“SETI” The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Chapters 30 & 31
30
Condon Ranch was still in a state of limbo. The 2,800-acre dormant ranch adjacent to the city limits of Escondido was set for multipurpose development. The Repco Development Company wanted to drop in 1,100 homes, 8 commercial buildings, and a 150-store shopping center. But the plan was being fiercely contested; the environmental-impact study showed that a species of fox and hundreds of oak trees would be devastated in the process. SO the prime property, which once was the working ranch of a Chicago publishing magnate, remained idle. It had inevitably returned to its pristine state. The ranch house, long since boarded up, sat silently, surrounded by overgrown chaparral in a beautiful valley.
Foreman O.B. Temeier’s job — his only job — was to keep away poachers and ensure that the main gate was securely locked at all times. The long-since-retired railroad man from Joplin, Missouri, was intrigued by all the activity on Hunter Hill that morning. It used to be a favorite vantage point for the deceased Midwestern publisher, who could gaze across an expanse of land toward a small town at the bottom of the hill. But Escondido had grown, and the publisher could not recognize it if he could view it once more.
O.B. sat on the front porch of the guest cottage and rocked back and forth, peering through binoculars at the four large white vans he had escorted to the top of Hunter Hill. He had seen dim lights glowing in the vans the night before. In the dark, through the rain, he occasionally saw slender beams of light darting around the equipment. The men and women who were on top of the hill were probably up and working on whatever they were working on all night long.
Prompted by a sudden thought, he stood, tossed the binoculars on the rocking chair, and tightened the belt around his corduroy jeans. He was going to e neighborly and bring those people a treat — and maybe find out what they were up to on “his” hill on “his” ranch.
Charlie Williams had been up all night, and he was glad to see the early-morning sun finally clearing the horizon. He stepped out of NASA command vehicle TC/283–2, a forty-five-foot-long converted recreational vehicle, and onto the soggy plateau overlooking Escondido. To the west, he could see San Diego and the ocean. Three other white trailers of various sizes were parked in a semicircle near the command vehicle. Off to the side, the eighteen technicians had positioned a conglomeration of antennas and satellite dishes. The men and women had been working since their arrival, and they were suffering great lethargy on that chilly, brilliant morning.
A steaming cup of black coffee was the only thing that prevented Charlie from falling over with exhaustion. He moved toward the edge of the plateau and looked back at the NASA contingent. The equipment was now quiet, and the slow movements of the technicians — some sitting on lawn furniture; others curled up inside the trailers, sleeping next to banks of warm reception and transmission equipment — belied their frantic activity of the night before.
Charlie turned back toward the west and pulled his North Face windbreaker a bit tighter around his neck. The dampness of the ground and the clammy air made him feel even colder. He felt the warming sun on his back and looked forward to the day’s heat. He hoped that a comfortable bed awaited him at his La Canada home near the JPL facility. He closed his eyes and imagined his head hitting the soft down pillow nestled on creamy cotton sheets. He opened his eyes again, took another sip of the stinging coffee, and tried to shake off the drowsiness that was beginning to cloud his thinking. Then he heard quick footsteps and turned to see who was approaching.
Larry had been with his group only a few months, and his enthusiasm was intense. But early in the morning, after no sleep, it was hard for even-tempered Charlie to take.
“Oh, shit. Now what?” Charlie whispered, turning back around.
Larry walked around in front of Charlie, blocking his view. Larry was wide awake and fully charged. “I heard that,” he said.
Charlie moved a few steps left and continued to gaze into the distance. He took another sip of coffee and warmed his hands on his mug.
“Good. I hoped you would. Whaddya have, Larry?”
Larry stood next to his boss and looked out at the same view.
“I just got on the horn with JPL, and there’s no word yet on Redden. They don’t know where the devil he is.”
Charlie looked at Larry and smiled. He said, “Gee, that’s too bad. Now tell me something really important.”
“There’s a lot of shit pouring in this morning from all over the place. It’s being pieced together now. But the most important thing” — he paused and handed Charlie a computer-generated map — “is this.”
Charlie squinted at the map. His incisive scientific mind suddenly awoke.
Larry continued, “I did some number-crunching with all the positioning data we processed last night and merged it with a mapping program of the target area I got at Software City.”
“You mean that chain of stores that sells software to civilians in every shopping center in the Southland?”
Charlie was intense now. The adrenaline was flowing. He tried to compare the map with the city below.
“Is this map current?”
“Yes.”
“Are all the streets listed?”
“Yes.”
“Does this look right to you?”
