Timescape. Part 10

Suddenly Saul claimed he knew how to refute John's approximation. His idea was to solve a particularly simple test problem where they already knew what the answer should be. Saul zoomed through the calculation. Only for one narrow range of physical conditions did the approximation give the right answer.

"There! See it's no good."

John shook his head. "b.u.g.g.e.r off--it works precisely for the most interesting case."

Saul seethed. "Nonsense! You've thrown all the long wave lengths out of the problem."

But heads nodded around them. John had won.

Since the embattled approximation was not totally useless, it was acceptable. Saul grudgingly agreed and a moment later was smiling and discussing something else, the issue forgotten. There was no point in remaining excited about an issue where something could be proved. Gordon grinned. It was an example of what he thought of as the Law of Controversy: Pa.s.sion was inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.

He approached Carroway and held out the coordinates from his message. "Bernard, do you have any idea where this is in the sky?"

Carroway blinked owlishly at the numbers. "No, I 8.

no, I never remember such details. Saul?" He pointed at the paper. '- "Near Vega," Saul said. "I'll look it up for you, if you want."After his lecture on Cla.s.sical Electrodynamics Gordon intended to search out Saul S1/riffer, but when he dropped by his office to leave off his lecture notes someone was waiting. It was Ramsey, the chemist.

"Say, thought I'd zip by and update you," Ramsey said. "I looked into that little riddle you gave me."

"Oh?"

"I think there's some real meat there. We're a long way from understanding much about long-chain molecules, y'kn0w, but I'm interested in that puzzle.

The part where it says, 'enters molecular simulation regime begins imitating host.' That sounds like a self-replicating mechanism we don't know beans about."

"Does that happen with the molecular forms you know?"

Ramsey's brow wrinkled. "Nope. But I've been studying the special fertilizing forms some of the companies are experimenting with, and ... well, it's too early to say. Just a hunch, really. What I came to tell you is that I haven't forgotten about the thing.

Cla.s.ses and my regular grants, y'know--they stack up on you. But I'll keep nudging along at it. Might go down and bug Walter Munk about the oceanography connection.-Anyway--" he stood, giving a mock salute of goodbye-- "I appreciate the info. Might be a good lead. Gratz a lots."

"Huh?"

"Gratz--gracias. Spanish."

"Oh. Sure." The cavalier Californian appropriation of Spanish slang seemed apt for Ramsey. Yet beneath the used-car salesman manner a quick mind worked.

Gordon was glad the man was looking into the first message and hadn't let it fall into a crack. This seemed to be a lucky day; threads were weaving to- ! 8 a Gregory Ben fordgether. Yes, a lucky day. "I'd give it an A plus so far,"

Gordon mused to himself, and went looking for Slrfffer.

''I nailed it for you," Saul said decisively, finger ar-rowing down at a speck on a star chart. It's a pointvery close to a normal F7 star, named 99 Hercules."

"But not smack on it?""No, but very close. What's behind all this, anyway?

What's a solid state physidst need a star position for?"Gordon told him about the persistent signals and showed him Cooper's recent decoding. Saul quickly became excited. He and a Russian, Kadarsky, were writing a paper together on the detection of extraterrestrial civilizations. Their operating a.s.sumption was that radio signals were the natural choice. But if Gordon's signals were indeed unexplainable in terms of earthly transmissions, Saul suggested, why not consider the hypothesis of extraterrestrial origin? The coordinates clearly pointed that way."See Right Ascension is 18 hours, 5 minutes, 36 seconds. Now, 99 Hercules is this dot at 18 hours, 5 minutes, 8 seconds, a little off. Declination of yoursignal is 30 degrees, 29.2 minutes. That fits.""So? They don't agree exactly.""But they're d.a.m.ned close!" Saul waved his hands. "A few seconds difference is nothing.""How in h.e.l.l does an extraterrestrial know our system of astronomical measurements?" Gordon said skeptically."How do they know our language? By listening to our old radio programs, of course. Look--parallax for 99 Hercules is a 0.06. That means it's over sixteen pa.r.s.ecs away.""What's that?""Oh, about 51 light years.""How could they be signaling, then? Radio came in about sixty years ago. There hasn't been time for 185.light to go the round trip---it would take over a century.

