Odyssey

The next best hope was Europa.

It had long been thought that life might be found in its ocean, which was sheltered beneath ice packs as much as twenty kilometers thick. There was liquid water, kept relatively warm by tidal effects.

An automated mission was dispatched during the third decade of the twenty-first century. It drilled through the ice but found no life or any indication it had ever existed.

There was talk for a while of life-seeding materials on comets, but that never provided a payoff either. So, as the century wore on, it became evident the solar system, save for Earth, was barren. Spectrographic analyses of planetary atmospheres in nearby star systems provided no evidence of an oxygen—carbon dioxide cycle. At that time, no one seriously believed humans would ever leave the solar system. So when, shortly after its eightieth a

Then, on New Year’s Day 2079, a probe took pictures of a carved figure on the jagged surface of Saturn’s moon, Iapetus. At first, researchers thought it was, like the Martian face and the zigzag wall on Miranda, an illusion. But a ma

A set of prints in the dust suggested that the image was a self-portrait.

Its origin remained a mystery for the better part of a century. Until Gi

Most disappointing, at Lalande and Procyon, they saw terrestrial-style worlds, with broad water oceans and warm sunlight. And not so much as a blade of grass. For a time, the belief that humans had been the beneficiaries of a special creation made a comeback. The Iapetus figure became, in the minds of many, a hoax. Others thought it had been left by diabolical forces. And the idea that humans were alone in the universe gained credence.

The fifth expedition went to Alpha Cephei, where they found two terrestrial planets within the biozone. When seen from orbit, both looked sterile. And indeed, Cephei IV was without life. But its sister world was the gold card.

It was teeming with living creatures. They were single-celled, but they were there! Today, a half century later, scientists are still debating how it happens you can have two worlds in a biozone, with similar conditions on both. And life starts on one but not on the other.

When the Salvator arrived in that historic system, MacAllister was thinking about that first expedition and wondering precisely what drove the human effort to find life elsewhere. He had long ago dismissed this yearning for other life as infantile. His position was completely rational: We are better off if whatever neighbors there are stay at a distance. God had done things the right way, he’d once written, when He put such vast distances between technological civilizations. In both time and space.

“There it is,” said Valya, putting Alpha Cephei III on the display. It had the requisite big moon, which is apparently needed to produce tides and prevent a planetary wobble, plus two smaller ones. Oceans covered about 80 percent of the planet. It had a sixteen-degree tilt, and ice caps at both poles. The telescope zoomed in, and Mac saw rolling plains and rivers. But the place looked bleak. No forests. No grasslands. He could imagine the feelings of the crew in that first lightship.

What was its name?

“The Galileo,” said Amy, who was less impressed than MacAllister had expected. “It sure looks dead.” And with that she dismissed the discovery that, in its time, had been hailed as the greatest of all time. Well, kids are never much on history. Nor for that matter was anybody else. It had been MacAllister’s experience that most people think anything that happened before they were born didn’t count for a whole lot.

Happily, there was no sign of moonriders. It was curious how drastically MacAllister’s perspective had changed. When they’d started out, almost three weeks ago, he would have been delighted to see black globes in the sky. But not now. The critters were too unpredictable. He was anxious for it to be over. It meant he would go home with no answers, hardly a healthy attitude for a journalist. But at least he would go home.

Valya launched the monitor and, a few hours later, put them in orbit around Cephei III.

SHORTLY AFTER THE Galileo’s discovery, the World Space Authority had established a base on the western coastline of one of the continents. Biologists, delighted with the opportunity to study off-world life, had lined up for assignment, and Cephei III had continued to receive researchers ever since. The base was still there, expanded over the years into a major facility, home to teams of specialists who, MacAllister suspected, couldn’t find anything better to do with their time than freeload on government funds and university grants.

“Did you want to go down and say hello?” asked Valya. “I understand they do a tour.”

Amy a

“You mean biologically?”

