The Contact Episode Four Read online

  THE CONTACT

  episode four

  by

  Albert Sartison

  Copyright

  © 2014 by Albert Sartison

  Second edition

  1.06

  Contents

  Outside

  On the line

  The cloak of invisibility

  Error?

  Blockade

  Illusion

  Anomaly

  Just give me an excuse...

  Rhino at the water hole

  The cloud

  Unforeseen circumstances

  The lacking element

  Life goes on

  Outside

  Like a sprinter on his blocks, the engineer was fully prepared next to the lock and awaiting instructions from Kimble. He usually spacewalked accompanied by one or two service robots, but on this occasion he had assembled all five of them. In addition, he had thought it best to get into the exoskeleton. To carry out their idea, he would have to work precisely and rapidly, and any error or delay could arouse the suspicions of the pirates, which would bring all their plans to naught. The price of such a mistake would most probably be the lives of all on board.

  The engineer looked at his watch. Several minutes remained before the next pulse from the pirates’ radar. He glanced at the robots again, then ran his eyes over the list of parameters. The whole metal team was at full readiness.

  An image of the Captain’s face floated onto the helmet’s internal screen, directly before the engineer’s eyes.

  “Ready? Half a minute to the pulse,” he said.

  “We’ve been ready a long time,” replied the engineer.

  “It’ll be coming up any second now.”

  On cue, the radar ping was heard in the engineer’s headphones. The computer had been ordered to signal any pirate radar activity in this way.

  “Go, go, go!” ordered Kimble at once.

  “Going!” shouted the engineer.

  He raised his hand, gesturing to all the robots to be ready to carry out his command. Green signal lamps instantly lit up on all of them, indicating that each one of them had seen his gesture and was in ‘await command’ mode.

  When the engineer, still a green rookie, had come under Kimble’s command, it seemed crazy to him to control robots by gestures. Space suits had not been so light at that time, and to have to keep gesticulating for hours on end in open space was quite tiring. It seemed all the more unnecessary because the robots could be controlled perfectly well by voice. But the Captain was adamant. Commands were made by gestures, and radio was used only in the absence of direct visibility.

  Like it or not, the engineer had to obey. The robots had excellent optics and could make out his commands from a considerable distance, responding by winking with their various-coloured signal lights. Controlling them was difficult at first, but eventually the gestures were stored in the subconscious and became second nature.

  Securing the still warm ore from the last asteroid in the cargo compartment, the engineer looked like the conductor of a space concert as he gestured his commands. Under his orchestration, the robots completed the work in a much shorter time than his colleagues on other large cargo spacecraft could achieve.

  They didn’t know for sure, but it was rumoured among the crew that their captain had a competition going against the captains of other cargo ships. Some thought otherwise, and believed that the skipper was only acting from force of habit from being in the SSS. Be that as it may, it was certainly an effective method of direct control.

  And now the engineer was grateful to Kimble for this quirk. The intensity of the robot control signals might have been too weak for the pirates to intercept at such a great distance, but it was nice to know that they were not broadcasting treacherous radio waves all round the galaxy.

  The engineer walked rapidly to the opening lock, the black diaphragm revealing more and more of a gaping hole into open space. Waves of a pale blue colour sometimes ran across the gap against the black background of the sky, revealing the force field keeping the air inside the ship. This field was only impenetrable to gaseous substances, other materials passed through it without meeting the slightest resistance. It made going into space possible without the lengthy and tedious procedure of pumping air out of the lock. One step took you outside the ship into airless space. One step back, and you could take your space suit off.

  The hydraulic amplifiers of the exoskeleton helped the engineer to walk, buzzing barely audibly in time with his steps. After emerging from the lock, the engineer waited until the last robot had left the ship and then divided the group into two parts. He sent four of them to the external fixing devices for the cargo compartment holding the ore. Having made sure that each one of them knew its position, he set off for the main radar array with the last robot.

  “Skip, I’m at the radar. I’m dismantling the array. Preparing to undock cargo. Readiness 10 minutes.”

  “Roger,” Kimble replied curtly. “And switch on your helmet cam.”

  The engineer’s arms appeared on the screen in front of the Captain, unscrewing the radar array’s fixing devices. The service robot, firmly attached to the hull, was gripping the array with its powerful feelers to stop it flying off in the wrong direction if the ship should unexpectedly start manoeuvring.

  With the fixing devices released and the interior made accessible, the Captain’s screen showed the engineer’s hands reaching quickly and precisely for a bundle of thick cables.

  “Switching off the supply... Supply switched off... Disconnecting bus,” said the engineer, commenting on his actions.

  “Array detached,” he reported a few minutes later. Holding the bundle of cables with one hand, he gestured to the robot to lift the array a bit higher. A space appeared below the massive steel leg, through which one could look under the external plating of the ship.

  “Connecting radar to autonomous module.”

  The engineer’s hands began connecting plugs and sockets, which clicked together to form a reliable connection. After quickly completing this, he pulled up the autonomous module and connected it to the leg of the array.

