Specialist astronaut Evelyn Slater encounters a small, badly damaged, ancient alien artefact on the first ever space-junk elimination mission. Where was it from? Who'd sent it?
International governments impose a security clampdown. Evelyn leads a te...
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.
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