Contact - Carl Sagan [44]
"If I may, Ms. President-"
"Ms. President, this is Dr. Peter Valerian of the California Institute of Technology, one of the pioneers in this field."
"Please go ahead, Dr. Valerian."
"This is an intentional transmission to us. They know we're here. They have some idea, from having intercepted out 1936 broadcast, of where our technology is, of how smart we are. They wouldn't be going to all this trouble if they didn't want us to understand the Message. Somewhere in there is the key to help us understand it. It's only a question of accumulating all the data and analyzing it very carefully."
"Well, what do you suppose the Message is about?"
"I don't see any way to tell, Ms. President. I can only repeat what Dr. Arroway said. It's an intricate and complex Message. The transmitting civilization is eager for us to receive it. Maybe all this is one small volume of the Encyclopedia Galactica. The star Vega is about three times more massive than the Sun and about fifty times brighter. Because it burns its nuclear fuel so fast, it has a much shorter lifetime than the Sun-"
"Yes. Maybe something's about to go wrong on Vega," the Director of Central Intelligence interrupted. "Maybe their planet will be destroyed. Maybe they want someone else to know about their civilization before they're wiped out."
"Or," offered Kitz, "maybe they're looking for a new place to move to, and the Earth would suit them just fine. Maybe it's no accident they chose to send us a picture of Adolf Hitler."
"Hold on," Ellie said, "there are a lot of possibilities, but not everything is possible. There's no way for the transmitting civilization to know whether we've received the Message, much less whether we're making any progress in decoding it. If we find the Message offensive we're not obliged to reply. And even if we did reply, it would be twenty-six years before they received the reply, and another twenty-six years before they can answer it. The speed of light is fast, but it's not infinitely fast. We're very nicely quarantined from Vega. And if there's anything that worries us about this new Message, we have decades to decide what to do about it. Let's not panic quite yet." She enunciated these last words while offering a pleasant smile to Kitz.
"I appreciate those remarks, Dr. Arroway," returned the President. "But things are happening fast. Too damn fast. And there are too many maybes. I haven't even made a public announcement about all of this. Not even the prime numbers, never mind the Hitler bullcrap. Now we have to think about this `book' you say they're sending. And because you scientists think nothing of talking to each other, the rumors are flying. Phyllis, where's that file? Here, look at these headlines."
Brandished successively at arm's length, they all carried the same message, with minor variations in journalistic artistry: "Space Doc Says Radio Show from Bug-Eyed Monsters," "Astronomical Telegram Hints at Extraterrestrial Intelligence," "Voice from Heaven?" and "The Aliens Are Coming! The Aliens Are Coming! "She let the clippings flutter to the table.
"At least the Hitler story hasn't broken yet. I'm waiting for those headlines: `Hitler Alive and Well in Space, U.S. Says.' And worse. Much worse. I think we'd better curtail this meeting and reconvene later."
"If I may, Ms. President," der Heer interrupted haltingly, with evident reluctance. "I beg your pardon, but there are some international implications that I think have to be raised now."
The President merely