by Rod Galindo
Now smiling, she nodded. "I'll be okay, Donnie. It's just that… these are aliens. Real, Honest-to-Rama aliens. Not the kind from the movies. Not puppets or human beings in costumes or created in a computer. These are intelligent creatures from another world! I… I'm sorry, I'm just…" Her voice trailed off.
"I know," Bouchard said. "As soon as I have time to process all of this, I’m sure I'll be right there with—"
Low gurgling sounds came from the speakers again. Then chirping. The chirping—no, squawking—seemed to be a new voice. Bouchard thought he heard the word "Wait" in there somewhere. He looked at his pilot. She stared back at him.
A thought occurred to Bouchard. "Oh man, what was I thinking?"
"What?" Pearls yelled.
Bouchard punched a button. "X-Ray! We need to be taking photos, holos!"
"Already on it, Commander," Ray replied. "I started nineteen minutes ago, when the alien ship was first within visual distance. I'm capturing images across the visual spectrum. I've also got our spectrometers, photometers and interferometers trained on it."
I should have known. "Good. I think we should—"
The word "WAIT" boomed across the loudspeakers, then the channel fell silent again.
Bouchard stared at the ugly alien lump for a moment, then looked to his two bridge companions. "Well," he said, "I'm guessing it would be pointless to ask for how long."
No one smiled.
"Alright then, I'm going to take this opportunity to get below, check on the repairs and the status of my crew. Not to mention my wife, who I'm sure is itching for an explanation."
"I'm sure she's pieced the puzzle together by now," Jack said. "She's quite the clever lass."
"I'm sure you're right." Bouchard patted Adrienne on the back on his way toward the hatch at the rear of the cabin. He paused on his way out the door and turned back. "Pearls? Keep an eye on that thing. If it so much as blinks, call me on the spot."
"Absolutely, boss."
FOUR
Bouchard floated through the only door to the command cabin and tossed his body down a white, vertical shaft. It was large enough to allow two people to pass each other going opposite directions, which was truly a luxury in the world of economical spacecraft. He used one of the two ladders running along opposite walls of every one of these types of shafts scattered throughout the ship. He and the crew had learned early on to be careful; it was easy to lose control of your trajectory with haphazard "zipping" along these corridors, not to mention the severe difficulty when it came to stopping yourself should you encounter another crewman.
Ahead of him lay intersections to decks two and three, all brightly lit and as white as a hospital room. The entire ship was white, in fact, inside and out. Thankfully, Don decided, it didn't smell like a hospital. Explorer Two boasted mainly the smell of plastic, rubber, lubricant, canvas, and occasionally, dinner. The smell of home, he thought. Thankfully, it didn’t smell too much like "space." To Don, when he returned from a spacewalk in Earth orbit, his suit had an acrid, sulfuric smell, like a combination of hot metal, welding fumes, and a steak that had just been seared on the grill. Even out here, doing spacewalks in the depths of the solar system, it wasn't much different. He still didn't know what it was from. Atomic oxygen clinging to the material? High energy ions? X-Ray will know.
He stopped at Junction Number Two and floated into the Science and Astronomy cabin, located directly below the command cabin. Since the windows—equally as large and numerous as those surrounding the command cabin one deck up—were currently covered by their external shutters, it would have been pitch-black were it not for sixteen illuminated screens situated in a horseshoe-like array around the lone silhouette of a man. The man's outstretched arms moved from one screen to the next, his fingers dancing on their surfaces like a musician strumming delicate, glowing harps. Bouchard floated up behind him. "So X-Ray, you find anything interesting?"
Ray Isley turned his head and smiled. "I've discovered entire textbooks worth of interesting data on our new friends, Commander. Most of it likely of more interest to myself and scientists back on Earth than to you and the others."
"Humor me."
