Or maybe not. Dale said, “Any which way, we’re not set up to deal with aliens who don’t breathe oxygen. If that turns out to be what’s going on, all we can do is hope whatever’s in there stays alive till we get to either Hawaii or the mainland.”

“Fair enough. I thought I should mention it, though.”

“That’s fine. That’s good, in fact. And when we do go home, I’ll tell the guys back in Washington there may be more things in the heavens and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy.”

Jerry blessed a sophomore English Lit class for reminding him where that allusion came from. “So you’re telling me Washington’s just a little Hamlet in the grand scheme of things?” he said with malice aforethought.

Neuwirth started to answer, then stopped before anything came out. He eyed Jerry over the tops of his glasses again, severely this time. “Anyone who makes puns like that can’t be all good,” he said at last.

“Thank you, sir,” Jerry answered.

“Hrmm.” It wasn’t really a word: more a rumble down deep in Dale’s chest. He flipped to the next page of the typescript. “I do think someone back in DC also came up with the possibility that there’s water inside the Midlothian object, not any kind of air. I don’t believe that’s likely—very hard to develop a technological civilization under the sea.”

“I agree with you,” Jerry said. “Hard, but not quite impossible. What if it’s a technology based on biological engineering, for instance? What if they grew that spaceship instead of manufacturing it?”

“Where do they get the motors that let them cross interstellar space with biological engineering?”

“Beats me,” Jerry said cheerfully. “Where do they get them with mechanical or electrical engineering?”

“A point,” Dale admitted. “We don’t even know whether the object got here from wherever it started faster than light or slower. Before I got involved in this project, I would have told you traveling faster than light was flat-out impossible. Now … Now I just don’t know. That darn object is down there.”

“It sure is.” Jerry noticed that Dale didn’t like to call it a spaceship or a starship. Maybe he was very security conscious. Everybody on the Midlothian project seemed to be, and had good reason to be. Or maybe, down deep, Dale didn’t want to believe it. If he didn’t, how could you blame him?

“I see you thought about sublight travel, too,” the director said. “You’re right—it may be an automated probe in that case, like the ones we’ve sent out ourselves, but more sophisticated. Or the aliens may have very long lives. Or they may be in there in some kind of suspended animation, waiting for the object to wake them, or for us to do it once we work out how to get inside.”