Contact

by Carl Sagan

At this time they emerged near a star visibly changing its brightness (she could tell from the progression of f/stops required)—perhaps it was one of the RR Lyrae stars; next was a quintuple system; then a feebly luminous brown dwarf. Some were in open space, some were embedded in nebulosity, surrounded by glowing molecular clouds.

And swimming into her field of view as the dodec rotated was . . . a prodigy, a wonder, a miracle. They were upon it almost before they knew it. It filled half the sky. Now they were flying over it. On its surface were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of illuminated doorways, each a different shape. Many were polygonal or circular or with an elliptical cross section, some had projecting appendages or a sequence of partly overlapping off-center circles. She realized they were docking ports, thousands of different docking ports—some perhaps only meters in size, others clearly kilometers across, or larger. Every one of them, she decided, was the template of some interstellar machine like this one. Big creatures in serious machines had imposing entry ports. Little creatures, like us, had tiny ports. It was a democratic arrangement, with no hint of particularly privileged civilizations. The diversity of ports suggested few social distinctions among the sundry civilizations, but it implied a breathtaking diversity of beings and cultures. Talk about Grand Central Station! she thought. The vision of a populated Galaxy, of a universe spilling over with life and intelligence, made her want to cry for joy. They were approaching a yellow-lit port which, Ellie could see, was the exact template of the dodecahedron in which they were riding. She watched a nearby docking port, where something the size of the dodecahedron and shaped approximately like a starfish was gently insinuating itself o...

CHAPTER 20

Grand Central Station

The five of them sat together by a little tide pool. The breaking of the surf generated a soft white noise that reminded her of Argus and her years of listening to cosmic static.

“What are you saying? They changed the geometry of space?” “Yes. We’re saying that space is topologically non-simply connected. It’s like—I know Abonnema doesn’t like this analogy—it’s like a flat two-dimensional surface, the smart surface, connected by some maze of tubing with some other flat two-dimensional surface, the dumb surface. The only way you can get from the smart surface to the dumb surface in a reasonable time is through the tubes. Now imagine that the people on the smart surface lower a tube with a nozzle on it. They will make a tunnel between the two surfaces, provided the dumb ones cooperate by making a little pucker on their surface, so the nozzle can attach itself.” “So the smart guys send a radio message and tell the dumb ones how to make a pucker. But if they’re truly two-dimensional beings, how could they make a pucker on their surface?” “By accumulating a great deal of mass in one place.” Vaygay said this tentatively. “But that’s not what we did.” “I know. I know. Somehow the benzels did it.” “You see,” Eda explained softly, “if the tunnels are black holes, there are real contradictions implied. There is an interior tunnel in the exact Kerr solution of the Einstein Field Equations, but it’s unstable. The slightest perturbation would seal it off and convert the tunnel into a physical singularity through which nothing can pass. I have tried to imagine a superior civilization that would control the internal structure of a collapsing star to keep the inte...

In her girlhood and as a young woman she would dream that he had come to her to tell her that his death had been a mistake. He was really fine. He would sweep her up into his arms. But she would pay for those brief respites with poignant reawakenings into a world in which he no longer was. Still, she had cherished those dreams and willingly paid their exorbitant tariff when the next morning she was forced to rediscover her loss and experience the agony again. Those phantom moments were all she had left of him. And now here he was—not a dream or a ghost, but flesh and blood. Or close enough. He had called to her from the stars, and she had come.

But not for a moment could such a possibility be entertained for him. His remains were decaying in a cemetery by a lake.

“So how are we doing?” she asked. The question was ambiguous. “I mean—” “I know. It took you many years from receipt of the Message to your arrival here.” “Do you grade on speed or accuracy?” “Neither.” “You mean we haven’t completed the Test yet?” He did not answer. “Well, explain it to me.” She said this in some distress. “Some of us have spent years decrypting the Message and building the Machine. Aren’t you going to tell me what it’s all about?”

“Dreams,” she said. “Last night, when we were all dreaming, you were inside our heads, right? You drained everything we know.” “We only made copies. I think everything that used to be in your head is still there. Take a look. Tell me if anything’s missing.”

“There was so much your television programs didn’t tell us. Oh, we could figure out your technological level pretty well, and a lot more about you. But there’s so much more to your species than that, things we couldn’t possibly learn indirectly. I recognize you may feel some breach of privacy—” “You’re joking.” “—but we have so little time.” “You mean the Test is over? We answered all your questions while we were asleep last night? So? Did we pass or fail?” “It isn’t like that,” he said. “It isn’t like sixth grade.” She had been in the sixth grade the year he died. “Don’t think of us as some interstellar sheriff gunning down outlaw civilizations. Think of us more as the Office of the Galactic Census. We collect information. I know you think nobody has anything to learn from you because you’re technologically so backward. But there are other merits to a civilization.” “What merits?” “Oh, music. Lovingkindness. (I like that word.) Dreams. Humans are very good at dreaming, although you’d never know it from your television. There are cultures all over the Galaxy that trade dreams.”

“You operate an interstellar cultural exchange? That’s what this is all about? You don’t care if some rapacious, bloodthirsty civilization develops interstellar spaceflight?” “I said we admire lovingkindness.” “If the Nazis had taken over the world, our world, and then developed interstellar spaceflight, wouldn’t you have stepped in?” “You’d be surprised how rarely something like that happens. In the long run, the aggressive civilizations destroy themselves, almost always. It’s their nature. They can’t help it. In such a case, our job would be to leave them alone. To make sure that no one bothers them. To let them work out their destiny.” “Then why didn’t you leave us alone? I’m not complaining, mind you. I’m only curious as to how the Office of the Galactic Census works. The first thing you picked up from us was that Hitler broadcast. Why did you make contact?” “The picture, of course, was alarming. We could tell you were in deep trouble. But the m...

“Last night, we looked inside you. All five of you. There’s a lot in there: feelings, memories, instincts, learned behavior, insights, madness, dreams, loves. Love is very important. You’re an interesting mix.” “All that in one night’s work?” She was taunting him a little. “We had to hurry. We have a pretty tight schedule.” “Why, is something about to . . .” “No, it’s just that if we don’t engineer a consistent causality, it’ll work itself out on its own. Then it’s almost always worse.”

“What a nice pendant,” he said, with just that air of fatherly reserve she had always imagined he would have cultivated had he lived to see her adolescence. “Who gave it to you?” “Oh this,” she said, fingering the medallion. “Actually it’s from somebody I don’t know very well. He tested my faith. . . . He . . . But you must know all this already.”