The ambassador and his aide (Jerry would have bet the foxy-faced man was KGB, though he might have been GRU) stared at the photo. Major Bronstein asked, “Why should we not think this is disinformation, aimed at making us seem like idiots if we act on it?”

There it was, the rational world rising up to kick Jerry in the teeth. He said, “Steve Dole is dead because the CIA didn’t want you guys to get any word of this. Only reason I’m in one piece is dumb luck. If you don’t want to get dealt in to whatever people can learn from that spaceship, go ahead. Laugh at me. And yob tvoyu mat’.”

His Russian TAs and profs had all warned him never to say that: telling somebody Fuck your mother! was a good way to start a fight. Bronstein looked comically amazed. As he did, Jerry realized he reminded him of Danny Kaye. Ambassador Dobrynin said, “You say you were on this ship that was a CIA project?”

“That’s right.” Jerry nodded.

“They would have checked you politically. You would have passed. You were not a sympathizer with the Soviet Union.”

“That’s right, too.”

“Why are you here, then?”

“Because some things are too big for one country to grab hold of all by itself. Here, take a look at this.” He took the other photograph, the one of the centaurowl in its suspended-animation apparatus, out of the envelope and passed it over to the Russians. “This is one of the, the beings that crewed the Humpty Dumpty. It’s … I don’t know, maybe frozen. Not dead, anyhow. I’m not sure whether I took this picture or Steve Dole did. Maybe it’s still there this way. Maybe the people on the Glomar Explorer have tried to wake it up since I left. Maybe they’ve managed to. Maybe they’ve killed it instead. I have no idea.”

Anatoly Dobrynin and Major Bronstein examined the second photo. Slowly, Bronstein said, “This could be a movie special effect. Trick photography.”

“Yeah, it could be,” Jerry said. “But if I were making this shit up—excuse me—wouldn’t I invent something a lot less crazy than aliens from outer space?” He took out his account of his time on the Glomar Explorer and gave it to Bronstein. “This is what happened, or as much as I could remember when I was writing it.”

The major read it. As soon as he finished a page, he passed it to the ambassador. They needed twenty minutes or so to finish. Then Dobrynin said, “I have a question. This Humpty Dumpty, you say it destroyed a Soviet submarine cruising five kilometers above it, a submarine that had no idea it was there. Yet it let you Americans seize it and bring it up to the surface. Why would it do this?”