Space Scout

by S A Pavli

  “I see,” I replied thoughtfully, still shaken by the thought that the Hianja had travelled the stars for thousands of years. “Are you at war with any other race?” I asked. “Or are you in competition for this planet with anyone who could be responsible for this attack?”

  “I have already stated that we have not made contact with any other alien race. And, it would be quite impossible for any Hianja to attack any other, whatever the pretext,” she said emphatically.

  “You seem rather certain that no other Hianja could be responsible?” The female’s head came up in surprise at this and she replied rather haughtily.

  “Violence is completely alien to our nature,” she explained “There has been no act of violence between Hianja for thousands of years.” The military individual was scowling in a very unfriendly fashion.

  I was baffled by their reaction. Why should it be so incredible that other Hianja had attacked the base?

  “That is remarkable, and very gratifying,” I replied. “We on Earth have the same philosophy. But nevertheless,” I continued. “Someone or something attacked your base and injured some of your people.” I had an afterthought. “Was anybody killed?” I asked. Both aliens inclined their heads.

  “No deaths,” said Manera-Ka. “But a number of injuries. ”

  “They made no attempt to shoot down the shuttle or attack the mother ship?” I asked

  “That is correct,” she replied.

  “And the damage to the base was minimal,” I continued. “We were able to repair the accommodation building and restore power and water. All in all,” I concluded. “It’s as if the attackers were trying to frighten off your people, without excessive casualties.”

  “There would be no point in doing that,” said Manera, who seemed to be the senior spokesperson. “If they wished to make a claim on the planet there are clear protocols available. If they were Hianja, we would have agreed to share the planet equitably. It is inconceivable for Hianja to attack Hianja for this reason . ”

  I was becoming frustrated by their insistence that the obvious was impossible. Since we were not responsible for the attack, and no other alien race was in evidence, then clearly it must have been Hianja. The real problem was, what was the motive? However, it seemed a good idea to get away from this sensitive subject for now.

  “Shall we leave this mystery until you arrive at , er Verana, and carry out your own investigations?” I suggested. “Perhaps you can tell me a little more about your civilisation?” I asked. “How long have you been a space faring race and how widespread is your civilisation?

  “I see no harm in revealing this information,” responded Manera courteously with an incline of her head. “The Hianja invented the Hyperspace Drive Twenty thousand of your years ago.” I could not prevent a sharp intake of breath.

  “Twenty thousand years!” I struggled to organise my thoughts. “You must have spread throughout the Galaxy by now. Why have we not met before?”

  “The Galaxy is a big place,” said Manera and I caught a glimpse of what could have been a smile on her lips. A dimpled quirking up of the lips, straightened out very quickly. “We have explored a tiny part of it so far, just a few thousand stars. We have settled a few planets..,” she inclined her head slightly as if listening “Seventy three on the last count.”

  “Bloody Hell,” I muttered to myself. I thought of the Human race’s Earth plus a measly three planets and how proud we were of our “Empire.” What a joke that’s going to be when they find out about these guys!

  “Fifty asteroids, two hundred moons and two hundred and fifty six artificial settlements,” she said, dead pan. I could almost swear she was enjoying this.

  “Um...that is remarkable,” I was somewhat overawed by this revelation, and my excitement was tempered by a frisson of fear. They had populated asteroids and moons. Built huge Artificial Worlds no doubt housing hundreds maybe thousands of people. But their military power would also be immense. Alfred’s voice in my ear rudely interrupted my thoughts.

  “Paul, the aliens have just transmitted to me photographs of the ship which attacked their base. There is no doubt, it is human.”

  The bottom dropped out of my world, taking my stomach and all my innards with it.

  Chapter 7

  There was a moment of sheer terror, until I remembered that the aliens had no idea that the attacking ship was human. They had not seen our shuttle yet.

  “If you will excuse me now, Alfred tells me that he has received your pictures of the attacking ship,” I said hastily, “We will examine it to see if it is familiar to us. This incident is unfortunate but I would like to say what an honour and privilege it is for me to be part of this contact with your great race. I hope this will be the beginning of a long, peaceful and mutually beneficial cooperation,” I bowed courteously.

  “Thank you Paul Constantine for your fine words. I also hope the same, and look forward to further conversations.” She did a little Japanese bow as well. Her tall companion inclined his head stiffly and the picture blacked out.

  “Christ!” I gasped. “I wish you had waited until I had finished talking to them before telling me that Alfred. I nearly gave the game away.”

  “I thought the quicker you knew that the better,” he responded

  “It was a bit of a shock. Put the pictures on screen,” I said.

  “These are the best three pictures,” said Alfred and three blurred images flashed up on the screen. I examined them carefully. They were of a dart shaped aircraft, seemingly identical to Epsilon 3.

  “Have you tried enhancing the images Alfred?” I asked

  “Yes Paul, they were quite high resolution, but they were taken from a moving aircraft and not in focus. The first picture is without reconstruction, the second one is with.”

  “What is reconstruction Alfred?” I asked.

