“SETI” Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Chapters 25 & 26
25
There was nothing more Sam could do. His new IC’s wouldn’t be ready for several more days. He still hadn’t determined how he would receive and process the data from the Tau Ceti signal source. Richard Redden? There were no reports from the police or JPL. Richard had simply vanished. Sam would have to think about the immediate future.
He drove to where he could think best, the Anza-Borrego Desert. It was a refuge for him, a place where he could be alone and prowl the parched hills in search of whatever it was he sought, be it peace or contentment or understanding.
Sam drove slowly through the small mountain community of Julian, the gateway to the Anza-Borrego. Every time he passed through the quaint town, which looked more like a sparsely populated Rocky Mountain community than like an outpost on the edge of the Mojave Desert, he felt as though a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders. The crush of people and events was far behind him. It was just him and the coyotes, the antelopes, the cougars, the deer, and the great horned owl. Stretched out before him that bright, crisp midweek morning were rugged mountains and 1,000 square miles of protected wilderness that contained countless species of birds, mammals, insects, and reptiles.
To most people, the desert was silent and desolate. But Sam heard the sounds of life in the desert and was able to distinguish species that were invisible to the untrained eye. Even at the Indian Sand Dunes, which he and his father frequently visited, Sam would find an area teeming with life.
Sam stayed on Highway 78, the main route into the park, as he looked for the turnoff that would lead him north past the Tamarisk Grove campground and past the crowded visitor center and Borrego Palm Canyon campground.
The thunderstorm had washed the air clean of dust and debris. The chaparral was etched sharply against the clear blue sky, and the winding canyons displayed their grotesque rock formations with particular clarity. Sam was in another world, as far away as the far side of the Moon, trying to suppress his dilemma. He didn’t know who or what was trying to contact him from deep space.
He turned sharply onto State Road S3. S22 wouldn’t be far . . . but how would he reestablish the contact without equipment?
He turned his view to the edge of the road. A large roadrunner and her small baby dashed across his path, running with their long tails stretched parallel to the ground. What odd creatures, Sam thought — birds that feed on geckos and small snakes, and rarely fly.
The narrow asphalt road intersected with S22. He turned right. His goal was not that far away. There were few cars passing him or in going the other direction and he saw no other humans on the desert floor, in the canyons, or in the hills. A midweek day in the fall was the best time to go to the desert, Sam thought. He could be alone. He would be undisturbed.
The elevation began to rise. Sam thought of Lisa as the road took him around one mountain outcropping, then another. He looked down to his right and saw the Borrego Badlands. The rising high-angle sun began to obscure the shadows, which made it easier to see features in the maze of ravines and flat creek beds below.
Finally, Sam reached the turnoff to Font’s Point, which was well-marked and featured in almost every park publication as a point of interest. Sam hoped that on that day, however, he could explore the narrow ledge and mesa by himself.
He parked at the side of the road and, reaching behind his seat, pulled out a backpack filled with the essential gear that experienced backpackers and hikers carried. A bite of lunch, an adequate supply of water, and a small pair of binoculars would keep him happy and occupied for some time.
A twisted path beckoned upward. Sam walked up it one careful step at a time, avoiding the nearby boulders and brush, the hiding places of the rattlesnake and the scorpion. His steps were measured but confident. He’d had years of experience in exploring the Anza-Borrego hills.
He finally reached the plateau and stepped forward to the edge and the sharp drop-off. There was no need for guardrails; if a hiker or backpacker knew enough about his craft to reach that point, he had sense enough to know how close to the edge he could go. Sam could go to the limit. He caught his breath and scanned the undulating hills below, their shapes carved by wind, rain, and erosion over thousands of years. No sculptor could copy the features of the ravines that plummeted from unnamed hills.
Sam found the flat rock that he had claimed as his and sat on it. He easily slipped off his worn leather backpack and put it behind him. Then he wrapped his arms around his raised knee and surveyed the creek beds, almost devoid of vegetation. He turned to his left and scanned the rising, then falling outline of the arid Santa Rosa Mountains to the north.
He sniffed the air. It smelled of sage. He heard the fluctuating buzzing of a bee. Looking to the south, he noticed a broad band of cumulonimbus clouds moving in. Another tropical storm from the waters of Mexico? Perhaps, but not until later, much later. Maybe tonight. Maybe not at all, if it slipped up the coast and to Los Angeles or Santa Barbara, or even turned away and died in the cooler northern waters.
Sam tried to concentrate on his environment. He leaned back against his backpack and gazed into the sky. The humidity, fueled by the thermal columns of heat rising from the desert floor, was causing the formation of cumulus clouds — sure signs of heavy amounts of moisture still in the air. He watched several large formations expand and mushroom. They were pure white and shaped like balls of cotton, but thicker, firmer. One section of the formation would grow; then a different section would suddenly blossom.
