Arthur Clarke - Imperial Earth

“I wish we could afford a new intercom system,” he said accusingly. “They cost a very small fraction of the Titan Gross National Product.”

Duncan thought it was wise to let this pass, and luckily on the second attempt the ambassador got through. He muttered a few inaudible questions, waited for a minute, then looked at Duncan and shook his head.

“No trace of him—not even a Terran forwarding address for any messages from home. Most odd.”

“Wouldn’t you say—unprecedented?”

“Um—yes. I’ve never heard of anyone failing to contact the Embassy as soon as they reach Earth. Usually, of course, we know that they’re coming, weeks in advance. There’s no law compelling them to get in touch—but it’s a matter of courtesy. Not to mention convenience.”

“That’s what I thought. Well, if you hear anything of him, would you let me know?”

The ambassador stared back at him in silence for a moment, with the most emphatic of smiles on his face. Then he said: “What do Malcolm and Colin think he’s doing? Plotting a coup d’état with smuggled guns?”

After a moment’s shock, Duncan laughed at the joke.

“Not even Karl is that crazy. Frankly, I’m completely baffled by the whole thing—but I’m determined to locate him. Though there may be half a billion people on Earth, he’s not exactly inconspicuous. Please keep in touch. Good-bye for the present.”

Two down, thought Duncan, and one to go. It was back to Ivor Mandel’stahm, in his self-appointed, and by no means unsuccessful, role of private eye.

But Ivor’s Comsole answered: “Please do not disturb. Kindly record any message.”

Duncan was annoyed; he was bursting to pass on his news, but he was certainly not going to leave it stored in a Comsole. He would have to wait until Mandel’stahm called back.

That took two hours, and meanwhile it was not easy to concentrate on other work. When the dealer finally returned the call, he apologized profusely.

“I was trying a long shot,” he explained. “I wondered if he’d bought anything in New York on a credit card. There weren’t all that number of aitches, and the Central Billing computer zipped through them in an hour... Alas—he must be using cash. Not a federal crime, of course. But a nuisance to us honest investigators.”

Duncan laughed.

“It was a good idea. I’ve done slightly better—at least I’ve eliminated some possibilities.”

He gave Mandel’stahm a brief résumé of his discussion with Calindy and Ambassador Farrell, then added: “Where do we go from here?”

“I’m not sure. But don’t worry—I’ll think of something.”

Duncan believed him. He now had an almost unreasoning confidence in the dealer’s ingenuity, not to mention his influence and his knowledge of the ways of Earth. If anyone could locate Karl—short of going to the police, or inserting a personal appeal in the World Times —it would be Mandel’stahm.

In fact, it took him only thirty-six hours.

“I’ve found him,” said Mandel’stahm. He looked tired but victorious.

“I knew you would,” Duncan replied with unfeigned admiration. “Where is he?”

“Don’t be so impatient—let me have my reasonably innocent fun. I’ve earned it.”

“Well, whose concierge did you bamboozle this time?”

Mandel’stahm looked slightly pained.

“Nobody’s. I first tried to find all I could about your friend Helmer, by the brilliant device of looking him up in the Interplanetary Who’s Who . I assumed he’d be there, and he was—a hundred-line print-out. I looked you up at the same time, by the way... You rate one hundred fifty lines, if that’s any satisfaction.”

“I know,” said Duncan, with what patience he could muster. “Go on.”

“I wondered if it would list any Terran contacts or interests, and again I was in luck. He belongs to the Institution of Electronic Engineers, the Royal Astronomical Society, the Institute of Physics, and the Institute of Astronautics—as well as several Titanian professional organizations, of course. And I see he’s written half a dozen scientific papers, and been joint author in others: the Ionosphere of Saturn, origins of ultra-long-wave electromagnetic radiation, and other thrilling esoterica... nothing of any use to us, though.

“The Royal astronomers are in London, of course—but the engineers and astronauts and physicists are all in New York, and I wondered if he’d contacted them. So I called on another of my useful friends—a scientist this time, and a most distinguished one, who could open any doors without questions being asked. I hoped that a visiting Titanian colleague was a rare enough phenomenon to attract attention... and indeed he was.”

Mandel’stahm gave another of his pregnant pauses, so that Duncan could simmer for a while, then went on.

“ This is what puzzles me. Apart from ignoring the Embassy, and telling Miss Ellerman to keep quiet, he’s done absolutely nothing to cover his tracks. I don’t think anyone with much to hide would behave that way...”

“It was really very simple. The Electronics people were happy to help. They told us he’d left North Atlan and could be contacted care of the Assistant Chief Engineer, Division C, World Communications Headquarters, Tehran. Not the sort of address you’d associate with gem smuggling and interplanetary skullduggery...

“So over to Tehran—just in time to miss him, but no matter. He’ll be at the same location now for a couple of days, and in view of his background, at last we’ve got something that makes a little sense.”

“World Com’s Division C are the boys who keep Project CYCLOPS running. And even I have heard of that.”

It had been conceived in the first bright dawn of the Space Age; the largest, most expensive, and potentially most promising scientific instrument ever devised. Though it could serve many purposes, one was paramount—the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

One of the oldest dreams of mankind, this remained no more than a dream until the rise of radio astronomy, in the second half of the twentieth century. Then, within the short span of two decades, the combined skills of the engineers and the scientists gave humanity the power to span the interstellar gulf— if it was willing to pay the price.

The first puny radio telescopes, a few tens of meters in diameter, had listened hopefully for signals from the stars. No one had really expected success from these pioneering efforts, nor was it achieved. Making certain plausible assumptions about the distribution of intelligence in the Galaxy, it was easy to calculate that the detection of a radio-emitting civilization would require telescopes not decameters, but kilometers, in aperture.

There was only one practical method of achieving this result—at least, with structures confined to the surface of the Earth. To build a single giant bowl was out of the question, but the same result could be obtained from an array of hundreds of smaller ones. CYCLOPS was visualized as an antenna “farm” of hundred-meter dishes, uniformly spaced over a circle perhaps five kilometers across. The faint signals from each element in that army of antennas would be added together, and then cunningly processed by computers programmed to look for the unique signatures of intelligence against the background of cosmic noise.

The whole system would cost as much as the original Apollo Project. But unlike Apollo, it could proceed in installments, over a period of years or even decades. As soon as a relatively few antennas had been built, CYCLOPS could start operating. From the very beginning, it would be a tool of immense value to the radio astronomers. Over the years, more and more antennas could be installed, until eventually the whole array was filled in; and all the while, CYCLOPS would steadily increase in power and capability, able to probe deeper and deeper into the universe.