Asteroid Crisis

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “If the invasion is as bad as we predict it could be, that might still save millions of lives,” Ansari said.

  “Billions, actually,” King said in a low voice. Ansari looked at him in shock.

  “Look.” JJ held onto a grab bar on the wall and turned to face the adults. “We’ve gone back twice before. We already changed what happens by helping save the moonbase crew and the space station. In our original timeline, the Kylarn destroyed Moonbase Magellan and its crew, and then took over the ISSC. All of you would be dead if we hadn’t changed anything.”

  “We risk our own lives every time we come here,” Dyl said.

  Song-Ye added, “We can do a lot of good—I promise.”

  “In your future, what happened with the asteroids?” Kloor asked.

  “This is a problem,” Dyl said. “They did some real damage.”

  “But we want to help you change that,” JJ assured them.

  Kloor frowned. “What does that mean. The billions of lives?”

  “We can’t give you specifics. It could jeopardize what we’re trying to do here,” JJ said, trying to defuse the tension in the room.

  “Your very presence is changing things!” Fox said quietly, his words cutting through the air with some frustration.

  “We weren’t trying to lie to you—we just needed to keep a low profile,” JJ explained. She desperately wanted the adults to trust her and her friends. She knew, though, that dishonesty wasn’t a good way to start building relationships.

  “You have to admit,” Dyl said, “that if we told you we were time travelers from the past trying to head off an alien invasion, you would have thought we were either lying or crazy.”

  Tony nodded. “Believe me, conversations like that never go well.”

  “Pfft,” Song-Ye said. “We didn’t understand it at first. How could we expect you to?”

  “We’re trying not to tip off the Kylarn about the changes we’re making,” King said. “So, can we keep this a secret among friends?”

  Stationmaster Ansari, who had always been on their side, nodded slowly. “It will be our secret.”

  Fox seemed surprised, and although Kloor wore a satisfied smile, Napali remained skeptical.

  “My gut tells me we can trust these cadets,” Ansari said. “And considering how powerful the aliens are, we’re going to need every ally we can get.”

  ***

  Nine

  Even though Song-Ye was more prone to space sickness, it was Dyl’s stomach that rebelled when they visited Dr. Romero in Medical.

  Although there were more crewmembers aboard the ISSC now, no one had suffered any injuries or accidents, and after the food-poisoning incident during their previous visit, all food was very carefully tested for Salmonella and other contaminants. In Medical, Dr. Romero used the facilities to perform an alien autopsy. Strapped to a surgical table, she had spread out the flabby tentacled form of one of the two dead Kylarn. After failing to take over the station, the two creatures had thrown themselves out the airlock to freeze in space rather than be captured alive.

  The doctor glanced up at them. “You’re just in time to help me with the dissection. We still know far too little about these creatures.”

  Song-Ye scrunched her face in confusion. “It’s been two years since the alien was captured. Why are you just now beginning dissection?”

  Dr. Romero sighed heavily. It was obvious she’d answered this question a thousand times already, but Song-Ye and Dyl still wanted to know. “To make a long story short, Earthbound bureaucrats set the rules, and I had to abide by them.”

  Song-Ye and Dyl were more confused than ever. Romero continued, “The other Kylarn specimen was sent to Earth for analysis just after you left last time. In all that time, I’ve only gotten two reports, neither of which said anything useful about Kylarn biology. I’ve been patient enough. Now it’s my turn to examine the other specimen. We kept it up here because we wanted to make sure that subjecting the creature to reentry and Earth’s gravity didn’t skew any of the results.”

  “Ick, alien autopsy,” Dyl said.”

  “As in, Insanely Cruel Knowledge?” Song-Ye teased.

  Romero said, “If you’re squeamish, Cadet Wren, you don’t have to watch, but I could use your assistance, both of you.”

  “I’m okay. I kind of prefer dead aliens to live ones,” Dyl muttered. “Either way, those squidbutts are ugly.”

  “I thought I was the one with the delicate stomach,” Song-Ye said, moving closer to help. “This is fascinating, though. By studying the internal organs and blood chemistry, we should be able to draw some conclusions about the Kylarn home world.”