So they-can't be answering our own radio stations.""True." Saul appeared momentarily deflated. "You say there's some more to the message?" He brightened.

"Let me see."After a moment he stabbed the printed messageand exclaimed, "Right! That's it. See this word?"

"Which?""Tachyon. Greek origin. Means 'fast one,' I'll bet.

That means they're using some faster-than-light transmission.""Oh, come on.""Gordon, use your imagination. It fits, d.a.m.n it!"

"Nothing travels faster than light."

"This message says something does."

"c.r.a.p. Just c.r.a.p.""Okay, how do you explain this? 'Shotfid appear as point source in tachyon spectrum 263 KEV peak.'

KEV--kilovolts. They're using tachyons, whatever they are, of energy 263 kilovolts.""Doubtful," Gordon said severely."What about the rest? 'Can verify with NMR directionality.

Measurement follows.' NMR--Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. Then garbage, a few more words, then garbage again. SMISSION FROM 19BD 1998COORGHQE and so on.""Not all garbage. See the rest is simple dots and dashes.""Hummm." Saul peered at the pattern. "Interesting.""Look, Saul, I appreciate the--""Wait a sec. 99 Hercules isn't just any star, you know. I looked it up. It fits into the kind of star cla.s.s we think might support life."Gordon pursed his lips and looked dubious.

"Right, it's an F7. Slightly heavier than our sun--more ma.s.sive, I mean--and with a big region around it capable of supporting life. It's a binary star--wait, wait, I know what you're going to say," Saul said ! s $ dramatically, pus.h.i.+ng his open, upright palm toward Gordon, who had no idea what he was going to say.

"Binary stars can't have livable planets around them, right?""Uh, why not?""Because the planets get perturbed. Only 99 Hercules doesn't have that problem. The two stars circle each other only every 54.7 years. They're far apart,with livable s.p.a.ces around each of them.""Both are F7s?""As far as we can tell, the bigger one is. You only need one," he added lamely.GOrdon shook his head. "Saul, I appredate ""Gordon, let me have a look at that message. Thedots and dashes, I mean.""Sure, okay.""Do me a favor. I think there's something big here.

Maybe our ideas about radio communication and the 21-centimeter line of hydrogen being the natural choice maybe they're all wrong. I want to check this message of yours out. Just don't make up your mind.

Okay?""Okay," Gordon said reluctantly.

When Gordon lugged his briefcase into his office the next morning, Saul was waiting for him. The sight of Saul's eager face, with brown eyes that danced as he spoke, filled him with a premonition."I cracked it," Saul said tersely. "The message."

"What ... ?""The dots and dashes at the end? That spelled no words? They aren't words--they're a picture!"Gordon gave him a skeptical look and put down his briefcase."I counted the dashes in that long transmission.'Noise,' you said. There were 1537 dashes.""So?"Frank Drake and I and a lot of other people have a ?been thinking of ways to transfer pictures by simple on-off signals. It's simple send a rectangular grid.""That scrambled part of the message? RECTANGULAR CO-ORDMZAL$ and so on.""Correct. To lay out a grid you need to know how many lines to take on each axis. I tried a bunch of combinations that multiply out to 1537. All gave a mess, except a 29-by-53 grid. Laying the dashes out on that scheme gave a picture. And 29 and 53 are both prime numbers--the obvious choice, when you think about it. There is only that one way to break 1537 down into a product of primes.""Ummm. Very clever. And this is the picture?"

Saul handed Gordon a sheet of graph paper with a point filled in for each dash in the transmission. It showed a complex interweaving set of curves moving from right to left. Each curve was made of cl.u.s.ters of dots, arranged in a regular but complicated pattern. "What is it?" Gordon asked."I don't know. All the practice problems Frank and I made up gave pictures showing solar systems, with one planet picked out--things like that. This one doesn't look anything like that."Gordon tossed the drawing on his desk. "Then what use is it?""Well--h.e.l.l! An immense amount of good, once wefigure it out.""Well...""What's the matter? You think this is wrong?"

