As the ship crossed the orbit of Saturn, Hal was able to provide some more details. It was clearly bigger than Phoenix and therefore, he assumed, had a larger crew. We could expect communication from the on-board computer, but Hal reminded me that it would be a week or two before the crew would be awakened from what must have been a lengthy hibernation. I was put in mind of the waking process, those mercurial packets of soothing drinks and the endless plates of food.
As Hal probed the incoming object – we both called it ‘the ship’ almost from the beginning – I went into a higher gear. My days became packed with a burgeoning list of experiments. I slept less, worked out and read more, tending towards technical matters. Parts of my mind were preparing not just to leave, not just to deal with whatever was coming from outer space, but to resume the work I had been doing and to return earth to a sensible path. I couldn’t know how I’d be received, but certainly I’d have a lot of explaining to do. But it could be done. All of it. New confidence flooded through me like Hal’s healing radiation. I began to feel good again, just tingling with excitement. My blues lifted like a curtain, even if uncertainties remained.
Who the hell was coming? Hal reminded me that the ship could have been sent from any point in time – potentially far into a future which extended forward from the time of my own departure. Could this be a time-travelling survey ship? Could it be the first in a stream of vessels sent out by the Holdrian scientists? What if there had been some kind of coup, or the time-travel method had fallen into the wrong hands? The wait was killing me.
The ship headed inexorably toward the sun. Hal hastily put together an intercept mission profile and awaited instructions. I hesitated. We’d need a lot of fuel to come ‘alongside’ the approaching ship; it was better, we reasoned, to wait until it had slowed sufficiently for us to join it on its approach. Hal sent numerous requests for identification and messages of welcome, but so far had received only a stony silence.
We talked about almost nothing else. “What would you be doing, Hal, if you were arriving in a system like this? Would you be making contact in advance?”
Without more data, the possibilities were virtually infinite. The ship could be derelict, he warned. There could have been a power failure. The hull could have been depressurized following a micro-meteoroid collision. Every Sci-Fi plot ran through my head, from Event Horizon through Sunshine, from Rendezvous with Rama to Icehenge. Even at such a speed, it would be forty hours before the craft reached the orbit of the earth. Data was coming in only slowly, and Hal’s probes were racing across the solar system to intercept, but could only go so quickly.
“Hal, am I going to have to warn people about this?”
The supercomputer chewed over the scenarios, silently and as briskly as usual. His answer was equivocal and worrying. “We are not certain that this craft does not harbour malicious intent.”
God, Hal, that’s just what I fucking need.
“So, do we head back in the Phoenix and sound the alarm? Or wait while the Earth receives the Independence Day treatment?”
Another short pause. “I think we should go”.
The next two hours were barely controlled chaos. Helper robots raced around packing up my accommodation and supplies; I was determined to leave no traces of my stay on the moon, as this quiet sojourn was no-one’s business but my own. Besides, I felt it a good precedent to set future lunar explorers: Take only pictures, and leave only footprints. Unless you’re a mining operation. But still.
By the time Hal had readied Phoenix for its ascent back up into lunar orbit, the approaching craft was continuing to decelerate as it passed the band described by Jupiter’s orbit. Warming up after months, the Cruiser’s engines emitted no sci-fi-movie roar in this vacuum, but steadily powered up until they exerted sufficient thrust to lift us off our lonely hilltop. I gazed out at Tsiolkovski’s broad, dark lava plain one more time, and then took command of the Cruiser, bringing her straight up like a climbing helicopter, pitching over and gathering forward momentum.
The lunar southern hemisphere receded, serene and sunlit, but I barely noticed. I was in constant discussions with Hal, bugging him repeatedly for more information on the incoming ship. Was it a type he recognized? Were there any sources of heat onboard? Was it in a roll, to distribute solar radiation, as any manned craft would be? The answers were maddening; it was not a class he recognized, but details of its structure were patchy. There might be heat but, at this billion-mile distance, it was barely distinguishable from the background radiation. Frustrated and keen to be doing something positive, or at least vent some of my angst, I pushed the ship faster, planning to cross the expanse between moon and earth in record time.
