| Book II English | Libro I Español | Libro II Español |
April, 2025 Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, Gran Canaria, Spain
The morning started like any other for Paco Benavides. A light breakfast, a quick shower, the ritual dressing for work. He lacked the spontaneous enthusiasm employers expect these days — his low-burn cynicism barely tempered by the gratitude he felt for having a stable job while his age peers faced fifty percent unemployment rates.
He genuinely liked the end goal of his work if not so much the means to achieve it: the monotonous daily slog, the office politics. But all jobs have drudgery and his at least was aimed at the stars.
Paco walked to the bus stop carrying his backpack and a morning-after headache. He had spent the better part of the previous night at an office party that turned wild. The jarring Canarian sun beat down on him with its usual fury. In an island full of tanned tourists, he was one of the few who prefer the glare of LEDs.
He boarded the bus to the observatory and fell into the back seat, far from the other passengers. He pulled the previous quarter’s status report out of his bag and started leafing through it while his mind kept revisiting the events of the previous night.
He hazily recalled talking to a girl who turned out to be his supervisor’s daughter. Quicksand territory for sure but, at the time, he had been unfazed. Through his mental fog and across the room, she had looked like a tall Nordic amazon. Her golden hair cascading on her bare shoulders, a gown flowing behind her as she spoke comfortably with a group of friends. Paco remembered experiencing a kind of astral trance — an out-of-body state heightened by alcohol, darkness, and the repetitive percussion of electronic music.
Toward the end of the office happy hour, when most of his colleagues were positively marinated in alcohol, Paco had put the moves on her. They danced and drank and danced some more. He suggested a more private setting for their next activity and to his surprise and delight, she agreed. The telescope room had never looked cozier to Paco.
After going through routine security at the entrance to his office building, he took the elevator up to the operations floor where he worked and was greeted by his colleagues with lackluster enthusiasm — everyone else was also feeling under the weather.
“Hey, Paco…looking quite dapper this morning! You might not want to remove your sunglasses for the rest of the day, though,” said Arturo, the assistant to the department head and his closest work buddy.
“I should have called in sick but it felt wrong to deprive you of my presence for too long.”
“Never deny yourself on my account. I’m not worthy.”
“You got that right.” Paco turned on his computer and checked the system report to find out how the overnight search went.
One of the many uses of the astronomical observatory was the search for Earth-like planets. In the process, the team examined large swaths of the known universe. Theirs were exciting prospects marred by the most exquisite monotony. Our cosmos is like an almost infinite soup with way too much broth separating the occasional chunks of carrot. By the time you found a meat morsel, you already had a belly full of liquid.
“Nothing to report on my end,” Paco said to nobody in particular.
“Same here,” replied a chorus of five discordant voices. The first mantra they all recited every morning. And with that, their day officially started.
Paco opened PowerPoint to work on the new quarterly status report. He wished he had a better grasp of graphic design to make his presentations more exciting but, let’s face it, the last thing anyone expected from an astronomer was dazzling graphics. His boss was more understanding than most, but that didn’t make these quarterly status sessions any less irritating and nerve-racking for an avowed introvert like Paco.
And then there was the small matter of his boss’ daughter (what did she say her name was?). He hoped her old man hadn’t somehow found out about what transpired between them the night before.
Paco was thinking about all of that when something caught his peripheral vision. Something he had never seen before. He stopped for a second to make sure he wasn’t daydreaming. “Hey guys, come take a look at this.”
“What is it?” Arturo asked.
“I have no idea, but it’s not normal.”
That wasn’t the first time someone had pronounced the words “not normal” as part of their work. It always turned out to be nothing, though. Background noise or statistical anomalies at best. But they were all sufficiently bored with the uneventful drift in their work, and yet motivated enough by the holy grail of finding planets capable of sustaining life, that they almost ran to Paco’s desk.
“Let’s see what you have,” said Martín eagerly. He was the youngest member of the group.
“I’m not sure yet. It may be some sort of glitch.”
Gathered around Paco’s screen, they looked slack-jawed at the furiously scrolling data as they tried to process its meaning — confusing at first, but increasingly clear to their well-trained and experienced minds.
It took a lot less than a minute for everyone on the team to feel the same sinking-yet-tingling sensation — the deep-down knowledge that if what they were seeing turned out to be accurate, things were never ever going to be the same. They might be making history right then and there.
“Um, yeah…Since this is most definitely not possible, how about we run some tests to figure out what the hell kind of bug we are dealing with here, huh?” Arturo suggested before divvying up the debugging tasks among the group.
For the next few minutes, they engaged in a series of tasks to clear the system and get fresh data in once again. Paco checked the cable connections, rebooted the computer, verified the status of the memory banks, and reloaded the data. After a few minutes, the report came back normal, showing identical data as before. They then proceeded to run a quick spectrographic analysis of the phenomenon.
The screen wasn’t lying. This was no joke and no fluke.
Their long collective silence was broken only when Paco whispered, “Martín, go get the old man. He’s going to have to make a few calls.”
//
MIT, Massachusetts, USA
“How would you respond if I were to tell you that chaos is its own kind of order?” That’s how Doctor Kyle Santiago started his quarterly undergraduate seminar on fractal patterns at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a tall man in his mid-thirties, already a world-renowned mathematician. It’s true what they say: in math, you either make it early or don’t make it at all. And he had definitely made it.
Beyond his impressive credentials as the utmost authority on pattern recognition and semiology, there was nothing extraordinary about Kyle. He fit the stereotype of the bohemian genius to a tee: a ruffled-hair misanthrope who lived alone, worked alone, and dressed to match. He had the typical nerdy touch of obnoxiousness, but under his antagonism lurked some deep insecurities.
In a not-too-distant past, Kyle’s mannerisms had been milder. Samantha soothed his natural unruliness during those happy days.
“Let me add that this seminar requires active participation. Contrary to appearances, I’m not the type who likes to talk incessantly to crowds.”
A petite brunette with large green eyes sitting at the front of the sparsely populated class ventured her opinion. “The nature of chaos is the absence of any pattern, right? So, if we can agree on that, I would say that your statement is not correct.”
“You are thinking at the wrong level of granularity. Doesn’t chaos arise with amazing predictability whenever a certain set of conditions are missing?”
“But that’s entropy, that’s the general tendency of the universe when ‘left alone.’”
“Correct. And the universe exhibits order, doesn’t it?”
“But then the order you are talking about would be inherent to those conditions that lead to entropy and chaos in the first place. Chaos itself isn’t ordered because it doesn’t exhibit any patterns.”
“In a certain way, it does. How could disorder be generated out of order? There is an upper layer of reality that’s very predictable. It’s the reality that we perceive. The familiar world around us includes the conditions that spawn lower levels — the subatomic — that still show an inherent logic despite their chaotic façade, as Heisenberg pointed out.”
“And that’s why fractals happen.”
“Yes, but fractals are just one manifestation of that ‘chaotic order.’ Quantum unpredictability is another. String theory might be yet another.”
“But if you are right, doesn’t that nullify the idea of free will? Wouldn’t it all mean that we live in a deterministic universe? Or worse, a fully chaotic one?”
Kyle was liking the way this girl’s mind worked but, before he could continue their exchange, there was a knock on the classroom door. He motioned to the students to hold for a second and went to get it.
A gaunt, bespectacled man stood on the other side.
“What is it?”
“Excuse the interruption, Doctor Santiago. I’m George Maxwell, in charge of community relations. There are two men waiting for you in the lobby. It seems that their business is urgent.”
Kyle was annoyed and it showed.
“Two men? Who are they? I’m in the middle of a seminar.”
“They are FBI.”
A pause.
“Oh.”
“Yup.”
“That’s strange. Did they say what they want from me?”
“No, even though I certainly asked.”
“All right, please tell them I’ll be there shortly,” said Kyle with vague apprehension as he closed the door on George.
He turned to address the class. “Looks like we’ll have to take this up again next week. In the meantime, read Gleick’s seminal book on chaos theory. At a very basic level, it’ll show you what I mean by order within chaos.”
Kyle grabbed his backpack and left the room as his students gathered their things. He walked to the end of the long corridor where he was joined by George and two big men in dark suits who flashed their badges and introduced themselves as agents O’Neill and Malvisco.
“How can I help you, gentlemen?” Kyle asked, barely concealing his annoyance.
“Let’s talk in the car if you don’t mind, Doctor Santiago. There’s no time to waste,” said agent Malvisco, who then proceeded to escort Kyle to a black SUV parked at the entrance of the building.
They boarded the vehicle and got settled in its ample leather interior. Kyle looked back at the administrator’s forlorn expression as they drove away.
The day was sunny, but he felt that a different kind of storm was gathering strength regardless. “So, what is this all about?” He asked the agents.
Malvisco looked at him behind very dark sunglasses. “It’s a matter of the highest national security priority.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s classified and all that…but if you came to me, you need me for whatever this is, so why not just tell me?”
“Because frankly, Doctor Santiago, we don’t know. What we do know is that you are about to go on a long trip. We are driving to Hanscom Field where a private plane is waiting for you.”
//
U.S. Special Forces Base, Al-Hadah, Yemen
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me…”
Colonel Brad Turner broke off in half sentence to pick up the impertinent phone if for nothing else, to cut right off whoever was at the other end and to ensure that his Bible reading’s spell wasn’t completely broken. He had been addressing a group of ten combat-ready men inside a field tent in the middle of Yemen and he knew how much the troops needed their leader’s reassurance before a mission.
This one was not just like any other routine gig — if there is such a thing in the Special Forces. Entering a heavily guarded and armed terrorist compound at the top of an impregnable mountain in the dead of night to capture their mastermind was going to be particularly tricky, even for this team.
“Turner!” Brad barked into the phone.
There was a long silence as he listened.
“Hmmm…when?” He said.
An even longer silence this time.
The troops were beginning to wonder what was going on, looking at each other. They were professionals and wouldn’t allow themselves to betray any emotion this late into their prep, but something about the call was odd.
“I understand, sir. However, we are about to go on a mission and my men need…”
Their Colonel had just been interrupted by whoever was at the other end of the line and that was not something one witnessed every day.
“Yes, sir. I’ll be there ASAP.”
Brad hung up the phone, his huge frame slightly hunched over, and looked at the men. He tried to hide his puzzlement, but was only partially successful.
“I’ve just been called upstairs, guys. I’m not going in with you tonight. Captain Williams will cover for me.”
Nobody moved a muscle and yet, somehow, the disappointment and tension in the room grew noticeably.
“Permission to speak freely, sir?” The most veteran of the troops said.
“Go ahead.”
“Well, sir, it’s just that we’ve been planning tonight’s operation for months. You know we will carry on in your absence, no problem, but what can be so important even for the people ‘upstairs’?”
“It’s classified.”
And, at that, Captain Williams stood up and said, “You heard the man. Gear up and fall in.”
Brad grabbed his hat and turned to leave, only stopping at the entrance of the tent to address his inwardly irritated men with a firm and final “Godspeed.”
//
Dominion Radio Astrophysics Observatory, Kaleden, British Columbia, Canada
Doctor Hannah Coleman locked her office. It had been a long day and she looked forward to relaxing at home. She considered herself lucky that Peter, her husband, was a caring father and a great cook who worked from home. His career as a writer lent great flexibility to his schedule and he could fill in for Mom with the kids — most of the time.
She walked to the empty parking lot, got in her Toyota, and started the usual drive home. Canada was very different from the United States, but it had a certain aura of familiarity. She wasn’t totally in love with the area just yet. Her post had its pluses, though. Kaleden didn’t get its name by accident — a combination of “Eden” with “Kalos,” a Greek word meaning “beautiful.” She lived in a town called Penticton, which proved the veracity of the Kaleden name. Situated between the immense lakes Okanagan to the north and Shaka to the south, it has many summer homes and the beautiful Pioneer Park beach. Hannah considered the small town a little boring, but she also recognized that both she and her family enjoyed a comfortable life there.
Hannah’s job was to gather various kinds of data about different moons, planets, asteroids, and other stellar objects in the solar system and beyond. Her goal was to paint as accurate a picture as possible of their different environments, temperatures, and chemical composition. This helped plan exploratory space missions. She loved her job. In fact, she could say without much exaggeration that she lived for it.
Hannah pulled into her garage, grabbed her papers and went inside. Immediately, she heard the familiar prattle of little feet and young voices rushing to greet her.
“Mommy, I’m hungry,” said Caleb, the oldest boy.
“Hi, guys! How was your day?”
“We played tetherball today and we won!” Replied Paul, the youngest.
“No, you didn’t. Philip’s team won!” Caleb challenged.
“Liar!”
“Okay guys, cut it out,” Peter intervened from behind them, conciliatory but firm. He greeted Hannah. “Hi, honey. I’m sorry, but I haven’t had the chance to get dinner going yet.”
“No problem. We can just throw together something quick. How about spaghetti?” She knew the boys would love that idea and she wasn’t wrong: they immediately stopped bickering and started cheering and chasing each other.
Hannah and Peter went into the kitchen and began gathering the ingredients. “So…what’s the verdict? Do you have to go to Japan?” Peter asked.
“Yup,” Hannah said, reaching for the pan. “Practically everyone who is a somebody in exobiology will be at the conference. I can’t miss that.”
“I was hoping you could pass it up. You know, slow down for a bit. Do a little Penticton touring with me and the kids. It’s been two years since we moved here, and we still don’t know our way around half the time…and it’s a small town!”
“I know, I know. I feel guilty enough as it is. Could you wash the tomatoes while I get the blender?”
“Come on! Just this once. Won’t you allow yourself to relax and spend some time with us? You work long hours and haven’t taken a vacation in…I don’t know how long. What’s the worst that can happen if you miss this?”
She understood her husband’s plea, but she was also annoyed by his insistence. They talked about this before, and he seemed to agree that this conference was a special event — one she had to attend. Still, Hannah felt remorse and didn’t quite know how to respond to Peter. During their last conversation about it, she felt pressured into saying that she would think about staying. She shouldn’t have given him false hopes. And now they were about to have another fight.
She was literally saved by the bell. The doorbell, that is. Someone was ringing it.
Peter looked at her, puzzled. Who might be visiting at dinner time without calling first? He dropped the knife and went to the door. Hannah was happy for the interruption and continued preparing their meal, hoping he’d forget their conversation about the conference in the interim.
“Hannah! There are some people here to see you.”
She looked up from the stove and walked to the hall where two official-looking men with closely cropped hair stood side by side while her husband held the door.
“Hello, Doctor Coleman. I’m agent Van Oort and this is agent Gómez.” They produced their FBI badges. “We are here under orders of the Secretary of Defense to ask you to please come with us.”
“What? Where?” Hannah and Peter exchanged surprised and irritated looks but tried their best to remain cordial.
“That’s classified. I’m sorry.”
“The Secretary of Defense? Wow. But this is…”
“Unexpected, yes. For better or worse, it is also unavoidable.”
“But I have to be back in the office tomorrow to prepare for a conference in two days, and…”
“Sorry to hear that. I’m afraid this cannot wait for your return,” Van Oort said.
“You can’t just yank me from my family. Does the FBI even have jurisdiction in Canada?”
“Doctor Coleman, do you really want to talk legal?”
Hannah didn’t expect this kind of veiled threat and took a step back.
“We took the liberty of notifying your supervisor that you will be on leave for an indefinite amount of time. Please, gather your essentials and come with us,” the agent continued.
“An indefinite amount of time!” Hannah almost screamed as she looked at her petrified husband. A thousand scenarios and probabilities crossed her mind in the span of a few seconds but, at last, she shook herself out of her trance and went upstairs to pack a handbag while the agents returned to their vehicle to wait for her.
Peter closed the door and went upstairs to join Hannah who was already gathering her things, frantic. “What is going on? This is beyond weird.”
“Tell me about it! But what can we do? It’s the Secretary of State we are talking about. Still, it sucks that I won’t be able to go to Japan after all. Will you do me a favor, Peter? Can you please call the office tomorrow morning and find out what they were told about my absence?”
“Sure, don’t worry. I’ll do it first thing. And you text me whenever you can so we know everything is okay!”
“Where is Mommy going?” The kids noticed that something was off and had joined their parents upstairs.
“I have to go back to work, Caleb. It’s a busy time for Mommy. But don’t worry, go play video games while Daddy finishes making dinner.”
“Aw, why do you have to go? When are you coming back?” Paul asked.
“I’m not quite sure, but I’ll let you know as soon as I find out. It won’t be long, you’ll see.”
And with that, Peter took the children back downstairs so that Hannah could pack. The agents didn’t look like the patient types, and she hurried to finish up so she could properly say goodbye to her family.
//
The three of them were in a windowless room inside a vast compound. A place with the aroma of a thousand conspiracy theories.
Less than ten minutes prior, Kyle, Hannah, and Brad had landed in a sunny area with lush vegetation, God knows where. Along with several military escorts, they went through huge metal doors to enter a great mountain and descended many floors below ground level in an oversized elevator.
Their shock prevented them from introducing themselves, even after they were left alone in a small room. In contrast, Brad appeared calm. His military uniform suggested that he was used to this institutional form of “abuse,” but a steely something about him seemed to discourage conversation anyway. They looked at each other suspiciously and remained silent for a short while yet.
“Does someone know what the hell this is about?” Kyle said finally. He needed answers. More answers than he got from the lapidary official goons who whisked him away from MIT earlier that day.
Hannah was the first to respond. “I was making dinner at home and the next thing I know I’m on a private jet here with a bunch of spooks. That’s all I got.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” contributed Brad unceremoniously.
And he was right. After a few minutes, a middle-aged redhead buoyed by high heels and a lot of attitude entered the room. She walked briskly to a solitary corner table and dropped a sheaf of papers on its gray surface. Behind her was a slightly hunched-over woman with thick glasses.
“Good afternoon everybody. My name is Sonia Rogers and I’m the person you should send your complaints to. With me is Doctor Laura Henry, our Chief Scientist and perpetual advocate for all things reasonable.”
Doctor Henry shrugged her thin shoulders in a self-deprecating fashion. She was older and looked wiser than her colleague.
“Let me first apologize for the rather abrupt way in which we summoned you. You’ve all been called on by your government before. This time is different.”
“I couldn’t agree more. Yeah, I would say this time is different.” Kyle agreed.
“Well, at least it’s good to know that someone takes responsibility for something in government,” Hannah added.
“Isn’t it? Thank you, Doctor Coleman. Allow me to make the rest of the introductions in case you didn’t get around to it yourselves. Doctor Coleman works at the Kaleden Astrophysics Observatory in Canada and is an astrophysicist with a world-class grasp of the somewhat undervalued field of exobiology.”
“Don’t tell me this is Area 51 and we’ll get to see the green men you’ve been prodding since the 40s! My dream, at last!”
“And that would be Doctor Kyle Santiago. Nobody knows more about symbolic patterns and ciphers. I’m glad to see that he also has a sense of humor.”
“Oh yeah. I get that a lot. I’m a hoot.”
“Last, but not least, Colonel Brad Turner of the Special Forces.”
Brad nodded to the group.
“Now that we’ve dispensed with the pleasantries, let’s get down to business.” Sonia took a page from the top of the pile and composed herself before continuing.
“There is an unknown, five kilometer long ‘object’ parked in a low orbit over the dark side of the Moon.”
That got their full attention.
“A few weeks ago, astronomers tracked its progress as it crossed the heliopause and traversed the Solar System in a matter of minutes. The object’s path aimed straight toward Earth, but it suddenly stopped at its current location and remains at rest. There is no doubt that it is manufactured and definitely not man-made.”
And just like that, it was as if all the air rushed out of the room. Nobody moved for a beat. Or two.
Those were pretty basic facts. Simple words really. But the implications of their meaning were nothing short of epochal. Not only for humanity as a whole — for each one of them on a personal level also. Particularly Hannah. She had spent a lifetime trying to prove her belief that we are not alone in the universe. All that study, the long and grueling days of research, the publishing of papers, the conference attendance, the teaching, the missed kindergarten functions and sports practices. All of that converged on this moment, infusing it with personal meaning. She felt herself getting emotional.
“I don’t know what to say. I’ve dreamt of this all my life. It’s why I became an astrophysicist. I just…” She broke off, not knowing how to end her sentence.
Doctor Henry picked up where Sonia had left off. “Because of its extremely fast progression we don’t believe anyone has detected it yet — other than top observatories and research facilities around the world and they are following the established confidentiality protocols for a case such as this.” At that, she passed around a folder full of photos showing a bright, smooth triangular object above the Moon.
“These are images taken by China’s Queqiao lunar relay satellite. As some of you know, the Quequiao is located on a Lagrange L2 halo orbit 65,000 kilometers beyond the far side of the Moon, which gives it a privileged vantage point. We are lucky that our Chinese counterparts deemed appropriate to share the photos with us” said Doctor Henry as she passed the images around.
“Unbelievable. I’ve got a million questions…What do you intend to do about this?” Hannah said, looking at the photos.
“We have to find out what the object is, obviously, but there’s no time to sit back and study it from a distance,” Sonia replied. “Who knows what it might do next — or when. We’ve called on the Russians and the Chinese to help us build a ship in record time to take a twelve-member team to the Moon’s orbit. We have a high-level plan in place, but there are many details that need to be worked out. However, the leaders of the three countries not only approved the mission immediately as their top national security priority, they expect us to brief them on the exact nature and purpose of the object by the end of the year — so long as it stays put before we get there, that is.”
It was already mid-May and they let that thought sink in.
“In the eventuality that the object exhibits bad intentions…well…rest assured that we are also working on a plan B,” Sonia added.
“So, what now?” Kyle asked.
“All in due time, Doctor. Try to get some sleep. You are flying to Russia tomorrow to start accelerated astronaut training. Welcome to Project Attica.”
Kyle sat picking at his breakfast. It was seven in the morning and he was oddly alone in the cafeteria. Only twenty-four hours had passed since his “kidnapping” and he already missed his daily routine, but the thing he missed the most was the sunshine. How could these people work in a place with no windows? Even for an introverted homebody like himself, the perpetual fluorescent light was too much to take in.
He hadn’t really slept and wasn’t hungry. He sensed a headache coming on, but felt relieved to see Hannah walking toward his table carrying a bowl of oatmeal and some orange juice. The fact that they were roughly the same age hadn’t escaped Kyle.
“May I?” she asked.
“Of course. How did you sleep, Doctor Coleman?”
“You can call me Hannah.”
“Kyle to you then.”
“It took me forever to fall asleep. This place gives me the creeps and I just don’t know what to make of the whole thing. I can’t quite get my head around it.”
“That makes two of us. I’ve been tossing and turning all night. It’s like I’m daydreaming and anytime now I’ll be back in my messy apartment, late for class.”
“Think about the implications of this event, though. First contact! The excitement of getting to know an extraterrestrial civilization. And the danger, unfortunately, maybe. I’m simply overwhelmed, so imagine how the public will feel once word gets out.” Hannah pulled back her dark hair and looked intently at the contents of her cooling bowl.
“No chance of that. I bet these here folks are pretty good at keeping a tight lid on things whenever it suits their agenda.”
“I’m worried about my family. It’s going to be difficult not to tell them anything. Who knows how long we’ll even be gone.”
“I got the advantage of not having to worry about any of that. Bachelor perks, you may call them. I’m freaking out all the same, mind you. I can’t warm up to the idea of being blasted into space on a rocket aimed at a weird alien triangle orbiting the Moon.”
“I just hope they let us out soon to see our families before we go on that ship.”
“I wouldn’t worry. Your family thinks you are helping the government. I’m sure they are used to you going out on academic trips and all of that. They’ll be fine.”
“This gig is fixing to be months long, though. I’ve never been gone for that length of time.”
“Selfishly, though, it’s us I’m worried about,” Kyle confided. “God knows who and what is up there! Or why they came here in the first place.”
“Everyone and everything on Earth will be impacted by this.”
“Do you have a working hypothesis yet?” He asked.
“I just came across Colonel Turner in the hallway. He told me that there is no new information about the object. It’s still sitting there, motionless, so whatever it’s come here to do, it hasn’t gotten started.”
“Whoever built that thing has some serious knowledge of physics and math,” Kyle said, feeling more enthusiastic all of a sudden. “And I know something about those. Granted, I’m positive they’d consider me an ignoramus in comparison — that much is obvious. However, if and when we establish communication, we will find out what recurring symbols they use to represent concepts like the universal constants. Then, maybe I can begin to unravel their language at a very basic level.”
“Forgive me, Kyle, but that’s a bit naïve.”
“Naïve?”
“Language is inexorably dependent on anatomy, and anatomy is contingent on natural environment and the evolutionary process. As an exobiologist, that’s my area of focus. And the less physiologically similar this species ends up being to us, the more inscrutable their language will be. Math or no math.”
Kyle shook his head and kept on eating. It was too early in the morning to argue and he was finding it difficult to be annoyed by Hannah anyway.
“Do you consider yourself to be a captive of our government right now?” She asked point-blank.
“That’s a difficult question. In a sense, yes, we are here against our will. Don’t get me wrong: I believe they’d let us go if we really wanted to. I hope against the evidence, I guess. We still live in a republic, but…”
“But?”
“I’m far from convinced that we are here under threat of hard power, although they are clearly exercising soft power against us. If we were to leave, I wonder whether we’d suddenly start receiving less and less invitations to symposia, finding it harder to publish peer-reviewed articles, getting harassed by university administrators until our careers were nothing but a nostalgic memory of what could have been,” Kyle confided.
“Death by a thousand cuts. I’m not sure what kind of power is best, to tell you the truth. Soft or hard.”
“Me neither, and yet…here we are.”
They sat across each other in silence a while longer. Then, she got up to leave, saying goodbye. Kyle’s eyes followed her sinuous progress across the room and, suddenly, he remembered Samantha leaving their bedroom in Boston to prepare breakfast any given Sunday. And with that, he went back to his cold eggs and hash.
//
The Gobi Desert night was clear and the air sharp. Captain Chen Liu straightened his lean body and turned up the collar of his jacket to warm up a bit. He didn’t mind the cold, at least not today. He had been selected to work on the recent alien business in some unspecified capacity. He hadn’t been assigned an official role so far, but an international mission of this import couldn’t very well be entrusted to just anyone. That meant his superiors thought highly of him. At least it’s what he told his wife as soon as he found out. She had immediately begun to envision a new kitchen, courtesy of the promotion that was sure to come his way.
Chen started to walk briskly across the base in response to General Wang’s summons, but unexpectedly ran into his superior before he could arrive at the General’s office. Wang was speaking excitedly on the phone. Chen didn’t want to pry, so he awkwardly kept his distance.
“Yes, sir. I understand,” he overheard. “We are in the process of selecting the personnel and will certainly follow established procedure. We will only send our best and brightest. Our most trusted, be sure of that.”
A pause.
“They’ll fly to Russia immediately, sir. As soon as everyone is notified, which should happen by tomorrow at the very latest.”
Wang’s considerable bulk began to relax as he listened to whomever he was talking to.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, hanging up.
Captain Liu picked up the pace to join the General in his walk.
“Good evening, sir. You wanted to see me?”
“Our superiors are very concerned about this alien thing, Captain. That’s why I called you in tonight. I was on my way to the office when I got the call.”
“What are they concerned about, sir?”
“They are wary of collaborating with the U.S. and Russia to build a spacecraft — the Theseus they are calling it. Not to mention the fact that there’s an enormous unknown object over the Moon and we have no clue why.”
“Right, of course. And I imagine that keeping our technology secrets safe will be difficult with foreign engineers working side-by-side with our own. I’m sure we will learn a few new things in the process as well, though.”
“Most definitely. And the object will have priceless secrets of its own.”
“Secrets that could give our rivals an advantage over us,” Captain Liu quickly agreed.
“Or vice-versa. Once up there alone, without backup, our allies (on paper) might stop at nothing to obtain exclusive intelligence. That’s where you come in the picture.”
“Me, sir?”
“Have you ever been in Russia, Captain?”
“Never, sir.”
“Well, that’s about to change. You and Lieutenant Bo Zhang will join the Americans and the Russians aboard the Theseus,” Wang said, letting the news sink in.
If Chen had any emotional reaction whatsoever to the huge revelation, he didn’t show it.
“Your mission will not be easy. The first goal is to ensure Earth’s safety starting with China, of course. There are plans to carry thermonuclear weapons and you’ll have access to the launch codes along with your Russian and American teammates. You also need to bring back any and all intelligence gathered by the foreign scientists. It’s bad enough that we couldn’t negotiate for our own experts to be on board. Space on the ship is at a premium and compromises had to be made.”
“I understand, sir. We will let them gather the intelligence under our watchful eyes and we’ll bring it back for our scientists to pore over.”
“That’s the spirit. Everything will depend on you. There will be no possible communication between us while you are in training because of the secret nature of the work. You must plan for contingencies to make absolutely certain that, no matter what happens up there, you and Zhang come back.”
“Sir, what if this object proves to be dangerous?” Captain Liu asked without showing any fear.
“If it’s dangerous, you’ll destroy it.”
//
Sonia Rogers stood with her arms crossed, about to brief a room full of mission members — some of them new — on what would happen next. Her words came out in quick staccato.
“Good morning everyone. As you all know, we will be boarding a military transport plane to Russia later today. You’ll be provided with all the gear you’ll need, so don’t worry about packing — not that you brought much to pack in the first place.”
This was met with widespread harumphs and eye-rolling.
“Apologies for the gallows humor,” she smiled.
Kyle was beginning to like this Rogers woman. He still didn’t trust her, however.
“Colonel Turner and Doctors Coleman and Santiago already know each other. They are, respectively, head of security, exobiologist, and decoder, but we have several new arrivals that I’d like to introduce before proceeding,” Sonia picked up a piece of paper and continued to talk without looking at it.
“Please, welcome the latest additions to the team. Chemistry Professor Doctor Anderson Ragland will help us determine the composition of the object and its contents. Raúl Carter is a Sergeant, and Thomas Adkins and Iris McCoy are both Specialists. All of them serve under Turner’s Special Forces command. Everyone gathered here has traveled a long way so please, be nice to each other.”
Polite yet unenthusiastic nods were exchanged, and Kyle couldn’t help but notice that there were more military personnel than scientists in this batch of fresh recruits.
“The flight will take fifteen hours, give or take. I hope you’ll find our military transport comfortable enough. We’ll land at Plestsy Airport near the Plesetsk Cosmodrome where your training will begin the following day. Plesetsk has been designated as Project Attica’s international base. It is also the construction and launch site for the spaceship — the Theseus. Any questions so far?” Sonia stopped briefly.
“You should know that there are additional expedition members that you’ll be meeting there for a total of twelve, including yourselves: Doctor Alex Krasnov, Doctor Valentina Dyakova, and Captain Boris Vasiliev. There are also additional security forces from China. Colonel Turner has already been briefed about this and about the fact that he will be in charge of all military aspects of this mission. The Chinese soldiers’ names are Captain Chen Liu of their intelligence service and Lieutenant Bo Zhang under Liu’s command. It is imperative for the good of the mission that you all work in unison and that’s why you’ll train in unison as well. We can’t afford for any real or perceived lack of trust to interfere with the job at hand.”
Ragland, the chemistry professor, raised his hand and Sonia yielded the floor to him.
“Thanks for the info, Ms. Rogers…”
“Call me Sonia, please.”
“Thank you, Sonia. I’m interested in knowing what my personal role will be in all of this. I’m sure everyone else in the room is wondering the same thing.”
“Sure, let’s jump right into that. The thing is, Doctor Ragland…”
“Anderson, please. I have a feeling we’ll all be bonding very soon.”
“Very well, Anderson. The thing is, we have a fairly general set of parameters for the mission. In essence, you should exercise your scientific judgment and apply your expertise based on the information on the ground. For the military members, the goal is to ensure the safety of the mission and, by extension and more importantly, of our planet. Under more normal circumstances, you’d be given a dossier full of details for your review during the flight to Russia. Events being as they are, however, we have very little information on the alien object. We are facing the unknown and the broad outline of the mission is to gather as much data as you can, communicate with the object’s crew in the best way you can — if anyone’s home, that is — and to come back alive.”
Anderson wasn’t the only one staring blankly at Sonia at that point.
“Now, if there are no other questions, we have a flight to catch.” With that, she left the room, and the group was escorted to make their final preparations.
//
The trip from the airport to the Cosmodrome was short, but Kyle was pining for some rest after the long flight. From the train window, he found Arkhangelsk Oblast — the Russian region where the mission center was located — to be quite beautiful. Blanketed with pine trees and pockmarked with lakes. It was big sky land for sure, with a kind of aloof beauty.
As soon as they arrived, the group was escorted to a dorm-like structure with individual rooms on both sides of a single corridor. He counted twelve doors. Had the building been constructed exclusively for their mission? Kyle marveled at the speed and efficiency with which the project was being conducted.
He entered his room and immediately dropped his bag, letting himself fall limply on the bed. They hadn’t met with the Russians and Chinese team members yet — maybe they hadn’t arrived? He fully expected to see them the following morning, though. What he didn’t anticipate was the knock on his door at the very moment he was starting to relax.
He dragged himself up to answer it.
“Ms. Rogers?”
Sonia stood there, beaming a weird smile at him.
“Hello, doctor.”
“Um, what can I do for you? Aren’t you tired?”
“Me? Tired? Never! Listen, I won’t keep you long. We need to talk. Can I come in?”
“Sure, I guess. Welcome to my humble abode.”
“I’ll cut right to it. You are the most critical player in the entire mission.” She said as she crossed the door. “Sure, every other role is important. We need a pilot to fly the Theseus, security for obvious reasons, and all the rest. However, what we most need is to find answers and your work in logic, symbolic patterns, and semiology is the only hope we have for coming out of this on top. You understand?”
“I do, but I have absolutely no clue how I’m going to even start digging in or what I will find once I’m over there. For all we know, these aliens might blast off as we approach their vessel or whatever that thing is.”
“Sure, there are unanswered questions, but you are all we’ve got. You will be the only crew member who can plausibly decipher anything about this mystery. Whoever is inside that huge triangle will talk and write gibberish. There’s nobody else in a position to understand it except you. And you are an American citizen — that’s to our advantage. Capisce?”
“Um, yeah?”
“What I’m saying is that there’s no need for you to be too liberal with your knowledge-sharing.” Sonia actually winked at him. “If and when you come across a piece of information that you feel should be exclusive to the U.S. and our national interests, keep it to yourself and you can debrief us back home.”
“Well, Ms. Rogers…”
“Please, feel free to call me Sonia.”
“Right, well, Sonia…the entire ethos of the scientific method is openness and sharing. And I wouldn’t know the first thing about national interest. Besides, we can’t expect to crack this puzzle — much less benefit from it — all on our own.”
“Yeah, well, I have my orders and you have yours. You’ll be treated to an exclusive and secret intelligence course during training — just so you can identify what’s in our interest as a nation. Isn’t that exciting?”
“I thought this kind of thing only happened in the movies. I mean, come on! First contact and all you people worry about is…”
“What I’m starting to worry about, Kyle —I can call you Kyle, can’t I? — is that maybe we made a mistake by choosing you for the job,” Sonia said with a sardonic glint in her eye. She turned around and slowly left his room, closing the door behind her.
She didn’t leave unobserved.
Bo, already at the base, had been surveilling the corridor through his slightly ajar bedroom door. He saw Sonia coming out of Kyle’s room and made a mental note to report the event to his superior, thinking it must be important.
//
The following morning, the U.S. contingent got to meet the rest of the mission team. Alex Krasnov, the geologist; Valentina Dyakova, the medic; and Boris Vasiliev, the pilot…and of course, Chen Liu and Bo Zhang, the Chinese security contingent.
The first thing Kyle noticed was that Valentina was so radiantly beautiful she couldn’t possibly belong to the same species as himself. Human she wasn’t, with her golden, cascading hair, majestic figure, and deep green eyes.
The second thing he experienced was a strong dislike of Chen who seemed to him a shady character of the first order. The Captain hadn’t spoken much during introductions, but there was an air about him that didn’t inspire trust. He appeared incapable of producing a smile if he tried. Granted, Kyle’s first impressions were often wrong. His social and relational skills weren’t exactly world-class. He hoped this was one of those instances yet, somehow, he doubted it.
Kyle had never enjoyed meeting new people, but he realized that anyone in this team could very well end up saving his life. He had to make an effort this time.
They all stood around a very deep and narrow pool. Several divers floated at the bottom, looking up in expectation. A broad, muscular man with a thick neck and slight Russian accent was explaining the exercise they were about to perform. Kyle only half-listened, focused as he was on his own thoughts. At some point, the team approached a nearby wall from which hanged some pretty imposing space suits. They were dark gray and made of a thickly-woven, tight-fitting fabric — some kind of strong and flexible composite. The shoes resembled ski boots with articulated joints to allow ankle motion. Gray gloves and a helmet with a narrow, horizontal visor to better protect the face against debris from potential attacks completed the high-tech ensemble. It was a far cry from the first Moon landing suits back in 1969 — technology and materials having improved tremendously in the intervening decades.
The team’s first challenge was to learn how to quickly put on the suits. This proved easier said than done.
Kyle had to fight himself just to get his helmet on at the same speed as his colleagues, and he was noticeably more awkward than Hannah, Valentina, and all the others. Their instructor had to help him properly put on each garment of the space suit. Finally dressed, Kyle took a deep breath and rejoined the rest of the team.
That wasn’t the worst part of the morning, however. Not by a long shot.
The instructor explained that they would be practicing how to spacewalk in the pool — as close to a zero-gravity environment as one can get aside from free-fall airplanes. Kyle only had one small problem with the space pool: he didn’t know how to swim.
Rather than worrying too much, he tried to focus on the positives. For one thing, the rescue divers were there to ensure that the trainees had no issues. For another, they weren’t really going to swim. It would be more like using their buoyancy to perform different tasks and maneuvers while submerged. The space suit was a self-contained safety capsule with its own temperature, atmospheric pressure, and oxygen…He couldn’t drown even if he wanted to.
Kyle’s rational side was telling him all this. A less evolved part of his mind kept screaming in a panic all the same.
“You will go down in groups of four. Three dives total, ten minutes each,” the instructor said through the helmets’ speakers.
“Remember: once you stop sinking, mid-way to the bottom of the pool, you’ll find your individual tool bench and Personal Propulsion System backpacks, or PPS for short. They will all be labeled with your name. Put on the PPS, grab your tools, and move to the other end of the pool. When you get there, simply place the tools in the labeled containers. Today, we’ll just practice this basic move because it’s your first session, but soon you’ll be doing serious stuff in two-hour dives. Questions?”
Kyle almost raised his hand. Except…he didn’t.
“Well then. The first group is Colonel Turner, Doctor Ragland, Specialist McCoy, and Specialist Adkins. Step in when ready.”
The four of them walked to the edge of the pool and went down a set of steps without hesitation, one after the other. Kyle saw them sink to the middle of the pool as the instructor directed the remaining trainees to sit on a long bench and wait for their turn. He sat down and prepared to wait, trying to calm himself without success.
His mind was racing along a nightmarish series of catastrophic scenarios, all along regretting that his pride got the best of him. How could he be so stupid?
“Hey Kyle, are you with us?” Hannah was calling his name on the open channel.
“Uh, yeah. What’s up?” He responded, slowly coming out of his own head.
“I was asking whether you have any scuba diving experience. Peter and I have done it a couple of times in Cancún.”
“No, not really. I’ve never been into aquatic sports.”
“You don’t know what you are missing. I think you should definitely try it. I bet you’d love it! Maybe, after this training, you’ll catch the scuba worm. Who knows?”
“I doubt that very much.”
The ten minutes were up. The rescue divers helped the first group to the surface. All of them seemed unfazed. Cheerful, really. That was reassuring, wasn’t it?
The second group went through the same motions with similarly positive results and soon the instructor called on Kyle. “The next batch is Doctor Krasnov, Doctor Santiago, Captain Vasiliev, and Sergeant Carter.”
This was it. The moment of truth he’d been dreading all morning. It was too late to back out now. He had to go in. Getting up, he took his sweet time as he shuffled along at the back of the line, long after the rest of his teammates had disappeared beneath the pool’s surface.
“Doctor Santiago, the ten minutes started already and you are not in the pool yet!”
The instructor’s voice sounded muffled and distant. Everything seemed to be in slow motion. All Kyle could think about was the water covering his face, his nostrils, filling up his lungs.
Agonizing, he took the first step in and then the second one, slowly. The third for sure was the charm. His foot slipped and he lost his balance, falling in the pool with a big splash while painfully hitting the edge with his back. The world turned upside-down and, next thing he knew, he was sinking and couldn’t go back to the surface. He didn’t even know which way was up.
Primeval fears, childhood terrors, urban legends…all joined forces and conspired to create an unbearable chaos of unsettling memories in Kyle’s mind. He started to scream and flail about as he sank. His hands pulled at levers on the suit he didn’t know he had, trying in vain to remove the helmet, the buoyancy belt, to peel off that heavy armor.
He fought off the rescue divers who came to his aid, but they kept at it regardless. After a few minutes, he somehow was brought to the surface kicking and screaming. The divers deposited him on the ground. The team surrounded him as he gradually began to calm down, panting.
“How are you feeling, big guy?” Hannah asked after a minute.
“I’m fine. Really. Thanks. I’m very sorry. The only thing bruised is my ego.”
“What happened, Doctor Santiago?” The instructor asked.
“My stupidity, that’s what happened. I should have said that I don’t know how to swim and that I have a corresponding fear of water.”
“Oh, men!” Hannah yelled. “They won’t admit their limitations even when their life literally depends on it. What is so hard about asking for help or extra training — or something?”
“Yeah, yeah. Spare me, please. This isn’t my proudest moment.”
The instructor intervened. “The pool exercise is over for today. Everyone, get out of your suits and go down to the gym for muscle toning. Doctor Santiago, if you are not feeling well, you can go to your room or the infirmary instead.”
“No thanks, I’m fine. Some exercise will do me good.”
“Now we are talking!” interjected Raúl. “You’ll be a grunt just like us in no time, Doctor Santiago!”
“I should be so lucky.”
//
“Laura, I need some updates.” Sonia stood at the entrance of her Chief Scientist’s office.
“Sure, what do you want to know?”
“Anything you have on the object’s nature and origins. I’m getting impatient and I’m not the only one.” Delicacy and tact were in short supply when it came to Sonia.
“We know nothing new, unfortunately. A preliminary spectrographic analysis was performed by the astronomers who first spotted it. The results don’t tell us much because the test was rushed and inconclusive. However, the object’s components don’t seem to be metallic in nature. We might be wrong on this, of course, and further analyses will need to be done on board the Theseus when they reach lunar orbit.”
“Okay, anything else?”
“It’s also impossible to say with absolute certainty where it came from. All we can deduce is that its approach vector toward the Moon might have originated in Aldebaran, in the constellation of Taurus — an orange giant with five additional stars relatively close to Earth. More interestingly, we know of a potentially Earth-like planet in that system. It’s larger than Jupiter and located at two astronomical units from its nearest star. The fact that it’s within the Goldilocks area makes it potentially habitable.”
“That’s nowhere near certain. We don’t know whether that planet is indeed habitable. Also, the object might have switched trajectories on its journey here, correct?”
“Correct. And it’s also possible that its point of origin is on the same Aldebaran vector, but further beyond. The thing is still orbiting the far side of the Moon and that’s all we know.”
“I guess it could be worse.”
“Always. Which reminds me…how is it coming along on the political front?”
“The usual. Nobody trusts anyone else. While each country recognizes the urgency of the project, we all feel like the others are keeping some aces up their sleeves and the rest of the cards close to their chests. There is some good news, however. The public is still blissfully unaware of the entire unfolding episode…and I hope that remains the case for a long time to come. The last thing we need is global panic in the midst of all the preparations.”
“Well, I’ll let you know the moment anything changes.”
“You do that, Laura,” said Sonia, leaving the room on her way to some unpleasant meeting, to be sure.
//
Lieutenant Armand Bisset’s appearance was cubic — his three gigantic dimensions being roughly equivalent. The instructor looked invulnerable in his fatigues and buzz cut.
“The four warheads on board the Theseus will remain armed at all times,” he said. “That doesn’t mean you have to worry about even a sneeze in their proximity, but it does mean that you must be careful and aware. Two crew members — any crew members — need to authenticate and enter the codes in order to fire the missiles. We will be going over exactly how that’s done many times in the next few weeks.”
The possibility of asking questions to this monolith of a man didn’t even enter Kyle’s mind. Had he actually thought about it, it would have seemed as unadvisable as pissing on a rabid bear. That’s why he almost choked when he heard Hannah raise her voice to ask a question.
“How will we know what situations would require us to fire the missiles?”
Like a tank’s turret, Armand’s neck turned slowly in her general direction. Before he could respond, Iris interjected: “I don’t have a Ph.D., but I’m guessing we’ll know pretty well if and when we need to fire, lady.”
Thomas hooted and high-fived his redhead partner. They had an easy camaraderie after years of combat together.
“Precisely,” Lieutenant Bisset agreed humorlessly. “There is no way for us to anticipate how things will develop up there, so you’ll have to use your judgment based on surrounding circumstances. It’s call initiative, Doctor Coleman, and that’s a notion you’ll become intimately familiar with in my class.”
“Thanks for the insight, Lieutenant. I wouldn’t have known what ‘initiative’ meant otherwise,” Hannah replied with barely concealed annoyance.
“Let’s re-focus, shall we?” intervened Brad, conciliatory, making a mental note to have a chat with Hannah at the end of the day.
Kyle had to hand it to her. The lady had spunk.
“Enough Armageddon-talk. The practical portion of today’s class will be more fun. For the past several days, you’ve learned everything you need to know about the inner workings of your M30 rifle. A weapon specially designed, tested, and built for this mission. You’ve learned how to safely carry it while wearing a full complement and your spacesuit, how to maintain it, and how to assemble and disassemble it. Today, you’ll learn how to fire it. So, grab your weapons and follow me,” Bisset ordered.
The rifle was attached to a backpack through thick, sturdy tubes linked to their spacesuits. The rifle-backpack combo had two purposes: to prevent the loss of the weapon in zero gravity situations and, most importantly, to let a thermite mix — known in the vernacular as “Greek fire” — flow from the backpack to the rifle for the purpose of functioning as a flame-thrower.
It wasn’t clear whether the scientific personnel would need to carry weapons on exploratory away missions, but they were being trained just in case.
The five-minute walk to the firing range had given Kyle the opportunity to chat with Hannah. He found himself more at ease with her than with anyone else on the mission. He was always looking for opportunities to approach her — hoping that his moves weren’t too obvious.
After they got to the range, they went to their individual firing stations and put on a pair of communications-enabled, noise suppressing headsets. The room was deep and narrow with very tall ceilings and multiple targets at the other end.
“Everyone! I will first demonstrate how the M30 is fired. Apologies to the professional soldiers among us for the basic nature of what I’m about to say,” Bisset handled his rifle so that everyone could have a clear view of it. “You will likely use the weapon in its semi-automatic mode most often. In this mode, one round is fired each time you pull the trigger. You may remember that you can select the different firing modes with this toggle,” he said pointing at a small control to the side of the firearm.
“When you switch the toggle to automatic, your M30 will fire continuously as long as you maintain the trigger pressed. You may ask yourself, why not use it always in automatic? Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? Trust me, it isn’t. For one thing, it will be more difficult to aim. The rifle will feel like a kicking mule and you’ll need most of your strength just to keep it from flying off your hands. Since your aim will be compromised, your accuracy will be drastically reduced as well. And because your accuracy will be impaired, your range will need to be shortened. In other words, use automatic fire only in close quarters against multiple, spread-out targets or against an enemy so formidable that only a rapid barrage of bullets could neutralize it. Got it?”
Nervous nods among the scientists ensued — and dead silence from the members of the military.
“Great. Next thing, anti-personnel ordnance. Each one of you will be able to carry up to ten grenades with many more stored in the onboard armory should you need them. Each grenade can be launched up to a hundred meters and their explosive range is fairly contained — on purpose. We don’t want shrapnel flying off for kilometers at a time due to low or zero gravity. You should be able to launch these explosives safely as long as you stay at least ten meters away from your target.”
Everyone in the team was handling the training differently. Alex was proficient with the weapon, exuding confidence and a cool detachment from the whole situation. Kyle didn’t want to entertain stereotypes, so he fought the amusing idea of Alex’s hypothetical past membership in the Russian mafia.
Valentina’s expression wasn’t one of self-confidence, precisely. She looked out of place holding a twenty-pound instrument of horror-deliverance in a firing range — although her male teammates might argue the exact opposite. She was a doctor who looked like a fashion model, and weapons had surely been, up until that moment, pretty low on her list of priorities.
She wasn’t the only uncomfortable one. Despite previous training, Anderson still held the rifle at length, like it stank.
“When you shoot a grenade, do it in an upward parabolic vector. You don’t want the thing to accidentally hit the ground in front of you. The higher the parabola, the longer it will take for the grenade to hit the target. If you achieve a very high arc, the distance will be proportionally shortened. Simple physics and, for all of you, far easier to grasp than for the average Joe,” Bisset continued.
“Anderson, remember: the end with the round hole is supposed to be pointed away from your chest!” Thomas started hooting and hollering again, high-fiving Iris and cracking himself up.
“Okay, Adkins, that’s enough. I think everyone got the idea,” Raúl said, trying to enforce some decorum.
“Last, but not least, we have the horror of horrors. The flamethrower,” Bisset positively beamed.
Every time Kyle thought of the flamethrower, his psyche was incongruously flooded with images of World War I trenches, hideous gas masks, shell-shocked soldiers, and white-clad nurses carrying metal syringes.
“Only use it as a last resort. It’s not easy to aim and, once you set things on fire, you can’t easily put it out. That’s why this particular mode toggle is a bit out of the way on the top side of the weapon. Remember that it requires you to press two separate buttons to prevent accidental activation,” he continued with his demonstration.
Bisset turned, facing the targets down range. With amazing dexterity, he unleashed a barrage of rapid bullet fire. The first set of targets were ripped to shreds.
“I’m going to switch to grenades next,” he coolly announced as if describing some nice afternoon weather.
In a matter of ten seconds, he fired five small grenades from a long magazine that he had attached perpendicular to the rifle. The targets were barrels full of confetti. The grenades’ explosions were small, more like implosions, but devastating all the same. The confetti clouds floated away within a surprisingly contained area.
Bisset then activated the two controls that unleashed the Greek fire. The target, a mock tank, was engulfed in a phosphorus-like inferno that would not cease to burn. The room got much, much warmer in a matter of seconds.
“It’s your turn, ladies and gentlemen,” Bisset said, flashing them what he thought was his most charming grin.
For the next several minutes, the team successively loaded and fired their weapons in semi-automatic and fully automatic modes. Kyle was thankful for the ear mufflers. Even with those on, the racket was tremendous.
His own performance hadn’t been stellar. When all was said and done, several of his dummies remained more or less intact.
“Switch to grenades,” Bisset ordered.
As Kyle was loading his magazine full of finger-sized canisters, he heard an inhuman series of shrieks. He turned to find out where they came from and saw Anderson running the width of the range straight to the exit, screaming.
Bisset intercepted the poor man who squirmed and tried to shake free.
“Good God, man, what are you doing?”
“I dropped them!” Anderson responded, still in abject terror.
“You dropped the grenades?”
“We all have to get out of here, let go of me!”
“Get ahold of yourself, Doctor Ragland. You’ll be fine. The grenades don’t detonate if they are simply dropped.”
“But I thought they were bombs.”
“You watch too much TV and pay too little attention in class, my friend.”
“I was loading the magazine. I grabbed a bunch of canisters together, lost my grip and…Oh God.” Anderson’s breathing slowed and he stopped wriggling just enough to look down, mortified. Kyle thought the chemist must have finally noticed the warm feeling that surely emanated from the very visible stain in the front of his pants.
//
The team didn’t have much free time. Almost the entire day was dedicated to training and preparations for the mission. Every evening, they were given an hour after dinner to relax, watch television, play ping-pong, board games or just be by themselves.
It was Friday evening and Kyle sat at a small table in the company of Alex and Anderson, finishing his dinner in the mess hall — meatloaf and garlic mashed potatoes.
“You guys up for a swim?” Alex asked.
“Sounds good to me,” Anderson responded.
Kyle felt like resting. It had been a particularly tough week, and the upcoming weekend wasn’t going to let up at all. “Sorry. I’m pretty toast. I think I’m just going to crash.”
“Sweet dreams then. We won’t hold it against you. This time,” Alex joked.
After dropping off his tray, Kyle walked out of the hall and up the stairs to his room when he saw Hannah leaving hers.
“Hi, Hannah. I didn’t see you at dinner tonight,” Kyle said.
“Hey there! No, I wasn’t hungry. Didn’t really feel like socializing either.”
“I know the feeling. I’m exhausted. Is it just me or is training increasingly unbearable?”
“They are turning up the heat for sure,” she said.
“Where are you headed? Do you mind some company?”
“I thought I’d just walk around, to clear my head. You can come with me as long as you promise not to talk shop.”
“Oh, you won’t have to worry about that, believe me,” Kyle readily agreed.
The underground base was enormous and had many broad passages, tunnels, and plazas, all artificially lit. Kyle wondered how long it took to build such a massive underground structure.
They walked together back downstairs and Kyle hoped that neither Anderson nor Alex would see them. It’d be awkward to be seen with Hannah after having ditched them for bed just a few minutes earlier. He wasn’t concerned enough to turn down an evening stroll with Hannah, however.
“Did you always know you wanted to be an astronomer?” He asked.
“Astrophysicist, you mean.”
“What’s the difference?”
“An astronomer studies the universe in general. An astrophysicist works on something more specific. We focus on the physical properties and interactions between celestial bodies. At the end of the day, you are right though. There isn’t much difference, particularly for me. I started in physics and evolved my discipline into exobiology.”
“You haven’t answered my question, though,” Kyle insisted, with a smile.
“Oh right. Well, yeah, probably ever since I was little. I’ve always been intrigued by space. Maybe it came from my dad. He was a science-fiction fan and he started sharing his books the moment I could read them.”
“I came into math through science-fiction as well. Isaac Asimov and Stanislaw Lem were my favorite authors, but I’d read almost anything I could find from the genre.”
“And why math in particular?” Hannah asked.
“I’ve always been frustrated by entropy. By disorder and imprecision. Our lack of control. I hate vagueness, and accuracy and certainty are enshrined in math — even though they are not always achieved.”
“Where did you go to school?”
“MIT. I’m teaching at my alma mater. You?” He asked.
“UCLA. Go Bruins!”
“I didn’t take you for a cheerleader.”
“Trust me, I wasn’t one.”
“It must have been nice to live in California. All that sun, the beach…Boston has its charm, for sure, but we can’t compete with Hollywood,” Kyle said.
“I barely had time to go out and enjoy Los Angeles. My studies kept me busy and I wasn’t the party animal type anyway. Never have been.”
They remained in silence for a while, walking next to each other and taking in the meager views in offer: technicians in white robes and hard hats coming and going, carts transporting top military brass, platoons jogging in gray t-shirts and green pants, pitchforks moving cargo.
“Is 10 PM an official curfew or more of a suggestion? What would happen to us if we don’t show up on time?” Hannah finally asked.
“Want to find out?”
“It may be that I’m homesick or just tired, but I can’t stomach the thought of going back there. I don’t want to be late, though. These people still creep me out a little.”
“I hear you. I’ve got a certain melancholy going on today, and I don’t even have a family waiting for me back in Boston.”
“Let’s turn around. It’s getting late.”
“Sure thing.”
“Are you originally from Boston?”
“No. You’d know if I were.”
“Why? Oh, right, the accent.”
“Exactly ma’am, you aah so smaaht,” Kyle joked, trying his best to imitate the Bostonian sound.
“Okay then, where are you from?”
“I was born in Rota, the military base in Spain. My father is Puerto Rican and my mother Irish.”
“Quite a mix. Fun people both, for sure. How did this introverted mathematician come about, huh?”
“I came from space, I guess. Where do you hail from?”
“Arizona. The Western Cauldron, I call it.”
“Looks like we are getting close to our home base, unfortunately,” Kyle said, nodding politely toward Brad and Raúl who were talking in hushed tones in a corner. They didn’t acknowledge his gesture.
“So friendly.”
“No kidding. I suppose that we need grunts on a mission like this.”
“No talking shop tonight, remember?”
“Oops.”
They walked up the stairs and Kyle stopped at his room’s door before wishing Hannah good night, tempted to ask her to come in for some coffee.
But he knew better than to try.
//
“You know that anything I witness during the mission will very likely be seen by the rest of the team as well, right? Imagine that we come across a big hairy alien and it starts making weird noises. And let’s suppose that, somehow, I’m able to translate those sounds in my head. The Russians or the Chinese will be recording the entire thing anyway. They will take that to their own experts once we are back on Earth. Any advantage the U.S. may enjoy by my keeping the translation secret will certainly be short-lived.” Kyle was getting annoyed with the intelligence courses.
The two spooks in charge had been explaining ad nauseam what kind of information they were most interested in — obviously, anything with even the faintest chance for military application: interstellar travel technology, any devices found on the object, the process of its construction, the materials used, and so on. They wanted him to conceal this knowledge from the rest of the group, particularly the foreign contingent.
“The key, Doctor Santiago, is in finding opportunities for you, and you alone, to record the most important bits of information. We are fully aware that this will not be easy. It’s nevertheless critical for national security and the U.S. interests.” The tallest of the goons said. His name was Agent Smith — probably an alias.
“It is less critical that you shield any such knowledge from your American teammates, especially the troops. However, Doctors Ragland and Coleman should never find out what your behind-the-scenes agenda is,” Agent Jones said.
Was that really his name?
“Suppose I somehow manage to gather that information. Who do I report it to when I get back?” Kyle asked.
“You can inform either one of us. Nobody else. Not even Ms. Rogers,” said Jones.
“Will I know where to find you?”
“We will find you.”
//
Bo walked down the corridor and knocked on Chen’s door, recounting in his mind the basic outline of what he had to report.
“Good evening, Lieutenant,” Chen said, retaining their usual formality whenever the two of them were alone. He couldn’t quite get used to the casualness the group had adopted. Just never felt right to him.
“May I, sir?”
“By all means.”
Bo stepped in and lingered for a few seconds. It felt awkward to meet a superior in his bedroom.
“Please, have a seat,” Chen said pointing at a couple of chairs around a circular table.
“Captain, I think you should know about what I saw the other night. I’ve been observing the team and some interesting things are going on. We need to be extra cautious, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw Ms. Rogers coming out of Doctor Santiago’s room. I don’t know how long she was there or what her visit’s purpose might have been.”
“Maybe she was checking on him to make sure everything was to his liking or something innocuous like that.”
“She didn’t visit you and I, though, did she? I doubt she went room to room to tuck us all in, with all due respect Captain.”
“It might have been a romantic encounter. Odd, but hardly worrisome if that’s the case.”
“I guess it’s a possibility, but I don’t know…Doctor Santiago doesn’t strike me as a Casanova, and he hasn’t had enough time or opportunity yet to seduce Ms. Rogers. And then, there’s his predilection for Doctor Coleman.”
“I didn’t have you pegged as such an expert in matters of the heart, Lieutenant,” Chen joked.
“I have hidden talents, sir, what can I say. Back to Doctor Coleman. She and Kyle might know each other from before the project. That’s neither here nor there, other than it begins to paint a picture of natural alliances. If they don’t know each other from a previous life, they sure seem to be forming a tight little couple right now.”
“And you are worried that they might conspire to keep us out of the loop?”
“Precisely, Captain.”
“Thanks for reporting these matters to me. I agree that we should maintain vigilance, but I’ve also been thinking since we arrived here in Plesetsk…” Chen trailed off.
“What about, sir?”
“I don’t believe that anyone will be able to keep anything for themselves during this mission. Most of us are scheduled to go on away sorties together or to watch live video feeds from our ship. It will be tight quarters. We won’t have many opportunities for secret meetings or even separate conversations.”
“That’s true, sir. But still…”
“That’s not all, Lieutenant. The main reason why I’m not worried is that this project is so critical for humankind that any animosity between nations shrinks to nothing in comparison. We face a global and historical threat. Or perhaps a significant opportunity for exponential technological development. Something tells me that we’ll all put aside our differences when we are up there by ourselves. We’ll have to rely heavily on each other to learn whatever it is we need to learn about the object — even to survive, if it comes to that.”
“I understand, sir, but there remains a point of contention. Kyle is the only one who might be able to decipher any potential alien language or document we come across. We will not be bringing with us any Chinese scientists to vet his translations.”
“Right, but since we can’t change that fact, you and I will be powerless to affect the outcome anyway. And, while we won’t be able to translate things in real time during the mission, we will record everything that happens. Our scientists will study the video evidence later.”
“Permission to speak freely, sir.”
“Granted,” Chen replied.
“I took you for a more…how shall I put it?”
“Ideologically-committed officer?”
“Yeah, I guess so. More on board with the official party line, if you don’t mind my saying, sir.”
“Not at all,” Chen eased Bo’s mind. “I’m committed to our goals, but I’m even more committed to reality. In the end, it has a way of imposing its will no matter what.”
“That’s very true, sir. Thanks for the added perspective.”
“Bottom line, Bo,” Chen used his subordinate’s first name on purpose this time. “By all means, be as vigilant as you can, but also rest assured that the dynamics of the mission will be such that nothing treacherous will stand for long.”
It took four reckless months, fifteen hundred technicians from ten countries, and twenty-five billion dollars to build the Theseus. Luckily for Earth, the alien object sat on the Moon’s orbit the entire time. Quiet, still, and hidden over the far side.
However, for an era of instantaneous global communications, advanced biotechnology, and artificial intelligence, our manned mission capabilities had gotten rusty.
The robotic probes launched by NASA, the ESA, and others since the end of the Apollo program were extraordinary feats. They landed on comets, roamed around Mars, reached the Kuiper belt and beyond. As impressive as all this was, it proved much less daunting than sending twelve people, sundry scientific equipment, a lunar-module, a drone, combat weapons, ammunition, and several thermonuclear warheads to circle the Moon.
The few remaining Apollo octogenarians had to be wheeled out. They helped Project Attica’s team rediscover what manned missions beyond our own orbit are about.
Most of the work was conducted in secret at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Many parts had to be transported from around the world by ship and giant trains.
Some assembly was required.
The Theseus was to be launched into Earth’s orbit on three enhanced Angara rockets from Russia. Its three separate modules would have to be joined in space — there was no single rocket in existence capable to haul into space that much weight all at once.
Each launch would take place in sequence. The manned command module was to be last in line as a precaution to avoid sending up the crew if any of the other rockets failed to reach orbit.
The ship’s compartments were serially connected. Up-front, was the flight command; in the middle, there were the scientific station, weapons bay, and armory; and at the back, the transportation bay for the drone, the twelve PPS jetpacks, and a lunar landing vehicle capable of flight to and from the Moon’s surface and Earth re-entry.
All the while, right next to where Theseus was being built, the entire expedition team continued their accelerated version of the grueling astronaut training. Kyle’s clandestine weekly intelligence courses left him feeling like he needed a long shower and Sonia kept close tabs on him throughout — as did Bo and Chen.
The crew went through day after day of flight simulation, spacewalk drills, centrifugal rides, weapons training, martial arts instruction, and weightlifting. These sessions often ended with someone violently throwing up or being taken to the infirmary.
But it all had to be done.
Their relative isolation was possibly the worst part. Nobody was allowed a mobile phone and every call had to be made from a land line — in all likelihood tapped and monitored by Leadership.
Every team member was only allowed one call a week to family and friends — and that only after officially requesting and receiving permission. A couple of times, people had to take turns to speak on the phone because several wanted to call at the same time. And, of course, everyone had to watch what they said for fear of being accused of a confidentiality breach.
In the end, they got through it all.
The two unmanned rockets went up without a hitch, unloading their payload in orbit, and on the day prior to the last launch, the crew members were allowed to make one more personal call. It was the last time they would have to fake on the phone to make it sound like their work was long and arduous, but routine nonetheless. They just had to figure out a way of saying goodbye — for possibly the last time — without sounding like they were saying that kind of a goodbye.
//
“I want you to know that I love you. And that I love the kids. You are a good man, Peter.”
“Hannah, that sounded a little ominous. Don’t freak me out. What in the world are you working on, the Manhattan Project 2.0?”
“You know I can’t give you any info and I’m afraid that’s not likely to change anytime soon.”
“I get it. I really do. But this is kidnapping pure and simple as far as I’m concerned! Four months and counting. The children miss you. I miss you! And now you are laying this whole gloomy farewell business on me.”
“I miss you guys too.”
“You sound like you are about to break into tears, Hannah.”
“Oh no, I’m just a little sad…don’t worry.”
“I’m glad you like what you are doing, but I wish you could come back and quit this astrophysics business. We could move to a quiet place and be a normal family again, you know?”
“Peter, right around now a quiet place with no work or worries sounds heavenly. And once this whole thing is over, I might even be willing to consider your suggestion.”
The sentence ended in a smile, but neither of them spoke for some time. They listened to each other’s rhythmic breathing through the phone.
“Can you put the kids on, Peter? I don’t want them to forget that they really do have a mom.”
//
The TV was on in the break room, but Brad didn’t watch. He sat alone staring at the door, thinking about what he needed to say, while the news played in the background.
His reverie didn’t last long. The entire international security detail came in and stood in front of him. Brad turned off the TV.
“Please, have a seat. This is our last evening before the mission. I called you because I think it’s important for me to answer any tough questions you may still have. Not about operational procedures, weaponry maintenance or emergency scenarios. We’ve drilled those enough and, knowing where we are going, most of them will be useless anyway the minute we take a good look at that thing up there.”
Everyone was listening attentively. They’ve had many pre-mission pep-talks in their careers, but this one felt different.
“I know what you are thinking. And it’s true: this job is unlike anything else you’ve done before. We don’t know whether we’ll be facing friend or foe. In fact, we don’t know if there will be anyone out there at all. Even within our own ranks, we harbor suspicion — and that’s inevitable. Our nations have been antagonistic for some time. This is all fully unprecedented and, because of that, daunting. It’s also liberating because we will need to improvise based on the conditions we’ll encounter. There’s very little that can adequately prepare us for what’s to come, nobody else who could do the job better. And so, half the battle is already won. We don’t need to like each other, but we do need to be able to trust one another. Everything — and I mean everything — hangs from that.”
Chen joined in. “Thank you, Brad.” He still couldn’t quite get used to using first names, but that had been the agreement since day one. While everyone remained keenly aware of the rank differences, the mission called for a flat chain of command — one that would enable increased independence and initiative should the circumstances call for it. First names fostered rapport and saying “Brad” was just plain faster than “Colonel Turner.”
“I just want to add that Bo and I are here to help,” Chen continued. “We’ll be completely alone in space starting tomorrow — far from the countries we are vowed to protect. All that we’ll have to rely on will be our ship and each other. We are wise enough to understand that our governments selected each of us to find out as much about this alien object as anyone else on this mission. And that’s okay because we ought to be able to defend the interests of the mission, of our countries, and our own all at the same time. Those interests must overlap or we will fail miserably. And there’s no room for failure.”
Bo spoke next, softly — he was the kind of quiet guy who carried a big stick. “I don’t have any questions. We’ve had months to ask anything that came to mind. But maybe others here do. Training went by quickly and there’s always renewed clarity the night before a mission. If you have things to say, now’s the time.”
The Chinese and American troops looked at each other in silence. Raúl, Thomas, and Iris had been fighting together in the special forces for several years — all across the globe under different conditions and circumstances. And Brad had been their boss for most of that time.
“It’s not easy for me to talk about fear, you know?” Thomas finally said. “We all want to hide our insecurities. If I’m honest, there’s just one thing that terrifies me about this mission: will the chow be the same they have here at the base?”
//
Just like every morning, Peter dropped Paul and Caleb at school and walked back home to work on his next book — a historical novel set at the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
He was halfway through the very first draft and, as usual for this stage, he was not happy with the output so far. The prose would be much more refined for the final draft. That wasn’t the biggest issue. What bothered Peter the most was that he still didn’t feel like the characters were credible. He always found character writing to be most difficult — an exercise in psychology and deep emotion — and he had never been an introspective guy. Regardless of his introversion, he still didn’t believe he was ever meaningfully in touch with his inner self, with his emotions.
After a few hours of typing, his legs and back started to feel sluggish so he got up, stretched, and made himself an early lunch.
He took his ham and cheese sandwich along with Michel Houellebecq’s “Platform” to the sofa. Houellebecq was one of Peter’s favorite writers and he thought it unforgivable to never have cracked open his best-known novel.
He had been reading for less than five minutes when he heard a knock on the door.
Peter didn’t expect anyone in the middle of a workday. He thought it must be some kind of solicitation and felt correspondingly annoyed. He got up, walked to the door, and looked through the peephole. There was a tall man standing alone and waiting.
Peter opened the door and the man introduced himself. “Hello, Mr. Coleman. My name is Clover. May I come in?” A foreign accent. Sounded vaguely Scandinavian. Perhaps Germanic.
“What can I do for you?” Peter asked.
“I have important information that you will want to hear.”
“I’m sorry. We are not interested.”
“I’m not selling anything.”
“Have a good day.” Peter moved to close the door, but the stranger obstructed it with his foot.
“Excuse me?” Peter said, alarmed.
“No need to be rude, Mr. Coleman. I know you are a nice man. I saw how tenderly you deposited your children in school this morning. Like every morning.”
That was chilling.
“What do you want?” Peter moved back somberly, letting the stranger in against every fiber of his being.
“Let’s sit. We’ll be more comfortable,” Clover said incongruously. He moved as if he owned the house. As if Peter owed him undivided attention.
They walked to the sofa where the novel sat open, facing down — an artifact belonging to a previous and happier reality.
“Are you from the government?”
“I represent concerned parties. Parties who need to know what your wife is working on.”
“She’s not at liberty to discuss anything with me.”
“We know this. We are counting on your wily ways, Mr. Coleman.”
“Wily ways?” Peter asked, incredulous. That sounded preposterous given the situation.
“You need to learn details about the project without her suspecting that you are probing, you understand?”
“Why can’t she know that you want the information?”
“We like to keep behind the scenes, so to speak. Can’t risk Mrs. Coleman’s employer catching wind of our efforts.”
“What do you plan to do with that knowledge?”
“You ask a lot of questions, Mr. Coleman. Contrary to appearances, I’m not a patient man.”
“She will never volunteer the information you are looking for; you have to believe me. I’ve tried…”
Clover interrupted Peter’s whining. “You are going to have to try harder, Mr. Coleman.”
“Or else?” He felt unreasonably emboldened, perhaps because of the stranger’s refined manners and appearance. That man couldn’t possibly be a criminal, could he?
“Have you ever taken your kids on a field trip to the Penticton community center? They would have a blast there. I’d love to take them myself. Would you like me to?”
A pause.
“We have been following your family for some time. Got cameras and microphones in your cars and all over your house. You can’t find them, so don’t try.”
That was enough to put Peter in a frantic rage, but he had to keep his cool for his family’s sake.
“I’m very happy to see you reconsider, Mr. Coleman. Well, it’s been a pleasure. Alas, time is of the essence. I’ll see myself out. Thank you for your hospitality.” Clover got up and slowly left the house.
Peter was left pondering what to do next. He couldn’t call the police. He didn’t even know what to report other than a veiled threat from someone he didn’t know and who, likely, was much more powerful than the local authorities. He couldn’t call Hannah to ask for advice or the protection of her employers for the very reason of Clover’s threats.
He just sat looking perplexed and letting his anxiety grow unchecked. For a very long time.
The final morning was diaphanous — the perfect weather for launch. A balmy two degrees Celsius and not a single cloud, but nobody on the team noticed. A somber yet determined atmosphere enveloped the base. You could hear a pin drop.
The group woke up before dawn and “enjoyed” a tasteless breakfast prepared as to eliminate the possibility of nausea during takeoff. They underwent a final physical exam to ensure the crew’s fitness and walked to the equipment room to gear up and listen to some last-minute reminders by Project Attica’s chief.
Sonia’s speech was fairly practical. It focused on what to do in the face of a potentially aggressive alien intelligence imbued with an unknown moral code — it all boiled down to finding ways to survive and prevent any threat from reaching Earth at any cost.
After that, the astronauts were left alone for a few minutes. Nobody said a word. They spent the time in their own heads, remembering, anticipating, preparing or praying.
At the appointed hour, Brad, who was in charge of the military contingent, got up to head the twelve-member procession to an elevator that would take them to the top of the Theseus. They walked slowly in their pressure suits, escorted by a few technicians in white coveralls.
The elevator was surprisingly fast and large enough to accommodate at least twenty people. Brad felt lightheaded as they climbed the enormous height of the rocket. He could see all of the surrounding territory almost to the edge of the steppe.
When they reached the flight module’s entrance at the very top, the lead technician opened the door and went in to check that everything was in order. A minute later, Brad was given the go-ahead and became the first team member to walk inside. Finding his seat, he strapped himself and donned a flight helmet. Everyone else did the same.
The techs busied themselves for a few minutes checking the crew’s safety harnesses and performing a few last-minute tasks. When they were finished, they exited the module with a terse “Godspeed,” closing the door behind them.
The space was arranged in four rows of three seats each. Boris, the pilot, sat in the middle of the front row and slightly ahead of the two crew members to either of his sides.
“Is everyone ready?” He asked all the team members. One by one, they responded in the positive.
“Plesetsk, Theseus here. All systems check. Full crew check. We are ready to proceed.”
“Roger that, Theseus. Countdown sequence will commence in T minus five. Cozy up and enjoy the ride.”
“Copy, Plesetsk. Theseus out.”
Those were five long minutes. Boris kept track of every indicator just like he had done a thousand times during training, while the rest of the crew mostly waited. Kyle and Hannah turned their heads at one point and gave each other a nod and a smile. With their helmets on, they could barely hear the ominous background hiss of the engines as they started to warm up.
“Theseus, we are all set for launch in ten, nine, eight…”
Everyone involuntarily tensed up, gripping the arms of their chairs.
“…seven, six, five, four…”
The crew’s anticipation became palpable. Some looked directly ahead to their dashboards, others closed their eyes tightly as if everything around them were about to explode.
“…three, two, one. We have a liftoff.”
And at that, the world seemed to end.
The roar and thrust of the rocket’s four engines overwhelmed them all. Brad felt his lungs wrap around his spine. The energy spent in lifting the forty-thousand kilograms payload was unimaginable, but its effects were keenly felt by every member of the crew.
Along with the crushing acceleration, the shaking and rumbling were deeply alarming. They all had been warned during training, of course. They knew what to expect, but nothing can truly prepare you for the feeling that comes with being strapped to a huge bomb going off — one carrying four thermonuclear warheads besides.
After a few harrowing minutes of flight, the tremors subsided considerably. Clearing the lower atmosphere and jettisoning the massive engines had provided the vehicle additional stability and the entire crew relaxed a bit.
Sonia’s mood sounded increasingly brightened with every successive rocket stage that was spent. “Theseus, prepare for the third and last stage deployment.”
“Roger that, Plesetsk,” Boris responded.
The final push felt like a big jolt inside the module. After a couple of minutes, the noise abated almost completely. At last, the spaceship proper was free of its noisy “pusher,” but a delicate synchronous dance loomed ahead — locking together their command module with the two unmanned ones that had been waiting in orbit for several days and which were already joined automatically under Plesetsk’s supervision.
The final coupling maneuver would also be automated — performed with the assistance of beacons placed on each module — but, ultimately, Boris had to ensure that everything went smoothly. He needed to be ready to act as a backup at the first sign of misalignment.
Traveling at dizzying speeds across Earth’s orbit, it took them a little over fifty minutes to reach a position directly in front of modules 2 and 3. Boris activated the coupling routine and grabbed the joystick, just in case.
As he worked, the rest of the crew kept very quiet, expectant. They could see the sealed airlock of module 2 gradually getting larger ahead of them.
Even though their approach was very slow, a sense of impending trouble weighed on everyone. In reality, the danger of damaging the hulls was minimal due to the “bumpers” around each airlock, and they knew it.
“Alignment appears to be within the established tolerances.” Boris announced.
“Roger that,” Sonia replied.
It took an additional thirty seconds for the craft’s assembly to be completed, but at last Theseus was whole.
“Yes! We are in business!” Boris yelled, to which the rest of the crew and Mission Control added their own exclamations. Sonia cheered so loudly that they had to lower the volume of her transmission.
“Happy to make you happy, Sonia,” Boris joked. “Don’t break out the champagne just yet, though. We still need to push this baby all the way to the Moon.”
“We have faith in you, Boris,” was her response.
The pilot then proceeded to aim the ship toward Earth’s satellite, engaging the propulsion system that would take them to their final destination. The relief the crew felt was just the precursor of a weirder feeling — they were speeding toward an unknown object of alien origin.
Sonia let out a sigh and the entire Mission Control staff cheered. The worst was over. At least for now. “Theseus, it looks like you are fully deployed and well on your way to the Moon. On behalf of everyone here, and as Head of Operations, congratulations on a perfect launch. You have our warmest wishes for the entire journey.”
“Sonia, Boris here. Thank you all and we’ll be in touch.”
“I’m sure you will. Plesetsk out.”
Like everyone else on board, Brad was happy the launch was over, but he also felt a knot in the pit of his stomach — the hope that at no point he’d have to use the dreadful arsenal pulsating in the belly of his spaceship.
//
Kyle was getting antsy and asked Hannah to hit the exercise bikes so they could blow off some steam. He had established very good personal rapport with her even though they were so busy all through training — their schedules pre-planned down to every minute of every day. During lunch breaks and right before turning in for the night, they had shared a lot about their personal lives. Kyle’s professional ambitions and social hang-ups found a complement in Hannah’s own drive to succeed and the compromises she had to make to be there for her family.
She agreed and they floated together toward the tiny exercise area where two folded static bikes stood pressed against the wall, waiting for someone to use them. At the touch of a button, both machines unfolded, ready for action.
“How many kilometers? Twenty?” She asked.
“You crazy? How about half?”
“You’re a wuss. Okay, see you at the finish line.”
He marveled at how hard she could ride. More than once, he was tempted to give up, but his pride didn’t let him. He crossed the line utterly spent and well behind. In contrast, Hannah looked fresh as a rose after twenty minutes of intense exercise. Her ponytail floated beautifully in zero gravity, like a dark waterfall — shifting shapes as she moved.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing. I’m just tired,” he responded, slightly embarrassed to have been caught looking.
“You rode for less than half an hour and you are tired? What is it going to take to get you in shape, Kyle?”
“How did it go with Peter on the phone? You know, before launch?” Kyle changed the subject.
“Oh…” Hannah looked down briefly.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I’m glad you asked. It was a bittersweet moment, to tell you the truth. I felt like I needed to say a meaningful goodbye. It could be the last, right? I didn’t want to alarm him, though. It wouldn’t be fair to get him worried when I haven’t been allowed to say what I’m up to. He did get nervous anyway. So much for caution, I guess.”
“How are Caleb and Paul taking it?”
“They are doing fine. Maybe too fine. I’ve been gone for so long that they might have a distant memory of me by now. They sounded like they were talking to a cousin rather than to their mom,” Hannah said, suddenly very serious.
“They are kids. Self-centered and coldly resilient, sure, but of course they miss their mom. They love you. How many times do I have to remind you?”
“I know. It’s not just Project Attica, though. It’s all my years at work, away from them. And now that I’m inside this tin can, the people I love the most in the world seem like they belong in a past lifetime. Sweet and distant like a cherished memory. I have some regrets, to say the least.”
“Nobody can understand what we are going through — not even us,” Kyle admitted. “You love your family and that’s winning half the battle. My own parents were never involved in anything I did, but I knew they loved me, whether they spent time with me or not. That knowledge gave me stability and security. That’s what kids need most. I’m sure it’s the same for Paul and Caleb.”
“What about you? Don’t you have plans to form your own family one day?”
Kyle suddenly pictured his life with Samantha and felt the bitterness of that loss, but he didn’t want Hannah to pick up on it.
“First, I’d have to find who to form a family with, right? I’ve been a woeful failure in that regard thus far.”
“How so?” Hannah asked.
“I can’t seem to find the time or the energy to pursue anything serious lately. Or even unserious, for that matter. When I finally meet a girl who I can see myself with, she always turns out to be unavailable.”
“Give me an example.”
“You would be shocked if I told you.”
“Come on! Try me.”
Kyle hesitated. It was clear to him that pursuing anything with Hannah was a bad idea. Nevertheless, he enjoyed thinking about it and this conversation was giving him the opportunity to play with fire without getting burnt. Consequence-free flirting.
“Okay, there was this woman. Smart, beautiful, sensitive. When we were together, I spent most of the time just staring, taking her in, you know? She was a terrific conversationalist to boot. I loved hanging out with her.”
“That’s sweet, Kyle! See? I knew you had it in you.”
“Yeah, well, it turns out she was married. So, I didn’t want to go there. I never even told her how I felt. Why open that can of worms, right?”
Would Hannah catch on his insinuation? The bad side of Kyle wanted her to take the bait, while the good side feared it.
“How long ago was this?”
“Pretty recent, actually.”
“Did she ever send you any signals? Encouraged your attention?”
“Oh no, nothing like that. It was all in my head, I’m sure.”
“Was it, though?”
An interesting question, he thought.
“Yeah, believe me. Maybe I’m making it sound more than it was. But enough about me. How did you meet Peter?” Kyle thought it best to steer the conversation back to Hannah.
“We were set up by a common friend.”
“I guess blind dates do work sometimes,” he said noncommittally.
“I guess they do. When we met, I was finishing college and Peter was already a published writer. His first novel had been a success. A common friend thought the two of us should meet and he invited me to the presentation party for Peter’s second book. I had never been to a glamorous event like that and felt completely under-dressed among the New York literati. Peter was very sophisticated and worldly. Handsome in an unassuming way. He behaved like the perfect guest, but later confessed to me that he had been secretly terrified. He’s an introvert, much like you, Kyle. But I couldn’t tell that night. He was on top of the world and made me feel welcome. No, so much more than that: he proudly shared the spotlight with me, even though we just met. And, well, the rest is history.”
“That’s a beautiful story.”
“Do you really think so? I always believed it ordinary, at least as far I was concerned. I looked like a provincial nerd in the cosmopolis. The crowd probably thought I was a poor relative of Peter’s. Be that as it may, he embodied the very definition of charm that night.”
“I’m sure he was delighted with your company, Hannah. The contrary would be a mathematical impossibility.”
“That’s very sweet — and flattering, coming from a world-renowned mathematician.”
“Your husband is a lucky man, no question about it.”
“It’s me who’s lucky, Kyle. Peter is the reason why I’m here in the first place.”
They both fell silent for a moment.
“I’m going to hit the shower. If I don’t come out in ten minutes send a rescue team,” Kyle joked. Taking a shower in zero gravity required more dexterity than he felt he could muster right then. He was lightheaded after a conversation that felt too revelatory.
“Hey, Kyle,” Hannah called before he could leave for the bathroom. “Too bad you didn’t explore that opportunity with that woman. Maybe next time you should be less cautious.”
Kyle shrugged his shoulders, smiled meekly, and floated away.
After almost four days in zero gravity traveling the 386,000 kilometers that separate Earth from its satellite, Theseus approached the visible side of the Moon.
The trip had been surprisingly comfortable — almost delightful — for everyone. While a bit cramped, the ship provided enough space for twelve people to have a modicum of privacy even. They floated around, performed flight tasks, exercised, had surprisingly tasty packaged meals, and slept — all without bumping into each other.
“Plesetsk, we are about to arrive at the predetermined orbit around the Moon,” Boris announced.
“Excellent. Everyone, go to your flight stations. Engage the deceleration routine. Once stabilized in orbit, proceed at cruising speed to circle the Moon Westward. You should be in view of the object within the hour.”
“Done and done, Plesetsk. Okay, green men. Here we come.”
The view from flight command was breathtaking. The Moon had grown in size to practically cover the full field of vision. Kyle looked in awe at the rugged formations clearly visible through the ship’s pristine glass. Hannah proffered an endless sequence of “wows.” The brightness of our satellite veiled most of the stars, so the entire panorama was a stark black and gray — beautiful and eerie.
“Theseus, activate the weapons system.”
“Copy that, Plesetsk. Stand by,” said Raúl, the mission’s “gunner,” as Kyle and Anderson exchanged uneasy glances.
Theseus was progressing fast along the orbital path toward the object and, at last, they entered the half of the Moon perpetually hidden from Earth. They could clearly see the shadowy edge of the dark side beneath them, engulfed in one of its two-week-long nights.
Only the Apollo astronauts had ever flown over the far side and the only ones landing on it had been robotic rovers. No human being ever stood on its surface. The majesty of the experience made their collective silence even more deafening than the roar of the rocket launch just a few days back.
//
“Plesetsk, we just spotted it.” Boris was still able to converse in almost real time with the team back on Earth by triangulating their signal through the Queqiao satellite orbiting behind the Moon.
“Very well, Theseus. Activate the approach sequence to maintain a constant distance of twenty kilometers from it, target weapons, and commence spectrographic analysis.”
“Roger that,” Anderson confirmed, preparing his scanning instrumentation.
At first sight, the object lacked any distinguishing features. It looked like a very bright star in the distance. As it grew larger, they could begin to appreciate the triangular shape and a slight yellowish tinge.
“Plesetsk, this is Anderson speaking. I’m going to try again but, so far, the results of the spectrographic analysis are inconclusive. Just like the first one that was done from Earth. I’m quite literally getting an error as if I had trained the tool on the void of space. I don’t know what to make of this.”
“Anderson, please recalibrate the spectrograph and perform the analysis again. What’s your current distance from the object?” Sonia replied.
“Two thousand three hundred kilometers and closing. Still too far for us to take a good look with the naked eye, but closing fast,” Boris answered.
“Plesetsk, Anderson here again, spectrography won’t tell us anything. The tool is in perfect functioning order, but no dice. It’s as if the object’s composition weren’t chemical at all, which is impossible, I know, and yet there you have it. Perhaps Hannah can offer some kind of explanation for this?”
“Maybe its atomic configuration is disguised somehow. Or maybe the elemental components are too diaphanous to provide a good material signature for our spectrograph,” Hannah offered in reply, confused.
“Theseus, let’s have you wait for full visual contact before deciding which contingency scenario to follow,” Mission Control advised.
“Roger that,” Boris responded.
The object was quickly growing in size and definition right in front of their forward windows.