"Alright." The android rotated his body to face the series of screens to Don's right. Most of them showed various parts of the exterior of the ship, but some showed the alien vessel in various visuals. Ray drew Don's attention to one in particular, and pointed to illuminated patches on the nearly black, spiky blob, which Bouchard recognized as the alien ship. "As you can see in this thermal image," Ray began, "these red and yellow locations show hotspots, but they aren't thrusters. The reverse and attitude thrusters are located here and here. As you can see, they are all quite cold."
Don shook his head. "But they were probably shut down now that they've matched our speed. It's understandable they're not emitting heat now."
"This isn't a live feed, sir," said Ray, "this video was taken eleven minutes ago, before their particle beam slowed us down. At the time I recorded this, the alien ship was still attempting to match our speed, which at the time was 211,397.6 KPH, which means they had to be using thrusters located on the side of the vessel that, as far as I can tell, has always been facing us. Whatever they are using for thrust, it isn't a chemical reaction, a nuclear reaction, an ion engine, an Electro-Mechanical drive, nor any other traditional, non-theoretical propulsion I am familiar with."
"Interesting."
"Quite. The hotspots are very intriguing," continued Ray. "I suspect they are vents on the outer hull, releasing excess heat generated by the ship's power source. Whatever that may be."
Bouchard grabbed a nearby hold so as not to float into a wall. "Those aren't showing hot spots on the inside of the ship? I simply assumed—"
"I haven't been able to penetrate the inside of the vessel, Commander."
"Really," Don said, more as a statement than a question. "Not even your eyes can see through it, huh?"
The android's expression didn't change.
Oh you can tell jokes, but when I try… Don let it go. "Have you tried the Dense-Body Penetrating—"
"Yes," Ray interrupted. "And every other radar and sensor Explorer Two has. That ship is either made from material more dense than four kilometers of osmium, or the walls are lined with some alloy or synthetic material I'm—again—not familiar with."
Don nodded. "Well, they are aliens, after all. They might have gadgets and gizmos as far ahead of us as we have compared with Lewis and Clark."
"Ah," replied Ray, "explorers from the Nineteenth Century. I had to access my library for that one. Very clever. And I agree. It's making my task of collecting data on the alien ship very intriguing, but very frustrating at the same time."
Bouchard nodded. He was sure Ray wasn't frustrated in the same sense that a human being could be; the machine had likely used the word to convey the fact that the trouble he was experiencing would surely frustrate a human.
Sometimes Bouchard had difficulty remembering this near-perfect looking Ivy League candidate, with his full head of luscious blonde hair, wasn't a real person. He looked, moved, and acted exactly like everyone else on board. All the way down to the hairs and blemishes of his warm skin, and the unwelcome puns and practical jokes he pulled when the humans were least expecting it. The engineers had almost made him too much like a human. But his nickname was "X-Ray" to remind everyone he most definitely was not; no one else aboard could see through walls. "Anything else?" Don asked. He was itching to get to the Living, Working, and Recreation ring to start his inspection.
"One other thing." Ray touched a series of virtual buttons on one screen, and the image changed on another screen to his right. "I reviewed the visual astrometric data prior to the initial attack. I now know what to look for in terms of detecting another "invisible" vessel that might be heading our way. I thought you might not want to be sneaked up on again."
"You thought right."
Ray nodded. "To that end, it didn't take me long to discover sever
al small, dark shapes all around us that occasionally block the background stars."
Ray's heart skipped a beat. "Several?"
"Nine, in fact. They are not moving towards us, but rather parallel to our trajectory. I postulate they are additional alien vessels observing our encounter."
A chill ran up Bouchard's back.
"There's no telling how long they have been shadowing us," Ray continued. "Like the one parked just outside, they do not show up on radar, either."
"Understood. Okay, well, keep an eye on them. Let me know if any of them decide to join the party."
"Will do, Commander."
Don patted the android on the back—a human gesture, but one he was sure the machine would interpret correctly—and made his way out of the science cabin. Great. Should have known all those old movies had it right all along. He paused at the junction of deck three. Damn. He had forgotten to ask Ray about the smell. Oh well, plenty of time to ask later.
