The Listeners by James E. Gunn| Free Online Book

Read The Listeners novel  online free on this novel bucket platform this novel written  by James E. Gunn

 "Is there anybody there?" said the Traveler,

Knocking on the moonlit door. . . .

The voices babbled.

MacDonald heard them and knew that there was meaning

in them, that they were trying to communicate and that he

could understand them and respond to them if he could only

concentrate on what they were saying, but he couldn't bring

himself to make the effort. He tried again.

"Back behind everything, lurking like a silent shadow

behind the closed door, is the question we can never answerr

except positively: Is there anybody there?"

That was Bob Adams, eternally the devil's advocate, look-

ing querulously at the others around the conference table.

His round face was sweating, although the mahogany-paneled

room was cool.

Saunders puffed hard on his pipe. "But that's true of all

science. The image of the scientist eliminating all negative

possibilities is ridiculous. Can't be done. So he goes ahead on

faith and statistical probability."

MacDonald watched the smoke rise above Saunders' head

in clouds and wisps until it wavered in the draft from the

air duct, thinned out, disappeared. He could not see it, but

the odor reached his nostrils. It was an aromatic blend easily

distinguishable  from the  flatter  smell  of  cigarettes  being

smoked by Adams and some of the others.

Wasn't this their task? MacDonald wondered. To detect the

thin smoke of life that drifts through the universe, to separate

one trace from another, molecule by molecule, and then force

them to reverse their entropic paths into their ordered and

meaningful original form.

All the king's horses, and alt the king's men. . . . Life itself

is impossible, he thought, but men exist by reversing entropy.

Down the long table cluttered with overflowing ash trays

and coffee cups and doodled scratch pads Olsen, said, "We

always knew it would be a long search. Not years but cen-

turies. The computers must have sufficient data, and that

means bits of information approximating the number of

molecules in the universe. Let's not chicken out now."

"// seven maids with seven mops

Swept it for half a year,

Do you suppose," the Walrus said,

"That they could get it clear?"

". . . ridiculous," someone was saying, and then Adams

broke in, "It's easy for you to talk about centuries when

you've been here only three years. Wait until you've been at it

for ten years, like I have. Or Mac here who has been on the

Project for twenty years and head of it for fifteen."

"What's the use of arguing about something we can't know

anything about?" Sonnenborn said reasonably. "We have to

base our position on probabilities. Shkiovskii and Sagan esti-

mated that there are more than one thousand million habit-

able planets in our galaxy alone. Von Hoemer estimated that

one in three million have advanced societies in orbit around

them; Sagan said one in one hundred thousand. Either way

it's good odds that there's somebody therethree hundred or

ten thousand in our segment of the universe. Our job is to

listen in the right place or in the right way or understand

what we hear."

Adams to MacDonald. "What do you say, Mac?"

"I say these basic discussions are good for us," MacDonald

said mildly, "and we need to keep reminding ourselves what it

is we're doing, or we'll get swallowed in a quicksand of data.

I also say that it's time now to get down to the business at

handwhat observations do we make tonight and the rest of

the week before our next staff meeting?"

Saunders began, "I think we should make a methodical

sweep of. the entire galactic lens, listening on all wave-

lengths"

"We've done that a hundred times," said Sonnenborn.

"Not with my new filter"

"Tau Ceti still is the most likely," said Olsen. "Let's really

give it a hearing"

MacDonald heard Adams grumbling half to himself, "If

there is anybody, and they are trying to communicate, some

amateur is going to pick it up on his ham set, decipher it on

his James Bond coderule, and leave us sitting here on one

hundred million dollars of equipment with egg all over our

faces"

"And don't forget," MacDonald said, "tomorrow is Satur-

day night and Maria and I will be expecting you all at our

place at eight for the customary beer and bull. Those who

have more to say can save it for then.."

MacDonald did not feel as jovial as he tried to sound. He

did not know whether he could stand another Saturday night

session of drink and discussion and dissension about the

Project. This was one of his low periods when everything

seemed to pile up on top of him, and he could not get out

from under, or tell anybody how he felt. No matter how he

felt,  the Saturday nights were good for the morale of the

others.

Piles no es pmible que est& continue el arco armado

ni la condicidn y flaqueza humana se pueda sustenar

sin alguna Kcita recreacidn

Within the Project, morale was always a problem. Besides,

it  was  good  for  Maria.  She  did  not  get  out  enough.  She

needed to see people. And then. . . .

And then maybe Adams was right. Maybe nobody was

there. Maybe nobody was sending signals because there was

nobody to send signals. Maybe man was all alone in the

universe. Alone with God. Or alone with himself, whichever

was worse.

Maybe all the money was being wasted, and the effort, and

the preparationall the intelligence and education and ideas

being drained away into an endlessly empty cavern.

Habe nun, ach! Philosophic,

luristerei und Medizin,

Under leider auch Theologie

Durchaus studiert, mit heissern Bemiihn.

Da steh' ich nun, ich armer Tor!

Und bin so klug als wie zuvor;

Heisse Magister, heisse Doktor gar,

Und ziehe schon an die zehen Jahr

Herauf, herab und quer und krumm

Meine SchUler an der Nose herum

Und sehe, doss wir nichts wissen konneni .

Poor fool. Why me? MacDonald thought. Could not some

other lead them better, not by the nose but by his real wis-

dom? Perhaps all he was good for was the Saturday night

parties. Perhaps it was time for a change.

He shook himself. It was the endless waiting that wore him

down, the waiting for something that did not happen, and the

Congressional hearings were coming up again. What could

he say that he had not said before? How could he justify a

project that already had gone on for nearly fifty years without

results and might go on for centuries more?

"Gentlemen," he said briskly, "to our listening posts."

By the time he had settled himself at his disordered desk,

Lily was standing beside him.

"Here's last night's computer analysis," she said, putting

down in front of him a thin folder. "Reynolds says there's

nothing there, but you always want to see it anyway. Here's

the transcription of last year's Congressional hearings." A

thick binder went on top of the folder. "The correspondence

and the actual appropriation measure are in another file if

you want them."

