by Scott Baird
“Roger that, Commander.”
Nelson flipped a switch to lock the X-57 on manual control. “Ferdinand! Listen carefully to my command: disable your ancillary memory stacks and then refresh your temp processing stack. Do it now.”
“Disabling ancillary memory.” Ferdinand was silent for a moment. “I am now functioning at sixty-five percent processing capacity, sir.”
“Okay. Now clear your local memory again.”
“Clearing memory.”
The docking hatch lock opened, and the lights turned green on the Magellan to match those on the lander.
“Memory cleared. All systems functioning. Proceed with manual docking procedure at will, sir.”
Nelson relaxed his posture slightly. “Neil, I want you to stay online and keep your channels isolated until I tell you otherwise.”
“Sir, once docking is complete the central processor is programmed to automatically override all lander systems. I cannot avoid that.”
Nelson bit his lip.
“Proceed with manual docking procedure at will, sir,” Ferdinand repeated.
Nelson made sure his suit was pressurized and his helmet sealed. It wouldn’t save him if a faulty lock caused a vacuum breach and tried to suck him out through the crack into space.
He took the controls. “Okay. Here I come.”
With no other choice, he eased the lander into its docking position, mating it successfully with the Magellan. When the hatch opened and the lander's internal airlock equalized with a hissing rush of air from the Magellan, he jumped. But everything seemed normal.
Nelson unstrapped and carried his transport container to the rear of the Magellan. “What happened there, Ferdinand?” he asked.
“Commander, a transmission from NASA has arrived.”
Nelson nearly slammed the sphere's container down on the lab counter. “No time for that now, Ferd! I want you to run a deep systems check on your own processing, but leave those ancillary memory stacks disabled until you have a direct order from me to enable them.”
“Confirmed, sir.”
“Good. Now just… give me a minute.” The sound of his breathing inside his helmet was loud, and he forced himself to slow his heart, calm his mind, and think clearly.
Using the on-screen cues, he logged into the ship’s administrative controller and checked security settings for all of the data channels. It was awkward manipulating the screen with his gloved hands, but he finally locked down communications to their least-automated settings, requiring human confirmation for nearly everything.
Finally he turned around, took a deep breath, and opened his visor. “All right. That was not the welcome I was hoping for, Ferd. You let me know if you have any unexpected malfunctions in your processing.”
“My processing appears functional, sir, albeit reduced at your command.”
“Right. Let’s get to work.”
Nelson opened the container and removed the Eris sphere, placing it carefully alongside the others in their sturdy, transparent holding bins. “I have some samples that need immediate testing here. I think even you will be surprised by this find, Ferdinand.”
Still in his EVA suit and gloves, he used a sterile syringe to pull some of the slime into a testing vial, and then put the rest in a small climate-controlled chamber for imaging and radioscopic examination. He placed the testing vial inside the glovebox and pressurized it. Then he stuck a probe into the vial.
“Okay, have a look into that for me. If this is what I think it is... well, just test it and see what you come up with. I want to hear the play-by-play on this one. Start out by checking it for toxins and pathogens. Before I take my helmet off, I want to make sure this isn't going to mess me up.”
“Certainly, Commander.” Ferdinand seemed to have gotten over whatever trouble he'd been having with the docking procedure, and was now back to his usual efficient, precise self. “Initial scan complete, no harmful effects detected, and it isn't evaporating or emitting any radiation or airborne pathogens.”
“Great,” Nelson replied, pulling his gloves off and removing his helmet. “Begin a molecular breakdown. Let's see what this stuff is made of.”
“Its physical traits suggest the potential for a primitive biology, sir. I am examining the molecular structure now.”
Nelson began to shuck the various pieces of his EVA suit and stow them in their wall compartments. He pulled a pair of scrubs from another bin and quickly donned them, then approached the workspace again.
“Testing for purines,” Ferdinand said. “Purines are present. Testing for phosphate... phosphate is present. Testing for deoxyribose...”
