by Blair Wylie
“But I think they are also warning us right up front that they will be controlling every aspect of this upcoming meeting, not just the logistical matters.”
The astronauts sat quietly for a few moments with their own thoughts. Then Knudsen said calmly, “Thanks, guys. I think our discussion just reinforced the reality that our mission still has a lot of unknown risks. But we can’t do much, if anything, about those, unfortunately. So, let’s just deal with the known risks that we trained so hard to mitigate.
“Okay, it’s time to fire-up all of the systems in the Osprey lander, and make sure everything works okay. Come on, let’s get started.”
9
Weismann: Okay, altitude 400, down at 7 per second, 4 per second forward.
Knudsen: No problem.
Weismann: 350 altitude, down at 4.
Weismann: Okay, you’re pegged at zero horizontal velocity.
Weismann: 270, 2 down.
Knudsen: Okay, how’s the fuel?
Weismann: Twelve percent.
Weisman: 120, 1 point 5 down. You’re looking good.
Weismann: 30, 1 down. Ten percent fuel remaining. Quantity Light just came on.
Knudsen: Lights just came on in the chamber. There’s a circular target, centre is marked with crossing lines.
Weismann: 10 altitude, ½ down. You’re on the crosshairs down there. Radar shows 50 metres depth.
Maldonado: Antennae module ejected. Our shadow is out there. All clear, nothing of note.
Weismann: Zero altitude, 1/2 down. 300 seconds until Bingo call on the fuel.
Weisman: Minus 20, 1/2 down. Picking up some dust. Right on the crosshairs.
Knudsen: Visibility good now.
Weismann: Minus 40. I see our shadow.
Weismann: Drifting forward just a bit, that’s good.
Weismann: Contact light.
Knudsen: Shutdown.
Weismann: Okay. Engine stop.
Weismann: Mode Control, auto. Descent Engine Command Override, off. Engine arm, off.
Mission Control: We copy you down, Osprey.
Knudsen: Copy you First Town, engine arm is off.
Knudsen: First Town, Addy Base here. The Osprey has landed.
Mission Control: Roger, Addy Base. We copy you on the ground. We didn’t crack-up on our end, but it was close. Thanks a lot.
Weismann: Thank you too.
Knudsen: Okay. Let’s get on with it. First Town, we’re going to be busy for a few minutes.
Knudsen: First Town, do you copy?
Knudsen: First Town, do you copy?
Knudsen: First Town, if you can copy, we are no longer receiving you. Our communication system checks out as nominal. Source of difficulty unknown. We will monitor your transmissions. If you copy us, we will broadcast again in one hour. Out.
10
The three New Earth astronauts worked efficiently as a team to complete their post-landing checklist in about twenty minutes.
The astronauts were not missing the zero-G environment of space. Okay, it was not exactly like New Earth on the surface of the little moon. But a gravitational force of about one-eighth of New Earth ‘normal’ was certainly better than nothing.
They were very pleased to confirm everything was working properly within the Osprey lander. They also determined that the electrical circuit was unbroken to the wire antenna they had shot out and unravelled on the surface of Addy while they were completing their descent.
So, the antenna should have been working, but it was not. And that was rather unsettling.
The cylindrical, subsurface chamber that they had landed in was still illuminated. The wall of the chamber appeared to be perfectly smooth towards its base, where the Osprey had come to rest. The wall appeared to morph into a natural, rough-looking rock surface towards the top of the chamber.
The white-light illumination inside of the chamber was provided by vertical, flush-mounted strips that were imbedded in the circular wall.
There appeared to be the outlines of two large doors on opposite sides at the base of the chamber, but the doors looked to be sealed tight.
The mysterious and alarming communication blackout they were experiencing was weighing heavily on their minds. But Knudsen kept everyone busy. They immediately began readying their spacesuits for some extended Extra-Vehicular Activity, or EVA.
At precisely one hour after touch down, Knudsen tried again to hail First Town Mission Control. In response, they first heard a high-pitched squeal, and then nothing but silence.
Then, after another a minute or so, they received an analogue transmission over their primary communication frequency. They distinctly heard in a monotone, contralto or tenor voice:
“We are blocking your transmissions. Stay in your space-travelling vehicle. We will now move it to a place where your normal surface planetary environmental conditions will be precisely replicated. Again, please relax and be patient.”
During the incoming transmission, Maldonado had been looking out of the little starboard-side window to the right of her seat. Suddenly she gasped, “Guys, there is a door opening on this side of the chamber! It’s a big, one-piece door! It’s sliding away! Okay, it’s fully open now. The portal looks to be big enough for our lander to pass through easily.”
Then they all felt a shudder and a slight vibration. Then they could see and feel that the lander was being moved sideways.
Weismann was scanning all of the outside-looking video displays, and he said calmly, “We landed on what we thought was just a raised circular platform. But it actually must be a cart of some kind, riding on rails, or maybe on wheels. It is now moving us inside another lit-up chamber on the other side of the open door. And as you can see, the lights inside of the landing chamber just went out.”
