother of new ships. It will eat your world and make new ships to travel elsewhere.”
“I don’t understand this. Can you explain?”
“Ask good questions,” the Guest demanded.
“What happened to your world?” Crockerman said without hesitating. He had already read a brief of Gordon and Feinman’s conversation with the Guest on this subject, but obviously wanted to hear it again, for himself.
“I cannot give the name of my world, or where it was in your sky. We have lost track of the time that has passed since we left. Memory of the world is dimmed by long cold sleeping. The first ships arrived and hid themselves within ice masses that filled the valleys of one continent. They took what they needed from these ice masses, and parts of them worked their way into the world. We did not know what was happening. In the last times, this ship, newly made, appeared in the middle of a city, and did not move. Plans were made as the planet trembled. We had been in space, even between planets, but there were no planets that attracted us, so we stayed on our world. We knew how to survive in space, even over long times, and we built a home within the ship, believing it would leave before the end. The ship did not prevent us. It left before the weapons made our world melted rock and gaseous water, and took us with it, inside. No others live that we are aware of.”
Crockerman nodded once and folded his hands in his lap. “What was your world like?”
“Similar. More ice, a smaller star. Many like myself, not in form but in thought. Our kind was many-formed, some swimming in cold melt-seas, some like myself walking on ground, some flying, some living in ice. All thought alike. Thousands of long-times past, we had molded life to our own wishes, and lived happily. The air was rich and filled with smells of kin. Everywhere on the world, even in the far lands of thick ice, you could smell cousins and children.”