The First Exoplanet

by T. J. Sedgwick

  Giving the order to carry out the final part of the clean-up operation, Bekov said, “Now it’s time to kill off the non-existent Jenna Perez. The one Dr King believes is in Miami with her unfortunate brother. Execute the tertiary phase now, Delta-5.”

  “Roger that, sir. Out.”

  Bekov sat back, with his hands behind his head, satisfied and revelling in his own genius. ‘Two loose ends and an enemy of the state in one go!’ he laughed malevolently. It just keeps getting better, thought Bekov, still laughing.

  Chapter Nine

  September 8, 2061 Western Global Alliance Joint Research & Space Centre, Seattle

  “Return of Gemstone Emerald in e-minus-ten seconds,” announced Sarah Townsley from the Mission Control room, referring to the first messenger microprobe. The Santa Maria probe’s first haul of treasure was expected at the entry coordinates any second. This treasure was information detailing discoveries in the Avendano system sent back in the first of five tiny messenger microprobes, codenamed ‘Gemstones’.

  “Ears and eyes towards entry coordinates,” reported the tracking operator two rows back from Townsley, “picking up radar signature ... and there’s the ping,” she continued.

  “Okay, Emerald establishing an encrypted connection with network. There, got it. Emerald has come home and is ready to give us news. Initiating download now…” said Townsley.

  “And ... confirm download in progress of an estimated cache of one-point-two-five petabytes of data. Estimated time to download: fifteen seconds…” she continued.

  “Download complete. Initiate Emerald recovery operation to Citadel. Good luck,” she said, handing over the reins of control to the drone operator in the room. A small utility drone would be dispatched from the Alliance Citadel Space Station to recover the tiny microprobe that Santa Maria had transmitted back to Earth’s orbit. Emerald would be examined on the Citadel and checks made that all data had been captured successfully as well as a detailed physical inspection. The sense of excitement throughout the room was palpable. The whole world was waiting with baited breath for the verdict: would life be confirmed? What details would the probe reveal? Was there a civilization in Earth’s cosmic neighbourhood, fifteen light years away? Another milestone in this history-defining endeavour was about to be made one way or another.

  Everything had gone by the playbook—years of planning and testing had, with any luck, paid off. Now they had the task of sifting through a day’s worth of visual and sensor data—a massive one-point-two-five petabytes. The AI programmed into Santa Maria’s software would have selected the things of most interest within its mission parameters. In this first day of the mission, she was programmed to stay hidden and assess exactly what humanity was getting itself into. It was a precaution really, in case of something hostile that would destroy the probe and curtail the mission. There were the undecipherable radio broadcasts which faded away years ago, the optical and spectroscopic imaging showing vegetation and possible industrial pollutants—the risk of an advanced, intelligent civilization was no longer purely theoretical. While staying stealthy – cloaking field active and passive sensors only – Santa Maria would stand off from the planet. There she would gather data about the planetary system, evidence of life and of potential civilization. Barring any mishaps, the next Gemstone, Topaz, would return to Earth-orbit in another two days.

  ***

  Dr Alan King, Chief Scientist at the WGA Joint Research & Space Centre, donned his top spec Ocular Panorama virtual reality headset.

  “Team, this is Alan King online. Please check in now. Once Sarah Townsley is ready we’ll start,” he said, eagerly awaiting his first glimpse of what the Santa Maria probe had seen just over twenty-four hours earlier.

  King would be responsible for chairing the run through of the annotated video that the probe had put together. Although the entire day’s data – video, passive sensors and flight data – would be reviewed in minute detail over the coming days, the probe’s AI had already made a two-hour long compilation of highlights. This consisted of a 3D video from Santa Maria’s high-powered optical cameras as well as her wide-spectrum cameras. They were capable of detecting everything from gamma rays to extremely low frequency radio waves. Objects or features of interest would be annotated with labels and summarised comments in plain English telling the viewer what the AI’s interpretation was. Watching the video was like a virtual trip through space—as if the viewer were sitting in a spacecraft.

  “This is Sarah Townsley, ready to go. Who else do we have online before I commence?” she asked over the mic integrated into her Ocular Panorama headset. Twenty-five members of the team, scattered in offices and labs throughout the WGA complex, checked in over the next two minutes.

  “Ok, we’re already a few minutes late, Sarah, let’s go,” instructed King, as Townsley started Santa Maria’s two hour video.

  To say he was excited would have been an enormous understatement. This was the culmination of his career—his last job before a well-earned retirement. Every second of what he and his team were about to view would be, in his opinion, pure gold and of unparalleled importance. His focus was total. King was in his element. This was his purpose and the most exciting time of his career. A view of the tiny, white shape of the Citadel, floating in the blackness of space above the arc of the earth, came into view. The mission time on the HUD read ‘T-10s’—just before the jump to the Avendano system. The clock counted down, the picture flickering for an instant as the faster-than-light transit was made. The view of Earth was gone, replaced by a dense star field with a small, yellow-white star prominent near the centre of the shot. This star was Sol but viewed from fifteen-light years away. King thought back to footage he’d seen of the 1969 Apollo moon landings and one of the most famous photos of all time. If Earthrise over the Moon from the Apollo landings had led to a change in the cultural and environmental zeitgeist then this view of our sun – a tiny point of light amongst so many millions of others – will surely do the same and more, thought King.

