Danchekker caught Hunt’s eye, blinked uncomprehendingly for a second, then nodded and abruptly changed the subject. “Anyway, I’m sure all that can wait until we are in more comfortable surroundings. Why don’t we go back upstairs. There are some more experiments being conducted in the labs that I think might interest you.”
The group began shuffling back toward the door. Behind them, Hunt and Danchekker exchanged mystified glances.
“What was the meaning of all that, may I ask?” the professor inquired.
“Search me,” Hunt replied. “Come on or we’ll get left behind.”
Many hundreds of millions of miles from Pithead, the news of the meeting with an intelligent alien race broke over an astounded world. As recordings of the first face-to-face contact aboard the Shapieron and the arrival of the aliens at Cianymede Main Base were replayed across the world’s viewscreens, a wave of wonder and excitement swept around the planet, exceeding even that which had greeted the discoveries of Charlie and the first Ganymean spaceship. Some of the reactions were admirable, some deplorable, some just comical-but all of them predictable.
At a high, official level, Frederick James McClusky, senior United States delegate to the extraordinary session that had been
called by the United Nations, sat back in his chair and stared around the packed circular auditorium while Charles Winters, the UK representative from US Europe, delivered the final words of his forty-five-minute address:
In summary it is our contention that the location at which the first landing is to be effected should obviously be selected from within the boundaries of the British Isles. The English language is now established as the standard means of communication for social, business, scientffic, and political dialogue between all the races, peoples and nations of Earth. It has come to symbolize the dissolution of the barriers that once divided us, and the establishment of a new order of harmony, trust and mutual cooperation across the surface of the globe. And so it is particularly appropriate that the English tongue should have been the vehicle by which the first words between our alien friends and ourselves were exchanged. Might I also remind you that at present, the speech of the British Isles is the only human language that has been assimilated by the Ganymean machine. What then, gentlemen, could be more fitting than that the first Ganymean to set foot upon our planet should do so on the soil where that language originated?”
Winters concluded with a final appealing look around the auditorium and sat down among a mixed murmuring of lowered voices and rustling of papers. McClusky jotted a few notes on his pad and cast an eye over the collection that he had already made.
In a rare show of agreement, the governments of Earth had released a joint statement declaring that the homeless wanderers from the past would be welcome to settle there if they so wished. The present meeting was called after the public announcement had been released, and had degenerated into a heated wrangle in camera over which nation should enjoy the prestige of receiving the aliens first.
Initially, McClusky, following his brief from the Presidential Advisory Committee and the State Department in Washington, had made first claim by drawing attention to the predominantly American flavor of the UNSA operations being staged around Jupiter. The Americans had found them, he had said in effect, and the Americans therefore had a right to keep them. The Soviets had taken two hours to say that since their nation occupied a larger portion of the Earth’s land surface than any other, it represented
the majority of the planet and that was what counted. China had countered by pointing out that she represented more people than any other nation and therefore, making an expedient appeal to democratic principles, China offered a more meaningful interpretation of “majority.” Israel had taken the view that it had more in common with homeless minority groups and that considerations of such kind would more accurately reflect the true nature of the situation. Iraq had lodged a claim on the grounds of its being the site of the oldest known nation, and one of the African republics on the grounds of its being the youngest.