MacDonald shook his head.

"There's a form letter here from NASA establishing the

ground rules for this year's budget and a personal letter from

Ted Wartinian saying that conditions are really tight and

some cuts look inevitable. In fact, he says there's a possibility

the Project might be scrubbed."

Lily glanced at him. "Not a chance," MacDonald said

confidently.

"There's a few applications for employment. Not as many

as we used to get. The letters from school children I answered

myself. And there's the usual nut letters from people who've

been receiving messages from outer space, and from one

who's had a ride in a UFO. That's what he called itnot a

saucer or anything. A feature writer wants to interview you

and some others for an article on the Project. I think he's

with us. And another one who sounds as if he wants to do

an expose."

MacDonald listened patiently. Lily was a wonder. She

could handle everything in the office as well as he could. In

fact, things might run smoother if he were not around to take

up her time.

"They've both sent some questions for you to answer. And

Joe wants to talk to you."

"Joe?"

"One of the janitors."

"What does he want?" They couldn't afford to lose a jani-

tor.  Good janitors  were harder to  find than  astronomers,

harder even than electronicians.

"He says he has to talk to you, but I've heard from some

of the lunchroom staff that he's been complaining about

getting messages on hison his"

"Yes?"

"On his false teeth."

MacDonald sighed. "Pacify him somehow, will you, Lily?

If I talk to him we might lose a janitor."

"I'll  do  my  best.  And  Mrs.  MacDonald  called.  Said  it

wasn't important and you needn't call back."

"Call her," MacDonald said. "And, Lilyyou're coming to

the party tomorrow night, aren't you?"

"What would I be doing at a party with all the brains?"

"We want you to come. Maria asked particularly. It isn't

all shop talk, you know. And there are never enough women.

You might strike it off with one of the young bachelors."

"At my age, Mr. MacDonald? You're just trying to get rid

of me."

"Never."

"I'll get Mrs. MacDonald." Lily turned at the door. "I'll

think about the party."

MacDonald shuffled through the papers. Down at the

bottom was the only one he was interested inthe computer

analysis of last night's listening. But he kept it there, on the

bottom, as a reward for going through the others. Ted was

really worried. Move over, Ted. And then the writers. He

supposed he would have to work them in somehow. At least

it was part of the fallout to locating the  Project in  Puerto

Rico. Nobody just dropped in. And the questions. Two of

them caught his attention.

How did you come to be named Project Director? That

was the friendly one. What are your qualifications to be

Director? That was the other. How would he answer them?

Could he answer them at all?

Finally he reached the computer analysis, and it was just

like those for the rest of the week, and the week before that,

and the months and the years before that. No significant

correlations. Noise. There were a few peaks of receptionat

the twenty-one-centimeter line, for instancebut these were

merely concentrated noise. Radiating clouds of hydrogen, as

the Little Ear functioned like an ordinary radio telescope.

At least the Project showed some results. It was feeding

star survey data tapes into the international pool. Fallout.

Of a process that had no other product except negatives.

Maybe the equipment wasn't sensitive enough. Maybe.

They could beef it up some more. At least it might be a

successful ploy with the Committee, some progress to present,

if only in the hardware.  You  don't stand  still. You spend

more money or they cut you backor off.

Note; Soundersplans to increase sensitivity.

Maybe the equipment wasn't discriminating enough. But

they had used up a generation of ingenuity canceling out

background noise, and in its occasional checks the Big Ear

indicated that they were doing adequately on terrestrial noise,

at least.

Note: Adamsnew discrimination gimmick.

Maybe the computer wasn't recognizing a signal when it

had one fed into it. Perhaps it wasn't sophisticated enough to

perceive certain subtle relationships. . . . And yet sophisti-

cated codes had been broken in seconds. And the Project was

asking it to distinguish only where a signal existed, whether

the reception was random noise or had some element of the

unrandom. At this level it wasn't even being asked to note

the influence of consciousness.

Note: ask computeris it missing something? Ridiculous?

Ask Olsen.

Maybe they shouldn't be searching the radio spectrum at

all.  Maybe  radio  was  a  peculiarity  of  man's  civilization.

Maybe others had never had it or had passed it by and now

had more sophisticated means of communication. Lasers, for

instance. Telepathy, or what might pass for it with man.

Maybe gamma rays, as Morrison sugested years before Ozma.

Well, maybe. But if it were so, somebody else would have

to listen for those. He had neither the equipment nor the

background nor the working lifetime left to tackle something

new.

And maybe Adams was right.

He buzzed Lily. "Have you reached Mrs. MaeDonald?"

"The telephone hasn't answered"

Unreasoned panic. . . .

"oh, here she is now. Mr. MaeDonald, Mrs. Mac-

Donald."

"Hello, darling. I was alarmed when you didn't answer."

That had been foolish, he thought, and even more foolish to

mention it.

Her voice was sleepy. "I must have been dozing." Even

drowsy, it was an exciting voice, gentle, a little husky, that

speeded MacDonald's pulse. "What did you want?"

"You called me," MaeDonald said.

"Did I? I've forgotten."

"Glad you're resting. You didn't sleep well last night."

"I took some pills."

"How many?"

"Just the two you left out."

"Good girl. I'll see you in a couple of hours. Go back to

sleep. Sorry I woke you."

But her voice wasn't sleepy any more. "You won't have

to go back tonight, will you? We'll have the evening to-

gether?"

"We'll see," he promised.

But he knew he would have to return.

MaeDonald paused outside the long, low concrete building

which housed the offices and laboratories and computers. It

was twilight. The sun had descended below the green hills,

but orange and purpling wisps of cirrus trailed down the

western sky.

Between MaeDonald and the sky was a giant dish held

aloft by skeleton metal fingersheld high as if to catch the

star dust that drifted down at night from the Milky Way.

