Post by Lorpius Prime on Aug 25, 2009 0:27:03 GMT -5
Space Shuttle Discovery,
Low Earth Orbit, 2045.
"All right, Discovery," the radio crackled, "you're live… now."
Shauna Adams watched Commander Harry McCrae's face light up as he smiled at the camera. On the little video screen below it, twenty-odd faces peered back. The display was much too small and antiquated for Shauna to see the details of any of those other faces, but she imagined most of them were smiling, too.
"Hello everyone," McCrae said in a voice as bright as his expression, "greetings from outer space!"
Some of the geeks in Mission Control would quibble about whether the Discovery actually was in "outer space". Shauna felt very sorry for their children, if they had any. Harry McCrae didn't have any kids of his own, but he had no trouble entertaining the ones he met.
Although, his job certainly did help with that.
"Greetings from Planet Earth," said the NASA public-relations officer on the edge of the video screen. He waved enthusiastically to McCrae before turning towards the cluster of people behind him. "Allow me to introduce Mrs. Nelson's seventh-grade science class from Robert Byrd Junior High in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Students, this is Harry McCrae, he's the Mission Commander for STS-298. Why don't you say hello?"
There was a chorus of timid greetings, and the screen shivered as the students waved. McCrae's smile grew even larger.
"I'm pleased to meet all of you," he told them. "And thank you, Mrs. Nelson, for letting me have the opportunity to speak with all of them, today."
Shauna could just see the tiny, pixilated figure of Mrs. Nelson waving on the far end of the screen.
"Well," McCrae started, "I suppose I ought to tell you a little bit about us. As I'm sure Frank down there has already mentioned, I'm aboard the space shuttle Discovery right now, which is currently in orbit about 400 kilometers—that's 250 miles—above the Earth. Right now outside my window I can see Italy. We're orbiting at about 10 kilometers per second, which is more than a hundred times faster than the fastest car any of you have ever been in," he stuck out his tongue for a moment.
"There are four other people onboard Discovery with me right now, and I should be able to introduce you to some of them in a little bit, although I'm afraid Mission Control requires us to keep one person on duty at all times to make sure we don't crash," he waved a hand to show just how silly he thought this regulation was.
"This mission is designated STS-298, although it's actually the two-hundred and ninety-sixth shuttle mission. You might want to remember that one in case I quiz you later," he winked. "This is our fourth day in space, and we've still got a lot to do over the next week before we come home. The primary purpose of our mission is to experiment with a new machine for making carbon nanotubes in low-gravity. If it works, we'll be another step closer to having ultra-strong materials that will let us build things like space elevators to make spacecraft like the Discovery obsolete."
McCrae put a hand to his mouth and leaned in, "I'm secretly hoping it doesn't work, though, because I want some of you to have the opportunity to fly in this thing, too."
Mrs. Nelson's science class laughed conspiratorially, and McCrae sat back again.
What he'd said was only partially true, of course. They did have a machine for making carbon nanotubes that General Electric was paying NASA to test out. But the experiment was fairly routine and almost entirely automated, and this would be the third one of its kind, anyway.
Discovery's real mission was to replace damaged imaging equipment on several spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office. The NRO was finally coming close to restoring its old surveillance capabilities after the PLA blasted just about the entirety of Earth's satellite infrastructure to dust in 2027. They were still having problems with damage from space debris, however. It was bad enough that only about three quarters of the network was fully operational at any given time, meaning that NASA and the Air Force were running themselves ragged trying to keep up with the maintenance schedule.
Commander McCrae and his crew couldn't admit that publically, however. Shauna knew they couldn't fool European, Russian, or even Indian intelligence about the true purpose, but by God they could at least fool some innocent school children. Another glorious victory for military secrecy.
Shauna's mind wandered back to the video conference to find that McCrae was now taking questions from his audience. Frank the PR-man picked out one of the children brave enough to raise his hand.
"What's your favorite part about being an astronaut?" the kid, a small blonde girl, asked.
McCrae put a finger to his chin as he considered the question. He turned his head slightly to glance towards his payload specialist. Secure in the knowledge that she was outside of the camera's pickup range, Shauna rolled her eyes at him.
The Commander chuckled softly, then raised his voice to answer, "Definitely the zero-gravity. It makes a lot of people sick at first, but once you get over that, there's nothing more fun. It's the most effective weight-loss program there is, and I highly recommend it," he patted his tight belly. If the girl in the audience got the joke, she was too nervous to laugh.