Alex spoke next. “Recording observations for archival purposes. We have reached the terminal distance of twenty kilometers. The object is clearly visible to us as an isosceles triangle whose long sides measure approximately five kilometers in length each. The short side is around two kilometers long. This roughly confirms the initial estimates. Otherwise, the object looks flat. Its thickness is less than two hundred meters. It has an off-white, almost yellow coloration and the surface is smooth, without noticeable components. It looks as if seamlessly manufactured in one piece. Faint illumination radiates from inside. It gives the object a ‘powdery’ aura of sorts all around its surface. I don’t think anyone has seen anything like this before. Brad, does it look like it may pose a threat?”
“It’s impossible to say, Alex. It hasn’t moved at all since we arrived in its vicinity, which is good news, but we should cautiously maintain our distance while we keep the weapons ready. The scientific team should recommend potential courses of action to establish contact.”
“I suggest sending the recon drone. Do you see any reason why we shouldn’t do that at this point, Brad?” Hannah asked.
“We don’t know how this thing is going to react, but we can’t afford to not find out. We should get started with our observations sooner rather than later. Anyone else want to offer an alternative?”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Anderson said. “Alex?”
“I’m all for it.”
“Okay, then. Boris, launch the drone,” Brad ordered.
To say that the whole thing felt surreal to Kyle would be a ridiculous understatement. Regardless of his months of intensive training, he remained a library rat at heart. So, when he saw the tiny robot speeding toward the object, he could not quite believe his eyes. In just a few minutes, the probe was nothing but a small point swallowed by the immense scale of the triangle right in front of him.
“The drone is directly above the object. Activating camera and recorder,” Boris said.
A grid around the entire object was plotted and the drone proceeded to methodically fly over it, quadrant by quadrant, only meters away from its surface. Both the team on the Theseus and Plesetsk watched the live video feed on their screens with bated breath.
After about an hour, however, once the recon was complete, all they ever got to see was an unchanging field of fuzzy beige, as if there was something wrong with their monitors.
“Okay…that was underwhelming, wasn’t it?” Valentina said.
“Not exactly what I expected but, then again, none of this is what one would call ‘predictable,’” Hannah agreed.
“Bring back the drone,” Brad ordered Boris, who proceeded to retrieve it into the vehicle bay.
Kyle ventured a thought, or rather a question, for the first time since their arrival. “We are not going to learn anything about it from a distance.”
“I believe you are right, but we should consider the possibility that whoever is at the wheel of that thing might either be studying us as we speak or planning to initiate contact themselves. If there is a ‘someone’ at all, I mean. Let’s wait a while to see if they make the next move — and hope for the best, whatever that means in this context,” Hannah suggested.
“How long do you think we should wait?” Brad asked.
“Our protocol recommends an hour. I have no better suggestion than that.”
“Mission Control agrees,” Sonia said through the communications channel.
“Very well. Ladies and gentlemen, find something to do. We are going to be here a while,” Brad concluded.
In response, Kyle turned on a broad array of scanning and listening tools to detect any potential emission or communication from the object. Hannah, Anderson, and Alex joined him to examine any incoming data.
“What if the ship is empty? Would that mean that we’re dealing with a robotic probe?” Valentina asked.
“A probe of this size?” Hannah questioned.
“What if it needs to be that big to travel this far and this fast for some reason?” Kyle wondered.
“I for one would be glad if it was a probe. I’m not sure I want to meet any green men today,” Raúl said.
“I thought you were a dashing man of adventure, Raúl!” Valentina joked.
“I’m smart enough to be careful about what I wish for.”
//
“Crickets,” Hannah said. An hour had passed and she was growing impatient. There had been no incoming data of any significance and the object remained in place. “Brad, at this point I think we need to make the next move. Your call as to what that should be.”
“We are going to have to go there and breach. All that time diving in the pool wearing funny costumes is going to pay off. Chen, what do you think?”
“I agree. Who knows how long we’ll have to wait for the object to react, if it does at all. Let’s go in.”
“Very well. Does anyone have a better idea?”
“Hold on, hold on. Time out.” Kyle interrupted. “We are going way too fast here. I imagine that these people won’t appreciate our breaking-and-entering. What happens if they get sufficiently pissed to retaliate? I’m sure you’ve all thought about that, right?”
“Kyle, I fully appreciate your concerns. That possibility has been considered. The fact remains that this is a dangerous mission and our participation in it comes with high… voluntary risks,” Brad said
Kyle noticed how Brad said the word “voluntary” and had an “involuntary” chuckle.
“We are entrusted to uncover the purpose behind this huge thing parked in our vicinity. We have to act without delay regardless of the consequences and there’s no time to waste. We will deal with whatever they dish out if and when that happens,” Brad ended.
“Mission Control agrees,” Sonia said, unceremoniously.
Kyle kept quiet, looking at the object as if blaming it for inaction that doomed him to his imminent fate as a member of the away team. Just as Sonia said back during training, he was the only crew member who had even a faint prayer of communicating with whatever intelligence controlled the object. So, his number was up.
“All right then, away team, gear up and fall in! Boris, bring us closer. Distance of one kilometer,” Brad barked as he unbuckled his seat-belt to float back to the vehicle bay.
Bo, Thomas, and Kyle followed promptly, in that order. Kyle felt a bolus of raw anxiety forming right in the middle of his throat. All he could think about was “alien.”
Regardless of any apprehensions, the away team worked fast and efficiently preparing for the task at hand. The months of training were indeed paying off, at least so far.
They put on their space suits and PPSs, and Bo and Thomas grabbed an acetylene torch and a laser cutter respectively. Every team member wore a body harness attached to a long cable. This would securely anchor them to the Theseus in the event of a PPS malfunction.
“Theseus is in position,” Boris announced through the intercom.
“Off we go,” Brad responded.
Bo and Thomas entered the small decompression chamber first while Brad and Kyle waited for them to exit the ship. Everyone’s roles in the away team were clearly delineated: Brad was the leader and would make all the decisions. Bo and Thomas were to provide security and perform the actual breach maneuver. And Kyle was the brains along for the ride, advising Brad.
After a minute, Kyle saw Thomas through the porthole, floating in space and giving them a thumbs up. Brad moved into the decompression chamber with Kyle in tow. The door quickly closed behind them and the air in the chamber rushed out, equalizing its pressure with the void outside.
“Opening the outer hatch,” Brad confirmed.
The slow rise of the hatch presented Kyle with a view that looked like a beautiful and scary black and yellow Rothko painting — all space and alien object, with the immense body of the latter cutting the former diagonally. The uncanny beauty of this experience seemed to calm Kyle’s nerves a little.
“Check your safety harness, Kyle. Are you ready?”
“As ready as anyone can be under the circumstances.”
“Does that mean that you are secure, Kyle?” Brad asked more specifically, annoyed.
“Yes, I am.”
“Very well, follow me then,” Brad said pushing his body outside into space.
Kyle followed and was surprised at how easy it all had been. Floating in space felt no different than floating inside the chamber. Same lack of gravity, same temperature, same everything. And it was very similar to their exercises in the water tank.
“Engage your PPS packs, gentlemen. I’ll see you at the beach,” Brad said whisking away and leaving behind a trail of compressed gas.
//
Kyle controlled his PPS through a virtual reality glove and a heads-up display on his helmet’s visor. A slight forward motion of his right hand thrusted him toward the object. The jolt had been more substantial than he expected, even after all his months of training, and the surprise made him start rotating as he propelled himself forward.
With some difficulty, he operated his glove to counteract his body’s rotation. This delayed him and made him trail behind the group. Kyle hated giving Brad reasons to complain about his performance. He didn’t like these military types. They made him feel inadequate.
The distance they had to cover was considerable and it took them several minutes even at the fairly good clip provided by their PPSs. As they got closer to the object, the sheer magnitude of its enormous dimensions dwarfed them.
“Prepare for final approach,” Brad ordered.
They slowed down by firing compressed gas in the opposite direction of their momentum. The timing had to be right if they didn’t want to slam into the object’s surface or, to the contrary, stop cold in space before actually reaching it.
Kyle saw his comrades bounce off as they touched the surface one after another.
“What’s going on, guys?” He asked.
“The material is elastic. So be careful,” Thomas replied.
After a few seconds, Kyle disengaged his thrusters and prepared himself to feel the alien surface. The thick gloves would prevent him from actually feeling the object’s material, but the thought of resting on top of something this big and this clearly alien could not easily be put into words. He saw that the strange aura all around the object was some kind of a diffuse golden film made out of powdery particles.
“That’s some unusual stuff for a spacecraft. And what’s up with the eerie yellow glow?” Kyle said.
He touched down with a light thump. The first thing he noticed was that the impact of his body against the wall was indeed attenuated — as if the material was padded. He had engaged his magnetic boots and gloves to no effect and his body rebounded back into empty space right after impact, just like it happened to the rest of his team.
“This thing is clearly not metallic. Either that, or it’s made of a non-ferrous alloy. Magnets are not going to work. Time for plan B,” Brad boomed.
Kyle took two pairs of “gecko feet” devices from his toolkit. They would provide grip without requiring air to generate a vacuum. The team placed them on their knees and elbows, which meant that they would have to crawl on all fours. Not ideal, but at least their hands were free to operate the cutting tools.
The maneuver took a few minutes — their every move observed and heard by the remaining crew on board the Theseus and the people in Plesetsk’s Mission Control. They were all ready to intervene and help should it become necessary.
Kyle re-engaged his PPS and approached the object with knees and elbows at the ready. The geckos worked, but barely. They were designed to be used on hard, smooth surfaces. Getting traction on the object’s soft walls often required more than one attempt.
“Do you see anything in your proximity that might resemble an entrance or porthole?” Hannah asked from the Theseus.
All of them turned around to survey the object’s surface as far away in the distance as they could.
“Nope. What the drone showed us on the screen is pretty much what you get. If we went over the entire ship we might find something. That would take us hours if not days. We are going to have to choose a breach point at random and, right where we are, seems to me as good a place as any,” Brad replied.
“Go for it” replied the Theseus.
“Okay, people, let’s gather up in a circle. Bo, go ahead. It’s showtime,” he ordered.
They closed in on a small area to open a breach in the hull. Being close together, they could help each other better in case something went wrong. Bo pointed his acetylene torch perpendicularly to the surface and proceeded to cut a wide enough square for them to jump inside with their full gear.
Kyle couldn’t help but marvel at Bo’s martial zeal in the face of this complete unknown. Soldiers act. Intellectuals ponder. The human condition needs both but, in times such as these, the willing suppression of second thoughts was something to behold and envy.
Kyle could feel sweat beginning to form on his forehead and underarms as a woozy sense of unreality began to intensify. Was the object a vessel from an alien civilization? Would its occupants be angry at their intrusion? What might they look like?
Kyle’s momentary spell was broken by Bo’s worried tone. “Something is wrong. The torch is not even smudging the surface, let alone cutting it.”
“Yeah…I can see that. This darn thing is tougher than we thought. Try holding the flame very still and close to the surface. Maybe it’s a matter of concentrating the heat even more into a smaller area,” Thomas suggested.
“I’ll try that,” Bo responded. He held the torch at full power over a small point for three long minutes.
When he turned it off, they looked at each other in wonderment. The surface remained unblemished.
“It’s not even hot,” Bo confirmed as he placed his gloved hand directly over the area.
“Let’s stop messing around and bring in the big guns. Thomas, your turn.”
“You got it, chief,” Thomas responded, a little too cheerfully given the circumstances.
He had the laser cutter — a tool that would cut open anything imaginable. Its light beam was hotter and more surgical than the acetylene torch’s flame, but it consumed so much energy that the team had wanted to use it only as a last resort.
Thomas worked for several minutes, but pretty quickly it became clear that he was going to have no better luck than Bo.
“Theseus, it doesn’t look like we are going to make a dent on this thing today. Did you guys detect any changes in the object after we started our breach? Any positional changes? Energy or radio frequencies emanating from it?” Brad asked.
“No. Nothing at all,” Boris responded.
“Alright then. Let’s look at the bright side here, shall we? At least nobody’s getting upset at us. Maybe it’s not ‘manned’ after all.” Brad addressed Mission Control next. “Plesetsk, what do we do now?”
“Let’s give this some thought. Return to the Theseus,” Sonia ordered.
Kyle felt a mix of relief and disappointment, but he knew that Hannah surely was devastated at their failure.
“Guys, we await you with open arms,” Boris said.
//
“Here’s what we know so far about the object: it’s made of an unknown material — one which cannot be damaged by any kind of direct hellish heat. It has no doors, portholes or fissures. It remains undisturbed in the face of our attempts to forcibly invade it. If you ask me, everything points to a robotic probe of some sort, doesn’t it?” Sonia’s face loomed large within the confines of the communications screen as she tried to make sense of their findings — or lack thereof.
“That’s possible although maybe not likely. I can’t quite fathom how a probe could be steered in real time from a distant star. Clearly, their technology is far more advanced than ours and maybe the trip was pre-programmed, so who knows. But we should continue treating the object with the utmost caution as if it were manned,” Laura said from behind Sonia.
“Makes sense, but it’d be beyond strange if someone was inside and yet they patiently waited in silence through all of this.”
“You mean even stranger than the fact that there is a five-kilometer triangle over the Moon? There must be a reason why it arrived precisely where it did and then stopped,” Kyle added. “Nothing about this is random, so we better find whatever meaningful pattern is behind this series of events. I suggest we enact Protocol 15.”
A tense pause ensued.
“I agree with Kyle, Sonia. Unless things start to change inside that object in the very immediate future, I don’t believe we’ll gather any more facts about its provenance and intent by simply observing it. So, we are going to have to land on the Moon.” Hannah said impatiently, even though the last few hours had been nothing short of a whirlwind.
“Leadership,” Sonia said addressing an array of three video-conferencing windows whose occupants represented the countries in charge of the mission. “I see the wisdom in Theseus’ recommendation. I’m far from sure that any other course of action makes more sense, even if Protocol 15 — landing on our satellite — is a bit of a shot in the dark. Let’s start with a drone recon of the area below the object’s path to make sure we know what we are getting into if we end up landing. Or, at least, to potentially rule out that there is anything of interest out there. Do you agree with this recommendation?”
“Reconnaissance before an eventual landing is a good first step. We can’t come back home empty-handed. We need an explanation for this event,” the Russian representative responded.
“China is in favor as well,” General Wang said.
“Count us in,” the U.S. delegate concluded.
“Very well, Theseus. Prepare the drone for a thorough recon of the precise Moon area in the original path traced by the object,” Sonia ordered.
“Understood, we’ll get right on it,” Brad responded as he turned to face the rest of his crew.
“You heard the woman, Boris. Gear up the drone.”
//
Reconnoitering a four hundred-square-kilometer virtual grid on the Moon’s surface was going to take two full days to complete. Unfortunately, they were still at the end of day one.
The crew took turns to watch the live-stream footage. Back on Earth, Mission Control did the same. It would go faster this way than if they waited to watch the recording after the drone’s return — and they needed to save all the time they could.
Kyle and Hannah finished their two-hour watch and switched places with Chen and Valentina.
They hadn’t talked much during their drone shift. They couldn’t afford a distraction that might mean missing a significant finding on the lunar surface, but now that they were finally relieved, Kyle wanted to chat.
“Would you care to grab a cup of coffee? We could go to the science module and take a nice little break away from the hubbub and the rush hour,” Kyle asked.
“You got it.”
“After you, milady.”
“How about over there, sandwiched between the geology and biology stations?”
“Couldn’t have picked a better spot if I tried. I’ll get us some joe. I’d like to offer you a rich variety of flavors and vintages, but I’m afraid we only have ‘Americano.’”
“That suits me just fine” Hannah joyfully replied.
Kyle turned around and went to the command module, where the ‘kitchen’ was located, to grab a couple of pouches of coffee, which he proceeded to heat up before returning to their spot of choice and giving one of them to Hannah. He opened his own pouch and squeezed a perfectly round sphere of hot coffee out of it. It floated and wobbled in front of his face before he swallowed it whole in one big gulp. It was too hot.
“Ouch…that was rough!”
“You have to be careful, Kyle. Small sips, remember?”
“I promise I’ll drink with more decorum in the future.”
Kyle was struggling to figure out what to say that hadn’t been said already in their many previous conversations. He wasn’t too good at prompting talk. Once he knew the basics of a person’s life, he had trouble figuring out what else to discuss unless it involved complicated mathematical notations. In the end, he started with a fairly bland line.
“You’ve been killing it on this mission, Hannah. Really. Stellar performance. Half the time you sound more self-assured than Brad even. I don’t know how you pull it off, but you do. Me, on the other hand, I’ve been licking my wounds since day one.”
“Nonsense. I thought your recommendation to follow Protocol 15 was spot-on.”
“We didn’t have a better option, did we?”
“I suppose not,” Hannah concluded. “So far, there’s been nothing for you or I to analyze, nothing for Brad to shoot.”
“Speaking of shooting…when I joined the project, I was afraid of not ever coming back from the mission, you know? After what’s happened so far, the opposite danger seems more likely: that we will return safe and sound, but with more questions than we had when we left.”
“Oh, I know I’m going to find something out one way or another! With or without you,” joked Hannah. “Seriously, though, I’m so glad you are here, Kyle. What could I possibly talk about with these people? They are all pretty weird.”
“Maybe that’s what they say about us, right? We could be their weirdos!”
“Are we developing an unhealthy ‘us vs. them’ situation over here?”
Kyle blushed a little. He knew he shouldn’t jump to conclusions — for a million reasons, particularly in Hannah’s case. “It’d be nice to keep in touch when all of this is over. Boston is not that far from British Columbia.”
“It would be nice, Kyle. Maybe not so realistic, though.”
“Yeah, maybe not.”
That hurt, thought Kyle.
“You’ll probably be sick of me by then. Hell, it’s amazing that we haven’t had enough of each other even at this point,” she ventured.
“Why? Because we’ve spent together every waking hour of every day for the past three months being tormented and prodded by fitness and medical fiends? Nah, that’s nothing,” he joked.
“Okay, if you insist, we can talk on the phone every now and then. Just make sure…”
“Guys, you are going to want to see this!”
Hannah couldn’t finish her sentence. Valentina was calling everyone to the monitors.
Hannah and Kyle looked at each other and moved to the front of the ship, crowding behind everyone already gathered there.
“Rewind a little please, Chen,” Valentina asked. “There, toward the lower right corner of the screen! See? It looks like a faint mark on the sand in the middle of the valley.”
“Can you zoom in?” Alex asked with a geologist’s interest.
“Not without losing some resolution,” replied Chen. “We can try and see if the picture holds. The drone’s cameras are quite powerful.”
As the image on the screen got larger, they all gasped. A regular formation outlined what had to be an enormous triangle covered in lunar dirt.
“Alex, what do you make of that?” Hannah asked.
“I would say it’s something close to the surface, fully covered by a thin patina of sand around one-meter-high judging by the scale of the area and the drone’s altitude. It could be another triangular object that someone intentionally buried there in a shallow grave. Since there is no atmosphere or volcanic activity on the Moon, it would otherwise take hundreds of thousands of years of random asteroid impacts for the displaced dirt to accumulate over an area this large and to fully and uniformly cover it. Highly unlikely.”
“Why would anyone bury something like that?” Hannah questioned.
Everyone paused in silence, pondering the implications of Alex’s words. A perfectly triangular object right beneath the lunar surface. The second alien artifact discovered in all of human history.
“There’s no time to waste. Leadership has already agreed on a Moon landing after drone reconnaissance if we were to find anything of significance. I’d say this qualifies,” Brad replied.
“Mission Control supports your decision,” Sonia agreed.
“Boris, prepare the lunar module and remain in orbit along with Chen and Raúl. Don’t retrieve the drone until it’s finished going over the entire grid, in case something else is found. The rest of you, gear up. We are going to the Moon.”
Kyle gripped the armrests of his seat and began sweating as the lunar module rushed closer to the looming lunar surface. The retrorockets fired and the small craft rumbled and shook. With the landing countdown as background noise, Kyle felt that familiar pit in his stomach — the feeling of being way beyond anything considered normal.
“Ten seconds to landing…nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…touchdown.”
Nobody moved for a few seconds.
“Put on your helmets and check your suits. Line up in formation behind me,” Brad ordered.
The first pair entered the small decompression chamber. The door closed and the lunar module’s exterior gate opened to let them out onto the surface, extending a ramp to access the surface and closing again so that the chamber could re-compress. Kyle and Hannah were the last in line and, by this point, he was practically hyperventilating.
“Kyle, you need to slow your breathing to conserve oxygen. Try calming yourself. Anxiety doesn’t help,” advised Valentina who could monitor everybody’s vital signs on a small tablet wrapped around her right arm.
“Sure thing, Doctor. No sweat.” He didn’t think it would be easy, though.
Hannah gave him a warm smile and a shoulder tap to calm him down.
“That’s how I like it,” replied Valentina before she too disappeared into the decompression chamber.
After a few seconds, Kyle and Hannah went in. With a hiss, the exterior chamber gate opened into a vast sea of black and gray. Kyle saw Brad, Bo, Thomas, Iris, Anderson, Alex, and Valentina standing on the surface, watching the two of them carefully walk down the ramp.
“Now that we have a quorum, everyone, follow me,” Brad said as he started toward the triangular formation that the drone had spotted. They landed in its proximity, but not directly over it for obvious reasons — not the least of which was to avoid disturbing the formation in any way that would prevent them from observing it in its original state. Brad and Bo led the single row of expeditioners while Thomas and Iris closed the back. It took them less than three minutes to walk to the edge of the formation.
On arrival, the scientists knelt to examine the outer edge, which was noticeable only by a two inches high “plateau” that extended for kilometers in three directions.
“I’d say it’s roughly the same size as the orbiting object, just like our preliminary calculations indicated,” Alex said. He removed some of the sand from the edge. It came off easily and in very little time they could see what was underneath.
“How do you like them apples?” Anderson said.
“Is that what I think it is, Alex?” Hannah asked.
“Looks like some sort of cement. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s mixed up with lunar dirt judging by its color and texture. Help me remove more,” Anderson requested.
They began to dig away and, after ten minutes, they had exposed an area half the size of a basketball court. All of it was made out of the same kind of concrete.
“Nothing resembling an entrance, unfortunately,” Alex said.
“Well, we can’t very well clear out several square kilometers of dirt. So, what now?” Kyle asked.
“This could be the ceiling of some underground chamber. I say we drill down on the concrete. With any luck, it won’t be too thick,” Brad suggested.
“What if it’s a landing platform instead? In that case, it won’t be hollow.” Kyle said.
Bo responded. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough. Hopefully, this breach will be more successful than the last one. I’ll go back to the module to grab the…” he was interrupted by Anderson, who was pointing at something to his right.
“What do you guys see on the side of that hill over there?”
Using the binocular lens feature in their helmets’ heads-up displays, they all turned in unison to look at the vertical face of a short slope that surrounded the valley on all sides.
“It looks like it could be an entrance, doesn’t it?” Kyle observed.
“Yes, I agree. I don’t recall it from the footage. The drone must have missed it, being almost perpendicular to its flight path. It’ll take us another five minutes to walk there. Brad, what do you say?” Anderson asked.
“Let’s get a move on it. It looks promising.” Brad began to walk toward the edge of the valley. The rest of the team assumed their assigned positions in a single file.
Moonwalking was effortless, but not simple. Their suits were state-of-the-art — light, tight-fitting, durable — and their backpacks incorporated up to three hours of oxygen. However, nobody wanted to fall and risk breaking their visors or ripping the fabric somehow. Plus, jumping in low gravity was fun, but also misleading. Their bodies still had the same mass as back on Earth, even though they felt much lighter. The impact of a bad landing could be just as significant regardless of the gravity differential.
After a few minutes, they arrived at a four-by-four-meter triangular gate made of what looked to be the same concrete they had encountered earlier. It didn’t show any signs or markings, and no controls of any kind were apparent.
Brad walked right up to it and ran his gloved hand over its surface trying to trigger any hidden mechanism that might open the door.
“Open sesame!” Kyle shouted loudly in nervous jest, startling everybody in the process.
“Keep it down, will you?” Iris complained.
“I can’t find any way whatsoever to open this. I see no mechanisms and it clearly doesn’t have motion sensors either. Any ideas, Hannah?” Brad asked, betraying some frustration at the heretofore impregnability of anything object-related.
“The only thing that jumps at me is that the door seems built to human proportions. But who knows, it might have been made to fit whole vehicles operated by tiny creatures instead. It’s the only relatively small artifact we have found on this mission so far…everything else is humongous.”
Short on patience by now, Brad called on his team. “Okay, Thomas, Iris, blow a hole on this sucker. The rest of you, step back about two hundred meters. Let them do their jobs without hurting anyone.”
As the team walked back, both soldiers extracted plastic explosives and wires from their backpacks and proceeded to place and arm the bomb. Using the putty, they sculpted a thin rectangle on the gate, tall enough to let a crouching person through, and connected the cables to the ignition mechanism. They walked back to join the rest of the group while carrying a small remote-controlled detonator.
“The explosive is in position, sir,” Thomas said.
“Go ahead, Iris” Brad replied.
“Fire in the hole!” She screamed. And with that, a huge cloud of dust and debris soundlessly blew out in all directions. Due to the low gravity, the fragments traveled far and wide and the dust cloud spread unimpeded. It took a while for it to dissipate before the team could see the damage. Indeed, this time they appeared to have breached the wall.
“Woo-hoo!” Iris yelled.
“Bo, Thomas, Iris, with me in defensive formation. The rest of you, stay put until we signal that everything is okay. Should anything go wrong, run back to the lunar module and prepare to return,” Brad ordered.
//
They walked slowly back to the gate, guns pointed ahead, and formed a semicircle in front of the gaping hole.
Thomas took the lead going inside without hesitation. The rest of the armed team closed ranks at the opening. “Wow! That was weird. As I stepped in, it felt like I went through some kind of membrane. And the lights came on automatically, but I see no lamps anywhere. Also, I feel much heavier, like gravity is stronger on this side. I’m standing at the beginning of a long, empty corridor. The walls, floor, and ceiling are naked and made of the same dark gray concrete as the door. No threats ahead that I can see.”
“Let’s go in,” Brad ordered.
As soon as they were all inside, Brad took the lead and walked down the softly lit corridor.
They had covered a distance of fifty meters when he decided to give the signal to the scientific team. “Might as well have you all come in now. Entry is easy, just be prepared to feel a light tug as you go through the hole — and gravity is stronger, by the way.”
“A tug?” Hannah asked.
“It’s some sort of an invisible membrane. It’s fine, it doesn’t hurt.”
“Don’t go anywhere, Brad. We are coming,” she replied enthusiastically.
In single file and in no time, the entire team was swallowed up by the corridor.
“Theseus, Plesetsk, are you seeing what we are seeing?” Hannah asked when she came inside.
“We haven’t missed a thing,” replied Raúl from orbit.
“We are as amazed as you all are,” Sonia quipped.
“The difference in the gravity pull is very perceptible. It’s truly mind-boggling. Feels like we are back on Earth.”
“Wait a minute,” Anderson said. “Something else is really weird. My readings indicate that the atmosphere is breathable. Nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide, and the usual trace amounts of other gases, all in the right proportions just like on Earth. The temperature is twenty-five degrees Celsius. Whoever built this place, their physiology is similar to that of human beings.”
“How can that be with the huge hole we blew at the entrance?” Iris wondered out loud.
“It might have something to do with that membrane over the entry hole. Could have been a containment field, formed immediately after the blast. Remarkable, really, but even stranger is the fact that the air and gravity in this space are fit for human habitation. I don’t know what to make of that. For now, can we remove our helmets?” Hannah asked.
“Let’s keep them on. There is no need to play dice until we know exactly what we are dealing with here. Plus, we’ll need the helmet cameras activated to record and transmit our progress back to Theseus,” Brad answered.
“True that…After you?” Hannah agreed.
The team moved down the corridor. The ceilings were four meters high and the width was similar.
Brad, again leading the pack, arrived at an intersection where the corridor bifurcated. He could see two clusters of symbols carved into the cement wall. “Kyle, there’s something here you should see,” he said.
Kyle joined him and looked at the symbols for a minute or two.
“Definitely alphabet characters. Of course, I don’t know what they mean yet. I would have to see additional characters in different contexts to even begin guessing their meaning. They do have a curious resemblance to Sumerian cuneiform letters. Not the same, by any means, but the similarity is interesting.”
“Let’s keep going. Iris, you are in charge of deploying the trackers,” Brad said.
“Shush…do you hear that?” Bo said, suddenly.
“No, what is it?” Anderson asked him.
“A faint noise like a jet turbine.”
“Yes, I can hear it,” Brad said. “The sound is pretty uniform and constant so let’s keep going for now. It might be some kind of air circulation system that just kicked in.”
Iris went to the wall and stuck a fluorescent, adhesive, signal-emitting beacon in the shape of an arrow so that they could find their way back whether the environmental lights remained active or not. She then joined them farther down into whatever facility they were in.
After a couple of minutes, Brad stopped cold. “Is it just me or did the hissing noise get louder?”
“I’d say it did,” replied Bo. “And I can hear a metallic rustling now.”
“I don’t believe this is ventilation noise. Where do you think it’s coming from?”
