ARIA

by Geoff Nelder

Abdul joined them after his EVA.

  “Move along, my friends.” He grabbed an iced lemon tea from a wall dispenser and drew through the straw before letting out a long breath. “It’s not from another satellite.”

  Jena stared at him and then noticed the others were too.

  “Well, I have never seen anything like it.” He relished centre stage.

  “Isn’t it metal?” Jena said.

  He danced his hands. “Probably, but the symbol on it—”

  “I thought it was a simple chevron,” Vlad said.

  “Yes, but it’s holographic.”

  Dan objected. “That’s nothing new.”

  “Properly holographic; it had several centimetres depth of solid matt black.”

  Vlad whistled.

  Jena said, “But it’d need a continuous power source, and it would be difficult to make it opaque.”

  “And, who would want to? Just to decorate a box?” Dan said.

  “Maybe it’s not decoration but communication,” Vlad said.

  Abdul smirked. “Then there is the little fact that it’s soft.”

  “What?” Jena said.

  Abdul waved his hands as he explained. “The grapple went into it as if it was made of rubber, then when the point of contact moved, the indentation levelled again. And there’s something solid inside.”

  Dan looked shocked. “You didn’t shake it, did you?”

  “It shook itself,” Abdul said.

  Leaning forward with his brown eyes opening wider, Antonio said, “You mean it’s alive? Interessante…”

  “Oh, come on,” Dan said. “Is this station alive? Yet there are all sorts of equipment that come alive, so to speak, triggered by sensors and time.”

  Antonio persisted. “So, the case reacted because a human was near it? Or?”

  “Yes, yes,” admitted Abdul. “I shook it, but it was more than just a box rattling around inside.”

  Jena rested her chin on steepled fingers. “So we have an alien artefact—the world’s first. And it’s been placed on our space station where only human presence can move it. And we’re the lucky ones to find it. Guys, we are history in the making.”

  Vlad rubbed his hands. “So, when are we going to open it?”

  Staccato beeps drew Dan to the comms console. He took a few light leaps in the artificial low gravity. “Hold it, we’ve new mission orders.”

  Vlad grinned at Jena. “They’ve seen sense and told us to crack the case up here out of Earth’s atmosphere and—”

  “They want us to examine it remotely with all the instruments we have.”

  “Done,” Vlad said.

  “—then send it to Edwards, because it’s a remote Air Force base with research facilities.”

  “What?” said Jena. “On its own?”

  “It makes sense,” Antonio said. “Handling the case could be hazardous. Although as far as I know, the isolation lab has not been tested with any real hazards.”

  “What lab has?” Jena said, reaching for her cell phone-sized NoteCom. “Look at the frenetic worries about the dangers of moon rocks, but nothing came of them.”

  “Wouldn’t exposure to direct solar radiation have sterilised it?” Vlad said.

  “I hope you’re not all angling to bring the case in here to take a peek,” Dan said.

  Abdul said to Vlad, “I don’t suppose the fact that you’re Ukrainian and I’m an Arab has anything to do with the CIA not wanting us to see what’s in it?”

  Vlad gripped Abdul’s shoulder. “Wouldn’t it be fantasticheskii? The first to see what’s inside?”

  “Forget it,” Dan said. “Abdul and Jena, remotely manoeuvre the case, in its holding dock, into the AutoLander—and I mean so remote, you can hardly see the damn thing.”

  Wednesday 15 April 2015:

  Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, California.

  RYDER NAPE KNEW HIS SHOCK OF BLACK HAIR GRABBED ATTENTION. He didn’t want aberrant hair but didn’t trust American hairdressers. Apart from that, he enjoyed being in America. When he graduated, it wasn’t in astrophysics or higher mathematics; it was in media studies—a butt of jokes. He had the last laugh. As an expert in New-Concept electronic presentations, he had been snapped up by a high-profile TV company at IMAX, London, and had leapt on exchange jollies like this one to Edwards Air Base in California.

  When the Marimar blasted off for the Space Station, Ryder watched it with his friend, the Dryden Lab Education Officer, Manuel Gomez. Two days later, the news came in about the case.

