Carol and Troy were talking in general terms about the way an advanced civilization might use seeds to colonize other planets. Nick wasn’t listening carefully. I can’t tell Troy or even Carol. If the aliens know what I’m thinking they will stop me. I’d better do it soon.
“Troy,” he heard Carol say as she began to take another set of pictures of the objects in the cylinder, “is it just co-incidence that the trident we found on Thursday looks so much like one of these seed packages?”
Nick did not wait for Troy to answer. “Excuse me,” he interrupted in a loud voice. “I forgot something very important. I must go back to the boat. Stay here and wait for me. I’ll be right back.”
He burst out of the room, down the corridor, and across the room with the low ceiling and the window on the ocean. Good, he said to himself, nothing is going to stop me. Without even pausing to put on his diving gear, Nick took a huge breath and dove through the window. He was afraid that his lungs were going to explode before he reached the surface. But he made it. He climbed up the ladder and onto the boat.
Nick went immediately to the bottom drawer underneath the racks of electronic equipment. He reached in and grabbed the golden trident. He could feel that the axis rod had thickened considerably. It was now nearly twice as thick as it had been the first time that he held it. Carol was right. Damnit, why didn’t I listen to her at the time? He pulled the object completely out of the drawer. The sun was just about to come up behind him. In the dawn light Nick could see that the trident had changed in several other ways. It was heavier. The individual tines on the fork end were much thicker and had almost grown together. In addition, there was an open hole into a soft, gooey interior on the north pole of the larger of the two spheres.
Nick examined it carefully. Suddenly he felt powerful arms wrap themselves around his chest and upper body, forcing him to drop the trident on the floor of the boat. “Now just hold steady,” he heard a lightly accented voice say, “and turn around slowly. We won’t hurt you if you cooperate.”
Nick turned around. Commander Winters and a tall, fat seaman that Nick had never seen before were standing in front of him in wetsuits. Lieutenant Ramirez was still holding him from behind. Ramirez gradually released Nick and bent down to pick up the trident. He handed it to Winters. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Winters said. “Where are your companions, Williams?” he then asked Nick. “Down there with my missile?”
Nick didn’t say anything at first. Too much was happening too fast. He was having difficulty integrating Winters into his scenario for returning the trident to the spaceship. As soon as Nick had felt the changes in its outer surface, he had known for certain that the trident was one of the seed packages.
Winters was studying the trident. “And what’s the significance of this thing?” he said. “You guys have taken enough photographs of it.”
Nick was doing some calculations. If I am delayed here very long, then Carol and Troy will undoubtedly leave the ship. And the aliens will launch. He took a deep breath. My only chance is the truth.
“Commander Winters,” Nick began, “please listen very carefully to what I’m about to say. It will sound fantastic, even preposterous, but it’s all true. And if you will come with me, I can prove everything to you. The fate of the human race may well depend on what we do in the next five minutes.” He paused to organize his ideas.
For some reason Winters thought about the ridiculous carrot story that Todd had told him. But the earnestness he was seeing in Nick’s face persuaded him to continue to pay attention. “Go ahead, Williams,” he said.
“Carol Dawson and Troy Jefferson are right now onboard a super-advanced extraterrestrial spaceship that is directly under this boat. The alien vehicle is traveling from planet to planet depositing packages of embryonic beings that are genetically designed to survive on a particular planet. That golden thing in your hand is, in a sense, a cradle for creatures that may later flourish on the Earth. I must return it to the aliens before they leave or our descendants may not survive.”
Commander Winters looked at Nick as if he had lost his mind. The commander started to say something. “No,” Nick interrupted. “Hear me out. The spacecraft also stopped here because it needed some repairs. At one time we thought it might have found your missile. That’s partially how we got involved in the first place. We didn’t know about the creatures in the cradle. So we were trying to help. One of the things the aliens needed for their repairs was gold. You see, they only had three days — ”
“Jesus K. Christ!” Winters shouted at Nick. “Do you really expect me to believe this crap? This is the looniest, most farfetched story I have ever heard in my entire life. You’re nuts. Cradles, aliens who need gold for repairs . . . I suppose next you’ll be telling me that they are six feet tall and look like carrots — ” “And have four vertical slits in their faces?” Nick added.
Winters glanced around. “You told him?” he said to Lieutenant Ramirez. Ramirez shook his head back and forth.
“No,” Nick continued abruptly as the commander looked completely confused. “The carrot thing wasn’t an alien, at least not one of the superaliens who made the ship. The carrot was a holographic projection . . .”
The perplexed Commander Winters waved his hands. “ I’m not listening to any more of this nonsense, Williams. At least not here. What I want to know is what you and your friends know about the location of the missile. Now will you come with us over to our boat of your own free will, or do we have to tie you up?”
