Star Matters

by David John West

  “I need one of these all right,” Stephen informed the others as he popped the ring pull on his can of lager after they had climbed the stairs to his room. The others took their cue to do the same. He took a deep draught and the cold brew filled his senses momentarily.

  Charlotte took charge of the Elephant in the Room as she often did to start discussion of the evening’s events, “Well, Stephen, you certainly had the safest view of what happened this evening. You weren’t directly involved fortunately but you weren’t meant to observe the drama either.”

  “We are safe now though, aren’t we?” Stephen asked. “They all left after all.”

  “They did leave,” replied Charlotte. “But that’s not the end of the story. We, that is Joe, Daniel and myself, have been involved in these events for years. Christopher just joined in tonight after a long while on the fringes.” Christopher silently nodded and took a drink of his beer. It occurred to him that Stephen assumed that the students he knew were all equally humans from Earth and Christopher now knew that was not quite the case.

  “There are two kinds of aliens visiting Earth right now, as far as I am aware,” Charlotte continued. “You saw the bad guys arrive first and they tried to capture us. They are the ones that you hear about who capture people here and take them away for their experiments. Fortunately for us the good guys were lying in wait and they saved us from kidnap by ambushing the bad aliens, captured them instead and removed them to exile on a planet far away where they can’t cause any more trouble for a while.”

  “That fits what I saw, I guess. So where does that leave me in all of this?” Stephen asked.

  Charlotte was holding back on the full picture as her enlightenment expertise was screaming that a subject could not take this much shock and awe in one conversation. She would have to consider taking Stephen through the full five-stage Enlightenment process and she already had the urgent task of taking Christopher through the end of the critical Revelation phase and then attempting to integrate his thinking with the Gayans and Professor Kitteridge. “Well, you are already well ahead of most onlookers of alien encounters, Stephen. You understand what you saw. Most people are left just wondering after such an encounter and never get any better understanding. I would say that I don’t consider you to be in any danger; the Zarnha were looking for us and they don’t know about you any more than they know all those crowds out there on the bridge having fun. My suggestion for now is that you keep it quiet and digest the episode. If you want to get more involved after that then you can, with us. We are involved because we understand it and it’s our mission. It’s what we do. We know what we are doing and ultimately helping emerging races to join with us is the most fulfilling thing an individual can do. But it’s not for everybody and it would also be fine for you to just let this night’s events become a weird experience in your life’s experiences. A good story to tell your grandchildren perhaps. Of course, they won’t believe you!” Charlotte wrinkled her nose disarmingly.

  Charlotte paused for breath then carried on, “I think that’s good advice for you, Stephen. You are likely to embarrass yourself if you try to tell your story to the public. In our experience the best treatment you can hope for is official denials – the establishment can’t cope with something outside their control and they like the population kept docile and untroubled by things the government and military are unable to deal with. The whole western democratic system kind of breaks down when the public don’t trust the government to keep them safe. In this situation they don’t even have the understanding you do now. The worst treatment could be that it affects your career and personal life if you get tagged with being the crazy guy with the alien encounter. It’s very hard to have a successful life after the authorities label you as a crackpot. That has happened a lot when the media get their hooks into an individual who has no believable evidence.”

  Stephen pulled out his phone and checked the videos he had taken from his hiding place. The lighting was indistinct especially as the darkness set in on the later scenes but it was a fairly clear recording of the edges of the Zarnha ship when it sat like a shallow dome offloading their agents. It was a disappointing recording of the Cavallo ships emerging from the ground due to the poor dusk light and all the dust. Later than that he had a decent recording of the light show as the Gayan spacecraft took off like twisting rails up into the heavens.

  “Mmm, nice pictures Stephen,” said Charlotte. “Some of the most convincing pictures of UFO lights I have ever seen. I am pleased we can’t be identified at the end when we climb out of the crater though. When the light is better in the earlier videos all you can see are indistinct figures. The Zarnha are in their hazmat suits and our Cavallos are in their robes and all covered in a pall of dust. The Zarnha craft is pretty clear in the early light but then again the authorities will say it was a military prototype or you are perpetrating a clever fraud. They always do that.”

  “Well, what of the missing Joe?” asked Stephen bluntly. “What has happened to him? He is one of my supervision students after all.”

  “Oh, I think Joe will return shortly when he is finished organising what to do with the Zarnha aliens,” said Charlotte. “He will have to miss a few lectures and do some cramming to catch up for his exams but that will do him good.”

  Stephen subsided after that. He could see their advice made sense and he needed to dwell on today’s events and what that meant for him. The beer and familiar surroundings made the whole episode seem unreal so that he could not imagine even broaching the subject to a third party. “All right then, let’s leave it for now and see how it goes. But I will not be happy until I see Joe has actually returned.” With that comment Stephen realised he had lost the confident air he had so carefully developed. He drew back his shoulders and pushed out his chest to show that he was back in control with a strong mentality despite the challenges of the last few hours and his own lack of initiative under stress.

  Charlotte and Christopher headed back down ‘T’ staircase from Stephen’s room and exited by the Porters’ Lodge opposite the bike storage area. Unseen and unheard, Duncan agreed with Charlotte soul to soul that Duncan would patrol around ‘T’ staircase and make sure that Stephen was safe that night. Christopher and Charlotte went on to Charlotte’s room in Cripps Building.

  They sat together on the sofa bed. “Thank you for coming to our help today, Chris, to my help,” Charlotte said softly. He knew that his help had counted for nothing in the end but he was quietly pleased that he had made the effort to help his friends. “You were very brave. I would never rush in like you did when you had no idea what was going on. It must have been impossibly scary for you but you came anyway.”

  “I just did it,” said Christopher. “I never had time to think.”

  “No need to talk about it anymore this evening, Chris.” Charlotte held him close, half turned towards each other. He placed his arm possessively around her shoulders and she folded closer to him. “We will need to explain it all to Professor Kitteridge in the morning,” she said and then all was quiet.

  THIRTY

  The four Cavallo spacecraft sprang out of warp from dark matter in a burst of glittering dust adjacent to the planetary system of the young yellow star Apsides, so named as one of the star systems of interest at the extreme edge of Dawn of Gaya influence some ten thousand light years past planet Earth, further out along the same spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Apsides had an eventful and violent birth that left a family of seventy-three planetary offspring in a flat orbital plane around the star. Dawn of Gaya had been attracted to the system by the remarkable group of five rocky, aqueous planets occupying the ‘Goldilocks’ zone where conditions were just right for human life to arise. Thousands of years previously, Dawn cultivar ships had deposited minute quantities of genetic material and precursor microorganisms to seed these five planets so that they could later evolve to support human life. Five planets so close together in the
same planetary system would provide resilience against natural disaster, comet strike, core instability and so on, allowing technically primitive local human beings the flexibility to transport between these hospitable planets using crude rocket technology. They would be able to populate the five adjacent planets without requiring the major leap to develop warp drive capability to travel light-years distances between the stars.

