Chapter Twenty-Four

Hurtling through space at right-angles to the ecliptic plane left the solar system behind her worryingly fast. The stretched communications with Earth made conversations more of a planned chore with minutes for her to say good morning to Derek and to receive a meaningless weather’s fine here back.

She’d gone through the medical instructions again for a three-months drug-induced hibernation. It’d worked fine with prison volunteers but not tried in space. A necessary evil to extend their life support resources, and maybe their lifespan. Failure to elicit a response from the spheres made an extended flight plan necessary. She paused to reflect on their argument a few days before.

Claude had said: “It seems bizarre that the spheres still travel at only eighty thousand kph, give or take a click.”

“Maybe they need to go slow for all the others to catch up,” said Kallandra.

“You think there might be more sneaking up behind us? They’ll say Enchante, pardon moi as they pass. Don’t they have enough time decoherences, or whatever else they’ve harvested?”

“NASA hasn’t spotted any from planets beyond Jupiter.”

“And so they’re taking longer to catch up? Possible. If that’s the case—”

She threw her hand into the air like a rocket. “Then zoom. I bet they’ll pop out of our time frame or accelerate to near light speed, and—”

“And we turn back, unless we can make them notice us first. Let’s try again.”

“Claude, we’re already sending stop-and-talk-to-us messages on every wavelength and frequency.”

“Like every tourist says in Quebec, parlez lentement s’il vous plait. ”

“Just because it’s taken them two billion years to gather time doesn’t mean they communicate at a snail’s pace. But, OK, let’s send a very slow version of ‘Hoi, what about us?’” Something else tugged. How did the spheres communicate? She’d set up the recordings of four of the sets of spheres their own telescopes and sensors could measure, and ran multi-dimensional pattern recognition routines.

“Got it! Claude come see.” She could feel her face glow with the excitement as the display revealed a simple but repeated phenomenon. “Remember that we’ve noticed the light from the spheres sometimes flickers?”

“Oui, possibly from when they rotate or somehow change their albedo.”

“When a comparison algorithm is run on the timing of those flickers in conjunction with the other sets of spheres, we get something interesting.” She tapped the computer trackpad to show a set of graphs that scrolled but resolved finally to one.

“You are right. Every time one lot flickers, there is a flicker from the one we think came from Earth—fifty-eight seconds later. Do you agree?”

“Sure, and when the Earth sphere flickers without ‘answering’ one of the others, they all flicker simultaneously exactly fifty-eight seconds after.”

“So why doesn’t it respond to us when we blast it with all the lights we have?”

“Remember you mentioned earlier about our radio signals might be on a different timescale to theirs? Suppose our blast of light is too long, and so they didn’t figure on our light as being relevant to them.”

“Good thinking, Kal, let’s blast them with an identical light signal the spheres sent to their "vaisseau amiral”

“I get you. The mother-ship? OK, I’m onto it.” She copied the pattern of the answering flickering from the spheres into the transmitting circuit. She looked at Claude, who gave her a ‘GO’ look, and so she did.

An hour later there’d been no change. They’d lit up their section of the universe, strobing like a supernova at a disco, with and without radio, and all available electromagnetic radiation output, but nothing came back.

“They don’t want to play, Cherie, we might as well go to bed.”

While Claude wrote up and sent back to Earth an updated report, she flipped open the medical cabinet and retrieved the hypnagogic drug instructions. She’d hoped they’d have made contact before going into a three months hibernation state, particularly as no one she knew personally had tried it. The procedure involved intravenous feeding and hydration, and their waste, although much reduced, had to deal with nightmarish contraptions.

“Hey, Kallandra, you are hiding something from me.”

She glanced at him, picking up facial clues. Was he joking, as usual? His eyebrows reached for his nose—not a good sign. “What are you jabbering on about?”

He grabbed her arm and tugged. “Over at the comms console.”

She considered waving him off, but what the heck…. “OK, but this had better be good.”

“I’ve had a few suspicions about why you’re on this mission,” he said. “I know you’ve been on national security missions. And Tabitha said—”

“Hang on, there, Buddy. What are you on about? Why me on this mission? The more relevant one is why you are?” She stopped herself launching into a greater tirade when it occurred to her that the stress of this probable one-way journey was getting to him. Surely his logic circuits knew they were both in the same boat—literally. How could one of them have a hidden agenda, and linked to the secret services. Sure, she’d been on training courses with the FBI, CIA, and all sorts over the years. Hadn’t all NASA pilots?

Claude pulled her over to the screens. She noticed that unread message flags waved at them. “You’ve made a pact with them, haven’t you?”

“Who—the spheres or NASA? And the answer is no to either. And why should I? See sense, Claude. You know we have to clear these messages, send a see-you-later and prepare for hibernation.”

“You’ve been besotted by the spheres since you hugged one at Glastonbury.

You probably feel you have an affinity with them, and that they couldn’t possibly hurt you in particular. But they don’t know we are here, you stupid bitch.”

