Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE







It was like nothing she had ever imagined. The cosmos held more beauty in one eyeful than most people would see in a dozen lifetimes. She had her nose pressed up against the cockpit window like child in the back of a station wagon. It was as if sparkling diamonds had been scattered on a black velvet background; a billion stars littered the heavens before her. She pushed herself across the cabin seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was floating four feet above the deck. On the port side she could see the blue and white splendor of planet Earth. It was enough to take her breath away. Earth in all its splendid beauty was an oasis of color in a desert of blackness.

Captain Mcdonnel watched in amusement as Julia floated from one side of the cabin to other like a puppy in a pet shop window. He envied her sense of wonderment, having lost his many, many flights ago. His opinion of her had changed. He had been prepared to deal with a prima donna, an uppity television star, but she was not the head case he expected. Besides her disarming beauty she was bright and engaging, not at all a self-centered brat he pictured in his mind. It would make the one thing his wife asked of him that much easier. He was not to land the spacecraft, she told him, until he had gotten an autograph for all the grand kids.

Despite their late start NASA was confident their superior radar and laser technology gave them the edge in finding the object. Coordinates from the Global Array pointed to spot 23,000 miles above the equator, somewhere between communication satellites Galaxy 11 and G-Star 17. NORAD had confirmed this general vicinity for each event. In the days preceding the launch ground stations had been meticulously sweeping the geosynchronous arc with powerful lasers and monitoring the beams for any diffusion that would indicate a solid object. While the concept proved sound all they managed to accomplish was to verify every piece of junk that traditional tracking methods already held in inventory. Whatever this "thing" was it changed the meaning of the word stealth. They were going to have to get close enough to eyeball it.

The captain, who was busy going over a post launch check off list with ground control, paid little attention to what Major Jank was doing. When Julia turned away from the window for the first time she found Jank pointing some kind of futuristic looking weapon at her. She recoiled as he jerked the gun back as if it had been fired.

"What the hell are you doing?" she demanded.

"Relax! For Christ’s sakes, it isn’t loaded." Jank looked at the captain and smiled wiyh raised eyebrows. "A bit touchy isn’t she?"

Mcdonnel chuckled half-heartedly. "Listen, Dan, I think it’s a federal crime to threaten a sitting ambassador."

"What is that?" Julia insisted.

"It’s my weapon."

"Why would you need a weapon?"

"Do I have to draw you a picture?" He pointed to the Air Force patch on his arm. "I’m here to provide security. I intend to be prepared."

"Prepared for what?" Julia snapped.

"Listen, miss, if this turns out to be alien technology, and I’m not saying it is, ahem..." he directed his glance at the captain, "but just in case..." He held up the rifle. "No telling what kind of fantastic weapons it might have."

"Think about it..." she scoffed. "Why would presumably intelligent beings leave advanced weapons where they might easily fall into the wrong hands. "

He pointed the gun at the ceiling as his body went into a free fall roll toward the back of the cabin. "Well, we can't be too careful now, can we? Besides I’d like to be the first one to try this thing out."

"What is it?" Mcdonnel asked.

"I’m glad you asked that, Travis. This is what is known as the MINTAR. That stands for ‘miniature nuclear tipped assault rifle’. We like to call it our hand held missile silo. This little baby packs quite a wallop. Just let those ruskies get in my way... BOOM!" He floated away laughing a perfectly maniacal laugh.

"You are insane, Jank," shouted the captain. "And stop scaring the ambassador."

"What is wrong with that man?" Julia asked rhetorically.

"I think he’s just yanking your chain. I don’t think he’s bought into the whole space ambassador thing."

"Have you?" she asked pensively. "Have you bought into the space ambassador thing?"

Mcdonnel hesitated, gathering his thoughts, careful not to say the right thing the wrong way.

"To be perfectly honest, at first, no, I did not. Jank has a good point." Julia did not react, still he felt obligated to justify his declaration. "I can't say he's all wrong either. Honestly, on the surface it looks like a pretty obvious political ploy to help an ailing presidency, am I right?" She nodded slightly. "But, hell, after meeting you and seeing your dedication to the truth I support you all the way. The Major does too. Don’t let him fool you. He’s here because he’s the best there is, and he loves his country. We’re both glad to have you along."

"Thank you. I appreciate that. I want you to know I am not here on the behalf of the President’s poll numbers. I’m here to find the truth and to represent my country, in that order."

