The Interstellar

by David Lund

  “How can something so powerful not show up on sensors?” he asked.

  “It might be masked to make it undetectable.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Who knows?” she shrugged. “If it’s alien technology, it might be.”

  “Well, let’s not jump to conclusions. Is there any way we can boost the scanners?”

  “Maybe, I can adjust the -” she stopped mid-sentence and stared at the screen. “Captain – I – there’s -”

  “What is it Lindsay?”

  “There’s something coming towards us.” Michael moved over to her console and looked at the screen.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s approaching fast.”

  “Could it be another energy barrier?”

  “I don’t think so, it’s coming from our side and I’m reading metal components.”

  “Metal?”

  “Yes. Captain, I think it’s a ship. And it’s going to ram us if it keeps up this speed.” Michael pressed the comm.

  “I need someone in the Engine room, NOW!”

  “I’m there now, Captain,” said Jal. “I’ve been monitoring the engines.”

  “Full reverse thrusters now!”

  “Yes Captain.” The ship hummed slightly as the manoeuvring thrusters burned out, and the ship began to move slowly.

  “We need more speed!” he yelled into the comm, as he watched the object on the screen get closer and closer.

  “Thrusters are at maximum, the engines are not warmed up Captain, I can’t get them running quickly.” Michael knew there was nothing they could do, the object was going too fast and they too slow, it would hit them soon.

  “Thirty seconds to impact,” Lindsey called out, her voice shaking. They both watched hopelessly as they watched their end approach.

  “It’s slowing down Captain. It halved it speed in two seconds. It seems to be pulling up along side

  us.” Michael ran off the bridge and to the nearest window. What he saw blew his mind. Just outside their own small vessel, was what looked like a torpedo, only much bigger. It was made of green metal, and looked sleek and clean. There were no markings of any kind on it. It was unmistakably, an alien ship.

  7

  Michael sat staring at the vessel for a while. He watched as it pulled neatly alongside their own ship and matched their speed. Aliens were real, the stories were true, they were out there. His mind was boggling and his heart was racing. Humanity had dreamed about this moment for centuries, the question was finally answered, they were not alone. Communication, he thought. He needed to try and talk to them, find out what they wanted and if they were hostile. Perhaps they were from one of the planets they had scanned; perhaps they had never seen aliens, either. Michael was excited and at the same time, very worried. There were so many variables.

  He went back to the bridge where Lindsey was waiting eagerly for him.

  “It’s a ship all right. We need communication.”

  “It’s offline, Jean didn’t have time to fix the transmitter.”

  “Can you get it working?”

  “It would take too long. Jean said he needed two days to fix it, and he would do it faster and better than I would.”

  “Other options?”

  “We could try waving,” Lindsay said, attempting a stab a humour. Then, in a more worried voice, “Captain, something is happening. The alien ship is moving towards us, slowly.”

  “Edwards to Engine Room,” he said, pressing the comm. “Cut the thrusters, we have company.”

  “Company? Do you mean -?”

  “It seems so, Jal. I’ll let you know, Edwards out.”

  “The alien ship is matching our speed, it’s still approaching. Something seems to be moving on it. A hatch has opened, Captain, and it’s big enough for our whole ship to fit through.”

  “Are you saying we are been abducted by aliens?” Michael joked wearily. Lindsey laughed nervously.

  “It seems so, Captain”, she said.

  “I suppose we’ll see. There’s nothing much we can do about it.”

  “Maybe they’re here to help?”

  “Let’s hope so.” He pressed the comm. “Attention crew. An alien ship has pulled within our vicinity, I repeat, an alien vessel is within our range. I know this is a shock to all of you, I assure you, it is to me too, but we need to stay alert. The vessel has opened and appears to want to take us inside.

  Whether to help us or harm us, we do not yet know. We have been unable to communicate. I want all personnel to keep concealed weapons, but I want no violence unless it is strictly necessary. I want peace with the aliens, but I would also like us to be able to defend ourselves if we need to.

  Prepare to be boarded. Edwards out.” He went to a cabinet beside the entrance where a weapons

  locker stood. He picked out two small hand guns, passed one to Lindsey and hid one inside his own boot. Why TEC had insisted they take weapons with them to Mars was a mystery to Michael, but he was suddenly glad they had.

  “The ship is twenty meters away, Captain.” They waited patiently, Michael knew he looked calm on the outside, but inside, he was scared out of his mind. “We are entering the alien vessel.”

  There was a thud and a dull clunk and the engines powered down.

  “Captain,” came Jal’s voice through the comm. “They’ve shut down our engines.”

  “I know, let them do it. No resistance.”

  Michael got up, told Lindsey to stay where she was, asked Marshall to meet him at the airlock, and headed down there himself. The two men met in the corridor, just outside the hatch.

  “Ready?” Michael asked.

  “As I’ll ever be, Captain.” Marshall was white as a sheet, he obviously had more trouble controlling his nerves. “God, I wish John were here.”

  “Me too, Lieutenant, me too.” John had been the man for this kind of situation, always cool and under control, he always seem to know how to act. The airlock whirred and swished open. Michael realized he had been holding his breath. He released it now, in a long, drawn out blow.