Charlie held the map out. He glances from the map to Escondido, then back to the map.
“Yes,” Larry answered quickly.
O.B.’s battered pickup truck crested the plateau road and stopped behind the two NASA scientists.
O.B. stuck his head out the window. “Good mornin’, Mr. Williams,” he shouted in a friendly voice. The ranch foreman opened the door and reached back inside the truck.
Charlie ignored him. “Larry, get me my binoculars.”
Larry had another surprise; he was hiding them behind his back. He held them out for Charlie. Charlie grabbed them and stepped even closer to the edge of the plateau.
Charlie looked at the map and got his bearings on the streets. The rain had washed away any smog or dust. The “seeing” was perfect, with little heat to distort the view through his binoculars.
Charlie pulled the binoculars to his eyes. He scanned the streets below, looked down at the map, then pulled up the binoculars again. Again, he switched the views until he found Mountain View Road, until he found the Alexander Automotive Garage until he found the Alexander house, and until he found Sam’s roof. He saw the twisted antennas reflecting the brilliant sun. He clearly saw the Alpha and Beta satellite dishes pointed, at what Charlie thought was an impossible angle, toward the Tau Ceti system, which moved in an endless arc across the sky,
He lowered the binoculars and stared down at Escondido. Even without the aid of his powerful 20x80 binoculars, Charlie saw the reflection of the sun on Sam’s antennas — the antennas that had failed to receive the previous night’s transmission, the jumbled transmission that Charlie’s people had detected and recorded in the pouring rain on top of Hunter Hill at the edge of Condon Ranch.
O.B. stepped up to Charlie and held out four pink bakery boxes.
“How’d you boys like some pie?”
31
The air was clean and clear in the La Canada-Flintridge foothills above the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Kenneth Wood tucked his copy of the Los Angeles Times under his arm and swung his briefcase from one hand to the other. He looked up and saw the wide fronds of several Mexican Fan palms waving in the breeze against the clear blue sky.
The door of the reception building closed behind him, and he took a leisurely walk in to the quadrangle, a walk that he loved to take early in the morning. He could hear the wind through the trees and watch the gardeners laboring over their precious beds of marigolds and daisies. He could get a small touch of nature before battling the bureaucratic wars at JPL “central,” listening to complaints from department heads about not having enough money to complete projects, hearing about the slow deliveries by vendors, and fielding requests for interviews.
As he crossed the quad, Kenneth saw a group of ten to twelve engineers and PIO officers. He knew their faces and their jobs, but not their names. They were running down the wide concrete staircase of the administration building toward him. His happy countenance suddenly became defensive. He knew that they weren’t running toward him to give him the cheerful morning greeting. “Have a nice day!” He abruptly stopped walking.
“My God, what is it now?” he whispered.
He watched the thundering herd approach. The first wild-eyes JPL employee to reach him was short, stubby Will Webster, Will was out of breath and hyper compared with the last time Wood saw him, in the staff meeting. He stared down at Will.
“What, Will? What the hell is it?”
Another engineer, sensing that Will wasn’t able to reply quickly enough, pulled Will away. “Ken, all hell is breaking loose.”
A barrage of requests and shouts poured over Kenneth Wood. His attention darted from man to man. He couldn’t understand anyone in the shouting and screaming.
“What? What?” he asked.
“I must talk to you,” Will said breathlessly.
Will was pulled away again, this time by Brian Small, manager of the Public Information Office. “Ken, we gotta talk. Should we release the pictures?”
An assistant of Brian’s leaned into the group surrounding Kenneth.
“My. Wood, the National Enquirer wants to know what color the aliens are. Green, purple, or blue?”
Kenneth was overwhelmed by questions and comments from engineers he did not recognize.
“We know the target of the SETI signals.”
“Should we continue a spectrometry scan?”
“What should I tell the Deep Space Network people to do?”
“Washington wants you to call immediately.”
“Charlie Williams wants to know what to do next. He’s in Escondido, and . . .”
“The police are looking for Richard Redden. LAPD Detective Turner wants you to call down to Parker Center immediately. They say he’s nowhere to . . .”
Wood cut off the questions with the wave of his hand and stepped close to Brian Small. “Mr. Small, don’t you think that the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory should see any pictures first, before anyone else?”
“Well, yes.”
“Including the National Enquirer?”
“Well, yes.”
“Are these the Mauna Kea photos I got a call about in the middle of the night?”
“Well, yes.”
Kenneth turned to Will Webster.
“Will, tell the imaging people to bring whatever they have up to my office right away.”
