From the Desk of Infinity

(Blogger’s note: This is another of those “trunk” manuscripts. It was written in the late 1970s, as best as I can remember and based on a couple of clues in the story. Unlike Isaac Asimov in his Early Asimov, I updated the tale. In his case, he published his early stories just as they had originally appeared, stuck in that earlier time. Since, this story hadn’t been published, I updated it. At one point Steve offered Elaine coffee or a cigarette. In our world today, smoking would be outlawed in the building and he wouldn’t have offered the cigarette. Steve used a tape recorder then but now he used his cell phone to record the conversation. And, of course, she didn’t take the pictures using a film camera but rather a digital camera. That complicated things a little bit because the film made for a better delay in getting the pictures.

Drawing of an alien made
during the hypnotic
regression session.

The other thing is that the story is based on a UFO abduction case that I investigated in the mid-1970s. Some of the details came out of that investigation, including the idea of using a green pen (originally a felt tip but now a gel) to draw the alien creatures. I believe that tale is the result of sleep paralysis rather than a real UFO abduction. For those interested in that, I suggest reading The Abduction Enigma, which tells the full story and how we (Russ Estes, Bill Cone and I) reached that conclusion. For those interested in learning more about this but don’t have access to the book, you can read a little about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2005/03/alien-abduction-and-leading-witness.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/08/abduction-enigma.html

And no, I’m not comparing myself to Isaac Asimov, merely using the technique that he used in writing his book about, well, writing his early stories.

Oh, for those interested in such things, this story’s original title, and the one used here was “From the Desk of Infinity.” It doesn’t have much relevance for the story. Bob Cornett and I were putting together an anthology of our short stories and we called the book, From the Desk of Infinity. We figured one story should be titled that, and this one “won” the honor.)

 

I finally got the story that I had been looking for, complete with pictures. The story that should have won me worldwide fame and fortune but that has netted me nothing except sleepless nights. A woman gave it to me and I could see it in print. Unfortunately, it would have to go under a pen name into one of those cheap newspapers that you can buy on your way out of the grocery store and that no one believes. They make sensational reading but you don’t hear people quoting them as sources around the water cooler.

She came into the city room one rainy afternoon. If it hadn’t been for the rain and the lack of any “real” events happening, I probably wouldn’t have listened to her. But the gloom filtering in the windows, the harsh artificial lights and the heavy sound of traffic three floors below put me into the mood to listen to horror stories.

She was almost five-seven, had brown hair to her shoulders, a brown blouse and an unfashionably short skirt. Nothing daring, just above the knee. She stopped to talk to one of the secretaries who sit in the first row of desks. They sometimes do what was once known as paste ups, a feature for the what was once called the woman’s section and point people to the rest of us. Since I had just done a story about a related happening, Debbie pointed to me.

As she walked up, I stood, watching her eyes. The eyes sometimes give a clue about the person. She stared back at me, almost saying that she didn’t care what I thought, just that I should listen. I held out my hand, wanting to use the old newspaper joke, “I’m Cash, from the Register,” but thought she might not appreciate the humor. Instead, I just said, “My name’s Ketchum. Can I help you?”

She hesitated before she spoke, which didn’t fit with the signal I had gotten from her eyes. Her hand was warm and moist, indicating that she was nervous but her poise hid it well. I was surprised by the old-fashioned gesture. “I’m not sure.”

I pointed to a chair at the empty desk, next to mine. “Why don’t you have a seat and we’ll see what we can do.”

She pushed the chair around so that it was facing me, pulled the rain hat from her head and slipped off the raincoat, letting it drip on the carpet. She didn’t have a purse, but dug a cell phone out of the coat pocket and set in on the desk. She set her umbrella on the floor, out of the way. Her motions were measured and slow. Again, she seemed to be hesitating. Since I didn’t know if there was going to be a story or not, I proceeded carefully. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

She shook her head, almost as if to shake out her hair. She started to say something and changed her mind. “I think coffee would be good. With sugar. If you don’t mind.”

“All right. I’ll just be a moment. Make yourself at home.” I slipped off to get the coffee, wondering what this was all about. It didn’t feel right. Most people came into the city room ready to blab their fool heads off about anything and everything for as long as someone would listen, but she didn’t seem to want to talk.

I set the coffee in front of her, catching her attention. She had been staring into space, not seeing or hearing anything around her. She stirred the coffee slowly with her finger, licked it, still seeming to debate what she should do.

I said, “I don’t believe I got your name.”

“Oh, that wasn’t very nice of me. Elaine. Elaine Jorgenson. I live here in town, or rather on the outskirts of town.”

She tugged at the hem of her skirt but was staring at the floor. “I have a story, or rather had an experience that might interest you.” She sipped the coffee, waiting for me to say something. Silence is sometimes the best stimulate but I said, “Go on.”

“I’m not sure that you’ll want to hear this or that you’ll even believe it but it’s all true. I can assure you of that.”

I rolled my eyes. I’m always afraid of storis that begin with “I’m tell the truth,” or some variant of that. However, I waited and then opened my laptop. “You don’t mind if I take a few notes, do you?”

“Of course not. You can write down whatever you want but you’ll probably end up throwing it away.”

“So you said.”

She fumbled through one of the coat pockets looking for a Kleenex but once she found it, just balled it up in her hand. “I don’t know where to begin.”

I was becoming irritated at all the delay. I could see no reason for it because she had come to us. “Why not start at the beginning,” I said sarcastically. She didn’t notice.

“That’s the problem,” she said. “I’m not sure of the beginning.”

It was late afternoon now and most of the staff had gone. We were almost alone. Only one or two of the night people slipping in. I rubbed a hand across my forehead, took a deep breath and watched her. She seemed to be psyching herself up.

“Let’s see. It started four nights ago.” She looked at me to make sure that I was paying attention. “It was about eleven when I saw it from the window in my house. I don’t know why I looked out just them, but I did and saw it hovering over the trees to the south. It was just a bright light that hung there for a few seconds and then flashed away.”

That was no big deal. I stopped typing and picked up the coffee and told the cup, “Lots of people have seen things like that. In fact, some have made better reports.”

“You’re getting a head here,” she said, slightly sharply. She took a sip of the coffee, punishing me for interrupting her. She set the cup down and stared at it before starting again. “It was back the next night about the same time. After a day, I know what I wanted to do if I ever saw it again so I picked up me cell. I couldn’t get a signal. I gave up for the moment and went back to the window. The thing then flashed brightly once, as if to say good-by, and shot away.”

I typed a few notes but didn’t interrupt her with questions because I could always go back and I was quickly losing interest. I pulled out the bottom drawer of my desk and put my feet up on the edge, rocking back in the chair. “Go on,” I said again.

“Well, I thought that if it had come back once, maybe it would come back again, so I made sure my camera was charged. It is 64 megapixels and when I bought it, was told that it was good in daylight and low light but to be sure to make sure I focused it properly. When the object came back that night, I tried to take some pictures.”

I sat up suddenly and leaned forward. “You got pictures? With you?”

Now she reached into another coat pocket and brought out the camera. It was a good one. Top of the line.

“I haven’t done much with them,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what to do.”

I said, “Can I see them?”

She called the pictures up on the small screen and turned the camera around for me. He scrolled through them, saw that two or three were good but the small screen made it difficult to be sure.

“Can I download these?”

“I didn’t bring the adapter.”

“Didn’t bring the adapter,” I repeated. I grabbed my phone, stabbing at the intercom button. “Who’s in the lab?” I heard one of the secretaries say something about checking for me. I put a hand over the mouth piece. “I think we can get those downloaded and prints made pretty quick. If that’s all right with you.”

I looked away when I heard someone answer me on the phone. I told her what I had and said, “Right now, if you can.” The lab tech, Leigh Roberts, said that she would be up in a few minutes to get the camera. I cradled the receiver and said, “Sorry about the interruption. I just didn’t expect pictures.”

“They might not be too good. I’m not familiar with the camera. I just got it.”

She sat holding the camera and said, “The night after I took the pictures, I wasn’t really interested in it anymore. Oh, I would have looked for it if I had been awake, but I wasn’t. I fell asleep on the couch watching HBO.”

“So, it might have reappeared?”

“It was there. That I do know.”

“But if you were asleep, how would you know?”

“Please. Mister Ketchum, you’re jumping ahead again.”

“I’m sorry. Please call me Steve. That’s make us friends.”

She ran a hand through her hair and stared out the window. I followed her gaze and was surprised to see that it was almost dark. The overhead lights in the city room were turned out to save money in these austere times, so I turned on my desk lamp. It threw a circle of bright light on my desk, hiding the things outside it in shadows.

“You know, it was strange,” she said. “I woke up about eleven and had the feeling that someone was watching me. I came wide awake and thinking. There wasn’t any of this slowly waking up. I was there right now and frightened. I knew that there was someone in the room with me.

“I peeked through my eyelashes and could see him standing over me, looking down at me. There was only the light from the TV screen and I could hear voices from it. I peeked at this man, standing there, but could only see a vague outline. He looked young. I guess small would be a better word. I thought that he was young because he was small. The funny thing about this is that I didn’t panic or scream but quietly laid there hoping he would go away, thinking I was asleep.”

I held up a hand to stop her. “The photo tech is here.” I stood and walked over to Leigh, telling her to call as soon as she had downloaded the pictures and examined them. Back at my desk, I asked Elaine if she wanted more coffee.

“No. I just want to get this thing told now that I’ve started.”

“Fine.” I sat down, loosened my tie and rolled up my sleeves. “You said that there was a young man in your house. Did you see what he looked like?”

“Not just then. Later, I got a good look at him and all the others. But right then I didn’t know what was happening. I watched him through my eyelashes so that it looked like I was looking at him through tall grass. Anyway, I didn’t move. He waved at someone, signaling for them to come over and then he reached down. Now, I opened my eyes and got the first real look at them. They weren’t human. They looked almost human, but there weren’t.” She paused there.

“Are you going to tell me that these guys, in your house, were from a flying saucer?” I looked away again, staring out the window. Across the street I could see the lights of a high rise and through one of the windows, I saw a man sitting there, reading the newspaper.

“Please,” she said. “Let me tell this my way. At the time I didn’t know who they were but I later found out there were from the flying saucer.”

“What did they look like?”

She hesitated as if wondering if she should answer my question. Then she said, “I was going to save that for later, but since you asked.”

“Damn right I asked.” But I was no longer taking notes. We’d ventured too far into the weird.

“They were about four feet tall, very thin and wearing shiny clothes, like those flight suits that pilots sometimes wear. They had long arms and hands that only had three fingers or rather two fingers and a long thumb. They had long, skinny faces with two eyes, a nose and mouth.”

“Hardly a good description,” I interjected.

“What’s wrong with it?” she demanded.

“Nothing’s wrong with it. I meant that it wasn’t very imaginative.”

She took offense at that. She stared at me and then said, her voice shaking with anger. “I think we’re through here. I should have known better.”

I thought about not saying anything more and letting her storm out of the city room. I didn’t want to get caught up in a flying saucer story.

But rather than leave, she said, “There is nothing imaginative about it. I’m telling you what I saw.”

I found myself apologizing to her. “Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that quite the way it sounded. I meant…” I let the sentence trail off because I had meant it. I’d said it to get a reaction.

