by P F Walsh
“Central, open access to the stairway.”
The row of shelves slid back about twenty feet to reveal a stairway going down. They went down the stairway to a small hall which ended in a steel door. Before they entered, they all put on their oxygen masks to protect against any contaminants that may have grown as a result of the demise of the last resident. Sean commanded that it open and the door swung toward them revealing a large room, covered with display monitors and work stations. There was a large pile of boxes, large water bottles and hundreds of food wrappers stuffed in an empty box along one wall near a sleeping cot. At the central console sat a figure in a chair, slumped over.
“Doctor....” Sean indicated the figure. The doctor moved over to the figure and began examining it. The figure was desiccated from many decades of sitting there. It was humanoid in general shape, but the orbital sockets were larger, and the figure was hairless except for a beard. It appeared as though he had spent his last time closed in this room with food and water.
“Captain, I would have to conduct an autopsy, but generally humanoid except for larger eyes I suspect, based upon the skull features under the dried-out skin. No visible signs of injury. Looks like Allister may be right, probably died of old age.” He said.
They spent quite a bit of time looking at all the operations stations and could see the city had a wide collection of concealed cameras. The room would be ideal for operations and security control.
“Artie, we don’t have time to go through all this stuff before we leave. Don’t operate any of the console controls, in fact leave this room sealed up. Central can provide whatever you need until we get a few weeks to untangle what all this stuff does. Doing something now may screw up the relocation.” He said.
“Aye Captain, I agree. We should get our mystery man out of here though, and put him on ice for inspection later. You agree?”
“Yes, Artie” Sean said, and with a last look, he turned to leave the room.
Former Ambassador Reginald Dawson received a letter from the Foreign Office which was quite cryptic,
“You are instructed to meet with Field Marshal Sir John Greer CMG, DSO, GCB and our representative at Sir John’s place of residence.
On Tuesday next, at Ten A.M. Come alone.”
The signature was an illegible scrawl, but the letter certainly came from the Foreign Office. There was no post mark so he assumed it came in a diplomatic pouch from London. It was slipped under the door to his room in a local hotel they had provided. After his enormous faux pas regarding facilitating the switching of a cell phone of the President’s girlfriend, he was asked to leave the Ambassador’s residence, his position, and await instructions.
“Who the bloody Hell is Field Marshall Sir John Greer?” He thought. “I have never heard of him.”
He went to his laptop and signed onto the hotel’s internet connection and did a search. He was very surprised to learn Sir John was a war hero and died in 1944. This left the Ambassador quite confused until he read on and learned he was buried with honors in Arlington National Cemetery across the river.
“So, we’re to meet at his grave then. This certainly portends a suggestion of an ugly end, doesn’t it?” He thought. He read on about the Field Marshall’s career.
“Well, at least it’s not a summons back to the Foreign Office for a formal defrocking and perhaps a verbal caning.” He mused. He added some more ice cubes in his glass, and poured himself another Gin and tonic, lamenting he neglected to get some lime spears.
At the appointed time, braced with a sip or two, he approached the two stone pilasters fronting the short walk to the bronze statue of Sir John and there was a woman in a long black coat and a vanilla colored head scarf tied under her chin, leaning against the pilaster waiting with her arms crossed.
“Good Morning Reginald. I have always liked that name, but truthfully, I prefer the sobriquet of ‘Reggie’. Do you mind?” She asked.
“Not at all Miss...?” He queried.
“Yes, well let’s get on with it. You are in a frightful mess it seems, and the romp around the Office is tied between burning at the stake in Trafalgar Square, to having you disappear.” She started walking over to the statue of Sir John mounted on a horse in classic pose, and he followed as she looked up at it she said,
“Having you disappear seems to have won the day, and not without a bit of tussle, I might add.” She turned back, walked beyond the memorial, and then continued as he tagged along close enough to hear,
“I got the job of being field magician, and suffered a bloody long flight on a red eye, though, I must say, Washington is quite lovely at this time of year.” She continued speaking as she looked about at the rows of tombstones,
“Not my idea to meet here by the way, I believe it was the Secretary who decided that. I think he wanted to suggest just how dead your career is close to being, except that there is likely to be no monument no matter what happens, you understand.” She said with a cold smile. He nodded and stayed silent, thinking as they strolled,
“Best to play humble, contrite, and shut up!”
“Here is the crux of it Reggie,” she said, “he wanted you sent to the furthest post we could find, and left it up to the staff. Being the wretched slags that we can be from time to time, we formed an office pool where everyone threw in a vacant remote post location on a card. One of the office girls who had just returned from lunch, quite unacceptably tipsy, was elected to be the person to draw your assignment and she giggled through the entire thing.” She said.
“They were all quite legitimate assignments, although I must remark, some were positively ghastly.” She paused. A cold shiver ran down Reggie’s back imagining the sport at which they enjoyed gambling with his soiled career.
“Despite her level of inebriation, she got full marks for pulling this one out.” She said, and walked on with Reggie by her side quite silent.
