Concepcion, Toron, and Edimar emerged from Concepcion's office, and everyone fell silent. The three of them made their way to the holotable, and Concepcion faced the crowd. "I've called this meeting because we have some important decisions to make."
Victor was surprised to see how informal the whole affair was, with everyone standing where they were, clustered in small groups of husbands and wives and friends. There was no counter to stand around, no gavel to hit, no ritual or procedure or order to follow. It was simply everyone coming together.
"I'll let Toron and Edimar explain the whole thing," said Concepcion.
She stepped aside, and Toron plugged the gog
gles into the holotable. A holo of the image Victor had seen earlier that day in the crow's nest appeared in the holospace. It wasn't much, mostly dots of light representing stars.
Toron was brief. He merely gave context to the image they were seeing, explaining when the data had been collected and what quadrant of sky they were looking at. Then, to Victor's astonishment, he turned the floor over to Edimar. She was clearly nervous, and one person had to ask her to speak up so everyone in the room could hear, but Edimar immediately raised her voice and projected toward the back of the room. The increased volume seemed to steel her courage, and she dove right in. She spoke for ten minutes, being clear and thorough in her explanation. She went into great detail explaining the procedures she had undertaken to verify the data, including calling in Victor to validate her initial assessment. This caused several people to glance briefly at Victor before Edimar continued. There were a few highly technical details and procedures that were unique to the Eye that Edimar knew no one would understand, but she deftly explained these in layman's terms so that everyone got the gist of it all. She then detailed the cross-checks that she and her father had subsequently performed and how everything had led her and him to believe what by now was obvious to everyone in the room. It was an alien starship decelerating toward the solar system. No, we don't know its trajectory yet. No, we don't know when it will get here. And no, we don't know what its intentions may be.
When she finished there was silence. Mother and Father stared at the holo, their faces a little pale.
Finally Concepcion spoke. "The question we have to answer is: What do we do about this information?"
"Have we heard any chatter about this?" asked Father. "Have any of the other families reported anything?"
"Not a word," said Concepcion. "There are few clans out this far right now, and it's unlikely that any of them are looking beyond the ecliptic."
"We obviously need to warn everyone," said Mother. "We should send transmissions out as quickly as we can. Everyone needs to know about this."
"As I said to Concepcion," said Toron, "I'd advise us to proceed with caution. We don't want to incite a panic. Consider the implications. If this is an alien starship moving at near-lightspeed, it clearly has technological capabilities far beyond our own. If it can move at near the speed of light, what else can it do? Can it detect radio? We don't know. If we send a hundred focused, laserized transmissions out in every direction, we might unintentionally attract its attention. We might bring it down on top of us. It's done nothing to acknowledge that it knows we exist. It's probably best to keep it that way."
"We can't do nothing," said Marco. "This could be an invasion for all we know."
"Or it might be completely peaceful," said Toron. "We don't know. We have some information, yes, but not much. Hardly any, really. Is this a research vessel? Do they even intend to enter the inner solar system? Is it even manned? We have no idea. It could be a drone or a satellite sent to take images of our planetary system. If that's true, it has to be an enormous satellite, bigger than anything humans have every constructed. But that doesn't mean that's not its intent. It might be completely benign."
"Or it might not be," said Marco.
"Yes," said Toron. "Or it might not be. All the more reason not to rush to action and draw attention to ourselves. Edimar and I will watch it closely. We'll be evaluating the data constantly, and we'll make everyone aware of any new developments."
"That's not enough," said Father. "I agree with Marco. This thing may be peaceful, but we shouldn't assume that it is. We should prepare for the worst."
"We should remain calm," said Toron. "I suggest we take cautionary action."
"Like what?" asked Father.
"If we send out a wide transmission that anyone can receive, we will draw unwanted attention to ourselves. We might attract pirates or thieves or worse. But, if we identify a few ships in the vicinity we trust, we can send out very focused laser transmissions only to them."
"We haven't seen pirates in a while," said Selmo.
"That doesn't mean they aren't out there," said Toron. "We can't be too cautious. Particularly not in an unknown situation like this."
"Who's close to us right now?" asked Marco.
Selmo came to the holotable and flipped on the system chart. "The Italians are closest. They only left this morning. But they're moving fast. We might hit them if we sent them a message now, but I doubt it."
Laserized radio transmissions, or laserlines, had to be sent with extreme accuracy. Stationary ships and space stations could receive them fairly easily over short distances since the sender knew their exact position in space. But few ships remained perfectly stationary, especially if they were moored to an asteroid. Even the slightest deviation in position would result in a missed message. Trying to hit a ship in flight was next to impossible. It had been done, but only when the ships were extremely close.
"If the Italians stick with their scheduled flight path," said Selmo, "they'll decelerate in ten days. They gave us a point to target for communications when they stop. If we wanted to send them a laserline at that point, we could."
"So we basically do nothing for ten days?" asked Marco. "If this is an invasion, we could be losing precious time. What if this thing is headed to Earth? Ten days could make all the difference."
"There's nobody closer?" asked Father.
"There's a corporate ship a few days from here," said Selmo. "A Juke vessel. They've been sitting there for a while doing nothing as far as we can tell. Assuming they haven't moved since our last scan, we could send them a message."
"What would we tell them?" asked Javier, one of Victor's uncles. "'Hey, there's an alien ship out there. Keep your eyes peeled.' They wouldn't believe us."