The Contact Episode Three Read online

  “Report when 137 changes course.”

  In its simulation, the computer assumed that 137 would begin the chase only after two hours had elapsed. Taking the optimum route, 137 should catch up with them on the second day. They would not manage to reach the sector of space covered by MRS 5M in time. They could not rely on help from the military. That meant they would have to prepare for a hijack.

  Kimble noticed that the pilot’s hands were shaking. If the pirates seized the ship, they would surely want to tow it back towards the asteroid belt, where they could conceal it well until they received their ill-gotten gains. In order to leave no witnesses, the crew would most likely be put in a lifeboat capsule, and when it was far enough away, they would give it a burst from a repeater plasma gun.

  “Don’t worry, we still have two days,” Kimble reassured him.

  After some thought, he asked the onboard computer:

  “Is 137 using active radar?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied the ship at once.

  “Can you determine the type of radar? The model?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “From what distance will they see us, if we are empty?”

  “From half a million kilometres, sir,” replied the computer.

  “Damn. That’s a hell of a range,” swore Kimble.

  He turned to the engineer.

  “Can we reduce our reflective surface in some way?”

  “You mean for radar?”

  “Yes.”

  The engineer thought.

  “We have the film we use to protect the ore from heat if it’s being transported close to the Sun. But it doesn’t reduce the radar image. On the contrary, it increases it. But we could stretch it so that it reflects the signal off to one side. That would reduce the effective reflection surface considerably.”

  “Can we hide from them that way?” asked Kimble.

  The pilot shook his head.

  “No, it wouldn’t work. They’re not complete idiots. If we suddenly drop off their radar, they’ll start searching for us, using passive radar. They can go over to another frequency. Or maybe they have other ships hidden away somewhere. If the crew knows its job, they’ll find us. The film won’t completely conceal us, it will only shield us to a limited extent.”

  Kimble turned to the engineer.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think the same,” the engineer replied, after thinking it over.

  “Are there any other possibilities?”

  “In theory, we could jettison the cargo compartment and hide ourselves behind the film. After that we change course. If they take the bait, they’ll continue chasing after the ore, while we can move off in a different direction,” proposed the engineer.

  The pilot sceptically shook his head.

  “After the manoeuvre, the radar image will change. They’ll sense that something isn’t right.”

  “What if we cover part of the cargo with film so as to increase the reflection to exactly that of the ship without the cargo compartment?”

  “Well, if that succeeds, then... But for that, we’d need time to do three things between their radar pulses. Undock, hide the ship, and wrap the ore in film. It would be a tricky job,” mused the engineer, thinking aloud.

  “What’s the time interval between their radar pulses?” asked Kimble.

  “A little under two hours.”

  “What do you think?” the Captain asked the engineer.

  “It’ll be difficult,” replied the engineer doubtfully.

  “Life itself isn’t a bowl of cherries.”

  The pilot and the engineer looked at one another, each waiting to see what the other would say.

  “Well, is there a chance, or is it impossible?” asked Kimble, impatient for an answer.

  “One in three that it’ll work,” said the pilot.

  “I’d say fifty-fifty,” replied the engineer.

  “OK. How much planning time do we need?”

  “An hour should do it.”

  “Right, then let’s get to work!”

  Fit for work again

  DHL 25631 tore through the interplanetary space between Mars and Earth at a dizzying speed. If it had moved at the same speed in the atmosphere, the monstrous friction against the air would have turned it into a plasma ball of growling thunder and flashing lightning. But here, in the emptiness of space, it seemed as if it were calmly standing still. It was not flying, it was falling: noiselessly, lifelessly, without a single shudder, without a single creak. Once it had reached cruising speed, DHL 25631 switched off its engines, and the dull sound coming from its nozzles ceased.

  There is no air in space, so the sounds from the rocket engines do not create the noise they do within Earth’s atmosphere. Nozzle sounds only reach the passengers of interplanetary spacecraft through the structures of the ship itself. This is why they sound dull, muffled, as if a huge waterfall were roaring a long way away as it ejected many tons of water into a bottomless pit.

  With the engines switched off, even this muffled sound ceases. It becomes completely silent. The silence of the grave is accompanied by the absence of any points of reference outside the ship. Looking out of a porthole you can see virtually nothing but stars. But they are so far away that even at DHL 25631’s maximum speed, it would take years for the position of the stars in the heavens to change enough to be visible to the naked eye.

  Steve was killing time by reading in the captain’s seat.

  “What are you reading?” asked Clive’s voice suddenly, right next to Steve’s ear.

  Steve started in surprise. He had been so absorbed in his reading that he had not noticed Clive come in.

  “Gosh, you startled me. Next time you float in, try to make some sort of sound, or my heart might stop from the shock.”

  “What a wuss you are.”

  “Well, we don’t all have new hea...” replied Steve, cutting himself off in mid-sentence. Clive at first paid no attention to the unfinished sentence, but was alarmed when he noticed the expression on Steve’s face.

  “What’s happened? What did you say?”

