Daniel switched on the PA system and then said. “This is your captain. We reached the point over the expected alien ship over 40 minutes ago, and find the ship gone, we don’t know where yet but expect to find out in the next 100 minutes.
We have however made a discovery on the surface, which points to a large camp set up by the aliens. The next course of action about the alien camp will be decided when we are clear on the tactical situation with the alien ship. Till then we are to continue being on battle alert in condition one, and all personnel in their designated battle stations. Daniel out.”
Once they had circled the entire Titan’s surface and not found the alien ship, they had to conclude that it had gone somewhere else, which could only be confirmed by Houston. They couldn’t help but wonder about the timing though. Why would it leave now, exactly when they had arrived? Was it a coincidence?
When they were finally able to establish contact with the mission control, Daniel was not sure who was more surprised with the news they exchanged. It seemed that complete pandemonium had broken out at Houston.
The mission was not being controlled by any shift manager, but by the chief of Mission Martin Samuels himself. Daniel had expected as much given that this was the most critical and delicate time of the mission, and Martin would have ensured that he was present in the control room at this time.
Houston had not seen the alien ship leave anywhere. The last they had seen the ship was at the exact spot it had been since it had arrived, before Titan went into eclipse behind Saturn. Martin had already ordered extra scanning of the entire Saturn system including its other moons and the neighborhood, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the alien ship.
The scary thought was that if the ship was accelerating towards earth, then its ion plasma nozzle would be pointing away from earth, making it that much more difficult to trace it. They had two partial solutions to the problem. NASA had a regular space probe going towards Uranus on a regular mission of exploration.
Uranus & Neptune having been explored far less than the gas giants in the outer solar system. NASA had ordered its sensors to be turned backwards towards Saturn. Unfortunately Saturn was not exactly behind the probe’s line of travel. It could look at Saturn only at an angle that was not ideal.
The other detective tasked to look from behind was a space telescope for astronomy purposes that ESA had released in the orbit of Mars. The probe was not orbiting Mars, but rather the Sun, following behind Mars, in Mar’s orbit around the Sun.
The probe had been placed in this orbit, because its primary sensors worked in the Radio range, and earth with its immense dependence on Radio signals, pumped out mega-watts of radio signals out into space.
Hence it was placed next to Mars, where there was no permanent human habitat yet, though that might change in a few decades. It was at a much better angle to look at Saturn, given the relative orbital position of Mars & Saturn at that moment, although it could never look behind Saturn, since Mars was in an inner orbital.
Unfortunately being primarily a radio telescope, its optical telescope was not particularly powerful, its main purpose being optical sightings to give direction to the radio telescope, and for reference. It would take 20 minutes for the command to reach the Mars telescope and nearly two and a half hours to reach the Uranus probe.
The minutes and the hours went by as all of earth searched frantically in one sector of the sky for a missing alien space ship. Even the Chinese had been requested to get into the search. Right now they had the same stakes in this game. One of their spacecraft was also heading towards the danger zone.
Daniel could not discount the possibility of an ambush. His ships was in the last known location of the alien ship, and he had the most skin in the game, so he put in a request to go for active scanning. It took over an hour at their current position for signals to reach earth and the same amount of time for a response.
It however took over four hours for the actual response to his request. It was Martin who personally replied to the message. “Listen Daniel, I can understand your position, and I would not like to be in your shoes right now. This decision was way above my pay grade, so I had to take it upstairs.
I am sorry man, but the request has been denied. I wish I could help you on this. Personally I think there is no more point in keeping radio silence, but this is not a civilian decision, and the generals upstairs seem to be sticking to their original doctrine. I wish you luck, and I will see what I can do from my end to help you. Martin out.”
So that was that, I guess Daniel thought. No point thinking about things he can’t do. Let him do things that are within his control. It had been more than four hours since they had gone into condition one, and battle stations fatigue must already be creeping in amongst his crew.
He decided to relieve them from their battle stations, although he was far from comfortable with the tactical situation. It was the worst possible situation a captain can be in, when he is in the open but does not know where his enemy is.
He decided to put his mind on the other task that he had promised his crew, which should keep all of them occupied, especially the scientists who must be going crazy waiting to study the alien camp below.
He switched the PA on and said. “This is your captain. We are now stepping down from condition one to condition two. While the civilians may relax a bit, I want the crew to be close to their battle stations as much as possible. The tactical situation is far from clear.
We have not found the alien ship, but our scanners and all of earth are looking for it. We will concentrate now on the alien camp below, in the hope that we can get some answers there. I would like both Drs. Sterner, Dr. Srinivasan, Dr. Matsumoto and Capt. Parkinson in the common area in five minutes. Daniel out.”
It was time that he talked to the geeks and picked on their brains. He had called Capt. Parkinson on a hunch, just like the mission planners had included him and other marines on this mission on a hunch.
