Beyond the Event Horizon - Episode Two

by Albert Sartison

  “After a shake-up like that, it totally forgets that it wanted to sleep,” ended Maggie, showing how the neural pulses moved along the spine towards the head.

  “Yep,” added Steve to himself, “I forgot what we were talking about too.”

  Nevertheless, he remembered Maggie’s advice. The result of applying it exceeded all expectations. That time he managed to sleep for only five hours and when he woke, he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t fall asleep again over breakfast, a slice of bread and butter still between his teeth. Remembering Maggie’s advice, and overcoming the monstrous desire to say the hell with everything and fall back into the still warm bed, he crawled under the shower. The cold water running over his body after the warmth of the soft blanket was like beating himself with a whip. The procedure really did give the brain a firework display of sensations.

  But Maggie was right. Once the water had been wiped off with a towel, he looked out onto the street and it was as if a second Sun had risen and painted the world in bright colours. The method had worked perfectly. It was a novel experience for Steve to wake up so effectively.

  His tablet bleeped and a red diode winked. Steve reached out a hand to draw it closer, sensing intuitively that it was Shelby. The message was in an attached video. He started it running and set up the tablet in front of him, continuing to eat his breakfast looking at the screen.

  “Steve, thanks for agreeing, it has made life much simpler for us. We couldn’t send Clive because he is not yet ready for such an adventure after his operation. And as you know, there are no other young people in ‘Dawn’ except you – and me, of course.”

  Steve laughed and then coughed, choking on a piece of toast.

  “Joking aside, here is the latest news. The second contact with the aliens has begun. I’ve attached the complete minutes of our communication, but I’ll tell you briefly what it was about. We have not yet discussed the details, but it is a matter of help in terraforming Mars. The aliens propose reconfiguring the position of the celestial bodies of the Solar System so that the orbit of Mars will pass closer to the Earth, and synchronising the angular velocity of the two planets. You will find the details of your mission and a transcript of our communication in the dossier.

  “Right now you are already on your way back. You probably already know that Kimble has been ordered to fly past Mars and set you down somewhere where you can meet Maggie. A special ship will be fitted out for the two of you that will take you directly to the aliens. That’s all for now, over and out.”

  Steve finished listening to the video message at the same time as he finished his breakfast. So the Academic Council had decided to send an expedition of two delegates, one of the male sex, one of the female. Just as in the message to extraterrestrial civilisations left on board the ‘Voyagers’ launched two hundred years ago. He got up from behind the table, grabbed his tablet, put it in his bag and looked around his cabin once again. He didn’t seem to have forgotten anything, he was ready to go.

  By the ship’s time, it was early morning. The silence in the corridors was broken only by the artificial wind, gusts of which, if you listened for them, could be heard in the form of a soft rustling from the ventilation slits.

  Trying not to make a noise, he quickly went past the living quarters and reached the gravity lock. Here, knowing how his organism would react, he set down his bag, grabbed an inhaler of space-sickness remedy and took a deep breath from it. The cold menthol entered his chest and dissolved there, filling his body with a strange sensation.

  In the cargo compartment, the persistent hum of the transformers for the scientific equipment became audible. Steve strode towards his drone, adding the sound of his steps in the magnetic soles to the electric hum. Reaching his craft, he noticed a bright piece of carrot-coloured paper on the front of the canopy. Apparently Toshi had left him a note.

  “I forgot to tell you how to open it without a key. Below the canopy is a symbol in the shape of a hand. Just press your palm to it. Good luck and keep your pecker up! P.S. Send photos.”

  Steve smiled, folded the note in three and put it in his coat pocket. So, a symbol in the shape of a hand... He began looking around the drone’s hull plating. It wasn’t easy to find the right symbol. The whole surface of the drone was covered in various warning signs, instructions, and all sorts of symbols...

  It must be this one. A little to one side was the stylised image of a hand, drawn in a broken line. As soon as he put his hand on it, the drone’s canopy folded back, making Steve jump back as it hissed loudly.

  Inside, everything was as it had been before; the interior was illuminated with the same reddish-orange light. The edges of the seats glowed at changing intensity to make them stand out in the semi-darkness against the background of the other glowing parts. He sat down in the pilot’s seat and allowed it to close up on his body. The interior of the ship was gradually waking up and the brightness of the illumination increased. The onboard computer moved the seat closer to the console and the joystick came up right under his hand. The smoothness of operation of the mechanisms in the interior was more reminiscent of a civil ship than a military drone.

  Steve intuitively laid his hand on the joystick but at once withdrew it, remembering Toshi’s advice not to switch control to manual until he was in space.

  He coughed, and commanded:

  “Close the – er – hatch.”

  “All the hatches are closed, sir.”

  Steve snorted and looked sceptically at the folded-back canopy. After thinking for a few seconds, he ordered:

  “Display the flight mission.”

