First Contact – IV
Connor sat quietly in the corner, while those with a more scientific bent, i.e. nearly everyone else, examined their consoles.
So what did they know? Well first, Hades was round, very round, unnaturally round. It was a grey colour, pure grey as it reflected and absorbed every wavelength pretty much equally.
“Nothing,” Vanessa said staring at her console. “There is no detail whatsoever. No differences at all on the surface, every wavelength, every part the same, apart from some radio waves.”
It was officially his sleep cycle, but Connor knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. “What about the IR bursts?”
“None at the moment, they tend to come and go in cycles.”
“Connor and Shen, will you two go and sleep.” Alan ordered. “Carmen and Iku, you as well. I know everyone is desperate to get going, but it has taken us months to get here. We need to make sure that we’re all wide-awake and some of us have been awake for nearly twenty-four hours. Everyone get some sleep and then we’ll get going properly. Nothing is going to happen for another good few hours apart from more analysis.”
Connor did not expect to get some sleep, but he must have, as his alarm woke him. He raced to throw some clothes on and then dashed onto the bridge. Shen arrived a couple of minutes later.
“Right we’re all here,” Alan said as Shen rushed in. “All analysis reveals it to be a perfect sphere. Whatever that thing is, as we suspected, it is not natural. As most of you already know, there is only one anomaly on its surface, a small square object that could be a building and we were lucky to detect that. When we land, that is where it will be. It also allowed us to work out where the poles are and therefore we can ensure that we are landing at the same speed as the surface, and for those of you interested, Hades has a thirtyish hour day.”
Connor was thinking, what he was sure everyone else was thinking, stating the obvious there, Alan. A perfect sphere, not natural – proof of aliens, though nobody was saying it!
“We are too far from Earth to get any meaningful advice, so we are on our own. The lander has enough fuel to get down and back several times, the gravity is what we estimated, and what we would expect for such a small object. Now I need four volunteers for the first expedition,” Alan continued.
Everyone raised their hands.
“Well we can’t all go, so solutions?” Alan asked.
“Draw lots,” Lian suggested.
“Right,” Alan said. He paused. “But there are going to have to be a few rules. There will be only one person from any one of the national groupings. So if I go, Vanessa won’t and vice-versa. Also, we need someone with medical experience and a qualified pilot. Everyone agreed?”
There were nods all round.
“Anyone want to pull out?”
There was silence.
The low-tech solution was everyone wrote their name on a piece of paper. Carmen would then pull the paper out of the chosen helmet, while keeping her eyes shut.
Carmen unfolded the first piece of paper. “Pavel,” she said holding up the paper. Kateryna looked genuinely disappointed. Connor was not sure if any of the others had only volunteered so as not to lose face. Well that filled the pilot criteria. Connor wasn’t sure if he wanted to go, but he could hardly be the only person to say no. And everyone would eventually get a shot, so best get his over and done with. Carmen put in her hand and pulled out a second piece of paper.
It was an unusual way of selecting those destined to possibly to form the first group of humans to contact aliens, Connor thought. No thought as to those best suited to the task. But then, nobody had met any aliens before, so how could you decide what criteria to use.
And he had to make the discovery of a lifetime.
“Vanessa,” Carmen said. She was a medic, that meant that the field was now open for the remaining six. Carmen put her hand in the helmet and pulled out another piece of paper.
“Alan,” Carmen said.
Connor tried not to catch Alan’s eye because he looked annoyed. Connor was quite pleased that Alan had not got to go because of his own rule.
“Iku,” Carmen said, holding up the fourth name.
So that was Europe and China still in the running. A one in four chance he would be going. Did he want to go?
Carmen shifted the remaining pieces of paper around the helmet and pulled one out. “Connor,” she announced with some disappointment. Alan seemed to glare at him, whereas Vanessa just smiled. Ha ha – he was going in Alan’s place. ‘I’ll meet the aliens before you do,’ he sang in his head.
Connor wasn’t sure whether to be glad or worried. Too late, he couldn’t pull out now so he smiled.
“Right, well,” Alan said. “We should get everyone suited up. I’ll double check the shuttle.”
Alan had spent the last five days going over everything in the shuttle, checking and double checking. Connor had considered him a bit anal about it, but now he was quite glad.
The chosen four walked along the ship towards the small hanger-bay. Connor felt something in his pocket, it was his harmonica. He nearly left it, but on an impulse he decided to take it. Perhaps he’d be the first person ever to play a musical instrument on an alien whatever-was-down-there. Connor climbed into his suit and then helped Vanessa with hers while Pavel and Iku struggled into theirs.