At that moment, six feet above them, a ten-legged, black, spiderlike creature with a body about four inches in diameter walked unnoticed to the edge of the canopy. It extended three antennae in their direction and then leaped off the side, landing on the back of Lieutenant Ramirez’ neck. “Aieee,” screamed the lieutenant during the pause in the conversation. He fell down on his knees behind Nick and grasped at the black thing that was trying to take a sample chunk out of his neck. For a second nobody moved. Then Nick grabbed a large pair of pliers from the counter and thwacked the black thing once, twice, and even a third time before it released its grip on Ramirez’ neck.
All four men watched it fall to the deck, scuttle rapidly over to the cradle that Commander Winters had put down so that he could assist Ramirez, shrink its size by a factor of ten, and disappear into the cradle through the soft gooey opening on the top of the sphere. Within seconds the goo hardened and all the external surfaces of the cradle were again rigid.
Winters was flabbergasted. Ramirez crossed himself. The seaman looked as if he were about to faint. “I swear to you that my story is true, Commander,” Nick said calmly. “All you have to do is come down with me and see for yourself. I left my diving gear down there so that I could hurry up here to retrieve this thing. We can go together with my last working tank and share the air supply.”
Winters’ head was spinning. The ten-legged spider was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He felt that he had now entered the Twilight Zone. I have never seen or heard anything even remotely like this before in my life, Winters thought. And only half an hour ago I had wild hallucinations with musical accompaniment. Maybe I am the one losing touch with reality. Lieutenant Ramirez was still on his knees. It looked as if he were praying. Or maybe this is finally my sign from God.
“All right, Williams,” the commander was surprised to hear himself say. “I’ll go with you. But my men will wait here on your boat for our return.”
Nick picked up the trident and raced around the canopy to prepare the diving equipment.
It took Carol and Troy a few seconds to react to Nick’s abrupt departure. “That was strange,” Carol said finally. “What do you suppose he forgot?”
“I have no idea,” Troy shrugged. “But I hope he hurries back. I don’t think it’s very long until launch. And I’m sure they will throw us out before then.”
Carol thought for a moment and then turned back to look at the cylinder. “You know, Troy, those golden things are e
xactly like the trident on the outside. Did you say — ”
“I didn’t answer you before, angel,” Troy interrupted. “But yes, you’re right. It is the same material. I hadn’t realized until we came down here today that what we picked up on that first dive was the seed package for Earth. They may have tried to tell me before; maybe I just didn’t understand them.”
Carol was fascinated. She walked over and put her face against the cylinder wall. It felt more like glass than plastic. “So maybe I was right when I thought it was heavier and thicker . . .” she said, as much to herself as to Troy. “And inside that trident are seeds for better plants and animals?” Troy nodded his head in response.
There was now some motion inside the cylinder. The thin membranes separating the subvolumes were growing what appeared to be guidewires that were wrapping themselves around the individual golden objects. Carol reloaded her camera with a new disc and ran around the outside of the cylinder, stopping in the best positions to photograph the process. Troy looked down at his bracelet. “There’s no doubt about it, angel. These ETs are definitely preparing to launch. Maybe we should go.”
‘We’ll wait as long as we can,” Carol shouted from across the room. “These photographs will he priceless.” They both could now hear weird noises behind the walls. The noises were not loud, but they were distracting because they were erratic and so totally alien. Troy paced nervously as he listened to the gamut of sounds. Carol walked over beside him. “Besides,” she said, “Nick asked us to wait for him.”
“That’s great,” Troy answered, “as long as they wait as well.” He seemed uncharacteristically nervous. “I don’t want to be onboard when these guys leave the Earth.”
“Hey there, Mr. Jefferson,” Carol said, you are supposed to he the calm one. Relax. You just said yourself that you think they’ll throw us out before they leave.” She paused and looked searchingly at Troy. “What do you know that I don’t?”
Troy turned away from her and started walking toward the exit. Carol ran after him and grabbed his arm. “What is it, Troy?” she said. ‘What’s wrong?”
“Look, angel,” he replied, not looking directly at her, “I just figured it out myself a minute ago. And I’m still not sure what it means. I hope I haven’t made a terrible — ”
“What are you talking about?” she interrupted him. “You’re not making any sense.”
“The Earth package,” he blurted out. “It has human seeds in it too. Along with the trees and insects and grasses and birds.”
Carol stood facing Troy, trying to understand what was bothering him so much. “When they came here a long long time ago,” he said, his face wrinkled with concern, “they took specimens of the different species and returned them to their home world. Where they were improved by genetic engineering and prepared for their eventual return to the Earth. Some of those specimens were human beings.”
Carol’s heart quickened as she realized what Troy was telling her. So that’s it, she said to herself. There are superhumans inside that package we’ve found. Not just better flowers and better bugs, but better people as well. But unlike Troy, Carol’s immediate reaction was not fear. She was overwhelmed by curiosity.
“Can I see them?” she asked excitedly. Troy didn’t understand. “The superhumans, or whatever you want to call them . . . ,” she continued, “can I see them?”
Troy shook his head. “They’re just tiny zygotes, angel. More than a billion would fit in your hand. You wouldn’t be able to see anything.”
