would choose base nine, divisible only by three. It was nothing made on Earth. For all these decades, humanity had been searching for intelligent life somewhere else in the universe, and Yuri and I had found it on our own doorstep. This was no more man-made than I was delivered by a stork.
In the manner of a miniature spaceship, its vaguely egg-shaped form rotated along its major axis. The main body seemed to be some sort of iridescent material. The front resembled burnished gold. Deep grooves ran the length of the object from the gold collar to the blunt rear where funnel shapes gave the impression of a propulsion system. Stubby fins completed the resemblance to a mini-spaceship. The funnels and fins looked as if they had grown out of the fuselage. There was no sign of any rivets or other construction methods.
The gold collar at the front, as brilliant as Tutankhamun’s casket, had a matching central node the size of a large half-melon, evenly dotted with pure silver, two-centimetre blisters, reminiscent of thimbles, right down to the crowded regular dimples on their surfaces. Simply stunning. From the centre of the node, a long, tapering golden rod pointed forward, adding an extra metre to the object’s two and a half metre length. Its diameter at the widest point was about one and a quarter metres.
It revolved, sedately, once per minute permitting us to examine the damage to its unworldly symmetry. An entire side was smashed and distorted, showing it had been the victim of a cosmic collision. Perhaps the guilty party was a meteor, gathered by Earth’s gravity, moving too fast to be detected, and smashing into the object as it plunged towards the surface of the planet. A billion to one accident.
Its electronic entrails had spilled into the void, with wires and components trailing behind the direction of rotation. Some of the material was hanging out more than two metres, the furthest item being an iridescent cylinder the diameter of a test tube, but over twenty centimetres long. Two strangely coloured, uninsulated wires held it captive. In the fore section, similar tubes formed clusters of various lengths and all with different coloured wires leading to and from them. Had fire burned off the insulation? Inside at the rear were a dozen marrow-shaped, steel-coloured spheres which might contain fuel. Two of them were split open, one with a jagged gash and the other a broken shell. What gas or liquid had these vented into space? Fuel was the most likely answer. What sort of fuel did it use? Was it dangerous?
‘Oh, my God!’ I said as a sudden panic overcame me. I manipulated the right robotic arm and brought the small claw to within thirty centimetres of the object.
‘Touch it not, Eva,’ said Yuri hurriedly, grasping my arm.
‘No. Don’t worry. Checking radiation.’
‘Блядь! Yes. Of course.’ It was rare to hear Yuri emit a Russian profanity.
After a few taps and slides on my computer, we had a reading. Marginally radioactive, but only slightly stronger than the background radiation in this orbit. I reported it over the secure channel.
‘Sorry, you guys. We should have thought of that,’ said Gerald.
‘No harm done. Can’t think of everything,’ I said.
Yuri’s skill with the thrusters gave us the opportunity to circle and film it from all angles. Strange symbols on one side, gave the impression of a name followed by a sequence of dots. The first column of dots was three, followed by seven followed by two. If I’d been a gambler, I’d have said this was number 37’2. Was it to base eight, ten, sixteen or some less predictable sequence? Base nine or ten was hinted at by the central block of dots. Surely no creature would choose base nine, divisible only by three.
What did the apostrophe represent? Or maybe it wasn’t an apostrophe, but a comma and we were viewing it upside down? 2,73 something?
‘Are you seeing this, Gerald?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘да,’ confirming Roscosmos was still with us.
‘Permission to stop its spin, Gerald?’
‘No, Evelyn. Wait. We have people who want to consider your options and there are more on the way. Presume you’ve people arriving, too, Ivan?’
‘да. Us too,’ confirmed Ivan using English for the benefit of the numerous non-Russian speakers who must be arriving at NASA, ESA, JAXA, CSA and Roscosmos. The trivial game of testing the Americans with the use of Russian forgotten in the excitement.
‘Don’t touch it, Evelyn, until we know what we’re dealing with,’ said Gerald.
Off air I said to Yuri, ‘That could be an extremely long time.’
‘Indeed,’ Yuri agreed, with one of his disarming smiles while raising his eyebrows.
I switched communications channel, ‘ISS. SDIV here. You copy us?’
A few seconds passed, and Brian answered, ‘Hi, Eve, copy you.’
‘Could be a while on this one, Brian. Let Mike know we’ll be late back. Difficult spin on it,’ I lied. ‘We’ll have to analyse and recalculate our trajectory.’
‘No problem, Eve. Be careful.’
‘We will,’ I switched back to the secure channel. We were now going to be very isolated. Our orbit and that of the ISS would quickly diverge.
Yuri manoeuvred us, so we were facing directly towards the artefact from the side. The mess of wiring and circuitry was much clearer as we approached to within a metre.
