Voyagers I (7 page)

Walking along the gravel path that skirted the long rows of silvery radio telescope antennas, Kirill Markov pulled his fleece hat down over his tingling ears and reflected on how much of the Russian spirit is shaped by the Russian climate.

A melancholy people in a bleak land that suffers a dreary climate, he told himself.

He stopped and surveyed the scene. Endless vistas of flat, snow-covered country, with hardly a hillock to break the monotony. Heavy, dull gray clouds pressing down like the hand of a sullen god. A cold wind moaning constantly, without even a tree to catch it and offer a lighter, cheerier sound.

Why did they have to build this research station out here in the steppes? Why not by the Black Sea, where the commissars have their summer
dachas
and the sun shines once in a while?

He shook his head. Admit it, old boy. If you were getting somewhere with this puzzle they’ve handed you, you wouldn’t mind the scenery or the climate so much.

It was the truth. The radio pulses had him stymied. If they were a language, or even a code, he had not been able to make the slightest dent in it during the months he’d been working on the problem.

Wearily, he turned in his tracks and started trudging back toward his living quarters. The wind tugged at his long overcoat. His feet were freezing.

And the radio pulses were as much a mystery to him as they had been when he had first tackled the problem.

He was walking past the gray cinder block of the administration building when Sonya Vlasov’s bright, high voice caught him.

“There you are, Kir! I was wondering where you’d gotten to.”

Inwardly he groaned. Sonya had been an easy conquest, if conquest was the correct word to use with someone so willing. Willing? She was demanding. Markov had a notion that their long nights together in bed had something to do with his inability to crack the Jovian puzzle. She was young, frighteningly energetic, athletic and more inventive than a team of Chinese acrobats.

She rushed up and grabbed his arm. “Have you forgotten that the laboratory director has invited you to tea this afternoon?”

It was already getting dark. The lights atop the buildings and along the paths had been switched on. Markov felt cold and utterly bleak deep inside his soul. Incredibly, Sonya was smiling, bouncy and coatless. She wore nothing more than a sweater, loose-fitting slacks and boots.

Her sweater was not loose-fitting, though, and despite himself Markov felt a tiny glow within. He smiled down at Sonya’s round, happy face.

“Yes, I had quite forgotten about the invitation. Where would I be without you?”

She laughed. “In bed with one of the other girls. They’re all very jealous of me, you know.”

“Ah, my angel of mercy,” he said, sliding an arm across her shoulders. “You are too kind to me. After all, I’m a doddering old man…”

“You are not!”

“Well, middle-aged, then,” he said as they headed toward the wood-frame building where his room was. “There are so many younger men who are sighing and moaning for a chance to bask in your smile. Yet you concentrate all your energies on me.”

And come to think of it, he added mentally, there are indeed other women who’ve been kept away from me by this over-developed sex maniac.

But Sonya would have none of it. She was single-minded in her devotion to Markov. And, sure enough, he ended up making love to her again before he started out for the director’s tea. It came as no surprise to him. As he lay half dozing in her soft, ample breasts, he found himself trying to count how many times he had done it over the past two months.

I must be close to a world record for a man approaching fifty years of age, he marveled.

The director’s tea was very private, very quiet, and mercifully brief. Markov chatted amiably about his studies of oriental languages while the rest of the men and women talked about astronomy and electronics. He didn’t understand them and they didn’t understand him. No one spoke about the radio pulses from Jupiter, because they were supposed to be a secret that only a half-dozen people in the entire station knew about. And no one knew who, among the two dozen guests at the tea, might be reporting conversations back to Moscow.

Markov wasn’t hungry by the time the partygoers bade farewell to their host and headed for their own quarters. He trudged listlessly past the cafeteria building and headed to his room. Sonya would be there, waiting in bed for him.

Maybe she’ll be asleep, Markov hoped. Then he frowned to himself. A fine state of affairs! You’re actually afraid of her. It’s time you told her that you’re a married man and you can’t carry on with her any longer.

He thought of the lean, languid blond electronics specialist he had met at the director’s tea. Big, sleepy eyes. She’d be more restful, at least.

It was a considerable surprise when he opened the door to his room and found his wife sitting in the chair in front of the electric heater.

“Maria!”

She looked up at him, the usual scowl on her face.

Markov glanced at the bed. It was unmade, but empty.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, closing the door behind him and wondering what had happened to Sonya.

