Alien Storm

by Don Viecelli

  “How much time do we have?” Major Helms asked beginning to sound a little anxious.

  “I’m not sure, Major,” Alex said. “Maybe just a few minutes. I need to check with flight control and check my instruments. You need to alert the crew and prepare for electric power interference and radio blackouts. Anything can happen with this type of storm.”

  “Okay, Alex. We’re working on it. Keep us informed,” Major Helms said and turned to speak to Major Parker who just finished talking with the CATO officer in mission control. He looked worried.

  “Kim, we need to get Commander Bonario inside immediately. Where is he now?” Major Helms asked.

  “He’s hovering near the MSS robotic arm,” Major Parker explained. “We’re running diagnostic tests and he’s observing. You can see him on the remote camera monitor. I’m calling him now. What do you want me to tell him?”

  “He needs to return to the airlock immediately. There’s an extreme solar flare alert and radiation levels will be too high for safety. Let me know how long it will take to get him inside, Kim. I’m going to check his biomedical readings.” With that comment, Major Helms pushed herself towards the instrument panel at the far end of the command module and added one more request. “Patch me through to Commander Bonario on the radio channel when you get through to him.”

  Outside, Commander Bonario was patiently watching the Mobile Base System move along its tracks when all of a sudden it stopped and Major Parker’s voice came over the speakers in his helmet. “Commander Bonario, you need to return to the airlock immediately. There’s a solar flare alert and hazardous radiation levels are expected to hit us very soon. Do you hear this message, Commander?” Major Parker asked.

  “Yes, I hear you loud and clear, Major,” Commander Bonario replied. He was familiar with the risks involved in being caught out in a sudden magnetic storm. “How much time do I have before the storm hits us?” he asked.

  “Not much time, Colonel,” Major Helms chimed in on the radio channel. “Alex is checking his instruments. He says it’s a big solar flare with potential S5 Extreme radiation levels. You need to get inside immediately.”

  “Okay, Major. I’m coming in. It will take me about 10 minutes to cover the distance to the airlock. I’m turning the MMU around now.”

  As Commander Bonario began to rotate around towards the Joint Airlock Module, he noticed the first signs of the solar storm approaching. The space station was beginning to surface-charge. The ends of the port side solar panels began to glow with an eerie blue-green color from the first energized proton beams from the flare. It quickly spread over the whole space station. Alarms started to sound off in his suit. He knew Major Helms was going to have a fit when her biomedical panel started to ring. He looked down at the display and control module on his chest and looked at the radiation level indicator. It was slowly moving to the red zone. He didn’t have much time before it would be too high for his suit to protect him from the X-rays. He started to consider his options when Major Helm’s voice filled his helmet.

  “Commander, you need to get inside as quickly as you can. The radiation levels are climbing fast. Do you read me?” Major Helms sounded worried. The radio channel started to crackle from electrical noise interference.

  She should be worried, thought Commander Bonario. “I hear you, Major, but the radio channel is breaking up. I’m aware of the radiation levels. I’m returning to the airlock as quickly as I can.” Suddenly the MMU stopped moving. He pressed on the translational hand controls, but no nitrogen-propellant was coming out. This is not a good time to have problems with the MMU, he thought. He tried the second propellant system. Each MMU had a dual parallel system for redundancy purposes, but it would not work either. Something was wrong with the controls. Maybe the magnetic storm was interfering with the computer chips. “This is no time for panic”, Commander Bonario said to himself. He could still use his manually operated jetpack to fly back to the airlock. It would just take a few moments to locate it under his MMU and point the nozzle in the right direction.

  Commander Bonario’s radiation alarm in his helmet sounded every five seconds and it was rising in intensity. He knew things were getting pretty bad outside. He needed at least ten minutes to reach the airlock on the other side of the command module. He didn’t know if he had that much time before the X-ray radiation levels reached critical limits. Exposure to massive amounts of X-rays would begin to burn up his insides in a matter of minutes and there wasn’t much anyone could do about it after the damage was done. It would be a painful death. He decided not to think about it now and concentrated on the jetpack.

  Inside, the crew was moving quickly to prepare for any damage. The space station was designed to protect the crew from extreme radiation storms, but the electrical and power systems usually took a hit and some systems had to be turned off. One major concern was the solar panels and how they would react to a massive magnetic storm.

  Major Parker was watching the commander on the remote camera monitor when it started to flicker. “Ah-oh,” he said to himself. Major Helms heard him over her headset. “What’s the matter, Kim?” she asked.

  “The commander has stopped moving. It looks like he is having trouble with his maneuvering unit. He was trying to get out his jetpack when the camera monitor started to fade. I can barely make him out. We’re losing the camera signal,” he said.

  “Try to call him on the radio,” Major Helms said. “Find out if he needs any help.”

  “I’m trying, Jean,” Major Parker replied. “The radio is full of static. We’re losing communications from the storm. I lost radio contact with ground control two minutes ago. We’re in radio blackout conditions until the storm clears.”