Go and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake root,

Tell me where all past years are,

Or who cleft the Devil's foot;

Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy's stinging,

And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.

Then the dish began to turn, noiselessly, incredibly, and to

tip. And it was not a dish any more but an ear, a-listening

ear cupped by the surrounding hills to overhear the whisper-

ing universe.

Perhaps this was what kept them at their jobs, MacDonald

thought. In spite of all disappointments, in spite of all vain

efforts, perhaps it was this massive machinery, as sensitive

as  their fingertips, which kept them  struggling with the

unfathomable. When they grew weary at their electronic

listening posts, when their eyes grew dim with looking at

unrevealing dials and studying uneventful graphs, they could

step outside their concrete cells and renew their dull spirits

in communion with the giant mechanism they commanded,

the silent, sensing instrument in which the smallest packets

of energy, the smallest waves of matter, were detected in their

headlong, eternal flight across the universe. It was the stetho-

scope with which they took the pulse of the all and noted the

birth and death of stars, the probe with which, here on an

insignificant planet of an undistinguished star on the edge of

its galaxy, they explored the infinite.

Or perhaps it was not just the reality but the imagery, like

poetry, which soothed their doubting souls, the bowl held up

to catch Donne's falling star, the ear cocked to catch the

suspected shout that faded to an indistinguishable murmur

by the time it reached them. And one thousand miles above

them was the giant, five-mile-in-diameter network, the largest

radio telescope ever built, which men had cast into the

heavens to catch the stars.

If they had the  Big Ear for more than an occasional

reference check, MacDonald thought practically, then they

might get some results. But he knew the radio astronomers

would never relinquish time to the frivolity of listening for

signals that never came. It was only because of the Big Ear

that the Project had inherited the Little Ear. There had been

talk recently about a larger net, twenty miles in diameter.

Perhaps when it was done, if it were done, the Project might

inherit time on the Big Ear.

If they could endure until then, MacDonald thought, if

they could steer their fragile vessel of faith between the Scylla

of self-doubt and the Charybdis of Congressional appropria-

tions.

The images were not all favorable. There were others that

went boompin the night. There was the image, for instance,

of man listening, listening, listening to the silent stars, listen-

ing for an eternity, listening for signals that would never

come, becausethe ultimate horrorman was alone in the

universe, a cosmic accident of self-awareness which needed

and would never receive the comfort of companionship. To

be alone, to be all alone, would be like being all alone on

earth, with no one to talk to, everlike being alone inside

a bone prison, with no way to get out, no way to communi-

cate with anyone outside, no way to know if anyone was

outside....

Perhaps that, in the end, was what kept them goingto

stave off the terrors of the night. While they listened there

was hope; to give up now would be to admit final defeat.

Some said they should never have started; then they never

would have the problem of surrender. Some of the new reli-

gions said that. The Solitarians, for one. There is nobody

there; we are the one, the only created intelligence in the

universe. Let us glory in our uniqueness. But the older reli-

gions encouraged the Project to continue. Why would God

have created the myriads of other stars and other planets if

He had not intended them for living creatures; why should

man only be created in His image? Let us find out, they said.

Let us communicate with them. What revelations have they

had? What saviors have redeemed them?

These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was

yet with you, that alt things must be fulfilled, which were

written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the

psalms, concerning me. . . . Thus it is written, and thus it

behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third

day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be

preached in his name among alt nations, beginning at Jerusa-

lem. And ye are witnesses of these things.

And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you:

but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with

power from on high.

Dusk had turned to night. The sky had turned to black.

The stars had been born again. The listening had begun.

MacDonald made his way to his car in the parking lot behind

the building, coasted until he was behind the hill, and turned

on the motor for the long drive home.

The hacienda was dark. It had that empty feeling about it

that MacDonald knew so well, the feeling it haJ for him

when Maria went to visit friends in Mexico City. But it was

not empty now. Maria was here.

He opened the door and flicked on the hall light. "Maria?"

He walked down the tiled hall, not too fast, not too slow.

"jQuerida?" He turned on the living room light as he passed.

He continued down the hall, past the dining room, the guest

room, the study, the kitchen. He reached the dark doorway

to the bedroom. "Maria Chavez?"

He turned on the bedroom light, low. She was asleep, her

face peaceful, her dark hair scattered across the pillow. She

lay on her side, her legs drawn up under the covers.

Men che dramma

Di sangue m'e rimoso, che no tremi;

Conosco i segni deff antica fiamma.

MacDonald looked down at her, comparing her features

one by one with those he had fixed in his memory. Even now,

with those dark, expressive eyes closed, she was the most

beautiful woman he had ever seen. What glories they had

known! He renewed his spirit in the warmth of his remem-

brances, recalling moments with loving details.

C'est de quay fay ie plus de peur que la pear.

He sat down upon the edge of the bed and leaned over to

kiss her upon the cheek and then upon her upthrust shoulder

where the gown had slipped down. She did not waken. He

shook her shoulder gently. "Maria!" She turned upon her

back, straightening. She sighed, and her eyes came open,

staring blankly. "It is Robby," MacDonald said, dropping

unconsciously into a faint brogue.

Her eyes came alive and her lips smiled sleepily. "Robby.

You're home."

"Yo te amo," he murmured, and kissed her. As he pulled

himself away, he said, "I'll start dinner. Wake up and get

dressed. I'll see you in half an hour. Or sooner."

"Sooner," she said.

He turned and went to the kitchen. There was romaine

lettuce in the refrigerator, and as he rummaged further, some

thin slices of veal. He prepared Caesar salad and veal scal-

lopine, doing it all quickly, expertly. He liked to cook. The

salad was ready, and the lemon juice, tarragon, white wine,

and a minute later, the beef bouillon had been added to the

browned veal when Maria appeared.

She stood in the doorway, slim, lithe, lovely, and sniffed

the air. "I smell something delicious."

