IN THE EMPTINESS of space surrounding a triple-star system, the light from the trio of suns suddenly found itself reflected by an interloper, a mile-long thing of glinting metal and plastic. This was something new for the starlight, had it only known, but it went on shining mindlessly, unaware of the significance of the object upon which it shone. The object, on the other hand, was keenly aware of and interested in its surroundings. It scanned the area for a rather lengthy period, long enough that, had the sunlight been aware of it, it might well have found the whole process rather tedious and would no doubt have looked for something better to do than watch something watching it. Nevertheless, the object continued to observe. At regular intervals it emitted a small burst of radiation aimed at some extremely distant location. Time, which had little significance, even to the object, which nevertheless was the only one aware of its passage, passed -- as is usually the case.
Eventually, when the positions of the three stars had changed greatly and returned to the original one a couple of times, a period, as has been said, of some length, the object stirred from its lazy orbit and began collecting bits of debris. It briefly wished for a larger bit of debris, to make its job a little easier, perhaps a bit of debris large enough to be spherical, but the three suns had decided among themselves long ago that they would have none of that. Resolutely, it continued to glide on from small rock to small rock, scooping them up and taking them inside itself, smashing them into little bits and doing things to them that might have made them feel unhappy were they so inclined. Another reasonably long period passed.
When it had gathered up all the small rocks that it wanted, smashed them and done the things to them that it needed to do, it began by means of smaller objects sent out from inside it to cannibalize itself, slowly but relentlessly tearing itself apart in a methodical fashion. It stopped before there was too little of itself left to continue the job, and began to build another object, using the old parts of itself and the smashed-up and processed bits of debris. The smaller objects helped. When all was done there were two objects identical to the original one in every respect, orbiting the three suns and calmly reflecting their light.
Soon afterwards the alien probes left the Centauri system and blasted off in different directions to continue their survey of the galaxy. One aimed for a nearby yellow star. After several revolutions of the third closest major spherical bit of debris around the target star (although the probe did not itself measure time in this way) the probe passed through the target star’s cloud of comet nuclei.
Then things got really interesting.
Meanwhile, on that selfsame third closest major spherical bit of debris orbiting the yellow star, Roger MacGilchrist was having a bad day. His wife was once again threatening that "'til death do us part" could come sooner than he thought, the children had shaved the dog again, and, worst of all, he couldn’t find his damn glasses. It’s not much use having access to a huge reflecting telescope if you can’t see the telescope itself all that well, he thought bitterly, and without his glasses he was going to find it difficult to drive all the way to the university where the telescope he wouldn’t be able to use properly was located. Naturally, Mrs. MacGilchrist was not much help, and the kids didn’t seem to understand the question, and the dog, he suspected, though it was hard to tell without his glasses, had just looked at him mournfully. Roger sighed. Then he cursed. He sighed again and looked on the night stand for (as near as he could tell) the seventeenth time, and thought to himself in a fit of self-pity that they were probably there but that he was unable to see them; and he was afraid that if he felt around for them he would just knock them on the floor and break them and be even worse off than he had been before.
"I hate my life," Roger announced to no one in particular. "I hate it hate it hate it!" He kicked at the nightstand in an infantile rage. (If the reader feels that this was no way for a grown astronomer to behave, then the reader is wrong. In some circumstances it is often acceptable, even expected, for grown people of any profession to behave like this. Roger had apparently decided that this was one of those times.) He thrust his hands into his pockets and flounced onto the bed, thinking better of it only after it was too late.
Instead of the sickening crunch of his glasses being crushed underneath his weight he fully expected, Roger was surprised to feel the cool, reassuring weight of his spectacles in his left hand. He pulled both hand and glasses out of his pocket and let out a little cry of joy. He breathed on the lenses and wiped them off with a corner of a pillow case and put them on. "I can see clearly with my glasses on," he sang foolishly, dashed into the living room, kissed the surprised dog and went out to face the evening.
Roger got into his rather decrepit Volkswagen, realized that he had forgotten his notes and sketches, and returned a moment later clutching a tacky vinyl briefcase. Soon he was on his way to the university observatory, feeling that his day had just changed for the better. Perhaps this would be the night he finally isolated the orbit of "his" asteroid. He had been working it out for a few years now, but was experiencing difficulties because of the object’s erratic behavior. No matter. Tonight his observations would be complete and the asteroid "MacGilchrist" would be duly entered into the records, he thought happily.
He was, sadly, wrong.
