The Contact Episode Four Page 2

  “What about the first two fields you named? Why are they not suitable?”

  “They are too short-acting.”

  “I thought any field was able to propagate infinitely in all directions.”

  “Generally speaking, yes, but those two have a special feature. A wave running across a field is attenuated in proportion to the square of the distance from the source. The square, that is the second degree, is not a random number. It depends on the dimensionality of space. Our space is three-dimensional, that’s why it is the second degree.

  “At distances comparable with the size of an atom, space has greater dimensionality. We don’t know exactly, but eleven dimensions or more are possible. Therefore waves propagating in multiple-dimension space are attenuated more rapidly. In fact, these fields are attenuated so rapidly that they are virtually incapable of proceeding beyond the bounds of the atoms. They are not suitable for communication over space distances.”

  “What other methods are there?”

  “With the aid of particles. For example, neutrinos. But if the incomer is using neutrinos as a medium, we shall probably not succeed in detecting them.”

  “Why not?”

  “They hardly react at all with matter, including with our detectors, which consist of nothing other than matter. Such a particle is capable of simply flying through a thickness of many kilometres of lead, with the probability of its absorption close to zero. To register one such particle, an ocean of neutrinos would have to fly through our detector. Fluxes of this power are radiated by stars, for example by our sun. We are able to detect such cases. But low-intensity sources like the radio station of the alien ship at a distance of four astronomical units? I am sure that is far beyond the capabilities of our apparatus.”

  “So the most likely variant is the gravitational-wave one?”

  “From what we know now, that appears to be the case. On condition, of course, that methods of artificially inducing such waves of sufficient intensity exist.”

  “Do we have the capability of listening in to the incomer’s communications in the gravity band?”

  “In theory we do. We should probably be able to register the gravitational field being radiated by the alien ship. Our apparatus is sensitive enough for such purposes. As for the gravitational waves sent to the object, that is a more difficult problem. But there is still a chance of success.”

  “Good, my electronic intelligence specialists will be in touch with you later today to integrate your detectors into our system. I wish you every success,” said MacQueen, and switched off without waiting for Shelby’s reply. The wall where his image had just been was blank again.

  The cloak of invisibility

  The entire crew was watching the engineer’s work online with bated breath. Taking off the radar array, dropping the cargo, unrolling the film: this was routine work which the engineer had performed many times, so he knew each movement off by heart.

  Changing the shape was a tougher nut to crack. The elastic skeleton stubbornly refused to take on the intended shape. It kept on trying to bend, first one way, then the other, as if it was deliberately resisting what was planned for it. Heavy breathing could be heard from the loudspeakers of monitors to which the image from the engineer’s helmet was being relayed. No wonder. He must be under incredible stress.

  The film, now almost in the required shape, again spoilt everything, stretching out like an umbrella in a high wind. Kimble switched on the microphone.

  “Fifteen minutes to the next ping. This will have to be your last try.”

  “That’s right,” replied the engineer.

  “Can you see from there what’s causing it?” the Captain asked in a calm voice.

  “It looks as if one of the telescopic ribs is stuck,” replied the engineer.

  “What if you broke it?”

  “I thought of that, but if I break it and it doesn’t unfold as it should, there will be a hole in the middle.”

  “It’s your last chance. Better with a hole than not at all.”

  The engineer stopped directing the robots’ work and lowered his hands to get his breath. He appeared to be bending at the waist, because the camera was looking at his feet and moving up and down in time with his heavy breathing. A minute and a half later, he had finally recovered his breath and straightened up. The camera again showed the film and the robots frozen round its perimeter.

  “I don’t think there’s any other way. I’ll try. Permission to proceed?” he asked.

  Kimble was slow to reply.

  “Are you sure you know which rib is causing the problem?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Permission granted.”

  The engineer sighed again and by controlling the robots, brought the film back to its original position. Then he tried again to impart the intended shape to it. Reaching the moment when the structure had bent sharply out every time, he stopped the robots.

  “Right, I’m approaching the rib.”

  The camera image slowly began closing in.

  “Here it is. When the film is distorted, the wave comes from here,” said the engineer, pointing somewhere towards the film with his finger.

  “I can’t make out where you’re pointing,” said the pilot.

  The engineer switched on the laser distance gauge and moved the red spot to the faulty rib.

  “OK, do whatever you think necessary,” said Kimble.

  The engineer floated to within hand distance of the rib. A few links of the telescopic ribs did indeed look distorted.

  “Is that distortion from your camera, or is it really bent like that?” asked the Captain.

  “No distortion, it really is like that. And to all appearances it’s jammed somewhere between these segments,” said the engineer, shaking the rib. These movements caused clearly visible waves to run across the film in all directions.

  “OK, but hurry up,” said Kimble.

