Cameron's feet were beginning to throb, but he forgot his own discomfort as the young tracking operator turned around, still seated, and sent a thought-message to him and the others. Every person on Earth had a microchip in their minds that allowed them to send thought sentences and have them received by third parties of choice. However, most people still chose to speak out loud.
"The alien ship will pass between the Earth and the moon in twelve minutes." The communications officer interrupted.
So, maybe it was going to bypass the Earth, as Zhdanov had suggested, Knightwood thought.
"Patch us in to Security Chief Hollendar." Knightwood ordered out loud. The delivery was crisp, deliberate.
As Knightwood waited for Hollendar's gravely voice and facial image to patch in, she glanced around in satisfaction at the orderly commotion of the UESRC communications center with large, luminous, dark brown eyes.
A co-effort between the United Earth Science Committee and the United Earth Security Service, the UESRC was composed of an enormous, aboveground relay observatory and two security bases for internal and environmental control maintained and operated by the United Earth Government. The first base had been constructed beneath the surface to preserve the nearby rural zone habitats; it was a sprawling, spider-like multi-level complex, augmented by an aboveground astroport and training station.
The newer, second installation consisted of an enormous cluster of ground-level buildings; the buildings had been built above the East, South and West Wings of the original base, extending the underground facilities. There were also new aboveground barracks, cargo holds, and instruction buildings.
The government had built this giant complex for the principal purpose of preparing a scientific expedition of exploration to the alpha centauri solar system. Although alpha centauri was the closest star to the Earth, little was known of its planetary system and the government wanted this expedition to be prepared for any eventuality. Volunteers were chosen from among the brightest young scientists, technologists, and engineers. These young men and women had to cross-train each other in their various disciplines—training that was supplemented by some of the world’s foremost technical minds. These mission-specialist volunteers had to undergo rigorous physical and survival training, exhaustive flight training, and in a seeming conflict of disciplines, they had to study both self-defense and diplomacy. They had to cooperate with each other while knowing that they were all competing for a few positions on the expedition.
At the moment, most of the base's senior scientists and head mission specialists stood clustered together in the communications center, united by the unprecedented event taking place. Only Security Chief Hollendar's presence was missed; he was still on board a shuttle returning from the UESS Council meeting in Statue City.
As the commuication operator Hastings punched in the controls to try to reach Hollendar, new schematics erased her screen, signifying that the alien vessel had made a course change. The new estimated coordinates of the alien vessel's arrival point were plotted.
"I don't believe it!" Hastings exclaimed. Hastings’ ordinarily calm manner vanished; the effect of this sent a sensation of mild alarm across the center. “It is now heading directly towards Earth’s coordinates—"
"Estimated arrival point.” Dawe demanded, his voice deliberately steady. There was no time for surprise, only reaction. His gut clenched.
Knightwood’s heart leapt into her throat. So, the Earth was its destination after all. The alien ship’s appearance in their solar system was no mere coincidence, as Zhdanov had initially suggested. It had deliberately changed its course towards their planet.
“Oh shit,” Zhdanov thought, his heart racing.
In the back of their minds, the assembled scientists mentally enacted all kinds of possible catastrophes in light of this new information. Cameron was thinking about the asteroid that had destroyed the dinosaurs with its impact; the alien ship, or whatever it was, was large enough to obliterate all life on Earth if it crashed with the same force.
Knightwood noticed Cameron's reaction. She half-turned, incredulous at his detachment and unmoved expression. She did not perceive that he was only acting stoically.
Cameron felt the tense minutes drag by like hours. He never criticized the impatience of youth. In the times that tried men's souls, his own patience wore thin too easily. He could have taken an injection to calm himself but chose not to. After what seemed a long time to him, the operator cut off her own steady monitoring with a conspicuous flinch.