After a moment, she sighed and then said, “Anyway, the one that had been near me from the start reached down toward me. I sat up and jerked away from him, screaming not to touch me. He didn’t seem to hear, or maybe just didn’t care. He reached for my arms, grabbing me. I felt some of the will drain out of me. I struggled for a moment but then gave up because it took too much effort to resist. I let him and his friend pick me up.”

I resumed typing. I had questions, but I kept them to myself.

“That was a strange sensation,” she said. “There seem to be no effort in picking me up. They grasped my upper arms and I just floated up. I saw a third man… or maybe I should say creature, standing in the corner, examining my TV. He didn’t pay attention to us. We went to the door. I say went because I don’t know how we got there. They seemed to float along, carrying me with them. I shouted, ‘I don’t want to go.’ But they didn’t pay any attention to that.

“Outside the house I saw the craft, which was the thing that I had been seeing over the last few days. It was much larger now because it was so much closer. Maybe the pictures will give you some indication of the size. It was disc-shaped and had a dome on top. It was hovering about four feet above the ground and there weren’t any steps or ladders into it. The funny think about that was that I was thinking that they could fly across space and come into someone’s house, but they forget to put out the steps or open the door. They didn’t need the steps though. We just floated up.”

I had been thinking about some sort of foot prints or impressions from the craft, but she had just eliminated that theory. I had to marvel at the way she created the story to leave no room for evidence. I wasn’t thinking about the pictures.

“The inside was brightly lit up. I started to put a hand up, to shield my eyes but they wouldn’t let me. I blinked, trying to adjust my eyes to the light while they stood around and watched, fascinated by my eyelids. None of them ever blinked. I watched pretty closely after that, but I never saw them blink.”

That was another weird detail. If nothing else, she had a finely crafted story with plenty of little details.

“I was taken to another room. It had one wall that was curved but all the others were straight. I was left there for several minutes. At first, I just sat on the table where they left me, but then got up to look around. For some reason, I wasn’t scared. A little anxious maybe, but not scared.”

She took another sip of the coffee and made a face. It had gotten cold. She set the cup on the desk and then said, “There wasn’t much to look at in the room. A few machines that looked like computers but I couldn’t really tell. There were a few panels on the wall that look sort of like one of our TVs. One or two had lines running through them. You know what I mean? Like oscilloscopes.”

She shrugged. “I guess they wanted me to have a good look around. Maybe to show me that they meant me no harm. No one came back until I sat on the table again. Then two of them returned. They were dressed differently than those I had seen before. Instead of the shiny suits, they were wearing cloth gowns or some sort. Maybe like doctors wear.

“One of them came over to me and pointed at my throat. I didn’t know what he meant and shook my head. He reached up and started to unbutton my blouse. I didn’t like that and pushed his hand away. The other one touched my shoulder and the first finished unbuttoning my blouse, pushing it from my shoulders. I couldn’t move to stop him.”

I typed a note on my laptop before glancing at the clock. The pictures should have been ready by now. I wondered about these women who had to imagine that they were stripped by extraterrestrial beings. Some people claimed that men have big egos but I don’t remember them claiming that a creature had flown across the galaxy to get a look at his body. I would have tried to get rid of her at them point, but I wanted to examine those pictures first.

She didn’t notice that I had stopped typing and continued. “They kept at my clothes, unzipping my pants, unhooking my bra and pushing down my panties. I noticed that the room was warm, now that I didn’t have my clothes. I felt worse than being undressed in public. At least there you have something in common with half the population but here, all I could say was that they were humanoid.

“One of them pushed on my shoulder, causing me to lie back. I swung my legs up so that I was prone, feeling like I was on an examining table and wondering what was next. One of them slipped a helmet over my head and there was a series of flashes as if they were photographing me. I had visions of being the centerfold in some kind of alien biological journal.

“Nothing seemed to happen for quite a while, except for a tingling at my scalp. It seemed like electricity. I was surprised when someone told me that it was over and that I could sit up. I looked around but couldn’t find the one who had spoken.”

“You mean it spoke to you in English?” I’m not sure why I asked because I was getting bored with this.

She said, “I don’t know. I just knew that it was now over.”

I nodded and thought “telepathy,” but didn’t say that.

“There was another creature there,” she said. “He wasn’t dressed like those in the lab coats but looked more like one of those who brought me in. I felt compelled to look at him, to stare at his forehead. I tried to look away but couldn’t. All the time he was talking to me quietly, soothingly, saying that I should relax, to take it easy, to remember good things. He talked about standing on a cliff, looking down at the ocean, feeling the light breeze on my face, wind in my hair, watching the waves roll in, slowly rolling in, each behind the other. Washing the shore briefly and then slipping away to be followed by another. I listened to him, carefully, hanging on his every word, trying to picture the scene, trying to relax.”

She hesitated and then said, “Since then, I’ve had a little time to think about it. I think he was hypnotizing me.”

“I’ve been told that it can’t be done without a person’s permission.” I threw that in there quickly, trying to slow her down, now back to typing my notes.

“Maybe you can’t if the victim is actively resisting but I bet you can if you can get them to listen to you. After all, a stage hypnotist usually hypnotizes a few people in the audience by accident.”

“Good point.” I picked up the coffee but it was cold and I didn’t drink any of it. I said, “Listen, this is getting rather complicated.” I pulled my cell across the desk and asked, “Do you mind if a record the rest of this. That way I can just concentrate on what you’re saying and not worry about making notes.”

I realized that I was running hot and cold on this. One minute I was wishing she would wrap it up and the next wondering what would happen next. I didn’t know if I was beginning to believe her story, or that I was working up the courage to ask her to dinner.

“I said you could do anything you wanted.”

I ignored the implied invitation and just said, “Thanks.” I tapped on the phone and pushed it closer to her, waited for a moment and then said, March fifteen, Elaine Jorgenson?” I looked at her and she nodded. I had the last name right.

“All right, Elaine, just start where you left off and I’ll pick up the rest of it later from my notes. Go ahead.”

She moved her chair so that she was closer to the cell and then leaned forward. It was too bad because the desk now hid her legs, and I had had trouble keeping my eyes off them.

“As I said, he was talking slowly, trying to get me to relax and I felt myself sliding away but didn’t have the power to stop it. Once I was under, he asked me a lot of questions about what I liked and didn’t like and why. Then he would take me back and make me relive some experiences, like when my parents died, my first date, that sort of thing. I had the idea that they, these creatures, didn’t understand our emotions and were trying to build a profile.

“After several minutes of that, closer to half an hour, I suppose, they told me to wake up and that I could go. I shook my head and tried to ask some questions. I wanted to know who they were and where they were from. I was a little angry too. They didn’t have the right to take me out of my house, take my clothes and then probe my mind and body. The more I thought about it, the madder I got, but they just ignored me. One of the explorers, that’s what I call the group that came out to get me, brought my clothes back and dumped them on the table.”

I could see that she was a little upset, annoyed, at what she was describing. It was the first real emotion I had seen during her telling of her tale.

“None of them offered to help. They just stood and watched. That made me feel naked again. It was sort of perverted, having to dress like that, in front of an audience. As I put on my shoes, one of them grabbed my arm and floated me back to my house. They put me on the couch, they looked around quickly to make sure they hadn’t left anything behind that I could use as proof and then they left.”

Now she looked at me rather than my cell. “I was sitting on the couch, rather stunned, afraid to move or breathe and trying not to think.”

When she didn’t say anything more for several seconds, I reached over and ended the recording. Thinking about the pictures, I called down to the photo lab and was told that Leigh was on the way up.

The shots turned out better than I had hoped. Viewed on the camera’s screen, a great deal of the detail had been lost. Now I could see the brightly glowing disc shaped object against the black background. There were even some bright stars in the sky and a hint of tree tops.

Leigh set the prints down in front of me. She handed me a flash drive and said, “I made some prints, enhancing them for the detail. I put everything on that drive for you. That includes the originals and my enhancements.” She handed the camera back to Elaine and said, “Everything is just as you left it.”

I pushed one of the prints under the desk light and reached in the drawer for a magnifying glass. I didn’t think about the flash drive at the moment as I examined one of the prints.

Elaine had stood up and was now looking over my shoulder. “They turned out pretty good, didn’t they?” She sounded pleased with herself.

Back in the old days of film, if she had shown up with just the roll so that we had to develop it, that might suggest some truth to her tale. But in the world today, she had to know the pictures were good. She could have downloaded them to her computer and them put the sim card back into the camera.

I looked up at Leigh and asked, “You see anything to suggest manipulation?”

“No. I did a preliminary check and didn’t see anything. The pixelization doesn’t show manipulation, but I’ll need some more time to be sure about that.”

“You still have copies?”

“Sure. I downloaded everything to my computer.” She hesitated and then said, “The only thing I found were the pictures of that UFO.”

I understood what she was saying, but the camera was fairly new, and most people download the pictures and then wipe them from the card before putting it back in the camera. I wasn’t sure that this little fact was significant.

The pictures convinced me that there was something to the story. It was the first time that someone had claimed to have been on a flying saucer and showed up with something to substantiate the claim, as far as I knew. This wasn’t much better than a “moon potato,” but it was something a little better. I turned on the cell recorder again. I said, “I have a series of questions to ask, but first, I’d like you to draw a picture of the aliens.”

“All right, but I’m not a very good artist.”

“Don’t worry about that. Just do your best.” I pulled a green gel pen out of the holder. If someone was going to draw aliens from space, I thought the natural color was green. She apparently didn’t catch the humor in that.

By the time she finished, most of the night staff had arrived. The overhead lights were turned on again, destroying the mood, seeming to move it from the dark recesses of horror into the bright lights of the mundane. Somehow it made the story seem less real. However, with the photographs, there was a place to begin an investigation without having to rely on the eyewitness.

The interview was basically over at that point when I finished with the questions which were just to check the facts against what she had said earlier. Finished with that, I stood up, straightened my tie and asked, “Would you care for some dinner? It’s getting late and I’m sure the paper would spring for one dinner.”

She shook her head. “I just want to get home. This was more tiring than I thought it would be. Maybe another time but thanks anyway. At least you sort of believe me.”

“To be honest, I don’t know what to make of this. I’ll follow up on it, though.” But the truth was, I wasn’t being honest because I did know what to make of it. She’d had some sort of a psychotic episode that didn’t involve aliens from space. But still, there were the pictures. I was sure that our photo lab would spot the flaw.

“There is one more thing. They told me that they would come back to see me sometime soon.”

I had to grin. Though my experience with this sort of thing was limited, I did know that the aliens sometimes said that. I said, “That’s old hat. They always tell the victim that but they never do return I wouldn’t worry about it.

I helped her with her coat and walked her to the door. Without thinking about it, and without meaning it, I said, “Thanks for the story.”

“Thank you for listening.” She turned then, pushed on the door and stepped into the hallway. She didn’t look back.

I went back to my desk and sat down, rubbing my face with both hands. I looked into the coffee cup but it looked more like industrial sludge than coffee so I set it down. I was wondering what to do, thinking about erasing the story from my cell but then remembered the photographs. If I was going to look into this, the place to start was with the pictures.

I picked up the phone, hesitated, then scrolled down to his number. He was a friend who was a photographer who played with cameras the way some people played with cars. If there was a way to fake something, or something had been faked, then he could tell how it was done or what the fatal flaw was. He agreed to meet me.