Then they climbed into the lander. Pavel sat in the pilot’s chair, while Iku climbed in beside him. Connor obviously wasn’t trusted enough to be a co-pilot.
The atmosphere in the bay was pumped out and then Alan opened the hanger-bay doors to space and then with a flick of a switch and the push of a button they were flying free.
The descent to the surface of Hades was event free. Pavel and Alan spoke continuously over the radio, and after five minutes Connor’s mind switched off and he began to day-dream. He was suddenly aware of Vanessa’s suit knocking against his.
“You OK?” she mouthed.
That was going to be a bugger. No private conversations. He gave a thumbs-up and then wondered if Puerto Rico was one of those Latin American regions where it was a rude sign. It was a rude sign in some places, wasn’t it?
“I’m fine,” he mouthed in reply.
“Good,” then she mouthed something that Connor couldn’t work out.
He tried to look confused. She just laughed and mouthed ‘You looking forward to this?’
‘A bit,’ he replied.
They spent the rest of the journey mouthing things to each other, which got more and more obscene as they got closer to the surface.
Twenty minutes after leaving the Gagarin, just as Connor was mouthing, ‘Do you want to have a fuck on Hades’, they touched down on the surface. That was a relief, they still weren’t sure that the surface was solid, it could have been some form of metallic liquid, or something exotic. Dark matter had been mentioned in some of the more bizarre suggestions.
“We still don’t know what the thing is made of,” Alan said over the radio. We just got word from Earth advising caution and that we should wait and carry out more scans. I told them it was a waste of time, as scans are showing nothing. Even the building was hard to spot, if it wasn’t for the radar using a wavelength that reflects better from the surface than most other wavelengths we wouldn’t have known about it. We missed it the first couple of times. We were lucky.”
“Perhaps not,” Connor replied.
There was silence until Alan asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, think about it. We only know about the building because the radar worked and it’s just a coincidence that the one wavelength that … Well I think we were supposed to find the building.”
There was silence while they digested this information.
“And,” Connor continued. “Perhaps you didn’t miss it on the first scans because it wasn’t there.”
It was Vanessa who broke the silence with, “Get that hundred dollars ready.”
“Do you have recordings?” Connor continued. “Because they may indicate if it is new or was here all the time.” He could see Vanessa smiling at him.
“I’ll check,” Alan said, “but we only noticed when we increased the resolution.”
Increased the resolution? What did that mean? It sounded like a cop-out.
“No atmosphere,” Pavel eventually said confirming what they already knew. Not that there would be much atmosphere, the temperatures in this part of the solar system were not much above 30K. Connor tried to remember what would be gaseous at that temperature. Hydrogen and helium were. Nitrogen wasn’t, oh that was at Earth pressures. Still anything that would be gaseous would probably escape into space.
They had landed exactly where they had wanted, a few hundred metres south of the building. Connor was not sitting in a seat that allowed him to see it, but one of the lateral cameras focused on it. It revealed a black rectangle, the edges of which were only visible when a star disappeared or reappeared from behind it. This far out into the solar system, there was hardly any light to reflect off it.
“Ready?” Pavel asked.
“Yes.”
“Sí.”
“Aye.”
Funny how the one person who didn’t speak English as their native language gave a reply in standard English.
“English only,” Pavel said. “Personally I would prefer it if we all spoke Russian, but they’re not my rules.”
“Looks like you Anglos are going to dominate the stars,” Vanessa replied.
“Who’s Anglo here?” Connor asked. “Celtic through and through.”
“You should all learn a proper language like Japanese,” Iku added.
“Depressurising now,” Pavel said flipping a switch.
Connor was aware of a hissing sound as the atmosphere was sucked out of the lander which gradually grew quieter, then the only noise was the near-silence of the radio.
“I’m going to open the door,” Pavel said. “We go in, we have a look around and then radio the Gagarin and ask for advice. Nobody touches anything.” Connor thought Pavel was staring at him as he said it.
“Aye aye captain.”
“Sí, mi capitán.”
Iku then said something in Japanese.
Pavel then replied in Russian and then added. “For those who don’t speak Russian, I was explaining once we are in that building then anyone taking the piss will be on a charge. This is serious. Everyone follow me.”
Pavel pressed a button on the hatch and then twisted the handle to manually open the door. The ladders extended automatically but under the low gravity he ignored them and jumped down onto the surface of Hades.