"Object now fast approaching north-central quadrant of sector eight. Projecting minimal impact damage—" Hasting's voice sounded incredulous, and for a good reason. She knew that the impact of an ordinary meteorite or asteroid would have had a catastrophic effect on the Earth's climate and ecosystems, much less an object that had until recently been traveling at a near light-speed. But the computer relayed that it had decelerated phenomenally with its course change.
Minimal impact damage? How was that possible??
They took in the news with tremendous relief, silently—there was no time for premature celebration. It was still headed their way.
"The waterfall," Zhdanov whispered despondently, seeing further. It was an ancient landmark in sector eight that had survived the years of ecological disaster, proving itself stronger than humanity's attempts to destroy it.
For a moment, Zhdanov considered that he was beginning to think like that pessimistic old skeptic Cameron; maybe their collaboration had rubbed off on Zhdanov after all. Perhaps the destruction of the last great natural landmark in the area was a sign that things were going to go downhill, that an uncertain future had dawned, Zhdanov thought. Perhaps humanity hadn't suffered enough punishment for her sins against the planet itself, and the stars themselves had sent an additional punishment.
"Confirming minimal impact—object landing in two minutes, fourteen seconds—
" Hastings continued.
"Dawe?" Knightwood asked suddenly, turning. She was not about to dwell on their relative good fortune; even if an impact greater than a nuclear bomb had been avoided, there was still too many unknowns to consider that the worst was over. "Can you contact one of the trainers and ask one of them to send out a team to accompany our reconnaissance shuttle?"
The stocky, barrel-chested Head Flight Trainer nodded. He was a man of “honest vices” (or so he called them) and had more than his fare share of tenacity and wits; Dawe was efficient, competent, disciplined, and organized to a fault. "You got something in mind?" He asked, narrowing hazel eyes on her, but not without a trace of affection. Knightwood was one of the few scientists Sullivan Dawe respected, if only because she was bold and brash and didn’t take shit from anyone.
"Yes, I'm going over to check out the impact site." She said firmly. "Would you boys care to join me?" Knightwood asked, turning to her colleagues, and proffered a challenging smile, her soft features exuding youthful excitement, her arching brown eyebrows raised.
"Isn't that a bit dangerous?" Zhdanov managed.
Dawe laughed gruffly behind him but didn't say anything. It wasn't that he disliked Zhdanov per se, but he did instinctively dislike the Ukrainian's speech, the soft, trilling foreignness of it. He resented its lilting intonation. It was simply unpleasant to his ear, which preferred quick, plain, efficient speech to this kind of unforgivably feeling, artistic elocution. Still, in all, he didn't dislike Zhdanov. Zhdanov was a good man, a fair man, and a good leader, he admitted, and Dawe knew Zhdanov's question had been directed more in concern for Knightwood's safety than Zhdanov's own. Zhdanov was no coward, but it sometimes gave Dawe pleasure to think him so—the man had to have some major flaw in his character! Dawe just didn’t know what it was yet.
"They haven't attacked us yet," Knightwood commented, flashing Zhdanov a bright smile. "And they haven't sent us any communications. Oh, I forgot—you boys m
issed a lot of the early action. Time to update you, isn’t it? The alien spaceship passed right by one of our biggest colonies without any show of hostility—"
"I'm not sure that's such a bad thing," Cameron remarked dryly, shaking his head. “Having missed out on anything, of course. Still, ‘action’, Knightwood? That’s hardly an appropriate description if they’ve done nothing to us thus far.”
Knightwood frowned but refused to let him daunt her. "Let me finish, Cameron! I didn’t have time to tell you while reports were still coming in, but Pluto base reported earlier that the ship sent some of our own old Earth transmissions back to us, some dating back almost a hundred years!"
"You're sure they sent them back?" Zhdanov asked, his eyebrows knitting together, making little creases in his forehead. "Could the radio waves have been reflected back to us by some natural source?"
"No," Knightwood said firmly. "We've confirmed the source. It’s them, all right. But do you know what the strangest part is? Most of the transmissions were turn-of the-century progress reports on wildlife in the rural zones!" She laughed.