  The probe switched cameras to reveal a planet – there it was – all at once what they’d come all this way for—Avendano-185f. About the size of a tennis ball at arm’s length, King could see the white swirl of clouds, the blue of oceans and the greens and browns of the land. Eerily similar to Earth, which was in view less than a minute before, but strangely different. A hemisphere of the planet was illuminated by its star from the right hand side of the view. Detail on the planetary surface could not be divined from this camera shot as it was too far away.

  Up popped a graphic on a side panel that the AI had helpfully put together—a schematic of the Avendano system. Its star at the centre of the diagram was similar to the sun but slightly cooler, giving a more orange glow, like the sun in early sunset. It was already known that 185f shared its star with four other planets, two of them rocky and barren, two of them gas giants. The ‘f’ denoted that it had been the fifth planet discovered. The first planet discovered was denoted by the letter ‘b’. The main view panel changed to a shot of the planet nearest the star. This planet had circular orbit and was labelled ‘185e’, showing it was the fourth planet discovered. Now that the probe had entered the Avendano system names had been assigned to the planets. This one was christened ‘Larunda’. It was uniformly light grey, slightly larger than Earth’s moon and had a barren, airless, cratered surface. The shot changed. A large red planet filled the view. It had a thick atmosphere and several streams of smoke plumes smeared out from their points of origin, which the AI assessed to be volcanoes. King started thinking about this volcanically-active planet, labelled ‘185d’ and named ‘Cerberus’. The parts he could see looked a similar colour to Mars, but much of the surface was obscured. Its large size – about twice the diameter of Earth – meant that it would still be many hundreds of millions of years until the planet cooled internally. As on Earth, this uncooled inside meant that the detected magnetic field would have helped prevent the ‘solar’ wind from stripping Cerberus
of its atmosphere.

  Further out from the star, planet three was what the probe had been sent for. Two gas giants, 185b then 185c, were much further away than any of the three rocky planets. These swirling orbs of gas had been named ‘Demeter’ and ‘Persephone’. They’d been discovered way back in 2018 as gas giant exoplanets tended to be far more easily detectable than their rocky brethren. Demeter, closest to its star, was light green with swirls of darker green encircling her. Five moons had been identified, as King took in the annotated details from the main view panel. Persephone was smaller than Demeter and aquamarine blue with a huge number of moons—seventeen in all had been detected by the probe.

  The schematic showed a circular shaded area covering either side of the orbit of Avendano-185f. This was the habitable zone where it was not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist.

  Avendano-185f had been renamed ‘Gaia’—the great mother of all and the giver of life to the Earth in Greek mythology. The data panel showed Gaia orbited Avendano at 0.93 AU – astronomical units – a standard astronomical measure with the distance from Earth to the sun being one. Its diameter was seven percent greater than Earth’s with estimated average density slightly higher. This meant that gravity on Gaia was close, 12 m/s2 compared to the Earth’s 9.8 m/s2. King knew that this would have implications for everything from evolution of life to the escape velocity from Gaia. There were two twin moons orbiting Gaia, very similar in size and appearance and around two thirds of Earth’s Moon’s diameter. Like the familiar satellite, both were airless, cratered and shaded in grey tones. The data panel told King that Gaia was warmer than the earth as evidenced by its lack of any visible polar ice caps. Around half of the planet was covered with seas and oceans, leaving an enormous land area compared to the earth’s half a billion square kilometres. The majority of the land area on Gaia was dark green in colour—interpreted as vegetation of some sort or another. North and south of the tropical half of the globe the green became less dense and interspersed with browns and lighter greens. There were lakes and mountains and what were interpreted as the browns and tans of deserts in the lee of several mountain ranges. Interestingly, the only place where apparent snow or ice could be seen was at the very peaks of a high, linear range of peaks. The blanket of atmosphere glowed in space with a similar colour to Earth’s—not surprising given the composition. Its thickness was greater than that of Earth’s. This could have been partly due to the stronger gravitational field of Gaia, but also due to other factors like the strength of the solar wind and magnetic field.

  King was feasting his eyes on all of this, much of it hitherto unknown. He had heard few words over his headset as the team sat in awe of the alien vistas before them. That was to be expected—this was about taking in the data, discussion would come later in the session and in the days and weeks afterwards. There had been similar viewings of the Solar System, which were amazing in their own right. But the novelty of a new alien system was a first. It would keep the documentary makers busy for years to come, thought King.

  The AI had labelled the next section of the presentation, ‘Signs of Intelligent Life’. King thought the fact that the AI had decided this was tantalising.

  “Are we to assume there are positive signs?” came a male voice in anticipation over the headset, addressed to King.

  “I believe so,” replied King, “but let’s be patient and see…”

  “Wow. Sure. Okay,” came a highly excited reply.

