Sphere

communications in the next room. He looked at the mug of coffee in his hand, noticing a chip on the rim. He struggled to assimilate what he was being told, but his mind moved sluggishly, in circles.

  Three hundred years ago, he thought. A spacecraft three hundred years old. But the space program wasn't three hundred years old. It was barely thirty years old. So how could a spacecraft be three hundred years old? It couldn't be. Barnes must be mistaken. But how could Barnes be mistaken? The Navy wouldn't send all these ships, all these people, unless they were sure what was down there. A spacecraft three hundred years old.

  But how could that be? It couldn't be. It must be something else. He went over it again and again, getting nowhere, his mind dazed and shocked.

  " - solutely no question about it," Barnes was saying. "We can estimate the date from coral growth with great accuracy. Pacific coral grows two-and-a-half centimeters a year, and the object - whatever it is - is covered in about five meters of coral. That's a lot of coral. Of course, coral doesn't grow at a depth of a thousand feet, which means that the present shelf collapsed to a lower depth at some point in the past. The geologists are telling us that happened about a century ago, so we're assuming a total age for the craft of about three hundred years. But we could be wrong about that. It could, in fact, be much older. It could be a thousand years old. "

  Barnes shifted papers on his desk again, arranging them into neat stacks, lining up the edges.

  "I don't mind telling you, Dr. Johnson, this thing scares the hell out of me. That's why you're here. "

  Norman shook his head. "I still don't understand. "

  "We brought you here," Barnes said, "because of your association with the ULF project. "

  "ULF?" Norman said. And he almost added, But ULF was a joke. Seeing how serious Barnes was, he was glad he had caught himself in time.

  Yet ulf was a joke. Everything about it had been a joke, from the very beginning.

  In 1979, in the waning days of the Carter Administration, Norman Johnson had been an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California at San Diego; his particular research interest was group dynamics and anxiety, and he occasionally served on FAA crash-site teams. In those days, his biggest problems had been finding a house for Ellen and the kids, keeping up his publications, and wondering whether UCSD would give him tenure. Norman's research was considered brilliant, but psychology was notoriously prone to intellectual fashions, and interest in the study of anxiety was declining as many researchers came to regard anxiety as a purely biochemical disorder that could be treated with drug therapy alone; one scientist had even gone so far as to say, "Anxiety is no longer a problem in psychology. There is nothing left to study. " Similarly, group dynamics was perceived as old-fashioned, a field that had seen its heyday in the Gestalt encounter groups and corporate brainstorming procedures of the early 1970s but now was dated and passe.

  Norman himself could not comprehend this. It seemed to him that American society was increasingly one in which people worked in groups, not alone; rugged individualism was now replaced by endless corporate meetings and group decisions. In this new society, group behavior seemed to him more important, not less. And he did not think that anxiety as a clinical problem was going to be solved with pills. It seemed to him that a society in which the most common prescription drug was Valium was, by definition, a society with unsolved problems.

  Not until the preoccupation with Japanese managerial techniques in the 1980s did Norman's field gain a new hold on academic attention. Around the same time, Valium dependence became recognized as a major concern, and the whole issue of drug therapy for anxiety was reconsidered. But in the meantime, Johnson spent several years feeling as if he were in a backwater. (He did not have a research grant approved for nearly three years. ) Tenure, and finding a house, were very real problems.

  It was during the worst of this time, in late 1979, that he was approached by a solemn young lawyer from the National Security Council in Washington who sat with his ankle across his knee and plucked nervously at his sock. The lawyer told Norman that he had come to ask his help.

  Norman said he would help if he could.

  Still plucking at the sock, the lawyer said he wanted to talk to Norman about a "grave matter of national security facing our country today. "

  Norman asked what the problem was.

  "Simply that this country has absolutely no preparedness in the event of an alien invasion. Absolutely no preparedness whatever. "

  Because the lawyer was young, and because he stared down at his sock as he spoke, Norman at first thought he was embarrassed at having been sent on a fool's errand. But when the young man looked up, Norman saw to his astonishment that he was utterly serious.

  "We could really be caught with our pants down on this one," the lawyer said. "An alien invasion. "

  Norman had to bite his lip. "That's probably true," he said.

  "People in the Administration are worried. "

  "Are they?"

  "There is the feeling at the highest levels that contingency plans should be drawn. "

  "You mean contingency plans in the event of an alien invasion. . . . " Norman somehow managed to keep a straight face.

  "Perhaps," said the lawyer, "perhaps invasion is too strong a word. Let's soften that to say 'contact': alien contact. "

  "I see. "

  "You're already involved in civilian crash-site teams, Dr. Johnson. You know how these emergency groups function. We want your input concerning the optimal composition of a crash-site team to confront an alien invader. "

  "I see," Norman said, wondering how he could tactfully get out of this. The idea was clearly ludicrous. He could see it only as displacement: the Administration, faced with immense problems it could not solve, had decided to think about something else.

  And then the lawyer coughed, proposed a study, and named a substantial figure for a two-year research grant. Norman saw a chance to buy his house. He said yes. "I'm glad you agree the problem is a real one. "

  "Oh yes," Norman said, wondering how old this lawyer was. He guessed about twenty-five.

  "We'll just have to get your security clearance," the lawyer said.

  "I need security clearance?"

  "Dr. Johnson," the lawyer said, snapping his briefcase shut, "this project is top, top secret. "

  "That's fine with me," Norman said, and he meant it. He could imagine his colleagues' reactions if they ever found out about this.

  What began as a joke soon became simply bizarre. Over the next year, Norman flew five times to Washington for meetings with high-level officials of the National Security Council over the pressing, imminent danger of alien invasion. His work was very secret. One early question was whether his project should be turned over to DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency of the Pentagon. They decided not to. There were questions about whether it should be given to NASA, and again they decided not to. One Administration official said, "This isn't a scientific matter, Dr. Johnson, this is a national security matter. We don't want to open it out. " Norman was continually surprised at the level of the officials he was told to meet with. One Senior Undersecretary of State pushed aside the papers on his desk relating to the latest Middle East crisis to say, "What do you think about the possibility that these aliens will be able to read our minds?"

  "I don't know," Norman said.

  "Well, it occurs to me. How're we going to be able to formulate a negotiating posture if they can read our minds?"

  "That could be a problem," Norman agreed, sneaking a glance at his watch.

  "Hell, it's bad enough our encrypted cables get intercepted by the Russians. We know the Japanese and the Israelis have cracked all our codes. We just pray the Russians can't do it yet. But you see what I mean, the problem. About reading minds. "

  "Oh yes. "

  "Your report will have to take that into consideration. "

  Norman promised
it would.

  A White House staffer said to him, "You realize the President will want to talk to these aliens personally. He's that kind of man. "

  "Uh-huh," Norman said.

  "And I mean, the publicity value here, the exposure, is incalculable. The President meets with the aliens at Camp David. What a media moment. "

  "A real moment," Norman agreed.

  "So the aliens will need to be informed by an advance man of who the President is, and the protocol in talking to him. You can't have the President of the United States talking to people from another galaxy or whatever on television without advance preparation. Do you think the aliens'll speak English?"

  "Doubtful," Norman said.

  "So someone may need