“Yes. That would be nice.”

Gloria was trying to get a look at the translation.

“Okay,” said Bucky. He moved away from Gloria and looked again at the translation. “It seems to be a warning. It says that no civilization, anywhere—and I assume that means anywhere in the galaxy, or maybe the universe—has been known to survive the advance of technology.” He read further, frowning. “They all collapse. They fight wars. Or they abolish individual death.”

“Individual death?” repeated Sabina. “That’s a bad thing?”

“Evidently it guarantees stagnation. I’m not sure. It’s a short message. It doesn’t specify.” He paused. “Anyway, it says that no technological civilization, anywhere, has ever grown old.”

“Gracefully?” asked Sabina.

Bucky shook his head. “At all. They say the oldest known high-tech society was extinct within a thousand years.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Sabina. “They survived. They did more than survive. They obviously had an interstellar ship of some kind.”

“That’s the end of the message,” replied Bucky, staring at it. “They say they were looking for a place to start over again, that the world they came from is a shambles.”

Jerry headed for the door. “That’s enough bad news for one day,” he said.

When he was gone, they were silent for a minute. Then Bucky, who had been sitting on the edge of his desk, laid the papers down and stood up. “Do you realize what that means?”

“That we’ve lived so long, we’ve beaten the odds?” suggested Jason.

Bucky shook his head impatiently. “Sabina? Gloria?”

He received two blank expressions.

“It means at least one of them visited the Earth,” he said. “How the hell else would they learn ancient Greek?”

“That’s right!” exclaimed Gloria.

“I’ll be damned!” said Jason.

“We were too primitive for the message to have any meaning back then,” continued Bucky. “I mean, hell, Moses or Caesar might have been walking around in those days. So they left it on the Moon. If we never reached the Moon, we weren’t high-tech enough for the message to have any meaning. But if we found it . . .” He let his voice trail off.

“What happened to them, I wonder?” said Sabina.

Bucky shrugged. “Probably they found a more hospitable world. Better climate, better atmosphere, fewer germs and viruses that could wipe them out. I won’t say we’ll never know, but we won’t know until we can reach the stars and find them.”

“It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” said Sabina.

“Yes, it is.” Bucky picked up the translation and handed it to Gloria. “Put this in the safe—the one in my suite.”

“Right.” She took it from him and headed off.

“Damn!” said Bucky excitedly. “Greek! Who’d have thought it?”

“We were actually visited,” said Sabina. “Isn’t that remarkable?”

“It’s going to be more remarkable when I go on television and tell the world,” said Bucky. “And prove to them that the White House is still lying to them!”

He went behind his desk, sat down in his leather chair, opened a drawer, and pulled out a cigar.

“Do you have to do that?” asked Sabina, making a face.

“I have a victory cigar about once every six or seven years,” said Bucky, taking a puff. “And this is my biggest victory of all.”

“Most people take victory drinks,” she suggested hopefully.

“I want my head to be totally clear when I address the public,” he answered.

Jerry entered the office, looking pleased with himself.

“Well?” asked Bucky.

“Nine o’clock tonight, Eastern time,” said Jerry. “I bought you time on ABC; the other two majors won’t change their schedules to accommodate you.”

“They’re going to wish they had,” replied Bucky confidently. “This speech will demote them to the minors.”

“Every cable network is covering it as a news event,” continued Jerry. He flashed a sudden grin. “Even the SyFy Network wants to cover it. They have no idea what you’ll be talking about—none of them do—but they’re sure it’s about the Moon.

“Sign ’em up,” said Bucky. “Hell, they’ve always believed in this stuff. The rest of the world hasn’t—but they will after tonight.”

Gloria returned from Bucky’s suite. “Okay, it’s locked away,” she announced.

“Good,” said Bucky. “I don’t figure to lose it between here and the studio down on the second floor, but I feel better with a copy of it there. I don’t know who our secret benefactor was, but I’d bet half my fortune that if we went back to the Archives tomorrow, it wouldn’t be there.”

“What makes you say that?” asked Sabina.

“It wasn’t that difficult to find once we doped out where to look,” answered Bucky. “It couldn’t have gone unnoticed all these years. My guess is that it’s back where it came from, some attic or underground vault that maybe three people in the world know about.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” admitted Jerry. “But now that you say it, it makes sense.”

“That’s because you’re not quite the devious bastard that I am,” said Bucky with a chuckle.

“Thank goodness.” Jerry returned his smile.

“Well,” said Gloria, “I’d better make sure the studio’s spic and span and ready for the press.”

“No press,” said Jerry. “This is going out on the airwaves. It’s a speech, not an interview or a press conference.” He turned to Bucky. “At least, I think that’s what it is. You didn’t say anything about wanting questions.”

“That’s fine. This announcement speaks for itself.” Bucky frowned. “I’ll show photos of the plate, of course—we’ll have the lab make ’em even bigger before the speech—but I wish I had the plate as well.”

“You know what would have happened if we’d tried to walk off with it,” said Jerry.

“Yeah,” acknowledged Bucky. “Everyone could visit us on Sundays for the next fifty years.”

“The plate is secondary,” said Sabina. “The important thing is the message.”

“Yeah, of course it is,” said Bucky. He smiled. “At least I’m not announcing their pending conquest of the Earth.”

“Or that the Sun is going nova,” added Gloria.

“Or that there really are four-armed green swordsmen on Mars,” said Jason.

“Yeah, there are worse messages to read,” agreed Bucky.

Then, suddenly, he froze.

“Bucky,” said Jerry, “are you okay?”

“Leave him alone,” said Gloria quickly. “I’ve seen him like this a couple of times before.”

“He looks like he’s having a stroke,” said Sabina, also worried.

“He’s all right, believe me,” insisted Gloria.

“Damn!” snapped Bucky, coming back to life.

“Are you okay?” asked Jerry solicitously.

“I am definitely not okay,” growled Bucky, starting to pace back and forth across the office. Suddenly, he stopped and turned to Jerry. “Cancel the telecast.”

“Are you crazy?”

“You heard me. Cancel it. If ABC won’t return our money, let ’em keep it.”

“But—”

“Just do it! Gloria, contact my pilot. Have him meet me at the corporate jet in an hour. Then you’ll have to make a very private phone call; I’ll be here so I can cut in and vouch for who you are if necessary.”

“Where are we going, Boss?” asked Jason.

“You’re not going anywhere,” said Bucky. “This is something I have to do alone.”

41

“So what do you think, George? We should have heard something by now.”

Cunningham sat back. He’d just finished a conference with the Pentagon people. The brass were unhappy. Tired of congressmen trying to force weapons they didn’t need down their throats to keep the armaments people in their home states happy. “We need better detection equipment,” General Maybury had complained. “For roadside bombs. Nelson tells us sure, they’re getting to it, but let’s concentrate for now on that new upgraded jet CRY has developed.” He was referring to Brig Nelson, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee.