Steve was too weary to react strongly to this news. He gave a tired laugh, imagining Clive’s reaction if he could have looked into the future and heard this report, say, a week ago.
“Create a video report for Mr. Shelby,” commanded Steve.
His own image appeared on the screen. A red spot appeared in the corner, indicating that a recording was in progress. Steve described recent events in a few words. He hadn’t the strength to go into detail. Waving his hand, he sent the message and lay back in the seat, covering his face with his palms.
“Sir, I suggest you undergo a medical examination to make sure you have no internal injuries,” proposed the computer.
“No, I’m all right,” answered Steve, without taking his palms away from his face.
“Sir, you are still in a state of shock, you are probably not assessing adequately how you feel,” was the computer’s response.
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Steve.
He got up from the seat and pressed the button on the spacesuit to take it off. The spacesuit opened and fell to the floor. Steve plodded his way to the medical compartment and lay down on an unoccupied operating table. The capsule containing Clive was alongside him. It was now completely filled with the dark green fluid. His body was floating in it.
The reanimation complex quickly scanned Steve’s body.
“Sir, you have several negligible skin injuries. There is nothing that threatens your health. Nevertheless, I advise you to take a sedative. You need rest,” reported the soft female voice.
“Do whatever you consider necessary,” replied Steve. Having seen how the complex had reanimated Clive today, he was no longer afraid of entrusting his body to a soulless machine.
The complex inserted a fine needle into a vein and injected the sedative. Steve felt a pleasant warmth spreading through his body. His eyelids became heavy. It was impossible to struggle against sleep. And Steve didn’t even try. He closed his eyes and felt the surface of the table becoming soft and adapting itself to his body. His head was filled with various pleasant thoughts. After a moment, Steve fell into a deep sleep. After such events, the detailed report on the results of the reconnaissance mission he and Clive had carried out would have to wait.
New circumstances
Shelby was sitting in his place watching the news. Life on Earth was going on as normal; there wasn’t a word in the press about the greatest discovery in all of man’s history. Judging by the stories running in the news, the public at large had not the least idea of it, but continued to be concerned with the usual everyday trivia.
The tablet lying near him on the table blinked, reporting that it had received a message. Because Mars was so far away, live communication was impossible, therefore communication was in the form of the exchange of video-recordings. Steve’s face appeared on the screen. He had a huge bruise under his eye, and his face was covered in scratches. Shelby raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Mr. Shelby, we inspected the warehouse. It’s empty. Absolutely. There is no movement on the base. It looks as if the base has been empty for quite some time. There are no guards at all, but we did come up against robbers...”
Steve’s breathing became laboured; it was apparent that he could not speak calmly about this.
“They shot at us. I’m OK, but Clive was severely wounded, he’s in reanimation. If it hadn’t been for the Falcon... Clive was badly hurt. He is going to have a heart transplant.”
Steve stopped talking and lowered his head. His shoulders moved up and down as he breathed heavily. He had still not recovered from the shock. Making a great effort, Steve raised his head again. He put his hand on the back of his neck, and passed it over his hair, face and down his neck. Not finding anything he could add, he looked at the camera once more.
“Over.”
Shelby took off his spectacles and laid them on the table. There was no longer any doubt. If it was empty, that meant that the military had long since removed everything from there to its own warehouses deep inside the planet. The empty base wasn’t even guarded; that meant the army was on a war footing, and all forces had been relocated to strategically important facilities.
The attack by the robbers was also highly significant. If they could blatantly wander freely over Mars and shoot at people, that meant they felt immune from punishment. Seeing that the army had withdrawn most of its forces, the robbers could now hang about near large military bases without fear. These predators were good at sniffing out the weak points. As soon as the grip slackened, they came creeping out of all the cracks.
Shelby put his spectacles back on again and commanded the computer to collect all recent reports of attacks by robbers. The computer only took a moment to issue the list. Shelby began leafing through it, reading only the headlines.
There had been a few episodes earlier in the year, then their number had risen sharply. Three quarters of the list were for the past fortnight, since Shelby had told MacQueen about the object. It appeared that the army had begun regrouping immediately after their first talk. As for the robbers, they were getting bolder not by the day, but by the hour. At this rate they would be plunged into chaos even without the incomers. All the same, the military had been far-sighted enough to keep the project secret.
Shelby set his tablet aside and thought. On the whole, this was a perfectly logical reaction from the military’s point of view: to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. It would have been nice to have access to the interplanetary traffic data to be aware of these plans.
Shelby thought things over for a little longer, then brought the tablet’s microphone close to his lips so that he could speak as softly as possible.
“Steve, I regret that I sent you on that mission, but believe me, I could never have imagined that it would turn out the way it did. Keep me up to date, and as soon as Clive comes round, he should record a message for me. I would very much like to know how things are with him.