Bo paid attention for a few seconds, keeping very still. “I’d say it’s coming from our nine o’clock.”
“Take Iris with you and go find out what it is. We will continue on our way and remain in communication.”
“Careful, guys. I don’t like the fact that there’s something functioning up there,” Sonia said.
After the two soldiers left to investigate, the team continued their slow, steady progress. For around ten minutes, they took several more turns without encountering a single door or anything else other than corridors and carved symbols — each turn palpably increasing their cardiac rate.
“Boris, the hard drives are recording all of this, right?”
“Yes, Kyle. Don’t worry. I just checked again and everything is in order.”
“Same for us on Earth, Kyle,” Sonia reassured.
//
“Brad, Iris and I are getting close to the source of the noise,” Bo’s voice sounded uneasy through the open channel. “Quite loud where we are, but we haven’t seen it yet. Same corridors with the same types of symbols, that’s all.”
“We are still searching as well and will keep you posted if we find anything new.”
The larger team resumed progress while Thomas affixed tracers to the walls at each turn. A few minutes later, the corridor opened into an immense internal patio with a central dome and a number of triangular doors along the perimeter.
One of the doors was open.
The group ran to it and gathered around its frame, short of crossing it. The room inside was dark.
“Thomas, go take a look,” Brad ordered.
The Specialist went in.
“Oh God. You are not going to believe this, guys,” he said.
Kyle and Hannah looked at each other, their chests thumping in expectation.
“What is it?” Brad asked.
“I think you should all come in and take a look for yourselves. There’s no danger.”
Hannah ran in, unceremoniously pushing people out of her way. Kyle and the rest of the science team followed right behind. Brad finally did the same.
They all stood in silence for a good long while. Their eyes wide open, their brains struggling to process what they had in front of them. They were at the entrance of a large, empty room. In its center, there was a three-sided stout pillar with a triangular base and, to its right, on the side wall, an enormous full width, floor-to-ceiling window into the largest hangar anyone had ever seen. It contained two objects parked side-by-side — exact replicas of the immense triangle orbiting the Moon. The vessels or drones were parked far enough from the window to be clearly identifiable, even though they still couldn’t be seen in their entirety due to their massive dimensions. The hangar appeared to have nothing else stored in it: no other vehicles, tools or signs of any crew.
“Are you seeing this, guys?” Hannah asked.
“Yup,” said Boris.
“You bet,” Sonia joined.
They were all speechless. Their heads going through myriad scenarios, each one more improbable than the other — until Valentina asked the million-dollar question.
“Who built this base?”
There was no reply because, right then, the team heard the sound of rapid weapon fire in the distance along with Bo’s and Iris’ screams.
And then nothing.
//
“We don’t have much time left for exploration, Doctors,” Brad screamed. “So, do whatever you need to do quickly. Thomas, go find Bo and Iris and bring them back. Take Valentina with you in case anyone needs treatment — and remain in radio contact.”
After the two left, Brad went to the door and crouched in a defensive posture to guard the perimeter.
“I think we should start by figuring out what is that short pillar in the middle of the chamber. It seems significant,” Kyle suggested to Hannah.
“Agreed,” she replied, already walking toward the center of the room.
The pillar was devoid of any markings or controls. It looked like a vertically-extruded triangle whose height reached up to their torsos.
Kyle instinctively placed his gloved hand on the pillar’s top triangular surface and, at that moment, the entire room came to life. The lighting dimmed, the walls lit up with what looked like digital holographic displays in bright orange colors, the pillar showed digital symbols on its top surface, and the space around them was suddenly occupied by what Hannah could clearly recognize as a three-dimensional representation of the Milky Way galaxy, crisscrossed by vectors and orbit paths, all drawn in different shades of orange light.
Kyle recalled Sonia’s request to keep the most important findings to himself. He remembered the intelligence training sessions. And discounted it all immediately without hesitation. Such thinking felt extremely narrow and petty just then, surrounded as he was by this almost transcendental beauty. He didn’t care what Sonia might think or even do to him when they got back. He was making history, immersed in an event that would forever change the human experience.
“This is amazing,” Hannah said, immediately realizing what an inadequate descriptor that was. “I mean, what a beautiful way for a room to come to life — from a dark, empty concrete space to this.”
“What do we do now? Should we touch one of these symbols and see what happens?” Alex asked.
“What if we trigger something bad?” Anderson interjected.
Kyle took the initiative. “This looks like a control room for launching ships across the galaxy and the hologram is probably where their trajectories are plotted. Beyond that, I have no clue what we are dealing with here. Hannah, can you go to the perimeter walls and record as many of those displays as you can? Anderson, Alex, record every angle of this three-dimensional galactic projection. I’m going to try and figure out the interface on the pillar.”
“You got it,” Anderson replied.
Kyle looked for patterns within a veritable ocean of symbols. Each character was formed by different configurations of vertical and horizontal strokes, much like ancient Sumerian letters, but because the text was substantially different from that, and because Kyle couldn’t place the writing in any specific context or match it against any set of familiar symbols, he was befuddled. There was no Rosetta Stone to use as a reference.
He touched a few characters. Each time, new ones appeared on the pillar’s surface along with new elements floating on the immersive holograph. Nothing else changed in their physical surroundings.
Thomas’ ragged, rushed voice suddenly boomed through the intercom. “Brad, we can’t find Bo and Iris, but Valentina’s health monitor shows them with a heart rate equivalent to someone who’s sleeping.”
“Sleeping? Are they knocked out? What the hell is going on?” Brad asked, expecting bad news.
“They could be unconscious,” Valentina answered.
“Also, Brad, we caught a glimpse of the noise’s source. It was hard to make out because it passed us quickly and at a distance, but it didn’t look friendly and it’s coming our way.”
“Hurry up and return to where we originally separated from Bo and Iris. We’ll meet you there.”
Brad turned to the scientific team next.
“Okay, people, time’s up! Wrap it up and follow me, single file.”
Kyle understood the urgency behind the order and complied along with the rest, leaving the complex interface behind. Nevertheless, he was frustrated by having to leave so soon without any solid knowledge of what or who might be behind everything they just witnessed in that room.
The group ran back through several corridors, following their handy tracers. It took them only a few minutes, but when they arrived at the agreed spot, Thomas and Valentina weren’t there.
“Where are you?” Brad asked through the channel.
“A minute or two away, I think,” Thomas responded as he and Valentina ran as fast as they could. “This thing is closing on us so be prepared to fire.”
Brad took a knee and aimed his weapon in the direction where he expected them to come from, asking everyone to crouch behind him.
By that point, the hissing, metallic rustling noise grew so loud that it was almost impossible for them to hear each other. The anticipation, the horrible sound, and their utterly alien surroundings chilled them to the bone, and Kyle pulled a lovingly worn picture of Samantha out of his pocket. He always carried it with him.
Soon enough, Brad saw their two comrades turn the corner in front of him, running as fast as they could. Without catching his breath, Thomas immediately joined him in a defensive position. Valentina was very visibly shaken.
“What are we dealing with, Thomas?” Brad asked.
“It looked to me like a dust devil. Kind of like a small tornado, so I don’t know how effective our weapons will be against that.”
They waited some more.
The noise was deafening. A hair-raising screech, like a hurricane. The soldiers tensed up, ready to fire and, as soon as they saw what was coming their way, they let loose a harrowing barrage of bullets.
Through his shock, Kyle noticed that the thing wasn’t so much a windy tornado as a swarm of pea-sized metallic pieces. Hard to tell, because its shape shifted constantly like a huge school of fish and, most unfortunately, it was wholly unaffected by the bullets.
//
Inside the Theseus, Chen, Raúl, and Boris were witnessing everything in real time, as was the staff on Earth. They were surprised by the attack on their teammates and felt impotent at their own inability to help.
“Retreat! Run back to the lunar module!” Raúl shouted through the open channel.
In that strange lunar base, Brad and Thomas were fully engaged in trying to halt the swarm’s advance, so they didn’t respond to Raúl. Bullets were not doing it however and, after a few seconds, they switched to grenades.
That seemed to at least slow down the swarm’s progress. Every time a grenade detonated, the tiny robot-like particles dispersed. Some of them even dropped onto the floor, lying inert. The thing needed several seconds to re-configure itself into a more cohesive shape after each blast and, oddly, it somehow seemed able to replenish its ranks with new bots as the fallen ones vanished. At least, that’s what Kyle thought was happening.
On board the Theseus, Boris momentarily moved his eyes away from the screen in desperation. He turned his head toward a porthole and saw something remarkable in the distance. “Chen, come take a look.”
“Can that wait? They are under attack down there!” Chen replied, frustrated.
“I still think you should come, sir.”
Chen peeled off and joined Boris with some reluctance. He looked outside at the object.
“An entrance opened up on its side. Do you see it?” Boris asked.
“Yes!” Chen replied.
At that, Raúl came over as well. “Maybe Kyle inadvertently opened it when he was touching the controls down in that base,” he guessed.
Chen closed the communication channel with the ground team and stood still, thinking. “Or maybe that aperture is designed to discharge some kind of weapon. There can be no doubt now that this is a ship — and it’s also a threat. Our teammates are under attack and we may have lost two of them already. I think we should blow it right to hell.”
“Respecting rank, sir, what does Leadership have to say?” Raúl asked Sonia, indirectly.
“We are trying to process all of this as well, team,” Sonia replied, sounding completely overwhelmed by recent events.
“This should be about helping Earth, Sonia. Do you know what the object will do next? What if it’s preparing to move closer to our planet? What if they release more of those swarms on our populations?” Chen said.
“You are not in command of the security aspects of this mission,” Raúl spat, suddenly sounding very official. “Colonel Turner is. The United States is, not China.”
“Turner is not here and he may never return. I’m the senior officer on deck and international law establishes that I must command the ship.”
//
“Switch to the flamethrower!” Brad barked over the deafening noise of swarm activity and exploding grenades. They were barely able to contain the onslaught as they ran back.
Suddenly, Bo’s voice came in loud and clear: “Iris and I here. We are coming!”
“Where have you guys been?” Brad asked.
“We spotted the thing in a staircase. It came right at us knocking us off balance. We fell down a long flight of stairs. Got knocked out. It looks like it went straight to find you right after.”
“Hurry up, Bo. We can’t hold it much longer!” Brad shouted as he kept hurling Greek fire at the swarm, which was slowly gaining on them regardless.
“All non-military personnel, run as fast as you can and get back to the module. We will hold this position until Bo and Iris arrive. If I order you to, or if you see this thing coming out to the surface, fly back to the Theseus,” Brad ordered.
“Thank you, Brad,” responded Kyle as he joined Hannah, Valentina, Alex, and Anderson already running to the exit, leaving the soldiers to hold their ground.
//
“Laura, with all due respect, I think you are not seeing the big picture here. Remember, we are under attack as we speak! We have detected suspicious activity on the orbiting object and two more such objects were found inside the surface base. A timely and decisive response is critical at this time,” Chen said.
“We are not going to blow it up, period. I’m not certain that the swarm is behaving aggressively. What if it just wants to get near the team to communicate?” Laura answered.
“Communicate? Are you serious? Didn’t you see how that thing moves and what it sounds like? It’s horrifying. And it’s already knocked out two members of the Special Forces. This is clearly one of the aliens who took notice when we blew up the door. It’s behaving not unlike someone defending their property, right?”
“We haven’t encountered any other sentient beings besides the swarm, have we?”
“Not so far.”
“And yet, you think it plausible for just one lone alien to hang out in a remote base for who knows how long? It seems to be more of a machine than a biological entity. It could be a robotic guardian that got activated once our team went inside and it’s just following pre-determined instructions to defend the base — an amoral actor who in no way may reflect the intentions of an entire civilization. Don’t forget that we forcefully breached their base…”
“You could be right, Laura, but Chen has a point,” Sonia interrupted. “The consequences of a failure to act are too staggering to contemplate. We have evidence that we are dealing with an immensely superior intelligence with technology capable of interstellar travel. Surely, we don’t stand a chance against such an aggressor.”
“If they are indeed aggressors!” Laura shouted back. “All I’m asking is for a bit more time to observe so that we can decide the best course of action — hopefully, one that doesn’t rely on destructive measures that may prevent us from making peaceful contact and studying the only extraterrestrial species we’ve encountered to date.”
“Maybe one day you’ll get to examine the lunar base and the two additional ships that it harbors, Laura. Right now, we must neutralize the one that’s operative and in orbit,” Chen said.
“Leadership, time is of the essence and the information at hand, while incomplete, is clear. What’s your decision?” Sonia asked the three video-conferencing windows on her screen.
//
Bo and Iris finally arrived, panting, right behind the swarm which was stuck in the middle of a corridor under heavy fire from Brad and Thomas. They immediately started attacking the creature with their own flamethrowers.
The simultaneous attack of four powerful weapons from two separate directions worked to further arrest the swarm’s movements. By now, it looked like a fearsome swirl of incandescent particles that morphed with increasing ferocity. The Greek fire wasn’t crippling it, only just holding it in place and confusing it. At times, the creature lurked forward toward Brad and Thomas. Other times, it reached back to get near Bo and Iris — torn between two simultaneous targets.
“Bo, we have to get you two on this side before we run out of ammo or you’ll never make it back to the lunar module. Your call: either rush past this thing through one of its sides, or back out altogether and try a different corridor to find an exit,” Brad said.
“Who knows if there’s another way out.” Bo then addressed Iris. “I’ll advanced toward it, firing my weapon. Once it focuses on me, you start running across. If I’m lucky, I may hold its attention long enough for you all to reach the exit.”
“Bo, that is a suicide move. I’m staying with you. We can kill this thing,” Iris objected, with a shaky but determined voice.
“McCoy, shut up and run as fast as you can when I give you the signal.”
“He’s right, Iris. The mission stands a better chance this way,” Brad agreed.
And with that, Bo lounged forward screaming and throwing everything he had at the creature all at once.
The thought of squeezing by a fierce, fiery whirlwind was too much to contemplate for Iris.
“Now!” Bo ordered, angry at her reluctance.
She lurched forward as the creature fully focused on Bo’s advance.
Brad met her half-way and grabbed her by the arm, rushing away from the scene of the carnage while Bo continued to hopelessly fire at the swarm without pause.
It kept advancing implacably even through the hellish firestorm until, a few seconds later, it surrounded the young lieutenant, ripping him to shreds and splattering the walls with his boiling blood and innards.
//
Kyle hoped they’d soon reach the exit. His legs kept moving despite shock and fatigue. They had heard the entire conversation with Bo on the open channel — the horrible rustling and loud grenade explosions gradually fading behind them as they ran away.
Kyle felt immense gratitude to Bo, who died so that the rest of them could live. His admiration extended to all the soldiers. They were risking their lives to protect the mission. But he also felt an overwhelming sadness as a kind of bitter undercurrent beneath his gratitude and adrenaline rush. A sadness rooted in the fact that the first human contact with an alien civilization turned violent — a historical misfortune that could never be undone. A great opportunity had been lost.
For now, the most pressing matter was to make it back to the lunar module and hope that Brad, Thomas, and Iris would also return safely. Up ahead, no farther than one hundred meters, they finally saw the hole like a dark, ominous gash which, nevertheless, promised salvation.
Hannah, Valentina, Anderson, Alex, and Kyle went through it one by one all the while looking behind their backs. Gravity became suddenly lighter and all external sound ceased. Kyle came out of the hole too fast and launched himself into a high, uncontrolled jump, landing on his side.
“Are you okay?” Hannah asked.
“I’m fine, let’s go!” Kyle answered, getting up and starting to run.
“Hurry!” Alex shouted as they all continued as fast as they could toward the module.
“What about the decompression chamber? It fits two people, and we are five,” Anderson reminded them, getting the words out as he half ran and half jumped away from the threat.
“We are all going in at once. It’s too risky to wait in pairs. We’ll just have to squeeze ourselves in there somehow,” Kyle said, determined.
“Look!” Hannah cried, turning around. “That thing is still chasing them outside!”
The rest of the team were way behind them and so was the swarm. It had managed to get onto the lunar surface without a hitch, never mind the harrowing environmental conditions. It was clearly built to last.
They heard Brad give orders as he continued firing on the swarm. “We can’t outrun it. Iris, catch up with the rest of the team to give them cover. Thomas and I will slow the thing down to make sure everyone makes it inside the lunar lander.”
Iris complied, ceasing fire and picking up pace to join Kyle and the rest as the remaining two soldiers turned around to more fully engage their enemy.
Everyone was already walking up the module’s ramp and into the decompression chamber. For several grueling seconds, the five of them tried in vain to fit inside a space designed for two people. In the end, Anderson climbed on top of the heads of the other three, but there was no room for Valentina.
“Don’t worry guys, I have Iris here. Just don’t waste time and go in,” she offered.
The door closed with a blessed hiss as they all looked at Valentina’s panicked eyes. After an anxious minute — the longest in their lives — the chamber opened to the inner module space and the group rushed in.
Kyle quickly closed the door behind them to allow everyone else to come on board. Through the portholes, they could see Valentina waiting impatiently for the outer gate to open and Iris running close behind. Brad and Thomas continued their ferocious fight against the swarm in the distance. The two of them had disconnected their radios so their teammates couldn’t hear their screams. It was their last stand, and they knew it.
Brad’s gun stopped firing — surely out of ammo — while Thomas kept on shooting what last few rounds still remained in his rifle’s chamber. Then the swarm enveloped Brad and — there were no other words for it — blended his entire body in a matter of seconds. It then moved onto Thomas even before his gun had stopped firing.
All it left behind were two red, floating stains — a ghastly mist.
The swarm moved toward their lunar module wholly unimpeded and at a vertiginous speed. Fewer than a hundred meters separated it from their remaining colleagues. Valentina whimpered desperately and Iris turned around to face the swarm, launching grenades as fast as she could, with a rage fueled by the destruction of her comrades. She managed to slow down the monster long enough for the module gate to open.
At last, Valentina jumped into the chamber and Iris climbed the ramp walking backward and firing at the swarm until she ran out of grenades.
She threw the weapon at the swarm which quickly shredded it and jumped forward to grab her. Iris turned and entered the chamber, slipping and falling to the ground so her left leg was still outside on the ramp.
“Close the door!” She screamed at Valentina. The Doctor pushed the button and the gate began to go up. Iris dragged herself forward, but the swarm caught up with her. She felt a searing pain in her leg and instinctively flexed it as the gate closed. Valentina pulled her inside as blood droplets sprayed everywhere.
They were safe.
The chamber’s air started equalizing, but not before Iris could feel the bitter cold and lack of oxygen rapidly sip into her ripped suit, numbing her body and suffocating her.
The interior door finally opened and both of them were quickly grabbed by their colleagues and strapped to their seats. “Let’s get out of here!” Alex said, who had been sitting at the controls getting everything ready.
A few seconds later, the entire module started to shake and make troubling noises. Kyle unfastened his seatbelt and went to check what was happening, looking through a bottom porthole.
The swarm had latched onto one of the engine nozzles and was beginning to tear it off.
“Alex, go!” He screamed.
“Almost there, get back to your seat!” Alex ordered.
Kyle strapped himself in time for the engines to roar as the module went up like a cannonball, away from the surface of the Moon and all of the mysteries and horrors that it contained.
Or at least, they hoped.
“Could it be still hanging on outside?” Valentina asked from her seat, applying pressure to the bleeding leg of a shocked Iris who sat right next to her.
“Alex, have we reached terminal velocity yet?” Kyle asked.
“Yes, why?”
“I’m going to check outside.” Kyle unstrapped himself again, floating back to the same floor porthole and then to each of the other windows in sequence. “It’s not there anymore. The heat and force of the exhausts must have pushed it away.”
“Let’s hope you are right. We’ll just have to wait and see,” Alex responded.
“Theseus, be advised, we will reach your position in ten minutes,” Alex announced.
“We are no longer at our prior location. We’ll explain later. For now, modify the flight coordinates to a new position at least two hundred kilometers away from the object,” Boris requested from the Theseus.
“What do you mean? Why?” Kyle interjected.
Chen’s voice came in. “Do as we tell you. We have a Leadership order to carry out and don’t have time to explain or debate. We will retrieve you soon.”
“Plesetsk, what’s this about?” Kyle asked directly of Sonia.
“We have detected new activity on the surface of the object — an opening of some kind. We’ll be executing an offensive maneuver against it. Remain in communication as you perform the requested orbital change,” Sonia confirmed.
“Grand! None of you geniuses consider it bonkers to attack someone who just might have opened the door to us as an invitation?” Kyle said.
“Modifying trajectory.” Alex interjected before things got further out of hand. “We’ll arrive at our new position in approximately twenty minutes.”
Kyle turned off the long-range channel. “What the hell is going on with Chen and Leadership? Is it just me or does this whole thing smell rotten? Are they going to try and blow up the object?” He asked.
“I’m just glad we are still alive and in one piece.”
“More or less” added Iris, somberly.
“How’s your leg, buddy?” Kyle asked.
“She’s going to need surgery back on Earth,” Valentina interjected as she was applying clean bandages to the huge gash and multiple lacerations on Iris’ leg.
“Will I lose my leg?” She asked.
“No, but you have lost a significant amount of tissue that needs to be reconstructed. You are looking at a few months of cures, physical therapy, and rehabilitation.”
“At least I’m alive, right? Not like Brad, Thomas, and Bo.”
“We are all alive thanks to them and to you, Iris,” Valentina acknowledged while tenderly squeezing the soldier’s right hand with both of hers.
“I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to talk about what happened down there in a fitting way,” Kyle said, staring blankly at the wall in front of him. “I don’t think there are words to describe what you all did for us.”
And a heavy silence fell on the capsule.
//
“Alex, are you safely in position?” Chen’s voice came in through the re-opened channel.
“We are where you told us to be, but as you surely know, we’ve sustained heavy casualties and we might be carrying…” Alex’s plea was interrupted.
“Not now! Wait until we get back to you,” Chen shouted.
“Just what the hell is going on?” Hannah asked furiously, offended at the cavalier way Chen dismissed the mention of their casualties and everything else.
“Guys, Kyle was right. Come over to this side,” Anderson said.
They crowded around a couple of portholes that showed a perfect view of the alien object in the distance and a tiny Theseus even farther away. A small, luminous object had left the Theseus traveling fast in the direction of the object.
It was a missile.
“The nuclear warheads are supposed to be a last recourse. Only to be used to halt an existential threat. I’m not sure the Object qualifies as an Earth-killer,” Hannah said.
“It’s retaliation time. Politicians’ favorite tactic. It’s what they know best,” Valentina lamented.
“If you ask me, they had it coming after what they did to us,” Iris said, with renewed strength thanks to the painkillers.
“As shaken as we all are, we don’t know enough about what happened on that base to justify a nuclear attack on a visiting civilization, regardless of how bad it looked to Leadership,” Hannah replied.
The missile was closing fast on its target. Kyle felt relieved and vindicated after the attack they had suffered, but he was also upset because humankind was about to blow this incredibly rare and sophisticated object to smithereens before anyone had the chance to really find out its purpose.
The missile impacted on the object and an enormous detonation flashed in front of their eyes. A few seconds later, once the deflagration was spent, the object remained inert and completely undamaged.
“Fantastic. It’s their turn now. We’re royally screwed,” Kyle said in disbelief.
Their mission had taken such a sudden turn for the worse! They were on a runaway train about to derail.
“Look we are launching a second missile!” Anderson said.
“I guess Chen is a firm believer in quantity over quality. I doubt the outcome will be any better this time around,” Hannah offered as they all waited for the second impact.
The new detonation was no different. The object prevailed. A long, fearful pause ensued, yet no counterattack took place.
Chen’s voice echoed inside the lunar module. “Alex, prepare the module for rendezvous.”
“Chen, will you let me finish what I have to say this time around or do you have any more failed plans to carry out?” Kyle asked.
“Go ahead.”
“Our attacker might be attached to the outside of the lunar module. We haven’t felt or heard anything banging against the hull since we left the Moon and we can’t see it through any of the portholes. Our sensors are not picking up anything unusual, but we are dealing with a stubborn and tricky bastard — one we can’t afford to let inside the Theseus.”
“We’ll scan the module once we are in range and we’ll also take a three-hundred and sixty-degree look at it before coupling.”
“That’s easy enough, Chen. I’ll perform two full rotations along both axes and you can give us the news,” Alex suggested.
“Roger.”
After a few minutes, Chen re-opened the communication channel.
“We’re within range. Let’s get going then. No time to waste.”
Both vessels fired their engines to meet at pre-determined coordinates far enough from the object to hopefully avoid retaliation and near enough for the lunar module’s fuel not to run out. Fifteen minutes later, the Theseus and the lunar module floated face-to-face in synch. The crew was about to discover whether they had been unable to shake off that nasty swarm after all.
“Good news so far. Our long-range scanner didn’t pick up anything weird on the lunar module. No change in its volume, mass, composition, or baseline temperature, but let’s do a visual regardless, as we planned.”
Alex activated the thrusters to perform two slow rotations while, on board the Theseus, Chen, Raúl, and Boris looked through different portholes for anything that might be hanging onto the module.
“Nothing unusual. Alex, could it have made it inside the engines or any other portion of the vehicle?” Chen asked.
“It’s doubtful. There is no wiggle room ins the engine’s casing and the swarm is pretty large, like seven or ten feet at any given time. The entire module is engineered to take up as little space as possible. We don’t know much about the thing, though. I guess it’s conceivable that it might have found a way to fit inside because it can so easily shift shapes.”
“You are clear to proceed, Alex. We’ll take the risk. Welcome home,” Chen said.
//
Sonia looked down at her food tray. Judging by its messy presentation, she was certain that the Mongolian beef, shrimp dumplings, and lychees combination she aptly chose from the all-you-can-eat buffet would be “delicious.” The thought barely registered, though. She had too much on her mind and so the food remained untouched.
“Everything fine, boss?” Laura asked. “You are not eating.”
“Yes, sorry, Laura. I’m not being very good lunch company today, am I? I can’t focus on anything. I keep imagining the horror we’ve been through and what the troops must have felt up there. Imagine fighting that monster and knowing that you will be literally shredded so that your colleagues can live. And then there’s the fact that two of the most powerful weapons ever devised didn’t even ding the object. We are helpless, Laura.”
“No question. This mission is not going our way, but maybe it was for the best that the missiles failed. We let our decisions be dictated by foolish politicians and their typical cowardly attitudes, and now we are facing the consequences.”
“Goodness, Laura, tell me how you really feel! You are not helping, you know?”
“My point is that I’m hopeful nonetheless.”
“Why?”
“The aliens haven’t retaliated yet, have they?”
“They could be planning their next steps.”
“I doubt they’d need this long to take us out if that was their goal. I’m convinced that the swarm was an automated security system. It was unleashed by default.”
Laura’s longstanding theory now seemed plausible to Sonia, but she remained worried. “Okay, even if you are right. At least, you have to concede that the aliens must have known that the attack was taking place and yet did nothing to stop it.”
“I have to think about this,” Laura said. “If you are finished with your food, let’s take a walk. I need to stretch my legs.”
They got up, returned their trays, and went out of the cafeteria into the adjacent hall.
“My God, how I wish we had windows in this place,” Laura lamented before continuing with her arguments. “I agree that it’s possible that the aliens knew about the attack and let it go on regardless. But what if they didn’t know about it in the first place? Assume that their home world is light years away, which is very likely. Whatever signal the objects or the base itself sent to their planet surely hasn’t arrived yet. Or maybe no signal was ever sent to begin with. We just don’t know.”
“In retrospect, I wish we never fired those missiles. It’s a decision we’ll have to live with. Just like we’ll have to live with the deaths of the greater part of our military contingent. I just hope that these people leave us alone long enough for us to do the regretting.”
“We have to make more considered decisions from now on, Sonia.”
“I hope.”
“Hey, nobody ever said this was going to be easy. Just listen to my advice every now and then. At this point, it can’t hurt, right?”
//
“Not in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine I’d become a soldier, Kyle” Hannah lamented.
They were in the locker ‘room’ gearing up for yet another away mission. Leadership had ordered them to board the object through its open gate and study the interior. This time, every crew member was to carry a weapon and the only people left in the Theseus were going to be Boris and, of course, the injured Iris. Everyone else had been enlisted to bolster the ranks of the expeditionary group in case more of those swarms were waiting.
“We did train for it, though.”
“You can’t seriously tell me that you thought it was ever going to come to this! To hold your own weapon and maybe even fire it against some indestructible monster!”
“No, I can’t. I’m an academic. I have no aggressive bones in my body…but none of this was ever in my to-do list, Hannah. Not just the guns thing. After all that we’ve experienced, I’ve resigned myself to being railroaded by events. We are not in control anymore.”
“Well, don’t give up. I don’t think that swarm belonged to the culture that built the base. It looked like a dumb predator to me. I think there might be a reasonable crew on their ship and maybe we can communicate with them. Even if we don’t find anybody, I’m sure we’ll learn a lot — hopefully enough to finally begin to unravel this mystery. I’m excited,” Hannah said while she locked her helmet in place.