  “Maybe we can figure out a chemical they’re allergic to,” Dyl added. “I wouldn’t mind finding some alien poison ivy to give the squidbutts a good rash and send them limping back home.”

  “This one already has a rash—or a stain at least,” Dr. Romero said. “Is this the creature that was sprayed with red dye?”

  “Yes, that one’s Red Spot. My sister squirted chemicals in its face,” Dyl said. “It attacked us in the greenhouse module, and we chased it with fire extinguishers.”

  On display screens on the wall above the surgical table, Dr. Romero called up a high-resolution scan of the Kylarn.

  “Life can take many forms in different environments—even on Earth. Look at the differences between deep-sea tube worms, giant redwood trees, kangaroos, and human beings. Though they seem impossibly different, they come from the same planet. Their biochemistry is carbon-based, and they use liquid water. Animals breathe oxygen, plants create energy through photosynthesis. In spite of their striking differences, living organisms need to use some form of liquid, generally water. So let’s try to figure out what makes the Kylarn tick.”

  “More like what makes them ticked off? Dyl muttered to Song-Ye.

  Dr. Romero used a scalpel and, with only a slight hesitation, made an incision in the aliens rubbery brown skin, exposing fatty tissue and a sticky, milky-gray fluid.

  A spoiled smell waited up, turning Dyl’s stomach. He swallowed hard. “Halfway between slime and snot.”

  Song-Ye was stoic. “I can see the blood vessels. There might be vital organs inside that cavity. Do we know where the lungs are? The heart? The digestive tract?”

  “The alien digestive system could give us a big piece of the puzzle,” Dr. Romero said. “If we knew what the Kylarn ate, we’d have some clue as to what they want with Earth.”

  “Maybe they want to conquer it and add it to their territory,” Dyl said.

  “I hope they don’t want to eat people,” Song-Ye said, giving a slight shudder at the thought.

  “We can take samples from its stomach contents, run a chemical analysis, and find out what Red Spot had for its last meal.” Dyl and Song-Ye helped Romero wrap a loose transparent material around the aliens body, and the doctor slid her hands into a pair of gloves built into the material. It reminded Dyl of one of the glove boxes at the Challenger Center.

  Romero extended the incision and spread open the cavity. They saw lumps of jelly, spongy masses and rubbery tubes, some of which started to float out of the body but were held in place by the clear material.

  “That stuff looks like it came from the bargain bin in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab,” Dyl said.

  Romero mused, “For the longest time, the human race wondered whether there was life elsewhere in the universe. We had hoped to find friends, a benevolent race … not creatures that want to conquer us.”

  “If we knew this was the company we were expecting, we never would have rolled out the welcome mat,” Dyl said.

  “That doesn’t mean friendly civilized alien races don’t exist out there,” Song-Ye suggested.

  “The search for other intelligent civilizations has been going on for a long time,” Dr. Romero said, looking down at the strange pieces of the specimen strapped to the operating table. “But the galaxy is a big place. It’s a process of elimination, narrowing down the poss
ibilities. In 1961, a man named Frank Drake spelled out the factors necessary for finding life out there—at least life something like our own. You start with the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy—about a hundred billion. Then estimate how many of those stars actually have planets around them: that’s somewhere between twenty and fifty percent, maybe as many as eighty percent. And of those stars with planets, how many of the planets are generally at the right distance from the sun where liquid water could exist.”

  “Sounds like we’re getting rid of a lot of possibilities,” Dyl said.

  “And we’re just getting started,” Dr. Romero added. “Out of all those possible planets, on what percentage might life actually evolve? And if life evolves, what are the chances it would be intelligent? And of the intelligent species out there, how many of them would bother to look elsewhere and try to communicate with us? Finally, what are the chances that the timing is right? For example, if an alien civilization tried to send a signal to Earth and the signal arrived here a thousand years ago, nobody in the Dark Ages could have heard it.”

  Song-Ye let out a long sigh. “As in, out of all the possibilities, we got stuck with a bunch of squidbutts who want to take over the Earth.”

