By James Tiptree, Jr.
[05 feb 2001 – scanned for #bookz, proofread and released – v1]
James Tiptree, Jr. is now known to be the pen‑name of Alice Sheldon, a woman of many talents who was connected with the CIA's photographic identification section. She took her own life early in 1987, having pondered the tragedy of her invalid husband. This story, dealing with the whole question of God and the gods of antiquity, was one of her last. It was written surely during the long period when she was contemplating her own death‑and what came after‑something that is noticeable in other short stories of hers in that time. In some ways there is a curiously light touch to her thoughts as shown in this tale‑‑even though it deals with a basic problem which has disturbed people since earliest days of human existence.
I didn't mean to start like this, I wanted to make it a nice formal Appendix, or Addendum, to the official Archives. The account of man's first contact with aliens: what really happened.
But I can't find any bound copies of the White Book, not even in the President's office. Except one somebody got mustard all over and another piece the rats got at. What I suspect, what I think is, they never finished it. All I can find is some empty cover‑boxes, so I'm going to put these discs in one of those so people will know it's important.
After all, I am the official Archivist-‑I typed the promotion myself when Hattie went. I'm Theodora Tanton, Chief NASA Archivist. And I'm seventy‑six years old, as of this morning. So is everybody,
old‑‑everybody who can remember, that is. So who's going to hear it, anyway? You with your six fingers or two heads or whatever?
You'll be around, though. They promised us that, that we wouldn't blow ourselves up. They said they fixed it. And I believe them. Not because I believe them exactly, but because I think they just might want to come back someday and find more than ashes.
They didn't command us not to fire atomic weapons, by the way. I guess they knew by that time that when a god commands Don't Eat Those Apples, or Don't Open This Box-‑it's the first thing men'll do. (And manage to blame it on a woman, too, if you'll notice. But I disgress.)
Nope, they just said, "We fixed that." Maybe the Russians have found out what they did by this time. Or the Israelis. What's left of the Pentagon is too scared to try. So, Hello, Posterity.
This is about what really happened, to add to the White Book, if you ever find one‑ooops, that was a rat. I have a Coleman lantern, and a hockey stick for the rats.
Start with First Contact.
First Contact took place on Mars, with the men of the First Mars Mission. The two who had landed, that is. The command module pilot, Reverend Perry Danforth, was just flying orbits, looking down and seeing peculiar things. Meeting them on Mars confused everybody for a while. They were not Martians.
The best account of the meeting is from Mission Control. I found a man who had been a boy there, sort of a gofer. In that big room with all the terminals‑-you've seen it a million times on TV if you watched space stuff. So this first bit is dictated live by Kevin (Red) Blake, now aged 99.5 years.
But before him I want to say a word about how everything was. So normal. Nothing sinister or dramatic going on. Like in a ship that's slowly, very slowly, listing to one side, only nobody's mentioning it. That's all underneath. But little things give it away, like this one Kevin told me before they landed.
It was a long trip, see, two years plus. They were all in the command module, called Mars Eagle. James Aruppa, commanding, and Todd Fiske, and the Reverend Perry, who wasn't going to get to land. (Personally, I'd have broken Todd's arm or something, if I'd been Perry, so I could get to land. Imagine getting so close‑and then flying circles for a week while the others are on Mars! But he acted perfectly happy about it. He even made a joke about being "the most expensive valet parking service ever." Very cooperative and one‑for‑all, the Reverend. I never did find out exactly what he was the Reverend of; maybe it was only a nickname.)
Anyway about five or six months out, at a time when they were supposed to be fast asleep, they called Mission Control. "Are you all right back there?"
"Sure, everything's nominal here. What's with you?"
Well, it turned out that they'd seen this flash, some trick rock reflection or something that made a burst of light right where Earth was. And they thought it was missiles, see, World War III starting . . . anybody would've, in those days. That's what I mean by the feelings just underneath. But nobody ever said a gloomy word, on top.
