First Contact – VII
“There is nothing for it, but to return to Earth,” Alan said.
“And then what?” Vanessa asked.
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t look like your boyfriend is coming back.”
“He wasn’t my boyfriend.”
“And everyone will have to take extra shifts as we’re a man short.”
And so they started the long journey back, and the atmosphere on the ship was different, no longer were they going to make new discoveries, they were returning to Earth where everyone wanted to know what had happened.
It was only a few weeks into the return journey that Vanessa started to feel ill and the diagnosis, when it came, surprised everyone.
“And then what?” Vanessa asked.
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t look like your boyfriend is coming back.”
“He wasn’t my boyfriend.”
“And everyone will have to take extra shifts as we’re a man short.”
And so they started the long journey back, and the atmosphere on the ship was different, no longer were they going to make new discoveries, they were returning to Earth where everyone wanted to know what had happened.
It was only a few weeks into the return journey that Vanessa started to feel ill and the diagnosis, when it came, surprised everyone.
The lift accelerated up but when it slowed to a stop there was some light, and it was much brighter than the surface of Hades. Connor looked round. He was in a room; a room with a single door out. His HUD said the temperature was 20C and that the atmosphere was still normal. Then he realised the gravity was still normal as well.
He walked over to the door, it opened, but not onto the surface of Hades, but into a corridor.
He undid his helmet and checked the time. Then he double-checked it. He had lost two days. What had happened? He knew that no matter what, the alien intelligence thing or whatever it was wasn’t just going to kill him. Well not yet. He peered out into the corridor. It was deserted.
“Hello,” he shouted. Where was he? Could he be on Earth? If he was, that would really confuse people. He laughed at the possible conversation. ‘Yes, I know I’m supposed to be beyond the orbit of Neptune. No I don’t know what I’m doing in the Whitehouse. I’ve to speak to the President and give him a message of peace from the aliens.’
Except there was no message and apart from a disembodied voice, there were no aliens. Perhaps he should make up a message. He could pretend that he was privy to some secret alien … No best not arse about. Men in dark suits with earpieces were notoriously humour lacking.
He stepped out, and realised the corridor was not really like any he had seen before; it was more like an alien corridor, the lighting was just ambient, there was no specific source. And the doors, there was nothing wrong with them that he could put his finger on but they were just different.
Shit where was he? Was he? … Nuh, he must be on Earth.
He stepped out into the corridor and the door behind him closed. He walked back towards it and it opened to reveal a different room to the one he had just been in. He stared into the room, he couldn’t go back. He was stuck here, wherever here was.
“Arse!”
What should he do? Find someone. That would be the best solution and just hope it wasn’t a high security facility.
He turned left and carefully walked along the corridor. There was door after door but no sign of life.
Then at the end of the corridor, after a couple of hundred metres, he reached another door. It opened, he walked in and he was standing on the bridge of a spaceship. He knew it was a spaceship because of the large viewscreen, showing stars. There were desks with chairs and consoles and everything round the edge of the circular room.
“Bastards,” he shouted to anyone who would listen.
Shit, he was on a spaceship and it must belong to someone. So who else was on it? Perhaps they were flesh-eating aliens? He jumped round at some unheard noise.
But there weren’t any aliens, flesh-eating or otherwise. He realised that the ship was deserted and fully functional because life-support obviously worked. Well it worked at the moment.
He retraced his steps back along the corridor, and looked in room after room, the doors opened as he approached. All were empty and most were just a few metres square until he was nearly back at the room when he had first arrived. Then a door opened to a much larger room than usual, a very big room. Various tables and chairs were scattered about, well they looked like tables and chairs.
Suddenly he was hungry and then he realised it was because he could smell food. He searched the room trying to find the source of the smell and when he opened a hatch there was a plate of hot pasta with some sort of tomato sauce waiting. This was obviously the galley or social area of the ship.
But there was no-one to socialise with. There wasn’t even signs of people having been here recently or even in the past. No skeletons, alien or human.
He removed his spacesuit, so now he was in his t-shirt and shorts, it was much more comfortable, he sat at a table and with the spoon supplied, ate the pasta. If an alien wanted to kill him, it wouldn’t be with poisoned pasta.
Once he was finished, he looked to see if there was anywhere to place his plate. Was it a self-clearing spaceship? He put the plate back in the compartment.
Right, back to exploring the spaceship. He peered out of the room, the corridor was just as empty and then trying to remember which door led to the galley, he walked down the corridor.
It took several days to fully explore the ship. It was to Connor’s best guess about half a kilometre long and half as wide at the widest, sort of fat cigar-shaped. There was a central corridor that zigzagged very inefficiently along the middle of the spacecraft, with various side corridors.
Connor chose a room towards the front of the spaceship as his room. He placed his suit in there. He wasn’t going to wander about an alien spaceship wearing his Gagarin suit unless he really had to. And best preserve the air for if and when he really needed it.