He surprised me. He scrolled through the pictures on my laptop and then asked, “Mind if I copy these.”

I pulled the flash drive out of my pocket and said, “They’re all on here.”

He plugged the drive into his computer, brought them up in one of his photo analyses programs. “What am I looking at?”

“Woman brought them into the city room and said that she wasn’t sure what she had photographed.” I didn’t want to suggest a bias to him. If that didn’t satisfy him, he didn’t mention it.

After about ten minutes he said, “If these are faked, they’re very good. It’ll take me some time to go over them carefully. There is nothing obvious in them.”

“How long?”

He pulled on his ear and puckered his lips. “I don’t know. Say three hours, maybe four to get the preliminaries done. The rest will take longer but after three hours I should be able to guess which way these will go.”

“I’ll give you a call.”

He grabbed my sleeve. “That’s three hours after I get to them. I have a lot of other work to do. My bread and butter in these lean times. I can’t drop what I’m doing right now, even to do you a favor.”

“Not a favor. I’ll pay for the work.”

He shrugged and said, “If it’s that important, Ill bump them up to the front of the line.”

I reached for my wallet. “How much will it cost?”

He was offended by the offer of money. “We’ll worry about that later.”

“No, we’ll settle it now. This isn’t my money. It’s the paper’s. This is a business deal made by two people. All right?”

“Then I’ll send a bill. Now, get out of here and let me get to work on wasting your money… the paper’s money. I’ll call when I have something.”

“You’ve got my cell?

“Yeah.”

“Then good night.” He opened the door and I stepped out. Halfway to the car, he turned out the porch light. I shot a glance into the sky, wondering where all the flying saucers were. The stars twinkled back at me. Nothing unusual.

I thought of other places I could go while I waited. I could call the police to see if there anyone had made any UFO reports but I’d probably be shuffled to the public affairs officer who wouldn’t be there until morning. I could call the airport to ask about radar, but I figured the stealth technology would suggest an out if there was nothing seen on radar. There was one so-called expert in town. At least he had been interviewed by some Japanese film crew recently so he might know something and we had interviewed him about that interview.

I learned that no one had called the police according to the desk sergeant I talked to. The airport guys shuffled me around but it was clear that they had nothing that would be helpful. The local expert was interested in the story, had heard one or two like it, but didn’t have any reports from the last few days. He was sorry he couldn’t help.

I grabbed a quick bite at one of the local taco houses. They weren’t as hot as those I had gotten when I lived in Texas, but they would do. Back in the city room, I sat at my desk, wondered how I would pitch the story at the budget meeting in the morning, and waited for a phone call. It came just after eleven. I looked at the clock, thinking that it was strange that the call would come at that hour.

“They look good, Steve. I’ve done about everything that I can do here. Tomorrow, at the shop, I can go a little deeper into this, but it looks good for now. Everything lines up. Looks like these are pictures of just what they seem to show. No manipulation.”

“Thanks, Bob. I do appreciate it.”

“You won’t when you get the bill.”

I smiled at the phone. “Try me.”

With nothing else to do, I decided to go home. Oh, I could have written the first pass at the story, but I just didn’t feel up to it. So, I left for the night but couldn’t sleep. I found myself staring out the window, looking for the aliens. I asked myself if I really did believe the story and surprised myself by saying that yeah, I thought I did.

In my study, I sat in front of the laptop and tried writing the story but somehow everything sounded as if I was making fun to the story or that I had dropped off the deep end. The words just wouldn’t come and the few that did weren’t the right ones.

The next morning, I went to see the managing editor. He listened politely, though he did have to suppress a chuckle or two. He asked to see the pictures and wanted to see my expert’s findings. He then carefully, quietly and ruthlessly killed the story. He said that no such nonsense was going to appear in his newspaper.

I argued with him for fifteen minutes, pointing out that we had run the ghost hunter story, a monster sighting or two and some of the most recent pictures of the Loch Ness monster that had been taken under alleged scientific conditions. I didn’t mention the puff pieces for the politicians who had the same political persuasion as the editor. Why not just carry it as a feature rather than straight news?

No. No way. Not even close. The newspaper, he was always careful to call it a newspaper, wasn’t going to be made a laughingstock by some crazy woman who couldn’t find a boyfriend so she dreamed up aliens from space. They hadn’t rejected her. They had searched her out. The newspaper was not going to carry such trash. Period. End of transmission. End of discussion. As if there had ever been any real discussion.

At noon, I swung by the photo shop/computer shop and offered to buy Bob some lunch so that I could pump him about the pictures. As we sat down, he pulled several prints from his pocket. “I’ve done everything that I can think of and I can’t find any evidence they are faked. I pixelated them, found no evidence of an insertion or manipulation. That’s almost impossible to hide if you have the right equipment and I have the right equipment. I’m convinced that you have a true anomaly here. If they are faked, I don’t know how it was done.”

The food arrived and I bit into a chicken leg. “Then you think these are pictures of a flying saucer.”

“Now, I didn’t say that. I merely said that the pictures weren’t fake by any means I know, so let’s not go drawing all sorts of unwarranted conclusions.”

“I’m afraid that I don’t understand. The evidence, the images on the pictures seem pretty clear cut to me.”

He set down his fork. “You and about half the population. Just because a picture isn’t faked doesn’t mean that it is of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. As just a single example, I have seen one picture reprinted quite a bit showing a windmill and a teardrop-shaped object. Now, that picture isn’t faked. It is real. But it is not a picture of a flying saucer It’s a picture of a lens flare. It is the interpretation that is faulty. So, all I’m saying is that is that this is a picture of something strange and if it’s faked, I found no evidence of that.”

“So, the what you’re saying is that you believe that the pictures were taken the way they were claimed to have been taken.” I realized that my sentence was somewhat complicated.

Bob understood it. He said, simply, “Right.”

As we parted after lunch, and after I had given Bob the details of how I had obtained the pictures, I would pass his conclusions onto the witness. I would have to tell her that the paper wasn’t going to run the story but I’m not sure she would care about that. I would tell her about the UFO expert who would probably like to hear her story. At that point I would be out of it because there was nothing else for me to do and I had a job that required I write a story or two.

I made an appointment to see her later that evening. She would supply some coffee and I could bring me cell phone to make a recording, if I so desired. Even if the paper wouldn’t print it, there were other places to publish it. Some of them would even pay for the privilege. Maybe that would cover my expenses such as the money that I now owed Bob.

Her house, though on the outskirts of town was easy to find. It was on a large lot, out by itself, surrounded by trees and was, at least, a hundred and fifty yards from the nearest neighbor. Beside it was a large open field that was also tree lined. If a spacecraft were to land in it, the neighbors would have a hard time seeing it. I thought about knocking on a few doors, just to see if anyone else had noticed the flying saucer, but decided that would wait until the next day. It was something I would have to do, if only to satisfy myself.

I was surprised to find the front door open. I knocked and shouted, “Elaine. Are you there? I’s me, Steve.”

There was no reply. I stepped into the living room, saw that the TV was on, there were coffee cups sitting on a table, waiting, but no sign of Elaine. I shouted again.

The rustling sound caught my attention and I ran to the window. Outside, in the field behind the house, hovered the craft. It was huge and seemed impossible to have gotten there without everyone in town seeing it. At first, it was only a dark shape but then the lights flared. I could see the dome, the portholes, and the outline of a door or a hatch. I pulled out my cell, thinking of pictures. These would be pictures that no one could dispute, at least to me. I knew the truth.

Elaine wasn’t in the house. I know that she wasn’t there because I saw her leave. I didn’t see her get into the thing or behind one of the windows, but I knew that was where she was. She had told me it would happen and I hadn’t believed her. Maybe she will return.

I doubt it, but I hope so. I’d just like to know for sure.

(Afterthought: As I mentioned, this story has a basis in reality. I investigated the case, interviewed the witnesses and arranged for the hypnotic regression. The picture at the top of the story was drawn by the witness in a state
of hypnotic regression. Here is the same picture, or rather her original drawing of the alien creature that she claimed came into her house. This was drawn prior to the hypnotic regression sessions. I was surprised by the difference in the two. Remember, they were drawn by the same hand. The only difference was the state of mind. I don’t know what the significance might be. I found this interesting and thought others might agree.) 

Star Trek by JJ Abrams: Where No One Wanted to Go Before

 

The other day I had the unpleasant experience of watching J.J. Abrams’ vision of the Star Trek universe. I had to wonder if he had ever watched the original series or understood the vision of Gene Roddenberry. There was nothing in that Star Trek movie that indicated that Abrams had.

I mean, we have a juvenile James T. Kirk speeding across the Iowa landscape in a borrowed Corvette, which he drives off a cliff at high speed. I know of no place in Iowa that remotely looks like that area.

Next, we see Kirk in a bar fight but at the end he is invited to attend the Star Fleet Academy. Yes, I know what George Patton had to say about these things but I’m not sure that Kirk’s tendency to erupt into rage is the best characteristic for an officer.

As he shows up for the shuttle ride to the academy, he announces that he plans to complete the four-year course in three… but this isn’t a civilian college in which the student sets his or her course of study. It is a military school that doesn’t allow for an acceleration of the program but I digress.

Kirk, in keeping with the original Star Trek history, reprograms the computer so that he can win the unwinnable Kobayashi Maru scenario. In the original, you get the impression that Kirk didn’t make a big deal out of it, meaning, he played it out carefully so that his ability to win was not revealed. In the new Star Trek, an arrogant Kirk appears on the bridge eating an apple as if to prove his superior intellect. It doesn’t make him look like someone who should command a star ship let alone be commissioned. It makes him look like a jerk.

While Kirk is being tried for “cheating,” the Federation receives a distress signal and everyone is scrambled to meet the threat. In the course of that, we learn that Spock, who is an instructor and a commander, has been having some sort of relationship with Uhura so she is able to “convince” him to assign her to the Enterprise… which is why these sorts of relationships are not only discouraged in the military but against regulations. But I digress again.

Everyone in the academy is assigned to a star ship, except Kirk who is under disciplinary review. But McCoy, whose status is somewhat obscured… is he a cadet, is he an instructor, or is he a doctor? Whatever, he decides that Kirk can’t be left behind and immediately devises a plan to get Kirk on the Enterprise. Together they browbeat a security guard to pass Kirk onto the ship. If I was Captain Pike, once I learned of this, all three of them, Kirk, McCoy and the guard would find themselves under arrest awaiting disciplinary action.

Other than these few glitches, I was getting into the story. Sure, the writer knew nothing about military chain of command, line officers and support team, but we can always overlook that ignorance if the story is good and the characters appealing.

Unfortunately, for me, the story eventually turns into another special effects and GCI extravaganza. True, the effects are good, but we have Captain Pike turning command of the Enterprise to Spock, the science officer and given the color of his shirt, is not part of the command team. The senior officer of the line on board should have assumed command. Pike then compounds the error by appointing Kirk as the First Officer, though Kirk has not graduated from the Academy, not been commissioned by the proper authority and is basically, a stowaway on the ship. He has done nothing to suggest that he would be a good officer but has, in fact demonstrated his complete lack training or ability understand the tactical situation. As Spock said later, he wouldn’t point out the regulations because Kirk would just ignore them anyway.

We have a HALO operation undertaken with a complete lack of training with them free falling from outside a planet’s atmosphere and diving deep into it. I wondered why they didn’t burn up as a meteor would. Maybe they wouldn’t get up to the speed to begin to burn, but they must free fall for a very long way.

