Earth Star(16)
Something else occurred to me. They’d given me some special shots during my medical check. What were those for? Potential chemical, radiation or germ warfare attacks? Nuke that!
I heard the door open behind us. A shocked male voice spoke. ‘Nuke that!’
I’d only thought the words, but someone else had actually said them. I turned to identify the guilty party, and saw a dark-haired young man in a Lieutenant’s uniform. His eyes moved from the screen to glance at me; he looked horrified, and hastily saluted.
‘Sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.’
I gave him a rather confused salute, turned back to face the vid screen, and was startled to find half the people in the room had risen to salute me. The civilians were still lounging in seats, their grey uniforms marking them out as ignorant of Military procedures, but the true Military were all on their feet. Even when they’d saluted, they still stood facing me at attention, clearly waiting for something.
I stood there like a nardle. This didn’t make sense. I was only a Captain, and the Military saluting me included several Majors and at least one Commander. I vaguely remembered seeing something in a vid, and gave it a try.
‘As you were.’
They all relaxed and sat down. I pulled a face at Fian, and we found a couple of seats near the front of the room. As we sat down, Fian leaned towards me and whispered in my ear. ‘What was that about?’
I whispered back. ‘I don’t know.’
I looked furtively around. The audience seemed to be split about half-and-half between civilians and Military. The civilians were presumably experts in various fields. I wondered why Fian and I had actually been inducted into the Military, while others were left with civilian status. There was probably some obvious reason, which I was too stupid to figure out, like the reason for the existence of this base.
A woman in Military uniform went to the front of the room, and the audience settled down to pay attention.
‘I’m Major Rayne Tar Cameron, Command Support. Fifty-two hours ago, the Earth Solar Array Meteor Watch detected a sphere approaching Earth. It was 4.71 metres in diameter, and undergoing controlled deceleration. It appeared to originate from a cluster of asteroids in the region of Mars orbit.’
Fian shot me a desperate look.
‘Fourth planet,’ I whispered. ‘Next one out from us.’
The image on the vid screen changed to a sequence showing the trajectory of the alien sphere. The Major let that play through before speaking again.
‘There is no evidence to indicate current or prior existence of an alien species in Earth’s solar system capable of building this. The current theory is the sphere came from outside this solar system, either by portal or conventional means, and stayed in the region of Mars orbit for an indeterminate period of time before approaching Earth.’
The vid screen now started showing what must be genuine vid coverage of the sphere approaching Earth. The images were obviously running at very high speed, but they slowed down twice to allow us to see the sphere making definite course changes as it manoeuvred into Earth orbit.
The Major started speaking again. ‘The sphere is now in geostationary orbit above Earth Africa. As soon as it was observed to be artificial and under power, Alien Contact was activated. We transmitted the standard series of mathematical and other greets which are sent out whenever Planet First teams enter a new star system. There was no response. We followed this with several expanded series of transmissions. Still no response. We have continued communication attempts without success. The sphere has held its position in geostationary orbit without any detectable action.’
A vid ran showing details of the attempts they’d made to communicate with the sphere. They’d done just about everything, including shining lights at it. They hadn’t actually sent someone over to knock on the side of the thing, because that might be construed as a hostile action.
The Major made another speech about attempts to scan the interior of the sphere. It was a very short speech, because none of the scans had worked. All we knew about the thing was its size and shape. Given the size, it was probably an unmanned, automated probe.
At this point, Major Rayne Tar Cameron gathered up the civilian members of the audience and led them off somewhere. All the Military in the room stayed in their seats, apparently expecting something else to happen.
Fian nudged me, and gave me a questioning look, obviously unsure if we should stay or go. A few minutes ago, I’d been wondering why we’d been inducted into the Military while other people were left as civilians, and this could be the answer. Perhaps you had to be a serving member of the Military to hear what was coming next. I stayed in my seat.