They had not really expected to land on Titan, and even if they did, a land battle was a remote possibility. It probably will not come to a land battle yet, but there was no harm taking in the tactical situation from a ground expert.
“Lieutenant Dubois, I want you along with me for the briefing, I assume the IR scans have been fed to the scientists.” Daniel said, waving Justin to come along. He might be needed to give opinion on the current scans and any further scans that may be needed.
Justin handed over his running tasks to Lt. Marcello to monitor as he came along and replied. “Aye sir. Infra-red, microwave and scans over other EM spectrums have been continuously streaming to the science consoles, ever since we started them. Dr. Matsumoto has been in constant touch with me over various aspects of the scans, and has really helped in enhancing our scans.”
USS Friendship did not really have any conference rooms. The common area was the largest volume of space on the ship. It was essentially a hollow cylinder inside the cylindrical shape of the ship that had been left open.
It could pack in over half of the occupants of the ship at a time, if they did not mind getting cozy. It performed the task of the ship’s open space. The rest were all compartmentalized for various purpose. Right now it would act as the Captain’s conference room.
By the time Daniel floated into the room, the last of the attendees were sliding in. They all used the hand rails placed along the walls of the cylinder to orient themselves towards a common up-down position. It was really disconcerting for humans to talk to each other when the other person appeared to be hanging upside down.
“Doctors, I believe you all have had some time to review the scans we have been making of the area that we suspect to be an alien camp on the surface. I have called this meeting to get your expert opinions. My objective for this meeting is twofold.
First I would like to know if there is something more we can infer about the alien camp below, which would help me to come to a decision on how best to explore it. Second would be if we can
glean some clues from the scans of the ground, which can help us find the missing alien ship, which is right now my biggest tactical concern.
As you all know, this damn atmosphere of Titan makes it impossible to see anything below on the ground, so I am all ears on any idea.” Daniel finished with a small sigh.
The scientist just looked at one another, each waiting for a cue from the others to start talking. Daniel gave an impatient sigh this time, and said. “All right Dr. Matsumoto, why don’t we start with you first?”
Dr. Yusuke Matsumoto was one of the leading planetary geologists of NASA. He also was supposed to be an expert on planetary weather on most bodies orbiting the solar system. If somebody had the best guess on the conditions below, it would be him.
Yusuke started tentatively. “All right, here is what I have guessed so far, with the caveat that you are looking at the planet mostly through microwave frequencies, which does not give too high a resolution. You are also looking at the camp with Infra-red which is almost as poor in resolution. Some of my guesses could turn out completely wrong.
First of all their camp seems to have been made in a plateau of sorts, far from any lakes or rivers. I probably don’t need to remind you, that these lakes and rivers are made out of liquid methane and not water. The temperature on the surface is -180° C on an average, making methane which is gas on earth, flow like water.
Water in turn is frozen solid and forms the ground on Titan. Please remember that the ice on the ground is not a layer above any rocks or soil. The ice is the ground. The entire surface of Titan as far as we know is made out of ice mostly. At this temperature you can consider it as solid as the ground on earth.
I would have expected them to make camp near a cryo volcano, which are the hottest parts of the surface of Titan. These areas would have been closer to -30° C, far closer to habitable than where they built their current base camp. At least that is what human’s would have done.
This fact, along with the fact that they chose to build very far from any liquid body and on a plateau which would be swept by the strong storms and breeze blowing all the time in Titan, makes me hypothesize that they built their base sunk underground.
It would be impossible to make such a sunk base on a cryo volcano, and would have the danger of seepage near liquid bodies. If they built their base sunk underground, then the storms and chilling breeze will blow over the base, causing no particular difficulty.
I speculate further, although this is probably more the specialty of Dr. Sterner here,” Yusuke paused after realizing that there were two Drs. Sterner present, “I mean Mischa here, that the aliens may have certain familiarity with some of the conditions on the surface of the planet, even possible that they originate from a planet with similar conditions.
I say this because the size and the layout of their camp construction, whatever rough outline I could make out from the IR scans, seem to follow a standard set pattern. There doesn’t seem to be anything random about it.
I am speculating here again, that this shows that they may be following standardized camp design patterns, and/or standardized military camp location and construction doctrine, when they created this camp. You already know the size of the camp is huge, the size of a football stadium. As for how many aliens would fit in such a camp, your guess is as good as mine, none of us have ever seen one.”
The brief silence indicated that Yusuke had finished, and Mischa quickly added. “We have discussed this, and I am in agreement with Yusuke on the construction doctrine thing.” Dr. Mischa Sterner was one of the foremost authorities in the new science of xeno-psychology, she was also a pioneer in newer field of xeno-sociology.