“You are to open a Consular office and be the Consul General. We all realize this is a major step down from being Ambassador to the most powerful country in the world, but you must understand Reggie, there was serious discussion of giving you the sack. The fact that they kidnaped your son was a huge mitigating factor, along with your tardy, but thorough, reporting of it all. However, this assignment is far better than I expected when that office girl reached into the box to pull out a selection. She almost fell in the box, by the way.” She kept walking. He finally thought it was time to ask,
“And, Miss, ‘whoever you are’, where will my new post be?”
“Ah yes, that.” She reached into her bag held to her side by a shoulder strap and pulled out a thick packet and handed it to him.
“These are your new credentials and other documents, letters of introduction, funds draught, and so on.” She said. Then, while still holding onto the packet as he grasped it, she said,
“Don’t make a shamble of this Reggie, or it’s all to pot!” She snapped sternly. She paused with a glare, released the packet, and then continued,
“Oh yes, the consular office you are to open is on the planet Hhearn. That’s twenty-seven light years from here. The Secretary was delighted when he was informed that an extensive process of deliberative selection decided this was best. You are to leave on a United States starship on Friday. You will find your tickets in the packet as well as advance travel funds. A trunk full of brochures and tourist information on London will be shipped there with you. We have a few Brits already there, and someone will meet you, so your socials shouldn’t be dreadful. I understand the Zeng tea is quite tasty.” She looked about and said,
“Right. Now that this is all sorted out, shall we go and have a bit of lunch? I need to find the loo.” She said dryly, unaffected by the shocked face of Reginald Dawson.
“Captain, I advise that your Ship and the five sentient ships move to the edge of the solar system before we move Caerus. I do not know what to expect from the action. There is a tremendous release of energy.” Central sent to Discovery. Allister
synced the ships and moved them all to a safe area, but a location where they could still see Caerus on the long-range cameras. Sean told Allister to signal Central to proceed. The time for Caerus to move to its new location in Earth’s solar system was at hand. Artie and Mel were on Caerus and would travel with the planet. They were both secured to heavy chairs wearing their oxygen masks. The chairs were secured to the floor. The rest of the Discovery crew was either at their stations or watching on the dining cabin monitor. At the appointed time, there was a huge flash of light where Caerus was located. When it subsided, Caerus was gone.
On Caerus, the lights had gone out and emergency lighting came on. The air was filled with dust but both Artie and Mel had their oxygen masks on so there was no immediate concern from the dust. After determining that both of them seemed fine after the big flash of light, they unbelted and began trying to raise Central. There was no response.
“Artie, how are we going to tell where the Hell we are if Central is knocked out?” Mel asked.
“Let’s go outside.” Artie said. “We can check the stars, if we can see them.” They both went outside and were surprised to see the stars shining clearly and brightly. In a few minutes, they confirmed that they were in Earth’s solar system, but the shield and the hologram were down.
“Looks like Central’s systems all went down.” Mel said.
“Yeah, let’s get some flashlights and go over to Central’s main room and see what’s going on.” He said.
They walked the few blocks on the darkened streets seeing only a few lights from backup power. They got to the park with the center glass building and went in. Lights were off but they were able to get to the elevator. The call button still glowed, so they pressed it and the elevator doors opened.
“Well Mel, what do you think? Give it a try? We could get stuck y’know.” Artie said.
“Considering our ages, I say go for it. We don’t have that much time left anyway.” Mel said with a grin.
They got in and pressed the down button. The door closed and the elevator began to smoothly descend. Once at the bottom the doors opened and they could see the huge cold room but only a few lights were lit.
“Mel, let’s check the back wall and see if there are any power distribution panels there. I see a few lights back there.”
“Lead on.” Mel said as they began walking to the far back wall using their flashlights to make sure footing was clear.
The whole back wall was covered with metal panels that looked like power panels. In the center of the wall there were six huge switch levers sticking out of the center panel.
“Looks like all the breakers tripped.” Artie said. “God, they’re massive.”
“You know what you do with breakers, right?” Artie quipped.
“Yeah, turn ‘em back on.” Mel said. “What about sequence?” Mel added.
“Good point, according to what I’ve seen of their printed matter, they read from the left to right like us. Let’s assume that the first one to energize should be the left one, agreed?” He asked.
“Sounds good to me.” Mel said as Artie then pushed the heavy lever back into its seated vertical position. As it snapped home in the last inch or so, a brief flash from the contacts and silence. Then, somewhere under the floor they could hear a hum beginning and settling into a continuous purr.
“Sounds like refrigeration compressors to me.” Said Artie.
He looked at Mel who shrugged his shoulders. Artie began re-setting all the breakers one by one. Each one, resulting in some sound from within the room or the walls. When he reset the last one, the lights came on in the cold computer room, and pilot lights on each of the processor columns came on and began blinking. They walked over to the central console, quite a way into the room, and watched as all the consoles began to light up and data began furiously scrolling across the screens.
