Vessel (4 page)

Aleks
already knew which bit he meant.

'
Hallucinations…
'

'We don't know the intensity, th
e duration or the frequency of his hallucinations,' Aleks said, his face flushing with angry heat. 'He could be seeing stars for all we know, a normal reaction to the increased radiation levels of the solar storm.'

'Would Major Romanenko know that seeing stars was a normal reaction to the increased
levels of radiation?' Bales asked.

'Well
yes, but —'

'So he wouldn't feel it necessary to waste precio
us radio time telling you about it, then?'

Aleks
had no answer, and that frustrated him even more. Bales gathered his papers together and slotted them back into the folder.

'I think it likely,' he said as he
placed the folder on the table, 'that what we heard this morning was nothing more than the symptoms of an anxiety disorder, perhaps induced by impaired cognitive reasoning though long-term and short-term stress. I believe we can expect more behaviour like this, perhaps to an even greater degree than we saw today, with the distinct possibility that Major Romanenko's psychoses may even pose a threat to the safety of himself and the other two crewmen.'

'But
that's ridiculous!' Lev shouted, snapping from his distant state. 'He's the best cosmonaut we have, a veteran of many successful missions on Earth
and
in space!'

'
I've also seen in his file that he has a history of depression.'

'
When he was a teenager for goodness' sake!'

'Depressive behaviour is not something that can be ignored, and as this case shows, cannot be indefinitely cured. Major Romanenko's mental instability should have had him filtered out during the selection process and he should have never been allowed to wear a space suit. He is a discredit to the RFSA, a discredit
to the partners of the ISS and a discredit to space exploration.'

Bales
shot a look at Aleks. 'I'm disappointed you couldn't tell me about this. I wanted you to be honest with me, even gave you the opportunity to speak your mind, and you held information back — important information. In light of this situation, my conclusion — and the conclusion I shall be reporting to my superiors — is that Major Romanenko is a threat to our mission, the crew, and potentially to the future of mankind. We will retrieve your crew as soon as possible and replace them with our own so we can be certain that the future of this mission is not jeopardised any more than it already has been.'

'T
his is insane …' Lev said, shaking his head in disbelief.

'Furthermore
, Mr Ryumin,' Bales said, standing up and pushing his chair under the table, 'you have been granted three month's leave so you can take some time to rest and recover from this ordeal. It hasn't been easy for you, I'm sure.'

'But
— but I'm fine,' Lev said, getting to his feet so fast that his chair snapped back against the wall.

'It wasn't a
suggestion.'

T
he door swung open and a young man rushed in. He was red faced and panting.

'Sorry to disturb you,' he said between gasps, 'but you're needed in Mission Control right away.'

Bales squeezed past and set off down the corridor at a run, and Aleks, with Lev in tow, scrambled out after him. Foregoing the elevator, they clattered down a flight of stairs, crashing one by one through the swinging double doors and into the corridor. When they got to Mission Control, security swept them in, and Aleks entered, hands on hips, chest rising and falling.

'What's the situation?' asked Bales,
his apparent fitness allowing him to speak in his usual composed way. The junior flight controller led them to the comms desk as he spoke.

'We had another window
— a brief one — and we had enough time to catch a message from the ISS.'

He nodded to the operator sat at
Aleks' desk, who, waiting for the command, thumbed the playback button on the recorder.

'It isn't much,' the junior flight controller said, the whites of his eyes bold and bright, 'but I think you need to hear it.'

The speakers erupted with a distorted chatter, swelling and throbbing with guttural hisses and stabs of noise that sounded like tearing paper. An underlying current of speech also seemed to be threading its way through the static, but it sounded distant and muffled, and not quite defined enough to form any recognisable words. The operator turned the gain up, and the hiss rose, becoming almost too loud to bear.

Then, clearly, through the mist of distortion flushing
from the speakers, a word — and then another — pressed against the eardrums of everyone in the room, the voice made unrecognisable through the strain of distress:

'Help
… me …' it said.

Section 2 — Progress

Chapter 4

An orange flame of daw
n light pierced through the small window, straight into Sally Fisher's eyes. She pulled the blind down and repositioned herself so her head was resting up against the small jet's leather-trimmed fuselage.

Sally had received the call from NASA
the evening before, around ten thirty at night. A call from NASA wasn't unusual, because they sponsored her SETI work in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, but the timing was. Although she had still been working — as she always seemed to be, and that's how she liked it — it was way past what she considered to be an appropriate time for a business call.

Her annoyances were soon forgotten when the voice on the other end of the phone relayed its
message. She had been summoned, not to the NASA headquarters in Washington D.C. or to the Kennedy Space Centre like she had been on a few previous occasions, but to Moscow. Her work was her life; there was no spouse, partner, or even cat to consult with, and so her response had been an immediate, resounding, and what she hoped didn't sound too much like an over-excited schoolgirl,
yes
.

