The Listeners Part 1

THE LISTENERS.

James E. Gunn.

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveler, Knocking on the moonlit door. . . .

The voices babbled.

MacDonald heard them and knew that there was meaning in them, that they were trying to communicate and that he could understand them and respond to them if he could only concentrate on what they were saying, but he couldn't bring himself to make the effort. He tried again.

"Back behind everything, lurking like a silent shadow behind the closed door, is the question we can never answer except positively: Is there anybody there?"

That was Bob Adams, eternally the devil's advocate, look- ing querulously at the others around the conference table.

His round face was sweating, although the mahogany-paneled room was cool.

Saunders puffed hard on his pipe. "But that's true of all science. The image of the scientist eliminating all negative possibilities is ridiculous. Can't be done. So he goes ahead on faith and statistical probability."

MacDonald watched the smoke rise above Saunders' head in clouds and wisps until it wavered in the draft from the air duct, thinned out, disappeared. He could not see it, but the odor reached his nostrils. It was an aromatic blend easily distinguishable from the flatter smell of cigarettes being smoked by Adams and some of the others.

Wasn't this their task? MacDonald wondered. To detect the thin smoke of life that drifts through the universe, to separate one trace from another, molecule by molecule, and then force them to reverse their entropic paths into their ordered and meaningful original form.

All the king's horses, and alt the king's men. . . . Life itself is impossible, he thought, but men exist by reversing entropy.

Down the long table cluttered with overflowing ash trays and coffee cups and doodled scratch pads Olsen, said, "We always knew it would be a long search. Not years but cen- turies. The computers must have sufficient data, and that means bits of information approximating the number of molecules in the universe. Let's not chicken out now."

"// seven maids with seven mops Swept it for half a year, Do you suppose," the Walrus said, "That they could get it clear?"

". . . ridiculous," someone was saying, and then Adams broke in, "It's easy for you to talk about centuries when you've been here only three years. Wait until you've been at it for ten years, like I have. Or Mac here who has been on the Project for twenty years and head of it for fifteen."

"What's the use of arguing about something we can't know anything about?" Sonnenborn said reasonably. "We have to base our position on probabilities. Shkiovskii and Sagan esti- mated that there are more than one thousand million habit- able planets in our galaxy alone. Von Hoemer estimated that one in three million have advanced societies in orbit around them; Sagan said one in one hundred thousand. Either way it's good odds that there's somebody therethree hundred or ten thousand in our segment of the universe. Our job is to listen in the right place or in the right way or understand what we hear."

Adams to MacDonald. "What do you say, Mac?"

"I say these basic discussions are good for us," MacDonald said mildly, "and we need to keep reminding ourselves what it is we're doing, or we'll get swallowed in a quicksand of data.

I also say that it's time now to get down to the business at handwhat observations do we make tonight and the rest of the week before our next staff meeting?"

Saunders began, "I think we should make a methodical sweep of. the entire galactic lens, listening on all wave- lengths"

"We've done that a hundred times," said Sonnenborn.

"Not with my new filter"

"Tau Ceti still is the most likely," said Olsen. "Let's really give it a hearing"

MacDonald heard Adams grumbling half to himself, "If there is anybody, and they are trying to communicate, some amateur is going to pick it up on his ham set, decipher it on his James Bond coderule, and leave us sitting here on one hundred million dollars of equipment with egg all over our faces"

"And don't forget," MacDonald said, "tomorrow is Satur- day night and Maria and I will be expecting you all at our place at eight for the customary beer and bull. Those who have more to say can save it for then.."

MacDonald did not feel as jovial as he tried to sound. He did not know whether he could stand another Sat.u.r.day night session of drink and discussion and dissension about the Project. This was one of his low periods when everything seemed to pile up on top of him, and he could not get out from under, or tell anybody how he felt. No matter how he felt, the Sat.u.r.day nights were good for the morale of the others.

Piles no es pmible que est& continue el arco armado ni la condicidn y flaqueza humana se pueda sustenar sin alguna Kcita recreacidn Within the Project, morale was always a problem. Besides, it was good for Maria. She did not get out enough. She needed to see people. And then. . . .

And then maybe Adams was right. Maybe n.o.body was there. Maybe n.o.body was sending signals because there was n.o.body to send signals. Maybe man was all alone in the universe. Alone with G.o.d. Or alone with himself, whichever was worse.

Maybe all the money was being wasted, and the effort, and the preparationall the intelligence and education and ideas being drained away into an endlessly empty cavern.

Habe nun, ach! Philosophic, luristerei und Medizin, Under leider auch Theologie Durchaus studiert, mit heissern Bemiihn.

Da steh' ich nun, ich armer Tor!

Und bin so klug als wie zuvor; Heisse Magister, heisse Doktor gar, Und ziehe schon an die zehen Jahr Herauf, herab und quer und krumm Meine SchUler an der Nose herum Und sehe, doss wir nichts wissen konneni .

Poor fool. Why me? MacDonald thought. Could not some other lead them better, not by the nose but by his real wis- dom? Perhaps all he was good for was the Sat.u.r.day night parties. Perhaps it was time for a change.

He shook himself. It was the endless waiting that wore him down, the waiting for something that did not happen, and the Congressional hearings were coming up again. What could he say that he had not said before? How could he justify a project that already had gone on for nearly fifty years without results and might go on for centuries more?

"Gentlemen," he said briskly, "to our listening posts."

By the time he had settled himself at his disordered desk, Lily was standing beside him.

"Here's last night's computer a.n.a.lysis," she said, putting down in front of him a thin folder. "Reynolds says there's nothing there, but you always want to see it anyway. Here's the transcription of last year's Congressional hearings." A thick binder went on top of the folder. "The correspondence and the actual appropriation measure are in another file if you want them."