  The Gayan ships Theresa, Sant’Ana, Clara and Maria spread into line abreast formation as space light shimmered between them. In fixed formation they could be mistaken for a single large craft. They descended towards the plane of planets with the bright star Apsides at the centre of the gossamer gravity web bonding the far-flung flock of planets together. There was no sign of any other advanced human race ever visiting the entire system; the Gayans had left observation satellites above the habitable planets with warpwave messaging to provide monitoring on demand of the planets’ surfaces and the nearby orb of space. Keeran and the Pantucci brothers patched their screens into these satellites above the blue planet Etheris, second nearest of the blue habitable planets to its star. Planet Etheris was just starting to hatch an ice-age cycle, tiny white ice caps crystallising out at the poles. As these grew in future ages, land would be reclaimed as the oceans were captured in the polar ice. The bulk of the planet was covered in ultramarine ocean; a spectacular lapis lazuli marble spinning through space. Small white whorls swam over the surface seen from space; mild storms flitting across the oceans below. The globe was pocked with hilly islands, actually the peaks of the tallest mountains, previously submerged by the inundating oceans at the end of the last ice age. The newly born ice age had started to reduce sea levels to reveal these fresh islands connected by immense underwater slopes to the sea floor tens of thousands of feet below. The Gayans had selected planet Etheris since it was approximately the same mass as the Zarnha’s home planet, Spargan, with a comfortable gravity field. Keeran and Rafaello agreed their captives would be safe there at least for the short term. They searched the planet’s surface for an appropriate landing site and selected a group of closely linked islands, each graced with a high conical peak surrounded by flat coastal plain smothered in dense forest. The central peaks gathered thick cloud at their summits indicating precipitation and availability of fresh water. The Gikipaedia entry for Etheris said the flora on the planet surface was massively developed, the terrestrial fauna was small but sported assorted defensive strategies including, but not exclusively, horns, teeth, spikes, venoms and poisons, mostly deployed in a defensive posture. The marine fauna was another matter entirely; many thousands of years in a conducive sea age with high nutrition levels had promoted a huge diversity of marine animals that were continuously engaged in reforging the food chain, inventing ever larger top predators that were highly aggressive and efficient at prey entrapment.

  The four Gayan craft descended elegantly to the scrub line atop a wide, red sand beach on the largest of the islands. The central cone of the island was lost to view in clouds and rain squalls. The forest perimeter was a solid wall a hundred yards high of enormous tree ferns and horsetails that indicated a cornucopia of natural foods, medicines and building materials contained therein. The forest edge was broken occasionally by small streams spurting to the sea, the majority of the rainfall on the central peak captured by the plants for their impressive pace of growth as the streams ran to the sea. Keeran and the Cavallos on the Maria deplaned first. They did not excavate and cover their craft for concealment as usual; no advanced human tribes had evolved yet on Etheris and only Gayans had explored the remote region previously.

  The Gayan adventurers looked out across the disingenuously quiet sea. Sublimely beautiful, reflecting the light azure skies with shades of jade, its serenity belied the turmoil of marine life below the surface. Occasionally a shoal of creatures broke the surface to escape from predators below, pattering back to the surface to either escape or be consumed. Shortly after the Gayans’ arrival, long dark shapes humped the water surface close to the shore with an arcing meniscus containing multiple solemn eyes. The speed and control of their travel demonstrated considerable mass and power beneath the surface as these large predators were attracted to the new arrivals onshore and set about determining methods to hunt them down. As Keeran watched these sinister forms, an even more monstrous waterspout engulfed one of the dark shapes, watching them with raised eyes as an even larger predator took one of the creatures ogling the Cavallos craft as a meal of its own. There was an eerie quiet after that brief drama as the other three Cavallo craft hinged open their loading decks and the Cavallos ushered their Zarnha captives on to the strand. Lastly, Omeyn MuneMei and Haruka disembarked the Sant’Ana, surrounded by their moat of respectful space.

  Omeyn MuneMei rotated to take in the scene and considered her circumstances in silence. It was plain that they were to be abandoned here. Her Zarnha group were only useful to the Gayans as hostages. Zarnha abducted humans and other creatures from planets of interest all over the galaxy for many purposes, including hostage-taking, so this was no great surprise. The location seemed habitable, even comfortable once the Zarnha established adequate steading and started work on providing luxuries Omeyn MuneMei would consider essential. The low-level Zarnha did not seem to be relishing the task. They looked a forlorn lot. An advanced technological society now contemplating the tribulations of a Robinson Crusoe existence until their far descendants or current enemies provided means of escape. The Gayan leader Keeran approached to confront the Omeyn and Haruka. He stood before the Omeyn, who was an identical copy of the one that had masterminded his fall from the Spyre in Braganza City a lifetime ago in his wild attempt to spring Kyra from their clutches. He was unrecognisable now to Omeyn MuneMei as Joe, another Earth-born Gayan twenty years on from that failed rescue attempt.

