They must have thought he was crazy, running through the lock to D Cylinder and stumbling up the narrow stairs to the upper level, shouting, “It’s open! It’s open!”
He came to the communications console just as Beth was [[118]] wiping the last crumbs of coconut from her lips. She set down her fork.
“What’s open?”
“The sphere!”
Beth spun in her chair. Tina ran over from the bank of VCR’s. They both looked at the monitor behind Beth. There was an awkward silence.
“Looks closed to me, Norman.”
“It was open. I saw it.” He told them about watching in the galley, on the monitor. “It was just a few seconds ago, and the sphere definitely opened. It must have closed again while I was on my way here.”
“Are you sure?”
“That’s a pretty small monitor in the galley. …”
“I saw it,” Norman said. “Replay it, if you don’t believe me.”
“Good idea,” Tina said, and she went to the recorders to play the tape back.
Norman was breathing heavily, trying to catch his breath. This was the first time he had exerted himself in the dense atmosphere, and he felt the effects strongly. DH-8 was not a good place to get excited, he decided.
Beth was watching him. “You okay, Norman?”
“I’m fine. I tell you, I saw it. It opened. Tina?”
“It’ll take me a second here.”
Harry walked in, yawning. “Beds in this place are great, aren’t they?” he said. “Like sleeping in a bag of wet rice. Sort of combination bed and cold shower.” He sighed. “It’ll break my heart to leave.”
Beth said, “Norman thinks the sphere opened.”
“When?” he said, yawning again.
“Just a few seconds ago.”
Harry nodded thoughtfully. “Interesting, interesting. I see it’s closed now.”
“We’re rewinding the videotapes, to look again.”
“Uh-huh. Is there any more of that cake?”
Harry seems very cool, Norman thought. This is a major piece of news and he doesn’t seem excited at all. Why was [[119]] that? Didn’t Harry believe it, either? Was he still sleepy, not fully awake? Or was there something else?
“Here we go,” Tina said.
The monitor showed jagged lines, and then resolved. On the screen, Tina was saying, “—hours the tapes are transferred to the submarine.”
Beth: “What for?”
Tina: “That’s so, if anything happens down here, the submarine will automatically go to the surface.”
Beth: “Oh, great. I won’t think about that too much. Where is Dr. Fielding now?”
Tina: “He gave up on the sphere, and went into the main flight deck with Edmunds.”
On the screen, Tina stepped out of view. Beth remained alone in the chair, eating the cake, her back to the monitor.
Onscreen, Tina was saying, “Do you think they’ll ever get the sphere open?”
Beth ate her cake. “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know.”
There was a short pause, and then on the monitor behind Beth, the door of the sphere slid open.
“Hey! It did open!”
“Keep the tape running!”
Onscreen, Beth didn’t notice the monitor. Tina, still somewhere offscreen, said, “It scares me.”
Beth: “I don’t think there’s a reason to be scared.”
Tina: “It’s the unknown.”
“Sure,” Beth said, “but an unknown thing is not likely to be dangerous or frightening. It’s most likely to be just inexplicable.”
“I don’t know how you can say that.”
“You afraid of snakes?” Beth said, onscreen.
All during this conversation, the sphere remained open.
Watching, Harry said, “Too bad we can’t see inside it.”
“I may be able to help that,” Tina said. “I’ll do some image-intensification work with the computer.”
“It almost looks like there are little lights,” Harry said. “Little moving lights inside the sphere ...”
Onscreen, Tina came back into view. “Snakes don’t bother me.”
[[120]] “Well, I can’t stand snakes,” Beth said. “Slimy, cold, disgusting things.”
“Ah, Beth,” Harry said, watching the monitor. “Got snake envy?”
Onscreen, Beth was saying, “If I were a Martian who came to Earth and I stumbled upon a snake—a funny, cold, wiggling, tube-like life—I wouldn’t know what to think of it. But the chance that I would stumble on a poisonous snake is very small. Less than one percent of snakes are poisonous. So, as a Martian, I wouldn’t be in danger from my discovery of snakes; I’d just be perplexed. That’s what’s likely to happen with us. We’ll be perplexed.”
Onscreen, Beth was saying, “Anyway, I don’t think we’ll ever get the sphere open, no.”
Tina: “I hope not.”
Behind her on the monitor, the sphere closed.
“Huh!” Harry said. “How long was it open all together?” “Thirty-three point four seconds,” Tina said.
They stopped the tape. Tina said, “Anybody want to see it again?” She looked pale.
“Not right now,” Harry said. He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, stared off, thinking.
No one else said anything; they just waited patiently for Harry. Norman realized how much the group deferred to him. Harry is the person who figures things out for us, Norman thought. We need him, rely on him.
“Okay,” Harry said at last. “No conclusions are possible. We have insufficient data. The question is whether the sphere was responding to something in its immediate environment, or whether it just opened, for reasons of its own. Where’s Ted?”
“Ted left the sphere and went to the flight deck.”
“Ted’s back,” Ted said, grinning broadly. “And I have some real news.”
“So do we,” Beth said.
“It can wait,” Ted said.
“But—”
“—I know where this ship went,” Ted said excitedly. “I’ve been analyzing the flight data summaries on the flight deck, [[121]] looking at the star fields, and I know where the black hole is located.”
“Ted,” Beth said, “the sphere opened.”
“It did? When?”
“A few minutes ago. Then it closed again.”
“What did the monitors show?”
“No biological hazard. It seems to be safe.”
Ted looked at the screen. “Then what the hell are we doing here?”
Barnes came in. “Two-hour rest period is over. Everybody ready to go back to the ship for a last look?”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Harry said.
The sphere was polished, silent, closed. They stood around it and stared at themselves, distorted in reflection. Nobody spoke. They just walked around it.
Finally Ted said, “I feel like this is an IQ test, and I’m flunking.”
“You mean like the Davies Message?” Harry said.
“Oh that,” Ted said.
Norman knew about the Davies Message. It was one of the episodes that the SETI promoters wished to forget. In 1979, there had been a large meeting in Rome of the scientists involved in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Basically, SETI called for a radio astronomy search of the heavens. Now the scientists were trying to decide what sort of message to search for.
Emerson Davies, a physicist from Cambridge, England, devised a message based on fixed physical constants, such as the wavelength of emitted hydrogen, which were presumably the same throughout the universe. He arranged these constants in a binary pictorial form.
Because Davies thought this would be exactly the kind of message an alien intelligence might send, he figured it would be easy for the SETI people to figure out. He distributed his picture to everybody at the conference.
Nobody could figure it out.
When Davies explained it, they all agreed it was a clever [[122]] idea, and a perfect message for extraterrestrials to send. But the fact remained that none of them had been able to figure out this perfect message.
One of the people who had tried to figure it out, and had failed, was Ted.
“Well, we didn’t try very hard,” Ted said. “There was a lot going on at the conference. And we didn’t have you there, Harry.”
“You just wanted a free trip to Rome,” Harry said.
Beth said, “Is it my imagination, or have the door markingschanged?”
Norman looked. At first glance, the deep grooves appeared the same, but perhaps the pattern was different. If so, the change was subtle.
“We can compare it with old videotapes,” Barnes said. “It looks the same to me,” Ted said. “Anyway, it’s metal. I doubt it could change.”
“What we call metal is just a liquid that flows slowly at room temperature,” Harry said. “It’s possible that this metal is changing.”
“I doubt it,” Ted said.
Barnes said, “You guys are supposed to be the experts. We know this thing can open. It’s been open already. How do we get it open again?”
“We’re trying, Hal.”
“It doesn’t look like you’re doing anything.”
From time to time, they glanced at Harry, but Harry just stood there, looking at the sphere, his hand on his chin, tapping his lower lip thoughtfully with his finger.
“Harry?”
Harry said nothing.
Ted went up and slapped the sphere with the flat of his hand. It made a dull sound, but nothing happened. Ted pounded the sphere with his fist; then he winced and rubbed his hand.
“I don’t think we can force our way in. I think it has to let you in,” Norman said. Nobody said anything after that. “My hand-picked, crack team,” Barnes said, needling them. “And all they can do is stand around and stare at it.”
[[123]] “What do you want us to do, Hal? Nuke it?”
“If you don’t get it open, there are people who will try that, eventually.” He glanced at his watch. “Meanwhile, you got any other bright ideas?”
Nobody did.
“Okay,” Barnes said. “Our time is up. Let’s go back to the habitat and get ready to be ferried to the surface.”
Norman pulled the small navy-issue bag from beneath his bunk in C Cylinder. He got his shaving kit from the bathroom, found his notebook and his extra pair of socks, and zipped the bag shut.
“I’m ready.”
“Me, too,” Ted said. Ted was unhappy; he didn’t want to leave. “I guess we can’t delay it any longer. The weather’s getting worse. They’ve got all the divers out from DH-7, and now there’s only us.”
Norman smiled at the prospect of being on the surface again. I never thought I’d look forward to seeing Navy battleship gray on a ship, but I do.
“Where’re the others?” Norman said.
“Beth’s already packed. I think she’s with Barnes in communication. Harry, too, I guess.” Ted plucked at his jumpsuit. “I’ll tell you one thing, I’ll be glad to see the last of this suit.
They left the sleeping quarters, heading down to communications. On the way, they squeezed past Teeny Fletcher, who was going toward B Cylinder.
“Ready to leave?” Norman said.
“Yes, sir, all squared away,” Fletcher said, but her features were tense, and she seemed rushed, under pressure.
[[124]] “Aren’t you going the wrong way?” Norman asked.
“Just checking the diesel backups.”
Backups? Norman thought. Why check the backups now that they were leaving?
“She probably left something on that she shouldn’t have,” Ted said, shaking his head.