  The screens filled with information. One of them showed a three-dimensional chart, in the centre of which EMC1906 was crawling like a snail against the background of a distance grid. A line ran from it up the screen. Steve made a few gestures to change the scale. A section of the line previously beyond the screen bent round and then came against Mars. Everything seemed OK, he could get started.

  “Carry out the mission.”

  The canopy came down and was fixed in special locks.

  “Canopy closed.” This message appeared on one of the auxiliary screens.

  “Oh, so it’s canopy. Not hatch. I’ll know that next time,” muttered Steve.

  The hum of the generators outside was cut off. Suddenly absolute silence reigned inside, as if his ears had suddenly stopped working and he had become stone deaf. It was not a pleasant sensation. After a few seconds, the drone began to come to life, filling the cabin with various noises. After checking the onboard systems and blowing out the engines, the drone slid outside.

  Steve was glued to the window. He was flying in the same direction as EMC1906, on a course deviating slightly to the right. The mother ship was floating past him, numerous lights shining from its hull. It was too close and large to see it completely, only part of it was visible.

  The drone came to the end of the huge cargo compartment, attached to the rest of the ship by a narrow segment like a wasp’s waist. Immediately behind it there appeared the main part of the ship containing the engine room, the living quarters and the bridge.

  These were all inside an enormous ring rotating around its own axis. When inside EMC1906, it was hard to estimate the external dimensions of the ring. Only from outside was it possible to see how massive and at the same time impressive its structure was.

  Eventually the drone’s computer decided that the distance from the mother ship was sufficient for its exhaust plasma to cause no damage and it increased speed, pressing Steve into his seat. Steve did not take his eyes off EMC1906, which had begun rapidly changing in size. After a minute, it was no longer easy to observe the ship through the window; it was too far behind.

  Steve stopped staring at the ship, made himself comfortable in his seat and got out his tablet. The flight to the destination point would take about seven hours. Enough time to look at the dossier Shelby had sent him.

  10

  The idea of a meeting in person between
Earthlings and aliens was first proposed by Shelby.

  “And what will that give us?” asked MacQueen when he had heard the proposal.

  “Well, at some time we shall have to begin live contact, not just remotely via communication means. Anyway, wouldn’t your intelligence people like to look an alien in the face?” said the professor, answering one question with another.

  “And who are you thinking of sending to the meeting?”

  “Someone from the project.”

  “Do you have a specific candidate in mind?”

  “My team includes the one who first discovered the aliens; I see no reason why he should not be the first delegate.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Steve.”

  “Steve...” The general thought about it, remembering the face of the young member of Shelby’s team. “Do you think you can entrust such a mission to him?”

  “I am absolutely confident I can.”

  “Do you propose sending him alone?”

  “No, I think it would be too much stress for one man. I think he will need support.”

  “And do you have a second candidate in mind?”

  “I would say rather that I have an idea about the second candidate. There is a young girl in the biologists’ team. I have spoken to the head of their group, a colleague of mine at the university, and he thinks very highly of her.”

  “Your man Steve is a student, isn’t he?”

  “Not exactly. He completed his studies this summer. As far as I know, he is thinking of going for a doctoral degree as soon as he receives his diploma.”

  “You said the second candidate is a girl. How many young people are there in the project? Five or six?”

  “Only three.”

  “Three. Out of a hundred... I assume their youth is not just a coincidence?”

  The expression on MacQueen’s face showed he expected not just a brief reply, but a detailed explanation.

  “No, it isn’t. You see, relations between the sexes play a large role in our society. The picture of our race will be incomplete if we ignore this point.”

  “But what do we gain from the aliens knowing about it?”

  “I believe they already know this. But the point of the meeting is to learn about each other, to get a sense of what we are. And relations within the species are just the sort of information which would be of interest, for example, from the point of view of biologists and anthropologists. In learning about a new species, scientists always pay attention to such matters. At the same time, this information is not critical for us from the security point of view.”

  “And why young, particularly?”

  “In young people the inter-sexual dynamic is at its maximum. In an older group, which sex you are is of secondary importance.”

  The general thought about it, then shrugged his shoulders.

  “Well, if you consider it important, I have no objection. But before deciding, I’ll give instructions to the Secret Service to compile a psychological profile and check your candidates in their usual way. If they don’t reveal any problems, let them fly, why not?”

  A few days later, when both candidates had been approved and had given their agreement, the details of the mission were on the agenda. It was MacQueen who explained them to the Academic Council.

  “Our primary task is to squeeze as much information out of the meeting as possible. And then more. And subsequently, just a little bit more,” said MacQueen dramatically, underlining his words with sweeping arm gestures, his fists clenched tight.

  Shelby silently observed the general’s speech, paying attention not to what he was saying, but to how he was saying it. His gestures were sharp, impatient. It looked as if he had already discussed the forthcoming mission with military intelligence and had formed his own secret plans. He’d have to be on the alert; the general had obviously kept something back.