  Manuel was the largest man on the base. The engineers told him if he visited the Space Station, he’d have to go up as two separate payloads. Ryder was with him in his plush, pale green office when Manuel had just read a message on his phone and wore a mock morose face.

  “Sorry, Ryder, buddy, all non-essential personnel are to leave the base.”

  “So, where are you going, Manny?” Ryder said, hiding his disappointment.

  “You have to leave, you jerk.” Manuel laughed a bear-sized guffaw. “Although you’re right, my department has to leave the site.”

  “But you’ll find a way to hide, won’t you? Stay here, take a glimpse at the case. How could you not resist it?”

  “I know what you’re doing, Ryder. But you can’t stop, even though you’d be easier to hide than me.”

  TWENTY MINUTES INTO HIS FLIGHT back to London, Ryder watched a patched-in monitor on his NoteCom. With Manuel’s connivance, he was able to monitor the case. His pulse, no doubt in tune with everyone else’s at Edwards, galloped as the crewless AutoLander, no bigger than a minibus, banked left to make a perfect touchdown.

  The Dryden labs at Edwards Air Force Base in the Californian desert were designed for research, not to protect the planet from back-contamination by putative alien organisms. Ryder remembered a lecturer at Houston who had concluded that it was impossible to bring rock samples from Mars without microbes leaking into the Earth’s atmosphere within a month.

  A buzz irritating his ear made Ryder realize that Manuel was talking. “There’s a stew going on here. The retrieval system to get the object is fucked up. So they’ve sent suited guys in with a big metal case to put the little case in—”

  “But, Manny, I thought they were going to isolate the whole aircraft.”

  “It’s in a hangar with the usual plastic dust screen—nothing special.”

  “No negative air pressure in the hangar to stop back-contamination?”

  “Actually positive, if anything, to stop the desert getting in. I know, buddy, but they…I don’t know.”

  Ryder wiped sweaty hands on his trousers. Perhaps he should ask the flight attendant for a brandy. “So, they’ve opened up the AutoLander’s cargo bay and retrieved the case in the hangar, then put it in another case.”

  “I’ll patch you in. They’re walking it to the lab.”

  “Yes, thanks, but Manuel, why bother with taking precautions against back-contamination? They’ve already exposed the case when they opened up the cargo bay?”

  “Yeah. At least they haven’t opened the case to see if the Marimar crew put sandwiches in. Do you have a view of the lab now?”

  “Got it, cheers, but presumably they’re going to test it unopened for days.”

  “I’m not privy to their plans. Reckon most tests were done in space on the ISS. You’re probably in the safest place on that airplane.” Manuel’s voice raised a notch from his usual deep resonance. “All they’re doing at the Dryden lab, Ryder, buddy, is decontaminating it. Usual stuff: fumigation dry chems followed by prolonged spraying with antiseptic and ending with pure water and clean-air drying. Don’t worry. They’ll send it to Goddard for its grand opening.”

  Ryder was too excited to sleep while the other passengers enjoyed their zeds. His state-of-the-art NoteCom wasted its talents, giving him a static scene. Added thrills came from a moving camera viewing the holographic chevron but even that lost its novelty after the first hour.

  He could call
his fiancée, Teresa, but she should be asleep. She hated him leaving her in London slaving away at her lecturing career while he jetted to wherever an exciting space mission beckoned. He’d thought she’d be used to it after a year or so, but…

  Instead, Ryder called Derek O’Connor, his boss and producer of cutting-edge TV, but was astonished that instead of snapping up this event, he sent back derisory quips about chasing UFOs. Ryder uploaded an illustrated report to him anyway.

  WHEN RYDER REACHED HIS LONDON APARTMENT at breakfast time, he noticed Teresa, languishing in bed. No doubt her difficult temperament seeking another excuse to get at him.

  “Ryder. Don’t think about getting in bed with me.” Her sharp tongue matched her short, spiked, blond hair. “Ugh, look at you. Didn’t sleep on your flight, did you?”

  “Just wait till you know why.”