There were other things underneath, of course, different for different people, all adding up to The End. But this is no place to talk about the old days; it's all changed now. So that's that, and now here comes Kevin:
"I can remember it like it was yesterday. All morning had been occupied with the Lander carrying Todd and Jim Aruppa coming down and finding a flat place. I nearly got thrown out of the control room for sticking my head in people's way to catch a glimpse of a screen while I was bringing stuff. The amount of coffee those NASA boys put away! And some of them ate‑-one man ate seven egg sandwiches‑-they were all keyed up like crazy. All right, I'll stick to the point. I know what you want to hear.
"So by then it was coming pitch dark on Mars, only the Lander's lights glaring on a pebbly plain with cracks in it. The computer colored it red, I guess it was. Mission Control wouldn't let them get out then. They were ordered to sleep until it got full light again. Ten hours ... Imagine, sleeping your first night on Mars!
"The last thing was, Perry up in the command module reported a glow of light on the eastern horizon. It wasn't a moon rising‑we'd already seen one of those. A little greenish crescent, going like crazy.
"So during the night Perry was supposed to check on what might be glowing toward the east‑a volcano, maybe? But by the time he came around to where he could see the place again, the glow had faded to nearly nothing, and next trip there was nothing at all to see.
"At this time a relief crew was on the CRTs in Mission Control, but every so often one of the men who were supposed to be sleeping in their quarters next door would come in and just stare at the screens for a few minutes. All you could see was a faint, jagged horizon line, and then the stars began.
"First light was supposed to be at 5:50 A.M. our time (see, I even remember numbers!) and by that time the whole day crew was back in the room, everybody all mixed together, and all wanting coffee and Danishes.
"On the screens the sky was getting just a little lighter, so the horizon looked sharper and darker until suddenly a faint lightness came on the ground plain in front of the mountains. And then came a minute I'll never forget. Like the whole room was holding its breath, only whispering or rustling a little around their dark screens. And then Eggy Stone yelled out loud and clear:
"'There's something there! It's big! Oh, man!'
"That made it official, what the sharp‑eyed ones thought they'd been picking up but couldn't believe, and everybody was jabbering at once. And the voices of the astronauts cutting through everything, with that four‑and‑a‑half‑minute lag, about how this Thing was sitting in front of them unlit, unmoving, no indication of how it had come there, whether it crawled or flew in or bored up out of the ground. Of course, they thought it was Martians.
"What it was was a great big, say fifty‑meter‑long, dumbbell shape lying there about a hundred meters in front of their main window. It was two huge spheroids, or hexasomethings, connected by one big fat center bar‑really like a dumbbell. Only in the middle of the connection was a chamber, say three meters each way. We could see right in because its whole front side was folded back like a big gullwing door. It appeared to be padded inside. The computer called it light blue, with two rust‑colored lumps like cushion seats back on the floor inside.
"And both of the big dumbbell chambers at the ends had like windows spaced all around them.
"And filling the window of the end nearest us, the window we could see into, was something moving or flickering slightly, something shiny and lighter blue. It took a second or two to recognize it, because of its size-‑it was over a meter long, almost round.
"It was an eye. A great, humongous, living eye, blue with a white rim. And looking at us.
"Like the creature it belonged to was so big it was all curled up inside its compartment, with its eye pressed to the glass. For some reason, right from the start we knew that the creature, or being, or whatever, had only one central eye.
"In addition to looking at us-‑that is, at the camera most of the time, the eye was also swiveling to examine the Lander and every thing around.
"Now all through the excitement Todd and Jim in the Lander were trying to tell us something. I wasn't in on this, but whenever I could get near Voice Contact I heard things like, 'We are not crazy! I tell you we are not crazy; it's talking in our heads. Yes, in English. We get two words very distinctly: peace and welcome. Over and over. And we are not out of our minds; if I could figure a way to get this on the caller you'd hear‑-'
"They sounded madder and madder. I guess Mission Control was giving them a hard time, especially General Streiter, who was sure it was a Soviet Commie trick of some kind. And of course there was no way for them to get a mental voice on the antennae. But then the aliens apparently solved that for themselves. Just as Jim was saying for the tenth time that he wasn't crazy or hadn't drunk too much coffee, all our communications went blooie for a minute and then this great big quiet voice drowned everything.
" 'PEACE . . .' it said. And then, 'WELL‑COME!'
