The Question

The National Security Advisor

Brian Martinson felt out of place in this basement office. He had gone through four separate security checkpoints to get into the stuffy little underground room, including a massive Marine Corps sergeant in full-dress uniform with a huge gun holstered at his hip, impassive and unshakable as a robot. But what really bothered him was the thought that the President of the United States was just upstairs from here, in the Oval Office.

The woman who glared at him from across her desk looked tough enough to lead a regiment of Marines into battle—which she had done, earlier in her career. Now Jo Costanza had even weightier responsibilities.

“You’re saying that this is a spacecraft, piloted by intelligent alien creatures?” she asked. Her voice was diamond hard. The business suit she wore was a no-nonsense navy blue, her only jewelry a bronze Marine Corps globe and anchor on its lapel.

“It’s a spacecraft,” said Martinson. “Whether it’s crewed or not we simply don’t know.”

“It’s made no reply to your messages?”

“No, but—”

“Who authorized you to send messages to it?” snapped the third person in the office, a bland-looking guy with thinning slicked-back sandy hair and rimless eyeglasses that made him look owlish. He was wearing a light gray silk suit with a striped red and gray tie.

Martinson had put on the only suit he possessed for this meeting, the one he saved for international symposia; it was a conservative dark blue, badly wrinkled, and tight around the middle. Clearing his throat nervously, he replied, “Dr. Ogilvy authorized trying to make contact. He’s head of the radio astronomy section of the National Science Foundation. That’s where our funding comes from, and—”

“They went by protocol,” Costanza said, making it sound as if she wished otherwise.

“But this is a national security matter,” snapped the anonymous man.

“This is a global security matter,” Martinson said.

Costanza and the other man stared at him.

“The spacecraft broke out of Jupiter orbit this morning,” Martinson told them.

“It’s heading here!” Costanza said in a breathless whisper.

“No,” said Martinson. “It’s heading out of the Solar System.”

Before they could sigh with relief, he added, “But it’s sent us a message.”

“I thought you said it made no reply!”

“It hasn’t replied to our messages,” Martinson said wearily. “But it’s sent a message of its own.”

He pulled the tape recorder out of his jacket pocket.