*****
Friday, January 20th, 2034
When it finally came, it woke me up. I’d taken a nap after twenty hours of non-stop quizzing, researching, stressing out and guesswork. Hal was about ready to knock me out with soporific radiation anyway; even genius supercomputers get frustrated after a whole day of fruitless speculation. But then, we heard it.
“Phoenix, this is the Larssen. Phoenix, this is the Larssen. We are inbound. Do you read?”
A magnificent jolt of excitement lit up my being. Bolt upright and quickly fully awake, I waited for Hal’s analysis and the opportunity to respond.
“We have a frequency. The message is not automated.”
I could barely speak, I was so relieved. “Larssen, this is Phoenix. Identify yourselves please?”
There would be a delay, I knew. The incoming craft was still short of Martian orbit, and would indeed give the Red Planet a seemingly inadvertent flyby. The silence in our Cruiser’s cabin was packed with nervous anticipation. It passed only too slowly. Then came the response.
“Phoenix, this is Larssen. We are an interstellar science vessel. There are one thousand and four souls on board. We have begun to reawaken after a long hypersleep. We are friends. Repeat, we are friends.”
Even Hal was shocked. A thousand souls? That was a hell of a big science team. Time to find out more. The drip-feed information was killing me.
“Larssen, this is Phoenix. You are welcome to our system. Please advise as to the nature of your science mission in this area. Please also be aware that we have tracked your origin to Holdrian, and request confirmation.”
Science satellites in Martian orbit were now, finally, able to get a good look at the vessel, adding to long-range data gathered by Hal’s faster deep space probes. She was a spinning 300-yard long truss with bulbous semi-spherical, dome modules distributed along the central length. A single, extremely powerful nuclear engine was positioned at the extreme end of the truss, far from the habitation domes. Other, smaller thrusters were firing in a steady, continuous sequence, braking the big ship as she careered along her precise path, direct to a rendezvous with the earth. From within the dome modules an increasing number of lights appeared, perhaps a part of the awakening process.
The radio crackled once more. “Phoenix, this is the Larssen. We are inbound from Holdrian. Our lead scientist will explain our mission upon arrival. Please understand that we are unarmed and pose no threat. Repeat, we are not a threat. We request permission to enter earth orbit. We also request a meeting with you. Some on board are your friends. Repeat, you are known personally by some of our science team. We are transmitting our proposed orbital characteristics now”.
Hal received the data. They wanted to swing into an elliptical orbit, which they would later circularize as they lost speed through further thruster firings. But I was ignoring such minutiae.
You are known personally by some of our science team.
I’ve been suspended over an infinity of nothingness on a hotel bed. I’ve been shot into orbit over an alien planet. I’ve fucked an alien seductress in a zero-G starscape. I’ve parachuted back to earth from the goddamned moon. And I’ve never, ever felt such a total sensory and cerebral overload as I did at that moment.
My friends are coming. The scientists from
Takanli. Maybe Garlidan. Even Bassar and Cyto. The Science Ministry girls.
Falik.
Emotions streaked through me like searing photons of nervous excitement. I somehow accepted their reluctance to divulge further and confined myself to agreeing to their proposed orbital parameters and arranging a meeting, high above the earth. Hal was hopping with frustration as the computer aboard the Larssen refused to communicate with him. But I found patience amid the uncertainty, watching the steady progress of the long, tumbling ship as it followed its course toward my home. They had come so very far. Surely there would be no turning back, nor turning away. Only months after first learning that we were not alone in the universe, mankind would receive its first visitors from another world.
*****
Saturday, January 21st, 2034
Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC
The newly-appointed co-chair of the President’s Council for Physical Fitness, Senator Chris Beasley, strode briskly up from the senate’s basement gym and back to his office. Refurbished and repainted after the blazing gun battle of three months before, the place hummed with activity and potential. Beasley had wasted none of his new energy and virility; his schedule was as taxing cerebrally as it was physically, his girlfriend Liz was kept as satisfied and sexually entertained as any girl could hope, and a stream of policy ideas, white papers and bills poured from his office, which was never absent a crowd of people waiting to see him. He divided his time into fifteen-minute meetings, and just never seemed to stop.
Chris, of course, was running on Takanli technology. This had posed a difficulty. Disbelief could be suspended in remarkable ways, and people can be gullible, particularly when a plausible explanation is offered by someone with a reputation for the bizarre and unexpected, but even this has limits. I had relied on willing public incredulity since the inception of the Dvalin project. Sure, they reasoned, you could produce advanced spaceplanes at the rate of thirty a year in a small, underground facility, because everything was modular. Sure, a man could train himself to read two thousand words a minute and remember every single one; aren’t there savants who can remember the order of a many decks of cards, or learn Icelandic in a week? Sure, the pharmaceutical industry was always going to come up with a little pen device which eliminated drunkenness in seconds.
But then, all that alien shit went down. The blue shield which protected Beasley and his friends as they crossed the National Mall for the big showdown with the former President. The gorgeous Star Trek Cruiser which landed there and whisked them away into space. The hallways which redesigned themselves in seconds, aboard a fucking asteroid which had been nudged into orbit. The information robots which landed from outer space, unfurled into giant screens, and started showing a documentary in every big public park in the world. And then the replicators. The Relocation systems. Oh, people loved those two devices more than anything; so much so that extremely strict, sometimes damned near Draconian measures were needed to limit their use, lest nefarious purposes eclipse the promise of plenty and security they offered.
Beasley thought often of the ending to one of his favourite childhood films, the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. As Gene Wilder’s loopy confectionary genius soars with Charlie and Grandpa Joe in their glass elevator, he poses a question: What happened to the boy who suddenly got everything he’d ever wanted? And Chris had always loved the answer: He lived happily ever after. With responsible deployment of replicators came the satisfaction of every basic human need. Clean water, valuable metals and minerals, luxurious foods, all flowed in carefully controlled streams. Food staples were on the long list of items banned from replication – farming, the livelihood of billions, would have virtually collapsed otherwise – but farmers benefited from being able to locally replicate complex irrigation systems and the machines to install them. The sea had not known such health and vigour since before the dawn of the industrial age. Mankind’s carbon footprint was falling by several percentage points each month. A viable, somewhat chaotic, but genuinely practicable Utopia was being created. The joy and relief was palpable.
So, the revitalized senator had learned to deal with odd looks from people. Most were simply astounded. Some were sceptical. Others gawked at him as though a malicious alien embryo were about to burst squealing from his chest. On balance, people had gotten used to it. Beasley was still Beasley, after all. Just upgraded. Faster, leaner, sharper. Sexier. Mostly, he reasoned, they were envious.
A good number of the throng which never really left his office waiting room were there to ask about me. Given my sudden disappearance during the greatest global crisis in mankind’s history (and one which, inarguably, I had myself initiated), and given Chris’ unique relationship with the famous, elusive, notorious Dvalin-genius, this was only to be expected. But he had just as little news as the rest of planet earth. I had left Dvalin in the Phoenix and had not left a forwarding address. Tracking stations had lost the ship as it left earth orbit. I could, quite literally, be absolutely anywhere. Many never began to assume I’d be somewhere as local or prosaically well-trodden as the moon. Theories abounded; I had returned to Takanli, or was living on Mars, or was on another asteroid-collection mission. Some posited that I had died, perhaps by my own hand. Some pictured me alone in space, out of fuel and starving, drifting around the sun in an endless, aimless loop. The ones who hated me – which, don’t forget, was a substantial if single-digit percentage of the populace – simply shrugged and muttered good riddance, as if my own departure could ever forestall the sweeping changes now well underway and, despite their protestations, seemingly irreversible.
