Why? What would make them—

I heard a roar. A high-pitched banshee wail, really. Looking up as far as I could through the bloodied faceplate, I saw the sweetest sight of my life. A squat, bullet-shaped chunk of metal with a cluster of jet pods hanging off its ass end and three spindly, awkward legs unfolding out of its sides.

The return vehicle settled gently on the rocks half a dozen meters in front of me and released its jet pods with an ungainly thump. I crawled over to it with the last bit of my strength. The airlock hatch popped open and I hauled myself up into it.

The airlock was about as big as a shoe box but I tucked myself inside and leaned on the stud that closed the hatch and sealed it. I just sat there in that tight little metal cubbyhole and gasped into my helmet mike, “Take me up.”

The acceleration from the booster rockets knocked me unconscious.

When I came to, I was on an air-cushion mattress in the orbiter’s tiny infirmary. My face was completely bandaged except for holes for my eyes and mouth. They must have pumped enough painkillers in me to pacify the whole subcontinent of India. I felt somewhere between numb and floating.

Hal was there at my beside. And Angel.

They had flown the return vehicle to me, of course, once they got a good fix on my position. The little ship’s cameras even got a good shot of the erupting volcano as it lifted up through the atmosphere—ahead of the pressure wave, thank goodness—and carried me safely to orbit.

“You did a great job, pal,” Hunky Hal said, smiling his megawatt smile at me.

“We were so frightened,” Angel said. “When the radio link went dead we thought . . .”

“Me, too,” I whispered. My voice wasn’t up to anything more.

“We’ll get an Oscar for this one,” Hal said. “For sure.”

For sure.

“Get some rest now,” he went on. “I’ve gotta get over to the processing guys and see how they’re morphing your video imagery.”

I nodded. Angel looked down at me, sweet as her namesake, then turned to Hal. He slid an arm around her waist and together they left me lying there in the infirmary.

Lovers. I felt my heart break. Everything I’d done, all that I’d gone through, and it didn’t help at all. He wanted her now.

And I still loved him so.

THE QUESTION

One of the new frontiers that we will face—sooner or later—is the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Radio astronomers have been searching for intelligent signals from the stars for more than half a century. Despite a few false alarms, no such signals have been found. Why?

One possibility is the sheer size of the starry universe. Our Milky Way galaxy alone contains more than a hundred billion stars, and there are billions of galaxies out there. How many of them harbor intelligence and civilizations?

Another possibility is that we’re using the wrong equipment. To expect alien creatures to be beaming radio signals across the parsecs is probably naïve. If such civilizations exist, they are most likely using very different technologies.

My own opinion is that alien civilizations are alien. They don’t think the way we do. They have different priorities, different desires, different needs.

“The Question” is my humble attempt to depict what might happen if and when we do make contact. I was guided by the famous maxim of the twentieth-century English geneticist J. B. S. Haldane: “The universe is not only queerer than we imagine—it is queerer that we can imagine.”

See what you think.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

—NOAM CHOMSKY

THE DISCOVERER

Not many men choose their honeymoon site for its clear night skies, nor do they leave their beds in the predawn hours to climb up to the roof of their rented cottage. At least Hal Jacobs’s bride understood his strange passion.

Linda Krauss-Jacobs, like her husband, was an amateur astronomer. In fact, the couple had met at a summer outing of the South Connecticut Astronomical Society. Now, however, she shivered in the moonless dark of the chill New Mexico night as Jacobs wrestled with the small but powerful electronically boosted telescope he was trying to set up on the sloping roof, muttering to himself as he worked in the dark.

“It’ll be dawn soon,” Linda warned.

“Yeah,” said Hal. “Then we get back to bed.”

That thought did not displease Linda. She was not as dedicated an astronomer as her husband. Maybe dedicated isn’t the right word, she thought. Fanatic would be more like it. Still, there were three comets in the solar system that bore the Jacobs name, and he was intent on discovering more, honeymoon or not.

His mutterings and fumblings ceased. Linda knew he had the little telescope working at last.

“Can I see?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, without looking up from the tiny display screen. “In a min— Hey! Look at that!”

Stepping carefully on the rounded roof tiles, he moved over enough so that she could peek over his shoulder at the cold green-tinted screen. A fuzzy blob filled its center.

“There wasn’t anything like that in that location last night,” Jacobs said, his voice trembling slightly.

“Is it a comet?” Linda wondered aloud.

“Got to be,” he said. Then he added, “And a big one, too. Look how bright it is!”

THE RADIO ASTRONOMER