“It’s bigger than Manhattan.”
A voice in back of Operations spoke up. “Maybe somebody ought to check and see if Manhattan’s still there.” No one laughed.
“If there’s something there,” the controller murmured, “we ought to be able to get visual confirmation.”
“Sure,” agreed his assistant, “but I was damned if I was going to solicit it on my authority.”
He nodded gloomily as he addressed the communications tech. “Get Civil Control at the airport and tell ’em to send someone up there for a personal look-see. Fire, police, medical: it doesn’t matter as long as they’re sober. And line up Baltimore Command. I may have to talk to them too.” A wide-eyed young man nodded as he moved to comply. “Meanwhile let’s keep all traffic away from that area.”
“Shouldn’t be difficult.” Mary stared at the holo. “That’s not flyover country anyway.”
The communications tech looked up from his console. “Baltimore on-line, sir.”
“Tell ’em to hold for a couple of minutes.”
“No, sir, you don’t understand. They’ve called us. They’ve got the same anomaly on their holo and they want us to confirm. They also want to know what the hell is going on up here.”
The chief controller considered. ‘Tell ’em yes, and we’re trying to find out.” Airspace Operations was filling up as clerical and other personnel who’d gotten the word drifted in. Neither controller took notice of the swelling audience. They couldn’t spare the time.
The communications tech again. “Civil scrambled a hovermed, sir.”
The controller nodded absently. Meteorology wouldn’t have a new satellite image for another hour yet.
As if repeating a hopeful mantra, Mary reiterated, “I’m sure it’s just a malfunction, Stephan. It has to be. We never picked it up coming in. It just appeared. Like it popped right out of the ground.” She grinned at the self-evident absurdity of it.
“That’s right,” confirmed the duty spacer. “Damnedest thing.”
“Besides,” Mary added, “nobody’s built a ship that big.”
“Nobody’s imagined a ship that big,” the controller muttered.
A lot of tea and coffee passed through multiple human systems before the hastily dispatched hovermed arrived on the scene. Its operators activated their recorders. The images they relayed back to base weren’t the best, but then they had been trained as medics, not photographers. Also, they didn’t hang around long. In fact, they left in quite a hurry.
If anything, the assistant controller was more awake now than she’d been when the first image had appeared in the regional holo.
“So it is a ship.” She was gawking at the oblong.
The previous half hour had seen the communications tech busier than he’d ever been in his life. “Baltimore again, sir. They’ve been in touch with Barcelona. The Federal Federation and Keiretsu reps say they know nothing about it. They’re due on-line with the Eeckars next. They tried the Candomblean embassy but the ambassador and his staff are all hung over from a party in Tangiers last night.”
“Figures.” The controller had to smile. Those Candombleans knew how to live.
“It’s not of human manufacture.”
Everyone turned to stare at the deadranger. Fortunately he was not the self-conscious type. “Can’t be,” he added defensively. “Something that size, just hovering there.”
“Antigravity principles are well understood,” someone ventured.
The deadranger glanced in the speaker’s direction. “You bet, but nobody’s figured out a practical way to apply ’em yet.” He indicated the holo. “Something else has.”
“Good thing too,” said another member of the staff. “Because if they hadn’t, that thing would fall down and put a lot of people at risk, even in a lightly populated area like the Adirondacks. Unless it’s hollow, like a big balloon.”
“It didn’t look like a balloon,” someone else who’d seen the relayed vids commented.
“So what do we do about it?” Mary tipped her mug, frowned at the empty container. “Wait for Baltimore to issue orders?”
“We could try transmitting at it.” The chief controller pursed his lips. “It’s evidently a craft of some kind and it’s within our jurisdictional airspace. It’s our responsibility.”
“Our responsibility,” she murmured.
“That’s right.”
She looked up from her mug and smiled at him. “You talk to it.”
He stared back at her, then raised his glance to the communications tech. “Shoot it some standard hailing frequencies, Manuel. Audio and visual. Let’s see if we can talk to it.”
“Talk to it.” The tech nodded slowly. “Right. Sure.”
“Just don’t transmit anything that could be interpreted as offensive.” Stephan smiled thinly. “We wouldn’t want to make anyone or anything on board mad.”
“No, we wouldn’t,” the tech agreed readily.
“It might not be capable of responding,” his assistant pointed out. “Probably just a dumb device. Some kind of fantastic drone.”
“Ready to try, sir?” The tech glanced down at the controller. “I’ve got a directional patch-up all set to go.”
The chief controller for Albany airspace unclipped his mike from his shirt pocket and held it to his lips. It hovered there, much as the mysterious object hovered above the Adirondacks.
What if Phil was right and the incredible apparition was of alien origin? What was he supposed to say? More important, what would he say if their queries produced a response? It did not occur to him that he might be participating in a pivotal moment in human history. He knew only that he had to try and do his job as best he could.