  Dr. Romero started to remove Kylarn internal organs, sliding them to one side beneath the clear wrapper, while she made her best guess as to their function. Dyl controlled the high-resolution camera, filming every movement. Dr. Romero and Song-Ye studied the Kylarn’s organs, measured them, and sealed each one in a special container beneath the clear wrap. They took liquid and tissue samples for later analysis.

  Dr. Romero studied her work. “I could write research papers for the next twenty years about this specimen, but we don’t have the time or luxury for that. This isn’t just a matter of scientific curiosity—we need to know more about these beings.”

  “We might know more than we think we do,” Song-Ye said. “If they intend to live on Earth after conquering it, the Kylarn must have a biochemistry similar to ours. It’s only logical.”

  Dyl frowned down at the alien, remembering the tentacled creatures that had scrambled through the ISSC modules while trying to take over the station. “Okay, their home planet may be more like Earth than we thought, but they sure don’t look much like us.”

  Dr. Romero continued pulling organs from inside the alien. Suddenly, the Kylarn’s tentacles twitched, swinging wildly, and flapping on the autopsy table. Song-Ye and Dyl stepped back, alarmed.

  “Is it…?” Dyl started, too frightened to say the word “alive.”

  “Impossible!” Song-Ye said, though her terror betrayed her attempt at sounding confident.

  Dr. Romero laughed. “Well, look what we found here.” She pressed inside the alien’s corpse again, and again the tentacles flapped, smacking the table hard.

  “A dense nerve cluster. It seems to respond to stimuli long after death. Must be super sensitive,” the doctor said.

  “Wha-what does that mean?” Dyl asked, still shaken.

  Dr. Romero smiled. “I think it’s a soft spot, a place of vulnerability. Now, how can we use that to our advantage?”

  Song-Ye and Dyl smiled. Now the real fun of discovery would begin!

  ***

  Ten

  While Dyl and Song-Ye helped Dr. Romero examine the alien body, Colonel Fox took JJ, King, and Tony to see the starfish-ship, which remained attached to the station airlock from the Kylarn’s attempted invasion.

  The vessel was an ominous, alien-looking construction attached to the node room’s exterior hatch, through which the Kylarn had entered in their bid to take over the station. Its hull gleamed silver, and five long, sharp arms radiated from the central body.

  “The vessel is still largely a mystery to us,” Fox said, “even though our aerospace engineers have analyzed it for nearly two years. Dr. Kloor has dozens of theories about the physical principles that might drive a ship of this sort, but we still haven’t been able to fly it to test those theories. The cockpit controls are a rather inscrutable. No matter how our engineers have experimented with this ship, they cannot get any of the systems to respond. Simply put, they’re stumped.” He raised his eyebrows, the thin mustache bristling on his upper lip.

  “Could I give it a try?” JJ asked. “I know it’s a long shot, but I’ve taken flying lessons. My uncle Buzz taught me how to take off and land, both with and without instruments. And I know as much about the Kylarn as anybody.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can fly an alien ship!” Tony said.

  “On the other hand,” King mused as they drifted there outside the node room, “JJ isn’t completely locked into how normal aircraft systems work, and she’s pretty resourceful. She might even have an advantage. And we have been studying simple Kylarn words and symbols.”

  “Commander Zota briefed us on basic squidbutt controls,” JJ said. “I’m sure Dyl brought his note cards. If I have those to remind me what all the symbols mean, I just might be able to figure it out! Think of what we could learn from that alien spacecraft. What do we have to lose? Isn’t it time to take a few risks?”

  “Indeed, Cadet Wren, you have a point,” Fox said. “If you think you can get this thing flying, I’m willing to let you try—though not without a spacesuit. It will offer a small measure of protection.”

  “I can manage in a spacesuit,” JJ said. “We’ve been trained, remember? And I wouldn’t mind the extra safety factor myself.” For a split second, she wondered what she had just gotten herself into. So much could go wrong. But then she thought about actually flying an alien ship, and excitement took over. “I’ll get those index cards from my brother, then we can test a few things.”