MacDonald shook his head.

"There's a form letter here from NASA establis.h.i.+ng the ground rules for this year's budget and a personal letter from Ted Wartinian saying that conditions are really tight and some cuts look inevitable. In fact, he says there's a possibility the Project might be scrubbed."

Lily glanced at him. "Not a chance," MacDonald said confidently.

"There's a few applications for employment. Not as many as we used to get. The letters from school children I answered myself. And there's the usual nut letters from people who've been receiving messages from outer s.p.a.ce, and from one who's had a ride in a UFO. That's what he called itnot a saucer or anything. A feature writer wants to interview you and some others for an article on the Project. I think he's with us. And another one who sounds as if he wants to do an expose."

MacDonald listened patiently. Lily was a wonder. She could handle everything in the office as well as he could. In fact, things might run smoother if he were not around to take up her time.

"They've both sent some questions for you to answer. And Joe wants to talk to you."

"Joe?"

"One of the janitors."

"What does he want?" They couldn't afford to lose a jani- tor. Good janitors were harder to find than astronomers, harder even than electronicians.

"He says he has to talk to you, but I've heard from some of the lunchroom staff that he's been complaining about getting messages on hison his"

"Yes?"

"On his false teeth."

MacDonald sighed. "Pacify him somehow, will you, Lily?

If I talk to him we might lose a janitor."

"I'll do my best. And Mrs. MacDonald called. Said it wasn't important and you needn't call back."

"Call her," MacDonald said. "And, Lilyyou're coming to the party tomorrow night, aren't you?"

"What would I be doing at a party with all the brains?"

"We want you to come. Maria asked particularly. It isn't all shop talk, you know. And there are never enough women.

You might strike it off with one of the young bachelors."

"At my age, Mr. MacDonald? You're just trying to get rid of me."

"Never."

"I'll get Mrs. MacDonald." Lily turned at the door. "I'll think about the party."

MacDonald shuffled through the papers. Down at the bottom was the only one he was interested inthe computer a.n.a.lysis of last night's listening. But he kept it there, on the bottom, as a reward for going through the others. Ted was really worried. Move over, Ted. And then the writers. He supposed he would have to work them in somehow. At least it was part of the fallout to locating the Project in Puerto Rico. n.o.body just dropped in. And the questions. Two of them caught his attention.

How did you come to be named Project Director? That was the friendly one. What are your qualifications to be Director? That was the other. How would he answer them?

Could he answer them at all?

Finally he reached the computer a.n.a.lysis, and it was just like those for the rest of the week, and the week before that, and the months and the years before that. No significant correlations. Noise. There were a few peaks of receptionat the twenty-one-centimeter line, for instancebut these were merely concentrated noise. Radiating clouds of hydrogen, as the Little Ear functioned like an ordinary radio telescope.

At least the Project showed some results. It was feeding star survey data tapes into the international pool. Fallout.

Of a process that had no other product except negatives.

Maybe the equipment wasn't sensitive enough. Maybe.

They could beef it up some more. At least it might be a successful ploy with the Committee, some progress to present, if only in the hardware. You don't stand still. You spend more money or they cut you backor off.

Note; Soundersplans to increase sensitivity.

Maybe the equipment wasn't discriminating enough. But they had used up a generation of ingenuity canceling out background noise, and in its occasional checks the Big Ear indicated that they were doing adequately on terrestrial noise, at least.

Note: Adamsnew discrimination gimmick.

Maybe the computer wasn't recognizing a signal when it had one fed into it. Perhaps it wasn't sophisticated enough to perceive certain subtle relations.h.i.+ps. . . . And yet sophisti- cated codes had been broken in seconds. And the Project was asking it to distinguish only where a signal existed, whether the reception was random noise or had some element of the unrandom. At this level it wasn't even being asked to note the influence of consciousness.

Note: ask computeris it missing something? Ridiculous?

Ask Olsen.

Maybe they shouldn't be searching the radio spectrum at all. Maybe radio was a peculiarity of man's civilization.

Maybe others had never had it or had pa.s.sed it by and now had more sophisticated means of communication. Lasers, for instance. Telepathy, or what might pa.s.s for it with man.

Maybe gamma rays, as Morrison sugested years before Ozma.

Well, maybe. But if it were so, somebody else would have to listen for those. He had neither the equipment nor the background nor the working lifetime left to tackle something new.

And maybe Adams was right.

He buzzed Lily. "Have you reached Mrs. MaeDonald?"

"The telephone hasn't answered"

Unreasoned panic. . . .

"oh, here she is now. Mr. MaeDonald, Mrs. Mac- Donald."

"h.e.l.lo, darling. I was alarmed when you didn't answer."

That had been foolish, he thought, and even more foolish to mention it.

Her voice was sleepy. "I must have been dozing." Even drowsy, it was an exciting voice, gentle, a little husky, that speeded MacDonald's pulse. "What did you want?"

"You called me," MaeDonald said.

"Did I? I've forgotten."

"Glad you're resting. You didn't sleep well last night."

"I took some pills."

"How many?"

"Just the two you left out."

"Good girl. I'll see you in a couple of hours. Go back to sleep. Sorry I woke you."

But her voice wasn't sleepy any more. "You won't have to go back tonight, will you? We'll have the evening to- gether?"

"We'll see," he promised.

But he knew he would have to return.

MaeDonald paused outside the long, low concrete building which housed the offices and laboratories and computers. It was twilight. The sun had descended below the green hills, but orange and purpling wisps of cirrus trailed down the western sky.

Between MaeDonald and the sky was a giant dish held aloft by skeleton metal fingersheld high as if to catch the star dust that drifted down at night from the Milky Way.

Go and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the Devil's foot; Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy's stinging, And find What wind Serves to advance an honest mind.