“I’m going to try to talk to the octopods,” Brad said to the image of Jonesey on the tutorial program’s screen.
Jonesey’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Do you think that’s wise?”
Brad was in the shuttlecraft’s tightly packed communications center, surrounded by consoles and screens. He always thought of the comm center as an all-seeing eye, searching everywhere, never sleeping. It was tight in there, especially for a gangling young man of Brad’s height. He was always bumping an elbow or banging a knee against the jam-packed instruments.
Hovering weightlessly in front of the tutorial screen, Brad replied, “We’ve built up a mini dictionary of their terms. In another week I’ll be going back to Odysseus. I want to bring some positive results back with me.”
“Have you gotten approval from Dr. Littlejohn?”
“I haven’t told him yet.”
“As I understand your mission guidelines, you should get your department head’s approval before attempting contact with the aliens.”
Brad knew that Jonesey was right. He knows Kosoff’s routine better than I do, Brad thought. And he never forgets anything.
“What do you hope to accomplish?” Jonesey asked.
“Making meaningful contact with an alien species!” Brad snapped. “Isn’t that worthwhile?”
“Not if it harms the aliens.”
Brad realized he was floating away from the screen when his rump hit the corner of the neural analyzer’s console. Slightly flustered, he pushed himself back toward Jonesey’s image.
“How can it harm them?”
Jonesey shrugged his slim shoulders. “We don’t know anything about their understanding of the world they live in. It seems unlikely that they know anything about the universe outside of their ocean. Your sudden intrusion into their world could upset them, cause them harm.”
Shaking his head so hard that he started drifting away from the screen again, Brad countered, “Look, they accustomed themselves to the probes we’ve placed among them. What’s the harm in saying hello to them?”
“I’m an engineering program, not a psych system. But mission protocol specifically says that attempts to make contact with an alien species have to be approved by the highest scientific authority.”
“Kosoff,” Brad growled.
“Professor Kosoff is the chief of this mission. You’ll have to get his permission before you try to contact the octopods.”
“And if I don’t?”
Jonesey shrugged again. “As you yourself have complained many times, Professor Kosoff doesn’t like you. Going around him and making contact on your own isn’t going to improve his attitude toward you.”
Brad knew that Jonesey was right. Still …
“Talk to Dr. Littlejohn, at least,” the image on the screen suggested.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Brad muttered. Reluctantly.
* * *
“Make contact with them?” Littlejohn was startled by the idea.
He was sitting at his desk, in his office aboard Odysseus, a small compartment next to his living quarters. Brad MacDaniels’s earnest—almost combative—face filled his desktop screen.
Aware of the three-minute communications lag between them, Littlejohn went on, “Actual contact with an alien species has to be okayed by Kosoff and the executive committee. You’re not authorized to make that decision on your own.”
But Brad was already saying, “The octopods have tolerated having our probes swimming along with them. They haven’t shown the slightest reaction to our probing their brains, although I guess they don’t even realize that we’re beaming neutrino probes at them. It would be an incredibly important step, making meaningful contact with them.”
Littlejohn shook his head sternly. “No, no, no. You can’t do it. You mustn’t. Not until Kosoff okays it.”
And then he waited for Brad’s reply. But he thought he knew what the headstrong young man would say.
At last Brad’s words reached him. “All right. Ask Kosoff. But I’ve only got another week to stay here before I return to Odysseus. Get Kosoff to make up his mind quickly.” As an afterthought, Brad added, “Please.”
* * *
Brad’s comm screen went dark. Littlejohn’s scared to death, he thought. He’s afraid of getting on Kosoff’s bad side. As if the bastard has a good side.
Turning weightlessly toward the tutorial screen, Brad said to Jonesey’s image, “I’m going to set up a communications link with the probes down there. I want to be ready the instant Kosoff gives the go-ahead.”
“If he gives you the go-ahead,” Jonesey cautioned.
“Not if,” said Brad. “When.”
* * *
“Absolutely not!”
Adrian Kosoff’s dark-bearded face reminded Brad of the images of pirates he had seen in videos when he’d been a lad. Scowling, dark eyes glowering menacingly, lips pulled tightly across his teeth. All he needs is an eye patch, Brad thought.
To Kosoff’s image on his comm screen Brad asked, “Is that the executive committee’s decision?”
Then the three-minute wait. Brad shifted his attention to the imagery coming from the probes floating among the octopods deep in the ocean. They look so peaceful, he thought. Not a care in the world. No problems, no conflicts.
“It’s my decision,” Kosoff snapped. “I don’t need the committee to tell me what the mission protocol says. One of the prime directives is to avoid making contact with the aliens until all the preparatory steps have been taken. Those directives were written by some of the best scientific minds on Earth. I’m not going to let a junior member of the anthropology group go against them.”
Brad felt no surprise, no anger, not even resentment. He realized that he’d known all along what Kosoff’s answer would be.
“We’ve already made contact with them, of a sort,” he argued to the smoldering image on the comm screen. “We’ve placed a half-dozen probes among them. If they’re truly intelligent, they must realize that those probes came from someplace.”
Kosoff’s response, when it came, was surprisingly moderate. “That’s true. It was a risk to put the probes among them, but a risk we had to take. We can’t study the beasts without them.”
“They seem to have accepted them easily enough,” Brad pointed out.
And again he waited. At last Kosoff answered, “That’s as far as we’re going, at present. Our task is to decipher their language, if the noises they make are truly a language. Once that’s done, we’ll decide on our next step.”
Brad knew that Kosoff was right. Direct contact with an alien species was fraught with unknowns. He recalled how circumspect the alien Predecessors of New Earth had been, constructing a whole planet and populating it with humanlike creatures. They had spent centuries carefully orchestrating their contact with us.
But what harm could it do? Brad asked himself. And answered, We don’t know. That’s the point. We don’t know and when you don’t know what the consequences of an action would be, you proceed slowly, carefully. Once the damage is done you can’t undo it, so you proceed along the path that has the least risk of damage.
Kosoff demanded, “Do you understand me? No contact!”
“I understand,” Brad said. “No contact.”
Yet while he waited for Kosoff’s next message, Brad realized he had enough of the octopods’ sounds in his files to study them for meaning. It’s not contact, he told himself, but it’s a start.
Kosoff said, “You’re due to return here to Odysseus next week. You’d better spend your time preparing for that.”
Brad nodded, and realized that his request to make contact with the octopods had wiped out any ideas Kosoff might have had about prolonging his stay at Alpha. Grinning to himself, he thought, I’m a kind of devious devil, after all.