  Commander Bonario heard nothing but static on his com-link. He turned down the volume. Things were looking a little dim and not because it was pitch black outside. All of a sudden a strange light appeared all around him. It was bluish in color and it caused him to squint as his eyes tried to adjust. He instinctively reached up and pulled down his helmet visor. It reduced the glare and he turned around to see where the light was coming from.

  At first he thought one of the crewmembers turned on an outdoor floodlight, but this light was different. It seemed to be a perfect beam and it was only shining on him. As he followed the beam to its source, he could make out a shape in the distance below the solar panels, but he could not be sure how far away it was. At first, it didn’t make sense. Then as his eyes adjusted to the light, his mind grasped the only explanation. It was a spacecraft. He did not recognize the design. It looked alien. Judging from its location under the solar panels, it was the size of two space shuttles. There were no sharp angles on top of the craft and there were no wings. It was curved on top from front to back. The front of the craft was narrower than the back. The sides were square and the bottom was flat. He couldn’t make out the back of the craft. The metal was light silver in color and some sort of insignia was visible on the top. There were no lights on the craft, but he could make out what appeared to be windows on the front side of the craft and the beam of light was coming from just below the windows. A reddish glow appeared inside the windows and he could just make out what appeared to be two figures looking at him in the distance.

  Commander Bonario noticed the craft did not seem to be affected by the storm. There were no energized particles of light bouncing off the craft. He suddenly realized there were no static sounds coming from his radio unit and the radiation alarm was silent. It was perfectly quiet. He looked down at his display and control panel. All indicators were normal. The radiation indicator showed normal readings. He began to realize what the beam was doing. It was protecting him from the radiation storm. On an intuition, he switched on the MMU and touched the hand controls. The MMU began to move. He quickly pointed himself towards the airlock and began to close the distance. The beam stayed on him as he propelled the MMU to the airlock. What seemed like hours were only minutes when he reached the hatch on the airlock and
punched the controls to open the door.

  He turned around and looked at the spacecraft. It had moved closer to the space station. He could clearly make out figures standing near the windows inside the craft. Somehow, he began to think more clearly and realized he should take a picture or two with the MMU digital camera. He raised his arm and saluted the figures in the craft. One of them waved back. It seemed surreal. The space station all around them was glowing from the magnetic particles. All of a sudden one of the solar panels above the spacecraft lit up like a Christmas tree and sent a large bolt of electrical current to an electric power generating motor attached to the P6 solar array truss structure. The motor overloaded and exploded violently sending metal fragments in all directions. The spacecraft was directly underneath the exploding motor and took several hits in the top and back sections. The beam of light disappeared and the two figures in the windows vanished.

  The spacecraft immediately turned around and began to descend towards Earth. Commander Bonario could not believe what was happening. He saw a thin vapor trail escaping from the craft as it quickly disappeared from sight. The spacecraft was in trouble, but he had no idea how bad. He kept shooting pictures with his camera until he could no longer see the craft. He glanced down towards the North Pole and saw greenish-blue dancing lights from a spectacular aurora borealis spreading out over the polar region all the way down below Canada. It was a beautiful sight resulting from a powerful magnetic storm. Then he opened the hatch on the airlock and carefully pulled himself inside. He silently thanked whoever was in that space craft and hoped they would be okay. No one is going to believe this, he thought to himself. Then he remembered the camera and the video-message he was planning to send to his family. “This is going to be some v-mail,” he said out loud to himself as he closed the hatch door.

  Chapter 3

  Alien Spacecraft:

  The aliens were in serious trouble. Their spacecraft suffered extensive damage from the exploding metal fragments. This was totally unexpected, both to the alien crew and to the spacecraft’s artificial intelligence system. Approaching the human space station was a calculated risk, one that did not anticipate possible space station design hazards caused by the magnetic storm. The alien crew simply saw a human being ill equipped to survive the storm outside the space station and decided to help. The captain did not second-guess their decision. It was done and now they had to try and survive the consequences.

  There were four aliens in the spacecraft, all ranged from four to five feet in height with light gray skin, slender hands and legs with four digit fingers and toes, large heads with big eyes, small noses, tiny ears, mouths without lips, narrow chins and not a single hair on their small bodies. Two of the aliens were males and the other two females. The oldest male was the captain of the ship. The youngest female was the chief navigator. The other male was the chief engineer and the remaining female was the chief scientist and medical officer. All wore similar clothing that flowed loosely around their bodies with identifying insignia visible on their chests. Their ages in Earth years ranged from a young 80 years old to the captain who was 159 years old. All of this was relative, for it depended on how many deep space travels each made and at what speed. These aliens were an experienced unit and had traveled together many times in the past on various missions. They were on the return leg of their trip when they saw the human space station. It was not there on their last trip to Earth, so it was of great interest to them and the captain decided to investigate.

  The aliens were on an investigative assignment in this part of the galaxy. Their race had visited this solar system many times in the past. The last visit had been twenty Earth years ago. The alien captain had actually been to Earth two times before with different crewmembers each time. Earth was of special interest due to the presence of intelligent beings on the planet. Their progress and development was closely studied and monitored, as were many other races in the known galaxy. And, of course, they were not the only alien race to visit the planet from time-to-time. But this assignment was not just to visit Earth. The aliens were on a special mission to study the sun.

