by B. C. CHASE
“If we don’t keep an open mind, it’s pointless for us to meet them. We need to start thinking about sacrifices. How much are we willing to sacrifice in order to make the meeting work? We’ve already sacrificed a lot. Much more might be required by the time it’s over.”
“What the heck are you talking about?” I ask.
“We need to stay focused on our mission. Our mission isn’t to bring everybody back to Earth safe and sound. Our mission is to establish diplomatic relations with the only extraterrestrial beings ever to make their existence known to us. There might be hiccups, but we can’t let that distract from what we are being sent to do.”
“It sounds like you’re expecting more of us to die, Commander Tomlinson,” I say. “Is there some reason you’re so pessimistic?”
“I’m not pessimistic,” he says. “I’m realistic. In the very act of traveling to the solar system and contacting us using our own technology, they have already shown that we are at a disadvantage.”
“It’s David and Goliath in space,” I remark.
“No, you’re thinking about this all freaking wrong,” says Commander Tomlinson. “You think we’re coming out here to gain an upper hand. You want to outwit them or outmaneuver them. They are so far above us, that would be like an ant trying to go head to head against an elephant. All we can do is try to learn from them which, I’m sure, is all they’ll expect of us. They weren’t drawn to the solar system by our resources or the habitability of our planet. There are plenty of other planetary systems much better than ours. They came here for us. We are what makes the solar system unique. They want to learn about us and teach us. The question is how much sacrifice they’ll extract before they decide we respect them and we are ready to join the community of interstellar species. We need to be prepared to sacrifice everything.”
“Community of interstellar species?” Shiro says. “Isn’t that a bit premature? How many interstellar species do you think there are?”
“We’re here which means that the development of sentient life is not a statistical rarity relative to the size of the universe and the length of time it has existed. They are out there, too. There could be a hundred thousand different species, statistically. Since we haven’t heard from them, it means they have chosen not to reveal themselves to us. Until now.”
Thirty-eight
“What in the world?” Shelby says.
I am in the European lab tidying up with the vacuum, so I can’t hear her well. I switch the contraption off and say, “What in space, you mean.”
She doesn’t respond with the laugh she would usually be kind enough to give me, but continues staring through the microscope she is using.
“Unbelievable,” she utters. She is in another world, totally unaware as I approach.
I ask, “What is it, Shelby?”
She lifts her eyes from the lens and says, dead-serious, “I have absolutely no idea.”
“Well what is it you put on that slide, there?”
“Katia’s blood sample.”
“But you’re not looking at Katia’s blood?”
“Yes, I am, but…well see for yourself.” She switches on a monitor and plugs the microscope in. The screen is illuminated with a clear image of thousands of translucent pink circles and ovals that are slowly drifting around. She points to a black blotch in the middle of the frame. “Look at that,” she says. I obey and note that it’s twice the size of the circles and cylindrical. Beyond that I make no further deductions. “Looks like a black dot to me,” I remark.
“No,” she says. She twists the microscope’s objectives to zoom in. The black blotch gets bigger two times until it occupies about a 16th of the frame. “Look at it now,” she says.
I can discern some details now. Sticking out one side it has two things that look like corkscrews and sticking out the other side are a couple arms with joints and sharp tips.
“What do you think that could possibly be?”
“A white blood cell?” I suggest.
She gives me a funny look. “You poor thing. You really don’t know anything about anatomy at all, do you? Look at these,” she points to the corkscrews, “Those look like flagella. They must be for propulsion. And see how dark this thing is? It’s solid. You can’t see inside it. That’s not normal.” I can see what she means. It isn’t translucent like the blood cells at all; it is absolutely black like a silhouette. “And these,” she indicates to the pointy parts. “They’re so straight, so perfectly straight. I’ve never seen anything like it.” She looks me in the eye, “This isn’t organic.”
Suddenly, the thing twitches. Its arms spread apart and its corkscrews start spinning. Its movements are rapid and abrupt like a flea’s. We are transfixed as we watch it, and in three quick jerks, it stalks and captures one of the blood cells. Puncturing it with its tiny arms, it sucks it in through one end of its cylindrical shape. Then it expels some liquid and debris back out.
Shelby exclaims, “It just ate the blood cell. It ate Katia’s blood.”
“That’s not good. And you think this was in her body?”
“Yes. It was. Unless I got really lucky, I’d say there are millions of them.”
“Millions?”
“Yes. There are about two-and-a-half trillion blood cells in an ounce of blood. Since I came across this thing in the small sample I took, I can only assume they must be all over her bloodstream.”
“The SPHERES are harvesting our food and now these things are in Katia’s blood doing who knows what. I think we’re getting in way over our heads.”
“I think I wish I had a bigger microscope,” she says, peering through the eyepieces. Then she pulls back and says, “Wait, did you say the SPHERES are harvesting our food?”
I’m in the habitation module where I am cleaning the big windows and Commander Sykes and several of the crew are eating. The windows are thick, that’s for sure, and have three layers. Even so, as I scrub them I still feel a lot closer to the cold vacuum of space than I can comfortably tolerate. Over the last weeks I have been sneaking around the station while everyone is asleep seeing if I can catch the SPHERES doing something unusual again, but so far they have been very good at doing absolutely nothing or they are very good at concealing their activities.
