Chapter 10

Victoria was awakened from a disturbed sleep by a persistent squeaking. Opening one eye, she could make out her alarm clock in the gloom. It read 6:45, but was making no noise. Rolling over onto her back, she opened the other eye and focused on the plaster ceiling. A long water stain shaped like a giant worm or amoeba was etched in the plaster. The squeaking and chirping continued, and she realized it was coming from outside her room. She stumbled out of the bed and wrenched open the curtains. Sunlight poured in, blinding her momentarily. Small birds - sparrows, she guessed - hopped around among the bushes that separated the motel’s walkway from the grills of the parked cars. Birds. God, she didn’t know they could be so damn noisy. She was used to the background racket of the city - the constant babble of car horns and sirens and the shuffle of millions of feet - but this was downright distracting. How could people sleep?

She realized with a start that she would have to find a way to get used to it. This ... this town would be her home soon. At least temporarily. She was supposed to spend a couple of days checking out the site with Peabody, and looking about for a place to stay. Peabody had given her the name of a real estate agent. She would be expected to relocate here once construction was well under way to oversee the final work. After the center opened, she would be here indefinitely. She frowned at the thought. But not forever, she vowed. Not forever.

After showering and dressing, Victoria stopped by the lobby to ask the desk clerk if the motel offered a continental breakfast. It was some Indian guy, and he had politely given her a cup of coffee but told her that, no, the Mountain Dew Motor Court operated on the modified New American plan, the primary attractions of which were free ice, snack machines and cable TV with pay-per-view.

She drank the coffee, choked down some stale crackers from the machine, and fished around in her purse until she found the keys to the rental car Peabody had given her the night before. He said he would be working in his room for much of the day, communicating via computer with the main office in New York.

Her meeting with the reporter was at 8:30. She was supposed to meet him at the newspaper office, which Peabody had told her was downtown. She couldn’t miss it, he said. She wasn’t so sure; her sense of direction was not strong. As she entered Jupiter proper, she drove slowly around the town square searching the facades of the buildings. People were wandering up and down the sidewalks, but nobody seemed to be in a hurry, she noted. She was surprised to see merchandise sitting on the sidewalk in front of what she guessed was a hardware store - a couple of lawn mowers, shiny new shovels and spades, and some sort of machine with prongs sticking out the back that she had no idea what it must do. My god, she thought, they hadn’t even chained them down. Those things would be gone in two seconds if left unattended in New York.

She suddenly felt disoriented, and she pulled the car over to the side of the road and parked in an empty space. She felt as though she was in an Andrew Wyeth painting, or had been thrown back in time to the ‘50s. Small-town America. Well, maybe not the ‘50s, she thought as she watched two boys of about 15 jumping their skateboards over a low wall along the town square. They were clad in baggy shorts and shirts with scuffed up but expensive athletic shoes. One was entirely bald, the other sported a purple Mohawk. Each had an earring dangling from an ear.

Looking down the street, she saw a sign identifying the newspaper office. She shut the car off, climbed out and carefully locked it. She walked down the street and felt slightly dizzy. Maybe it’s the air here, she thought. It’s different somehow.

She pushed open the door to the newspaper and gave the woman at the counter her name, and told her she was expected by one of the reporters. A couple of minutes later the reporter from the meeting last night emerged from the back and came around the counter, his hand extended.

“Ms. Chandler, isn’t it? Thanks for stopping by. I’m Winston Moss.”

“Doctor,” she said, accepting his handshake.

“Beg your pardon?”

“It’s doctor. Dr. Chandler. I have a Ph.D.” She dropped his hand.

“I’m sorry.” His eyes glimmered with amusement. “Won’t you come back to my office, doctor?”

They went through into the back, past paste-up boards, stacks of newspapers, filing cabinets, desks piled high with papers and books, and ended up at a small cubicle filled with an overflowing desk. A kid at a nearby desk looked up from a computer he was pecking at and grinned before resuming his work. He looked incongruous in the newspaper office; dressed in a bright Hawaiian shirt, he somehow looked like a surfer beached on a strange land.

“Won’t you sit down?” Winston grabbed a stack of mail in his arms and dropped them on a pile behind his desk. He cleared off a space on his desk and opened a notebook.

“Want some coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

“Well, then,” he said. “Shall we get started?”

She looked up to find him staring at her strangely. “What?” she asked. “What is it?”

