Five points of light glittered in the eternal night of
interplanetary space, bound to each other and to their
planetbound companions by the invisible tethers of laser
communications. The ships were decelerating at two
gravities, still barely visible to the telescopes around
their destination.
"How are your men doing?" Jacob asked the radio
amiably.
"Fine. Enjoying themselves, actually; this is as much
rest as they've seen in six months." The Marine Sergeant's
voice was a deep growl. "How long before we get to stretch
out a little?"
"We'll be at Saturn in thirty minutes," McBride
answered. "Make burn for orbit in fifteen. Banneker is
transmitting recalcs now."
"Roger that. See you in a bit. Over and out."
Leonard reached a hand up to turn off the main
thrusters, and noticed Jacob's brooding gaze. "Worried?"
"A little." He shrugged it away. "I wish we could see
the planet."
"Such is life," Leonard agreed. In order to minimize
their flight time, they had been accelerating all the way
from City of Light, turning their ships shortly after the
halfway point. Earlier interplanetary spacecraft had toyed
with dual-thrusting designs, which did not require the ship
to turn around for deceleration, but the need for reversible
cabins made these impractical. Nature and physics enforce
simplicity. Every spaceship now built was, in essence, no
more than a self-guided projectile.
"`One thing every spacecraft oughta have is a huge
window,'" Jacob quoted. Leonard heard and understood the
envy in the voice. NASA's Apollo astronauts, the first
humans to reach the Moon, had had the luxury of being
explorers, but in this century, space was just another place
to work. Quinn was old enough to remember the transition,
and clearly preferred the former state.
"Are you ready for a fight, Len?"
"Are we expecting one?"
The Old Man smiled reflexively. "Expect the
unexpected."
Leonard recognized the phrase, and remembered when he
and Kyle had been recruited by the United Nations for a Top
Secret research project. It was also when they had first
met Jacob-Martin Quinn in person, and understood why his
claim to the Quintex empire was more than hereditary.
Leonard pushed the memory aside, burying it with the other
secrets, concentrating on the orbit calculations and other
current events.
Whoever now hid on Saturn's dark side was very good.
They had to be; otherwise the radar stations around the
ringed planet would have picked them up already. They knew
where the radars were located, and they knew how to avoid
detection. There was no telling what they had sitting in
the rings, or what they had been doing for the three days
since they got there.
He could still hear Carolyn's voice, whispering in his
ear: Don't go if you're not going to come back. They both
knew it was a promise he might not be able to keep, but if
he didn't return, she couldn't really get angry at him
anyway. And if he did return...
A soft smile crept over Leonard's face, and Jacob
correctly guessed what the thought was. He knew the
security officer better than most people suspected.
In the next twenty minutes, everything went wrong.
The Tsao Chung Sh'in's port navigation system
subprocessor suffered a momentary breakdown, due to an
undetectable manufacturing fault on the circuit board. As
it had been engineered to, the unit automatically requested
confirmation by telemetry of the loneboat's approach vector.
The radio pulse had flashed through Saturn before either
Jemison or Warlow noticed it, breaking the chase group's
radio silence and setting off alarms on the three stolen
Ariane shuttles and another vessel of decidedly inhuman
design.
Three minutes later, six separate Saturnian tracking
stations recorded four objects moving out of a sensory blind
spot in the inner rings. The information, including live
images, was transmitted to the chase group immediately, and
five ship computers frantically recalculated thrust
patterns. On board Alfa 5499, five Marines checked their
gear once more as acceleration shoved them back into their
seats.
After another minute, the scheduled report from Japetus
came in, with full spectro- and radio-graphic analyses of
the objects which were now moving toward the outer solar
system. Three of them were definitely the stolen Ariane
transports, identifiable by their radar reflections and hull
albedo, but the fourth matched nothing on record.
