Astronomicon: Icarus

14 - Transmission

"Okay, Felix, you can work out the safest course out of here. Dmitry is safely back on board," announced Captain Taylor.

"Plotting a route now, Captain," came Felix's reply over the intercom.

"Hang on, Captain," said Iolo. "We're picking up that signal again."

"Definitely not Dmitry this time."

"It's much stronger this time and the distortion has reduced," added Iolo.

"Any idea what it is?" asked Captain Taylor.

"I think it might be a distress call."

"You're sure? What makes you think that?"

"I can't be sure. It's roughly on the emergency frequency, but it's still too garbled. If we could get closer to the source, maybe we could work out what it's saying?" replied Iolo.

"Okay," replied Captain Taylor, "Felix, are we clear of the worst hazards?"

"Not yet, Captain."

"Get us out of the worst of the danger and then hold position for a while. We need to check something before we leave."

"Yes, sir," came Felix's reply.

Iolo continued to make changes to his console, "There's still a lot of distortion from the asteroids, but if I take the average we should get a pretty good approximation for the direction to the source of the signal."

"Just tell me it's not back in the direction of the chaos we left behind?"

"No, pretty close to the opposite direction. Our current bearing has been taking us nearer to it. That must be why the signal distortion has reduced. I'll send Felix the estimated bearing to the source, now."

"Have you got that, Felix?" asked the Captain over the intercom.

"Yes, sir. You want me to head that way?"

"Indeed. Take it easy and don't take any risks. We don't know what's out there. We just want to establish if it is a distress call."

"That is going to take us deeper into the cluster."

"Yes, but further from the disturbed rocks. Don't worry, we won't be going far." replied Captain Taylor, then he turned to Iolo, "If someone is in trouble out there, the best we can do is rescue their crew. Towing a ship isn't viable inside the cluster. Any luck with that signal yet?"

"We're definitely heading the right way." Iolo replied, "We're picking up fewer echoes from asteroids, but the distortion is still present. The computer's got some of the ID code but hasn't extracted enough data to reconstruct any of the audio message."

"Forget the audio data for now. See if you can extract the transcript data," suggested Captain Taylor.

"Hang on."

"You've got something?"

"Maybe," shrugged Iolo, "There's another waveform causing the distortion. Look, if I pull up a longer strip of the wave you can see a slower oscillation, somehow overpowering the carrier wave and making it rhythmically speed up and slow down. If I distort the incoming signal with an inverted form of that wave, maybe I can get some more data out of it."

"Can you do that?"

"The comms system can do it. Whether I can make the system do it, is another thing altogether."

Captain Taylor picked up the microphone again, "Felix, can you see anything out there?"

"Just rocks and lots of 'em, Captain."

"Okay, maintain your heading," he said then replaced the microphone and turned back to Iolo, "Still no idea how far away the signal source is?"

"Hang on, hang on...yes...I think this is working. I'm still not going to get audio data out of this."

"So what have you got."

They both stared at the screen as the incoming message box began to slowly display a string of text.

"penheimer - gency distre – ife suppor – iling and – wer - i – ed of immed – scue" spelled out across the screen.

"It looks like valid text, but is that English? It looks like a crossword puzzle without the clues," said the Captain.

"I have no idea what the first word is," replied Iolo, "But I'd bet money that the next two are 'emergency distress' and the last two look like 'immediate rescue'."

"Yes, and the fourth and fifth words just have to be 'life support'!"

"And you wouldn't mention your life-support system in a distress call unless you had a problem with it?"

"Could 'iling' be the last few letters of 'failing'?"

"Makes sense, Captain. Looks pretty definite that we are dealing with a distress call."

Captain Taylor grabbed the microphone again, "Felix, it's a confirmed distress call, put your foot down. Someone needs our help."

"Yes, Captain," replied Felix, chuckling as he pulled the hand throttle further backwards.

"Can you get me a distance on the source?"

Iolo did some hasty calculations using the popup calculator function on the comms display, "Looks to be between four thousand and five thousand kilometres away."

"That's a long way into the cluster."

"Mining vessels rarely go that deep. It's risky if anything goes wrong out here."

"Let's get closer, assess the situation. If it looks too dangerous, we can relay their distress call back to Callisto station and let the experts take care of it."

"It could be too late by the time rescue ships got here from Callisto," replied Iolo. "If we were stranded I'd really hope that another, nearby mining vessel would come to our aid."

"We'll assess the situation when we get there."

"Yes, Captain."

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