“Hmmm? Oh, sorry. Nothing. You just ... you haven’t ever been to Jupiter before, have you, um, Dr. Chandler?”

“No. Never.”

“So, what do you think?”

“It’s ... charming,” she managed. “Quaint, I guess. Small.”

He laughed. “Yeah. It’s all that. And more. Look, I didn’t mean to give you such a hard time last night. It’s just that I’ve been getting the runaround from your friend Peabody. I’m just trying to find out what’s going on. Anyway, Peabody said you’d have all the answers. Well, I’ve got the questions, so it looks like we’re a pretty good match.”

“Hardly,” she said dryly. “Mr. Moss…”

“Winston.”

“Pardon me?”

“Winston. It’s my name.”

“Let’s get one thing straight, Mr. Moss. I’m a scientist, here to do a job. That’s to run the center. It’s not to make matches, it’s not to schmooze with the press, it’s not to make friends, it’s not to make people happy.”

“Why not?”

“What?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“With what?”

“With all that you just said. What’s wrong with making friends and making people happy?”

“I ... I ... that’s not what I meant, exactly,” she said, flustered a bit. She cursed herself. What was the matter with her? This was a stupid reporter, for Christ’s sake.

“Well, what did you mean? Exactly.”

Damn him, she thought. Sitting there smirking at her. Ready to make her look like a fool, no doubt.

“Look, Mr. Moss, I’m not sure this whole interview thing is going to work out. To be honest with you, I don’t trust the press. In fact, I don’t like the media much. I think the press is only interested in making people look bad, in snooping around trying to find out anything negative. And if they can’t find it, they make it up. Excuse me, they speculate.”

Winston leaned across the desk and lowered his voice. “You know what, doctor? Don’t let this get out, but I agree with you. As a rule, the press is pond scum.” He grinned. “But there are exceptions to the rule, you know.”

She appraised him coolly. “O.K., Mr. Moss, what is it you want to know? Exactly.”

He leaned back and grabbed a pen, suddenly becoming more businesslike. “Let’s start with this institute or center of yours. Why would some guy who sells condoms want to build a facility to look for aliens? What’s in it for him?”

“Mr. Carrington does much more than manufacture, um, prophylactics,” she said hotly. “His holdings are very diversified, I can assure you. Prophylactics are but a small part of his business. He has agricultural interests...”

“Yeah, but he made his first wad in rubbers, didn’t he?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps. It’s no affair of mine. I thought we covered all that at the town meeting. All I know is he finances the Carrington Laboratories, where I am employed. We do important research there. And it has nothing to do with rubbers.”

“All right, all right. I personally don’t care what your Mr. Carrington makes. Of course, folks around here might not take too kindly to it. Then again, you never know. It’s not like they don’t sell Mr. Carrington’s product around here, you know.”

Victoria flushed. “No, I’m quite sure I wouldn’t know.”

“So, he’s not secretly building a condom plant up there on the mountain, is he? And using this UFO stuff as a cover?”

“You don’t believe, do you?” she said suddenly. “You think this is all fantasy, science fiction. You think we’re all a bunch of lunatics.”

Winston nibbled on his pen. “Well, you have to admit, the idea of contacting creatures from outer space from a mountain in Jupiter is kind of outlandish. Not to mention the idea of them coming here to visit.”

“I suppose it was too much to hope for that somebody who lived in a place called Jupiter would actually be interested in space,” she said hotly.

Winston laughed. “Well, we’re not exactly named for the planet. Nor the Roman god, for that matter.”

“Oh.” Despite Victoria’s glacial tone and flashing eyes, she was curious.

“It’s not something the Chamber of Commerce advertises. Seems that back when the pioneers were passing through to Kentucky and Tennessee, there was this one bunch that included a fellow with a mule. The party had climbed the mountains and made it into this valley here when it seems for some reason or the other the mule wouldn’t go another inch. Well, the fellow was mighty attached to that mule, so he decided he wouldn’t go any further, either. The rest of the folks moved on, but he stayed and opened a little trading post, and the town kind of gradually build up around it.”

“And this person’s name was Jupiter?”

“No, that was the name of his mule. He took to calling his place Jupiter’s Store, and the town just took over the Jupiter part.”

“But why didn’t he name the store after himself?” Victoria asked.

Winston grinned. “He was a Swedish gent. His name was Gudfarten. The chamber folks aren’t too keen on advertising that bit of folklore, either.”

