Rafferty, laughing: “No, not really. It’s just that I think you’re dizzy enough already!”
Goodwin, laughing: “Okay, stand off and get some good shots of this. I’m going to grab the next apex as it swings on by me. A case of one small touch for man, one fantastic grope for mankind! Here goes, and…Whoah!”
Rafferty, anxiously: “Jim, what’s wrong?”
Goodwin: “Wrong? Oh, nothing. Just that this thing seems to be weightless, is all. Might as well be a paper bag! Brought it to a halt just like that! Now I’m taking hold of the raised rim on the hatch, if that’s what it is, and—”
Rafferty: “Jim?”
Goodwin: “I’m, uh, trying to look in through the window. It looks like glass or maybe crystal—it looks transparent, too—but isn’t. Maybe it’s frosted up. The glitter is blinding. Like a mess of diamonds. Can you come in a little closer? If we both use our torches together…”
Rafferty: “Here I am. Move over a bit.”
Goodwin, chuckling: “How come we’ve never got this close in atmosphere, like on board the UES?”
Rafferty: “‘Cos it’s against regulations, that’s why. Ready with your torch?”
Goodwin: “Okay. Lights, action, cameraaggghhhh!”
END OF TRANSCRIPT
Less than six hundred metres away from rendezvous at that time, (0030 Hrs), the copilot of Shuttle Two recorded what he could see of the contact between his colleagues and the alien vessel. Also, the camera on Shuttle One was continuing to function, and thus both observed and corroborated the facts of the matter. As Goodwin and Rafferty shone their torches in through the window, either a) the beams were reflected blindingly, or b) the vessel itself emitted an intense and all-encompassing light. This took the form of a single dazzling “flash,” as opposed to continuous illumination, and when the light returned to normal—which it did immediately—Goodwin, Rafferty, and the alien vessel were no longer there. Together with so-called “Anomaly 13,” the crew of Shuttle One had disappeared; their life support tethers were subsequently found to have been sheared through as by an incredibly sharp cutting instrument that left no marks or indication of forceful laceration.
There was no debris, neither human nor artificial, as would be expected in the aftermath of a massive explosion; no detectable radiation; nothing to indicate the whereabouts of the vanished persons and artifice or explain their disappearance….
Sir, I have stated as best possible the terrible facts of the matter. Now, as the Commander of United Earth Station IV—in the sure knowledge that without their shuttle’s life support systems Goodwin and Rafferty would have something less than two hours to live, and the fact that they have been listed “missing in the performance of their duties” for over seventy-five hours now—I take this early opportunity to request a) that Shuttle One be adorned with a commemorative plaque recording the names and relevant details of its crew and their demise, and b) that the shuttle itself be enabled to remain permanently in orbit as a most suitable mausoleum and monument to these most honorable astronauts.
And I remain, sir—
—Your Most Obedient Servant,
Helmut W. Silberstein Jr.
Comdr UES IV.
5th Aug 2407.
III
From the Notebook of Michael Gilchrist,
exobioecologist aboard United Earth grav-drive vessel
Starspike Explorer, Earthdate 4th January, 2403.
“Really must have words with the Captain, keep this bloody woman off my back! A vegetarian, vegan or whatever? God, but if she keeps this up she’ll be living on hay and water and nothing else! Why hay? Because on an untamed, unsettled planet where as yet there are no herbicides, combined harvesters or lawnmowers, namely Ophiuchus VIII, hay is grass that has died naturally and dried out in the sunlight, in other words, we ‘cruel exobioecological types’ can’t be accused of torturing it first! And come to think of it, I have probably just prescribed the perfect diet for the silly cow! And as for water—so-called ‘pure’ water—I’m tempted to point out to her that every time she takes a sip she’s sending countless innocent microscopic organisms to their soupy graves in her own acid-bath digestive system!
“She has a problem, she says, with the wailing. Well I have a problem every time the Starspike Explorer wobbles into or out of grav-drive. I have a problem trying to understand how we can hook up on ripples in sub-space that have their source in stars that went bang billions of years ago. I’ve got neither the math nor the right kind of mind for it, which is why I keep the hell out of the engine-room: because that place frightens me just as much and probably more than the Ophiuchus foliage—namely the tree ferns—frightens her.
“It’s the tree ferns, yes….
“Well, actually, they don’t frighten her…it’s just that she’s sorry for them! But all of Ophiuchus’s greenery is weird. I keep trying to tell her it’s a young world, and Nature hasn’t quite sorted it out yet. We have plants on Earth that look like animals, and animals that look like plants; that’s just evolution, is all. And it’s the same here, except things are evolving somewhat differently. Here it turns out the flora and fauna are just a tad more like each other. But sentient? Hell no! No such thing. And man cannot live by bread alone, especially when he’s eighty light-years from a wheat field!
“Ophiuchus VIII:
“There’s a little less oxygen in the air: 20.2 percent, and a little less nitrogen: 77 percent; with swamp methane, carbon dioxide, argon, neon and the usual suspects soaking up another 2.65 percent, along with a smidgeon of krypton, zenon, and like that. And yes, I know I’m far too casual, too familiar with all of this stuff, but I’m never contemptuous of it; not like Laurilu Nagula when she takes it out on an inoffensive gravimonitor with a twelve-inch monkey-wrench in mid-drive!
“Anyway, putting her out of mind if not her misery, which I might yet—
“—Ophiuchus VIII:
“It took us eighteen months to get here and when we’re done it will take us another eighteen months to get back. But that’s no big deal really, not when you come to consider it. If I remember my history correctly, didn’t it take Christopher Columbus just as long to get to America and back to Spain? He called his discovery the New World but it was never a new planet—and he certainly didn’t have to sail across eighty light-years of deep space in order to discover it! But there I go again….
“My problem: I’m too easily distracted. I have a butterfly mind, or so they tell me. It flits hither and thither. Thither: a damn silly word. Say it often enough, quickly enough, it soon becomes meaningless. Thither, thither, thither.
“See what I mean? So where was I? Ah, yes:
“Since the discovery of the gravity drive ninety years ago humanity has been spreading out—but actually we’re spreading inwards, sideways, and up and down—throughout the Milky Way galaxy; more properly throughout our spiraling arm of the galaxy. But since the Milky Way is a hundred thousand light-years across, even with the propulsive energies of dead stars giving us a push we’ve a long, long way to go yet.
“So why are we here—I mean out here, on Ophiuchus VIII?
“Well, while stars like Sol are fairly common, planets like the Earth are few and far between. And the Earth is ecologically moribund, overpopulated, no longer able to supply its people with fossil-fueled energy or even sufficient good, clean food. In a nutshell and while yet there are such things as nuts, it’s way past time we moved house. Back on Earth the population can, must, will be controlled, and maybe in another hundred years there will be room to move and breathe again. But we cannot let mankind stagnate, go into decline, die; and out here, if we can find new planets to tame, settle, populate, then the human race can blossom all over again, explode throughout space, and eventually, even if it takes millennia, become literally universal.