The First Exoplanet

by T. J. Sedgwick

  “Don’t see any alien welcoming committee on its way,” commented Hartmann over the headset.

  Once the silence had been broken, others felt inclined to chip in.

  “Is she water-tight? Will she float?” asked Christina Frewer.

  “We’re about to find out, Christina. But, yes, the probe should float at least until the airbags deflate over time. But they’re pretty robust. After that she’ll sink as her average density is a lot more than water,” explained Trantham.

  “Water tight?” repeated Frewer.

  “Sorry, yeah, to a rated five-thousand metres under Earth’s seas; a little less here given the higher gravity assuming an Earth-seawater density. But water density is not yet known here on Gaia. Not until splashdown, anyway. Subsea scans show water depth of just over two-thousand metres at the point of impact if you have a look at the data I’ve just brought up on our view screens,” said Trantham.

  The rough, angry-looking sea came closer and closer at a rapidly increasing rate.

  “Errr, shouldn’t the airbags...” asked Townsley, her question cut off as the probe smashed into the water with no inflating airbags visible on the downward camera. Then the status message, ‘Airbag malfunction,’ flashed on their viewscreens in red letters and the view turned to semi-darkness punctuated only by the occasional stream of bubbles as Santa Maria didn't sail but sank towards the new world of Gaia. As the depth indicator climbed higher and higher, the probe sank deeper and deeper. The picture started to flicker and blackout only to be re-established and flicker and blackout again at an increasing frequency.

  “What’s happening?” asked Frewer over the headset.

  “Topaz is losing the feed from the probe. Unfortunately she wasn’t designed to explore the ocean depths,” said Trantham, hinting at the missing contingency they should have considered. That was his perfectionist streak rearing its head in his usually well-disciplined mind.

  The feed and then sensor data faded and the view switched to the one from five-hundred kilometres above Gaia where the Gemstone Topaz was standing off. The microprobe only had basic cameras and sensors since it was designed primarily for its role in carrying information from the main probe back to Earth. The view was fixed on the ocean that Santa Maria had gone down in, as Topaz kept watch for her lost mother ship.

  Trantham fast-forwarded through the intervening hours and days of the planet turning, the twin moons orbiting their parent. The mainly faint specks of artificial satellites around Gaia and the flare of the odd itinerant shuttle were the only other things that broke the monotony of the clockwork vista.

  “I’ll skip to the point where Pinta comes on the scene,” said Trantham, alert for any challenges to this proposal. There were none, so he did.

  The protocol programmed into Pinta for recovery of Santa Maria and Gemstones like Topaz was to preserve herself, staying hidden if possible, locate assets, send a probe recall signal, download recorded data then transmit Gemstones to Earth. In the scenario presented, Topaz would be captured by Pinta and data from the days she was missing downloaded. Part of the reason was to preserve data, but more urgently in this case was to give clues as to the whereabouts of Santa Maria. Allowing the probe and, more alarmingly, the FTL drive to fall into alien hands was unthinkable, but it was just the situation they were having to wake up to. There was no evidence one way or the other as to the aliens’ hostility or friendliness. They simply did not know at this stage. One thing Trantham and, he was sure, many of his team secretly feared, was that the only thing that had prevented two such advanced races as humans and the aliens from crossing paths before now was the revolutionary FTL drive. The aliens seemed more advanced due to the sheer scale of their space presence. But the road to technological enlightenment had never been a linear, preordained route. Some branches of the technology tree would shoot up in the light of chance factors or societal imperatives of the time. Others would sit as underdeveloped offshoots of knowledge waiting for their chance to mature.

  In the distance, off to the left of the Topaz camera shot, a speck, that Trantham initially thought was a spacecraft of some description, grew in size. This happened quickly as the video was still playing at four times real time. Trantham slowed the video down as a familiar shape came into view amongst the reaches of another star system—it was Pinta ready to house the tiny orphan, Topaz.

  The camera view changed to a somehow crisper, higher definition view with a multitude of data readouts and HUD information. The HUD title switched from ‘Topaz [Gemstone]’ to ‘Pinta’. A status message read, ‘Downloading Gemstone data...’ then only seconds later, ‘Download of Gemstone data complete.’

  In the two minutes between data download from Topaz and sending her back to Earth something unexpected was reported. The spherical computer-generated image of Gaia sprang up on their view screens with photo-realistic detail of clouds, land and oceans. A yellow box with a red, flashing dot was displayed on the forested coast of the ocean Santa Maria had vanished into.

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” cried Trantham as the tag ‘Santa Maria’ popped up next to the red dot, “Santa Maria is pinging on her locator beacon. The water must have got to her electronics and taken out other systems. It seems the locator beacon at least is waterproof.”

