Reaching For The Stars

They spent day two of their stay exploring some of the glorious countryside on some electric bikes which they hired from an outlet in the shopping complex. The boys were all for racing round everywhere on the bikes which had quite a good turn of speed whereas the girls wanted a more leisurely ride to enjoy the scenery which varied from rolling grasslands to rocky canyons with waterfalls and pools. The day was completed with a visit to another restaurant in the complex. This was another fabulous meal but of course this time minus the champagne. On the last day, after all the shopping and exploring everyone was content to laze on one of the many superb beaches, scattered all around, many quite private and secluded, others teaming with life, but all had restaurants and coffee shops all within easy walking distance of the beach.

They all thoroughly enjoyed their break and were sorry to pack up and leave on the homeward leg after the break. Peter said he would not care to be paying the bill for the three days.

The journey back to Earth was only six and a half hours and the students said that they would spend the time packing up ready to leave when they got back to Heathrow. Peter asked them if they would like to go straight back to Lincoln rather than have to transport everything north by road, the opposite of what they had done when leaving for which the students were very grateful.

Only about an hour in to the homeward journey, a warning buzzer sounded on the flight deck grabbing everyone`s attention. Peter and the others were all downstairs in their lounge area talking to Maggie who had developed a relationship with Bill over the past week and they were now almost always in each-others company. Peter, Chris and Bill hurried back up to the flight deck to investigate the cause of the warning buzzer. A quick look round the panels told them that all systems were working normally apart from a flashing red light on the communications panel. Peter returned the saucer to manual control and reduced their speed drastically while Bill and Chris tried to find out what was occurring. After several minutes Bill looked up at Peter with a strange expression on his face.

“I`m picking up a standard radio transmission from somewhere, and it just keeps repeating, “Hello, we are here and waiting.” ”

“Can you locate the source”? Chris asked. A couple of minutes passed then Bill nodded his head, “Got it, it`s coming from I presume a planet as yet un-identified, about three light years away, in the Pegasus constellation. I`m guessing that there is some sort of intelligent life there, it`s similar to what Earth was doing for ages before the landings, just sending out a random message hoping someone would pick it up.”

“Lock onto it and give me a course setting please”.

“On your screen……………now”.

“Thanks, Bill”

While this was going on between Chris and Bill, Peter had switched on the intercom system which gave him direct communication with all the decks. “Can you all please come up to the flight deck; we have a situation up here”

Minutes later everyone appeared on the flight deck, all the girls looking worried and the boys just curious. “Some minutes ago our communications scanner detected a radio signal from somewhere in the Pegasus constellation. The message seems similar to what the scientists did on Earth years ago before the landings, the message keeps repeating “Hello, we are here and waiting”, we have now changed course to investigate the cause. Looks like you all might be in a unique position as these things happen very rarely.”

There was an outburst of excited chatter round the flight deck as everybody absorbed the news. Maureen spoke first, raising her voice a bit to cut through the chatter. “This must mean that there is life out there somewhere, and they speak our language”.

“Not guaranteed, the comms scanner automatically translates spoken words into whatever language the crew set on the system, in our case, English but it could have been translated into one of several hundred thousand known languages in use throughout the federation”.

“Signal`s fading now”, Bill stated.

“Can we still find it?” Peter asked

“Yes, our current course will put us right above the transmitter, time at this speed, one hour forty five”

Fiona asked why the signal was fading. “It`s probably on a rotating transmitter that changes direction every so often. If you`re searching for life in the universe it`s probably the best way to search as then the signal gets transmitted in all directions”.

“Why hasn`t the signal been picked up before now, after this is a well-travelled route between Earth and Centuari 3, we must have several saucers a day going through this part”? Maureen asked.

“Only the police saucers and those of the military have comms scanners, so any civil flights wouldn`t have been able to pick it up. It`s just luck that we were here when the transmitter was facing our way”. Peter replied.

“What happens now”? Maggie asked.

“The federation has a strict non landing procedure in cases like this. We can go to within twenty thousand feet of the planet`s surface but no closer. Our next step once we have verified what the transmitter is will be to contact federation headquarters back on Varianne and they will investigate further.”