It was a joke. When Maria cooked, she cooked Mexican,

something peppery that burned all the way into the stomach

and lay there like a banked furnace. When MacDonald

cooked, it was something exoticFrench, perhaps, or Italian,

or Chinese. But whoever cooked, the other had to appreciate

it or take over all the cooking for a week.

MacDonald filled their wine glasses. "A la tr&s-bonne, & la

tres-belle," he said, "qui fait ma joie et ma sante."

"To the Project," Maria said. "May there be a signal

received tonight."

MacDonald shook his head. One should not mention what

one desires too much. "Tonight there is only us."

Afterward there were only the two of them, as there had

been now for twenty years. And she was as alive and as

urgent, as filled with love and laughter, as when they first had

been together.

At last the urgency was replaced by a vast ease and con-

tentment in which for a time the thought of the Project faded

into something remote which one day he would return to and

finish. "Maria," he said.

"Robby?"

"Yo te amo, coraz.6n"

"Yo te amo, Robby."

Gradually then, as he waited beside her for her breathing

to slow, the Project returned. When he thought she was

asleep, he got up and began to dress in the dark.

"Robby?" Her voice was awake and frightened.

"jQuerida?"

"You are going again?"

"I didn't want to wake you."

"Do you have to go?"

"It's my job."

"Just this once. Stay with me tonight."

He turned on the light. In the dimness he could see that

her face was concerned but not hysterical. "Rast ich, so rost

ich. Besides, I would feel ashamed."

"I understand. Go, then. Come home soon."

He put out two pills on the little shelf in the bathroom and

put the others away again.

The headquarters building was busiest at night when the

radio noise of the sun was least and listening to the-stars was

best. Girls hustled down the halls with coffee pots, and men

stood near the water fountain, talking earnestly.

MacDonald went into the control room.' Adams was at the

control panel; Montaleone was the technician. Adams looked

up, pointed to his earphones with a gesture of futility, and

shrugged. MacDonald nodded at him, nodded at Montaleone,

and glanced at the graph. It looked random to him.

Adams leaned past him to point out a couple of peaks.

"These might be something." He had removed the earphones.

"Odds," MacDonald said.

"Suppose you're right. The computer hasn't sounded any

alarms."

"After a few years of looking at these things, you get the

feel of them. You begin to think like a computer."

"Or you get oppressed by failure."

"There's that."

The room was shiny and efficient, glass and metal and

plastic, all smooth and sterile; and it smelted like electricity.

MacDonald knew that electricity had no smell, but that was

the way he thought of it. Perhaps it was the ozone that

smelled or warm insulation or oil. Whatever it was, it wasn't

worth the time to find out, and MacDonald didn't really want

to know. He would rather think of it as the smell of elec-

tricity. Perhaps that was why he was a failure as a scientist.

"A scientist is a man who wants to know why," his teachers

always had told him.

MacDonald leaned over the control panel and flicked a

switch. A thin, hissing noise filled the room. It was something

like air escaping from an inner tubea susurration of sur-

reptitious sibilants from subterranean sessions of seething

serpents.

He turned a knob and the sound became what someone-

Tennyson?had called "the murmuring of innumerable bees."

Again, and it became Matthew Amold's

. . . melancholy, long withdrawing roar

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

He turned the knob once more, and the sound was a babble

of distant voices, some shouting, some screaming, some con-

versing calmly, some whisperingall of them trying beyond

desperation to communicate, and everything just below the

level of intelligibility. If he closed his eyes, MacDonald could

almost see their faces, pressed against a distant screen, dis-

torted with the awful effort to make themselves heard and

understood.

But they all insisted on speaking at once. MacDonald

wanted to_shout at them. "Silence, everybody! All but you

there, with the purple antenna. One at a time and we'll listen

to all of you if it takes a hundred years or a hundred life-

times."

"Sometimes," Adams said, "I think it was a mistake to put

in the speaker system. You begin to anthropomorphize. After

a while you begin to hear things. Sometimes you even get

messages. I don't listen to the voices any more. I used to

wake up in the night with someone whispering to me. I was

just on the verge of getting the message that would solve

everything, and I would wake up." He flicked off the switch.

"Maybe someday somebody will get the message," Mac-

Donald said. "That's what the audio frequency translation

is intended to do. To keep the attention focused. It can mes-

merize and it can torment, but these are the conditions out

of which spring inspiration."

"Also madness," Adams said. "You've got to be able to

continue."

"Yes." MacDonald picked up the earphones Adams had

put down and held one of them to his ear.

"Tico-tico, tico-tico," it sang. 'They're listening in Puerto

Rico. Listening for words that never come. Tico-tico, tico-

tico. They're listening in Puerto Rico. Can it be the stars are

stricken dumb?"

MacDonald put the earphones down and smiled. "Maybe

there's inspiration in that, too."

"At least it takes my mind off the futility."

"Maybe off the job, too? Do you really want to find anyone

out there?"

"Why else would I be here? But there are times when I

wonder if we would not be better off not knowing."

"We all think that sometimes," MacDonald said.

In his office he attacked the stack of papers and letters

again. When he had worked his way to the bottom, he sighed

and got up, stretching. He wondered if he would feel better,

less frustrated, less uncertain, if he were working on the

Problem instead of just working so somebody else could work

on the Problem. But somebody had to do it. Somebody had

to keep the Project going, personnel coming in, funds in the

bank, bills paid, feathers smoothed.

Maybe it was more important that he do all the dirty little

work in the office. Of course it was routine. Of course Lily

could do it as well as he. But it was important that he do it,

that there be somebody in charge who believed in the Project

or who never let his doubts be known.

Like the Little Ear, he was a symboland it is by symbols

men liveor refuse to let their despair overwhelm them.

The janitor was waiting for him in the outer office.

"Can I see you, Mr. MacDonald?" the janitor said.

"Of course, Joe," MacDonald said, locking the door of his

office carefully behind him. "What is it?"

"It's my teeth, sir." The old man got to his feet and with a

deft movement of his tongue and mouth dropped his teeth

into his hand.