"Odd choice," Cameron agreed, contemplating the news.
"Indeed," Knightwood went on. "And don't you think it's a little odd that they changed their heading towards Earth, and yet they can't keep from crashing on the surface?”
“Yes, that’s something I was wondering about.” Zhdanov admitted. “Any ideas about it?”
Knightwood nodded. “All I can think is: it would have been easier to maintain orbit above the Earth and send down smaller ships if they wanted to pick a fight with us. Once that giant thing is grounded, it won’t be easy getting it out of the Earth’s gravity again. So, if you want my opinion, I'd say that all the signs indicate that ship’s guidance systems are out of control.”
“Or something else could have gone wrong.” Zhdanov suggested. “Whatever happened to them, it seems as if they have to find somewhere to land, and quickly."
"We have eight other planets—and plenty of rocky moons," Cameron interjected. “So why Earth?”
Knightwood narrowed her eyes at him. "All right, let's just suppose that my assumption is completely off. The fact remains that it has landed, and I think we need to check it out. Now tell me what else should we do? Any suggestions?"
Neither Cameron nor Zhdanov said anything.
“We could also be getting worked up over nothing.” Knightwood declared.
“How so?” Zhdanov asked.
“It’s like you said before, maybe they don’t care about us at all but just happened to be coming here to stop and make repairs on a hospitable planet.” She explained. “Or we may never get close if there's some kind of disastrous force at work, say a radiation leak, for example, or I don't know—what if they even managed to fix their ship and decided to leave before we could learn anything about why they're here and where they came from?"
Zhdanov shrugged.
“I’d say good riddance to them,” Cameron opined.
"All right," Zhdanov acquiesced, ignoring the remark, and turned to Knightwood. "If you're so eager to get yourself killed—"
"You're telling me you're just going to stand here, with that thing out there?" Knightwood demanded, as her own horrible fears of the potential, unknown danger surfaced. “Maybe no one on Earth will be safe for long, anyway. We need to know whether this alien ship is hostile or if it is not. And if it is, we need to determine as early as we can if there is anything we can do to defend ourselves against it. Or would you rather just stay here and wait to see if they will fry us?” she added cynically.
“Of course not,” Zhdanov’s voice was firm, then he seemed to check himself.
“If we don’t go, then who should?” Knightwood asked.
“I don’t know—this is all happening so quickly.” Zhdanov shrugged. “But all right, I agree, we should be the ones to go and we should go now. Coming, Cameron?" he asked, but the older scientist seemed unaffected by their conversation.
"Cameron—" Knightwood began, summoning her most persuasive voice.
"Just leave him alone." Zhdanov advised. "After all, there's no sense in all three of us risking our lives in this. Maybe we should wait until we hear from the UESS Council."
"If they ever make up their minds what to do about it," Knightwood said. “It’ll be too damned late by that point,” she added, turned away. Cameron watched Knightwood's thick brown ponytail swish from side to side as she headed for the door. Zhdanov hesitated for just a moment, then he followed her out. Cameron’s face expressed doubt, concern, but for no one to see—Dawe had already moved to the operator's console to monitor the schematics himself.
Cameron hesitated, then followed Knightwood's lead irresolutely a moment later, his steps leaden.
It would be better to get it over with, he thought, and prove himself right or wrong—at least for the sake of his own sanity. He hoped, however, that he was wrong. He could live with being wrong. He hoped that the alien beings who had created this monolith had no malevolent purpose in coming to Earth, that their presence might peacefully end humanity's solitude but not the human race itself.
After all, vindication did the dead no good.
* * * * *
Sasha Blair was in the shower when a knock came at the door. It never fails! she protested, resigned nonetheless to the inevitability of these intrusive interruptions.
