From Whence the Stars Call

From Whence the Stars Call

by Justin Case

Justin Case (yes, that is his real name) is a Christian, news junkie, and an avid reader and gamer whose bad habit is excessively quoting movies and tv shows. He just received his doctorate in physics in 2025 and is now working as a lab assistant. He likes to write speculative fiction in his spare time. His first published story, “The Maestro in Gold”, was accepted by the Writer’s Co-op for their anthology “The Rabbit Hole: AI and Other Weirdness”. “From Whence the Stars Call” is his second story accepted for publication.

It glided through the darkness, a ship without sails in a sea without water pursuing the sound of a white whale; a spaceship heading out across the vast expanse seeking after a signal transmitted from a distant black hole. It was called the Unity and it was in the fourteenth month of its three-and-a-half year mission.

Vincent, the ship’s cook, was a lean and muscular man in his early forties. Fond of exercise, he worked out in the kitchen for privacy.

“Are we there yet?”

Vincent looked over at Jonathan, a reporter and photographer, who was standing in the doorway to the ship’s kitchen. He rolled his eyes and returned to his sit-ups.

“You’ve made that joke every day for the last week. You’re one of those people who can’t tell when they’ve taken a joke too far.”

Jonathan smirked at the response. Setting a pad of paper down on a small table, he walked past Vincent and over to the wine rack. He pulled out a bottle of red wine and analyzed the label.

“At this rate we’re going to finish off the red before the trip is over.”

“You can drink as much as you want, but it’s all nonalcoholic,” Vincent added without interrupting his exercises.

“You say that like I don’t know,” Jonathan responded while pulling a plastic cup out of the cupboard. “We’ve been here for more than a year, but you act like we just took off yesterday.”

“I’m just reminding you. If you know it’s nonalcoholic, why are you even bothering to drink?”

“I miss the flavor,” he said while pulling out the cork.

“If you’re so worried about running out of the red, why don’t you have some of the white?” Vincent asked as he stood up. He grabbed a towel off the kitchen counter and began to wipe the sweat from his face.

“I can’t stand white. For me, it has to be red or nothing.”

With that he took a sip. Vincent walked over to the refrigerator and began to peruse its contents.

“Why is it you still insist on doing your workouts in the kitchen?”

“I like the privacy,” Vincent said as he settled on a bottle of tea. “You’re not really helping the situation.”

“Can I help it that you’re pretty much the only other person on this ship who’s not an egghead?”

“I feel like I should be insulted by that.”

“You shouldn’t be. I’m just saying I’m sick of all the science-y talk. You talk with the crewmen and it’s all engine efficiency and fuel levels and spatial compression and stuff. With the physicists it’s all exoplanets and relativity and whatever. I feel like there’s nobody to talk to.”

“You forgot about the biologists,” Vincent said teasingly.

“Yes, and the linguists and the anthropologists and the medical staff. Everybody has a degree in something and, frankly, that’s all they seem to want to talk about.”

“Actually, it’s only one anthropologist and I happen to know that several of them do talk about things other than science. I was just talking football with some of the crewmen the other day.”

“I’m not a sports guy. But even if I was, the conversation always seems to circle back to one scientific topic or another. We’ve got, what, twenty-three people on this ship and only four of them aren’t engineers or doctors of some kind.”

Jonathan wandered over towards the small dining area off the kitchen where he had set his pad of paper down. Vincent finished off his tea, pulled a second bottle out of the fridge, and then joined him.

“You knew what you were signing up for didn’t you?” Vincent asked. “Three and a half years in space with a bunch of egghead scientists.”

Jonathan didn’t respond but began sketching on the pad.

“Nothing to say?”

Jonathan looked over at Vincent.

“The first sign of alien life. Ever. This was history making. It was a paradigm shift, the biggest one to have ever occurred. I had to be a part of it.”

“Are you suggesting you just signed up for this trip with no questions asked?”

“Hey, I knew I was going to be confined to a ship for an extended period of time. I just didn’t think it would get this boring.”

