by David Lund
“Underwater?”
“Yes, have you noticed the gills on the side of their heads? They are amphibian, and more than half of their cities are underwater. Of course their water was also polluted by the radiation, so they can’t breathe in the oxygen from it, but they have plenty of ships designed to run beneath the surface. The oceans on that planet are very deep, it would be almost impossible for our sensors to detect a structure right at the bottom.”
“But could they build something that could withstand that kind of pressure?” Lindsey asked, flicking her blond hair over her shoulder.
“As I said, the Friiist lived underwater, I’m sure they have the means.”
“So you think that’s where Marshall and Adrian and being held?” Caitlin asked. “Deep underwater?”
“Yes,” Gareen said simply. They all thought for a minute. Michael was sure they were all wondering the same thing. How to get to them? How could they infiltrate the Friiist home world and travel underwater to the bottom of a vast ocean without even knowing where to look? If this supposed structure existed, and that was a big if.
“Do you have ships capable of withstanding the pressure of the ocean floor?” he asked Gareen.
“We have very capable submarines, yes. But our ocean floor is much shallower than that of the Friiist, and none of our spaceships would be able to cope with the pressure.”
“So what options do we have?”
It was Jean, who had been quiet for a while, who had the answer.
“We ‘ave to steal one of their ships.”
16
Twenty seven light years away, back on Earth, Base Commander James Henderson was walking through the halls of The Exploration Centre, making his way to the cafeteria for a late lunch. He had a lot on his mind. It had been nearly three months since The Interstellar had disappeared, and everyone was screaming for TEC to be closed down. He had spent most of his time appearing on news reports and television talk shows trying to defend TEC’s reputation. On top of that, endless meetings had been held with several state presidents and other ministers and important people to discuss the future of the company. It was draining him and he was feeling extremely tired. He’d had little time to get over the loss of The Interstellar. He had after all been the one who had started the project in the first place. It was his baby, and he felt as if he had lost his own child. Also, he had grown to know the crew who had worked on that ship over the years and he had developed a deep affection for them. And now they were gone.
As he walked, lost in his thoughts, he suddenly noticed someone coming up behind him, fast. He turned on that spot and had just enough time to see a dark figure jump him and pin him to the floor.
He struggled for a minute but the stranger pressed a cloth to his face and his vision immediately began to swim and after a few seconds, he lost consciousness.
He woke up with a pounding headache. He slowly opened his eyes and looked around. He was in an office he didn’t know. There were no distinctive signs in the room. Indeed, it was rather bland.
No photographs hung on the walls, and the only window was covered with a dark veil, obscuring the outside. A large mahogany desk sat in the middle of the room, with nothing on it but a laptop computer.
There was only one person in the room with him, who was sitting on the other side of the desk. A smartly dressed man in his sixties. His grey hair was immaculately set on top of his head. His face was free of wrinkles but his eyes were slightly bagged, as if he hadn’t been sleeping much lately. He had a rather large nose, but his eyes were a soft blue. He stood as James awoke. His suit was expensive, nicely cut, and he looked as if he worked out. He opened his arms wide and smiled.
“Mr Henderson,” he cooed softly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” James sat up straighter in his chair, rubbing his temples.
“Who are you? Why have you kidnapped me?” His voice was shaking slightly, and he realized he was scared.
“I’m sorry about the rough approach, but it was essential that you not know where you were being taken.”
“I don’t remember being asked to come.”
The man sat down again, opening a drawer and pulling out a file, which he tossed across the desk.
On the front was the inscription: Project 5462.
“What’s this?” James asked without taking the file.
“Open it.”
He reluctantly picked up the file. Inside were details about The Interstellar: information about the crew, about the engine specifics, it’s flight plan, etc. In fact as he perused the file, he realized EVERYTHING about the ship and it’s mission was inside, every last detail.
“Where did you get this?” he asked angrily throwing the file on the desk. “It’s confidential.”
The man was still smiling.
“We have our sources.”
“Who’s we?”
“That’s a very good question, Mr Henderson. You can call me John. I am the president of this company.”
James was growing impatient.
“You’re being rather vague.”
“Mr Henderson, you are rather vague about your own company, are you not? You do not want everyone to know all of your secrets. Well, my company is the same.”
“Yes, I have a few secrets, which apparently aren’t that well guarded,” he nodded to the file on the desk. “But the whole world knows what my company does. We are explorers, we send ships into space. Why don’t you just tell me who the hell you are?”
The man, John, studied him for a while, seemingly trying to decide how much to tell him.
“I’ve studied your file Mr Henderson. You’ve dedicated your life’s work to space exploration. You’re a good man.” he sighed. “Have you ever heard of RAPAET?”
“No, should I have?”
