Stolen Worlds

by Bob Blink

  "Yeah. Yeah, it has," his professor replied, then hung up without saying more.

  Chapter 6

  Dr. William Gelon set the telephone headset down softly, his choice of an instrument for the call to his assistant clearly dating him. That wasn't all that did these days. His seventy-year old stomach, which had been an off and on problem for several years now, was constantly bothering him since this whole business had started. He popped a Tums, one of several he'd already had today, and climbed out of his office chair so he could head back to room 126, the small conference room where the local team would be gathering for the telecom shortly.

  He looked around for his cane. The damn thing was never where he expected to find it. All of the walking of late had really done a number on his bad knee. He knew he needed to consider replacement surgery, but the idea made him queasy, and he couldn't justify being out of the loop because of the powerful drugs he'd been told would probably be required for several weeks during recovery. Finding the cursed stick, he lurched down the hall and then the stairs to the lower level. The conference room speakers were spaced down the table ensuring everyone could hear, and equally important, everyone would be placed close enough to a microphone they could be heard by those that would be on the other ends of the phone lines. Ends, because the call was going to be connected to more than twenty remote locations.

  Of late the astronomy department had been swamped with angry callers, and his email was overflowing with hate mail from people who had decided this entire situation was somehow his fault. In fact, others had actually discovered the anomalous acceleration before he had, but his lead presenter status at the United Nations meetings apparently shifted all responsibility to him. There are a lot of misguided idiots out there, he decided. Unfortunately some of them were potentially dangerous, so security had been beefed up around the campus and at Cahill Hall in particular.

  If they knew what he had only just discovered their anger would be ten-fold of what it was now. But they had learned from their mistake, and from this point onward their discoveries would be discussed with members of the committee, and to a lesser degree to certain members of the government that had been identified as contact points for any new developments. Each nation had such an arrangement, but the intention of the central committee was to hold certain items close, and not reveal everything to the entire scientific community. Secrecy was the only way to cut back leaks to the media who were driving the frenzy that had to be stopped.

  "I'm here professor," a winded Tony wheezed out as he hurried into the room. "What do you want me to do?"

  Gelon gave him several instructions to help them get ready for those who would be attending the telecom here at Cal tech, but the majority would be remote on the conference call.

  "What's happened?" Tony asked, wondering if the professor would tell him before the call.

  "The acceleration has changed," Dr. Gelon said gravely. "Abruptly, just a couple of hours ago. The magnitude remains the same, but the direction has been modified."

  "Natural phenomena don't work like that," Tony objected. At least the kinds of things he was used to dealing with in his years studying physics and astronomy didn't.

  "That's right," professor Gelon agreed. "They don't. There should be some time for things to die out and build up as the new vector is established."

  "What does the new direction mean for us?"

  "There will be less orbit precession, but the orbit will change much more rapidly than we have been predicting using the older value."

  "Oh, shit!" And he'd just been telling Gwen that there was lots of time.

  "How fast?"

  "I haven't run the numbers. I'll let you do that after the conference call. But, as a rough estimate, I'd guess we have about a third of the time we had previously assumed."

  Fifteen minutes later they were gathered in the first level conference room with all remote participants linked in. Agreement had been reached as to what everyone was seeing. As before, all parties involved had detected the same transition to the new acceleration vector, and all knew qualitatively what it meant.

  "This is not a natural transition," Dr. Allen said, echoing Tony's words from earlier. "There is intelligence behind it. The changes we are seeing cannot be random. They are precisely what is required to speed the changes in Earth's orbit to pull it away from our sun."

  The silence stretch for a considerable time until Dr. Shen Tai of China spoke up.

  "You are suggesting that Bylov was right all along," he said.

  Then there were many objections from those that refused to accept the possibility, regardless of what the data suggested.

  "I cannot see what their purpose would be if some intelligent beings were behind this," a voice from elsewhere stated.

  Dr Gelon had come to Bykov's conclusion himself. "Whoever these beings are, they want our world, but they want it elsewhere," he said flatly.

  "The way they are going about it doesn't make sense. There are faster ways to move the world than they have selected. If they are so advanced, they should know this. There is no need to lower the orbit closer to the sun. It would faster and more efficient to simply raise the orbit everywhere."

  "Vermin," a deep rumbling voice that was easily recognized said.

  "What?" Dr. Anders asked.

  "They are ridding the planet of vermin," Bykov repeated over the net. "The Earth is currently in possession of all manner of life forms, all certainly foreign and perhaps toxic to these beings. I believe Dr. Gelon is right about their intentions, but they would like to have our world purged of the existing infestation. They have the perfect means of seeing that happen at their disposal. Thermal cycle the planet through temperature ranges that the existing biological forms cannot tolerate as the planet is extracted from this system. That would leave the planet pristine once it arrives wherever they are sending it. A significant gain for very little additional effort. No risk to your own species, no wars to fight. It's beautiful."

  Tony had never heard of humans referred to as an infestation.

  "This activity is going to take an incredibly long time," Dr. Heroshi Kobata objected.

