James Tiptree Jr. - Second Going

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SECOND GOING

By James Tiptree, Jr.

James Tiptree, Jr. is now known to be the penname of Alice Sheldon, a woman

of many talents who was connected with the CIA's photographic identification

section. She took her own life early in 1987, having pondered the tragedy of

her invalid husband. This story, dealing with the whole question of God and

the gods of antiquity, was one of her last. It was written surely during the

long period when she was contemplating her own deathand what came

aftersomething that is noticeable in other short stories of hers in that

time. In some ways there is a curiously light touch to her thoughts as shown

in this taleeven though it deals with a basic problem which has disturbed

people since earliest days of human existence.

I didn't mean to start like this, I wanted to make it a nice formal Appendix,

or Addendum, to the official Archives. The account of man's first contact with

aliens: what really happened.

But I can't find any bound copies of the White Book, not even in the

President's office. Except one somebody got mustard all over and another piece

the rats got at. What I suspect, what I think is, they never finished it. All

I can find is some empty coverboxes, so I'm going to put these discs in one

of those so people will know it's important.

After all, I am the official Archivist-I typed the promotion myself when

Hattie went. I'm Theodora Tanton, Chief NASA Archivist. And I'm seventysix

years old, as of this morning. So is everybody,

oldeverybody who can remember, that is. So who's going to hear it, anyway?

You with your six fingers or two heads or whatever?

You'll be around, though. They promised us that, that we wouldn't blow

ourselves up. They said they fixed it. And I believe them. Not because I

believe them exactly, but because I think they just might want to come back

someday and find more than ashes.

They didn't command us not to fire atomic weapons, by the way. I guess they

knew by that time that when a god commands Don't Eat Those Apples, or Don't

Open This Box-it's the first thing men'll do. (And manage to blame it on a

woman, too, if you'll notice. But I disgress.)

Nope, they just said, "We fixed that." Maybe the Russians have found out what

they did by this time. Or the Israelis. What's left of the Pentagon is too

scared to try. So, Hello, Posterity.

This is about what really happened, to add to the White Book, if you ever find

oneooops, that was a rat. I have a Coleman lantern, and a hockey stick for

the rats.

Start with First Contact.

First Contact took place on Mars, with the men of the First Mars Mission. The

two who had landed, that is. The command module pilot, Reverend Perry

Danforth, was just flying orbits, looking down and seeing peculiar things.

Meeting them on Mars confused everybody for a while. They were not Martians.

The best account of the meeting is from Mission Control. I found a man who had

been a boy there, sort of a gofer. In that big room with all the

terminals-you've seen it a million times on TV if you watched space stuff. So

this first bit is dictated live by Kevin (Red) Blake, now aged 99.5 years.

But before him I want to say a word about how everything was. So normal.

Nothing sinister or dramatic going on. Like in a ship that's slowly, very

slowly, listing to one side, only nobody's mentioning it. That's all

underneath. But little things give it away, like this one Kevin told me before

they landed.

It was a long trip, see, two years plus. They were all in the command module,

called Mars Eagle. James Aruppa, commanding, and Todd Fiske, and the Reverend

Perry, who wasn't going to get to land. (Personally, I'd have broken Todd's

arm or something, if I'd been Perry, so I could get to land. Imagine getting

so closeand then flying circles for a week while the others are on Mars! But

he acted perfectly happy about it. He even made a joke about being "the most

expensive valet parking service ever." Very cooperative and oneforall, the

Reverend. I never did find out exactly what he was the Reverend of; maybe it

was only a nickname.)

Anyway about five or six months out, at a time when they were supposed to be

fast asleep, they called Mission Control. "Are you all right back there?"

"Sure, everything's nominal here. What's with you?"

Well, it turned out that they'd seen this flash, some trick rock reflection or

something that made a burst of light right where Earth was. And they thought

it was missiles, see, World War III starting . . . anybody would've, in those

days. That's what I mean by the feelings just underneath. But nobody ever said

a gloomy word, on top.

