ARIA

by Geoff Nelder

  “Thank you, Antonio,” Abdul said. “Lady and gentlemen, a miracle has just occurred. Our doctor has admitted an error.” Even Jena joined in the tension-easing laughter.

  “So,” Dan said, “we land at an airfield as close to Ryder’s centre as he suggests. We’ll take advisement from him as to the local situation and then as to whether to land at night and so forth. Vlad, update the computer for a selection of re-entry windows, bearing in mind our approximate destination. I’ll get onto Ryder. Jena, let Charlotte know what we’re up to and let her know we will keep in touch. Be positive and encouraging—as if I need to say.”

  Tuesday 15 September 2015:

  Anafon Study Centre, North Wales, twenty-two weeks since the start of ARIA. Most people would have lost twenty-two years of memory.

  “NO. NO WAY!” SHOUTED BRIAN, his blond, overgrown crew cut bristling like a toilet brush.

  Bronwyn agreed. “Five astronauts? Five more mouths to feed. That’ll deplete our food. I’m not cooking for five strangers.”

  Ryder fought back a wry smile. These two remained as cantankerous, yet supportive of each other, as they were before their absconding attempt and Bronwyn’s gunshot wound.

  Derek patted Bronwyn’s hand. “And just them landing nearby and us leaving our perimeter to fetch them makes us much more likely to come across ARIA.”

  “Objections noted,” Ryder said. “But it’s going to happen; it has to. And with careful planning, we’ll minimise the chances of ARIA coming back here. One thing we know for sure is that none of the ISS crewmembers have it. But there are other reasons why we should welcome them.”

  Bronwyn clenched a fist at him. “So, you are going to ignore our wishes, yet again.”

  “Remember,” Ryder continued, “they were five of the planet’s brightest people before they left Earth, and Antonio is a first-class physician.”

  “Even his skills are useless against ARIA,” Derek said.

  “There’s something Ryder hasn’t told you, yet,” Teresa said to the group. Then to Ryder, “Isn’t there, dear?” Brian and Bronwyn lowered their eyebrows with suspicion at Ryder while the rest raised theirs in interest. The teenager, Megan, sat farther back, plugged into her personal stereo. Ryder glared at Teresa, he anticipated some hostility to the notion of the arrival of the alien case and hoped to concentrate on the benefits of the ISS crew joining them.

  “Thanks, dear. Yes, another case appeared on the space station.” Gasps from the biology technicians showed they saw first the significance of the new development and the implications if opened in their presence.

  Laurette butted in. “So, the crew might not be free of ARIA after all?”

  “That isn’t what I’m saying at all,” Ryder said, fighting impatience at people who wouldn’t let him finish. “Like the first one, they haven’t opened it. It’s sealed in the Marimar’s cargo hold. No decision has been made what to do with it and won’t be until it arrives here.”

  “This gets bloody better by the minute,” shouted Brian. “You are allowing strangers to bring ARIA to us for certain.”

  Gustav, as a bio technician, possessed more foresight. “It could be our salvation, Brian. There would be little point in the aliens sending a duplicate virus when the first has done such a thoroughly devastating job.”

  Bronwyn looked confused. “I dunno how you can say that. We might not be the only uninfected. There must be loads of isolated communities. Suppose the second case is just to make sure.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Ryder said. “Unless Brian and Bronwyn, as locals, know any better, the maps show me that the nearest airfield with a long-enough runway for Marimar to land is at Hawarden near Chester, fifty miles away.” He waited for the two to acknowledge.

  After a long pause, Brian said, “Hawarden’s runway will be long enough. It’s private though, no commercial flights.”

  “All the better. I don’t suppose there would be anyone there now,” Ryder said.

  Bronwyn said, “Wouldn’t it be better for it to land on a straight bit of beach closer to here? Fifty miles mightn’t sound so far, but it could be dodgy.”

  “They considered that, Bronwyn,” Ryder said. “Always dangerous to land on a beach, especially at night. Then there are other advantages to landing at a proper airfield.”

  “It can’t refuel and take off again once it’s buried itself on a beach,” Teresa said.