Roughly egg-shaped, it measured sixty meters by forty
meters by twenty meters, more than twice the volume of a
Quintex loneboat. Six smaller pods curved up from the hull,
four near the larger end and two around the midsection. Two
fins extended outward from the nose of the ship, running
parallel to the long axis of the ship. The entire ship was
a flat, dark grey color, reflecting barely any light, and
there were no markings anywhere on the hull. McBride was
struck by its uncanny resemblance to a certain fictional
Monolith.
There was no longer any doubt. Quinn, McBride, and
Jemison silently prepared themselves for Situation One:
direct contact with an alien culture, as defined in the
Project Theory Monograph, which all three of them knew by
heart. They had written most of it.
The chase group began cycling their engines to nearly
three gravities, trying to keep up with the target vessels.
Pursuit was complicated by the latter's tactics: the four
ships were running their engines at inconstant, erratic
thrust, causing unpredictable acceleration and course
changes. Tabowitz ordered the chase ships to spread out, in
case the enemy tried to scatter and escape that way.
All of the thirty-three human pursuers were accustomed
to high gravities, but the shifting acceleration caused a
few to become slightly nauseous. Six minutes after
Tabowitz's last order, Jacob Quinn radioed Jemison and told
him to start a number series on the target vessels. Warlow
watched curiously as Jemison worked in silence, calling up a
program whose latest version had been written five years ago
in South America.
1 2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 ...
The first twenty prime numbers were broadcast over and
over from Tsao Chung Sh'in's main transmitter, as amplitude-
modulated pulses easily detectable by any standard radio
receiver. If not the fourth, unidentified vessel, at least
the three Ariane transports would receive it, and maybe
whoever or whatever was piloting the ships would understand
that their pursuers were intelligent, reasoning creatures
who wanted to talk.
Of course, many intelligent, reasoning creatures could
be expected not to want to talk after having one of their
convoys attacked and robbed. And other intelligent,
reasoning creatures might have no interest in conversation
under any circumstances. Jemison had examined all of these
risks while he was part of Project Theory, but his main
focus had been establishing communications of some sort--
any sort-- with a hypothetical alien culture. Now, it was
no longer hypothetical, and he could feel his own pulse
racing with excitement and fear.
This is it, he thought, breathing deeply. This is
first contact.
Correction: Gramble and Millen made first contact. He
shook off the thought as memories of the Project flooded
into his consciousness. Never assume anything.
Ethnocentricity gets people killed. Start with the basics--
numbers, symbols, navigational charts...
"What is going on?" Warlow demanded. She'd recognized
the sequence of primes after it repeated once. "Kyle!"
"We'll find out soon enough," came the muted reply.
"Give them some time."
"Time?" repeated Warlow incredulously. "These are
pirates, we're going to--"
Then Kyle turned to look at her, and she saw everything
in his pallid eyes.
"Devil be damned." The words fluttered through
unmoving, half-parted lips. "This is not happening." She
slammed her palms down on the armrest keypads and called up
the Japetus report again. "This is not jicking happening.
My God, my God..."
There was no longer any need to keep anything hidden.
"Shao Chung!" The computer beeped, recognizing even Kyle's
accented Chinese. "Pipe all monitoring of target vessels to
main screen, configuration Mike Three. Stop-stop."
"You're not kidding." Nina had correctly deduced what
was going on. It all seemed so obvious now, she didn't
bother to ask Kyle if she was right. "Jesus, Kyle, are you
actually going to try to talk to them? They've killed five
men!"
"We don't know anything, and if it were us out there,
we'd want the benefit of a doubt."
She half-glared, half-gaped at him. "I'm sparking the
lasers. They misfire one thruster, and Ariane collects from
Lloyds again."
Kyle nodded slowly, watching his console. "Caution is
always recommended."
"Jesus," repeated Nina, her fingers colliding audibly
with the keypads.
"He's doing what?" Galza nearly shrieked into the
radio.
"Trying to establish communications. Look, Tony--"
"I take it back, Jac; I'm glad the Marines are here.
In fact, I vote that we get out of the way and let them fry
all four targets immediately."