“No! I won’t do it!” Nari shouts. Nari pulls herself through the hatch followed closely by Shiro. She looks enraged.
Shiro objects, “But you’re not thinking logically.”
“Nothing could possibly make me abort my baby,” says Nari. “Nothing.”
Shiro warns, “If you don’t make the right choice, we might have to make it for you, Nari.”
Commander Sykes says, “Shiro?”
“Yes?”
“We are not aborting if Nari doesn’t want to. Don’t bring it up again, do you understand?”
“But—”
“That’s it. Not again.”
“Yes, sir.”
Looking at Shelby, Commander Sykes says, “I never heard the results of your analysis.”
“What analysis?”
“Semen.”
I cringe. After I turned in my sample, I was hoping never to hear about it again.
“Commander Tomlinson is the only one who’s fertile.”
“Good,” says Commander Sykes. “At least that’s not as big a problem as it could be. Tomlinson, we don’t want any more babies. Keep your hands to yourself.”
“I’ll follow your example, sir,” smirks Commander Tomlinson.
Shelby says, “As a precaution, I’m putting all the women on Ethinyl Estradiol.”
Commander Sykes says, “That sounds prudent. And where are you with the nanobots in Katia’s blood?”
“So far I haven’t been able to observe them doing anything more than sucking in blood cells. But I have noticed more than one type.”
“More than one type?”
“Yes. I haven’t made sense of them yet, but I have noticed that they are not all the same.”
Abrupt
ly, Shiro says, “I know where they came from. They are manufacturing them here on the station.”
“How do you know that?” asks Commander Sykes. “Why didn’t you mention that before?”
“I only put it together last night.”
“How are they doing it?”
“To make nanobots, you need a perfectly sterile environment. They have been using the Japanese airlock. I have seen them congregating in there at night.”
I am relieved to hear that I am not the only one who has been concerned enough to keep an eye on the SPHERES at night.
Commander Sykes says, “So you’ve been watching them go into the airlock at night and you haven’t told anyone?”
“Yes. I assumed that if I made it public, they might stop.”
“Have they left the station?”
“Not that I have seen, but I wouldn’t rule it out. I have seen them go into the airlock for hours at a time and then they come out.”
“Keep watching them,” Commander Sykes says.
“Believe me, I will.”
Commander Sykes asks Shelby, “Did you finish looking at the rest of the samples?”
“Yes. You and Katia are the only ones who have nanobots.”
“If we can’t find out what they do, then I think it’s best we find a way to eradicate them. I don’t like the idea of something swarming in my bloodstream,” Commander Sykes says.
“I wouldn’t either,” says Shelby. “I’ll do my best. But I don’t want to do anything that might hurt you guys in the process.”
“Thank you,” says Commander Sykes. “Well, congratulations, everyone. Saturn is fourteen days away. That’s something to look forward to.”
“Unless something goes wrong,” says Shiro under his breath.
“What did you say?” asks Shelby, frowning.
“Fun fact: every time we approach a planet, someone dies.”
Katia says, “Boy did you wake up on the wrong side of the sleeping bag today, Shiro.”
“Why is it that whenever I provide realistic information, people conclude something is wrong with my emotional state?”
“How could anyone think something is wrong with your emotions, Shiro?” says Shelby. “You don’t have any.”
His face as unreadable as ever, Shiro says, “Yes.”
I float over to the mess hall and say, “I think we should disable the SPHERES.”
“Why?” asks Shiro.
“Because apparently we don’t have any control over what they’re doing.”
“What are you afraid of?” asks Commander Tomlinson. “That they might know more about how to run the space station than we do?”
“I think it’s a matter of control. If they are capable of manufacturing nanobots, is there anything they cannot do? Should we cede control of our ship simply for the sake of convenience or because we don’t understand what is happening?”
“It’s not about convenience,” says Commander Tomlinson. “It’s about efficiency and the success of the mission. It’s about what they want and what they know is best. How much control do you really think we’ve had all this time?”
Despite my distain for Commander Tomlinson, the question is a pertinent one. I wouldn’t doubt that the ECIs have been in charge since this mission’s infancy; there has simply been a natural evolution in their methods towards more direct interference. The closer we come to meeting them, the more they manipulate us.
∆v∆v∆v∆v∆
I think Saturn has always been a kind of a psychological point of no return for me. Despite being in space as long as I have (that’s 272 days—not that I’m counting), I feel as if Saturn is a giant outpost marking the confines of Earth’s proverbial backyard. Beyond that is the untamed wilderness of the solar system, the domain of alien and unfamiliar planets like Neptune and Uranus. What scant information we have about those comes from the single time one of our probes has visited them (that was Voyager 2), and from woefully inadequate telescopes. Once we pass Saturn, there is no turning back. We will be off on a 280-day voyage blazing through uncharted territory at speeds greater than any manmade spacecraft has ever achieved (549,889 kilometers per hour). Pluto, the nobody of the solar system, the planet that was, will be our target, where we will at long last meet the bug-eyed beings who have summoned us.