“No, I would have been very surprised if you had. It’s our company.”
“What does it stand for?”
“We’ll come to that. What happened when The Interstellar disappeared?”
“Nothing. It disappeared. What do you want me to say?”
“What were the circumstances?”
“You seem to already know.”
John stood up again and starting pacing back and forth behind his desk.
“You told the public that you lost communication with the ship and lost sensor data. You didn’t tell them about the wormhole. Why?”
“We don’t even know if it was a wormhole, we just recorded an unknown phenomenon near the ship’s position. And until we’ve analysed sensor data, we don’t want everyone to know about it.”
“Since it’s been so long, I imagine your research revealed no conclusive results?”
“What’s your point, John?” The man sat down again, he seemed tense.
“It was a wormhole,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“It was a wormhole,” he said again, louder. “It was a rift in space; through which your ship has travelled.”
“What? How do you know this? What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that the phenomenon The Interstellar encountered was a portal through space. You have a PhD in astrophysics, you know how it works.”
“Yes, I know what a wormhole is, but how do you know that it was a wormhole?”
“Because we created it.”
At this, James was lost for words. What this man was saying was madness; you couldn’t create a wormhole. No one had even seen one before. And how could they possibly know that this was one?
It is true that the ship seemed to just vanish into thin air, without leaving any trace. Could it be possible?
“I’m going to need an explanation,” he muttered finally.
“I think we’re going to need some coffee,” John said.
*
Ten minutes later, they were still in John’s office, but had steaming mugs of coffee sitting in front of them.
“It all started about fifty years ago”, he said. “My father was a comet researcher in his youth and studi
ed the comings and going of comets, meteors, asteroids and such. One day, on August 17 th, 2021 to be exact, he was in his lab, following a particularly large comet as it travelled near Jupiter, when he picked up a signal. He told his boss about it, who dismissed it as background noise, but my father was intrigued and decided to investigate further.
“He started spending more and more time at the lab, trying to pick up the signal again, for it had only been of the briefest of seconds, but he was convinced it was no ordinary background noise. I was only a boy at the time, but he used to tell me about this signal and that it might come from aliens and that he was trying to prove that it did. Some might have said he was obsessed.
“Anyway several months later, he picked up the signal again; and this time he was sure it was no background noise. It was clear, a radio wave. It was a transmission. He managed to decode the message and realized it was in an alien language.”
“Are you really saying that your father discovered alien life?”
“That is what I’m saying, yes.”
“That’s ridiculous,” James snarled.
“Well, after I finish my story, you might not think so. My father studied this language but couldn’t make sense of it. He didn’t talk about it to anyone this time, but kept it to himself. The transmission wasn’t aimed at Earth, it seemed to be transmitting out into space. And so my father poured over this alien language, resisting asking for any help. He wanted to be the one to make this discovery.
He wanted the glory. After a few days, he had made no headway and began to feel that he wouldn’t be able to understand the language, so he did something foolish.”
“He sent his own message?” James guessed, and he was intrigued against his better judgement.
“Yes. He sent a welcome message to the point of origin. Jupiter’s not that far, it only took a few hours for the message to be received.” John fell silent and seemed to look out into the distance.
“Did he get an answer?” James asked finally.
“Of sorts. He disappeared.”
“He disappeared?”
“Yes, just a few hours after sending the message. Nobody ever heard from him again.”
James burst out laughing.
“I’m sorry to break it to you John, but your daddy told you this story and then he split. And you believed it?” He was laughing so hard, he had to hold his stomach.
John sat calmly until James’ laughter had subsided somewhat.
“Surely you don’t think I’m a fool, Mr Henderson? Of course, I realized that might be the case, and if I hadn’t found the alien message, I might still think that.”
James stopped giggling.
“You found - ?”
“Yes. I was only fourteen when I found it, but already very much into computers. He had hidden it in an encrypted file, but I managed to open it. It took years but I was finally successful in translating the message.”
“What did it say?”
“Latest scan reveals no new information.”
“That’s it?” James asked, aghast.
“Yes. But it was proof, proof of an alien life. Of a ship, in our solar system. I was amazed, and began to believe that they had abducted my father for trying to contact them. But I had their signal, I began to look for them at the same coordinates that my father had first found them, but there was nothing. With the help of some friends, I developed better software for researching the signal. It took many years but I found it again, about five light years away.
“You could track a signal from that far?”
“Yes, and now even further, all the way to it’s origin. Twenty seven light years away.”
James took a sip of his coffee and sat back in his chair, thinking. He hadn’t touched his cup while
they had been talking and his coffee was lukewarm at best. He didn’t mind though, he drank it without really tasting it. He could have done with something stronger. He wasn’t really sure he believed everything John was telling him. It seemed so outrageous. John sat staring at him, saying nothing, he too was sipping his lukewarm coffee.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” he said finally.
