by Shain Carter
“Me?” Ted’s voice was a mixture of surprise and disappointment. “Wait,” he said quickly, “don’t tell me…”
Ted began pacing, mumbling to himself and slapping his hands together. The others looked at one another with undisguised amusement. After a moment Ted snapped his fingers.
“Oh, of course,” he cried. “Satellites! Any species that could refine titanium metal and make nuclear reactors would have been able to put up satellites. And they almost surely would have - satellites are simply too useful for a civilized society to be without.”
“Satellites?” Meredith rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, Ted. Satellites don’t stay up forever. Look at Skylab - it barely lasted six years, let alone sixty-five million.”
Alec cleared his throat meaningfully, and everyone turned to him. “No, Meredith, Ted’s actually correct. Satellites in low earth orbit - like Skylab - come down because of atmospheric drag. Even at altitudes of a few hundred miles there’s enough air to slow them down and drop them out of orbit. But if you go out to a high orbit - something like a geostationary orbit, at around twenty-four thousand miles - there is absolutely no air and so no friction. Obviously satellites won’t stay operational for sixty-five million years, but if they were put in geostationary orbit sixty-five million years ago, then they are still out there now.”
“Exactly!” Ted cried, pointing at Alec. “Only the earth rotated a little faster back then, so geostationary satellites wouldn’t have been quite so high, but still plenty high to be stable. They'd still up there, all we’d have to do is find them.”
Derek beamed at Ted. “Right on all accounts. It was George’s idea to look for satellites. Some old school mates of his work at an observatory in Australia. They figured out where to look and spent quite a bit of time searching. They still haven’t found any, but what they did find makes 65 million year old satellites pale in comparison.”
Ted gaped at Derek. “What’d they find?” he demanded.
“What they found was a spacecraft entering our solar system. A dinosaur spacecraft. And it's headed our way.”
Derek paused to let the scientists absorb the implications of his words. After a minute, he continued. “We’ve spent the last five months pulling the pieces together, and what we’ve come up with so far is this. Whatever event triggered their nuclear holocaust, the dinosaurs must have had some warning. Enough time for a group of them to build a ship to take them to the Alpha Centauri star system, a little more than four light years from earth. The Alpha Centauri system is made up of three stars, one of which is class G2 - just like our sun. That alone makes it highly likely to be orbited by planets with temperatures and atmospheres similar to earth.
"We can only guess at what happened next. The trip itself would have been horribly unpleasant and dangerous. It would have taken generations to get there. Even at a million miles an hour, it’s still a three thousand year trip. But somehow they managed, and when they arrived at Alpha Centauri they found a compatible planet and colonized it.
“They had left a planet that they knew was headed for disaster, but they had no way of knowing what had actually happened. Had some escaped death? If so, what state were they in? What could they do to help them?
“These questions must have bothered them, and what they did next was something truly remarkable. They sent a probe back home. A sort of cosmic care package, waiting for some sign of intelligent survivors. But no one was left to activate it, and the probe has been orbiting between Alpha Centauri and the sun ever since on a thousand year cycle.”
Derek paused for breath, and George grinned at Dawson. “Quite a feat for a bunch of dumb animals, is it not?”
Ted was wide eyed. “You’re telling us you’ve found a spacecraft from Alpha Centauri? Where is it now? Why haven’t we already heard about this?”
"Where it is now is behind the sun from us. We calculate it won’t re-emerge until late July, and it won’t make its closest approach to earth - which really won’t be that close, until late November. As for why you haven’t heard about this before, well, it's hardly the sort of news one releases lightly. Imagine the riots and chaos if people knew we were about to be visited by alien dinosaurs, or at least by one of their starships. Even our own government isn’t eager for the probe to arrive. I spoke with several high ranking officials about it and they all said to ignore it - let it fly by without making contact and hope it goes away. ‘We’ll intercept it on its next trip,’ they told me, ‘after we’ve had a chance to study our options.’ The idiots! The next trip isn’t for a thousand years!"