The boy who was called on next asked, "What kind of food do they give you to eat in space?"
"A lot of dried stuff," McCrae told him, "wet food like soup or noodles can get really messy up here, and that can be dangerous for us if it gets into our controls. It's not bad, though. A little blander than home cooking, but the chicken I had yesterday tasted just fine."
Shauna thought he was being generous. Although she did have to admit the food was better than anything she'd ever cooked in her home.
The next question came from a boy whose whiny voice sounded like countless TV-news "experts" whose primary enjoyment in life came from demonstrating just how smart they were.
"If the Discovery is the last of the shuttles," the kid asked, "what would happen if there was an accident and you needed to be rescued?"
"Oh, good question," McCrae said, playing right into the boy's hands. "Well, it would depend on the sort of emergency we were having. America's launching all sorts of rockets all the time, so if we ever needed a piece of equipment it wouldn't be any trouble to get it up to us. And in the worst case, if we needed to bring someone back to Earth but couldn't use the shuttle, then we have an agreement with Russia so that they keep one of their own spacecraft on standby to launch a rescue mission if it came to that."
The know-it-all sniffed loudly to show that he was not satisfied with this answer, but the PR-man called on someone else.
Another boy raised his voice, "What happens if you crash into a—"
He was cut off by a sharp buzzing from the radio.
"Mission control to Discovery, we're going to have to cut your lesson short, there's a situation."
For a moment, McCrae simply looked shocked, but then he closed his jaw and shook his head at the screen, still smiling, but sadly now.
"I'm sorry kids," he said, "but I'm afraid I need to go, something's come up for the crew to deal with. I hope we'll get to talk again later. Thank you, Mrs. Nelson."
Shauna saw Frank the PR-man turning to draw the class' attention back towards himself just before the screen went dark as McCrae killed the connection.
"Discovery to mission control," McCrae said gravely, "what's happening?"
"Discovery, there's some sort of… object in orbit that we've just detected, and it looks like it's right on top of you."
McCrae met Shauna's eyes, and she knew that the expression on her face was just as worried as his.
"Can you clarify, Mission Control? What does that—"
The voice of Ryan Withers, their pilot, cut in, "Commander I can see this thing out the window, and it's gotta be huge as hell. You need to look at this."
McCrae's frown grew even deeper as he spun to move himself towards the cockpit. Shauna followed right behind.
When they reached the flight deck, it was to find Kara Mullens, the other payload specialist, pressing her face against one of the overhead windows. Ryan was sitting dutifully at his station, but was clearly unhappy about it, as he was craning his neck to look outside as well. Jim Landry was probably still asleep, but everyone was too excited to try waking him just now.
"What is it?" Shauna asked, trying to maneuver for a place at the window.
She had to duck out of Harry's way to let the Commander get by, however, and so she still had not seen anything when he gasped out, "Holy shit!"
Losing her patience, Shauna put a hand on Jill's shoulder, and her colleague obligingly shifted aside to let Shauna see the source of everyone's excitement.
Mission control was being cautious to refer to it as an "object". It was their job to make no unwarranted assumptions. But Shauna knew instinctively, just from looking at the thing through the window, that it was a spacecraft. That was simply the only possible explanation, what she saw was not something that could have formed naturally; and the only way a constructed object like that could have appeared in Earth Orbit was if it was a spacecraft.
And it was huge.
The lack of references in space made it difficult to judge the size and distance of objects, especially unfamiliar ones. But in this case, that just meant that Shauna couldn't tell if the thing she was looking at was the size of a Manhattan skyscraper, or if it was closer to the size of Manhattan. For sure it was bigger than Discovery, bigger than anything mankind had ever put into space.
And that meant…
"Mission control," Commander McCrae said to the radio, rescuing Shauna from her train of thought, "can you tell me anything, here?"
"We just picked it up a few seconds ago, Discovery," the radio buzzed back. "When we saw it, it was decelerating, but now it seems to have matched your orbit."
It's powered, Shauna thought. From the wide-eyed expressions on everyone else's face, she wasn't the only one.
"How big is it?" McCrae asked, "How far away?"
"We're… well we're not sure," mission control sounded nervous and unhappy, "radar isn't getting any sort of consistent reading. Everything we've determined has been from visual observation."