Not six hours later, she had met her NASA liaison at the
Moffett Federal Airfield, a short drive from the Carl Sagan Centre where she conducted most of her research. She had been ushered onto a small, unexpectedly luxurious private jet. The jet's turbines where already whining at idle as she boarded, and within minutes of buckling up her seatbelt, they were airborne. No one had even asked to see her passport.

The soft, creamy leather should have been comfortable
, yet Sally struggled to sit still on its velvety folds. Her brain was a muddle of exhilaration, anticipation, nervousness; a mixed bag of pure ecstasy and unadulterated fear.

They had told her
on the phone that she was needed right away in Moscow, but little more than that. The NASA escort at the airport hadn't uttered a word beyond polite pleasantries and the odd instruction. She surmised that whatever it was they wanted from her, it could only be one of two things: firstly, Sally was a communications expert. That didn't mean she was good with radios — although she was — more that her research led the way in the field of deep space transmission. Her first MIT doctorate thesis, completed when she was just twenty-three, helped NASA extend its field of view into the cosmos to make sense of the fine detail received by its space telescopes like Hubble and ROSAT. Her second thesis helped NASA and CalTech push space telescope technology to the next generation, enabling NuSTAR to be launched. Despite her extraordinary technical ability and almost god-like understanding of light in all its wavelengths, Sally had chosen to reject a position at NASA and had joined the SETI Institute instead, driven by an insatiable urge to find life outside the reaches of Earth. This association was the basis of her second assumption for NASA's motives.

Of course, NASA wouldn't let such talent
as hers go to waste, and so in exchange for their support of her search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, both through financial investment and access to their facilities, equipment and man-power, Sally would undertake research and assist in the development of technology for NASA and its partners. Her complete lack of ability to put less than her all into what she did meant that she effectively had two full time jobs — one she worked during the day, and the other she worked at night. It would be a strange day — even hour — when Sally Fisher wasn't poring over a computer screen or a printout.

Although
it wasn't unusual for NASA to request something vague at short notice, the likelihood of them flying her all the way to Moscow for SETI purposes seemed monumentally slim. She couldn't overlook the obvious fact that her encyclopaedic knowledge of communications could easily be imparted over the phone, by email or through Skype, so to send her to Russia for a mere technical query seemed just as unlikely. Her brain spun, tying itself in tighter and tighter knots as she sat alone in the leather-clad flying cigar tube. She considered turning on the polished wood-framed television, but she knew nothing on that could possibly distract her overactive mind.

The plane, which had been climbing, banked right and levelled out. They were flying East, towards the rising sun and into the new day.
With the sun now dead ahead, Sally could slide her blind open again; she watched the criss-crossing grey lines down below give way to open wilderness, and her heart leapt knowing there was so much to explore in the world — and beyond. As she dozed, she hoped she would be getting a chance to discover a whole lot more very soon.

A
screech of rubber on tarmac shuddered through the plane, jolting Sally awake. Disorientated, she brushed her hair from her face — peeling away the strands that were sticky with drool — and stretched against the seat as she remembered where she was. She didn't recall falling asleep, let alone travelling nearly six-thousand miles; it only went to show just how sleep-deprived she was, working day and night without even realising it.

The sky was bright
but bleak, glowing like a fluorescent tube. As they taxied towards the main terminal building, they turned off the painted yellow line, peeling away from the rows of huge airliners and on to the smaller hangers at the opposite end of the airfield. The nose swivelled as they approached the second to last hanger, and the small plane entered and rolled to a stop. It was dim inside, and Sally struggled to make anything out through her small window. From what she could see, it was empty. The door swung down, and a man in a nondescript dark suit and sunglasses leaned in through the gap.

'If you'd like to come this way, Miss Fisher,' he said, voice as stiff as his suit.

Sally did as she was told. As she descended onto the tarmac, she looked around the hanger; it was indeed empty.

'Please follow me,' the non
descript man said, and she did. He led her to the back of the hanger, opening a door for her. On the other side, out in the open, a black SUV with dark-tinted glass waited for them. As she approached, the back door opened. A man with white crew-cut hair stepped out and offered his hand to her.

'Good afternoon, Miss Fisher,' he said as
she took his hand and shook it, 'welcome to Russia. I'm John Bales, and I'd like to thank you for joining us out here on such short notice.'

'That's ok
ay,' Sally said.

The non
descript man entered the front passenger side of the vehicle, and Bales gestured to Sally to climb aboard too. She froze, her nerves taut with a sudden panic, but as quick as the feeling had come, it went, and she stepped into the SUV and slid herself along the rear bench. Her constant struggle with strange people and situations wasn't going to get in her way today.

'I'm sorry for all this secrecy and haste,' Bales said, getting into the car and shutting the door behind him, 'but we want to keep what
we
know and what
they
know entirely separate.'

The
car pulled away, accelerating at an uncomfortable pace past the rear of the hangers.

'Who are
they
?' Sally asked.

