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By Root 1379 0

not just a blueprint for building a machine but also descriptions of the designs and means of fabrication of components and subcomponents. In a few cases, he thought, there were descriptions of whole new industries not yet known on Earth. Ellie, mouth agape, shook her finger toward Drumlin, silently asking Valerian whether he had known about this. His lips pursed, Valerian hunched his shoulders and rotated his hands palms up. She scanned the other delegates for some expression of emotion, but could detect mainly signs of fatigue; the depth of technical material and the necessity, sooner or later, of making political decisions were already producing strain. After the session, she complimented Drumlin on the interpretation but asked why she had not heard of it until now. He replied before walking away, "Oh, I didn't think it was important enough to bother you with. It was just a little something I did while you were out consulting religious fanatics."

If Drumlin had been her thesis adviser, she would still be pursuing her Ph.D., she thought. He had never fully accepted her. They would never share an easygoing collegial relationship. Sighing, she wondered whether Ken had known about Drumlin's new work. But as conference cochairman, der Heer was sitting with his Soviet opposite number on a raised dais facing the horseshoe of delegate tiers. He was, as he had been for weeks, nearly inaccessible. Drumlin was not obliged to discuss his findings with her, of course; she knew they both had been preoccupied recently. But in conversation with him why was she always accommodating-and argumentative only in extremis? A part of her evidently felt that the granting of her doctorate and the opportunity to pursue her science were still future possibilities firmly in Drumlin's hands.

On the morning of the second day, a Soviet delegate was given the floor. He was unknown to her. "Stefan Alexeivich Banida," the vitagraphics on her computer screen read out, "Director, Institute for Peace Studies, Soviet Academy of Sciences, Moscow; Member, Central Committee, Communist Party of the U.S.S.R." "Now we start to play hardball," she heard Michael Kitz say to Eirno Honicutt of the State Department. Baruda was a dapper man, wearing an elegantly tailored and impeccably fashionable Western business suit, perhaps of Italian cut. His English was fluent and almost unaccented. He had been born in one of the Baltic republics, was young to be head of such an important organization- formed to study the long-term implications for strategic policy of the deaccessioning of nuclear weapons-and was a leading example of the "new wave" in the Soviet leadership.

"Let us be frank," Baruda was saying. "A Message is being sent to us from the far reaches of space. Most of the information has been gathered by the Soviet Union and the United States. Essential pieces have also been obtained by other countries. All of those countries are represented at this conference. Any one nation-the Soviet Union, for example-could have waited until the Message repeated itself several times, as we all hope it will, and fill in the many missing pieces in such a way. But it would take years, perhaps decades, and we are a little impatient. So we have all shared the data.”

"Any one nation-the Soviet Union, for example-could place into orbit around the Earth large radio telescopes with sensitive receivers that work at the frequencies of the Message. The Americans could do this as well. Perhaps Japan or France or the European Space Agency could. Then any one nation by itself could acquire all the data, because in space a radio telescope can point at Vega all the time. But that might be thought a hostile act. It is no secret that the United States or the Soviet Union might be able to shoot down such satellites. So, perhaps for this reason, too, we have all shared the data.

"It is better to cooperate. Our scientists wish to exchange not only the data they have gathered, but also their speculations, their guesses, their…dreams. All you scientists are alike in that respect. I am not a scientist.