MacDonald stared at them with a twinge of revulsion.

There was nothing wrong with them. They were a carefully

constructed pair of false teeth, but they looked too real.

MacDonald always had shuddered away from those things

which seemed to be what they were not, as if there were some

treachery in them.

"They talk to me, Mr. MacDonald," the janitor mumbled,

staring at the teeth in his hand with what seemed like suspi-

cion. "In the glass beside my bed at night, they whisper to

me. About things far off, like. Messages, like."

MacDonald stared at the janitor. It was a strange word for

the old man to use, and hard to say without teeth. Still, the

word had been "messages." But why should it be strange? He

could have picked it up around the offices or the laboratories.

It would be odd, indeed, if he had not picked up something

about what was going on. Of course: messages.

"I've heard of that sort of thing happening," MacDonald

said.  "False teeth accidentally constructed into a kind of

crystal .set, that pick' up radio waves. Particularly near a

powerful station. And we have a lot of stray frequencies

floating around, what with the antennas and all. Tell you

what, Joe. We'll make an appointment with the Project dentist

to fix your teeth so that they don't bother you. Any small

alteration should do it."

"Thank you, Mr. MacDonald," the old man said. He fitted

his teeth back into his mouth. "You're a great man, Mr.

MacDonald."

MacDonald drove the ten dark miles to the hacienda with

a vague feeling of unease, as if he had done something during

the day or left something undone that should have been

otherwise.

But the house was dark when he drove up in front, not

empty-dark as it had seemed to him a few hours before, but

friendly-dark. Maria was asleep, breathing peacefully.

The house was brilliant with lighted windows that cast long

fingers into the night, probing the dark hills, and the sound of

many voices stirred echoes until the countryside itself seemed

alive.

"Come in, Lily," MacDonald said at the door, and was

reminded of a winter scene when a Lily had met the gentle-

men at the door and helped them off with their overcoats.

But that was another Lily and another occasion and another

place and somebody else's imagination. "I'm glad you decided

to come." He had a can of beer in his hand, and he waved it

in the general direction of the major center of noisemaking.

"There's beer in the living room and something more potent

in the study190 proof grain alcohol, to be precise. Be care-

ful with that.  It will sneak up on you.  Butnunc  est

bibendumi"

"Where's Mrs. MacDonald?" Lily asked.

"Back there, somewhere." MacDonald waved again. "The

men, and a few brave women, are in the study. The women,

and a few brave men, are in the living room. The kitchen is

common territory. Take your choice."

"I really shouldn't have come," Lily said. "I offered to spell

Mr. Saunders in the control room, but he said I hadn't been

checked out. It isn't as if the computer couldn't handle it all

alone, and I know enough to call somebody if anything unex-

pected should happen."

"Shall I tell you something, Lily?" MacDonald said. "The

computer could do it alone. And you and .the computer could

do it better than any of us, including me. But if the men ever

feel that they are unnecessary, they would feel more useless

than ever. They would give up. And they mustn't do that."

"Oh, Mac!" Lily said.

"They mustn't do that. Because one of them is going to

come up with the inspiraton that solves it all. Not me. One

of them. We'll send somebody to relieve Charley before the

evening is over."

Wer immer strebens sich bemiiht,

Den konnen wir erlSsen.

Lily sighed. "Okay, boss."

"And enjoy yourself!"

"Okay, boss, okay."

"Find a man, Lily," MacDonald muttered. And then he,

too, turned toward the living room, for Lily had been the last

who might come.

He listened for a moment at the doorway, sipping slowly

from the warming can.

"work more on gamma rays"

"Who's got the money to build a generator? Since nobody's

built one yet, we don't even know what it might cost."

"gamma-ray sources should be a million times more rare

than radio sources at twenty-one centimeters"

"That's what Cocconi said nearly fifty years ago. The same

arguments. Always the same arguments."

"If they're right, they're right."

"But the hydrogen-emission line is so uniquely logical. As

Morrison said to Cocconiand Cocconi, if you remember,

agreedit represents a logical, prearranged rendezvous point.

'A unique, objective standard of frequency, which must be

known to every observer of the universe,' was the way they

put it."

"but the noise level"

MacDonald smiled and moved on to the kitchen for a cold

can of beer.

"Bracewell's 'automated messengers'?" a voice asked

querulously.

"What about them?"

"Why aren't we looking for them?"

"The point of Bracewell's messengers is that they make

themselves known to us!"

"Maybe there's something wrong with ours. After a few

million years in orbit"

"laser beams make more sense."

"And get lost in all that star shine?"

"As Schwartz and Townes pointed out, all you have to do

is  select a wavelength of light that is  absorbed  by stellar

atmospheres. Put a narrow laser beam in the center of one of

the calcium absorption lines"

In the study they were talking about quantum noise.

"Quantum noise favors low frequencies."

"But the noise itself sets a lower limit on those frequencies."

"Drake calculated the most favorable frequencies, con-

sidering the noise level, lie between 3.2 and 8.1 centimeters."

"Drake! Drake! What did he know? We've had nearly fifty

years experience on him. Fifty years of technological advance.

Fifty years ago we could send radio messages one thousand

light-years  and laser signals ten  light-years.  Today  those

figures are ten thousand and five hundred at least."

"What if nobody's there?" Adams said gloomily.

Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint.

"Short-pulse it, like Oliver suggested. One hundred million

billion watts in a ten billionth of a second would smear across

the entire radio spectrum. Here, Mac, fill this, will you?"

And MacDonald wandered away through the clustering

guests toward the bar.

"And I told Charley," said a woman to two other women

in the corner, "if I had a dime for every dirty diaper I've

changed, I sure wouldn't be sitting here in Puerto Rico"

"neutrinos," said somebody.

"Nuts," said somebody else, as MacDonald poured grain

alcohol carefully into the glass and filled it with orange juice,

"the only really logical medium is Q waves."

