front of the room. “The first face-to-face meeting between interstellar neighbors.”
“They’re about one meter tall,” Art netted to his companions. “Face to face doesn’t exactly describe it.” Without turning, Eva shot back a glowering emoticon.
A large graphic popped up beside Chung. “The contact team will be on the embassy ship, shown here in red. UP escort vessels”—on which Montoya had insisted—“are blue. We’ll rendezvous with our visitors, shown in green….”
“Uh-oh.” A neural alarm demanded Art’s attention. His implant had put through an incoming newsbreak on Interplanetary News Net. It was prioritized TEOTWAWKI.
He wasn’t the only one still linked in. As a buzz erupted across the hall, Chung’s deputy whispered into his boss’s ear. Scowling, Chung nodded.
Chung’s visual aid dissolved into a telescopic close-up of a stony cylinder in a field of stars. “…continues to decelerate. Experts extrapolate that it will assume orbit around Jupiter sometime tomorrow,” said the voiceover. A talking head replaced the starship. “To repeat what little we now know, the visitor is coming from the direction of Barnard’s Star. This reporter has monitored its approach for much of the day. In that time there have been several exchanges of coded radio messages between Earth and this vessel, all using the Snakes’ standard commercial frequency.
“As interesting, perhaps, as the onrushing starship are the actions of United Planets authorities. That they are aware of the approaching starship is evident: UP vessels have been converging on Jupiter in large numbers for about three weeks.
“What did the authorities know, and when did they know it?” The camera zoomed into a close-up of the reporter. “Why have they withheld this incredible news from the citizens of the United Planets?
“This is Corinne Elman, reporting exclusively for Interplanetary News Network.”
Repeatedly, and over many years, the collective leadership of the Unity had directed T’bck Fwa to search vigilantly for evidence in human space of two technologies: antimatter and interstellar drive. No reason was ever given for those requests, nor for the loss of interest five years ago. At least he interpreted as loss of interest the discontinuance of those inquiries.
His evidence for starship research was in all ways the opposite of his antimatter investigations. The human infosphere teemed with speculations about interstellar drives—none of them close to reduction to practice. Ironically, human starship enthusiasts were almost unanimous in the belief antimatter technology would be needed to conquer the interstellar void—and in their urgings the UP should therefore proactively develop antimatter technology.
Fond in his own way of his long-time hosts, T’bck Fwa had hoped that a future starship was, in fact, what the UP intended for its antimatter. The alternative, antimatter’s use in weaponry, would be horrible indeed. Alas, the same patient data mining that had revealed the UP’s disguised antimatter program had yielded no conclusive proof of a mature companion program for starship development.
The Unity’s uncharacteristically insistent requests … the humans’ unexplained huge investment in antimatter … the absence of any credible evidence for an interstellar-drive program … these were all very confusing. Decades of diligent sifting through unimaginably large amounts of data had offered no reconciliation.
Then came today’s news.
There was a starship. It was arriving from what the humans called Barnard’s Star—not only humanity’s second-closest interstellar neighbor, but also the Unity’s.
And that starship was heading not for Earth, but towards the humans’ undeclared antimatter facility.
As T’bck Fwa formulated a coded report to the Unity leadership, he could not help but wonder: Had knowledge of an alliance between Earth and K’vith motivated the insistent questions from home? Or
“They’re about one meter tall,” Art netted to his companions. “Face to face doesn’t exactly describe it.” Without turning, Eva shot back a glowering emoticon.
A large graphic popped up beside Chung. “The contact team will be on the embassy ship, shown here in red. UP escort vessels”—on which Montoya had insisted—“are blue. We’ll rendezvous with our visitors, shown in green….”
“Uh-oh.” A neural alarm demanded Art’s attention. His implant had put through an incoming newsbreak on Interplanetary News Net. It was prioritized TEOTWAWKI.
He wasn’t the only one still linked in. As a buzz erupted across the hall, Chung’s deputy whispered into his boss’s ear. Scowling, Chung nodded.
Chung’s visual aid dissolved into a telescopic close-up of a stony cylinder in a field of stars. “…continues to decelerate. Experts extrapolate that it will assume orbit around Jupiter sometime tomorrow,” said the voiceover. A talking head replaced the starship. “To repeat what little we now know, the visitor is coming from the direction of Barnard’s Star. This reporter has monitored its approach for much of the day. In that time there have been several exchanges of coded radio messages between Earth and this vessel, all using the Snakes’ standard commercial frequency.
“As interesting, perhaps, as the onrushing starship are the actions of United Planets authorities. That they are aware of the approaching starship is evident: UP vessels have been converging on Jupiter in large numbers for about three weeks.
“What did the authorities know, and when did they know it?” The camera zoomed into a close-up of the reporter. “Why have they withheld this incredible news from the citizens of the United Planets?
“This is Corinne Elman, reporting exclusively for Interplanetary News Network.”
Repeatedly, and over many years, the collective leadership of the Unity had directed T’bck Fwa to search vigilantly for evidence in human space of two technologies: antimatter and interstellar drive. No reason was ever given for those requests, nor for the loss of interest five years ago. At least he interpreted as loss of interest the discontinuance of those inquiries.
His evidence for starship research was in all ways the opposite of his antimatter investigations. The human infosphere teemed with speculations about interstellar drives—none of them close to reduction to practice. Ironically, human starship enthusiasts were almost unanimous in the belief antimatter technology would be needed to conquer the interstellar void—and in their urgings the UP should therefore proactively develop antimatter technology.
Fond in his own way of his long-time hosts, T’bck Fwa had hoped that a future starship was, in fact, what the UP intended for its antimatter. The alternative, antimatter’s use in weaponry, would be horrible indeed. Alas, the same patient data mining that had revealed the UP’s disguised antimatter program had yielded no conclusive proof of a mature companion program for starship development.
The Unity’s uncharacteristically insistent requests … the humans’ unexplained huge investment in antimatter … the absence of any credible evidence for an interstellar-drive program … these were all very confusing. Decades of diligent sifting through unimaginably large amounts of data had offered no reconciliation.
Then came today’s news.
There was a starship. It was arriving from what the humans called Barnard’s Star—not only humanity’s second-closest interstellar neighbor, but also the Unity’s.
And that starship was heading not for Earth, but towards the humans’ undeclared antimatter facility.
As T’bck Fwa formulated a coded report to the Unity leadership, he could not help but wonder: Had knowledge of an alliance between Earth and K’vith motivated the insistent questions from home? Or
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