"Here, here."

For the longest time there was silence in the cockpit. The captain continued his seemingly endless task of system analysis. She had sensed the air of disrespect Jank held for the captain. It didn't seem to bother Travis Mcdonnel.

"Why did Jank give you that dirty look when he was talking about aliens?"

Mcdonnel blushed. "That’s a long story."

"I want to hear it."

"No you don’t," the captain rebuffed. "It’s nothing really, kind of silly..."

"I’ve heard them all," she assured him. "Nothing you would say could surprise me, really."

He pulled off his headset and looked over his shoulder for Jank. "Okay, but this is between me and you. People have been grounded for telling tales if you know what I mean… It was Christmas time, two years ago, my wife and I were flying home to the Baltimore area. Both our families are up there. We have a little Cessna I fly back and forth to the Cape when I’m on an assignment. It was twilight, maybe 4:30 or 5:00, when Carol, that’s my wife, saw what she thought was a plane sitting right off the starboard wing. I mean it was close. It had lights but it didn’t look like any plane I’d ever seen. I thought, well, you bastard. So I banked hard left and she’s yelling ‘he’s still there’! By now, of course, I’m getting pretty pissed off. I pulled the plane up another thousand feet. It stuck with me like glue. I couldn’t seem to shake it. So I got on the radio and blasted a few choice expletives his way. Within a matter of seconds my own voice came blaring back at me. It was as if it recorded my voice and transmitted it back to me. I mean to tell you it was weird. I tried a couple more moves, granted my little Cessna is no F-22, but I can whip it around pretty good. Whoever was flying that thing was every bit as good as me.

"I called the international airport in Atlanta and asked them if they could get a transponder signal from this jerk. They darn near asked me if I had been drinking. They asked me for my pilots license number and then told me there was nothing there. Then, just like that, the damn thing just took off. Left me there like I was standing still. No plane ever made could move that quickly. I don’t know what it was. Unfortunately I never got a real good look at it like Carol did. She was pretty shook up. She’s been a UFO buff ever since. She has every re-run of the X-Files on disk and every episode of S.E.T.I.'s Universe too. She’s your biggest fan."

"I’m flattered," she said. "That’s actually a very common sort of story. You feel like you were being toyed with and left sitting there as if it grew bored with you."

"Yes! That’s it, exactly..." Just then the Captain was distracted by a flashing light on the control panel. He shoved his headset back on and listened intently. Julia studied his eyes, trying to judge by his expression what he was being told. She knew something was wrong. "Could you repeat that ground control? I’m going to put you on the speakers so the rest of the crew can hear this." He turned his head and yelled: "Hey, Jank, get up here!"

The major quickly pulled himself up from the galley. "What’s up?"

"Just listen," the captain told him. "Go ahead, ground control."

"We have just confirmed that there’s been an accident aboard the Russian shuttle. All four cosmonauts are dead. The Russian Space Command is offering no details but we are speculating there was some sort of hull breach. Death was probably instant and painless."

Julia felt a pang of anxiety rush through her veins. Her life began to flash before her eyes. She too was separated from instant death by only a few inches of hull material. She stared into Captain Mcdonnel’s eyes looking for reassurance; he nodded slightly and smiled.

"I don’t understand," Jank said incredulously, "what about their pressure suits?"

"Don’t know," said the captain. "There’s more..."

"Following the reports out of Moscow," the voice of ground control continued, "CNN is reporting that top Russian officials are blaming the American SDI system. A formal complaint has been filed with the United Nations in New York. President Gladinov is scheduled to call President Cole within the hour for an explanation. It has been speculated that this was all preplanned in the event of an accident. A little finger pointing to deflect the attention from themselves. They’re covering their asses, boys and girls. By the way, there has been no comment from the White House."

"Do you have a twenty on the Araine?" asked Captain Mcdonnel.

"The Araine? Just a second… Altitude, approximately 17,000 miles. You should have them on your radar in 22 minutes. Speed and trajectory calculations have you overtaking them at an altitude of 20,000 miles."

"Copy that, ground control. Keep us posted."

Captain Mcdonnel pulled off his headset and turned toward Jank. "It’s tough, man, you always hate to lose a fellow traveler even if it is a Russian." Jank nodded but said nothing. "Let’s have a moment of silence for our fallen comrades." Julia lowered her head and clamped her eyes shut. Jank remained silent as the captain made the sign of the cross. For an indiscernible amount of time only the humming of the equipment could be heard in the eerie silence of space. Then, Mcdonnel, his eyes still closed, sighed and made the sign of the cross again before raising his head. "Okay, kids, it’s back to work."

