introduced into the lunar environment.”
The American closed the folder in front of him and waited for the tirade to start in earnest. He didn’t have to wait long.
“I think an immediate vote to censure the United States is appropriate at this time,” the French ambassador said, with a sober nod to his American counterpart. There was an instant smattering of yeses from around the large table.
“The Russian ambassador would like to read a statement,” the distinguished British ambassador said, looking at his colleague from America with sad eyes.
The Russian stood and nodded to the Englishman, then faced the American ambassador directly.
“You take responsibility for the investigation upon the lunar surface, is this correct?” he asked.
“That was clear in the president’s statement to this body, I believe.”
“I see. And just how is the United States planning to conduct such an exhaustive endeavor, from the safety of this planet?”
“I have not been informed of the plan of action nor its timetable.”
“Mr. Vilnikov, is this a statement or a cross-examination?” asked the chairman.
“I’ll tell you how,” the Russian said as he looked at the faces watching him. “You will simply guess as to the cause, or more to the point, you will lie to the people of the world. Therefore I will state that my government has every intention of conducting its own investigation, not from the safe confines of the Earth, but directly from the surface of the Moon!”
The Russian ambassador closed his briefcase. He turned and left the chamber with his assistants trailing behind.
As the American watched, the Chinese ambassador stood, nodded his head, and he also left. The meeting broke up with every U.N. protocol broken. The American ambassador sat and looked at the tabletop.
“What’s happening?” one of his young assistants asked.
“I’ll tell you,” he said as he tapped his fingers on the folder that held the president’s statement. “They’re not doing this to investigate what happened on the Moon. They saw everything as clearly as we did. No, they’re going because there is something up there that makes our nuclear technology as obsolete as a biplane. I figure they have two agendas, and I’m not even a scientist. One, they are going to retrieve the weaponry that was uncovered in that crater, if it’s still there, and two, they want that material.”
“But the images of the weapon were not broadcast to the public,” his assistant said.
The ambassador shook his head, not even wanting to comment on how naive the young man was.
“Then what will we do?” the assistant asked, worry finally showing on his face.
“Nothing. We can’t even begin to start planning a return trip. We stripped NASA’s budget completely to the bone as far as the Moon is concerned.”
“What does that mean for the country?”
The ambassador stood and placed the president’s statement in his case and then turned and smiled sadly at his assistant.
“It means if everyone gets to that technology before we do and answers the questions concerning that mineral, the United States just may become a Third World nation.”
Dr. Pete Golding watched the Astro-Sciences Division in frustration. They had invaded the Computer Center and were working frantically. Their assignment was to find out as much from the Peregrine 1 mother craft, and from the last burst of data sent by John, as they could. The photos and strange paperwork absconded by Europa from NASA and JPL communications was spread out on the largest ten monitors at the Comp Center. The way Virginia Pollock and her hundred-person team were working the problem of finding out what they were dealing with on the Moon, Pete figured they would get nowhere quick.
Golding stood from his position in the observation seats arrayed in a semicircle high above the Computer Center floor. He was looking at the unusual language discovered on the plasticlike “paper” uncovered by the lunar rovers. He figured it would take Linguistics a full year even to figure out the alphabet of the alien tongue. The Chinese- and Cyrillic-looking characters had no rhyme or reason based on Pete’s limited expertise. He wandered from screen to screen, his eyes fixed on what appeared to be a star field. Perhaps it was a photograph, though if it was he didn’t immediately recognize the position of the stars. As his eyes roamed over the recovered material he saw another photograph taken from the Moon. He did see something familiar in this one. It was obviously Earth. He could see what looked like the west coast of North America, but that was as far as the recognition went. The rest of the globe was covered in clouds. Pete then looked more closely at the small un-detailed photo and corrected himself.
“Not regular clouds.” he mumbled under his breath. “Looks like steam, smoke, maybe even ash.” He stepped up to Virginia, who was busy arguing with a supervisor from Linguistics about the very problems Pete had thought about a moment before-the fact that they had little time to decipher the alien tongue.
Pete tapped Virginia on the shoulder and nodded his head toward an empty Europa terminal.
“Just take your linguistics team, Professor, and start trying to figure the common wordage of repeated phrases. You may have better luck in the short time we have,” she ordered, watching Pete for a moment before joining him.
“What is it, Pete?” she asked finally, stepping up to the desk and terminal.
“This,” he said, typing in a computer command. The small photo of Earth came up. It was only half a shot. He assumed the picture was taken during earthrise, when only half the globe is visible. “What do you make of these?” he said, pointing at the cloud cover.
“Clouds?” she asked, wondering if Pete was on the same level of observation as everyone else.
“I don’t think so. There’s no pattern to normal cloud cover. It looks like steam, smoke, maybe even ash. See the dark tinges embedded in the clouds and the way the center of some of them look deep and funnel-like?”
“Okay, I see it, but that could be moisture, maybe even a hurricane. Hell, Pete, it could be anything. Listen, we’re worried about the Moon at the moment, not Earth,” she said, her words trailing off as she leaned in closer to the flat screen monitor. She saw something she thought was familiar.
“I think it’s volcanic activity on a massive scale,” Pete said as he tapped the screen. “And look at this,” he added, typing in another command for Europa to execute. The picture of the strange-looking star field came up and Pete leaned back in his chair. “Looks familiar, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know. I’m not an astronomer,” Virginia said, once more looking at Pete. She realized he was right about the strange cloud pattern depicted in the photo.
“Look,” he said, pointing at a spot inside the same star field. “That’s Venus.”
“Okay, I’m not an astronomer, but I know enough to tell you you’re mad. It’s not in the right spot. I would say it’s about, oh, maybe a hundred, maybe even two hundred thousand miles from where it should be.”
“Nonetheless, it’s Venus.” Pete began to type and then thought better of it. He reached out and brought the terminal microphone closer to his mouth. “Europa, shut down all inquiries from other terminals and then act on the following requests only.”
“Yes, Dr. Golding-overriding system for singular use.”
As the sexy-voiced computer started shutting down all terminals across the board, they heard the complaints from everyone in the comp center as their stations shut down. With a withering look from Virginia, who still gave Pete Golding a lot of leeway when it came to playing hunches, the operators and her team quieted and watched Pete.
“Europa, clear and enhance photo 112. Can we get an estimation of moisture content in the cloud cover?”
“Attempting to analyze,” Europa said, as the picture of an eclipsed Earth disappeared and then reappeared with grid marks and a multitude of overlaid colors. “In answer to your query, Dr. Golding, the moisture content of cloud cover cannot be analyzed with current data. However, Europa can correct a previous assumption of the objects tagged as clouds.”
Pete smiled and then looked back at Virginia. “Go ahead, Europa.”
“Objects viewed in photograph are of varying thickness. They are indicative of windblown contaminate,