  A close-up shot of Gaia filled the display and one by one yellow label boxes popped up:

  Artificial Structure #1: mass ~110,000 MT, altitude 711 km, velocity 11.1 km/s

  Artificial Structure #2: mass ~1,450,000 MT, altitude 756 km, velocity 11.5 km/s

  Artificial Structure #3: mass ~22,000 MT, altitude 427 km, velocity 3.9 km/s

  ……

  A multitude of yellow squares further populated the display until the annotations started overlapping and crowding in places. The significance of this discovery was not lost on King. The probe had detected thousands of objects in orbit around Gaia. There were over seven hundred of them with masses greater than the old ISS and over a hundred of them larger than the Alliance Citadel. If these were alien-built structures, then those aliens had a significantly larger presence in space than humanity had so far mustered. The long-range telescopic lens of Santa Maria zoomed into the largest of the structures. It weighed in at a mass of over five million metrics tonnes—ten thousand times more massive than the old ISS. Quite out of character for the normally steady, sober-minded King, he exclaimed to himself, “Whoa! Look at that thing!”

  A roughly cylindrical, grey metallic object filled his vision, with the background entirely taken up by the planet it was orbiting—Gaia. He took note of the information box next to the cylinder. The probe had estimated its main dimensions as six-hundred metres long with a three-hundred metres diameter. Estimated mass was five-point-one million metric tonnes. This meant the probe assumed it was hollow inside; although based on what evidence, King was not sure. There were some details visible on the round surface of the cylinder, but these did not protrude too far. In fact, they seemed to sit mainly flush. The ones that did protrude looked like hemispherical bumps. The far, flat, end of the cylinder, partly hidden by its own shape, seemed to have a number of long tubes regularly spaced around the circle with a larger bore tube at the axis. The near end was flat and glinted in the sunlight as if it were made of something reflective. And that’s when King noticed what he’d missed in the info box. The cylinder was rotating. The AI even commented that it suspected this was to create an artificial ‘gravity’ on the inside surface of the cylinder. As the angle of the camera view changed, the glinting light on the near end lessened and what came into view looked like an array of panels. King thought they looked like glass or some other transparent material.

  A female voice came over King’s headset. ”Are those windows or something?” she asked, trying not to sound silly at asking what a lot of the team were thinking.

  “I think they might be,” replied King. “Let’s wait and see if we get a better shot.”

  As if the AI heard King’s reply, the camera zoomed into the near end. It looked even more like the entire end was covered in transparent panels; so much so that King thought he could make out the inside surface of the cylinder.

  The view abruptly panned to the terminus of one of the far end tubes. “Is that a ship coming out of that tube?” King remarked.

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” replied a female voice. King had not realised his mic was active—he was thinking aloud, so engrossed was he in what they’d found. The probe was still cloaked and undetected. A boxy-shaped shuttle accelerated away, heat signature at its tail detected on infrared. It partially orbited the planet, Santa Maria’s camera continuing to track it as it re-entered Gaia’s atmosphere. Flames streaked behind it until it disappeared below some cloud.

  Hundreds more shuttle movements were tracked between orbiting structures, to and from the planetary surface and out towards farther flung destinations. Most of these were as-yet unknown to King and the team. There were many other designs of craft too, some in fleets that looked very much like military starfighters. Some were large and reminded King of liquefied natural gas tankers on Earth with spherical containers visible throughout the middle section of their long bodies. There was a hive of activity between the various orbiting space structures, the planetary surface and its moons.

  The probe’s AI also noted the cacophony of communications traffic in the system. There were hundreds of thousands of distinct short-range broadcasts, which seemed to be relayed from satellite to satellite and lasers for longer-distance comms.

  “Well, that solves that not-so-little mystery,” said King, referring to the complete lack of radio signals detected from the system after 2045.

  “Yes, but it doesn’t tell us why,” challenged Townsley.

  King was getting a nasty feeling about the answer to that parti
cular question. Why would you use laser comms and only short-range radio, microwave and the like and go to the effort of needing relay satellites? It seemed like the old SETI scientist, Yau Min Chang, was right—whatever intelligent beings lived here no longer wanted to be heard across the stars. Or was it for a different reason, closer to home?

  “Has to be deliberate,” started King, going on to explain what he’d just thought through in his head. Nobody managed to come up with a better theory.

  The probe had identified what it thought were settlements on the surface of Gaia. Although mainly based on radio chatter and heat signatures, in some cases they could be seen visually; although not much detail could be seen yet. That would be revealed, King surmised, in the next instalment now due in just less than two days’ time as the probe neared the planet. The AI would make a decision on the best orbit, how and if it would de-cloak and when to broadcast a first contact message. It would make a risk-assessed decision, deciding if it considered the Aliens friendly or not. It would look at evidence of violence, capability and so on. AI had come a long way and every first contact message King had ever seen was all about coming in peace and cooperation anyway.

  Santa Maria did not have time to detail every object it had found in its summary. That would be done in time with structures and spacecraft examined, named and catalogued. This was a whole new star system and they’d discovered an intelligent civilization, seemingly more advanced than humanity. One thing was for sure: nothing would ever be the same again.