In the communications console, the mood was grim. Barnes was on the phone with the surface vessels. “Say that again,” he said. “I want to hear who’s authorized that.” He was frowning, angry.
They looked at Tina. “How’s the weather on the surface?”
“Deteriorating fast, apparently.”
Barnes spun: “Will you idiots keep it down?”
Norman dropped his day bag on the floor. Beth was sitting near the portholes, tired, rubbing her eyes. Tina was turning off the monitors, one after another, when she suddenly stopped.
“Look.”
On one monitor, they saw the polished sphere. Harry was standing next to it.
“What’s he doing there?”
“Didn’t he come back with us?”
“I thought he did.”
“I didn’t notice; I assumed he did.”
“God damn it, I thought I told you people—” Barnes began, and then stopped. He stared at the monitor.
On the screen, Harry turned toward the video camera and made a short bow.
“Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. I think you will find this of interest.”
Harry turned to face the sphere. He stood with his arms at his sides, relaxed. He did not move or speak. He closed his eyes. He took a deep breath.
The door to the sphere opened.
“Not bad, huh?” Harry said, with a sudden grin.
Then Harry stepped inside the sphere. The door closed behind him.
* * *
[[125]] They all began talking at once. Barnes was shouting over everyone else, shouting for quiet, but no one paid any attention until the lights in the habitat went out. They were plunged into darkness.
Ted said, “What’s happened?”
The only light came through the portholes, faintly, from the grid lights. A moment later, the grid went out, too.
“No power ...”
“I tried to tell you,” Barnes said.
There was a whirring sound, and the lights flickered, then came back on. “We have internal power; we’re running on our diesels now.”
“Why?”
“Look,” Ted said, pointing out the porthole.
Outside they saw what looked like a wriggling silver snake. Then Norman realized it was the cable that linked them to the surface, sliding back and forth across the porthole as it coiled in great loops on the bottom.
“They’ve cut us free!”
“That’s right,” Barnes said. “They’ve got full gale-force conditions topside. They can no longer maintain cables for power and communications. They can no longer use the submarines. They’ve taken all the divers up, but the subs can’t come back for us. At least not for a few days, until the seas calm down.”
“Then we’re stuck down here?”
“That’s correct.”
“For how long?”
“Several days,” Barnes said.
“For how long?”
“Maybe as long as a week.”
“Jesus Christ,” Beth said.
Ted tossed his bag onto the couch. “What a fantastic piece of luck,” he said.
Beth spun. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Let’s all stay calm,” Barnes said. “Everything’s under control. This is just a temporary delay. There’s no reason to get upset.”
But Norman didn’t feel upset. He felt suddenly exhausted. [[126]] Beth was sulking, angry, feeling deceived; Ted was excited, already planning another excursion to the spacecraft, arranging equipment with Edmunds.
But Norman felt only tired. His eyes were heavy; he thought he might go to sleep standing there in front of the monitors. He excused himself hurriedly, went back to his bunk, lay down. He didn’t care that the sheets were clammy; he didn’t care that the pillow was cold; he didn’t care that diesels were droning and vibrating in the next cylinder. He thought: This is a very strong avoidance reaction. And then he was asleep.
Norman rolled out of bed and looked for his watch, but he’d gotten into the habit of not wearing one down here. He had no idea what time it was, how long he had been asleep. He looked out the porthole, saw nothing but black water. The grid lights were still off. He lay back in his bunk and looked at the gray pipes directly over his head; they seemed closer than before, as if they had moved toward him while he slept. Everything seemed cramped, tighter, more claustrophobic.
Several more days of this, he thought. God.
He hoped the Navy would think to notify his family. After so many days, Ellen would start to worry. He imagined her first calling the FAA, then calling the Navy, trying to find out what had happened. Of course, no one would know anything, because the project was classified; Ellen would be frantic.
Then he stopped thinking about Ellen. It was easier, he thought, to worry about your loved ones than to worry about yourself. But there wasn’t any point. Ellen would be okay. [[127]] And so would he. It was just a matter of waiting. Staying calm, and waiting out the storm.
He got into the shower, wondering if they’d still have hot water while the habitat was on emergency power. They did, and he felt less stiff after his shower. It was odd, he thought, to be a thousand feet underwater and to relish the soothing effects of a hot shower.
He dressed and headed for the C Cylinder. He heard Tina’s voice say, “—think they’ll ever get the sphere open?”
Beth: “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“It scares me.”
“I don’t think there’s a reason to be scared.”
“It’s the unknown,” Tina said.
When Norman came in, he found Beth running the videotape, looking at herself and Tina. “Sure,” Beth said on the videotape, “but an unknown thing is not likely to be dangerous or frightening. It’s most likely to be just inexplicable.”
Tina said, “I don’t know how you can say that.”
“You afraid of snakes?” Beth said, onscreen.
Beth snapped off the videotape. “Just trying to see if I could figure out why it opened,” she said.
“Any luck?” Norman said.
“Not so far.” On the adjacent monitor, they could see the sphere itself. The sphere was closed.
“Harry still in there?” Norman said.
“Yes,” Beth said.
“How long has it been now?”
She looked up at the consoles. “A little more than an hour.”
“I only slept an hour?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m starving,” Norman said, and he went down to the galley to eat. All the coconut cake was gone. He was looking for something else to eat when Beth showed up.
“I don’t know what to do, Norman,” she said, frowning.
“About what?”
“They’re lying to us,” she said.
“Who is?”
[[128]] “Barnes. The Navy. Everybody. This is all a setup, Norman.”
“Come on, Beth. No conspiracies, now. We have enough to worry about without—”
“—Just look at this,” she said. She led him back upstairs, flicked on a console, pressed buttons.
“I started putting it together when Barnes was on the phone,” she said. “Barnes was talking to somebody right up to the moment when the cable started to coil down. Except that cable is a thousand feet long, Norman. They would have broken communications several minutes before unhooking the cable itself.”
“Probably, yes ...”
“So who was Barnes talking to at the last minute? Nobody.”
“Beth ...”
“Look,” she said, pointing to the screen.
COM SUMMARY DH-SURCOM/l
0910 BARNES TO SURCOM/1:
CIVILIAN AND USN PERSONNEL POLLED. ALTHOUGH ADVISED OF RISKS, ALL PERSONNEL ELECT TO REMAIN DOWN FOR DURATION OF STORM TO CONTINUE INVESTIGATION OF ALIEN SPHERE AND ASSOCIATED SPACECRAFT.
BARNES, USN.
“You’re kidding,” Norman said. “I thought Barnes wanted to leave.”
“He did, but he changed his mind when he saw that last room, and he didn’t bother to tell us. I’d like to kill the bastard,” Beth said. “You know what this is about, Norman, don’t you?”
Norman nodded. “He hopes to find a new weapon.”
“Right. Barnes is a Pentagon-acquisition man, and he wants to find a new weapon.”
“But the sphere is unlikely—”
“It’s not the sphere,” Beth said. “Barnes doesn’t really [[129]] care about the sphere. He cares about the ‘associated spacecraft.’ Because, according to congruity theory, it’s the spacecraft that is likely to pay off. Not the sphere.”
Congruity theory was a troublesome matter for the people who thought about extraterrestrial life. In a simple way, the astronomers and physicists who considered the possibility of contact with extraterrestrial life imagined wonderful benefits to mankind from such a contact. But other thinkers, philosophers and historians, did not foresee any benefits to contact at all.
For example, astronomers believed that if we made contact with extraterrestrials, mankind would be so shocked that wars on Earth would cease, and a new era of peaceful cooperation between nations would begin.
But historians thought that was nonsense. They pointed out that when Europeans discovered the New World—a similarly world-shattering discovery—the Europeans did not stop their incessant fighting. On the contrary: they fought even harder. Europeans simply made the New World an extension of pre-existing animosities. It became another place to fight, and to fight over.
Similarly, astronomers imagined that when mankind met extraterrestrials, there would be an exchange of information and technology, giving mankind a wonderful advancement.
Historians of science thought that was nonsense, too. They pointed out that what we called “science” actually consisted of a rather arbitrary conception of the universe, not likely to be shared by other creatures. Our ideas of science were the ideas of visually oriented, monkey-like creatures who enjoyed changing their physical environment. If the aliens were blind and communicated by odors, they might have evolved a very different science, which described a very different universe. And they might have made very different choices about the directions their science would explore. For example, they might ignore the physical world entirely, and instead develop a highly sophisticated science of mind—in other words, the exact opposite of what Earth science had done. The alien technology might be purely mental, with no visible hardware at all.
[[130]] This issue was at the heart of congruity theory, which said that unless the aliens were remarkably similar to us, no exchange of information was likely. Barnes of course knew that theory, so he knew he wasn’t likely to derive any useful technology from the alien sphere. But he was very likely to get useful technology from the spaceship itself, since the spaceship had been made by men, and congruity was high.
And he had lied to keep them down. To keep the search going.
“What should we do with the bastard?” Beth said. “Nothing, for the moment,” Norman said.
“You don’t want to confront him? Jesus, I do.”
“It won’t serve any purpose,” Norman said. “Ted won’t care, and the Navy people are all following orders. And anyway, even if it had been arranged for us to depart as planned, would you have gone, leaving Harry behind in the sphere?”
“No,” Beth admitted.
“Well, then. It’s all academic.”
“Jesus, Norman ...”
“I know. But we’re here now. And for the next couple of days, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. Let’s deal with that reality as best we can, and point the finger later.”
“You bet I’m going to point the finger!”
“That’s fine. But not now, Beth.”
“Okay,” she sighed. “Not now.”
She went back upstairs.
Alone, Norman stared at the console. He had his work cut out for him, keeping everybody calm for the next few days. He hadn’t looked into the computer system before; he started pressing buttons. Pretty soon he found a file marked ULF CONTACT TEAM BIOG. [[131]] He opened it up.
