Impact

84

The clocks in the room approached 3 A.M. as the discussion crawled along, going nowhere. From the flat-panel at the end of the room, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs finally said a few words, addressing them to Chaudry. His voice was mild, courteous. "If you wish to take the military option off the table, Dr. Chaudry, what do you propose to replace it with?"

Chaudry stared at him. "Study. Research. Now that we know where it is--assuming that image is of the thing responsible for the strangelet missiles--we can redirect all our moveable satellite resources toward it. We just need to get the coordinates off that disk."

"And then?" the chairman asked.

"We attempt communication."

"And what, exactly, would we say?"

"Explain that we want peace--that we're a peaceful people. We aren't a threat to them."

"A peaceful people?" Mickelson said, with a snort. "Let's hope that 'machine' has been sound asleep over the past few bloody centuries."

"That may in fact be the problem," said Chaudry, "the reason it's threatening us. Because of our aggressive behavior. Who knows how long it's been monitoring us, listening in on all our radio and television broadcasts which have been pouring into space for the past century. Its computers would decipher them, of course. Anyone looking at all our news broadcasts over the past hundred years would take a dim view of humanity."

"How the hell would it know English?" Mickelson asked.

"If it was built to keep tabs on intelligent life," said Chaudry, "it's probably got exceedingly powerful artificial intelligence capabilities; one would assume it could decipher any language."

"How old is it? When was it built?"

Ford spoke up. "The image shows erosion and pitting by micrometeoroids as well as blanketing by regolith thrown up by ancient impacts. That machine's at least a few hundred million years old."

Mickelson turned to Chaudry. "You agree?"

Chaudry scrutinized the image. "Yes, I do. This is very old."

"So you think it's real?"

Chaudry hesitated. "I'd like to see the original images and its location before I answer that question."

"We don't have time right now for verification," said Lockwood. "We have four hours to report to the president. Let's pass by the military option and move on to communication. Assuming it can interpret English, do we communicate with it?"

"We've got to reassure them we mean no harm," said Chaudry.

"You start pleading peace with them," Mickelson said, "that's advertising your weakness."

"We are weak," said Chaudry, "and that machine knows it."

Silence followed.

Derkweiler raised a hand. "The Spacewatch group at NPF has been studying ways to divert killer asteroids. Maybe we could use one of their techniques to nudge a large asteroid from the Asteroid Belt and send it plunging into the machine. Like a dinosaur-extinction-size asteroid."

Chaudry shook his head. "It would take years to plan such a mission, launch it, and get it to Mars. And we don't even have the technology yet to do it. We've got to tell the president the truth: we have no options." He glared around the room.

This was followed by another long silence, which Lockwood finally broke. "We're still hung up on the military option. Forget the military option and let's talk about something else--what the hell is this machine, who put it there, and what's it trying to do?"

Ford cleared his throat. "It might be defective."

"Defective?" Chaudry looked surprised.

"It's old. It's been sitting for a long time," said Ford. "If it's damaged, maybe there's a way to mislead it. Fool it. Trick it in some way. Its behavior up to this point has been erratic, unpredictable. That may not be deliberate--it may be a sign of malfunctioning."

"How?" asked Mickelson.

At this a silence fell. Lockwood glanced at his watch. "It's almost dawn. I ordered a quick breakfast at five in the private dining room. We'll patch over the others and continue the discussion there."

Ford rose, deliberately leaving his jacket draped on the back of the chair. He exited the room and waited in the hall for the room to empty, the stragglers emerging and making their way to the dining room at the far end of the hall. Ford lingered near the door, watching everyone leave. The second to last to leave was Marjory Leung. She looked like hell. Ford had been sure she was the mole, but she hadn't taken his bait.

Chaudry was the last to emerge from the conference room.

The mission director came out, his hand just withdrawing from his suitcoat pocket. Ford stepped up quickly as if to speak to him confidentially, shot his hand into the pocket, and pulled out a piece of paper.

"What the hell--?" Chaudry cried, his wiry body moving like lightning, his arm shooting out to snatch back the paper, but Ford sprang back out of reach.

He held the paper up before a group of astonished witnesses. "This is the password to the hard drive. Dr. Chaudry here just lifted it out of my jacket pocket. I said there was a mole in your group. And we just caught him."