She had been a regular psychology PhD student, searching for a topic for thesis over two decades ago, when the course of her life changed on one eventful day. Most remember that day as the day the president announced to the world about the discovery of the first alien space ship. In her friend’s circle, most may remember that day as the day president announced the name of Jorge Sterner, a young PhD student and Mischa’s future husband as the discoverer.
Mischa simply remembers that day as the day when Jorge told her that he loved her, and also as the day when she decided that she had found the topic for her PhD thesis, which has shaped what she has done in her professional life. Mischa couldn’t still decide, which of the two events had been more important, but she really did not care because both had been happy events.
She had heard Jorge and someone who was to become their closest lifelong friend, Ramesh discuss various aspects about the alien ships discovery, and she wondered about the alien being sitting inside the ship, and what it must be thinking, especially about us humans.
She could not get the thought out of her head, even as she left them at the bar in discussions. She laughed, smiled and wept at the shoulders of her other lifelong friend Fluentez all the way back to their apartment, somehow managing to convey between her sobs to Fluentez what Jorge had told her.
Yet even as the two girls talked excitedly about the beginnings of a new romance, a part of her brain was wondering what it would be like to get inside the head of this alien traveling towards them. That night she had decided her topic of thesis.
A few days later when she presented the proposed topic on which she planned to earn her PhD to her guide, he was initially surprised by no small extent. “Speculative psychology of extra-terrestrial beings based on technological observations and artefacts”, was hardly a run of the mill topic that he expected to encounter every day.
A few days ago, it would have put Mischa squarely in the loony basket, but now with the discovery of the alien ship, the rules of the game had altered. Knowing this, her guide had reluctantly relented. Thus had been born the field of xeno-psychology.
Mischa had single handedly written the book on the subject. She had over the years gone back to college to study sociology, anthropology and evolutionary biology, to integrate these back to the new discipline she had created, to such an extent that xeno-sociology was almost considered a new and distinct discipline in itself.
Her newly created field of science had however received the biggest boost in respectability and credibility from the military planners in the US government. She had initially been surprised by the generosity of research grants and consultation projects she had managed from various government departments, but in hindsight she should not have been.
The military was tasked with thinking about the aliens as their enemy and preparing a defense against them. She was the closest they had to someone who knew the enemy’s mind. That didn’t mean that she knew the aliens’ mind any better than the average layman on the streets.
How could she, when no human had met an alien? The military was not sponsoring her for any special ability to make wild speculation. Her contribution was a huge set of behavioral algorithms that she had written, where increasing number of observed inputs would give increasingly narrowed down option of possible future behavior.
All these of course based on detailed research papers which were now widely respected. The planners had actually programmed these algorithms on their computers as preparation for future alien encounters, as was happening right now. They could get increasingly accurate predictions on future behavior of the aliens as they observed and fed more actions of the aliens; or so it was hoped.
As she shook aside the thought of that fateful day over two decades ago, and her life that unfolded after that with Jorge and their two children, leading to this – her circling over Titan, she added to the analysis of Dr. Yusuke Matsumoto. “Other than agreeing with Yusuke’s analysis about the camp, I don’t yet have anything to add on it. However I have an add-on speculation about the reason why we do not see the alien space ship.”
That got Daniel’s attention. He was floating in a nominally sitting position. It was a subconscious human instinct. You don’t need to be in a sitting position, while you are at rest floating in space. Any position of the body would do just fine. His bo
dy straightened up and his eyes urged Mischa to continue speaking.
“I speculate that the alien ship has left to perform some routine task, which may be dictated by their military doctrine, or by standard navigational procedure. It probably has not left as an unforeseen or emergency response to any situation precipitated by humans or nature.
Let me explain a bit. I know I just sounded like a professor giving a dissertation on some obscure research paper, but I can’t help it, I AM a professor giving dissertations all the time.” She smiled sheepishly and looked sideways towards her husband, who rolled his eyes conveying, ‘here we go again!’
“There are two possibilities. First the alien ship left the orbit of Titan at the time it did, because it had planned to do so in advance, to go on some pre-planned task, and our arrival just after it had left is a mere coincidence.
The second possibility is that the alien ship had intended to stick around in orbit, but made a sudden departure as a response to something unforeseen. That unforeseen event could either be them observing our arrival, or some emergency like, say… they had some engineering problem on their ship or some rock on a collision course towards their ship.
What I am saying is that the first possibility is what I feel has happened rather than the second. Why am I saying this; other than the obvious reasons like, we do not see any signs of disaster or emergency? It is because of the time of the departure.
I am not sure, if you have read any of my papers, but for the benefit of all, one of the patterns observed from the encounter with the first alien ship, which seem to be repeated on this second one as well, is that many of their actions seem to occur at intervals, which are multiples of 3.61 days on an average.
There has not been enough interactions with the aliens to have sampled a huge amount of data, so this pattern is not conclusive, but it does seem to exist nonetheless. They have been following a similar pattern even on this second visit.
The Battle of Titan Page 25