“Claude?” A wave of maternal emotion washed over her towards him, in spite of his invective. Or maybe because of it. “Sure I feel a connection with them. It’s one of those ephemeral reasons I was sent on this mission. But I want to go home as much as you do.”

“Non, you have arranged a failsafe solution if we can’t make ourselves heard. A massive detonation with our death would do that.”

“I doubt it would. Anyway, we’ve missiles that could do that without destroying ourselves.” She tried to fathom what had really upset him.

With a look that told her he was about to reveal a trump hand, he leaned to the side of the main comms console and opened one of the large aluminium lockers. A matt black box filled most of it. No labels, handles or buttons. It looked heavy, threatening and yet she knew that was an illogical reaction.

Claude pointed at the black box and said, “What’s that called—or is it classified?”

Kallandra put her hand out to the unknown black surface but stopped short at touching it. “That’s truly weird. Before launch I’d been over every inch of this vessel—”

“As have I.”

“Sure, Claude, we both have, though resources were being shoe-horned in, right up to the last hours. And equipment relevant to a larger crew, such as the extra suits, were being extricated. Hey, let’s see what the manifest says.”

“I have already checked. Spare batteries and comms parts.”

“Yes, that’s right. A regular warehouse for Radio Shack. That’s what I remember seeing there during the week before we took off. You were with me, Claude.”

He spoke slowly, in low tones. “Ah, oui. So what is this?” Claude put on his best hangdog face, while his arms invited a hug.

She stepped back. “I’m annoyed with you. How dare you think I’d conspire against you.”

He advanced. She put her hands on her hips, and then realised she was still in her underwear. Not able to be both defiant and improperly dressed her face rebelled and broke into a smile. His embrace charged her whole body. In particular, skin on skin produced a tingle as if they were human batteries. Maybe the stress of the flight and the not knowing, had melted her resistance. She stroked the back of his shirt while feeling his warm breath on her neck.

“Claude, what are you thinking now?”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

“I guess so, but where shall we—?”

“I don’t know what you have in mind, but I know we have to break into that box.”

And so her flight of fancy crashes to Earth, or rather the deck. “Of course. Have you actually checked for a touch panel?”

“Yes. No reaction. But we have cutting tools. I could make a hand sized circle in minutes, and then—”

“Claude, wouldn’t it be better to ask Houston what it is? It’s been there for weeks, we can wait another hour.”

He pulled back from her and prodded his forehead with an elegant forefinger.

“I’ve thought of that, but suppose it is a device to create a huge ‘notice me’ explosion?”

“Then they might do a pre-emptive remote detonation. OK, what else can we do?”

“We can jettison it. As long as they didn’t weld it or use superglue we can lever it out and attach a propellant canister so it moves away from us.”

“That might be a bit drastic if all it contained were our spare pants. Let’s put it outside but on our longest tether.”

“And then ask them what it is? The four-k tether wouldn’t protect us from a nuclear blast even if behind us.”

“Granted but our rear has good blast protection. Better than it going off in here, and I’m reluctant to completely abandon what might be essential resources.”

Claude waved his arms in exasperation. “But obviously we’ve not needed it. We know our food and water will keep us going for months. We have sufficient nuke energy to outlive us. What else, besides chocolate, are you going to need?”

“OK, a compromise. We dump it here with enough hydrazine in a strapped-on nozzle to slow it, say, to a thousand mph, and with a radio beacon.”

“So we can find it on our way back, if we found it was something essential.”

“Yeah,” she said, “like a strawberry gateau.”

* * *

Contemplating hibernation sent her the shivers. A hundred-percent survival rate with prisoners was small comfort. Suppose the ship forgot to wake them? Any change in the spheres’ behaviour should trigger a first stage preparation to wake them, then, if the change didn’t return to the previous status, the next stage would follow—their being awakened. But she knew the criterion for what constituted a sufficient change in the position vectors or appearance of the spheres changed with whoever joined the group discussing it at JPL. She and Claude were allowed a say but not a final decision.

Mankind was too important. The mission outweighed their lives. She had to accept that one scenario had to include their demise. Life support depletion or meteorite encounters could see the end of their involvement but, if not destroyed, the Apoidea would continue, robotically pursuing the spheres and sending back mission reports.

The automated relays and subroutines were good, the best, but they didn’t have the gut reactions, that insight and serendipity giving humans an edge. Or, so she argued, to be allowed on board.

“It’s good that we’re only test driving this hibernation lark for three months, and not three thousand years,” she said, but Claude merely nodded.

Blasting another set of flashing lights and radio signals at the spheres brought a further zero response so, after a series of injections and the insertion of ignominious surgical appliances, they both lay in waterbed-like pods, waiting for drug-induced sleep.

For precious minutes Kallandra’s brain fought and lost consciousness in several bouts. Something tugged at her, preventing sleep. Her eyes opened wide when she realised what they’d missed. All she could see was nothing—no need for light while they were asleep. No, a faint green LED led her eyes to an emergency stop button.

Did she want to hammer it now, or wait? Now, but it was too much effort to reach….