There was no way this was of human manufacture. The wires were multi-coloured but not insulated, almost as if the metal had colour built-in. They entered the components at seemingly random locations. One was broken in half and appeared to be an empty tube. Whatever had been within it was long gone. Although we could see the wires entering the exterior of the tubes, there was no sign of them inside. The inner surface of the broken tube appeared smooth.
‘See wires, Eva? They like hairs growing out of it.’
‘Yes, and they disappear inside.’ I felt a gut-wrenching sickness in my abdomen. ‘Looks hellish advanced,’ I said.
‘What we stumbled across?’
‘Don’t know, Yuri, but I’ve a feeling simply finding it will change our lives.’
‘да.’
I opened the microphone, ‘Gerald, this had a serious impact at some time. Are you seeing these wires and cylinders?’
A different voice replied, ‘Hi Evelyn. Peter Wright here. NASA’s taking over for a while and I’ll be your liaison with target four. Gerald will look after the unscrambled communications. We’re re-designating it AD1 for Alien Device One. Stand by while we assess the video. I take it you’re sure it isn’t a hoax.’
‘Copy that. I’m looking around for the mother ship as we speak!’ I said. I’d met Peter Wright a few times at the Johnson Space Center. He was a very cold individual with apparently no sense of humour.
‘Ha,’ I said in an aside to Yuri, ‘they’re talking about us behind our backs. You got plenty of images?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m still recording continuous eight K video,’ I said. I didn’t want to stop recording in case it reacted to us and I had plenty of memory cards.
‘What is this thing, Eva?’
‘Something more advanced than us. I’m glad we can see inside. At least we know it’s not a bomb.’
‘Our mission parameters will take drastic change of direction, I am thinking.’
‘Yes, no doubt.’
‘It seems only mechanical thing.’
‘Yes, Yuri. No little green men arrived in this.’
‘Evelyn?’ Peter’s voice.
‘Copy.’
‘We’d like you to camp out beside it there. We want some time to discuss this Earth-side. Any problem with that? Resources? Air?’
I looked at Yuri and he shook his head.
‘No problem, Peter,’ I said.
‘Hello, Evelyn, Gerald here, copy?’ came over the insecure channel a few minutes later.
‘Yes, Gerald?’
‘We want to think about whether we want you to nudge this one to burn it up or whether it might be worth cutting off and keeping the array. Are you okay to stay with it until morning?’
‘No problem, Gerald,’ I said, knowing the conversation was for the benefit of the ears of the listening public.
‘By the way,’ continued Gerald, ‘We’ve lost your video feed. Can you check out your end?’
‘Copy that, Gerald. I’ll examine the connections. When did it go down?’
‘It was broadcasting fine then suddenly cut. Happened about forty minutes ago.’
‘Copy that. Might be the antenna. I’ll get back to you,’ I said.
The main reason for the security delay was in case we had a catastrophic accident, but it was also useful if we didn’t want the public or media to catch sight of something until we’d examined it, exactly as had happened here. Those who designed the system were thinking “military” not “alien”. Having to conduct some subterfuge was not that unexpected. The nature of our discovery, however, was of Earth-shattering proportions. It had Area 51 written all over it.
‘Early dinner, Eva?’ asked Yuri, unstrapping himself and moving over to the storage lockers.
‘Any roast chicken in those supplies?’
‘да.’
‘Could murder a gin and tonic.’
‘Sorry. Bar’s dry,’ he replied.
We both moved to the back of the craft to eat, floating in mid-air watching an alien artefact from God knows where, rotating before us. One side incredibly alien and the other seriously trashed. What was it and why was it here? The questions were mounting.
After dinner, I reported back to Gerald on the open channel that the video dropout did appear to be a fault with our antenna, so we’d have to replace it when we returned to the ISS. That would explain to the media and public why there was no video feed.
I had come to space to help rid low-Earth orbit of worrying space junk and now I was becoming embroiled in the most incredible adventure. The significance to the world of our discovery of this alien wreck, would be enormous. We finally knew, once and for all, we weren’t alone in the universe.
Our current aspect had the artefact spinning slowly in front of us with the majesty of the rotating Earth beneath it. Earth had been the only place we knew of which supported life. This object proved not only that life existed elsewhere, but much more importantly, intelligent life.
After dinner, Yuri backed us off to a safe distance, I shut down unnecessary systems and put on my harness. I set the laser rangefinder to ping the object silently once a minute and set off an alarm if the gap opened or closed by more than a metre. I tried to sleep, but with AD1 spinning in front of me I knew sleep wouldn’t come easily. I wished I could tell my dad.