In his room there was a sort of toilet. Well he assumed it was a toilet, if it wasn’t then well … and then whenever he entered, a sort of bunk formed from the wall and there was a shower area, a room off the other which when he walked in produced a fine mist. The first time he walked in, his clothes ended up soaked.
Connor spent his time between his room, the galley and the bridge.
The galley always produced a variety of meals. Somehow the ship knew how to make human food at least he could survive here, but why was he here?
In the bridge, he would sit in the chair in the middle of the room and shout commands to non-existent crew and try and figure out the how the hell he would be able to fly this thing. There was a screen at the front. It just showed stars and they never changed, so if they were going anywhere it was slowly.
Or, Connor thought, in moments of paranoia, it wasn’t the real display and he wasn’t in a spaceship and he was in some vast experiment.
Around the periphery of the room there were a number of consoles they were just dark, none seemed to be functioning.
He looked at the stars from the bridge, none of the constellations looked familiar, so he wasn’t close to Earth. And the stars were so much brighter, but that could just be because there was no atmosphere in the way. Even so, they appeared brighter than they had on the Gagarin. Or perhaps the screen just magnified things.
He had found several other places that were of interest, first was the airlock, well he assumed it was an airlock, because it sort of resembled what he thought an alien airlock should look like. He didn’t go in there; it might open up to empty space. If he got really bored, he would put his Gagarin suit on and try it.
Then there was what he thought of as the engine room, or rather rooms, they were on the level below him and they were huge. He didn’t touch any of the controls. He had no idea what any of them did and he didn’t want to accidently switch life-support off.
Most of the doors opened automatically when he had approached, however a few remained resolutely closed, he wondered what they may contain. Trying to open them would be a project for another day.
So once he had explored all of the ship he had access to, Connor sat in what he had designated the captain’s chair on the bridge (it was in the middle of the room) and reflected on what he knew. The ship appeared to function with no commands, no crew, it just worked. He didn’t know what any of the controls did and he didn’t want to touch any in case he hit the self-destruct button, or give the order to head towards the nearest black hole.
In frustration he shouted out. “Look you’re going to have to give me some help here, because I don’t know what I’m doing.”
There was no answer, but then he hadn’t expected there to be one.
“Any manuals? A dummy’s guide to driving a spaceship? Ten things not to do when piloting an alien spacecraft? Black Holes and how to avoid them. Anything?”
Still nothing.
“Do you want a tune?” Connor pulled out his harmonica and started on Danny Boy, it was either that or Old MacDonald.
There was no reaction.
After a further ten minutes of playing, Connor decided he’d have to do something; anything, so he hit some buttons and the stars were replaced by some alien symbols. Well that was a great help since he didn’t read alien. But then suddenly the alien symbols began to make a sort of sense.
He could read alien! Or at least this alien, how the hell could he do that? Oh well it wasn’t as if he was doing anything else. Was he supposed to do learn to control the spaceship? Perhaps he was supposed to take it home to Earth. Perhaps that’s what the alien had meant when it had said give power? He was supposed to turn up at Earth in charge of an alien spacecraft that only he could fly.
And what would happen if he did that?
People would come along and politely remove him and take charge of it because Connor was not supposed to be captain of an alien spaceship. Even though he had been given it. Had he been given it?
And which way was Earth anyway?
Connor spent his time reading the manual. The first section was helpfully about trying to get the ship to move. Well it wasn’t as if he was doing much else at the moment. He looked about for the console that looked like the one the instructions were describing. He went over and sat in the human-sized seat and pressed the button, which he assumed turned it on. The console lit up with some form of holographic display. The colours flickered and then settled onto a green display. Now what was next?
Connor went back to trying to understand what the controls were saying because the display looked nothing like it was supposed to.
After an hour Connor had had enough and he retired to the galley to get some food and then it would be time for a sleep and perhaps after that, the controls would make a bit more sense. Sleep on it; that was always a good idea.
After two days of studying the controls, Connor thought he had the basic knowledge on how to get the spaceship to move. The only problem was it needed a crew of at least ten to man all the controls. He could probably make it move but without running around checking all the other controls, he would make a mess of it. He could probably pilot it with a smaller number of people but not on his own.
So where was he going to get a crew from?
Connor was beginning to lose track of time, but he reckoned it was two weeks or so after first arriving on the spaceship that he noticed the other craft on the viewscreen. “What is it?” he asked. As expected there was no reply.
Bugger, the owners of the craft were coming to take control and they probably wouldn’t take too kindly to there being an alien on board, so he tidied up the galley, cleaned his room, hid his spacesuit as best he could. He could only hope the new arrivals didn’t have the ability to scan for lifeforms, because if they did, he was shafted.
