Contact - Carl Sagan [34]
"It doesn't make sense," said drumlin, casually touching his belt buckle. "We couldn't have missed it before. Everybody's looked at Vega. For years. Arroway observed it from Arecibo a decade ago. Suddenly last Tuesday Vega starts broadcasting prime numbers? Why now? What's so special about now? How come they start transmitting just a few years after Argus starts listening?"
"Maybe their transmitter was down for repairs for a couple of centuries," Valerian suggested, "and they just got it back on-line. maybe their duty cycle is to broadcast to us just one year out of every million. There are all those other candidate planets that might have life on them, you know. We're probably not the only kid on the block." But Drumlin, plainly dissatisfied, only shook his head.
Although his nature was the opposite of conspiratorial, Valerian thought he had caught an undercurrent in Drumlin's last question: could all this be a reckless, desperate attempt by Argus scientists to prevent a premature closing down of the project? It wasn't possible. Valerian shook his head. As der Heer walked by, he found himself confronted by two senior experts on the SETI problem silently shaking their heads at one another.
Between the scientists and the bureaucrats there was a kind of unease, a mutual discomfort, a clash of fundamental assumptions. One of the electrical engineers called it an impedance mismatch. The scientists were too speculative, too quantitative, and too casual about talking to anybody for the tastes of many of the bureaucrats. The bureaucrats were too unimaginative, too qualitative, too uncommunicative for many of the scientists. Ellie and especially der Heer tried hard to bridge the gap, but the pontoons kept being swept downstream.
This night, cigarette butts and coffee cups were everywhere. The casually dressed scientists, Washington officials in light-weight suits, and an occasional flag-rank military officer filled the control room, the seminar room, the small auditorium, and spilled out of doors, where, illuminated by cigarettes and starlight, some of the discussions continued. But tempers were frayed. The strain was showing.
* * *
"Dr. Arroway, this is Michael Kitz, Assistant Secretary of Defense for C3I."
Introducing Kitz and positioning himself just a step behind him, der Heer was communicating… what? Some unlikely mix of emotions. Bemusement in the arms of prudence? He seemed to be appealing for restraint. Did he think her such a hothead? "C3I"-pronounced cee-cubed-eye-stood for Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence, important responsibilities at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were gamely making major phased reductions in their strategic nuclear arsenals. It was a job for a cautious man.
Kitz settled himself in one of the two chairs across the desk from Ellie, leaned forward, and read the Kafka quote. He was unimpressed.
"Dr. Arroway, let me come right to the point. We're concerned about whether it's in the best interest of the United States for this information to be generally known. We were not overjoyed about your sending that telegram all over the world."
"You mean to China? To Russia? To India?" Her voice, despite her best effort, had a discernible edge to it. "You wanted to keep the first 261 prime numbers secret? Do you suppose, Mr. Kitz, the extraterrestrials intended to communicate only with Americans? Don't you think that a message from another civilization belongs to the whole world?"
"You might have asked our advice."
"And risk losing the signal? Look, for all we know, something essential, something unique might have been broadcast after Vega had set her in New Mexico but when it was high in the sky over Beijing. These signals aren't exactly a person-to-person call to the U.S. of A. They're not even a person-to-person call to the Earth. It's station-to-station to any planet in the solar system.