Strangers

appear that way to Horner, so Miles decided the most natural thing to do would be to talk with the witnesses and begin to answer some of the many questions they had. He discovered that most of them had already heard about the CISG, so he quickly summarized the findings of that committee for the others, by way of explaining why the cover-up had initially been ordered.
        The ship before them, Miles explained, had first been spotted by deeply positioned defense satellites orbiting the earth at a distance of more than 22,000 miles. They had seen it coming in past the moon. (The Soviets, whose defense satellites were cruder, did not spot the visitor until much later - and never accurately identified it.)
        Initially, observers thought the alien craft was a large meteorite or small asteroid on a collision course with Earth. If it was a soft, porous material, it might burn up during descent. And even if Earth were unlucky, if the incoming debris was made of more solid stuff, it still might fragment into a host of small and relatively harmless meteorites. However, if Earth were very unlucky, if the wandering rock had a high nickel-iron content, which might eliminate the possibility of extensive fragmentation, it was definitely a menace. Of course, it was almost certain to hit water, since oceans covered seventy percent of the planet's surface. Water impact would result in little damage, unless it hit close enough to shore for its tsunami to devastate a port. The worst-case possibility was a land strike in a heavily populated area.
        "Imagine a lump of nickel and iron the size of a bus hurtling into the heart of Manhattan at a couple of thousand miles an hour," Miles told them. "That picture was horrifying enough to make us consider measures to destroy or deflect it."
        Less than six months earlier, the first satellites in the nation's Strategic Defense Shield had been placed secretly in orbit. They had comprised less than ten percent of the system as it would be ultimately constituted, and on their own they could not have done much to prevent nuclear war. But thanks to several forward-thinking designers, every satellite had been given high maneuverability that would allow it to turn its armaments outward and double as a planetary defense against just such a threat as that hurtling piece of space junk. Recent theory proposed that impacting comets or asteroids had wiped out the dinosaurs, and prudent planners had decided it might be wise to use the Strategic Defense Shield to knock down not only Soviet missiles but the fate-flung missiles of the universe itself. Therefore, one of the satellites was repositioned while the meteorite streaked nearer Earth, and plans were laid to fire all of its antimissile missiles at the intruder. Although none of those projectiles was nuclear, their explosive warheads, in combination, were believed sufficient to fragment the meteorite into enough pieces to ensure that none would be large enough to reach the surface of Earth with destructive potential.
        "Then," Miles said, "hours before the scheduled attack on the intruder, an analysis of the latest photographs indicated a shockingly symmetrical shape. And spectrographic readings, forwarded by the satellite, began to confirm that it might be something stranger than a meteorite. Its analysis did not match any of the standard profiles for meteorites." He had walked among the witnesses as he talked, and now he put one hand upon the flank of the ship, still capable of being awed by it even after eighteen months. "New photos were ordered every ten minutes. During the following hour, the approaching shape grew ever more distinct, until the likeli hood of it being a ship was so great that no one would risk ordering its destruction. We hadn't informed the Soviets of the object or of our intention to destroy it, for that would have given them information about our defense satellite capabilities. Now, we purposefully began random jamming of Soviet high-atmosphere radar, dropping bogeys and electronic shadows on them, to cover the ship's advance and thus keep the secret of its visit. At first, we thought it would take up orbit around Earth. But very late in the game, we realized it was going to come straight in, following the very path an unpowered meteorite would have followed, though in a controlled fashion. Defense computers were able to give a thirty-eight-minute warning that point of impact would be here in Elko