“I’m not interested in zapping anybody, mister . . . not for you or for whatever you represent. Your system put me here; don’t you tell me I’m screwed up now because I don’t belong. Don’t you tell me I owe anything to your system to help straighten out its mess. Save your garbage for the morons.” Without waiting for a reply he got up and strode toward the door. Edwards and Massey remained silent, staring fixedly at the table. If Brad was flushing himself down the tubes, they weren’t going to get caught in any of the backsplash.
* * *
Clifford, still shaking when he slammed the door of his office behind him five minutes later, began hammering a brief code into the keyboard of the desk terminal. At least he had tried the official channel. The outcome hadn’t really been a surprise; that was why he had already prepared a long file in the data bank, ready for immediate transmission.
A woman’s face appeared on the screen. “Message Center. Can I help you?”
“I need an immediate outgoing channel. The destination code is 090909-73785-21318.”
“Triple-09 prefix is extraterrestrial, sir—for the lunar bases.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry, but those channels need special authorization from grade 5 or over. Do you have a clearance reference?”
All the frustrations of the last half-hour boiled over. “Listen, damn it, and store this on file. This is absolutely top priority. I take full responsibility. I don’t care if you need clearance from the President, the Pope, or God Almighty himself. GET ME THAT DAMN CHANNEL!”
Chapter 3
” . . . Proxima Centauri, 4.3 light-years away from us, has at least three planets of significant size, the largest of them having a mass of 0.0018 times that of the sun and an orbital period of 137 years. Slightly farther away, at 6.0 light-years, Barnard’s Star again has at least three planetary companions, B1, B2, and B3, of masses 0.0011, 0.0008, and 0.0003, periods 26, 12, and 14.3 years respectively; we strongly suspect others as well. Beyond these systems, the stars Lalande 2115A, 61Cygni, and Kruger 60A, to name just three, also possess planets that have been positively observed and whose main properties have been accurately measured. In fact, more than thirty planets of stars other than our own sun are known to exist within a radius of twenty light-years from us.”
Professor Heinrich Zimmermann pointed out the last item on the list and then turned away from the three-dimensional model of the local regions of the galaxy to look directly into the camera. The camera trolley rolled noiselessly forward to close in on his tall, immaculately dressed figure, dignified by a lean, angular build and a crown of silvery hair.
“Thus some of our work here at the Joliot-Curie Observatories on Lunar Farside has added immensely to our knowledge of the Sun’s neighboring planetary systems. If these statistics are extrapolated to cover the whole galaxy, they indicate the existence of billions of planets. If only one in every thousand were to be similar to Earth in temperature and surface chemistry, we are still left with millions of worlds on which life as we know it could emerge. Furthermore, as you saw earlier, the emergence of life is not, as was once supposed, a billion-to-one freak occurrence; as the experiments of such scientists as Okoyaku and Skovensen have shown, it is virtually a certainty once the right conditions are established.” He stepped aside to allow a zoom-in for a close-up of the model while he delivered his final words. “I will leave you to draw your own conclusions as to the implications of these statements. Despite the exciting things that we have seen in this program, it could be that the real excitement is yet to come.”
“Okay. Cut it there.” The floor director’s voice sounded from the wall of darkness behind the arc lights. “That was fine. Take a short break, but be ready for another take of the first part of sequence 5 in five minutes. Harry and Mike, don’t go rushing off anyplace—I need to talk to you for a second.”
The lights dimmed and a hubbub of voices broke out on all sides. The floor around Zimmermann was transformed into an arena of bustling technicians. He paused to allow his eyes to readjust to the comparative gloom of normal lighting, acknowledged the thanks from the film team, and moved away from all the activity to stand by one of the dome’s viewing ports. While he dabbed his forehead lightly with a pocket handkerchief, he stared silently out at the harsh, bleak landscape of the lunar surface.