  Insisting on going straight to his den instead of to Teresa’s bed was the easy bit. Getting useful information from NASA was not.

  “I’m ringing Karen. She might have been on shift last night at the Goddard Space Centre. Remember the party when she snagged that job there?”

  Teresa had risen from bed and stretched her arms wide while peering over Ryder’s shoulder. “Your sister spends so much time optimising the diets for astronauts, yet she’s a balloon herself.”

  “That’s a bit harsh. Anyway, you wouldn’t be so slender if you’d had a couple of kids.”

  “It’s to do with having the appetite of a rugby team.”

  “Good, she’s online. Hi, Karen. You’re looking well.” He glanced at Teresa’s sneer and then back at Karen’s image. “How’re Eric and the children?”

  Karen’s mass of milk-chocolate hair matched her tan. “They’re all fine, thanks, Brother. Isobel takes a crucial seventh grade test next week, and Glen has a final audition for the Pre-Teen e-Musician 2015 on the same day.”

  “But isn’t that cheating?” called Teresa. She stood, arms folded, to glare at Ryder’s sister on screen.

  “Well, he’s thirteen now, but not when we filled in the forms.”

  Teresa walked out of the webcam’s view shaking her head, releasing a blond hair glistening, twisting in the light.

  Ryder tried to pump his sister for information on the case. “And, Karen, they’re still enjoying their grub up there?”

  “Why shouldn’t they be? I planned the carb bits myself.”

  “And they’re still alive?”

  “Cheeky sod. You did want favours?”

  “You know I’m kidding, Sis. I’ll catch you tomorrow. Give my regards to your Eric and the kids.”

  Her responses, in an indirect way, told him the astronauts had no significant ill effects from their proximity to the case.

  He couldn’t raise Manuel, but then it was just after midnight in California, so he’d have to contain his information thirst. He wondered how long the odds were of being welcome in Teresa’s bed.

  Thursday 16 April 2015:

  London.

  IT HAD BEEN A FRUSTRATING THIRTY HOURS FOR RYDER. An official news blackout from the Dryden Labs at Edwards. He sat on his apartment’s wood-block floor surrounded by newspapers but found only the occasional puzzled reports, no startling revelations, not even the expected scaremongering. His thumb ached, thanks to a sticky button on his TV remote control, in his vain attempt to find news of the case. If he hadn’t had inside information via Karen and Manuel, it would’ve been any normal day where the most important world news consisted of celebrities scoring points off each other.

  He couldn’t understand why Derek and Teresa weren’t excited about a probable alien artefact. Maybe it was his overactive imagination, fuelled by his early-years’ indulgence in Sci-Fi. It could be that NASA had deliberately played down the discovery so as not to be alarmist, or they might have believed it originated on Earth, left behind by a negligent astronaut.

  He had to wait for Manuel to finish his breakfast before pumping him, again.

  “It’s going to be opened today, Ryder, so—”

  “Patch me into it, Manny.”

  “The security’s hellish tight, but I’ll see. You’d better keep this channel open in case I can only feed you intermittently. Gotta go, buddy. Ciao.”

  It was just as well that communications were ultra-broadband and multi-channel, even so, Ryder thought he’d better let Teresa know, in case she shut off the link. He was writing her a Post-It note when she arrived home.

  “Look at this place. It’s filthy,” she said, trawling a finger along a sideboard.

  “Really? Look, Teresa, I’m waiting for a call—”

  “We’re going to have to sack Elsie. It’s no good.”

  “—only they’re opening the case today.”

  “I suppose she told you that she had to leave early to sort out her daughter’s marital problems again. I hope we don’t produce offspring like Loopy Lisa.” She draped herself over his shoulders as he sat at the computer.

  “’Course not...What?”

  “You’re not listening to me, are you? Ryder?”

  “What was it? Something more important than mankind discovering we’re not alone in the universe? Sorry, I shouldn’t be sarcastic.”

  “Oh, were you? Even if little green men burst out of the case, we would still need our flat cleaned.”

  “Elsie did ring,” said Ryder. “Lisa is having problems, again. I would’ve mentioned it as soon as you came in, only—”

  “You were watching out for E.T.”