I didn’t notice if the one who missed the narrow platform and fell to his death had been wearing a red shirt, but I knew that one of them would have to die. Then were treated to a sword fight on the platform. Really? The Romulans come from inside to fight with Kirk and his pal on the outside carrying edged weapons. This makes no sense, other than to set up the sword fight which the Federation wins but no one has any kind of gun…

This is the sort of nonsense that we’re treated to for the rest of the movie. No logic, but visually interesting effects. Kirk and Scotty beam aboard the Warp Speed Enterprise, but Scott is caught in some kind of useless, clear pipe full of water as he is drawn toward huge spinning blades sure to slice and dice him before he can drown. Kirk accesses a computer, finds the right code and opens a vent or something that drops Scotty and water all over the deck. I’m reminded of the scene in Airplane II where they show (ironically, the original Captain Kirk, meaning Shatner) a machine with glowing tubes that has no function other than to look like something important.

Kirk and Spock, who has handed the command to Kirk, who immediately abandons the command to someone else (does no one want to command the Enterprise?) to beam aboard the ship threatening the Earth. They land in a huge storage area (doesn’t anyone think about the logistics of supplying air to that huge cargo bay?) and immediately engage in a gunfight with the Romulans who couldn’t hit water if they fell out of a boat and Kirk and Spock who can’t miss.

At this point, I’m disgusted with the movie, but have to hang on to the end. Of course, Kirk and Spock are successful (I’d mark this as a spoiler, but the movie is old and was there ever any doubt that they would succeed?).

I know, I know, it is a little confusing, but it is the final scene that really shows a lack of understanding. Kirk, who was probably commissioned by this point (though we don’t know that) is given permanent command of the Enterprise… because… I don’t know, it was in the script?

I’m thinking that he should be tossed out of Star Fleet given all the regulations he broke, his juvenile history of being, well, let’s just say a delinquent and let it go at that, and his continuing disobeying the lawful orders given to him. We know from history how promoting someone rapidly into authority works out in the long run. Just ask George Custer…

The real point here is that Abrams has taken Star Trek and turned it on its head. He missed the point of Roddenberry’s vision to create a standard science fiction adventure that is long on visual effects and fairly short on any sort of reality. Yes, I know that it is fiction, but the operation of the military is wrong and the science is lacking. Science fiction was about extrapolating what exists around us, placing it in a new environment, letting the characters grow. Here they are just jammed into the situations that make no sense, but that’s okay because it looks good.

Sure, I’m old fashioned, but I would have liked to see Star Trek remain faithful to the original concept and not changed into a GCI spectacular with big explosions and ridiculous stunts without a thought given to the possibility that sure things would work. I would have liked to see a movie that didn’t turn Kirk into an idiot and, at the very least, attempted to be plausible… we just didn’t get that here.

Migration

 

(Note: For those interested, this is what is known as a “trunk” manuscript. It was written decades ago, while I was still in college. I have updated it to reflect our 21^st century capabilities. There were some things that I edited out. At one point, I had envisioned making one of the characters an African-American but not reveal who it was. In this version, I didn’t do that because, given the descriptions, I think some might figure it out... but that would defeat the purpose of making one of them black. The point was that the racial identity of the crew was not important. They found themselves in a situation where they had to work together. However, in this version, and at this time in our history, it is an unnecessary distraction. The entire crew could be African-American or Hispanic or Jewish for that matter. These distinctions, in this story, are not as important as all of them working together is. Anyway, here is the story, which, was written long long ago on a college campus far far away.)

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

John Maston, the head of the project, and for the last six months the man in charge of research in the Star Explorer, sat alone in what was sometimes called the conference room. It was a small area, barely big enough to hold everyone at once, and it served a number of other functions as well. In an orbiting spacecraft, nearly everything had double or triple duty because of weight and space limitations. If was function and utility over beauty and creature comfort.

Maston wasn’t a particularly big man, but then everyone on board was of smaller stature. That was the weight and space limitations again. Although he had a thick head of hair, his head was neatly shaved because he worried about hair contaminating their environment. His sleeves were rolled up, precisely, halfway between his elbow and his shoulder as he had learned while serving as an NCO in the Air Force. It was an indication of his precise nature and attention to the smallest detail.

He sat there, staring at the screen, but wasn’t overly interested in what he was seeing. All the available calculations suggested that the comet, which had already circled the sun and was working its way back to the outer reaches of the Solar System, would miss the Earth. Oh, it would come close enough that people would be able to see it without aid of either a small telescope or binoculars but it wouldn’t strike. Earth would pass through the tail, which might result in a spectacular light show, but Maston suspected that would be a great disappointment. He just couldn’t get excited about it, unlike nearly everyone else in the world.

“Hey, John. You busy?”

Maston jumped at the sound of the man’s voice. He hadn’t heard Oscar O’Neal approach. He didn’t like O’Neal. There was no real reason for the dislike, it was just something about the man that annoyed Maston. Maybe it was his high-pitched voice or his constant fidgeting. Or the way he combed his hair to hide the obvious retreating hairline. Everything about him was distracting.

“Not really. Just looking over the latest in the orbital data. What do you need?”

O’Neal shrugged. “Nothing really. Everyone else is watching the comet. You’d think it was the first one ever. I just got tired of all that excitement.”

“Well, then, sit down.” Maston bookmarked his place and then wiped the screen. He looked at the other man and wondered what his real problem was. He didn’t think O’Neal was really tired of the others watching the comet approach.

“How are your observations going?”

O’Neal shrugged again and said, “As you’d expect. Every time I need to use the instruments; they’re all occupied. You’d think the damned thing was unique.” O’Neal never called the comet by name. It was always that damned thing.

“Well, once we pass through the tail and it moves farther out, everyone will lose interest and we can get back to normal.” Maston stood up and pressed his hands together doing isometrics. “Guess I’ll check on the others.” He left without another word, leaving O’Neal by himself. O’Neal was oblivious to the snub.

 

Linda Johnson, the assistant flight engineer, was bent over a camera. She was a stout woman who was barely five feet tall. Like the other women, she wore her brown hair short, but unlike them, wore a light cotton jumpsuit rather than the shorts and T-Shirt combination. She was concentrating on what she was doing and didn’t hear Maston approach.

Louder than necessary, he said, “ANYTHING new?”

Startled, she jumped and looked around, annoyed. “You don’t have to sneak up on people.”

Next to her was the project astronomer, Terry Collins. He was big for the space program, with a full head of hair but was soft around the middle. He was one of the best in his field. He said, “Don’t give her any trouble. Once we get these pictures back to Earth, they’ll renew us without so much as a debate.”

“We need to get all this wrapped up in the next few hours. We’ve got other projects on the schedule.”

He turned and left. He found the others on the upper deck, using one of the telescopes. Karen Houston, the flight engineer and Sarah Hughes, the physicist, were staring at the monitor where the head of the comet was displayed in nearly infinite detail. Houston and Hughes were nearly identical, though Houston was a brunette and Hughes was blond. There were each about five six, weighted about 115 pounds and were dressed in the same shorts, T-shirt combination.

Although Mike Hart was the biologist, he was directing another camera, also focused on the comet head. He was there to work the camera though he wanted to be somewhere else. He was almost the male duplicate of the two women, though he was heavier and had black hair.

They seemed to have fallen into the same obsession as the people on Earth, using every spare minute to watch the comet. They saw it as a small ball of light with a bit of the tail pointing away from the sun. On the lab, they had a much better view and with their equipment, could see the smallest detail.

Almost from the beginning, as the details of the orbit were worked out, there were those saying that the Earth would pass harmlessly through the tail. The prophets of doom were suddenly in their own, screaming that it was the end of man. The end of the world. The end of time. The comet was the harbinger of death.

Cooler heads pointed out that the Earth had passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet in 1910 and that the prophets of doom then had made the same disaster predictions. It was more exciting to talk of the destruction of society and the coming apocalypse than it was to mention something that would be little more an astronomical light show.

As the Earth approached the tail, all on board their craft were in position to watch, either through one of the telescopes or on a computer monitor. It made for a spectacular show through the various filters used. There was a band of colored light smeared across the night sky with the blue marble of Earth near it. As the Earth approached, the light seemed to bow out, surrounding the planet. The light shifted, becoming red, the color deepened and flared and then paled as if it had finished the mission.

“My god, it’s unbelievable. You just have to see it. You should be down here,” said a voice on one of the podcasts.

Through the static on the radio, or in the sometimes-pixelated pictures from the Internet, they could see the reporters on the ground attempting to describe the beauty of the shifting, swirling colors thought anyone with a window would be able to see it for themselves. It seemed that the whole sky had lit up in a pyrotechnic display that rippled through the colors of the rainbow and then burst into almost impossible hues.

Millions had gone out, into the country, away from the light pollution of the cities. People stood motionless and in awe. The whole Earth was encompassed in the bright red fire.

And then they began to choke.

A gas that no one predicted and no one expected began to filter down, through the atmosphere. Europe was first. It happened so fast and the gas so deadly that they couldn’t warn anyone. A few half-hearted cries for help were broadcast but they weren’t understood. And then there was silence from those affected. Paris was suddenly dead. Rome, Athens, Berlin. No one was answering the radio, no one was posting to the Internet. Just a few pictures of the beautiful red sky, a color so deep that it was nearly painful to look at and then nothing more.

Africa was next, surviving a little longer because of the strange winds aloft and the orbit of the comet. For a short while sub-Sahara Africa was alive. Questions flowed north but slowly as the comet’s tail drifted south, those cities fell silent. There were some cameras that continued to record long after their operators died. The Internet was not affected.

With the warnings out of Africa, a few in Canada and the United States figured it out. The president and some of the American leadership made it into shelters with positive air control. That meant the gas was kept out.

Survivalists, now feeling vindicated, watched the horror over the Internet. They saw people dropping as the gas killed them in minutes. As the gases filtered to the ground, it choked, strangled and then killed. Some of those in the western hemisphere had ten minutes to prepare. Not many were able to escape.

Over the radio and through the Internet, Maston and his crew heard the panic rising until those calling for help were nearly incoherent. Houston called, but the transmission made little sense. It was as if they were demanding those safely in orbit make an attempt to rescue them, but, of course, they could do nothing other than listen to the radio and watch on the Internet connections that faded in and out and then reduced to voice only that suddenly stopped altogether. They heard nothing more.

They hoped that Asia would be able to do something, though they didn’t know what that might be. It was the same as it had been everywhere else. A few voices that turned to panic and then died.

There had been pictures over the Internet but the scenes were bleak. There were people lying everywhere. Bodies were piled in the streets, scattered around farms, aircraft had fallen from the sky. Fires erupted but there was no one to put them out so they spread, burning more of the cities and then the forests and farm fields. The planet was there but the Earth was gone.

Maston sat, stone faced, staring at the pictures that were now beamed up automatically. He heard someone crying softly but didn’t look to find out who it was. They all just sat, unmoving, almost afraid that any motion or a sudden noise might break the little peace that was left. They just sat unaware that their closed environment had saved them.

Sarah Hughes, the youngest of the crew at 31, left. That broke the mood and one by one the others returned to the small privacy areas that were their sleeping quarters. Maston was left alone, staring at the monitors and listening to the hissing of the radios. On one he could see the shimmering lights of a city. There was no evidence of the comet’s tail. It had disappeared as quickly as civilization on Earth vanished.

