Jack McDevitt: Infinity Beach

There was an echo to the voyage. Kim could not repress memories of the flight with Solly. The distances tended to collapse, as if she were on a train running through dark but familiar countryside, and the landmarks were all abstract, temporal, racing by. Places she’d been before. Here we were playing chess and Solly kept winning so I got annoyed. And there was where we finally beat Veronica King to the solution, in the case of “The Haunted Balcony.”

She knew when they arrived at the place where Kim’s image, as Clea, had performed the torchlight dance.

Stupid. Somewhere she had been incredibly stupid and had let it all slip through her fingers.

They spent most of their time devising their contact strategy. They intended to begin broadcasting as soon as they arrived, to ensure they couldn’t be missed. A new kind of Beacon Project, Kim thought.

They debated endlessly how best to establish a syntax and vocabulary. “We don’t want to play more number games,” Gil Chase reminded them.

They knew the two technologies had a common system for exchanging audio and visual signals. “We can use pictures in the beginning,” Eric Climer said. He was a linguist. “But it would have been helpful,” he complained to Kim, “if I had known in advance what this was about. I could have brought the proper software.”

They formulated lists of questions to ask once a common language had been devised. How far back can you trace your history? To even begin to phrase that question they’d have to work out a joint system for measuring time.

Where are you from?

“No,” said Maurie, “don’t ask that. It sounds too much like intelligence-gathering.”

“What do we do,” asked Sandra, “if they put that kind of question to us?”

“Considering what’s already happened,” said Paul, “we’d better avoid giving them any information of that nature.”

Kim nodded. “I agree.” She didn’t want to be responsible for the arrival of an invasion fleet if they encountered a worst-case scenario.

“But if they get the idea we don’t trust them,” said Matt, “how can we expect them to trust us?”

“We can’t,” said Mona. “But we don’t need a great deal of mutual trust. At least not in the beginning. They’ll certainly understand our reluctance to divulge that kind of information. I think our best approach to this is to be honest.”

“So what other questions,” asked Terri, “do we want answered?”

“ Is there anyone else? ” said Ali. “ Have they found anybody else out there? ”

“ Your ships seem to have armaments. Why? ”

“ What’s your explanation for order in the universe? For the existence of the universe itself? Why isn’t there nothing? ”

“ Have you been able to establish the existence of alternate universes? If so, have you been able to learn anything about them? ”

“ Do you believe life has a spiritual dimension? ”

“How are you going to define ‘spiritual?’” asked Mona. No one had any idea.

“ What do you do with your leisure time? ”

“Do we really care about that?” asked Terri. “Why would we want to know whether they play bridge?”

Maurie, who’d proposed the question, shook his head in dismay. “What people do with their leisure tells us a great deal about the nature of a society, what its values really are, for example, as opposed to what its members say its values are.”

“What if they ask us that question?” said Mona. “Are we going to admit that ninety-nine percent of our population sit around indulging in electronic fantasies?”

“Best not do that,” said Gil. “If these things are hostile, that would only invite attack.”

“So we lie,” said Matt.

“Sure.” Gil looked frustrated. “We don’t want to create problems down the line. Maybe we should be thinking more about what they’re going to ask us than vice-versa. Because they may think the same way we do. So what do we say when they ask questions designed, for example, to test our technological knowledge?”

“I don’t think we need to worry too much about that,” said Paul. “All they have to do is shoot at us and see how quickly it takes us to leave town.”

Nobody seriously believed there’d be a biological presence at Alnitak, but everyone was convinced the Mac would find an automated outpost of some sort, a scanner watching for one of the giant ships to reappear. There was no way humans would not have established one, and nobody could imagine an intelligent species simply abandoning interest in a place in which two encounters had occurred in recent decades. Although it occurred to Kim that Woodbridge would have forced just such an abandonment had he been able. What did that say about human governments?

They agreed, by a vote of seven to three, that any effort by the celestials to attach an object to the hull would be deemed hostile, and the contact attempt would be terminated at that point. Ali explained to Kim later that he didn’t care much about the outcome of that particular vote since the safety of the ship was his responsibility, and she should not doubt for a minute that he would not require anybody’s authorization to clear out if he didn’t like any aspect of the behavior of their prospective clients.

If an object actually arrived despite their best efforts, and secured itself to the Mac , they would send the robot out to break it loose. To ensure it didn’t circle back, the robot would burn it with a few thousand volts before tossing it aside. No hatch would be opened at any time after the operation commenced. The robot was dispensable and would be left behind.

If nothing appeared to either challenge or welcome them, they would broadcast a greeting and wait things out. The Mac carried enough supplies for a ten-week stay in the region. If there were no developments during that time, they’d leave an automated scanner and broadcasting station of their own and return home.

As could be expected, a few shipboard romances developed. Paul and Terri paired off; Eric created a bit of tension by running dalliances with both Mona and Tesla. Matt, who was married, either refused to take advantage of Sandra Leasing’s obvious interest or he did it with sufficient discretion that Kim saw no evidence of it.

Ali remained professionally courteous to everyone, but he maintained a discreet distance from the women. During the course of a wandering discussion one night in the rec room, he commented casually that emotional attachments between captains and passengers were not conducive to good order.

Kim was well below everybody else’s age, and she knew her companions perceived her as little more than a child. It was just as well; she was still too close to Solly to think about any kind of relationship. And considering the cramped conditions on board the Mac , everything became public within a few hours anyhow.

During the final days prior to arrival at Alnitak, tension began to build.

The renowned twenty-fourth-century psychologist Edmund Trimble had argued that extended life spans were detrimental to human progress. For one thing, he said, life tended for most people to consist of a series of missed opportunities. Consequently, after seventy or eighty years, people became not only inflexible, but increasingly cynical. As it had turned out, Trimble’s fears were exaggerated but not altogether groundless. The average age for the members of the contact team, not counting Kim or Ali (who was only 41) was 126. The general conviction, based on all these years of experience, was that something would go wrong. What they expected to go wrong was that no one would be waiting at Alnitak: that the opportunity had been missed and that all they would have to show in the end would be the Valiant , the Hunter logs, and maybe another intruder chasing them around.