Page 14 - Extraterrestrials, Foreign and Domestic

The Cosmic Bore
(Fantastic Transactions 1, 1990)

The invading vessel was first spotted soon after it began an
impossibly rapid deceleration near the orbit of Neptune. It was
obviously heading for Earth. Hailing in a multitude of languages,
terrestrial governments quickly changed the tone of their
transmissions from friendly to hostile when no response was
received from the oncoming spacecraft. In a matter of days it
arrived, settled into an asynchronous equatorial orbit, and began
its own broadcast.
Every frequency used for carrying signals, from the lowest to
the highest, was abruptly pre-empted. Powered by an unknown
energy source, the ship bombarded the planet around the clock
with a complex jumble of data, totally unintelligible to anyone.
Cryptologists and communications experts, aided by a hastily-
assembled network of the world’s largest computers, set about the
task of decoding the message. But the populace, terrified at the
loss of every means of transportation, production, and
communication requiring wired or wireless reception, had no
patience for scientific inquiry. Economies tottered, law and order
wavered. Action was demanded, and soon forthcoming—to no
avail.
Missiles were launched from both sides of the Atlantic. Their
trajectories, as tracked telemetrically, terminated abruptly several
thousand meters short of the target. No explosion, no debris: the
alien vessel evidently had the means of vaporizing any intruding
object before it could get close. Then the highest of technologies
in the most secret of weapons was publicly revealed: particle-beam
projectors on satellite platforms. As each orbited past the enemy,
it directed a stream of disruptive ionizing radiation at it. But it was
like a garden hose watering the Sahara: no measurable effect.
A shuttlecraft manned jointly by the industrial powers passed as
close as it dared to the intruder, gathering all the information it
could without benefit of electronic audio or video. It was a
dangerous mission, but an experienced crew brought the craft
home with its precious cargo—including photographs taken with a
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