Nelson peered at the third sphere through its transparent container. It was definitely smaller than the first two, but nearly identical in shape and color.
He closed his eyes. “Come on, Ferd. Tell me what I want to know! Is this extraterrestrial life I'm looking at?” Unable to sit still but lacking room to pace around the work area, he moved into the forward cockpit area.
“Deoxyribose is present.”
Nelson froze, then pivoted back to the lab area.
“Affirmative, Commander. The sample is biological in nature and appears to contain DNA.”
“Yes! Thank you, Ferd!” Nelson nearly shrieked. “We've done it. It's real!”
“I will attempt to break down the genetic code and perform bioassay tests. Should I transfer data to NASA now?”
“No,” Nelson said, kneeling in front of the test box and staring at the orange-colored substance. “I want to make the big announcement. And we're sending it unencrypted.”
“Sir, that's against protocol for an initial—”
“Yes it is. But that's how it's going to happen, Ferd.” Nelson stood again and stared at the Eris sphere, then went back to the bio-substance.
“I still have no idea what this is,” he muttered to himself. “But it's the most important thing ever found, and one more step toward whatever I'm supposed to understand.”
18 – Rising Voices
“Mission Control, this is Commander Roger Nelson of the I.C. Magellan, coming to you with a slightly delayed broadcast from orbit over the dwarf planet Eris. Becker, I have a surprise for you.”
Nelson held up the vial of orange goo in front of the camera and waited for it to auto-focus.
“We are not alone!”
He focused the camera back on his face. “Ferdinand is still breaking down the genome, if that's what it actually is, but my best guess at this point is that I've found some kind of extremophile colonial bacterium. It resembled an orange slime mold, possibly a biofilm. As you know, I'm no biologist. But I know enough to get excited—Ferd confirmed DNA, and this thing was somehow viscous at surface temperature on Eris. It's definitely nothing we've ever seen before, not water-based. Nothing from Earth.
“I'll be sending pictures and the full analysis shortly. Oh, and Abigail, how about that, eh? Discovery of life in space!” He grinned, giddy with excitement and relief at the discovery, years into his mission. “I thought about naming it after you, but I don't think it's quite sexy enough. So I'll let Becker claim it: Bacterium Beckercoccus, perhaps? Anyway, I'll soon be leaving this frigid rock for home. And if the spheres let me, I'll be dreaming of you the whole way.”
He grew more somber. “Secretary Stewart. There was a security incident with Ferdinand when I returned from the surface. I've taken manual control of the Magellan until further notice. No more updates from you guys, no more automatic directives until I give the word.
“That's all for now.”
He ended the transmission and sent it on its way, then sat back and let out a long sigh. “Handle that one, Stewart.”
Standing up, he turned his attention back to the orange slime. He aimed the microscope at it and let the computer focus in on it to 3000x. “Nope, definitely not sexy. And you're not intelligent, either,” he murmured. “But you do have DNA, and that is... incredible.” He looked around, the sound of ocean waves crashing j
ust outside his hearing, and his eyes came to rest on the third sphere, sitting still in its container. “So why did they want me to find you?”
Some time later, Nelson stood in the doorway eating from a foil packet and staring across the little room at the vial still sitting under the scope.
“So when should I expect a reply from Mission Control, Ferd?”
“It could be twenty-four hours or more, sir, depending on how long it takes them to download all packets and formulate their response. We are almost ninety-seven astronomical units from Earth.”
Nelson nodded. “Here I am on mankind’s most advanced spacecraft, and I’m stuck waiting days at a time for the mailman.” He swallowed. “I should probably wait up for it, though. I have a feeling it’ll be a good one when it gets here. Stewart will want to court-martial me. Hey, have you finished your deep system check?”
“Yes, sir, just now. Nothing out of order.”
“Good. I hope NASA figures this one out quick. I don't want to fly all the way back to Earth with a sixty-five percent functioning computer at the helm.”