“I mean moonriders.”

She checked her notebook. “A few times,” she said. “Most recent was last year. One of the researchers said she saw a formation pass overhead.”

“Is she still here?”

“Back in Rome.”

MacAllister had been looking at a history of sightings. There’d been none that couldn’t be explained as runaway imaginations or hoaxes until about twenty years ago, when they first started showing up on the superluminal routes.

The earliest deep-space sighting had occurred at Triassic II. A cargo ship, bringing supplies to a ground station, had spotted strange objects moving in formation through the clouds. The pictures, when relayed home, had created a sensation.

During those first few years, such sightings had been rare. But their frequency had begun to increase. In ’54 there’d been eleven, the most ever reported in a single year. They’d been distributed among the Blue Tour stars, as well as Sirius and Procyon. There were no sightings farther out, none from Betelgeuse or Achernar or Spica or Bellatrix. Of course those stars weren’t on any of the tours. So, were the moonriders only interested in the worlds close to Earth? Or were they everywhere?

THEY’D AGREED THAT each stop deserved some time. That if they just went in and unloaded the monitor and cleared out, they’d be neglecting an important aspect of their assignment: to conduct an active search. MacAllister wasn’t sure exactly when the mission changed, when it had gone from laying monitors and maybe if we got really lucky we’d see something, to prosecuting an aggressive hunt and dropping off the monitor more or less as a sideshow.

Valya reported their presence to the people at the ground station. When, at Amy’s urging, she asked whether they’d seen anything unusual in the skies, they laughed.

Meantime a transmission came in from Wolfie. He was going to expand the moonrider story in the coming issue, publishing not only MacAllister’s report, but covering the reaction at home as well. “People are getting stirred up,” he said. “I think it would be interesting to look at the political ramifications of this. The White House is trying to suggest everything’s business as usual, but I understand there are some behind-the-scenes concerns.” Did MacAllister concur? He included a bundle of news reports.

Hutchins had forwarded a digest of the media reaction, so he already knew the Terranova Rock had ignited a firestorm. Now the talking heads were wondering why the aliens would keep their presence secret if they did not have malicious intent. MacAllister dismissed that reasoning. The moonriders were certainly not keeping their presence secret. They were flying right out there for anyone to see. What he sensed on their part was contempt. They didn’t much care whether we saw them or not.

He told Wolfie to go ahead. “You’ve got it right,” he said. “The real story here isn’t the moonriders, but the overreaction of the media. Which means let’s show the public what they’re doing. Put it on the cover and play it for all it’s worth.”

He made the mistake of relaying the conversation to Amy and Eric. Eric looked doubtful. “It’s true,” MacAllister insisted. “The media are out of control. And it’s time somebody called them on it. All they want to do is sell advertising space. So they go with whatever that day’s big story is and push it until it’s exhausted or something else comes along. We’ve become an oversized tabloid. Scandal, murder, and moonriders. It’s all we care about.”

“Does that we include The National?” asked Eric. “I mean you’re complaining about media overreaction, but you put it on the cover.”

MacAllister laughed. “We’ll be talking about the state of the media, not moonriders. And that is serious business.”

“Don’t you think,” said Amy, “the media are broadcasting what people want to hear?”

MacAllister nodded. “Sure they are,” he said.

It wasn’t the response she’d expected. “Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?”

“No.” Don’t they teach anything in school anymore? “The media should be telling people what they need to hear. Not sex and scandal. But what their representatives are up to.”

THEY ORBITED ALPHA Cephei III for a full day, which was the minimum time they’d agreed to invest at each site. The most exciting thing that happened was a chess game between Eric and one of the researchers at the ground station. (The researcher won, as MacAllister would have predicted.)

Then they were on their way to Arcturus. He settled down to enjoy a biography that mercilessly attacked the previous president.

In the seventy-two hours since the Terranova Rock story broke, reports of flying objects across the NAU and around the world have risen dramatically….