The whole thing left Julia feeling uneasy. What if the ‘thing’ itself was the cause of the cosmonauts’ deaths? After all, she thought, the Russians were first to launch. Was the Araine next? Then what? She floated away keeping her fears to herself. Pulling herself through the impossibly small portals she made her way to the sleeping quarters just off the galley below the main deck. There she lay down on the cot-like bed and fastened the Velcro straps.

She wasn’t tired but closed her eyes anyway. She could hear Major Jank rustling around in the storage compartment. Soon, she was able to block him out of her mind. Never intending to doze she began to drift off, residing in that place between consciousness and sleep.

She looked up to see the man and the boy tying off hand twisted lines from each of the small tree’s spindles. The man was explaining how they would have to visit the tree every few weeks to tighten the lines until the tree was big enough for them to set up tensioners. She was amused that the man seemed more impressed with the whole process than did the boy. The boy, for his part, was far more interested in the little snake he had found. Neither of them seemed to know she was there. Finally, the man stood, wiping his brow he asked her for a drink. She looked down to the basket that was sitting at her feet and saw a carafe of juice glistening in the sun. Without a word she handed it to him and watched as he drank his fill. He handed it back and kissed her on the cheek. As he walked away she felt a tear roll down her face. The feel of the cool breeze drying the lonely tear on her cheek made her whole body shudder. Somehow, some way, she loved this man...

She awoke to the sound off Captain Mcdonnel yelling at the top of his lungs. How long had she been away? These dreams were becoming too frequent. She was beginning to scare herself; it was too easy to lose herself in that peaceful world inside her dreams. She could not let it happen again.

She pulled herself up from the galley to find both the captain and Jank sitting in their chairs alternately reading the instrument panel and looking out the cockpit windows. "We’ve got the Araine on radar," said the captain. "Come on up here, sleepy head, help us get a visual."
She pressed her face against the window trying to get a panoramic view. "What exactly am I looking for?" she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

"A capsule," Jank said. "An Apollo-like module. We should be damn near on top of them right now." She glanced down at the radar screen. The blip representing the Araine was poised to merge with the center of the screen. "Where the hell are you?" he whispered aloud. The captain had set the attitude rockets to fire in a sequence that would put the orbiter into a slow roll so they could see everything above and below them. It seemed impossible to expect to see a tiny white fleck against the profound immenseness of outer space. "It should be right there, right now! Can’t you see it!"

"There!" screamed Julia. "I see it!"

"Confirmed. I’ve got it too," said Mcdonnel. "I’ll get a camera on it." He busily adjusted the starboard wing-mounted camera. Properly aimed he began zooming it in until the registration numbers were clearly legible on the base of the Araine module. "Houston, this is the Patriot confirming visual sighting of the ESA’s Araine module. I’ll be sending you some pictures in four seconds... three... two..." He flicked a switch and the broadcast monitor flashed to life. "T.T.F.N. my little French friends."

The major held up his arm. "Gotta love those Europeans, eh Travis," he tapped the face of his watch, "always right on ‘sscchhedule’."

"Do you mean to tell me you really knew, right down to the minute, when we would see them?" Julia asked, her unbelieving eyes darting back and forth between the two of them.

"Minute, hell," complained the captain, "we had it pegged right down to the second."

Jank smiled at her disbelieving face. "It’s easy when you have a copy of their flight plan." He chuckled and the captain laughed along with him. "We still have the best damn spies in the world!"

"Patriot," came the voice of ground control over the speakers, "We have you reaching the search start point at Galaxy 11 in approximately 19 minutes. The Araine cannot increase its speed and will take an additional 60 minutes to reach the same point. You will have one hour to locate it, assess it, and take it aboard if possible before company arrives. Our window of opportunity is very, very small, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s make the best of it."

***

Galaxy 11 was sitting 300 meters away from the idling Patriot. The enormous solar panels that gave it life made it look fantastically huge against the empty blackness of space. They were waiting for the word from Houston that the laser had been synchronized with the shuttle’s search program. The beam, as deep a green as they had ever seen, was currently trained on the satellite giving it an eerie profile. The shuttle’s computer was then fed the diffusion patterns the ground stations had collected over the past two days. Any discrepancies were to be investigated.