Maston stood up, looked down at his tablet where he had been preparing the monthly progress reports. He put his fingers on the surface, squeezed and watched as the image faded. He then dropped the tablet to the floor and stomped on it, destroying it and losing the data contained in it. He wondered if he could later access in the cloud and found that he just didn’t care at the moment.

 

No one was in the conference room at seven when they were supposed to discuss their daily assignments. Maston, still in a state of shock, sat there quietly, alone again, staring at the bulkhead. He was content to wait and to let his mind wander. There was no rush now. There was no pressure to complete his assignments. He knew that the crew would show up because there was nowhere else to go.

Linda came in about ten. She sat down opposite of Maston, sighed and asked, “Now what?”

Without looking at her, he said, “Yes?” It was a question.

“What do we do now?”

“We continue to do our work.”

“What’s the point?” she asked. She sat with her legs drawn up, nearly touching her chest.

“It’s what we were sent here to do,” said Maston, seemingly surprised by the question.

“That makes no sense,” she said. Her voice cracked and she asked, more of a plea than a question, “What do we do now?”

“We work out the equations and return.” The voice came from behind Maston. He turned and saw Collins.

Maston shook his head. “I don’t think so. We haven’t completed our work here.”

“Our work here?” said Linda, her voice strained. “Who cares about our work here? It’s not going to do anyone any good. This project is as dead as the Earth.”

“No. I don’t think so,” said Maston, quietly. “Not now. We don’t know the conditions down there. It’s much too soon to make any sort of judgment on that.” He was sounding slightly desperate.

“We know enough,” said Linda. She looked from Maston to Collins and back again. Collins hadn’t moved from the hatch.

“We don’t know the effects. We don’t know how persistent they might be. We don’t even know if we can still breathe the air,” said Maston.

“Oh, come on,” said Collins. “There are survivors down there. This thing didn’t kill everyone. We can talk to them on the radio or find them on the Internet. Hell, we can even try Skype, or twitter or Zoom.”

“Survivors?” asked Linda, her voice suddenly stronger. “You’ve heard them? You talked to them?”

“Well, no, not yet, but I haven’t even tried. But it’s only logical that there are survivors. There are always survivors. People in enclosed environments. High flying jets. Submarines. Hospitals with positive air flow.”

“Great,” said Maston, annoyed. “You overlook the possibility that the effects are permanent. Planes land. Submarines surface and people in hospitals walk out the doors.”

Linda could take no more. “Stop it,” she shouted. “You don’t know everything. You haven’t even tried. You just sit here and talk about projects that have no purpose now. So, just shut up.” She stood and then walked away.

Collins, still in the hatch said, “She’s right, you know. What are we going to do?”

Maston stared at Collins, as if expecting him to say something more. The astronomer was staring at the floor.

“Like I said, since we don’t know the conditions dirtside, we just hang loose here. We’re self-sufficient. We’re in a closed system. We have everything we need. All we have to do is wait and see.” He didn’t see the irony of his statement. Just as Collins had said. There were always survivors.

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

They spent the next several weeks trying to determine what was happening on Earth. They worked the radios and used the Internet connections which were still up and running. They listened for calls for help and they scanned the Earth’s surface looking for signs of life using the sensor arrays and high-definition cameras that once searched signs of ancient civilizations, traced animal migrations and monitored the greenhouse gases. They saw fires burning in forests, in open agricultural fields, in the hearts of cities. They saw clouds of smoke that obscured tens of thousands of acres and huge black swaths of ash. At night they saw the orange glow of those fires, but not the lights of the once great civilization.

They listened for others broadcasting on the radio. They tried to connect to the Internet to find others who had access and were searching for survivors. They listened for calls for help and searched the surface for markings and movement suggesting there were survivors. The used everything available to them to alert those on the ground that they had survived and could provide some assistance.

And they found nothing. They saw nothing. It was as if everything had been wiped out in a single night of horror.

After three weeks of failure, Maston finally went to check on the progress in the comm center. He had avoided it because he believed that if he didn’t have a definitive answer, then all things were possible. It was a simple delaying tactic he’d learned as a kid. For him, it was a useful strategy to avoid the worst case.

He found Richard Thompson, a psychologist who had once been a Naval communications officer and who had joined the crew only days before the comet destroyed humanity. He had arrived on the last resupply mission. Maston stopped at the hatch and asked, “How’s it going?”

Thompson didn’t look at him. He kept his eyes on the various indicators and dials and said, “I’m afraid it’s not very encouraging. I can’t find anyone communicating on anything anywhere.”

Although he knew it was a dumb question, Maston asked, “You sure the equipment is working right?”

Thompson looked irritated. “Of course, it’s working right. I still get the automated broadcasts from the Naval Observatory; radio NAV aids are still up and running and a few other things like that. Stations that are automated and where the power grid hasn’t failed, or where they had some sort of back up generation systems.”

He spun a dial and turned up the volume. “Listen. You can hear the Morse code. Yesterday I got something over the commercial broadcast band. It was the same thing, over and over. Some sort of recording that recycled every thirty minutes. Tried to make contact but there was no reply.”

“Okay. Keep at it. You’ll find something.” Maston realized how lame that sounded but thought he should say something encouraging. It had been part of the management seminar he had to take before his appointment to the mission.

When Maston left, Thompson sat there for several minutes, replaying the conversation in his mind. He thought, at one point that Maston had looked as if he was unhappy with the idea that there were radio signals from the ground, until he learned that it was all probably automated. Then his relief was almost unmistakable. He wondered what Maston was thinking.

 

“I just can’t believe that everyone is dead,” said Thompson, one morning at breakfast. He wasn’t eating anything. He was just sitting there, staring at the table top.

“Well, there’s a real conversation stopper,” said Johnson, squeezing a package that was labeled, “Eggs, scrambled, with cheese.”

Maston said, casually, “If the effects are persistent, there might not be anyone left down there. We don’t really know anything about how toxic the tail was, or how long the toxic level remains fatal. I would hope that nature would take care of the problem, scrubbing the atmosphere.”

He surveyed the group slowly, looking at the face of each of them. Finally, he said, almost reluctantly, “If you want my opinion, I think we ought to leave.”

“Leave? You mean go back to Earth?” Sarah Hughes was in her usual chair opposite Maston. “You just said breathing the air could be still be fatal and you want to land?”

Maston hesitated for a moment and then said, “No. Not go back to Earth. I mean leave the Solar System.”

“Wait,” said O’Neal as he was caught off guard. “Just wait a damned minute. What do you mean leave the Solar System? Are you insane? It just can’t be done.”

“It can be done. Maybe not easily, but it can be done.”

“Oh, don’t be stupid. You know the Voyager Spacecraft launched, in what? 1976? It left the Solar System after decades of flight and do you know when it’ll get to another system? Eighty thousand years. How do you plan to defeat that? We can’t leave. You haven’t thought this through.”

Maston said, trying to remain calm, “That is an old chemical rocket that reached its top velocity and is now traveling at such a slow speed that you can’t really think of it as an interstellar craft. I’ve worked out some of the numbers…”

“And we can do better?” O’Neal interrupted. “We can do better than, what? Fifty thousand miles an hour. A hundred thousand?”

Maston put down his food packet that he hadn’t opened and said, “We have ion engines that pull their fuel out of the dark matter around us. We have all the life support that we need, a closed system so that we can recycle everything we need. This thing was designed to orbit for a hell of a long time before it needs to be resupplied. I’ve looked at this very carefully for the last several weeks.”

“And if there was a problem with any of that, we were only days from Earth being able to launch a rocket. Help could get here relatively quickly.”

“Not anymore,” said Maston.

“Yeah,” said Linda Johnson, as if agreeing. “But, just where would you go? What if there was no habitable planet when you got there?” She didn’t think it was possible but she didn’t want the conversation to degenerate into an argument. Too many discussions had ended up in fights with people storming off to other sections of the station.

The use of you as opposed to us was not lost on Maston. Realizing what it meant, he just sighed and said, “Then drop it. It was only a suggestion.”

“No,” said Richard Thompson. “No, it wasn’t. You said that you had been working on this for days. I think you’re serious. You’d enjoy shooting off into deep space, the king of your tiny realm.” He wasn’t sounding much like a psychologist at that point.

“Look, I said drop it. Isn’t it about time someone went to the communications center? We should be looking for those still alive on Earth.” Maston picked up his food containers and then walked out.

“Well,” said O’Neal. “Do you believe that? Just shoot off into deep space and leave the solar system. The man’s crazy as a fruit bat.”

“Maybe not. The idea does have some merit,” said Johnson.

O’Neal turned his attention on her. “Don’t be absurd. You’re an engineer, you know it’s impossible. It’s ridiculous.” He looked at the others and asked, “Well, Collins? Isn’t the idea insane?”

Collins set his orange juice container on the table as if daring it to float away. He studied it and saw the plastic straw was bent at a strange angle.

“The thing is,” he started to say. “The thing is, as an astronomer, the idea appeals to me.”

“Oh, for crying out loud.”

“Wait,” said Collins, holding up a hand like a traffic cop. “Let me finish. I said the idea appeals to me. I didn’t say I was in favor of it. I understand the vast distances in space. I understand the logistical problems and I know that none of us would survive the flight outside of the solar system.”

Thompson stood. “I’m going to the comm center. One way to end all this nonsense is to make contact with someone down there so that we all can go home.”

He stopped for a second at the word, “Home.” The others caught it too. It was the first time that anyone had said anything like that in that in a long time.

 

Maston found Collins sitting in one of the alcoves, studying a screen that seem to be filled with random characters. He coughed discreetly and then asked, “You busy?”

Collins swiveled in his seat, looked up and said, “Nope. What you need, John?”

Maston leaned against the bulkhead and said, “Been thinking about leaving the solar system…” He held up a hand to stop the protest and asked, “Say that we could do it, where should we go?”

Now Collins laughed. “Shouldn’t that have been your first question?”

“I was just trying to think of an alternative to what we have here.” He shrugged. “So, I thought to go ask the astronomer.”

“Of course, the best thing is Mars. We can make the flight easily and we’re still close to Earth. We could get back if we had to. Leave the solar system and we’re pretty well screwed in an emergency.”

“Mars has flaws. True, the temperature at the equator can get to about seventy degrees at high noon, but it plunges way below zero at night. Besides, the atmosphere is too thin to support life and we don’t have the ability to either create oxygen or terraform the planet. Mars doesn’t really work. I was thinking of a world within ten, twelve light years away.”

Collins saved his work and then faced Maston again. “Okay,” he said. “We know that the majority of stars have planets, and we know which stars have planets in the Goldilocks Zone.”

Collins took a deep breath and added, “If you stick strictly to ten light years, then you’re pretty limited on possibilities. Proximate Centauri, at just a shade over four light years is the closest. And that’s it within ten light years.”

“Only one?”

“Well, this is the one where we’ve detected a planet that is in the habitable zone. Expand your criterion slightly and we can add Ross 128. Tau Ceti, just under twelve light years has a couple of candidates and Gliese 1061, again just under twelve, with possible candidates.”

Maston nodded. “I expected more.”