"I knowthe waves we haven't discovered yet but are

going to discover about ten years from now. Only here it is

nearly fifty years after Morrison suggested it, and we still

haven't discovered them."

MacDonald wended his way back across the room.

"It's the night work that gets me," said someone's wife.

"The kids up all day, and then he wants me there to greet

him when he gets home at dawn. Brother!"

"Or what if everybody's listening?" Adams said gloomily.

"Maybe everybody's sitting there, listening, just the way we

are, because it's so much cheaper than sending."

"Here you are," MacDonald said.

"But don't you suppose somebody would have thought of

that by this time and begun to send?"

"Double-think it all the way through and figure what just

occurred to you would have occurred to everybody else, so

you might as well listen. Think about iteverybody sitting

around, listening. If there is anybody. Either way it makes the

skin creep."

"All right, then, we ought to send something."

"What would you send?"

"I'd have to think about it. Prime numbers, maybe."

"Think some more. What if a civilization weren't mathe-

matical?"

"Idiot! How would they build an antenna?"

"Maybe they'd rule-of-thumb it, like a ham. Of maybe they

have built-in, antennae."

"And maybe you have built-in antennae and don't know

it."

MacDonald's can of beer was empty. He wandered back

toward the kitchen again.

"insist on equal time with the Big Ear. Even if nobody's

sending we could pick up the normal electronic commerce of

a civilization tens of light-years away. The problem would be

deciphering, not hearing."

"They're picking it up now, when they're studying the

relatively close systems. Ask for a tape and work out your

program."

"All right, I will. Just give me a chance to work up a

request"

MacDonald found himself beside Maria. He put his arm

around her waist and pulled her close. "All right?" he said.

"All right."

Her face was tired, though, MacDonald thought. He

dreaded the notion that she might be growing older, that she

was entering middle age. He could face it for himself. He

could feel the years piling up inside his bones. He still thought

of himself, inside, as twenty, but he knew that he was forty-

seven, and mostly he was glad that he had found happiness

and love and peace and serenity. He even was willing to pay

the price in youthful exuberance and belief in his personal

immortality. But not Maria!

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

Mi ritrovai per ana selva oscura,

Che la diritta via era smarrita.

"Sure?"

She nodded.

He leaned close to her ear. "I wish it was just the two of

us, as usual."

"I, too."

"I'm going to leave ill a little while"

"Must you?"

"I must relieve Saunders. He's on duty. Give him an oppor-

tunity to celebrate a little with the others."

"Can't you send somebody else?"

"Who?" MaeDonald gestured with good-humored futility

at all the clusters of people held together by bonds of ordered

sounds 'shared consecutively. "It's a good party. No one will

miss me."

"I will."

"Of course, querida."

"You are their mother, father, priest, all in one," Maria

said. "You worry about them too much."

"I must keep them together. What else am I good for?"

"For much more."

MaeDonald bugged her with one arm.

"Look at Mac and Maria, will you?" said someone who

was having trouble with his consonants. "What god-damned

devotion!"

MaeDonald smiled and suffered himself to be pounded on

the back while he protected Maria in front of him. "I'll see

you later," he said.

As he passed the living room someone was saying, "Like

Eddie said, we ought to look at the long-chain molecules in

carbonaceous chondrites. No telling how far they've traveled

or been sentor what messages might be coded in the

molecules."

As he closed the front door behind him, the noise dropped

to a roar and then a mutter. He stopped for a moment at the

door of the car and looked up at the sky.

E quindi uscimmo a riveder ie stelle.

The noise from the hacienda reminded him of something

the speakers in the control room. All those voices talking,

talking, talking, and from here he could not understand a

thing.

Somewhere there was an idea if he could only concentrate

on it hard enough. But he had drunk one beer too manyor

perhaps one too few.

After the long hours of listening to the voices, MaeDonald

always felt a little crazy, but tonight it was worse than usual.

Perhaps it was all the conversation before, or the beers, or

something elsesome deeper concern that would not. surf ace.

But then the listeners had to be crazy to begin withto get

committed to a project that might go for centuries without

results.

Tico-tico, tico-tico. . . .

Even if they could pick up a message, they still would

likely be dead and gone before any exchange could take place

even with the nearest likely star. What kind of mad dedication

could sustain such perseverance?

They're listening in Puerto Rico. . . .

Religion could. At least once it did, during the era of

cathedral building in Europe, the cathedrals that took cen-

turies to build.

"What are you doing, fellow?"

"I'm working for ten francs a day."

"And what are you doing?"

"I'm laying stone."

"And youwhat are you doing?"

"I am building a cathedral."

They were building cathedrals, most of them. Most of them

had that religious mania about their mission that would

sustain them through a lifetime of labors in which no progress

could be seen.

Listening for words that never come. . . .

The mere layers of stone and those who worked for pay

alone eliminated themselves in time and left only those who

kept alive in themselves the concept, the dream.

But they had to be a little mad to begin with.

Can it be the stars are stricken dumb?

Tonight he had heard the voices nearly all night long.

They kept trying to tell him something, something urgent,

something he should do, but he could not quite make out the

words. There was only the babble of distant voices, urgent

and unintelligible.

Tico-tico, tico-tic. . . .

He had wanted to shout "Shut up!" to the universe. "One

at a time!" "You first!" But of course there was no way to do

that. Or had he tried? Had he shouted?

They're listening with ears this big!

Had he dozed at the console with the voices mumbling in

his ears, or had he only thought he dozed? Or had he only

dreamed he waked. Or dreamed he dreamed?

Listening for thoughts just like their own.

There was a madness to it all, but perhaps it was a divine

madness, a creative madness. And is not that madness that

which sustains man in his terrible self-knowledge, the driving

madness which demands reason of a casual universe, the

awful aloneness which seeks among the stars for companion-

ship?

Can it be that -we are all alone?

The ringing of the telephone half penetrated through the

mists of mesmerization. He picked up the handset, half

expecting that it would be the universe calling, perhaps with a

clipped British accent, "Hello there, Man. Hello. Hello. I say,

we seem to have a bad connection, what? Just wanted you to

know that we're here. Are you there? Are you listening?

