The Contact Episode Two

by Albert Sartison

If the object is telling the truth in saying that they have colonised the planets of the star Gliese 581, our radio waves would have reached them 20 years after we invented radio, i.e. a good three hundred years ago. So why didn’t they come earlier?

  A soft knock at the door was heard, breaking the silence of the night. Steve held his breath and listened. Had he misheard? The knock was repeated. No, he hadn’t been mistaken. Steve looked at his clock in surprise; it showed half-past midnight. Guests, so late? Had something happened? He leapt out of bed, picked up his jeans, which were on the floor next to it, and hopped towards the door, putting them on as he went.

  Shelby was on the doorstep. He seemed very excited for such a late hour.

  “Steve, are you asleep?”

  It would be hard to think of a more stupid question. But then it wasn’t really a question.

  “No, no, come in,” replied Steve, opening the door and beckoning him in.

  “Thank you.”

  When he came in, Shelby did not take off his raincoat, but sat down in the armchair as he was. As Steve reached out to switch on the light, Shelby stopped him.

  “No, don’t switch it on. I have just come from MacQueen, and my worst suspicions are beginning to come true. We are sitting here in this base and amusing ourselves with chatter, and meanwhile things are happening out in space. I need you and Clive to go to Mars.”

  Steve’s eyes opened wide in astonishment.

  “And what do we have to do there?”

  “I think MacQueen is mobilising forces, although he is pretending that nothing is going on. He answers my questions very evasively indeed. He’s a cunning devil, though you wouldn’t think so at first glance. Have you noticed?”

  All Steve could do was shrug his shoulders. “Not really.”

  How could he know? He had never had the chance to talk to MacQueen, not even once.

  “I tried to find at least some information, but all data on space flights is now being filtered by the military. There’s the pretext of some sort of glitch, it is impossible to find anything at all, not one database is available. You understand?”

  Shelby paused briefly and looked Steve straight in the eyes, “you know that there’s a big military base on Mars...”

  “I know,” said Steve, although he had never ever heard of any military base on Mars.

  “It’s an open secret that the military at that base use the industrial warehouses in peacetime, because they are more conveniently situated. But if MacQueen mobilises the fleet, they’ll move the contents from the warehouses to their own protective stores under the planet’s surface.”

  “You want Clive and me to fly there? But couldn’t there be some other way to find out what’s going on?” asked Steve. He was gradually coming to realise what Shelby wanted. “After all, Mars isn’t just round the corner.”

  “Normally there would be. The industrial warehouses publish data on their stocks, but now there is no information available. The stock data have not changed for several days now. Again under the pretext of some glitch, but it’s clearly no coincidence. No, there must be something going on there.”

  Steve began thinking about the details of the forthcoming journey.

  “But how can I assess what is going on at the warehouse?” he asked.

  “It’s very simple. It’s a big warehouse; cargo ships are coming and going all the time. You just have to watch for a few hours and everything will be clear.

  “If MacQueen really is carrying out mobilisation, there will be a lot of army transporters taking things out. And if I’m wrong, there won’t be anything military in sight, just civilian ships. Do you know how to tell the difference?”

  Of course he knew, who didn’t? A flight to Mars. It wasn’t every day you got a chance like that. It was just that the details weren’t altogether clear.

  “Is there anyone there who can help us?” asked Steve.

  “No, I don’t have any of my own people there. And even if I did, I couldn’t draw the attention of outsiders to the fact that mobilisation is going on at top speed. Although ‘Dawn’ is secret, many feel that something is going on. You only have to give them an excuse, and there will be so many rumours flying around that practically anything will be bandied about.”

  “But how can we leave the base? We’re not allowed to.”

  “If you have permission, you can. I have an important reason for sending you to Mars. Oh, and by the way, if MacQueen or one of his subordinates should ask, you are flying to Mars on my instructions, but because of secrecy, you won’t learn the purpose of the flight till you get there.”

  “Is it far to the warehouse? I mean from the spaceport. How will we get there?” asked Steve.

  “Hire something suitable.”

  Steve took his tablet from the night table.

  “Map of Mars, spaceport,” he commanded.

  Satellite pictures of Mars appeared on the display. Steve turned it towards Shelby. “OK, there’s the spaceport. And where’s this warehouse?”

  Shelby took the tablet from Steve and made a few gestures to reduce the scale so that the whole planet was visible, and commanded:

  “Mars 25-16N.”

  The sphere of the planet did a half-revolution and denoted the location of the warehouse by a flashing white point. Steve whistled.

  “Why, it’s on the other side of the planet! It will take us a week to get there,” he said.

  Shelby raised his eyebrows in surprise and looked at Steve, “A week? How do you intend to travel? By dog sled?”

  Steve imagined a dog sled with twelve huskies harnessed to it. They were wearing oxygen masks as they ran across the Martian desert, urged on by Steve’s whip. The ridiculous picture looked like something in a dystopian science fiction novel. He smiled. “No, of course not, but all-terrain vehicles are not that fast either.”

  Shelby laughed, “Steve, we are working on the most important project in the history of mankind, you will just take a ship.”