"Off," she said. The water flow ceased, and she stepped from the shower stall. "Just a minute," she shouted much louder, hoping that the person outside her quarters could hear her and would wait in case it was something important, while at the same time hoping she didn't slip on the floor and break her neck, as fast as she was drying herself.
"It's just me." Her husband’s voice filtered through from the living area. She heard the front door swish closed.
"Why did you knock?" She called through the door, her voice echoing in the small bathroom.
"I didn’t." Richard’s voice came through, faint and muffled. "That must have been my helmet when I dropped it on the floor." He laughed. "But it saves me time getting you out of there. We've got a job to do, so you'd better suit up quick."
Sasha stopped what she was doing and stood a moment in mute shock, clutching her towel in tightened fists. Cold drops of water fell from her damp, dark blond hair and began to slide down her back; she gave no thought to drying them, but instead suddenly pressed the towel into her face to blot out any sound she made.
"Hello, did you hear what I said?" Richard called from outside the door. She heard him get up from the sleep panel and realized he was coming to check on her.
"Sure. I'll just be a minute." She shouted pleasantly, as if what he had said had not alarmed her. However, the way he’d said it reminded her of what she loved most about her husband. She could tell that he was more worried about her reaction to the news than whether or not she actually hurried.
"Dawe's got orders to send a recon team over to check out sector eight. They didn’t have the chance to send a vidmessage yet," Richard continued, sensing that an immediate explanation would help Sasha to deal with the surprise. Sasha was so methodical, unlike himself. She had a highly intelligent, organized mind, but it was slower and more thorough than his own, and she liked to have all of the data before drawing conclusions, while he almost always made rapid, straight-forward judgments, being a quick thinker and far more impulsive by nature than Sasha was even when she made an effort to be.
"We'll get the details later—assuming they don’t leave without us." He informed her.
"Very funny, Mr. Mathieson," Sasha called, not sounding amused in the slightest.
From the silence that ensued, Richard inferred that she thought he had been joking with her. He had an old habit of teasing her that had made it impossible for her to tell when he was being serious.
"Dawe said something about Harris
on and Cummings both being at Gabriel—so that leaves yours truly, team Pegasus to act as the recon escort." He pursued more decisively.
"You're not joking?" Sasha asked, sounding disturbed by this news.
"Sorry, not this time. They've got a big shuttle waiting in the East Wing docking bay."
The bathroom door opened. Sasha emerged wrapped in a towel and hurried to the bedroom closet for her white flight suit uniform, avoiding his gaze until she could recompose herself. She was a rather lovely woman just past thirty and of medium height and build. Her husband followed her with his bright hazel eyes from his position on the sofa.
"It's been four years since I’ve been called for a recon mission." She commented.
"Gurney seems excited about it, though." Richard leaned back, lacing his fingers as he brought his hands behind his head. "I met him in the hanger on his way back from training flights. They'd all been canceled—he didn't know why. I was about to get lunch, so we went to the canteen—one of the staff found us there and gave us the message. They were so busy they never even got around to hailing us directly."
"They canceled the training flights?" Sasha echoed. "You didn't hear anything in the Engineering department—?" She had spoken too quickly for her husband to hear the last comment, but it hadn't been intended for his benefit.
"Something wrong?" Richard asked with deliberate calmness.
"All of our classes were canceled this morning, too." Sasha replied, digesting the information. "You think this recon business has anything to do with it? Sounds like too much of a coincidence to me."
"I don't know," he sighed deeply; there had been few such mysteries in his life. "But the atmosphere around the place today seemed tense—artificially silent—I can't describe it to you. People weren't talking. And all of the video transmissions have been curtailed to a minimum."
"Well, I wouldn't know about that." Sasha said, turning around to regard him from the open doorway. "I had to put in my day of odd-job duty for this month today. They had me organizing the cleaning equipment, emergency coding in noon meals for the cadets on flight call, running practice simulators, and minding the security officers' children while they experimented with color emulsions. Wipe that grin off of your face, mister you've got three days coming to you, too."