Civilian Team Members
1. Theodore Fielding, astrophysicist/planetary geologist
2. Elizabeth Halpern, zoologist/biochemist
3. Harold J. Adams, mathematician/logician
4. Arthur Levine, marine biologist/biochemist
5. John F. Thompson, psychologist
Choose one:
Norman stared in disbelief at the list.
He knew Jack Thompson, an energetic young psychologist from Yale. Thompson was world-renowned for his studies of the psychology of primitive peoples, and in fact for the past year had been somewhere in New Guinea, studying native tribes.
Norman pressed more buttons.
ULF TEAM PSYCHOLOGIST: CHOICES BY RANK
1. John F. Thompson, Yale—approved
2. William L. Hartz, UCB—approved
3. Jeremy White, UT—approved (pending clearance)
4. Norman Johnson, SDU—rejected (age)
He knew them all. Bill Hartz at Berkeley was seriously ill with cancer. Jeremy White had gone to Hanoi during the Vietnam War, and would never get clearance.
That left Norman.
He understood now why he had been the last to be called in. He understood now about the special tests. He felt a burst of intense anger at Barnes, at the whole system which had brought him down here, despite his age, with no concern for his safety. At fifty-three, Norman Johnson had no business being a thousand feet underwater in a pressurized exotic gas environment—and the Navy knew it.
It was an outrage, he thought. He wanted to go upstairs and give Barnes hell in no uncertain terms. That lying son of a bitch
He gripped the arms of his chair and reminded himself of what he had told Beth. Whatever had happened up to this point, there was nothing any of them could do about it now. He would indeed give Barnes hell—he promised himself he [[132]] would—but only when they got back to the surface. Until then, it was no use making trouble.
He shook his head and swore.
Then he turned the console off.
The hours crept by. Harry was still in the sphere. Tina ran her image intensification of the videotape that showed the sphere open, trying to see interior detail. “Unfortunately, we have only limited computing power in the habitat,” she said. “If I could hard-link to the surface I could really do a job, but as it is ...” She shrugged.
She showed them a series of enlarged freeze-frames from the open sphere. The images clicked through at one-second intervals. The quality was poor, with jagged, intermittent static.
“The only internal structures we can see in the blackness,” Tina said, pointing to the opening, “are these multiple pointsources of light. The lights appear to move from frame to frame.”
“It’s as if the sphere is filled with fireflies,” Beth said. “Except these lights are much dimmer than fireflies, and they don’t blink. They are very numerous. And they give the impression of moving together, in surging patterns ...”
“A flock of fireflies?”
“Something like that.” The tape ran out. The screen went dark.
Ted said, “That’s it?”
“I’m afraid so, Dr. Fielding.”
“Poor Harry,” Ted said mournfully.
Of all the group, Ted was the most visibly upset about Harry. He kept staring at the closed sphere on the monitor, saying, “How did he do that?” Then he would add, “I hope he’s all right.”
He repeated it so often that finally Beth said, “I think we know your feelings, Ted.”
“I’m seriously concerned about him.”
“I am, too. We all are.”
“You think I’m jealous, Beth? Is that what you’re saying?”
[[133]] “Why would anyone think that, Ted?”
Norman changed the subject. It was crucial to avoid confrontations among group members. He asked Ted about his analysis of the flight data aboard the spaceship.
“It’s very interesting,” Ted said, warming to his subject. “My detailed examination of the earliest flight-data images,” he said, “convinced me that they show three planets—Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto—and the sun, very small in the background. Therefore, the pictures are taken from some point beyond the orbit of Pluto. This suggests that the black hole is not far beyond our own solar system.”
“Is that possible?” Norman said.
“Oh sure. In fact, for the last ten years some astrophysicists have suspected that there’s a black hole—not a large one, but a black hole just outside our solar system.”
“I hadn’t heard that.”
“Oh yes. In fact, some of us have argued that, if it was small enough, in a few years we could go out and capture the black hole, bring it back, park it in Earth orbit, and use the energy it generates to power the entire planet.”
Barnes smiled. “Black-hole cowboys?”
“In theory, there’s no reason it couldn’t be done. Then just think: the entire planet would be free of its dependency on fossil fuels. ... The whole history of mankind would be changed.”
Barnes said, “Probably make a hell of a weapon, too.”
“Even a very tiny black hole would be a little too powerful to use as a weapon.”
“So you think this ship went out to capture a black hole?”
“I doubt it,” Ted said. “The ship is so strongly made, so shielded against radiation, that I suspect it was intended to go through a black hole. And it did.”
“And that’s why the ship went back in time?” Norman said.
“I’m not sure,” Ted said. “You see, a black hole really is the edge of the universe. What happens there isn’t clear to anybody now alive. But what some people think is that you don’t go through the hole, you sort of skip into it, like a [[134]] pebble skipping over water, and you get bounced into a different time or space or universe.”
“So the ship got bounced?”
“Yes. Possibly more than once. And when it bounced back here, it undershot and arrived a few hundred years before it left.”
“And on one of its bounces, it picked up that?” Beth said, pointing to the monitor.
They looked. The sphere was still closed. But lying next to it, sprawled on the deck in an awkward pose, was Harry Adams.
For a moment they thought he was dead. Then Harry lifted his head and moaned.
Norman wrote in his notebook: Subject is a thirty-year-old black mathematician who has spent three hours inside a sphere of unknown origin. On recovery from the sphere was stuporous and unresponsive; he did not know his name, where he was, or what year it was. Brought back to habitat; slept for one half-hour then awoke abruptly complaining of headache.
“Oh God.”
Harry was sitting in his bunk, holding his head in his hands, groaning.
“Hurt?” Norman asked.
“Brutal. Pounding.”
“Anything else?”
“Thirsty. God.” He licked his lips. “Really thirsty.”
Extreme thirst, Norman wrote.
Rose Levy, the cook, showed up with a glass of lemonade. [[135]] Norman handed the glass to Harry, who drank it in a single gulp, passed it back.
“More.”
“Better bring a pitcher,” Norman said. Levy went off. Norman turned to Harry, still holding his head, still groaning, and said, “I have a question for you.”
“What?”
“What’s your name?”
“Norman, I don’t need to be psychoanalyzed right now.”
“Just tell me your name.”
“Harry Adams, for Christ’s sake. What’s the matter with you? Oh, my head.”
“You didn’t remember before,” Norman said. “When we found you.”
“When you found me?” he asked. He seemed confused again.
Norman nodded. “Do you remember when we found you?”
“It must have been ... outside.”
“Outside?”
Harry looked up, suddenly furious, eyes glowing with rage. “Outside the sphere, you goddamn idiot! What do you think I’m talking about?”
“Take it easy, Harry.”
“Your questions are driving me crazy!”
“Okay, okay. Take it easy.”
Emotionally labile. Rage and irritability. Norman made more notes.
“Do you have to make so much noise?”
Norman looked up, puzzled.
“Your pen,” Harry said. “It sounds like Niagara Falls.”
Norman stopped writing. It must be a migraine, or something like migraine. Harry was holding his head in his hands delicately, as if it were made of glass.
“Why can’t I have any aspirin, for Christ’s sake?”
“We don’t want to give you anything for a while, in case you’ve hurt yourself. We need to know where the pain is.”
“The pain, Norman, is in my head. It’s in my goddamn head! Now, why won’t you give me any aspirin?”
[[136]] “Barnes said not to.”
“Is Barnes still here?”
“We’re all still here.”
Harry looked up slowly. “But you were supposed to go to the surface.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“The weather went bad, and they couldn’t send the subs.”
“Well, you should go. You shouldn’t be here, Norman.”
Levy arrived with more lemonade. Harry looked at her as he drank.
“You’re still here, too?”
“Yes, Dr. Adams.”
“How many people are down here, all together?”
Levy said, “There are nine of us, sir.”
“Jesus.” He passed the glass back. Levy refilled it. “You should all go. You should leave.”
“Harry,” Norman said. “We can’t go.”
“You have to go.”
Norman sat on the bunk opposite Harry and watched as Harry drank. Harry was demonstrating a rather typical manifestation of shock: the agitation, the irritability, the nervous, manic flow of ideas, the unexplained fears for the safety of others—it was all characteristic of shocked victims of severe accidents, such as major auto crashes or airplane crashes. Given an intense event, the brain struggled to assimilate, to make sense, to reassemble the mental world even as the physical world was shattered around it. The brain went into a kind of overdrive, hastily trying to reassemble things, to get things right, to re-establish equilibrium. Yet it was fundamentally a confused period of wheel-spinning.
You just had to wait it out.
Harry finished the lemonade, handed the glass back.
“More?” Levy asked.
“No, that’s good. Headache’s better.”
Perhaps it was dehydration after all, Norman thought. But why would Harry be dehydrated after three hours in the sphere?
“Harry ... ?”
[[137]] “Tell me something. Do I look different, Norman?”
“No.”
“I look the same to you?”
“Yes. I’d say so.”
“Are you sure?” Harry said. He jumped up, went to a mirror mounted on the wall. He peered at his face.
“How do you think you look?” Norman said.
“I don’t know. Different.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know!” ... He pounded the padded wall next to the mirror. The mirror image vibrated. He turned away, sat down on the bunk again. He sighed. “Just different.”
“Harry...”
“What?”
“Do you remember what happened?”
“Of course.”
“What happened?”
“I went inside.”
He waited, but Harry said nothing further. He just stared at the carpeted floor.
“Do you remember opening the door?” Harry said nothing.
“How did you open the door, Harry?”
Harry looked up at Norman. “You were all supposed to leave. To go back to the surface. You weren’t supposed to stay.
“How did you open the door, Harry?”
