Beyond the Event Horizon - Episode Three

by Albert Sartison

  BEYOND THE EVENT HORIZON

  episode three

  by

  Albert Sartison

  Copyright © 2015 by Albert Sartison

  First edition

  1.01

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  1

  When only a kilometre remained to the welcoming party, Steve finally found the strength to get up from his seat.

  “So, mission completed?” he muttered to himself, but the onboard computer took these words as addressed to it.

  “No, sir. After setting you down on Mars, I must return to EMC1906,” the drone’s AI replied.

  “Just like that, without refuelling?” Steve was surprised.

  “According to my calculations, the fuel tanks will be 6% full on return to base, not counting the emergency reserve.”

  “Not bad. OK, it’s time for me to go.”

  “I wish you a successful day, sir,” replied the onboard computer, and opened the canopy.

  Outside, the lower edge of the Sun was already almost touching the horizon. The evening landscape differed in some indefinable way from Earth’s. Steve looked around, trying to make out what it was. Everything seemed as on Earth, but something was not quite the same.

  The approaching group distracted his thoughts from the unusual Martian sunset. The harrier riders dispersed around the landing point, but the APC remained a little further back. Several people emerged from it and walked rapidly towards him. As the tallest of them came closer, he signalled to Steve to switch on his spacesuit radio.

  “Good evening. I’m Colonel Anderson,” said the now familiar voice in his headphones.

  The speaker extended a hand in greeting. In the dim light of the evening Sun, made dimmer by the dust storm raised by the vehicles, Steve could barely distinguish the outlines of his face through the spacesuit visor. He shook the extended hand.

  “Please come this way,” said the colonel, pointing towards the APC. “We have to hurry, we haven’t much time.”

  There were several more heavily armed people inside the APC. Taking his seat inside, Steve glanced briefly at their weapons.

  “We’ve been having a hot time here lately. We have to be on the alert,” explained the colonel, noticing Steve’s reaction.

  The APC closed its door and set off at once. A breathable atmosphere was soon restored, as indicated by a green light in the corner of the compartment lighting up as an orange one went out. All the military, as if by command, raised the visors of their spacesuits.

  “Do we have far to go?” asked Steve. He looked around the special forces troops sitting alongside him, but they paid no attention to his question.

  “No, it’s quite close. Everything’s ready there, it only needs you. By the way, we were expecting you two hours ago,” replied the colonel. “Did you have problems during the flight?”

  Steve nodded.

  “We entered a meteorite tail. We had to decelerate and then get back up to speed again.”

  “Understood,” replied Anderson dryly.

  At that moment, the APC was shaken by a rumbling. An instant before this, Steve had heard the noise of turbines starting up. He had hardly had time to take this in when they were caught in the shock wave of the drone flying overhead.

  “The war chariot can’t wait to get home,” laughed the colonel, pointing to the display from the external camera. “I haven’t seen one of those before. What model is it?”

  The drone, flying up in a parabola, was clearly visible on the screen. The dark point of the spacecraft was marked in the sky by a whitish vapour trail, which disappeared when the upper layers of the atmosphere were reached.

  Steve just shrugged his shoulders.

  “I was only a passenger,” he replied. “A civilian. I don’t know much about military equipment.”

  Anderson smiled for the first time.

  “You’re a hard man for a civilian,” said the colonel, and looked at his subordinates. The shadow of a smile passed across their faces. “You had us sweating for a bit when you had your sights on us. You don’t fool around with those things. Have you seen them in action?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  The colonel, satisfied with the reply, nodded and fell silent. Their guest was clearly not inclined to talk; he was probably tired.

  The sombre Martian landscape could be seen floating by through the small portholes. Who could tell what it would look like in twenty years, if the aliens fulfilled their promise and changed the climate on Mars, if plants began to bloom here and the air became filled with the scent of flowers, and the chirruping of crickets by night and birds by day.

  Then Steve suddenly realised why the Martian evening had looked so strange. There was no warmth in the light. On Earth, the Sun low over the horizon coloured the landscape in soft warm hues. In the morning and evening, the Sun’s light had to take a particularly long path through the thick atmosphere, therefore the dust particles, filtering the blue end of the spectrum, coloured it in warm hues. On Mars, however, the atmosphere was much thinner, so this effect was not noticeable. On the Red Planet, the setting Sun hardly changed colour; that was why it looked so unnatural to the inhabitants of Earth.

  Without reducing speed, the APC suddenly jumped slightly and entered some sort of tunnel. The tunnel wall lights could be seen flashing past through the portholes. The road was descending perceptibly.

  “I thought the base was inside the hill,” said Steve. He was surprised that the hill had been left behind them.

  “It is,” replied Anderson coolly.

  “But... it’s over there,” said Steve, pointing in the opposite direction.

  “There’s a whole system of tunnels here. We use them so as not to create unnecessary activity around the hill.”