  The sun in this solar system was still young by universe time. It was only 4.5 billion Earth years old, about half of its expected life cycle. It averaged 93 million miles from this planet. The sun’s outer layers rotated on its axis from 25 days in the center to 35 days at the poles. It was 25,000 light-years away from the center of the galaxy. The sun was made up of 74 percent hydrogen, 25 percent helium and 1 percent other elements. By now, about half of its supply of hydrogen had been used up. As the sun converted most of the hydrogen into helium in a nuclear fusion reaction, energy was released in the form of gamma rays. By the time the rays reached the surface, it was turned mostly into visible light. The sun’s brightness as compared to other suns in the universe was just about average. It wasn’t the sun’s size or brightness that interested these aliens. It was this period in its lifecycle and predicting what it would do next, for it would have a profound effect on this planet and its inhabitants.

  The reasons for this interest were personal. The aliens were from the race called Tular. Their planet was twice as large as the Earth and a lot further from their sun, which was sixty percent larger than Earth’s sun and was about six billion years old. The biggest difference between the two stars was the alien’s sun had expanded to twice its normal size and had consumed their home planet in heat and radiation until nothing remained but the molten surface colored by the glow of the red giant. Their planet became too hot to support life thousands of years ago and their race gradually expanded outwards to live on the remaining planets.

  Earth’s sun was young compared to the Tular’s sun and it was a lot more dynamic. The Tular’s have been studying this sun for several centuries. Over that time, they have observed its affects on the planet. The sun was more luminous than in the recent past and was gradually heating up the atmosphere of this planet. It was also more active. Sunspot activity had increased dramatically over the last 100 years and the captain and his crew were measuring the surface temperature changes since their last visit twenty years ago. On this trip they noticed some significant changes in the sun, made a record of their findings and were on their way back to see what effects it was having on Earth when they noticed the space station in orbit around the planet.

  The humans had made great progress since the last time the captain had visited Earth. There were many satellites in orbit around the planet and even some around the sun. On their journey the aliens had passed a few satellites racing out towards the center of the galaxy and had stopped to view and record the various stages of technology. The aliens did not interfere with any of the objects and let them continue on their way. It did serve to heighten their interest in the progress of human development, though. It also put them more on alert to counter any surveillance attempts to identify their spacecraft.

  This particular journey had lasted for several weeks and the aliens were planning to return to their home base when they encountered the space station complex in orbit around the planet. Their first priority was to avoid detection and make a record of all the data they could before taking some time to explore the surface of the planet. This changed quickly when they realized one astronaut was still outside on their first pass by the space station. This was not a safe place to be after they examined the human’s spacesuit and realized it would not protect him from what they knew was coming.

  The alien captain turned to his companions and they calmly discussed the situation and what they should do. There were no audible sounds in the spacecraft since the aliens communicated by telepathy. They were perfectly capable of speech, but telepathy was much quicker for communications between multiple beings and it allowed them to reach a fast consensus. The captain asked for a final vote. Are we all in agreement? The three crewmembers responded in unison, Yes.

  The crew had made a decision to help this being whom they were monitoring by his communication signals. The chief scientist and
medical officer realized how perilous the situation was when the first energized particles reached the space station followed by gamma rays from the sun. They had the technology to protect this human astronaut, but it would involve some close maneuvering near the space station and the possibility of detection by their monitoring systems. They all understood the risks and agreed they had no choice if they wished to help this being.

  As the magnetic storm increased in intensity, the aliens waited for the storm to degrade the human’s radio communications and monitoring systems before approaching the space station and moving under its solar panel arrays. They had to be within 100 meters to operate the magnetized beam that would disperse the harmful X-rays by producing an artificial magnetic field within the beam of light. It worked very similarly to the Earth’s magnetic field found emanating from the Polar Regions. The aliens knew that the rescue attempt would be seen by the human astronaut, but that could not be avoided. They felt it would be of minimum danger to themselves or their craft and they would be able to depart in a matter of minutes to complete the rest of their mission.

  Inside the spacecraft, all seemed perfectly normal. The captain and chief scientist stood by the front windows of the spacecraft. The chief navigator monitored the controls and was flying the craft. The chief engineer was monitoring the computer intelligence systems. A dark reddish glow from the lighting system filled the control room and made it easier for them to see what was happening outside through the forward windows. Everything seemed to be working as planned until the astronaut reached what looked like his entry hatch compartment. Then the unexpected happened which caused great alarm among the aliens.

  The chief engineer monitoring the intelligence systems received an alarm of an intense buildup of electrical energy in the space station solar panels due to the magnetic storm. There was no way to protect them from what happened next. The energy overloaded one of the generator motors on the space station and it exploded sending fragments of metal in all directions. Several of the pieces of metal tore through the top and back sections of their spacecraft leaving open, ragged holes in the surface that could not be automatically sealed by their protective mechanisms. Normally, small meteorites were their greatest threat and they could be avoided, or if hit, the small holes could be automatically sealed by various means. This damage was much more serious and required emergency action.