  The robot, without awaiting further orders, brought one of its feelers to the contact point. On the feeler tip was something like a needle, spluttering out violet sparks. Working with the precision of a jeweller, the feeler spot-welded the autonomous module to the leg of the array, first on one side, then on the other.

  The engineer waited a few seconds for the last weld spot to stop glowing cherry red, then lightly shook the autonomous module. Finding no clearance, he tugged on it in different directions, applying more force this time. The module was solidly welded on.

  “Fixing of autonomous module completed. Switching on link to ship.”

  After a few more manipulations on the sensor screen of the autonomous radar, the laser transmitter to one side of it came to life and made several revolutions round its own axis to direct its lens precisely onto the ship’s receiver.

  “On line!” called the pilot immediately. “Clear signal, channel gives 200 gigabits a second.”

  Kimble nodded in satisfaction and commanded:

  “Excellent. Time to next pulse, one hour twenty-three minutes. Plan on schedule. Undock the ore.”

  The engineer signalled to the robot that it should follow him with the radar array. Its manoeuvres round the ship were no longer so easy because of the massive object it was carrying in its feelers. No wonder, the array weighed at least a ton. There is no gravity in space, but the force of inertia has not gone away. Without gravity, it became even more of a problem, because it was difficult to estimate the actual weight of an object just by holding it in your hands.r />
  Approaching the cargo compartment, the engineer commanded the robot with the array to stop. Its nozzles burst out in bright fire. It was not easy to stop something as big as this array.

  “Skip, I’m in position. Ready to undock ore. Attention pilot: awaiting switching off of main engines.”

  “Countdown to switching off main engines, five, four, three, two, one. Engines stopped!” replied the pilot.

  The great columns of plasma flame from the rear of the ship gradually faded out.

  “Thrust zero, commence undocking!” said Kimble.

  The engineer again made a sign to attract the attention of the waiting service robots. He raised both arms high, then lowered them, clenched his fists, spread his arms and opened up his fingers. The robots, in obedience to the command, their movements totally synchronised, opened the first catch holding the ore.

  “Four mechanisms disconnected. Twelve more to go,” reported the engineer.

  “Roger,” the Captain answered.

  After releasing all the other catches, the robots moved a little way away from the ship’s hull and showed their green lights to signal that their task had been fulfilled.

  “Cargo separated.”

  “Roger. Await further orders,” replied Kimble, and turned towards the pilot.

  “Minimum thrust, move away from the cargo,” he commanded.

  The pilot nodded and took manual control of the ship. He activated the nozzles, slowly moving away from the cargo. Ten minutes later, THP 11600 was a good hundred metres away from the cargo and was now flying through the vacuum on a parallel trajectory.

  “Spread out the film!” said Kimble.

  The engineer pointed to two robots and they winked to acknowledge the order. He folded his arms. The robots floated up to him at once, obeying without question. He sent the other two in the opposite direction.

  While they were approaching, he activated the film-unrolling mechanism. The telescopic skeleton, on which the film was stretched like the webbing of a duck’s foot, began straightening out noiselessly. The further the film was unrolled, the more rapidly the process continued. Its surface area seemed to be growing from nothing and capable of growing indefinitely.

  Meanwhile, the robot holding the radar array in its feelers was watching the film and visually estimating its area. He transmitted the data to the engineer’s space suit. When the area reached the calculated value, the engineer switched off the unrolling mechanism.

  The approaching robots reached the opposite edges of the protective film at just the right time. The engineer signalled to all four of them to position themselves evenly around the perimeter and grip the edge of the film. What remained now was the most difficult part. The shape had to be changed so that the reflected signal corresponded to the radar shadow of the loaded ship.

  The skeleton on which the film was stretched was not intended to be bent, but it had a certain elasticity. When the engineer made his calculations, it turned out that in several places, the maximum permissible angle of bend would be reached or even slightly exceeded. If the skeleton could not withstand this and broke at these points, the rigidity of the entire structure would be upset and the film could become an unpredictable shape. If this happened, their whole idea would go down the drain. They could only hope that the designers of the film-unrolling mechanism had built in sufficient reserve.

  After checking that all the robots were in position, the engineer took a short break, held his breath briefly and closed his eyes. If only it would work! Breathing out, he reported:

  “Ready to change shape. Permission to begin?”

  “Do it!” the Captain reacted instantly.

  On the line

  “Please follow me, sir,” Shelby heard someone say unexpectedly behind him. He took off his spectacles and turned towards the voice. One of the security officers stood in front of him. His machine pistol hung on his chest and he was holding a tablet with Shelby’s own photograph on it.

  “Excuse me, what’s going on?” asked Shelby.

  “General MacQueen requires your expertise and he has invited you to a discussion. I have been ordered to accompany you,” said the officer curtly. It was clear no further questions would be allowed. Shelby got up from behind his desk and followed him.