He tried to concentrate on the beauty around him, but his thoughts always went back to the signal, to Richard, and to Lisa. He wished she were lying next to him. He wanted to hold her. He closed his eyes and imagined what it would be like to touch her soft skin and smell her delicate perfume.
Again, however, his thoughts were interrupted by thoughts of the signal.
Sam began to think about the improbable. He had heard the television interviews and read the books about the “visitors,” the abductions, and the sometimes painful medical experiments. He speculated about how he would handle abduction, confinement, and experimentation. He would fight back. No, he would question the aliens. Who? What? Why? Where? How? He would want to know as much as possible as quickly as possible.
Parallel universes, mirror realities, and astral planes — good God, what can one believe to be real, or unreal? The line between reality and fantasy was as fuzzy as the line between wakefulness and sleep.
Openings in time and reality, slits in the universal fabric of time and space, where alien beings could slip in and out? C’mon. But what if?
But Sam was certain of one thing: the signal he had received was no hallucination, no fantasy. The hard proof was there on disk and tape. He had heard the signal. Sam knew that he had been fully awake and alert when he heard those signals. And with him to confirm his discovery was his best friend, Efrim, and his new friend, Lisa. For them, the experience was just as real.
He had been contacted for a specific reason. He did not know what that reason was, but he could not and would not let Richard Redden’s jealousy and hate interfere. He would find a way to reestablish contact and assert his role in the unfolding drama of which he was an integral part. It was his SETI signal and his alone. It was directed at him and meant for him. It was his, and he would solve its mysteries.
Sam took a deep breath, then sat up. The sun had reached its zenith, and the growling in the stomach reminded him that he had skipped breakfast.
He enjoyed his chicken sandwich, chips, and apple, then spent the next several hours exploring the escarpments in and around Font’s Point. Sam could hear rustling in the creosote bushes and the white burroweed. He suspected that the source was a kangaroo or black-footed mouse. Perhaps a Gambel quail was scratching for seeds. He had seen the desert sparrow and a lone Scott oriole earlier in the day. The variety of life diverted his attention from his problems.
Late in the afternoon, Sam drove south, past Ocotillo Wells, to view the sunset among the elephant trees. Among those puffy-looking squat trees along a hillside trail, he gave ample room to Ocotillo, Beaver Tail, and Deerhorn cacti. A cactus thorn was painful, but the fruit from the purple bud of the prickly-pear cactus was sweet and juicy. The bulb tasted like kiwifruit, only more tart, more like raspberry.
Sam was getting hungry again as darkness began to cover the Anza-Borrego. He knew that the Moon be new that night. There would be only the light of the stars and the small flashlight he always carried in his backpack to help him find his way back to the parking lot at the head of Elephant Trees Nature Trail several miles away.
He wanted to continue on toward Split Mountain. He looked ahead and saw its outline against a nearby black sky. It would be invisible soon, and he had no intention of adding the venomous bite of Crotalus cerastes, the sidewinder, to his troubles. He knew that the small but hot-tempered, quick-to-strike snake hunted at night, and Sam did not want to stand between the sidewinder and his prey.
It was time to go home. He turned and glanced southward at what he thought was lightning on the horizon. There was no thunder yet. But judging by the rapid buildup of the clouds marching northward, his earlier suspicion that another tropical storm was moving into California had been correct. Sam took quicker steps along the familiar trail. He looked over his shoulder and saw the first star of the evening. He didn’t know why he had turned to see that particular star, but he closed his eyes and made the most fervent wish he could imagine. He smiled, turned away, and concentrated on the rocky path.
A short walk to his Jeep and a long drive home would lead him to his bed and sleep. He craved both.
From one thousand miles straight up, the view of the squall line approaching the California coast from the south was much clearer. Nearly continuous blue-green lightning deep in the cloud mass was visible.
Also evident were the sounds of data streams being sent from the magenta spacecraft to Earth. The magenta hue was even brighter. Life was coursing through the spacecraft. It was active; it searched and listened, asked questions, and awaited answers.
There was no reply from the intended recipient. How long could unanswered queries be tolerated?
26
The radioman aboard the Navy P-3 Orion submarine hunter squeezed between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats. He pulled down his heavy David Clark headphones and put a map in front of Capt. Mark Stephens. The veteran Navy pilot listened to his radioman over the din of the four screaming turbo-prop engines. No amount of insulation could adequately quiet the noisy cockpit.
“Captain, you wanted me to tell you when we were there,” the radioman shouted.
“And lemme guess, Miller — we’re there,” Stephens said.