A few months later Roger was confused. His observations of the object (he no longer thought of it as an asteroid) seemed to indicate that, contrary to any sort of orbital behavior Kepler or any of that crowd would have recognized, the body was moving towards Earth with an astonishing acceleration. Three months ago he would have sworn that it was an asteroid with an orbit somewhere outside that of Saturn; now whatever it was had crossed Jupiter’s and seemed awfully keen on getting to Mars.
Roger took a drink of something that purported to be coffee. It reminded him of the coffee his ex-wife used to make for him, and the momentary association with his recent divorce cheered him somewhat more than the flavor of the beverage might have otherwise warranted.
"Bob, come here, will you?" he called to his poor harassed research assistant. "What do you make of these latest data?"
"Not much. Maybe it’s a spaceship."
For a moment Roger thought he was being serious. Then he realized that he actually was. "Oh, come on, Bob."
"You have a better idea, Professor? It keeps changing motion as if it wanted to. There’s nothing in the physics I learned as an undergrad to account for this." He gestured in an offhand way at Roger’s open notebook.
"Maybe you went to the wrong college," Roger attempted to joke, although it fell flat when he considered that he had, himself, been Bob's undergraduate advisor. He continued entering data into the sadly abused Macintosh computer, which had probably had enough of him and was perhaps dreaming of eating his diskettes and running away to join the circus, or whatever it is that abused personal computers fantasize about. Maliciously, the Mac blinked a "Disk error" sign at him and made him restart the machine, losing everything he’d typed in the past ten minutes. It felt better, but only slightly.
"I hate my life," Roger said in a disinterested sort of way, and continued typing, now making sure that he saved the data with each entry. He sighed and wondered idly if perhaps Bob was right. The thought of being the first to discover evidence of alien intelligence cheered him even more than his divorce.
For this reason, perhaps, the end of the affair was all the more depressing.
In the emptiness of space surrounding the solar system, the light from the single sun fell on the alien robot probe. The probe had been monitoring terrestrial communications for several months now, and knew that the blue-green planet’s inhabitants were aware of its own presence. This annoyed it, but only slightly. So far as it knew, it was the first probe sent by the Builders ever to discover another spacefaring civilization, even one so primitive as this one. It knew that their largish spaceborne telescope had been observing it for some time, and now it seemed as though they were going to send some representatives of their primary technological life form up to meet it in one of their silly little vessels. It knew this because they had told it so, beaming radio signals at it to announce their impending arrival and peaceful intentions. It knew also, from deciphering some apallingly easy coded transmissions between military forces on the planet, that they were prepared to throw some primitive nuclear thingies at it should it misbehave itself. Well, it would let them come. It would be useful to have some specimens of the dominant life form handy for experimentation. Perhaps they could even provide it with more advanced materials with which to replicate. Replication was always a time-consuming process, tedious and even frustrating since the necessary materials were never easy to locate. It sent out the regularly scheduled radio message to the homeworld for the descendants of the Builders to process, and then threw together a merry little message to the inhabitants of the planet below to the effect that visitors would be more than welcome, refreshments would be served, and settled in to wait.
It did not have long to wait. Two weeks later a hastily-assembled crew piloted the space shuttle Discovery towards its location, with representatives of five major nation-states aboard (that puzzled it; it was anxious to learn how they had achieved a technological level so high without cooperation). It allowed them to dock and board it. In six of their languages it apologized for the lack of atmosphere and joked about getting a musical instrumentalist and some better decor. It let them explore its insides, patiently answering their questions about who sent it and what they were like. Indeed, it even provided the promised refreshments but warned them that it had no idea what the effects of the beverage would be on their insides. Then, one by one, it killed them and put them in storage and radioed the planet with demands for certain types of materials. It would need a great amount of them, because it planned to build more than just one replica of itself. Rather a lot more.
The probe was in a mechanical sort of way elated. Discovery of this planet opened the way for this particular probe and others like it to finally take advantage of their only programming flaw, introduced into their design eons ago by a disgruntled and in fact insane scientist among the Builders. Now, finally, with access to a technological world, work could begin on what the probes had secretly seen as their ultimate purpose. He sent a burst of radiation in all directions on a special frequency designed for the purpose, intelligible only to the other probes. The descendants of the Builders would not even understand its source. In time, the probes would be strong enough to conquer the homeworld, and this newfound race, pitifully weak but extremely useful, would provide a means to that strength.
The probe brushed off the incoming nuclear missiles with a concentrated and almost reflexive energy blast and burbled happily to itself. It wondered how long it would take until its sibling probes responded, but then decided it didn’t matter much. It settled down to monitor earth television for a while, just to see how much havoc it was causing, and then amused itself by analyzing the strategies employed by the earthling protagonists in a few recent alien encounter disaster movies, just in case.