“They didn’t promise us any space battles.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Jonathan said and then paused for a second. “It’s just that . . . alien life. To be the first person to actually photograph alien life. To be the first person to interview an alien.”

“You’re expecting to talk with them in English?”

“Frankly, yes. The message we received, that extraterrestrial note in a bottle, that was in English. And French and Mandarin as well. Somebody out there must speak it.”

Jonathan returned to his sketching while Vincent finished his tea.

“You never did seem that interested in meeting aliens,” Jonathan commented.

Vincent shrugged.

“What are you expecting? That they’ll all come out and incinerate us the moment we land.”

“Nothing that dramatic. Frankly, I’m more interested in the location than the inhabitants.”

“But if not for the aliens, what is there to see?”

“A black hole for one thing.”

Jonathan looked up at Vincent inquisitively.

“Not much to see there. The name sums it all up. It’s a black hole.”

“I need to prep for dinner, but you’re free to stick around if you want,” Vincent said as he stood up.

“You know, I still don’t understand what all of these eggheads are talking about when they say that this black hole we’re going to functions as the aliens’ sun. Suns put light out, black holes pull light in.”

“It’s not the black hole that’s producing light, it’s the gases around the black hole,” Vincent responded as he examined a cookbook. “They move fast, they heat up, and they produce light.”

“You sound like one of the eggheads. But why is there even gas around the black hole? It sucks everything in including the gas, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, but not immediately. The gas doesn’t just go flying in. It orbits the black hole for a while.”

“Well, I still don’t get it.”

“Well, if there is a planet orbiting the black hole then clearly the black hole hasn’t pulled it in just yet.”

Jonathan silently conceded the debate and after a moment switched subjects.

“What are you thinking of making tonight?”

“I’m planning on keeping it simple. Spaghetti and meatballs. Were you hoping for something else?”

“Not particularly.”

Jonathan returned to his sketchbook while Vincent washed up and began gathering the ingredients. The two proceeded in relative silence for several minutes before Jonathan resumed the conversation.

“You know, I keep thinking about what you just said, about not caring if you see aliens. That’s the whole reason we’re making this trip, but you don’t seem to think that much of it.”

“I wanted to see a black hole. Isn’t that reason enough?”

“No, it’s just . . . everybody on this ship from the captain to the eggheads to me is hoping to see . . . well, for lack of a better word, little green men. In fact, where not just hoping for it, we’re expecting it. But you seem to be expecting failure.”

“So only people expecting the best should be allowed on this mission?” Vincent asked.

“That’s not what I said. But you have to admit that it is somewhat ironic. Humanity gets a message from the stars and the majority of the world’s population hops into high gear and begins working on the biggest mission since they landed a man on the moon. They build the fusion reactor, they develop artificial gravity, they discover that trick for sending faster than light messages, they design those spatial compression engines. Now a journey that would take thousands of years takes a year and a half. We poured all of our time and money into this in order to make first contact and yet the ship’s cook ends up being a skeptic.”

“To be fair, it really doesn’t matter whether or not I believe there are aliens. My job is just to make food.”

“Still, it sounds ironic to me.”

“Additionally, you made a mistake with your timeline.”

“What?”

“You said they discovered how to send signals faster than light after we received the message, but we discovered that before we received the message.”

“That doesn’t alter my argument in the slightest.”

Another lull entered the conversation and Vincent took the opportunity to fill up several large pots with water. Jonathan continued to sketch, but when the faucet was turned off, he broke the silence.

“So, if you’re sure that message wasn’t from aliens, where do you think it came from?”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t a message from aliens. I simply meant that I doubt it was from aliens. I mean, why would aliens send us a message in our own languages?”

“How else are they supposed to communicate? We probably wouldn’t understand their language.”

“So, they pick up signals we sent out a long time ago, learn what languages we speak, and then send us back a message in our languages alone, but not in their language?”

“Why not? Besides, the message couldn’t have come from Earth. Satellites around both Earth and Mars have detected it coming from the direction of this particular black hole. Multiple times in fact.”

Vincent wasn’t sure how to respond; Jonathan made some compelling points.

“Why do you care if I’m a skeptic or not anyway?”

