That one' — he pointed at a Tosok with a hide much bluer than Hask’s own—'is Kelkad, the captain of this ship.'
It wasn’t cryonics — the kind of freezing for suspended animation humans had long dreamed off. Yes, this was cold — well below zero Celsius — but it was nowhere near absolute zero. The Tosoks seemed to have a natural ability to hibernate, just as many Earth animals did.
Clete was wearing blue jeans and a denim jacket; neither provided quite enough insulation against the cold. He looked around the room, still relishing the weightlessness. He found every detail of Tosok engineering fascinating. The only places he saw actual fasteners were where they were clearly meant to be undone for maintenance, like the bolts that secured the chair supports in the lander. Everything else seemed to have been molded in a single piece, mostly from ceramic, although there were a few places where metal was visible.
'They can hibernate for centuries without aid of equipment or drugs?' asked Clete.
'Yes.'
Clete shook his head. 'Y’know, before humans went into space we weren’t even sure we could survive there. After all, we’d always lived under Earth’s gravity — seemed reasonable that nature might’ve made some use of gravity feed, whether in our circulatory systems, our digestive systems, or somewheres else. But it didn’t. We can live just fine in zero gravity. The one part of us that does rely on gravity — the sense of balance, which is controlled by fluids in our inner ears — simply shuts down under zero-g. Dreamers like me, we thought this meant that as a race we were intended to go into space.'
Hask’s translator had beeped a few times at unfamiliar words during Clete’s comments, but the alien clearly got the gist of what the human had been saying. 'Interesting thought,' he replied.
'But you guys,' said Clete, 'being able to shut down for centuries, having that ability built right into y’all. You can fake gravity in space, course, through centrifugal force or constant acceleration. But there ain’t nothing you can do about the time it takes for interstellar travel. With a natural suspended-animation ability, y’all sure got us beat. We might have been destined to go into planetary orbit, but your race seems to nave been destined to sail between the stars.'
'Many of our philosophers would agree with that statement,' said Hask. He paused. 'But not all, of course.' There was silence between them for several moments. 'I am hungry,' said the Tosok. That didn’t surprise Clete in the least; as far as he could tell, Hask hadn’t eaten since his lander had splashed down. 'It will take several hours for the others to revive. Do you require food?'
'I brought some with me,' said Clete. 'Navy rations. Hardly gourmet vittles, but they’ll do.'
'Come with me.'
Clete and Hask killed time eating and talking. Clete found the Tosok approach to food utterly fascinating — not to mention disgusting — and he recorded it all on videotape. Eventually, the other Tosoks were revived enough to leave the hibernation chamber, and Clete heard the Tosok language for the first time as they spoke to each other. Although it contained many English-like sounds, it also included a snapping, a pinging, and something like two wooden sticks being clacked together. Clete doubted that a human could speak it without mechanical aids.
There was a lot of variation in skin color among the Tosoks. Hask’s skin was blue-gray. One of the others had a taupe hide, another a neutral gray.
Two had cyan skin. One was navy blue. Kelkad’s was a bit lighter than that.
Eye color seemed to vary widely; only one of the Tosoks had all four eyes the same color. They chattered endlessly, and one of the aliens took great interest in Clete, poking him in the ribs, feeling his skin and the hair on his head, and staring with two round eyes directly into Clete’s face from only inches away.
Hask seemed to be briefing the others. As far as Clete could tell, hand gestures didn’t play any significant role in Tosok communication but the tufts on the tops of each one’s head waved in complex patterns that seemed to add nuance to the spoken words. Hask’s monologue contained several instances of a word that sounded like
It was difficult to tell, but Captain Kelkad seemed displeased with Hask — his voice rose higher than was normal as his sentences progressed and his tuft moved with great agitation. Perhaps, thought Clete, the alien captain felt Hask had exceeded his authority by making first contact before reviving the others, or maybe he was angry over the death of one of his crew.
At last, Kelkad turned to look at Clete. He spoke a few words, and Hask translated. 'Kelkad says he will meet with your leaders now. We are ready to fly back down.'
*5*
The Tosok landing craft skimmed above the surface of New York’s East River until it came to Turtle Bay, site of the United Nations. It zoomed over the low, concave-sided, dome-roofed General Assembly building, then did three loops around the thirty-nine-story slab of the Secretariat, before settling in the wide driveway in front of the General Assembly. No doubt about it — the Tosoks had a flare for the dramatic. Almost two billion people were watching the event live, and it seemed as though half of New York had been out on the streets, looking up.
The UN had been cordoned off. New York’s finest on one side of the barrier and gray-uniformed United Nations guards on the other were carefully controlling who got access. Frank Nobilio hoped the precautions were sufficient. He’d spent hours poring over the photographs of the alien mothership taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (which had passed within line of sight of it repeatedly now). The guys at NASA/Ames said the ship appeared to be fusion-powered — and a fusion exhaust aimed at Earth could do enormous damage. Frank was terrified of the consequences if one of the Tosoks were assassinated.
Still, there was always something about being here at the UN that moved him deeply. Oh, sure, over its history, the United Nations had probably had more failures than successes, but it still represented the loftiest of human ideals, and that meant something to Frank, who in his early twenties had spent a year in the Peace Corps, and who, as a grad student at Berkeley, had been involved in protests against the Vietnam War.