  “Exactly,” Ryder said. “So are there other airfields closer than Chester?”

  “RAF Valley might be closer, but you’d have to cross to Anglesey over the bridge with all the dangers of getting trapped, see,” Brian said.

  “And it’s a military installation so it’s harder to get into and just might have people there,” Bronwyn said.

  “Other airfields are too small for the Marimar,” Brian said. “How are you going to get there and back without running into infected people?”

  “Okay, so we have decided on Hawarden Airfield,” Ryder said. “There’s at least three road routes.”

  Brian scowled. “I assume you mean the coast road, the A55 dual carriageway, and a country-lane route. And there’s no democratic vote on which is the best airfield? Again.”

  “We think the coast road might be best since there might be roadblocks, manned or otherwise, on the dual carriageway,” Derek said.

  “You must be kidding,” said Brian, laughing at them. “The coast road goes through all the coastal resorts, including campsites—and I mean thousands of caravans.”

  “Ah,” said Derek, “but ARIA will have cut the numbers down. I know it’s sad, but we’re talking twenty years of memory loss and most of the caravans wouldn’t have started their holiday season back in April.”

  “It’s a good job you have local people here then, isn’t it?” said a smug Brian, exaggerating his melodic Welsh accent. “Where do all the old people go to retire?”

  “Eastbourne,” Derek said.

  “And?”

  “All right, Rhyl and the other North Wales resorts,” said Ryder. “And being ancient, losing twenty years to them isn’t going to count for much...”

  “...compared to middle-aged and younger people,” said Derek. “So we avoid the coast road.”

  “And avoid the gangs of pensioners,” said Bronwyn with a smirk.

  “Let’s just have a thought for those pensioners,” said Teresa. “Most would have been on medication, all gone. So the diabetics, heart conditions, anaemia, kidney problems, hypertension, those prone to infections, Parkinson’s...”

  “We get the grim picture,” said Ryder. “No swarms of geriatrics except fit ones and there’s not many of those. Even so, we should avoid the coast road. How about the country lanes. I suppose there’s a problem there too, Brian?”

  “Only that the lanes wriggle a lot ’cos they visit every sodding village and town. Do you want that? And then they are just tractor width in places and so might be blocked by accidents, abandoned, manned roadblocks, or trees that fell in the last five months.”

  Derek stood to get a drink. “Let’s consider this roadblock idea. How would a group remember that they manned a roadblock the previous day? They wouldn’t, unless they wrote each other memory-aid notes and stuck them on each other’s foreheads. I suppose they might each wake up, realize they are hungry, wander outside, and find each other. In the conversation about what the hell’s going on, they might suggest highway robbery. Some would be well brought up and resist that action, so time would be spent arguing.”

  “So if there are any roadblocks they are unlikely to be manned in the mornings,” Ryder said.

  “But they could go on through these long summer evenings into the night,” Brian said. “Making very early morning, say three, a good time to move around.”

  “Agreed,” Ryder said. “And for speed, I’m leaning towards the A55 dual carriageway. There are plenty of links between that and the coast road if diversions are necessary.”

  “There’s some difficult strategy
questions, though, aren’t there?” Brian said.

  “More a policy decision,” Derek said.

  “I’m tempted to say we’ll only shoot people shooting at us,” Ryder said, knowing that was what they were referring to. “But it’s like if strangers breached our perimeter here. In fact, our going to the airfield is like a bubble of Anafon on the move.”

  “Nice image, but not quite,” Derek said.

  “No,” said Teresa. “Ryder, you said if anyone came over the hill towards us we had to try and ascertain if they were infected just in case they had heard of us from the ISS and came here as uninfected refugees.”

  “Yes, but if we thought there was a good possibility they were okay, we would quarantine them in the mine,” Ryder said. “How can we take the mine with us?”

  “We could take the estate car as a mobile quarantine, but that would be impractical if we picked up hundreds,” said Brian. “And I don’t like the idea of shooting hundreds either.”