"I've tried hitting it with a laser range, Commander," Ryan spoke up, "but it won't get any sort of reading at all. I don't know what's going on."
McCrae clearly didn't, either. His expression was becoming increasingly grim, but at least he didn't seem frightened, merely frustrated.
"All right, mission control, do you think we should—"
The spacecraft out the window suddenly shifted positions. The motion was instantaneous, one second it was hanging where Shauna had been looking at it, the next it had jumped several degrees of arc to her left. Harry wasn't looking at the window to see it happen, but he cut himself off at the sound of Shauna's gasp and Jill's yelp.
"What just—?" he started to ask.
"We're getting a hard return!" came the excited voice of mission control. "Looks like the object is just a little under 400 meters along the longest axis, and maybe 200 on the shortest. It sort of tapers at the edges so best guess is some sort of ellipsoid overall." There was a brief pause, "And it's less than two kilometers away from your position."
"I can confirm that," Ryan said, as the pilot worked with his laser ranger again. "Commander?"
"It's not getting any closer to us?"
"Not so far, it appears to be in a stable—"
Mission control's message was lost in a sudden harsh static. Sometimes there was brief interference in radio communication due to debris or atmospheric effects, but the connection did not return even after several seconds.
"What the hell?" McCrae asked, as he dialed down the volume slightly to diminish the noise of the static.
"Uh oh," Ryan said from the pilot's chair. Everyone turned to him as he tapped at the controls. "We're getting the same interference on every channel, and all of our other communications links are down, we don't have a connection to anything right now."
No one said anything. The pilot touched a few more buttons and then said, "I think we're being jammed."
"By that ship?" demanded McCrae, who apparently did not think of it as merely an "object" either.
"Ye—wait," Ryan cut himself off, "maybe not, hang on." He reached out and turned a knob which emitted a loud click.
Immediately, the static on the radio changed to something that sounded like it had much more of an intelligible pattern. Commander McCrae turned up the volume again, and was rewarded with a high pitched and mechanical-sounding voice coming from the speakers.
"—ting to communicate with the Human vessel marked N-A-S-A, Discovery, and United States. Please respond on any frequency using a standard audio protocol. This is the Republican vessel Hixixyee-82, attempting to communicate with the Human vessel marked N-A-S-A, Discovery, and United States. Please respond…"
The four astronauts on the flight deck looked wordlessly at one another for a few moments as the message continued to repeat on the radio in its eerie voice.
Ryan spoke first. "They were broadcasting in the clear," he said sheepishly, "we were mucking it up with the encryption."
No one responded, and the pilot closed his mouth nervously.
"This is the Republican vessel Hixixyee-82…"
Commander McCrae reached out a hand and dialed down the volume so that it was nearly inaudible.
"Okay," he said with a deep sigh, "I suppose we'd better respond."
He glanced around to see if anyone had any different suggestions, but no one argued. McCrae shrugged.
"Watch out, Ryan," he said. The pilot leaned back to let the commander access the radio controls. McCrae hovered his hand over the frequency dial for a moment before ultimately just twisting it at random.
"Ah, this is the space shuttle Discovery to unknown spacecraft" he transmitted into the repeating message. "Your broadcast is interfering with our communications. Uh, we'd appreciate it if you'd stop."
Shauna gave him an astonished stare. That's what you're going to say? Harry met her eyes, but only shrugged helplessly.
No one seemed to notice that the message had stopped broadcasting until the worried voice mission control crackled back to life.
"Discovery? Come in Discovery. If you're receiving this, we're not getting any response."
Commander McCrae blinked and shook his head. "Ah, sorry Houston," he said into the radio again, "we were getting major interference from the, uh, object. It… well it was talking to us."
"Discovery?" the relief in the controller's voice was obvious. There was a pause, "Er, you're broadcasting in the clear, Discovery. Resume encryption and switch to channel—"
The rest of the message was drowned out by the return of the harsh, mechanical voice from before.
"Our apologies, space shuttle Discovery," the voice said. "We had to be certain that our message would be received. We will now communicate on this frequency only. We bring friendly greetings to your species from the Republic. Please do not panic."
"Uh, thank you," McCrae said uncertainly, "we aren't panicking. As I have said this is the space shuttle Discovery, of the United States of America. Of Earth, I suppose. I assume from your previous message that you are not human?"
There was a long pause, and McCrae was just reaching for the transmit button again, when the response buzzed back.
