The Dark Freeze

by Peter Gregory

  As the ship neared the snow-covered ice, four short, stubby protuberances emerged from the rear of the ship. Landing legs. Landing legs with large disc-like attachments at the end, presumably to spread the weight of the ship. They watched as the ship descended the last few feet slowly and smoothly before settling effortlessly on the snow.

  Everyone stared at the screen. And waited. Waited for a first glimpse of… Liz took a sharp intake of breath as the circular hatch at the bottom of the ship suddenly dropped down, catching them by surprise. ‘That wasn’t very subtle, was it?’ said Liz. Almost immediately, a geodesic-shaped object about two feet in diameter, a robot of some kind Liz presumed, emerged from the open hatch and hovered in mid-air between the ship and the ground. Once again, no flames were apparent. Suddenly, without any warning, the geodesic-shaped ‘hovercraft’ zoomed off into the distance, skimming the ground at great speed before disappearing from view. At the same time, a second geodesic-shaped ‘hovercraft’ emerged before it too sped off. The process was repeated twice more, with each geodesic-shaped ‘hovercraft’ heading off in a different direction.

  ‘Well,’ said Viv, ‘they certainly like their geodesic shapes.’

  ‘It looks like they’ve gone north, south, east and west,’ said Frank, ‘probably to gather information and samples.’

  ‘Do you think one will go down the ice cave and take samples of the bacterial life?’ asked Liz.

  ‘Quite probably,’ said Frank. ‘After all, that’s where one of their meteorites, er probes, ended up.’

  They strained their eyes to see if any aliens alighted from the scout ship, but none did. The absence of alien life prompted a debate. ‘Are the aliens machines?’ asked Rupert. ‘Advanced, intelligent machines, not carbon-based life.’

  ‘Why should machines need specific temperatures and light levels?’ said Frank. ‘Surely they can function over a wide range of conditions.’

  ‘And why do they need to kill off all life first? It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Viv. ‘I think the machines are just an advanced scouting party gathering information and samples to take back to the asteroid. Detailed, firsthand information. The aliens will come later.’

  ‘There’s not much we can do except wait and see what develops,’ said Frank. ‘Let’s have a brew.’

  As they sipped their drinks waiting for the machines to return, they reflected on the unique happenings of the past few years. The unprecedented meteor showers, the sudden appearance of the asteroid, its position in geostationary orbit and especially the emergence of the huge fan-like array. They wondered what kind of technology was required to produce such a gigantic, fan-like array. A fan-like array that had expanded to a staggering 800 miles, making the overall diameter of the asteroid a whopping 2,000 miles, the same as that of the moon.

  Viv did a quick calculation. ‘I estimate its area to be about 302,000 square miles,’ he said, ‘almost a third of a million square miles.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ gasped Rupert, ‘how do they manage to keep something so big and so thin so rigid and stable?’

  ‘And how do they store and transport something that huge around the galaxy?’ asked Liz.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Frank. ‘The nearest material we have on Earth is graphene, a monoatomic layer of interlocked hexagonal rings of carbon atoms, a bit like a single sheet of graphite but far stronger. Being only one atom thick, graphene is essentially two dimensional.’

  ‘I’ve heard of graphene,’ said Viv. ‘It was discovered by scientists at Manchester University, wasn’t it? Scientists who were awarded the Nobel Prize for its discovery.’

  ‘It was and they were,’ said Frank. Continuing, he said, ‘Graphene is very tough, extremely strong – stronger than steel – flexible and conducts electricity. Also, being just one atom thick, it’s extremely light. Their array could be made of something similar, but much more advanced.’

  ‘That’s very interesting,’ said Rupert. ‘I wasn’t aware of graphene.’

  ‘Neither was I,’ said Liz. ‘Thanks for that, Frank.’

  About six hours later, the machines returned to the scout ship and entered the hatch. A few minutes later, the ship lifted effortlessly into the dark sky on its return journey to its mother ship, the asteroid. Exactly the same scenario was re-enacted at the four other locations.

  There was nothing they could do except wait for the next scout ships to arrive, the scout ships with aliens.

