Voyagers I Read Online Free PDF Page B

telephones. She flashed Markov a disapproving glance, the kind that his wife often gave, the kind that automatically made him raise his hands to straighten his thinning lank hair and beard. Then she nodded to the captain and gestured wordlessly to the door beyond her desk.
    The captain, motioning Markov to follow him, went to the door, knocked once and slowly—carefully—opened it.
    Does no one speak here? Markov wondered. Are we at a shrine?
    The captain would not cross the threshold, but he brusquely motioned Markov to go inside.
    He stepped through into a sumptuous office. A broad desk of polished dark wood with crossed flags behind it. Oriental carpet on the floor. Windows that looked out onto Red Square. Plush leather chairs neatly lined against one wall. Gleaming samovar standing on a low cabinet.
    The office was unoccupied. But before Markov could turn back toward the captain, the door at the far end of the room opened and his wife stepped through.
    “Maria! This is your office?”
    She was wearing her tan uniform, which made her look even squatter and heavier than usual. She scowled at him.
    “My office? Hah! My office is smaller than the colonel’s desk.”
    “Oh.”
    “Come on, come on. They’re all waiting for you.”
    He crossed the fine carpet and entered the inner room. It was a conference chamber, the air hazy with cigarette and pipe smoke from twenty men and women seated around the long narrow table. Markov sneezed.
    At the head of the table sat the colonel, a pudgy little man with narrow, squinting pig’s eyes. Maria introduced everyone to Markov. He immediately forgot all their names except for Academician Bulacheff—the head of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and an astronomer of first rank.
    Feeling somewhat uneasy, Markov took the seat Maria indicated between a slight, bald man who puffed nervously on a long, thin cigarette, and a female secretary who had a notepad on her lap. Markov noticed that her skirt was up above her knees but her legs weren’t worth bothering about.
    “Now then,” the colonel said with a single nod of his head that made his wattles quiver, “we can begin.”
    Markov remained silent, listening, as they unfolded the story. The planet Jupiter was giving off strange radio pulses, superimposed against the natural radio noises emanating from the planet. Could it be a signal of some sort? A code? A language?
    One of the military men sitting near the colonel shook his head. “I think it’s an American spacecraft that’s been sent into a very deep orbit.”
    “It couldn’t be,” said the man beside Markov.
    “A secret probe on its way to Jupiter,” the officer insisted.
    “For what purpose?”
    The officer shrugged. “I’m not in the intelligence service. Let them find out.”
    “We have no indication of such a launch by the Americans,” said a bleak-faced graying woman halfway down the table from Markov. “I doubt that the Americans could hide such a launch from us.”
    “What about the West Germans? They have a launching base in Brazil now, don’t they?”
    “It is under constant surveillance,” the woman answered. “And it does not have the capability of launching interplanetary missions.”
    “Then it must be the Americans,” the officer said.
    Or the Jovians, Markov thought.
    “It is not a spacecraft,” Academician Bulacheff said in a mild, soft voice. “The radio pulses are coming from the planet itself. Of that we are certain.”
    “Have the Americans picked up the signals?” the colonel asked. Apparently Bulacheff’s word was enough to silence the spacecraft theory.
    “We have done a computer search of the American scientific journals,” one of the younger civilians answered. “Not a word about this has been published.”
    “Perhaps they haven’t picked up the signals.”
    “Nonsense! Their facilities are as good as ours. Better, in some cases.”
    “But do they have a radio telescope operating at the proper frequency? After