ARIA (27 page)

“Agreed,” Ryder said. “And for speed, I’m leaning towards the A55 dual carriageway. There are plenty of links between that and the coast road if diversions are necessary.”

“There’s some difficult strategy questions, though, aren’t there?” Brian said.

“More a policy decision,” Derek said.

“I’m tempted to say we’ll only shoot people shooting at us,” Ryder said, knowing that was what they were referring to. “But it’s like if strangers breached our perimeter here. In fact, our going to the airfield is like a bubble of Anafon on the move.”

“Nice image, but not quite,” Derek said.

“No,” said Teresa. “Ryder, you said if anyone came over the hill towards us we had to try and ascertain if they were infected just in case they had heard of us from the ISS and came here as uninfected refugees.”

“Yes, but if we thought there was a good possibility they were okay, we would quarantine them in the mine,” Ryder said. “How can we take the mine with us?”

“We could take the estate car as a mobile quarantine, but that would be impractical if we picked up hundreds,” said Brian. “And I don’t like the idea of shooting hundreds either.”

Ryder had to make a decision. “We could have the estate in front and the minibus some hundred metres or so following. We have mobile phones working on our own local network like walkie-talkies. If the lead car sees people, unlikely so early in the morning, it tells the minibus and both retreat and reroute. Only shoot to maim in order to stop anyone following. If we have to. It’s tough, but us getting ARIA is a slow death sentence, and if it’s them or us...”

They all had no choice but to agree, leaving Ryder to go to the comms and let them know up there in space.

Wednesday 16 September 2015:

Orbit.

“W
E
HAVE
ANOTHER
PROBLEM
, C
OMMANDER
,”
SAID
J
ENA
.

“What?” Dan said. “Vlad’s found Santa Claus orbiting the moon?”

“Hey, that’s good,” she said. “In fact, he’s found Santa Claus, but he’s orbiting Saturn. Come and see.”

Vlad said, “We can hardly see anything, but the computer says there’s a new object in the Cassini Division between rings A and B. Our telescope has it as a fuzzy ball.”

“Size?” asked Dan.

“How do you measure the diameter of a pom-pom? My apologies. I estimate it to be about a hundred metres.”

“Any transmissions coming from it, Vlad?”

“No, Commander, not on wavelengths we listen for.”

“Right, send what we have to Ryder and Charlotte. Maybe Charlotte can direct the remote scopes to it. In the meantime, get Hubble trained on it with IR, UV, X-rays, visible light, the works. I need to consult Antonio. Call me when you get anything.”

Jena sat at the neighbouring console to Abdul. “Zap over the alien’s coordinates and I’ll handle Hubble. Extend the range of wavelengths. If they sneeze, Abdul, you make sure you hear it.”

“I will if they sneeze in Morse code,” said Abdul. “But they didn’t talk to us before, they won’t this time either. What about a radar-imaging scan?”

“Everything, Abdul. Do I have to do it for you?”

“Jena, a radar probe will tell them we’ve found them and they can use our pinging to find us.”

“Oops,” said Jena, adding an embarrassed smile.

“I’ll take that as a don’t do a radar scan, then.”

“We could use one of the other probes already out there. Check, but I think the Cassini Saturn orbiter probe launched back in the nineties is out there,” Jena said. “That way we’re not sending radar pings to the alien but asking existing satellites to do it.”

Abdul tapped his database. “Cassini died in 2008, while orbiting the biggest moon, Titan.”

“Um, suspicious?”

“Not really, Jena, it had passed its expected life. But remember it launched its daughter probe, Huygens, onto Titan. We might be able to re-activate it. More interesting is the Jupiter Moon Mission. It reached Ganymede last year and it’s active.”

“Excellent, get the codes for both, the last one was managed by Darmstadt, Germany and the first from Houston. Ping the alien bastard from one or both.”

“Pardon me, Jena, I’m a computer hacker whiz. If we were radar pinged, I’d be able to backtrack it to the satellite and then follow its radio transmission in under five minutes.”

“The point being, Abdul?”

“The point is if a mere human can track it, a smart alien could be knocking on our door demanding to see my hacker’s licence before you’ve seen any results.”

“Not if you send the radio controls via a broad-scattered signal and ditto for the orbiters. We don’t need to avoid confusion from the non-existent radio signals from Earth and it doesn’t matter if others pick our signals up. No one could track them back.”

“Not just a pretty face, are you? Hey, I could bounce the initial signals off other satellites to add to the confusion.”

“Then fucking get on with it, Abdul.” Her aggression sparked because, although the ruse she suggested might work, they had no idea how clever the aliens were and Abdul had pointed out her mistake. Out of his sight, she chewed at her fingernail
a stress habit hidden from NASA shrinks. Abdul reminded her of the possibility of the aliens finding them. Maybe they should return as soon as possible, after all.

“I can’t raise a squeak out of the Huygen probe on Titan,” said Abdul. “Shame, it is the closest to the alien. Shall I keep trying?”

