Death Wave by Ben Bova

“And you think that they’ll go into a panic over a problem that won’t affect us for two thousand years?”
    â€œI’m hoping,” Jordan said, “that they’ll have the decency to try to save intelligent species who will be destroyed by the death wave in another century or two—unless we act to save them.”
    â€œWho are these intelligent species?” Castiglione demanded. “Where are they?”
    â€œOur astronomers can explain that to you,” said Aditi.
    Jordan said, “There are at least six intelligent species within five hundred light-years of Earth. All of them appear to be pretechnological in their development. They are intelligent, but they haven’t yet developed high technology. No electricity. No space travel. No interstellar communications.”
    â€œThen how do you know of them?”
    â€œOur Predecessors have sent scouts throughout this sector of the galaxy,” Aditi said. “Once they detected the death wave, they began searching for intelligent species that would be endangered.”
    Jordan added, “Life in the universe is commonplace, apparently. But intelligence is very rare. It’s our duty to help intelligent creatures to survive the death wave.”
    â€œOur duty,” Halleck echoed.
    â€œOur moral obligation,” Jordan insisted. But he did not tell her the rest of it. He did not tell Halleck and Castiglione that most intelligent civilizations destroy themselves, one way or the other. He did not tell them that intelligence often leads to a dead end.

 
    BOSTON
    Carlos Otero was accustomed to getting what he wanted. He believed himself to be a self-made man, starting soon after graduating Harvard with nothing more than the local communications company that his father and uncles had bequeathed him. From that small beginning he had built the Otero Network, a news and entertainment empire that reached halfway across the solar system.
    And yet, Otero said to himself, this man Kell had taken over all his broadcast centers, even the one all the way out in the habitats orbiting the planet Saturn, commandeered them all to tell his tale of impending doom.
    Otero admired the man’s daring, but feared his abilities. Standing at the floor-to-ceiling window of his office, on the top floor of Boston’s tallest tower, Otero scowled unhappily at the city spread at his feet.
    He was a solidly built man in the prime of life, his luxuriant hair and full mustache handsomely dark, his body well muscled. He generally won at any game he played, from golf to arm wrestling—even when he played against people who did not owe their living to him. He had a bright, flashing smile and used it often, especially with willing, eager women.
    But this morning he stood alone in his office, unsmiling, hands clasped behind his back, brooding over the report his head of engineering had sent him.
    Otero had asked his top engineer a simple question: How did this man Kell manage to take over all the broadcast facilities in the solar system?
    The answer unsettled Otero badly. We don’t know, his top engineer had reported. We simply cannot determine how Kell took command of the entire Otero Network, and all the other broadcast facilities from Mercury to Saturn, as well.
    That kind of power is dangerous, Otero knew. If he can step in and take over all our communications, where does that leave us? Where does that leave me? Impotent. Helpless.
    On the other hand, he thought, if we can somehow get Kell to work with us, for us, what a coup that would be! The star traveler, exclusively on Otero Network! I could give him carte blanche, let him tell his story about the wave of radiation or whatever it is that’s approaching us. I could make him an interplanetary media star.
    And his wife, an alien from another star. What a sensation I could make of her!
    Abruptly, Otero turned away from the window and strode to his desk. “Get me Anita