“All right, let's begin,” said the President. “This is a joint informal meeting of the National Security Council and what for the time being we're calling the Special Contingency Task Group. I want to impress on all of you that nothing said in this room—I mean nothing—is to be discussed with anyone who isn't here, except for the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President, who are overseas. Yesterday, Dr. der Heer gave most of you a briefing on this unbelievable TV program from the star Vega. It's the view of Dr. der Heer and others”—she looked around the table—”that it's just a fluke that the first television program to get to Vega starred Adolf Hitler. But it's… an embarrassment. I've asked the Director of Central Intelligence to prepare an assessment of any national security implications in all of this. Is there any direct threat from whoever the hell is sending this? Are we going to be in trouble if there's some new message, and some other country decodes it first? But first let me ask, Marvin, does this have anything to do with flying saucers?”
The Director of Central Intelligence, an authoritative man in late middle age, wearing steel-rimmed glasses, summarized. Unidentified Flying Objects, called UFO's, have been of intermittent concern to the CIA and the Air Force, especially in the 50s and 60s, in part because rumors about them might be a means for hostile power to spread confusion or to overload communications channels. A few of the more reliably reported incidents turned out to be penetrations of U. S. air space or overflights of U. S. overseas bases by high-performance aircraft from the Soviet Union or Cuba. Such overflights are a common means of testing a potential adversary's readiness, and the United States had more than its fair share of penetrations, and feints at penetration, of Soviet air space. A Cuban MiG penetrating 200 miles up the Mississippi Basin before being detected was considered undesirable publicity by NORAD. The routine procedure had been for the Air Force to deny that any of its aircraft were in the vicinity of the UFO sighting, and to volunteer nothing about unauthorized penetrations, thus solidifying public mystification. At these explanations, the Air Force Chief of Staff looked marginally uncomfortable but said nothing.
The great majority of UFO reports, the DCI continued, were natural objects misapprehended by the observer. Unconventional or experimental aircraft, automobile headlights reflected off overcast, balloons, birds, luminescent insects, even planets and stars seen under unusual atmospheric conditions, had all been reported as UFO's. A significant number of reports turned out to be hoaxes or real psychiatric delusions.
There had been more than a million UFO sightings reported worldwide since the term “flying saucer” had been invented in the late 40s, and not one of them seemed on good evidence to be connected with an extraterrestrial visitation. But the idea generated powerful emotions, and there were fringe groups and publications, and even some academic scientists, that kept alive the supposed connection between UFO's and life on other worlds. Recent millenarian doctrine included its share of saucer-borne extraterrestrial redeemers. The official Air Force investigation, called in one of its final incarnations Project Blue Book, had been closed down in the 60s for lack of progress, although a low-level continuing interest had been maintained jointly by the Air Force and the CIA. The scientific community had been so convinced there was nothing to it that when Jimmy Carter requested the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to make a comprehensive study of UFO's, NASA uncharacteristically refused a presidential request.
“In fact,” interjected one of the scientists at the table, unfamiliar with the protocol in meetings such as this, “the UFO business has made it more difficult to do serious SETI work.”
“All right.” The President sighed. “Is there anybody around this table who thinks UFO's and this signal from Vega have anything to do with each other?” Der Heer inspected his fingernails. No one spoke.
“Just the same, there's going to be an awful lot of I-told-you-so's from the UFO yo-yos. Marvin, why don't you continue?”
“In 1936, Ms. President, a very faint television signal transmits the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games to a handful of television receivers in the Berlin area. It's an attempt at a public relations coup. It shows the progress and superiority of German technology. There were a few earlier TV transmissions, but all at very low power levels. Actually, we did it before the Germans. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover made a brief television appearance on… April twenty-seventh, 1927. Anyway, the German signal leaves the Earth at the speed of light, and twenty-six years later it arrives on Vega. They sit on the signal for a few years—whoever “they” are —and then send it back to us hugely amplified. Their ability to receive that very weak signal is impressive, and their ability to return it at such high power levels is impressive. There certainly are security implications here. The electronic intelligence community, for example, would like to know how such weak signals can be detected. Those people, or whatever they are, on Vega are certainly more advanced than we are—maybe only a few decades further along, but maybe much further along than that.