"We are not human," the monotone voice acknowledged. "Our species evolved on a planet a great distance from this star system. But we have recognized the intelligence and capabilities of your own species. We decided to introduce ourselves in the belief that our two species can cooperate to mutual advantage."
McCrae tapped the pilot on the shoulder, "Hey, get another radio set up and try to get back in touch with Houston. We really ought to be relaying all of this to them."
Ryan nodded silently and went to work.
Back into his own radio, the Commander said, "I'm sure everyone on Earth will agree when I say that I'm honored to hear you say that. Um, may I ask what I should call you?"
There was another pause, and then, "Our nation is called the Republic. Our species is known in our own language as Goxewegenkyunds, but our computer has warned us that it may be difficult or impossible for you to properly pronounce this word based on your speech patterns. Until you have developed a convenient term of your own, it may be easiest to refer to us as the Republic, or Republicans."
"Oh God, Republicans from space," Ryan said in mock horror. McCrae slapped a palm against the back of the pilot's head.
For her own part Shauna was mumbling, attempting to properly say the word Goxewegenkyunds. She couldn't quite manage to make it sound the way it had on the speaker, however.
Commander McCrae recovered from the slight spin he'd given himself disciplining his pilot, and returned to the radio. "Are you not speaking to us directly?"
"None of us has yet learned your language or customs. We assigned an artificial intelligence to analyze your communication methods, and it is currently translating." There was a slight pause before the voice continued, "It is informing me that it may be appropriate to offer to switch languages at this time, as it knows several."
McCrae's eyebrows lifted. "Um, English is fine," he said.
"That is convenient," came alien's computer-synthesized response. "I hope that this method of introduction is appropriate. The computer could not determine a single prescribed solution and we were uncertain of our ability to balance convenience with politeness and pacifism.
Shauna frowned, and she could see McCrae doing the same thing as he picked apart the meaning of that sentence.
"Well, you did startle us," he said after a moment, "but I don't think there was any way to avoid some surprise. Um, we aren't offended or anything," he finished.
"I am pleased. Our conclusion was that engaging in direct personal contact would be the most expedient method of generating trust. So I now invite the occupants of your vessel to come aboard ours. I hope that you are willing and able to leave your vessel for a direct meeting."
Low Earth Orbit, 2045.
"All right, Discovery," the radio crackled, "you're live… now."
Shauna Adams watched Commander Harry McCrae's face light up as he smiled at the camera. On the little video screen below it, twenty-odd faces peered back. The display was much too small and antiquated for Shauna to see the details of any of those other faces, but she imagined most of them were smiling, too.
"Hello everyone," McCrae said in a voice as bright as his expression, "greetings from outer space!"
Some of the geeks in Mission Control would quibble about whether the Discovery actually was in "outer space". Shauna felt very sorry for their children, if they had any. Harry McCrae didn't have any kids of his own, but he had no trouble entertaining the ones he met.
Although, his job certainly did help with that.
"Greetings from Planet Earth," said the NASA public-relations officer on the edge of the video screen. He waved enthusiastically to McCrae before turning towards the cluster of people behind him. "Allow me to introduce Mrs. Nelson's seventh-grade science class from Robert Byrd Junior High in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Students, this is Harry McCrae, he's the Mission Commander for STS-298. Why don't you say hello?"
There was a chorus of timid greetings, and the screen shivered as the students waved. McCrae's smile grew even larger.
"I'm pleased to meet all of you," he told them. "And thank you, Mrs. Nelson, for letting me have the opportunity to speak with all of them, today."
Shauna could just see the tiny, pixilated figure of Mrs. Nelson waving on the far end of the screen.
"Well," McCrae started, "I suppose I ought to tell you a little bit about us. As I'm sure Frank down there has already mentioned, I'm aboard the space shuttle Discovery right now, which is currently in orbit about 400 kilometers—that's 250 miles—above the Earth. Right now outside my window I can see Italy. We're orbiting at about 10 kilometers per second, which is more than a hundred times faster than the fastest car any of you have ever been in," he stuck out his tongue for a moment.
"There are four other people onboard Discovery with me right now, and I should be able to introduce you to some of them in a little bit, although I'm afraid Mission Control requires us to keep one person on duty at all times to make sure we don't crash," he waved a hand to show just how silly he thought this regulation was.