  The three people in front of them were bipeds, that much was sure, as they were wearing some sort of spacesuit that resembled their own, only they looked much more sophisticated. They seemed much less bulky and had no visible commands on them. They had two arms, and two legs, just like them, and they were also similar in height. The one in front seemed to be about as tall as Michael, perhaps even a couple of centimetres taller. Michael could not see their faces; as their helmets had a reflective visor, he could only see their own scared reflections. He took a step forward, speaking in a determinedly calm voice, although his hands were shaking.

  “Hello, welcome to our ship, my name is Michael, we have no harmful intentions.” The one nearest him simply gazed in his direction for a few seconds and then, so quickly, that Michael didn’t see it coming, punched him in the side of the head. Michael knew only a few seconds of dizziness before everything went black and he slipped into blissful unconsciousness.

  *

  Michael woke up to a dreadful screaming sound. He went from asleep to awake in a matter of seconds. He recognized the screaming voice: Lindsey. His head hurt like hell, and his body ached all over. Opening his eyes, he instantly noticed two things: first, he was no longer on his ship, and secondly, the rest of the crew seemed to be in the same room as him. Everybody was along a wall, spaced about two meters apart. There didn’t seem to be anything from stopping them walking

  around the room. He felt the side of his head where he had been punched, and cringed at the nasty bruise he could feel under his fingers. He checked to see of he still had his gun, no chance.

  He got to his feet and made to walk towards Caitlin, who was lying next two him.

  “Don’t!” Marshall shouted from his other side, making Michael halt in his tracks. Hayes pointed towards the other end of the room where crewman Jal lay, unconscious. “There are individual energy fields around each of us, st
opping us from leaving our corner. Jal was electrocuted. I don’t think they are as strong as the one Jean ran into, though. She’s breathing.” Michael stepped back and lent against the wall.

  “Well, we were wondering if they are hostile, I suppose we’ve got our answer.” He raised a hand to his head and winced. “What happened after they knocked me out?”

  “They didn’t speak to us. The one who hit you pulled out some kind of gun and the message was clear: come with us. The led us to this room and locked us inside. They took Lindsey about five minutes ago, the scream you heard was her.” Marshall looked anxious, and Michael knew he was fond of Lindsey, so was he for that matter. He pounded the wall angrily, making his hand hurt, but he felt slightly better for it.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Not long, about twenty minutes.”

  “How is everyone?” He looked around the room. Caitlin and Jean were still unconscious from their respective injuries. The rest of the crew looked ashen faced and scared, but seemed all right. Adrian was next to Jal, on the other side of the room, he was staring at her, anxiously.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Michael asked him.

  “She’s breathing,” the doctor replied, echoing Marshall, and not really reassuring Michael.

  “Did you get a look at them?” he asked Marshall.

  “They didn’t take their suits off. I tried talking to them but got a punch in my stomach for the trouble, I advised the others to shut up after that.”

  “You did good, Marshall.”

  Michael turned away from the Lieutenant and looked around the room. It was larger than the bridge of their ship, and very brightly lit. The walls were the same green colour as the hull. He had noticed that he and his ship mates were breathing normally, and the ambient temperature was reasonable, so that must mean that either the aliens breathed the same air as they did, or they knew some things about the humans. Eleven people were scattered evenly around him, all stuck behind their own energy field. The only gap was where a double door stood.. Michael thought, with a pang, about the seven dead crew members and then of Lindsey, who was probably being either tortured or experimented on. Rage burned inside him.

  “HEY!” he screamed as loudly as he could whilst banging on the metal wall. “HEY, I WAN’T TO

  TALK TO YOU!”

  “What are you doing?” Marshall asked anxiously.

  “Trying to get their attention,” he replied, still screaming and banging on the wall. They all heard Lindsey scream again, and Michael yelled even louder, trying to call their attention, yes, but also to drown out the young woman’s cries of agony.

  “I’m not sure that that’s a good -,” the doors swished open and Marshall cut his sentence short as two aliens, still wearing space suits, came in carrying Lindsey. They dropped her on the floor, and Michael, seeing the bruised face and cast free broken leg, yelled at them.

  “What the hell did you do to her?” The one nearest to Michael walked towards him and produced an electronic pad onto which it typed something with a thick gloved hand. It then held the pad up to Michael. On it was written the word Leader?

  “Yes,” Michael answered. “I’m the leader you son of a bitch! What the hell do you want with us?”

  The alien tapped something on his pad again and looked at the other one, he then pressed a button on the wall near Michael. There was a flash and Michael guessed the energy barrier had been taken away. The alien advanced towards Michael and grabbed his arm. He thought about hitting it, but decided it might be wiser to see where they were taking him, and at the same hoping he wasn’t about to be tortured.

  The other alien stayed in the room while the first one escorted Michael out into a corridor, still lined with the same bare, green metal walls. They walked along in silence. Michael suspected that this was the same one who had hit him earlier. It was the same height, at any rate. It led him into another room, one that looked like some sort of office; there was a sort of desk, and a kind of stool, onto which he was deposited. It was extremely hot and here, and Michael immediately began sweating. The alien walked around the desk and sat down on his own stool.