“You’re admirable, Hannah. Yeah, I guess the attack at the base might have been caused by our forced breach. This time, we’ll be walking through an open door. It won’t be a home invasion…more like a visit. And if they didn’t retaliate after we tried to nuke them…”
“Exactly!”
“I hope we get enough time inside to record everything. I can’t wait to return to Earth and get to work on the evidence. And if we establish communication with someone, well, that would be…” Kyle said, latching on his helmet with a click.
“Grab your weapons and load up on ammo.” Chen’s voice didn’t betray any nerves. “Apologies for asking you to leave so much of your scientific equipment behind, but I can’t have you carrying unessential weight in your backpacks. We might need to run again.”
“I can at least bring one emergency kit with me, can’t I?” Valentina pleaded to Raúl, who she considered the “good cop.”
“You decide what’s essential for you. But remember that each one of us already carries enough oxygen for a three-hour sortie plus your field weapon, ten grenades, one thousand rounds, the thermite mix, and the standard-issue toolkit. We want you to be able to run and to shoot easily. Everything else is secondary this time around,” Raúl answered as he looked at each of them to make sure everyone understood.
The team’s last task was to put on their PPSs and haul themselves into space, straight for the object’s open gate.
Kyle was the last one to cross the gate’s threshold. It opened into a barren room as large as an airliner’s hangar. It was flooded with a soft, warm light like everything else of alien origin they’ve seen so far.
His teammates were lying on the floor or in the process of getting up. They had all fallen because of the sudden pull of artificial gravity inside the alien ship.
As Kyle floated into the room, he felt the familiar tug of the containment field. He tried to avoid landing awkwardly, like the rest of them had but, in the end, he too lost his balance. Human beings are just not wired to adapt to sudden changes in the universal force of gravity.
“You okay, Kyle?” Valentina asked.
“Yes, I’m fine. I’ll never get used to this.”
“Alright, team! You know the drill. Get in single file formation, defensive posture,” Chen ordered.
“As I suspected, the temperature is a balmy twenty degrees Celsius and the atmosphere is breathable as well,” Anderson confirmed.
“And no hissing noises this time, thankfully,” Alex added.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions yet. Be vigilant and follow me,” Chen replied.
They walked slowly and cautiously towards the center of the huge hangar and then beyond it, to a wall presenting a series of open doors. There were markings on the wall next to each one just as they saw down at the Moon base where the symbols had been etched into concrete. These were digital, iridescent, in a slightly different shade of yellow than the wall itself.
“Which door do we take, Chen?” Raúl asked.
“Hannah? Kyle? Any preference?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Captain,” Kyle responded.
“I got nothing,” said Hannah.
“Is that why they pay you guys the big bucks?” Chen joked.
“Who said anything about big bucks?” Hannah replied, teasingly.
Chen made the decision. “Let’s stick to the one in the middle.”
He moved closer to the door and stopped briefly, looking into a ten-meter corridor that ended in a T intersection. He entered and the group followed, walking slowly, guns still aimed forward. At the intersection, they turned right.
They were in a new corridor with an open door and several closed ones, all marked. Entering the only open room, they were surprised.
It resembled any bedroom on our planet, except that the furniture pieces were formed by simple, uncluttered horizontal and vertical planes hovering above the ground: a human-sized bed, a seat, and a desk. They were all made out of the same smooth iridescent material they saw everywhere. It was as if its previous occupant had vacated the place leaving just the furniture behind. No equipment, bedding, or personal items remained.
The most striking thing about the room was the lack of a wall opposite the entrance. It was a window completely open to space and showing a full view of the flickering stars.
“A crew member’s cabin maybe?” Hannah asked.
“Beautiful room,” said Kyle. “The drone didn’t pick up any windows on the ship’s surface. Maybe this a display screen.”
“Or maybe you clumsily opened the windows along with the gate with your mad pressing of buttons all over the Moon base,” Anderson joked.
“‘Mad’? No way, it was all methodical. Just because you didn’t know what I was doing doesn’t mean I didn’t,” Kyle grinned.
“No, we would have seen more of these openings from the Theseus. Like Kyle said, this is probably a screen that projects whatever is outside it,” Hannah said.
“Well, however they’ve managed to do this, it’s spectacular,” Valentina concluded.
Coming out of the room, Chen tried to open the next door. He passed his gloved hand around the frame, pushing in here and there. He attempted to lift the door — all without luck.
“It’s strange that nobody has shown up to meet us yet. This ship has clearly been occupied by a crew, though, but I think it might be empty at the moment. If it was a probe, why have rooms and signs all over it?” Alex wondered out loud.
“Did the crew leave after they arrived here; in which case how exactly did they do that without us noticing? Or is this an empty ship that was either controlled remotely or on autopilot? Either way, someone is behind the fact that it got here. And, by the way, we just started exploring it. We shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that it’s empty yet,” Kyle said.
“By now, I’m positive that their anatomy is of similar proportions to ours. Even though their vehicles and the lunar base are enormous, everything within them appears designed to human scale,” Hannah said.
“Judging by their alphabet, I think their written communication is similar to ours as well. It’s closer to the limited character set of our contemporary writing systems than to hieroglyphic or pictographic sets,” added Kyle.
“You are letting down your guard, people! Keep your focus!” Chen admonished the team.
“Yes, sir,” Raúl responded turning around and giving the scientists a hard look.
They walked down many more corridors, methodically sticking their tracers on the walls at each turn. As exciting as the entire mission had been, they couldn’t help but feel deflated because of how empty everything was. They had less than two-and-a-half hours of oxygen left and the hope of finding the aliens was slipping away.
Chen raised his right fist to stop the advance. “Can you guys hear that?”
“No, what is it?” Hannah asked.
“Listen harder. Can you hear a faint hum?”
“Oh no, here we go again!” Anderson feared.
“Yes, I hear it. I don’t think it’s a swarm, though. The sound is quieter and less ominous,” Kyle said.
“Or maybe it’s far enough to seem that way,” Hannah offered.
“We’ll keep going. I don’t want to separate the group this time. We’ll stand a better chance if we stick together,” Chen ordered.
They approached another turn. Raúl was about to place a tracer on the wall when he was almost knocked over by something that came flying around the corner.
He stumbled, but quickly regained his footing and pointed his gun at the thing while the rest of the team targeted the intruder with their own weapons.
It was a small flying machine that looked like some kind of butterfly or hummingbird, with wings that flapped at very high speeds. Of course, it was made of the same material as the rest of the ship.
It stopped in mid-air for a couple of seconds, looking at them without distress or aggression, even though everyone had their guns trained on it. After a short pause, it floated past them.
Astonished, they all turned to look at the curious thing before it disappeared into another passage.
“Did you see that, Plesetsk?” Kyle asked.
“It gave us quite the fright,” Sonia answered.
“What the hell was that?” Raúl asked, befuddled.
“Do they use robots as their crew?” Alex guessed.
“I don’t think so. Again, everything is designed for beings of roughly human size and proportions,” Hannah patiently replied.
“But if that’s the case, where are all those people, huh?” Raúl asked. “We keep seeing robots, not aliens.”
“I wish I knew,” is all Hannah could really say to that.
Boris’ voice from the Theseus interrupted their speculation. “Team, Iris is feeling worse. She’s delirious and unresponsive. Her temperature is forty degrees Celsius and the leg wound looks very raw and angry. You might need to speed things up over there. We have to get her back to Earth soon.”
“Listen to me, Boris,” Valentina competently ordered. “Double her dose of intravenous antibiotic including thirty milligrams of Oxycodone, and place ice on her forehead and wrists until the temperature drops. We’ll be there as soon as we possibly can.”
“You got it.”
“Okay, people, you heard Boris. We have to do this faster,” Chen said taking again the lead at a trot.
//
They moved along for half an hour without incident when they came upon a large circular atrium. It had a dome very similar to the one they saw at the lunar base although, obviously, it wasn’t made of concrete. There were also several triangular doors all around the perimeter and, as usual, one of them was open.
“You can’t blame these people for being inconsistent,” Sonia said. “I bet that’s a control room.”
Raúl stepped inside and briefly looked around. “Yes. Same control table in the center, same glass window into a hangar. There are three smaller triangles parked there and the room itself is smaller than the one on the base — about twenty square meters, I’d say.”
“Okay, let’s go in,” Chen ordered.
“Wait a second…Captain! there’s a corpse crouched in the far corner!”
It took a moment for them to process the words.
“I’m coming, Raúl. The rest of you, stay here,” Chen ordered.
Hannah started pacing around, excitedly. “I knew we’d find a crew, but I would have never guessed they’d be dead!”
“And just one member in over an hour of searching? There must be others, but I imagine they are dead too or they would have celebrated a funeral for their teammate. Instead, he’s just lying there dead?” Valentina wondered.
“Chen, we can’t wait any longer. Can we come in?” Hannah asked.
“Go ahead. It’s safe.”
Everyone hurried inside the room and moved to where the corpse was located. Hannah and Valentina knelt next to it while the others stood around in awe. Raúl went back to guard the entrance.
“Theseus, Plesetsk, are you getting this?” Valentina asked as she got very close to the cadaver for her camera to record every detail.
“Perfectly,” responded Boris.
“It belongs to a human in an advanced state of decomposition and with no evident source of trauma. I’ll take tissue samples for DNA testing. Judging from the skeletal structure and its overall size, I’m fairly certain that we are looking at a grown male who died years ago. It’s hard to be precise with dating given the circumstances. We’ll know once we get back to Earth and conduct further analysis,” she said.
“He’s naked,” Kyle observed.
“Indeed,” Valentina replied, noting the truism.
“Anyone else besides me think that’s odd?” Kyle asked, looking at the group.
“I certainly do,” Hannah agreed. “All known human cultures throughout history wore some sort of clothing adapted to their natural environments and customs.”
“The biggest question is not what he’s not wearing, but how did he get here to begin with. I don’t think he’s part of the crew,” Anderson observed.
“What do you mean? What else could he be?” Chen asked, very confused.
“If this guy comes from another planet, the very theory of evolution is in question because, well, how could a human being evolve in an environment other than Earth? And if he and the rest of the crew are from Earth, what’s the explanation for that? No country or corporation knows how to build ships and lunar outposts like these.”
“I follow you, Anderson, but where do you think he came from then?” Hannah asked, impatient.
“I think he’s a contemporary human being just like us. I can’t believe I’m actually about to say this. He’s probably an abductee.”
“You can’t be serious!” Alex objected.
“Look around you, doofus! Where the hell do you think we are? How are your precious scientific beliefs holding up so far, eh?” Anderson spat back.
“We are forced to consider that what Anderson is saying might be possible. But, as Hannah is fond of reminding us every five minutes or so, the ship is built to human scale and I don’t know about you, but the humans in my circle surely don’t know how to build something like this. We should examine the control console to try and find out who these people are beyond the shadow of doubt,” Kyle suggested as he walked back to the pillar in the center of the room.
With a brief hesitation he placed the palm of his right hand directly onto the surface and, just like it happened at the base, the entire room came to life. This time, however, the walls, floor, and ceiling suddenly “dissolved”. The effect caused them to stumble in place, startled. They found themselves standing in the middle of space. They could see the Moon looming huge right below them, Earth farther away, and the immense mantle of stars as a backdrop. They could also see the Theseus to the side.
A three-dimensional holographic overlay of orange vectors and symbols appeared superimposed on their surroundings, charting the heavens.
“Man, this is quite the show,” Alex said, looking all about him.
“I think the control pillars are activated simply by the shape of a human hand. I doubt there are any biometrics involved because I’m wearing gloves and, even if I weren’t, my DNA and fingerprints wouldn’t coincide with any member of the crew.”
“Just be more careful than last time. We got lucky that you only managed to open a door. I don’t want us to embark on any unscheduled galactic trips,” Chen admonished.
“Being careful won’t help us uncover what this is all about and that’s what we came here to do, right? And we don’t know for a fact that it was me who opened the door to the ship,” Kyle responded looking in Chen’s direction.
“Well, if it wasn’t you, who did it then? And to what end?”
“Better not to speculate…There is a three-dimensional cluster of small written labels floating near you, Chen. They look similar to a computer file structure back home.”
Kyle pointed both his hands at the files, trying different movements until he found a way to zoom into the cluster bringing it into focus.
“The whole room is a gestural interface similar to the ones we all use on our phones back on Earth. This bolsters Hannah’s theory that the designers of this ship were human — we share the same ergonomics and cognition. So, the dead man was one of them, not a contemporary abductee,” Kyle observed.
“What do you think is inside each of those labels, Kyle?” Hannah asked.
“I don’t have the faintest idea, but I’ll try to figure it out.”
“What about the three triangular ships in the hangar?” Alex asked no-one in particular. “They look like shuttles for short trips, kind of like our own lunar module.”
“I agree, but let’s not worry about them just yet. Let Kyle do his thing,” Hannah answered.
“There are two kinds of color labels, so they must represent two different classes of files. The text next to each follows a pattern and I’m guessing they are file names. With any luck, they may include dates or version numbers. I’m starting to differentiate the letters from the numbers. However, I need to see more files to be sure,” Kyle broadcast excitedly as he tried to scroll through the file system.
He gestured fruitlessly at the air in front of his face, swiping vertically. Then he tried swiping laterally, also without success. He stopped to think and realized that he may be able to scroll along the Z axis to take advantage of the three-dimensional interface. Instinctively, he attempted a “pulling’ motion with both hands, like a “come here” gesture. That did the trick. The interface focused past the first set of files to show a second cluster as if it had been placed right behind. He repeated the gesture with the same effect, each time taking note of the label color and the alphanumeric markings in each.
The rest of the team watched Kyle in a sort of trance, as Valentina continued examining the corpse in solemn silence.
“Try to open one of the files. You don’t have much time,” Sonia requested.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll do that now,” Kyle replied.
After a few attempts, the operation turned out to be the same as the reverse pinch people use for zooming out on their smartphones. Myriad characters began to float inside a sort of virtual cube that could be rotated to show each of its six sides.
“It’s a text file mapped onto a three-dimensional volume. They don’t always use triangles or pyramids, particularly if the usage context would be hampered by rigid adherence to a specific polygon.” Kyle observed as he managed to open the cube to show a second cube inside — more “pages,” so to speak.
“Like their rooms are not pyramidal. They favor triangles, but only use them when it makes sense,” Hannah agreed.
“I’m going to open a bunch more of these files to establish that red signifies ‘text.’ Anderson, Alex, once I got them open, scroll through and film the contents for later analysis.”
“You got it,” Alex replied.
After a few minutes, about a hundred text cubes were floating in space and they both started recording.
“If I’m right, the next batch of files will be much easier to understand.” Kyle opened one of the items marked in blue and a collective gasp filled the room.
A large cubical “frame” appeared showing a video clip in three dimensions. It took them a while to fully realize that they were watching the alien equivalent of home videos. Or, more precisely, a documentary feature. It had been shot using multiple three-hundred and sixty-degree cameras from different points of view — it was like drone footage, perhaps shot by robots like the butterfly thing they encountered earlier. It didn’t look like CCTV or security camera footage. It was aptly edited into a cohesive narrative.
The video showed what must have been part of the ship’s crew in a stand-up meeting, surrounding a man. Several robots could be seen going to and fro. There were four males and six females, some of darker complexion than others, all wearing long hair, colorful shirts of different patterns, and loose-fitting beige pants. The women had their faces painted in bold geometric designs.
The man in the center seemed to be the leader and was addressing the group in an unknown tongue that sounded similar to Middle Eastern languages.
“My God, this is incredible. We are finally seeing them! They truly are human,” Hannah said.
“I think we’ve accidentally stumbled on the ship’s logs. Amazingly, these people didn’t set up any security that would prevent a total stranger from accessing their data. They must have enjoyed a high level of trust…or maybe inordinate gullibility,” Kyle wondered.
“They probably didn’t expect any visitors. It looks like there are a lot of video files. Let’s record the contents from as many of these as we can. I wish we could just put them all on a hard drive and take them back to the Theseus,” Hannah said.
“Yeah, so when we get home we can play them on our PCs,” Kyle joked.
//
The next video floored them. It showed a group of six men sitting on floating chairs in the middle of space — inside a similar control room — although of much smaller size, probably belonging to one of the shuttles in the ship’s hangar.
They were rapidly approaching a smooth, bluish-white planet and entered its atmosphere at a vertiginous speed, seemingly without decelerating at all. The effect for those watching the video was dizzying.
The shuttle suddenly stopped cold less than a meter above the surface of the planet, no graduality, no rebound, no shaking. Just a total absence of motion. Perfectly dissipated and redirected energy.
“This is nuts. They figured a way to dispose of the inertial, centrifugal, and centripetal forces along with gravity. Frictionless motion too, while at it,” Kyle exclaimed.
On the video, a member of the unknown crew spoke a few terse sentences and something remarkable happened. The room walls came back into view and their seats enveloped each one of the team members as they stood up — the chairs transformed into a sort of suit that covered them head to toe in small, triangular facets. Their new armor looked like a seamless, golden mosaic and Kyle assumed that the crew could view the exterior environment from inside their helmets.
The six men walked out of the shuttle’s control room followed by cameras and went through an empty corridor similar to the ones aboard the mother ship. They arrived in a room that opened to a harsh world outside. For a brief moment, they stood side by side right on the edge of the ship and, amazingly, began to levitate out into the icy, mountainous planet in front of them.
They were carried standing perpendicularly to the ground and only a few inches above it — surely the suits had the ability to nullify gravity even outside their ships.
The planetary conditions didn’t appear to be hospitable to humans. Winds were incredibly strong and it must have been very cold judging by the ice rain. The entire ground was covered in snow and ice, although it might not have been made of water due to its bluish color. The overcast sky was a beautiful aquamarine and the clouds obscured all stars and any possible moons. It wasn’t evident whether the expedition took place during the day or at night because the light outside was spectral — enough to see everything clearly, as under a full Moon, but not bright or excessive. No flora or fauna were evident, at least not yet. Kyle wondered if the explorers were looking for life or perhaps trying to extract minerals or fuel from the planet.
They talked sparingly to each other while they floated merrily along, oblivious to the blizzard that enveloped them. They never hesitated. Never stopped to get their bearings or decide where to go. They seemed to know exactly what they needed to do and how to get there.
After a few minutes, the group arrived at the edge of a cliff overlooking a deep and wide canyon. Kyle, slightly afraid of heights, saw with a shudder how unthinkingly the six strange teammates dove right into it. Their free fall was fully controlled and feet-first, but entirely too fast for Kyle’s taste.
Their momentum suddenly stopped mere centimeters above the canyon’s floor. The group then continued moving forward to the canyon’s opposite wall which must have been a good five hundred meters away. As they got closer, Kyle and company saw a triangular surface, like a door, directly on the wall. It was very similar to the one in that valley on far side of the Moon.
The door opened and the group went inside.
“These people clearly favor simple, uniform structures. They are very focused on structural coherence. Their societies must be tremendously cohesive,” Alex observed.
The explorers effortlessly switched from levitation to walking as their environmental suits dissolved around them. They went through a series of long corridors until they reached a sealed door with a strange symbol etched in stone. It wasn’t a set of characters but, rather, a pictograph of a person surrounded by a few undulated lines and standing inside a triangle.
That was very surprising to Kyle. It was the first icon they saw anywhere. By this point, he had started to assume that the alien culture didn’t care for graphic archetypes other than alphabetical, conventional characters. He had thought that unusual.
The video became even more puzzling when the door opened automatically to a wall of orange liquid that pushed right up to the threshold. A faceted helmet suddenly covered the head of three of the expedition members and they went in while the other three remained outside.
The camera followed them swimming to the center of a room fully immersed in the orange liquid, oxygen bubbles coming out of their helmets. Shortly after, they arrived at the most bizarre scenes Kyle had seen in a mission chock-full of them.
The center of the flooded room was occupied by at least thirty naked humans — both men and women — vertically suspended in the liquid and standing very still, their arms to their sides. They were neither asleep nor dead, but very much alive. What gave that away, despite their body’s immobility, was the frantic shaking of their heads and the contorted grimaces on their faces. They did not appear happy to be there. The other odd thing was that none of them wore a helmet or any other type of breathing apparatus.
The three scuba divers, for lack of a better term, took one of their captives, a woman, and brought her toward the opposite wall where a small triangular door had opened. They disappeared through it and that was the end of the video.
“What the hell was that?” Kyle wondered, suddenly very concerned about being there and having witnessed such a thing.
“That looked to me like some sort of aquatic jail,” Hannah stated.
“Most definitely. Why keep their captives in an enclosed pool, though? And how the hell were they able to breathe without helmets?”
“I’m scratching my head. It was very disturbing to see them take a woman with them through that little hole. I get claustrophobic just thinking about it.”
“Any ideas where that planet was, Hannah?”
“None whatsoever, other than the fact that it’s no planet or moon in our own Solar System. That’s for sure.”
“The whole thing is messed up as far as I’m concerned. We better get out of here pronto,” Raúl warned.
“That little movie takes the Oscar for most deeply disturbing,” Hannah said.
“We are all back to being very concerned for your safety, team,” Sonia announced from Earth. “Try to find as many answers as you can, but let’s not prolong your visit more than necessary.”
“You and the rest of Leadership are safe and sound in your cozy offices, Sonia. Us? We have our skin in this game right here, but it’s nice to know you all care so much,” Raúl said.
“We might be safe here on Earth…for now. If those alien wackos decide to try something against us, how would we prevent it?” Sonia lamented.
“Okay people, chill out. Let’s just open more video files for now and forget what we saw. There might be a perfectly innocuous explanation for it — other than these people are freak harvesters of fellow human beings. We might have seen a balneary or a hospital. The ‘captives’ might have been patients in treatment. We simply don’t know,” Kyle said, conciliatory, as much for his own benefit as for the others’.
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that,” Raúl concluded.
//
In the space of half an hour, they watched ten more videos. Thankfully, none of them as disturbing. As they scrolled through the repository, they tried to hit the beginning, the middle, and the end of a collection that must have contained hundreds if not thousands.
They recorded each with their helmet cameras, switching to the next one after a few minutes. That was preferable to watching only a couple of the videos in their entirety. They hoped to be able to capture the crew in as many different situations as possible for an accurate picture of their lives.
Many of the things the videos showed looked familiar to Kyle and Hannah. This was definitely a human crew…or at least a very plausible facsimile of one. There clearly was a lot of weird stuff as well.
For instance, every tool, utensil, and piece of furniture appeared out of and disappeared into thin air. The crew never had to pick up or put away anything. With few exceptions like the central control pillar, the robots, and the ship’s walls themselves, everything else came and went, right at their fingertips.
“All that they use is made of the same beige, fuzzy material, except their clothes,” Hannah said.
“It’s like they figured out how to instantly 3D-print anything anywhere to then dissolve it. The only thing this ship needs to store is atoms that get reconfigured into different objects and then recycled. No wonder everything is so barren. These people knew how to travel light! Can you imagine if all your stuff could be summoned at will and disposed of at any time?”
“The minimalists’ dream,” Hannah agreed.
On another video, the crew sat at a kind of mess hall eating small, colorful pyramidal bites that looked like jello shots. They were served on triangular dishes that also appeared and disappeared. Their glasses were four-sided prisms with a triangular base and, obviously, an open top. The liquids they drank were polychromatic too.
“I’m sure they also needed to store nutritional molecules on the ship to prepare those sushi things and the drinks,” Kyle said.
On yet another video, they saw a gym where a few people worked out using machines and dumbbells which dissolved into thin air once they had been used.
“I wonder if their clothes are also disposable,” Valentina said.
“I doubt we’ll know unless they filmed themselves getting dressed in the morning!” Raúl responded.
“The dead crewman was naked. Maybe his clothes disappeared when he died,” she continued.
The videos showed an incredibly varied collage: people navigating the ship from the control bridge, walking the corridors, performing mysterious tasks in different rooms, flying the shuttles, and running around during what they assumed were emergencies.
“Okay, people, it’s time to leave,” Chen boomed.
“Just a few more video files. It won’t take long,” Hannah pleaded.
“We need time to retrace our steps and make it back to the Theseus. I don’t want us to run out of oxygen by cutting it too close.”
“Well, if that’s all you are worried about…here,” said Hannah, annoyed, removing her helmet to Chen’s great alarm and surprise.
Everyone stopped cold.
She took a few deep breaths without any negative effects.
“Any funky smells?” Kyle asked.
“Why don’t you find out for yourself?”
With a hiss, Kyle removed his helmet and perceived a very neutral odor. Just normal breathable air filling his nostrils and lungs.
“You still need to keep your helmets on to activate the cameras. Otherwise, how will we record your precious evidence? Or communicate with Theseus and Mission Control,” Chen objected.
“Sure, we’ll have to keep the helmets on, but the point is: we can safely remove them if we end up running low on oxygen. As a last measure. We won’t suffocate as we walk back to the entry hangar,” Hannah said.
Kyle scrolled all the way to the end of the file sequence and opened what seemed to be the last video — at least within that particular grouping. It showed an old man effortlessly pushing a floating platform where an elderly woman rested very still with her eyes closed.
He walked down several corridors until they arrived at a door which opened automatically. The man pushed the “gurney” inside a very large room that contained many big, sarcophagi-like boxes arranged in rows. Each sarcophagus was fully covered in symbols and floated horizontally, mere inches above the ground. They were crafted out of the same opaque glowing material as the rest of the ship.
The old man made his way to an empty spot at the end of one of the rows where an empty sarcophagus appeared out of thin air. He tenderly lifted his inert colleague placing her inside.
The man took a step back humming an eerie tune and lowered his head as if praying or meditating. He produced a bunch of colorful ropes, tying them into elaborate knots. When he was finished, he placed the knotted ropes in the form of a triangular wreath over his colleague’s chest and the sarcophagus was automatically sealed. That was the end of the video.
They all fell silent, pondering the implications of such a remarkable scene.
“We just witnessed a funeral,” Hannah said.
“Clearly,” Kyle agreed. “But only one person attended it. Isn’t that strange?”
“It’s strange to us, but it could be part of their traditions,” Valentina said.
“Sure. However, I think we might have watched the funeral of the second-to-last crew member and that’s why there is only one person attending. They both look quite old and the room is filled to the brim with sealed sarcophagi. Remember that we saw older people in some of the other videos we opened…maybe they were all aging together on board the ship!” Hannah wondered.
“What a grim destiny to be the last one living in a barren ship for who knows how long,” Kyle replied.
“If you are right, the crew spent a big portion of their lives on this ship and died on it too. Was that their plan all along or did they get lost during their travels? We have to find the crypt,” Anderson said.
//
The group traversed the ship for another hour in search of the sarcophagi room. As they moved through the corridors, the only things they encountered were several more butterfly bots who paid them brief attention before blessedly floating away.
Kyle kept looking at the markings everywhere to try and identify the ones he saw on the video next to the crypt’s door. They were beginning to lose hope — a ship of that size would take days to cover — but, at last, they had the great fortune to find it. The crypt was locked, however, and their efforts to physically pry it open failed once again.
“Why don’t these damn doors open for us as they do for the crew?” Raúl yelled.
“They might react to biometric data,” Alex offered.
“Maybe, but I was able to manipulate their file systems without any security barriers. I have a crazy idea: back on Earth, we are beginning to tap the potential of the brain’s signals to move objects or control software at a very basic level. A sort of telepathy,” Kyle said.
“The technology here is so advanced that I wouldn’t put it past their society to have cracked telekinesis,” Alex said.
“It won’t hurt to try. Everyone, please concentrate on the door and imagine it opening,” Kyle said.
Very self-consciously, they all fell quiet for a few minutes, each enveloped in his or her own thoughts.
The door didn’t budge.
“How the hell does one open a door with these people!” Raúl yelled again, giving up in frustration.
“Maybe there is too much interference. The door’s sensors might be ‘confused’ by so many people’s thoughts directed at them all at once,” Kyle observed. “Let me try this alone. Go around that corner and I’ll call you when I’m done.”
They did as he said and, once the entire group was gone, he tried hard to empty his thoughts. It wasn’t easy with all the excitement during the last few days. However, after a few moments, he felt enough at ease to conjure up a clear image of the door opening. He maintained that thought in his mind for several seconds.
The door opened with a swoosh.
“I’ve done it! Come back, guys!”
“You have outdone yourself, Kyle. Great call on the telepathy thing. It would not have occurred to me in a million years,” Hannah said as they walked into the now-open crypt. Kyle led the team and Raúl stayed back to cover the door.
“If the crew was able to operate objects and machines through telekinesis, why not the entire ship?” Alex asked.
“That’s a good point. Maybe they reserved it for smaller interactions. Perhaps telepathy has its limits for them and piloting a ship this size was one of those,” Kyle wondered.
“Piloting the ship possibly required multiple people. It might have been a collaborative task and that’s why they needed visual cues and interactive controls they could all reference and use simultaneously without confusing everything in the process — like what we experienced when we all wanted to open the door at the same time,” Hannah said.
“What about their speech, then? Why would they need to talk if they can just simply ‘think’ to one another? They are all pretty chatty on those videos,” Alex continued.
