Yngve, AR - Alien Beach Page 2

  Ceremony, he had forgotten ceremony. Should they all dress up for the occasion?

  "Isn't your wife here?" Ann asked - Carl's wife usually worked close to him, both being scientists and devoted to each other as well as their work.

  Carl explained, somewhat awkwardly: "We, uh, decided that one of us should stay behind with the family, just in case there was a danger of exposure to alien microbes. But we keep in touch every day."

  It was the truth, yet he feared people would misinterpret it. Then the phone rang, and all of a sudden Carl had a million other things to deal with.

  DAY 2

  The next morning, the newly-formed ECT gathered in the lab's Von Karman Auditorium for their first big meeting: a dozen people, mostly astronomers and specialists in the fields of biology and spaceflight.

  Also present at the meeting were the NASA chief, the U.S. Air Force Joint Chief Of Staff, the Vice President, and the head of the National Security Council. All three visitors sat silent in the background, perhaps out of insecurity in the new situation; they listened intently to the chatting scientists around them. A cameraman from the White House was filming the entire meeting, so that the President and the UN Security Council could follow it from the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Other guests connected via the camera link were various scientists, NASA staff, and Ann's friend Arthur back in Sri Lanka.

  Carl Sayers, standing at the small lectern, introduced the people present and made some formal notices about discretion - then he went on to his main speech.

  "I assume that you've seen the Sirian message already; it's all over the world, and they'll surely keep repeating it until we respond. Well, as we speak the President and the United Nations Security Council are discussing the next step. I'm pretty sure most heads of state are eager to get their hands on alien technology, so they won't refuse the Sirians a visit altogether.

  "Now, NASA's preliminary plan is as follows. First, we establish a certain frequency and stick to it, so that the aliens... uh, Sirians are clear about who they should listen to - remember, almost anyone can send something they might receive with their big disk!

  "Then we send a radio message on several frequencies, making it clear that they are welcome - as long as we decide the conditions of their visit. They must not spread alien microorganisms or other uncontrollable life forms into our system, so personal contact will be difficult. I assume we can work something out, or that the Sirians can provide some kind of solution...

  "The first close encounter would have to take place on neutral ground: close enough to make it soon, but not too close to Earth. I have suggested the surface of the Moon, and the President has declared his support of the idea."

  He nodded toward the camera, and flashed a quick smile.

  "Now, who will be the first to meet the Sirian envoy in person? Not me, I'm afraid..." The scientists laughed. "In all likelihood it's going to be an American astronaut, shuttled over from the space station, who's appointed Earth Ambassador. A great honor.

  "The Sirians have mentioned a first, personal meeting in their message, but they weren't precise about the conditions. How should the initial communication proceed? We don't know. Can they speak our language, since they have taped our own TV and radio broadcasts since at least the 1950s? We don't know . Do they have complex rules of conduct, which we must learn before we can risk a close encounter? We don't know . Should we hold them off as long as possible, and stick to telecommunications? We don't know . And, of course, how many of them are there on that big mothership? We don't know ."

  A scientist on the second row couldn't contain his thoughts, and raised an arm.

  "What if someone outside NASA gets to hold the meeting first, or... or tries to intervene?" he asked.

  Carl Sayers gave the anxious caller a grave look.

  "Remember that the President and the entire UN Security Council are watching. There is an exceedingly small risk that some rogue state - we shouldn't be pointing fingers here - is planning a pre-emptive missile strike on the Sirians. I should warn anyone with such ideas, that the Sirians may expect to be attacked. Don't forget, they've seen our TV. They know what we are capable of, so they shouldn't arrive defenseless..."

  An uncomfortable moment came over the people in the room, a sense of collective shame. For all its supposed intelligence, mankind had until now dismissed the idea that it was being monitored by a superior civilization. Unless the world's televion broadcasts had been censored overnight, images of war, starvation, crime and pornography were yet available to the Sirian receiver-transmitter disk.

  Ann Meadbouré, the anthropologist, broke the silence.

