The Contact Episode One Page 4

gestured to lower the volume to a normal level and turned to face the camera above his console.

  "Hi, Clive, this is Steve!"

  "I can see it's you, what's your problem now?"

  All their telephone conversations began this way. Steve found it very irritating that Clive always accused him of some kind of shabby trick. As if, because he was ringing Clive, he must have done something wrong and didn't know what to do next. Although, to be honest, more often than not, this was the reason he called Clive. Particularly if he was calling from the observatory.

  "This time, no problem - at least, none that's my fault."

  "So what have you got there?"

  "Listen, you're not busy, are you? If not, could you look in at the observatory, I've come across something interesting and I need your help."

  Steve had to force himself to say the last few words. He hated having to ask Clive for anything, but that was the best and, most importantly, tested way of getting Clive to come to the observatory without lots of questions, discussions and stories from Clive about how busy he was.

  "Well, since you're not getting anywhere without my help, so be it... I'm in the library, I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

  "OK, but put your skates on, if you can."

  "What's so important?"

  "I don't know how important it is, but it's urgent, that's for sure." Steve was afraid the object might disappear from view, be lost, fly back to where it had come from, whatever... The chance of seeing something like this did not come along every day. You could spend all your life in the observatory and never see the like again.

  Clive nodded and hung up. His image disappeared from the screen.

  Exactly fifteen minutes later, Steve heard the sound of the door opening, and jumped out of his chair to meet Clive.

  "So what's going on?" asked Clive.

  "Sit down, I'll show you."

  Steve sat Clive down in the armchair, stood behind him and restarted the simulator.

  "It all began during my shift yesterday. The telescope picked up an object from distant space. On its initial trajectory, it would have intersected Earth's orbit, but..."

  "What do you mean, 'on its initial trajectory'? You mean its flight trajectory is changing?" interrupted Clive.

  "Yes, it's changing. Just listen, don't interrupt. It was first picked up beyond the orbits of the outer planets, coming from the direction of the Omega Nebula."

  Steve leaned on the back of Clive's chair and gesticulated with his free hand, showing the position of the object in the Solar System depicted on the screen.

  "On the basis of the results from the first analysis of its flight trajectory, it would have intersected the Earth's orbit in about two hundred years. The repeat observation didn't find it at first, the data for velocity had to be corrected. The third time, the data still didn't match. That's when the object first came to my attention."

  Steve moved away from the back of the chair in which Clive was sitting, sat back down in his own chair, took a gulp of tea and recovered his breath. It was obvious that Clive was intrigued, but so far his eyes still showed a trace of scepticism. After taking another gulp, Steve continued.

  "When I got the data about the object and looked at its flight trajectory, I realised at once that it was accelerating. But as you know, the computer does not consider such possibilities; we are not observing artificial objects. And yet it was clear that the object was accelerating. I reset the acceleration to other than zero, and immediately everything about its motion fell into place. But that wasn't the end of the surprises."

  Steve had already foreseen Clive's next question and jumped in before he had a chance to ask it.

  "Yes, I compared it with the spacecraft database, it's not there. No position beacons either. There were no other data, but as you must realise, a distance of more than forty astronomical units would be quite a long way for an object of that size."

  Clive was now completely intrigued. He didn't even notice the coffee grounds on the petals of his flower. He moved the vase a little to one side, so that it didn't impede his view of the auxiliary monitors.

  Meanwhile, Steve increased the tempo of his story till he was talking nineteen to the dozen.

  "Well, I racked my brains, and wondered if it might be one of the lost ones. I skipped the stories more than five years old, before that it would have been physically impossible for them to have performed such a manoeuvre, the engine thrust would not have been sufficient. I also took a look at the search operation logs - there were a couple of candidates, but it would be quite strange to assume that they had been zooming away at top speed for five years in one direction, and then suddenly changed their minds completely and decided to come back. What's more, if they had been noticed on the way back at a distance of forty astronomical units, they would also have been noticed while they were much nearer. In short, theoretically it can't be ruled out, but in practice it's highly improbable that we have simply come across a lost craft."

  Steve finally stopped talking. Clive looked him in the eyes for a few more seconds, then silently turned to look at his flower. Silence reigned, broken only by the slight sound of the air conditioner and the buzzing of the servers.

  "Could they be military? We don't have complete information about military spacecraft. Let's assume that during a flight to Saturn a spacecraft was travelling in stealth mode, but on the return trip, without it," proposed Clive.

  Steve smiled condescendingly.

  "I haven't told you everything yet. In the past day, the object has picked up speed. Enough to travel thirty astronomical units. In less than 24 hours."

  Clive tried to work out in his head the speed and power reserve needed for this. But whichever way you looked at it, the difference between the present-day capabilities of the best engines and the thrust of this object was tremendous.

  "Perhaps the initial coordinates are wrong? Could it have started from much nearer?" suggested Clive.

  Steve shook his head and continued.