“Right. I’m going to stick to my justification: telepathy might need to be established between two people directly, or between a person and an object. Additional people might dilute the process.” Hannah answered.
“I still think it’s unreasonable to require telepathy to open doors when simple sensors would automate the task,” Alex persisted.
“Activating the door with your own mental signature would record who came into the room at any given time. Maybe. Hell, I don’t know! It’s a different culture we are talking about after all — human or not,” Kyle replied, reaching the limits of his patience and itching to study the crypt.
“Excellent arguments. I hope we’ll be able to draft a coherent account of their culture once we get going with our analyses back on Earth,” Hannah said.
The crypt was enormous, triangular, and had high ceilings like the rest of the ship. It was roughly the size of a football field and was full of sarcophagi arranged in concentric triangles with space between each tomb to move from row to row. Kyle led the team to the heart of the place, recording everything along the way.
The usual barren décor was only adorned by the bright orange symbols they had seen in the video, glowing all around the surface of each sarcophagus. Kyle thought they might be epitaphs containing the name of a crew member and maybe some kind of biographical or inspirational message. They were long enough to constitute full obituaries. This was a strange culture — so he could be wrong about all of it so far — yet Kyle felt a certain level of kinship and familiarity because of their shared humanity.
For several minutes, each of them recorded as many inscriptions as they could.
“Time’s up, people. We really need to get back to our ship. As fascinating as this all is, we don’t have unlimited fuel or oxygen even on the Theseus. Plus, Iris needs medical attention,” Chen said.
Every member of the science team turned around and followed the Captain along the trail of tracers. It would take a while to get back to where the expedition started.
As they walked and turned a corner, Chen suddenly stopped. He saw another butterfly bot calmly floating in their direction about thirty meters away.
He turned to Raúl. “Grab that thing. It’s small enough that we can take it to Earth and have it dissected. Our scientists could reverse-engineer their anti-gravity technology.”
“Are you mad, Chen!” Valentina intervened. “The robot might react defensively. Raúl could be injured or worse! You were not with us during the first attack and I don’t want to repeat the experience.”
“Never mind the risk! I’m in charge of this mission now and we must retrieve all valuable technology that we can. The robot doesn’t look menacing at all, it’s probably just one of those roaming cameras they used.”
Raúl agreed. “I’ll do it…but blow the bastard away if it attacks me.”
“You bet,” responded Hannah pointing her gun up as the rest of the team did.
With all the chatter, the basketball-sized mechanical butterfly had passed them by and Raúl needed to turn around and chase after it. After tucking his weapon to his side, the sergeant lounged at it with both arms.
There was a brief tussle during which the robot lifted Raúl above the ground. The machine didn’t appear to be hostile, but its programming clearly dictated that it had to free itself and continue its flight along the corridors of the ship.
Raúl wasn’t letting go either, but one of the two parties had to give sooner or later. The butterfly’s hidden mechanisms whirred faster and louder and, with a strong jerk, it threw Raúl down. He landed hard with a rip on his suit. Blood quickly begun to trickle out from the gash.
The team opened fire on the bot, which sped away and quickly disappeared around the corner.
“Are you okay, Raúl?” Valentina asked, running toward him, joined by Chen.
“It looks like I’ve been sliced.”
“Don’t move. Let me help you.” She pulled alcohol, antibiotic ointment, gauze, and tape from her backpack, after which she uncovered his wound.
“It’s a nasty gash, but you’ll be fine.” She treated and bandaged the cut. Chen then applied glue to the suit’s ripped fabric.
“Are you able to walk?” Valentina asked.
“Yes, just a little sore. Thanks for your help.”
“Very well, let’s get out of here,” Chen ordered, ignoring the team’s looks of recrimination.
They went all the way back to the ship’s opening without incident. They put on their PPSs and prepared themselves for this last spacewalk.
//
Their return flight was going to be trickier because they couldn’t use their safety harnesses — the team didn’t find any place inside the alien ship to tie the ropes and Theseus retrieved them shortly after their arrival. If one of the PPSs were to malfunction, the unlucky soul would float away into deep space. True, Theseus would then organize a rescue attempt, but that was easier said than done, and a waste of precious fuel, time, and resources that they could ill-afford.
With a very careful jump forward, they engaged their PPSs flying single file like climbers do, so that they could help each other more easily in case of an emergency. The flight back to Theseus would take less than ten minutes. That was the good news. The bad news came mid-way from Raúl.
“Guys, it looks like the glue didn’t work. I might have reopened it as I was gearing up or the pressure differential might have ripped it.”
“How bad is it?” Chen asked.
“I’m starting to feel like shit, pardon my French, sir. It’s getting awfully cold in here and breathing takes extra effort.”
“Place your free hand over the rip. See if you can slow down the loss of pressure.” Chen suggested.
“Raúl, don’t talk and try to calm down. Breathe slowly. That will help you conserve oxygen,” Valentina suggested.
They continued forward for a few minutes, hoping that Raúl’s rip wouldn’t turn out to be fatal.
After a short while, he spoke again. “I’m freezing… I don’t think…I’ll make it to…”
“Disengage your PPS, Raúl. Kyle, you are right behind him. Catch him and bring him the rest of the way to the Theseus. The first of us to arrive will gather around the entrance to let you and Raúl go into the decompression chamber first. Boris, open the gate now,” Chen’s orders came in fast and clear and were carried out without delay.
Kyle caught the sergeant’s body firmly in his grip. Guiding his PPS became much more difficult just then, but training kicked in. He only had about a hundred meters left to travel. Chen, Anderson, and Valentina latched themselves to the Theseus’ wall around the airlock. This ensured an unimpeded entry for Kyle and Raúl, whose breathing had slowed down considerably.
Once the two of them were inside the chamber, Kyle pushed the button and closed the door. After the short wait for the atmosphere to equalize, he opened the interior door.
Boris was already waiting for them with a warm electric blanket, which he immediately wrapped around Raúl’s body after removing the soldier’s helmet.
A few tense moments later, they noticed with immense relief that Raúl was still breathing, even though his skin looked deadly pale and felt cold to the touch.
“Billions spent, months preparing, and lives lost…all to find a lonely old man,” Sonia said, shaking her head.
“Technically, we found more than one. We just couldn’t retrieve DNA from any of them since they were entombed,” Valentina corrected.
Sonia darted an unmistakable look, even across the distance separating Earth from the Theseus.
Hanna intervened. “I think the ship was launched from their Moon base. How long ago is hard to say. It could have been years. Nobody ever detected their activity because of its location on the far side.”
“For all we know, they could have been behind all of the UFO sightings over the decades,” Kyle offered.
“A couple of months ago, I would have laughed you out of the room for saying that,” Anderson added.
“Have you seen anything that might point us to where these people came from and why they are here?” Sonia asked.
“And why do they look human if they came from another planet,” Laura joined, looking up from the notes she had been feverishly writing down.
“We don’t have answers to any of those questions yet,” Kyle admitted.
“Their planet must be very similar to Earth in terms of atmosphere and size — they breathe the same air as us, the intensity of their artificial gravity closely matches our own, and their temperature tolerance resembles ours as well. The evidence is all there. So, from that perspective, their human appearance is coherent,” Hannah explained.
“Well, yes and no. Evolution took a certain path here on Earth over a period of billions of years. That journey resulted in us as a species. We’ve already talked about how unreasonable it would be to assume that the exact evolutionary events would be repeated somewhere else in the universe. For heavens’ sake, they even have robots that look like butterflies!” Anderson interrupted, skeptically.
“It’s not unreasonable. We have the same Creator, don’t we?” Raúl offered while the scientist on the videoconference rolled their eyes and shook their heads in derision.
“And here we have the secular Western mind at work yet again. I for one find Raúl’s explanation plausible,” Valentina said.
“Let’s first eliminate all the natural options before we jump with both feet into theological and supernatural disquisitions, shall we?” Kyle replied, nipping that line of argumentation in the bud.
“There is an alternative explanation,” Hannah said. “We are conditioned to think of these beings as alien because their ship came from outside our Solar System and because their technology is so far beyond our current means. It’s hard for us to believe otherwise. No country on Earth can undertake construction projects like their lunar base or build spaceships as large as cities.”
“So far, I’m tracking,” Kyle egged on.
“But what if their culture originated on Earth — just eons ago? They could be our parents.”
A pause ensued.
“That’s an intriguing theory, Hannah,” Alex said. “But a civilization capable of industrial and technical achievements like these would have been far more advanced than our own — and they would have littered our planet with plenty of evidence to their existence. Archeologists haven’t found remnants of a culture this sophisticated anywhere on Earth.”
“Solid objection. Let’s see what we discover if and when we decipher their language. All ideas should remain on the table in the meantime.”
“Sonia, Raúl and Iris both need medical attention. The Theseus is low in oxygen, fuel, and provisions. We should return to Earth at once,” Chen recommended.
“I agree. There will be other missions to gather further evidence. As troubling as that submerged-captivity scene was, at this time I don’t think we have enough reasons to consider their ship an existential threat — and thank God for that because we couldn’t scratch it with thermonuclear weaponry. Even the swarm creature, deadly as it was, isn’t going to come to Earth and decimate our entire population. My recommendation to Leadership will be to relax the global defensive posture and to treat subsequent missions primarily as scientific, save for carrying more deadly light weaponry to deal with this swarm thing. So, yes Chen, please come back home.”
//
The team kept busy for the better part of an hour preparing the Theseus for the return trip. Everyone had a job to do.
Valentina checked the group’s vital stats and saw that everyone except Iris was in fairly good shape. She went to check on her injured leg supplying her with more antibiotics and analgesics. Iris’ temperature was still a little high.
Once she was done taking care of her, she approached Raúl. The sergeant was strapped to his zero-gravity cot, just like Iris, so the cut on his chest would remain immobile.
“Let me take a look, soldier.” Valentina unbuttoned his jacket and pulled up his shirt. She then removed the bandage and saw that the cut was still irritated but not infected, and the stitches were holding up.
“Thanks, Valentina. I do feel better. And, by the way, thank you for backing me up before.”
“What do you mean?” She said, applying antibiotic ointment and changing the dressing.
He lowered his voice. “When the smart-asses begun snickering about what I said. You know, about the Creator.”
“They’ve educated themselves into stupidity, Raúl. Don’t mind them.”
“Ouch! That hurt.” He couldn’t help but grimace even though he was trying hard to remain still as she worked on him.
“Sorry, bud! Like I said, the wound is still pretty raw so you can expect several weeks of discomfort.”
“When you doctors talk about ‘discomfort’ better watch out!” Raúl joked.
“At least I didn’t say ‘pressure.’ That’s our codeword for excruciating pain,” she smiled at him.
“I don’t mind discomfort or pressure if you are the one responsible, Doctor Dyakova!”
Valentina was enjoying Raúl’s flirtatious banter, but her mind kept going back to the conversation they had earlier with Sonia and her team. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Are you Christian?”
“Yes, Catholic. You?”
“I’m Russian Orthodox. So, you know about the Fall of Man, right?”
“Of course, original sin and all that.”
“Yes. Well, I always doubted that there could be any intelligent life in the universe. I believe that space is so immeasurably vast precisely to isolate humanity, to punish us for our original sin. Earth might be our exile after Adam and Eve were banished from Paradise,” she explained.
Raúl was surprised at the turn the conversation had taken, but engaged her on her terms nevertheless. “I hate to break it to you, Valentina, but you can kiss that theory goodbye. We found an entire cemetery on that ship — a ship that’s most definitely not ours. A ship that came from outside our Solar System!”
“That even bolsters my case. These humans could come from a world that’s not fallen. We share the same God and He may have created them in His image too, like He did with us,” She countered.
“That’s above my pay grade, doctor. I don’t even know where to begin with the whole thing.”
“Well, I’m not ready to give up my theory just yet. Who knows what they will uncover after we get back. There,” she said, gently touching Raúl’s face. “Try to rest. We are taking you home.”
“Can’t wait. I hope you won’t mind if I come visit once this is all over.”
“Can’t wait.”
//
“I’m not looking forward to re-entry,” Kyle said, absentmindedly, as if he had been thinking out loud rather than talking to Hannah. In just a few minutes, they’d all be leaving for Earth.
The team put on their pressure suits and performed their assigned tasks while a tense silence permeated the Theseus.
“Nothing to worry about, man. It’ll get nice and toasty in here, you’ll see!” She joked.
“Silly me! I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
“By the way, what are your plans when you get back?”
“Assuming they don’t whisk us away again for more of the same and the world doesn’t come to a sudden end at the hands of our ‘new friends’ over there, I think I’ll do nothing for a while. Stay in, eat, sleep, and be merry. My usual idea of excitement is binging on a new series, so imagine what this little excursion has done to my sanity. I have to recharge. How about you — well, other than spending time with your husband and kids?”
Hannah took a moment before answering. “Do you want the truth or the socially-acceptable version?”
“How about you give me both?”
“Okay. I’m looking forward to spending many lazy days lying on the beach, getting tanned, building sandcastles, and snorkeling as a family. Oh, and cooking dinners with Peter while we sip delicious Montepulciano.”
“Which version is that?”
“Wait until you hear the alternative and then you tell me.”
“Makes sense.”
“These last few days have been the most meaningful — dangerous! —, exciting, and all-around best of my life. Bar none. I had the privilege to work with the bravest, smartest people I’ve ever met on a mission that embodies the very reasons why I became an astrophysicist. I feel like a part of something much bigger than myself, my team, and even my family. For a change, I’m driving history instead of just accepting it ready-made. And the best part is that we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what we just experienced. I’m shaking in anticipation of the things we’ll learn.”
“I think it’s pretty obvious which version is which.”
“Yup.”
They exchanged smiles and floated to their respective stations in the command module. They sat down and strapped themselves to their chairs. Through the portholes, Kyle could see the enigmatic, lonely ship with its forlorn side bay door still open.
“Engines in five, four, three, two, one,” Boris announced.
With a slight shake, Theseus distanced itself and gradually accelerated.
Kyle looked at the object one last time, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
A few days later, Theseus arrived on Earth. The lunar module carrying the entire crew re-entered the atmosphere uneventfully, leaving the rest of the ship in orbit to be reused in future missions.
They landed back in Plesetsk with the aid of powerful parachutes. Iris and Raúl were immediately taken to the infirmary. The rest of the team went through a full medical examination and a final debrief with Sonia and Leadership. The day ended with a solemn ceremony of remembrance for the fallen soldiers whose bodies would never be recovered, complete with an eulogy by General Wang himself.
Notifying the next-of-kin had been very hard for Sonia and, to her shame, she was selfishly glad that Project Attica’s secrecy had prevented the families from attending the ceremony. It would have been that much tougher to look them in the eye.
It was a bitter-sweet moment when everyone said goodbye right after the ceremony. They had experienced so much together: elation, confusion, fear, grief, despair, hope. They lost colleagues along the way and witnessed things and events nobody had ever seen or even quite imagined. They grew closer than many of them would admit, but the fact was that after half a year, people really looked forward to some R&R with their friends and families — and to recovering the personal space and privacy they had lacked for so long.
Kyle felt differently. He was going to miss Hannah.
True, he knew they would see each other again soon. After two weeks of downtime, the two of them and Anderson would join the ongoing science work to study what they found. Pattern recognition, linguistics, exobiology, and chemistry were the keys to unlocking the mysteries from this alien ship, as opposed to geology, medicine, or military security. That’s why Alex, Valentina, and the military team weren’t invited back.
Nevertheless, he didn’t look forward to fifteen days of waiting to get his hands dirty and to see Hannah. He shared so much in common with her regardless of their different life experiences. Their conversation came easy — something that wasn’t the case with almost anyone Kyle had ever met before. And if he were honest with himself, he’d realize that his attraction went far beyond the bounds of friendship.
Both of them stayed behind to spend a little time alone after everyone else left. Well, they weren’t exactly alone. Their respective escorts waited nearby to show them the way to two private planes that would take them home.
Kyle wanted to say something heartfelt, but he didn’t know how to put it in words or, really, whether he even should. She was married, after all, and he wasn’t about to get mushy in front of a couple of grunts anyway. He knew that Hannah’s family was anxiously waiting for her. He didn’t have the right or the heart to keep her away from them any longer after months of exile.
“Well, I guess this is it. For now,” he said.
“I guess,” Hannah replied, looking into his eyes.
“Have fun in Canada. You more than deserve it. We’ll need all our strength when we get back.”
“You too, Kyle. Hopefully, you’ll decide to get off the couch to do something other than carry pints of ice-cream from the refrigerator to the sofa.”
“No guarantees. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Too bad they wouldn’t let us take any of the video evidence with us, huh?”
“I understand the need for secrecy. At least for now. But yeah, it’s a bummer.”
“Understand? Who cares what our governments think. The world needs to know this.”
“Okay, maybe we should have this conversation later, right?” Kyle whispered while looking sideways to remind Hannah of their escorts.
“Yeah, yeah. I hear you. Well, at least we will both get some rest. I’m not crazy enough not to realize that we need to step away to make sense of it all and to recoup.”
“There you go. That’s more like it.”
“Now for sure I’m saying goodbye, Kyle.”
“I know, it’s time. Won’t keep you any longer. Bye, Hannah, have a safe flight.”
Hannah started laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“Safe flight, you said?” She was trying hard to get the words out between bouts of laughter. “It’d be ironic if after all we’ve done I ended up crashing on my way to Canada!”
//
The parking lot in front of the grocery store was full. Clover considered himself lucky to have found a spot near the Colemans’ car to more easily keep track of them.
The day threatened snow. It looked like a nasty storm was on its way. The family better rush out of the store and back home if they want to avoid driving through a white sheet, Clover thought. He hoped that was the case because this particular surveillance job was getting tiresome.
The husband had yet to produce any intel even though his wife had been back for several days. How hard could it be? Where was this guy’s panache? As far as Clover was concerned, the husband was a sorry nerd — just like his wife, come to think of it. What a pair.
His car’s heater barely kept the Canadian cold at bay. He wanted a warm coffee but couldn’t just step out and get it.
At last, the couple and their two children came out of the store pushing two cart-loads full of groceries past Clover’s car. He pretended to look for something in his glove compartment so as not to be seen.
They opened the back door of their minivan and the husband started the long process of loading the merchandise while the wife settled the kids in their seats. She had a great ass, Clover thought, but his discipline and training kicked in to stop any further daydreaming.
Their minivan backed up and left the lot. Clover was pretty sure they’d be returning home after a fruitful shopping spree. He followed them at a prudent distance, changing lanes every so often to avoid being detected.
The Colemans’ were boring. Maybe more boring than most of his targets. The wife never met with anyone unusual, she called nobody to talk shop, and never unpacked a damn dossier to leaf through. They didn’t even eat out yet.
He should know better, Clover thought. Most people’s lives weren’t all that interesting. Even in a natural paradise like British Columbia, people spend most of their time in boxes: the bedroom box, the kitchen box, the living room box, the car box, the office box, the gym box, the restaurant box, the store box, and back to the bedroom box. They rarely get out into the open or enjoy adventures. People’s lifestyles reminded him of a giant zoo — one without spectators. They rattled their cages, calling for the zookeeper to feed them. Not really living, but just content with having a couple of windows into reality — their phones, their computers, their TVs. Distracting each other while Nature and Grace performed their ancestral dance out there in the real world.
Clover awoke from his interior diatribe when the family arrived at their home — a mid-century single-story dwelling. When he saw them start to unload the van, he lost his patience and dialed a number.
After a few rings, someone picked up.
“This guy is not going to produce anything unless we make it clear that we mean business. Let me make a move. What do we have to lose at this point?” Clover coldly spoke into his phone.
He listened for a few seconds, then took a breath and continued speaking.
“I can be on their tail for six months and that still won’t get us any closer to our goal. Trust me.”
He listened for a few more seconds, his tension finally evaporating.
“They gave us no other choice. It’ll work this time, I assure you. Leave it to me.”
And he hung up.
//
“Mommy, look at the big snowman I made!” Caleb screamed at the top of his lungs.
Hannah kept looking ahead, oblivious.
“Wow. It looks great, kiddo!” Peter said after a couple of seconds, seeing that she hadn’t registered Caleb’s plea for praise. “Keep going and you’ll soon be made the kingdom’s chief mason!”
“What’s a mason, daddy?”
“Like a builder, you know?”
“Yeah!”
Peter turned to his wife. “Hannah, he was so proud to show you what he made. What’s wrong, honey? You’ve been gone for half a year and sometimes I feel like you are still gone.”
“I’m sorry, Peter. My mind was wandering. Honestly, I have a ton to think about.”
“I had hoped that you would make a real lasting change in your work life when you came back. We talked about moving away, slowing down so you can focus more of your time on the children. On us…”
“You talked about that, Peter, not me. And how realistic would that be, eh? Do you think I’ll just throw away everything I’ve ever worked for and move to the boondocks to raise cattle and watch Jeopardy?”
“Ouch. Tell me how you really feel, please! You know what? Your priorities are all screwed up, Hannah. You’ve been here for a week already and we still don’t know what you are working on, what you’ve been doing. How long will you be gone next time? Is this a good family life in your book?”
“Definitely not, Peter. I won’t try to argue to the contrary.” Hannah felt remorse for having snapped back so hard. “No question that I’m asking too much of you and the kids. But, if you knew what I’ve been doing — trust me — you’d understand why I can’t just leave it all behind.”
“Does it have to do with the military?”
“Peter, you know I can’t say, even though I’d like nothing more. If I opened my big mouth, I’d be placing everything in danger.”
“Who’s going to know that you told me? Do you trust me or not?”
“It’s not a question of our trust, it’s a question of my employers’ trust in me.”
Hannah turned around and watched the children play in the snow under the weak sun. She looked up at the sky, remembering the heat of re-entry just a few days back. Remembering the object and the still-orbiting Theseus.
“What do you say we go home? It’s starting to get really cold,” and they both got up to grab the children.
//
After a whole day of ice skating, snow sports, eating roasted chestnuts and drinking hot cider, they got in their minivan and drove home.
That night, when the kids were in bed, and while Peter watched a football game on TV, Hannah went to her office, closed the door a picked up the phone to call Kyle. A few rings later, she heard her colleague’s familiar voice.
“Hello?”
“Kyle, it’s Hannah.”
“Oh, wow. Hi there, Hannah. Is everything okay?”
“Yes, sure. Everything is fine…Well, not entirely, no. I just thought I’d give you a ring. I’m kind of going out of my mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m antsy and bored and, on top of that, I feel guilty for being antsy and bored instead of enjoying time off with my family. Like my head tells me this is where I belong, but my heart pulls me away. I don’t think I can stay here another full week away from Laura and her team. They get to study our findings while we are on vacation. It makes no sense.”
“It does make sense, Hannah. We talked about this, remember? We all went through pretty traumatic experiences. Without rest, you would for real go out of your mind. Sooner or later.”
“I know that I’m letting my emotions get the best of me. I’m not conducting myself rationally and I need to change that. But it’s so hard. And Peter is not making things any easier for me.”
“How so?”
“Because he’s so damn perfect! He’s the perfect husband and father. So committed to our family that it makes me feel like a total loser for wanting to get back to work. He is really upset with me because I can’t tell him what we are working on. I’ve never seen him so interested in my stuff. Normally, he backs off when I say that something is confidential, but these days… He keeps asking me about our project. He also wants me to basically retire so that I can spend all of my time with the family, make up for my excessive focus on work in the past, for my travels, my long absences. I can’t do that. I don’t want to abandon my career, but I love my family. I want to have both, is that too much to ask?”
“I don’t know, Hannah. It might be?”
“You are not helping, Kyle!” Hannah said only half-joking. “What makes things worse is that we don’t know how long I’ll be gone next time around. Have you heard anything from Sonia? Any timetable?”
“No. I spend my time bored and alone — which altogether makes it possibly a worse situation than yours.”
“How much longer do you think they’ll ask us to be quiet? I don’t know that I can guarantee to keep this to myself for an indefinite amount of time.”
“Hannah, you know that in all probability they are listening to this call, right?”
“I don’t care. Maybe this way they’ll realize what we are going through in our personal lives for not being able to discuss things with our loved ones.”
“At least you have loved ones to not discuss things with.”
“Sorry, Kyle. I’m loading you up with my problems when I’m sure you have your fair share.”
“Nah, nothing exciting. Don’t worry.”
A pause.
“Am I being weird for missing our tube-and-pouch meals together? I loved drinking those floating coffee and orange juice bubbles.”
Hannah waited for Kyle’s response. She regretted having mentioned anything about “our meals together.” It sounded corny and it didn’t come out the way she meant it. She felt bad for having called Kyle behind her husband’s back.
“You are not weird, and you are not alone.”
“Thanks.”
“By the way, the best chance we have of being able to open up about what we are doing and share it with the world is to go back to work and solve all these riddles once and for all.”
“Music to my ears. Hey, I’ve taken enough of your time and it’s late.”
“No problem. I have a second pint of Chunky Monkey waiting for me. No, seriously, enjoy your family and call me anytime you want. Oh, and cut Peter some slack. You were gone for several months and that’s hard for anybody. You’ll see how much you’ll miss them when we are gone next. Try to live the moment, one day at a time.”
“Wise words, Kyle. Thank you. Have a good night, okay?”
“You too, Hannah. And thanks for calling.”
//
It wasn’t like Peter to stay out this late — he had gone to the library after lunch, to write. Changing scenery often helped unclog his brain and got his creative juices going. He would write in cafes or bookstores, at times even sitting on city benches if the weather was good. As long as he had his notepad and a different landscape, he was satisfied.
So, Hannah didn’t think anything of it for a while. But, after twelve full hours, Peter still wasn’t home. She started worrying around nine in the evening and called him repeatedly on his mobile phone. He never picked up. All she got was voicemail and he hadn’t returned any of her messages either.
It wasn’t in her nature to be a worrier, but she couldn’t recall her husband ever being absent this long without letting her know where he was. She couldn’t decide whether she felt more worried or angry. Probably both in equal measure.
It didn’t help that she wasn’t allowed to plunge herself into work to keep her mind occupied. Once again, she regretted the unwarranted — as far as she was concerned — secrecy around Project Attica.
She read magazines to kill time, watched cartoons with Paul and Caleb, cooked dinner, fed the kids, gave them a bath, and put them to bed.
Come midnight, Hannah felt trapped. She couldn’t very well leave the house to go look for Peter because the children would be left alone. She didn’t really have any close friends in Penticton, let alone relatives, to babysit while she tried to get hold of her husband. And the library surely was closed by now anyway, so who knows where he might be.
She thought of calling the police, but she figured it was too early for them to trigger a missing person alert. If Peter wasn’t back in the morning, she would definitely stop by the local precinct after dropping the kids at school. In the meantime, she’d keep calling his phone.
Hannah was involved in this line of thinking, her anxiety raising steadily, when she heard a rumble at the house door. She bolted from the sofa and ran across the room.
It was Peter. He walked gingerly, clearly in pain, and his head was bandaged and badly bruised.
“Oh, dear God! What happened to you? I’ve been worried all day and I can see I was right to be.”
“Sorry, honey. I know I look a number, but it’s really nothing.”
“Here, lie on the sofa and I’ll bring you something to drink.”
“I don’t want anything, thank you, Hannah. I’m okay. Just bruised.”
“Did you have an accident?”
“No. I was mugged.”
“Mugged? How? Where?”
“I was having a very productive day. Wrote for hours and when I left the library late in the evening, right before closing, I was still thinking about characters and plot points. The parking lot was dark and I wasn’t as aware of my surroundings as I should have been. Before I knew it, three thugs surrounded me. They didn’t say anything. Just started hitting and I fell. They took all the money I had, which wasn’t much, but they let me keep my ID and credit cards. How generous of them.”
“Dear Lord. What did you do then?”
“Thankfully, I was able to drive myself to the hospital. They treated me in the emergency room. That’s why I’m so late.”
“You should have called me. Hell, you should have picked up your phone! Why didn’t you get back to me? I would have joined you at the hospital.”
Peter knew that was exactly what he would have done if the story he was telling were true. He was prepared for the interrogation, however — had time to think.
“The thugs took my mobile phone and when I arrived at the hospital, I was immediately taken in for treatment.”
“I see.”
“I also didn’t want to alarm you over the phone. What would you do with the kids anyway? Bring them to the hospital so they could catch God knows what superbug? Nah, I’ve been okay. They took good care of me.”
“And showing up like this is not alarming?”
“At least I’m giving you the news face to face, Hannah. Let’s talk about something else. I have a big headache.”
“We have to call the police.”
“No!”
“Why not? They need to catch those assholes before they hit someone else.”
“They were young, petty thieves. The police are not going to have time for them with the kind of crime statistics they deal with every day here.”
“That doesn’t matter, Peter. Even if they don’t arrest anyone, just on principle alone…”
“Hannah, let’s just drop it. I want to forget the whole thing and leave Canada as soon as we can.”
“I don’t know when that will be, Peter. I’ll be back to work soon.”
“That I know, believe me. Hannah, please, tell me what you are up to. This is driving me nuts.”
“You’ve never been this torn about my job.”