Iku, Vanessa and then Connor followed Pavel using Connor’s suggestion that the order they should travel in should be the order of names out the helmet. It wasn’t as if he was trying to get the glory by bringing up the rear. Plus he got to look at Vanessa’s arse, which was still rather shapely in her suit.
“No ice,” Vanessa said as Connor pulled the door shut and turned the handle. “Which means either the surface is relatively new or something removes any. Are you listening Alan?”
“Of course I am.”
“Nor are there signs of any cratering, not even micro craters. But we knew that.”
Connor wasn’t sure if Alan was ignoring the bet quips or hadn’t realised that’s what Vanessa really meant.
It did not take too long for them to reach the ‘building’ using the sort of leaping steps they developed as the most efficient way of walking.
“Which way?” Pavel asked as they reached the nearest wall, which revealed no details whatsoever. It was now visible as their eyes grew used to the light levels.
“This way?” Connor said pointing left.
“Why?”
“A decision needs to be made.”
Pavel shrugged his shoulders and they walked in a clockwise direction to reveal another featureless wall.
“This is still not giving out much radiation,” Iku commented. “I wonder why. I mean it is totally featureless.”
“To power it?” Vanessa replied.
“Of course, if most of the photons get absorbed then that’s quite a bit of energy. So what’s it powering?”
“I thought it was quite reflective?” Iku said. “When they discovered it, they said it was reflecting most light.”
“Either they got it wrong, or it was,” Connor said. “But it isn’t now. Someone on Earth should measure it again.”
Nobody commented on Connor’s comment.
They turned the second corner and only noticed the opening when they were nearly upon it.
“I suppose we go in,” Pavel said.
“Should anyone stay outside?” Iku suggested.
“Are you volunteering?” Connor asked.
“No, I was just thinking it would be better if someone stayed out here.”
“Well if someone does, then it should be someone who can pilot the lander,” Vanessa said.
“And the medic should go with the most people,” Connor added.
“We all go in,” Pavel replied. He obviously wasn’t wanting to be left out.
“We’ll need to leave a relay,” Iku said.
“Eh?”
“The walls absorb pretty much everything, once we’re in there, the only direction that radio-waves will travel out is not towards the lander.”
“Ah yes, I see, right put down a relay.”
They walked single-file into the room, which was just as featureless as the rest of the artefact.
As Conner entered, he could hear Pavel say, “Right everyone look …”
Then two seconds after Connor, the last to enter, walked into the room; the floor just disappeared.
So what did they know? Well first, Hades was round, very round, unnaturally round. It was a grey colour, pure grey as it reflected and absorbed every wavelength pretty much equally.
“Nothing,” Vanessa said staring at her console. “There is no detail whatsoever. No differences at all on the surface, every wavelength, every part the same, apart from some radio waves.”
It was officially his sleep cycle, but Connor knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. “What about the IR bursts?”
“None at the moment, they tend to come and go in cycles.”
“Connor and Shen, will you two go and sleep.” Alan ordered. “Carmen and Iku, you as well. I know everyone is desperate to get going, but it has taken us months to get here. We need to make sure that we’re all wide-awake and some of us have been awake for nearly twenty-four hours. Everyone get some sleep and then we’ll get going properly. Nothing is going to happen for another good few hours apart from more analysis.”
Connor did not expect to get some sleep, but he must have, as his alarm woke him. He raced to throw some clothes on and then dashed onto the bridge. Shen arrived a couple of minutes later.
“Right we’re all here,” Alan said as Shen rushed in. “All analysis reveals it to be a perfect sphere. Whatever that thing is, as we suspected, it is not natural. As most of you already know, there is only one anomaly on its surface, a small square object that could be a building and we were lucky to detect that. When we land, that is where it will be. It also allowed us to work out where the poles are and therefore we can ensure that we are landing at the same speed as the surface, and for those of you interested, Hades has a thirtyish hour day.”
Connor was thinking, what he was sure everyone else was thinking, stating the obvious there, Alan. A perfect sphere, not natural – proof of aliens, though nobody was saying it!
“We are too far from Earth to get any meaningful advice, so we are on our own. The lander has enough fuel to get down and back several times, the gravity is what we estimated, and what we would expect for such a small object. Now I need four volunteers for the first expedition,” Alan continued.
Everyone raised their hands.
“Well we can’t all go, so solutions?” Alan asked.
“Draw lots,” Lian suggested.
“Right,” Alan said. He paused. “But there are going to have to be a few rules. There will be only one person from any one of the national groupings. So if I go, Vanessa won’t and vice-versa. Also, we need someone with medical experience and a qualified pilot. Everyone agreed?”
There were nods all round.