“There are other factors at work besides distance to them. Distance they orbit their stars and there is one in the habitable zone, way outside your range, that has, what we believe to be a toxic atmosphere. So even in the habitable zone doesn’t mean it could support human life.”

“What would you recommend?”

“Mars.” Collins smiled. “Gives us the option of returning to Earth if things don’t work out. You start flying through interstellar space and you create a whole new list of trouble. Once we get past Mars, then our options fade rapidly.”

Maston rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I expected more.”

“You’re on the threshold of what we know. Another ten years and we might have a better list. We might have actually planned for an interstellar flight.”

“Mars doesn’t have the atmosphere we need.”

“And we don’t really know, for certain, that any of these others has an atmosphere that would support human life. You get there and learn there is no place to land because it’s a water world, or a frozen snow ball or bubbling with lava, and that’s it.”

“I thought you said that there were worlds with the proper conditions.”

“I said they were in the Goldilocks Zone. We just don’t have the data to prove we could live on the planet.”

“I limited the search to ten light years because we might be able to return here,” said Maston.

“I’m not even sure that we can reach one of these other star systems. The distances to them are somewhat problematic. I think we’ve got it worked out right, but there are some variables that change things as we collect better data. We keep adjusting the distances, sometimes closer and sometime farther.”

Maston shook his head, disappointed. “I expected more.”

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

Although Maston thought that he was slowly converting some of them to the idea that a voyage to another world was possible, there was a real reluctance to commit to the plan. It was just there, in the background, with no one thinking much about it. Rather, they were hoping for a change on Earth that would allow them to land.

They had gathered, again, in the conference room. Maston was sitting at the head of the table. His sleeves were rolled up, but no longer with the precision he’d once used. He hadn’t given in to the T-shirt and shorts that had become the standard uniform of the crew. He thought, that as the leader, and as one of the older members of the crew, it just didn’t fit him. He had an image to maintain.

“Where’s Thompson?” he asked.

“Sitting on the comms, I imagine.”

Almost as if he had heard his name, Thompson showed up. He moved slowly, and sat down. He looked at each one, and ignored the food and drink packets on the table. He said, quietly, “I want you all to listen very carefully. Don’t jump to any conclusions and please don’t interrupt me. I have what might be good news.”

“YOU MADE CONTACT,” shouted Johnson.

“I told you not to jump to conclusions,” snapped Thompson. He picked up a juice packet, took a drink and licked his lips. “I haven’t made contact but I have heard a broadcast.”

“A broadcast?” said Johnson.

“It sounded like what I’ve been looking for. You know, someone survived, got a radio working and is looking for others who survived. But there was also something strange about it. There were four or five different voices involved who seemed to know each other and were trying to find more survivors.”

He stopped again. He saw that that the others were confused, unsure of what he was trying to tell them.

“It was like there was some big disaster…” He held up his hand to stop them from asking questions and said, “It’s not like what happened but something else. That the government or the military had moved in declaring martial law. It sounded as if they had created a dictatorship.”

“Who in the hell cares about that? It means that the effects of the comet aren’t permanent,” said Hart. “It means that people survived, just as I expected. What did you say to them?”

Thompson said, “I didn’t send anything. I just listened for a while and then thought that maybe you all should listen to see what you thought. I didn’t like the sound of what was going on down there.”

“I don’t care what you thought,” said O’Neal. “You just proved that we don’t have to go blasting off into deep space in some kind of idiotic plan to find a new planet.”

“How could you not like what was going on?” asked Jenny Howard.

“There was something in the tone of those radio transmissions. Some sort of undercurrent that was disturbing. I think they were talking in some kind of code so I didn’t understand everything that was being said, but I don’t know why they’d need a code.”

Maston said, “I don’t get, and I don’t think any of us get what you’re trying to say.”

“It sounded like they were running search and destroy missions,” he said. “It was like they were hunting other groups.”

“Why would they do that?” asked Hughes.

“To steal what they have, obviously,” said Maston. “They’re working to ensure their survival by stealing from others.”

“I’d like for everyone to listen in for a while,” said Thompson. “Maybe we can make some sense out of all this. Maybe figure out exactly what is going on down there.”

Maston shrugged and said, “Lead on.”

They left their lunch sitting on the table and made their way to the communications center. There was an electricity bubbling through the group. It was evident in the nervous tics, the slight shaking in hands and a quiet babble as they tried to figure out what Thompson had been trying to tell them. There were a couple of jokes that fell flat and then the conversation stopped.

Thompson entered first and sat in the chair in front of the console. He glanced over his shoulder. The whole team was crowded around in the close quarters. He turned first to the radios and said, “As far as I can determine, there are four or five groups operating in the northeastern part of what was once the US. I don’t know why we haven’t heard anything before now but it might have to do with after effects of the comet passing.”

He turned up the volume and said, “I can’t get a visual and I’ve tried everything that I can think of. I think these groups are well organized.”

There was a burst of static and then voices were loud and clear. They heard someone on the ground say, “It seems to be a large group in front about a klick. Ten, maybe twelve adults, well-armed. Over.”

“Roger. Think it wise to move on them? Over.”

“Sure. We’ve got them out-gunned. They don’t look as if they expect any trouble. Their path isn’t thought out. Just walking around. Over.”

“We can be there for back up in twenty minutes. Over.”

“I’ve got this covered. Hang back as reinforcements, if we need the help, we’ll give you a shout. Over. Out.”

The radio fell silent and no one spoke for a moment. Thompson tried to look from face to face but it was hard to see in the weak light of the comm center. Maston, who was closest, was frowning.

“See what I mean,” said Thompson. “There will be silence for a while. The one group is probably moving in to set up the ambush.”

Those were the last words spoken. Each stared at the radio as if there was something fascinating by the bouncing needles and flashing lights. Maston was doing his isometrics. The rest just stood there staring.

“Control. Alpha One. Over”

“Go one.”

“Roger. Caught them napping. Little resistance. Killed four and captured the rest. Executed the survivors. Over.”

There was a gasp from one of the women and Collins said, “Shit.”

“Details of supplies?”

“Variety of arms including a fifty cal sniper rifle. Six by filled with food including boxes of MREs. Over.”

“Bring it on in.”

“We have seven children. What should we do? Over.”

Maston leaned forward and snapped off the radio. He pushed through the others and stopped. “Let’s go to the conference room.”

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

In the conference room there was a lot of chatter. Maston couldn’t follow much of it, but it was clear that almost all of them were horrified by what they had heard. It was bad enough that there were gangs running everything, but the brutality of those gangs was something else. Maston understood that it was a matter of survival, but he could think of no reason to execute anyone, especially children. Although he didn’t know that the children had been killed, it seemed that it was the direction that conversation was going. It was why he had switched off the radio when he did.

He sat there, quietly watching those others. Sarah Hughes seemed to have been hit the hardest by what she had heard. Maston saw the tears in her eyes. He didn’t know if it was for the children or for what all that meant for them. There was no safe haven on Earth. Not now anyway.

Slowly, the noise died in the room. He waved a hand, almost as if attempting to wipe the slate clean. He had a very good idea what everything they had heard meant, but he said, “Okay. You heard. Anyone have anything to say about it?”

Terry Collins stared right back at him and said, “What do you think, John?”

“I know exactly what it means, but I’d like to hear some other ideas before I get into all that.”

Jenny Howard said, “Like Richard said. It sounds like they are actively looking for survivors…”

O’Neal said, “That’s it. Looking for survivors? Sounded like they were looking to steal anything they needed and kill anyone in competition for those supplies.”

Howard said quietly, “You don’t know that.”

“Really?” He said, “Did you listen to what was said? They were killing those who weren’t part of their little group. They said they had executed the captives.”

Maston held up a hand to stop the discussion. “Let’s keep calm here. We don’t know they killed the children.”

“That’s because you turned off the radio,” accused O’Neal.

Maston was going to say more about that but decided not to.

Linda Johnson spoke up then. “I have a few ideas.” She looked at the other three women.

“Yeah,” she said, as if daring them to interrupt her. “I have a few ideas. It sounded as if they had created the worse dystopian world you could imagine. It sounded as if they were murdering for supplies. It sounded as if they didn’t care what they did as long as they survived.”

Her voice was rising, not in anger so much as distress. “It sounded as if they had degenerated into a world where is was kill or be killed. One man, one leader, in charge of as much territory as he could keep, and in charge of as many people as he could control with violence. That’s what’s going on down there.”

She looked as if she was going to say more but instead, stood up. Without another word, she walked out of the area.

There seemed to be nothing else to discuss at the moment. They sat in silence for a moment, and then, one by one, left the conference room.

 

Richard Thompson continued the search, sometimes assisted by Jenny Howard or Mike Hart. The others drifted in and out as the mood moved them, usually not staying from more than an hour. They were able to listen to the group in the northeast and each time it sounded as if they were even more ruthless than the last. It was clear that they weren’t recruiting new members but wiping out what they thought of as the competition.

Thompson set up a computer program so that they could automatically scan the rest of the world. But the radio bands were quiet and if it hadn’t been for the one group they found, they would have believed that the rest of the world was as dead as the ancient Greeks. They started to think that by some strange coincidence, those in the northeast had avoided the toxic cloud and wondered why others didn’t escape that area, looking for something a little less dangerous.

Late one afternoon about two weeks after the first discovery, as Thompson was about to set the search program to automatic, he heard a brief burst of new radio traffic. This one seemed to be based in Africa, around the Lake Victoria area. He couldn’t understand what they were saying but the brief messages made it sound more like a military operation than someone benignly searching for other survivors. He tried the various translate features available through what was left of the Internet, but the dialect or language wasn’t one that was found. He didn’t know what they were saying and he thought it best not to mention it until he knew more about it.

Maston came in, surprising him, sat down, and asked, “Well?”

“I was thinking,” said Thompson, “that there is a lot of open space in the world now. Space where the ground is fertile and the growing season nearly endless. If we avoid the northeast, it should be safe for us to return to Earth.” He did not mention the African contact to Maston.

Maston nodded and said, “It would be the safest course, naturally. A planet that we know can support human life, not to mention that a great many of the resources are there along with the infrastructure to support them.”

“Then you’ve abandoned the idea of heading off into deep space?”

“You have to admit that my plan has a sense of great adventure to it. The first humans to leave the confines of the solar system.”

Thompson grinned. “It sounds more like a suicide plan to me besides, there is no one to record this. No one is thinking about us, up here, orbiting Earth.”

“Which is what could be said about most of the great explorers of the past. Taking risks that could lead to their deaths but they went ahead anyway.”

“But they had some knowledge of what they were doing. And they were still on Earth,” countered Thompson.

Maston started to get annoyed. “My idea is not suicide. We know what star systems have planets in the habitable zones. We know how long it would take to get there, more or less, and we have the resources to make the trip.”

“The problem,” said Thompson, “is that we don’t have the resources. I know you think that this is a closed system and everything is recycled endlessly, but there is leakage. There is a slow decay in the system, a slow loss that can’t be replaced. There always is, no matter how you engineer it. How are you going to replace the water, for example?”

Now Maston laughed. “The Oort cloud. It’s filled with big snowballs that contain all the water that we could ever use.”

“What are you going to do, drag one along with us to tap into whenever we need to refresh the water supply?”

“Something like that,” said Maston.

“Have you talked to either mission engineers or specialists to see if such a thing is possible?”