The car slowed, reaching a
chain-link gate that started retracting straight away. Outside, a group of people clutching big cameras with fat lenses and tall flash guns pushed their way in through the growing gap. They crowded the car, thrusting their cameras up against the windows, blasting flash after flash through the glass. Sally recoiled, shielding her eyes from the relentless onslaught.

'D
on't worry, they can't see you. You're quite safe in here,' Bales reassured her.

The driver leaned
on the horn, edging the car forward through the small crowd. It didn't take long until they were free, and soon they were travelling along a lightly trafficked highway, overtaking everything else on it.

'I take it there's more to this than a
simple malfunction on the International Space Station?' Sally said, watching the traffic flying backwards on the dull, grey infrastructure.

'Yes,
there is,' Bales said.

'And I don't think you need me just bec
ause I'm good with light, either,' Sally continued, eyes jumping from tree to tree as they took over from the bricks-and-mortar landscape. A field rushed by, its crop trimmed to the ground, stumps yellow and withered.

'
No,' Bales said.

Sally looked at him;
he was studying her. His tanned face was doing well to hide it, but his searching eyes betrayed his curiosity. Sally was used to it. Her reputation often preceded her, and it was one of the reasons she had shied away from the lecture halls and seminars, retiring to the seclusion of SETI research. Ever since she was young, she had been under constant scrutiny.

'What have you found?' Sally asked, breaking eye contact with Bales to
hide the excitement crackling inside her belly.

'Well,
you could say that
it
found
us
.'

Sally looked back at him, her eyes tracing his features to see if he was mocking her. He wasn't.
'So it's true.'

'What's true?'

'Well, it was just a rumour,' she said, playing with her fingers, 'but word is that the ISS had made contact with an entity … not of this world.'

The rumour
wasn't true at all, but Sally thought she might be able to squeeze more truth out of the man if he believed his information had already been compromised. She knew how these things worked: information was dished out on a need-to-know basis, and no one ever needed to know — especially not her. She was a component in a machine, a piece in a puzzle.

They
considered each other, and she worried for a fleeting moment that he had seen straight through her ruse. He broke his gaze with her and looked out the window as concrete expanse began to consume nature once again, not saying anything. Sally took this as a cue to drop the conversation — at least for now.

T
he car slowed as it threaded its way through the tightening asphalt canyons between the tall industrial structures of West Korolyov. It came to a stop outside a dominating yellow brick building whose tall, cuboid structure seemed to have far too few windows for its size, almost like a prison. The barrier opened as they pulled up to it, and closed behind them again right away.

'Please put this on,' the non
descript man said, handing her a lanyard with a plastic card dangling from the end. Although she understood the languages of the cosmos unlike anyone else, she struggled with the languages of other countries, and the Russian text on the card meant nothing to her. She slipped it over her head.

They parked up and
climbed out the SUV, and Bales alone led her into the building. They followed corridor after corridor, taking left turn after right turn, burrowing deeper and deeper into the maze until they reached a room whose Russian signage actually meant something to her. Not because she could read it, but because she recognised the pattern of shapes from documentation she had seen before: Mission Control.

She showed her pass to the
security officer stationed outside and followed Bales in through the double doors. The room inside was dim, which, as her eyes adjusted, disguised its cavernous space. The walls curved around the perimeter, and row upon row of desks filled the width. At the front of the room were three huge screens relaying information about the ISS, and she stopped to take it all in, drinking in the moment. Her involvement in science had never put her on the front line, but here she was and she was overwhelmed with awe.

'
It's quite something,' Bales said. 'If you'd like to follow me, we need to get down to business as soon as we can. I'm sorry for the haste, but time is of the essence.'

Sally nodded
understanding, and they walked around the room until Bales stopped at a row of desks, guiding her in to an empty seat next to a man who was adjusting his headset.

'If you'd like to take a seat next to
our CAPCOM Mr Dezhurov here. He'll be able to fill you in with the details. Mr Dezhurov, Miss Fisher; Miss Fisher, Mr Dezhurov.'

Mr Dezhurov
stood and shook her hand. He looked tired — very tired.

'Pleased to meet you,' he sa
id, his English dripping with heavy Russian intonation. 'You can call me Aleks.'

'And I'm Sally.'

They sat down.

'Very briefly,'
Aleks began, 'a few weeks ago, the crew of the ISS discovered a unidentified object.'

He
continued to describe what had happened, telling Sally about the difficulty in establishing visual contact with the vessel and their failure to communicate with it. He told her about Mikhail's hallucinogenic experiences and, making Sally's skin prickle, the harrowing two-word message that had been their last.

'That
transmission was recorded four days ago and was the last time we had contact with anyone on board the ISS,' Aleks concluded.

'Oh my g
od,' Sally whispered, looking between the solemn faces of Aleks and Bales. 'But I'm afraid even with all my knowledge of long-range communication, we won't be able to penetrate the barrier of radiation from the solar storm to make contact with the crew. It's just not possible …'