“I’ve come for a firsthand report on your progress,” she said. “My superiors thought that I would like to see my husband after a two-month absence.”

Putting on a smile, Markov said, “How thoughtful of them.”

He pulled off his heavy coat and hung it on the hook behind the door. Maria’s plain black suitcase sat on the floor next to the closet.

The closet! Could Sonya be hiding in the closet?

“You must be tired after such a long trip,” he said to his wife. “Would you like some tea? Perhaps dinner?”

“You look tired yourself. There are dark circles under your eyes.”

“I’ve been working very hard.”

“Yes, I know.”

This must be the way a mouse feels when it’s in the paws of a cat, Markov thought. Or the way a prisoner feels when the police take him in.

“I’m afraid I haven’t made much progress…”

“That depends on how you look at it,” Maria said, her voice flat and cold. “The girl who was in your bed seemed quite content with your progress.”

“Girl?” His voice squeaked, almost. “Oh, her. She…well…” He shrugged and grinned sheepishly.

“I hope that you have learned something about the radio signals,” Maria said, deadly calm, “in between your sessions in bed.”

Markov’s grin crumbled. Pulling a wooden chair to sit facing her, he said earnestly, “Maria…I don’t believe there is anything to be learned from the pulses. We have used computer analyses on them and I have studied them faithfully for months now…”

“Faithfully.” She snorted.

“Faithfully,” he repeated. “There is no hint of a periodicity, or a rhythm, or any of the characteristics that one would expect from a language.”

“Are you sure your mind has been clear enough to do your work properly?”

“Have I ever failed you before?”

“You’re getting older, but not any wiser.”

He slapped a palm on his knee. “That’s unfair, Maria Kirtchatovska! I am…”

She leveled a blunt forefinger at him and he lapsed into silence. “We must crack this code, Kirill. Do you understand? My superiors will not accept failure.”

“But I don’t think it
is
a code.”

“They do.”

Raising his hands to the heavens, Markov demanded, “And if they believe that the Moon is made of green cheese, will they destroy the cosmonauts who bring back rocks?”

She would not move from her chair. To Markov, she looked like a stolid, unyielding mule. Words bounced off her thick hide.

“If it’s not a code, it’s not a code!” he said, his voice rising. “If it isn’t a language how can it be a language?”

Maria’s stare bored into him. “So I am to return to Moscow and tell my superiors that my husband has spent two months studying the radio signals and he has concluded that they are completely natural in origin. And when they ask me what kind of studies he did, I can tell them that he spent most of the two months in bed with some oversexed cow who should be sent out to pasture in Siberia.”

“No!” Markov snapped. “You wouldn’t.”

“If you fail, I fail,” Maria answered. “And before I let that happen, I’ll see your little bitch in hell.”

“Maria, you don’t understand…”

“No,
you
don’t understand. I will not accept your word on this. Not when I know you’ve been playing instead of working. It’s my career you’re playing with! My life! And your own.”

Feeling desperate, he ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Look…I have done a serious job with these signals. Honestly I have. Let me show them to Academician Bulacheff. If he agrees with me, will that satisfy you?”

Maria gave him a long, deadly stare, then reached down into the bag at her feet and pulled out a single sheet of handwritten paper.

“Read this,” she commanded.

Markov squinted at the letter, patted his pockets until he found his glasses, slipped them on. As he read, his face fell. His hand began to tremble slightly.

Finally he looked back at his wife. “Who…who is this man Stoner?”

“An American scientist, an astrophysicist who helped to build the telescope that the Americans placed in orbit earlier this year.”

Shakily, Markov made his way to the bed and sank down onto it. “And he thinks there is an artificial spacecraft in the vicinity of Jupiter, causing the radio signals.”

Maria said, “Why would he write you such a letter?”

Glancing at the flimsy sheet, Markov answered, “He says he read my book on extraterrestrial languages…”

“Your notorious book.”

“But…do you believe what he says, Maria? Perhaps it’s an American trick of some sort.”

“Many Americans do not understand the nature of the struggle between communism and capitalism. They believe that the two systems can coexist in peace.”

Markov nodded.

“This man Stoner is an idealist. He is also a scientist who wants to be recognized for discovering alien life. That is why he has written to you.”

“But why me? Why not the International Astronomical Federation? Or the Soviet Academy of Sciences? Why to me?”

“Who can tell?” Maria replied. “Our agents in America are looking into the matter.”