  "There is no reason for panic," she told the assembly, and stood up. "Everything in the Sirian message and their behavior is non-violent. They act like scientists, they come only to study - not to interfere, or to build permanent settlements, or form alliances, or in any way judge us. There is no..." She hesitated: it was obvious to the point of silliness. "There is no moral dimension to a visit from scientists! Especially in the case of scientists from an entirely different world!"

  Carl nodded to Ann, gesturing subtly at her to sit down.

  "Ann Meadbouré is right," he asserted the audience. "No one is being judged here. The Sirians must come from a world that's quite unlike our own, which brings me to my next point..."

  He used his remote, and the room darkened. On the wall behind him, a series of enlarged, fuzzy black-and-white photographs were projected: clips from the Sirian TV broadcast.

  Gray humanoid shapes walked past the camera, the view slightly convex for unknown reasons. The aliens' size couldn't be determined, since there were no humans or man-made objects in view for reference. No easily definable machinery could be seen, except for smooth, silvery shapes and garments hung around the necks and chests of the Sirians. Long conic heads that were slightly swept backward, large eyes half-shut, all bodies having two arms each. Soft arms, almost tentacles with fingers. No clothes. Male and female genitals were easily discernible, astonishingly anthropomorphic except for lack of visible body hair. The faces were flatter than human faces, dominated by the eyes and their thick, smooth eyelids. Their age and size appeared to vary, though most of them seemed to move in their physical prime. Carl's audience lost their concentration and once more gazed at the eerie pictures. It was still too unreal to grasp. The Sirians were too human-like, too unlike the weirdest fantasies of aliens. Too... not ugly.

  Carl cleared his throat.

  "The Sirian broadcast, probably made in black-and-white to simplify matters of interpretation and transmission, came in two parts. First a purely abstract part, with simple words and sign-language. We'll skip that for now. Second, moving images of the Sirians themselves, taken during their long journey. As you can see, this travelogue also displays their route from Sirius to other stars, back to Sirius, passing our Sun, then spiraling outward to more distant systems.

  "I was amazed to learn that this wasn't their first expedition to the Solar System. The first Sirian ship sailed us by without actually landing, more than six thousand years ago. That ship has now passed far, far out into the galaxy. The present visit is the fourth or fifth expedition from Sirius.

  The NSC man rose from his chair. "Doesn't this indicate," the man asked gravely, "a mass migration from Sirius? Is their home system becoming uninhabitable?"

  Carl put on his best TV documentary-host manner.

  "Now, this isn't entirely explainable yet. I'm not even sure the Sirians originated on Sirius! Because if they did, and if they are as similar to us as they seem, their planet must have gone through enormous cataclysms! We know next to nothing of how the Sirius system formed, but normal double-star planets should have extremely unstable orbits and will be thrown out into the cold for very long periods. We might be dealing with a nomadic species, who colonized the Sirius system just recently... perhaps they even brought their own homeworld with them."

  Now it was the Pentagon man's turn to ask anxious questi
ons.

  "You are suggesting the Sirius system was uninhabitable to begin with, and was colonized by the Sirians later! Have we got any guarantees that they ain't planning a similar colonization of our Solar System?"

  Carl seemed almost insulted. The Egyptian psychologist of the ECT team stood up and faced the general, ready to explode; Carl answered quickly, before the Egyptian had the chance to respond.

  "This isn't the time for invasion hysteria." His tone sharpened. "A shorter visit is what the Sirians've asked for, and I certainly think we can risk that. Besides, general - if they had colonization in mind, wouldn't you want to learn more about them? Otherwise we would surely be defenseless."

  The general stiffened and said nothing. He cast an anxious glance at the camera, which carried his image to several important places in the world via the Internet.

  "Now," Carl resumed, "what are we to make of the Sirians' proposed visit? I have a simple theory of why they want to visit our world in person. Shouldn't an automatic probe such as our Voyager or Pathfinder craft do the job just as well, at much lower cost and risk? No. These beings are looking for something more than atmospheric data or soil samples. They want -"

  A cell-phone signal broke off his speech. The Vice President picked up his phone and talked a few words into it. Then he rose from his seat, looked around the briefing room. His face burst into a grin.

