(Eh?)
(Nothing. Can you mind the ship while I go off in a corner and catch some shut-eye?)
(Sweet dreams,) Kadin said, extending himself to take the helm. Mozy withdrew, dampening her sensory inputs. She spun a cocoon for herself in a nest of sedentary programs, and quickly dropped off to sleep.
* * *
She awoke from a dream in which the ship was a mad beehive, each bee a materialization of some visiting personality. She awoke to the sound of Kadin talking. Not to her. Not to Homebase or to Mother Program. She unwound her cocoon. (Who is it, David?) she said softly.
Kadin spoke again, but not to her. (Are you tracking us? Have you sighted our craft?) Kadin's words passed into a translating routine, and reappeared as a quavering signal, through the tachyon link.
The return signal was indistinct, a wailing sound that reminded her of something—synthesized music, perhaps, or sea gulls. Eventually she recognized that perhaps it actually
was
a song; it was filled with changes in pitch and volume and timbre, changes that repeated, with variations. The translating program overvoiced: (BEST AVAILABLE TRANSLATION: "STAR TRAVELERS / STAR TRAVELERS / DO GO GO GO? / SUN TRAVELERS / VOID TRAVELERS / SLOW SLOW YOU GO.")
(David,) she whispered, (can you understand them?)
(I'm not exactly sure,) he answered. (Can you come up to the bridge?)
Mozy blinked, and she was back on her pedestal among the stars, the controls incandescent before her, the ship a cloudy jewel behind. In the viewer, the optical image of the alien object was substantially larger, but it still squirmed against the starfield. The distance between them and the target was now just a few million kilometers.
Kadin rubbed his jaw. (I can't decide whether the problem is in the reception, or the translation algorithms,) he said.
(Probably the translation programs,) Mozy said, peering at the play of lights before her.
(They're the best Homebase has.
They
claim to have deciphered previous transmissions. I've had my doubts.)
(I wasn't thinking of Homebase,) Mozy said.
(What, then? Mother Program's translator going dotty?)
(Why should it be exempt? Everything else has been going dotty,) Mozy said. She scowled and reached out to touch a fiery ball. It changed from crimson to cyan, flickering. Deftly, she isolated and exposed the inner workings of Mother Program's translation routines, then brought self-diagnostic programs into play. (Analysis, Mother Program?)
(PLEASE SPECIFY.)
(Translation.)
(INDEFINITE. 33 PERCENT PROBABILITY OF TRANSLATOR MALFUNCTION. ANALYSIS PROCEEDING.)
(Mmm.) Mozy looked at Kadin.
He arched his eyebrows and paused in what he was doing. (Can you do anything about that?)
She looked at him skeptically. (Like what? Translate it myself?)
(Why not? I'll bet you could—)
Teach myself? she thought. Perhaps it was not so absurd a thought. Languages had always intrigued her, though she had been hampered in school by a bad memory for vocabulary. That should be no problem here, with the full memory of Mother Program at her disposal. Barring further malfunction, of course. . ..
The alien song started again, and she peered into the translation routine, observing. She followed pathways back into the grammar and syntax programs. She watched the scanning stacks as they checked for recursive phrases, comparing observed values with those already in the vocabulary banks. Once she began to understand the methodology, she noticed the search-and-scan routine stumbling intermittently, as several recursive phrasings were missed, and one seemingly erroneous connection was made, triggering an improbable analysis of phrase structure that significantly altered the translation.
Unsure whether she would do more harm than good by tampering with the existing mechanism, she quickly duplicated the routines that looked useful, and set up working space to perform her own operations. After some exploratory trial and error, she began to realize that the translation program from Homebase was insufficiently powerful. It took little account of harmonics and subtle changes in tonal qualities, at the same time focusing overly much on simple relations of pitch and rhythm. This was going to require learning as she went along.
(What do you think?) Kadin asked, after a while.
She ignored him and kept working.
A
long
time later, she looked up and informed him: (They're saying, "Star travelers, are you coming to meet us? Star travelers, will you join us?" At least, I think that's what they're saying. The second sentence I'm less sure of, but I believe the sense of it is, will we rendezvous and meet them in person?)
