“Right,” said the voice pleasantly. Out in the dining room, the autochef began to hum and cluck self-importantly. Wesson wandered over and inspected the instrument console. Air locks were sealed and tight, said the dials; the air was cycling. The station was in orbit and rotating on its axis with a force at the perimeter, where Wesson was, of one g. The internal temperature of this part of the Station was an even 73°.
The other side of the board told a different story; all the dials were dark and dead. Sector Two, occupying a volume some eighty-eight thousand tunes as great as this one, was not yet functioning.
Wesson had a vivid mental image of the Station, from photographs and diagrams-a five-hundred-foot Duralumin sphere, onto which the shallow thirty-foot disk of the human section had been stuck apparently as an afterthought. The whole cavity of the sphere, very nearly-except for a honeycomb of supply and maintenance rooms and the all-important, recently enlarged vats-was one cramped chamber for the alien…
“Steak’s ready!” said Aunt Jane.
The steak was good, bubbling crisp outside the way he liked it, tender and pink inside. “Aunt Jane,” he said with his mouth full, “this is pretty soft, isn’t it?”
“The steak?” asked the voice, with a family anxious note.
Wesson grinned. “Never mind,” he said. “Listen, Aunt Jane, you’ve been through this routine-how many times? Were you installed with the Station, or what?”
“I was not installed with the Station,” said Aunt Jane primly. “I have assisted at three contacts.”
“Um. Cigarette,” said Wesson, slapping his pockets. The autochef hummed for a moment, and popped a pack of G. I.’s out of a vent. Wesson lighted up. “All right,” he said, “you’ve been through this three times. There are a lot of things you can tell me, right?”
“Oh, yes, certainly. What would you like to know?”
Wesson smoked, leaning back reflectively, green eyes narrowed. “First,” he said, “read me the Pigeon report-you know, from the Brief History. I want to see if I remember it right.”
“Chapter Two,” said the voice promptly. “First contact with a non-Solar intelligence was made by Commander Ralph C. Pigeon on July 1, 1987, during an emergency landing on Titan. The following is an excerpt from his official report:
“‘While searching for a possible cause for our mental disturbance, we discovered what appeared to be a gigantic construction of metal on the far side of the ridge. Our distress grew stronger with the approach to this construction, which was polyhedral and approximately five times the length of the Cologne.
“‘Some of those present expressed a wish to retire, but Lt. Acuff and myself had a strong sense of being called or summoned in some indefinable way. Although our uneasiness was not lessened, we therefore agreed to go forward and keep radio contact with the rest of the party while they returned to the ship.
“‘We gained access to the alien construction by way of a large, irregular opening… The internal temperature was minus seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit; the atmosphere appeared to consist of methane and ammonia… Inside the second chamber, an alien creature was waiting for us. We felt the distress, which I have tried to describe, to a much greater degree than before, and also the sense of summoning or pleading… We observed that the creature was exuding a thick yellowish fluid from certain joints or pores in its surface. Though disgusted, I managed to collect a sample of this exudate, and it was later forwarded for analysis…’
“The second contact was made ten years later by Commodore Crawford’s famous Titan Expedition-”
“No, that’s enough,” said Wesson. “I just wanted the Pigeon quote.” He smoked, brooding. “It seems kind of chopped off, doesn’t it? Have you got a longer version in your memory banks anywhere?”
There was a pause. “No,” said Aunt Jane.
‘There was more -to it when I was a kid,” Wesson complained nervously. “I read that book when I was twelve, and I remember a long description of the alien-that is, I remember its being there.” He swung around. “Listen, Aunt Jane-you’re a sort of universal watchdog, that right? You’ve got cameras and mikes all over the Station?”
“Yes,” said the network, sounding-was it Wesson’s imagination?-faintly injured.
“Well, what about Sector Two? You must have cameras up there, too, isn’t that so?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then you can tell me. What do the aliens look like?”
There was a definite pause. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that,” said Aunt Jane.
“No,” said Wesson, “I didn’t think you could. You’ve got orders not to, I guess, for the same reason those history books have been cut since I was a kid. Now, what would the reason be? Have you got any idea, Aunt Jane?”
There was another pause. “Yes,” the voice admitted.
“Well?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t-”
“-tell you that,” Wesson repeated along with it. “All right. At least we know where we stand.”
“Yes, Sergeant. Would you like some dessert?”
“No dessert. One other thing. What happens to Station watchmen, like me, after their tour of duty?”
“They are upgraded to Class Seven, students with unlimited leisure, and receive outright gifts of seven thousand stellors, plus free Class One housing…”
“Yeah, I know all that,” said Wesson, licking his dry lips. “But here’s what I’m asking you. The ones you know-what kind of shape were they in when they left here?”
“The usual human shape,” said the voice brightly. “Why do you ask, Sergeant?”
Wesson made a discontented gesture. “Something I remember from a bull session at the Academy. I can’t get it out of my head; I know it had something to do with the Station. Just a part of a sentence: ‘… blind as a bat and white bristles all over…’ Now, would that be a description of the alien-or the watchman when they came to take him away?”
Aunt Jane went into one of her heavy pauses. “All right, I’ll save you the trouble,” said Wesson. “You’re sorry, you can’t tell me that.”
“I am sorry,” said the robot sincerely.
As the slow days passed into weeks, Wesson grew aware of the Station almost as a living thing. He could feel its resilient metal ribs enclosing him, lightly bearing his weight with its own as it swung. He could feel the waiting emptiness “up there,” and he sensed the alert electronic network that spread around him everywhere, watching and probing, trying to anticipate his needs.
Aunt Jane was a model companion. She had a record library of thousands of hours of music; she had films to show him, and microprinted books that he could read on the scanner in the living room; or if he preferred, she would read to him. She controlled the Station’s three telescopes, and on request would give him a view of Earth or the Moon or Home…
But there was no news. Aunt Jane would obligingly turn on the radio receiver if he asked her, but nothing except static came out. That was the thing that weighed most heavily on Wesson, as time passed-the knowledge that radio silence was being imposed on all ships in transit, on the orbital stations, and on the planet-to-space transmitters. It was an enormous, almost a crippling handicap. Some information could be transmitted over relatively short distances by photophone, but ordinarily the whole complex traffic of the space lanes depended on radio.
But this coming alien contact was so delicate a thing that even a radio voice, out here where the Earth was only a tiny disk twice the size of the Moon, might upset it. It was so precarious a thing, Wesson thought, that only one man could be allowed in the Station while the alien was there, and to give that man the company that would keep him sane, they had to install an alpha network…