There was a long silence. “I opened it.” He sat up straight, his hands at his sides. He seemed to be remembering, reliving it.
“And then?”
“I went inside.”
“And what happened inside?”
“It was beautiful. …”
“What was beautiful?”
“The foam,” Harry said. And then he fell silent again, staring vacantly into space.
“The foam?” Norman prompted.
“The sea. The foam. Beautiful ...”
[[138]] Was he talking about the lights? Norman wondered. The swirling pattern of lights?
“What was beautiful, Harry?”
“Now, don’t kid me,” Harry said. “Promise you won’t kid me.”
“I won’t kid you.”
“You think I look the same?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You don’t think I’ve changed at all?”
“No. Not that I can see. Do you think you’ve changed?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I—maybe.”
“Did something happen in the sphere to change you?”
“You don’t understand about the sphere.”
“Then explain it to me,” Norman said.
“Nothing happened in the sphere.”
“You were in the sphere for three hours. …”
‘Nothing happened. Nothing ever happens inside the sphere. It’s always the same, inside the sphere.”
“What’s always the same? The foam?”
“The foam is always different. The sphere is always the same.”
“I don’t understand,” Norman said.
“I know you don’t,” Harry said. He shook his head. “What can I do?”
“Tell me some more.”
“There isn’t any more.”
“Then tell me again.”
“It won’t help,” Harry said. “Do you think you’ll be leaving soon?”
“Barnes says not for several days.”
“I think you should leave soon. Talk to the others. Convince them. Make them leave.”
“Why, Harry?”
“I can’t be—I don’t know.”
Harry rubbed his eyes and lay back on the bed. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said, “but I’m very tired. Maybe we can continue this some other time. Talk to the others, Norman. Get them to leave. It’s ... dangerous to stay here.” And he lay down in the bunk and closed his eyes.
“He’s sleeping,” Norman told them. “He’s in shock. He’s confused. But he seems basically intact.”
“What did he tell you,” Ted said, “about what happened in there?”
“He’s quite confused,” Norman said, “but he’s recovering. When we first found him, he didn’t even remember his name. Now he does. He remembers my name, he remembers where he is. He remembers he went into the sphere. I think he remembers what happened inside the sphere, too. He just isn’t telling.”
“Great,” Ted said.
“He mentioned the sea, and the foam. But I wasn’t clear what he meant by that.”
“Look outside,” Tina said, pointing to the portholes. Norman had an immediate impression of lights-thousands of lights filling the blackness of the ocean-and his first response was unreasoning terror: the lights in the sphere were coming out to get them. But then he saw each of the lights had a shape, and were moving, wriggling.
They pressed their faces to the portholes, looked. “Squid,” Beth said finally. “Bioluminescent squid.”
“Thousands of them.”
“More,” she said. “I’d guess at least half a million, all around the habitat.”
“Beautiful.”
“The size of the school is amazing,” Ted said. “Impressive, but not really unusual,” Beth said. “The fecundity of the sea is very great compared with the land. The sea is where life began, and where intense competition among animals first appeared. One response to competition is to produce enormous numbers of offspring. Many sea animals do that. In fact, we tend to think that animals came out onto the land as a positive step forward in the evolution of life. But the truth is, the first creatures were really driven out of the ocean. They were just trying to get away from the competition. And [[140]] you can imagine when the first fish-amphibians climbed up the beach and poked their heads up to look out at the land, and saw this vast dry-land environment without any competition at all. It must have looked like the promised—”
Beth broke off, turned to Barnes. “Quick: where do you keep specimen nets?”
“I don’t want you going out there.”
“I have to,” Beth said. “Those squid have six tentacles.”
“So?”
“There’s no known species of six-tentacled squid. This is an undescribed species. I must collect samples.”
Barnes told her where the equipment locker was, and she went off. Norman looked at the school of squid with renewed interest.
The animals were each about a foot long, and seemed to be transparent. The large eyes of the squid were clearly visible in the bodies, which glowed a pale blue.
In a few minutes Beth appeared outside, standing in the midst of the school, swinging her net, catching specimens. Several squid angrily squirted clouds of ink.
“Cute little things,” Ted said. “You know, the development of squid ink is a very interesting—”
“—What do you say to squid for dinner?” Levy said.
“Hell no,” Barnes said. “If this is an undiscovered species, we’re not going to eat it. The last thing I need is everybody sick from food poisoning.”
“Very sensible,” Ted said. “I never liked squid, anyway. Interesting mechanism of propulsion, but rubbery texture.”
At that moment, there was a buzz as one of the monitors turned itself on. As they watched, the screen rapidly filled with numbers:
0003212525263203262930132104261037183016061
808213229033005182204261013083016213716040
83016211822033013130432000321252526320326
293013210426103718301606180821322903300518
220426101308301623711604083016211822033013
1304320003212525263203262932104261037183016
0618082132290330051822042610130830162137
16040830162118220330131304320003212525263
203262930132104261037183016061808213229033
005182204261013083016213716040830162118220
3301313043200032125252632032629301321042610
3718301606180821322903300518220426101308
301621371604083162118220330131304320003212
525263203262930132104261037183016061808213
229033005182204261013083016213716040830162
“Where’s that coming from?” Ted said. “The surface?”
Barnes shook his head. “We’ve cut direct contact with the surface.”
“Then is it being transmitted underwater in some way?”
“No,” Tina said, “it’s too fast for underwater transmission.”
“Is there another console in the habitat? No? How about DH-7?”
“DH-7’s empty now. The divers have gone.”
“Then where’d it come from?”
Barnes said, “It looks random to me.”
Tina nodded. “It may be a discharge from a temporary buffer memory somewhere in the system. When we switched over to internal diesel power ...”
“That’s probably it,” Barnes said. “Buffer discharge on switchover.”
“I think you should keep it,” Ted said, staring at the screen. “Just in case it’s a message.”
“A message from where?”
“From the sphere.”
“Hell,” Barnes said, “it can’t be a message.”
“How do you know?”
“Because there’s no way a message can be transmitted. We’re not hooked up to anything. Certainly not to the sphere. It’s got to be a memory dump from somewhere inside our own computer system.”
“How much memory have you got?”
“Fair amount. Ten giga, something like that.”
“Maybe the helium’s getting to the chips,” Tina said. “Maybe it’s a saturation effect.”
“I still think you should keep it,” Ted said.
[[142]] Norman had been looking at the screen. He was no mathematician, but he’d looked at a lot of statistics in his life, searching for patterns in the data. That was something human brains were inherently good at; finding patterns in visual material. Norman couldn’t put his finger on it, but he sensed a pattern here. He said, “I have the feeling it’s not random.”
“Then let’s keep it,” Barnes said.
Tina went forward to the console. As her hands touched the keys, the screen went blank.
“So much for that,” Barnes said. “It’s gone. Too bad we didn’t have Harry to look at it with us.”
“Yeah,” Ted said gloomily. “Too bad.”
“Take a look at this,” Beth said. “this one is still alive.”
Norman was with her in the little biological laboratory near the top of D Cylinder. Nobody had been in this laboratory since their arrival, because they hadn’t found anything living. Now, with the lights out, he and Beth watched the squid move in the glass tank.
The creature had a delicate appearance. The blue glow was concentrated in stripes along the back and sides of the creature.
“Yes,” Beth said, “the bioluminescent structures seem to be located dorsally. They’re bacteria, of course.”
“What are?”
“The bioluminescent areas. Squid can’t create light themselves. The creatures that do are bacteria. So the bioluminescent animals in the sea have incorporated these bacteria into [[143]] their bodies. You’re seeing bacteria glowing through the skin.”
“So it’s like an infection?”
“Yes, in a way.”
The large eyes of the squid stared. The tentacles moved. “And you can see all the internal organs,” Beth said. “The brain is hidden behind the eye. That sac is the digestive gland, and behind it, the stomach, and below that—see it beating?—the heart. That big thing at the front is the gonad, and coming down from the stomach, a sort of funnel—that’s where it squirts the ink, and propels itself.”
“Is it really a new species?” Norman said.
She sighed. “I don’t know. Internally it is so typical. But fewer tentacles would qualify it as a new species, all right.”
“You going to get to call it Squidus bethus? “ Norman said.
She smiled. “Architeuthis bethis,” she said. “Sounds like a dental problem. Architeuthis bethis: means you need root canal.”
“How about it, Dr. Halpern?” Levy said, poking her head in. “Got some good tomatoes and peppers, be a shame to waste them. Are the squid really poisonous?”
“I doubt it,” Beth said. “Squid aren’t known to be. Go ahead,” she said to Levy. “I think it’ll be okay to eat them.” When Levy had gone, Norman said, “I thought you gave up eating these things.”
“Just octopi,” Beth said. “An octopus is cute and smart. Squid are rather ... unsympathetic.”
“Unsympathetic.”
“Well, they’re cannibalistic, and rather nasty. ... She raised an eyebrow. “Are you psychoanalyzing me again?”
“No. Just curious.”
“As a zoologist, you’re supposed to be objective,” Beth said, “but I have feelings about animals, like anybody else. I have a warm feeling about octopi. They’re clever, you know. I once had an octopus in a research tank that learned to kill cockroaches and use them as bait to catch crabs. The curious crab would come along, investigate the dead cockroach, and then the octopus would jump out of its hiding place and catch the crab.
[[144]] “In fact, an octopus is so smart that the biggest limitation to its behavior is its lifespan. An octopus lives only three years, and that’s not long enough to develop anything as complicated as a culture or civilization. Maybe if octopi lived as long as we do, they would long ago have taken over the world.
“But squid are completely different. I have no feelings about squid. Except I don’t really like ‘em.”
He smiled. “Well,” he said, “at least you finally found some life down here.”