  Ryder had to make a decision. “We could have the estate in front and the minibus some hundred metres or so following. We have mobile phones working on our own local network like walkie-talkies. If the lead car sees people, unlikely so early in the morning, it tells the minibus and both retreat and reroute. Only shoot to maim in order to stop anyone following. If we have to. It’s tough, but us getting ARIA is a slow death sentence, and if it’s them or us...”

  They all had no choice but to agree, leaving Ryder to go to the comms and let them know up there in space.

  Wednesday 16 September 2015:

  Orbit.

  “WE HAVE ANOTHER PROBLEM, COMMANDER,” SAID JENA.

  “What?” Dan said. “Vlad’s found Santa Claus orbiting the moon?”

  “Hey, that’s good,” she said. “In fact, he’s found Santa Claus, but he’s orbiting Saturn. Come and see.”

  Vlad said, “We can hardly see anything, but the computer says there’s a new object in the Cassini Division between rings A and B. Our telescope has it as a fuzzy ball.”

  “Size?” asked Dan.

  “How do you measure the diameter of a pom-pom? My apologies. I estimate it to be about a hundred metres.”

  “Any transmissions coming from it, Vlad?”

  “No, Commander, not on wavelengths we listen for.”

  “Right, send what we have to Ryder and Charlotte. Maybe Charlotte can direct the remote scopes to it. In the meantime, get Hubble trained on it with IR, UV, X-rays, visible light, the works. I need to consult Antonio. Call me when you get anything.”

  Jena sat at the neighbouring console to Abdul. “Zap over the alien’s coordinates and I’ll handle Hubble. Extend the range of wavelengths. If they sneeze, Abdul, you make sure you hear it.”

  “I will if they sneeze in Morse code,” said Abdul. “But they didn’t talk to us before, they won’t this time either. What about a radar-imaging scan?”

  “Everything, Abdul. Do I have to do it for you?”

  “Jena, a radar probe will tell them we’ve found them and they can use our pinging to find us.”

  “Oops,” said Jena, adding an embarrassed smile.

  “I’ll take that as a don’t do a radar scan, then.”

  “We could use one of the other probes already out there. Check, but I think the Cassini Saturn orbiter probe launched back in the nineties is out there,” Jena said. “That way we’re not sending radar pings to the alien but asking existing satellites to do it.”

  Abdul tapped his database. “Cassini died in 2008, while orbiting the biggest moon, Titan.”

  “Um, suspicious?”

  “Not really, Jena, it had passed its expected life. But remember it launched its daughter probe, Huygens, onto Titan. We might be able to re-activate it. More interesting is the Jupiter Moon Mission. It reached Ganymede last year and it’s active.”

  “Excellent, get the codes for both, the last one was managed by Darmstadt, Germany and the first from Houston. Ping the alien bastard from one or both.”

  “Pardon me, Jena, I’m a computer hacker whiz. If we were radar pinged, I’d be able to backtrack it to the satellite and then follow its radio transmission in under five minutes.”

  “The point being, Abdul?”

  “The point is if a mere human can track it, a smart alien could be knocking on our door demanding to see my hacker’s licence before you’ve seen any results.”

  “Not if you send the radio controls via a broad-scattered signal and ditto for the orbiters. We don’t need to avoid confusion from the non-existent radio signals from Earth and it doesn’t matter if others pick our signals up. No one could track them back.”

  “Not just a pretty face, are you? Hey, I could bounce the initial signals off other satellites to add to the confusion.”

  “Then fucking get on with it, Abdul.” Her aggression sparked because, although the ruse she suggested might work, they had no idea how clever the aliens were and Abdul had pointed out her mistake. Out of his sight, she chewed at her fingernaila stress habit hidden from NASA shrinks. Abdul reminded her of the possibility of the aliens finding them. Maybe they should return as soon as possible, after all.

  “I can’t raise a squeak out of the Huygen probe on Titan,” said Abdul. “Shame, it is the closest to the alien. Shall I keep trying?”

  “No, Abdul. Either the probe had a mishap or the alien shut it up. We’d better not keep trying and give them more data to track us down. What about the Ganymede probe near Jupiter?”

  “It’s alive and chatting but the radar appears to go right through the alien. It doesn’t—”

  “Not surprising. If we have stealth technology, so has the alien. Hey, I got a visual on the fuzzy-ball alien.”

