extraterrestrial intelligence, the discoverer should simultaneously inform the following international institutions of the discovery and should provide them with all pertinent data and recorded information concerning the evidence: the International Telecommunication Union, the Committee on Space Research, the International Council of Scientific Unions, the International Astronautical Federation, the International Academy of Astronautics, the International Institute of Space Law, Commission 51 of the International Astronomical Union and Commission J of the International Radio Science Union...
Malenfant and Nemoto, by comparison, had gone straighton the talk shows.
Playfully, Maura slapped Malenfant's wrist. "Naughty, naughty. All those commissions you skipped. You made a lot of enemies there."
"But," he said, "I did get to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House. You know, this guy makes it sound as if he'd rather we hadn't made the discovery at all, rather than make it the wrong way."
"Human nature, Malenfant. You took away his toy."
Now the speaker opened the floor for comments.
The discussion soon turned to how the situation should be managed from here. There were plenty of calls for behavioral scientists to study ways in which the public response to the news could be somehow anticipated and controlled -- for research into popular public images of ETs, discussion of analogies with the response to missions like Apollo to the Moon and Viking to Mars, and suggestions that SETI proponents should make use of media like webcasts, games, and music to present SETI and ET themes "responsibly."
Maura pulled an elaborate face. "Don't these people realize the cat is already out of the bag? You can't control the public's access to information anymore -- and you certainly can't control their response. Nor should you try, in my opinion."
At last the speaker cleared off the stage, and Malenfant's spirits lifted a little. As an engineer, he knew that a bucket-load of philosophical principles wasn't worth a grain of good hard fact. And that was why the next item, by Frank Paulis, was a breath of fresh air. After all, it was Paulis, with his money and his initiative, who was actually going out there to look.
Paulis's images of his en-route spacecraft, the Bruno, showed a gangly, glittering dragonfly of solar-cell panels and gauzy antennae and sensors mounted on long booms, surrounded by a swarm of microsats devoted to fly-around inspections and repairs.
The launch had been uneventful, the first years of the long flight enlivened only by the usual hardware glitches and nail-biting techie dramas. It struck Malenfant as remarkable how little space technology seemed to have progressed in seventy years since the first Sputnik; the design of the Bruno would probably have been recognizable, give or take a few sapphire-based quantum chips, to Wernher von Braun. But flying in space had always been a conservative business; if you had only one shot, you wanted your ship to work, not to serve as the test bed for new gadgets and ideas.
Anyhow, the Bruno had survived its man-made crises. The ship was still a year away from its rendezvous with what appeared to be the primary construction site -- or colony, or nest -- of the Gaijin. The asteroid belt was a broad lane of rubble; already the probe had encountered a number of those dusty wanderers, never visited before or seen in close-up. But, Paulis promised, standing before slide after slide of coal-dark, anonymous rocks, the best was yet to come. For in the darkness, the Gaijin awaited.
After a morning of such thin gruel, Malenfant retreated to his hotel room.
He traveled light these days: just bathroom stuff, a couple of self-cleaning suits and sets of underwear, a softscreen that was all he needed to connect him to the rest of the species, and a single ornament -- a piece of unbelievably ancient rock from the far side of the Moon, carved into an exquisite Fox God. He had become
Malenfant and Nemoto, by comparison, had gone straighton the talk shows.
Playfully, Maura slapped Malenfant's wrist. "Naughty, naughty. All those commissions you skipped. You made a lot of enemies there."
"But," he said, "I did get to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House. You know, this guy makes it sound as if he'd rather we hadn't made the discovery at all, rather than make it the wrong way."
"Human nature, Malenfant. You took away his toy."
Now the speaker opened the floor for comments.
The discussion soon turned to how the situation should be managed from here. There were plenty of calls for behavioral scientists to study ways in which the public response to the news could be somehow anticipated and controlled -- for research into popular public images of ETs, discussion of analogies with the response to missions like Apollo to the Moon and Viking to Mars, and suggestions that SETI proponents should make use of media like webcasts, games, and music to present SETI and ET themes "responsibly."
Maura pulled an elaborate face. "Don't these people realize the cat is already out of the bag? You can't control the public's access to information anymore -- and you certainly can't control their response. Nor should you try, in my opinion."
At last the speaker cleared off the stage, and Malenfant's spirits lifted a little. As an engineer, he knew that a bucket-load of philosophical principles wasn't worth a grain of good hard fact. And that was why the next item, by Frank Paulis, was a breath of fresh air. After all, it was Paulis, with his money and his initiative, who was actually going out there to look.
Paulis's images of his en-route spacecraft, the Bruno, showed a gangly, glittering dragonfly of solar-cell panels and gauzy antennae and sensors mounted on long booms, surrounded by a swarm of microsats devoted to fly-around inspections and repairs.
The launch had been uneventful, the first years of the long flight enlivened only by the usual hardware glitches and nail-biting techie dramas. It struck Malenfant as remarkable how little space technology seemed to have progressed in seventy years since the first Sputnik; the design of the Bruno would probably have been recognizable, give or take a few sapphire-based quantum chips, to Wernher von Braun. But flying in space had always been a conservative business; if you had only one shot, you wanted your ship to work, not to serve as the test bed for new gadgets and ideas.
Anyhow, the Bruno had survived its man-made crises. The ship was still a year away from its rendezvous with what appeared to be the primary construction site -- or colony, or nest -- of the Gaijin. The asteroid belt was a broad lane of rubble; already the probe had encountered a number of those dusty wanderers, never visited before or seen in close-up. But, Paulis promised, standing before slide after slide of coal-dark, anonymous rocks, the best was yet to come. For in the darkness, the Gaijin awaited.
After a morning of such thin gruel, Malenfant retreated to his hotel room.
He traveled light these days: just bathroom stuff, a couple of self-cleaning suits and sets of underwear, a softscreen that was all he needed to connect him to the rest of the species, and a single ornament -- a piece of unbelievably ancient rock from the far side of the Moon, carved into an exquisite Fox God. He had become
Similar Books
Untamed
Pamela Clare
Spy Games
Gina Robinson
Veneer
Daniel Verastiqui
Lord Devere's Ward
Sue Swift
Sleeping Beauty
Maureen McGowan
Only Love (The Atonement Series)
Elle Chardou
Dead Man's Embers
Mari Strachan
The Islands of the Blessed
Nancy Farmer
44 Scotland Street
Alexander McCall Smith