There were other things underneath, of course, different for different people,

all adding up to The End. But this is no place to talk about the old days;

it's all changed now. So that's that, and now here comes Kevin:

"I can remember it like it was yesterday. All morning had been occupied with

the Lander carrying Todd and Jim Aruppa coming down and finding a flat place.

I nearly got thrown out of the control room for sticking my head in people's

way to catch a glimpse of a screen while I was bringing stuff. The amount of

coffee those NASA boys put away! And some of them ate-one man ate seven egg

sandwiches-they were all keyed up like crazy. All right, I'll stick to the

point. I know what you want to hear.

"So by then it was coming pitch dark on Mars, only the Lander's lights glaring

on a pebbly plain with cracks in it. The computer colored it red, I guess it

was. Mission Control wouldn't let them get out then. They were ordered to

sleep until it got full light again. Ten hours ... Imagine, sleeping your

first night on Mars!

"The last thing was, Perry up in the command module reported a glow of light

on the eastern horizon. It wasn't a moon risingwe'd already seen one of

those. A little greenish crescent, going like crazy.

"So during the night Perry was supposed to check on what might be glowing

toward the easta volcano, maybe? But by the time he came around to where he

could see the place again, the glow had faded to nearly nothing, and next trip

there was nothing at all to see.

"At this time a relief crew was on the CRTs in Mission Control, but every so

often one of the men who were supposed to be sleeping in their quarters next

door would come in and just stare at the screens for a few minutes. All you

could see was a faint, jagged horizon line, and then the stars began.

"First light was supposed to be at 5:50 A.M. our time (see, I even remember

numbers!) and by that time the whole day crew was back in the room, everybody

all mixed together, and all wanting coffee and Danishes.

"On the screens the sky was getting just a little lighter, so the horizon

looked sharper and darker until suddenly a faint lightness came on the ground

plain in front of the mountains. And then came a minute I'll never forget.

Like the whole room was holding its breath, only whispering or rustling a

little around their dark screens. And then Eggy Stone yelled out loud and

clear:

"'There's something there! It's big! Oh, man!'

"That made it official, what the sharpeyed ones thought they'd been picking

up but couldn't believe, and everybody was jabbering at once. And the voices

of the astronauts cutting through everything, with that fourandahalfminute

lag, about how this Thing was sitting in front of them unlit, unmoving, no

indication of how it had come there, whether it crawled or flew in or bored up

out of the ground. Of course, they thought it was Martians.

"What it was was a great big, say fiftymeterlong, dumbbell shape lying there

about a hundred meters in front of their main window. It was two huge

spheroids, or hexasomethings, connected by one big fat center barreally like

a dumbbell. Only in the middle of the connection was a chamber, say three

meters each way. We could see right in because its whole front side was folded

back like a big gullwing door. It appeared to be padded inside. The computer

called it light blue, with two rustcolored lumps like cushion seats back on

the floor inside.

"And both of the big dumbbell chambers at the ends had like windows spaced all

around them.

"And filling the window of the end nearest us, the window we could see into,

was something moving or flickering slightly, something shiny and lighter blue.

It took a second or two to recognize it, because of its size-it was over a

meter long, almost round.

"It was an eye. A great, humongous, living eye, blue with a white rim. And

looking at us.

"Like the creature it belonged to was so big it was all curled up inside its

compartment, with its eye pressed to the glass. For some reason, right from

the start we knew that the creature, or being, or whatever, had only one

central eye.

"In addition to looking at us-that is, at the camera most of the time, the

eye was also swiveling to examine the Lander and every thing around.

"Now all through the excitement Todd and Jim in the Lander were trying to tell

us something. I wasn't in on this, but whenever I could get near Voice Contact

I heard things like, 'We are not crazy! I tell you we are not crazy; it's

talking in our heads. Yes, in English. We get two words very distinctly: peace

and welcome. Over and over. And we are not out of our minds; if I could figure

a way to get this on the caller you'd hear-'

"They sounded madder and madder. I guess Mission Control was giving them a

hard time, especially General Streiter, who was sure it was a Soviet Commie

trick of some kind. And of course there was no way for them to get a mental

voice on the antennae. But then the aliens apparently solved that for

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