"This mission is designated STS-298, although it's actually the two-hundred and ninety-sixth shuttle mission. You might want to remember that one in case I quiz you later," he winked. "This is our fourth day in space, and we've still got a lot to do over the next week before we come home. The primary purpose of our mission is to experiment with a new machine for making carbon nanotubes in low-gravity. If it works, we'll be another step closer to having ultra-strong materials that will let us build things like space elevators to make spacecraft like the Discovery obsolete."
McCrae put a hand to his mouth and leaned in, "I'm secretly hoping it doesn't work, though, because I want some of you to have the opportunity to fly in this thing, too."
Mrs. Nelson's science class laughed conspiratorially, and McCrae sat back again.
What he'd said was only partially true, of course. They did have a machine for making carbon nanotubes that General Electric was paying NASA to test out. But the experiment was fairly routine and almost entirely automated, and this would be the third one of its kind, anyway.
Discovery's real mission was to replace damaged imaging equipment on several spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office. The NRO was finally coming close to restoring its old surveillance capabilities after the PLA blasted just about the entirety of Earth's satellite infrastructure to dust in 2027. They were still having problems with damage from space debris, however. It was bad enough that only about three quarters of the network was fully operational at any given time, meaning that NASA and the Air Force were running themselves ragged trying to keep up with the maintenance schedule.
Commander McCrae and his crew couldn't admit that publically, however. Shauna knew they couldn't fool European, Russian, or even Indian intelligence about the true purpose, but by God they could at least fool some innocent school children. Another glorious victory for military secrecy.
Shauna's mind wandered back to the video conference to find that McCrae was now taking questions from his audience. Frank the PR-man picked out one of the children brave enough to raise his hand.
"What's your favorite part about being an astronaut?" the kid, a small blonde girl, asked.
McCrae put a finger to his chin as he considered the question. He turned his head slightly to glance towards his payload specialist. Secure in the knowledge that she was outside of the camera's pickup range, Shauna rolled her eyes at him.
The Commander chuckled softly, then raised his voice to answer, "Definitely the zero-gravity. It makes a lot of people sick at first, but once you get over that, there's nothing more fun. It's the most effective weight-loss program there is, and I highly recommend it," he patted his tight belly. If the girl in the audience got the joke, she was too nervous to laugh.
The boy who was called on next asked, "What kind of food do they give you to eat in space?"
"A lot of dried stuff," McCrae told him, "wet food like soup or noodles can get really messy up here, and that can be dangerous for us if it gets into our controls. It's not bad, though. A little blander than home cooking, but the chicken I had yesterday tasted just fine."
Shauna thought he was being generous. Although she did have to admit the food was better than anything she'd ever cooked in her home.
The next question came from a boy whose whiny voice sounded like countless TV-news "experts" whose primary enjoyment in life came from demonstrating just how smart they were.
"If the Discovery is the last of the shuttles," the kid asked, "what would happen if there was an accident and you needed to be rescued?"
"Oh, good question," McCrae said, playing right into the boy's hands. "Well, it would depend on the sort of emergency we were having. America's launching all sorts of rockets all the time, so if we ever needed a piece of equipment it wouldn't be any trouble to get it up to us. And in the worst case, if we needed to bring someone back to Earth but couldn't use the shuttle, then we have an agreement with Russia so that they keep one of their own spacecraft on standby to launch a rescue mission if it came to that."
The know-it-all sniffed loudly to show that he was not satisfied with this answer, but the PR-man called on someone else.
Another boy raised his voice, "What happens if you crash into a—"
He was cut off by a sharp buzzing from the radio.
"Mission control to Discovery, we're going to have to cut your lesson short, there's a situation."
For a moment, McCrae simply looked shocked, but then he closed his jaw and shook his head at the screen, still smiling, but sadly now.
"I'm sorry kids," he said, "but I'm afraid I need to go, something's come up for the crew to deal with. I hope we'll get to talk again later. Thank you, Mrs. Nelson."
Shauna saw Frank the PR-man turning to draw the class' attention back towards himself just before the screen went dark as McCrae killed the connection.
"Discovery to mission control," McCrae said gravely, "what's happening?"
"Discovery, there's some sort of… object in orbit that we've just detected, and it looks like it's right on top of you."
McCrae met Shauna's eyes, and she knew that the expression on her face was just as worried as his.
