First Contact (Galactic Axia Adventure) (19 page)

“They’ve apparently been out there for a while and have been keeping tabs on us,” another added. The image of a written message in their own dominant language was still frozen in everyone’s mind. “They want to communicate with us. But why?”

“Not a clue,” the man replied. “As you know, we’ve been listening for years and never detected any signals. I suspect they’ve been observing us even longer.”

“This could be a preamble to invasion,” another added. “How do we know we can trust them any more than that creature that attacked the orbiter?”

The chairman considered both the suspicions and speculations of his staff. “We’ve got to figure out how to communicate with these people and find out all we can about them.”

“I may be able to help with,” a man offered from the back of the room. They all turned to see Dr. Garret standing near the open door.

“As you know, I’m part of the team at the new radio telescope,” Dr. Garret began. “During the testing of the radio telescope, we received some rather strange harmonic signals.”

He was immediately interrupted. “Those harmonics were the result of misaligned equipment!” the director of the telescope declared. “We’ve since solved that problem so we don’t receive any further interference.”

Dr. Garret just shook his head.” I beg to differ with you, sir,” he said to his superior. “Those harmonics were not the result of equipment failure. They were clearly artificial in origin. A recording disk of these odd harmonics has been made and studied by an independent group of researchers.”

A murmur ran through the room. This was the first time the existence of the secret group had been made public.

“I’ve been aware of your group for some time,” the chairman said to the shock of Dr. Garret. “Please continue.”

“We ran a series of test on those signals to narrow them down to several hundred harmonics until we had a group we couldn’t explain away as some sort of natural occurrences,” Garret continued. “It finally occurred to us that maybe these signals were harmonics of signals traveling faster-than-light.”

Again the room erupted at the mention of this impossible concept. The chairman pounded his fist on the table to silence everyone. After it quieted down, he nodded for Garret to continue his explanation.

“I know the concept of faster-than-light signals is generally believed scientifically impossible,” he said to mollify the others. “But we decided to take a leap of faith and assume it was possible. Once we did, it turned out to be quite easy to build a signal processor that could harmonically multiply the signals. We can now duplicate the frequency range we suspected these aliens are using. Designing and building a receiver was the next logical step.” He paused to take a sip of water.

“To test the theory,” Dr. Garret continued, “we fed the recording of these strange signals into the equipment. The results should have seemed obvious but it still shocked us considerably. We came up with a few that were clearly an alien human language.”

The room erupted into turmoil as everyone started talking at once. The chairman let them talk for a minute and then used his fist again to gavel them back into silence. “Did you manage to translate this language?” he asked Garret.

“Yes sir, we did. It turned out to be quite similar to an obscure ancient dialect here on Maranar.” The room was stunned into silence by the implication. Was it possible these aliens had visited their planet many thousands of years ago and had even influenced their culture and language before returning to the stars?

“And what did the translation reveal?” the chairman asked dubiously.

“That there is an Axia out there that is watching over us,” Garret answered. “We managed to build a transmitter along with the receiver and are now in direct communication with them.”

Garret sat down and waited for the collection of scientists and bureaucrats to respond. The group remained silent while the significance Garret’s statements sank in. Several people twisted around to again view enlargements of the pictures taken by the shuttle crew. The most riveting was the one of the woman pilot of the black Axia ship.

After almost a minute the chairman spoke again. “How are we going to keep a lid on this?” he asked the woman in charge of the mission press team. “The press must be suspicious about why we didn’t provide a live video feed from the orbiter.”

“We’re trying to leak a story to the media with just enough truth to divert some of their suspicions.”

“Any chance that someone else may have tapped into the signals coming from the shuttle?”

“There’s always a chance, but I doubt it. If it had been intercepted, we would most certainly have heard about it by now.”

“What about those tabloid headlines I saw this morning?” someone down the table asked. “They were using four inch high letters announcing that aliens had contacted the shuttle crew. They even had an artist’s rendition of the alien showing a green-eyed bug thing.”

“My team planted that story,” the woman said with a smile. “By leaking it to the tabloids, the story loses credibility with the public. All we have to do is let their overactive imagination do our work for us.”

“Clever,” the chairman said. “The leak is actually true, but using a less that credible outlet will keep people from really believing it.”

Several others murmured their approval. They all feared the panic that could result from the general public prematurely knowing the actual truth.

“What’s the situation with the government?” the chairman asked the agency’s governmental liaison officer.

“About the same as with the general public.”

“So you think we’ll be able to keep them at bay?”

“Barring a direct invasion by those red creatures or the Axia itself, yes.”

“Well then, that about wraps it,” the chairman announced. “Please keep those who saw or had access to the photos and transmissions under close watch. We don’t need a major incident right now.”

“Excuse me sir, but I may have another way to ensure security,” said the representative from the Department of Air Vehicles.

“What is it?”

“Do you remember our Project Green where we investigated these so-called visitors from outer space?” The chairman nodded. “Well, one way we kept it from getting out of hand was to have bogus situations where someone we planted called up the papers with a story about a landing or abduction or something. Then we’d interview them and attribute their story to hallucinations or some easily explainable phenomena. The end result was the public discounted their stories and it discouraged others from coming forward. We can easily renew the project and thus discourage anyone from speaking out for fear of public humiliation and ridicule.”

The chairman thought about it for a moment. “That’s a little drastic but I think it might be necessary, considering the situation. Go ahead and do it, but don’t overplay your hand. Also, everything coordinated with the press team.” The liaison officer and the press team leader nodded at each other.

The chairman paused for a moment and then continued. “Is there anything else before we adjourn?”

No one spoke.

“All right, this meeting is dismissed. I’d like to see you two privately,” he said to Dr. Garret and the communications director. Everyone else got up and headed to their various departments while the three adjourned into the chairman’s private office.