“You know, it’s funny,” she said. “Remember how barren it was out there? Nothing on the bottom?”
“Sure. Very striking.”
“Well, I went around the side of the habitat, to get these squid. And there’re all sorts of sea fans on the bottom. Beautiful colors, blues and purples and yellows. Some of them quite large.”
“Think they just grew?”
“No. They must have always been in that spot, but we never went over there. I’ll have to investigate it later. I’d like to know why they are localized in that particular place, next to the habitat.”
Norman went to the porthole. He had switched on the exterior habitat lights, shining onto the bottom. He could indeed see many large sea fans, purple and pink and blue, waving gently in the current. They extended out to the edge of the light, to the darkness.
“In a way,” Beth said, “it’s reassuring. We’re deep for the majority of oceanic life, which is found in the first hundred feet of water. But even so, this habitat is located in the most varied and abundant marine environment in the world.” Scientists had made species counts and had determined that the South Pacific had more species of coral and sponges than anywhere else on Earth.
“So I’m glad we’re finally finding things,” she said. She looked at her benches of chemicals and reagents. “And I’m glad to finally get to work on something.”
* * *
[[145]] Harry was eating bacon and eggs in the galley. The others stood around and watched him, relieved that he was all right. And they told him the news; he listened with interest, until they mentioned that there had been a large school of squid.
“Squid?”
He looked up sharply and almost dropped his fork. “Yeah, lots of ‘em,” Levy said. “I’m cooking up a bunch for dinner.”
“Are they still here?” Harry asked.
“No, they’re gone now.”
He relaxed, shoulders dropping.
“Something the matter, Harry?” Norman said.
“I hate squid,” Harry said. “I can’t stand them.”
“I don’t care for the taste myself,” Ted said.
“Terrible,” Harry said, nodding. He resumed eating his eggs. The tension passed.
Then Tina shouted from D Cylinder: “I’m getting them again! I’m getting the numbers again!”
00032125252632 032629 301321 04261037 18 3016 06180
82132 29033005 1822 04261013 0830162137 1604 083016
21 1822 033013130432 00032125252632 032629 301321 0
4261037 18 3016 0618082132 29033005 1822 04261013 08
30162137 1604 08301621 1822 033013130432 000321252
52632 032629 301321 04261037 18 3016 0618082132 290
33005 1822 04261013 0830162137 1604 08301621 1822 03
3013130432 00032125252632 032629 301321 04261037 1
8 3016 0618082132 29033005 1822 04261013 0830162137
1604 08301621 1822 033013130432 00032125252632 032
629 301321 04261037 18 3016 0618082132 29033005 1822
04261013 0830162137 1604 08301621 1822 033013130432
0003212525252632 032629 301321 04261037 18 3016 06
18082132 29033005 1822 04261013 0830162137 1604 083
01621 1822 033013130432 0003212525632 032629 301321
“What do you think, Harry?” Barnes said, pointing to the screen.
“Is this what you got before?” Harry said. “Looks like it, except the spacing is different.”
“Because this is definitely nonrandom,” Harry said. “It’s [[146]] a single sequence repeated over and over. Look. Starts here, goes to here, then repeats.”
00032125252632 032629 301321 04261037 18 3016 06180
82132 29033005 1822 04261013 0830162137 1604 083016
21 1822 033013130432 00032125252632 032629 301321 0
4261037 18 3016 0618082132 29033005 1822 04261013 08
30162137 1604 08301621 1822 033013130432 000321252
52632 032629 301321 04261037 18 3016 0618082132 290
33005 1822 04261013 0830162137 1604 08301621 1822 03
3013130432 00032125252632 032629 301321 04261037 1
8 3016 0618082132 29033005 1822 04261013 0830162137
1604 08301621 1822 033013130432 00032125252632 032
629 301321 04261037 18 3016 0618082132 29033005 1822
04261013 0830162137 1604 08301621 1822 033013130432
0003212525252632 032629 301321 04261037 18 3016 06
18082132 29033005 1822 04261013 0830162137 1604 083
01621 1822 033013130432 0003212525632 032629 301321
“He’s right,” Tina said.
“Fantastic,” Barnes said. “Absolutely incredible, for you to see it like that.”
Ted drummed his fingers on the console impatiently. “Elementary, my dear Barnes,” Harry said. “That part is easy. The hard part is—what does it mean?”
“Surely it’s a message,” Ted said.
“Possibly it’s a message,” Harry said. “It could also be some kind of discharge from within the computer, the result of a programming error or a hardware glitch. We might spend hours translating it, only to find it says ‘Copyright Acme Computer Systems, Silicon Valley’ or something similar.”
“Well...” Ted said.
“The greatest likelihood is that this series of numbers originates from within the computer itself,” Harry said. “But let me give it a try.”
Tina printed out the screen for him. “I’d like to try, too,” Ted said quickly.
Tina said, “Certainly, Dr. Fielding,” and printed out a second sheet.
“If it’s a message,” Harry said, “it’s most likely a simple substitution code, like an askey code. It would help if we [[147]] could run a decoding program on the computer. Can anybody program this thing?”
They all shook their heads. “Can you?” Barnes said.
“No. And I suppose there’s no way to transmit this to the surface? The NSA code-breaking computers in Washington would take about fifteen seconds to do this.”
Barnes shook his head. “No contact. I wouldn’t even put up a radio wire on a balloon. The last report, they have forty-foot waves on the surface. Snap the wire right away.”
“So we’re isolated?”
“We’re isolated.”
“I guess it’s back to the old pencil and paper. I always say, traditional tools are best—particularly when there’s nothing else.” And left the room.
“He seems to be in a good mood,” Barnes said.
“I’d say a very good mood,” Norman said.
“Maybe a little too good,” Ted said. “A little manic?”
“No,” Norman said. “Just a good mood.”
“I thought he was a little high,” Ted said.
“Let him stay that way,” Barnes snorted, “if it helps him to crack this code.”
“I’m going to try, too,” Ted reminded him.
“That’s fine,” Barnes said. “You try, too.”
“I’m telling you, this reliance on Harry is misplaced.” Ted paced back and forth and glanced at Norman. “Harry is manic, and he’s overlooking things. Obvious things.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that the printout can’t possibly be a discharge from the computer.”
“How do you know?” Norman said.
“The processor,” Ted said. “The processor is a 68090 chip, [[148]] which means that any memory dump would be in hex.”
“What’s hex?”
“There are lots of ways to represent numbers,” Ted said. “The 68090 chip uses base-sixteen representation, called ‘hexadecimal.’ Hex is entirely different from regular decimal. Looks different.”
“But the message used zero through nine,” Norman said. “Exactly my point,” Ted said. “So it didn’t come from the computer. I believe it’s definitely a message from the sphere. Furthermore, although Harry thinks it is a substitution code, I think it’s a direct visual representation.”
“You mean a picture?”
“Yes,” Ted said. “And I think it’s a picture of the creature itself!” He started searching through sheets of paper. “I started with this.”
001110101110011100111010100000 111101011101
11110110110101 100110101010100101
100101111010000 11010010100010101100000
111011111110101 1001010110 1001101010101101
1000111101000010101100101 10000100
1000111101000010101 1001010110
111111011011101100100000
001110101110011100111010100000 111101011101
11110110110101 100110101010100101 10010
1111010000 11010010100010101100000
111011111110101 1001010110 1001101010101101
1000111101000010101100101 10000100
1000111101000010101 1001010110
111111011011101100100000
001110101110011100111010100000 111101011101
11110110110101 100110101010100101 10010
1111010000 11010010100010101100000
111011111110101 1001010110 1001101010101101
1000111101000010101100101 10000100
“Now, here I have translated the message to binary,” Ted said. “You can immediately sense visual pattern, can’t you?”
“Not really,” Norman said.
“Well, it is certainly suggestive,” Ted said. “I’m telling you, all those years at JPL looking at images from the planets, I have an eye for these things. So, the next thing I did was go back to the original message and fill in the spaces. I got [[149]] this.”
• •00032125252632• •032629• •301321• •04261037• •18•
•3016• •0618082132• •29033005• •1822• •04261013•
•0830162137• •1604• •08301621• •1822• •033013130432•
•00032125252632• •032629• •301321• •04261037• •18•
•3016• •0618082132• •29033005• •1822• •04261013•
•0830162137• •1604• •08301621• •1822• •033013130432•
•00032125252632• •032629• •301321• •04261037• •18•
•3016• •0618082132• •29033005• •1822• •04261013•
•0830162137• •1604• •08301621• •1822• •033013130432•
•00032125252632• •032629• •301321• •04261037• •18•
•3016• •0618082132• •29033005• •1822• •04261013•
•0830162137• •1604• •08301621• •1822• •033013130432•
•00032125252632• •032629• •301321• •04261037• •18•
•3016• •0618082132• •29033005• •1822• •04261013•
•0830162137• •1604• •08301621• •1822• •033013130432•
•00032125252632• •032629• •301321• •04261037• •18•
•3016• •0618082132• •29033005• •1822• •04261013•
•0830162137• •1604• •08301521• •1822• •033013130432•
•00032125252632• •032629• •301321• •04261037• •18•
•3016• •0618082132• •29033005• •1822• •04261013•
•0830162137• •1604• •08301621• •1822• •033013130432•
•00032125252632• •032629• •301321• •04261037• •18•
•3016• •0618082132• •29033008• •1822• •04261013•
•0830162137• •1604• •08301621• •1822• •033013130432•
•00032125252632• •032629• •301321• •04261037• •18•
“Uh-huh ...” Norman said.
“I agree, it doesn’t look like anything,” Ted said. “But by changing the screen width, you get this.”
Proudly, he held up the next sheet.
