Ben Bova: Voyagers

Markov shrugged. “It’s all psychological. Sometimes, on very rare occasions when I have found someone beautiful and truly loving, I am a tiger. But with most women…nothing.”

“But how does your wife…?”

The interrogation room door was flung open by a stocky man in a captain’s uniform. “Haven’t you finished the forms yet? The colonel is waiting!”

Unfolding his lanky frame so that he had the advantage of height over the young captain, Markov suggested, “If you are certain that I’m not a spy or an assassin, perhaps I could meet the colonel and then return here afterward to finish the forms.”

The lieutenant stood up too. “Or I could complete the interview after the working day is finished.”

Markov said carefully, “I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“I often work late,” she said. “And these forms are strictly routine. There’s nothing sensitive about them. We could even complete the interview at your apartment, if that is more convenient for you, Professor.”

The captain snapped, “We don’t conduct security interviews in people’s apartments!”

With a sad shrug, Markov reached for his chair. “Very well then. I suppose we’ll have to finish this here and keep the colonel waiting.”

“No,” the captain decided. “You will see the colonel now, and then return here to complete the interview. No matter how long it takes.”

“Whatever you say,” Markov agreed meekly. But he winked at the lieutenant.

She kept a straight face and said, “I will see you in this room, no matter how late it is.”

It was difficult for Markov to suppress a grin as he followed the stocky captain down the featureless corridors. The walls were bare of decoration and even though they had apparently been freshly painted, the halls looked grim and almost shabby. Men and women, most of them in uniform, hurried through the halls. Although Markov could see no cameras anywhere, he got the feeling that everyone was being watched constantly.

The captain took him as far as an anteroom, in which a doughy-faced middle-aged civilian woman commanded a large desk with an electric typewriter and two telephones. She flashed Markov a disapproving glance, the kind that his wife often gave, the kind that automatically made him raise his hands to straighten his thinning lank hair and beard. Then she nodded to the captain and gestured wordlessly to the door beyond her desk.

The captain, motioning Markov to follow him, went to the door, knocked once and slowly—carefully—opened it.

Does no one speak here? Markov wondered. Are we at a shrine?

The captain would not cross the threshold, but he brusquely motioned Markov to go inside.

He stepped through into a sumptuous office. A broad desk of polished dark wood with crossed flags behind it. Oriental carpet on the floor. Windows that looked out onto Red Square. Plush leather chairs neatly lined against one wall. Gleaming samovar standing on a low cabinet.

The office was unoccupied. But before Markov could turn back toward the captain, the door at the far end of the room opened and his wife stepped through.

“Maria! This is your office?”

She was wearing her tan uniform, which made her look even squatter and heavier than usual. She scowled at him.

“My office? Hah! My office is smaller than the colonel’s desk.”

“Oh.”

“Come on, come on. They’re all waiting for you.”

He crossed the fine carpet and entered the inner room. It was a conference chamber, the air hazy with cigarette and pipe smoke from twenty men and women seated around the long narrow table. Markov sneezed.

At the head of the table sat the colonel, a pudgy little man with narrow, squinting pig’s eyes. Maria introduced everyone to Markov. He immediately forgot all their names except for Academician Bulacheff—the head of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and an astronomer of first rank.

Feeling somewhat uneasy, Markov took the seat Maria indicated between a slight, bald man who puffed nervously on a long, thin cigarette, and a female secretary who had a notepad on her lap. Markov noticed that her skirt was up above her knees but her legs weren’t worth bothering about.

“Now then,” the colonel said with a single nod of his head that made his wattles quiver, “we can begin.”

Markov remained silent, listening, as they unfolded the story. The planet Jupiter was giving off strange radio pulses, superimposed against the natural radio noises emanating from the planet. Could it be a signal of some sort? A code? A language?

One of the military men sitting near the colonel shook his head. “I think it’s an American spacecraft that’s been sent into a very deep orbit.”

“It couldn’t be,” said the man beside Markov.

“A secret probe on its way to Jupiter,” the officer insisted.

“For what purpose?”

The officer shrugged. “I’m not in the intelligence service. Let them find out.”

“We have no indication of such a launch by the Americans,” said a bleak-faced graying woman halfway down the table from Markov. “I doubt that the Americans could hide such a launch from us.”

“What about the West Germans? They have a launching base in Brazil now, don’t they?”

“It is under constant surveillance,” the woman answered. “And it does not have the capability of launching interplanetary missions.”

“Then it must be the Americans,” the officer said.

Or the Jovians, Markov thought.

“It is not a spacecraft,” Academician Bulacheff said in a mild, soft voice. “The radio pulses are coming from the planet itself. Of that we are certain.”

“Have the Americans picked up the signals?” the colonel asked. Apparently Bulacheff’s word was enough to silence the spacecraft theory.

“We have done a computer search of the American scientific journals,” one of the younger civilians answered. “Not a word about this has been published.”

“Perhaps they haven’t picked up the signals.”

“Nonsense! Their facilities are as good as ours. Better, in some cases.”

“But do they have a radio telescope operating at the proper frequency? After all…”

The man beside Markov shrilled in a high, reedy voice, “We know of at least four Western facilities that are devoted to studying radio emissions from the planets. The Americans are even mapping Venus with radar! Do you have any conception of the kind of equipment needed to accomplish that? No—if we have detected these strange signals from Jupiter, they have detected them also. That is sure.”

“But why haven’t they published any reports? It’s been several months now and the Americans are always in a rush to get into print.”

“Publish or perish,” said Academician Bulacheff with a slow smile. “Under their system, a scientist must publish papers constantly or be left behind in the competition for money and prestige.”

The conversation drifted further and further into a guessing game about what the Americans were doing. Markov slumped back in his chair and studied Bulacheff. He was an elderly man with a thin, sallow face. The little hair that remained on his gleaming dome was pure white and wispy, like a spindrift of snow blown across the tundra. The old man seemed slightly amused by the proceedings. He caught Markov gazing at him and returned a slight smile.

“The signals can be only one of two things,” Bulacheff said. His soft voice quavered slightly, but everyone turned to him and listened.

Raising one finger, the academician said, “It could be some natural process of the planet Jupiter that is giving off these radio waves. Most likely it is exactly that and nothing more. After all, we have been observing Jupiter’s radio emissions for only a few decades. The planet has been in existence for more than four thousand million years. Who are we to say what is natural and what is anomalous?”