Message on the way. May not get there for a couple of

centuries. Do be around to answer, will you? That's a good

being. Righto. . . ."

Only it wasn't. It was the familiar American voice of

Charley Saunders saying, "Mac, there's been an accident.

Olsen is on his way to relieve you, but I think you'd better

leave now. It's Maria."

Leave it. Leave it all. What does it matter? But leave the

controls on automatic; the computer can take care of it all.

Maria! Get in the car. Start it. Don't fumble! That's it. Go.

Go. Car passing. Must be Olsen. No matter.

What kind of accident? Why didn't I ask? What does it

matter what kind of accident? Maria. Nothing could have

happened. Nothing serious. Not with all those people around.

Nil desperandum. And yetwhy did Charley call if it was

not serious? Must be serious. I must be prepared for some-

thing bad, something that will shake the world, that will tear

my insides.

I must not break up in front of them. Why not? Why must

I appear infallible? Why must I always be cheerful, imper-

turbable, my faith unshaken? Why me? If there is something

bad, if something impossibly bad has happened to Maria,

what will matter? Ever? Why didn't I ask Charley what it

was? Why? The bad can wait; it will get no worse for being

unknown.

What does the universe care for my agony? I am nothing.

My feelings are nothing to anyone but me. My only possible

meaning to the universe is the Project. Only this slim poten-

tial links me with eternity. My love and my agony are me,

but the significance of my life or death are the Project.

HIC'SITVS'ESTFHAETHON'CVSRVS'AVRIGA'PATERNI

QVEM'Sr NON'TENVTI' MAGNIS'TAMEN' EXCIDIT'AVSIS

By the time he reached the hacienda, MacDonald was

breathing evenly. His emotions were under control. Dawn had

grayed the eastern sky. It was a customary hour for Project

personnel to be returning home.

Saunders met him at the door. "Dr. Lessenden is here. He's

with Maria."

The odor of stale smoke and the memory of babble still

lingered in the air, but someone had been busy. The party

remains had been cleaned up. No doubt they all had pitched

in. They were good people.

"Betty found her in the bathroom off your bedroom. She

wouldn't have been there except the others were occupied.

I blame myself. I shouldn't have let you relieve me. Maybe if

you had been hereBut I knew you wanted it that way."

"No one's to blame. She was alone a great deal," Mac-

Donald said. "What happened?"

"Didn't I tell you? Her wrists. Slashed with a razor. Both

of them. Betty found her in the bathtub. Like pink lemonade,

she said."

Perce jusques au fond du coew

D'une atteinte imprevue aussi bien que mortelle.

A fist tightened inside  MacDonald's  gut and  then slowly

relaxed. Yes, it had been that. He had known it, hadn't he?

He had known it would happen ever since the sleeping pills,

even though he had kept telling himself, as she had told him,

that the overdose had been an accident.

Or had he known? He knew only that Saunders' news had

been no surprise.

Then they were at the bedroom door, and Maria was lying

under a blanket on the bed, scarcely making it mound over

her body, and her arms were on top of the blankets, palms

up, bandages like white paint across the olive perfection of

her arms, now, MacDonald reminded himself, no longer

perfection but marred with ugly red lips that spoke of hidden

misery and untold sorrow and a life that was a lie. . . .

Dr. Lessenden looked up, sweat trickling down from his

hairline. "The bleeding is stopped, but she's lost agood deal

of blood. I've got to take her to the hospital for a transfusion.

The ambulance should be here any minute." He paused.

MacDonald looked at Maria's face. It was paler than he had

ever seen it. It looked almost waxen, as if it were already

arranged for all time on a satin pillow. "Her chances are

fifty-fifty," Lessenden said in answer to his unspoken question.

And then the attendants brushed their way past him with

their litter.

"Betty found this on her dressing table," Saunders said. He

handed MacDonald a slip of paper folded once.

MacDonald unfolded, it: Je m'en vay chercher un grand

Peut-etre.

Everyone was surprised to see MacDonald at the office.

They did not say anything, and he did not volunteer the

information that he could not bear to sit at home, among the

remembrances, and wait for word to come. But they asked

him about Maria, and he said, "Dr. Lessenden is hopeful.

She's still unconscious. Apparently will be for some time. The

doctor said I might as well wait here as at the hospital. I think

I made them nervous. They're hopeful. Maria's still un-

conscious. ..."                                       3

0 lente, lente currite, noctis equi!

The stars move stilt, time runs, the clock will strike. . . .

Finally MacDonald was alone. He pulled out paper and

pencil and worked for a long time on the statement, and then.

he balled it up and threw it into the wastebasket, scribbled a

single sentence on another sheet of paper, and called Lily.

"Send this!"

She glanced at it. "No, Mac."

"Send it!"

"But"

"It's not an impulse. I've thought it over carefully. Send it."

Slowly she left, holding the piece of paper gingerly in her

fingertips. MacDonald pushed the papers around on his desk,

waiting for the telephone to ring. But without knocking,

unannounced, Saundeis came through the door first.

"You can't do this, Mac," Saunders said.

MacDonald sighed. "Lily told you. I would fire that girl if

she weren't so loyal."

"Of course she told me. This isn't just you. It affects the

whole Project."

"That's what I'm thinking about."

"I think  I  know what you're going through)  Mac"

Saunders stopped. "No, of course I don't know what you're

going through. It must be hell. But don't desert us. Think of

the Pro)'ect!"

"That's what I'm thinking about. I'm a failure, Charley.

Everything I touchashes."

"You're the best of us."

"A poor linguist? An indifferent engineer? I have no quali-

fications for this job, Charley. You need someone with ideas

to head the Project, someone dynamic, someone who can

lead, someone withcharisma."

A few minutes later he went over it all again with Olsen.

When he came to the qualifications part, all Olsen could say

was, "You give a good party, Mac."