• •00032125252632• •032629• •301321•
•04261037• •18• •3016• •0618082132• •29033005•
•1822• •042610134, •0830162137• •1604•
•08301621• •1822• •033013130432•
•00032125252632• •032629• •301321• •04261037•
•18• •3016• •0618082132• •29033005• •1822•
•04261013• •0830162137• •1604• •08301621•
•1822• •033013130432• •00032125252632•
•032629• •301321• •04261037• •18• •3016•
•0618082132• •29033005• •1822• •04261013•
•0830162137• •1604• •08301621• •1822•
•033013130432• •00032125252632• •032629•
•301321• •04261037• •18• •3016• •0618082132•
•29033005• •1822• •04261013• •0830162137•
•1604• •08301621• •1822• •033013130432•
•00032125252632• •0326294, •301321• •04261037•
•18• •3016• •0618082132• •29033005• •1822•
•04261013• •0830162137• •1604• •08301621•
•1822• •033013130432• •00032125252632•
•032629• •301321• •04261037• •18• •3016•
[[150]] “Yes?” Norman said.
“Don’t tell me you don’t see the pattern,”
Ted said. “I don’t see the pattern,” Norman said.
“Squint at it,” Ted said.
Norman squinted. “Sorry.”
“But it is obviously a picture of the creature,” Ted said. “Look, that’s the vertical torso, three legs, two arms. There’s no head, so presumably the creature’s head is located within the torso itself. Surely you see that, Norman.”
“Ted ...”
“For once, Harry has missed the point entirely! The message is not only a picture, it’s a self-portrait!”
“Ted ...”
Ted sat back. He sighed. “You’re going to tell me I’m trying too hard.”
“I don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm,” Norman said.
“But you don’t see the alien?”
“Not really, no.”
“Hell.” Ted tossed the papers aside. “I hate that son of a bitch. He’s so arrogant, he makes me so mad. ... And on top of that, he’s young!”
“You’re forty,” Norman said. “I wouldn’t exactly call that over the hill.”
“For physics, it is,” Ted said. “Biologists can sometimes do important work late in life. Darwin was fifty when he published the Origin of Species. And chemists sometimes do good work when they’re older. But in physics, if you haven’t done it by thirty-five, the chances are, you never will.”
“But Ted, you’re respected in your field.”
Ted shook his head. “I’ve never done fundamental work. I’ve analyzed data, I’ve come to some interesting conclusions. But never anything fundamental. This expedition is my chance to really do something. To really ... get my name in the books.”
Norman now had a different sense of Ted’s enthusiasm and energy, that relentlessly juvenile manner. Ted wasn’t emotionally retarded; he was driven. And he clung to his youth out of a sense that time was slipping by and he hadn’t yet accomplished anything. It wasn’t obnoxious. It was sad.
[[151]] “Well,” Norman said, “the expedition isn’t finished yet.”
“No,” Ted said, suddenly brightening. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. There are more, wonderful experiences awaiting us. I just know there are. And they’ll come, won’t they.”
“Yes, Ted,” Norman said. “They’ll come.”
“Damn it, nothing works!” She waved a hand to her laboratory bench. “Not a single one of the chemicals or reagents here is worth a damn!”
“What’ve you tried?” Barnes said calmly. “Zenker-Formalin, H and E, the other stains. Proteolytic extractions, enzyme breaks. You name it. None of it works. You know what I think, I think that whoever stocked this lab did it with outdated ingredients.”
“No,” Barnes said, “it’s the atmosphere.”
He explained that their environment contained only 2 percent oxygen, 1 percent carbon dioxide, but no nitrogen at all. “Chemical reactions are unpredictable,” he said. “You ought to take a look at Levy’s recipe book sometime. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen in your life. The food looks normal when she’s finished, but she sure doesn’t make it the normal way.”
“And the lab?”
“The lab was stocked without knowing the working depth we would be at. If we were shallower, we’d be breathing compressed air, and all your chemical reactions would work—they’d just go very fast. But with heliox, reactions are unpredictable. And if they won’t go, well ...” He shrugged.
“What am I supposed to do?” she said.
“The best you can,” Barnes said. “Same as the rest of us.”
[[152]] “Well, all I can really do is gross anatomical analyses. All this bench is worthless.”
“Then do the gross anatomy.”
“I just wish we had more lab capability. …”
“This is it,” Barnes said. “Accept it and go on.”
Ted entered the room. “You better take a look outside, everybody,” he said, pointing to the portholes. “We have more visitors.”
The squid were gone. For a moment norman saw nothing but the water, and the white suspended sediment caught in the lights.
“Look down. At the bottom.”
The sea floor was alive. Literally alive, crawling and wiggling and tremulous as far as they could see in the lights. “What is that?”
Beth said, “It’s shrimps. A hell of a lot of shrimps.” And she ran to get her net.
“Now, that’s what we ought to be eating,” Ted said. “I love shrimp. And those look perfect-size, a little smaller than crayfish. Probably delicious. I remember once in Portugal, my second wife and I had the most fabulous crayfish. ...”
Norman felt slightly uneasy. “What’re they doing here?”
“I don’t know. What do shrimps do, anyway? Do they migrate?”
“Damned if I know,” Barnes said. “I always buy ‘em frozen. My wife hates to peel ‘em.”
Norman remained uneasy, though he could not say why. He could clearly see now that the bottom was covered in shrimps; they were everywhere. Why should it bother him?
Norman moved away from the window, hoping his sense of vague uneasiness would go away if he looked at something else. But it didn’t go away, it just stayed there—a small tense knot in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t like the feeling at all.
“Harry.”
“Oh, hi, Norman. I heard the excitement. Lot of shrimps outside, is that it?”
Harry sat on his bunk, with the paper printout of numbers on his knees. He had a pencil and pad, and the page was covered with calculations, scratchouts, symbols, arrows.
“Harry,” Norman said, “what’s going on?”
“Damned if I know.”
“I’m just wondering why we should suddenly be finding life down here—the squid, the shrimps—when before there was nothing. Ever.”
“Oh, that. I think that’s pretty clear.”
“Yes?”
“Sure. What’s different between then and now?”
“You’ve been inside the sphere.”
“No, no. I mean, what’s different in the outside environment?”
Norman frowned. He didn’t grasp what Harry was driving at.
“Well, just look outside,” Harry said. “What could you see before that you can’t see now?”
“The grid?”
“Uh-huh. The grid and the divers. Lot of activity—and a lot of electricity. I think it scared off the normal fauna of the area. This is the South Pacific, you know; it ought to be teeming with life.”
“And now that the divers are gone, the animals are back?”
“That’s my guess.”
“That’s all there is to it?” Norman said, frowning.
“Why are you asking me?” Harry said. “Ask Beth; she’ll give you a definitive answer. But I know animals are sensitive to all kinds of stimuli we don’t notice. You can’t run God knows how many million volts through underwater cables, to light a half-mile grid in an environment that has never seen light before, and not expect to have an effect.”
[[154]] Something about this argument tickled the back of Norman’s mind. He knew something, something pertinent. But he couldn’t get it.
“Harry.”
“Yes, Norman. You look a little worried. You know, this substitution code is really a bitch. I’ll tell you the truth, I’m not sure I’ll be able to crack it. You see, the problem is, if it is a letter substitution, you will need two digits to describe a single letter, because there are twenty-six letters in the alphabet, assuming no punctuation—which may or may not be included here as well. So when I see a two next to a three, I don’t know if it is letter two followed by letter three, or just letter twenty-three. It’s taking a long time to work through the permutations. You see what I mean?”
“Harry.”
“Yes, Norman.”
“What happened inside the sphere?”
“Is that what you’re worried about?” Harry asked.
“What makes you think I’m worried about anything?” Norman asked.
“Your face,” Harry said. “That’s what makes me think you’re worried.”
“Maybe I am,” Norman said. “But about this sphere...”
“You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about that sphere.”
“And?”
“It’s quite amazing. I really don’t remember what happened.”
“Harry.”
“I feel fine—I feel better all the time, honest to God, my energy’s back, headache’s gone—and earlier I remembered everything about that sphere and what was inside it. But every minute that passes, it seems to fade. You know, the way a dream fades? You remember it when you wake up, but an hour later, it’s gone?”
“Harry.”
“I remember that it was wonderful, and beautiful. Something about lights, swirling lights. But that’s all.”
“How did you get the door to open?”
[[155]] “Oh, that. It was very clear at the time; I remember I had worked it all out, I knew exactly what to do.”
“What did you do?”
“I’m sure it will come back to me.”
“You don’t remember how you opened the door?”
“No. I just remember this sudden insight, this certainty, about how it was done. But I can’t remember the details. Why, does somebody else want to go in? Ted, probably.”
“I’m sure Ted would like to go in—”
“—I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Frankly, I don’t think Ted should do it. Think how boring he’ll be with his speeches, after he comes out. ‘I visited an alien sphere’ by Ted Fielding. We’d never hear the end of it.”
And he giggled.
Ted is right, Norman thought. He’s definitely manic. There was a speedy, overly cheerful quality to Harry. His characteristic slow sarcasm was gone, replaced by a sunny, open, very quick manner. And a kind of laughing indifference to everything, an imbalance in his sense of what was important. He had said he couldn’t crack the code. He had said he couldn’t remember what happened inside the sphere, or how he had opened it. And he didn’t seem to think it mattered.
“Harry, when you first came out of the sphere, you seemed worried.”
“Did I? Had a brutal headache, I remember that.”
“You kept saying we should go to the surface.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. Why was that?”
“God only knows. I was so confused.”
“You also said it was dangerous for us to stay here.” Harry smiled.
“Norman, you can’t take that too seriously. I didn’t know if I was coming or going.”
“Harry, we need you to remember these things. If things start to come back to you, will you tell me?”