  The voice of Omeyn MuneMei intoned, The stern face of the Omeyn was unmoved as her voice emanated.

  “You will find our treatment far more favourable than the treatment meted out by you to millions of abductees imprisoned on Spargan and across the galaxy,” Keeran observed mildly. The Omeyn stayed silent; there was no point reasoning with this savage who would show no respect. In time the situation would be remedied to her advantage. “You will all stay here until we return, I am sure you will be very comfortable,” Keeran continued.

  “I must protest against this inhumane treatment of our Omeyn and these innocent people of Spargar,” protested Haruka, only mildly cognisant of the hypocritical nature of her objection since other human races were routinely treated in much worse ways, so far beneath the contempt of an Omeyn. “What if some accident befalls you, or you do not care to return for us?”

  “In the unlikely event that all four of our craft befall some unfortunate misadventure then the worst case is that you will have the opportunity across all the ages to evolve a new human race here in these beautiful surroundings. I am sure this future people honed by these beautiful surroundings will be a more enlightened race than the race of Spargar is today. In the short term we will leave a nutritional processor for your convenience until such time as its power cell expires and you have established natural sustenance.” Keeran turned and started walking away. Then he turned back to add, “We believe the seas locally are particularly bountiful, and there are several other islands nearby when you are ready to venture out on to the water, but be aware the sea creatures here can be especially large and aggressive. The land animals are small, plentiful and nutritious but also well protected by defensive morphology. Until we meet again, enjoy your stay here and au revoir.”

  The Zarnha huddled in their Hazmat suits. They would soon have to discard their protection and throw themselves on the natural resistance of their atrophied immune systems without specific immunological protection against whatever microbes the planet Etheris might have in store for them. Haruka moved to get the Zar
nha lower orders organised to make shelter to please the Omeyn. Keeran rejoined Rafaello and the Cavallos all returned to their ships. The loading platforms raised shut then the four craft rotated to vertical before lifting off slowly so that the Cavallos could best enjoy the views. The Zarnha looked up at the departing craft forlornly, bent black stick people randomly scattered on the sand.

  Keeran and the crew of the Maria enjoyed the rare pleasure of a leisurely ascent through Etheris’ atmosphere unmolested by local aircraft. The islands below soon faded into the deep blue of the oceans as the skies darkened above and the planetary curvature resolved itself into a sphere far below. As they reached the edge of the atmosphere, space debris was burning up occasionally as meteors flamed across Etheris’ upper atmosphere. The Gayan ship Maria by contrast was a streak of silver ascending up and away, its ionised tail stream a line of light piercing down to the planet. Rafaello had plotted a course to the edge of dark matter where the DMF drive could warp them back to the edge of the Gayan home range. Keeran was planning to report in person to the Worders on Chamarel to make essential preparations for their short-term plans for advancement on planet Earth.

  THIRTY-ONE

  The following morning Charlotte and Christopher arrived at Professor Kitteridge’s room at St John’s College to find Daniel already there with Duncan in spirit attendance. Daniel was taking Professor Kitteridge through the events of the previous evening, notably with greater passion than would have been the case had Joe been reporting in his matter-of-fact tones.

  “And then the cavalry literally came over the hill right when we needed them,” Daniel was explaining, sweeping his arm around the room to indicate the Cavallos rising up on all sides of the crater they had been trapped in. Professor Kitteridge was enthralled. This kind of action was always a possibility in what he understood to be a conflict between the Gayans and Spargans, but so far things had been contained as both races ostensibly played by the Epsilon treaty rules in a phoney war situation concealed among the native human population on Earth. “Things were happening so fast, Joe and Charlotte had my back and I had theirs. We were moving in a blur and what we couldn’t handle Duncan was moving us around to avoid the blows. They were so many, but they just couldn’t get at us more than ten or so at a time and they kept falling as we dealt with them faster than they could come at us. It must have been nightmarish for Christopher on the floor below us as more and more Zarnha piled up around him, all dark suits, helmets and weapons a yard long… ”