“I realise that this is not the time to ask another service from you, but I do so only because the matter really brooks no delay. There is a station in areosynchronous orbit round Mars that serves the International Flight Control Centre. Telemetry information from the trackers goes through it. If you could land on the base and download the information, we would have a complete picture of what the fleet is doing now.
“I’ll send you the access codes. The military may already have deactivated them, but there is a slim chance that they forgot them. These codes were given to us as an exception, when the remote manipulation experiment was at its height.
“Be careful. The station is a strategic object and is very well armed. If the access codes have changed, it won’t let you in. It will fire without warning at any unauthorised ship approaching it. So make sure it has given you permission to dock before you approach.
“I tried to make contact with it from here and through my office in the university, but all forms of access via interplanetary communication are closed. When the military took the transport structure under their wing, obviously the first thing they did was to close access to all non-military institutions. So I can’t download any information at all.
“You have a ship at your disposal; it won’t give you any problems to reach the station’s orbit. Please do this, and then come back with Clive. We shall have to decide what to do next from here on. Over.”
Worst fears
Steve opened his eyes. The first thing his gaze focused on was the cupola above the operating table on which he had fallen asleep. When Steve had gone into a deep sleep after the injection of a sedative, the medical module had lowered the sealing cupola over him so that outside noises would not disturb his rest. Now the module had noticed that its patient had woken up. It smoothly opened the cupola, as if inviting Steve to stand up.
“Good day, Steve. How do you feel?”
The onboard computer was politeness personified. Perhaps he should think of it as ‘she’. In any case, it spoke with a female voice.
Steve nodded. He did
in fact feel fine. The healthy sleep had done him a lot of good. Now, sitting in the blindingly illuminated medical compartment, after a good sleep, the events in the Martian desert the previous night just seemed like a bad dream.
“I’m fine. How is Clive?”
“The patient Sinclair is in a stable condition. While you were asleep, the mechanical damage to the soft tissues was completely removed from his body. About an hour ago, his new heart was implanted. The implant is working as it should. The forecast is favourable. It should be possible to return the patient to consciousness in about an hour from now.”
Steve rose from the couchette and looked round in search of his clothes. They lay on the seat next to him. There also were his shoes, carefully washed and cleaned while he slept. Putting his trousers on, Steve muttered to himself under his breath:
“The patient will blow his top when he learns what happened to him.”
“Sir, the patient’s new heart is not yet sufficiently trained to react correctly to intense stress. There is a strong possibility that the patient will faint. I recommend you refrain from discussing disturbing subjects, at least initially.”
Steve frowned. The onboard computer clearly did not know Clive.
“How can I keep off disturbing subjects if he himself asks about them?” he objected, and after a moment’s thought, added, “Listen, will he be able to remember anything?”
“Most probably he will not remember the events of the last few minutes before he lost consciousness.”
“Are you sure?”
“The human brain processes current events in the short-term memory. As necessary, important information is separated out and transferred to a segment of the long-term memory. As a result of the physiological features of the human nervous system, this process takes several minutes. On loss of consciousness, the contents of the short-term memory are erased. Therefore, events which took place directly before loss of consciousness, and which had not had time to become recorded in the long-term memory, are lost irrevocably. This is a typical phenomenon, widely known in the practice of emergency medical assistance.”
Steve listened to the onboard computer’s explanation while pulling on his trousers and buttoning his shirt. He was still sleepy, and did not feel at all inclined to fill his head with minor details of the physiology of the human brain.
“Uh-huh. OK. Then let me know when he comes round. Did any messages come in while I was asleep?”
“Yes, there was one from Professor Shelby. Do you want to listen to it?”
“Go ahead.”
Having listened to the message, Steve sighed and made his way to the cockpit. While he had slept, the Falcon had turned back to the spaceport. Steve had planned that when he woke up, he would return the ship, get on the next flight to Earth and forget the Martian adventure as if it were a terrible dream. But it looked as if he would have to stay on this damned planet for a while yet. Hell, the red colour of the Martian sand had already begun to irritate him.
Steve sat in the captain’s seat and commanded:
“Go into areosynchronous orbit in the plane of the equator. Get on the same trajectory as Mars-03AS. Do not approach the station closer than a quarter-orbit arc. Execute.”
The ship responded with the now familiar rumbling noise as it heated up the reactor. Less than half a minute later, it took off. The Falcon required only four hours to reach orbital altitude. It synchronised its speed with that of the station and put itself into the same trajectory, at the distance ordered by Steve.
“Flight mission completed, Sir,” said the onboard computer.
Steve set aside his tablet.
“Distance to station?” he asked.
“In orbital arc, about 32,000 kilometres. In a straight line, 29,000 kilometres. Sir, the station is tracking us with a laser beam, which is obviously used for taking bearings. Approaching the station without its permission involves the risk of being attacked.”
