The Visitors (v1.0)

10. WASHINGTON, D.C

When Dave Porter entered the conference room, the others were there. Some of them had just arrived and were getting settled at their places. The President sat at the head of the table. General Henry Whiteside, army chief of staff, sat at his right hand, John Hammond, White House chief of staff, at his left.

John Clark, the President's military aide, was sitting near the end of the table opposite the President. He pulled out one of the few remaining chairs as an invitation to the press secretary to sit down.

"Thanks, Jack," said Porter, sitting in the chair and pulling it up to the table.

"Dave," asked the President, "is there anything new on the wires?"

"Nothing, sir. I imagine everyone knows that our visitor is chewing up trees and turning them into bales of cellulose."

"Yes, I think everyone does. That news came early this morning. There is nothing else?"

"A lot of copy is moving," said Porter. "Nothing significant. The new object in orbit is getting a fair amount of attention."

"All right, then," said the President, "let's try to figure out what we know of the situation. General, would you care to go first."

"Everything still seems to be quiet," said Whiteside. "The pub-lie has a lot of interest, but there's been no panic. Not so far. It might not take much to set it off, for everyone is keyed up. Tension, I would suspect, is running fairly high, but so far is under control. A few kooks are doing a few outrageous things. There have been demonstrations at some colleges, but good-natured demonstrations. Kids letting off steam. Exuberance, mostly. Out in Minnesota, the state highway patrol has the situation well in hand. Lone Pine has been cordoned off. The public seems to be taking it well enough. No big demand to be allowed to go in. The governor has put the National Guard on alert, but there's been no need as yet to use it. The patrol is allowing the press into Lone Pine. Some photographers and newsmen waded the river early this morning and circulated all around the visitor. Nothing happened. It kept on attending to business, whatever its business may be. I don't mind telling you that we've been concerned about the killing of the barber yesterday, but so far this thing has shown no further hostility. I understand a team of FBI agents from Minneapolis is now at the scene. Perhaps the director has heard from them."

Timothy Jackson, FBI director, said, "Only a preliminary report, Henry. So far as the agents can ascertain, the visitor seems to carry no armament of any sort. Or, at least, nothing that can be recognized as armament. In fact, it has no exterior features at all, nothing mounted on it, nothing sticking out of it."

"Then how did it kill the barber?" asked the President.

"That's what we'd like to know," said Whiteside. "So far, we haven't a clue."

"Steve, you're sending out some men, aren't you?" asked the President.

"They should be there by now," said Dr. Steven Allen, the science advisor. "I expect any minute to hear from them. I must warn you, however, not to expect any quick findings or any startling disclosures. We seem to be dealing with something far outside our normal experience.~~

"Are you saying," asked Marcus \Vhite, the Secretary of State, "that we are dealing with something from space, an extraterrestrial intelligence, perhaps?"

"The tendency at first is always to overstate," said Allen. "There is, I must admit, a temptation to say this is an intelligence from space, but we have no proof yet that it is. It did, undeniably, fall from space, and, as I say, it appears to lie outside all present experience, but, as a scientist, I'm reluctant to make any judgment until at least some results are in.

"You're straddling the fence," said the Secretary of State.

"No, Marcus, just withholding judgment. It would seem unlikely, on the face of it, that it originated on Earth, but as yet we simply do not know. I am encouraged, whatever it may be, by the fact that it does not, so far, seem intent on doing any harm. So far, it's been friendly."

"Cutting down trees is not exactly friendly," said William Sullivan, Secretary of Interior. "Do you realize, Mr. President, that the land where it is engaged in its depredation is a primitive wilderness area. One of the most significant such tracts we have, the most representative of what the primitive wilderness really was like. Some thousands of acres of trees, mostly white pine, still stand there today as they stood before white men came to America. Truly, it is a tragic business."

"It seems to me," said Hammond, "that cutting down trees and separating out the cellulose should be considered a mark of intelligence."

"A well-programmed machine could perform such a task quite easily," said the science advisor.

"But someone or something would have had to program the machine."

"That is true," said Allen.

"I would think," said the Secretary of State, "that the loss of a few trees is a small thing to bemoan in the face of what is taking place."

"From your point of view," said Interior, "that may be true, although from my point of view, I can't agree with you. It's the arrogance of the visitor that bothers me. It's like someone entering a man's backyard and chopping down an apple tree that the owner has cherished for years, or stealing the produce from his garden. Not a simple act of vandalism, but acting as if he had a legal right to chop down the apple tree or to rob the garden."

"We're wasting time," said State, "harping on such small matters. We should be considering our national stance, arriving at some sort of policy. If this visitor of ours out in Minnesota should turn out to be an alien intelligence, we, necessarily, must have a policy to guide our handling of it. We can't be sure it is the only one there is. There may be others waiting to hear from it before coming in. And if others did show up, a policy would be paramount. We must have some idea of how we should act toward them. How are we to treat and view them? I don't mean we have to immediately get down to specifics, for so far we don't know what may be involved, but certainly we should determine some broad guidelines on how we should act under certain possibilities. We have the time now to lay out a policy. If we fail to do so, we'll find ourselves reacting to various kinds of situations and not always to our best interest."