“You’ve never been gone for months at a time with no end in sight! Is it really so hard to understand that I want some kind of answer? It would make me feel better if I knew what you were working on. I could understand the scale of the project and adjust my expectations, wrong as they might turn out to be. Anything is better than this silence. Better than to see you disappear through that door once again.”
Peter was actually welling up. That softened Hannah’s heart, but she was also surprised and the vehemence of his emotion. He was not a sensitive guy.
“Honey, all I can tell you is that the project deals with information that will for sure change human history. Information that’s hard to uncover, but that will transform the world as we know it in record time — for the better.”
“I hope you are right, Hannah. Our marriage hangs on this.”
She got up to prepare dinner, torn between conflicting emotions: her relief to finally have her husband home, concern about what happened to him, understanding for his insistence, while simultaneously resenting it. She also didn’t appreciate Peter’s veiled threat of marital rupture. Would she be this unsupportive if the situation was reversed? She wondered whether there was something else going on that made Peter this frantic. Something he wasn’t telling her.
Kyle walked down an underground corridor in that familiar-yet-unappreciated fluorescent lighting he so vividly remembered from months of training. He had landed ten minutes before at what looked like the same location he had visited the first time around, and was on his way to rejoin Project Attica. He looked forward to meeting the scientists who had been classifying the video and physical evidence since their return to Earth two weeks prior. And, of course, it was going to be delightful to see Hannah again.
His escorts took him to a door with a window that provided a partial view of a conference room with four familiar people sitting around a small table. He took off his jacket, all of a sudden feeling hot, and opened the door.
“Kyle! So great to see you,” Hannah said, getting up from her chair to come and awkwardly greet him with one of those handshake and hug hybrid moves.
“Awesome to see you too,” he said nervously.
“Welcome back, Kyle. I know everyone in this room is relieved to have you join our efforts,” Sonia welcomed him.
“I certainly am. We have made great progress in identifying the visitors’ alphanumeric characters and classifying the video evidence for analysis, but we need your special brand of magic,” Laura said.
“How about my own brand of magic, Laura? I’m hurt!” Anderson mocked as he shook Kyle’s hand.
“Thank you, all. It’s great to be back. Frankly, I wish I could have come sooner. Apparently, one can get tired of watching Star Trek reruns. Who knew?”
“We convened this meeting to debrief you all on your arrival and we couldn’t get started without you. You haven’t missed a thing, so please take a seat and we’ll begin. Laura, do the honors,” Sonia, said as her Chief Scientist brought a PowerPoint deck onto a very large LCD screen. The first slide showed a photo of the dead crewman on the alien ship.
“DNA testing has confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt that the cadaver belongs to a human being. That’s not the most counterintuitive finding — it was clear from the moment we saw him. What’s most interesting are the results of the chemical analysis: he dates to around two hundred thousand years ago,” Laura said, flipping to a new slide.
Without missing a beat, Hannah claimed the discovery. “I was right! These people are us!”
Kyle remembered the time on the Theseus when she advanced her hypothesis to the entire team and Mission Control.
“Your ancestor theory makes some sense, Hannah,” Laura conceded, “but the current understanding of human evolution is that the homo sapiens appeared around one-hundred and ninety-five-thousand years ago. I have a hard time admitting that our ancestors lived in caves and, somehow, simultaneously discovered interstellar travel. And we still can’t explain why a civilization this advanced would leave zero remnants for archaeology to find. So, we shouldn’t completely discount the possibility that these people are in fact alien.”
“Well, not exactly ‘zero remnants,’ right? There is us. Today’s humans. We can be considered heirs to their civilization,” Kyle interjected.
Laura then launched into a more detailed description of the latest working hypotheses and remaining questions. “Putting aside for a moment the theory that these beings come from a different planet, the probability of two identical yet somehow unrelated species developing sequentially on the same planet is infinitesimal. So yes, maybe they are our parents, but we haven’t found any references to planet Earth in the videos we recorded — and we don’t know how to read the texts very well yet. Obviously, there is much material still to be gathered from their ship. Nevertheless, if we were to find no Earth references, that would be very odd for people traveling across galaxies for years. To never mention their home planet? Let’s keep entertaining the possibility that this is an alien crew that just happened to be biologically identical to us, but who lived long before us. Maybe their culture colonized our planet and we are descendants of ancient aliens, but that’s also unproven as of yet.” She showed more slides in sequence. “What were they searching for out there among the stars, to begin with? Why come to our Solar System? Why use our Moon as a base? If they visited or even colonized Earth at some point, why is there no evidence of that? Where was home for these humans if they used the Moon just as an outpost for their explorations?”
“Yeah, and what was up with the aquatic jail, huh?” Anderson asked.
“That scene just confirms that they are human like us. No culture of ours has ever been devoid of cruelty,” Laura continued.
“This is getting more and more interesting by the second. I can’t wait to get my hands on those texts!” Kyle said.
“And the videos!” Hannah joined in his excitement.
“We do think that these people had been traveling through space for most of their adult lives. And died in space,” Laura said, flipping through slides. “Many unknowns remain: What were the propulsion and life-support systems that made such extended travel possible? Was lifetime travel necessary due to technical limitations? Was it a matter of their choice, or was it imposed on them by some external problem? What is the ship made of? Most troubling of all, what was that bot swarm that attacked our recon team?”
“Has anyone posed the idea of the swarm as an infiltrator? It could have been their enemy — one that broke into their Moon base,” Kyle observed.
“That’s an intriguing thought. It could explain why the base is empty after a hypothetical killing spree, but it raises more questions than it answers. Where did the swarm come from in that case? And is it likely that it remained active and functioning for two thousand centuries up until the moment it attacked us?” Laura replied.
“It could have been a weapon developed by an enemy faction within their own society. Nothing alien. These people may have simply been at war with each other,” Kyle continued.
“Intriguing,” she conceded.
“And isn’t it great that we set it free roaming around the Moon, waiting for our second mission to arrive?” Anderson plaintively joked.
“We need a shorthand name for these people. We keep referring to them as, well, ‘them’ whenever we don’t call them ‘aliens,’ which I don’t think they are,” Hannah suggested.
“We do have a working name. The team has been calling them ‘visitors’,” Laura responded.
“Okay then, do you or Kyle have any other questions about these visitors?” Sonia asked, sounding impatient all of a sudden.
“Do we ever! But, I want to start translating right away rather than sit around a conference room with you all day. You don’t seem to know much anyway. No offense,” Kyle said.
Sonia narrowed her eyes and shot back a mock-hurt grin.
“Amen to that!” Hannah agreed, getting up and practically running to the door with Kyle following.
“Aren’t you exhausted from your trip?” Sonia called after them.
But they were gone, and Laura rushed to catch up and show them the way to the lab.
//
General Wang thought he was in love as he buried his face in Zhi Ruo’s scarf, a memento of their evening together. He blissfully inhaled her hypnotic perfume, walking out of her house. His security detail opened the door of the official car — the latest Cadillac model, jet-black — and Wang got in, burdened by the thought of having to return to matters related to Project Attica.
“Back to headquarters,” he ordered, still in a kind of dreamy state. Massage-drunk, they call it.
As they drove through the streets of Shanghai, he recalled Zhi Ruo’s smile, her delicate figure, and the way she playfully tussled his hair and tickled his ribs. She was such a delight — and the strongest possible contrast against Wang’s own wife, with her overbearing personality and brusque manners.
Was he in love, then? He had to be. This is what love must feel like, he thought. It had been so long since the last time he felt this way that he couldn’t even be sure. That’s how pathetic his personal life had become.
He still had a few minutes before again getting consumed by work. He always found the night city lights to be exhilarating and was comforted by the bustling urban life of Shanghai. As they traveled the populated streets, it began to snow. This was very unusual for the region in that time of year, but Wang enjoyed the parsimonious beauty it brought.
The General was immersed in these thoughts when he heard a loud beep coming from somewhere inside the car.
This was puzzling.
Not a second later, everything around him became subsumed in an impossibly incandescent white light. He heard a loud bang and felt his body pushed up against the ceiling of his car…and then beyond.
All of this took place in the blink of an eye, but that’s how Wang himself would describe the event — his own death — if he had the time. Or the opportunity.
//
While Kyle recovered at home, Laura’s team had been busy gathering and categorizing a visitor alphabet of thirty letters and sixty numbers. Based on human physiology and speech patterns, the linguists established correlations between phonemes and letters, assigning to each its own speech frequency rate. They also came up with preliminary guesses as to the value of each numeral.
The visitors themselves had been key to the translation of their tongue because, much like people can learn the rudiments of a language by watching foreign movies or reading comic books, the scientists were able to identify the meaning of certain words by observing the actions performed by the crew, as well as the objects they interacted with when they spoke to each other in the videos.
Once that partial semantic basis had been set, Laura’s team proceeded to transcribe every mission-recorded conversation, text file, and inscription using the new alphabet. In this way, Kyle and Hannah were able to study the evidence with ease and embark on a more thorough translation.
Their first order of business was to vet the work of Laura’s team. To their delight, they only found a few differences of opinion that were all solved fairly quickly.
Early during the process, and guided by the fact that the visitors’ tongue really did sound similar to the languages spoken in the Middle East, an idea occurred to Kyle. He requested the help of a translator with high enough clearance to be able to work on Project Attica.
Sonia found a professional Army intelligence translator who knew Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and English. With his help, and to their amazement, they found out that quite a few of the visitor’s words had similar roots to contemporary Middle Eastern languages. The implication, of course, was that Hannah’s ancestor theory was confirmed. Much of history, anthropology, sociology, and linguistics would have to be rewritten.
Together with Anderson, they worked fourteen-hour days straight for almost three months. During that time, they learned that the visitor ship had been built on the Moon’s base. Kyle was not able to reach any sort of understanding as to the processes or technologies involved. However, the crew had used a term analogous to “light compression” that he thought was indicative of the ship’s material. There was no other evidence to go with and nobody thought it possible to turn photons into solid matter so, for now, they assumed it was some sort of analogical term.
The team believed that the vectors traced over the three-dimensional navigation interface displayed one of the routes taken by the visitor’s ship. Based on that assumption, and improbable as it seemed, Hannah determined that the visitors traveled from our Moon to Epsilon Eridani, continuing on to the Cetus Dwarf, and arriving at the Virgo Supercluster, in just a few months — a trip that would take sixty-five million years to make at the speed of light. This timeline by no means represented the entirety of the ship’s travels — it had been out in space for the duration of the crew’s lives and, more importantly, for millennia thereafter.
However, the route they were able to film could have included stops along the way. They knew from video evidence that the crew sent shuttles to nearby planets. Maybe even moons and asteroids. So, who knows how fast their vessel could travel if there were no interruptions along the way.
Kyle deduced that it had been launched to scour the universe looking for life, yet never found it — much less an extraterrestrial intelligence or a civilization of any kind. That was greatly deflating. However, the team knew that there were many more files onboard and they were hopeful that future expeditions might uncover evidence to the contrary.
At some point during the visitors’ travels, the crew seemed to have received disturbing news. They appeared on several videos consoling each other, holding meetings, and frantically operating the control room interface. This continued for some time before the occupants returned to a sort of resigned baseline normalcy. Kyle was not able to identify the reason for this behavior, but it couldn’t have been anything related to their own ship which otherwise appeared to be unaffected — there weren’t any records of extensive repairs.
An idea occurred to Hannah one night as she was trying to go to sleep. Yet another plausible hypothesis. She jumped from bed still in her pajamas to knock on Kyle’s door.
After a minute, he opened, wearing boxers and a t-shirt and rubbing his sleepy eyes. He let her enter the room. “What is it, Hannah? It’s three in the morning,” he said, putting on a pair of pants and trying in vain to straighten his unruly hair.
“What if the crew’s emergency had to do with events back on Earth?” she said. “Could they have found out that their civilization was about to end while they were in space? That would explain why they were doomed to travel for years without returning — until they died off one by one.”
“Why do you think the ship came back during our own time then — hundreds of thousands of years later?”
“They could have programmed it to continue the search on its own. The ship’s propulsion, whatever that may be, is certainly fast enough to allow it to cover most if not all the known universe in two hundred thousand years. Maybe it came back after his search was done, either with proof of extraterrestrial life or, sadly, empty-handed.”
“It’s so frustrating that we keep answering questions that lead to yet more and bigger questions? I’d like to be certain of something for a change.”
“Imagine what we can still find in the archives! It’s very exciting.” Hannah was practically shaking with enthusiasm.
“There’s another possibility. A disturbing one. Imagine that the ship returned because it was called back, as it were, by some contemporary — to us — event here at home.”
Hannah stopped to think for a second. “Um, how would it know what’s going on here on Earth when none of the original humans are still around to send any kind of signal?”
“The signal might have been triggered automatically as well. The visitors could have engineered a system that would be set off once certain conditions on our planet were met. Whether meteorological, geological, political or demographic.”
“If you are right, what would be the implications of that?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We are far from knowing the exact reason why the ship is here.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go to sleep again. I simply have to go back for more.”
“I’ll wait for you here next time. I’d rather just study your data. Enough Flash Gordon adventures for me, thank you very much.”
“You have to come. I would miss you too much otherwise. These last few months have been the best of my life — in no small part because of you.”
Kyle didn’t know how to respond. He stayed quiet and very still with his head lowered for what seemed like a very long time. He finally stirred himself up to give her a terse “thank you.”
The soft light in his bedroom, the late hour, and their professional complicity all conspired to create an atmosphere of unreality and irresponsibility.
They were sitting on the edge of Kyle’s bed facing each other. Hannah placed her right hand over his and left it there. He felt paralyzed.
She moved closer to him — their warm breath tingling their faces — and let her forehead delicately rest on his. They stayed that way for many tension-filled seconds. Hannah noticed her self-control slipping away beyond the point of no return.
Kyle turned his head a bit and Hannah’s cheek landed squarely on his, their mouths tentatively seeking each other. When their lips finally touched, Kyle pulled away.
Hannah was surprised and confused. Hurt.
“We shouldn’t…” Kyle muttered.
She looked vacantly at the wall for a while.
“Hannah, I’m sorry, but you know this is not right.”
“Yes, I know. But at the same time, I don’t know. Why is it not right, Kyle?”
“It’s not only because of the fact that you are married, Hannah. I might not be saintly enough to be deterred by that in a moment like this.”
“What is it then?”
“There is someone else, Hannah.”
She carefully considered what to say about that, figuring out how to deal with her hurt feelings and get herself together.
“Do you mean that woman you mentioned aboard the Theseus? The one you liked so much?”
“That woman was you, Hannah. I was sharing my feelings in a veiled way. But no. It’s another person.”
“OK, shoot then!”
“Her name was Samantha and she died two years ago. Cancer.”
That was something else entirely. Kyle’s relationship with Samantha must have been very serious and Hannah regretted that her dear friend had to suffer such a bitter loss. But, on the other hand, she felt glad that Kyle was unattached, and she wasn’t proud of that feeling.
“I’m so sorry, Kyle. Were you married?”
“Five years.”
A long pause ensued. Hannah understood the depth of Kyle’s loneliness and didn’t want to ask him any more questions. He was getting increasingly melancholy.
“Please, forgive me.” Hanna stretched her hand and tenderly tousled Kyle’s hair before getting up to leave the room. At that moment, he said, “Hannah, I’m sorry that I can’t.”
After she had left, he sat very still, looking at that door for a very long time.
//
After three months of continued study, Sonia had convened a videoconference with Leadership and was in the middle of her debrief. “We can’t discount the possibility that the swarm didn’t belong in the visitor’s Moon base in the first place.”
“What do you mean by that?” The Russian delegate asked.
“Some of us think that the swarm wasn’t manufactured by the visitors. For one thing, its morphology and dynamics are very different from the floating robots we encountered on the ship — and really from anything else we have seen produced by their culture. For another, it could be that the bad news received by the ship’s crew had to do with the swarm in some way. It could have killed everyone at the Moon base.”
“If that were the case, why didn’t our away team encounter any human remains?” the U.S. representative asked.
“The swarm kills by essentially blending a body into a finely grained pulp. After hundreds of thousands of years, this organic matter may have simply disintegrated. The fact is, we don’t know that that’s what happened for sure,” Sonia admitted.
“This is pure speculation. Do you have anything to back it up?” The Russian delegate replied. “If the visitors didn’t build the swarm, where did it come from? Why couldn’t the Moon crew eliminate the threat? After all, their technology is vastly superior to ours and we were able to slow down the swarm during its attack. Was there an invasion of swarms that proved impossible to eliminate even for the visitors? And if there were more than one, why didn’t we find the rest still at the base along with their lone ‘comrade’?”
“We simply don’t know enough, but we’d look to eliminate most of these hypotheses during the next mission,” Sonia said.
The interrogation didn’t let up, however. “Why would the visitors decide that they couldn’t come back from outer space even after their Moon base had been decimated? Wouldn’t they feel compelled to exact retribution? Why wouldn’t they attempt to protect Earth from a potential swarm invasion,” said the Chinese counterpart — a new face on the screen who was introduced as General Ang. Earlier during the call, they had communicated to Sonia that General Wang had been recently assassinated and an investigation was ongoing. She extended her regrets, wished much success to the investigation, and knew enough not to ask any follow-up questions.
The fact was, she already knew about Wang’s death. She had received an anonymous note the previous day threatening her with a similar fate if she didn’t follow instructions that had yet to arrive. Clearly, someone was targeting Project Attica’s senior leadership. She still didn’t know what to do about it and was scared.
“The team has discussed the possibility that an attack on Earth was indeed the event that destroyed all remnants of the visitors’ ancient civilization — besides having attacked the Moon base.”
“That seems unlikely. A swarm invasion would have needed to utterly disintegrate every person, building, vehicle, and tool on the face of the planet. Otherwise, we would have found something decades if not centuries ago. Quite a tall order, even for such formidable weapons. And why didn’t they equally disintegrate the entire Moon base while attacking it? The place was completely pristine when we got there,” Ang continued.
“We don’t know that for a fact. Maybe a portion of the base was indeed destroyed, and the swarm interrupted their attack for some reason. Or they could have spared the base for their own purposes. You are ultimately right, though: we don’t know what happened up there.”
“Be that as it may, what is your working hypothesis?”
“The one that’s gaining the most adherents is that, indeed, the swarm was an old enemy. Some of us hold the view that the visitor ships’ mission was meant to find the home planet of the civilization responsible for the swarm or, in case they are a synthetic life form, the swarm’s own society. This sounds farfetched, but it’s really not any more bizarre than what we all have witnessed to date. That’s why we recommend maintaining Project Attica’s secrecy classification. There’s no point in alarming the population with unconfirmed scenarios. There could still be other, less dramatic explanations that we have yet to discover. We should allow more time for our ethics and communications professionals to ponder how and when to disclose the information given the global implications of something like this.”
“It may be too late for that, Sonia. There are plenty of rumors circulating in the press at this point,” said the U.S. Leadership delegate.
She wondered whether the rest of Leadership had also received threats. “That’s true, but we have been successful at countering the claims. Most people believe they are just conspiracy theories.”
“I wonder if that ancient enemy is still out there. If it might come back,” Ang wondered.
“Precisely. More of a reason to keep things quiet for now,” Sonia answered.
“Anyone in favor of lifting Project Attica’s secrecy classification, raise your hand” The U.S. representative asked the rest of the delegates.
Nobody did.
“Very well then, let’s keep this bottled up until the next mission returns,” he announced. “Hopefully with better answers.”
//
“What? You damn politicians!” Hannah screamed. “This is exactly the reason why you are turning everything to crap, worldwide. There is absolutely no valid argument for why we should keep the knowledge of the visitors from the public. And on a personal note, this secrecy is already costing me my marriage and my sanity.”
“Calm down, Hannah. I don’t have to remind you what your national security obligations entail,” Sonia replied. “Besides, we are very aware that perpetual secrecy is not only undesirable, but unachievable. The embargo will lift once the next mission returns.”
“When do we leave?”
“You mean when do you all go back home or when does the next mission depart?”
“The next mission, of course!” Hannah replied, clearly angry.
“Let’s talk about that later.”
“No, I want to talk about it right now.”
Sonia took a deep breath.
“As you wish. I’m afraid you won’t be part of the new mission, Hannah. You are too valuable to risk another encounter with the swarm. You are needed for the analysis, not so much for the collection phase of the project. We will ask you to continue the research when new material arrives.”
At that point, Kyle knew that Hannah was about to blow up.
“Absolutely unacceptable! My experience and knowledge of the visitors will be invaluable up there. How will the new team know where to look, what to bring back?”
“You left the tracers behind. They will simply use them to follow your steps back to the control rooms. Plus, since the entrances to the ship and the base remain open, the new team will have more time to fully explore them and, hopefully, retrieve even more information. I wish you could go and face no risk, but that’s impossible.”
“I see you guys have it all figured out, as usual,” Hannah said, seemingly beginning to resign herself. She couldn’t be in control — the project was so much bigger than her.
Kyle got up and placed a consoling arm around her shoulders. Initially, she pushed it away, still angry and hurt. After a minute, she calmed down some and they both left the conference room.
Sonia called behind them. “You two are free to go home for now. We’ll let you know when you are needed again.”
//
A few days later Hannah called Kyle out of the blue, interrupting one of his graduate seminars. He decided to answer the phone when he saw who the caller was. “I have something to tell you.”
“Can this wait? I’m in the middle of a class,” he said, walking out of the classroom to get some privacy.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know who to turn to. I just found out that my family has been threatened, Kyle!” Hannah broke down in tears.
“Wait a second, what do you mean “threatened”?
“Our house, our phones, our cars are all bugged and we’ve been followed for months. This is serious, Kyle. And we don’t know who’s behind it.”
“How did you find out?”
“Peter told me. A couple of hours ago while we were having sex.”
Too much information, Kyle thought.
“He whispered it all in my ear,” she continued. “He said they were probably watching but they would assume that he was telling me sweet-nothings.”
The mental image of Peter having sex with Hannah didn’t appeal to Kyle, so he pushed it aside.
“We should not be talking on the phone if that’s the case, Hannah.”
“Don’t worry. I’m calling you from a burner.”
“A what?”
“A pay-as-you-go phone I just bought. I’ll get rid of it after this call.”
“This all sounds like a bad spy movie. Do you know what these people are after?” Kyle asked.
“They want to find out about our work on Project Attica. Peter showed up recently all bruised and lied to me about being mugged by petty thieves when, in fact, it was these people who beat him. He immediately started asking me questions about my work again. I told him nothing, so he broke out in sobs. I had never seen him do that before! I figured that something was wrong, but I couldn’t imagine that he had been blackmailed.”
“Looks like you are in quite the bind. On the one hand, you’ve been itching to publicize our findings. Telling Peter would be a way to enlarge the circle of people who know. If Leadership doesn’t discover that you are the leaker — and how could they — then you also get these blackmailers off your back in one fell swoop. However, that means that you’d be giving critical, world-changing intelligence to who knows who. And yet, if you don’t tell Peter, you’ll be worried about what could happen to your family for a long time to come.”
“Can you go to the police?”
“I don’t even know that I could trust the police. This has the signature of bad state actors all over it, whether domestic or foreign.”
“Right.”
They fell in silence for a while.
“My only recourse is to go very public with it all. I’m sure that the blackmailers want to retain the project information for their own benefit — not to make it publicly available. I can eliminate their leverage against me by removing any advantage they might obtain from the secrecy.”
“That could work to get these guys off your family’s back, but the government will deny everything anyway, and we’ve seen what happens to whistle-blowers,” Kyle warned.
“I’m past the point of caring. I’m over the Project Attica people. They treat us like tools that can be discarded whenever it suits them.”
“That’s not entirely true, Hannah. We’ve been privileged to experience something unprecedented in human history and we continue to be an integral part of that team. This will be the legacy of our careers. Think it through, Hannah.”
“What is more important, my academic legacy or saving my family while letting the public know something they deserve to know anyway?”
“Your family must come first. I don’t blame you for that. Maybe…”
“What are you thinking, Kyle? Maybe what
“Maybe you’re right. But if you go public, pick a date and do it as soon as possible. Also…”
Also what?”” Did you say your phones are bugged?”
“You bet.”
“Great. Remember when you called me during our holidays? We talked about Laura’s work and how we enjoyed sipping liquid bubbles in zero gravity. If your phone was tapped, those are pretty solid cues into the nature of what we have been doing.”
“Oh my God! I may have inadvertently put everyone else in danger.”
Five in the morning, Sunday.
Ph.D. candidate Nestor Manzanero yawned broadly, stretching his arms and trying to shake off his sleepiness. He needed to be alert for two more interminable hours before his shift would be over. The silence in the building was oppressive. Most of his colleagues were home, snug in their beds or, in the case of military personnel, in their barracks next door. He had to stay awake for two more hours. Then, he could get some Zs.
Nestor had fallen asleep on the job once before and vowed to never do it again. Doctor Henry almost fired him, and he needed the job badly, what with his wife expecting their first child. It was a good job, with great pay. A little mystifying for sure. Half the time he wasn’t clear what the hell was going on and, since he was on a need-to-know basis, pretty soon it became evident that his employers thought he didn’t really need to know much.
But he thought he knew enough. There was something up there in space, something intelligent and possibly dangerous. He signed non-disclosure agreements out the wazoo, but that didn’t mean he was stupid.
His job was to monitor the orbiting craft known as Theseus. It had been empty and abandoned for several months. He and his teammates were supposed to keep an eye on the vessel in four-hour shifts around the clock without breaks — and nothing unusual had ever happened.
It was easy to discount the importance of what they were doing, to take your eyes off the screens. After all, what could possibly mess with the Theseus while in orbit? It was a brand-new ship in sleep mode, drifting around the globe. Nobody expected anything to go wrong, so they thought there was no harm in checking their phones or even taking a short nap every now and then. However, the previous week he had been caught and he feared that his supervisors were now on his case. So, it was no rest for the weary Nestor.
His train of thought was interrupted when he noticed something odd. Theseus had activated its alarm, represented by a flashing exclamation point icon on the main screen. His scientific curiosity kicked into high-gear and so did his training. He validated the orbit and realized that the vessel had entered into a decaying vector. A quick calculation told him that it would burn in atmospheric re-entry in exactly one hour and fifty-seven minutes.
That was disturbing, but he knew he could fix the issue by simply engaging the right thrusters — gravity hadn’t taken an unavoidable hold of the Theseus just yet.
Nestor remotely engaged the craft’s thrusters to return it to a stable orbit — without response. Something was very wrong. He was about to perform more checks when, out of the corner of his right eye, he saw a shadow coming in and out of frame.
He turned his full attention to that monitor. It showed the feeds from all different CCTV cameras on board.
After a second, Nestor’s eyes widened, and he gasped. It took him a few beats to shake off the shock long enough to pick up the phone and dial.
//
The morning was chilly and crisp — winter still remained — but not for long. Hannah could feel a tinge of the upcoming spring subtly threaded in the air.
Her flight to New York had been uneventful. Even enjoyable, given what she was about to do.
She stopped near Union Square to have coffee. She sat in a corner of the shop nursing her cup and staring absentmindedly at her phone, fully aware of being watched.
They still didn’t live the rural life that Peter would have wanted, but their marriage had survived nonetheless. The ongoing blackmail episode had brought them closer together into a strong, common front against the threat to their family. The ambition for a successful academic career of historic proportions was about to vanish for Hannah anyway so, all the two of them had left was each other and their children. That was liberating.
She took out her phone to make a call. One that could never be “unmade.”
Leaking the nature and contents of Project Attica was the right thing to do. She felt sure of that. Governments weren’t entitled to hide things like these from the societies they were supposed to serve.
People needed to know.
She dialed The New York Times desk.
“Hello, my name is Doctor Hannah Coleman,” she said. “I’m an astrophysicist and exobiologist and I need to speak with your managing editor.”
Hannah listened for a few seconds.
“Trust me, this is a call he’s going to want to take,” she said, and then she was briefly put on hold.
//
“How did this happen!” Sonia wondered very loudly. “How did a swarm get inside the Theseus?” She was looking at the live camera feed in disbelief.
They had been trying to rectify Theseus’ trajectory without success. All anyone could do was watch as the swarm rabidly destroyed the onboard instrumentation and tried to puncture the hull panels. The craft was rapidly losing structural integrity.
“The thing must have jumped onto the lunar module just before our team left the surface,” Laura guessed.
“And nobody detected it? How could that be? It’s like seven feet tall, for crying out loud!”
“Maybe only a few of its robotic units made it in. We think them capable of self-replication. They could have formed a new swarm over time.”
“All we have is crazy theories and wild guesses. I’m sick of not knowing what the hell we are dealing with here.”
“I understand, Sonia, but we need to call Leadership right now and hope that the swarm doesn’t survive the heat of re-entry.” And Laura, along with everyone else in the room, noticed that Theseus’ cameras suddenly switched off and no new data was coming through the feed.
Sonia’s entire team went silent, glued to the blank computer screens portending disaster. Very soon, they’d be witness to the end of an era.
THE END
Copyright © José Antonio Martínez Salmerón. All rights reserved.