"Shut up and listen. None of us has ever seen anything
like that fourth ship before. It's sure as hell not from
Earth." The hull albedo indicated compounds that humans
hadn't developed yet, or some sort of incredibly radar-
absorbent coating. "We are dealing with extraterrestrial
life forms here, aliens, non-human intelligences; do you
understand me?"
"Why the hell didn't you bring this up before?" Now,
Galza was definitely shrieking. Tabowitz tried to focus on
possible strategies for chasing down the targets. The--
alien?-- pilots were as good as any he'd seen in the UNSF.
"I didn't want to cause a panic."
"And you want me to just back off and let you handle
it? Those were my men they killed, in case you've
forgotten!"
"See? You're panicking." Quinn's eyes glittered like
diamonds. "Now are you going to do this voluntarily, or do I
have to order you?"
Galza coughed out a laugh. "`Order'? Who the hell do
you think you are?" His face tightened. "Both of our names
are on that JAG release form. I am not letting those
bastards get away with this, I don't care who or what--"
"All right, we do it the hard way." Numbers and letters
suddenly began appearing on the Bartholomew Enninger's
communications screen. A paging tone sounded in each of the
five ships' cabins. "This is Jacob-Martin Quinn. By the
authority granted to me by the Planet Earth in United
Nations Directive Two Five Zero One Stroke One One Zero
Stroke Two Zero Five Two, I hereby request and require the
Bartholomew Enninger to immediately surrender command to the
Abigail Maitland..."
"What the hell is this?" barked Galza when he realized
what was happening.
"...And assist in the interception and apprehension,"
Quinn continued, "of the three Ariane shuttles identified at--"
he rattled off coordinates-- "and the single unidentified
vessel at three-five-zero mark zero-zero-six. You are now
receiving encryption keys to verify this order and to slave
your ship to the Maitland. Please signal that you have
understood and will cooperate with this directive."
For a moment, Anthony Galza was the only person not
speaking. All the ships in the chase group had received the
transmission. "You little weasel," he finally directed at
Quinn. The UN Directive was authentic and very specific.
Any ship not agreeing to cooperate with the lead vessel
could be impounded, and its owner fined or imprisoned; in
more extreme cases, the lead vessel was authorized to
disable or destroy unaligned spacecraft.
Checkmate. The left half of Jacob's face twitched
almost unnoticeably. "Bartholomew Enninger, do you copy my
last transmission?"
"We don't want to fight him," Tabowitz stated matter-of-
factly.
Reluctantly, Galza had to agree. "Wilco, Jac. It's on
your head." Goddamned UN.
"Project Theory." Nina Warlow shook her head the few
millimeters she could under two gravities. She had heard
rumors about the secret UN council on extraterrestrial
contact, but never taken them seriously until now. "You guys
had a lot of jicking nerve, pulling this stunt."
"We were hoping we wouldn't have to," replied Jemison.
The decision to classify the Project as Top Secret was a
difficult one, he had been told at the first briefing. But
the UN would never have been able to justify the
expenditures, and asking the scientific community at large
to agree on something as theoretical as first contact was
even more unlikely. The UNSF wanted to get it done quickly
and efficiently, to have official procedures ready if and
when the aliens showed up.
"Yeah," Warlow murmured. Kyle's reverie had lasted
less than a second, and he turned his head to see Nina's
eyes widen slightly. "Whoa, whoa! They're moving."
"Targets are changing delta-vee!" came the shout from
the cockpit. Alfa 5499 spun around, engines burning, trying
to maintain its distance.
Marines were mumbling all around the Sergeant. "What
the hell was that all about?"
"Sounds like Tories gettin' cold feet--"
"Cut the chatter," snapped the commanding officer. He
knew exactly what the Abigail Maitland had just ordered
Bartholomew Enninger to do, and he knew if he was the
captain, he would be mad as hell. Galza was not going to
offer his left hand to Quinn the next time they met.
Jacob Quinn had other things to fear. He moaned as the
new acceleration pressed down on his chest, flattening his
arteries. The targets had turned ninety degrees from the
plane of the ecliptic, only shutting down thrusters after
they had completed rotation, and were now moving at a
constant velocity out of the Solar System.