  28

  First Glimpse

  Two days later the scout ships returned. All five of them. To the same locations. Liz and her colleagues gathered round the screen showing real time images of the one in the Arctic, images beamed directly from one of America’s orbiting spy satellites. Images that were crisp, clear and life-sized, even in the Arctic gloom. Were they about to get their first glimpse of the aliens? To see what they looked like. Or would there just be more machines to gather more information? They waited in eager anticipation, eyes fixed on the spacecraft in the centre of the screen.

  For a while, nothing happened. Then they saw it. The hatch began to open. Not quickly like before, but slowly, just a small crack in the hull of the spacecraft, a small crack through which vapour of some kind, probably water vapour, escaped into the cold Arctic air.

  ‘It’s probably some sort of pressure hatch to equalise the pressure,’ said Viv, his eyes fixed on the screen.

  ‘Probably is,’ said Frank, staring intently at the small opening that had appeared in the hull of the spacecraft.

  As the hatch opened wider, light from the interior of the spacecraft spilled into the Arctic darkness, illuminating the patch of snow immediately below the hatch with an eerie bluish-grey glow.

  ‘So they don’t live in the dark,’ said Liz.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it,’ said Rupert.

  ‘I didn’t think they did,’ said Frank. ‘As Liz said earlier, the darkness is just a by-product in their attempt to attain the right temperature.’

  ‘Look!’ exclaimed Rupert, ‘something’s happening.’

  With the hatch now fully open, steps began to descend to bridge the gap from the spacecraft to the ground, a gap of approximately ten feet. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the screen, itching to get their first glimpse of the aliens. They didn’t have to wait long. A foot appeared on the first step. Then another. Two feet and two legs clad in a dark grey spacesuit. As the alien descended the steps, a torso appeared followed by a spacesuited head. The movie makers and Liz had been right. The aliens were bipedal, upright humanoids with two arms and two legs.

  ‘Is it me or do they look smaller than us?’ asked Liz.

  ‘You’re right. They do look smaller. More the size of a chimpanzee,’ replied Rupert.

  ‘I think they’re bigger than that,’ said Frank. ‘Somewhere between the size of a human and a chimpanzee. About five foot tall I’d say.’

  As the alien alighted on the snow-covered ground, it removed an instrument from the belt on its spacesuit, took some readings and studied the results. Satisfied, it removed its helmet. Liz gasped. What met her eyes wasn’t the face of a humanoid, but a face that was a cross between a chimpanzee and a seal pup. The nose was small and flat, like a chimpanzee’s, as were the ears. Its mouth was also small, with thin lips, but the feature that really caught her attention was its eyes. They were large, round and dark, in complete contrast to the pallid colour of its face. Superficially, they reminded Liz of a seal pup, but only superficially. Whereas the eyes of a seal pup are endearing, charming and loveable, these were dark, sinister and foreboding. They made her shiver.

  Short, thick, white hair surrounded the pale-coloured, pallid face, hair that reminded her of a polar bear.

  Satisfied that everything seemed fine, the alien made a gesture with its hand. A few moments later, a second alien began descending the steps, an alien without a spacesuit.
An alien shorn of all attire except what could best be described as a pair of dark grey shorts and a ‘vest’, a lighter grey garment that covered its upper torso. And, like its companion, it also had a belt around its waist.

  Liz’s fist impression was that the alien looked like a miniature Yeti, a miniature version of the abominable snowman. Its arms and legs were covered in thick, greyish-white hair and, she presumed, so was the rest of its body. As a child, she’d been fascinated by tales of the abominable snowman, a mysterious creature reputedly seen in the Himalayas. There was no way her parents would take her to the Himalayas, but every winter she implored them to take her to the snow-capped mountains of Snowdonia where she’d hoped to catch sight of a Yeti, but never did. Yet here she was looking at something remarkably similar. ‘Could it be,’ she wondered, ‘that these very same aliens had visited Earth before, and been spotted? Spotted and dismissed by a sceptical public? Probably not, but then…’

  ‘Look, they’re moving,’ said Viv. And they were. The two aliens were ‘walking’ away from the spacecraft with a gait that was a hybrid of a human and an ape. Every so often, they stopped to test the air and drive a rod-like probe into the snow-covered ground, recording the readings on the instruments on their belts.