Markov tried to pull himself together. Too much was happening, too quickly.

“Do you still believe,” Maria asked, “that the signals are not a language?”

He took a deep breath, then, “They are not a language. At least, they are not any kind of language that
I
can understand.”

She reached out and took the letter from his limp hand. Placing it carefully back in her bag, she said, “A few moments ago you expressed a desire to see Academician Bulacheff. Well, he wants to see you, too. Immediately. We go back to Moscow tonight.”

“It’s just too fantastic to be believed!”

“I assure you, Mr. President, it’s quite true.”

The President got up from the polished mahogany table and walked toward the fireplace. The regular Cabinet meeting had ended in its usual bitter wrangling, and he had gladly left the cold formality of the Cabinet Room for the smaller intimacy of the Roosevelt Room.

Standing by the small bronze bust of Teddy Roosevelt on the mantel above the fireplace, the President looked haggard: tie loosened, collar opened, hair tousled, fists jammed into the pockets of his jacket.

The press secretary watched him worriedly. An old friend and adviser, he knew that the pressures were inexorably grinding the President into despair.

The President looked wistfully at the painting of Teddy the Rough Rider that hung above the sofa. “Things were a lot simpler in his day, weren’t they?”

The Defense Secretary shook his gray-maned head. “It only seems so from this distance in time, sir.”

“You work so hard to get this job,” the President murmured, more to himself than to the others in the room, “and once you’ve got it, you wonder why you ever tried.”

“Somebody’s got to do it,” the press secretary joked. “They hold an election every four years.”

The President smiled weakly at him. Turning to his science adviser, he asked again, “Intelligent life on Jupiter? You’re sure of that?”

“No, sir,” she answered firmly. “Not totally sure. But it’s a strong enough possibility that we should be prepared to face up to it.”

With a sigh, the President muttered, “Why does everything have to happen during
my
Administration?”

The Secretary of Defense, a former industrialist, cleared his throat as he always did before delivering an opinion. “Mr. President,” he said in his flat Oklahoma twang, “Sally and I don’t always see eye to eye on things…”

The science adviser glared at him from her seat across the small room. “You can say that again! Joey.”

He grinned at her. “All right, I’m a male chauvinist pig
…Ms.
Ellington.”

“
Dr
. Ellington.” She did not grin back.

The President looked pained, but said nothing. So his press secretary chided, “Hey look, there’s only the four of us in here, so let’s drop the squabbling for a while, huh? This is too important for cheap shots.”

“I totally agree,” said Defense. “The point I was going to make is that Dr. Ellington and I are convinced that we must turn over the Arecibo radio telescope facility to studying these radio signals.”

“Why Arecibo?”

“It’s the biggest and most powerful radio facility we have,” the science adviser explained. “The biggest radio telescope in the world, as a matter of fact.”

“What about the telescope up in orbit?” asked the press secretary.

“That’s an optical telescope, like Mount Palomar.”

“We need Big Eye, too,” Defense added. “In fact, that’s how we got the photographs of this thing in orbit around Jupiter.”

“If it really is in orbit,” muttered the science adviser.

“You think it’s artificial?”

She nodded, grim-faced. “Yes, I do. But we don’t have enough numbers on its trajectory yet to tell if it’s truly in orbit around the planet or merely making an extended flyby. It could be a flyby…from beyond the solar system.”

The President sank into the chair next to his Defense Secretary. “It’s hard to believe, either way.” He looked across the table at the press secretary. “Intelligent creatures from another world. Scary, isn’t it?”

“Scares hell out of me,” Defense said.

“We’ve got to be absolutely sure about this,” said the press secretary. “If word about this leaks out before we’re ready to absolutely confirm or deny it…there’ll be pandemonium.”

“I realize that,” Defense said. “We’re taking every security precaution, I assure you.”

But the science adviser said, “We’re going to have a peck of trouble with the Arecibo regulars. We can’t just walk in there and tell them to pack up and leave for an indefinite period of time. They’d raise the roof.”

“Suppose we explained the situation to them and asked for their co-operation…”

Defense shook his head. “You’ve got a lot of academic superstars down there who believe that their freedom of expression comes first and everything else—including the national security—comes afterward. Try to get their co-operation and they’ll go running to the
Post
.”

“The Pentagon Papers, all over again,” said the press secretary.

But the President persisted. “Carl Sagan’s one of the people in that group, isn’t he? I know Carl. He worked on my election committee. I could explain it to him. He’d want to help us, I know he would.”