  On the monitors, the engineer’s hands were shown gripping the rib and trying to force it into the correct shape, but the material was too strong for human muscles. After an unsuccessful attempt, the engineer swore briefly and activated the power support of the exoskeleton. The long-drawn-out sounds of the hydraulic amplifier were heard again through the monitors.

  The engineer gripped the rib with the exoskeleton’s manipulators, which looked like a crab’s claws, and with no visible effort, cautiously began bending it straight. Then a little more, and then again. The hydraulic amplifiers whined under the strain. The material the rib was made of was strengthened with nano-tubes. It was stiffer than alloy steel.

  Suddenly the telescopic rib shuddered mightily and straightened out completely, almost hitting the engineer’s space suit.

  “Ow, I almost got hit in the face,” gasped the engineer. “Well, it all looks normal now. I didn’t even have to break it.”

  “Time,” said the Captain with metallic tones in his voice.

  The engineer turned and flew back to the place from where he had been directing the robots. This time the deformation succeeded. The film took on the required shape.

  “OK, my robot visually estimates the shape to be close to the intended one. How does it look to you?”

  The pilot rapidly performed some wizardry on his console, making calculations.

  “Confirmed. The shape is as calculated,” he said, and turned to the captain, giving a thumbs up.

  Having set up the radar on the cargo and unwound a second film to protect the empty ship, the engineer came back on board and went up to the captain’s bridge. Kimble slapped him on the shoulder.

  “Brilliant! First-class work! Now let’s see if the pirates take the bait. How long to the next pulse?”

  “It’s due now,” replied the pilot.

  All three gazed intently at the monitors. A ping was heard. The pirate ship was studying the latest radar pulse. Now, if the echo of their pulse seemed strange to them, they would start sending a series of narrow-beam pulses towards the assumed pos
ition of THP 11600. Such pulses produced a more precise signature, from which the change in the radar echo would probably be noticeable. Under a hail of narrow-beam pulses, it would be very difficult to move away from the cargo without being noticed.

  The whole crew froze in anticipation of a series of pings. Ten seconds elapsed, twenty, one minute, two... No control ping followed. Kimble poured himself some water, and trying to make no noise, almost on tiptoe, as if fearing any sound would draw the pirates’ attention, he went back to his chair and sat in it. Holding the glass in his hand, he looked in turn at the engineer and pilot, who were watching him. No-one dared break the silence.

  After one more minute, Kimble finally allowed himself to relax in his chair, got into a comfortable position and sipped from the glass.

  “Well then, we can assume that they didn’t notice anything,” he said in a soft voice.

  The engineer also sat in a chair.

  “It looks that way,” he said after a pause.

  “Now let’s change course very carefully towards Sector MRS 12,” said the Captain to the pilot.

  “Yes, sir!”

  The pilot went over to the console and began changing the flight mission.

  THP 11600 gave a barely noticeable shudder as it began to turn at an acute angle to its former trajectory, almost perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. Their optimum flight trajectory at which the ship could get as far as possible from the cargo was away from the direction of flight of the pirates. Unfortunately, if they went that way, it would be impossible to hide behind the second screen which in that case they would have to place directly astern. The powerful plasma exhaust from the main engines would have burnt it up in no time. So they had to make do with a less than ideal trajectory, turning only their side towards the pirate ship.

  Kimble plugged into the internal network.

  “Attention all crew! The separation of the cargo and the camouflage were successful. It looks as if our friends did not suspect anything. All remain in your positions at constant readiness. We haven’t got away from pursuit yet.”

  Switching off the internal network, he turned to the engineer.

  “Get some rest for an hour or two. Splendid work, good show!”

  The engineer was so tired that he couldn’t even force a smile. He nodded obediently and left the Captain’s compartment.

  After the turn, THP 11600 picked up speed and plunged into the depths of space, away from the disc of the Solar System.

  Error?

  This time Steve woke of his own accord. After lying on his side for some minutes with his eyes closed, he rolled onto his back, his face facing the monitor over the bed.

  “Where are we?” he asked in a voice rather hoarse from sleep.

  The cabin at once came to life, and the lighting switched from semi-twilight to bright daytime mode. It was as full of light as if the sun had suddenly entered it. Steve instinctively screwed up his eyes. The light was too bright.

  “We are approaching near-Earth space, sir. DHL 25631 has informed me that it will begin deceleration in two and a half hours.”

  The monitor showed a map of the near-Earth sector of the Solar System, with the flight trajectories of DHL 25631 and the Falcon. These trajectories diverged after about three hours – DHL 25631 continued moving towards the Moon, and the Falcon descended to a low Earth orbit. After one loop round the planet it would land on the surface. The final destination had been declared as the civil spaceport from which Steve and Clive had taken off for Mars some days ago.

  “Hmm, the civil spaceport. Why not direct to the military one?”

