provides so little in return for its gargantuan costs!'
Tench sighed dramatically. 'So little in return? With the exception perhaps of the SETI program, NASA has had enormous returns.'
Sexton was shocked that the mention of SETI had even escaped Tench's lips. Major blunder. Thanks for reminding me. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence was NASA's most abysmal money pit ever. Although NASA had tried to give the project a facelift by renaming it 'Origins' and shuffling some of its objectives, it was still the same losing gamble.
'Marjorie,' Sexton said, taking his opening, 'I'll address SETI only because you mention it.'
Oddly, Tench looked almost eager to hear this.
Sexton cleared his throat. 'Most people are not aware that NASA has been looking for ET for thirty-five years now. And it's a pricey treasure hunt-satellite dish arrays, huge transceivers, millions in salaries to scientists who sit in the dark and listen to blank tape. It's an embarrassing waste of resources.'
'You're saying there's nothing up there?'
'I'm saying that if any other government agency had spent forty-five million over thirty-five years and had not produced one single result, they would have been axed a long time ago.' Sexton paused to let the gravity of the statement settle in. 'After thirty-five years, I think it's pretty obvious we're not going to find extraterrestrial life.'
'And if you're wrong?'
Sexton rolled his eyes. 'Oh, for heavens sake, Ms. Tench, if I'm wrong I'll eat my hat.'
Marjorie Tench locked her jaundiced eyes on Senator Sexton. 'I'll remember you said that, senator.' She smiled for the first time. 'I think we all will.'
Six miles away, inside the Oval Office, President Zach Herney turned off the television and poured himself a drink. As Marjorie Tench had promised, Senator Sexton had taken the bait-hook, line, and sinker.
24
Michael Tolland felt himself beaming empathetically as Rachel Sexton gaped in silence at the fossilized meteorite in her hand. The refined beauty of the woman's face now seemed to dissolve into the expression of innocent wonder-a young girl who had just seen Santa Claus for the first time.
I know just how you feel, he thought.
Tolland had been struck the same way only forty-eight hours ago. He too had been stunned into silence. Even now, the scientific and philosophical implications of the meteorite astounded him, forcing him to rethink everything he had ever believed about nature.
Tolland's oceanographic discoveries included several previously unknown deepwater species, and yet this 'space bug' was another level of breakthrough altogether. Despite Hollywood's propensity for casting extraterrestrials as little green men, astrobiologists and science buffs all agreed that given the sheer numbers and adaptability of earth's insects, extraterrestrial life would in all probability be buglike if it were ever discovered.
Insects were members of the phylum arthropoda-creatures having hard outer skeletons and jointed legs. With over 1.25 million known species and an estimated five hundred thousand still to be classified, earth's 'bugs' outnumbered all of the other animals combined. They made up 95 percent of all the planet's species and an astounding 40 percent of the planet's biomass.
It was not so much the bugs' abundance that impressed as it was their resilience. From the Antarctic ice beetle to Death Valley's sun scorpion, bugs happily inhabited deadly ranges in temperature, dryness, and even pressure. They also had mastered exposure to the most deadly force known in the universe-radiation. Following a nuclear test in 1945, air force officers had donned radiation suits and examined ground zero, only to discover cockroaches and ants happily carrying on as if nothing had happened. Astronomers realized that an arthropod's protective exoskeleton made it a perfectly viable candidate to inhabit the countless radiation-saturated planets where nothing else could live.
It appeared the astrobiologists had been right, Tolland thought. ET is a bug.
Rachel's legs felt weak beneath her. 'I can't… believe it,' she said, turning the fossil in her hands. 'I never thought… '
'Give it some time to sink in,' Tolland said, grinning. 'Took me twenty-four hours to get my feet back under me.'
'I see we have a newcomer,' said an uncharacteristically tall Asian man, walking over to join them.
Corky and Tolland seemed to deflate instantly with the man's arrival. Apparently the moment of magic had been shattered.
'Dr. Wailee Ming,' the man said, introducing himself. 'Chairman of paleontology at UCLA.'
The man carried himself with the pompous rigidity of renaissance aristocracy, continuously stroking the out-of-place bow tie that he wore beneath his knee-length camel-hair coat. Wailee Ming was apparently not one to let a remote setting come in the way of his prim appearance.
'I'm Rachel Sexton.' Her hand was still trembling as she shook Ming's smooth palm. Ming was obviously another of the President's civilian recruits.
'It would be my pleasure, Ms. Sexton,' the paleontologist said, 'to tell you anything you want to know about these fossils.'
'And plenty you don't want to know,' Corky grumbled.
Ming fingered his bow tie. 'My paleontologic specialty is extinct Arthropoda and Mygalomorphae. Obviously the most impressive characteristic of this organism is-'
'-is that it's from another friggin' planet!' Corky interjected.
Ming scowled and cleared his throat. 'The most impressive characteristic of this organism is that it fits perfectly into our Darwinian system of terrestrial taxonomy and classification.'
Rachel glanced up. They can classify this thing? 'You mean kingdom, phylum, species, that sort of thing?'
'Exactly,' Ming said. 'This species, if found on earth, would be classified as the order Isopoda and would fall into a class with about two thousand species of lice.'
'Lice?' she said. 'But it's huge.'
'Taxonomy is not size specific. House cats and tigers are related. Classification is about physiology. This species is clearly a louse: It has a flattened body, seven pairs of legs, and a reproductive pouch identical in structure to wood lice, pill bugs, beach hoppers, sow bugs, and gribbles. The other fossils clearly reveal more specialized-'
'Other fossils?'
Ming glanced at Corky and Tolland. 'She doesn't know?'
Tolland shook his head.
Ming's face brightened instantly. 'Ms. Sexton, you haven't heard the good part yet.'
'There are more fossils,' Corky interjected, clearly trying to steal Ming's thunder. 'Lots more.' Corky scurried over to a large manila envelope and retrieved a folded sheet of oversized paper. He spread it out on the desk in front of Rachel. 'After we drilled some cores, we dropped an x-ray camera down. This is a graphic rendering of the cross section.'
Rachel looked at the x-ray printout on the table, and immediately had to sit down. The three-dimensional cross section of the meteorite was packed with dozens of these bugs.
'Paleolithic records,' Ming said, 'are usually found in heavy concentrations. Often times, mud slides trap organisms en masse, covering nests or entire communities.'
Corky grinned. 'We think the collection in the meteorite represents a nest.' He pointed to one of the bugs on the printout. 'And there's mommy.'
Rachel looked at the specimen in question, and her jaw dropped. The bug looked to be about two feet long.
'Big-ass louse, eh?' Corky said.