  "The President called. The Security Council has just voted approval. The Sirians will be allowed to land on Earth! Get ready for the real thing!"

  The assembled scientists broke out into spontaneous applause and cheering. The Vice President shook some hands, and then took the general and the NSC man aside.

  "Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel just quit their membership in the United Nations," he said softly. "The Orient is getting ready for war. Space war. We fly to New York now and meet the President for a crisis council."

  Chapter Three

  DAY 3

  The soldier came to his senses.

  "Why is the sea... huh?"

  He was lying in a clean, white hospital bed, the room crowded with beds. A TV set hung from the ceiling. He took in the news:

  "The Saudi Ambassador's speech was unrehearsed and contradictory, but he was clearly supported by his superior, King Khadi. To our journalist, the Ambassador made a brief comment as he left the UN building..."

  "God is with us. We act in the strength of God's truth! The Moon's surface shall not be desecrated by unclean creatures!"

  "This just in - the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh has been formally notified by the Saudi government, that all U.S. airbases in Saudi Arabia must be closed down and evacuated within one month. Political commentator Steve Russert is with us live to discuss this development. What do you say, Steve? Has King Khadi become an ally to the fundamentalists?"

  "Well, Barbara, it could be a gesture meant for the home opinion. The Saudi kings have shown these moments of pious posturing before. Speculations are that his real agenda, if he has one, is the Saudi kings fear aliens will share with us their advanced technology - which could make oil obsolete as fuel..."

  The soldier tried to reach for the calling button next to him. He found that his arms and legs had been strapped to the bed.

  "Let me loose!" he shouted. "I'm not a maniac!"

  Other patients began screaming too - some jokingly, others not.

  "He's right!" a grave-faced neighbor declared. "He's an emissary like me! Our minds are telepathically linked with the Holy Venusian Priests!"

  Each patient claimed special insight, making the latest news part of his individual delusion.

  "Hale-Bopp-be-bop-alle-luja!"

  "To infinity - and beyond!"

  "Sirius, the final frontier!"

  "The truth is out there!"

  "I come in peace!"

  "Klaatu barada niktou!"

  The cacophony of shouting lunatics quickly grew unbearable. The soldier wanted to scream in agony - then he recalled the words he had uttered just before he blacked out in the street.

  "Ch... chiskr-r-r-r... chis chiptl mmer-r-r-r-lleee," he mumbled to himself.

  Yes, it meant something. No, he was cracking up. It was all so confusing. A doctor came up to him, accompanied by a nurse. He asked a few questions, checked the soldier's heart and eyes, and ordered the nurse to undo his straps. Once free, the soldier sat up and looked for his real clothes. The nurse handed them to him, and he began to change his hospital gown for his own veteran's wardrobe.

  "You ought to have your brain scanned for tumors or lesions," the doctor told him. "If this is your first seizure, you must take precautions -"

  "Already did," the soldier said, buttoning his desert-camouflage shirt. "Just after the war. The shrinks found nothing they could change. Chemical weapons screwed up my brain. I'm a permanent war cripple."

  "Nevertheless, another scan is necessary. If you stay here till -"

  "I'm going. You can't hold me here."

  He was gone.

  The soldier marched out of the hospital as briskly as he could without running. A part of him wanted to stay there. Another part warned him that if he stayed there, they would never let him out again. He would have become just another kook among kooks there, babbling about a "higher insight". Maybe it was madness. But he had experienced something. For a moment he had been on a strange world, been something not quite human. He glanced down at his feet. Ordinary feet, stuck in badly shoe-laced army boots, size 12. He didn't know in which direction he was walking, but any "higher insight" he didn't feel at all.

  The soldier stopped in his tracks. A veteran rolled past him in a wheelchair, thick arms pushing the wheels around his face had made brief news some time ago, when he stepped on a terrorist bomb. Barely twenty, and the guy had no legs. How old was the soldier himself? His head was starting to ache again. He popped an aspirin tablet and walked on, out of the well-guarded hospital compound. It was another hot, cloudless day, jet airplanes making white tracks in the sky.