  “A process of artificial enhancement of an image,” explained Alfred in his best schoolmasters voice. “Without reconstruction the object is just cleaned up, with reconstruction it is rebuilt to look as new. Some degree of extrapolation is necessary to reconstruct the original.”

  “I see,” I said examining the two side by side images. The first was fuzzy, only the major features were clear. The second could have been a shiny new aircraft, straight out of the factory. “Looks like you used a lot of extrapolation .”

  “There was enough detail in the original to identify the craft. It is a Scout shuttle , Raytheon class.”

  “Wait a minute Alfred,” I protested. “Raytheon class shuttles were used for the first generation of scout ships. We are talking one hundred and fifty years ago now. Before you and I were born. They went out of use one hundred years ago. There have been five generations of shuttle since then.”

  “Correct Paul, actually Raytheon were the second generation, but your dates are effectively correct.”

  “Damn, what the hell is going on here? Alfred, how sure are you about the reconstruction?”

  “I am ninety percent sure.”

  “OK, Let’s leave aside for the moment the question of how this came to be here. How similar is the Raytheon class to our shuttle? Can we show that the two shuttles are completely different animals?”

  “If they accept my reconstruction, yes, they are not the same,” said Alfred “If they do not , the unreconstructed image looks very similar to Epsilon.”

  “Well, we are just going to have to sell them the reconstruction,” I said emphatically.

  It was still early in the day and the aliens would not arrive on Verana/Omorphia until tomorrow afternoon. I was hungry to learn more about them and their civilization, but just talking to them seemed slow and clumsy. I asked Alfred if they would release information to us, historical, archaeological, biological, social and so on, that I could read and browse through and Alfred agreed to ask. I took a break and took a walk. I strolled along the beach, throwing stones at the sea as people have done from time immemorial and cogitating on our situation. My stomach was churnin
g with excitement and there was a little voice at the back of my head which was babbling hysterically and incoherently. I silenced the voice severely, but every now and again it broke through!

  I wanted to know as much about the Hianja as I could before confronting them with the Epsilon. If they were a peace loving people as they claimed, I had to persuade them that we were the same. The female, Manera, seemed sympathetic, but her companion, the saturnine Smetronis was less so. When I returned from my walk, Alfred informed me that the material we had asked for had been supplied. The aliens were happy to reveal themselves and their civilisation to us, and had asked for similar information from us. This presented us with a problem, in that I was not happy to reveal Man’s warlike past to the aliens. Not yet, not until they had at least had the chance to appreciate our better qualities, I thought.

  I asked Alfred to provide factual information about our biology and evolution, about our different Nations and their Cultural, Philosophical and Religious inheritance, and our scientific history, the history of ideas. We agreed to include a sketchy overview of our Science and Technology, since most of it was obvious from what they had already seen. But nothing that would reveal Man’s blood thirsty past, the wars and religious conflicts, the Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing which blotted our history. When I considered all that, for the first time in my life I felt ashamed to be Human. Surely I thought, the Hianja must have similar episodes in their past? We, like them, had left these things behind us. The United Nations, re-enforced and given teeth in the 21st Century had ceased to tolerate Tyranny and had acted with sanctions to enforce Democracy and Human Rights across the Globe. The oppression, inequity and exploitation that had characterised the previous three thousand years of man’s recorded history had slowly come to an end.

  After some lunch I settled down with excited anticipation to study the Hianja.

  “What have they sent us Alfred?”

  “Biological, Historical, High Level Scientific and technological. We have a list of all their Planets and settlements and can examine them in overview.”

  “That’s a lot of info. I would need weeks to get through that lot.”

  “Would you like me to provide an overview , and you can then choose which items to study further?” offered Alfred.

  “That sounds good Alfred,” I agreed . “Go for it.”

  “OK Paul,” began Alfred “General info first; The Hianja have an immense History, going back thirty thousand years. They originated on one Planet, funnily enough called ‘Hian’, which is still inhabited and is in fact the centre of their ‘Empire’, if they can be said to have an Empire. In fact it is a loose Federation of Planets, self ruling and Independent, but , seemingly, peaceful and peace loving. Our friends originate from the planet ‘Mesaroyat’ as they said, which is at the edge of the Hianja Federation. It is a planet which has fairly recently been settled, by Hianja standards, some three thousand years ago. It seems that our friends can be almost considered as hardy ‘Frontier Folk’ by the Hianja in the older worlds. There are two other Hianja worlds within ‘spitting’ distance (a few days travel in Hyperspace), otherwise the next closest world is twenty days away. The Hianja ‘Federation’ covers twenty thousand Light years. The Hianja do not use the same Hyperspace Universe that we do, which is why we have not met before. Theirs is half the size of ours, so their travel times are correspondingly shorter. Biological information; The Hianja are Bi-Sexual, like Humans, but their method of reproduction is different.”

  “Oh?” I interrupted Alfred’s flow. “Different? In what way?”

  “They have sex organs similar to Humans, but the male is sterile.”

  I did a double take, then asked the obvious question. “Sterile? How do they conceive...?” I began.

