The Question
by Ben Bova
As soon as questions of will or decision or choice of action arise, science is at a loss.
The Discoverer
Not many men choose their honeymoon site for its clear night skies, nor do they leave their beds in the pre-dawn hours to climb up to the roof of their rented cottage. At least Hal Jacobs’s bride understood his strange passion.
Linda Krauss-Jacobs, like her husband, was an amateur astronomer. In fact, the couple had met at a summer outing of the South Connecticut Astronomical Society. Now, however, she shivered in the moonless dark of the chill New Mexico night as Jacobs wrestled with the small but powerful electronically boosted telescope he was trying to set up on the sloping roof, muttering to himself as he worked in the dark.
“It’ll be dawn soon,” Linda warned.
“Yeah,” said Hal. “Then we get back to bed.”
That thought did not displease Linda. She was not as dedicated an astronomer as her husband. Maybe dedicated isn’t the right word, she thought. Fanatic would be more like it. Still, there were three comets in the solar system that bore the Jacobs name, and he was intent on discovering more, honeymoon or not.
His mutterings and fumblings ceased. Linda knew he had the little telescope working at last.
“Can I see?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said, without looking up from the tiny display screen. “In a min—hey! Look at that!”
Stepping carefully on the rounded roof tiles, he moved over enough so that she could peek over his shoulder at the cold green-tinted screen. A fuzzy blob filled its center.
“There wasn’t anything like that in that location last night,” Jacobs said, his voice trembling slightly.
“Is it a comet?” Linda wondered aloud.
“Got to be,” he said. Then he added, “And a big one, too. Look how bright it is!”
The Radio Astronomer
“It’s not a comet,” said Ellis de Groot. “That much is definite.”
He was sitting behind his desk, leaning far back in his comfortable, worn old leather swivel chair, his booted feet resting on the edge of the desk. Yet he looked grim, worried. A dozen photographs of Comet Jacobs-Kawanashi were strewn across the desk top.
“How can you be so sure?” asked Brian Martinson, who sat in front of the desk, his eyes on the computer-enhanced photos. Martinson was still young, but he was already balding and his once-trim waistline had expanded from too many hours spent at consoles and classrooms and not enough fresh air and exercise. Even so, his mind was sharp and quick; he had been the best astronomy student de Groot had ever had. He now ran the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia.
De Groot was old enough to be Martinson’s father, gray and balding, his face lined from years of squinting at telescope images and wheedling university officials and politicians for enough funding to continue searching the Universe. He wore a rumpled open-necked plaid shirt and Levis so faded and shabby that they were the envy of the university’s entire student body.
He swung his legs off the desk and leaned forward, toward the younger man. Tapping a forefinger on one of the photos, he lowered his voice to a whisper:“Only nine people in the whole country know about this. We haven’t released this information to the media yet, or even put it on the Net…” he paused dramatically.
“What is it?” Martinson asked, leaning forward himself.
“This so-called comet has taken up an orbit around Jupiter.”
Martinson’s jaw dropped open.
“It’s not a natural event,” de Groot went on. “We got a couple of NASA people to analyze the orbital mechanics. The thing was on a hyperbolic trajectory through the Solar System. It applied thrust, altered its trajectory, and established a highly eccentric orbit around Jupiter. Over the course of the past three days it has circularized that orbit.”
“It’s intelligent,” Martinson said, his voice hollow with awe.
“Got to be,” agreed de Groot. “That’s why we want you to try to establish radio contact with it.”
The National Security Advisor
Brian Martinson felt out of place in this basement office. He had gone through four separate security checkpoints to get into the stuffy little underground room, including a massive Marine Corps sergeant in full-dress uniform with a huge gun holstered at his hip, impassive and unshakable as a robot. But what really bothered him was the thought that the President of the United States was just upstairs from here, in the Oval Office.
The woman who glared at him from across her desk looked tough enough to lead a regiment of Marines into battle—which she had done, earlier in her career. Now Jo Costanza had even weightier responsibilities.
“You’re saying that this is a spacecraft, piloted by intelligent alien creatures?” she asked. Her voice was diamond hard. The business suit she wore was a no-nonsense navy blue, her only jewelry a bronze Marine Corps globe and anchor on its lapel.
“It’s a spacecraft,” said Martinson. “Whether it’s crewed or not we simply don’t know.”
“It’s made no reply to your messages?”
“No, but—”
“Who authorized you to send messages to it?” snapped the third person in the office, a bland-looking guy with thinning slicked-back sandy hair and rimless eyeglasses that made him look owlish. He was wearing a light gray silk suit with a striped red and gray tie.
Martinson had put on the only suit he possessed for this meeting, the one he saved for international symposia; it was a conservative dark blue, badly wrinkled, and tight around the middle. Clearing his throat nervously, he replied, “Dr. Ogilvy authorized trying to make contact. He’s head of the radio astronomy section of the National Science Foundation. That’s where our funding comes from, and—”
“They went by protocol,” Costanza said, making it sound as if she wished otherwise.
“But this is a national security matter,” snapped the anonymous man.
“This is a global security matter,” Martinson said.
Costanza and the other man stared at him.
“The spacecraft broke out of Jupiter orbit this morning,” Martinson told them.
“It’s heading here!” Costanza said in a breathless whisper.
“No,” said Martinson. “It’s heading out of the Solar System.”
Before they could sigh with relief, he added, “But it’s sent us a message.”
“I thought you said it made no reply!”
“It hasn’t replied to our messages,” Martinson said wearily. “But it’s sent a message of its own.”
He pulled the tape recorder out of his jacket pocket.
The President of the United States
His nervousness, Martinson realized, had not stemmed from being in the White House. It came from the message he carried. Now that he had played it, and explained it, to the National Security Advisor and her aide, he felt almost at ease as they led him upstairs to the Oval Office.
The President looked smaller than he did on television, but that square-jawed face was recognizable anywhere. And the famous steel-gray eyes, the “laser eyes” that the media made so much of: they seemed to be boring into Martinson, making him feel as if the President was trying to x-ray him.
After Martinson explained the situation once again, though, both he and the President relaxed a bit.
“Then this thing is no threat to us,” said the President.
“No sir, it’s not,” Martinson replied. “It’s an opportunity. You might say it’s a godsend.”