  This time their route lay downwards, deep underground. After going down in one of the lifts, they walked along a corridor with bare walls, and finally stopped outside a massive door. The officer typed in the code, and after waiting for the entrance to open, made a gesture of invitation. Shelby thanked him with a nod and stepped inside. The door closed behind him.

  Hardly had the massive locks clicked into place, sealing the entrance completely, when the dim reddish light from the lamps along the floor and ceiling changed to daylight brightness. Shelby looked round, and was surprised to see the futuristic interior of the room. The walls, floor and ceiling were made of thick transparent glass with a barely perceptible tinge of blue. Through them he could see the concrete enclosing the hollow cube which formed the room. There was a table in the middle with a dozen or so chairs made in the same transparent material. There was no decoration at all: no carpets, no pictures, no other furniture, just the transparent table and chairs.

  Shelby looked round for a second entrance, but not finding one, and still feeling surprised, sat down. He had expected to see MacQueen in the room, but it appeared that he would be contacting him by video link. Yet he couldn’t see any monitors anywhere.

  Suddenly one of the walls came to life, turning into a huge display screen. An image of MacQueen’s head appeared on it. The camera was showing his head on such a large scale that it was all there was room for on the screen.

  “Hello, Professor,” said the ten-foot head in a deep voice.

  Shelby nodded in reply. It was somewhat disconcerting to hold a conversation with such a huge head. Gulliver, on his voyage to Brobdingnag, the Land of the Giants, must have felt the same way when talking to the locals there.

  “Excuse me for not receiving you in person. We are in a state of emergency, so the location of Command Headquarters is classified. We have to communicate by means of specially protected rooms like this one. We call it an aquarium.”

  “What an apt name,” commented Shelby.

  Ignoring this reply, MacQueen continued:

  “Furthermore, we do not trust our cryptographic methods of protection, so we try to use special cable channels where possible.”

  “But what if they have infiltrated your aquaria?” asked Shelby, looking round the room.

  MacQueen laughed.

  “If the aquaria are compromised, the command bunker most likely is too. In that case, we are playing an open hand. But unfortunately, we don’t have anything better. However, precautions will do no harm.

  “But let’s get down to business. I think it is no secret to you that we are monitoring every communication emanating from the object, the whole spectrum of electromagnetic waves. Furthermore, we have sprayed a cloud of nano-aerosols round the entire planet, so that even if the object uses a narrow-beam laser link, we can intercept that too from scatter radiation.

  “But the problem is that the alien ship has not broken radio silence so far, not once. It uses communications only to contact us, never to contact any home planet or ship. Therefore we should like to know your opinion, Professor. Tell me, are there any other theoretically possible means of communication, which our Earth technology has not mastered?”

  Shelby thought about it.

  “It would be no bad thing to discuss this question in the presence of my physicist colleagues,” he said after a brief pause.

  “I would not like to reveal the tactical details of our actions to a wider public, even of those already involved in ‘Dawn’. You are an astrophysicist, and if some highly theoretical possibility of transmitting data is not known to you, then we are unlikely to have the appropriate detectors. Therefore I am only interested in those methods of transmitting information of which we ourselve
s are not making active use, but are capable of detecting. There is little point at present in discussing pure theory for which we do not have effective instruments.”

  Shelby nodded in approval.

  “That’s logical. All right, let me think... Some medium is required to transmit information. This may be either a field of some kind, or a flow of subatomic particles. Wave oscillations of fields are propagated at the speed of light; that is, at the maximum permissible speed in our universe, so that is the quickest method of communication we know.

  “We have discovered several fields. If you ignore those strong and weak interaction fields which are not suitable for communication, that only leaves electromagnetic and gravitational. We actively use the oscillations of the electromagnetic field in communication. As for gravitational fields, we are capable of detecting them, but we have not yet learned to generate them for the transmission of information. This is an example of the sort of field you asked about.”

  “Why don’t we use gravitational waves?”

  “Firstly, it is difficult to create them. At present we only know one way of generating them, by the oscillations of massive bodies. And I do mean ‘massive’. We are not talking about kilogrammes or even tons, but about masses comparable to the size of a planet or even a star. Such masses are necessary to create a wave of sufficient power. I’m sure you understand the practical difficulties inherent in this sort of technology.”

  “And secondly?”

  “Secondly, the absence of a gravitational lens, which means that we cannot focus the induced signal. In the whole Universe, we only know of one method of distorting gravitational fields, namely again by using massive bodies. But even they only have a low refractive index.”

  “So, nothing but technological problems,” said MacQueen.

  “Generally speaking, yes. But these waves are poorly studied, so they could well have other properties we do not know about.”

  “For example?”

  “For example, their rate of propagation. Let us assume that waves create a disturbance in the space-time continuum itself. Then the theoretical models predict rates of propagation exceeding that of light in a vacuum, including the infinite. In that case it would be possible to have instantaneous communication between two objects at any distance from each other. But I should warn you that this follows from theories which only exist on the frontier of science. The academic world takes a sceptical view of them.”