Connor’s vague hope that spaceship was from Earth, were dashed as soon as he got a good look at it. The markings were alien, not like any he recognised; perhaps they looked a bit like Korean. Connor tried to get the ship to move but had no success, the controls did not respond. The alien ship spent several hours circling and scanning or doing whatever aliens did when they came across a derelict spaceship and then disappeared off the screen. Connor ran down the corridors of the ship to where he eventually heard some noises. The aliens were having trouble with an airlock.
Did he want them to gain entry?
He decided that he didn’t, because he had seen enough ancient films about aliens loose on spaceships, but it was not as if he could do anything to stop them.
Then the lights on the door of the airlock turned yellow and he turned and ran.
He walked over to the door, it opened, but not onto the surface of Hades, but into a corridor.
He undid his helmet and checked the time. Then he double-checked it. He had lost two days. What had happened? He knew that no matter what, the alien intelligence thing or whatever it was wasn’t just going to kill him. Well not yet. He peered out into the corridor. It was deserted.
“Hello,” he shouted. Where was he? Could he be on Earth? If he was, that would really confuse people. He laughed at the possible conversation. ‘Yes, I know I’m supposed to be beyond the orbit of Neptune. No I don’t know what I’m doing in the Whitehouse. I’ve to speak to the President and give him a message of peace from the aliens.’
Except there was no message and apart from a disembodied voice, there were no aliens. Perhaps he should make up a message. He could pretend that he was privy to some secret alien … No best not arse about. Men in dark suits with earpieces were notoriously humour lacking.
He stepped out, and realised the corridor was not really like any he had seen before; it was more like an alien corridor, the lighting was just ambient, there was no specific source. And the doors, there was nothing wrong with them that he could put his finger on but they were just different.
Shit where was he? Was he? … Nuh, he must be on Earth.
He stepped out into the corridor and the door behind him closed. He walked back towards it and it opened to reveal a different room to the one he had just been in. He stared into the room, he couldn’t go back. He was stuck here, wherever here was.
“Arse!”
What should he do? Find someone. That would be the best solution and just hope it wasn’t a high security facility.
He turned left and carefully walked along the corridor. There was door after door but no sign of life.
Then at the end of the corridor, after a couple of hundred metres, he reached another door. It opened, he walked in and he was standing on the bridge of a spaceship. He knew it was a spaceship because of the large viewscreen, showing stars. There were desks with chairs and consoles and everything round the edge of the circular room.
“Bastards,” he shouted to anyone who would listen.
Shit, he was on a spaceship and it must belong to someone. So who else was on it? Perhaps they were flesh-eating aliens? He jumped round at some unheard noise.
But there weren’t any aliens, flesh-eating or otherwise. He realised that the ship was deserted and fully functional because life-support obviously worked. Well it worked at the moment.
He retraced his steps back along the corridor, and looked in room after room, the doors opened as he approached. All were empty and most were just a few metres square until he was nearly back at the room when he had first arrived. Then a door opened to a much larger room than usual, a very big room. Various tables and chairs were scattered about, well they looked like tables and chairs.
Suddenly he was hungry and then he realised it was because he could smell food. He searched the room trying to find the source of the smell and when he opened a hatch there was a plate of hot pasta with some sort of tomato sauce waiting. This was obviously the galley or social area of the ship.
But there was no-one to socialise with. There wasn’t even signs of people having been here recently or even in the past. No skeletons, alien or human.
He removed his spacesuit, so now he was in his t-shirt and shorts, it was much more comfortable, he sat at a table and with the spoon supplied, ate the pasta. If an alien wanted to kill him, it wouldn’t be with poisoned pasta.
Once he was finished, he looked to see if there was anywhere to place his plate. Was it a self-clearing spaceship? He put the plate back in the compartment.
Right, back to exploring the spaceship. He peered out of the room, the corridor was just as empty and then trying to remember which door led to the galley, he walked down the corridor.
It took several days to fully explore the ship. It was to Connor’s best guess about half a kilometre long and half as wide at the widest, sort of fat cigar-shaped. There was a central corridor that zigzagged very inefficiently along the middle of the spacecraft, with various side corridors.
Connor chose a room towards the front of the spaceship as his room. He placed his suit in there. He wasn’t going to wander about an alien spaceship wearing his Gagarin suit unless he really had to. And best preserve the air for if and when he really needed it.
In his room there was a sort of toilet. Well he assumed it was a toilet, if it wasn’t then well … and then whenever he entered, a sort of bunk formed from the wall and there was a shower area, a room off the other which when he walked in produced a fine mist. The first time he walked in, his clothes ended up soaked.
Connor spent his time between his room, the galley and the bridge.
The galley always produced a variety of meals. Somehow the ship knew how to make human food at least he could survive here, but why was he here?
In the bridge, he would sit in the chair in the middle of the room and shout commands to non-existent crew and try and figure out the how the hell he would be able to fly this thing. There was a screen at the front. It just showed stars and they never changed, so if they were going anywhere it was slowly.