  "Some conjecture," Dr. Allen said, interrupting. "Immediacy doesn't seem to be a driver here, despite the fact the recent changes do shorten the time span for everything. Even so, it will be decades before the Earth is stripped away from the sun, and we haven't even considered where it might be going or how far away that might be. Unless the ability exists to considerably increase the acceleration, even nearby stars are going to take a prohibitively long time, so a somewhat inefficient orbit would probably not concern these beings overly much. Clearly they plan on a different time scale than we do."

  "They probably have some kind of warp drive once they get it away from the sun," Tony said, thinking of things his favorite author had postulated would affect star travel.

  The comment earned him some odd looks, and he decided maybe he'd best stifle such thoughts in the future.

  "If there are beings behind this, Dr. Kobata said, "then where are they? All of our searching has failed to reveal anything that points to an alien life-form. Some sign of these supposed creatures should linger somewhere. Something from their arrival to signs of whatever installations they would have to have created to implement the powerful forces required to move an entire planet!"

  "More importantly, what can we do about them?" Dr. Henry from the land downunder asked.

  Their discussion had run on for a considerable period when Dr. Gelon interrupted the discussions. "I think that is a topic for after lunch," he suggested, noting they had run more than an hour over their planned break time. Everyone should ponder this while we stand down and have a bite to eat."

  "Before we go. Another issue I want to make certain gets addressed today," Dr. Anders said. "A lot of hard work has been invalidated by recent events," he said. "Years have been invested into tracking asteroids, comets and miscellaneous space junk that might present a danger to the Earth. With
the dramatic changes that are occurring in our orbit, that data will no longer be viable. We will be moving into zones we never investigated. The world could very possibly be at risk from objects we never worried about before. Now maybe these beings will be on hand to protect against any potential impacts, and maybe they will consider it more of the cleansing process."

  Aliens! Tony couldn't believe what had happened in the meetings. As improbable as it seemed, the majority of some of the brightest minds on the planet had just decided publically that alien beings were somehow responsible for the tragedy that was taking place. Even if the meetings were not strictly confidential, it wasn't something he should tell Gwen. But it was too good a secret to hold in, and after the discussion with the reporter, she was pretty much on-board with what was happening now.

  But, he agreed with the group's conclusion. Even though he had not yet been awarded his degree, too much of what they were observing with this anomalous force was inconsistent with the way nature operated. And humans clearly lacked the technology to even comprehend how all this might be done, ergo, something outside of their experience had to be involved.

  He nibbled at his chicken sandwich and tried to recall everything that he'd heard this morning, trying to fit the comments into a composite whole. Ideas and concerns were being raised that he had never thought to consider, like Dr. Anders and his spot-on concern that they were now exposed to potential dangers from asteroids that they had been safe from in the past. He recalled the rush that night when he watched as the massive asteroid flashed by the Earth several years ago.

  The image of the object he had stared at in real time jumped into his mind, and along with it the memory of the strange distortion he'd briefly observed. His subconscious made the leap for him. Shit! It hadn't been a reflection! He knew how the aliens had come here unobserved and where they might be. Then his certainty cooled a bit. Could he be wrong? Okay, he'd downgrade his idea to a possibility, but his gut told him he'd stumbled upon something important. He could hardly wait for the afternoon session to reassemble. Finally, unable to contain himself, he went in search of Dr. Gelon.

  *****

  "My graduate student has an interesting theory," Dr. Gelon announced when the group had reassembled in preparation to continue their earlier discussions. He flashed a picture on the screen, one of those that Tony had taken for his personal use that night. "You will note this spot of light next to the asteroid as it makes its close approach to the Earth and moon. According to Anthony, the light lasted only momentarily, and he assumed it was a reflection that had leaked into the objective of the telescope. It is a problem we have to contend with making observations within the city. A careful look at this single frame suggests that the light is only a spot on what appears to be a much larger object that is blocking out the stars behind it. We will have to look for official photos of this event and see if we can learn more, but this photo was easily recovered off his personal computer."

  "What are you implying, Dr. Gelon?" one of the listeners on the other end of the conference net asked.

  "Tony is suggesting this is one of the alien's vehicles and that we haven't spotted them due to their masking their arrival with the numerous close encounters with seemingly random asteroids we have experienced in recent years."

  "They're on the moon!" Tony spoke up, unable to hold back while this discussion painstaking wound its way to the inevitable conclusion. "Probably on the back side where we'd be unlikely to notice them."

  "Interesting theory," Dr. Allen said. "How big does this object appear to be?"

  "Tony and I made a preliminary analysis only. It is crude, but from this one photo we'd say it is approximately two hundred meters in length. Perhaps a quarter of that in cross section."

  "Large, but not nearly of the scale one would expect considering the forces that are being brought to bear on the Earth."

  "This is probably just one of many ships," Tony countered, surprised that he was engaging this austere group so openly. "I would guess there are many of them," he added.

  "And they have built a base on the moon?" Dr. Kobata asked. "Do you think they could perform all this from such a location?"

