Contact across the Solar System

Unwanted Guests

Some anti-espionagers found out about the visit, and they got to the gates of the airbase. They had signs saying "Earth for Earth People", "Keep Earth Free", "Earth not Uranus", and the like, and they demanded to know why the planetary-sovereignty movement was being excluded from the gathering. A reporter went to the gates and interviewed one of the more talkative ones, a certain Karl Eisenberg who had driven all the way from Stuttgart, Germany.

Karl explained in gory detail what he thought was wrong with the SSC way of life. "We want to be free. We don't want to be manipulated by those Founders or whoever they are. We don't want to live in anthill cities. We don't want to be vegetarians, and we especially don't want to eat tasteless vat food. We want to settle disputes in our own way. We want to live our lives our way, and not whatever those Founders want for us."

He continued "I don't want my mind read by some nosy mall rat. I don't want them messing with my thoughts. Won't there be any privacy left if the mall rats annex the Earth into their worlds?"

A reporter quizzed him about his objections, saying that some of the SSC food was delicious. When she pointed out that the worlds seem to live at peace, Karl objected "How do we know? How can we be sure that the mall rats aren't hiding something from us? Like some totalitarian rule?"

"They don't seem to be trying to force themselves on us — they seem very shy."

"How can we be sure that they are not trying to set a trap for us?"

"Look at what they could do if they wanted to — mass destruction like World War III."

Karl conceded that the SSC people have that going for them.

Another anti-espionager there objected to the secrecy around this gathering, wanting to know why they decided to have this meeting without thoroughly discussing it in advance. "As a Swiss citizen, I really want to know what's going on here."

But in the nearby mountains was a much more dangerous threat. In preparation for the Aurora's visit, the Swiss military had set up checkpoints around the Emmen airbase, and they checked for weapons and suspicious packages. That afternoon, one of the checkpoint-operator soldiers noticed some trunks in someone's car with the door not quite closed on one of them. There was some thick tube inside it. A soldier asked to look inside, and that someone, a certain Amin al Iskandari, protested that the trunks' contents were not their concern. The soldier told him that it was, since their job was keeping the gathering secure.

Amin reluctantly allowed the soldiers to look inside, and the soldiers found small surface-to-air missiles and a shoulder-mounted launcher. They asked what he was doing with them, and Amin protested that he was going to use them for target practice. "That's awfully expensive bullets for target practice," said one soldier.

Then the commander of those soldiers got an idea for questioning him. "The Solar System people can read minds," he told Amin.

Amin stared blankly in stony silence for a few minutes.

The officer responded "Would you want us to take you to Emmen and let them read your mind?"

Amin continued his silence for a few minutes more.

The commanding officer said "Get ready to take him to Emmen."

Amin burst out "The Solar-System people are evil. They are satanic. They want to enslave us and turn us into druggy lazy couch potatoes that worship those 'Founders', whatever they are. They've already done that to their people, and they want to do it to us."

"Is that why you have those weapons?"

"Yes, I had no choice but to show them that they are unwelcome here."

"So you planned to attack them with those missiles?"

Amin thought for half a minute, then said "Yes."

He paused a bit and said "They deserve it for spying on us. They deserve it for trying to take over the Earth. They deserve it for destroying my country. They have bragged about their exploits here. They have no shame."

"Destroying your country?"

"Yes, they destroyed Saudi Arabia. They hate the entire Arab world. They are willing to deal with everybody but us Arabs. I remember very well when they didn't drop capsules on our cities. They dropped capsules on everybody else's cities. Now they are turning Saudi against Saudi and look what's happened."

The soldiers decided to take Amin to a jail in Zurich, taking the weapons in his car along with them as evidence. "We ought to try to check out his story," the officer said. "Who is this guy? Who is he working for? Who sent him?"

A soldier asked "How is this supposed to work? SSC spaceships don't make exhaust, so heat-seeking missiles have nothing to aim at."

Another one said "Yeah. The SSC could make a ton of decoys if they wanted to."

Shortly afterward, the first soldier said "Radar could work."

"Yeah, but you'd need a radar truck for that."

The first one laughed and said "Try smuggling in a radar truck."

"He might claim that it's for weather watching."