Reaching For The Stars

Shortly Bill reported two radar blips approaching their position. He opened up the video link and the face of a Varian pilot appeared on the screen. The pilot introduced himself and said that he expected to rendezvous with Peter`s craft in an hour`s time. He informed them that there was a military detachment as well, in total 180 people. Peter, in turn informed the pilot of the plans that the Colonel on Lios had made for their arrival, which the pilot seemed quite impressed with.

Just under an hour later, the pilot re-appeared on the main screen.

“We have you on visual Captain, ETA five minutes. I will follow your craft and the military craft will follow me, as we enter the atmosphere, then we`ll take up whatever position you want.”

“That sounds fine; maintain the in-line formation. We will have a fighter escort so we`ll just follow them.”

They entered the atmosphere of Lios shortly after and within a few minutes a flight of fighter jets appeared alongside. The lead aircraft came quite close to Peter`s saucer and the same pilot they had seen earlier waved from his cockpit, then giving a thumbs up signal, took up a position in front of the saucer. The remaining seven fighters formed a protective ring round the three saucers and they began to descend towards the surface. About ten thousand feet above the surface some more aircraft appeared, some more military jets and some larger aircraft, obviously civil airliners, and all joined the incoming formation. As they came closer to the surface the air base came into view on the outskirts of what seemed to be a large city. The fighters began their final descent and a thousand feet above the base, the sky suddenly lit up with a multitude of fireworks, and even though it was daylight the display could be clearly seen and was spectacular. The fighters dropped down onto the runway and Peter bought their saucer into a hover about a hundred feet above the airfield. A member of the ground appeared on the apron and began signalling with a pair of large bats that were once common place on the airports on Earth. He signalled a downward movement and Peter dropped the saucer accordingly and moments later they were on the ground, quickly followed by the two saucers from Varianne. During the previous half hour Bill had been down to deck 1 and drawn personal auto-translators for everybody, and they were all now being worn by crew and students alike. They were very small and discreet and consisted of a tiny microphone and a very lightweight headset. By using the technology on board they had by now all tuned themselves to the master auto-translator on board so now when anyone spoke their voice was automatically translated into the Lios language, but they could still understand what each other was saying, likewise when the Lios population spoke to them their voices were automatically translated into English and came through the headsets.

Peter shut down the motors and opened the door. The boarding ramp extended automatically and by the time it touched the ground everyone was waiting in the doorway to disembark. The population of Lios were tall, with even the women standing over seven feet tall. Many of the men were in excess of eight feet in height and all had long sliver mane like hair. They all had pointed faces as they had seen on the pilot who had first made contact, which gave them an almost wolf-like appearance. A tall woman stepped forward wearing a pale grey uniform of jacket, skirt and white blouse, with a fancy blue string type tie. She wore four silver rings on her cuff and a badge very similar to air force pilot`s wings on Earth on her left breast. She had a peaked cap which looked to small on her head, apparently secured to her hair with small clips. She stopped at the bottom of the ramp, and saluted smartly, unusually with her left hand, as on Earth and on most other federation planets this was done with the right hand. Peter walked down the ramp and returned the salute. The woman then stepped forward and clasped Peter`s hands in hers and with tears running down her cheeks, she spoke for the first time.

“Welcome Captain. It is my great pleasure to welcome you to our planet. We have waited so long for this moment, that many of us thought that maybe we were alone in the universe. Everything that this planet has to offer is yours for the asking. Make yourselves at home and I hope this is the start of a wonderful new period in our history”.

“Greetings to you to Colonel, I am sure the future will be wonderful for all of your people. Now, I will stand aside and leave you in the very capable hands of senior planetary ambassador Wulfe from Varianne, the leader of the federation. He is well versed with inducting new planets into the federation; he has personally handled over sixty new inductions”.

Peter stepped back and gave the ambassador the floor as it were.

The rest of the party disembarked and started mingling with the crowds of people who had turned up to witness the historic occasion. Maggie found herself talking with the planet`s vice president, the president himself was now in deep conversation with ambassador Wulfe, and managed to turn the talk to the students who were all standing quietly in a group watching the proceedings. The vice president asked to meet them and Maggie called them all over and introduced them all by name. The vice president was very interested in what the students were doing and said that they were certainly in the right place at the right time to be a part of his planet`s history.

After conversing with them for quite a long period of time he spotted another distinguished looking man who was standing to one side watching the proceedings with interest. The vice president called the man over and introduced him as Professor Lozza, who was another government official and was in fact the education minister as well as being the principal of the planet`s principal university. The professor also took a keen interest in the students and what they were doing and after talking at length with them, surprised everybody with an amazing offer.

“After listening to you all and learning what you do, I wonder how you would feel about coming to Lios for an extended visit. I am sure that you could teach my people a great deal; as I am sure we could teach you a lot about us. I would like you all to come to my university for a period that we can discuss, as paid visiting staff to teach my students all about life on your planet. I am sure that since you have been roaming the universe with the wonderful Captain you must have seen many things that I know my students and the planet`s population in general would love to hear about. I can offer you, what here would be considered a very good package of salary and benefits but how that would compare to what you might get paid on your own planet, I have no idea as yet, but no doubt that will become clearer as the next few days unfold.”

