Ben Bova - Voyagers

“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?”