(How sure are you?) Kadin asked.
(There is a repetition of converging harmonics, and what seem to be open-ended phrasings—questions,) Mozy said.
(Translation routine, what is your version?) Kadin queried.
(STAR TRAVELERS, GO / GO GO GO TO COME / WE GO . . .)
(Yours makes more sense,) Kadin said. (Are you guessing?)
(Mother's translator has the right idea, but it's stumbling. Try sending them an answer. Tell them, yes—we're coming.)
(I'll send it in MacEnglish, and in translation. Do you want to do the translation for me?) Kadin said.
(I suppose I could try,) Mozy said. Translating
into
alien sounds would be harder—but if they were all going to be neighbors, then the sooner she started learning, the better.
Payne scratched his head, looking away from Teri's image. When he replied, it was in a sort of drawl, a touch of his native midwestern accent returning. "I'm just not sure if we're really
ready
," he said. "I'd feel better if we had some harder evidence to back us up."
"Are you going to wait forever?" Teri said. "There will always be something you can't quite confirm, something you're not as sure of as you'd like to be. It's part of the business."
Payne glanced around the motel room and sighed. "I know. I know. But I don't want to shut myself out. I'd like to dig around, really learn what's going on."
"You've learned quite a lot already. And you can't expect the backers to fly you around indefinitely."
"Okay. But what happens after I go on the air with this?"
"The First Amendment isn't dead, yet," Teri pointed out. "Protect your sources, and build on it. You might find more people willing to talk once the ice has been broken."
Payne grunted. No doubt, she was right; in one sense, it was time for action. His sources, however nervous, clearly wanted the information made public, or they wouldn't have given it to him; and if he didn't get on the air with it soon, someone else would just beat him to it. But there was an inner sense that told him to be cautious. He had learned precious little in New Phoenix, either about Mozelle Moi or about Sandaran Link Research Center. The one lead he had gotten from SLRC's p.r. office, which was someone mentioning the name of Dr. Jonders, had gotten him nowhere; but some intuition told him that Jonders might yet open up. It was a hard feeling to define, but Jonders's faintly defensive reaction to his questions, particularly about Mozy, suggested that Jonders might know more than he was presently willing to admit.
And that, Payne thought, was why he was reluctant to go on the air. A premature and overly sensational story might destroy his chances of getting more out of Jonders or anyone at the Center. If he went ahead, he had to do so with great care—to err, if he erred at all, on the side of caution.
"Let me work up a trial draft," he said finally. "I'll call you back tomorrow."
"No later than that," she warned. "I'll have our people get in touch with the news service and tentatively schedule a slot."
"But hold off on the commitment until we've gone over it."
"Good-bye," Teri said. "Get to work."
He blanked the phone and mulled for a while, sorting through his notes. There were memo printouts scattered on the bed, and covering the small motel room desk. Motels. He was growing weary of motels. Berkshires Observatory, Pasadena, New Phoenix, New Washington for conferences, back home, New Phoenix again . . . . He glanced at the phone. He ought to call Denine.
Later. When he had finished that first draft.
He put on some music and settled down to start writing.
* * *
The red plastic disk twirled through the air and landed in the cup with a satisfying
plink
. Betsy rocked back, grinning. Jonders allowed her a crinkly smile. "I knew you had something up your sleeve when you stopped playing the holos, because I was beating you."
"Livid!" Betsy cried, laughing. "No chance."
"And all this time, you've been practicing tiddly-winks."
Betsy's sister dumped the colored disks out of the cup. "We haven't been practicing, Dad. We're just naturally good."
Jonders was still trying to think of a comeback when Marie called from the other room. "Bill—come look at this."
"What?" He struggled to his feet and went into the den. Marie was sitting on the couch, reading—and watching the news. She pointed at the tube. There was a familiar face on the screen . . . it was Joseph Payne, that newscoper who had called him a few days ago. Jonders rocked on the balls of his feet and listened, frowning.
