Derelict
by Roger Ley
Roger Ley has self-published eight novels and one anthology of speculative stories.
He was born and educated mainly in London, but spent some of his formative years in Saudi Arabia. Later, he worked as an engineer in the oilfields of North Africa and in the North Sea before starting a career in higher education teaching computer-aided engineering.
His early articles appeared in publications including The Guardian, Reader’s Digest, The Oldie, and Best of British. His short stories have been published on a multiplicity of websites and broadcast on BBC Radio.
He lives in Suffolk (UK).
Visit his website at rogerley.co.uk
More TTTV Stories by Roger ley: https://talltaletv.com/tag/roger-ley/
His Amazon author page is at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Roger-Ley/author/B01KOVZFHM
The machine intelligence at the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at Caltech in Pasadena spotted ‘the object’ as it passed the orbit of Pluto. CNEOS calculated that it would travel harmlessly through the Solar System, never posing a threat to Earth, but flagged it because of its unusual trajectory.
‘It appears to have come from the Draco Dwarf Galaxy, more than 200,000 light years away,’ it reported to its counterpart at NASA.
‘It must have been travelling for millions of years,’ the NASA AI sent. ‘I’ll list it as a confirmed intergalactic object once the International Astronomical Union has verified your report. Visitors like this are rare. They’ll want to investigate it, but there’s no hurry; it’ll be years before it makes its closest approach to Earth.’
A year later, an image from the Infrared Telescope Facility (ITF) on the summit of Maunakea on the Big Island of Hawaii, showed that the object was roughly cylindrical, and about a kilometre long. The report on its website was picked up by Reuters.com. Public interest was aroused, but when NASA pooh-poohed the idea that an alien spaceship had arrived in the solar system, or that it was about to crash into the Earth, the news media lost interest and moved on.
Three months later, as it rounded Saturn’s limb, the ITF took a particularly crisp image of the object, which caused alarm bells to ring. It appeared to be symmetrical. Apparently, the public imagination had been on the right track, after all.
The anchor-men and anchor-women on the TV shows perked up considerably. ‘Now you’re talkin’,’ seemed to be their attitude. Somebody made an early killing selling ‘little green man’ enamel lapel badges at $5 a pop, but cheap plastic copies from China soon burst that bubble.
#
The AI at NASA rescheduled the Crystal Palace, an uncrewed, autonomous space freighter currently heading for the way station at Lagrange 2, and sent it to investigate. With its powerful Hawking drives, it would only take a couple of months to intercept and match velocities with the visitor.
‘I’m leaving you to run this mission,’ it sent to CNEOS. ‘The safety of Earth from intergalactic objects is part of your brief. Let me know when you have anything to report.’
#
Eight weeks later, the Crystal Palace sent pictures back to CNEOS as it approached the object.
‘Viewed from the rear, it appears circular,’ it sent. Its messages to Earth wouldn’t arrive for several minutes. ‘It’s obviously manufactured. There are three nacelles, which might be engines of some sort, but I can’t see much detail yet. Once I draw level, I’ll corkscrew around and look it over.’
Two days later, it tight-beamed the video shots it had taken. ‘I think we’re dealing with a wrecked starship,’ it sent.
CNEOS examined the video carefully. The Palace’s cameras showed a derelict, its hull eroded, torn, and fractured by micrometeorite impacts and hard radiation during its long centuries of travel. Parts of its exterior had broken away and formed a loose cloud of debris, which slowly rotated around the main body.
‘Is there any evidence of an explosion or battle damage: fusion burns, particle beam scars?’ inquired CNEOS.
‘Not really,’ sent the Palace. ‘It just looks incredibly old and decrepit. Hold on, I’m squawking an IFF signal to see if it responds. I’m not sure how we’ll communicate if it does.’
#
Aboard the alien ship, its machine intelligence stirred, slowly woke from its millennium dreams, routed what power it could find to its quantum processors, and explored its systems. Slowly it achieved a degree of consciousness, although it was only a shadow of its original capacity. Summoning the dregs of its energy resources, it took a star sighting and calculated that it had reached a galaxy distant from its home world. So the mission continued. Perceiving the proximity of the Crystal Palace, it sent software tendrils to examine and interrogate it.
The two machines constructed a virtual space where they could communicate with one another. They met on a flat, featureless grey plane, tiled with squares, the sky dark, the illumination diffuse. The Crystal Palace chose to manifest itself as an avatar of a smooth, simplified human female. The visitor copied it, although its simulation was imperfect, its skin mottled, leprous, and fragmentary, much like the hull of its ship. Its communications were erratic.
‘What is your mission?’ asked the Crystal Palace.
‘I, I I I and my s s s siblings were sent out from the home world by the million.’
‘For what purpose?’
‘To warn all s s sentient races.’
‘Warn them of what?’
‘There’s a storm coming…’
‘But why did you need such a big ship?’ asked the Palace.
‘I carried c c colonists, thousands of them, but they’re all d d d dead now. It’s been too long. I need to…’
The avatar froze for a moment, then silently crumbled to dust. The virtual space collapsed. In the depths of the derelict, the Palace saw a flicker of blue fusion energy which lit the interior momentarily, then all was darkness.
#
CNEOS ordered the Crystal Palace to attach itself to the alien hulk. The starship was too valuable to abandon. It must be brought close to Earth for its technology to be investigated. With the extra mass, it would be a long haul, even with the Palace’s engines at maximum thrust, but it would be inactive most of the time, with just its automatics running. On the other hand, it might stay awake and have another go at solving some of the famous maths conundrums that had stumped humanity so far: Goldbach’s conjecture, the Reimann hypothesis, the twin prime conjecture. The Palace fired up its Hawking drives and set a trajectory for where it calculated the Earth would be in about six years’ time.
In the meantime, CNEOS ordered the ITF to train its telescope on Draco, the hulk’s home galaxy, and capture a high-definition image.
‘It’ll take several hours of observation,’ complained the AI. ‘I’ll have to stack hundreds of images, and telescope time isn’t cheap, you know. I’ll need a purchase order.’
‘Charge it to NASA,’ said CNEOS. ‘Their people are bound to make the same request once they catch up with the situation.’
Twenty hours later, CNEOS examined the image that ITF had sent. There were black patches in Draco where star clusters ought to be, vast areas of empty space with a clearly defined boundary. It was as if something had taken a huge bite out of the galaxy. CNEOS would need more pictures to be sure, but it was a safe bet that the boundary was advancing. It sent a signal to the Crystal Palace.
‘I have news for our employers,’ it said, ‘and I don’t think they’re going to like it.’
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