"Saul I know you've got a reputation for thinking about--what's that Hermann Kahn calls it?--the unthinkable.

But this--!""You think I'm making all this up?""Me? Me? Saul, I detected this message. I showed it to you. But your explanation--! Faster-than-light telegraph signals from another star. But the coordinates don't quite fit! A picture coming out of the noise. But the picture makes no sense! Come on, Saul."

! a Gregory Ben fordSaul's face reddened and he stepped back, handson hips. ''you're blind, you know that? Blind."

"Let's say ... skeptical.""Gordon, you're not giving me a break.""Break? I admit you've got some sort of case. But until we understand that picture of yours, it doesn't hold water.""Okay. O-kay," Saul said dramatically, smacking a fist into his left palm. "I'll find out what that drawing means. We'll have to go to the whole academiccommunity to solve the riddle."

"What's that mean?"

''We'll have to go public."

"Ask around?""Ask who? What specialty? Astrophysics? Biology?

When you don't know, you have to keep your mind open."''yes ... but ..." Gordon suddenly rememberedRamsey. "Saul, there's another message.""What?""I got it months ago. Here." He rummaged through his desk drawers and found the transcript.

'Fry that on for size."Saul studied the long typed lines. "I don't understand.""Neither do I.""You're sure this is valid?""As sure as I am of what you've already deciphered.""s.h.i.+t." Saul collapsed into a chair. "This really confuses things."''yes, it does, doesn't it?"

"Gordon, it makes no sense."

"Neither does your picture."'qook, maybe you're getting conflicting messages.

When you tune into different radio stations, you get music on one, sports on another, current events on a third. Maybe you've got a receiver here that just scoops up everything."

i 8 oSaul leaned forward in his chair and pressed his palms agaitist his temples. Gordon realized the man was tired. He had probably stayed up all night working on the breakdown of the picture. He felt a sudden burst of sympathy for him. Saul was already known as a proponent of the interstellar communication idea, and a lot of astronomers thought he was too wild, too speculative, too young and impulsive.

Well, so what--that didn't mean he was wrong."Okay, Saul, I'll accept the pictfire idea--provisionally.

It can't be an accident. So--what is it?

We have to find out." He told Saul about Ramsey.

That merely complicated matters, but he felt Saul had a right to know."Gordon, I still think we've got something here."

"So do I.""I think we ought to go public.""With the biochemistry, too? The first message?"

"No ..." Saul thought. "No, just with this second message. It's clear. It repeats itself for pages. How of-ten did you get that first signal?"

"Once."

"That's all?"

"That's all.""Then let's forget it.""Why?""It might be a decoding error."Gordon remembered Lakin's story about Lowell.

"Look, I've got a lot more experience with these things than you do. I know what people will say. If you muddy the water around a subject, n.o.body jumps in.""We'd be withholding information.""Withholding, yes. But not forever. Just until wefind out what the picture means.""I don't like it.""We'll give them only one problem at a time."

Saul raised a finger. "One problem. Later, we'll tell the whole story."

! 9'0 Gregory Ben ford"I don't like it.""Gordon, look. I think this is the way to do it. w.i.l.l.you take my advice?""Maybe.""I'll take it, go public. I'm known. I'm a crazy guy who fools around with interstellar radio signals and all that stuff. A certified authority on a nonexistent subject. I can get the attention of the academic com- "Yeah, but ...""One problem at a time, Gordon!"

"First, the picture. Later, the rest.""Well ..." Gordon had a cla.s.s coming up. Saul had a hypnotic quality about him, the ability to make notions seem plausible and even obvious. But, Gordon thought, a sow's ear with a ribbon around it was still a sow's ear. Still ... "Okay. You get into the ring.

I'm staying out.""Hey, thanks." Suddenly Saul was shaking his head. "I appreciate that. I really do. It's a great break.""Yeah," Gordon said. But he felt no elation.