“Actually, it's more like forty-five percent,” Ferdinand was quick to point out. “Allowing for backup processes and redundant parallel computing. If you would allow me to just bring my peripherals back online, I would be capable of—”
“Sorry, Ferd, but no.”
Nelson disposed of his food packet and wandered over to the spheres in their bins. He bent down and stared at them for several moments, as if he could penetrate their secrets with his gaze alone.
The familiar hum began to fill his mind again. He closed his eyes and embraced it this time, clearing his consciousness to allow the sensation free reign. He put his hands out over the containers and found himself quickly lost amid the gently cresting waves. A new sound joined in this time, almost like a voice crooning quiet words without syllables.
He opened his eyes. “What are you?” he whispered.
Pulling a rubber glove over one hand, he opened the containers and brought each sphere out onto the desk. Lining the three little balls up next to each other, he removed his glove and reached out a finger to the artifact from Titan.
It glowed and chimed the instant his skin came into contact with its surface. No visions took over his mind, but the sounds were loud and clear. He let go and touched the one from Triton. It also glowed and emitted its higher-pitched tone, then stopped when he let go.
Settling himself and preparing his mind for whatever came next, Nelson touched the third sphere, the smallest one, from Eris. It glowed a new color, faintly magenta but with hints of green and yellow and blue around the edges. Its tone was higher than the other two and pulsed slightly as he held his finger on it. His eyes caught a flash of brilliant light, but that was the only visual stimulus from this artifact.
Less apprehensive now, he began touching the spheres alone and then in concert with each other. When he moved one sphere into contact with another, nothing happened, but when he touched Titan with one finger and Triton with another, they made the same harmonious but incomplete tone he'd heard before. Triton and Eris together made a similar but higher-pitched tone. The first, Titan, when touched simultaneously with the third from Eris, made a different sound that instilled in him a feeling of almost unbearable mystery and longing.
It was a rudimentary kind of music. Working up his courage, he touched all three at once in an attempt to get the tri-tonal sound of the combined signals that had reached Earth so many months before. The tone sounded, a perfect harmonious chord that resonated throughout the Magellan's cabin, and it thrilled him.
Then it grew louder.
The converged tones built up to a wonderful, encouraging sound, a sound that meant all was right. An image of ocean waves that he'd seen before in his dreams played along the back of his mind, and whether it was memory or a new hallucination he felt or saw stars and the shadowy face of his wife as well. He closed his eyes, trying to see more closely, but her visage faded and the star field blotted everything else from view.
On impulse, Nelson scooped all three spheres up in his hands. As they came into contact with one another and the palms of his hands, the major triad crescendoed as images began flashing before him in rapid succession.
Water, vast expanses of it, gently moving before a light wind. Stars, infinite in their variety and depth. Planets, too, this time, whirling along in their orbits, with other dark bodies passing along in a stream of cosmological splendor.
And there was Abigail. Was she standing, or floating in space? She had the stars at her back, but sunshine lit her face. She was looking at him.
Memories of the past. His first test flight. The movies and stories that had set him on a path to space as a boy. And memories of Abigail.
Stars, flying by faster and faster. Three glowing orbs, brighter than all the stars, growing in brilliance until they enveloped all the other stars. The all-encompassing chord swelled into a cacophony of immense musical power and light that filled Nelson's mind.
The lights illuminating the interior of the Magellan began to flicker and the screens around the work room flashed white. Strange sounds came over the ship's communications system, an incredibly fast muttering, like a symphony played a hundred times faster than it was written.
“Ferdinand? Ferd, is that you?” Nelson cried out, dropping the spheres. The noise immediately ceased and the ship's lighting returned to normal. Wide-eyed, he stared down at the spheres. “What was that, Ferd?” he whispered.
“An immense burst of radio signals, sir. Several million transmissions playing simultaneously through our comms system. The burst seemed to come from the spheres, but I am unsure how they gained access to our audio feed.”