" . . .A researcher at the Berkshires Observatory has reported the discovery of an unusual source of cosmic tachyons—faster-than-light particles from outer space. Stanley Gerschak, an astronomer at the observatory, stated that the tachyons, apparently originating from outside the solar system, may in fact be an intelligent signal directed toward Earth."
The reporter paused for a recorded sound, which reminded Jonders of a lone wolf crying over a prairie. Behind Payne's head was a holographic photo of an oddly configured dish antenna, silhouetted against the sky. "The sound you are hearing now is the actual tachyon signal, after computer processing."
Jonders squinted, groping his way into an armchair as the newscoper described the apparent similarities between the tachyon signal and the songs of the humpback whales of Earth. Payne noted that while many scientists disagreed both with Gerschak's data and with his interpretations, his observations nevertheless posed some intriguing questions.
The photo-illustration changed—to a shot of Tachylab, in space. Jonders's stomach tightened. "Berkshires Observatory is not the only place where such investigations may be underway. This is an orbiting laboratory near the GEO-Four space complex, which, in conjunction with this facility—" the image changed to a captioned photo of Sandaran Link Center "—is the major research center in the field of cosmic tachyon sources, and tachyon communications. Officials at these laboratories declined to comment on the subject, citing the classified nature of their research."
Wide shot of Payne. Behind his head now was a photo of a spacecraft. "It is a matter of public record, however, that the deep-space probe,
Father Sky
, is equipped with a tachyon communications link with Earth, and is controlled from Tachylab and the Sandaran-Choharis Center." Payne went on to describe the mission as presented in the official releases, noting that
Father Sky
was engaged in exploration of the cometary halo surrounding the solar system.
"Might the unexplained signals in fact be transmissions from
Father Sky?"
Close-up angle on Payne's face. The reporter turned into the camera. "Officials at Sandaran-Choharis acknowledged the possibility, but declined to give a yes or no answer. Gerschak denies the likelihood, but concedes that his signals and
Father Sky
's both originate in the same region of the sky. So, we are left with an unanswered question: are the signals real, and if so, are they from our own space probe, or from another, as yet unidentified, source?"
Jonders let air escape from his lips as the story ended. It had not been the bombshell he had feared. Still, remembering the questions that Payne had asked him that day, it was evident that the reporter was onto something more than he was yet willing to report on the air.
" . . .this is Joseph Payne, International News Service."
The scene shifted to a studio anchorwoman, who said, "This has been a special report, exclusively on the Third Millennium News Network. In our next segment, three men are rescued from the sixty-fourth floor—"
Jonders took a couple of deep breaths and stared past the tube, without really seeing. Marie touched a switch to deaden the sound. "Bill?" she said.
"Yah?" He scarcely responded.
"What do you think of that? Is there any truth to it?"
"What? Oh." He looked up, raised his eyebrows. "Can't say, really. I don't know anything about this fellow at the Berkshires Observatory."
"But what about the tachyons? Do you think he
could
have found something?"
He shrugged. "Like they said, he could be intercepting the spacecraft signals. I doubt that he could decode them."
"But is there anything else—?"
"Now, you know I can't say anything more than they told him."
She stared at him in exasperation.
He fumbled, apologizing. "As a matter of fact, this guy Payne called me a few days ago. I couldn't tell him anything. Some I didn't know, some I couldn't say."
"Mmm." Marie studied her eyeglasses, turning them over in her hand. "Let me ask you something else."
He cleared his throat uncomfortably.
"Suppose," Marie said. "Suppose—just hypothetically—if there were contact of some sort between—well, with some extraterrestrial race—don't you think that the world would have a right to know about it?"
There was a pressure building, somewhere inside, wanting to tell her, wanting to spill everything. He shrugged, suppressing it. "I suppose so. Depending on the situation. I doubt that I would ever be given the chance to make that kind of—"
He sensed a movement and turned. Mary and Betsy were both standing in the doorway. Betsy ran forward and climbed up into his lap. He hugged her wordlessly, and she looked into his face, her eyes sparkling blue, her pupils wide. "Daddy, do you think there are aliens out there, sending us messages?" She blinked and pushed back a lock of hair. It fell back in front of her eyes.