~ by Julie Wile
“And so, the strange beings fell from the sky in a ball of fire…”
“Will you stop playing with that recorder?! It’s sensitive equipment. And for the last time, we didn’t fall from the sky, we descended from space and we weren’t on fire; that was the heat shield doing its job!” the exasperated human said, snatching the microphone away from the shorter alien.
“You most certainly did, that’s why we named you Kelvia, ‘born from fire.’ I remember it like it was yesterday,” a tall humanoid alien said with a smirk, as they glanced up from the box they were looking through to label the contents.
“How in Vanafanyu do you remember something from over fifty years ago? You were what, five?” The human sat down to resume scanning for signals.
“You aren’t going to trick me into telling you my age that easily. I will tell you that I was older than your grandparents are now,” the taller alien retorted.
The first alien, about half the other’s height, looked over their shoulder, grinning at one of the labels. “Danger rope?” she asked.
“It behaved strangely when I ran my qua through it. I don’t want Hector hurting himself with it.”
“So, it’s fine if I connect it to the qua box then?” said the shorter alien.
“Will you two stop trying to set this room on fire?! Just because you’ll be okay doesn’t mean my equipment will!” Hector rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Maybe I should back up a bit, to tell you how I ended up in this radio room with a Yawu and a Quanafi,” he said into the microphone.
“Oh, so the human gets to play with the talking machine, and we don’t?”
Hector sighed deeply. “One of you is basically a walking EMP just waiting to happen, and the other likes to plug in shorted out cables just to see what will happen. Why on Vanafanyu would I trust either of you with this?!”
“Because they’re old and I’m adorable?” the shorter alien said.
“I am not old!” exclaimed the taller one, exasperated.
“As I was saying, I’m Hector, a human, or as the Quanafi call us, a Kelvian, but this is very much not Earth. It is the moon of a gas giant some fifty light-years away from Sol. When we first came here, it was not exactly voluntarily, and we wouldn’t have survived for more than a week without help from the indigenous Nafi, sapient species.”
The taller alien leaned over, careful not to touch any of the equipment, and said, “I’m Niv, a Quanafi. I have much better control of my qua than Hector gives me credit for.”
“Shh, this is my recording. Well, the other eternal test of my patience and sanity is Pasheli, a meter-high, slate gray Yawurenyi.”
“With a very fluffy and beautiful tail,” Pasheli added, curling it around her humanoid body.
“Yes, yes, who is incredibly vain about her tail,” snarked Niv.
“You two are just jealous that you don’t have tails,” Pasheli said, growling under her breath.
The three of them would have carried on like that for hours, except the control panel started beeping and lights lit up all over it.
“Shush you two, we have an object detected!”
“Probably just another space rock,” said Pasheli, sitting down on one of the chairs beside Hector.
“I am pretty sure they track those space rocks,” said Niv, taking a large step back away from the equipment. “I should go get us tea, so I don’t create static.”
“Probably a good idea,” said Pasheli.
Hector, focused on his equipment, waved Niv away.
***
Meanwhile, in space…
“I’m getting a signal, Josefina!”
“There’s nothing out here to create a signal, Pedro. I know we’ve been traveling for several decades, but I think the emptiness of space might be finally getting to you,” said Josefina.
“I think I’d know a signal from noise by now. It is repeating in a distinct pattern… of the Fibonacci sequence.” He frowned. “Now it’s gone.”
“I told you…” Josefina trailed off as she looked outside. In the distance, she could now see a tiny point of light… flashing in the Fibonacci sequence, and repeating itself every few minutes as it changed color. “A beacon? Hail it and send word to the Great Moderator and the Voice of Suspicious Space Objects. Just don’t let the others know until we figure out what this is and who put it there.”
Pedro sent the message. He then went to hail it but noticed that the signal was back, albeit at a much higher frequency now. “I think it’s sweeping through the sound and electromagnetic spectrums for some reason. I’ll see if I can pin it down long enough to hail it.”
Josefina began to pace. “They don’t know who or what will detect it. They’re trying to give the highest chance it will be picked up on some sort of sensor or with natural senses. It isn’t a very strong signal, so it is clearly only for people approaching this planet and its moons.”
Pedro muttered in frustration as he hailed just as the frequency changed again, but to his surprise, it reverted back to his frequency, and the signal changed. He played it aloud so Josefina could also hear. The first couple of iterations weren’t in any language they understood, but just as it had altered signals, it was cycling languages… mostly human languages.
“It can’t be… there is no way they survived to even reach here, not with how poorly they were provisioned.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The test flight. The books say they forced a group of dissidents to fly their experimental generation ship, to see if it even worked… the prototype of the very one our parents stole.”
The signal, clearly capable of receiving audio input too, picked up on something in what they said, and switched to a slightly archaic form of their own language – at least a form of Spanish, which had been their language before they got bored about forty years in, and intentionally created a derivative thereof.
