From the ISS, the Cluster gave the impression of being a tightly connected arrangement of pinheads in the far distance. I was one of the few people who was aware the distance between the Cluster and the ISS was being gradually widened. The shuttle journey was automatic, although the pilot did have override controls for emergencies.
The pinheads grew into shiny cake decorations, ping-pong balls, oranges, grapefruits, and footballs, showing detail of how they were constructed.
The Cluster had expanded from when I had led the original construction team the previous year. There were now two large spheres. The largest was the living quarters and the other, the stretched sphere, housed AD1 with space for AD2. There were two other smaller spheres. One was the original laboratory section and the other, adapted from the original alien sphere, was now an observation sphere from which my companions in the shuttle bus today, plus the two military men, would watch my team of six dealing with the visitor.
The two smaller spheres were joined to both the larger spheres by airlocks.
Also, newly attached to the living quarters was a drum-shaped exercise module forty metres in diameter. It was revolving at the correct speed to create a force on the outer floor equivalent to about ninety per cent of the force of gravity.
We were now close. The shuttle bus began its final approach, turning sideways and easing its way towards the living quarters. We heard contact being made and the clasps began their closing procedures. Forty minutes later, Reg led us all through into the residential sphere.
The living area was the biggest single pressurised space ever to exist in orbit, about fifty feet in diameter, with the central section being designated for relaxation, discussion, leisure, eating, and drinking. Around the outside were sleeping cubicles. There were also two toilets which provided enough space to have a relatively thorough wash. To one side was the access to the rotating exercise drum. On the other side were three nodes allowing supply vehicles to be attached.
My orientation was personal to me, but at the top of the sphere was another airlock which was where the shuttle bus was now parked.
I put my bag into the cubicle I’d been allocated. Oh boy, it had a porthole! I emerged into the central area, and Reg flew up to me.
He said, ‘Sorry, Eve, but I’m under strict instructions from ESA to send you off for an hour in the drum.’ He passed me a printed sheet of my exercise routine and pointed at the door of what I would soon come to call the drum of pain.
Once I’d climbed down to the spinning floor, I walked three-quarters of a mile in about forty minutes and followed that with some bench work. Some of the manoeuvres caused pain in my shoulders which had also taken the impact from several shots.
‘That’ll do, Slater. Come up for a coffee. We’ve news from Yuri,’ shouted Reg from the gods of this nightmarish spinning theatre.
I rested at the hub to get used to the change in orientation, opened the airtight door, and flew into the living area with my leg aching, yes, but free from pain.
‘What’s the news, Reg?’ I asked as I heated my coffee.
‘Easier to watch,’ he said and pressed play on the nearby monitor.
‘Hello, Cluster. I told you there now, Eva. We have development. This came onto the screen short while ago,’ said Yuri.
The image switched to the monitor inside Mars One and the picture suffered interference before a simple message came onto the screen.
‘THANK YOU. ENOUGH.’
Yuri’s face with his flashing blue eyes reappeared on the screen, ‘Assume means had enough language lessons and took decision stop them. What want us do now? We still on schedule to match Cluster orbit by nine in morning. Await reply. Lag now short. Must honest be and admit sympathise with our friend – several days repeated English lessons. Myself, I would have screamed “no more” long time sooner.’
‘I responded with “acknowledged” about fifteen minutes ago,’ said Reg.
‘Can you tell Yuri to play the natural history videos so he’s aware of animals and their relationships with us and their environments?’
‘Yes, I’ve already told him, Eve.’
‘It’s fascinating. AD2 has learned English and told us to stop the lessons,’ I said and opened my reflexlet.
A few waves of my thimball and Roy Williams of my language laboratory was on the screen.
‘Hi, Doctor Slater, how are you?’ he asked.
‘Great being back up here, Roy. AD2 has asked, in English, for the lessons to stop. Can you send Yuri a digital thesaurus and dictionary, which he can transmit to AD2?’
‘No problem. I’ll get onto it.’
‘It’ll need to be in an understandable format. We can’t be sure raw data will be understood.’