Will dutifully nodded. Kenneth marched forward and began to climb the stairs quickly and with purpose. He stopped suddenly and turned to Brian Small again.
“Where has Richard been lately, and why in the hell are the police looking for him?”
Kenneth Wood turned the corner and walked into his outer office. As soon as his secretary saw him, she sprang out of her chair and ran over to him. He tried to avoid her by racing to his office door, but she stepped in front of him. Her excitement was running high, consistent with the excitement of every employee at JPL. The large multi button telephone on her desk was constantly ringing; all the lights were blinking.
“Here, Mr. Wood.” She handed him a stack of messages. “Sir, these things have been coming in so fast and furious, I’ve had an awful time just trying to keep up.”
His shoulders dropped. “OK, Peggy. Thanks. I need some tea.”
He grabbed the messages. “Which is the hottest?”
She thought for a minute, then said, “Well, the president called about thirty minutes ago.”
“Which one, Peggy? Rockwell? McDonnell Douglas? Lockheed?”
“No. The United States.”
Kenneth looked away, then back at his secretary. “Yeah. That probably should be the first call, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’d advise it. But you also have Evegeny Romanov calling from Gorki.”
Kenneth turned quickly and bolted into his large, mahogany-paneled office. He threw his briefcase and newspaper on a nearby coffee table and collapsed in his tall chair behind a cherrywood desk.
“I knew it! I knew it!” he shouted.
Peggy entered the office and walked in front of his desk. He ripped open the top button of his shirt and opened the knot on his tie.
“Knew what, sir?”
“The Russians. The fucking Russians. I knew they’d pick up on this.”
He put his hands over his face. “Christ, now what?” he asked through his hands. Then he sat up quickly and leaned on his desk.
“I wonder how much they know,” he said quietly. “Which line, Peggy?”
“Three-four.”
He reached for the phone. Peggy left the office, closing the door behind her.
Kenneth grabbed the handset and put the phone to his ear. He contemplated his approach toward an old colleague of sorts. He pushed the line button.
“Evegeny, is that you? How are you?”
Kenneth heard the deep, slow Russian accent he had heard many times before. Cooperation in the unmanned exploration of space had become an intimate pledge between Soviet and American scientists and administrators. There had been unusual cooperation in the use of the Deep Space Network during the recent pass of Haley’s Comet, and there was more to come.
Wood knew just how far to go with Romanov. There had been quiet moments over Smirnoff or Jack Daniels when they dreamed together about what great things could be accomplished with the Russian heavy-lift capability and the American genius for technology and engineering. In a perfect world, in a perfect time, much could be done toward reaching into the depths of space, exploring the nearby planets, and cooperating on Earth-science studies in space.
Although the climate was improving, these still were not perfect times. Wood knew that his responses would have to be measured and carefully structured, especially since he was talking to the Russians before he had a chance to call the president of the United States. But such was the nature of this SETI signal discovery, he thought. Maybe he could glean some morsel of information or tidbit of data that would help him and his people determine the origin and content of the supposed message from another civilized society before he talked to the president.
But he had to be careful. Pleasantries first, a little naivete’ second. Third, probe for information, and finally try to pick up any overlooked shards of information.
“So tell me, Evelyn, it’s the middle of the night in Grouch? Right?”
“Yes, my friend. And it is the first thing in the morning in Pasadena,” Romanov replied.
“It’s not that early.”
“I tried to call you at home earlier, but your line was busy?”
“Oh, really?” Kenneth thought of playing dumb. But after rapid reflection, he realized that would be a bad idea.
“Yes, Kenneth. When a possible earthbound signal has been sent by an extraterrestrial civilization, directed specifically at your neighborhood near San Diego, I think that requires a call to you in the middle of the night.”
Kenneth took a deep breath and exhaled into the mouthpiece.
Romanov continues, “Yes, my friend, we know. Even the confused old men in the Politburo know. Of course, they don’t know what it means or what should be done. But we do, don’t we?”
“Yes, Evelyn. We most certainly do. You know, of course, that the story has hit the news wires?”
“So I have been told.”
“And you can bet that the leak was on our side.”
“These days, Kenneth, I wouldn’t bet on it. We have a group of people in Australia, and they like to sit and drink with the Australians.”
“To get information?”
“And because they like to drink.”
“OK. Do you want to data-dump me first or should I give you the privilege? I should talk to Washington first, however.”
“That won’t tell you any more about the signal, I can tell you that. You’ll get the same response I got from Moscow. Give us more information, and make sure it is not a hoax.”