"Something about the voice, its tone, made Mission Control sound for a minute like a‑well, like a cathedral. 'PEACE! . . . WELCOME! . . . PEACE . . . FRIENDS . . .'
"And then it added, very gentle and majestic, 'COME . . . COME . . .'
"And Mission Control became aware that Todd and Jim were preparing to go out of the Lander.
"Pandemonium!
"Well, I'll skip all this bit where Mission Control was ordering them to stay inside, on no account to even put a hand out, to unsuit--Jim and Todd were calmly suiting up-‑and anything else they could think of and General Streiter ordering court‑martials for everybody in sight, on Mars or Earth-‑it even went so far as getting the President out of bed to come and countermand them in person. I found out afterward that the poor man got so mixed up he thought they were refusing to go out onto Mars, and he was supposed to tell them to! And all with this four‑and‑a‑half‑minute lag, and this great hushy voice blanking everything out with 'PEACE . . . WELCOME...'
"Until finally it was obvious even to the general that nothing could be done, that forty‑four million miles away two Earthmen were about to walk out onto Mars and confront The Alien."
(This is Theodora putting in a word here. See, everyone had been so convinced that there was no life on Mars above something like lichen that absolutely no instructions had been thought up for meeting large‑scale sentient life, let alone with telepathic communications.)
"Well, they evacuated the air, and as they went to go down the ladder, Jim Aruppa grabbed Todd, and we could hear him saying in his helmet, 'Remember, you bastard) Count cadence now!'
"And nobody knew what that was until we found out there'd been this private arrangement between the two men. After all those months together, see, Jim wasn't going to take all the glory for being the First Man on Mars. As he put it to Todd, 'Who was the second man to step onto the moon?' And Todd had to guess twice, and nobody else knew either. And Jim wasn't going to let that happen again. So he ordered Todd to descend in sync with him and make an absolutely simultaneous first‑foot‑down. That was one of the little squabbles that kept Mission Control lively all those two years. Some kind of guy, Jim.
"So there they were counting cadence down the ladder to Mars--to Mars, man!-‑with this alien Thing a hundred yards away staring at them.
"And they walked over to it slowly and carefully, looking at everything, the eye following them. And there were no sign of how it had possibly moved there except by some kind of very gentle flight. But no machinery, nothing at all but these two big hexagonal spheroids with windows. And the compartment between. The first word Jim sent back was, 'It seems to be entirely nonmetallic. Not plastic, either. More like a-‑like a smooth shiny dry pod, with windows set in. The frames are non‑metallic too.'
"And then they got to where they could see the windows on the farther‑off spheroid‑-and there was another eye looking out at them from it!
"It seemed exactly like the first eye, only slightly larger and paler. The flesh around the eyes registered blue too, by the way‑-and there was no sign of eyelashes.
"And then both Jim and Todd claimed that this eye winked at them and Mission Control went back to calling them crazy.
"When they got back in front, by the open compartment, they made signals as though they were hearing something. And then the voice we could hear via radio changed too. 'Come,' it said in sort of grand‑friendly tones. 'Come . . . Please come in. Come with, say hello friends.'
"Well, that sent Mission Control into a new spasm of countercommands, in the midst of which the two men set the camera on its tripod outside, and walked into the open alien compartment, bouncing a little on the padded floor. Then they turned around to face us, and sat down on the seat‑cushion‑looking things. And at that the big overhead door slid smoothly forward and down and closed them in. It had a window in it-‑in fact it was mostly window. But before anybody could think of any reaction to that, it opened up again halfway, and Todd and Jim stepped out. Four and a half minutes later we heard, 'They say to bring food for one day.'
"And the men went back up into the Lander to collect supplies.
"Somehow the ordinariness, or what you might call considerateness of this just took the wind out of a lot of angry lungs.
" 'No water necessary, they say,' Jim Aruppa told us as they climbed back out of the Under. 'But we brought some just in case. I never thought I'd be glad to see a can of Tab.' He grinned, holding up his little camp basin. 'But we can at least wash our hands in it.'
" 'Jeez, it's getting like a god‑forsaken picnic!' Eggy Stone shouted over the general uproar.