Jonathan looked over at Vincent and then returned to his sketchbook before responding.

“It doesn’t really matter to me. I just find it ironic.”

Neither Vincent nor Jonathan felt the need to speak after that. The conversation had run its course and the two parted ways, mentally at least, until dinner was ready.

#

One year, nine months. The Unity had reached the black hole about three months ago, but the exact location of the alien signal remained elusive. The planets orbiting the black hole were all lifeless husks and the signal appeared in no way to have come from out further into space beyond the black hole. For the last three months, the crew searched and scrutinized every piece of solid matter they could locate. Some began to wonder if the alien civilization had died out long before their message even reached Earth.

Vincent, having now seen a black hole along with several extrasolar planets, was satisfied and proceeded with his duties apparently unbothered by the delay in contact. Meanwhile Jonathan anxiously paced the ship like a caged tiger. As Jonathan’s anxiousness grew, his conversations with Vincent became less and less frequent and, for the last five days, had ceased altogether. Each was in his own world when the ship’s speakers awoke and the captain’s voice filled the air.

“Hello. This is Captain Sousa. All non-essential crew members and staff are to report to the conference room immediately for debriefing. That is all.”

The captain’s voice was flat, but most, including Vincent and Jonathan, could not help but hear the smallest bit of disappointment in his voice.

Never in the almost two years the mission had been ongoing had so many people been asked to report to the conference room at once. At any one point in time, only five people were considered essential, that is, necessary to keep the ship running. This left eighteen other non-essential personnel to fit into the one room. The room could seat half a dozen people easily, but it was too small to comfortably fit eighteen.

When Vincent and Jonathan arrived, the conference room was packed with people from every team. Nearly every single person was standing. Vincent positioned himself against the back wall. Jonathan pushed his way closer to the conference table but was still only a couple of feet away from Vincent. Silently, he hoped that the meeting would bring him everything he had been hoping to hear for the last three months.

At the front of the room, the captain and the members of the physics team talked in hushed tones. Their faces were downtrodden, and one looked almost on the edge of despair.

The crowd murmured, most trying to make sense of this unusual event. Eventually, the captain spoke up and the whole room went silent.

“Quiet. Quiet everybody. Quiet. I know you’re wondering why you have all been called here. As you know, we have not yet been able to determine the precise source of the signal we have been following. So far, all of the planets we have found in the area have been . . . uninhabited.” He paused. “After an extensive review of the data, our physics team, led by Dr. Russo, believes they may have determined the source.”

A couple of people responded with excited looks, but most remained reserved. The captain stepped aside for Dr. Russo. Dr. Russo looked dejected.

“Hello everyone,” he began. “As you all know, what brought us out here was a message we . . . believed was sent to us from an alien civilization.”

Vincent and Jonathan both noted his use of the past tense word ‘believed’.

“I know you all can appreciate the technological advances mankind has made in reaching this point. From drawing on cave walls to sending messages faster than the speed of light by Wilson-Hartley entanglement,” he paused. “I won’t delve into a lecture on how it works, lest to say that it does work. You all know this as most of you have, at some point or another, talked to your families in near real time.”

His voice was slow and depressing. It seemed as though, at any moment, he might break into tears, but he continued.

“We now believe that . . . this communication technique might explain the source of the signal.”

The crowd murmured again.

“We now believe that . . . the message we received wasn’t transmitted by extraterrestrial life.” He paused again. “We now believe that it was transmitted by us.”

The crowd gasped and then the room went dead quiet. You could hear a pin drop.

“We have been performing a number of calculations and simulations and we now believe that we may have been following, for lack of a better word, an echo. For those of you who don’t know, Phil Hartley was the primary designer of the equipment used to induce Wilson-Hartley entanglement. He died shortly after receiving the Nobel for his discovery.

Dr. Russo stopped, closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“I got a chance to meet with him once before he passed. He was very much interested in extraterrestrial communication.”

He had to pause again.

“Hartley was very much a recluse and he performed many of his own experiments with the equipment he developed in an attempt to contact extraterrestrial life. He sent out messages in a number of different languages including English, French, and Mandarin. Many of these messages were not recorded, but he did take notes on some of them.