The confusion only quadrupled the surprise, therefore, when Senator Beasley’s intercom beeped on this chilly January morning, and his secretary announced that a message had arrived from the Phoenix. He stared amazed at the machine for a moment before asking to hear it, heart in his throat, concern mixed with excitement and adrenaline pumping through him afresh.
I was back in earth orbit. We were to expect guests. A thousand of them. Humanity’s very first interstellar meeting was seemingly about to take place. The giddy politician leapt from his seat and cartwheeled down the senate building’s hallway like an Olympic gymnast.
At about the same time, Evelyn Tanner’s cellphone vibrated for attention in her uniform pocket. Promoted from Captain to Major, with her own Pentagon office with responsibility for orbital commerce and space-elevator affairs, Evelyn had hoped for some word from the Phoenix just as ardently as Beasley had. The text, brief but crystal clear, read ‘Phoenix inbound. Takanli science ship following. Prepare for First Contact’.
She and Chris were swiftly in communication. A plan was needed. The new President needed a briefing, and fast. The world had to be readied for as significant event as any of the previous years’ earth-shaking revelations. This wasn’t just a handful of replicators being sent down, or an asteroid showing up, or a movie about distant alien beings. Word began to filter through, first unofficially, and then via every form of media known to man:
They’re here.
*****
Sunday 22nd January, 2034
Earth Orbit, aboard Phoenix
It was quite a sight. The Larssen, a three hundred meter interstellar spacecraft, had arrived in orbit a few hours after my own Phoenix. The long, metal truss which formed the spine of the craft shone brightly in the sunlight. Her dozen semi-spherical modules, concentrated at one end of the truss, sported curiously opaque windows which, we assumed, were protecting their interior from the intense solar radiation. After all, the ship had not ventured this close to a star in many years. Her main engine silent, the ship manoeuvred with small thrusters distributed along her truss; their short, synchronized firings expelled tiny puffs of gas which were visible from the flight deck of the Phoenix.
“Pre-arranged orbit has been achieved”, Hal confirmed. “There is still no response from the computer onboard the Larssen.” We had assumed the ship was run by an automated system no
t unlike our own, to which the running of the ship could safely be entrusted while the thousand-member crew slept their way across the galaxy. I could only imagine the scenes on board as they thronged to the replicators for fluids and food, stretching limbs kept immobile for decades. I prayed that, among them, Falik was now waking, as excited as I was for our meeting, so long delayed and so passionately desired.
The radio crackled into life again. I frowned at the lack of computer contact; could it be that they had a problem?
“Phoenix, this is the Larssen. Our aft-most module has docking facilities. Please make your approach. You will be greeted on arrival”.
I checked the relevant co-ordinates and agreed a flight-plan with Hal. We would use our own orbital manoeuvring thrusters to gently bring the Phoenix alongside the dome-shaped module which, we could already see, had a broad opening, perhaps twenty meters wide, which would comfortably accommodate our Cruiser.
As we approached, messages were relayed from earth. Beasley was co-ordinating the welcome, which had been hurriedly agreed and would involve an initial reception of the visitors at the United Nations in New York. He reported massive global excitement, and not a little fear, but mankind’s experience of alien technology had thus far been uniformly benign and hugely beneficial; there were few voices of genuine dissent. Mostly, people were curious, stoked to meet their interstellar neighbours, and impatient for the first of their thousand to be transported down to the surface.
Larssen held steady as we drew closer. The dome modules were a light purple colour, just opaque enough to hide their contents. Part of me had expected to see our new arrivals packed at their windows, waving avidly, but there was no sign of movement. Perhaps they were not yet fully awake. I turned my attention to the docking module, with its rectangular portal into which Phoenix slowly made its way. The interior was the same pure white as Hal had designed for the docking ports on Dvalin. So far, they were giving nothing away.
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