Miller pointed at the map. “Yes sir. The navigator wanted me to tell you personally. We are at 33 and 120 degrees exactly. We should be over the Provideniya any minute.”
Stephens looked over at his copilot, who was busily looking for Russian “fishing trawler.” “I hope we have enough daylight to spot Ivan and take a couple of shots,” Stephens said.
The copilot strained his eyes, trying to find the small spy ship against the vast dark expanse of the Pacific Ocean. The last rays of sunlight were quickly vanishing. The copilot could see only whitecaps and the outlines of some of the heavier waves that were building in front of the thunderstorms pushing in from the south.
The copilot turned back to Captain Stephens. “Mark, I can’t see shit or shinola down there. It is getting black as peat. Why in the hell didn’t they get us out sooner?”
“Paperwork, my good friend. What else? Orders are on paperwork, and paperwork has to be typed, slowly and carefully at times. Therein lurks the delay — paperwork and orders.”
Stephens grabbed the radioman’s sleeve. “What was the last condition report?”
The radioman thumbed through several pieces of paper on his clipboard. He began to read from one narrow slip, “Sky is fifteen hundred, scattered. Ceiling, eight thousand. Altimeter is twenty-niner seven-niner. Temperature is seven-six. Winds out of one-eight-zero at one-eight gusting two-six.”
Stephens looked out the windshield. “That’s nice. We’re trying to find a Russian pimple in the middle of a huge black ocean. Who thought this one up? Where’s the Nathaniel now?”
The radioman answered, “The frigate Nathaniel is steaming north now off Leucadia at two four knots.”
Stephens thought for a moment. “Well, Ivan is in a seam and will be for a short while until we get a radar fix . . .”
He was interrupted in midsentence by the intercom. “Captain, we have a radar fix at three-zero-five, twenty-five or twenty-six from out present position.”
Stephens turned to the radioman. “Mr. Miller, ask and ye shall receive.”
Genady Mirotshinov was wedged between the greasy gearbox at his right and the equally dirty bulkhead at his left. He watched and listened intently as Chief Engineer Edouard Perchora went through his litany of difficulties in repositioning the transmission and gearing controls for the giant forward satellite dish. Perchora’s flashlight bounced from one oil-stained lever to another, resting occasionally on gear as large as a man.
Mirotshinov furrowed his brow, then shook his head in disgust. “Chief Engineer Perchora, I hate to stop this dissertation on the engineering complexities of your task, but you lost me long ago. All I need to know is, can you be up and ready within three hours? That’s when we’ll be on station.”
Perchora looked around from his position on a ledge just under the massive gearbox.
“My friend, I have been working thirty-three hours straight just on the gimbal frame, which may or may not be able to hold the dish on target in these heavy, building seas. The gear mechanism must be adjusted to handle the wide swings it was not designed to dampen. I can only work so fast, and there is much to do.”
Mirotshinov’s patience was at an end. “Yes or no, chief engineer? I must tell Moscow. Can we be ready?”
“Yes, comrade captain, but I can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to hold on target in these seas. The system was designed to intercept transmissions from American terrestrial and satellite communications sources, not from extraterrestrial communication sources deep in the cosmos, comrade captain.”
Mirotshinov pulled himself away from the confining gearbox crawl space and walked toward the ladder that led to fresh air and the upper deck. He tried to brush a smudge off his lightweight yellow rain gear but succeeded only in rubbing grease farther into the fabric.
He looked back at Perchora. “Just try to finish, chief engineer.” The captain took his first step up the ladder. Hid old bones twinged with pain from the fatigue of staying in a cramped position too long. He stopped and called to Perchora. “And stop calling me ‘comrade captain,’ comrade chief engineer. Captain Mirotshinov is sufficient.”
The chief engineer watches his captain climb the stairs. He mentally noted the remark for the crew political fitness log he periodically submitted.
Mirotshinov quickly closed the forward hatch and walked along the deck toward the bridge. Young seaman Inaiyev, who was finally warm, his color back to normal, ran up to the captain and saluted.
“Captain, radar had just picked up an American P-3, coming in at approximately two hundred and fifty knots. They will be here any moment.”
Mirotshinov looked up at the moonless sky, covered with a layer of clouds. He stepped to the rail, nearly losing his balance on the pitching deck. The seas were higher than they had been in Alaska and much, much rougher.
“They will see us, but with this dark cloudy sky they will not see much. And their frigate — where is it?”
“IP in one hour near our station, sir.”
“Wonderful. Then we will have company,” Mirotshinov held up his forefinger, “in international waters, thank God, to watch us make fools of ourselves as we try to hold a bead on some wild, imaginary transmissions from the deepest parts of the cosmos.”
“Thank who, sir?”