'We, the People of the United States' were indeed great words, and even decades in Washington hadn’t dulled Frank’s faith in them. But 'We the Peoples of the United Nations' were even greater words, he thought as he looked up at the giant plaque outside the General Assembly:
WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED TO SAVE SUCCEEDING GENERATIONS FROM THE SCOURGE OF WAR, WHICH TWICE IN OUR LIFETIME HAS BROUGHT UNTOLD SORROW TO MANKIND, AND TO REAFFIRM FAITH IN FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS, IN THE DIGNITY AND WORTH OF THE HUMAN PERSON, IN THE RIGHTS OF MEN AND WOMEN AND OF NATIONS LARGE AND SMALL…
Those were words the whole planet could be proud of. As everyone in the crowd waited for the air lock on the Tosok lander to open, Frank smiled to himself. Its critics notwithstanding, he was glad there was a place like this for the aliens to land.
The air lock did open — and out came Cletus Calhoun. The crowd, which normally would have been delighted to catch a glimpse of a celebrity, reacted with disappointment. A UN guard hurried over with a microphone stand, and Clete stepped up to it.
'Take me to your leader,' he said, in harsh, mechanical tones.
The crowd laughed. Clete’s face split in a toothy grin. 'I suppose y’all are wondering why I called y’all here today.'
More laughter.
'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said, sobering. 'It is my profound honor to present to y’all the first extraterrestrial visitors to Earth.' He indicated the air lock, and the Tosok captain, Kelkad, strode out.
The entire audience gasped. Most of them had seen the pictures of Hask taken aboard the
It started at one side of the vast crescent of spectators: a single woman clapping. Within moments it swept like a wave over the entire crowd: a thunderous storm of applause.
Kelkad’s long strides quickly brought him over to stand next to Clete. Frank could see Clete talking to the alien, probably explaining the significance of the clapping. Kelkad made a beckoning gesture with his back hand and the remaining six Tosoks filed out of the lander. They formed two rows of three behind Kelkad, who moved to stand in front of the microphone.
The applause died down at once, everyone anxious to hear what the alien leader had to say.
'Hello,' said Kelkad — or rather, said his pocket translator. Frank assumed the vocabulary database from Hask’s translator must have by now been copied over to those of the other Tosoks. 'Nice planet you’ve got here.'
The applause again, with hundreds of cheers mixed in. Frank recognized Clete’s sense of humor in the comment; he’d obviously coached Kelkad on what to say.
Frank found himself clapping so hard his palms were stinging. And so were his eyes, at the beautiful sight of aliens standing in front of the rainbow row of one hundred and eighty-five flags outside of the United Nations of Earth.
'People of planet Earth,' said Kelkad later that afternoon, standing at one of the two podiums inside the General Assembly hall, 'we come to you as neighbors: our home world is a planet in the Alpha Centauri system.'
Frank was sitting in the public gallery above the General Assembly, looking down on the concentric semicircular rows of delegate seating. His eyebrows went up. Although Alpha Centauri A was much like the sun, it was bound gravitationally to two other stars. Offhand, Frank wouldn’t have thought that system capable of having an Earth-like world.
'We came here,' continued Kelkad, 'to bring you greetings from our people.
But, unexpectedly, it seems we also need your help. Our starship has been damaged, and is in need of repair. We cannot build the required parts ourselves — the damage is beyond the limited resources of our mothership.
But although many of the principles used in building the replacement parts we need will be unfamiliar to you, Dr. Calhoun assures me that you have the technology to manufacture complex items according to our plans. We therefore ask that some of you agree to build the parts we need. In exchange, those who do build the parts will be welcome to keep whatever knowledge and technology they can glean from the process.'
Frank could see the rows of ambassadors salivating down below. Of course it would likely only be the technologically sophisticated countries, doubtless led by the U.S. and Japan, that would get contracts with the Tosoks.
Kelkad continued on for another half hour or so, with everyone listening intently. And then:
'And so,' said Kelkad, 'it is with great pleasure that we extend the front hand of friendship, and the back hand of trust, across the light-years to our closest neighbors, to a race of beings that we hope will also become our closest friends. Men and women of planet Earth, you are no longer alone!'
After the speech, every nation on Earth extended invitations to the Tosoks to visit. There was considerable pressure for them to head east from New York, across the Atlantic — it was felt that the United States had monopolized the alien visitors too much already, and a westward trip across the U.S. would be inappropriate.
And so it came to pass that the aliens toured London, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Moscow, Jerusalem, Giza, Calcutta, Beijing, Tokyo, Honolulu, and Vancouver. An entourage traveled with them, including Frank and Clete, and several other prominent scientists from various nations, along with a security detachment. The Canadian representative turned out to be Packwood Smathers, the same blowhard Clete had argued with on CNN.
One of the highlights of the trip — for Tosoks and humans alike — was observing one of the true wonders of nature. Clete tried to set the stage for it appropriately.
'Even now that I’ve actually been in space,' he said to the Tosoks, 'the most incredible astronomical sight I’ve ever seen I saw from the ground.'
He paused. 'A total solar eclipse. There’s nothing like it. And we’re goin’ to get to see one. I wish I could say we planned this for you guys, but we’re jes’ plain lucky. It’s almost two years afore the next one. But this one — well, this one will be visible in lots of highly populated areas. I had to go to the Galapagos for the one in ’98 and to Siberia for the one in ’97 — but it don’t matter;