Kenneth thought for a moment, considering his next line of questioning. “Which it is not, Evelyn, which it is not.”
“I believe you’re right.”
“So?” Kenneth asked.
“So?” Romanov replied.
There was silence.
Romanov finally broke the silence. “Enough games. We still haven’t cracked the signal text. We, of course, have military surveillance satellites in the area. Which ones, I won’t tell you, of course.”
“Of course.”
“But that won’t do us any good because they are pointed down at you, not up toward Tau Ceti. And the gout-ridden generals won’t let me touch them.”
Kenneth pulled over his yellow legal pad and wrote down his first note. The Russians knew the origins of the signal. That probably would be one of the first questions the president would ask.
Romanov continued through a crash of static on the line. Kenneth thought that the recording analysts at CIA were probably cursing from the sharp pain caused by that volume spike.
“We have a, shall I say, research vessel nearby, just off the coast of San Diego.”
“Obviously studying the gray-whale migration,” Wood said, laughing.
“Obviously. But the sea conditions have made getting a lock on the signal nearly impossible. Data is only sketchy, because the signal keeps popping in and out. We can’t keep a firm lock with our tracking dishes in twelve-to-fifteen-foot seas.”
Kenneth scribed that down as well. Did that mean that in heavy seas they couldn’t track American surveillance satellites?
“We even had some . . . tourists who are visiting your country and enjoying the sights of the California coast, trying to get us some data. But you know it takes a lot of equipment, and with what they got, it was not of any use.”
“Au, gee, that’s too bad. Why don’t you have your ‘tourist’ friend’s stop by for a chat? We can get to meet them and maybe see what they did get.”
“No. Not possible. They are traveling today. The idiots locked onto Epsilon Eridani. These tourists are not astronomers, Kenneth, and they rarely look up at the sky. Mostly at the ground.” There was a long pause.
“Your turn.”
Kenneth let out a long sigh.
“Oh, c’mon, Kenneth. We will find out anyway soon enough.”
“We know the signal strength is greatest in the San Diego area,” Wood said reluctantly. “Precisely where we are still working on.” He bit his tongue. “Why that area, we don’t know. How they, or it, or whatever can focus the beam so narrowly is a mystery. You know, of course, about the triangular purplish object approximately one thousand miles above the California coast. It is obviously involved with this phenomenon.”
“Yes,” Romanov answered. Wood immediately sensed the tentative nature of the answer. But what the hell he thought. He was pleased that the National Enquirer had scooped the KGB, the largest spy organization in the world.
“A fuzzy picture was made from the observatory at Mauna Kea.”
“You know, I’m jealous of that spot. When are you going to take to Washington that proposal for a joint instrument?”
“Evegeny, it’s on the list in Washington.”
“Probably at the bottom. Can you fax me a copy of the picture?”
“That’s no problem. But by the time you get it, it’ll probably be on every evening newscast in this country.”
“That’s fine, but maybe it would be more significant if a copy came directly from you. Politics, Kenneth.”
“I’ll have to get clearance on that one too, but I see no problem. So now what?”
Kenneth knew that volume switches were now being turned up in some dark recording facility in McLean, Virginia and in the bowels of the Kremlin.
“I think that it is important that we form a scientific alliance of our CETI program and your SETI program,” the Russian said. “Working together, we can verify the authenticity of this signal, decode its hidden message, and determine why it is being directed so accurately to one spot on the North American continent. As you know, we have an active and very well-funded CETI program here in the Soviet Union, and it would be good for our two programs and for all of mankind if we worked together on this momentous discovery. Well, what do you say?”
“I say it sounds great. But I will have . . . “
Romanov quickly completed the sentence. “. . . to check with Washington.”
“Right.”
“By the way, has your deputy Richard Redden been found yet?”
Wood sat straight up in his chair. “How in the hell did you know that?”
“When a high executive is sought for a petty burglary in the town of Escondido, it makes a little noise. These kinds of things do appear in police journals, no?”
“Your guys are everywhere.”
“So are yours. But we are both lost when it comes to intelligently handling this historic moment. We cannot let this pass. We cannot let it slip through our fingers because of the stupidity of the politicians. If we cannot respond to this, even though a reply aimed at the Tau Ceti system won’t be received for more than eleven years, we will have committed a sacrilege.”
“A sacrilege? Are you getting religion now, Evegeny?”
“Kenneth, how can you look up into the beauty and majesty of the heavens above our tiny blue glove and not have religion?”
“Quite true, my friend. Quite true.”