Or, Connor thought, in moments of paranoia, it wasn’t the real display and he wasn’t in a spaceship and he was in some vast experiment.
Around the periphery of the room there were a number of consoles they were just dark, none seemed to be functioning.
He looked at the stars from the bridge, none of the constellations looked familiar, so he wasn’t close to Earth. And the stars were so much brighter, but that could just be because there was no atmosphere in the way. Even so, they appeared brighter than they had on the Gagarin. Or perhaps the screen just magnified things.
He had found several other places that were of interest, first was the airlock, well he assumed it was an airlock, because it sort of resembled what he thought an alien airlock should look like. He didn’t go in there; it might open up to empty space. If he got really bored, he would put his Gagarin suit on and try it.
Then there was what he thought of as the engine room, or rather rooms, they were on the level below him and they were huge. He didn’t touch any of the controls. He had no idea what any of them did and he didn’t want to accidently switch life-support off.
Most of the doors opened automatically when he had approached, however a few remained resolutely closed, he wondered what they may contain. Trying to open them would be a project for another day.
So once he had explored all of the ship he had access to, Connor sat in what he had designated the captain’s chair on the bridge (it was in the middle of the room) and reflected on what he knew. The ship appeared to function with no commands, no crew, it just worked. He didn’t know what any of the controls did and he didn’t want to touch any in case he hit the self-destruct button, or give the order to head towards the nearest black hole.
In frustration he shouted out. “Look you’re going to have to give me some help here, because I don’t know what I’m doing.”
There was no answer, but then he hadn’t expected there to be one.
“Any manuals? A dummy’s guide to driving a spaceship? Ten things not to do when piloting an alien spacecraft? Black Holes and how to avoid them. Anything?”
Still nothing.
“Do you want a tune?” Connor pulled out his harmonica and started on Danny Boy, it was either that or Old MacDonald.
There was no reaction.
After a further ten minutes of playing, Connor decided he’d have to do something; anything, so he hit some buttons and the stars were replaced by some alien symbols. Well that was a great help since he didn’t read alien. But then suddenly the alien symbols began to make a sort of sense.
He could read alien! Or at least this alien, how the hell could he do that? Oh well it wasn’t as if he was doing anything else. Was he supposed to do learn to control the spaceship? Perhaps he was supposed to take it home to Earth. Perhaps that’s what the alien had meant when it had said give power? He was supposed to turn up at Earth in charge of an alien spacecraft that only he could fly.
And what would happen if he did that?
People would come along and politely remove him and take charge of it because Connor was not supposed to be captain of an alien spaceship. Even though he had been given it. Had he been given it?
And which way was Earth anyway?
Connor spent his time reading the manual. The first section was helpfully about trying to get the ship to move. Well it wasn’t as if he was doing much else at the moment. He looked about for the console that looked like the one the instructions were describing. He went over and sat in the human-sized seat and pressed the button, which he assumed turned it on. The console lit up with some form of holographic display. The colours flickered and then settled onto a green display. Now what was next?
Connor went back to trying to understand what the controls were saying because the display looked nothing like it was supposed to.
After an hour Connor had had enough and he retired to the galley to get some food and then it would be time for a sleep and perhaps after that, the controls would make a bit more sense. Sleep on it; that was always a good idea.
After two days of studying the controls, Connor thought he had the basic knowledge on how to get the spaceship to move. The only problem was it needed a crew of at least ten to man all the controls. He could probably make it move but without running around checking all the other controls, he would make a mess of it. He could probably pilot it with a smaller number of people but not on his own.
So where was he going to get a crew from?
Connor was beginning to lose track of time, but he reckoned it was two weeks or so after first arriving on the spaceship that he noticed the other craft on the viewscreen. “What is it?” he asked. As expected there was no reply.
Bugger, the owners of the craft were coming to take control and they probably wouldn’t take too kindly to there being an alien on board, so he tidied up the galley, cleaned his room, hid his spacesuit as best he could. He could only hope the new arrivals didn’t have the ability to scan for lifeforms, because if they did, he was shafted.
Connor’s vague hope that spaceship was from Earth, were dashed as soon as he got a good look at it. The markings were alien, not like any he recognised; perhaps they looked a bit like Korean. Connor tried to get the ship to move but had no success, the controls did not respond. The alien ship spent several hours circling and scanning or doing whatever aliens did when they came across a derelict spaceship and then disappeared off the screen. Connor ran down the corridors of the ship to where he eventually heard some noises. The aliens were having trouble with an airlock.
Did he want them to gain entry?
He decided that he didn’t, because he had seen enough ancient films about aliens loose on spaceships, but it was not as if he could do anything to stop them.
Then the lights on the door of the airlock turned yellow and he turned and ran.