Contact - Carl Sagan [41]
"Those goddamn programs are our ambassadors into space… the Emissary from Earth." She paused a moment to savor the phrase. "With an ambassador, you're supposed to put your best foot forward, and we've been sending mainly crap to space for forty years. I'd like to see the network executives come to grips with this one. And that madman Hitler, that's the first news they have about Earth? What are they going to think of us?"
* * *
As der Heer and the President entered the Cabinet Room, those who had been standing in small groups fell silent, and some who had been seated made efforts to stand. With a perfunctory gesture, the President conveyed a preference for informality and casually greeted the Secretary of State and an Assistant Secretary of Defense. With a slow and deliberate turn of the head, she scanned the group. Some returned her gaze expectantly. Others, detecting an expression of minor annoyance on the President's face, averted their eyes.
"Ken, isn't that astronomer of yours here? Arrowsmith? Arrowroot?"
"Arroway, Ms. President. She and Dr. Valerian arrived last night. Maybe they've been held up in traffic."
"Dr. Arroway called from her hotel, Ms. President," volunteered a meticulously groomed young man. "She said there were some new data coming through on her telefax, and she wanted to bring it to this meeting. We're supposed to start without her."
Michael Kitz leaned forward, his tone and expression incredulous. "They're transmitting new data on this subject over an open telephone, insecure, in a Washington hotel room?"
Der Heer responded so softly that Kitz had to lean still further forward to hear. "Mike, I think there's at least commercial encryption on her telefax. But remember there are no security guidelines established in this matter. I'm sure that Dr. Arroway will be cooperative if guidelines are established."
"All right, let's begin," said the President. "This is a joint informal meeting of the National Security Council and what for the time being we're calling the Special Contingency Task Group. I want to impress on all of you that nothing said in this room-I mean nothing-is to be discussed with anyone who isn't here, except for the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President, who are overseas. Yesterday, Dr. der Heer gave most of you a briefing on this unbelievable TV program from the star Vega. It's the view of Dr. der Heer and others"-she looked around the table-"that it's just a fluke that the first television program to get to Vega starred Adolf Hitler. But it's… an embarrassment. I've asked the Director of Central Intelligence to prepare an assessment of any national security implications in all of this. Is there any direct threat from whoever the hell is sending this? Are we going to be in trouble if there's some new message, and some other country decodes it first? But first let me ask, Marvin, does this have anything to do with flying saucers?"
The Director of Central Intelligence, an authoritative man in late middle age, wearing steel-rimmed glasses, summarized. Unidentified Flying Objects, called UFO's, have been of intermittent concern to the CIA and the Air Force, especially in the '50s and '60s, in part because rumors about them might be a means for hostile power to spread confusion or to overload communications channels. A few of the more reliably reported incidents turned out to be penetrations of U.S. air space or overflights of U.S. overseas bases by high-performance aircraft from the Soviet Union or Cuba. Such overflights are a common means of testing a potential adversary's readiness, and the United States had more than its fair share of penetrations, and feints at penetration, of Soviet air space. A Cuban MiG penetrating 200 miles up the Mississippi Basin before being detected was considered undesirable publicity by NORAD. The routine procedure had been for the Air Force to deny that any of its aircraft were in the vicinity of the UFO sighting, and to volunteer nothing about unauthorized penetrations, thus solidifying public mystification. At these explanations,