"Well, the door snapped open and shut down again. We could see them through the window, waving. And then the thing simply lifted up quietly and flew like magic toward and over the camera, and over the Lander, and we couldn't pick it up again. And that was absolutely all for thirty‑six long hours, until--
"-‑Say, Miz Tanton, haven't you got the tape of what they said when they came back? I just can't talk one word more."
So here's a break. All this next part I put together from Jim and Todd's report‑tapes of their trip, plus the officially cleaned‑up version of it that was in the Times. I found a stack of archive tape dupes in the janitor's cubby.
But before that, I should say that the Reverend Perry had been busy, up in the Martian sky. Mission Control at least had one astronaut who would take orders, and they'd told him to try to check out where the Thing had come from during the night. So he got busy with his 'scopes and sensors, and about the time Jim and Todd were going back for their chow, he had a report. A Martian building, or structure, "like a big mound of bubbles," was located in the foothills of Mount Eleuthera to the east. But as a city it was strange‑-it had no suburbs, no streets, not much internal differentiation, and no roads leading to or away. (Of course not; we know now it was a ship.)
So when the flying dumbbell bearing the two humans went off NASA's cameras, Perry knew where to try to pick them up. And by the way, although Perry was obedient to orders, he too was acting strange. He didn't volunteer anything, but on direct questioning he admitted that he was hearing voices in his head‑-at first he said something about a "ringing in his ears" -‑and when the aliens' voices cut in on the radio wavelength, Perry pulled himself down to his knees and NASA could see enough to realize he was both trying to pray and weep. This didn't disturb them overmuch-‑considering what else was going on-‑because the Reverend was known to indulge in short prayers whenever some special marvel of space came up, and he was addicted to brief thanksgivings at any lucky break. He was quite unselfconscious about this, and it never interfered with his efficiency, so maybe NASA figured they were covering all bets by having him along. General Streiter asked him if he was all right.
"I shall say no more about this now, General," Perry replied. "I recognized it is inappropriate to this phase of our mission. But I sincerely believe we have contacted a . . . a Higher Power, and that some very great good may come of this if we prove worthy."
Streiter took this in silence; he knew Perry as a congenial fellow Commie‑hater, and he had expected him to see Red skulduggery in the sudden materialization of the Thing. But Perry seemed to be taking another tack; the general respected him enough to let him be.
So back to Todd and Jim, who were being flown silently, magically, over the Martian landscape. They were at the big door‑window. The lift‑off was so gentle that Jim said he wouldn't have known they were moving if he hadn't been looking out. This reassured them about the absence of any straps or body‑holds in the padded compartment they had entered.
They were of course looking for a city or town, or at least the openings of tunnels, and the "mound of bubbles" Perry was reporting took them by surprise. Near the top of the mound was an opening where a sphere or two seemed to be missing; as they came over it, they saw that their craft exactly fitted in. Forward motion ceased quietly, and with a soft, non‑metallic brushing sound the modules that carried them dropped into the empty slots. Todd was inspired. "Hey, that's all one huge ship‑and this is a dinghy!''
His mind had broadcast the right picture. "Yess!" the aliens chorused, "our ship!''
Before they could see anything of the interior, a side window in their compartment opened, and a light blue, leathery‑looking trunk or tentacle about the size of a fire hose appeared. "Hello!" said the voice in their heads clearly.
"Hello," they said aloud.
The tentacle extended itself towards Jim's hand. Involuntarily he drew back. "Hello? Hello? Friendsl" said the soundless voice. "Touch?"
Gingerly Jim extended his hand, and to his surprise, after a little confusion, the contact the alien wanted was achieved.
"It wants to shake hands!" Jim exclaimed to Todd.
"Yes! Friends! Shake!" And a similar window in the opposite wall opened, revealing the other alien. Its tentacle was larger, more wrinkled, and lighter blue. "Friends?"
A round of enthusiastic handshaking ensued. Then the second alien wanted something more. Its tentacle's tip pulled clumsily but gently at Todd's glove, and he got a confused message about taking it off and speaking.
When Todd got his glove off and took the alien's flesh barehanded, he gasped and seemed to stagger.
"What's wrong? Todd?"
...
widez2