Carol was not dissuaded. “ But these guys have such amazing technological ability. Maybe they can . . .” She stopped. “Wait a minute, Troy. Remember that carrot on the base? It was a holographic projection and must have come somehow out of the information base on this spacecraft.”
Carol walked away from Troy into the middle of the room. She raised her arms and looked up at the ceiling thirty feet above her. “Okay, you guys, whoever you are,” she invoked in a loud voice. “Now there’s something that I want. We risked our ass to get what you needed for your repairs. You can at least reciprocate. I want to see what we might look like someday . . .”
To their left, not too far from one of the large blocky machines connected to the cylinder, two of the wall partitions moved apart to form a hallway. They could see light at the other end. “Come on,” an exultant Carol called to Troy, who was again smiling and admiring her assertiveness, “let’s go see what our superaliens have created for us now.”
At the end of the short corridor, there was a softly lit square room about twenty feet on a side. Against the opposite wall, illuminated by a blue light that gave the entire tableau a surrealistic appearance, eight children were standing around a large, glowing model of the Earth. As Carol and Troy approached, they recognized that what they were seeing was not real, that it was simply a complex sequence of images projected into the air in front of them. But the diaphanous picture contained such rich detail that it was easy to forget it was just a projection.
The children were four or five years old. All were wearing only a thin white loincloth that covered their genitals. There were four girls and four boys. Two of them were black, two were Caucasian with blue eyes and blonde hair, two were Oriental, and the final boy and girl, definitely twins, looked like a mixture of all humanity What Carol immediately noticed was their eyes. All eight children had large, piercing eyes of brilliant intensity that were focused on the glowing Earth in front of them.
“The continents of this planet,” the little black boy was saying, “were once tied together in a single gigantic land mass that stretched from pole to pole. This was relatively recently, only about two hundred million years ago. Since that time the motion of the plates on which the individual land masses rest has completely changed the configuration of the surface. Here, for example, you can see the Indian sub continent tearing away from Antarctica a hundred million years ago and moving across the ocean toward an eventual collision with Asia. It was this collision and the subsequent plate interaction that lifted the Himalayas, the highest mountains on the planet, to their current height.”
As the little boy was talking, the electronic model Earth in front of him demonstrated the continental changes that he was describing. “But what is the mechanism that causes these plates and land masses to move with respect to each other?” the tiny blonde-haired girl asked.
“Psst,” Carol whispered in Troy’s ear. “How come they are speaking English and know all this Earth geography?” Troy looked at her as if he were disappointed and made a circular motion with his hands. Of course, Carol said to herself, they’ve already processed the discs.
“. . . then this activity results in material being thrust upward from the mantle below the Earth’s crust. Eventually the continents are pushed apart. Any other questions?” The black boy was smiling. He pointed at the model in front of him. “Here’s what will happen to the land masses in the next fifty million years or so. The Americas will continue to move to the West, away from Africa and Europe, making the South Atlantic a much larger ocean. The Persian Gulf will close altogether, Australia will drive north toward the equator and press against Asia, and both Baja California and the area around Los Angeles will split off from North America to drift northward in the Pacific Ocean. By fifty million years from now Los Angeles will start sliding into the Aleutian Islands.”
All of the children watched the changing globe with complete attention. When the continents on the surface of the model stopped moving, the Oriental boy stepped slightly out from the group. “We have seen this continental drift phenomenon that Brian has been describing on half a dozen other planets, all of them bodies mostly covered by a liquid. Tomorrow Sherry will lead a more detailed discussion about the forces inside a planet that cause the sea floor to spread in the first place.”
A projected image of a warden entered the scene from the left and removed both the Earth globe and several other unidentified props. The small boy waited patiently for the warden to comple
te his task and then continued, “Darla and David now want to share with us a project they have been working on for several days. They will play the music while Miranda and Justin perform the dance they choreographed.”
The mixed twins turned eagerly to their classmates. The girl spoke out. “When we first learned about adult love and the changes that we all can expect after we pass puberty, David and I tried to envision what it would be like to find a new desire even stronger than those we already know. Our joint vision became a short musical composition and a dance. We call it ‘The Dance of Love.’ ”
The two children sat down away from the group, almost at the side of the image, and began moving their fingers rapidly as if they were typing on the floor. A light synthesized melody, pleasant and spirited, filled the room. The blond boy and the Oriental girl began to dance in the center of the group. At first in the dance, the two were totally separate, unaware of each other, each child completely absorbed in his own activities. The boy knelt down to pick a beautiful flower, its red and white coloring shimmering in the holographic projection. The girl bounced a large bright blue ball as she danced. After a while the little girl noticed the boy and approached him, somewhat tentatively, offering to share the ball. The boy played ball with her but ignored everything except the game.
This is magic, thought Carol as she watched the children’s images moving with grace and deft precision in front of her. These children are wonderful. But they can’t be real. They are too orderly, too self-contained. Where is the tension, the strife? But despite her questions she was profoundly moved by the scene she was witnessing. The children were acting in concert, as a group, flowing in harmony from activity to activity. Their body language was open and unafraid. No neuroses were blocking their learning process.