  Donning a spacesuit was a lot more complicated than pulling on a change of clothes. The technology had advanced from the suits developed for the original space program, but the completely enclosed suit still had to be like a form-fitting spaceship that provided all the life support and protection a human body needed to survive in the extremely hostile environment. She dressed in an insulated undergarment, leggings, boots, torso pack, gloves, oxygen, communication systems, and energy reserves.

  Ready to go.

  She sealed her helmet and activated the suit radio so Fox could speak with her. Floating in her bulky suit looking at her friends, she gave them a thumbs-up, pushed off into the node room, and sealed the hatch before pulling herself up into the hollow control cavity of the alien ship.

  “Don’t overdo it, Cadet Wren,” Fox said in her earphones.

  “I’m a cautious person,” she replied. She thought she heard her brother snicker before Fox clicked off the transmission.

  The alien cockpit chamber was spherical and cramped. Large pilots could not have managed a test flight, but the squidbutts were evidently squishy and could cram into a small space. She didn’t see any single control panel, just display screens, buttons, and control sticks mounted at seemingly random places around the walls. Since the Kylarn had sets of tentacles, it wouldn’t be difficult for one of the aliens to reach in any direction. She had reviewed Dyl’s notes and recognized many of the symbols. The exact controls of the ship would be different from the time machine, of course, but they were similar enough that the sequencing should work.

  “First things first,” she said, partly to herself and partly to Colonel Fox over the suit radio. “This should activate the systems.” Zota had already shown them the trick to activating the alien technology. Grinning with anticipation, she pressed the symbols in their proper order.

  Lights glowed on the control panels. Trapezoidal screens lit up, filled with streams of information that she couldn’t read. Other screens showed images of the space station—external cameras, apparently.

  A set of controls up and behind her head showed targeting hexagons and a set of control sticks—possibly the energy weapons that had blown up the Eye in the Sky satellite. She decided to stay away from those.

  Another screen displayed a curved line that looked like the course the ship
had flown from the Moon. Swoop symbols around a cluster of knobs implied direction—a way to choose movement. A set of colored graphs was … velocity? She found a lever below the propulsion systems and pushed it gently as if afraid it might give her an electric shock. “Let’s see if this does what I hope it does.”

  “Again, I advise caution, Cadet Wren,” Fox admonished.

  Then beneath JJ the hatch slid shut and sealed. She felt the starfish ship moving, vibrating, and making a faint grinding sound. “The good news is, I think I’ve discovered the docking controls.”

  The starfish ship detached from the ISSC with a puff of decompression from the node room, and an automatic burst of exhaust propelled it away from the station. The change in movement bumped her from one side of the cockpit to the other.

  “I’m not doing that!” she said. “Automated systems have taken over.”

  Sensors were guiding the starfish ship away from the ISSC—hopefully, without causing any damage. She had seen how easily the stations solar panels and observational instruments could be damaged. Her mind was whirling. She remembered the cockpit gauges and systems inside the Piper Arrow that she had flown with Uncle Buzz. “The controls aren’t insanely complicated,” JJ said, sounding as if she were trying to convince herself. Voices were shouting over the helmet radio, and she transmitted back, “I’m doing what I can—just let me think for a minute.”

  As the screen images showed the ship drifting farther from the space station, she couldn’t find any override. When no better idea sprang to mind, she decided to try the propulsion systems herself and see if she could fly the thing. Once she got far enough away from the space station, she would have all the room in the solar system to maneuver—as long as she could get back to the ISSC. She had a few hours of air in her suit. That gave her time to solve the problem.

  With a little experimentation, matching the directional symbols she had memorized from Dyl’s cards, she could make the ship move along the three axes, just as she had moved the waldo arm in the Challenger Center. She cautiously tested the alien systems and was pleased that she could tilt the starfish ship left and right, back and forth, up and down. When she tried to accelerate, the vessel began to spin like a Ninja throwing star—a shuriken—but she didn’t feel dizzy. In fact, the control chamber seemed balanced like a gyroscope. She flew farther away into space, then shifted direction to head back toward the looming green, blue, and white planet Earth. It looked so beautiful in front of her.