  Pinta’s high-powered camera zoomed in but nothing was detectable on visuals except the green of the forest canopy. Infrared revealed something of the activity beneath; multiple heat signatures—some rectangular with one of those rectangles moving at speed towards the shoreline. The same shoreline where the heat signature of Santa Maria’s fusion reactor had been identified. There were other shapes too. Trantham, along with the other team members, began to realise their first overhead glimpse of the humanoid aliens that had fished the truck-size probe from their ocean.

  All too efficiently, Pinta’s AI continued acting on her instructions, ‘Transmitting Gemstone to Sol system...’ followed by a black screen and the word, ‘End.’

  Except, thought Trantham prophetically, this is anything but the end.

  Chapter Twelve

  September 21, 2061 Mission Control Director Trantham’s Home, Seattle

  Trantham awoke with a start as his smartwatch on the bedside cabinet dragged him from a deep sleep at four o’clock in the morning. His wife of thirty years grumbled and rolled over back to sleep as the drowsy Mission Control director hoisted himself to a seated position and spoke quietly, accepting the call to his watch.

  “Yeah, this is Trantham,” he said, the bluish glow from the smartwatch illuminating his face and the bedroom beyond.

  “Sorry to wake you, Will, but Pinta has returned,” said an enlivened Sarah Townsley on night duty at Mission Control.

  “Ok, give me twenty...” started Trantham. Collecting his thoughts he continued, “Where is she, Sarah?”

  “Just jumped in and completed data transmission to the ground station. She’s thirty minutes or so from Citadel and on chemical rocket burn. All systems normal.”

  “Ok, good to know. See you shortly.”

  ***

  September 21, 2061 Western Global Alliance Mission Control, Seattle

  They seemed to be spending most of their working hours subsumed in the virtual world of the probes in Avendano these days, thought Trantham as he donned the Ocular Panorama headset once again. The sense of anticipation in the early-morning Mission Control centre was unsurprising, given the cliffhanger that had been dealt them three days previously. It had looked like the aliens had recovered Santa Maria from one of their oceans and were surrounding her with vehicles and personnel, but in preparation for what exactly?

  “They’ve just got Pinta into the Assembly Module, Will,” reported Townsley over the Ocular VR headset.

  “Okay, copy that, Sarah. Anything to report?” asked Trantham.

  “They didn’t mention anything—but they were just securing her when I checked in. They’ll do a full inspection and lodge their report.”

  “Sure. Let’s see what P
inta’s got to show us. Who else do we have online right now?” asked Trantham over his headset.

  “This is Ken Hawkins checking in from the office,” said the astrobiologist who’d been up early and had his device set to alert him of any mission updates at home.

  “Hartmann here. Still at home, but didn’t want to miss the show,” said the probe construction chief brightly.

  No one else spoke and Trantham could see from his status panel that no one else was yet online. Others would no doubt join in later.

  “Right, let’s get started,” said Trantham, firing up the AI-crafted highlights of Pinta’s findings on all of their VR headsets. The video stream continued where it had left off. The IR – infrared – video showed the alien personnel and ground vehicle activity around what had already been identified as the crash-landed Santa Maria probe that they had fished out of the sea. Visuals still showed nothing, of course, due to the thick forest canopy, which extended right to the shoreline near where the probe sat motionless. The video skipped forwards and showed two previously unseen vehicles either side of the probe. The one on the left was slightly longer and wider than the probe. The vehicle to her right was smaller and squarer in plan-view and moved at a right angle to the long side of the probe. Suddenly, just after the vehicle seemed to merge with it, the probe moved. Then, more perceptibly, she shifted positions laterally until she was now directly over the longer, larger rectangle.

  “Looks like they’re putting her on the back of a flatbed truck or whatever their equivalent is,” commented Hartmann.

  “I agree. Shipping her off somewhere,” replied Trantham.

  The video skipped forward with the IR outlines of alien figures working all over the probe—Probably securing the load, thought Trantham as he watched.

  “Definitely bipedal from their profile and way they move,” confirmed astrobiologist Hawkins.

  “Curious gait wouldn't you say? They seem to fall into their stride then almost run when they go anything more than a metre or so. It’s as if they’re in a desperate hurry to get there,” he continued, looking at the zoomed-in IR images that Pinta had recorded from space.

  .

  “Know what you mean, Kenneth,” agreed Trantham. “Humanoid, but you’d definitely not mistake their walk for humans moving around down there.”

  “Can you go back and freeze the picture then overlay some dimensions on the alien figures please, Will?” requested Hawkins.

  “Sure, two seconds … there.”

  “Wow, those guys are one-point-five metres across the shoulders. Curious,” commented Hawkins, his mind somewhere else.

  “What’s curious?” asked Trantham.

  “Well, looking at most of the twelve figures I can see, ten of them are massive, or I assume they are if the rest of their body is what we would consider in-proportion to their broad shoulders. That’s assuming they have a humanoid body plan.”

