The Sentinel - Arthur C. Clarke [113]
A new voice cut into the conversation.
“Mission Commander here. This is all very interesting, but there’s a much more important matter to settle. Is it intelligent? If so, we’ve got to consider the First Contact directives.”
“Until I came here,” said Dr. Brenner, somewhat ruefully, “I would have sworn that anything that could make a shortwave antenna system must be intelligent. Now, I’m not sure. This could have evolved naturally. I suppose it’s no more fantastic than the human eye.”
“Then we have to play safe and assume intelligence. For the present, therefore, this expedition comes under all the clauses of the Prime directive.”
There was a long silence while everyone on the radio circuit absorbed the implications of this. For the first time in the history of space flight, the rules that had been established through more than a century of argument might have to be applied. Man had—it was hoped—profited from his mistakes on Earth. Not only moral considerations, but also his own self-interest demanded that he should not repeat them among the planets. It could be disastrous to treat a superior intelligence as the American settlers had treated the Indians, or as almost everyone had treated the Africans . . .
The first rule was: keep your distance. Make no attempt to approach, or even to communicate, until “they” have had plenty of time to study you. Exactly what was meant by “plenty of time,” no one had ever been able to decide. It was left to the discretion of the man on the spot.
A responsibility of which he had never dreamed had descended upon Howard Falcon. In the few hours that remained to him on Jupiter, he might become the first ambassador of the human race.
And that was an irony so delicious that he almost wished the surgeons had restored to him the power of laughter.
7. Prime directive
It was growing darker, but Falcon scarcely noticed as he strained his eyes toward that living cloud in the field of the telescope. The wind that was steadily sweeping Kon-Tiki around the funnel of the great whirlpool had now brought him within twelve miles of the creature. If he got much closer than six, he would take evasive action. Though he felt certain that the medusa’s electric weapons were short-ranged, he did not wish to put the matter to the test. That would be a problem for future explorers, and he wished them luck.
Now it was quite dark in the capsule. That was strange, because sunset was still hours away. Automatically, he glanced at the horizontally scanning radar, as he had done every few minutes. Apart from the medusa he was studying, there was no other object within about sixty miles of him.
Suddenly, with startling power, he heard the sound that had come booming out of the Jovian night—the throbbing beat that grew more and more rapid, then stopped in mid-crescendo. The whole capsule vibrated with it like a pea in a kettledrum.
Falcon realized two things almost simultaneously during the sudden, aching silence. This time the sound was not coming from thousands of miles away, over a radio circuit. It was in the very atmosphere around him.
The second thought was even more disturbing. He had quite forgotten—it was inexcusable, but there had been other apparently more important things on his mind—that most of the sky above him was completely blanked out by Kon-Tiki’s gasbag. Being lightly silvered to conserve its heat, the great balloon was an effective shield both to radar and to vision.
He had known this, of course; it had been a minor defect of the design, tolerated because it did not appear important. It seemed very important to Howard Falcon now—as he saw that fence of gigantic tentacles, thicker than the trunks of any tree, descending all around the capsule.
He heard Brenner yelling; “Remember the Prime directive! Don’t alarm it!” Before he could make an appropriate answer that overwhelming drumbeat started again and drowned all other sounds.
The sign of a really skilled test pilot is how he reacts not