Meredith turned her head to Derek sharply. "What do you mean - making contact? You’re not suggesting this thing is still working?"
"Oh, but it is, my dear. This thing - this messenger probe - is working just fine. We’ve been watching it carefully, and it’s been doing things that can only be deliberate. Slowing down, even though it is falling towards the sun. Maneuvering. Reorienting. Changing luminosity. Even after 65 million years, shuttling back and forth thousands of times between our solar system and Alpha Centauri, it’s still working. Amazing, isn't it?
"But the truly amazing thing is that it's not just still working - it's actually calling out to us, trying to establish contact. It’s been flashing us a message with reflected sunlight, the same way you might use a mirror to send a signal. Imagine the secrets it must hold! The technology of a civilization that is 65 million years more advanced than ours! What knowledge there must be, trapped in that little probe, waiting for us to extract! In one fell swoop we will advance ourselves a thousand times beyond our present state of technology.
“The thing is clearly looking for a response - some indication of intelligent life - to get it to land on earth. And respond I will, with a craft of my own. A craft that you will build for me over the next four months."
Alec shook his head. "What the hell are you talking about, lad? The craft who’s going to build you?"
Derek pointed at each scientist in turn. "You, him, her. Burt, give ‘em the details."
Burt maneuvered to the head of the table while the others took their seats. Burt dimmed the lights again, then fumbled a moment with the laptop. A very detailed engineering drawing flashed onto the screen. “Here it is,” Burt told them, “Derek’s interceptor craft.”
Dawson squinted at the image. The drawing was too detailed to take in at a glance, but Dawson could see that the interceptor was essentially a small box with an oversized antenna projecting from one end and a much smaller nozzle from the other.
“Put simply, it’s not much more than a big radio transmitter strapped onto a propulsion unit. The plan is to get it as close as possible to the contact probe, then send it radio signals, following the pattern the probe has been flashing to us using sunlight.
“The trick will be to get our interceptor craft to where we need it. In order to maximize the time that the contact probe is in the solar system, its makers have given it a wide loop around the sun, rather than bringing it in close to earth. A wide loop means it travels a greater distance within the solar system, and by not falling so close to the sun, it’ll travel at a slower average speed. That gives us a longer time window to intercept it, but it also means the contact probe will come no closer than 600 million kilometers from us - about the distance from earth to Jupiter at its closest approach.”
Alec threw his hands in the air. “You’re dreaming, lad, if you think you can get a probe out as far as Jupiter in just a few months. Never mind the time needed to build the thing, that’s a six year trip in itself.”
“It’s a six year trip if we use the typical burn and coast technique. Fire off some chemical propellants for five or ten minutes, then coast the rest of the way. But we have in mind another sort of propulsion system, one that gives a low but sustained thrust.”
Meredith’s face lit up. “A nuclear rocket engine!”
All eyes turned to her. “It’s very simply,” she explained. “All you need is a small nuclear reactor designed t
o produce maximum temperatures, rather than maximum power, which is what reactors are normally designed to do. The reactor super-heats hydrogen gas, which then shoots out of a nozzle. The hotter the gas, the more thrust the rocket gives you. The concept was looked into in the early 60s and has been used on a few probes, but no one has done much work on it recently.”
“But you could design a reactor for us?” Derek’s words sounded less like a question than an order.
Meredith thought for a moment. “I think so. It certainly shouldn’t be hard to design a reactor that can accelerate a light craft at one g.”
Ted began tapping furiously on his tablet, then looked up sharply. “At a constant acceleration of one g, the interceptor could get there in just under two weeks.”
Burt nodded. “Add another week for maneuvering - which will be your job, Ted - and the whole trip could be done in less than a month.”