  Tony stammered. "There's no way I could extrapolate that from what facts we know," he replied.

  "I would think they would have to be on Earth, if they really exist as we are postulating," Dr. Kobata said. "How would these ships get from the moon to the Earth unobserved. Amateur astronomers are abundant, and the moon is almost always under observation as they scan for small meteor impacts and the like. It would be difficult to make a journey from the backside to Earth without attracting attention."

  "Clearly we need further study on the matter," Dr. Gelon said, smoothing over the reply. "But have another look at the object we believe is a vessel of some sort. It is very dark, and difficult to see. In this photo there was a spot of light, but the passing was unusual. The bright, full moon wasn't very far away and reflected light was what was probably the source of illumination. Most often, even though the asteroids pass within the orbit of the moon, the moon is nowhere nearby. In those cases a hitchhiker might have a better chance of making the transition unobserved, or even more possibility, might jump off into a spot where no one would be looking, and then make a slow and quiet descent to the Earth. The vehicle appears to have a very small albedo. That doesn't answer where they might be to remain hidden, but all of this needs a more careful review."

  "So, what if all of this is correct?" a raspy voiced Vladimir Bykov asked. "What can we do about them? How do we save the Earth? We need to act soon, before their actions move the planet so far we are forever going to suffer adverse consequences even if we managed to chase them away. The models show the effects the first couple of years will be far less severe and ultimately survivable, but then will rapidly escalate. But do not forget, these beings must be incredibly advanced, and we would be primitives going against them?"

  "Clearly there are no answers to that," Dr. Allen injected. "But we need to find them first, and see what we can learn. Even if we fail, it seems we have lost little. If our reading of the situation is correct, the human race and every other species on the planet are doomed if we do nothing."

  "Whatever we do, we must be circumspect about our actions," Dr. Henry noted. "If they learn we are on to them, they might change their approach and take more direct action."

  "Our satellites can perform a careful global mapping. They are already in place, and it is impossible to tell just what actions they are performing. The already orbiting spacecraft could complete the task without any deviations from their present movements. If these creatures have established a base, something should show. The moon, however, is a different matter."

  "Currently there are no satellites in orbit around the moon that could perform the kind of mapping we would wish," Dr. Gelon agreed. "And to place one there would almost certainly be noticed if there really are alien beings in place there. We will need an alternative scheme."

  "You have bases at three separate locations on the Earth facing side," Dr. Shen pointed out. "All of them are equipped or extensive off site exploration with rovers and such. We could charter several explorations to the back side."

  "The moon is a damn big place," Dr. Henry noted. "I can see years being spent without stumbling on a hidden facility if we were to proceed without something to guide us."

  "Doing anything on the moon is immensely more complicated than here on Earth," Bykov pointed out. "It would be better if we could locate these interlopers here."

  "Whatever we do, we must inform our respective governments," professor Shen Tai noted. "It is imperative that they know what we have concluded."

  "Concluded without real proof," Dr. Anders warned. "It is dangerous to let too many know. That will mean more leaks, and just like what happened after our presentation to the United Nations, there will be more panic. I suggest we release our conclusions to just a few of the governments of nations that are space qualified for now, and allow
them to decide how their counterparts are to be alerted."

  "Many of the scientists from nations that didn't meet the criteria objected to the restriction, and while the proposal that moved forward was for the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and India to be alerted initially, Tony suspected that a great many others would learn unofficially what had been decided today.

  Unnoticed by everyone was the silent listener on the communications network that Dr. Gelon had taken care of himself. Bud Hollister, the Director of NASA, had been listening in to the entire meeting, sitting quietly as the situation developed as he considered the ramifications of what he was hearing. Now, as he quietly disconnected his link he wondered just how to explain all of this to the Vice President.

  Chapter 7

  "Looks like this time we're going somewhere else," Dr. Gelon whispered to his colleague Doug Anders as their escort led them to an elevator in the back of the White House and they prepared to descend to some special area below the main floor. Professor Gelon moved slowly, his left knee and cane not allowing him to keep pace with the others if they walked at their normal speed.

  "There's a secure conference room in the basement," one of their escorts pointed out. "Based on what the NASA Director conveyed to the President, the discussions are to remain secret, and there is a large assembly of individuals who will be here today."

  Dr. Anders glanced at Professor Gelon, but he shook his head. He didn't know who they would be speaking to either.

  They were taken below and led into the conference room where the Vice President and a large group were already assembled. It was clear they had already been discussing the issue in preparation for the arrival of the two scientists. The President was nowhere to be seen. Either he would arrive fashionable late, or as Hollister had suggested, he would be letting the Vice President handle this thorny issue. Dr. Gelon spotted only the Vice President, as well as Bud Hollister, the NASA Director. Many of the others were unknown to him, although he also recognized the Majority and Minority Leaders of both Houses of Congress as well and the Speaker of the House, a feisty old Southerner who wasn't much liked by the opposition party. Three of those present were women. Clearly Bud had made a strong effort to bring the President, or more likely the Vice president, up to speed.