"Patriot, we are ready to commence on your mark," said ground control.

Captain Mcdonnel looked at his crew. "Are we ready?"

"Let’s get it on," urged the major.

"Houston, we have a go, on my mark... Five... Four... Three... Two... Sequence initiated."

The Patriot began to move, the laser beam leading the way. Major Jank peered out the cockpit window with a pair of peculiar looking binoculars. By flicking a switch he could instantly convert them into an infrared device, a useful tool in the darkened shroud of outer space. Julia’s binoculars seemed a bit more conventional, no active electronics or fancy filters, just the traditional focus wheel to fiddle with. For nearly forty minutes they cruised along the imaginary line known as the geosynchronous arc passing one piece of space junk after another. Nothing was out of place. Nothing tripped the alarm. It was clear the major was becoming discouraged. He had become quite good at spotting dead satellites tumbling in place well before the computer checked them off. Each one gave him an instant jolt only to have the rug pulled out from under him as the computer blurted the dissonant sounder of another miss.

Just when she thought he was only going through the motions she heard him gasp. She spun her self around to see his mouth agape and his face turning pale. "What is it?"

"Stop! For Gods sake, Travis, stop this thing and back it up. Now!"

Still no alarm had sounded. Almost instantly radio chatter from Houston bombarded him. "Dan," he shouted as the shuttle slowly reversed itself, "I’ll stop the beam on your mark... What do I tell these guys?"

"Tell them to keep their pants on, damn it!" He motioned Julia to join him at the port side window. "I want you to scream the instant you see anything… You understand me?"
"Yes," she answered. "Anything."

"Keep your eye on that beam." He held his hand up so that Mcdonnel could clearly see it. When his hand dropped the captain would freeze the beam in place putting the search program into a wait-state. "C’mon, baby..." He whispered.

"Oh my God!" she screamed. Jank’s arm went down and the captain hit the mark. "Do you see it major? God almighty, do you see it?"

"We’ve got it, Travis! No wonder those poor bastards never saw this thing... Somehow its splitting and bending the laser beam around itself. It’s like a birdcage." Mcdonnel floated over and took the binoculars from Jank. Julia was transfixed, her eyes never straying from the subject.

"What the..." Mcdonnel gasped. "I see the bulge but I don’t see anything else."

Jank ripped the binoculars from Mcdonnel’s face. "It's in there... Bring us in closer." The captain pulled himself back into his chair and quickly narrowed the radar’s focus as tight as it would go and still nothing appeared on the screen. He looked up at Jank and shook his head slowly. "I said, bring us in closer!"

"What about Houston? Is this it?"

"Yes," Jank said quietly. "I’m sure of it."

Julia was too. She saw it in there. It was as black as the night, indistinguishable from the space it occupied, but she had all the evidence she would need. It was not, in fact, what she saw, but rather, what she didn’t see. There were no stars behind it. As she moved her perspective she could see stars winking in and out. "He’s right, it’s in there. It’s inside the bulge. If you watch it closely you can see how some kind of solid object blocks out the stars behind it. I’m telling you, Captain, it’s there."

"Move us in closer," Jank requested for the third time.

"All right, I’m acting on your word. Time to observe radio silence." The captain floated over to the comm panel and with a flick of a switch cut the Patriot off from Houston and the rest of the world. "We’re on our own. Let’s go!"

Captain Mcdonnel carefully fired the maneuvering thrusters. The shuttle inched ever closer. Jank was glued to the window. "What the hell is it?" he whispered. When the Patriot was fifty meters away he could make out its silhouette. It was spherical, about two meters across and totally black. It reminded him of a giant eight ball.

Suddenly the beam cut off. "Damn them," Mcdonnel swore. "Why did they do that?"

"You shut them off," Julia explained, "what did you expect?"

"Doesn’t matter," Major Jank injected as he floated toward the airlock. "We won’t need them now."

Julia stared in disbelief. "You are not going out there," she demanded.
"Of course I am. What the hell do you think I’m here for?"

"But we don’t know what it is. We don’t even know if it’s dangerous or not."