“Look like it’s re-booting.” Mel said.
“Yeah, that might take a while though. Let’s get back outside. It’s freezing down here.” Artie replied.
They headed back to the elevator and got back up. As they walked outside, they could see most of the lights were now coming back on back on. The streets were lit up again.
“Now that we have made that historic scientific discovery, let’s go and get ourselves something to drink. I’m thirsty after that long space trip.” Artie said.
“It seems like walk-around humans aren’t indispensable after all.” Mel said.
“I wonder how long it will take to boot up the bar?” Artie mused out loud.
Berkeley “Berky” Dillon was a post graduate student in astrophysics, and was like all those on Earth who look to the stars, wondered if anything was out there. He had been glowing over the paper he had turned in titled,
‘Detection and Recording of Extraterrestrial Vehicles in our Solar System.’
It got an A+ and a scribbled ‘outstanding’ note across the top. Berky had picked up the movements and signals of the Seeker’s Collector as it moved back and forth between Earth and the Seeker ship parked alongside Ceres. That was when the Seeker was investigating Earth, and ultimately choosing Sean Flynn to stand before the Council for Membership. At the time, he and his friend Tommy Malman believed that his detection rig was faulty and delivering false readings, when in fact, he had captured viable data no one else had. His logs and recordings were submitted with his paper, and were now being published. He had received several emails from the astronomical world, congratulating him on his work.
Berky was sitting in his attic again with his rig all powered up and scanning when a huge burst of radio energy blasted painfully from the audible monitor into his earphones. He pulled them off and threw them on the floor while he held his ears.
“What the Hell was that?” He snapped out loud.
“Damn, I hope I didn’t hurt my hearing with that one!” He thought.
He began to look at his settings and the celestial location his antenna was aiming at. He wrote all those down carefully, just in case his auto-logger didn’t catch the settings.
“What did I find now?” He thought. He then began looking at the satellite listing of documented satellites and could see none that were known to be overhead at the time of the burst. Berky spent the rest of the night going over his findings and settings and was convinced that he had caught something unusual. The breath of the nighttime sky, and space itself, made the likelihood of some other listener being tuned-in to that particular spot in the sky was remote. He went through his emails and found the one from Professor Metcail from the Griffith Observatory nearby. Berky went to his computer and sent the Professor an email that he had just recorded a new nearby radio/energy event and would he be willing to look at the location? Two hours later, he received a positive reply,
“Would he like to come up and be there when they looked?”
Berky dashed off an excited, positive reply, and promised to bring all his data with him.
“Berky, you drive carefully now, that’s my new car and telescopes are usually on top of mountains. The roads will be all curvy! Promise!” His mother demanded.
“Yes Mom, I promise to be careful.” Berky answered.
He left his home and drove to Griffith Park area where the observatory was located. After identifying himself, they let him and led him to the Professor who greeted him with a big smile, and congratulated him again on astute observation, and the patience that goes into it.
“What have you got now Berkeley?” He asked.
Berky laid out his information, and the professor examined them.
“That is usually a quiet section of the sky Berkeley, why were you looking there?” He asked.
“Well sir, everyone monitors the ‘watering hole’ so I look at areas no one is generally observing, that’s how I found the Seeker and its remotes.” He said.
“I see. I can’t really say you were wrong, can I?” He smiled.
“No sir, but this new one nearly damaged my ears when it came in. I think ther
e’s something that happened out there we should know about, sir.”
“Well let’s go take a look, shall we?” He started walking over to the controls for the telescope and dialed up the directions. They spent an hour scanning the general area and were on the last pass.
“Well Berkeley, I don’t see anything out there. You said you think it’s nearby?” He asked.
“Yes sir, it was way too loud to be from outside our general area of space.” He stood there as the Professor kept examining the sky.
“I think we’re going to strike out.... Whoa!” He exclaimed.
“Hang on, while I lock this in.”
Berkeley could hear the drive begin to lock in on something the telescope was looking at.
“Come and take a look” He said. Berky came over to the telescope and looked through the eyepiece. There, in front of his eyes was a small planet that looked like the moon but wasn’t.
“What have we got here Professor?” He asked.
“Berkeley, we have a small planet that is definitely not supposed to be there, that’s what. You’ve done it again!” He added,
“Since you found this, you get to name it, at least until we learn if anyone else has named it already. What do you want to call it?” He asked.
“BK-52" He answered.
“BK-52? Where did you get that? You don’t want to use your own name?” He asked.
“No sir, that would be a little pretentious for a student, don’t you think sir? Anyway, it’s my Mom’s birthday, and she’s 52.” He replied. The Professor looked at him and said,
“I like your style. This is a major event. The first question is, how could everyone miss a small planet this close? The second question is, if it wasn’t there last week or yesterday, how did it get here?” The Professor said.
“You’ve really opened another can of worms, Berkeley. Good job!” He said as he took another look. Other student astronomers were gathering around the excitement they could overhear.