  “The Falcon is a civil spacecraft, sir. The military spaceports are closed to us,” replied the onboard computer, showing no surprise at Steve’s question.

  “Could you land there?”

  “Technically, there is nothing to prevent it. With the necessary permission of the military space traffic controllers, it would be possible.”

  “All right. Ask the traffic controller for permission to land directly at the Space Force base. Tell them you have on board two passengers with clearance 1C, carrying out a task connected to the ‘Dawn’ project. Tell them to apply to Professor Shelby personally for the details. Shelby is in charge of this project, in case they don’t know. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Excellent.”

  Clive was already in the pilot’s compartment, making some calculations on the computer. Steve had hardly reached his chair when Clive, without wasting time on such trivia as greetings, started on his latest theory.

  “Those data from the trackers which the Martian base sent. Have you looked at them?”

  “Of course, how else would I have known about MacQueen’s bombers?”

  Clive rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, as was his habit when someone failed to follow his train of thought.

  “Yes, of course, but did you look at the flight parameters of the other ships?”

  “No, why?”

  “Why? Because our observatory is taking part in the remote manipulation project. That was another of your jobs on the telescope, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  Steve waved his hand, brushing this aside.

  “Oh, come on, Clive. As if I didn’t have other things to worry about. I’ve had it up to here with ‘Dawn’.”

  “Well, now you have a minute free, why not look at them?”

  “OK, so you’re beating about the bush. You’ve looked at them and seen something?” asked Steve, irritated. He was still half-asleep, and had no desire to quarrel.

  Clive, looking mysterious, simply nodded.

  “Well then, trot it out.”

  Clive transferred the image from the monitor in front of him to the big screen, on which numerous diagrams with long columns of small figures appeared.

  “There’s a small anomaly in the data from the trackers.”

  “Right,” agreed Steve, listening intently.

  “You can see it best at high speeds. The higher the speed, the more noticeable the anomaly is.”

  Steve looked at the figures, but could still not understand what Clive was trying to tell him.

  “What exactly is wrong?”

  Clive waved again, and the diagrams and columns of figures were replaced by a schematic map of the Solar System, on which all interplanetary transport was shown. Steve had seen this map before. It was based on data from the base in areostationary orbit round Mars.

  “Look at it now,” said Clive, continuing to gesticulate. A scale consisting of the colours of the spectrum now appeared in one corner. At the same time, all the interplanetary traffic ships were shown in different colours, from red to violet.

  “The colour of the ships denotes their speeds. Low speeds are at the red end of the spectrum and high speeds at the violet end,” explained Clive. “You are now seeing the data from the trackers’ radars; that is, the measured positions of the ships in space. And now the data obtained by calculation, based on the engine readings.”

  Clive waved, and some ships moved back.

  “Did you see that? Look at it again...”

  Clive then removed from the screen first the radar readings and then the calculated data. Then he repeated this several more times.

  When the pictures replaced each other in rapid succession, it was noticeable that the ships were jumping, first forward, then back. Those shown in red were not moving at all, the green ones barely perceptibly, as if changing from one leg to another, but the violet ones were clearly jumping forward and back.

  Steve looked at it for some time, then asked:

  “Could it simply be an error?”

  “What, in all the trackers measuring the positions of all the ships?”

  Steve said nothing, immersed in thought. The fact that this affected all the ships suggested that there was most likely an error in the data. But the interplanetary flight control centre could worry about that. He had neither the time nor the inclination to sort out other people’s problems
.

  “Has this anomaly been there long? Have you looked at the historical data?” he asked, hoping to close the subject as soon as possible. Clive was always digging up some sort of nonsense.

  “The data you obtained from the base cover only a short period, just a few days. There are no older data,” replied Clive.

  “It’s surprising that no-one noticed this before we did,” said Steve.

  “Perhaps this really is only a measurement error which arises only at that base, and perhaps no-one before us ever studied the data from that base,” suggested Clive.

  “Well, Shelby told me about it and it was he who gave me the access codes. So he also requested the data from that base. Surely, we ought to ask him.”

  “Shelby does not perform routine work like digging through tons of raw radar readings himself. Do you know who on his team apart from you might be working on such data?”

  “Of the students, only me. He has several post-graduates writing their doctoral theses, most likely one of them does it.”

  Silence reigned. Steve had some sort of unpleasant premonition.

  “Hmm, yes...” he said eventually. “Do you know what this reminds me of? When we noticed the incomer, we also took it for an error at first. I hope that this time it stays an error. If not, it will be a feather in your cap.”

  “Keep your trap shut, Steve! There are problems enough as it is. When ‘Dawn’ is declassified, you, as the first discoverer, will become a celebrity, and most likely in the bad sense of the word. I don’t want that sort of fame, I can do without it,” replied Clive with irritation.

  “Attention, prepare for deceleration manoeuvre,” warned the voice of the onboard computer.