  "At this speed the object whistled past Saturn, then obviously became caught up in its atmosphere, lost speed..." Clive's eyes began to widen. "flew on, reached Jupiter and became its satellite."

  Clive, shaken, reached out for the bottle of water without looking, but it slipped out of his hand. The water poured out right onto his shorts. He swore, picked up the bottle, put it back and looked accusingly at Steve as though it was his fault.

  Steve assumed an imperturbable air and observed the quivering Clive as an adult looks at a clumsy child. It was satisfying to see Clive actually spill something for once after frequently accusing Steve and other colleagues of clumsiness! After a short pause while Clive wiped himself dry, Steve ended his story.

  "Since then, the object has been in orbit round Jupiter."

  "Was there any visual contact?" asked Clive.

  "There was, but as the object was not being specially tracked, there are only random photos from the general database. And those were only taken by small telescopes; in other words, what photos there are aren't worth anything, they don't provide any clarity."

  "Show me!"

  Steve gestured to let the computer know what he wanted. The computer obeyed, and displayed both shots on the main monitor and the flight trajectory data on the auxiliary ones.

  Clive stared intently at the screen. His gaze swung from one picture to the other, as if he were looking for some sort of trap. This went on for about half a minute. Steve would have liked to say something, but Clive gestured to him to stop him doing so. Clive had just come over from the main monitor to the auxiliary one and was greedily absorbing the columns of figures.

  "So while it's circling round Jupiter, we ought to look at it more closely!" exclaimed Clive, without looking away from the figures.

  "We need a telescope array. And as you know, a decent array of telescopes can only be lined up on the Dean's signature. And before all this bureaucracy is finished, at least one whole day will have elapsed" replied Steve.
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br />   Clive knew this, of course.

  "Hmm, yes, that's no use..." Clive thought deeply. "You know, we have orbital telescopes round the gas giants, let's line them up on it," he proposed.

  Steve had completely forgotten about this. Yes indeed, these telescopes had been specially aligned for an experiment about the remote manipulation of Mercury's orbit, but now they were virtually idle. Being low-power and highly specialised, they were of little interest to the scientific community. They weren't particularly useful for commercial organisations either, because they did not have suitable instruments for tracking artificial objects. It would have been too inconvenient to use them to track interplanetary transport craft.

  "Do you happen to know anyone from their control centre personally?" asked Steve. "Because if we go through the official channels, there will be the same bureaucratic delay."

  Clive's duties in the observatory included, among other things, the allocation of telescope time. This job was not usually entrusted to students, but Clive was an exception. Firstly, he had already completed his studies and had of course already let all the professors know that he planned to apply for a postgraduate studentship (in other words, he had already thoroughly got on everyone's nerves). Secondly, Clive was unequalled for pedantry and responsibility. So when the question of appointing an allocator of telescope time arose, he was the obvious front-runner.

  The scientific community often called on each other for help, particularly in matters of allocating telescope time. And Clive was no exception. At first he ignored requests from colleagues at other research centres to take one or two photographs bypassing the official channels, but in time he came to realise that you couldn't get by without mutual backscratching. He himself had occasion to ask things of others. Thus he created for himself a wide circle of acquaintance ready to help with telescope time.

  "I know. Look up our colleague Sanchez in my address book," said Clive.

  Steve quickly found the required contact number and commanded the computer to make the call. The weary face of the duty operator appeared on screen.

  "Control centre Jupiter-Alpha, Sanchez, how can I help?"

  "Hello, sorry to dis..." Clive started, but Steve interrupted him.

  "Hello, Jupiter-Alpha, we are calibrating our equipment and we need the support of your telescope array. Could you turn a couple of your lenses onto a small asteroid in orbit round Jupiter? We just need a short series of shots, there's no need to track it. Four telescopes would be about right."

  "I'd be glad to, but I can't give you more than two, the others are switched off. Send the trajectory parameters and I'll do it. In which spectral bands do you want the shots?"

  "The visible spectrum would be sufficient, but the infrared might come in handy too," replied Steve as he sent the object's trajectory data.

  "As you wish. We are using the telescopes ourselves right now, but they'll be free in about 30 minutes. You can expect the results then," Sanchez replied.

  "That's fine, thank you."

  "No problem, ask again any time!"

  Clive turned to Steve.

  "While we're waiting for Sanchez to send the pictures, let's look at Saturn's atmosphere," he proposed. Steve nodded approvingly.

  Clive moved his chair back to its place behind the operator's table. His console immediately sprang to life with little signal lights of various colours. With the usual gestures, Clive only took a few moments to go through the authorisation routine, and take over control of the telescope.

  "Have you put the data on the object in the general directory?" he asked.

  "Wait, I'm doing that right now," replied Steve. "Ready."

  Having made the data available, Steve turned back towards Clive. As always, Clive managed to be controlling the computer at the most interesting times.

  Clive was already fully engaged, sending the parameters to one of the orbital telescopes. For