After about ten minutes, the cart stopped moving. The Osprey had been moved about twenty metres beyond the doorway into a well-illuminated chamber. Then the door started to close. In the vacuum of space, there was no sound to be heard as the door was being closed.
When the door had fully closed, they noted that the Osprey was now in a chamber that resembled a barrel vault. It was a horizontal tube with a flat bottom. The tube looked to be about sixty metres long, and about twenty metres high.
The circular wall and roof of the chamber appeared to be made of perfectly smooth, grey rock, or a form of concrete. But the vertical, far end of the tube was flat, and it looked to be made of some kind of dull metal. It was also light grey in colour.
There looked to be the outline of a human-sized door in the flat-wall side of the chamber, but if so, it was a door without any handle, or visible hinges.
There was a dull, dark, flat panel imbedded in the metallic wall beside the outline of the door. And there was a simple-looking metallic bench pushed up against the wall beneath the panel.
After a few minutes, the Osprey crew started hearing a soft hissing sound. “It’s coming from outside, I think,” suggested Knudsen with wonder in his voice.
“Yes, Skipper, that’s right,” Weismann agreed. Then after another quick instrument scan, he added, “The pressure is gradually increasing outside. And so is the temperature. It’s too early in the pressurization process to analyse the gas composition properly.”
“Right, then let’s get our EVA suits on now, folks,” ordered Knudsen. “We don’t know what might happen next, but let’s be ready for anything.”
Just then, the radio crackled, and they heard in a clear, monotone, soprano voice:
“The only way we will talk to you point forward is by means of compressional sound waves, in your language, outside of your vehicle. Sit on the bench facing the wall panel. The atmosphere we are creating will be comfortable for you. If we had wanted to hurt you in any way, we would have done so by now. That may sound threatening, but it is meant to calm you. You must try to trust us. We simply desire a friendly discussion with you. This is the last electromagnetic transmission we will make.”
Knudsen looked in horror at Mal
donado and Weismann, and said, “Holy shit, guys! They expect us to trust them implicitly! And we still know nothing about them!
“Well, we actually know a few more things about them, Knudsen,” replied Maldonado quietly. “They are obviously technically advanced, probably much more so than we are. They seem to know a lot about this facility. They may have actually built this strange place, way in the past. And they probably could have killed us by now! They have obviously heavily invested in the effort to learn our oral and written language, somehow. And they must have travelled a great distance to get here. So, I think we should take them at face value. They probably do just want to talk to us, at least initially.”
“They seem to know all about the air we like to breathe anyway, and what a ‘comfortable environment’ probably means to us,” offered Weismann in support. He was busy scanning a suite of instruments. Then he explained, “The hissing sound has stopped, obviously. It’s up to one hundred and one kilopascals of pressure out there, and it is a comfortable twenty-one degrees Celsius.
“And the motion of the air is subsiding. They have even given us some water-vapour humidity, about seventy percent relative or so. The gas chromatograph is showing a composition very near to that of New Earth’s air!
“There are no obviously toxic contaminants or pathogens showing up on the biological threat detector, not yet anyway. Of course, that rather complicated device is only looking for threats it knows about.”
“Right,” replied Knudsen while thinking rapidly. “Your combined input really helped me out, guys, thanks.
“So, revised decision, we won’t fully suit up. We’ll just wear our coveralls and a jacket. We know we can’t talk through masks very well. But let’s each of us take a filter mask along, and an air pack too. That might buy us enough time to get back into the Osprey if they suddenly decide to do something, ah, unfriendly.
“We’ll open up now and climb out of the Osprey when we confirm things have been stable out there for say, twenty minutes.
“Weismann, put a microphone and camera on your head, and put a recorder pack under your jacket. I don’t see any reason to try to hide our effort to record what transpires. We should assume we won’t be able to download then upload any data we acquire until we’re back in the Osprey again. Or, maybe not until we are back on our own again, in space? Who knows?
“Okay people, let’s get moving.”
11
The bench in the alien’s inner, subsurface chamber on Addy looked to be a familiar design to the three New Earth astronauts. It had simple, tubular, metallic legs, and a thick cushion that was covered in a material that looked and felt like vinyl. Although the bench did not provide back support, it proved to be form-fitting, and very comfortable.
The three astronauts decided to move the bench a couple of metres away from the metallic wall, and they kept it directly aligned with the dark panel on the flat, vertical surface. The bench seemed to be almost weightless in the low gravity field of the little moon.
Then the astronauts took turns to carefully sit down on the bench so they would directly face the dark panel. Unconsciously, they sat down in the same prescribed arrangement they always followed in the Nebula and the Osprey, with Knudsen on the left, Weismann in the middle and Maldonado on the right.
When they were all seated, they found their eyes were at about the same height as the centreline of the rectangular panel.
They had only been seated a few moments when they clearly heard the question, “Do you have a leader?”
