They met in college in 1942 — the second year of WW2 for America — where they were taking a course in celestial navigation as a hedge against being drafted into the army. That turned out to be a bummer when radar made sextants and Bowditch tables obsolete. They were drafted. Into the Army, despite their special skills. They served as grunts. They watched in horror as the world tore itself apart leading up to D-Day, but they hoped for better days to come. They watched in 1945 as the West managed to get its act together with the Marshall Plan and afterwards tore itself apart again in the Cold War. Thanks to the GI Bill, they went back and finished up their degrees, as Astronomy majors. They became post-docs, then associate professors, and finally got their PhDs and got steady jobs at the same mountain top observatory, supported by the same government grant. They watched as Russia went down the tubes, and they hoped that a less ideologically motivated and more realistic Russia would be better off once and less difficult once Gorbachev pulled the plug. They were, of course, disappointed

“Apparently we humans don’t think straight with no enemy to unite us,” concluded Professor Rashid.

“Seems so,” replied Professor Doberstein.

“What if we,” said Professor Rashid, “given the prestige conferred by our PhDs, were able to create one?”

“Create one? We two? Are you crazy?” said Professor Doberstein. “How would we do that?”

“Well, nobody off-campus thinks about astronomy any more. They think it’s about horoscopes. The real thing — all that endless vastness, our total insignificance — is too scary. Mind-boggling. There are no prizes or 20% returns on your money. You don’t get to sign autographs or create sneakers for million-dollar contracts. There are no stars with cleavages getting pulsars named after them. That means that any cockamamie story we could come up with will be swallowed whole provided we keep our beards and our job titles and our dignity.”

“Distinguished scientists? That has a nice ring to it. We could try”

*

Which is how the Great Terrestrial Union got off the ground. Using their observatory positions and their lack of any known political connections, reputations as credentials they called a press conference and announced that they had lately detected signs of alien activity in our solar system. In fact, very close to our orbit. Mysterious radia2tion that was apparently being modulated by something or someone to send some sort of messages. This much they had established by the presence of non-random patterns. Definitely beyond the possibility of accidental occurrence, but offering no clue as to what the messages might be. Their best efforts had so far failed to decode them, but anyone could tune in on TV and listen to the beeps and hear the patterns for themselves. (The two investigators said they had found that the mysterious strangers were using as carriers gravity waves, whose origins were poorly understood.)

The initial public reaction was disbelief, followed in due course by the usual cycle of denial, followed by worry, followed by fear, followed by panic, followed by extravagant muscle flexing. Evangelicals saw the first signs of Armageddon. Politicians feared the disruption of their hard-won seniorities and connections and threats to their post retirement corporate board directorships. Generals and admirals saw both their pride and their pensions deflated, their influence weakened, and their medals devalued. Jihadists saw Allah’s glorious revenge in the offing in a fiery cataclysm that would soon consume both non-believers and believers alike and transport the Chosen directly to Paradise. Jews knew that it would somehow soon be discovered that it was all their fault. Dealmakers of all kinds tried desperately to find a way to make first contact to gain an advantage and get exclusive rights before anyone else could horn in.

But, surprisingly quickly, rationality asserted itself.

If there really were outsiders observing us and discussing their observations among themselves, certain things were indisputable:

1. They were obviously intelligent and technically advanced to have been able to travel into our corner of space in the first place.

2. Having come so far they must have some sort of plan for whether they intended to approach us as colonists, marauders, or potential friends.

3. They would have to make the first move, since they presumably knew how and we hadn’t figured out how to talk to them.

These considerations led to

4. We had better get prepared.

There was obviously no way to know whether the aliens’ intentions were friendly or warlike, so we needed to be prepared either way. If we guessed wrong, the consequences would be irreversible. If we spread a welcome mat and it turned out we had surrendered to alien predators without a fight, that would be one kind of disaster. If we attempted to mount a defense, and refused a hand of friendship that was possibly being offered, that would be another, but equal disaster.

One things was clear : walls, missile shields, suicide vests, jacked-up border patrols, tightened immigration laws and indeed national borders themselves, were not likely to be of any use. What was needed was international consultation on a coordinated worldwide strategy. That would require rounding up people capable of the best thinking we could muster.

