"We thought you knew," Harry said.
"Knew about five-dimensional creatures that can't be killed? Nobody said a word to me." He shook his head. "Opening this sphere could be incredibly dangerous."
"It could, yes."
"What we have here is, we have Pandora's box."
"That's right."
"Well," Barnes said. "Let's consider worst cases. What's the worst case for what we might find?"
Beth said, "I think that's clear. Irrespective of whether it's a multidimensional creature or a virus or whatever, irrespective of whether it shares our morals or has no morals at all, the worst case is that it hits us below the belt."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that it behaves in a way that interferes with our basic life mechanisms. A good example is the AIDS virus. The reason why AIDS is so dangerous is not that it's new. We get new viruses every year - every week. And all viruses work in the same way: they attack cells and convert the machinery of the cells to make more viruses. What makes the AIDS virus dangerous is, it attacks the specific cells that we use to defend against viruses. AIDS interferes with our basic defense mechanism. And we have no defense against it."
"Well," Barnes said, "if this sphere contains a creature that interferes with our basic mechanisms - what would that creature be like?"
"It could breathe in air and exhale cyanide gas," Beth said. "It could excrete radioactive waste," Harry said.
"It could disrupt our brain waves," Norman said. "Interfere with our ability to think."
"Or," Beth said, "it might merely disrupt cardiac conduction. Stop our hearts from beating."
"It might produce a sound vibration that would resonate in our skeletal system and shatter our bones," Harry said. He smiled at the others. "I rather like that one."
"Clever," Beth said. "But, as usual, we're only thinking of ourselves. The creature might do nothing directly harmful to us at all."
"Ah," Barnes said.
"It might simply exhale a toxin that kills chloroplasts, so that plants could no longer convert sunlight. Then all the plants on Earth would die - and consequently all life on Earth would die."
"Ah," Barnes said.
"You see," Norman said, "at first I thought the Anthropomorphic Problem - the fact that we can only conceive of extraterrestrial life as basically human - I thought it was a failure of imagination. Man is man, all he knows is man, and all he can think of is what he knows. Yet, as you can see, that's not true. We can think of plenty of other things. But we don't. So there must be another reason why we only conceive of extraterrestrials as humans. And I think the answer is that we are, in reality, terribly frail animals. And we don't like to be reminded of how frail we are - how delicate the balances are inside our own bodies, how short our stay on Earth, and how easily it is ended. So we imagine other life forms as being like us, so we don't have to think of the real threat - the terrifying threat - they may represent, without ever intending to."
There was a silence.
"Of course, we mustn't forget another possibility," Bames said. "It may be that the sphere contains some extraordinary benefit to us. Some wondrous new knowledge, some astonishing new idea or new technology which will improve the condition of mankind beyond our wildest dreams."
"Although the chances are," Harry said, "that there won't be any new idea that is useful to us."
"Why?" Barnes said.
"Well, let's say that the aliens are a thousand years ahead of us, just as we are relative to, say, medieval Europe. Suppose you went back to medieval Europe with a television set? There wouldn't be any place to plug it in."
Barnes stared from one to another for a long time. "I'm sorry," he said. "This is too great a responsibility for me. I can't make the decision to open it up. I have to call Washington on this."
"Ted won't be happy," Harry said.
"The hell with Ted," Barnes said. "I'm going to give this to the President. Until we hear from him, I don't want anybody trying to open that sphere."
Barnes called for a two-hour rest period, and Harry went to his quarters to sleep. Beth announced that she was going off to sleep, too, but she remained at the monitor station with Tina Chan and Norman. Chan's station had comfortable chairs with high backs, and Beth swiveled in the chair, swinging her legs back and forth. She played with her hair, making little ringlets by her ear, and she stared into space.
Tired, Norman thought. We're all tired. He watched Tina, who moved smoothly and continuously, adjusting the monitors, checking the sensor inputs, changing the videotapes on the bank of VCR's, tense, alert. Because Edmunds was in the spaceship with Ted, Tina had to look after the recording units as well as her own communications console. The Navy woman didn't seem to be as tired as they were, but, then, she hadn't been inside the spaceship. To her, that spaceship was something she saw on the monitors, a TV show, an abstraction. Tina hadn't been confronted face-to-face with the reality of the new environment, the exhausting mental struggle to understand what was going on, what it all meant.
"You look tired, sir," Tina said.
"Yes. We're all tired."
"It's the atmosphere," she said. "Breathing the heliox." So much for psychological explanations, Norman thought. Tina said, "The density of the air down here has a real effect. We're at thirty atmospheres. If we were breathing regular air at this pressure, it would be almost as thick as a liquid. Heliox is lighter, but it's far denser than what we're used to. You don't realize it, but it's tiring just to breathe, to move your lungs."