Meredith turned to Derek. “There’s just one problem. I can design a reactor pretty quickly, but it will take a lot more than a few months to get the radioactive fuel. We’ll need to use plutonium, and there’s a ton of regulations to follow and thousands of pages of paperwork to be filled out. Then there’s the problem of setting up a secure lab to actually fabricate the reactor. We’re talking about a minimum of two years before we even get off the drawing board.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Derek told her with a smile. “When you’re in the power loop, like I am, you can find ways to cut a few corners.” He glanced quickly at George, then turned back to Meredith. “You just design the thing, and when you’re ready, I’ll have all the plutonium you’ll need.”
Alec, who had been slumped over in his chair, struggled to an upright position. “Let’s say you can get the reactor built in time, which I doubt, you still need to get your little toy up out of the earth’s gravitational well. A one g thrust isn’t going to do that for you.”
Grinning even more broadly, Derek ordered Burt to show the next slide. “You’re right,” he told Alec, “Nelson’s engine won’t get us into space. But this will.”
The image of a rocket filled the screen. It lay on its side, on a long-bed trailer that was hitched to drab green tractor. Several men, dressed in desert robes and their faces obscured by loose fitting scarves, posed in front of the trailer. Three held rifles high above their heads. Using the men as reference, Dawson estimated the rocket to be about forty feet long and just under five feet around.
"This may look a little familiar to you from the Gulf Wars,” Burt said. "It's a Scud-D missile. In 1974 it was state-of-the-art, the pride of the Soviet army. Not anymore. These days the Russians only use it as a source of hard cash. They've sold quite a few of them to different governments around the world. My understanding, though, is that Mr. Becker is the only private purchaser of the rocket."
"You own one of these?" Alec cut in.
Derek held up two fingers. "Two of them, actually. And that's where you come in."
"Absolutely,” Burt continued. "The engines aren't powerful enough to deliver a payload into space. But two of them, stacked together into a staged rocket, should do the trick."
Alec shook his head derisively. "You're still dreaming, lad. You couldn't get a box of tissue paper into space, even with two scuds ganged together."
"But you could do it - make a two-stage out of them?"
"Theoretically, yes. There's no real trick to it, just a lot of legwork. A group of German engineers modified a few Scuds for the Iraqis in the late '80s and tripled their range. It wouldn't be too difficult to figure out how to extend that work to a two-stage. With the right CAD program I could do the calculations in a just few months. But what's the point? You still won't have anywhere near the thrust you need to get the probe into orbit."
"That’s right - not with regular rocket fuel,” Burt agreed. "But we won't be using regular rocket fuel. What we'll be using is much more powerful - something called green flame fuels. They’re the most powerful fuels known to man, and the world expert on them is right here. Tell them about it, Professor Jones."
Everyone turned expectantly to Dawson. "No, Burt, I won’t,” he said quietly, staring straight at him. "I already told you I have no intention of working on the green flame again. The books were closed on that program a long time ago. You’ll have to figure out another to get your rocket into space."
Becker smiled condescendingly. "Don't worry, Jones, I won't hold you to that. The shock of my findings has just been too much for you. You'll change your mind and beg to be on this program once you realize what a fantastic opportunity I'm handing you."
Dawson gripped his glass hard. He opened his mouth to speak, but then checked himself. There was no point in arguing about it here. Becker would find out soon enough that he meant what he said.
Becker turned back to the others. “You all know your roles now, and you’ve probably figured out Burt’s - it was his job to assemble the team, and he’ll continue on with us as my assistant. But you might be wondering about George. He will provide us with a research facility. Chemical labs for Professor Jones, fabrication facilities for Professor Nelson, high speed computers for all of you. Perhaps the most important thing he’ll give you is complete solitude, so you can work without distraction. We’re on a very tight timeline here, and you’ll have to be focused."
George stood and nodded to Burt. "Please, show them the map, while I describe their home for the next four months."