‘Yes, we’ve been preparing both. Will send them shortly.’
‘Thanks, Roy.’
Next, I sent a message to Yuri telling him what was on the way and that his lack of diligence in his English lessons was the probable cause of his thick Russian accent and abysmal sentence construction.
‘What’s the current lag to Mars One, Reg?’ I asked.
‘Less than a minute. We should be able to confer normally by late tonight. Yuri is now in rapid deceleration.’
At coffee, I was introduced to Dr Petra Vostola and Dr Hugh Allison who, together with Reg, myself, Yuri, and Alana, would be the reception committee. Me leading it and representing Europe, three Russians, and two from the USA. The Chinese had declined to send a representative. CSA and JAXA were leaving the negotiations to the rest of us.
Petra and Reg had me follow them through the observation area into the alien habitat sphere.
There was AD1 attached to the gantry. I pushed off and flew over to it, easing myself to a halt at the front. I ran my hands over the gold area, along the golden rod and traced a finger along the grooves which ran the length of the craft. I became aware of some photography and spun around.
‘Did you know that NASA actually forgot to take any photographs of Neil Armstrong on the moon – only Aldrin. We must get some pictures of you alongside the alien. This has been the first opportunity.’ said Reg.
‘In that case, don’t forget to take some with Yuri in here,’ I said. ‘Are you serious about Neil Armstrong?’
‘Yes. Buzz got one of his back on the lander steps and there are a couple of stills from the lander’s movie camera, but all the quality images are of Buzz Aldrin.’
‘Amazing,’ I said.
For five minutes or so I posed in various positions for the camera and continued to lay hands on the alien artefact, pulling myself around to the gash, touching the inside of the ship and carefully handling the multi-coloured wires which still trailed from some of the broken cylinders. I returned to the golden front and caressed the thimble-like silver protrusions. They were slightly textured, like an exaggerated fingerprint. I peered inside anew and there was no indication of where they joined the main body of the craft, though there was a join where one had been cut off and replaced after being examined. It seemed sacrilege to damage something so beautiful. I hoped AD2 would not mind us having explored his compatriot.
‘Can I unscrew the rod, Reg?’ I asked. He nodded.
Slowly, with wonder and excitement, I turned the rod through its strange clockwise motion until it separated from the protruding thread of the nose of the craft.
I examined it but of course, there was nothing I’d not already seen with the powerful lenses. I matched the hole with the thread and tightened it again.
‘Finished playing?’ asked Reg.
I performed a neat mid-air twist and laughed. ‘I hadn’t realised how much I wanted to touch it. A wonderful experience. Something made by intelligent beings from another world. I’ll never forget it.’
Reg and Petra strapped themselves into two of the six seats and I pushed myself in their direction, strapping myself into another chair.
‘This is where we’ll be when we introduce ourselves, Eve. Your seat will be the one in front and below these.’
‘So it zaps me first?’ I asked.
‘You cut me to the quick, Eve,’ said Reg and we all laughed.
From the seats, AD1 was slightly off to our left and the AD2 would be directly in front of us.
‘You’re certain you don’t want it attached to the gantry?’ asked Petra.
‘Yes, we know he’s aware of us, so it’d be insulting to treat him as a captive. We’re wearing pressure suits, yes?’ I asked.
‘Yes, we’re a little concerned about him hurting us accidentally if gasses were released or he damaged the sphere. We’re making an awful lot of assumptions here. However, AD1’s manoeuvring thrusters seem to use compressed nitrogen which is, of course, harmless,’ said Reg.
‘I don’t think we’ve a choice. The pressure suits might be a step too far, but we can remove the helmets when it’s clear we’ll not be harmed in any way,’ I said.
‘We’ve snap-shut visors,’ said Reg.
‘Right, so we can have the visors open when we meet him,’ I said, pulling out my reflexlet. ‘Brief me on the procedure.’
We spent the next three hours going through the activities planned for the next morning once Mars One arrived. There was going to be nothing easy or quick about the transfer.