  ‘This should be interesting,’ said Rupert, pointing to a dim shape in the distance. The keen nose of a polar bear must have picked up an unfamiliar scent and come to investigate. Liz could just make it out in the distant gloom. It stopped when it saw the aliens, stood on its hind legs to get a better view, and sniffed the air. It hadn’t encountered scent like this before. The bear remained where it was, unsure what to do. However, curiosity got the better of it and it began to edge closer towards the aliens. Carefully, cautiously, inch by inch, like a predator stalking its prey. In a few moments time, the first ever encounter between alien life and Earth life would take place. What happened would reveal a lot about the aliens’ intentions. Would they act peacefully or would they…

  Suddenly, one of the aliens looked up, pointed to the polar bear and said something to its companion. Almost immediately, its companion withdrew a strange looking object from its belt, aimed it at the polar bear, and fired. What happened next both startled and horrified them. An intense white flash engulfed the polar bear and, as that disappeared, so did the polar bear. It had gone. Vanished. Vanished into thin air. Not a trace remained. Nothing to show that just a few seconds earlier, a polar bear had stood on that very same spot. It had vanished without a trace.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ gasped Rupert. ‘Did you see that.’

  ‘We did,’ came the reply. ‘We most certainly did.’

  ‘What the f… hell was it?’ said Liz, managing to restrain herself from using the eff expletive, an expletive she thought unladylike.

  All eyes turned towards Viv and Frank. ‘Either it’s been atomised and destroyed,’ said Frank, ‘or it’s been transported to another location.’

  Liz couldn’t help herself. ‘You mean transported like in Star Trek? You know, like ‘‘beam me up, Scotty’’.’

  ‘Yes, like that,’ replied Frank, smiling in spite of himself. ‘But if I had to choose, I’d say it was atomised.’

  ‘What do you mean, atomised?’ queried Rupert.

  ‘Well, I think what they used was some sort of quantum ray, a weapon designed to destroy the quantum states of atoms. And if you destroy an atom’s quantum states, you destroy the atom.’

  ‘But you can’t destroy an atom, can you?’ said Liz. ‘It contradicts the conservation of matter and energy law.’

  ‘Perhaps destroy was the wrong word,’ said Frank.

  ‘What I meant was if you destroy the quantum states of an atom, the quantum energy levels of the electrons collapse and the electrons fall into the nucleus.’

  ‘Where they’d combine with the protons to form neutrons, emitting lots of energy in the process,’ interjected Rupert, ‘explaining the intense flash of light which enveloped the bear.’

  ‘That’s right,’ continued Frank, ‘and since an atom is almost entirely empty space, the resulting pile of neutrons would be invisible to the naked eye. In a way, it’s as if the polar bear collapsed to a nano-sized neutron star.’

  The ensuing silence was broken by a concerned looking Viv. He seemed far away, as if deep in thought.

  ‘Did you know that when different civilisations have met on Earth, it’s usually been disastrous for one of them. The most technologically advanced civilisation invariably takes over, sometimes wiping out the other in the process. I hope the same thing doesn’t happen to us.’

  ‘But it might,’ thought Liz. ‘Perhaps Michio Kaku was right.’ From their actions thus far, it looked very likely that these aliens were indeed descended from predators.

  29

  Origins

  ‘Where the hell do you think they’re from?’ asked Rupert, disgusted and frightened by the aliens’ destruction of the polar bear. ‘Where the fucking hell are they from?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Viv, ‘but I certainly wouldn’t fancy them as neighbours.’

  ‘Let’s consider it objectively,’ said Frank, the group’s expert on stars and planetary systems in the Milky Way galaxy. ‘The nearest star is Proxima Centauri…’

  ‘I thought the nearest star was Alpha Centauri,’ interrupted Liz.