It was Adams, the skeptic, who affected him most. "Mac,

you're what I believe in instead of God."

Sonnenborn said, "You are the Project. If you go, it all

falls apart. It's over."

"It seems like it, always, but it never happens to those

things that have life in them. The Project was here before I

came. It will be here after I leave. It must be longer lived

than any of us, because we are for the years and it is for the

centuries."

After Sonnenborn, MacDonald told Lily wearily, "No

more, Lily"

None o* them h"d had the courage to mention Maria, but

MacDonald considered that failure, too. She had tried to

communicate with him a month ago when she took the pills,

and he had been unable to understand. How could he riddle

the stars when he couldn't even understand those closest to

him? Now he had to pay.

Meine Ruh' ist hin,

Meine Hen ist schwer.

What would Maria want? He knew what she wanted, but

if she lived  h" could not let her pay that price. Too long she

had been there when he wanted her, waiting like a doll put

away on a shelf for him to return and take her down, so that

he could have the strength to continue.

And somehow the agony had built up inside her, the dread-

ful progress of the years, most dread of all to a beautliful

woman growing old, alone, too much alone. He had been

selfish. He had kept her to himself. He had not wanted chil-

dren to mar the perfection of their being together.

Perfection for him; less than that for her.

Perhaps it was not too late for them if she lived. And if

she diedhe would not have the heart to go on with work to

which, he knew now, he could contribute nothing.

Que acredito su ventura,

Morir querdo y vivir loco.

And finally the call came. "She's going to be all right,

Mac," Lessenden said. And after a moment, "Mac, I said"

"I heard."

"She wants to see you."

"I'll be there."

"She said to give you a message. 'Tell Robby I've been a

little crazy in the head. I'll be better now. That "great per-

haps" looks too certain from here. And tell him not to be

crazy in the head, too.' "

MacDonald put down the telephone and walked through

the doorway and through the outer office, a feeling in his

chest as if it were going to burst. "She's going to be all right,"

he threw over his shoulder at Lily.

"Oh, Mac"

In the hall, Joe the janitor stopped him.  "Mr. Mac-

Donald"

MacDonald stopped. "Been to the dentist yet, Joe?"

"No, sir, not yet, but it's not"

"Don't go. I'd like to put a tape recorder beside your bed

for a while, Joe. Who knows?"

"Thank you, sir. But it's They say you're leaving, Mr.

MacDonald."

"Somebody else will do it."

"You don't understand. Don't go, Mr. MacDonaldl"

"Why not, Joe?"

"You're the one who cares."

MacDonald had been about to move on, but that stopped

him.

Ful wys is he that can himselven knowel

He turned and went back to the office. "Have you got tha

sheet of paper, Lily?"

"Yes, sir."

"Have you sent it?"

"No, sir."

"Bad girl. Give it to me."

He read the sentence on the paper once more: I have grea

confidence in the goals and ultimate success of the Project

but for personal reasons I must submit my resignation.

He studied it for a moment.

Pigmcei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantel

vidant.

And he tore it up.

TRANSLATIONS

1. Pues no es posible . . .

The bow cannot always stand bent, nor can human frailty

subsist without some lawful recreation.

Cervantes, Don Quixote

2. Habe nun, ach! Philosophle, . . .

Now I have studied philosophy,

Medicine and the law,

And, unfortunately, theology,

Wearily sweating, yet I stand now,

Poor fool, no wiser than I was before;

I am called Master, even Doctor,

And for these last ten years have drawn

My students, by the nose, up, down,

Crosswise and crooked. Now I see

That we can know nothing finally.

Goethe, Faust, opening lines

3. Men che dramma . . .

Less than a drop

Of blood remains in me that does not tremble;

I recognize the signals of the ancient flame.

Dante, The Divine Comedy,

Purgatorio

4. C'est de quoy fay ie plus de pew que la pew.

The thing of which I have most fear is fear.

Montaigne, Essay.

5. A la trSs-bonne, & la tris-belle, qui fait ma joie et ma sant&

To the best, to the most beautiful, who is my joy and m}

well-being

6. Rast ich, so rest ich

When I rest, I rust.

7. Nunc est bibendumi

Now's the time for drinkingi

Baudelaire, Les Epavel

German proverb

Horace Odes. Book I

8. Wer immer strebens sich bemUhl, . . .

Who strives always to the utmost,

Him can we save.

Goethe, Faust, Part I

9. Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint

I am the spirit that always denies.

riripthf.  F/iiitf Part T

10. Net mezzo del cammin di nostra vita . . .

In the middle of the journey of our life

I came to myself in a dark wood,

Where the straight way was lost.

Dante, The Divine Comedy,

Inferno, opening lines

11. E quindi uscimmo a riveder ie stelle.

And thence we issued out, again to see the stars.

Dante, The Divine Comedy,

Inferno

12. Nil desperandum.

Thore's no cause for despair.

Unmr.a rtfiffv ttnrkiT T

13. HIC ' SITVS ' EST ' PHAETHON ' CVRRVS ' AVRIOA *

P ATERN I . . .

Here Phaeton lies: in Phoebus' car he fared,

And though he greatly failed, more greatly dared.

Ovid, Metamorphoses

14. Perc6 jusques au fond da coeur . . 

Pierced to the depth of my heart

By a blow unforeseen and mortal.

ComeiUe, Le Cid

15. Je m'en vay chercher un grand Peut-Stre.

I am going to seek a great Perhaps.

Rabelais on his deathbed

16. 0 lente, lente currite, noctis equi!

Oh, slowly, slowly nm, horses of the night!

Marlowe, Dr. Faustus

(Faustus is quoting Ovid. He waits for Mephistopheles to

appear to claim his soul at midnight. The next line: "The devil

will come and Faustus must be damn'd.")

17. Mein, Ruh' ist hin, . . .

My peace is gone,

My heart is heavy.

18. Que acredito su ventura, . . .

For if he like a madman lived,

At least he like a wise one died.