“Would you believe me if things were reversed?”
“Probably not.”
“You said you created this wormhole. How? And why?”
“Why? Because I want my father back, and I believe it’s a way to rescue him.”
“John, your father must have been at least thirty five back then, do you really think he’s still alive?”
“I do.”
“What have you heard on these signals?”
“Nothing, it’s too far to pick anything up, it’s just the same pattern.”
“That’s weak, the signal could be caused by a number of things.”
John stood up again, and emptied the dregs of his coffee into a nearby plant.
“James,” he said quietly. “I haven’t told you everything. Far from it. I can see your scepticism, but I do have proof and I will show it to you.”
“What kind of proof?”
“Research and Protection Against Extraterrestrials.”
“What?”
“RAPAET, that’s what it stands for.”
“That’s just a name, it’s not proof.”
“No,” John replied thoughtfully. “The proof is downstairs.”
“What is this proof?”
“It’s one of them.”
“One of what?”
“One of the aliens.”
17
Michael was lying on the grass in the shade in the large palace gardens, wearing nothing but a pair of something that resembled shorts that one of the Henfor had dug out for him; apparently shorts were not fashionable any more and were quite hard to find. It was the middle of the day and the two suns were roasting him. It must have been at least forty five degrees. He had a large bottle of water next to him and every few minutes, he would splash himself with the deliciously cool liquid.
Gareen sat next to him in the sun, wearing a long white gown, his legs crossed and his hands pressed on the ground behind him. His eyes were closed and his face was turned towards the two stars, he seemed to be trying to absorb their heat.
“Don’t you guys have swimming pools?” Michael asked, sweating heavily.
“Swimming pools?” Gareen asked without opening his eyes. “What are those?”
“They’re like private little lakes that you put in your garden.”
“No, we don’t swim much. The lakes and oceans are cold, especially at this time of year. The water is barely above thirty degrees.”
“Where we come from, that’s hot. It’s hot now.” He poured yet more water over himself.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to agree to disagree. I don’t see how you can be so hot. I feel almost cold. I could do with a jacket.”
Michael laughed and gulped down some of the water.
“Maybe we should go inside with the others. I have to get out of the heat.”
“As you wish,” Gareen said.
Both men stood and walked back along the path to the palace. The gardens were beautiful, filled with many different trees and flowers. They had been for a long walk as they talked about different ways of stealing a Friiist ship. They hadn’t come up with a plan as of yet, but they had a few ideas.
The main problem of course, was how to get to the enemy planet in the first place. The sensor net that separated the two orbits would detect them straight away and the Friiist would converge on their position. They had no way of stealing a Friiist vessel on the Henfor side as there were none.
One idea they had was to find a way for one of the Friiist ships to cross the sensor net and hijack it, but Gareen said that every Friiist ship has a personal code and they would know that it had been commandeered.
His own craft, The Interstellar, was in a Henfor ship yard being repaired. It had suffered major damage, but Gareen assured him that it would be as good as new, with a few improvements, within a matt
er of days. They were going to install atmospheric pressure resisters, upgrade the navigation systems, boost the engine power and even install shielding. Michael thought they were being
extremely generous. Barneen had assured him that they would do everything they can to help them get home, and what was a little technology amongst friends, he had said. Michael had wondered if they could use their own ship to infiltrate the Friiist world, but Gareen explained that it would be even more vulnerable than a Henfor ship, and in any case, the repairs would take too long and they had to act fast.
They had also talked about the possibility of a full blown attack, but the casualties would surely be numerous and they agreed that a stealth tactic would be better. The problem was that it was hard finding a way to get there. Friiist was only about a million kilometres away but somehow seemed far beyond reach. As Michael looked up at the sky, he could see the brilliant blue ball, pale in the bright sunlight, which was the Friiist home world. It looked beautiful and it was no wonder that the Henfor had wanted to explore this giant so close to them. How could the Friiist be so hostile? What had happened to them to make them this way? They had disliked the Henfor even before the probe destroyed their world. Could they just be a xenophobic species, so different from the Henfor?
They walked along the path in silence, both lost in their own thoughts. Michael was dragging his feet, it was much too hot. Fortunately, the tall trees provided shade along the path giving him some respite. The building wasn’t that far away, but the path was windy and thread its way through the garden, as if to offer the visitor the grand tour. His bottle of water was almost empty, and he forced the last few drops into his mouth as he staggered on.
“Are you all right?” Gareen asked, looking at Michael with concern.
“Just a bit hot,” he moaned back. Gareen wrapped a large arm under Michael’s armpit and hauled him forwards.