The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite came on as Gordon and Penny were finis.h.i.+ng dinner. She had made a souffi and Gordon had uncorked a white Beaujolais; both were feeling quite flush. They moved into the living room to watch. Penny took off her blouse, revealing small well-shaped b.r.e.a.s.t.s with large nipples."How do you know it'll be on?" she asked lazily.

"Saui called this afternoon. He did an interview in Boston this morning. The local CBS station did the work, but he said the national network picked it up.

Maybe there isn't much else going on." He glanced around to be sure the curtains were drawn."Ummm. Looks that way." There was one big story--the nuclear powered submarine Thresher had ! 9 I.

one down in. the Atlantic without a single cry for elp. They hd been on a test dive. The Navy said that probably a system failure created progressive flooding. The interference with electrical circuits caused loss of power and the sub plunged to deeper waters, finally imploding. There were 129 men aboard.

Other than this depressing news there was very little. A follow-up on the Mona Lisa exhibit which toured New York and Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. A preview of the launch of Major L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., who was to be launched on a 22-orbit, two-day trip around the earth in Faith 7, the final flight of Project Mercury. A statement by the White House that aid to South Vietnam would continue and that the war might be won by .the end of 1965 if the political crisis there did not significantly affect the military effort. Generals grinned at the camera, promising a firm effort by the ARVN and a short mop-up operation in the delta region.

In New York, efforts to save Pennsylvania Station had failed, and the cla.s.sic edifice began to fall to the wrecker's ball to make way for the new Madison Square Garden. The Pan Am Building, dedicated a month earlier, seemed the wave of the urban-blighted future. On camera, a critic decried the fall of Penn Station and declared the Pan Am an architectural atrocity, contributing to congestion in an already crowded area. Gordon agreed. The critic closed with a wistful remark that meeting beneath the clock at the Biltmore hotel, just across the street from the Pan Am, wasn't going to be much of a joy any more.

Gordon laughed to himself without quite understanding why. His sympathies suddenly reversed. He had never met a girl at the Biltmore; that was the sort of empty WASP ritual open to Yalies and kids who identified with The Catcher in the Rye. That wasn't his world and never had been. "If that's the past, f.u.c.k it," he muttered under his breath. Penny gave him a questioning glance but said nothing. He grunted impatiently.

Maybe the wine was gett'mg to him.

! 9 2 Then Saul came on."From Yale University this evening, a startlingannouncement," Cronkite began. "Professor SaulShriffer, an astrophysicist, says that there is a possi-bility that recent experiments have detected a mes-sage from a civilization beyond our Earth."They switched to a shot of Saul pointing to aspeck on a star chart. "The signals appear to comefrom the star 99 Hercules, similar to our own sun. 99Hercules is 51 light years away. A light year is thedistance---""They're giving it so much time," Penny said won-deringly.

'."Shhh!""--light travels in a year, at a speed of 186,000miles per second." A shot of Saul standing beside asmall telescope. "The possible message was detectedin a way astronomers had not antic.i.p.ated--in an ex-periment by Professor Gordon Bernstein--""Oh, Jesus," Gordon groaned."--at the University of California at La Jolla. Theexperiment involved a low-temperature measure-ment of how atoms line up in a magnetic field. TheBernstein experiments are still being studied--it isnot certain that they are, in fact, picking up some sig-nal from a distant civilization. But Professor Shriffer,a collaborator with Bernstein who broke the code inthe signal, says he wants to alert the scientific com-munity." A picture of Saul writing equations at theblackboard. "There is a puzzling part of the message.A picture ."A well-drawn version of the interweaving curves.Saul stood in front of it, speaking into a hand-heldmicrophone. "Understand," he said, "we make nospecific claims at this time. But we would like thehelp of the scientific community in unraveling whatthis might mean." Some brief talk about the decodingfollowed.Back to Cronkite. "Several astronomers CBS Newsasked today for opinions expressed skepticism. If I o 3 Professor Shriffer proves correct, though, R could mean very fiig news, indeed." Cronkite made his rea.s.suring smile. "And that's the way it is, April the twelfth"

Gordon clicked Cronkite off. "G.o.dd.a.m.n,"' he said, still stunned.

