"I wasn't aware they ever were," Harry said.
"You say foolish things sometimes. Thoughtless."
"Children," Barnes said, "can we get back to the business at hand?"
"Point it out the next time, Ted."
"I will."
"I'll be glad to know when I say something foolish."
"No problem."
"Something you consider foolish."
"Tell you what," Barnes said to Norman, "when we go back to the surface, let's leave these two down here."
"Surely you can't think of going back now," Ted said.
"We've already voted."
"But that was before we found the object."
"Where is the object?" Harry said.
"Over here, Harry," Ted said, with a wicked grin. "Let's see what your fabled powers of deduction make of this." They walked deeper into the room, moving among the giant hands and claws. And they saw, nestled in the padded claw of one hand, a large, perfectly polished silver sphere about thirty feet in diameter. The sphere had no markings or features of any kind.
They moved around the sphere, seeing themselves reflected in the polished metal. Norman noticed an odd shifting iridescence, faint rainbow hues of blue and red, gleaming in the metal.
"It looks like an oversized ball bearing," Harry said.
"Keep walking, smart guy."
On the far side, they discovered a series of deep, convoluted grooves, cut in an intricate pattern into the surface of the sphere. The pattern was arresting, though Norman could not immediately say why. The pattern wasn't geometric. And it wasn't amorphous or organic, either. It was hard to say what it was. Norman had never seen anything like it, and as he continued to look at it he felt increasingly certain this was a pattern never found on Earth. Never created by any man. Never conceived by a human imagination.
Ted and Barnes were right. He felt sure of it.
This sphere was something alien.
PRIORITIES
"Huh," harry said, after staring in silence for a long time.
"I'm sure you'll want to get back to us on this," Ted said. "About where it came from, and so on."
"Actually, I know where it came from." And he told Ted about the star record, and the black hole.
"Actually," Ted said, "I suspected that this ship was made to travel through a black hole for some time."
"Did you? What was your first clue?"
"The heavy radiation shielding."
Harry nodded. "That's true. You probably guessed the significance of that before I did." He smiled. "But you didn't tell anybody."
"Hey," Ted said, "there's no question about it. I was the one who proposed the black hole first."
"You did?"
"Yes. No question at all. Remember, in the conference room? I was explaining to Norman about space-time, and I started to do the calculations for the black hole, and then you joined in. Norman, you remember that? I proposed it first." Norman said, "That's true, you had the idea."
Harry grinned. "I didn't feel that was a proposal. I thought it was more like a guess."
"Or a speculation. Harry," Ted said, "you are rewriting history. There are witnesses."
"Since you're so far ahead of everybody else," Harry said, "how about telling us your proposals for the nature of this object?"
"With pleasure," Ted said. "This object is a burnished sphere approximately ten meters in diameter, not solid, and composed of a dense metal alloy of an as-yet-unknown nature. The cabalistic markings on this side - "
" - These grooves are what you're calling cabalistic?"
" - Do you mind if I finish? The cabalistic markings on this side clearly suggest artistic or religious ornamentation, evoking a ceremonial quality. This indicates the object has significance to whoever made it."
"I think we can be sure that's true."
"Personally, I believe that this sphere is intended as a form of contact with us, visitors from another star, another solar system. It is, if you will, a greeting, a message, or a trophy. A proof that a higher form of life exists in the universe."
"All well and good and beside the point," Harry said. "What does it do?"
"I'm not sure it does anything. I think it just is. It is what it is.
"Very Zen."
"Well, what's your idea?"
"Let's review what we know," Harry said, "as opposed to what we imagine in a flight of fancy. This is a spacecraft from the future, built with all sorts of materials and technology we haven't developed yet, although we are about to develop them. This ship was sent by our descendants through a black hole and into another universe, or another part of our universe."
"Yes."
"This spacecraft is unmanned, but equipped with robot arms which are clearly designed to pick up things that it finds. So we can think of this ship as a huge version of the unmanned Mariner spacecraft that we sent in the 1970s to Mars, to look for life there. This spacecraft from the future is much bigger, and more complicated, but it's essentially the same sort of machine. It's a probe."
"Yes ...
"So the probe goes into another universe, where it comes upon this sphere. Presumably it finds the sphere floating in space. Or perhaps the sphere is sent out to meet the spacecraft."
"Right," Ted said. "Sent out to meet it. As an emissary. That's what I think."
"In any case, our robot spacecraft, according to whatever built-in criteria it has, decides that this sphere is interesting. It automatically grabs the sphere in its big claw hand here, draws it inside the ship, and brings it home."