  “But... To fly that far, we’d need a ship at least... well, probably a Falcon class,” objected Steve, as if apologising for the fact that such an expensive toy was required.

  “These details are of little importance,” said Shelby, rising from the armchair. “You and Clive will have unlimited credit, and you will hire whatever you think necessary.”

  Shelby gave Steve a friendly pat on the shoulder.

  “Steve, you and Clive are fine young men. Everything will turn out right for you. Please don’t mention our conversation to anyone. I’ll meet MacQueen tomorrow. If anything becomes any clearer, I’ll let you know. Don’t say anything to Clive yet, tell him on the way. That’s if you have to make the trip at all.”

  Time to act

  Next day, Steve was sitting at his table waiting for the results of the latest session of negotiations with the object. The initial euphoria had worn off when it became apparent that the object really did not want to give a direct answer to the interesting questions. His day-to-day work, like that of his colleagues in the project, was becoming more and more routine. New answers came in, they were discussed, agreement was reached on the next questions, they were sent to the base on Ganymede, and the whole procedure was repeated. The more questions Earth asked, the more often they received the reply “Not possible to answer this question.” The supply of questions was beginning to run out.

  So was MacQueen’s patience. So far, the object had not asked any questions of its own. The sense of contact was slipping more and more from Steve’s grasp, and he could tell the other participants in the project felt the same.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Steve suddenly noticed Shelby entering. It was apparent from his manner that the flight to Mars would have to be made after all. He looked very worried. After stopping by the guard for an instant, Shelby came up to their table.

  “How are things, lads? Is there any news from the object?”

  Clive was about to answer, but Shelby did not give him time to speak. “Everything is ready
for your trip to Mars, as we agreed. You must go right now.”

  Steve nodded.

  “Trip to Mars?” asked Clive, looking at Shelby in surprise.

  “I’ll explain everything on the way,” said Steve.

  Clive looked in mute astonishment first at Steve, then at Shelby. “Explain what?” he asked, dumbfounded. “What about our task? The project?”

  “This is your project,” Shelby replied, “Clive, Steve will explain on the way, as he said. As soon as you find out anything, get in touch with me via my old number, you know the one.”

  Shelby fell silent, looking from one of them to the other. Clive, taken aback by this sudden turn of events, could not think how to object.

  “Well, in that case, let’s get going,” said Steve, getting up. “Are you coming?” he asked Clive.

  “Yes, of course.”

  Clive was still in a sort of stupor. He did not like spur-of-the-moment trips to the next town, let alone flights to Mars. It was unthinkable for him to do anything without thorough preparation. He just sat there looking blank.

  “Clive!” Steve called to him. “Have you dozed off or what?”

  Clive finally got a grip on himself and stood up. Shelby patted him on the shoulder.

  “Good luck, boys!”

  Having said this, he turned his back on them, and, as if nothing had happened, set off for the drinks machine. Steve would have liked to ask more, but then he realised that Shelby’s carefree attitude served as a mask, preventing attention being drawn to him.

  “Let’s go,” said Steve.

  On the way to the door, Steve looked briefly in the direction of the biologists. Most of the group were absent, only two were in their places, Maggie and one of her colleagues. They were discussing something. From the serious expressions on their faces, it was apparent that they were discussing something to do with their work. Maggie was standing with her back to them. Her fair hair, tied in a ponytail, followed the movement of her head when she nodded in sign of approval. They were too absorbed in their conversation to notice that Steve and Clive had decided to leave.

  As they approached the exit, Steve let Clive go ahead, while he threw a last glance at Maggie. She was still chatting to her colleague as animatedly as if this conversation were the most important thing in her life. But then she suddenly looked towards Steve. It was not by chance, she was deliberately looking his way. Steve was just about to leave the hall.

  Maggie realised that Steve had guessed she was observing him. It was a somewhat embarrassing situation, and Maggie clearly felt awkward about it. With feigned unconcern, she waved goodbye to him. Steve nodded in reply. Maggie’s embarrassment had not escaped his attention. His mood was suddenly uplifted.

  “Why are you smiling?” asked Clive, noticing the expression on Steve’s face.

  Steve awakened from his reverie and assumed his former appearance.

  “Who, me? I’m not smiling,” he replied. “You must have imagined it. Where did you get that from?”

  An hour and a half later, they were sitting together in the space elevator in business class. Others were taking their seats. Clive silently observed the other passengers. A slight contempt could be read in his eyes.

  “How long they spend fussing around,” he said eventually. “Look at that guy in the blue jacket. He came in, sat down, then he got up, opened his bag, sat down again and got up again. Why so many useless movements? Why couldn’t he simply find his seat and sit down?”

  “That’s another argument in favour of your idea of planting chips in people’s brains. To optimise routine operations,” said Steve in a mocking tone.

  “Exactly!”

  Clive had had enough of all this fidgety movement. He looked out of the porthole. Steve looked that way too.

  There, behind four layers of reinforced glass, a splendid view of the spaceport was opening up. In the distance, partly concealed by a blue haze, a military spacecraft was landing. With all its four turbine nozzles pointing down, licking the landing site with blue flame, it descended gently until the wheels touched the ground. Having completed touch-down, it shuddered, its wheels in springy contact with the ground, and stopped.