"Can you clarify, Mission Control? What does that—"
The voice of Ryan Withers, their pilot, cut in, "Commander I can see this thing out the window, and it's gotta be huge as hell. You need to look at this."
McCrae's frown grew even deeper as he spun to move himself towards the cockpit. Shauna followed right behind.
When they reached the flight deck, it was to find Kara Mullens, the other payload specialist, pressing her face against one of the overhead windows. Ryan was sitting dutifully at his station, but was clearly unhappy about it, as he was craning his neck to look outside as well. Jim Landry was probably still asleep, but everyone was too excited to try waking him just now.
"What is it?" Shauna asked, trying to maneuver for a place at the window.
She had to duck out of Harry's way to let the Commander get by, however, and so she still had not seen anything when he gasped out, "Holy shit!"
Losing her patience, Shauna put a hand on Jill's shoulder, and her colleague obligingly shifted aside to let Shauna see the source of everyone's excitement.
Mission control was being cautious to refer to it as an "object". It was their job to make no unwarranted assumptions. But Shauna knew instinctively, just from looking at the thing through the window, that it was a spacecraft. That was simply the only possible explanation, what she saw was not something that could have formed naturally; and the only way a constructed object like that could have appeared in Earth Orbit was if it was a spacecraft.
And it was huge.
The lack of references in space made it difficult to judge the size and distance of objects, especially unfamiliar ones. But in this case, that just meant that Shauna couldn't tell if the thing she was looking at was the size of a Manhattan skyscraper, or if it was closer to the size of Manhattan. For sure it was bigger than Discovery, bigger than anything mankind had ever put into space.
And that meant…
"Mission control," Commander McCrae said to the radio, rescuing Shauna from her train of thought, "can you tell me anything, here?"
"We just picked it up a few seconds ago, Discovery," the radio buzzed back. "When we saw it, it was decelerating, but now it seems to have matched your orbit."
It's powered, Shauna thought. From the wide-eyed expressions on everyone else's face, she wasn't the only one.
"How big is it?" McCrae asked, "How far away?"
"We're… well we're not sure," mission control sounded nervous and unhappy, "radar isn't getting any sort of consistent reading. Everything we've determined has been from visual observation."
"I've tried hitting it with a laser range, Commander," Ryan spoke up, "but it won't get any sort of reading at all. I don't know what's going on."
McCrae clearly didn't, either. His expression was becoming increasingly grim, but at least he didn't seem frightened, merely frustrated.
"All right, mission control, do you think we should—"
The spacecraft out the window suddenly shifted positions. The motion was instantaneous, one second it was hanging where Shauna had been looking at it, the next it had jumped several degrees of arc to her left. Harry wasn't looking at the window to see it happen, but he cut himself off at the sound of Shauna's gasp and Jill's yelp.
"What just—?" he started to ask.
"We're getting a hard return!" came the excited voice of mission control. "Looks like the object is just a little under 400 meters along the longest axis, and maybe 200 on the shortest. It sort of tapers at the edges so best guess is some sort of ellipsoid overall." There was a brief pause, "And it's less than two kilometers away from your position."
"I can confirm that," Ryan said, as the pilot worked with his laser ranger again. "Commander?"
"It's not getting any closer to us?"
"Not so far, it appears to be in a stable—"
Mission control's message was lost in a sudden harsh static. Sometimes there was brief interference in radio communication due to debris or atmospheric effects, but the connection did not return even after several seconds.
"What the hell?" McCrae asked, as he dialed down the volume slightly to diminish the noise of the static.
"Uh oh," Ryan said from the pilot's chair. Everyone turned to him as he tapped at the controls. "We're getting the same interference on every channel, and all of our other communications links are down, we don't have a connection to anything right now."
No one said anything. The pilot touched a few more buttons and then said, "I think we're being jammed."
"By that ship?" demanded McCrae, who apparently did not think of it as merely an "object" either.
"Ye—wait," Ryan cut himself off, "maybe not, hang on." He reached out and turned a knob which emitted a loud click.
Immediately, the static on the radio changed to something that sounded like it had much more of an intelligible pattern. Commander McCrae turned up the volume again, and was rewarded with a high pitched and mechanical-sounding voice coming from the speakers.
"—ting to communicate with the Human vessel marked N-A-S-A, Discovery, and United States. Please respond on any frequency using a standard audio protocol. This is the Republican vessel Hixixyee-82, attempting to communicate with the Human vessel marked N-A-S-A, Discovery, and United States. Please respond…"
The four astronauts on the flight deck looked wordlessly at one another for a few moments as the message continued to repeat on the radio in its eerie voice.