  Eventually, MacQueen finished the generalities and got down to the details. With some difficulty, Shelby ended his train of thought and switched over to the general’s speech.

  “This is how we envisage the contact in practice. The two candidates are now on their way to Mars. A special ship is waiting for them there. Inside the ship we have fitted a special transparent compartment, which, on arrival at the destination, will be sent out into space, at some distance from the ship.

  “So the ship will deliver our people to the rendezvous point, about a thousand kilometres from the cloud.”

  “Why not closer?” said one of the biologists, interrupting him.

  “We want to be able to study the alien transport from close to. In overcoming such a distance, they will have to accelerate, decelerate and maybe change direction. All this will give us, or I hope will give us, much information about their engines, the technical features of their ships and so on. If the rendezvous were closer to the cloud, we would not see any of that.”

  The general switched on the visualisation of the forthcoming mission. The animation showed the ship taking off from Mars, setting course for the cloud and, when reaching its vicinity, stopping at a certain distance from it. An alien ship appeared from the cloud and flew towards it.

  “So, now we have the aliens on board. Or more precisely, inside the special compartment or capsule. Now, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, everything depends on your imagination. What information does it make sense to collect, and how should we do this? Any suggestions?”

  MacQueen made a gesture of invitation, emphasising that he was turning over the discussion to the scientists.

  “I would be interested in taking X-ray pictures of the aliens, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t be quite proper to X-ray them.” This opinion was expressed by one of the medics.

  “Why not?” objected one of the physicists. “It doesn’t have to be done openly; it could be done in secret. For that you would need to ignite an X-ray flare and take the picture from the other side.”

  “But X-ray radiation is harmful to living organisms.”

  “That’s no problem. We can calculate the dose so that it will not do any harm to people.”

  “Not to people, but what if the aliens react very sensitively to X-rays?”

  “Hardly likely. In making interstellar flights, they are constantly encountering X-ray radiation. Any star, including our Sun, can suddenly increase the intensity of its radiation in this part of the spectrum. They must know this. So if their physiology is actually such that X-rays do them serious harm, their spacesuits will be provided with the necessary protection.”

  “How can you be protected from X-rays in a thin spacesuit?”

  “Firstly, where did you get the idea that their spacesuits are thin, and secondly, don’t forget who we are dealing with. They can create powerful gravity waves inside a small ship, so they are sure to have thought up some means of protection against X-rays. The only problem is that if the radiation is harmful to them, they will be protected against it and our scanning will simply fail. That’s all there is to it.

  “I would just like to say that if we really do decide to take X-ray pictures, we need to create the appearance that the flare took place by chance, involuntarily.”

  Sullivan sceptically shook his head, smiling ironically.

  “Too many things happen by chance when they communicate with us. First cannons fire, then flares occur. Don’t you think so?”

  “Yes, I agree with you. Knowledge of their physiology is worth its weight in gold to us,” remarked MacQueen, as if he had not heard Sullivan’s words. “While we’re on the subject, do they breathe or can they manage without doing so?”

  “The respiratory process is the exhalation of used gases and the inhalation of an oxidiser from the environment. The oxidiser, in our case oxygen itself, is required for the implementation of reactions connected with the production of energy in the cells. But methods of producing energy can also be based on other principles, therefore the ability to breathe, as we understand it, is not necessarily essential to the aliens,” expla
ined one of the biologists. “If we use our tried and tested method of the reduction of possible variants, one can assume that their physiology, like ours, involves respiration. Learning the composition of the exhaled gas would enable us to understand the arrangement of their metabolism. But how can we obtain samples of their breath?”

  “It will be difficult,” was the opinion expressed by another biologist. “We have no way of knowing the composition of the atmosphere suitable for their respiration, and thus of providing them with their accustomed conditions. Therefore they will have to be in sealed spacesuits. And that makes it impossible to obtain samples of exhaled gases.”

  “Maybe there’s a way round that. I’m thinking of the example of our own spacesuits. Although they do not exchange gases with the environment, the helmet has a convex visor. If the design of the aliens’ spacesuits is of similar shape, it may be possible for us to make a spectral analysis of the atmosphere inside the helmet and draw the corresponding conclusions about its composition. But this is just theory, of course. Practice, as we know, is always more difficult. We would need special illumination, different from that which we use in spaceships and in everyday life.”

  “It would be no bad thing to determine their weight,” commented another biologist. “If we knew their weight and had a rough idea of their volume, we could draw certain conclusions about their internal physiology.”

  “In weightlessness, this is no easy task,” said Shelby. “You won’t be able to build scales into the floor.”

  “I agree,” replied the biologist, nodding.

  “We shall have to make them grip something and pull it towards them. Or push off from a certain sector of the surface,” proposed one of the physicists. “If we build a dynamometer in there, we can calculate the force applied, and on the basis of the observed acceleration, we can estimate their weight.”