  “Ta-daaa,” a gentle melody sounded, attracting the attention of the passengers.

  “Boarding completed,” reported a pleasant female voice.

  “At last,” said Clive. He was already nervously hunched up in his seat in anticipation of the voyage.

  Steve was waiting excitedly too. Flights to other planets had become a fairly routine matter, but not to the extent of being boring. Particularly for professional astrophysicists.

  The airlock door closed with a hissing sound as it was slammed tight shut. At the same moment, the space elevator capsule rocked gently and smoothly, but quickly accelerated and rushed upwards.

  Steve and Clive were glued to the view. The moment of lift-off was the most interesting. At one instant you were standing on the ground, but in the blink of an eye, you were looking at the entire spaceport from the height of a ten-storey building. The space elevator gained altitude very rapidly. There wasn’t time to see everything, but all the ground crew, service robots, bowsers and buses became minute, as if they were toys. A few seconds more and they became points, and after that you couldn’t make them out at all. Steve always found it surprising that although the process of increasing distance from the Earth was constant, the visual changes took place in jumps.

  The space elevator rose to an altitude of 20 kilometres, at which point the view from the window became too monotonous to be worth constantly observing.

  “Let’s take a look at the target of our voyage, shall we?” proposed Steve.

  Clive took out his tablet and set it up on the folding table in front of him, so that Steve could see the image on the screen too, and called up a map of Mars.

  “Remind me of the coordinates again,” he said to Steve.

  “Mars 25-16N.”

  The destination of their journey was in a desert, far from the industrial centres, located inside one of the enormous craters. The mountains round the crater had long been worn down by erosion, but they protected the warehouse from the howling wind and the curious gaze of outsiders. If you could believe the photos from orbit, there was nothing special at that location, just an ordinary warehouse. And the resolution of the picture also left something to be desired.

  Steve was also looking at the display on Clive’s tablet.

  “What map are you using, the ordinary version?” asked Steve.

  “Yes, so what?”

  “On the ordinary maps, such objects are specially retouched.”

  “We have access to the hidden maps now, let’s look at those,” proposed Clive.

  He was about to log in again using the account with which they had been provided for the project, but Steve grabbed his arm and stopped him. In response to Clive’s silent question, he simply looked him expressively in the eyes. Clive at once understood his mistake. If something was missing from the free-access map, then looking for it in the hidden sources might not be the best idea, considering their intention of remaining incognito.

  “Listen, Clive, the general maps show the date of the photos, don’t they?”

  “Yes. So?”

  “If they’re trying to hide something, they’ll just use old photos. That’s what I would do.”

  “Now that’s an idea. So, zoom in...”

  Steve increased the scale so that one photo filled the whole screen. At the bottom of the screen, the date of the month before last appeared.

  “And now let’s look outside the crater.”

  Steve moved the map on the screen. Now it showed the area at the foot of the mountains surrounding the crater. The date jumped forward to yesterday. The photos of the foothills were no more than a day old. Steve looked meaningfully at Clive.

  “It’s interesting, isn’t it?” said Steve. “They’ve brought the photos of the sand in the desert right up to date, but the industrial object
is not in that frame.”

  Meanwhile, the sky outside had lost its dark blue colour and had become black, with bright specks of stars. The space elevator cabin was silently sliding upwards. It had already left the upper layers of the atmosphere and was entering near-Earth space. In the panoramic window, the orbital station gradually came into view. This was where Steve and Clive were to change to a regular Mars flight.

  Another two hours remained till they reached the station. Steve and Clive decided to use the time to take a nap. Stretching out luxuriously in the deep comfortable business-class seats, they both dozed off. The elevator cabin was darkened in the customary way, and other passengers were either sleeping or quietly getting on with other things. The atmosphere was cosy, inviting sleep.

  Half an hour before they arrived at the orbital station, the dim reddish light in the cabin was replaced by bright pale blue.

  The further away from the planet’s surface they went, the more rapidly gravity decreased. Entering near-Earth space, the space elevator began moving at low acceleration, so as not to cause the passengers the discomfort of complete weightlessness. As soon as it stopped accelerating, there was no force of gravity at all.

  Before beginning to decelerate, the space elevator cabin smoothly turned upside down. The transparent ceiling showed Earth now instead of the space station. Now people were sitting the other way up from their initial position. The elevator began to decelerate, and the force of gravity returned.

  Steve and Clive found their gate almost immediately. Although the orbital station was of impressive dimensions, it was well thought out. Boarding for the flight to Mars was already in full swing, the airlocks of the spacecraft already open.

  Once inside, Steve and Clive took their seats and fastened their safety belts. Flights on such a small craft were not quite as comfortable as in the space elevator. The spacecraft accelerated noticeably, shook more strongly and, on reaching cruising speed, switched off the engines altogether, and moved through interplanetary space with a total absence of gravity.

  Humans are used to gravity on Earth, requiring the heart to beat with considerable force to supply the head with a sufficient quantity of blood. Now that the pressure of blood in the head was no longer balanced by the Earth’s gravity, faces swelled up, like on Earth when you are hanging upside down.