“They've given us no other information about themselves—except at some frequencies the transmitted signal doesn't show the Doppler effect from the motion of their planet around their star. They've simplified that data reduction step for us. They're… helpful. So far, nothing of military or any other interest has been received. All they've been saying is that they're good at radio astronomy, they like prime numbers, and they can return our first TV transmission back to us. It couldn't hurt for any other nation to know that.
And remember: All those other countries are receiving this same three-minute Hitler clip, over and over again. They just haven't figured out how to read it yet. The Russians or the Germans or someone is likely to tumble to this polarization modulation sooner or later. My personal impression, Ms. President—I don't know if State agrees—is that it would be better if we released it to the world before we're accused of covering something up. If the situation remains static—with no big change from where we are right now— we could think about making a public announcement, or even releasing that three-minute film clip.
“Incidentally, we haven't been able to find any record from German archives of what was in that original broadcast. We can't be absolutely sure that the people on Vega haven't made some change in the content before sending it back to us. We can recognize Hitler, all right, and the part of the Olympic stadium we see corresponds accurately to Berlin in 1936. But if at that moment Hitler had really been scratching his mustache instead of smiling as in that transmission, we'd have no way to know.”
Ellie arrived slightly breathless, followed by Valerian. They attempted to take obscure chairs against the wall, but der Heer noticed and directed the President's attention to them.
“Dr. arrow-uh-way? I'm glad to see you've arrived safely. First, let me congratulate you on a splendid discovery. Splendid. Um, Marvin…”
“I've reached a stopping point, Ms. President.”
“Good. Dr. Arroway, we understand you have something new. Would you care to tell us about it?”
“Ms. President, sorry to be late, but I think we've just hit the cosmic jackpot. We've.. It's… Let me try and explain it this way: In classical times, thousands of years ago, when parchment was in short supply, people would write over an old parchment, making what's called a palimpsest. There was writing under writing under writing. This signal from Vega is, of course, very strong. As you know, there's the prime numbers, and “underneath” them, in what's called polarization modulation, this eerie Hitler business. But underneath the sequence of prime numbers and underneath the retransmitted Olympic broadcast, we've just uncovered an incredibly rich message—at least we're pretty sure it's a message. As far as we can tell, it's been there all along. We've just detected it. It's weaker than the announcement signal, but I'm embarrassed we didn't find it sooner.”
“What does it say?” the President asked. “What's it about?”
“We haven't the foggiest idea, Ms. President. Some of the people at Project Argus tumbled to it early this morning Washington time. We've been working on it all night.”
“Over an open phone?” asked Kitz.
“With standard commercial encryption.” Ellie looked a little flushed. Opening her telefax case, she quickly generated a transparency printout and, when an overhead projector, cast its image against a screen.
“Here's all we know up to now: We'll get a block of information comprising about a thousand bits.
There'll be a pause, and then the same block will be repeated, bit for bit. Then there'll be another pause, and we'll go on to the next block. It's repeated as well. The repetition of every block is probably to minimize transmission errors. They must think it's very important that we get whatever it is they're saying down accurately. Now, let's call each of these blocks of information a page. Argus is picking up a few dozen of these pages a day. But we don't know what they're about. They're not a simple picture code like the Olympic message. This is something much deeper and much richer. It appears to be, for the first time, information they've generated. The only clue we have so far is that the pages seem to be numbered. At the beginning of every page there's a number in binary arithmetic. See this one here? And every time another pair of identical pages shows up, it's labeled with the next higher number. Right now we're on page…
10,413. It's a big book. Calculating back, it seems that the message began about three months ago. We're
