The Lure

43 The Oort Cloud

‘Now just so we can get the complete background, Tom — why the murder?’

‘It was self-defence. He was sent to kill us all.’

‘Ah yes — “they’re out to get me”. You told me that. Who is out to get you, Tom? The Slovaks? The aliens?’

‘Sneer away, Joe, but I have the evidence right here in my pocket.’ Petrie taps at his casual jacket. ‘I think my own government wants me dead, maybe the Russians too.’

‘At the risk of asking the obvious…’

‘My guess is they still have a pre-emptive strike mentality. They think we should keep our heads down. If we reply, it’s telling the signallers that we’re approaching a technological stage where we could become a risk to them maybe a few centuries down the line. They think the signal could be a lure to flush out civilisations like us in order to remove us.’

‘But you don’t believe that?’

‘If the signallers thought like that, they’d have self-destructed long ago.’

‘Tom, maybe my government will take the same line as your government. You know what I mean?’

‘I know. I’m taking that chance.’

Hazel said, ‘He’s keeping something back.’

Sullivan looked sharply at the Science Adviser. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Can we run it back? Go to that bit about timespans.’

Petrie’s soul-baring ran backwards, stopped, ran back again, and then settled on ‘… a helluva time.’

‘Look at his posture near the end of the sentence.’

A frame at a time; Petrie’s voice a low-pitched, robot-like drawl. We’re-just-four-hundred-years-from-Antares-two-hundred-from-Betelgeuse-eight-years-from-Sirius-and-four-months-from-the-Oort-cloud. The frame froze. Petrie’s mouth was half-open, intensity congealed on his face.

‘A hesitation on the last phrase?’ the DCI asked.

‘Yes. And a slight shifting back in his seat. He wasn’t sure about the Oort cloud.’

‘Maybe he wasn’t sure this damn cloud fitted his argument.’

‘No sir, that’s not what the body language is saying. Look at the way he leans back after he mentions the cloud. See how he puts his fingers over his mouth. He’s thinking, I shouldn’t have said that. He’s said more than he intended.’

‘What is this damned Oort cloud anyway?’

Killman said, ‘It’s a reservoir of maybe a hundred billion comets orbiting the Sun. They’re so far beyond the planets that the Sun heats them to just three degrees above absolute zero.’

‘How do we know this cloud is there? Can we see it?’

‘It’s invisible from here.’

‘So how the hell do you know it’s there?’ Bull repeated.

‘We see stray comets coming in from it.’

The President pulled a sceptical face. ‘Surely three degrees absolute is too cold for life forms?’

‘Three degrees rings a bell,’ said Baxendale.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Killman. ‘By coincidence the relict heat from the Big Bang is also at three degrees. We’re immersed in it. So when the cosmologists thought they were seeing primordial ripples in the Big Bang radiation, they were actually looking at patches of dust in the Oort cloud. Fooled them for years.’

‘Some of us don’t have degrees in astrophysics,’ Bull complained.

Killman put a fat hand to his forehead, horrified. ‘And Petrie thinks the signal came from the Oort cloud?’

Hazel was shaking her head doubtfully. ‘Does that make sense? Life on a deep freeze planet?’

‘No, ma’am, not in my opinion. But it raises another issue.’ The physicist raised a finger in the air. They gave him time, while he gathered his thoughts. Then he was speaking to himself. ‘I think I see what this guy’s getting at. He thinks there’s a relay station in the Oort cloud.’ He raised his head and seemed surprised to find that he had an audience. ‘Could be it fires signals at us from time to time.’

‘You mean they’ve been watching us?’ Bull asked Killman in alarm.

‘Maybe for a million years.’

Hazel turned to Bull. ‘Mr President, if this Oort cloud story is right, then any contact you make may not just affect our remote descendants. The cloud’s only three months away at the speed of light. If we replied to the signal, we could get a response within six months. Three or four weeks if it’s in the inner cloud, which is even more stable.’

The DCI sipped beer. ‘Maybe a response like a death ray.’

‘All information about the galactic civilisations, all knowledge, could be stored in stations like this. They could be scattered round every planetary system with life, they could get updated every millennium or two.’

Killman was beginning to look wild-eyed. ‘Dialogue with the relay station would in effect be dialogue with the Galactic club, but with a response time of weeks instead of thousands of years. If this guy’s right — it’s breathtaking!’

Bull sighed. ‘I’d like us to keep our eye on the ball here. This Iraq business is filling my diary by the hour, and what am I doing about it? I’m sitting here listening to fantasy. All we have is this lunatic’s word.’

Sullivan said, ‘We have hard evidence.’

‘Huh?’

‘A compact disk. A sampler, this Petrie says, with knowledge centuries ahead of the present time. The main information is on another disk which he has with him.’

‘Now that’s what we really need. Hard evidence. So where is this sampler disk?’

‘I have it on site,’ said Hazel. ‘At least its electronic contents. I’m having to call on outside help for analysis.’

Bull looked at Baxendale disapprovingly. ‘That’s dangerous.’

‘I’d like to call in Fort Detrick with your permission, Mr President,’ said Hazel.

‘It’s okay, Mr President,’ Sullivan said. ‘I’m handling the security angle.’

‘We could have results by tonight,’ said Baxendale.

Bull stood up, and the others got to their feet. ‘I don’t like this. Some knowledge is just too dangerous to handle. But yes, bring in Fort Detrick.’ He turned to Killman. ‘Thank you for your help, Mr MIT.’

Killman opened his mouth to say, ‘Actually, it’s Professor Killman’, but then he caught Hazel’s look and left quietly. She’d had enough trouble getting him into Shangri-La in the first place.

When the door had closed behind the MIT Professor, the President turned to his Science Adviser and the DCI. ‘This is a helluva way to spend a day. Hazel, I’ll hear your report on the guy’s sample disk this evening. Use my helicopter to ferry in personnel. If this turns out to be kosher I’ll bring in Paley and Flood. If it’s not, I want to be back in the Oval Office tomorrow morning.’

Outside Aspen, the CIA Director glanced up at the low, heavy sky. Big snowflakes were materialising out of the amorphous grey. By tomorrow morning Camp David would be all but inaccessible by road. He turned up the collar of his windcheater to protect his neck against the freezing air and the big snowflakes, and made footprints in the pristine snow on the path.

He thought that his phrase ‘handling the security angle’ had carried just the right degree of vagueness.

There were some things with which you shouldn’t burden the President.