  ‘It’s the nearest sun-like star, a G-type star, yes, but the nearest star is Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf that’s only a fraction the size and luminosity of the sun,’ continued Frank. ‘Most of the stars in the solar neighbourhood, within say 15 light years of the sun, a total of less than a 100 stars, are red dwarfs. Only a few per cent are like our sun. If we double the size to 30 light years, 75 per cent of the stars are still red dwarfs and only 7 per cent are like our sun. Even within a 100 light years, most of the stars are red dwarfs.’

  ‘Do red dwarfs have planets?’ asked Rupert, ‘planets capable of supporting life.’

  ‘They do,’ replied Frank. ‘Of the 600 or so exoplanets discovered thus far, some orbit red dwarf stars. As to whether they could support life, well, it’s possible. Because red dwarf stars are much cooler and have a lower luminosity than G-type stars like our sun, the planets would have to be much nearer the star to receive sufficient light and heat for life to have evolved.’

  ‘In other words,’ said Rupert, ‘the habitable zone, the so-called Goldilocks zone, would be much closer to a red dwarf star than for a G-type star.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Frank, ‘but I don’t think red dwarf stars are the best place for life to have evolved, especially intelligent life. I think the most likely place for life to have evolved in our own galaxy is on planets orbiting stars near its centre. A spiral galaxy like ours is a thin disc, barely 1,000 light years across, except at the centre where it bulges into a spheroid and it’s here, in that galactic bulge, that the highest density of stars are found. Three per cubic light year compared to just four per ten cubic light years in the spiral arms of the galaxy. Not only that, but they are older stars – some are 10 billion years old – allowing plenty of time for life to have evolved. Intelligent life. You could say the bulge is the city of the galaxy and we’re in the suburbs, some 26,000 light years away.’

  ‘But if they’re from the galactic bulge, how can they have travelled such a vast distance?’ said Rupert. ‘Even light, the fastest thing in the Universe, would take 26,000 years to reach us.’

  ‘To have a chance of bridging interstellar distances, you need to accelerate a starship to near light speed,’ said Viv, ‘but even then it would take hundreds, even thousands, of years just to explore the solar neighbourhood, never mind the entire galaxy. Daedalus, a nuclear fusion starship proposed by scientists in the UK in the 1970s, travelling at 0.12c (12 per cent of the speed of light), would take 50 years to reach Barnard’s star, just six light years away. As for intergalactic space travel, well, that seems totally out of the que
stion.’

  Liz was about to say ‘remember Arthur C Clark,’ but decided against it. Instead, she said, ‘But we’re decades away, even from that technology.’ Doing a quick calculation in her head, she continued, ‘For instance, it’ll take Voyager 1, the fastest spacecraft ever built, 74,000 years just to reach the nearest star, Alpha, er, Proxima Centauri! Travelling at 38,000 miles per hour, it’ll take 74 millennia to travel just 4.3 light years.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Frank. ‘It certainly puts things in perspective doesn’t it. In terms of space travel, we haven’t even left our own backyard.’

  ‘One of the biggest problems,’ continued Frank, ‘is the need to carry vast amounts of fuel. Acceleration requires fuel, which has mass. The more the total mass, the more energy required to accelerate it… The more energy required, the more fuel you need… It’s a ‘‘Catch 22’’ situation, known as the ‘‘Rocket Equation’’ – faster acceleration requires exponentially more fuel.

  ‘Our current technology,’ continued Frank, ‘employs chemical fuel. It’s heavy and bulky and, in relative terms, it’s power output is extremely low. Nuclear fission, and especially nuclear fusion, are infinitely superior, but the best fuel of all is matter-antimatter. However, such technologies are hundreds, possibly thousands, of years into the future.’

  ‘But the aliens could have them, right?’ said Liz.

  ‘They could,’ replied Frank. ‘We already know they can travel much faster than 38,000 miles per hour.’

  ‘Another way,’ said Viv, ‘is not to carry all the fuel but scoop it up along the way.’

  ‘Ah, like the Bussard “Ramjet’’,’ said Rupert, ‘which scoops up interstellar hydrogen gas to feed the nuclear fusion engine as the starship travels through space.’

  ‘Or more likely photon sails,’ said Liz, ‘like the ones they’re using now to block out the sunlight.’