Supernal

Chapter 3

1:25 am Thursday, 21st June 2029

Kennedy Space Center, Florida

The Secretary of State took a miniature digital music player and a pair of folding headphones out of his pocket and handed them to Toby.

"The recording is poor quality because of static. You can hear it better through headphones. Press play when you're ready."

Toby pressed play and hardly dared breathe as he listened to the recorded message.

#

"Do not be alarmed. We are your friends. We wish you no harm. It is time for us to reveal ourselves. It is time for you to learn the true origins of life on your planet. A small transport vessel will dock with your Orbiting Construction Facility on June 22nd. A delegation of four ambassadors will be on board. We propose a meeting with four representatives of Earth. Stringent sanitization precautions must be taken to prevent any virus cross-contamination. We request that two of your representatives be the evolutionary biologist, Dr Tobias Jardine, and the astrophysicist, Dr Charlotte Lee. Our vessel is in transit and there will be no further communication. We wish you well."

#

Toby listened to the message a second time, stunned at hearing his name spoken by what sounded like an ordinary human voice but had to be alien. It was surreal. Flattering and frightening at the same time.

"So what do you make of it?" the president asked.

"You know from my paper that I believe in extra-terrestrial life, but I can understand why you all assumed it was a hoax. These ... people? ... obviously have a lot of information about Earth. They know about the OCF and the pandemics, but how can they know about me and this Dr Lee? Have you had the recording analyzed? To me, the accent sounds slightly far eastern, maybe Indian."

"No, we couldn't risk bringing any more people in on this. Only the six of us have heard it. I believe our only option is to go ahead with the meeting and see where it leads us. When I know more I can make decisions on what action to take."

Toby felt himself tingling with anticipation. Now that he was apprised of the situation he was elated and excited at the prospect of being involved in what could be mankind's greatest discovery.

"So, Dr Jardine," the secretary of state said. "You're not an American citizen so we can't order you to do anything against your will. Are you prepared to volunteer to go to the OCF and participate in the forthcoming meeting?"

"Wild horses couldn't stop me," Toby told him.

#

"Age?"

"41."

"Height?"

"Six-two in my socks."

"Step on the scales please."

"Are you taking any prescription drugs or any recreational drugs?"

"None."

The doctor told Toby to sit while he did a few more checks.

"You seem in great shape for your age," the doctor admitted grudgingly as he removed a blood pressure cuff from Toby's arm. "Do you work out?"

"I've been rebuilding a derelict house," Toby explained. "Lots of heavy lifting."

"Well, I can't find any reason you can't fly."

Toby had been taken straight from the briefing room to the medical center to make sure he was fit enough to make the journey into space. The doctor was clearly unimpressed at being called out at 4 am to do a routine check-up, and Toby suspected he would still be going even if the doc had found a problem. It was just a formality.

Before the president's briefing ended. Toby had found out he would be travelling to the OCF on a SpaceX Cargo Dragon. The project director had manually disabled the backup oxygen-generator control unit on the OCF as an excuse to evacuate the test team. Today's unscheduled flight had been requested to deliver a replacement control unit and Toby would be hitching a ride. If any of the crew asked, he was a specialist oxygen systems engineer.

Dr Lee had gone up on the evacuation flight on Tuesday, supposedly as an electronics expert to help with the repairs.

The project director had asked for the Cargo Dragon ostensibly because it was a much cheaper option than the usual Spaceplane. But the real reason was that it had no windows. The docking was computer-controlled, so there was no way the flight crew would be able to see the alien vessel stationed alongside the OCF.

Toby had asked how they got the project director to cooperate so unreservedly with the plan.

"He knows if he doesn't I'll make the rest of his life a misery," the president had told him.

"You can do that?"

"Sure ... I'm married to him."

#

After his cursory medical, Toby went back to his room. He had an hour to kill before he was taken to the launch pad. The doctor had advised him not to eat before the flight. The g-force would probably make him throw up and he would be responsible for cleaning out his helmet. He also advised him not to drink as it was a six-hour trip and a Cargo Dragon had no 'rest room' as the doctor prissily called it.

He spent the time googling Dr Charlotte Lee on his laptop. She had a Wikipedia page. Her photo showed an attractive middle-aged Asian lady with dark, grey-streaked hair. Dr Lee was unmarried and had no children. It gave her place of birth as Saigon in 1974. Toby guessed she was probably one of the babies evacuated to the US by American forces at the end of the Vietnam War.

She was a professor of astrophysics at Berkeley and her qualifications were excellent but no different from many of the other professors. Toby wondered why she had been chosen in particular.

Toby had been told he could not take his laptop or any other personal possessions on the flight. Besides security issues, every extra ounce on board had a fuel penalty. They had computers and anything else he might need on the OCF. But he had a hunch that some of his files and research papers might come in useful. He had a high-capacity flash drive in his laptop case. He plugged it in and downloaded all his folders and files from his laptop's hard drive. He slipped the flash drive into one of the small pockets in his flight suit.

#

The agent Toby had christened Stan drove Toby to the launch gantry in a SpaceX crew bus and wished him good luck as he directed him towards a brightly lit sanitization tunnel. 

"Thanks ... give my regards to Ollie," Toby told him.

"Who?"

Toby left the puzzled agent standing at the edge of the launch pad and walked into UVC light at a wavelength guaranteed to kill any bacteria.

He was greeted on the other side by men in protective suits and masks. A silent elevator whisked him smoothly to the capsule and within minutes he was on his back, strapped into a contoured seat behind the two pilots. He was handed a helmet and was plugged into an oxygen outlet in the seat headrest 'only as a precaution' a ground crew member assured him.

The helmet had an intercom and he could hear the reassuringly calm voices of the crew and launch controllers as they went through endless checks. Nobody spoke to him and he daren't speak for fear of interrupting something important.

Ten minutes later he caught the words 'initiate main engine' and without further warning, he was slammed into the seat padding. The pressure on his chest made it difficult to draw breath and his overriding thought was that he now knew how a bug must feel when it was stamped on.