"I thought it was very well done," Penny said judiciously.

'fiNell done? He wasn't supposed to use.my name at all?

"Why, don't you want any credit?"

"Credit? Christ--!" Gordon slammed a fist against the gray plaster wall with a resounding thump. "He did it all wrong, don't you see that? I had this sinking feeling when he told me, and sure enough-- there's my name, tied to his crackpot theory!"

"But it's your measurement---"

"I told him, keep my name out."

"Well, it was Walter Cronkite who gave your name. Not Satfl."

"Who ares who said it? I'm in it with Satfl, now."

"Why didn't they have you on TV?" Penny asked innocently, clearly unable to see what all the fuss was about. "It was just a lot of pictures of Saul."

Gordon grimaced. "That's his strong suit. Simplify science down to a few sentences, screw it up any way you want, pander to the lowest common denominator--but be sure Saul Shriffer's name is in lights. Big, gaudy, neon lights. c.r.a.p. Just--"

"He sort of hogged the credit, didn't he?"

Gordon looked at her, puzzled. "Credit ... ?" He stopped pacing the room. He saw that she honestly thought his anger was over not getting his face .on TV. "Good grief." He felt suddenly hot and flushed.

He began unb.u.t.toning his blue broadcloth s.h.i.+rt and thought about what to do. No point in talking to Penny--she was light years away from understanding how scientists felt about something like this.

He rolled up the sleeves of his s.h.i.+rt, puffing, and walking into the kitchen, where the telephone was.

! 9 4 Gordon began with, "Saul, I'm mad as h.e.l.l.""Ah ..." Gordon could picture Saul selecting just the right words. He was good at that, but it wasn't going to do him any good this time. "Well, I know how you feel, Gordon, I really do. I saw the network show two hours ago and it was just as much a surprise to me as it was to you. The local Boston footage was clean, no mention of your name explicitly, the way you wanted it. I called them right away after I saw the Cronkite thing and they said it got all changed around up at the network level.""How did the network people know, Saul, if you didn't--""Well, look, I had ttell the local people. For background info, y'know.""You said it wouldn't get on.""I did what I could, Gordon. I was going to callyOLl.""Why didn't you? Why let me see it without--"

"I thought maybe you wouldn't mind so much, after seeing ho,w,, much time we got." Saul's voice changed tone. ' It's a big play, Gordon! People are going to sit up and take notice."Gordon said sourly, "Yeah, notice.""We'll get some action on that picture. We'll crack this thing.""It'll crack us, more likely. Saul, I said I didn't want to get dragged in. You said--" *"Don't you see that was unrealistic?" Saul's voice was calm and reasonable. "I humored you, sure, but.i.t was bound to come out.""Not this way.""Believe me, this is how things work, Gordon. You weren't getting anywhere before, were you? Admit it."He took a deep breath. "If anybody asks me, Saul, I'm going to say I don't know where the signals are coming from. That's the plain truth."

! 9 5.

"But that's not the whole truth.""You are talking to me about the whole truth? You, Saul? You, who talked me into withholding the first message?""That was different. I wanted to clarify the issue---""The issue, s.h.i.+t! Listen, anybody asks me, I say Idon't agree with your interpretation.""You'll release the first message?""I..." Gordon hesitated. "No, I don't want to stir things up any more." He wondered if Ramsey would continue to work on the experiments if he made the message public. h.e.l.l, for all he knew there really was Some sort of national security element mixed up in this. Gordon knew he didn't want any part of that.

No, it was better to drop it."Gordon, I can understand your feelings." The voice warmed. "All I ask is that' you don't hinder what I'm trying to do. I won't get in your way, you don't get in mine.""Well ..." Gordon paused, his momentum blunted."And I truly am sorry about Cronkite and your name getting into it and all that. Okay?""I ... okay," Gordon muttered, not really knowing what he was agreeing with.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

! 998.

GREGORY MARKHAM STOOD WITH HIS HANDS BEHIND.