Ryan spoke first. "They were broadcasting in the clear," he said sheepishly, "we were mucking it up with the encryption."
No one responded, and the pilot closed his mouth nervously.
"This is the Republican vessel Hixixyee-82…"
Commander McCrae reached out a hand and dialed down the volume so that it was nearly inaudible.
"Okay," he said with a deep sigh, "I suppose we'd better respond."
He glanced around to see if anyone had any different suggestions, but no one argued. McCrae shrugged.
"Watch out, Ryan," he said. The pilot leaned back to let the commander access the radio controls. McCrae hovered his hand over the frequency dial for a moment before ultimately just twisting it at random.
"Ah, this is the space shuttle Discovery to unknown spacecraft" he transmitted into the repeating message. "Your broadcast is interfering with our communications. Uh, we'd appreciate it if you'd stop."
Shauna gave him an astonished stare. That's what you're going to say? Harry met her eyes, but only shrugged helplessly.
No one seemed to notice that the message had stopped broadcasting until the worried voice mission control crackled back to life.
"Discovery? Come in Discovery. If you're receiving this, we're not getting any response."
Commander McCrae blinked and shook his head. "Ah, sorry Houston," he said into the radio again, "we were getting major interference from the, uh, object. It… well it was talking to us."
"Discovery?" the relief in the controller's voice was obvious. There was a pause, "Er, you're broadcasting in the clear, Discovery. Resume encryption and switch to channel—"
The rest of the message was drowned out by the return of the harsh, mechanical voice from before.
"Our apologies, space shuttle Discovery," the voice said. "We had to be certain that our message would be received. We will now communicate on this frequency only. We bring friendly greetings to your species from the Republic. Please do not panic."
"Uh, thank you," McCrae said uncertainly, "we aren't panicking. As I have said this is the space shuttle Discovery, of the United States of America. Of Earth, I suppose. I assume from your previous message that you are not human?"
There was a long pause, and McCrae was just reaching for the transmit button again, when the response buzzed back.
"We are not human," the monotone voice acknowledged. "Our species evolved on a planet a great distance from this star system. But we have recognized the intelligence and capabilities of your own species. We decided to introduce ourselves in the belief that our two species can cooperate to mutual advantage."
McCrae tapped the pilot on the shoulder, "Hey, get another radio set up and try to get back in touch with Houston. We really ought to be relaying all of this to them."
Ryan nodded silently and went to work.
Back into his own radio, the Commander said, "I'm sure everyone on Earth will agree when I say that I'm honored to hear you say that. Um, may I ask what I should call you?"
There was another pause, and then, "Our nation is called the Republic. Our species is known in our own language as Goxewegenkyunds, but our computer has warned us that it may be difficult or impossible for you to properly pronounce this word based on your speech patterns. Until you have developed a convenient term of your own, it may be easiest to refer to us as the Republic, or Republicans."
"Oh God, Republicans from space," Ryan said in mock horror. McCrae slapped a palm against the back of the pilot's head.
For her own part Shauna was mumbling, attempting to properly say the word Goxewegenkyunds. She couldn't quite manage to make it sound the way it had on the speaker, however.
Commander McCrae recovered from the slight spin he'd given himself disciplining his pilot, and returned to the radio. "Are you not speaking to us directly?"
"None of us has yet learned your language or customs. We assigned an artificial intelligence to analyze your communication methods, and it is currently translating." There was a slight pause before the voice continued, "It is informing me that it may be appropriate to offer to switch languages at this time, as it knows several."
McCrae's eyebrows lifted. "Um, English is fine," he said.
"That is convenient," came alien's computer-synthesized response. "I hope that this method of introduction is appropriate. The computer could not determine a single prescribed solution and we were uncertain of our ability to balance convenience with politeness and pacifism.
Shauna frowned, and she could see McCrae doing the same thing as he picked apart the meaning of that sentence.
"Well, you did startle us," he said after a moment, "but I don't think there was any way to avoid some surprise. Um, we aren't offended or anything," he finished.
"I am pleased. Our conclusion was that engaging in direct personal contact would be the most expedient method of generating trust. So I now invite the occupants of your vessel to come aboard ours. I hope that you are willing and able to leave your vessel for a direct meeting."