Looking out to the flat horizon he could make out the ghost of a quarter Moon hanging in the bright sky. Somewhere beyond the Moon, far, far beyond it, the aliens in their spacecraft were already on their way out of the Solar System.
What do they want of us? Martinson wondered. Why did they bother to make contact with us at all, if all they’re willing to do is answer one damned question? Maybe they’re not such good guys. Maybe this is all a weird plot to get us to tear ourselves apart. One question. Half the world is arguing with the other half over what The Question should be. With only a few hours left, they still haven’t been able to decide.
Sure, he thought to himself, it could all be a set-up. They tell us we can ask one question, knowing that we might end up fighting a goddamned war over what The Question should be. What better way to divide us, and then walk in and take over the remains?
No, a saner voice in his mind answered. That’s paranoid stupidity. Their spacecraft is already zooming out of the solar system, heading high above the ecliptic. They won’t get within a couple of light-hours of Earth, for God’s sake. They’re not coming to invade us. By this time tomorrow they’ll be on their way to Epsilon Eridani, near as I can figure their trajectory.
But what better way to divide us? he repeated silently. They couldn’t have figured out a more diabolical method of driving us all nuts if they tried.
The Teenagers
“I think it’s way cool,” said Andy Hitchcock, as he lounged in the shade of the last oak tree left in Oak Park Acres.
“You mean the aliens?” asked Bob Wolfe, his inseparable buddy.
“Yeah, sure. Aliens from outer space. Imagine the stuff they must have. Coolisimo, Bobby boy.”
“I guess.”
The two teenagers had been riding their bikes through the quiet winding streets of Oak Park Acres most of the morning. They should have been in school, but the thought of another dreary day of classes while there were aliens up in the sky and the TV was full of people arguing about what The Question ought to be—it was too much to expect a guy to sit still in school while all this was going on.
Andy fished his palm-sized radio from his jeans and clicked it on. Didn’t matter which station, they were all broadcasting nothing but news about The Question. Even the hardest rock stations were filled with talk instead of music. Not even bong-bong was going out on the air this morning.
“…Still no official statement from the White House,” an announcer’s deep voice was saying, “where the President is meeting in the Oval Office with the leaders of Congress and his closest advisors…”
Click. Andy changed the station… Trading has been suspended for the day here at the Stock Exchange as all eyes turn skyward…”
Click. “…European Community voted unanimously to send a note of protest to the United Nations concerning the way in which the General Assembly has failed…”
Click. Andy turned the radio off.
“Those fartbrains still haven’t figured out what The Question will be,” Bob said, with the calm assurance that anyone older than himself shouldn’t really have the awesome power of making decisions, anyway.
“They better decide soon,” Andy said, peering at his wristwatch. “There’s only a few hours left.”
“They’ll come up with something.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
Both boys were silent for a while, sprawled out on the grass beneath the tree, their bikes resting against its trunk.
“Man, I know what I’d ask those aliens,” Bob said at last.
“Yeah? What?”
“How can I ace the SATs? That’s what I’d ask.”
Andy thought a moment, then nodded. “Good thing you’re not in charge, pal.”
The Radio Astronomer
Brian Martinson had never seen an astronomical facility so filled with tension.
Radio telescope observatories usually look like the basement of an electronics hobby shop, crammed with humming consoles and jury-rigged wiring, smelling of fried circuit boards and stale pizza, music blaring from computer CD slots—anything from heavy metal to Mahler symphonies.
Today was different. People were still dressed in their usual tropical casual style: their cut-offs and sandals made Martinson feel stuffy in the suit he’d worn for the meeting in Washington. But the Arecibo facility was deathly quiet except for the ever-present buzz of the equipment. Everyone looked terribly uptight, pale, nervous.
After a routine tour of the facility, Martinson settled into the director’s office, where he could look out the window at the huge metal-mesh-covered dish carved into the lush green hillside. Above the thousand-foot-wide reflector dangled the actual antenna, with its exquisitely tuned maser cooled down and ready to go.
The director herself sat at the desk, fidgeting nervously with the desktop computer, busying herself with it for the last few hours to the deadline. She was an older woman, streaks of gray in her buzz-cut hair, bone thin, dressed in a faded pair of cut-off jeans and a T-shirt that hung limply from her narrow shoulders. Martinson wondered how she could keep from shivering in the icy blast coming from the air-conditioning vents.
There were three separate telephone consoles on the desk: one was a direct line to the White House, one a special link to the U.N. Secretary General’s office in New York. Martinson had asked the woman in charge of communications to keep a third line open for Madeleine Dubois, who—for all he knew—was still trying to bring order to the chaotic meeting at NSF headquarters.
He looked at his wristwatch. Four P.M. We’ve got three hours to go. Midnight Greenwich time is seven P.M. here. Three hours.
He felt hungry. A bad sign. Whenever he was really wired tight, he got the nibbles. His overweight problem had started during the final exams of his senior undergrad year and had continued right through graduate school and his post-doc. He kept expecting things to settle down, but the higher he went in the astronomical community the more responsibility he shouldered. And the more pressure he felt the more he felt the urge to munch.
What do I do if the White House tells me one thing and the U.N. something else? he wondered. No, that won’t happen. They’ll work it out between them. Dubois will present the IAU’s recommendation to the President and the Secretary General at the same time.
Across the desk, the director tapped frenetically on her keyboard. What could she be doing? Martinson wondered. Busywork, came his answer. Keeping her fingers moving; it’s better than gnawing your nails.
He turned his squeaking plastic chair to look out the window again. Gazing out at the lush tropical forest beyond the rim of the telescope dish, he tried to calm the rising tension in his own gut. The phone will ring any second now, he told himself. They’ll give you The Question and you send it out to the aliens and that’ll be that.
What if you don’t like their choice? Martinson asked himself. Doesn’t matter. When the White House talks, you listen. The only possible problem would be if Washington and the U.N. aren’t in synch.
The late afternoon calm was shattered by the roar of planes, several of them, flying low. Big planes, from the sound of it. Martinson felt the floor tremble beneath his feet.
The director looked up from her display screen, an angry scowl on her face. “What kind of brain-dead jerks are flying over us? This airspace is restricted!”