The edges of Victoria’s lips began to quirk into a smile. Suddenly, she shook her head and her face snapped back into a severe expression. “Be that as it may, even a mule should be able to appreciate the science involved here. Do you really think that of all the billions and trillions of stars and planets out there, the only intelligent life is found on this one?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I think a pretty good case could be made that none can be found on this planet either.”

“Make jokes if you like, Mr. Moss. But this is serious business.”

“I thought it was science?”

She ignored the jibe. “Do you have any idea what it would mean to make contact with another civilization? Think what it would mean. Think of the possibilities. What we could learn. The technology. Think about the advances we could make in medicine, for instance. Perhaps they could give us medicines that would cure some of our major diseases.”

“Or perhaps they could give us new diseases we didn’t even know existed.”

“And space travel,” she continued earnestly. “Think about that. Think about traveling to other planets. Seeing other worlds, other civilizations. Think about the knowledge, the wisdom of the universe, that lies out there.”

“You’re really into this, aren’t you?” Winston said. Her faced was flushed with excitement, and her eyes flashed as she spoke.

“Yes, I am,” she said, suddenly angry. “Go ahead, laugh. I don’t care. People have been laughing at me all my life. It doesn’t matter. I’ll show you. I’ll show them. We’ll do it. We’ll contact aliens, and we’ll get them to come here. Just wait.”

“Whoa, slow down. I’m not laughing at anybody. It’s just that, well, you know, most of the people I know who talk about flying saucers are a couple of cards shy of a full deck, you know? I’ve never heard a scientist talking about them in a, er, scientific manner.”

His peace offering didn’t do much to mollify her. She sat back, glaring at him, her hands trembling.

He decided to try another tack. “So, how exactly do you plan on contacting these, um, aliens? What kind of communications device will you be using?”

She raised her chin and took in a deep breath. “To put it in layman’s terms, we plan to have a wide-band digital pulse transmitter to beam out a constant signal. Our main computer is programmed to send a welcoming signal out in every known language, plus several electronic ones we’ve developed. We assume that a species more advanced technologically than us will be able to recognize patterns and decipher the signal.”

“Interesting,” Winston responded. She looked at him to see if he was being sarcastic, but he was busy scribbling on his notebook.

“The signal will inform anyone or anything listening that we are an advanced civilization ourselves and looking for peaceful contact. We assume they will be able to home in on the signal and track it here. We also will have a large antenna on the mountain site to receive any signals sent back.”

“Really? How large?”

“About 50 meters in diameter.”

Winston whistled as he wrote. “Wow. You should be able to pick up the Knicks games with that.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said. “So, when do you open for business?”

“Construction will begin immediately. We estimate three months before we can begin initial operations.”

“Three months? You think you can get it all built in three months?”

“Oh, no. The antenna will be shipped here in pieces, and put together. A lot of the other equipment will be housed temporarily in pre-fabricated buildings while the main unit is under construction. That won’t be finished until next year. But Mr. Carrington is anxious to get this started. Very anxious.”

“Why is that?”

“What?”

“Why is Carrington so anxious to contact aliens? Or is this just a tax write-off?”

“Oh, no. He’s long had an interest in the potential for extraterrestrial contact. He’s very, um, passionate on the subject, actually. Like me. I think he recognizes the enormous potential in alien-human interaction. He’s really quite visionary in that way.”

“I’ll bet,” Winston said as he wrote. “So, um, you’ll be running the show, then?”

“On site, yes.”

“So you’ll be moving here?”

“It would be a rather lengthy commute from my apartment in New York.”

“You found a place to live?”

“No, but I’m supposed to meet with a real estate agent later today. A Ms. Arrington, I believe.”

“Yeah, she’ll find you something nice. Well, welcome to Jupiter, Dr. Chandler. If you need someone to show you around, show you where things are, give me a call.” He looked at her.

“Thanks, but I think I’ll be able to find my way around. Besides, I’ll be pretty busy. Is that all?”

“For now, yes. Thanks again for stopping by.” He stood.

She rose from her seat.

“By the way,” he stopped her. “Can I ask you a favor?”

She considered. “A favor? Like what?”

“Just in case you, you know, hear anything. From up there.” He pointed to the ceiling. “Would you call us first? We are the local press, after all.”

She laughed. “I’ll have to think about that, Mr. Moss.”

Winston watched her go. Space aliens, he mused. Scientists. What was Jupiter coming to?