The voice was baritone, and it closely resembled that of a human male, except it was also a rather unnatural monotone. It was not clear where the sound was coming from exactly. Actually, it seemed to be coming from all around them. The acoustics in the chamber were obviously very good. There was no echo, and the volume of the sound at their location in the chamber was conversational.
“I am the overall leader of our mission,” replied Knudsen calmly in his normal speaking voice. “We have been sent by our government to meet with you. We call ourselves ‘human beings’. I am a military human being. We have two sexes. I am a ‘man’, or an adult ‘male’ by sex. I am also an aircraft and spacecraft pilot.
“My name is Colonel Nils Knudsen. My second in command is beside me, directly to my right. His name is Lieutenant Colonel Asher Weismann. He is also a military man, but he is also a scientist.
“Our third in command is Major Francis Maldonado. She is sitting furthest to my right. She is a woman, or adult female by sex. She has only recently joined our military ranks to be able to participate in our mission to visit with you. She is a linguist, and an expert in human cultures. She will function as our leader while we talk with you.”
There was a short pause, then they heard the same baritone voice say, “Let us proceed this way then, human beings. We will ask you a question, and then we will listen to you, and consider your answer. Then you will ask us a question, and you will listen to us, and consider our answer. Now, what is your first question?”
Knudsen and Weismann both leaned forward to look at Maldonado. Knudsen nodded and gave her a thumbs-up sign, and Weismann flashed her a big smile, and a supporting nod as well.
So Francis asked in a strong voice, “You obviously are able to hear us, and you can probably see us, quite well. But we can only hear you. Why is that?”
There was a longer pause this time. Then they heard a soprano monotone voice say, “We have survived many generations by being what you might call intelligent and reclusive beings. We do not equate our secretive behaviour with cowardice, but other intelligent alien lifeforms have in fact perceived us that way. We are not ashamed of ourselves, nor do we consider ourselves vastly superior or ‘god-like’.
“We are an isolated clan of an ancient race that has lived in many places in our galaxy. We will not tell you what we call ourselves. The less other intelligent beings know about us, the better for our security. We live secret lives in secret places. We do that because we have been pursued and persecuted by the alien race of exploitive bullies we know you call the ‘Masters’. That strikes us as an appropriate name for those monsters.
“We can see that you are not like us, physically. Your appearance is frankly disturbing to us. But our appearance would no doubt be disturbing to you as well.
“So, we can probably have a better discussion meeting in this manner, where you can only hear us, or rather hear our machine-translated voices. For now, please accept as fact that there are three of us, directly facing you now, on the other side of the dark panel.
“Now, our studies lead us to believe you may resemble us to some degree with respect to basic life principles and guiding values. You seem to get along reasonably well with each other, and you seem to be respectful of your environment. That gives us some hope that we could possibly align with you on certain shared concerns, should both sides perceive mutual benefit.
“You see, we have been monitoring your electromagnetic transmissions since you arrived on the neighbouring planet. On the positive side, that is how we have learned so much about you, and about the language we are now both using. But on the negative side, through your ignorance or arrogance, you are frankly reckless with your transmissions.
“So, now for our question. Are you unaware that indiscriminately broadcasting your presence, radially out into space in all directions, puts us all at great risk?”
Francis looked nervously at Knudsen and Weismann, and they both looked a bit confused, and a bit scared. After a moment, she said with a bit of a waver in her voice, “Perhaps we are unaware of the risk you are talking about.
“We have used electromagnetic frequencies to communicate with each other for eons. We find it an extremely useful technology, and very efficient. The practice originated on our home planet that we called Earth. It is about one hundred and six of our light years away from us. Perhaps you may know this, but we define a year as the length of time for the planet we live on to complete an orbit around its star.
“We note that you have communicated with us using an electromagnetic frequency. Why was that not a reckless act as well?”
After a short pause, a baritone monotone voice replied, “It was a risk we thought we must take to achieve this meeting. We did in fact send you ten very short messages. There will not be any more, and you will not be allowed to make any more while we are on this moon together.
“We will see to that with our more advanced technology. Our ten messages were not broadcast radially, rather they were sent to you in a very tightly confined and directed beam. The messages were all sent in your language. The digital translation code was only sent to you once. If any of the messages were heard by other advanced, intelligent beings, they will almost certainly conclude you were just talking with yourselves again, in the way you always do.
“Let us presume that you just asked us, ‘Why does this matter?’
“The reason is we intercepted a digital electromagnetic message shortly after your species first settled on the neighbouring planet. It was definitely not meant for us, or for you. It was broadcast both radially, and highly directionally with great power, along a discrete and purposeful vector. It was sent using the high energy available on a ‘Master’ exploration, generation spaceship, as it was departing from this solar system. You see, we also know the language of the Masters, and how to decipher the many codes they use.
“The message said, ‘We have confirmed the failure of our first attempt at colonization on the planet. Expect to encounter an advanced, competitive, probably hostile alien civilization when you get here. The ecosystem of this planet is toxic to us right now, and will no doubt be far worse after generations of further alien intervention and contamination. Annihilation of the entire planet is therefore recommended, if you have the technology.’