“Hello, traveler of the stars, welcome to Vanafanyu. We certainly hope you mean us no harm, as we have this entire area under close observation and will protect ourselves if need be.”
Pedro and Josefina looked at each other in concern, then Pedro spoke. “We mean you no harm.”
“Good, then you are welcome here. Since you have no ill intent, please approach this beacon. Signal it in a band of the electromagnetic spectrum of your choosing, and it will blink in that wavelength for easier tracking.”
Josefina nodded, and Pedro signaled it in a yellow-green light to contrast with the bluish planet and the orange-red star. After a moment, the beacon changed to a steady blink in that exact wavelength.
“Impressive. I didn’t think they’d have all of this set up already,” said Josefina.
“You didn’t think they’d be alive,” said Pedro.
Once they were much closer to the signal source, they realized it was a little cubesat, just a beacon alone in orbit around one of the moons.
“Maybe this was a waypoint they left out here… they may or may not even be around anymore?” Said Josefina.
“Were you expecting a space station?” said Pedro, hailing it again. “What now?”
“Please confirm your species,” it asked.
“Human,” he replied.
“Further confirmation required. Where are we boldly going?”
“Uhhh…” Pedro thought for a minute.
Josefina pressed a button to call someone to the bridge.
A moment later, a preteen girl came onto the bridge. “Aunt Josie, I was in the middle of watching an old movie. Don’t you have people you pay to run errands for you?”
“I am pretty sure you are the most qualified for this job, Rosa,” said Josefina with a grin. “Please repeat the question. We have brought in an expert on this subject matter.”
“Welcome, new claimed human. Where are we boldly going?”
Rosa smiled at her aunt. “Where no one has gone before.”
“Correct. I am a leaf on the wind…”
Rosa thought for a second. “…Watch how I fly, erm, I mean watch how I soar.”
“Your first answer was sufficiently close; humans are imperfect. How many suns does Tatooine have?”
“Two. I was just watching that!”
“What book is named for the temperature at which paper burns?”
Josefina looked up as Rosa fell silent. “Fahrenheit 451?”
“Correct. Oh, what brave new world…”
Pedro took this one. “…That has such people in it.”
“Correct. What radio show is said to have incited a panic?”
“War of the Worlds?” said Josefina uncertainly.
“Correct. How many leagues under the sea?”
“20,000?”
“Correct.” The questions continued for a bit, mostly about science fiction trivia, but there were occasional curveballs about historical events, famous authors, and even personal preferences.
After another pause, the beacon spoke again. “If you are not human, you clearly know enough about the most important things any human space traveler would know, and so, either way, we welcome you.”
“Whadda I do now?” asked Rosa, bored now that the questions were over.
The beacon was silent briefly, but still blinking though much more slowly. “Request not found. Please wait for the next available human.”
Pedro and Josefina both stifled a laugh, and Rosa just looked at them in confusion.
“Attention! Attention! Hailing party has passed the human test. Please be prepared for a Spanish-speaking human on channel A14.”
“Those were the weirdest questions,” said Pasheli.
“Well you aren’t human, now shush. At least I know this language,” said Hector, before hailing back on A14, switching to Spanish.
There was background chatter for a moment on the other end, then beeping, and the connection was confirmed.
“Hello, intrepid travelers from Earth! I’m Hector, director of interstellar communications and planetary protection. Welcome.”
“Wow, the director himself!” said Rosa in the background.
“Shh, hello, Director. I’m Captain Josefina of the ship Descubralia. We are refugees from Earth, and wish permission to land.”
“You have children with you,” said Hector, trailing off for a moment.
“Yes. We are a generation ship as you were, assuming you are the ones from the test flight.”
“We are. I will need to consult with my advisory council and my other colleagues on the safest way to get you to the surface. Are you prepared to remain in orbit for a time, Captain?”
“Certainly, Director,” said Josefina. “As long as is necessary. I need to speak to my passengers and crew and ready them for landing anyhow.”
“I will speak with them posthaste, though it is night in our sector and we were not expecting your arrival, so there may be extended delays,” said Hector.
After some more discussion, they both cut the connection to go about their duties.
Hector turned to Pasheli and motioned Niv in from the doorway. “We three are now the Department of Interstellar Communications and Planetary Protection. We need to get an advisory council and some experts together ASAP.”
“Are they planning on falling from the sky in a ball of fire too?” asked Pasheli
Hector sighed. “If you want them to believe we actually know what we are doing and aren’t just some people hanging out in part of an old spacecraft scanning for random signals, you are going to have to start admitting you know about heat shields and space.”
“I will rouse the elders. They will be quite surprised that the little beacon even worked,” said Niv, before departing.
“It wasn’t that it wouldn’t work…” said Hector softly. They hadn’t had any contact with Earth since they left the solar system, and though the Kelvians had settled in well and formed many thriving communities, the silence from the stars had always been there, and now it was broken.
For more fantastic articles from our latest magazine issue ‘Space’, please click on the below link:
F&F Fall 2019: Space