“What wavelength should be used for the contact attempt?”
Cavendish shrugged. “As many as we can, I suppose. We really have no idea of which wavelengths it communicates in.”
“If any.”
Stoner rose to his feet and said, “We ought to try to physically intercept it—go out and meet it, rendezvous with it, board it.”
“I suppose we could consider that, of course.”
But McDermott bellowed, “Out of the question! It’d take months to prepare a manned space shot, years, and this thing will whiz past us before we’d be ready. Besides…”
“If we pushed hard,” Stoner countered, “we could set up a Space Shuttle launch in time.”
“And what would we use for the upper stages,” McDermott taunted, “a slingshot?”
“If we have to.”
“Actually,” Cavendish stepped in, “I suppose we should attempt radio contact first, don’t you think?”
Markov stood up, his slightly reddish face set in a puckish grin. He glanced back at Stoner as if he recognized him.
“I am not a physical scientist,” he said, turning toward the podium. “However, in the question of communicating with the spacecraft, may I make a suggestion?”
“Yes, certainly,” said Cavendish.
“If you have made tape transcriptions of the radio signals issued from Jupiter during the spacecraft’s encounter with that planet, perhaps it would be useful to play these recordings back to the spacecraft as it approaches the Earth.”
McDermott scowled. Cavendish knitted his shaggy brows together. “Play back the radio pulses from Jupiter?”
“Yes,” said Markov. “That would immediately tell the alien that we observed the radio pulses that he caused. It would immediately be recognizable to him as an artificial signal from our world.”
“H’mm. Striking.”
“What makes you think it’s a him?” a woman’s voice called out.
“Shouldn’t we be more cautious?” Jeff Thompson said, getting to his feet beside Stoner. “I mean, maybe we ought to wait for it to signal us before we start bombarding it with radio waves or laser beams. It might not like being bathed in electromagnetic energy.”
“If we wait too long,” Cavendish countered, “it just might sail right past us and leave the solar system entirely, just as Professor McDermott said.”
“That’s why I think we should try to make physical contact with it,” Stoner said, still on his feet. “If it’s unmanned we could even try to capture it and bring it into an orbit around the earth.”
“Absolutely not!” McDermott snapped.
“Why so?” asked Cavendish.
“Too risky. Too many unknowns. It’s one thing to make radio contact, we’ve got the equipment and personnel for that. We are not going to play space pirates—boarding and seizing an extraterrestrial spacecraft. If they want to put that thing in orbit around Earth, they’ll do it themselves.”
“So what’ll happen,” Stoner said, his voice rising, “is that we’ll spend the next few months trying to get an answer out of it, and it’ll sail right on past us and out of the solar system forever. Why wave bye-bye to it when we might be able to get our hands on it?”
“It might not want to be captured,” somebody said.
Cavendish, leaning his elbows on the rickety podium, responded, “That’s assuming there’s a crew aboard, isn’t it?”
“Or a smart computer.”
“Damned smart computer, to take the bird across interstellar distances.”
“We have no authority,” McDermott insisted, hunching his shoulders like a football player about to make body contact, “to attempt to intercept the spacecraft.”
“Then get the authority,” Stoner insisted, “before it’s too late and the thing sails right on past us.”
“We should try to establish radio contact first,” Zworkin said. “If there is a crew aboard…”
“Of course,” Stoner agreed. “But let’s start making the necessary plans for a rendezvous with the bird.”
McDermott’s face was getting splotchy with anger. “Do you have any idea of the magnitude of such a task?”
Stoner let himself grin at Big Mac. “As the only experienced astronaut in this group, yes, I think I do.”
“We don’t have time to play space cadet!”
“You don’t have time for anything else. If that spacecraft just zips past us without our learning anything from it…”
“We’ll make radio contact,” McDermott said.
“And what happens if it doesn’t respond? What if we don’t hit the right communications frequency and it just ignores us?”
Zworkin stood up and made a little bow toward McDermott, almost apologetically. “I believe the young man is correct,” he said, his singsong voice barely carrying back to the row where Stoner stood.
McDermott started to reply, but the Russian went on, “We should, of course, be preparing to meet this alien craft in space and, if it is at all feasible, to bring it back to Earth for careful scrutiny. I will recommend such a course of action to the Soviet Academy. Perhaps the Soviet Union can make rocket boosters and cosmonauts available, even if the United States cannot.”
McDermott looked as if he was choking, but he managed to say, “I understand. And I will recommend to the White House that NASA be alerted to the possibilities of such a mission.”
Stoner resumed his seat, but not before receiving a venomous glare from Big Mac.
You’ve won the first battle, Stoner said to himself. But it’s going to be a long, dirty war.
Chapter 21
OFFICE OF SENATOR WILLIAM PROXMIRE
WISCONSIN
For Release After 6:30 A.M. Thursday, February 16, 1978
Senator William Proxmire (D-Wis) said Thursday, “I am giving my Golden Fleece of the Month award for February to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which, riding the wave of popular enthusiasm for ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind,’ is proposing to spend $14 to $15 million over the next seven years to try to find intelligent life in outer space. In my view, this project should be postponed for a few million light years.”
The Golden Fleece of the Month Award is given for the biggest, most ironic or most ridiculous example of wasteful spending for the month. Proxmire is Chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over NASA funds.
“NASA is proposing to pay $2 million this year and $14 to $15 million over the next seven years to Pasadena, California’s, Jet Propulsion Lab to conduct ‘an all-sky, all-frequency search for radio signals from intelligent extra-terrestrial life.’ But this is only the foot in the door. Under the heading of ‘broad objectives’ the Jet Propulsion Lab proposal indicates that the purpose of the study is to:
Build an observational and technological framework on which future, more sensitive SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) programs can be based.
“What this tells me is that while the public is intrigued by the outer space phenomena, the Space Agency is so mesmerized that it is attempting to translate the momentum into a multi-million dollar, long-range program of questionable searches for intelligence beyond our solar system.
“What’s wrong with the program? Like so many other big spending projects, this is a low priority program which at this time constitutes a luxury which the country can ill afford.
“First, while theoretically possible, there is now not a scintilla of evidence that life beyond our own solar system exists. Yet NASA officials indicate that the study is predicated on the assumption that intelligent extra-terrestrial beings are out there trying to communicate with scientists here on Earth. If NASA has its way, this spending will go forward at a time when people here on Earth—Arabs and Israelis, Greeks and Turks, the United States and the Soviet Union, to name a few—are having a great difficulty in communicating with each other.