FIVE
Deck three of Explorer Two was the longest tunnel on the entire ship. It ran from the bow all the way to the protective shield, three hundred meters—over three American Football fields—down the length of the one thousand meter vessel. From it, a crewmember could access every location on his or her wayward abode. Namely—in order of opportunity from stem to stern—the large maintenance bay directly below Science and Astronomy (from whence Don had just come), the tunnel leading up to the command cabin and Science and Astronomy, the Living, Working, and Recreational, or "LWR" ring, the observation towers, the magnetron that provided their protective magnetic field, the two shuttles—one docked to port and the other to starboard—and the numerous storage bins carrying materials used by the ship's 3D printers to create most tools and repair parts the crew needed on their voyage. They could also use the materials to print food and morale items if desired, so long as unnecessary items were recycled after use like everything else. Don still couldn't figure out how he was going to get Jack to recycle the guitar he printed up in the first month of their voyage, nor the espresso machine Adrienne threatened to kill anyone who touched, but he would find something to hold over their heads eventually.
The towers. He could restrict Pearls use of them. But could he be so mean? The observation towers were Pearls' favorite hang-out; it was no wonder she was there when the incident occurred. Tower One shot three hundred meters straight "up", and Tower Two led the same distance straight "down", each with an AlON5 ceramic-glass sphere at its peak. A person could see the entire ship from either the one above or below the vessel. Adrienne would strap herself in up in Tower One and sit for hours amongst the ferns and flowers, reading just by the starlight from a seemingly infinite number of suns and galaxies. Countless unimaginably luminous objects which the average person could never see merely by looking up from the surface of the Earth. Out here, Don thought, over one hundred times further away from the sun as Earth normally is, there was no atmosphere to filter or twinkle the stars, no cities to wash out their gentle light. Not even a dark boat at the center of the Pacific Ocean could reveal the view Bouchard and his crew enjoyed every single "day." It was one of the few "pros" he counted against the bucketful of "cons" of participating on this mission, the biggest con being the fact he nor any of his crew would ever see the Pacific Ocean ever again.
Don pushed off various handholds until he reached the hub of the LWR ring. The ring was only place on the ship with something resembling gravity, hence the reason they mainly lived, worked, and "recreated" there. It was centripetal force, not exactly real gravity, but it was the best option they had to keep their bones from degrading in zero-G. It was an idea that had been in science fiction novels for at least two hundred years, but it was still the best alternative the top scientific minds of Earth could come up with, short of hijacking an asteroid bigger than the Moon and using it as a spaceship.
The ring was a work of art in itself. The spheres "atop" the two towers had to be six hundred meters apart in order to clear the five hundred meter-wide rotating wagon wheel that was the LWR ring. The thing had to be a particular minimum size so that the crew—who had to live in it quite literally the rest of their lives—wouldn't suffer ill effects, things most people living on Earth had never experienced and would never dream about. Don grasped the concepts, if not the math involved with things like "gravity gradient", where perceived gravity at your head was different than at your feet. Or when a high angular velocity could create "cross-coupling", where simply turning your head in the conduct of a normal day's duties could cause motion sickness and dizziness. Then there was tangential velocity, which had to be maximized in order to reduce the Coriolis Effect, which can distort your apparent gravity. If this is too low, people become disoriented when simply walking around. All these things add up a ridiculously large—and ridiculously expensive—space wagon wheel, indeed.
Bouchard maneuvered into the hub—a white, spherical room which rotated around him. He grabbed a nearby handhold, and was gently jerked into the same "perspective" as the ring. Now the long tunnel he had just left appeared to be rotating instead of the hub.
Sharing the room with him were four pillars, each housing an elevator leading in four different directions, and alongside each of these were emergency ladders shafts leading "down" to the floors of the inner and outer rings. Don used his wristwatch to call his wife. Last they spoke she was in Auxiliary Command and Control. "Brea? Are you still in the ACC?"