“Anyone want to pull out?”
There was silence.
The low-tech solution was everyone wrote their name on a piece of paper. Carmen would then pull the paper out of the chosen helmet, while keeping her eyes shut.
Carmen unfolded the first piece of paper. “Pavel,” she said holding up the paper. Kateryna looked genuinely disappointed. Connor was not sure if any of the others had only volunteered so as not to lose face. Well that filled the pilot criteria. Connor wasn’t sure if he wanted to go, but he could hardly be the only person to say no. And everyone would eventually get a shot, so best get his over and done with. Carmen put in her hand and pulled out a second piece of paper.
It was an unusual way of selecting those destined to possibly to form the first group of humans to contact aliens, Connor thought. No thought as to those best suited to the task. But then, nobody had met any aliens before, so how could you decide what criteria to use.
And he had to make the discovery of a lifetime.
“Vanessa,” Carmen said. She was a medic, that meant that the field was now open for the remaining six. Carmen put her hand in the helmet and pulled out another piece of paper.
“Alan,” Carmen said.
Connor tried not to catch Alan’s eye because he looked annoyed. Connor was quite pleased that Alan had not got to go because of his own rule.
“Iku,” Carmen said, holding up the fourth name.
So that was Europe and China still in the running. A one in four chance he would be going. Did he want to go?
Carmen shifted the remaining pieces of paper around the helmet and pulled one out. “Connor,” she announced with some disappointment. Alan seemed to glare at him, whereas Vanessa just smiled. Ha ha – he was going in Alan’s place. ‘I’ll meet the aliens before you do,’ he sang in his head.
Connor wasn’t sure whether to be glad or worried. Too late, he couldn’t pull out now so he smiled.
“Right, well,” Alan said. “We should get everyone suited up. I’ll double check the shuttle.”
Alan had spent the last five days going over everything in the shuttle, checking and double checking. Connor had considered him a bit anal about it, but now he was quite glad.
The chosen four walked along the ship towards the small hanger-bay. Connor felt something in his pocket, it was his harmonica. He nearly left it, but on an impulse he decided to take it. Perhaps he’d be the first person ever to play a musical instrument on an alien whatever-was-down-there. Connor climbed into his suit and then helped Vanessa with hers while Pavel and Iku struggled into theirs.
Then they climbed into the lander. Pavel sat in the pilot’s chair, while Iku climbed in beside him. Connor obviously wasn’t trusted enough to be a co-pilot.
The atmosphere in the bay was pumped out and then Alan opened the hanger-bay doors to space and then with a flick of a switch and the push of a button they were flying free.
The descent to the surface of Hades was event free. Pavel and Alan spoke continuously over the radio, and after five minutes Connor’s mind switched off and he began to day-dream. He was suddenly aware of Vanessa’s suit knocking against his.
“You OK?” she mouthed.
That was going to be a bugger. No private conversations. He gave a thumbs-up and then wondered if Puerto Rico was one of those Latin American regions where it was a rude sign. It was a rude sign in some places, wasn’t it?
“I’m fine,” he mouthed in reply.
“Good,” then she mouthed something that Connor couldn’t work out.
He tried to look confused. She just laughed and mouthed ‘You looking forward to this?’
‘A bit,’ he replied.
They spent the rest of the journey mouthing things to each other, which got more and more obscene as they got closer to the surface.
Twenty minutes after leaving the Gagarin, just as Connor was mouthing, ‘Do you want to have a fuck on Hades’, they touched down on the surface. That was a relief, they still weren’t sure that the surface was solid, it could have been some form of metallic liquid, or something exotic. Dark matter had been mentioned in some of the more bizarre suggestions.
“We still don’t know what the thing is made of,” Alan said over the radio. We just got word from Earth advising caution and that we should wait and carry out more scans. I told them it was a waste of time, as scans are showing nothing. Even the building was hard to spot, if it wasn’t for the radar using a wavelength that reflects better from the surface than most other wavelengths we wouldn’t have known about it. We missed it the first couple of times. We were lucky.”
“Perhaps not,” Connor replied.
There was silence until Alan asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, think about it. We only know about the building because the radar worked and it’s just a coincidence that the one wavelength that … Well I think we were supposed to find the building.”
There was silence while they digested this information.
“And,” Connor continued. “Perhaps you didn’t miss it on the first scans because it wasn’t there.”
It was Vanessa who broke the silence with, “Get that hundred dollars ready.”
“Do you have recordings?” Connor continued. “Because they may indicate if it is new or was here all the time.” He could see Vanessa smiling at him.
