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taken up the challenge, where governments and others have shamefully failed, to get out there and figure out what's going on. There are obvious mysteries about the Gaijin -- some of which might be resolved as soon as we get our first good look at them. But there are other, deeper questions that their very presence here poses, questions that go right to the heart of the nature of the universe itself, and our place in it. And right now, only you are doing anything which might help us tackle those questions.
    "You have my support. Do your work well. Godspeed. Thank you."
    The applause began, politely at first.
    It was a polished performance, Xenia supposed. She imagined this man thirty years ago giving pep talks at space shuttle component factories. Do good work!
    But, to her surprise, the applause was continuing, even growing thunderous. And to her deeper surprise, she found herself joining in.
     
    Xenia and Dorothy had some trouble reaching Frank Paulis and Malenfant, so walled off was the astronaut by a crowd of eager young engineer types.
    Dorothy studied Xenia's expression. "You don't quite go for all this hero worship, do you, Xenia?"
    "Do you think I'm cynical?"
    "No."
    Xenia grimaced. "But it... frustrates me. We're living through first contact, an era unique in the human story, whatever the future holds. At least Bootstrap is trying to respond. Away from here, aside from what we're doing, all I see is irrationalism. That, and positioning. Various bodies trying to use this discovery for their own purposes."
    "Like the Church?"
    "Well, isn't it?"
    "We all must pursue our own goals, Xenia. At least the Church's involvement in this project of yours represents a tangible demonstration that we are working our way through the crisis of faith the Gaijin have caused us."
    "What crisis?"
    "The Vatican began its first modern evaluation of the implication of extraterrestrial life for Christianity back in the nineties. But the debate has been going on much longer than that. We seem to have believed there were other minds out there long before we even had any clear notion of what out there actually was... This intuition seems to be an expression of our deep embedding in the universe; if the cosmos created us, it could surely create others. Did you know that Saint Augustine, back in the sixth century, speculated about ETs?"
    "He did?"
    "Augustine decided they couldn't exist. If they did, you see, they would require salvation -- a Christ of their own. But that would remove the uniqueness of Christ, which is impossible. Such theological conundrums plague us to this day... You can laugh if you like."
    Xenia shook her head. "The idea that we might go out there and try to convert the Gaijin does seem a little odd."
    "But we don't know why they are here," Dorothy pointed out. "Would seeking truth be such an invalid reason?"
    "And now you're here to bless the BDB," Xenia said.
    "Not exactly. Perhaps you've already done that, by naming it after Giordano Bruno. I take it you know who he was."
    "Of course." The first thinker to have expressed something like the modern notion of a plurality of worlds -- planets orbiting Suns, many of them inhabited by beings more or less like humans. Earlier thinkers about other worlds had imagined parallel versions of a Dante's Inferno pocket universe, centered on a stationary Earth. "You have to imagine other worlds before you can conceive of traveling there."
    "But Bruno was anticipated," Dorothy said gently. "A cardinal we know as Nicolas of Cusa, who lived in the fifteenth century..."
    Dorothy's lecturing tone seemed quite inappropriate to Xenia, making her impatient. "Whatever his antecedents, Bruno was killed by the Church for his heresy."
    "He was burned, in 1600, for a mystical attack on Christianity," Dorothy said, "not for his argument about aliens, or even his defense of Copernicus."
    "That makes it okay?"
    Dorothy continued to study her quietly.
    At last the crowd of techie acolytes was breaking