  “Great, Jena, what does it look like?”

  “A larger fuzzy ball but brown in colour.”

  “Jena, you don’t think we’ve just been wasting our time, do you?” said Abdul, looking fed up.

  “Why? Had you something better to do? Besides packing.”

  “Already packed. To be honest, I’m getting a bit nervous up here. I’ve never been so keen to get back to terra firma.”

  “All you men are wimps. I’ve set Hubble up locked on the alien, even if it moves, as long it doesn’t shift too quickly. You do the same for listening to frequencies and transmit to Ryder and Charlotte. With solar power recharging our batteries, we should be able to keep an eye on them for years.”

  “Pity we haven’t some air-to-air laser guns,” Abdul said, but Jena looked at him as a dog trainer would a puppy that had just made a puddle.

  “We could do a darn sight better than that. Gotta speak to Dan.”

  Dan had his head close to Antonio, making Jena sure they plotted some dire deed.

  “Hey, Dan, since we know where the alien is, how about doing something about it?”

  “We are,” Dan said. “You are finding out all we can about it, and I’ve asked Antonio to do what he can in the way of the old-fashioned criminal profiling method, using what we know about both cases.”

  “You’re joking,” Jena said. “Just because the cases are conveniently human holiday size, doesn’t mean the aliens are our size. For God’s sake, they’ve probably been monitoring our TV for years and know everything about us and made suitcase-sized Trojan horses. They could be tiny or huge.”

  Antonio rubbed his chin. “Or have no shape at all.”

  “I’d like to see a gas or thought process manufacture something solid,” said Jena.

  “We can’t rule it out, especially looking at their spaceship, assuming that’s what it is,” Antonio said.

  “I think it is a safe bet that ball of fudge is them and I think we owe it to mankind to hurt it,” she said. There; she’d laid bare her emotion but was prepared to back it.

  Dan remained calm. “You know I respect your intellect and engineering skill, Jena, but to attempt to destroy the alien—”

  While Jena became flushed, Antonio spoke up. “We need to clarify our options.”

&
nbsp; Vlad had completed most of the station hibernation procedures by keeping the solar panels facing the sun, so there would be plenty of electricity. This ensured the onboard computers could act as a webserver for anyone from Earth to access e-mails, message boards, pages of news and information. He also set up some of the computers to act as a mobile phone receiver and transmitter since the Earth-based ones had bellied-up.

  “When do we get our re-entry window? Hello, are we having a goodbye party?”

  “No, Vlad,” said Abdul, “Jena wants us to have a pop at our luggage depositors. Maybe send the case back to sender, address unknown.”

  “Now then, Abdul, don’t be facetious,” Antonio said. “The suggestion possesses logic.”

  “Thank you, Antonio,” Jena said. “We show defensive spirit. Even if we can’t destroy them, maybe they will change tack and bother some other planet.”

  “I mean the logic inherent in giving us cover fire while we head back to Earth.”

  “I know we are under some stress,” Abdul said, “but my dear Antonio, if we made a homemade rocket with some spare tubing, explosives, and propulsion system, it would take at least three years to reach Saturn. Or have you figured out a slingshot trajectory that will shave a few months off it?”

  “And it would be like firing a popgun at an aircraft carrier,” said Vlad. “Unless we convert the nuclear propulsion unit from the ion-drive on that experimental remote probe we have in the science bay. Da, that’ll do it, but it would still take too long to reach them.”

  “How about using the emergency escape pod?” said Antonio, with the smug look he had when he considered he had a winning argument.

  Dan shook his head. “It’s for an emergency escape for five crew to reach Earth and nothing more. We can’t just take it, reconfigure its programming, convert it into a space torpedo, and send it to a possible alien target.”

  “If it isn’t their ship, it wouldn’t annoy them then, would it?” Jena said. “But we have the Marimar to fly around in so we use the pod as a weapon.”

  Vlad said, “It’s comforting to know the escape pod is there, but I’d much rather fly back in the Marimar. I vote we use the escape pod.”