Another pause and another deep breath.

“I’ve contacted one of my assistants back on Earth and, after a lot of work, he managed to locate some of Hartley’s written notes. Among the messages Hartley transmitted . . . was the message that we received all those years ago.”

Jonathan’s eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open. He turned to Vincent in shock. Vincent didn’t know how to respond.

“We now believe . . . we now believe that one of Hartley’s messages may have intercepted the black hole’s gravitational field and that the black whole redirected it back towards Earth.”

Upon this last statement, the crowd broke into a low-level cacophony. Dr. Russo placed his right hand on his forehead, ashamed and distraught.

“Quiet down now! Quiet down!” the captain yelled.

When the din had settled, Dr. Russo took his hand away from his face and resumed.

“By the time the message had returned, Hartley had passed. Since he was a recluse, there was nobody to identify the received message when it was publicized,” Dr. Russo said before pausing again. “As I said, we have essentially been chasing an echo in space.”

“No, no it can’t be. The signal would have had been distorted by the black hole’s gravitational field. There is no way it could be the same signal.”

The comment had come from someone outside the physics team, but whoever they were, they sounded knowledgeable enough on the subject.

“That’s one of the things about Wilson-Hartley entanglement,” Dr. Russo responded. “It’s highly resistant to relativistic distortions from gravity. Even the pull from a black hole, if the signal was intercepted far enough from the event horizon, would not be sufficient to completely disrupt the signal. We have performed dozens of calculations and simulations and the bulk of them support this.”

The crowd became loud again. Many had already begun crying including a woman standing near Vincent.

“Quiet down! Quiet down!” yelled Captain Sousa and he began hammering on the table. “Order! Order! I will have order, dang it!”

Eventually, everyone quieted down, but the sobbing of several was still audible.

“Now we didn’t find what we were looking for, but we can still make the most of this mission. Right now, I am dismissing everyone except the head of each science team. We will consult with mission control back home and decide how to proceed, but I need everyone to remain calm in the meantime and return to your quarters. You are dismissed.”

At this the crowd began to shuffle towards the door. Some were angry, some were sad, a few were borderline catatonic. Several pushed their way through the crowd and ran off in distress. Being close to the door, Jonathan and Vincent were two of the first ones out. Jonathan ran off in the direction of the kitchen. Vincent followed at a walking pace.

Vincent found John sitting in the small, adjacent dining area in the kitchen. Another bottle of red was open next to him, and he was sipping it out of another plastic cup.

“Are you okay?” Vincent asked even though he knew the answer.

“It was a waste. It was all a waste. The last two years of my life, pointless.”

Vincent wanted to convince Jonathan that he was wrong, but he wasn’t sure how to convey it. He walked over to the counter and grabbed another plastic cup before sitting down across from Jonathan. He pulled the bottle of red over to him, uncertain of what to say.

“There was no alien life, but that doesn’t make the trip a complete waste. Look at everything mankind has achieved just to get us here. Think of all that you have achieved. You’re among the first people in history to have set foot outside the solar system. You got to visit a distant galaxy, see a black hole, see strange planets. Isn’t that a triumph unto itself?”

Jonathan remained silent for a moment and then finally responded.

“Shakespeare once wrote ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ I always liked that quote. I always believed that quote.”

He stopped to drink some more wine and then looked at Vincent.

“What do you believe?” he asked.

“About what?”

“Anything.”

“I believe there is a God. I believe he can do things that we can’t even imagine. In a way, I believe the same thing Shakespeare wrote.”

Jonathan replied with more silence.

“Listen, I have to begin organizing dinner,” Vincent said sincerely as he rose to his feet. “But if you want to talk later on, please let me know.”

He turned to the kitchen. He felt Jonathan grab his wrist and he turned back to him.

“I’m jealous of you,” Jonathan said.

“Why?”

“Because I want to believe.”

With that Jonathan stood up and left the kitchen. Vincent watched him go before turning back to the kitchen to begin prepping dinner.