There was stunned silence from the students while they took in the staggering offer, then they all started speaking at once. After a few minutes, Sylvia spoke on behalf of the remainder of the students. “Thank you very much sir. It is a fantastic offer which I am sure we would all love to accept”. The professor smiled broadly and said he would speak with them again very shortly before excusing himself, and moving away towards another group of people who were currently deep in conversation with Chris, Bill and Ambassador Wulfe.

The party remained on Lios for a week and the students formally accepted their offer of an extended visit, to start one month after their return to Earth. Their initial engagement would be for six months and they would receive a payment of sixty thousand dollars each for the six month stay, plus free flights to Earth every month for home visits for three days at a time. Maggie declined to accompany them while the other two leaders accepted but in their cases for only three months. Maggie had spoken at length with Bill before reaching her decision. The night before they were due to depart for earth the population of Lios threw a massive party for Peter and his crew. The detachments from Varianne would remain on Lios for some considerable time. It was at this party that Bill proposed to Maggie and she accepted which made the party even better. The following morning after lengthy farewells and tears from Group Colonel Haun, they finally boarded the saucer for the homeward trip. Once the doors were closed and everything was set, the control tower of the airbase where the saucer had been since their landing a week ago, gave them clearance to take off. The duty controller was replaced by the President himself. He said it was a great honour to be able to perform this simple duty. The saucer lifted smoothly into the air and at a thousand feet above the surface, Peter bought the saucer to a hover and dipped the front in a salute to the population of Lios. This completed, Maureen quickly programmed the computer for the journey home. The course immediately flashed up on the pilot`s panel and Chris engaged the auto-pilot. The auto-pilot quickly bought the speed up to maximum speed and the time meter illuminated with eleven hours. Everyone settled in for the flight, the student`s still busily comparing notes and the recorded conversations they had managed to get during their time on Lios and what they would do when they returned. Bill and Maggie retired to his cabin to discuss their wedding, which they thought would probably be in about seven months-time.

When they were about six hours away from home Peter called everyone up to the control room.

“I just thought I`d get you all together for the last time. As you`re well aware, you`ve been part of an incredible piece of galactic history, which I`m sure you`ll cherish for the rest of your lives. For our student`s, you have a wonderful once in a lifetime opportunity to really make a name for yourselves in your chosen field. I am sure you`ll all do a sterling job when you return to Lios. When we land on Earth, don`t forget that the seasons have moved on. When we left it was spring, but due to the vast distances we have covered it is now mid-December on Erath. We have remained on Earth time for the whole voyage mainly to keep things simple and to avoid messing with everybody`s body clocks with all the time differences. As you know now, some planets have longer days than on Erath and some are shorter. You`ll probably remember when the court sentenced the terrorists to a term in Earth years, that`s working the same sort of system so that the people can understand it easier. As you know, we`re going direct to the university so that will save you all having to travel back by road, just the reverse of what we did when we left. We will check the local area weather as we get nearer so that you`ll have some idea of what to wear when you leave us. Thank you for travelling with us, I know I speak for all of us crew when I say that it`s been a pleasure to fly you and work alongside all of you. The best of luck to you all”. As he finished speaking the control room erupted in applause from student`s and crew alike.

As the saucer re-entered Earth`s atmosphere and the standard aircraft instruments lit up, Bill bought a UK weather forecast up on his screen. The display showed a temperature of minus 5˚ with snow on the ground. “Looks like we`ll need to wrap up warm in a bit when we land. There`s snow on the ground with a temperature of minus five degrees.”

“Great, sounds lovely, it`s ages since I saw snow” Fiona said. Maureen got up from her seat and went downstairs to tell the students to get their coats ready as they`d be needing them when they landed. Twenty minutes later the saucer swept over Lincoln and from their altitude they could see that everything was blanketed in white. Everybody was looking through the windows at the pretty scene beneath them.

The university buildings stood out clearly and Peter bought the saucer in for a perfect landing on the same playing field they had used when they had left back in the spring. As the doors opened, a tractor came hovering over the snow towing a wheeled trailer to carry all the student`s baggage. This was closely followed by a mini-coach to carry everyone over to the main buildings. The luggage was quickly loaded onto the trailer by the male student`s and soon they were all inside the main building, waiting for the principal to make an appearance, and glad to be out of the wind which was bitterly cold. Their noses were red after only being outside for about ten minutes. They stayed at the university for several hours before saying more goodbyes and then heading back to their Heathrow base.

The journey back to London only took half an hour and the weather had not improved when they landed at the spaceport. They unloaded all their personal stuff and loaded it into a waiting van to convey it all back to their office. After unloading the van and sorting everything out they were asked to attend to duty commanders office, who welcomed them all back and said they had done a wonderful job with the student`s and in particular the discovery of the planet Lios. The university principal had already contacted the commander, whilst they were travelling back to London expressing his thanks and praise for Peter and the crew. It transpired that the president of Lios had also made contact with him through the advance delegation that was still on the planet. It seemed it was congratulations all round. They were told that once they had completed their reports, they were on leave for three weeks.

Peter and Maureen and Fiona and Chris decided that they would all go down to Lymington to see Peter`s and Fiona`s parents for a few days. Bill was invited as well but declined saying he was going back to Lincoln to spend some time with Maggie, but added that if the invitation was still open in a few days, perhaps he could join them in Lymington then, hopefully with Maggie. Peter and Fiona readily agreed to this.