“Oh sure, Norman. Absolutely. You can count on me; I’ll tell you right away.”
“No,” Beth said. “none of it makes sense. First of all, in areas where fish haven’t encountered human beings before, they tend to ignore humans unless they are hunted. The Navy divers didn’t hunt the fish. Second, if the divers stirred up the bottom, that’d actually release nutrients and attract more animals. Third, many species of animals are attracted to electrical currents. So, if anything, the shrimps and other animals should’ve been drawn here earlier by the electricity. Not now, with the power off.”
She was examining the shrimps under the low-power scanning microscope. “How does he seem?”
“Harry?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he okay?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
Still looking through the microscope lens, she said, “Did he tell you anything about what happened inside the sphere?”
“Not yet.”
She adjusted the microscope, shook her head. “I’ll be damned.”
“What is it?” Norman said.
“Extra dorsal plating.”
“Meaning?”
“It’s another new species,” she said.
Norman said, “Shrimpus bethus? You’re making discoveries hand over fist down here, Beth.”
“Uh-huh ... I checked the sea fans, too, because they seemed to have an unusual radial growth pattern. They’re a new species as well.”
“That’s great, Beth.”
She turned, looked at him. “No. Not great. Weird.” She clicked on a high-intensity light, cut open one of the shrimps with a scalpel. “I thought so.”
“What is it?”
[[157]] “Norman,” she said, “we didn’t see any life down here for days—and suddenly in the last few hours we find three new species? It’s not normal.”
“We don’t know what’s normal at one thousand feet.”
“I’m telling you. It’s not normal.”
“But, Beth, you said yourself that we simply hadn’t noticed the sea fans before. And the squid and the shrimps—can’t they be migrating, passing through this area, something like that? Barnes says they’ve never had trained scientists living this deep at one site on the ocean floor before. Maybe these migrations are normal, and we just don’t know they occur.”
“I don’t think so,” Beth said. “When I went out to get these shrimps, I felt their behavior was atypical. For one thing, they were too close together. Shrimps on the bottom maintain a characteristic distance from one another, about four feet. These were packed close. In addition, they moved as if they were feeding, but there’s nothing to feed on down here.”
“Nothing that we know of.”
“Well, these shrimps can’t have been feeding.” She pointed to the cut animal on the lab bench. “They haven’t got a stomach.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Look for yourself.”
Norman looked, but the dissected shrimp didn’t mean much to him. It was just a mass of pink flesh. It was cut on a ragged diagonal, not cleanly. She’s tired, he thought. She’s not working efficiently. We need sleep. We need to get out of here.
“The external appearance is perfect, except for an extra dorsal fan at the tail,” she said. “But internally, it’s all screwed up. There’s no way for these animals to be alive. No stomach. No reproductive apparatus. This animal is like a bad imitation of a shrimp.”
“Yet the shrimps are alive,” Norman said.
“Yeah,” she said. “They are.” She seemed unhappy about it.
“And the squid were perfectly normal inside. ...”
[[158]] “Actually, they weren’t. When I dissected one, I found that it lacked several important structures. There’s a nerve bundle called the stellate ganglion that wasn’t there.”
“Well ...”
“And there were no gills, Norman. Squid possess a long gill structure for gas exchange. This one didn’t have one. The squid had no way to breathe, Norman.”
“It must have had a way to breathe.”
“I’m telling you, it didn’t. We’re seeing impossible animals down here. All of a sudden, impossible animals.”
She turned away from the high-intensity lamp, and he saw that she was close to tears. Her hands were shaking; she quickly dropped them into her lap. “You’re really worried,” he said.
“Aren’t you?” She searched his face. “Norman,” she said, “all this started when Harry came out of the sphere, didn’t it?”
“I guess it did.”
“Harry came out of the sphere, and now we have impossible sea life. ... I don’t like it. I wish we could get out of here. I really do.” Her lower lip was trembling.
He gave her a hug and said gently, “We can’t get out of here.”
“I know,” she said. She hugged him back, and began to cry, pushing her face into his shoulder.
“It’s all right. …”
“I hate it when I get this way,” she said. “I hate this feeling.”
“I know. ..... .
‘And I hate this place. I hate everything about it. I hate Barnes and I hate Ted’s lectures and I hate Levy’s stupid desserts. I wish I wasn’t here.”
“I know. …”
She sniffled for a moment, then abruptly pushed him away with her strong arms. She turned away, wiped her eyes. “I’m all right,” she said. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” he said.
She remained turned away, her back to him. “Where’s the [[159]] damn Kleenex?” She found one, blew her nose. “You won’t say anything to the others. …”
“Of course not.”
A bell rang, startling her. “Jesus, what’s that?”
“I think it’s dinner,” Norman said.
“I don’t know how you can eat those things,” Harry said, pointing to the squid.
“They’re delicious,” Norman said. “Sautéed squid.” As soon as he had sat at the table, he became aware of how hungry he was. And eating made him feel better; there was a reassuring normalcy about sitting at a table, with a knife and fork in his hands. It was almost possible to forget where he was.
“I especially like them fried,” Tina said.
“Fried calamari,” Barnes said. “Wonderful. My favorite.”
“I like them fried, too,” Edmunds, the archivist, said. She sat primly, very erect, eating her food precisely. Norman noticed that she put her knife down between bites.
“Why aren’t these fried?” Norman said.
“We can’t deep-fry down here,” Barnes said. “The hot oil forms a suspension and gums up the air filters. But sautéed is fine.”
“Well, I don’t know about the squid but the shrimps are great,” Ted said. “Aren’t they, Harry?” Ted and Harry were eating shrimp.
“Great shrimp,” Harry said. “Delicious.”
“You know how I feel,” Ted said, “I feel like Captain Nemo. Remember, living underwater off the bounty of the sea?”
“Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” Barnes said.
[[160]] “James Mason,” Ted said. “Remember how he played the organ? Duh-duh-duh, da da da daaaaah da! Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor.”
“And Kirk Douglas.”
“Kirk Douglas was great.”
“Remember when he fought the giant squid?”
“That was great.”
“Kirk Douglas had an ax, remember?”
“Yeah, and he cut off one of the squid arms.”
“That movie,” Harry said, “scared the hell out of me. I saw it when I was a kid and it scared the hell out of me.”
“I didn’t think it was scary,” Ted said.
“You were older,” Harry said.
“Not that much older.”
“Yes, you were. For a kid it was terrifying. That’s probably why I don’t like squid now.”
“You don’t like squid,” Ted said, “because they’re rubbery and disgusting.”
Barnes said, “That was the movie that made me want to join the Navy.”
“I can imagine,” Ted said. “So romantic and exciting. And a real vision of the wonders of applied science. Who played the professor in that?”
“The professor?”
“Yes, remember there was a professor?”
“I vaguely remember a professor. Old guy.”
“Norman? You remember who was the professor?”
“No, I don’t,” Norman said.
Ted said, “Are you sitting over there keeping an eye on us, Norman?”
“How do you mean?” Norman said.
“Analyzing us. Seeing if we’re cracking up.”
“Yes,” Norman said, smiling. “I am.”
“How’re we doing?” Ted said.
“I would say it is highly significant that a group of scientists can’t remember who played the scientist in a movie they all loved.”
“Well, Kirk Douglas was the hero, that’s why. The scientist wasn’t the hero.”
[[161]] “Franchot Tone?” Barnes said. “Claude Rains?”
“No, I don’t think so. Fritz somebody?”
“Fritz Weaver?”
They heard a crackle and hiss, and then the sounds of an organ playing the Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
“Great,” Ted said. “I didn’t know we had music down here.”
Edmunds returned to the table. “There’s a tape library, Ted.”
“I don’t know if this is right for dinner,” Barnes said.
“I like it,” Ted said. “Now, if we only had seaweed salad. Isn’t that what Captain Nemo served?”
“Maybe something lighter?” Barnes said.
“Lighter than seaweed?”
“Lighter than Bach.”
“What was the submarine called?” Ted said.
“The Nautilus,” Edmunds said.
“Oh, right. Nautilus.”
“It was the name of the first atomic submarine, too, launched in 1954,” she said. And she gave Ted a bright smile.
“True,” Ted said. “True.”
Norman thought, He’s met his match in irrelevant trivia. Edmunds went to the porthole and said, “Oh, more visitors.”
“What now?” Harry said, looking up quickly.
Frightened? Norman thought. No, just quick, manic. Interested.
“They’re beautiful,” Edmunds was saying. “Some kind of little jellyfish. All around the habitat. We should really film them. What do you think, Dr. Fielding? Should we go film them?”
“I think I’ll just eat now, Jane,” Ted said, a bit severely. Edmunds looked stricken, rejected. Norman thought, I’ll have to watch that. She turned to leave. The others glanced toward the porthole, but nobody left the table.
“Have you ever eaten jellyfish?” Ted said. “I hear they’re a delicacy.”
“Some of them are poisonous,” Beth said. “Toxins in the tentacles.”
[[162]] “Don’t the Chinese eat jellyfish?” Harry said.
“Yes,” Tina said. “They make a soup, too. My grandmother used to make it in Honolulu.”
“You’re from Honolulu?”
“Mozart would be better for dining,” Barnes said. “Or Beethoven. Something with strings. This organ music is gloomy.”
“Dramatic,” Ted said, playing imaginary keys in the air, in time to the music. Swaying his body like James Mason.
“Gloomy,” Barnes said.
The intercom crackled. “Oh, you should see this,” Edmunds said, over the intercom. “It’s beautiful.”
“Where is she?”
“She must be outside,” Barnes said. He went to the porthole.
“It’s like pink snow,” Edmunds said. They all got up and went to the portholes.