"That was weird." Leonard scanned his eyes over the
radar scope. "Why didn't they shut off their engines first?
They're moving upward now."
"Aliens," Jacob said. "Who knows what they're
thinking?"
Tabowitz could think of a dozen different reasons for
the way the turn had been executed. Perhaps the aliens were
used to constant thrust in a combat situation. That is a
hostile posture; what can we infer from that? Maybe they
had been doing something else, and had forgotten. What
would they be doing that is more important than proper
navigation? Or maybe they wanted to be moving out of the
plane of the Solar System. Why would they want to do that?
We are in open space already, several hundred kilometers
from the nearest planetoid...
One of the ships began glowing again. "We have delta-
vee on Target One." The closest Ariane shuttle had turned
completely around, and was now applying reverse thrust to
slow itself down. As if in a gesture of friendliness.
But the other three are not stopping. What is going
on?
"There."
1 2 3 5 7 11 13 ...
The sounds came in a series of pure tones. Warlow, who
had played the violin for fifteen years, quickly identified
it as an eight hundred eighty hertz signal. Her eyes
automatically went to Jemison, wondering what he would
decide to do.
"Why aren't the other three slowing?" Nina wondered,
loudly.
"Gesture of trust. We've got five ships; they send
one. Shao Chung, plot an intercept course for Target One.
Stop-stop."
"Are you sure about that?"
Tsao's acceleration changed again, and Jemison had to
wait for his inertia to adjust before answering. "There are
five loneboat fusion drives aimed at that ship. I doubt
they came this far to let us kill them."
Warlow turned that over in her mind while studying the
main screen. They had been receiving telemetry from one of
the many robot telescopes orbiting Saturn, and now each ship
was close enough to use its own cameras to track the target
vessels. Something yellow began blinking on the side of
Target One.
"What the hell..." She instinctively leaned forward to
increase the magnification. "The airlock."
Leonard McBride's heart was beating rapidly. The
Maitland was almost directly above Target One now, and had a
perfect view of the lock beginning to cycle.
"Abby, move us four meters to starboard. Stop-stop."
The loneboat glided over, and Quinn adjusted the
cameras. Their new angle gave them a better view of whoever
or whatever might emerged from the airlock. He looked over
to see Leonard targeting the main lasers.
"It's open."
A seemingly interminable silence followed, with the
airlock door open to space. Jacob looked out the viewport
at Tsao Chung Sh'in, which was closing to less than one
hundred meters from the Ariane shuttle, its neon colors
standing out against the velvety blackness. Maitland,
shrouded in green flame, was still nearly a kilometer away.
Leonard wondered what Kyle Jemison was thinking. For
all his worrying about his family, at this moment he had
probably forgotten about them, focused on the historical
event before them. Anyone would have forgiven him this,
especially Delia; she had known when she married him that he
was a man of strong convictions and concrete dreams. After
the heat of the moment had passed, he would always know for
whom he explored and fought.
"Movement!"
The waiting ended as a white, gloved, five-fingered
hand emerged and curled itself around an exterior handhold.
Ten pairs of eyes watched, mesmerized, as a figure in a
standard-issue Ariane Odyssey pressure suit pulled itself
out, swinging through the open airlock in a slow arc,
locking magnetic boots onto the hull, and finally standing
upright, all in the dreamy slowness which zero-gravity
imparts to human motions.
The suited figure began waving its left arm, hand wide
open, fingers spread. First it faced Tsao, apparently
conveying non-belligerence. Then it turned toward Abigail
Maitland, and sunlight momentarily streaked through the
helmet's faceplate and illuminated the features of the man
inside.
All five ships had trained their telescopes on Target
One and increased the magnification, and every vessel was
looking for something different. Tony Galza had been
inspecting the suit, to see if it was authentic Ariane.
Price had been looking for any equipment which might be used
as a weapon if anybody got too close. Jemison was trying to
decide whether the waving of the arm could be interpreted as
other than a friendly gesture.