“Don’t know why not. And it seems to me that we could also use the comet to generate oxygen. There would be a number of resources available to us in those comets. Seems fitting that they would supply us with life sustaining essentials given what one of them did to the human race.”

Thompson just shook his head and said, “We’re better off returning to Earth in a few months than wandering off into deep, dark space on your dream of colonizing the galaxy.”

“Not my dream. Our chance for survival. A chance to start over.”

 

Thompson had thought that if he kept the idea that there were other groups quiet, then Maston would stop preaching about the benefits of flying off into deep space. He located a group in Europe, but while they didn’t sound as ruthless as the one in North America, it was clear that they were being ruled in a very tribal way. It was a throwback to Medieval times. But there were still thousands of square miles of land available.

And then, for some reason, he began locating groups all over the world. Only Antarctic seemed to be unoccupied and its environment was not conducive to long term survival. It was still too cold to have a growing season but then, it there might be enough fish to sustain them. They would be isolated, but their long-term survival without conflict was nearly guaranteed.

But it soon became evident to the rest of the team that there were militant groups on all the continents. It became evident that the toxic nature of the comet’s tail had dissipated. There was no more danger from it, and in that sense, it was safe to return to Earth.

When the team was assembled, Maston said, “I guess we’ll start with Thompson and what he’s found.”

Although reluctant to start, he said, “For the last several days, weeks really, I have been listening to the radio traffic from Earth. I have not been able to capture any video, and it seems as if the Internet has degraded to the point where access to it is very spotty. All I have found are the audio messages.”

“But you have found more than one group?” asked O’Neal.

Maston said, “Let’s let Richard make his report.”

“I had thought it was just a few isolated groups, but they’re all over the world. Maybe some place like New Zealand or Ireland, an island, would be free of them, but there other than that, they just keep popping up.”

Hart said, “Surely we can negotiate with them.”

Thompson shook his head. “I wish I could say that it would be possible but it seems to be one of each group working for dominance over their territory. It would only be a matter of time before we ran into one of those groups and we’re just not prepared to defend ourselves.”

“I would think that we could avoid a few isolated groups,” said O’Neal.

“It’s more than just a few isolated groups. A I said, they keep popping up all over Earth. I don’t like the sound of them and you all have heard how ruthless they are.”

There was no response to Thompson’s analysis. Maston could tell that they didn’t like what they were hearing about what was going on below them. It might be that they didn’t believe him. Maston sat quietly for a few minutes and then said, “Okay. So now we all know the score. I don’t want to sit here, on this lab in orbit around the Earth, for the rest of my life.”

He stopped and let his words sink in. “We have a few decisions to make. As I see it, we can sit here and rot. We can sit back and wait for things to stabilize… hope that they stabilize and then land. Or, as I have suggested, we can make our way to another planet. I believe that covers all our options.”

O’Neal spoke first. He said, “There is only a single option. We wait for the situation to stabilize because it will, and then return to Earth. The other two are just nonsense.”

Before anyone could say anything more, Maston said, “Wait a minute. I want to expand on the third point. Maston pulled his tablet closer, scrolled down and then said, “I’ve conversed with Terry about other solar systems and planets in the habitable zone. With his help, I’ve worked out a few ideas.”

He touched the tablet screen, and the flat panels around them lit up, showing the figures. He said, “As you know, this project was originally set up to launch a trip to Mars. We weren’t really supposed to land, but we could if the conditions were right. All this was to be done without resupply from Earth, once we had completed our research here. Except in extreme emergency, we would be on our own. It was projected to last three to five years, so we have the life support for an extended journey. Given our resources, and given that we’d pass through the Oort Cloud, we could gather additional water and other elements that would be useful for us. We could, theoretically, survive for more than thirty years without touching the ground.”

O’Neal shook his head and slammed a hand to the table. He said, “I can’t believe that you’re are serious about this. It’s nothing more than a suicide mission.”

He glanced around and saw that the others were listening. He said, more loudly than he intended. “You can’t be listening to this drivel. We’re going to end up in a large, floating coffin drifting through space for eternity.”

Maston chose to ignore him. “What I purpose, is that we use the sun to slingshot us out of the Solar System and head for another star. Proxima Centuri is the closest with planets in the habitable zone.”

“You don’t know a thing about them.”

Collins said, “Well, that’s not the whole truth. We do know a great deal about those planets. One of them seems to have surface temperature that would allow for liquid water.”

“That doesn’t mean we could breathe the atmosphere,” said O’Neal.

“No, but we have spectroscopic analysis that suggests there are sufficient levels of oxygen in the atmosphere, and no toxic gases.”

O’Neal sat very still. “Why?” he asked quietly. “Why would you want to do this?”

“Because,” said Maston, “it’s our only good option. The people down there haven’t learned a thing. They’re rediscovering everything that was wrong with the world. They’re enforcing a tyrannical rule with executions for not thinking the right way, or for not haven’t anything to contribute to the new world order, or just because they don’t look right. We, on the other hand, have an intelligent, cohesive group and we can make the right changes. We have the chance to give man the stars.” He was beginning to sound like the preacher in a revival meeting.

“Oh, come on,” wailed O’Neal. “You’re insane. We can’t reach another star. I suggest we wait right here and let those groups below us weed themselves out. Then we land and build this… this utopia, that you’re dreaming about.”

“Wouldn’t work,” said Maston. “Eventually, there would be contact and we’d be in no position to protect ourselves.”

“Well, it’s better than taking off for a world that probably doesn’t exist.”

Maston looked around the table and said, “Jenny? What do you think?

Before Howard could answer, O’Neal said, “What? You’re taking a vote right now?”

“No, said Maston. “I thought we might discuss the options, carefully, rationally, and see I we can find a satisfactory alternative.”

Thompson finally spoke up. He said, “If what John said is right, then we have no pressing need to make a decision right here, right now. We have time to study the options to make the right decision.”

“How long can we put this off?” asked O’Neal

Collins supplied the answer. “We’d have to work out the navigation problems and work to modify the engines but we have two good engineers on board that will tell us if we can make a sustained trip. They’ll be able to let us know if this interstellar flight is even possible.”

Hughes grinned and said, “Theoretically, there is nothing to stop us from using the hydrogen out there to fuel the engines. I’d have to take a long look at that to be sure. We’d have to check the engines very carefully because they were designed for sustained operation.”

“Sarah’s got the right idea,” said Maston. “We need to explore the options and have no need to make a decision this afternoon.”

Maston swiped at his tablet, the screens around them went blank. He said, “To this point, we were just talking but not planning. We have nothing else to do so while we investigate the possibilities, Richard can continue to monitor the situation on the ground to see if there is any significant change.” He grinned and said, “If no one has anything else,” and then before anyone could speak, he said, “Then we’re adjourned.”

 

CHAPTER FIVE

Sarah Hughes went in search of Terry Collins. There were questions that she wanted to ask the astronomer about the proposed trip out of the solar system. She found Collins sitting in an alcove that contained computer access to the main library. It seemed that he was scrolling through the latest in astronomical information.

She said, “You busy?”

He looked around, grinned and said, “Not really. Just checking the star catalogs.”

She dropped into the other chair and said, “Is this plan feasible?”

“You mean flying off to some planet outside the solar system?”

“I mean, are there actually planets that can support human life?”

“That’s an interesting question. We have found some evidence of planets that are in the habitable zone that seem to have the right combination of gases in the atmosphere but I fear some of the science isn’t as rock solid as it could be. But what about you? You’re the physicist here. Can we make the trip?”

Hughes sat back in her chair and thought for a moment. “There are all sorts of problems that we haven’t thought about. The engines aren’t designed for the sorts of stresses that the trip would entail. They weren’t designed to operate for years as we accelerate, nor decelerate. If something fails… when something fails… we might not have the capability to repair it without the assistance we’d have gotten from Earth.”

“So, you don’t think this… what? Adventure? Will succeed?”

“If we don’t have a destination, then what’s the point? You can’t guarantee that we’ll find a suitable planet at the end of the voyage, and if there is not, we don’t have the ability, won’t have the time to find another destination.”

Collins said, “Let us say that we know that our destination will be suitable for us. What are the logistical problems?”

“Ignoring our limited supplies, abundant though they are, and ignoring that even his closed system is going to leak so that we slowly run out of water and air, we have no shielding. If we accelerate for an extended period and more toward relativistic speeds, which by the way, I don’t think will work, but supposing it did, then we have a problem with running into something. A watermelon at such speeds would be catastrophic. We wouldn’t see it until we hit it.”

She leaned forward and continued. “I don’t think John thought about the time it would take to accelerate to anything that would make the trip plausible, but we have to decelerate at the other end. Same problems because we have to use the engines.”

“You’re saying the trip will fail.”

She shrugged. “I haven’t really talked to the engineers about it. I thought our first problem was locating a suitable planet and if there were any candidates close enough to us that we could reach it.”

“The problem is that we don’t have the precise information we need. What if we find the planet is too hot for us, or that it is a water world with little land. What if it is a mostly sterile ball that that has no life at all and therefore, we couldn’t grow any food without modifying the environment.” Collins fell silent.

“You’re against this then.”

“I think that we have two chances of success. Zero and none. There are too many unknowns and there is no way that I can gather additional data about these star systems, not to mention the all the other problems we’d encounter.”

Hughes took a deep breath and said, “Thanks.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Talk to the engineers to see what they have to say.”

 

Hughes found both the engineers, Karen Houston and the assistant engineer Linda Johnson sitting in the lounge. Houston had her tablet sitting on her lap as she worked her way through something on the screen and Johnson seemed to be watching the data scroll on one of the flat screens attached to a bulkhead.

Hughes didn’t sit and didn’t worry about preamble. She simply said, “The engines are not up to the task.”

Houston looked up and asked, “What task?”

“Interstellar flight.”

“They weren’t designed for that.”

“Yes. I know. I wondered if they could be modified.”

“Let’s say, yes. But then, we’re asking them to do something beyond their capabilities and when there is a catastrophic failure, we won’t be able to fix it.”

“Have you looked into it?”

Johnson said, “John is planning on using hydrogen as the fuel, postulating that hydrogen will be available along our path. We gather it in as we fly. But, as we move toward relativistic speeds, it becomes the same as bombarding us with radiation. We don’t have the shielding necessary for those speeds. We’d fry the electronics, not to mention ourselves. We can’t survive the speed we need even if we could achieve it, which we probably can’t.”

Hughes said, “I worried about the radiation but I think that is the least of the problems.”

Johnson laughed. “The solution, if we leave Earth orbit, is Mars. We’re built for that. We don’t overtax the systems, and we can always come back to Earth if we can’t manage things on Mars.”

Hughes nodded slowly and said, “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

As she left Houston and Johnson, she thought, “This is never going to work. O’Neal was right, it is suicide.”

CHAPTER SIX

 

Maston entered the conference room feeling good. He had surveyed the others and believed that they would all vote for the long-term trip to another star system. He would go down in history just as Magellan had. He failed to remember that Magellan did not survive his around the world exploration.

When he appeared, the room fell silent. He walked to the head of what doubled as a conference table and sat down. “Well,” he said, “Let’s get started. He looked at Thompson and added, “Let’s find out if there is a need for a decision. Anything new from the surface.”

Thompson glanced at the others and said, “Not really. If anything, the situation on Earth is getting worse. There are brushfire wars all over the surface and just as it seems that one group or another has established dominance, another shows up to destroy it. I’m waiting for someone to figure out that there are still nukes available.”