  “Oh, nothing. How are you?”

  “No, no, wait. What were you going to say?”

  Steve tried to look as if he didn’t understand what Clive was talking about, but made such a bad job of it that even Clive saw he was putting it on. His clumsy attempt to change the subject only alarmed Clive more.

  “You were going to say ‘new heart’?”

  “What? That’s crazy! Of course not!”

  Clive, without saying another word, looked around for a reflecting surface. In the rear part of the compartment was an almost mirror-like panel. He pushed off from the seat and floated towards it. When he reached it, he unfastened his shirt and gasped. His chest bore a not very noticeable dark red scar.

  If there had been gravity in the ship, Clive would have fallen in a faint. As it was, he was just disorientated for a second.

  “What – is – this, – Steve? What happened?”

  Well, that was it, the nerd had found out. This was the end of his quiet life, now Clive would pester him for the rest of the flight. He turned his seat towards him. Before saying anything, Steve sighed deeply.

  “Sit down, I’ll tell you.”

  Clive, white as a sheet, reached the second pilot’s seat.

  “I asked you the last thing you remembered from our trip to that warehouse. Do you still remember it? Or have you forgotten that too?”

  Clive, sitting with wide open eyes, just nodded his head.

  “Well, we reached the store on the harriers and left the ship some way off, so that we could get there without being noticed and look round everything properly. Anyway, the store turned out to be empty. We could see that from the ridge. Then we would have gone back to the harriers, but I noticed robbers hanging round them. We decided we’d forget about the harriers, call up the ship, and jump into it as soon as they saw us.

  “You called up the Falcon and it waited f
or us in the crater, because the store was empty by that time, there weren’t even any guards there. In brief, when the ship arrived, we ran towards it and the robbers started shooting at us.

  “I managed to reach it, but you were wounded. One bullet entered your heart. Some hours ago the medical complex carried out a transplant, because it was impossible to restore it.”

  Clive took the story quite calmly. It appeared the first shock was already over, and the background details were not so shocking. But Clive was a nerd. He was never going to leave the subject alone.

  “You said you managed to reach it and I didn’t. Then what? Did you fly off and return for me later?”

  “Think about what you are saying. If you needed a heart transplant, that means your heart was... well, you must realise what sort of state it was in. And you know what happens when the heart stops.”

  Steve noticed that Clive’s hands were shaking, although he had put them on his knees.

  “Listen, Clive. While you were still under the anaesthetic, the onboard computer warned me that I should not discuss the subject with you for the time being. You have a new heart, it needs training, it can’t withstand strong stress. Let’s put off this conversation till later. In a week’s time you’ll have got over the shock and the details won’t be so upsetting for you. I’ll tell you everything in detail then. Agreed?”

  Clive’s whole body shivered.

  “Agreed,” he eventually replied.

  “Well, that’s fine. The main thing you should be concerned about now is your health. And I can tell you in all sincerity that everything is in order with you. You must know that yourself. If you don’t believe me, go and get a body scan.

  “While you were in reanimation, the medical module scanned your brain activity. It showed me the report afterwards. Everything is in order with your brain. Absolutely. No problems. And your new heart has adapted to you very well. It’s the same as your old one, it was grown from your cells. You just need to give it some training. Your state of health now is even better than it was before the operation. Do you understand? That’s the main thing, all the rest is just details. After a while, I’ll tell you everything. But for now, it’s in your own interests not to ask too many questions. Have you got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Think about our mission. Forget everything else. Just remember that nothing threatens your health.

  “Anyway, while you were asleep I descended to a lower orbit, towards the cargo terminal. We docked with one of the cargo ships and now we’re flying towards Earth. There’s about a day of the flight left.

  “I’ve also had a message from Shelby. He didn’t tell me straight out, but he hinted that he had talked with MacQueen about what we managed to find out. He’ll tell us the rest when we get back. So altogether, it was pretty sparse information.”

  “What about the object? Has it reacted in any way to the approaching bombers?”

  “Shelby didn’t say anything about that. There’s probably no change.”

  Clive was lost in thought.

  “What’s MacQueen up to, I wonder?” he asked.

  “In what sense? He’ll probably deploy the group and then begin setting terms. You know how he’s been putting pressure on Shelby, saying he doesn’t like the way the object avoids so many questions.”

  “No, I understand that, I’m talking about something else. Assume he has the object in his sights. Then what? We know the object is very strong. We made an estimate of the friction energy during its manoeuvre in Saturn’s atmosphere. You would need a charge of at least ten kilotons to penetrate it, perhaps a lot more,” Clive speculated.

  “I see where you’re going. MacQueen has no means of delivery which could catch up with the object at sublight speed. But he can use pulse weapons. Shots from them travel at almost the speed of light. That would be enough to catch up with the object.”

  “Yes, but they aren’t powerful enough. Mobile weapons of that class do not exist, they are too massive. They have only just started installing them on big ships. And those are only experimental ones, the energy of the explosion at the epicentre of such a shot would barely reach half a kiloton.”