Saturn is coming up fast, now the size of a little grape held at arm’s length. It is, without doubt, the most beautiful and the most awe-inspiring of all the planets we have seen. Venus and Jupiter were amazing, in their ways. But Saturn leaves you breathless, even at this distance. I feel like I could stare at it for eternity. Its rings are tilted and shine bright against the blackness of space. Its moons, surrounding it as dots and half-dots, add a depth that puts the great planet’s majestic size into perspective. In nine days, we will reach it.
None of us has devoted much to time to the discussion of what they will look like—the ECIs, that is. I guess that’s because none of us has a darn clue. Will they have hair? Will they be bipedal? Will they have legs at all? For all we know they could be globs of goop. Wouldn’t that be a disappointment. Armstrong and Aldrin sent back pictures of our flag planted on moon-soil. We will send back pictures of dung-heaps planted on Pluto.
If they are piles of goop, I suppose we could plant our flag in the ECIs. We could just stick the post right there through one of their globby brains. That would make a good photo op and let the Earthlings know that there’s nothing to fear. …or that we’re the biggest jackasses NASA ever sent to space.
On the subject of flags…yes, we brought one. But it isn’t a U.S. flag. It’s just got the pulsar star map from Voyager’s golden record on it. That map shows Earth’s location in the galaxy. Naturally, I didn’t like this idea. That’s why I stowed Old Glory in my jeans when we launched from Cape Canaveral. I plan to carry it down to Pluto with me and take a proper picture next to it. If only my giant Levi Strauss belt buckle could be seen through my spacesuit…
“So,” says Katia. “Are you going to write something about Saturn like you did about Venus?” She, Tim, and I are gazing out the window.
“No words,” says Tim. “I have no words. She’s magnificent.”
We continue to stare out in silent awe. Then Katia says, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Timmy.”
He looks at her, “Is it really Valentine’s Day? I’d quite forgotten about that. Thank you.”
She nudges him and clears her throat.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Katia,” he looks at her with fondness.
There’s a pause and I say, “Well that’s nice. Nobody tells the old man Happy Valentine’s day… What is it, are only young folks allowed to celebrate Valentine’s Day now? Good golly.”
Katia laughs and hugs my arm, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Papochka.”
“That’s more like it,” I say. “It’s bad enough nobody remembered my birthday.”
“Your birthday?” Katia exclaims.
“Yes, February 26th.”
“February 26th? That’s in twelve days!”
“Yes, but you missed it last year.”
Katia frowns, “I did? How did I do that? I’m so sorry. I can’t believe it. I would never forget my Papochka’s birthday.”
“Katia,” grins Tim. “We weren’t even on the station by then. Last year we launched on May 15th.”
Realizing that I’m pulling her leg, Katia punches me in the arm, “You old liar!”
“Hey, easy. This is birthday month. You haven’t done anything to celebrate that, yet.”
“We won’t be celebrating your birthday day either,” she says, “if you keep this up.”
Before we get back to our work, I take one last look at Saturn. In nine days we will cross paths with the mighty gem of the Solar System. Looming in my mind is Shiro’s observation that every time we encounter a planet something goes horribly wrong. Surely after all this we’ve earned a break.
Thirty-nine
Commander Sykes asks Tim, “And how many feet squared a
cceleration is that?”
“121.48.”
“So that’s what…about three g’s?”
“Almost four, yes.”
“Did you hear that everyone? We’re going to be pushing four g’s during this Oberth so I want everybody strapped in the launch seats.”
“Four g’s, really?” says Shelby. “For how long?”
“Nine minutes,” says Tim.
Shelby sticks her tongue out and scrunches up her face, “Ugh. That borders on dangerous. I had forgotten about this one—probably on purpose.”
Commander Sykes says, “It’s going to be quite a ride, that’s for sure.”
I take a last glimpse out one of the little portals in Node 2. We are now passing over Saturn’s outermost rings. They glint and glimmer in the white sunlight, a myriad of icy rocks of all sizes that travel around the planet in an endless procession. The planet itself is giant and towering ahead of us. The rings cast dramatic, wide shadows across the southern hemisphere.
We will be passing straight through the space between the rings and the surface.
As we buckle up in the launch seats in Node 2, Commander Sykes says, “This is like making a hole-in-one from New York to Los Angeles with one swing.”
“Aw that’s nothing. Could do that with my eyes shut,” I remark.
We will be so close to Saturn in order to get the maximum acceleration from its gravity. I just hope none of those rocks has strayed from the rings. At the rate of speed we are traveling, the tiny ones must be like speeding bullets. It’s not even worth thinking about what the big ones are like. Because of the angle of the rings, we have a very narrow opportunity to pass over them and then under them on the other side while our engines burn.
As I settle into my seat, I experience a pang of sadness. I am reminded of Sarah. She had used my seat under Commander Tomlinson’s orders when we had launched out of LEO. Now she’s gone.
We have all fastened our seatbelts when I look down to realize that Commander Sykes isn’t seated. There are only seven seats but eight people. “What about you, Commander Sykes?”