Robert Sawyer - Ineluctable

What to do? What to do?

Darren Hamasaki blew out air, trying to calm down, but his heart kept pounding, a metronome on amphetamines.

This was big. This was huge.

There had to be procedures in place. Surely someone had thought this through, had come up with a—a protocol , that was the word.

Darren left the observatory shed in his backyard and trudged through the snow. He stepped up onto the wooden deck and entered his house through the sliding-glass rear doors. He hit the light switch, the halogen glow from the torchiere by the desk stinging his dark-adapted eyes.

Darren took off his boots, gloves, tuque, and parka, then crossed the room, sitting down at his computer. He clicked on the Netscape Navigator icon. Oh, he had Microsoft Explorer, too—it had come preinstalled on his Pentium IV—but Darren always favored the underdog. His current search engine of choice, which changed as frequently as the current favorite CD in his stereo, was also an underdog: HotBot. He logged on to it and stared at the dialog box, trying to think of what keywords to type.

Protocol was indeed appropriate, but as for the rest—

He shrugged a little, conceding the magnitude of what he was about to enter. And then he pecked out three more words: contact, extraterrestrial , and intelligence .

He’d expected to have to go spelunking, and, indeed, there were over thirteen hundred hits, but the very first one turned out to be what he was looking for: “Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” a document on the SETI League web site. Darren scanned it, his eyes skittering across the screen like a puck across ice. As he did so, he rolled his index finger back and forth on his mouse’s knurled wheel.

“We, the institutions and individuals participating in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence…”

Darren frowned. No one had sought his opinion, but, then again, he hadn’t actually been looking for aliens.

“… inspired by the profound significance for mankind of detecting evidence…”

Seemed to Darren that “mankind” was probably a sexist term; just how old was this document?

“The discoverer should seek to verify that the most plausible explanation is the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence rather than some other natural or anthropogenic phenomenon…”

Well, there was no doubt about it. No natural phenomenon was likely to generate the squares of one, two, three, and four over and over again, and the source was in the direction of Groombridge 1618, a star 15.9 light-years from Earth; Groombridge 1618 was in Ursa Major, nowhere near the plane of the ecliptic into which almost every Earth-made space probe and vessel had been launched. It had to be extraterrestrial.

“… should inform the Secretary General of the United Nations in accordance with Article XI of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space…”

Darren’s eyebrows went up. Somehow he doubted that the switchboard at the UN would put his call through to the secretary-general—was it still Kofi Annan?—if he said he was ringing him up to advise him that contact had been made with aliens. Besides, it was 2:00 a.m. here in Ontario, and UN headquarters were in New York; the same time zone. Surely the secretary-general would be at home asleep right now anyway.

“The discoverer should inform observers throughout the world through the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams of the International Astronomical Union…”

Good God, is it still possible to send a telegram? Is Western Union even still in business? Surely the submission could be made by E-mail…

HotBot quickly yielded the URL for the bureau, which still used the word “telegrams” in its name, but one could indeed fill out an online form on their home page to send a report. Too bad, in a way: Darren had been enjoying composing a telegram in his head, something he’d never done before: “Major news stop alien signal received from Groombridge 1618 stop …”

The brief instructions accompanying the form only talked about reporting comets, novae, supernovae, and outbursts of unusual variable stars (and there were warnings not to bother the bureau with trivial matters, such as the sighting of meteors or the discovery of new asteroids). Nary a word about submitting news of the receipt of an alien signal.

Regardless, Darren composed a brief message and sent it. Then he clicked his browser’s back button several times to return to the Declaration of Principles , and skimmed it some more. Ah, now that was more like it: “ The discoverer should have the privilege of making the first public announcement…”

Very well, then. Very well.

There was nothing to do now but wait and see if the beings living on the third planet were going to reply. Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed expected they indeed would, but it would take time: time for the laser flashes to reach their destination, and an equal time for any response the inhabitants of that watery globe might wish to send—plus, of course, whatever time they took deciding whether to answer.

There were many things Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed could do to while away the time: read, watch a video, inhale a landscape. And, well, had it been any other time, he probably would have contented himself with one of those. The landscape was particularly appealing: he had a full molecular map of the air in early spring from his world’s eastern continent, a heady blending of yellowshoot blossoms, clumpweed pollens, pondskins, skyleaper pheromones, and the tang of ozone from the vernal storms. Nothing relaxed him more.

He’d been afraid at first to access that molecular map, afraid the homesickness would be too much. After all, their ship, the Ineluctable , had been traveling for many years now, visiting seven other star systems before coming here. And there were still three more stars—and several years of travel—after this stop before Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed would really get to inhale the joyous scents of his homeland again. Fortunately, though, it had turned out that he could enjoy the simulation without his tail twitching too much in sadness.

Still, this was not any other time; this was the period when, had they been back home, all three moons would have risen simultaneously, the harmonics of their vastly different orbital radii briefly synchronizing their movements. This was the time when the tides would be at their highest, when the jewelbugs would be taking to the air—and when the females of Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed’s kind would be in estrus.

Even aboard ship, the estrus cycle continued, never losing track of its schedule. Yes, despite his race’s hopes, even shielding females from the light and gravitational effects of the moons did nothing to end the recurring march. The cycle was so ingrained in physiology that it maintained its precision even in the absence of the stimuli that must surely have originally set its cadence.

Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed took one last look out his window at the distant yellow star. The planet they’d signaled was invisible without a telescope, although two of the gas giants—the fifth and sixth worlds—shone brightly enough to be seen with naked eyes, despite presenting only crescent faces from this distance.

The ship’s computer would flash a signal to alert Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed, of course, if any response were received. He set out to find his mate, to find his dear Fist-Held-Sideways.