  “Why are you wearing that suit?” Michael asked. The alien looked at him for several seconds, then down at his pad before tapping something onto it and holding it up for him to see.

  Contamination, was written on it this time.

  “You know our language?”

  Translator.

  Michael nodded, feeling astounded that they had a translator for their language. But that wasn’t the pressing issue.

  “Why have you captured us?” Michael looked intently at the alien in front of him. He wished he could see his face, they seemed to be similar, well they had arms and legs and a head in the same place at least. The alien took his time putting his answer on the pad, it seemed to be thinking.

  Human? The word came from the pad.

  “Yes, you know us?”

  Violent.

  “No, we are a peaceful species. It seems to me that you are the violent ones.” Michael regretted his last sentence, he did not want to anger them. Also, he noted that the longer the sentence, the longer it took for the translator to interpret what he was saying. He hoped that their translator didn’t get anything mixed up.

  Not peaceful. You are violent.

  “We have no hostile intentions. What do you want from us?”

  Leave.

  “We want to, we are twenty seven light years away from home. It would take us too long to get home, we would die.”

  Then die. It seemed to Michael they were unlikely to get any help from the aliens.

  “What did you do to to Lindsey? The girl you took.” Taking Michael by surprise, the alien suddenly stood up and hit Michael across the face, hard. Michael was dazed and fell to the floor, but he recovered quickly and rolled to the right, correctly interpreting the alien’s next move, which had been to stamp down hard on Michael stomach. He got up, and in a swift movement, spun his leg around under the aliens’ feet, making it fall to the floor. It got up quickly though, before Michael had time to pin it, and with surprising speed and agility for someone wearing a bulky space suit, grabbed Michael again, firmly, with amazing strength, and sat him down roughly on the stool.

  Michael knew he was no match, so he just sat there and waited. The alien sat down too. He reached for his pad again.

  Human weak, and Michael laughed.

  “Human hot and tired,” he answered.

  An alarm sounded suddenly on the ship, and the alien in front of Michael reacted instantly. He jumped up, grabbed Michael and ran out of the room, quickly dumping him back in the room with the others, not bothering to put him behind a force field, and left quickly with the other alien.

  Michael ran over to Lindsey, who still lay on the floor where they had dumped her. Her face was purple, and she had two black eyes; she was also bleeding from a cut on forehead, and her broken leg was lying straight out. They had removed her cast.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her, stroking her hair gently.

  “They – they hit me, several times, but didn’t ask me any questions.” Tears were falling down her face earnestly. “I kept asking them what they wanted but they just kept hitting me – and then –then…”

  “What Lindsey?” She gulped hard and wiped her sore eyes.

  “They fixed my leg.” Michael’s eyes grew wide. Everybody else was watching silently as Lindsey continued, “They put me on some sort of machine – it hurt so badly, I screamed – but my leg, it’s

  fixed, it’s not broken any more.” She sobbed quietly. Michael helped her to her feet, and she put some weight on her leg. She seemed okay. Glancing around the room, Michael was relieved to see Jal awake and looking around, obviously recovering from the energy field shock.

  “What did they do to you, Captain?” Marshall asked, but before Michael could answer, there was a loud bang and the ship shook hard, making them all stumble. The alarm blared on, and there was another shake of
the ship. Michael got up and went to Marshall’s corner. Not far from him on the wall, was a set of buttons. One of them probably shut off the energy field, but there were no writings or marking of any kind. There was just six buttons in a line. He tried the first one, nothing happened.

  “I think it’s a code,” Marshall said. “I saw him press four different buttons when he released you.”

  Before he could try anything else, they heard a sound like electricity, and the doors opened, revealing four aliens. They entered into the brightly lit room and each one ran over to a different person. These were not the same as the other aliens, their suits were blue instead of white and their face plates were see through. Michael looked at them, and staring back at him, was the face of startling blue, and bright red eyed creature. It had a small nose, more like slits than anything else and a wide mouth, which it opened to speak.

  “There’s no time to explain, you must follow us now!”

  8

  “You speak English?” Michael was amazed. His brain was having trouble accepting the face of the creature in front of him, speaking in English. He saw that most of the crew had been freed by the alien’s crew mates.

  “No time,” it said again. It’s voice was deep and melodious. “Follow me.” The aliens led the humans back into the corridor, they ran at a frantic pace. Reaching a corner, they ran into two of the white suited aliens. The one who had spoken to Michael pulled out a device that looked like on old fashioned mobile telephone and pointed it a the two white suited aliens. The sound of electricity they had heard earlier reappeared, and to the Humans’ amazement, an actual bolt of electricity shot out of the end of the ‘telephone’, and hit the other two squarely in the chest, making them fall to the ground. They ran on.

  They reached what seemed to be a hatch, the aliens ushered them through it and closed it behind them. This new area was horribly cold, and Michael realized they had just entered another ship. The alien Michael came to think of as the leader, spoke in a strange language. The voice still had that deep melodious sound but what came out was incomprehensible.