  “It is an artificial process,” explained Alfred. “Genetic material is taken from the male and implanted using in-vitro fertilisation. The baby grows up in an artificial ‘womb’. As to how reproduction occurred prior to this, they have not released that information.”

  “That’s bizarre. The whole process of reproduction is artificial. So these people do not have a sex life as such then?” I asked.

  “Surprisingly, they do, not too different to Humans. But the male does not fertilise the female.”

  “Not too different you say? So there are differences?” I tried not to sound as if I was interested in prurient details.

  “Hianja lack a continuous sex drive. Either Evolution, or Genetic accident has dampened down their sexuality to the point where drugs are needed before copulation can take place.”

  “I am surprised that they provided that level of detail,” I mused.

  “The information is buried away in some biological detail and they may have overlooked its presence,” Alfred replied.

  I mulled this over for a few seconds before continuing. “We would have to believe that some time in the past, the male must have been fertile and they would have reproduced naturally. Do you think infertility may have happened slowly, say as a result of pollution?” I asked.

  “Possibly,” answered Alfred. “We have seen a similar fall in male fertility on Earth over the last few hundred years due to the contamination of the environment by pseudo organic materials.”

  “But this fall has stabilized recently?” I stated rather than asked.

  “Yes,” replied Alfred, “But only as a result of the rigorous cleanup of the environment undertaken in the late 21st Century .”

  “This is all very interesting Alfred,” I said “but we must move on to wider things for now. How about their Science and Technology?”

  “One very interesting and major difference Paul,” began Alfred. “They are not substantially in advance of us in most areas, although their technology is more sophisticated in most areas. They do however have one major technology which we do not; They are able to generate an artificial gravity field.”

  “Artificial gravity? How effective is it? What can they do?” I asked, unable to restrain my excitement.

  “They are able to generate a focused and directed Gravity field or gradient. It can be used to counteract a Planet’s natural gravity, or to accelerate a ship in a required direction. Their shuttles for example do not use rockets. They do not need to carry thousands of tons of reaction mass to allow planetary landing and take off. ”

  “Gravity Control. The Holy Grail. What they would pay back on Earth for that,” I mused.

  “It would certainly transform Earth’s economy,” said Alfred, taking me literally.

  “Any other technological titbits Alfred?”

  “It would also appear to have been more successful in conquering biological ageing. The average individual can live for more than three hundred years before irreversible senility sets in.”

  “Incredible,” I murmured, awestruck. “It’s something we have dreamed of and they have made it come true.” Human lifespan had been increased over the last two hundred years to well over one hundred, but no solution had been found to senility. Brain cells died off and were not replaced, so although the body could be kept healthy, the mind gradually died. The world’s oldest woman was one hundred and seventy five years old, and the average was one hundred and fifty, so great progress had been made. But to live for hundreds of years, that was incredible. What effect would that have on a person’s psychology? In fact, what effect would that have on Society I mused. Earth scholars would go ecstatic with delight studying the Hianja.

  But then, I thought, the Hianja have had more than twenty thousand years of civilization. I would have expected these great advances, in fact, been surprised if their technology was no more advanced than ours. Alfred continued with his summary of Hianja technology but there were no more major surprises. They had made advances in automation and construction techniques, allowing them to build huge ships and artificial space stations, inhabited by thousands of people. They had made advances in Bio Technology and Nano Technology, Computers and AI, Fusion Power and compact electrical storage mediums, the list
was endless. I was impressed by the scale and magnitude of their achievements. But mostly, I was impressed with the thought that these people had built a superbly advanced civilization, that had lasted 20000 years! It was a testament to their sanity and stability.

  The hours passed and I suddenly realized that it was dark, and I was tired.

  “Alfred, let’s call it a day,” I said, stretching and leaning back in my chair. “Tomorrow let’s have a meeting to discuss our strategy. We have to prove we are not responsible for the attack on the base. The problem is, we may not be responsible, but a human ship certainly was. How do we get out of that?”

  “Paul, that ship has been lost for one hundred and fifty years. We do not know where its been in that time, and we do not know who is flying it now. There is no evidence that it is under Human control.”

  “All true,” I agreed “It is a mystery Alfred.”

  Chapter 8

  The next morning I took my time in rising and preparing for the day. I wandered down to the beach for a relaxing swim. This was followed by a light breakfast and I was ready for the day. I settled myself in front of the screen and contacted Alfred.

  “Progress report Alfred? What’s the aliens ETA?”

  “Sometime this afternoon Paul,” came the reply. “I am able to examine their craft in more detail. It is impressively large, two hundred to three hundred meters in length and fifty in circumference. It had the hyperspace drive doughnut at the front, and another circular protuberance in the middle which I am guessing is the Gravity Control device. There are no Reaction engines of any sort, it looks like all non-Hyperspace travel is under Gravity control. There are five tanks around the rear section which I am guessing hold water for biological use.”

  “Aha,” I said thoughtfully. “Visual available?”

  “On screen,” replied Alfred and a picture of the alien craft appeared on the display. I examined it carefully but there was no more detail to be seen other than what Alfred had described.