  The noise of the whole group’s turbines was reflected from the walls, resounding in the passenger compartment. Suddenly the sound changed to something quite different. They were probably approaching the exit from the narrow underground tunnel.

  The tunnel ended as suddenly as it had begun and they entered a brightly lit hall with an unusually high ceiling, about a hundred metres or maybe more. The APC slowed down, turned a few times, went into reverse and finally stopped. The rear door opened and those inside, once again as if by command, jumped out.

  “Come this way.” Steve heard the voice of the colonel, who was already outside, gesturing to him to come out.

  “He was sitting right next to me, how did he manage to get outside?” thought Steve. He couldn’t recall how he had ended up alone inside. The passenger compartment had a low ceiling, so you could only move along it in a crouching posture. Steve picked up his bag, threw it out and then jumped out himself. After shaking off the dust, a lot of which had settled on his spacesuit during the transfer, he looked around him.

  Apparently he was in the main hall of the base, which served both as a landing site and parking place for numerous combat spacecraft. About twenty drones covered in tarpaulins could be seen in the distance. They looked about the same size as the one in which he had reached Mars, and their predatory noses poked out from under the tarpaulin. The guard was patrolling next to them. It consisted of two soldiers with automatic plasma guns in their hands, reinforced by a humanoid combat robot, standing motionless as a stone statue in the shadows nearby.

  On the other side, part of the hall was fenced off by a construction barrier. Every
now and again, welding pulses flared up from the other side of it, momentarily lighting up the whole hall with a blinding light.

  Turning where he stood and looking around the hall, Steve’s eye was caught by a large ship standing right in the centre. The ship’s ramp was down, and the light from inside was of a particular kind, familiar to him from his flight in the Falcon. Memories of the adventures of those days at once came to his mind. The entrance to the ship was guarded by three soldiers, and several more were patrolling round it.

  The colonel gestured towards the ship.

  “Please go on board,” he said. “They’re waiting for you.”

  Steve lifted his bag, nodded in farewell and set off for the ship. After taking a scan of his hand, the guards, with an indifferent look, let him pass. It seemed they had no idea of his forthcoming mission. Or at least, their faces expressed nothing but deadly boredom.

  Inside, the ship was more spacious than the Falcon Steve was familiar with, although its interior appeared simpler. The finishing materials were more functional than decorative and there were many arrows pointing various ways: to the bridge, the living accommodation, the conference hall, the medical compartment and the cargo compartment.

  Steve dropped his bag in the nearest corner and went to the bridge. Its door was open and he looked inside. The bridge was empty. He looked around and noticed a half-empty mug of coffee with milk standing on the console opposite the first pilot’s seat. The coffee was barely warm.

  He ran his gaze along the monitors. One of them showed images from various cameras, internal and external. The soldiers by the entrance who had checked his identity were still standing in their places. The light was off in the medical and cargo compartments. Oh, there they were! Several people were sitting in the conference hall. One of them was Maggie. He decided to go there.

  As he arrived in its doorway, the captain said: “Ah, Steve! At last!” Although they didn’t know each other, the captain knew his face, apparently from a careful study of his dossier.

  “Now the whole team is here.”

  The captain pointed to those sitting next to him.

  “This is Nick, the pilot. This is James, the radio operator, Maggie I think you already know. And my name is Kevin.”

  Steve shook hands and exchanged courtesies with them all in turn. Waiting patiently till Steve had sat down and opened his tablet, the captain clicked his fingers, ordering the electronic assistant to display the description of their mission on the large monitor.

  “Well, we mustn’t waste time. Because Steve was late, we shall have to make an extra loop around the planet to come out on the optimum course.

  “The fleet has created a full-sphere security cordon around the cloud. This cordon consists of several levels and blocks all traffic within it. It is only possible to pass through it at one point.”

  The captain put his finger on the monitor to show where is was on the map.

  “This point is our first destination. We shall reach it in eight hours of flight time. After deceleration, it is forbidden to move at interplanetary speeds near the cloud, so it will take us two hours to reach the last level of the cordon. Passing it, we shall enter what is today the most protected zone in the Solar System, where we shall change course to proceed to the rendezvous point, which is our second destination.

  “Inside the cordon, there is a rule that communication with the cloud is conducted only from the spacecraft which is closest to it. At that moment, that means us.

  “James, who is responsible for radio communications, will be in constant radio contact with the cloud from then on. Forty-five minutes later, we shall reach the third and final destination of our journey, the rendezvous point. I should say that it is not static, but flies after the cloud, which in turn is following Earth in its orbit around the Sun.

  “The meeting will take place not on board our ship, but inside a special capsule. It is made of reinforced glass and has two compartments, separated from each other by a special transparent screen.