  As he squinted at the burning sun, it blinked out of existence. The sky went almost dark, save for the pinhead of a white sun at the horizon. The stars began to come out; he couldn't recognize any of the familiar constellations. Out there in the darkening night he could discern a very bright yellow star; and he knew it was the Earth's Sun.

  Someone shook his shoulder; the vision flickered away. He found himself leaning against a wall, just outside the hospital gate.

  "You all right, soldier?" the other man, a younger soldier, asked.

  "Yeah," he said faintly, "just a little dizzy. The sun, you know."

  "Better get your cap on," the man said. "Are you in service? You look like shit."

  "No," the soldier said truthfully, straightening himself to face the other soldier, "I'm retired. Veteran's pension. Served in the Gulf."

  "Sorry to hear that, man. I was in the Gulf myself, but I never got into any serious shit."

  The soldier saw genuine concern in the other man's face. Maybe the Army could help him, he thought. Get back into the service, start over. Yeah, right - like they helped that guy with no legs.

  "I'm okay now - thanks. Say, have you heard any buzz from the top brass, about this alien contact stuff you know?"

  The other soldier made a wry face: "You kidding? They're pissing in their pants now! Every goddamn missile there is, is being pointed into space. Of course the bigwigs ain't tellin' us, but the word is out."

  "You figure there's gonna be a war?"

  "Shit, I don't know. Word is, we're going to evacuate the bases soon. Anything could happen. Just about anything. You wait and see."

  The soldier thanked him and said goodbye. No, obviously the Army was the wrong place to turn to for help. Dammit, he wanted to meet aliens - not be ordered to shoot them. And he had no desire to go back to America, either. He wanted to go in one direction only. The soldier looked up at the sky, which now was studded with vapor trails from aircraft...

  Up.

  Up.

  Up.


  He would think of something, as soon as he had sweated out the old thirst for booze and pills. It was going to be a couple of long nights, though he could look forward to more TV news about the Sirian visitors. If only he had possessed one of those new Internet-connected, computerized TV sets - then he could have had even more access. But that would cost money he didn't have.

  An hour later, he saw on CNN the released list of scientists appointed to stay close to the aliens, during their one-year visit on Planet Earth.

  "A rigorous selection was made, before a select team could be assembled and approved by the U.N. Security Council. The ECT is now under the direct coordination of astrophysicist Carl Sayers, president of the Planetary Society. The other dozen members are...

  "From the U.S.: The writer and astronomer Stone Pound, a well-known popular science writer, with his own Internet column.

  "From Egypt: Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Lazar Mahfouz.

  "From France: The anthropologist and marine biologist Ann Meadbouré, who has studied dolphin behavior with Arthur C. Clarke at his Sri Lanka research station.

  "From Great Britain: The acclaimed biologist Andrea McClintock, one of the world's leading experts in evolutionary theory.

  "From Germany: Best-selling historian Bruno Heinzhof, lecturer at the leading universities of Germany, Israel, and America.

  "From Japan: Takeru Otomo, award-winning engineer with outstanding merits in nuclear power plant design.

  From Sweden, an unexpected choice: The physician Mats Jonsson, just recently awarded for his discovery of a new procedure to..."

  DAY 50

  The whole world watched, as the orbiting space shuttle released the Moonlander module.

  Across every time zone on Earth, humanity was watching the astronauts land on the Moon - a nostalgic moment for those who remembered the Apollo landings. This time, someone was waiting for the astronauts. The Sirian lander craft, a sleek, silvery shape ninety meters long, had arrived just hours before. A trio of Sirian envoys walked to greet the Earthlings welcome. One of the two human astronauts walked out of the lander, seeing three Sirians approach from their own landing site. The aliens wore spacesuits made from some metallic dark-red fabric, and their movements seemed surprisingly heavy. One Sirian sat languidly down on a rock, while a third figure wandered up close to the first astronaut.