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eBook Category: Science Fiction Hugo Award Nominee
eBook Description: Two members of the Science Foundation are forced to test their faster-than-light spaceship in secrecy, but the successful twenty-minute journey to Mars and back captures the attention of an alien race who arrive to deliver a cryptic message.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Analogue, 1990
Fictionwise Release Date: February 2001

213 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [96 KB], eReader (PDB) [37 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [24 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [22 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [43 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [93 KB], hiebook (KML) [82 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [50 KB], iSilo (PDB) [20 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [25 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [53 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [38 KB]
Words: 7238
Reading time: 20-28 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

I don't know what Sally Brown's words did to Marcus, but they created in me such a conflict of emotions that I wanted to throw up. On the one hand, the arrival of aliens and their superior technology would make all our work for the past few years as obsolete as the horse and carriage; on the other hand, I would have what I had wanted for so long: access to the stars.

We froze in front of the tv screen, waiting for our first look at the Genizee.

What we got instead was a look at their ships, inside and out, and at their technical equipment. No pictures of aliens, not then. We learned later that they weren't sure Earth people were ready for three-foot-long cylinders of quaking black jelly, topped by a writhing mass of yellow spaghetti. Instead, we got pictures of technology.

Oddly enough, it was the sight of the ships that Marcus and I, alone of all the people on Earth, found hardest to take. The video signals had been beamed to Earth a few hours earlier, from just beyond the orbit of Saturn, along with a series of radio messages--in seven major Earth languages--proclaiming peaceful intentions and giving a projected arrival time at Earth equatorial orbit in less than a week. The radio messages we could take. But the ships...

Marcus caught on first. "Where is it?" he said, almost under his breath. "Wilmer, where's the drive?"

No one else would have been able to understand his question. But I did.