Edmunds was outside with the video camera. They could hardly see her through the dense clouds of jellyfish. The jellyfish were small, the size of a thimble, and a delicate, glowing pink. It was indeed like a snowfall. Some of the jellyfish came quite close to the porthole; they could see them well.
“They have no tentacles,” Harry said. “They’re just little pulsating sacs.”
“That’s how they move,” Beth said. “Muscular contractions expel the water.”
“Like squid,” Ted said.
“Not as developed, but the general idea.”
“They’re sticky,” Edmunds said, over the intercom. “They’re sticking to my suit.”
“That pink color is fantastic,” Ted said. “Like snow in a sunset.”
“Very poetic.”
“I thought so.”
“You would.”
“They’re sticking to my faceplate, too,” Edmunds said. “I have to pull them off. They leave a smeary streak—”
[[163]] She broke off abruptly, but they could still hear her breathing.
“Can you see her?” Ted said.
“Not very well. She’s there, to the left.”
Over the intercom, Edmunds said, “They seem to be warm. I feel heat on my arms and legs.”
“That’s not right,” Barnes said. He turned to Tina. “Tell her to get out of there.”
Tina ran from the cylinder, toward the communications console.
Norman could hardly see Edmunds any more. He was vaguely aware of a dark shape, moving arms, agitated. ...
Over the intercom, she said, “The smear on the faceplate—it won’t go away—they seem to be eroding the plastic—and my arms—the fabric is—”
Tina’s voice said, “Jane. Jane, get out of there.”
“On the double,” Barnes shouted. “Tell her on the double!”
Edmunds’s breathing was coming in ragged gasps. “The smears—can’t see very well—I feel—hurts—my arms burning—hurts—they’re eating through—”
“Jane. Come back. Jane. Are you reading? Jane.”
“She’s fallen down,” Harry said. “Look, you can see her lying—”
“—We have to save her,” Ted said, jumping to his feet.
“Nobody move, “ Barnes said.
“But she’s—”
“—Nobody else is going out there, mister.”
Edmunds’s breathing was rapid. She coughed, gasped. “I can’t—I can’t—oh God—”
Edmunds began to scream.
The scream was high-pitched and continuous except for ragged gasps for breath. They could no longer see her through the swarms of jellyfish. They looked at each other, at Barnes. Barnes’s face was rigidly set, his jaw tight, listening to the screams.
And then, abruptly, there was silence.
An hour later, the jellyfish disappeared as mysteriously as they had come. They could see Edmunds’s body outside the habitat, lying on the bottom, rocking back and forth gently in the current. There were small ragged holes in the fabric of the suit.
They watched through the portholes as Barnes and the chief petty officer, Teeny Fletcher, crossed the bottom into the harsh floodlights, carrying extra air tanks. They lifted Edmunds’s body; the helmeted head flopped loosely back, revealing the scarred plastic faceplate, dull in the light.
Nobody spoke. Norman noticed that even Harry had dropped his manic effect; he sat unmoving, staring out the window.
Outside, Barnes and Fletcher still held the body. There was a great burst of silvery bubbles, which rose swiftly to the surface.
“What’re they doing?”
“Inflating her suit.”
“Why? Aren’t they bringing her back?” Ted said.
“They can’t,” Tina said. “There’s nowhere to put her here. The decomposition by-products would ruin our air.”
“But there must be some kind of a sealed container—”
“—There isn’t,” Tina said. “There’s no provision for keeping organic remains in the habitat.”
“You mean they didn’t plan on anyone dying.”
“That’s right. They didn’t.”
Now there were many thin streams of bubbles rising from the holes in the suit, toward the surface. Edmunds’s suit was puffed, bloated. Barnes released it, and it floated slowly away, as if pulled upward by the streaming silver bubbles.
“It’ll go to the surface?”
“Yes. The gas expands continuously as outside pressure diminishes.”
“And what then?”
“Sharks,” Beth said. “Probably.”
In a few moments the body disappeared into blackness, [[165]] beyond the reach of the lights. Barnes and Fletcher still watched the body, helmets tilted up toward the surface. Fletcher made the sign of the cross. Then they trudged back toward the habitat.
A bell rang from somewhere inside. Tina went into D Cyl. Moments later she shouted, “Dr. Adams! More numbers!”
Harry got up and went into the next cylinder. The others trailed after him. Nobody wanted to look out the porthole any longer.
Norman stared at the screen, entirely puzzled.
But Harry clapped his hands in delight. “Excellent,” Harry said. “This is extremely helpful.”
“It is?”
“Of course. Now I have a fighting chance.”
“You mean to break the code.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why?”
“Remember the original number sequence? This is the same sequence.”
“It is?”
“Of course,” Harry said. “Except it’s in binary.”
“Binary,” Ted said, nudging Norman. “Didn’t I tell you binary was important?”
“What’s important,” Harry said, “is that this establishes [[166]] the individual letter breaks from the original sequence.” “Here’s a copy of the original sequence,” Tina said, handing them a sheet.
00032125252632 032629 301321 04261037 18 3016 06180821
32 29033005 1822 04261013 0830162137 1604 08301621 1822 0
33013130432
“Good,” Harry said. “Now you can see my problem at once. Look at the word: oh-oh-oh-three-two-one, and so on. The question is, how do I break that word up into individual letters? I couldn’t decide, but now I know.”
“How?”
“Well, obviously, it goes three, twenty-one, twenty-five, twenty-five. ...”
Norman didn’t understand. “But how do you know that?”
“Look,” Harry said impatiently. “It’s very simple, Norman. It’s a spiral, reading from inside to outside. It’s just giving us the numbers in—”
Abruptly, the screen changed again.
[[167]] “There, is that clearer for you?”
Norman frowned.
“Look, it’s exactly the same,” Harry said. “See? Center outward? Oh-oh-oh-three-twenty-one-twenty-five-twentyfive ... It’s made a spiral moving outward from the center.”
“It?”
“Maybe it’s sorry about what happened to Edmunds,” Harry said.
“Why do you say that?” Norman asked, staring curiously at Harry.
“Because it’s obviously trying very hard to communicate with us,” Harry said. “It’s attempting different things.”
“Who is it?”
“It,” Harry said, “may not be a who.”
The screen went blank, and another pattern appeared.
[[168]] “All right,” Harry said. “This is very good.”
“Where is this coming from?”
“Obviously, from the ship.”
“But we’re not connected to the ship. How is it managing to turn on our computer and print this?”
“We don’t know.”
“Well, shouldn’t we know?” Beth said.
“Not necessarily,” Ted said.
“Shouldn’t we try to know?”
“Not necessarily. You see, if the technology is advanced enough, it appears to the naïve observer to be magic. There’s no doubt about that. For example, you take a famous scientist from our past—Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, even Isaac Newton. Show him an ordinary Sony color-television set and he’d run screaming, claiming it was witchcraft. He wouldn’t understand it at all.
“But the point,” Ted said, “is that you couldn’t explain it to him, either. At least not easily. Isaac Newton wouldn’t be able to understand TV without first studying our physics for a couple of years. He’d have to learn all the underlying concepts: electromagnetism, waves, particle physics. These would all be new ideas to him, a new conception of nature. In the meantime, the TV would be magic as far as he was concerned. But to us it’s ordinary. It’s TV.”
“You’re saying we’re like Isaac Newton?”
Ted shrugged. “We’re getting a communication and we don’t know how it’s done.”
“And we shouldn’t bother to try and find out.”
“I think we have to accept the possibility,” Ted said, “that we may not be able to understand it.”
Norman noticed the energy with which they threw themselves into this discussion, pushing aside the tragedy so recently witnessed. They’re intellectuals, he thought, and their characteristic defense is intellectualization. Talk. Ideas. Abstractions. Concepts. It was a way of getting distance from the feelings of sadness and fear and being trapped. Norman understood the impulse: he wanted to get away from those feelings himself.
Harry frowned at the spiral image. “We may not [[169]] understand how, but it’s obvious what it’s doing. It’s trying to communicate by trying different presentations. The fact that it’s trying spirals may be significant. Maybe it believes we think in spirals. Or write in spirals.”
“Right,” Beth said. “Who knows what kind of weird creatures we are?”
Ted said, “If it’s trying to communicate with us, why aren’t we trying to communicate back?”
Harry snapped his fingers. “Good idea!” He went to the keyboard.
“There’s an obvious first step,” Harry said. “We just send the original message back. We’ll start with the first grouping, beginning with the double zeroes.”
“I want it made clear,” Ted said, “that the suggestion to attempt communication with the alien originated with me.”
“It’s clear, Ted,” Barnes said.
“Harry?” Ted said.
“Yes, Ted,” Harry said. “Don’t worry, it’s your idea.”
Sitting at the keyboard, Harry typed:
00032125252632
The numbers appeared on the screen. There was a pause. They listened to the hum of the air fans, the distant thump of the diesel generator. They all watched the screen.
Nothing happened.
The screen went blank, and then printed out:
0001132121051808012232
Norman felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.
It was just a series of numbers on a computer screen, but it still gave him a chill. Standing beside him, Tina shivered. “He answered us.”
“Fabulous,” Ted said.
“I’ll try the second grouping now,” Harry said. He seemed calm, but his fingers kept making mistakes at the keyboard. It took a few moments before he was able to type:
032629
The reply immediately came back:
0015260805180810213
“Well,” Harry said, “looks like we just opened our line of communication.”
[[170]] “Yes,” Beth said. “Too bad we don’t understand what we’re saying to each other.”
“Presumably it knows what it’s saying,” Ted said. “But we’re still in the dark.”
“Maybe we can get it to explain itself.”
Impatiently, Barnes said, “What is this it you keep referring to?”
Harry sighed, and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “I think there’s no doubt about that. It,” Harry said, “is something that was previously inside the sphere, and that is now released, and is free to act. That’s what it is.”