Jacob Quinn had focused Maitland's primary camera on
the upper torso of the suited figure, and the brief glimpse
he got of the face froze his mind.
"BACK OFF!" He screamed into the radio after a
breathless half-second. "Kyle, get the hell out of there!
Everybody back off! Abby, full burn, get us away from
Target One!"
"What-- stop-stop! What the hell is going on?" Leonard
asked as a wave of artificial gravity pushed him back into
his chair.
Jacob had difficulty answering. "That's Gramble."
"Come again?"
"The man standing on the hull has been dead for two
weeks."
"Jesus jicking Christ!" Tony Galza cursed. His head
had been slammed into the seat by the sudden acceleration.
Being slaved to the Maitland gave him no warning of sudden
maneuvers. "What the jick is he doing now?"
Tabowitz suddenly realized the situation, and was
relieved to see that they were thrusting at well over three
gravities.
"You heard him. We're getting the hell out of here."
Warlow pulled the safety harness around herself. "Shao
Chung! Da y'o xran, q'ai!"
Jemison frowned, speechless, as Nina continued giving
orders in Mandarin. He couldn't understand what had caused
the Old Man to panic; Quinn had always been very level-
headed. But there must have been a reason.
A sigh escaped his lips as he watched Target One
dwindling on the screen. The suited figure lifted its head
to look at the departing spacecraft, and Jemison looked
straight into the man's eyes for a split second. The
strangely hollow gaze caused Kyle to shudder.
"Can't be," he breathed as he recognized the face from
the autopsy pictures.
The explosion prevented Warlow from asking him about
it.
Fusion power is the cheapest, cleanest, most efficient
source of energy known to Twenty-First Century Man. Simple
hydrogen atoms, stored in the form of either deuterium or
dihydrogen monoxide-- more commonly known as water-- are
fused together into helium, with the reaction releasing high-
speed neutrons and massive amounts of energy. This is the
mechanism which has caused the Sun to burn for countless
billions of years, and is the same fire which forms the
heart of every interplanetary space vehicle.
Even after the theory had been perfected in the
twentieth century, it took several decades of engineering to
make a compact fusion power plant feasible. Mikhail
Kaminsky spent half his life and several fortunes developing
an efficient laser ignition process. A reliable magnetic
bottle which could contain and channel the violent nuclear
reactions had become reality only forty years ago. These
and countless other advances in fuel storage, energy
conversion, and miniaturization had combined to make fusion
a household word in every corner of the populated Solar
System. Interplanetary voyages now took days instead of
years, and every loneboat could provide its own electricity
and air for several years, if necessary.
Of course, every new technology brings with it new
dangers, even as it eliminates old dangers and
inconveniences. The smallest loneboat fusion drive is
potentially a bomb capable of destroying a good-sized office
building, and is otherwise still the spacecraft's second
most dangerous weapon, the first being the ship itself.
The Ariane transport which had been designated Target
One by the chase group had deactivated its fusion bottle
without first closing down the engine. Free of its magnetic
imprisonment, the thermonuclear blaze was free to expand in
every direction. And it did.
It was like looking directly into the Sun, at least for
the Saturnian telescopes. The four loneboats and one
patroller were protected by their self-polarizing viewports,
which darkened when exposed to bright light, saving the
occupants from blindness. But the chase group very
definitely felt the blast slam into their vessels, tossing
them away with the force of an angry god.
Alfa 5499's passengers were the best equipped to handle
violent maneuvers. Ironically, it was the farthest ship
from the explosion, and all they had to deal with was an
acceleration which threw them back into their seats and sent
their vessel sailing into the inner solar system again. The
pilot recovered from their spin in less than ten seconds.
Benjamin Banneker had been holding position five
hundred meters from Alfa 5499, and had just begun turning,
as ordered by Quinn, when Target One incinerated itself.
Golino and Price suffered a few bruises, and their ship was
a hundred kilometers away before they managed to slow
themselves down. Bartholomew Enninger had been thrown only
eighty kilometers, but Galza and Tabowitz were just as
shaken.