“I’ll check,” Alan said, “but we only noticed when we increased the resolution.”
Increased the resolution? What did that mean? It sounded like a cop-out.
“No atmosphere,” Pavel eventually said confirming what they already knew. Not that there would be much atmosphere, the temperatures in this part of the solar system were not much above 30K. Connor tried to remember what would be gaseous at that temperature. Hydrogen and helium were. Nitrogen wasn’t, oh that was at Earth pressures. Still anything that would be gaseous would probably escape into space.
They had landed exactly where they had wanted, a few hundred metres south of the building. Connor was not sitting in a seat that allowed him to see it, but one of the lateral cameras focused on it. It revealed a black rectangle, the edges of which were only visible when a star disappeared or reappeared from behind it. This far out into the solar system, there was hardly any light to reflect off it.
“Ready?” Pavel asked.
“Yes.”
“Sí.”
“Aye.”
Funny how the one person who didn’t speak English as their native language gave a reply in standard English.
“English only,” Pavel said. “Personally I would prefer it if we all spoke Russian, but they’re not my rules.”
“Looks like you Anglos are going to dominate the stars,” Vanessa replied.
“Who’s Anglo here?” Connor asked. “Celtic through and through.”
“You should all learn a proper language like Japanese,” Iku added.
“Depressurising now,” Pavel said flipping a switch.
Connor was aware of a hissing sound as the atmosphere was sucked out of the lander which gradually grew quieter, then the only noise was the near-silence of the radio.
“I’m going to open the door,” Pavel said. “We go in, we have a look around and then radio the Gagarin and ask for advice. Nobody touches anything.” Connor thought Pavel was staring at him as he said it.
“Aye aye captain.”
“Sí, mi capitán.”
Iku then said something in Japanese.
Pavel then replied in Russian and then added. “For those who don’t speak Russian, I was explaining once we are in that building then anyone taking the piss will be on a charge. This is serious. Everyone follow me.”
Pavel pressed a button on the hatch and then twisted the handle to manually open the door. The ladders extended automatically but under the low gravity he ignored them and jumped down onto the surface of Hades.
Iku, Vanessa and then Connor followed Pavel using Connor’s suggestion that the order they should travel in should be the order of names out the helmet. It wasn’t as if he was trying to get the glory by bringing up the rear. Plus he got to look at Vanessa’s arse, which was still rather shapely in her suit.
“No ice,” Vanessa said as Connor pulled the door shut and turned the handle. “Which means either the surface is relatively new or something removes any. Are you listening Alan?”
“Of course I am.”
“Nor are there signs of any cratering, not even micro craters. But we knew that.”
Connor wasn’t sure if Alan was ignoring the bet quips or hadn’t realised that’s what Vanessa really meant.
It did not take too long for them to reach the ‘building’ using the sort of leaping steps they developed as the most efficient way of walking.
“Which way?” Pavel asked as they reached the nearest wall, which revealed no details whatsoever. It was now visible as their eyes grew used to the light levels.
“This way?” Connor said pointing left.
“Why?”
“A decision needs to be made.”
Pavel shrugged his shoulders and they walked in a clockwise direction to reveal another featureless wall.
“This is still not giving out much radiation,” Iku commented. “I wonder why. I mean it is totally featureless.”
“To power it?” Vanessa replied.
“Of course, if most of the photons get absorbed then that’s quite a bit of energy. So what’s it powering?”
“I thought it was quite reflective?” Iku said. “When they discovered it, they said it was reflecting most light.”
“Either they got it wrong, or it was,” Connor said. “But it isn’t now. Someone on Earth should measure it again.”
Nobody commented on Connor’s comment.
They turned the second corner and only noticed the opening when they were nearly upon it.
“I suppose we go in,” Pavel said.
“Should anyone stay outside?” Iku suggested.
“Are you volunteering?” Connor asked.
“No, I was just thinking it would be better if someone stayed out here.”
“Well if someone does, then it should be someone who can pilot the lander,” Vanessa said.
“And the medic should go with the most people,” Connor added.
“We all go in,” Pavel replied. He obviously wasn’t wanting to be left out.
“We’ll need to leave a relay,” Iku said.
“Eh?”
“The walls absorb pretty much everything, once we’re in there, the only direction that radio-waves will travel out is not towards the lander.”
“Ah yes, I see, right put down a relay.”
They walked single-file into the room, which was just as featureless as the rest of the artefact.
As Conner entered, he could hear Pavel say, “Right everyone look …”
Then two seconds after Connor, the last to enter, walked into the room; the floor just disappeared.