Burt clicked a button on the laptop, and a map of the southern border between Europe and Asia appeared on the screen. George pointed to a red dot in eastern Turkey.
"This is Anjawan,” he told them, "a small town in a remote region of my country. It was one time chosen to be home to Turkey's greatest university - a university that would be the envy of all others. We spent years planning it, with no detail or expense spared. Ten years ago ground was broken and construction began in earnest. Then, after only a short time, an earthquake struck. You might remember hearing about the tremendous loss of life, or seeing pictures of the destruction. Mountain sides collapsed, entire villages were leveled or swallowed whole into the earth. Thirty thousand lives were lost.
"But what escaped media attention was that the quake also leveled the new university. Not entirely, there were a few buildings that escaped, but too few to matter. My government chose not to rebuild - money was needed for the quake victims."
George’s voice filled with emotion as he went on. "I understand why they made that decision, but it was a terrible loss to our country. And now we have a chance to use what is left for a purpose far greater than we ever dared to imagine, even in our wildest dreams. To make contact with other beings, once from this earth but now from another planet - this will be the most important event in the history of man!"
Chapter Six
At dinner that evening Dawson found that the others had been thoroughly taken by Derek’s story. Ted Krezler, in particular, was awestruck by the possibility of contacting alien species, and the dinner conversation was monopolized by him and Derek. Not by them speaking to each other, but by them taking turns holding the floor, alternately wrestling control from the other.
This may have frustrated the others, who struggled to get a word in edgewise, but it pleased Dawson. He was never comfortable in social situations, especially among strangers, and with Ted and Derek sparring for center stage Dawson felt no obligations to speak himself. Besides, this gave him a chance to discretely study his host in action.
Dinner brought out a different side of Derek than what Dawson had seen during the afternoon presentation. Earlier Derek had held court over the others, a role he clearly relished. Derek clearly enjoyed being the focus of attention, and was used to people hanging on his every word. He was also used to the power that comes from having people need him.
Now the roles were reversed: he needed someone - the scientists. He needed them to make his crowning achievement happen. Worse yet, from Derek’s viewpoint, the scientists were the experts here, not
him. The situation was uncomfortable for Derek, Dawson concluded, and Derek compensated by controlling the one thing he could control: the conversation.
And control it he did. At every opportunity he spoke about himself and his pet projects: his work on dolphin-free tuna, on the preservation of old growth forests, on securing land for Panamanian peasants, and so on. His list of social crusades, it seemed, was endless - and they were not what the others wanted to hear about.
Ted was the only one successful in breaking Derek’s monopoly on the conversation simply because he was so excited by what Derek had told them that he could not contain himself. He would sit quietly for several minutes at a time, lost in deep thought, then, when a new idea struck, would interrupt Derek mid-sentence. And once he started talking, Ted was unstoppable until he had said his piece.
He enthused over everything from the messenger probe’s means of propulsion to whether it was guided by machines or living beings. Meredith, George, Burt - even Dawson, to some extent - enjoyed Ted's theories, especially the more wild ones, and Burt and Meredith egged him on with even more wild speculations of their own. Alec, too, despite appearing exhausted, joined in on occasion.
Just as dessert was being served, the butler whispered something in Derek’s ear. Derek checked his watch, then nodded to the man. “O. K.,” he told him, “but send them in for a moment first.”
As the butler disappeared Derek explained the interruption to the group. “It’s time I put my children to bed, but I’d like to you to meet them first. May I introduce Andy and Cindy.”
A boy and a girl stepped into the room. They were good looking kids, both dressed for bed in light pajamas. Andy was the younger - Dawson guessed about ten. He had an exuberant smile, and his sun-bleached hair was cropped short. Despite the late hour he was so full of energy that he jumped a little as he walked. Cindy, perhaps three years older than Andy, was much taller than her brother and somewhat gangling, as can be the case with girls that age. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her white teeth were nicely set off by the deep tan of her face. She held a book in one hand.
