longer reflective, still lay clutched by the tether’s grabber-hand. Gerald tried to calm his racing pulse. It had felt, briefly, like some kind of deliberate attack!
As if on cue, there came a clear, ringing sound. A call from Earth, with General Akana Hideoshi’s message tone.
Gerald thought furiously. There were ways to do what he just saw. Smart materials could be programmed to change reflectance in a phased array pattern that mimicked a concave surface. It took aintelligence though, especially in rapid response to changing external stimuli. The object must have somehow sensed and responded to the crawler’s presence.
Knowing that he had just moments, he ordered the crawler forward the rest of the way.
“It has onboard sensing and response capability,” he said. “And sophisticated control over its surface-”
Gerald dimmed the spotlight a little, in case the object did something like that again-but also ordered the extender arm to bring its camera forward. Now he could tell, the specimen really was smooth sided, though with a cluster of small bulges at one end, of unknown purpose. Gerald could not judge exactly where the object’s boundary gave way to the blackness of space. Glassy reflections rippled fields of starlight, or Earthshine from below, almost like a wavy liquid, creating a maze of shifting glitters that vexed human perception. Even image analysis produced an uncertain outline.
At the nearest curving surface, he saw a reflection of the crawler, dead center, warped as if in a funhouse mirror, though he made out some company and institutional logos on the camera’s housing. NASA, BLiNK, and Canon.
He could sense conflicting parts of Akana’s personality, at war against each other. Curiosity wrangling against career-protection. Nor could he blame her. Astronauts were trained to believe in procedure. In “i”-dotting and “t”- crossing. In being “adult” to the nth degree.
It was something to ponder later or in background as he made the crawler traverse the remaining gap and lift its manipulator arm.
“Do you still think this is some obscure piece of space junk?” he asked the general’s image in the comm screen, now with members of her staff clustered around. Some were evidently in full immersion, staring-with blank irises- while twiddling their hands. Nearby, Ganesh and Saleh had dropped their own duties to join in, with the tourist, Senor Ventana, close behind.
She stopped, as the image changed yet again.
The nearest flank of the object-still offering a reflection of the crawler’s camera-now seemed to ripple. The image warped more than ever. And then, while the lens itself stayed constantly centered, the
Some moved left and others right. One “A” in NASA leapfrogged over a “C” in Canon. The “L” in BLiNK rotated in one direction, then back in the other, tossing the “i” out of its way.
Though Gerald somehow expected it, no new words formed. But letters kept moving about, piling up, shifting, turning upside down, reversing… in a strange dance. He had to cough, suppressing a sudden urge to laugh at the manic ballet.
A member of Akana’s staff commented, with a degree of mental agility that Gerald found stunning:
Another aide answered almost immediately.
Gerald made a mental note. To treat Akana with more respect. Anyone who could hire and keep a staff like this… Her bright guys were outracing his own meager imagination, tracking possibilities. Implications that he let sink in.
The object. Not just an artifact. It was active.
Quasi- living.
Maybe an ai.
Perhaps more.
As they all watched, a new phase commenced. The roman letters began to change, morphing into
… first a series of signs that were variations on a cruciform pattern-sturdy teutonoid pillars and crosses…
… then transforming into more curvaceous figures that squiggled and spiraled…
… followed by glyphs that resembled some slanted, super-intricate version of Chinese ideograms.
“I’m not getting a match with any known language,” commented Ganesh from nearby, waving at virtual objects in front of him, that only he could see. As if in frightened agreement, little Hachi gave a hoot and covered up his eyes.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” answered Saleh, the Malaysian astronaut, her voice tightly focused and low. “Any savvy graphic artist can design programs to create unusual emblems, alphabets, fonts. They do it for movies, all the time.”
He had no doubt that others were starting to share this unnerving possibility, and he felt a need to at least offer one down-to-Earth alternative.
“It could be a hoax. Someone put it there, knowing we’d come along and grab it. That kind of thing has happened before.”
If any of the others thought that strange for him-of all people-to say, they didn’t mention it. The notion floated among the human participants, both on Earth and above, swirling like the letters and symbols that glinted, shifting across the object in front of them.
“Now aren’t you glad you came here, instead of High Hilton?” Ganesh asked Senor Ventana. “Real science. Real discovery! It sure beats big windows and silly nullgee games.” Always the salesman, he added, “Be sure and tell your friends.”
“After this information is cleared for release, of course,” Saleh added quickly.
“Yes, after that.” Ganesh nodded.
The fertilizer magnate agreed absently. “Of course.”
Silence stretched for several minutes, while onlookers watched the object offer a seemingly endless series of alphabets or symbolic systems.
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, and meant it. Suddenly, he felt like an astronaut again. And “team” was a welcome word. The sound of belonging to something much wiser than he could ever be alone.