∞∞∞

The homecoming party at the Hassel farm was going very well. All of the neighbors from up and down the valley were there, partially to see Delmar and partially to see the new ship. Delmar diplomatically declined the requests for tours but did enjoy explaining its many amenities. Naturally, all of the former troopers and Ladies of the Fleet plied him with questions about the ship and were the most appreciative of the recent innovations.

Rosemary Sabeti was in the kitchen helping Agnes with refreshments. With a sitter watching little Del-Robert at home, Rosemary was enjoying the break from raising a two year old. But the crowd was fast becoming a new source of stress for the expectant mother. When Agnes asked for volunteers to help in the kitchen, Rosemary gladly accepted, thankful for the relative quiet.

Rosemary glanced out into the living room. “Delmar sure seems to be enjoying himself this time,” she observed to the older woman. Agnes followed Rosemary’s gaze and smiled.

“Yes he is. A year at survey school has sure helped build his self-confidence.”

“He does appear to be less shy,” Rosemary said. She watched Delmar start up a conversation with a young woman without flinching. Agnes observed the exchange in the front room and winked at Rosemary.

“Do I detect you playing matchmaker?” she asked the young mother.

“It wouldn’t hurt him a bit to have the right woman at the right time,” Rosemary replied with a grin.

“Well, his new ship does have excellent accommodations for a couple,” Agnes commented, starting toward the front room with a tray of cookies. “What’s wrong with us helping nature takes its course?”

Rosemary picked up the refill picture for the punch bowl and followed Agnes. While restocking the refreshments, both women watched Delmar continue his conversation with the young woman. Agnes noticed Robert observing the two young people and seemed to approve.

Suddenly, someone out on the front porch gestured wildly toward the sky. Another guest came running into the house saying something about another ship overhead. Everyone, including Delmar and the Hassels, either went out the front door or crowded to the windows trying to see the spectacle.            

From his vantage point on the front porch, Delmar looked up to see a sleek black patroller gliding over the house. In the fading twilight he could read AR-236 and the name
Aurora
on its nose as it set down next
Cabbage Patch
. He grinned and started making his way through the crowd that was heading toward the pair of ships. He got to the patroller just as the hatch slid open.

“How come I wasn’t invited to the party?” Leatha called as she came out through the hatch and launched herself into Delmar’s arms.

∞∞∞

About that same time another meeting was taking place aboard the mothership far out in space near Maranar. “We have a little problem,” Commander Tess said to the people present. “The people responsible for their space mission and the group we’re communicating with aren’t the same people.”

“That appears to be the case,” the comm officer confirmed. “However, the senior person we’ve communicated with, a scientist named Garret, assures us he will inform their space agency about our communications.”

“What about reaction among the native population?” the commander asked, glancing at the supervisor of the watcher detachment.

“According what we’ve picked up from their media broadcasts, the public is still ignorant of our presence. There does appear to be a rather clever press campaign underway to leak information in such a way to make the public discount it.”

“Someone down there is pretty sharp,” Commander Tess commented with definite relief. “Apparently we’re not the only ones that don’t want this situation to blow wide open.”

“I had AR-111 perform a passive scan while she was close to their vessel,” the comm officer unit volunteered. “She confirmed that the action took place in the detector shadow of the moon and only the relayed signals from their craft were received by the planet. There was no evidence of their crude sensors picking up an echo from either her ship or the Red-tail.”

“Good work. Did she also clean up the debris from the Red-tail ship?”

“Yes ma’am,” the watcher supervisor answered. “She waited until their vessel passed beyond the horizon of the moon so it wouldn’t further alarm those men.” The commander nodded her approval of the precaution.

“Let’s keep it low key right now,” Tess said to everyone present. “Let those people down there know we’re considering a brief undercover visit soon. I’d like their opinion. We may be forced to open this planet prematurely but I’m not sure they’re ready. I want all the information possible to forward to Shalimar for their decision.”

“Should I activate the watchers we have on the surface?” the watcher supervisor asked. “Although under deep cover, they can be ready to act as liaison in a matter of hours.”

Commander Tess thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. I’d rather hold them in reserve for later use. No need to play our entire hand at once.”

Chapter Thirteen

The morning after the homecoming party was definitely more relaxed. Leatha slept onboard her ship and then joined Delmar and the Hassels for an early breakfast. The prospect of real home cooked food versus one produced by a food synthesizer was all the invitation she needed.

Agnes was just finishing the first load of pancakes and had started the bacon and eggs when Leatha entered the kitchen. Agnes was pleased to see Leatha wearing a comfortable cotton blouse and pants rather than her service uniform.

“Mind if I help, Mrs. Hassel?” Leatha asked.

“Don’t mind at all.” She ladled the batter onto the griddle for the second batch of pancakes and stepped back to take a good look at the girl. “And you just call me Agnes. Mrs. Hassel makes me feel old.”

Leatha grinned and tied on one of Agnes’ aprons hanging on a rack in the corner.

“Where are the men?”

“Out doing the chores,” Agnes said. “Robert is able to do them himself but I think he likes the company.”

“How long has it been since Delmar has been home?” Leatha asked, turning the bacon before she started scrambling the eggs.

“Not since just after basic almost two years ago,” Agnes answered. “After almost of a year on Mica at the computer school, he transferred to survey for another year.”

“I knew he’d studied computers on Mica,” Leatha said. “But not a lot more. He didn’t talk much about it. Just kept his face buried in his studies.”

“I’m not surprised,” Agnes said as she started flipping pancakes. “He was pretty discouraged when the computer studies proved too much for him to grasp. Even though his letters home never mentioned it, I think he was trying to prove to himself that he wasn’t a failure.”