The Question

The Radio Astronomer

Brian Martinson had never seen an astronomical facility so filled with tension.

Radio telescope observatories usually look like the basement of an electronics hobby shop, crammed with humming consoles and jury-rigged wiring, smelling of fried circuit boards and stale pizza, music blaring from computer CD slots—anything from heavy metal to Mahler symphonies.

Today was different. People were still dressed in their usual tropical casual style: their cut-offs and sandals made Martinson feel stuffy in the suit he’d worn for the meeting in Washington. But the Arecibo facility was deathly quiet except for the ever-present buzz of the equipment. Everyone looked terribly uptight, pale, nervous.

After a routine tour of the facility, Martinson settled into the director’s office, where he could look out the window at the huge metal-mesh-covered dish carved into the lush green hillside. Above the thousand-foot-wide reflector dangled the actual antenna, with its exquisitely tuned maser cooled down and ready to go.

The director herself sat at the desk, fidgeting nervously with the desktop computer, busying herself with it for the last few hours to the deadline. She was an older woman, streaks of gray in her buzz-cut hair, bone thin, dressed in a faded pair of cut-off jeans and a T-shirt that hung limply from her narrow shoulders. Martinson wondered how she could keep from shivering in the icy blast coming from the air-conditioning vents.

There were three separate telephone consoles on the desk: one was a direct line to the White House, one a special link to the U.N. Secretary General’s office in New York. Martinson had asked the woman in charge of communications to keep a third line open for Madeleine Dubois, who—for all he knew—was still trying to bring order to the chaotic meeting at NSF headquarters.

He looked at his wristwatch. Four P.M. We’ve got three hours to go. Midnight Greenwich time is seven P.M. here. Three hours.

He felt hungry. A bad sign. Whenever he was really wired tight, he got the nibbles. His overweight problem had started during the final exams of his senior undergrad year and had continued right through graduate school and his post-doc. He kept expecting things to settle down, but the higher he went in the astronomical community the more responsibility he shouldered. And the more pressure he felt the more he felt the urge to munch.

What do I do if the White House tells me one thing and the U.N. something else? he wondered. No, that won’t happen. They’ll work it out between them. Dubois will present the IAU’s recommendation to the President and the Secretary General at the same time.

Across the desk, the director tapped frenetically on her keyboard. What could she be doing? Martinson wondered. Busywork, came his answer. Keeping her fingers moving; it’s better than gnawing your nails.

He turned his squeaking plastic chair to look out the window again. Gazing out at the lush tropical forest beyond the rim of the telescope dish, he tried to calm the rising tension in his own gut. The phone will ring any second now, he told himself. They’ll give you The Question and you send it out to the aliens and that’ll be that.

What if you don’t like their choice? Martinson asked himself. Doesn’t matter. When the White House talks, you listen. The only possible problem would be if Washington and the U.N. aren’t in synch.

The late afternoon calm was shattered by the roar of planes, several of them, flying low. Big planes, from the sound of it. Martinson felt the floor tremble beneath his feet.

The director looked up from her display screen, an angry scowl on her face. “What kind of brain-dead jerks are flying over us? This airspace is restricted!”

Martinson saw the planes: big lumbering four-engined jobs, six of them in two neat vees.

“Goddamned news media,” the director grumbled.

“Six planes?” Martinson countered. “I don’t think so. They looked like military jets.”

“Didn’t see any Air Force stars on ’em.”

“They went by so fast…”

His words died in his throat. Through the window he saw dozens of parachutes dotting the soft blue sky, drifting slowly, gracefully to the ground.

“What the hell?” the director growled.

His heart clutching in his chest, Martinson feared that he knew what was happening.

“Do you have a pair of binoculars handy?” he croaked, surprised at how dry his throat was.

The director wordlessly opened a drawer in her desk, reached in, and handed Martinson a heavy leather case. With fumbling hands he opened it and pulled out a big black set of binoculars.

“Good way to check out the antenna without leaving my office,” she explained, tight-lipped.

Martinson put the lenses to his eyes and adjusted the focus. His hands were shaking so badly now that he had to lean his forearms against the windowsill.

The parachutists came into view. They wore camouflage military uniforms. He could see assault rifles and other weapons slung over their shoulders.

“Parachute troops,” he whispered.

“Why the hell would the army drop parachute soldiers here? What do they think—”

“They’re not ours,” Martinson said. “That’s for sure.”

The director’s eyes went wide. “What do you mean? Whose are they?”

Shaking his head, Martinson said, “I don’t know. But they’re not ours, I’m certain of that.”

“They have to be ours! Who else would…?” She stopped, her mind drawing the picture at last.

Without another word, the director grabbed the phone that linked with Washington and began yelling into it. Martinson licked his lips, made his decision, and headed for the door.

“Where’re you going?” the director yelled at him.

“To stop them,” he yelled back, over his shoulder.

Heart pounding, Martinson raced down the corridor that led to the control center. Wishing he had exercised more and eaten leaner cuisine, he pictured himself expiring of a heart attack before he could get the job done.

More likely you’ll be gunned down by some soldier, he told himself.

He reached the control room at last, bursting through the door, startling the already-nervous kids working the telescope.

“We’re being invaded,” he told them.

“Invaded?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Parachute troops are landing outside. They’ll be coming in here in a couple of minutes.”

“Parachute troops?”

“But why?”

“Who?”

The youngsters at the consoles looked as scared as Martinson felt. He spotted an empty chair, a little typist’s seat off in a corner of the windowless room, and went to it. Wheeling it up to. the main console, Martinson explained: “I don’t know who sent them, but they’re not our own troops. Whoever they are, they want to grab the telescope and send out their own version of The Question. We’ve got to stop them.”

“Stop armed troops?”

“How?”

“By sending out The Question ourselves. If we get off the Question before they march in here, then it doesn’t matter what they want, they’ll be too late.”

“Has Washington sent The Question?”

“No,” Martinson admitted.

“The United Nations?”

He shook his head as he sat at the main console and scanned the dials. “Are we fully powered up?”

“Up and ready,” said the technician seated beside him.

“How do I—”

“We rigged a voice circuit,” the technician said. “Here.”

He picked up a headset and handed it to Martinson, who slipped it over his sweaty hair and clapped the one earphone to his ear. Adjusting the pinsized microphone in front of his lips, he asked, “How do I transmit?”

The technician pointed to a square black button on the console.

“But you don’t have The Question yet,” said an agonized voice from behind him.

Martinson did not reply. He leaned a thumb on the black button.

The door behind him banged open. A heavily-accented voice cried, “You are now our prisoners! You will do as I say!”

Martinson did not turn around. Staring at the black button of the transmitter, he spoke softly into his microphone, four swift whispered words that were amplified by the most powerful radio transmitter on the planet and sent with the speed of light toward the departing alien spacecraft.

Four words. The Question. It was a plea, an entreaty, a prayer from the depths of Martinson’s soul, a supplication that was the only question he could think of that made any sense, that gave the human race any hope for the future:

“How do we decide?”

With thanks, once again, to Michael Bienes.