"I’ll tell you what we do know. We know that we have less than an hour before the Europeans arrive. We know that we can get to within fifty meters of it and it won’t shoot at us. I say that’s enough to go on." Without pausing to even consider her objections he proceeded to don his EVA suit. "Listen, you two can sit in here and study it all you want. My mission is to keep this thing from falling into the wrong hands, even it means destroying it… Do you understand?"

She looked at Mcdonnel’s face and knew he would do nothing to stop Jank from fulfilling his stated duty. He merely watched in silence as Jank loaded the MINTAR with live nuclear rounds. The major was long past the point of no return.

Soon he was sealed in the airlock doing a final check on the operation of his suit. The jetpack unit contained eighteen miniature thrusters that would move him through the vacuum of space with the ease of fingertip control. He would exit the Patriot through the cargo bay and approach the object cautiously, moving in decreasing concentric circles until he was upon it. If there was any fear in him at all, it was buried deep; hiding behind fiery eyes, lurking in the shadows of a soldier’s mind that was trained to reject it.

Julia sat next to the captain and watched the monitors. Jank made his way through the cargo bay with the grace of an acrobat. He slipped past the mechanical arm and reached the back wall of the cargo bay where the satellite retrieval net was stowed. The captain explained how Major Jank was one of the men who tested the prototype of the SRS, the Satellite Retrieval System. It had been used successfully for years, but today it would be put to the ultimate test.

With the SRS net strapped to his utility belt he pulled the MINTAR from it’s holster and moved out of the cargo bay. Captain Mcdonnel trained the tail mounted camera on him as he sailed toward the alien object without the slightest hesitation. He circled it several times before saying anything. "Man, this thing is eerie..." he whispered. With the MINTAR out in front of him he began to tighten the circle. "Travis, I think I’m ready to go in. If was going to get me I think it would have happened by now. Agreed?"

"Yes," the captain said instantly. "Go ahead, but be careful. Mcdonnel out..."

Jank approached the object with slow deliberate moves, like a lion tamer trying not to spook his performers. "Christ, Travis, it looks like a giant eyeball. I’m about two meters away and I see no evidence that it is aware of my presence." He put his weapon back in the holster and inched closer to the object. With his gloved hand he reached out and touched its smooth surface.

"It’s like glass only smoother. It’s perfectly spherical with no outward features." From his utility belt he pulled out two electrodes. The electrodes would broadcast via short-range radio to the Patriot where Captain Mcdonnel would monitor them for signs of electrical activity. However, the major could not make them stick to its surface. They simply slid off forcing him to nab them before they could float away. "Geez, Teflon’s got nothing on this thing. Talk about your frictionless surface. Travis, I’m going to have to hold them in place for you to get any readings. Are you ready?"

"Ready when you are." He watched the oscilloscope screen but nothing happened. "Go ahead, Dan, I’m all set..."

"I am!"

Still nothing appeared on the scope. He adjusted the sensitivity by a factor of ten to no avail. He tapped on the screen with his knuckles. "Either this thing isn’t working or that thing is dead."
"Or..." Julia added, "It’s just playing dead."

"I say we haul it in," Jank declared. "We don’t have much time to think about it."

"He’s right," Mcdonnel said. "I’ve made my decision... Prepare the SRS net, we’re taking it home with us."

"Now you’re talking!"

Jank deftly unfurled the net, no small task in the frictionless void of outer space. With complete mastery of the jetpack controls he choreographed an elegant ballet using the metallic net and the alien sphere as props. When that was done he clamped a tow ring on the end and waited for the captain to release the towline. Propelled by spring action the towline zipped out of the cargo bay like a string tied to an arrow. Jank reached out, and just as if he’d rehearsed it a thousand times, grabbed the line and snapped it on the ring in one fluid motion.

"That was beautiful, Dan," marveled the captain. "Goddam, it nearly brought a tear to my eye." He engaged the winch and the object silently retreated into the jaws of the Patriot. "Eight ball in the corner pocket," he joked.

"Travis, close the bay doors on my mark," Jank said confidently. It seemed everything was going his way. He followed the object closely, like a soldier leading a prisoner to the gallows. The winch disengaged automatically and the object floated unaided the last ten meters. "Now, Travis! Now!"

With a press of a button the doors began closing, trapping the object in the belly of the Patriot. A small thud reverberated through the ship as object struck the floor of the bay. The impact absorbing material lining the floor prevented the object from rebounding back into the cargo bay doors. Jank immediately went to work strapping down the sphere securely for the twenty-three thousand-mile trip home.