“Why do we need to verify it”? Maureen asked.

“The trouble with this type of transmission is that we have no idea how long it`s been transmitting the message. It could have started many years ago on an automated system and for all we know at the moment the planet may have been abandoned for whatever reason or the population could all be dead. We have no way of knowing until we get there. We had a similar case a few years ago and when it was investigated, it turned out that some natural disaster had overtaken the planet concerned and it was devoid of all life forms but the transmitter was still functioning. The scientists thought that the planet had been dead as it were, for about a thousand years.”

As they approached the mystery planet, Chris switched on the main viewing screen and a globe appeared on it. The planet had water and an atmosphere but was quite small, about the same size as Venus. They were still six million miles away so surface details were not visible. The speed was reduced shortly after and at a million miles out surface details became visible through the magnification of the cameras. There appeared to be several settlements on the surface, all appeared linked by roads and waterways. There was quite a large expanse of open water visible and what appeared to be ships of some kind could be seen moving slowly on it. Peter reduced the saucers speed even further so that a few minutes later when they entered the planet`s atmosphere they were travelling at only sixteen thousand miles an hour. Once in the atmosphere, the standard aircraft instruments lit up and the window shutters opened. Bill was checking the surrounding air for any traces of poison or other things that would require space suits if anybody was able to venture outside, which obviously on this trip they couldn`t do. His checks came back clean with a decent oxygenated atmosphere. Everyone was watching intently out of the flight deck windows as the saucer dropped closer to the surface. The speed was reduced still further until they were travelling really slowly at only four hundred miles an hour. Maureen happened to glance down at the radar screen on the navigational panel and she looked a bit alarmed.

“Peter, we have company, three blips showing on radar approaching rapidly, distance twenty miles”.

“Good spot, let`s see what we`ve got”. Bill responded, operating more dials as he spoke. He switched on the secondary screen and projected the radar images onto it, and the screen sure enough showed three fast moving blips. He bought another system to life and this in turn bought up a view all-round the saucer. Bearing down on them were three aircraft similar to the fighter jets on Earth before the landings. They closed rapidly and the first the students knew of their presence was when one streaked across their field of vision from the windows. The three aircraft circled the saucer warily then one came closer and waggled its wings and then peeled off back towards the surface. “I think they want us to follow them down, what do we do?” Chris asked.

“You know the regulations as well as I do “, Peter responded. We`ll go down to our permitted height and see what happens next”. So saying, Peter dropped the saucer to the twenty thousand foot level and they continued their voyage over the planet`s surface. One of the settlements was now passing beneath them and they all see a tall metal mast with a dish transmitter on top which was obviously the origin of the radio signal. The dish was currently pointing away from them, confirming the suspicions of the crew that it was a rotating transmitter. Suddenly one of the aircraft re-appeared alongside and they could all see the pilot clearly. He seemed to be tall as he appeared hunched in the cockpit; he had long flowing silver hair without a helmet and had a long almost canine face. The aircraft paced the saucer for several minutes with the pilot repeatedly pointing down towards the ground. After a few minutes of this he appeared to give up and everyone saw him take something from his panel, which he held up to the cockpit canopy, a standard microphone. “Looks like he wants to talk”. Fiona observed. Bill was operating more switches on the communications panel, trying to locate the aircraft`s radio frequency, which he found after a couple of minutes. The pilot`s voice echoed round the flight deck in a language that nobody knew or recognised. Bill pressed another button marked “Auto-translate” and after a short pause the pilot`s voice again came through the speakers, this time in a mechanical sounding English. “Greetings strange beings we have waited for you to arrive for many years. We knew there must be others in the universe other than ourselves. You have answered all our prayers and hopes”.

Peter picked up the radio microphone that Bill handed to him. “Greetings to you as well, friend. We picked up your radio transmission and here we are. May I speak with whoever is in charge at your air base or a government official, please”?

“I will connect you to my base commander, thank you for coming”.

After a pause of several minutes a different voice, this time female, came through the speakers.

“I greet you spacemen, we have been hoping for something like this to happen for a very long time. You are very welcome to land at my base if you wish.”

