Ben Bova - Voyagers

“Something up at the nose.” Stoner described the circle. “Maybe it’s a hatch.”

“Be careful, Shtoner.”

“I’m going up there.”

Trembling, throat dry, too excited to be afraid, Stoner stepped slowly toward the glowing circle.

He stood at its edge as the whine in his earphones worked its way up to a shrill screech and then cut off completely. The line of light cut off too. But the circle of metal continued to glow dully, almost as if heated from within.

“It’s glowing,” Stoner reported. “Could it be radioactive? A nuclear heat source? Maybe I’ve cooked myself.”

“No radiation counts from detectors here,” Federenko replied.

“Maybe the screen blocks it.”

Federenko said nothing.

But the glow was subsiding now and Stoner saw that the metal inside the circle was becoming milky, translucent. He strained his eyes at it.

“I think I can see something…”

Slowly he got down on his hands and knees and put the visor of his helmet against the hazy surface.

“You look like religious pilgrim,” Federenko called, “at prayer.”

Ignoring him, Stoner reported, “It’s clearing up. It’s becoming transparent. I can see inside…not much light down there, but…”

He peered through the glassy surface, forcing himself with sheer willpower to see what was inside. Then it hit him with the power of a physical blow.

“Oh, my god in heaven,” he whispered. “It’s a sarcophagus.”

Deep inside the windowless bowels of the ABC News building, the FCC official shook his head in wonder.

“A sarcophagus? What the hell’s he mean?”

The network vice-president, a bright, dazzlingly intense young black man wearing a maroon cashmere jacket, answered, “Whatever it is, we’ve got to get it on the air. Now .”

Hugh Downs was on the monitor screen, anchoring the ongoing coverage of the space mission. An image of the alien spacecraft as seen from the Soyuz’s cameras was displayed behind him.

“On the air? Live?” The FCC man blanched.

“Got to.”

“No! Too risky. Suppose he finds something…awful? The panic…”

The network VP jabbed a finger toward the monitor screen. “Half the country is already scared stiff of this thing and the other half don’t really believe it exists at all! We got to put it on live, man, let them see for themselves. Otherwise nobody’s going to believe it!”

“I’m not sure…”

“Well, I am.” He picked up the phone and gave the necessary orders.

The FCC man said gloomily, “If you do it, the other networks will go to live coverage too.”

“Good. Long as the Russians are feeding it to us live, we oughtta put it out on the air live. This delay crap is for the birds.”

“But I don’t have the authority to allow live broadcast! I shouldn’t be involved…”

“Listen,” the VP snapped. “Why do you think the network brass put me on this hot seat? Part of their affirmative action program? I get paid to make decisions, man! If this works, I’m a genius, I’m on my way to the top of the heap.”

“And if it doesn’t work? If there’s a panic or some kind of reaction from Washington?”

“Then I’m on my way back to Philadelphia, with my death certificate in my hand.”

“I can see right through the metal,” Stoner said into his helmet microphone. “The metal’s become transparent.”

“He is dead?” Federenko asked.

“Must be. Or frozen. Maybe he’s just preserved…you know, cryonically.”

Stoner’s pulse was racing and he felt sweat trickling along his skin, inside the pressure suit. It was difficult to make out details of the alien’s form—he saw a long, very solid-looking body stretched out on a bed or bier of some sort. There was a head, shoulders, two arms. He couldn’t see the lower end of the body.

“Speak!” Federenko commanded. “What do you see? Your words go straight to Tyuratam.”

“Okay, okay…”

Stoner pressed his visor close to the transparent hatch again, to get a clearer view. And there was no hatch. His helmeted head sunk an inch or two below the rim of metal that framed the circular hatch.

“Oh no…” He pulled back, then ran his gloved fingers around the rim of the circle. It was open, as if the metal that had been there moments earlier had dissolved.

“Nikolai,” he called, fighting to keep his voice from climbing too high. “The hatch—first it went transparent, now it’s disappeared altogether.”

“Disappeared?”

“Gone. Vanished. Just an open hole where solid metal was a minute and a half ago.”

Federenko asked unbelievingly, “It is open?”

“Yes. I’m going inside.”

“Wait. I check with ground control first.”

Stoner shook his head inside the fishbowl helmet. At their distance from Earth it was taking nearly six seconds for Federenko’s messages to reach Tyuratam, and another six for their responses to get back to the Soyuz. Plus the time in between while they screw around trying to make up their minds, Stoner thought.

“I’m going in,” he said.

“Wait, Shtoner.”

But he already had his hands on the hatch’s rim and started gingerly lowering his legs through the opening.

“I’m halfway through. No problem.”

“Shtoner, it could be dangerous.”

“I don’t think so.”

He floated down inside the craft and touched his boots to the soft flooring. They stuck gently, just as they had on the outside of the hull.

He turned slowly in a full circle, taking in the interior of the alien spacecraft.

“I’m inside,” he said, his voice unconsciously hushed. “Can you hear me?”

“I hear you.” Federenko’s voice in his earphones was weaker, streaked with sizzling static, but clear enough to understand easily.

“It’s a lot smaller in here than the ship’s exterior dimensions. This must be just one compartment. All the machinery’s hidden behind bulkheads.” He shivered. “And it’s cold in here. Colder than outside. How can that be?”

“What do you see?”

Stoner turned to the elevated bier and the creature resting on it. He took a step toward it, then stopped.

The curved walls of the compartment were starting to glow. Not like molten metal, but like the soft radiance of a moonlit sky. As Stoner watched, slack-jawed, the hull turned milky white, then translucent, and finally as clear as glass.

“Shtoner! Answer!” Federenko was bellowing. “Can you hear me?”

“I can see you, Nikolai,” he answered, awed. “The whole damned hull has turned transparent. Just like the hatch did. I can see right through it!”

A pause. Then Federenko grumbled, “It is the same as always from here. Dark metal. Not transparent.”

“A one-way window,” Stoner mused. “Christ, what’d that be worth to Corning?”

“Who?”

Stoner giggled as he stood beside the bier and looked across the hundred or so meters of vacuum to the Soyuz. It looked squat and ugly to him now, a primitive artifact from a primitive world.

“They have one helluva grasp on materials sciences, I’ll say that for them.”

“Describe, Shtoner. All is being transmitted.”

He swallowed hard and looked down at his gloved hands. They were trembling.

“Shtoner, talk.”

“This whole section of the interior is about four meters long—say, twenty-five feet. Almost the full five meters wide, but only two and a half, three meters high. The floor is solid and opaque. So’s the back wall of the compartment. But the nose and side walls are perfectly transparent. As if there weren’t any hull there at all. I can see right through it.”