  “Really? I wouldn’t know; I’m not well up on armaments. Perhaps he has more powerful models you don’t know about,” said Steve with a shrug.

  “Possibly. But there’s still the problem of aiming them. The pulses themselves are not guided. At great distances, they can only hit stationary targets, or targets with a predictable flight trajectory. But the object would obviously be manoeuvring.”

  Steve thought about it.

  “If there’s a whole group of them, they can take up battle stations all round Jupiter, deployed in the form of a sphere, and if the object so much as twitches, they will open fire at short range. Then even unguided charges can score a hit.”

  “Do you think they’ll have time to react?”

  “Why shouldn’t they? The object picks up speed gradually. If they form a sphere a few light seconds from the planet, then while it’s gathering speed, they will have enough time to lock onto the target and strike.”

  Clive suddenly lost interest in the discussion, and began to wipe his forehead.

  “What’s the matter, have you got a headache?” asked Steve.

  “Yes, I feel a bit out of sorts somehow. I’ll go and lie down, maybe take a nap.”

  When Clive had gone off to rest, Steve continued thinking. Yes, Clive was right, even to hit the target would not be easy, let alone to cause it any significant damage. But then that was MacQueen’s worry.

  Steve adopted his favourite pose, with his feet on the console, and became immersed in his reading again. It was very comfortable to sit in this position on Earth, but in space it made little difference. You could just float in the air. But a habit is hard to get out of.

  After reading for a while, he dozed off. When exciting events are punctuated by periods of calm, you have to take your sleep while you can. On the base there was no such opportunity.

  “Attention crew of ship number 0777 being transported by DHL 25631, identify yourself!” suddenly rang out from the loudspeaker.

  Steve, shocked awake by this unexpected intervention, immediately took his feet off the console and began looking in bewilderment at what the monitors were showing.

  Steve spoke to the onboard computer. “Falcon, who is asking?”

  “It is a space patrol ship, sir.”

  “What does it want? Have you given it the registration information?”

  “Yes, sir, but they insist on live contact with the pilot.”

  “First pilot on line,” said Steve, switching on the microphone with a gesture.

  “How many crew and passengers do you have on board?” asked the voice. The tone was strict, almost commanding.

  “One pilot, one passenger.”

  “Are you carrying any explosives or weapons?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Pilot and passenger to assemble in the cargo compartment. Prepare lock for docking with our ship. We are coming on board.”

  “OK. When do you intend to arrive?”

  “Right now. Over.”

  Steve was confused for a moment by such insistence. After thinking briefly, he asked the onboard computer: “What is Clive doing?”

  “He is asleep.”

  “Wake him up and put me in contact with him.”

  The computer fell silent.

  “Steve, what have you been getting up to now?” said Clive in a sleepy voice half a minute later.

  Steve rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Clive had barely woken up before he was back to his old ways.

  “I’ve just been talking to the commander of some sort of military ship. They want to inspect our ship and told us to assemble in the cargo compartment.”

  “Really? All right. When?”

  “Right now.”

  “Right now? Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “I’ve only just learned it myself. Just half a minu
te ago.”

  “Oh, OK.”

  “We’ll meet in the cargo compartment.”

  “All right.”

  When Steve reached the cargo compartment, Clive was already there waiting for him. He was floating next to one of the portholes and watching with interest what was going on outside.

  “Can you see them?” asked Steve.

  “Yes, they’ve only just appeared.”

  Suddenly the orange beacon light over the lock began winking, warning that the lock was about to open.

  Steve went over to the other porthole and looked out through it. Not far from the ship, barely distinguishable in the darkness against the background of space, he could see an almost black military ship. Its purpose was apparent even to a non-specialist. Its outline was rough, as if cut out by an axe, whereas civilian ships had smoother, more graceful lines.

  The military ship had no distinguishable navigation lights of any kind. It was immersed in gloom. Its portholes, covered in armour plate, were narrow, giving the impression that it was screwing up its eyes before striking a devastating blow.

  A long sleeve extended from the military ship towards the Falcon, rapidly approaching the lock. A few seconds later it contacted the Falcon. At the same moment, the lock hissed as the pressure was equalised, and an instant later, the lock diaphragm opened.

  Steve looked into the now-open hole, expecting to see people in there. But instead of that, several balls of a metallic colour flew in. They were about the size of a fist and had winking red lights. Each had several laser beams scanning the interior of the Falcon.

  Steve looked at Clive in confusion.

  “What sort of a pantomime is this?” he asked, astonished.

  Before Clive had time to reply, the voice with which Steve had by now become familiar spoke from one of the balls.

  “Everyone stay where they are!”

  Steve thought this was a stupidly theatrical way to address them, and rather impertinent. As if he and Clive represented a danger!

  The ball fell silent, and the others instantly disappeared further into the ship. The ball which stayed in the cargo compartment, obviously keeping an eye on Clive and Steve, showed a red diode light slowly blinking. A minute later, the ball came to life again.