So we identified and enlisted our best and brightest brains in devising a response, from whatever country or race or skin-color they might come. In a truly united UN this time, not an over-hyped overstuffed and overpaid debating society, but a true assembly of top minds and skills with a definite goal and a deadline (a short one, since no one knew how quickly the showdown might come).

To everyone’s amazement, after a brief period of wheel spinning and xenophobic bloviation, serious negotiations actually began. With a series of well timed nudges from the two astronomers to a suddenly fawning audience, as they became gurus, the pace quickened. There was no other place for the conferees to turn for information. As gurus they issued their bulletins in parsimonious dribbles calculated to keep cooperation at a maximum and controversy at a minimum. The world painfully raised itself by its bootstraps and finally modernized the single functional body that had half-heartedly kept everyone’s eye on the ball on 45th Street for seven decades. There was no further clarification of the threat, but neither was there any bickering over who understood the threat better. The one big thing drew them all together in the fox’s den and left the nitpicking hedgehogs outside.

A quick-response council was established, with a small rotating executive membership, with authority to react immediately without further consultation. Orbital surveillance was instituted so that every inch of our globe’s surface was soon being watched 24/7. Missiles were made omni-directional so that nuclear warheads could be launched at any target anywhere, either terrestrial or in space. Logistic plans were put in place so that emergency supplies could be distributed anywhere they were needed on a moment’s notice. Democrats and Republicans, Sunnis and Shi’ias, Buddhists and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians, Han and Uigurs put their differences aside. Everyone was taught to recognize supposed danger signs. People were well fed and had their physical and mental weaknesses attended to so as to ensure their ability to resist when they should be called upon. They were educated and encouraged to feel self-sufficient and self-confident in case they had to become resistance guerillas overnight. Everything took second place to the defense of our little blue planet, whose essential frailty we suddenly realized. And all this was accomplished without the usual bickering over whose country or whose district would get the plum installations, or whose politicians or insiders would get how much of a cut of every expenditure. It was amazing how effective the organizing was when everybody’s shoulder was put to the same wheel.

*

Now, it was twenty years on, and still no sign of aliens, and here sat the two astronomers in the chill night air inside their open dome, letting the flickering computers do the job of keeping the mirror fixed on its pointer star, and debated.

“We can’t keep this up indefinitely, you know.”

“True. Eventually the truth will out.”

“Question is, do we do the right thing by letting it happen without explaining ourselves — do we just die without further comment — or do we reveal the truth, and hope humanity has learned a lesson from its enforced unity?”

“Either way, we’ll be villains.”

“Which doesn’t matter. We’ll be dead.”

“Well, I admit to a twinge of pride. It would make me feel better to know we got some credit.”

“We could leave a message in a bottle.”

“Very funny. But if we could, what would the message be? See how easy it was, once you thought you had a common enemy, or Now that you have the GTU in place, don’t be stupid and lose it? Wouldn’t everybody just be furious at having been duped?

“And if we simply die without telling our story, and little by little the world discovers it has been tricked? Would that be any better?”

“Can’t we somehow leave things a permanent mystery — so no one will never be sure about these ‘aliens’?”

“Doubtful. The gravity wave shtick is too simple. Some smart grad student will figure it out eventually.”

“So which way has a better chance of making the GTU — and the Earth
— permanent?”

“You tell me.”

“I think it’s better that we simply die and leave the problem for someone else. I am nervous about this playing God bit, anyway. Too much responsibility.”

“But if we have played it this far, we should do whatever we can to make it stick.”

“How?”

“I say send a message. We have now deciphered the code. The word is that ‘they’ have perceived no evil intent from us, and they will therefore go back home and leave us alone, and maybe come back in a few centuries to see how we’re doing. If we’ve been good, they’ll leave us alone for another while.”

“Like the Twelfth Imam, or Jesus?”

“Right. It’s worked for their believers.”

*

At that moment, there was a whirring sound outside the dome An odd-shaped vehicle appeared. Two post docs in the lab next door couldn’t agree later what it looked like, except that it didn’t look like anything they had ever seen before. The night porter said that Rashid and Doberstein simply walked out of the dome on their own, as if in a trance, their arms stretched out in front of them like sleepwalkers, a door in the bottom of the vehicle opened showing a gleam of blue-green light inside, the door closed again, and the craft simply disappeared. Just vanished. The whirring sound stopped.

We haven’t blown ourselves up yet, and no other alien sightings have yet been reported, so there’s hope.