Nelson was shaken, but found himself unfrightened. “Your systems are still functioning fully, Ferdinand? The ship is unaffected?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay.”
He took a deep breath and picked up the two smaller spheres in one hand. They instantly lit up and their tones sounded, as before. Then he picked up the largest in his other hand and brought them together. “Here we go, Ferdinand. Mark.”
The sound became a major chord again, the strange transmissions burst through the ship's audio channel, and this time every screen on the ship lit up white.
The chaotic noise and music ranged from static and tonal pulses to snatches of almost-recognizable tunes and organic-sounding chatter, like the buzzing of insects mixed with the chanting of a chorus of monks. Nelson had to shout to be heard over it all.
“Analyze it, Ferdinand! And make sure you log it all in your data store. Where is all this coming from, and what is it?”
“Analyzing... there are millions of channels, sir. With billions of signals on each and trillions of transmis—”
Ferdinand's voice faltered, cutting itself off. “I'm unable. Unable to. Sir, at this scale I may not be able to log everything. I'm operating at only sixty-five percent, and I can't... I've never encountered a dataset this immense. Sir, I'm unable to—”
“Okay, okay,” Nelson shouted. “Just log and analyze the first one thousand transmissions. What does that get us?”
Ferdinand managed to gain control of the audio system to lower the general volume so Nelson could hear better. “It appears to be radio chatter originating from multiple different locations in the galaxy, being relayed through the spheres and into our comms system. I can't interpret the chatter.”
Nelson held the sphere together and closed his eyes. “How can you tell where they're coming from?”
“There are codes embedded in each signal that give relative distances from the center of the galaxy, along with vector information to pinpoint locations within a star system and exoplanet. I'm plotting these locations on the main screen now. The other screens are unresponsive. Can you get to the cockpit, sir?”
Nelson, still holding the spheres tightly in his cupped hands, stumbled toward the front of the ship. Ferdinand had control of the main console and it
was lit up with star charts. Nelson saw stars he recognized, near to Earth: Keplar-452b, Keplar-62f, and Gliese 163c. There were also many others, unfamiliar ones. “What am I looking at, Ferd?”
“There are other metadata associated with each signal, one of which may be a form of timestamp. If it is a timestamp, then all of these signals are nearly simultaneous and ongoing.”
Nelson looked at the spheres in his hands. “You mean they're current? Being transmitted right now?”
“Either that, or they were all transmitted within moments of each other at some point in the past. The timestamp datapoint is a number, approximately 4.32 x 10^17. All the transmissions are stamped with numbers close to that, and they are all incrementing at the same rate.”
“4.32 x 10^17... what significance does that number hold?”
“Among other mathematically significant correlations, it is close to the age of the universe in seconds, the observable time thought to have elapsed since the Big Bang. But… I find it unlikely that interstellar signals would be based on Earth seconds.”
“Unless they originally came from Earth.” Nelson gave it a moment of thought as he listened intently to the sounds echoing around the Magellan. A sudden idea came to him, unbidden. “Or unless these Others are something like us. If they perceive time in a similar way, if they're close to us biologically—and the discovery of DNA makes me think they are—then a second is the minimum amount of time that's significant to us outside of precise measurements. Right?
“Regardless of the timing of Earth's orbit around the Sun, a moment in time may be common beyond humanity's experience. The time it takes for a heart to beat, or to say a word, or to take a breath.”
“Perhaps.” Ferdinand didn't sound convinced. And to be fair, Nelson had to admit to himself that he was straying outside the bounds of logic now and making leaps of pure intuition.
“Under our current understanding of relativity, however, it's impossible for signals to be transmitted across space from those distant stars,” Ferd said. “Not without travel times of many years.”
Nelson raised the spheres to eye-level and attempted to peer into them. “Unless they're using quantum entanglement. And outputting the signal in radio waves on this end so we can hear it.” The idea had occurred to him as he spoke, and he was honestly unsure if it was his idea or if the spheres had somehow planted it in his mind.