"Still here, dear," she replied. "Are you coming down?"
"Be there in a jiffy."
As the elevator "dropped", he felt the ever-increasing but welcome pull of the false gravity, not unlike being on a carnival ride. By the time his boot touched the floor of the inner ring, one hundred twenty-five meters "down", the tangential velocity was just under twenty-five meters per second, and the angular velocity was a comfortable two rotations per minute. His insides had all fallen back into place once again, even though he only experienced one-half Earth gravity here in this inner ring. He was heavy compared to what he had been only a few seconds earlier, but the illusion of weight felt good.
The inner ring housed all the experimental lab, as well as the technical science and engineering stations. The outer ring, another one hundred and twenty-five meters further down, was where Don's body was almost fully tricked into believing normal Earth gravity was present, and is where he slept, ate, took a shower, used the latrine, saw the doc, and made love to his wife. On that ring, the angular velocity remained the same—1.89 rotations per minute—but the tangential velocity had increased to almost fifty. Whatever that meant; Bouchard could have cared less. He only cared that he and Brea wouldn't hurt themselves when they crawled into bed.
Occasionally he wondered if he would ever get the hang of zero-G sex. Occasionally he wondered if Brea would ever allow him to try again.
The three couples on board had given up experimenting with the novelty early on in the mission after ending up with cuts, bruises, and in the case of Pearls and Mag-Lev, a minor concussion.
Don bounded up to his wife in the half-gravity, not unlike astronauts bounced on the surface of the moon. He had to be careful lest he bump his head. Again. Treads was busy at a wall of screens, each with small images of perfectly round bubbles. Several bubbles still silently flashed amber and red, indicating the status of various on-board systems or equipment. He placed gentle hands on her shoulders, covering up the Space X patch on one shoulder, and the British flag on the other. He kissed her large but neatly shaped blonde bun.
She spun around and, without even looking at his face, gave him a tight hug and didn't release it.
"Oh, Brea-baby, it's okay," he whispered, wrapping his arms around her. "We'll be alright. We'll make it out of this."
"Will we?"
"These... people, beings, creatures… they want something, or they would have taken us out long before we ever even saw them."
"But what do they want?" she asked, breaking their embrace. "Are they really… aliens?"
"Well, I seriously doubt they're Chinese, unless the new Emperor has been keeping some serious secrets from NASA!"
Treads looked up into his eyes. "But what could we possibly offer people who are advanced enough to be out here ahead of us?"
"I don't know, sweetie. I don't know. Maybe they don't want anything more than for us to go home. You heard them, didn't you? They keep saying 'Go', 'Earth'. And 'Now'! So they may simply want us to turn back. Of course, we all know that's a complete impossibility, unless Planet X or Nibiru really does exist and we can A, find it, and B, reach it, and then somehow sling-shot around and head back toward the Sun. I didn't exactly get a chance to tell our new friends all this, so I hope they don't get too upset when I do."
"I heard them." Brea said quietly. She turned and took a few steps away. "I heard them over the speaker. I just didn't want to believe they're real."
"Yeah, Scales had a hard time with it as well. But he came around."
"I was really hoping this was all just some elaborate training exercise NASA had told you about from the start, and you just didn't tell me or anyone else about it. To really put us to the test and all that."
Bouchard said nothing.
She spun round. "Is it a test?"
Don stared at her for a moment, wondering if he should lie just to keep her from worrying. He decided against it, and shook his head once.
Treads let loose a sigh of exasperation and threw her hands into the air. "I just don't know what to think, Donnie. I don't!" She dropped her arms to her side once again. "This is easier for you. You've been watching all those ridiculous movies all your life."
"They don't seem so silly anymore, do they?"
The sound she made seemed to be a mixture of humor and anger. "Yeah, well. They're all so campy and far-fetched! All the science is wrong."
"Not all of it."
"Most of it. I can't get past it."
"You can't get over the bad science, but the magic in Greek and Roman Mythology doesn't bother you?"