  “The Earthlings’ compartment, which is where you two will be,” said the colonel to Steve and Maggie, "is to be filled with a special gas not suitable for breathing. The aliens’ compartment will not be closed, so there will only be the vacuum of space in it.

  “As you will realise, voice communication through the screen will be impossible, if only because there will be no air in the aliens’ compartment. As well as this, we do not know if they have hearing suitable for communication in the sound wavebands to which we are accustomed. Therefore, contact will proceed by radio waves from then on.”

  “So that means we shall not actually be meeting them in the same room?” asked Maggie.

  “No. Due to the danger of the transfer of infectious microorganisms or substances, you will sit on opposite sides of the glass screen.

  “The duration of the meeting is not limited. You will have a selection of questions which must be asked, but other than that, you can communicate about whatever you like and for as long as you like. Not forgetting, of course, that this is not a family picnic, but the first meeting with an intelligence from another planet in the history of mankind. So I advise you to give a lot of thought to your questions, and avoid topics touching on our security.

  “At the end of the meeting, you will wait until the aliens have left the capsule and withdrawn to a respectable distance. After that, the capsule will eject your compartment, we shall catch it, and that is how you will return on board.

  “At that point, Nick will attach a tow rope to the empty capsule and throw it out of the plane of the ecliptic. On that trajectory, it will pass the planets at maximum distance and be caught by the Sun’s field of gravity. In two months, this gravity will cause it to fall directly into the Sun. Any questions?”

  “Will there be communication with the capsule?” asked Steve.

  “Yes, of course. The question of your personal safety is vital, therefore we shall hear and see everything that takes place inside the capsule. Apart from this, you will be dressed in special spacesuits with the highest level of protection against nanobots. As a precaution. We shall also observe the vital functions of the body. If something goes wrong, immediate evacuation will take place.

  “Another important aspect. If one of you suddenly feels a strange sensation, you will use a codeword. We’ll pull you out of there at once.”

  “In the event of evacuation... What should we do?”

  “You are not to do anything. Whatever happens, you will remain in your seats. If necessary, the capsule will simply eject the compartment with you in it, and we shall intercept it.”

  “And if you fail to intercept it?”

  The captain smiled.

  “We shall not fail. Half the fleet will be observing you, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

  2

  “So what do you make of it?” Steve asked Maggie, as soon as the briefing was over. It was the first opportunity he had had to exchange a few words with her since he had left Earth as one of the expedition to the gravitational anomaly.

  “What do I make of what?”

  “Well, this whole business. The meeting with the aliens.”

  Maggie silently shrugged her shoulders.

  “I don’t know yet, we’ll have to wait and see.”

  “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “I was a bit at first, but not now. I’m just interested.”

  “Have you thought about what they will look like?”

  “That’s the one thing I keep thinking about.”

  “So what does the biologist in you think?”

  Maggie just gave a brief laugh.

  “And what does the astrophysicist in you think?”

  Steve couldn’t think of any answer to this.

  “I’ve often wondered – if there were no primates on Earth, what would take their place?” he asked.

  “Dolphins are supposed to be clever...” put in James, who had been silently picking up his things from the table, showing no ap
parent interest in the conversation.

  “Dolphins? I doubt it,” snorted Maggie.

  “Why not? I read that their brains are bigger than ours,” said Steve.

  “Yes, but it’s not just the brain size, the structure is important too. Theirs is quite primitive compared to that of primates. No. Dolphins? Hardly. Now octopi, that’s another matter. But they have a very short life span. If they lived longer, I’d probably go for them.”

  Steve and James looked surprised.

  “Why octopi?” asked Steve.

  “They have developed brains and excellent control of their feelers.”

  “What do feelers have to do with it?” asked James.

  “How could they build a civilisation without them? Developed brains are the first essential. The second is a developed movement system and limbs which can be relied on to hold objects so that tools can be created. You won’t get far on the power of thought alone. The third is the ability to impart experience from generation to generation, and that requires a sufficient life span.

  “They are fine as far as the first and second are concerned, it’s the last one they have a problem with. They only live a few years. You can’t learn much in such a short period,” explained Maggie.

  “So we can expect to meet octopi?”

  Maggie sighed wearily.

  “No. On Earth octopi are not bad candidates, but on another planet? Oh, what does it matter? I’m just saying I don’t know what they’ll look like. They could even be humanoid.”

  The captain’s face appeared on one of the monitors.

  “So there you are! Go to your places, we’re about to take off,” he told them, and switched off without waiting for a reply.

  Space flights had gradually become routine for Steve, particularly in passenger ships, cautiously piloted by live pilots. Previously, on those rare occasions when he had had to leave Earth, he had looked fearfully around him in the passenger compartment of a ship about to take off, envying those people who could doze off and calmly sleep through the takeoff and entry into space. Now he was beginning to feel the same way himself. Truly, the best way of ceasing to be afraid of something is to meet one’s fear face to face. The more often, the better.