  “Ok, a lot of assumptions. What’s your point, Professor?” asked Trantham, trying to move Hawkins along.

  “Well, the other two are not massive. As the dimensions show, they’re the size of a small woman. To me that suggests they have specialised classes perhaps. Maybe the larger aliens are workers or soldiers, the smaller ones might be supervisors or something like that,” said Hawkins.

  When the video reverted to real time speed, the ‘flatbed truck’ was seen to move off slowly until it reached a point five kilometres away where it sped up. It made its way to what the AI had assessed as a settlement; although, given the lack of visuals under the thick forest canopy, it could have just as easily have been a military installation or something completely different and alien. Without eyes on the ground as they’d planned with the exploration drones, there was always going to be some guesswork involved. Then Santa Maria’s beacon signal vanished.

  “What do you think happened to her?” asked Townsley.

  “Hard to say, but when we viewed a small settlement that wasn’t covered by forest we saw a vehicle pod of some sort disappear into a building. Looks like the same may have happened here. Underground bunker or tunnel perhaps. Again, we really need eyes on the ground,” said Trantham.

  “Alright, let’s see if there’s anything else worth looking at right now,” said Trantham, partly to his colleagues over the headset and partly to himself.

  The video skipped forward eighteen hours and reported a marked increase in radio traffic in the period starting from when the Santa Maria probe was assumed to have disappeared into a building or tunnel. It continued, tailing off slowly as time went by.

  “What do you make of that?” asked Trantham.

  “Looks like a tunnel or underground entrance to me because the beacon signal went out just like that, in an instant. We’d still be seeing it if it were a building, assuming their buildings are like ours of course,” theorised Townsley.

  “Makes sense,” agreed Trantham

  “They’re obviously excited about getting their hands on our probe—they didn't waste much time spiriting her away,” commented Hartmann.

  “Well, how would we be if an alien probe was tracked into the Atlantic and we recovered it successfully?” asked Townsley

  “Indeed Sarah,” said Trantham. “And what would we do with it?”

  “I think we know the answer to that already,” replied Hartmann, “We’d take it apart, examine it with a fine-toothed comb. Then if we found any useful tech we’d try to replicate it.”

  “Yes sir, indeed. The elephant in the room has reared its head. We’ve been fearing just that but no one’s said much about it so far,” agreed Trantham.

  “Reverse-engineering of the FTL drive, my friends,” announced Hartmann ominously.

  There was no doubt in any of their minds that the aliens were tech-savvy enough to work out how the faster-than-light drive operated. They’d established a serious space presence with gigantic orbital structures around Gaia and other planets as wells as on Gaia’s twin moons. There were tentative signs of other facilities on more distant moons too and the bustling traffic of space vehicles. The two outer planets, the gas giants Demeter and Persephone, had five and seventeen moons, respectively. Some of these were planets in their own right. At least two around the green gaseous orb of Demeter, closest to the star, had shown signs of alien activity. Four of the moons of more distant Persephone looked like they too had an alien presence. There were also at least several orbital structures around the gas giants themselves. The AI assessed these as fuel scoops based on a conceptual design that had been theorised on Earth a long time ago. The fuel scoops gathered hydrogen, or more complex hydrocarbons if present, from the clouds of the gas giants and cooled it to its liquid form to be used as fuel. An essentially limitless supply for a space fleet and industry to thrive on adding to solar and nuclear as feasible long-term options in such a star system.

  If the aliens replicated the FTL-drive then humanity would then, ultimately, be relying on their good nature to avoid conflict. Nobody had seen overt military action, but there was the suspected military infrastructure and ships in the system. At least one giant dockyard had been identified in orbit around Gaia and several designs of spacecraft with what looked like weapons emplacements on them.

  What Pinta’s AI-generated video showed next shook up a few beliefs and hypotheses. The probe skipped forward four hours and was no longer presenting a view of Gaia at all. Instead the northern hemisphere of the largest moon of planet Demeter filled the screen with the background entirely made up of the green hues of the gas giant it was orbiting. The moon, named Exelon, had a thin, translucent atmosphere with only some faint, wispy clouds visible. There were prominent ice caps at the poles and myriad surface features were visible on the impact-scarred dark red surface. Mountain ranges, volcanic peaks, fault networks and rift valleys all indicated it was tectonically active. The numerous impact craters had been created on account of there only being a thin atmospheric shield to burn up incoming meteors and erode what they had created. The data box next to
Exelon told Trantham and the team that the moon was almost as large as Gaia, that’s to say only two percent smaller than Earth, although fifteen percent less massive, according to Pinta. The star, Avendano, six astronomical units away, illuminated the left half of Exelon, which was a similar distance to Jupiter at its aphelion from Sol. The shaded right half of the moon was punctuated by clusters of artificial light and networks of straight lines connecting them. Yellow boxes had popped up around the clusters, labelled, ‘Unknown Alien Settlement or Facility’.