“That going on all over the planet?” asked Hughes, though she already knew the answer.

“There are some areas in South America that seem safe, but I don’t think the environment there is anything approaching pleasant. The interior of Australia looks good, but no one is living there. No one was living there. No resources for us.”

Maston interrupted because it was exactly what he had wanted to hear. “Thanks, Richard. Okay. We have three possible courses of action in front of us. If there are no objections, I’ll eliminate the first, that is that we do nothing and stay right here.”

O’Neal said, “I don’t know why you’d eliminate that. It seems to be the smartest thing to do. We stay put until we can return to Earth once all the fighting ends.”

“We’ve watched what is happening,” said Maston, “And it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. At some point a ruling class will emerge and given the situation, I don’t think we’d be welcomed with open arms.”

“Why not?” asked O’Neal. “Our expertise would be useful and it’s not as if we’d land without some important resources. If nothing else, we bring a great deal of expertise with us.”

Maston started to snap, tired of O’Neal’s pessimism, but he quickly controlled his temper. “What would stop them from just taking our supplies and leaving us to die?”

“It’s a better idea than flying off into deep space. I say we land and…

Maston interrupted him and said, “Those in favor of staying in orbit and waiting to see what more happens on Earth, raise your hand.”

Only O’Neal supported the idea. Maston wasn’t surprised. In the last several days he had talked to a everyone and knew that they didn’t like the idea of landing any time soon. They all wanted to act while they still had some choice.

“That ends that part of the discussion.”

O’Neal started to rise but Maston waved him down. “You’re part of the team, so sit down. We have more to discuss.”

Maston turned his attention to Collins. “Have you worked out a place for us to go?”

To Maston’s surprise, Collins shook his head. “I don’t believe there is a habitable planet near enough for us, even if we can move at relativistic speeds. The distances are too vast.”

Maston rocked back, stunned. “I thought…”

Collins waved him to silence. “I have been studying the data that we have and it is just too fragmented. We were a long way from attempting anything like interstellar flight. Our interest was in finding extra solar planets, but the techniques for gathering data about them was, I suppose, a little more enthusiastic than our capability if you want to look at it dispassionately.”

Now Maston was the one getting angry. “Just what in the hell does that mean?”

“It means that the closest of the possible planetary systems might not have a planet where water is liquid. It means that an analysis of the atmosphere from here is problematic. It means that we might just arrive there and find that there is nowhere for us to land and no resources for us to use. It means that we’d be worse off than if we landed on Earth.”

“You saying that interstellar flight is impossible?”

Now Hughes spoke up. She said, “We know it is possible. We’ve sent probes out of the Solar System. We just don’t have the capability to do it with any reasonable chances of survival… not without a better idea of what we’ll find when… if we get there.”

“I don’t believe this,” said Maston.

Collins took over again. “Our best bet, at this moment, is Mars. You rejected it out of hand because you had this great vision of being on the first expedition outside the solar system.”

“Columbus did the same thing. No one knew what he was going to find,” said Maston.

“Oh, don’t bring up that old chestnut. Columbus believed he was going to find India. He just didn’t know there were continents in his way. His trip was no more dangerous than any other voyage at the time, not to mention that they’d still be on Earth and not drifting through deep space. Once they arrived, then there would be food and water.”

“What makes Mars better?” asked Maston.

“Because if it doesn’t work out, we can still get back to Earth. We have an escape hatch. If we going flying off into deep space, then we have no Plan B. We can’t recover from the mistake.”

Maston looked to Hughes. “I thought you’d want to do this.”

“I would too,” she said, “If there was a reasonable chance of success. But there isn’t.”

“We’d be the first people to leave the solar system. We’d be remembered forever.”

Houston spoke up. “No, we wouldn’t. Nobody on Earth is going to remember us. They might not even remember that we’re up here.”

“We can tell them. Make an announcement. Let them know what we plan. That we have a way of salvaging our civilization.”

“And there you have it,” said Thompson. “This isn’t about staying alive, it’s all about being the first to leave the solar system. It’s about fame and glory but not survival.”

Maston took a deep breath and although he didn’t what to ask the question, he did. “Everyone in favor of heading to new world outside the solar system, say ‘Aye.’”

No one said a word.

“When did you all decide this?” he asked.

“When we realized that the data about the extra solar planets was not as solid as we thought,” said Collins.

“The trip to Mars is only a few months, not the years it would take to make the trip outside the solar system. There is a backup plan if that fails. We can return to Earth. It is the only course of action that makes practical sense.”

“Then why not wait it out here?” shouted O’Neal. “Why take that trip if we don’t have to?”

“Because of the tribal warfare down there,” Hart, speaking for the first time. “That’s nearly as dangerous as traveling into interstellar space.”

Maston ignored O’Neal. He was the radical in the group, who wanted nothing other than to land. Maston had convinced himself that they needed to do something else. It began to look as if he was the only one who wanted to find their way to another star system.

“This is getting us nowhere,” said Johnson. “Further discussion isn’t going to help.”

Maston didn’t want to give it up because that would end the dream. As long as they talked, there was a chance that they’d change their minds and vote with him. There were nine votes. O’Neal would vote to return, which meant there were only eight. Maston would vote for interstellar flight, which meant he needed four and it didn’t look good at the moment.

Although the issue seemed to be dead, he said, “We have an opportunity here that the human race won’t have again for decades, if not centuries. We have a chance to move the human race away from its one home and ensure its eternal existence.”

“Philosophical nonsense,” said Thompson.

Before Maston could speak, O’Neal said, “I vote to wait here and return to the Earth when the situation stabilizes.”

Then, almost as if a voice vote was required, Hughes said, “That’s one to stay. I think we know which way John will vote, and we know which way Richard will vote, so we have a three-way tie. I’ll break it for the moment by saying, Mars.”

Jenny Howard, who had just been listening, but who had made up her mind weeks ago, said, simply, “Mars.”

Hughes said, “We have three for Mars, one to stay and one to fly off into space. There are three votes left.”

“This isn’t really a democracy,” said Maston. “I’m in command here.”

“Of course,” said Hughes, “but since this is not in the mission plan and there is no more mission control, then we have devolved… evolved? Into a democracy.”

For a moment, no one spoke. It was as if the rest were weighing their options.

Houston said, “Just to make it interesting, I say we make the long trip into space.”

“Oh, for the love of God,” said O’Neal. “That’s the dumbest thing anyone has said for a very long time.”

Houston glared at him and said, “No dumber than wanting to wait for the situation to change on Earth. That’s not going to happen in our lifetime.”

Johnson looked toward Maston and for a moment he thought she was going to vote with him. It would make an interesting outcome. There would be three for Mars, three to go and one to stay.

But Johnson said, “As an engineer, I understand better than anyone except for Jenny, just what is involved. While I like the idea of an interstellar flight and it has been a dream of mind since I was a little girl, we just don’t have the resources to make it work. I vote for Mars.”

“Interesting dilemma,” said Collins. “If I vote for Mars, then it’s all over. If I vote to go, then the deciding vote falls to Mike.”

Collins looked at Hart who looked horrified at the prospect for a moment, and then he relaxed. Collins picked up on that because Hart now knew how the vote would turn out.

“As an astronomer, I’ve always been a little concerned that my science is largely observational. I can’t get out into deep space to observe things. I have to remain relatively Earth-bound. I love the idea of interstellar flight…”

“There a but in there anywhere?” asked Hart.

“Don’t worry, Mike. You’ll be safe. I can’t, in good conscience, say anything other than Mars. We go to Mars.”

“That’s it,” said Johnson.

“No,” said Maston, slamming his hand down on the table. “That’s not it. I think we need to revote.”

“John,” said Thompson kindly, “it’s over. We’ve voted twice. The majority has decided.”

“There is one vote left.”

“It won’t make any difference.”

Hart said, “For the record, I vote for Mars.”

O’Neal said, “You all are idiots. We can stay here for as long as it takes. Mars is not a viable option.”

Hughes said, “Listen. For the moment, this is our best bet. But we don’t need to break orbit immediately. We have some time to gather additional data. We can revisit this decision if something changes. Even if we get to Mars, and something changes, we can make another plan.”

Maston, grasping at the straw, thinking he could persuade them later, said, “Then we adjourn now but we prepare for the journey to Mars.”

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

 

Although Maston hoped that something would change, it didn’t. Collins attempted to learn more about the extra solar planets in nearby star systems, but the technical ability to gather the data was gone. He had access to all that had been discovered before the Earth passed through the comet tale, but there just wasn’t the detail he needed.

The engineers, Houston and Johnson believed that the engines would be able to gather fuel as they moved through deep space, but didn’t believe they could withstand the rigors of long-term operation as they accelerated and then braked on the trip. Both believed they would suffer a catastrophic failure that would be beyond the capability of either of them to repair.

Hart wasn’t sure that the capability to produce food would last as long as projected, especially for a flight that would last more than a decade. He thought that they needed to be close to an Earth-like planet in case of a failure, and the best Earth-like planet was Earth.

Hart also worried about the dynamics of the closed society that had limited reproductive capabilities. It meant simply that there would have to be interbreeding that would lead to long-term mutation. They simply did not have a breeding population of sufficient size to ensure the long-term survival of the race.

Thompson worried about two problems. The makeup of the crew was not split evenly between men and women. That would lead to sexual tensions that couldn’t be easily corrected. With one of the men left out, or with a shifting of affections, such tensions could lead, would lead, to a deadly outcome.

He also worried about the ethnic make-up of the crew. While no one had manifested any sort of surface prejudice, that didn’t mean that some weren’t buried beneath the surface. It might never be a problem, given the testing done prior to launch, but some resentments might be hidden, to play out in the long-term and closed nature of the society.

Maston, of course, was angered that they had decided not to deep space. Some worried that he would resent the loss of his authority and that might bubble over into greater and deadly tensions.

Each had good reasons to wish to stay in the solar system because, if nothing else, there was always the promise of Earth. They might be headed for Mars, but if the situation on Earth changed for the better, they could easily find their way back.

O’Neal, of course, resented everything. He argued against the plan. He argued that Mars was not a viable option. He argued they would all die on that planet, unable to live there without artificial means such as supplemental oxygen and that the soil, not to mention the reduced sunlight and the colder temperatures would not allow them to grow food. As they got closer and closer to breaking orbit, he became irritable and irritating. On the morning they were scheduled to leave, he stopped talking to anyone. He just sat quietly, his face pale, as if he expected for the flight to end quickly in disaster.

 

The station broke orbit easily. There was no plan now to use the sun to increase their speed. The orbital dynamics had been worked out by Collins and Hughes. Earth and Mars were at the optimum places in their orbits that made the flight to Mars simple and quick.

As they left Earth orbit, they saw the shimmering oceans, the dark greens and browns of the land masses and then the broad band of sand that marked the Sahara. Clouds had obscured the North American land mass.

Maston was sure that they were wrong about pinning their hopes on Mars. They should be looking for somewhere else for them to go. He’d been out voted and accepted the defeat, but still campaigned for the interstellar option. He believed the others would eventually see the wisdom of his plan.

But some of the things he wanted could be accomplished on Mars. Maybe they could live in peace helping one another rather than taking what someone else had earned and fighting senseless wars. Maybe they could make those changes on Mars… Just maybe.