  “You’re a biologist, Teresa. Aren’t you enthralled by the idea of extra-terrestrial life, which must exist if that case isn’t from Earth? And there might be microbes, bacteria, even small life forms in the case.”

  “My uni teaching job is complicated enough. Stuffing the heads of hung-over students with a fraction of what there is to know about life on Earth.”

  Ryder didn’t want to take his eyes off the screen in case he missed something. “Good point. But how would you like to be head of a new department? You could call it—”

  “Faculty of Little Green Men and Other Mental Disorders. Hey, is that your computer?” said Teresa.

  “Great. It’s the patch into the Dryden Lab at Edwards. Look, there’s the case.”

  “There are some like it on special offer in Lo-Cost.”

  “Funny girl. But can you see that logo?”

  “No. You see, Ryder, there’s a known condition where the part of your brain that interprets signals from the optic nerve is overridden by wishful thinking. Oh...I see it now. It’s holographic yet looks solid. I assume you’re referring to the chevron symbol that appears to hover just above the lid—if that’s a lid.” She raised an eyebrow at him.

  He was relieved she was interested at last. Apart from needing a fellow human to share ideas and wonderment, Teresa’s biological expertise could be useful.

  “I assume that the lab’s glove-box will prevent back-contamination in the event of putative organisms getting into the atmosphere?” she asked.

  “Manuel says they’re using sterile nitrogen.”

  “Not a vacuum?”

  “Back in the late sixties, when they built the first NASA lab to handle moon rocks, the technicians found a vacuum glove-box unworkable. And the gloves leaked. In fact, no one’s been able to make a completely leak-proof containment lab. They concentrate on attempting to prevent the escape of infectious diseases.”

  “Yes, Ryder, the best place for doing this opening-the-case stuff is out in space.”

  “Can you guess why they didn’t?”

  “It has to be politics.”

  “No flies on you, kid. The US government doesn’t want anyone else to know what’s in it.”

  “That begs two questions, Ryder. Aren’t they going to be a bit peeved at us, in London, being able to watch it being opened?”

  “What they don’t know...and the second?” he asked.

  “Are they so naïve as to think aliens have put blueprints in the case? Maybe to end all di
seases, a perfect weapon and a mass hypnosis machine so that mad woman, Caroline Diazem, can stay president forever.”

  “You’re right, Teresa. Look, they’re using a robotic probe to open it.”

  “Looks like they’re trying the knock-three-times method.”

  “I think they’ve already tried sending it please open messages, using all the frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. Usual codes. Prime numbers, pi, Fibonacci series, our DNA sequence—everything.”

  “Have they tried human speech with open sesame?”

  “As if the residents of Alpha Centauri or wherever would be conversant in English and—”

  “D’oh! Listen up, Homer. If an intelligent alien species left a package for us to find on our doorstep, deliberately, on one of our most sophisticated pieces of technology, they must have researched us. They’d know our languages, history, and legends. What would be the point of using non-human means of opening it?”

  Ryder threw apart his hands. “As a test?”

  “Haven’t you been listening? They already know how dumb we are. So it should be easy to open the case.” When Teresa used logic, it was always impeccable.

  They watched the futile attempts to use the robotic arm until boredom won. Even so, long after Teresa called it a night, he stayed up.

  In spite of the swallowed double espressos and Pro-Plus intake, Ryder drifted in and out of sleep in the lounge while a static screen washed his face in fluorescent pale blue.

  He sat bolt upright. A technician must have gone into the containment lab beyond the gloves. He wore a protective suit, complete with helmet and air supply. He placed his gloved hand on the case.

  “No vibrations,” the technician’s voice came through.

  Ryder grabbed both sides of the screen, desperate not to miss a single pixel. It would’ve been eleven p.m. at the American lab. Maybe they chose this time because management would not be around. Such political complications flitted through Ryder’s head as he concentrated on the technician.

  “My hand passes through the chevron logo with no effect. I’m going to lift the case...It’s about ten kilograms. There doesn’t appear to be a seam or a handle. I can’t feel any lumps.”