Tsao Chung Sh'in was barely two hundred meters away
when it happened. Without an atmosphere to carry a shock
wave, Jemison and Warlow had no warning before the expanding
fireball burned into their vessel. They were both thrown
sideways and back, and Warlow blacked out as her head
smashed into the cabin wall. Jemison managed to find a
handhold, and gripped it madly as the safety harness
tightened around his body.
Fortunately, the fusion power plant performed as well
as Rolls-Royce had advertised. When the first layer of
circuits lining the hull was interrupted, the fuel injectors
were immediately choked, and a controlled shutdown of the
drive proceeded. The explosion ripped into the drive
chamber before all of the reaction mass could be flushed,
but the second blast that resulted was several magnitudes
less than it would have been otherwise.
It also saved Jemison's life, as he would later
realize. Thunder cracked behind his head, and he turned
instinctively to see flames bursting through the cabin door.
The starboard plasma vent had ruptured, blowing away half
the ship and setting the other half ablaze. Alarms blared,
the cabin lighting changed from soft pink to blood red, and
a complicated series of mechanical and chemical sealing
agents tried to simultaneously douse the fires and keep the
ship's precious atmosphere from leaking into space.
The safety systems were partially successful. A dozen
smaller explosions rocked the interior of Tsao Chung Sh'in,
and Kyle felt the ship buckling around him. Suddenly, the
cabin grew smaller, and he felt his face crushed up against
the interior of the viewport. A sharp discomfort traveled
up his spine as colored bits of hull rushed past, and the
hiss of escaping air deafened him. He could see stars
swirling around him as the loneboat hurtled wildly into deep
space.
I can't die, he thought, strangely unworried. Len owes
me money.
After an endless span of seconds, the emergency seals
took hold, and oxygen poured into his lungs again. It also
fueled several electrical flashes in the half-crushed cabin,
now all that was left of the loneboat. Jemison was unable
to move his head, pinned by gravity and pain, as the fire
consumed both halves of his co-pilot's corpse. It was five
minutes before the few automatic extinguishers still
functioning managed to put it out. His eyes were watering
then.
Jacob Quinn rubbed his head and felt blood. He wiped
his hand on his shirt, without looking, and turned to
McBride. "Damage?"
"We lost one engine. The drive's still intact, but
we'll have to repair the thrust ports." Leonard's left arm
was stained crimson, and it hung limply over his armrest.
"What about the others?"
Leonard flipped on the radio, and a dozen voices filled
the room. Jacob listened intently for a while, then added
his voice to the fracas. Enninger and Banneker had suffered
minor damage. The Marine patroller was fine. Tsao was not
responding.
Jacob's head was throbbing. He wondered how much of it
was from that bump he had taken. They had contacted an
alien intelligence-- either that, or he had been
hallucinating. But cameras don't hallucinate, and they had
plenty of photographic evidence now.
Is this the kind of universe we live in? We try to
establish peaceful communications, and they explode an H-
bomb in our faces? His headache got worse.
More radio signals flooded in. Several Saturn stations
reported the incident as an atomic detonation. UNSF vessels
were already proceeding to the scene, but it would take the
closest one four hours to get there. Somebody finally found
what was left of the Tsao and beamed the picture and
coordinates to the chase group. Alfa 5499 moved to
intercept as the Marine medics suited up.
Suddenly, Jacob asked, "Where are the other three?"
It took Leonard fifteen seconds to answer. "I can't
find them."
"What do you mean, you can't find them? How fast could
they have moved?"
"I'm calling Saturn."
The initial scans lasted half a hour, while Alfa 5499
recovered a comatose Kyle-Bartelt Jemison and the barely
recognizable body of Nina-Wollheim Warlow. By the time the
search was called off, nearly two days later, every single
telescope owned by Ariane and Quintex had been commandeered,
to no avail. The aliens were gone.
Copyright © 1996 Curtis C. Chen. All Rights Reserved.