"You are talking like this Minnesota thing is the equivalent of a new nation," said Whiteside. "\Vell, it isn't a nation. We don't know what it is. How can we decide on policy until we know what it is? As a military man, my principal concern is our defense capability against it."

"Defense," said White. "We have no indication so far we stand in need of any sort of defense."

"There's another matter we should be talking about," said Leslie Logan, the CIA man, "and that is security."

"How do you mean, security?" asked State.

"If there is an intelligence involved in the]\finnesota object," said Logan, "if we find that it came from a place that is not the least like Earth, reflecting factors of evolution and development at great variance from those we know on Earth, then there is a possibility we may learn a great deal from it. We would be dealing with an alien intelligence and an alien technology. If we could acquire some of its intelligence and technology, undoubtedly we could adapt some of it to our own needs and to our national advantage. Any study that we make of it must be done with this firmly in mind. I would suggest it would be most unwise to share any such knowledge with the world. We should immediately take steps to ensure that nothing we get from it is allowed to leak to other interests."

"So far," said the Secretary of State, "only one visitor has landed. There may be other landings. If there are, the chances would be very good that some of the landings would take place in other countries. If such should be the situation, it seems to me that we would not be able to squirrel away much knowledge. I think the better course would be to share with the world such knowledge as we can get. If we do this, we then can expect, if there are other landings in other countries, to be in a better position to share in the findings that might be made by others."

"In the first place," said Logan, "we cannot know if there will be other landings. That is a supposition that has been carried too far in this discussion. If there were, not many of the other countries, perhaps none of them, would possess the scientific resources and capabilities that we have to extract knowledge."

"That may be true, but the position you urge would result in

an extremely bad world impression if we should be too obviously selective in sharing knowledge or in making public what we find, if we find anything."

"You can rely on our finding a few facts," said the science advisor

"We could reveal some general findings," said the CIA. "A gesture to world opinion if you think that to our advantage, but I would urge we be in no hurry to do so and that we should be highly selective."

"There is a worldwide interest," said State, "and I am beginning to get some discreet inquiries. Sir Basil, at the British embassy, was on the phone to me this morning. Tomorrow I can expect a call from Dmitri. And others after that. It is my view that it would foster a much better international climate if we were to be aboveboard from the very start. Before too long, we can expect an opinion being expressed that this is not a matter of national concern alone, that it should be international. I would be in favor of issuing an invitation to a panel of world scientists to participate in our observations, studies and assessments."

The CIA man shook his head. "I don't agree at all with you," he said.

"Andy, what have you got to say to all of this?" asked the President.

"I can't comment offhand," said Andrew Rollins, the Attorney General. "So far as I can recall, there is nothing in international law that would apply. There might be something tucked away in some treaties. You'd have to give me a few days."

"You're talking like a lawyer," said State.

"I am a lawyer, Marcus."

"Off the top of your head, then. As a man, not a lawyer. What are your thoughts? Should they go contrary to your precious law books, we'll not hold you to them."

"The thing that strikes me," said Rollins, "is that we have talked about our interests and the world's interests and what sort of policy we should have. Never for a moment have we considered the interests of this visitor of ours. It has dropped in to visit us, whether for good or evil, I don't know. But, until we do know, until we have some indication otherwise, I think that as gracious hosts, we should give it some benefit of doubt."

"Andy," said State, "that is exactly what I have been trying to say. As usual, you say it much better than I could have."

"But it is destroying trees!" wailed Interior.

"While I recognize that we may have some obligation to act the gracious host," said Whiteside, "I still would insist that we must stay alert. We must be on our guard. We are facing something with which we are unfamiliar."

"You still think we may be forced to defend ourselves?" asked State.

"I didn't say that, Marcus. I said we should remain alert."

Porter spoke up. "At the press briefing today, there were a number of questions about the new object in orbit. Wanted to know if we were considering sending a shuttle from the space station to investigate. I could only say that it still was under discussion. Is that still the case? I remember that it was mentioned earlier."

"The shuttle can leave within an hour," said John Crowell, of NASA. "It requires only a presidential order. The station has been alerted and the shuttle crew is standing by."

"How difficult an undertaking would it be?" asked the President.

"A fairly simple exercise," said Crowell. "Both the station and the object are in synchronous orbits, displaced from one another by less than a thousand miles. Using the shuttle for a closer look would seem to be to our advantage. Using the telescope on the station, which is not, as you may know, an astronomical glass, but one of rather limited power, we have been able to pick up some information. The object is much larger than had first been believed. It measures nearly twenty miles in diameter and is five miles thick. In the form of a disc. It seems not to be a single, solid object; rather it is made up of discrete parts."

"The thing that is in the back of everyone's mind, of course," said Porter, "is that it may have something to do with our visitor. That it may be a mother ship."

"I think we should send out a shuttle," said the President, "and find out what it really is." He asked Crowell, "Can you see any danger?"

"Nothing specific that I am aware of," said Crowell. "In the case of an unknown, danger can't be entirely ruled out."

"How do the rest of you feel about it?" asked the President. "See any complications?"

"There may be complications," said the Attorney General, "but it's something we must do. We should know what's out there, what we may have to deal with. But I think the pilot should be ordered to be extremely cautious. Careful to stir up nothing. No overt moves. Absolutely no heroics."

"I agree," said State.

"So do I," said Interior.

A murmur of assent went around the table.