By mid-afternoon, we’d done everything within our power to work out what we’d need to do if anything went wrong. Now we had to hope AD2 was as intelligent as we’d assumed.
I was prodded into another hour in the drum of pain and it was easier on the second occasion. I walked a quarter of a mile without using my cane and completed two miles in total.
In the evening, we all ate together. We had a live conversation with Yuri on Mars One who informed us AD2 had asked to have the audio thesaurus replayed through the on-board system.
Mia, the language specialist said, ‘He’s probably wondering why we’ve so much redundancy in our language, especially in English which is worse than any other language for having different ways to present the same question or answer. Maybe each of the alien words has a single meaning. If so, the thesaurus would be a real puzzle.’
‘Yuri,’ I said, ‘can you play him the video of the announcement to the world about AD1, so he knows what we’ve told people about their existence? Set it running an hour before you reach Cluster orbit. I don’t want him to have too long to read anything into it which we might not have intended.’
‘No problem, Eva.’
It had taken me some time to persuade the space agencies, especially NASA, to allow the message to be played to him, as several of those at NASA and ESA were concerned he might find it deprecatory, but it was important we were honest from first contact, and I’d finally won the day on that issue, but I knew there was a secret still being kept, not only from the alien but also from my colleagues in the Cluster. Nevertheless, I was increasingly surprised how easily I’d got my way when dealing with the alien. Was it simply that I was one of the discoverers or was it a natural authority I projected? Anyway, it was most useful, and I’d use it only to argue for things of importance.
It was difficult falling asleep that night, especially as I could watch the Earth through my cubicle porthole. I was unable to close my eyes because it was so beautiful, yet at some unknown point they did close, not to reopen until my watch gave its dawn chorus alarm.
««o»»
Alana had already arrived and was in communication with Yuri.
About four miles away, the strange-looking Mars One was slowly approaching us, its front hub rotating and partially hiding the extended rear which held AD2.
As I sipped coffee and finished a ham and tomato omelette, I watched the Scaffy Wagon manhandling a quarter section of the alien environment sphere from which the atmosphere had been drained. They were in the process of stashing it against the adjacent section. Their next operation was to move AD2 from the hold of Mars One and place it into the alien sphere.
AD2 would have already seen the announcement video and Yuri was now showing a screen which said, simply, ‘WE ARE TAKING YOU TO A MEETING. PLEASE BE PATIENT.’
We hoped this would be sufficient.
Behind the seats in the Alien sphere was the banner which bore the words ‘Welcome to Earth’ in the alien text. I so hoped they had it right and had not written something trivial or demeaning. I trusted my people, but language was never my strongest subject. We were still at least an hour from opening the hold of Mars One.
Outside, circling the Cluster were several drones with video cameras recording everything. There was apparent live transmission to the news channels on Earth, but we all knew there was a fifteen-minute delay. Five minutes would not be enough if things went badly.
No one among the spacefaring nations believed anything but good would come from this meeting of alien species, but there was always the remote possibility we’d misjudged them and were about to get caught unawares.
‘Eve,’ a shout from Alana, ‘AD2 has answered “I UNDERSTAND” on Yuri’s monitor.’
‘Thanks, Alana. That’s most certainly good news.’
Alana said, ‘Okay, Scaffies, now hold position until they open the Mars One hold.’ I chuckled to myself that the Wagon drivers were now called Scaffies. I made a mental note to tell Angus when next I saw him.
‘Copy that,’ from the Scaffy Wagon.
Mars One was growing in size. This truly was a much larger vessel than it seemed at first glance. There were short blasts from manoeuvring engines as it changed its attitude to the Cluster, turning tail so the main hold would be closest to the alien sphere. Five minutes later it was stationary, and a tethered figure emerged from a hatch halfway along the cylindrical section of the hull.
We all watched enthralled, as he made his way to the doors of the cargo hold. First one was unlocked then the other. He swung them open and fastened them back. AD2, in all its pristine glory, was inside, attached to its specially constructed framework.