“Thank you for your invitation. My name is Captain Peter Gresham of the Galactic Federation Police. Our regulations prohibit us from landing on this occasion but rest assured more of us will follow shortly now that we have found you”.

Thank you Captain, you mention a galactic federation, do I take that to mean that there are more places than your planet which are inhabited and support life”?

“Yes you interpret my comments correctly. There are over three thousand planets within the federation. My planet was similar to yours before the federation landed and made contact with us. We were at the same stage of development as your planet is now but everything changed for the better within several months of the federation landing. I can assure you that your planet will have a wonderful future within the federation. You will all have a lot to learn and take in but you will be surprised how easy the transitional period is.”

“Thank you Captain. I understand you are bound by regulations. Do you have any idea on the time scale before we get further contact”?

“No, but I can say it won`t be long. Now we must leave but rest assured we will return”.

Peter handed the radio microphone back to Bill and nodded at Chris who took the saucer up rapidly, leaving the planet far behind, as the speed was increased.

“Bill, can you get Varianne HQ on the hyper-link this far out”?

“Not sure, I`ll give it a try”. He twisted some dials and after a few seconds the face of the duty controller on Varianne appeared on the screen.

“Hello Pathfinder, this is an unexpected call, what can we do for you”?

Peter told the duty controller everything that had transpired over the last hour or so. He then went on to explain that they were carrying a group of students who would have found the follow up procedures fascinating and extremely valuable for their life sciences degrees. The controller told him he would get back to him shortly and told Peter to clear the atmosphere and then to remain on station until further instructed. Chris had been listening in and promptly took the saucer back into space and then went into an orbital pattern one hundred thousand miles above the planet, he maintained a speed of eighteen thousand miles an hour which was the minimum required to remain in orbit and was the maximum speed of space craft on Earth before the landings and the new technology.

Several hours passed before the screen came to life again. The same controller appeared on the screen and said that the federation president was now in the control room and wished to speak with them.

Peter grinned and asked the controller to put the president on. He then re-capped what he had told the controller and was pleasantly surprised when he was given the order to remain in orbit to await an official party from Varianne who the president said was leaving as he spoke and would be with them in a few hours-times. His final words bought a cheer from everyone on board, when he said that he wanted Peter to lead the other saucer down and to make sure he landed first as he had been the first person to make contact with the new planet`s population.

Peter re-established a radio link with the planet via their hyper-link which was for vast distances and speed as it accelerated radio and video communication to ten times the maximum speed of the saucers, which meant that even over a distance of many light years, communication was almost instant with only a second or so pause between conversations, like an old radio on Earth from one country to another. The female base commander came back on the radio almost immediately.

“Hello Captain, have you re-considered my offer to land”?

“Better than that, we have been in touch with federation headquarters on a planet called Varianne, and as we speak there is an official party en-route to your planet to begin the induction process for federation membership. Incidentally, what is the name of your planet”?

“That is marvellous news Captain, our planet is called Lios. When is this deputation due to arrive and what do we need to do”?

“You don`t need to do anything. The Varian party will be here in about three hours and we have been asked to lead them in. They will have a saucer craft like ours, probably just one, they may bring a military deputation as well but that is not guaranteed. The party will consist of federation representatives, scientists, monetary experts, medical teams and all sorts of support staff. If you could arrange for a suitable landing area at your base that would be much appreciated, and also if you have time to organise it, some sort of representative from your government.”

“That`s already in hand. Our president is already here on the base, I informed him earlier after our conversation and he flew straight here. He and the rest of the government are as excited as we are here on the base with this marvellous development. We will track your arrival on radar and will despatch a fighter escort for you when you re-enter our atmosphere. Just follow the escort and they will bring you direct to your landing area. Incidentally I am Air Force Group Colonel Haun.”.

“Thank you Colonel Haun. We will be with you shortly and my crew and I are looking forward to meeting you. You may have been wondering how we know your language, we`re cheating a bit, we use an automatic translator which we have on board. We also have personal sets which we will all use when we land so everybody will be able to converse normally as we are doing now.”

“Thank you Captain, I must admit I was curious about the language, we are looking forward to seeing you shortly”.