“Shelby’s message contains authorisation codes. Try to obtain its permission to dock.”
The computer fell silent; obviously it was tuning in the link with the station.
“Sir, the station refers to a special provision which forbids it to grant permission to dock.”
“And Shelby’s codes didn’t help?”
“No, the station is authorised and obliged to attack any ship approaching it. Until the special regime is cancelled by the International Flight Control Centre, there are no exceptions to this rule.”
Steve thought about the situation. What should he do now? Could it agree simply to send them the data?
“Tell the station that we are collecting data within the framework of the experiment on the remote manipulation of Mercury’s orbit. We need telemetry from the trackers on the trajectories of all spacecraft. Use Shelby’s codes again as authorisation for this.”
The onboard computer was silent again for a few seconds.
“Sir, the transmission of the data was successful.”
“Excellent! Can you interpret the raw data from the trackers?” asked Steve.
“Yes, I know the unified protocol used during interplanetary flights.”
“Then show all the ships we have data on.”
A chart of the Solar System with numerous winking points appeared on one of the captain’s displays. Each point indicated a spacecraft in open space.
Steve made a gesture to fix the image. By gesticulating, he changed the perspective of the observer on the chart of the Solar System. After finding the optimum viewing angle, he played with the magnification to gain the best understanding of the disposition of the ships in space. Having understood the situation, he ordered, “Right, now leave only the traffic heading for Jupiter and its vicinity. Take out all the others.”
Most of the winking lights on the screen went out.
“Take out all the civil traffic. I’m only interested in military spacecraft.”
“There are no civil spacecraft heading towards Jupiter.”
“So, that’s the way it is. How many military spacecraft are flying towards Jupiter?”
“Forty-eight units, plus an indeterminate number of service craft within the group.”
“Can you recognise the types of ship?”
“Yes, sir. Do you want to see a list?”
“Show me it.”
Quickly running his eyes down the list, Steve’s eyes opened wide. Incredible! Had MacQueen gone out of his mind? Steve made a gesture to the computer.
“New message for Shelby. Mr. Shelby, the station would not let us dock, but agreed to send the telemetry from the trackers. Sir, a group of heavy bombers is on its way to Jupiter. There are several transport craft with them. I don’t know what they are carrying, but judging by their size, it’s something very big. MacQueen is undoubtedly concentrating offensive weapons on Jupiter. I repeat, offensive weapons on the way to Jupiter. Over.”
The onboard computer took several seconds to connect to the nearest interplanetary communication satellite and send the message to it.
“MacQueen has gone completely mad! The damned warmonger, **** him!” swore Steve to himself.
“Falcon, hear my command. New flight destination. Descend to low orbit, towards the interplanetary cargo terminal. We’re flying home, to hell with this planet!”
# # #
END OF EPISODE TWO
Episode THREE is now available on Amazon
--Events in the asteroid belt...
--Secret of the aliens: living or machines?
--Cunning plan...
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MY OTHER BOOK:
Entangled (a short story)
Aar
on has cheated death once more... the heart attack didn’t kill him, just made him contemplative, walking the corridors of his life’s memories. Read Aaron’s incredible journey, written in a comfortably lazy, lyrical style that evokes all the senses – all the tastes, aromas and sweet touches of life.
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An excerpt from “Entangled”:
Aaron came to, opening his eyes with some difficulty. He could dimly make out the contours of the room. His surroundings lacked any distinct detail, just random grey-coloured silhouettes and strange shapes which, when looked at more closely, merged into familiar objects.
He tried to raise himself up off the bed to see more but was unable, his arms were not up to the task - his muscles simply refused to do their job. He would have to settle for just moving his eyes. Moving his head also proved impossible. An impotent weakness enveloped his whole body.
OK. Now he understood. It was a hospital. Aaron had absolutely no memory of how he had ended up there, which meant it had happened again. His doctor had warned him that sooner or later it would happen, and it looked like that time had come. He had had a heart attack. The second in two years.
Aaron could feel his teeth chattering as if he were freezing to death. But he was well covered, he was warm, so it was not from cold. It had been the same last time. Maybe fear? No, he was not scared of death. The worst was already behind him. The very fact that he was lying in a hospital bed looking at a hospital ward meant that this time around he had survived again. Everyone died at some point, and one day it would be his turn, but not this time. This time he had pulled through.
In a way, he was already getting used to the thought of his death. After his first heart attack, he had not been himself at all. Back then, the first time round, when he had also come to in a hospital bed, the doctor had told him what had happened and he had almost broken down. He knew that his life would no longer be the same ever again. Tears had run down his ageing, wrinkled cheeks and he had been unable to stop them. This time, however, it was bearable.
The Contact Episode Two Page 8