“Sure! He’d want to run the show,” the science adviser said.

“And we can’t let that happen,” said Defense.

“Why not?”

“He’s much too well known. He’d be a terrible security risk. Pulitzer Prize—winning author. Television star. We couldn’t let him wander around free if he’s going to work on this, and we can’t lock him up inside a security compound—his absence would tip off the Russians that we’re on to something.”

“He’s damned friendly with Russian scientists, too, isn’t he?” the press secretary asked.

“Don’t you think the Russians already know about this?” the President asked. “I mean, they have radio telescopes too, don’t they?”

“I don’t know if they have anything operating down below six hundred megahertz right now,” answered the science adviser. “After all, we stumbled onto the signals only because one of our older facilities was working out at the end of the spectrum.”

“And we’ve got Big Eye,” said Defense. “The Reds don’t have a comparable telescope in orbit. Ground-based telescopes, no matter how big they are, just can’t pick up this thing near Jupiter. We’ve checked that. You can’t see it from the ground, it’s too faint to be picked up.”

“What about a space probe?” the President suggested. “We could send a probe out there to see if this object is natural or artificial.”

The science adviser hiked her eyebrows. Defense made a sour face.

“It would take several years to design, build and launch a suitable probe,” the science adviser said. “We simply don’t have spacecraft sitting on shelves, waiting to be picked up and used. And it would take almost a year before a probe could reach Jupiter’s vicinity, even on a high-thrust boost.”

“Besides,” Defense said, “we’ve fired Pioneers and Voyagers past Jupiter for years now and they’ve never picked up a trace of anything like this.”

“Let’s get back to the main point,” said the press secretary. “No matter what you do, with Arecibo or anything else, this thing has got to be orchestrated carefully.
Very
carefully. The public’s got to be prepared for this before we actually release any news.”

“Can we keep it from being leaked?” the President asked.

“You’re assuming,” Defense murmured, “that we can’t prevent leaks?”

“Prevent them?” The press secretary laughed. “We can’t even slow them down!”

“The Department of Defense…”

“Leaks like a sieve.”

Defense glowered but did not reply. The science adviser suppressed a giggle.

“We’ve got to play this game
right
,” the press secretary insisted. “We’ve got to set up the public…”

A knock on the door brought him up short. The President’s appointments secretary took a single step into the room.

“Excuse me, sir. The delegation from the National Farm Bureau,” she said softly.

“Oh…yes.” The President got up from his chair, smoothed his jacket. “Is the Secretary of Agriculture in there with them?”

“Yes sir.”

Sighing, the President turned back to the three at the table. “Work out a plan of action and let me see it. Tonight, if you can.”

They stood as the President left the room. Then they dropped back into their chairs.

“Well, what do you think?” Defense asked.

The press secretary grimaced. “The Cabinet won’t support him and the Congress spits in his eye every chance it gets. The Senate’s got four presidential candidates in it, the Cabinet’s got at least two more, the economy’s sliding into oblivion, we still have oil troubles, and now he’s got Martians coming at him.”

“Jovians,” corrected the science adviser.

“Whatever. We’ve got to prepare for the worst. I mean…can you imagine what the saucer nuts will do when word of this gets out?”

The science adviser corrected, “You mean the UFO researchers.”

“I mean the saucer nuts! And the religious crazies. My god, they committed suicide by the hundreds in Jonestown a few years back over
nothing
! What’ll they do when we tell ’em we’re going to be invaded by alien monsters?”

“Where’s Orson Welles when we really need him?”

“This isn’t a joke, Sally.”

“What about other nations?” the press secretary asked no one in particular. “Don’t we owe it to our allies to give them some advance word on this?”

“NATO’s already been clued in,” Defense responded. “The Dutch have apparently picked up the radio signals at one of their own facilities.”

“Dwingeloo,” the science adviser said.

Loosening his tie, the press secretary wondered, “What if we start a big flap about this and it turns out to be a false alarm? Those very same UFO people and religious cults
won’t believe us
. They’ll think we’re covering up.”

“They already think we’re covering up UFO visitations,” said the science adviser.

“Suppose they’re right?” Defense asked.

“What?”

“Suppose…well, what if this thing really is an alien spacecraft and—and they’re hostile? Dangerous?”

The science adviser shook her head crossly at him. “That’s exactly what we need around here: paranoia.”