“No, Abdul. Either the probe had a mishap or the alien shut it up. We’d better not keep trying and give them more data to track us down. What about the Ganymede probe near Jupiter?”

“It’s alive and chatting but the radar appears to go right through the alien. It doesn’t—”

“Not surprising. If we have stealth technology, so has the alien. Hey, I got a visual on the fuzzy-ball alien.”

“Great, Jena, what does it look like?”

“A larger fuzzy ball but brown in colour.”

“Jena, you don’t think we’ve just been wasting our time, do you?” said Abdul, looking fed up.

“Why? Had you something better to do? Besides packing.”

“Already packed. To be honest, I’m getting a bit nervous up here. I’ve never been so keen to get back to terra firma.”

“All you men are wimps. I’ve set Hubble up locked on the alien, even if it moves, as long it doesn’t shift too quickly. You do the same for listening to frequencies and transmit to Ryder and Charlotte. With solar power recharging our batteries, we should be able to keep an eye on them for years.”

“Pity we haven’t some air-to-air laser guns,” Abdul said, but Jena looked at him as a dog trainer would a puppy that had just made a puddle.

“We could do a darn sight better than that. Gotta speak to Dan.”

Dan had his head close to Antonio, making Jena sure they plotted some dire deed.

“Hey, Dan, since we know where the alien is, how about doing something about it?”

“We are,” Dan said. “You are finding out all we can about it, and I’ve asked Antonio to do what he can in the way of the old-fashioned criminal profiling method, using what we know about both cases.”

“You’re joking,” Jena said. “Just because the cases are conveniently human holiday size, doesn’t mean the aliens are our size. For God’s sake, they’ve probably been monitoring our TV for years and know everything about us and made suitcase-sized Trojan horses. They could be tiny or huge.”

Antonio rubbed his chin. “Or have no shape at all.”

“I’d like to see a gas or thought process manufacture something solid,” said Jena.

“We can’t rule it out, especially looking at their spaceship, assuming that’s what it is,” Antonio said.

“I think it is a safe bet that ball of fudge is them and I think we owe it to mankind to hurt it,” she said. There; she’d laid bare her emotion but was prepared to back it.

Dan remained calm. “You know I respect your intellect and engineering skill, Jena, but to attempt to destroy the alien—”

While Jena became flushed, Antonio spoke up. “We need to clarify our options.”

Vlad had completed most of the station hibernation procedures by keeping the solar panels facing the sun, so there would be plenty of electricity. This ensured the onboard computers could act as a webserver for anyone from Earth to access e-mails, message boards, pages of news and information. He also set up some of the computers to act as a mobile phone receiver and transmitter since the Earth-based ones had bellied-up.

“When do we get our re-entry window? Hello, are we having a goodbye party?”

“No, Vlad,” said Abdul, “Jena wants us to have a pop at our luggage depositors. Maybe send the case back to sender, address unknown.”

“Now then, Abdul, don’t be facetious,” Antonio said. “The suggestion possesses logic.”

“Thank you, Antonio,” Jena said. “We show defensive spirit. Even if we can’t destroy them, maybe they will change tack and bother some other planet.”

“I mean the logic inherent in giving us cover fire while we head back to Earth.”

“I know we are under some stress,” Abdul said, “but my dear Antonio, if we made a homemade rocket with some spare tubing, explosives, and propulsion system, it would take at least three years to reach Saturn. Or have you figured out a slingshot trajectory that will shave a few months off it?”

“And it would be like firing a popgun at an aircraft carrier,” said Vlad. “Unless we convert the nuclear propulsion unit from the ion-drive on that experimental remote probe we have in the science bay.
Da
, that’ll do it, but it would still take too long to reach them.”

“How about using the emergency escape pod?” said Antonio, with the smug look he had when he considered he had a winning argument.

Dan shook his head. “It’s for an emergency escape for five crew to reach Earth and nothing more. We can’t just take it, reconfigure its programming, convert it into a space torpedo, and send it to a possible alien target.”

“If it isn’t their ship, it wouldn’t annoy them then, would it?” Jena said. “But we have the
Marimar
to fly around in so we use the pod as a weapon.”

Vlad said, “It’s comforting to know the escape pod is there, but I’d much rather fly back in the
Marimar
. I vote we use the escape pod.”

Dan wagged a finger. “You are all assuming it is a choice between using the escape pod or the
Marimar
.”

“Oh yes,” said Abdul, “there’s the homemade-rocket option.”

“No,” Dan said, “I meant not throwing anything at the fudge ball. It would take up too much precious time; it might aggravate the situation, and if it is related to the aliens, it might be a decoy. The real alien mother ship might be round the dark side of the moon. Then there is the other strategic argument.”

“Oh, I know it,” Jena said. “You still think ARIA was meant to be for the benefit of mankind. You must be a demented—”

“There is a possibility,” interrupted Antonio, “that the second case might immunise uninfected people like us.”

“It doesn’t matter what we all think, does it?” She looked at the others who gave her no encouraging return nods. No matter how logical she might think her points were, none of the others would entertain going against the gang leader.