Chapter 1: The Mission

D-6

"Come in Ms. Kitlras," Captain Rileymen offers. "Have a seat. We have much to discuss, and I think you will find it most interesting."

His office looks better furnished than my apartment. A couch sits along one wall, a desk in front of the other. Large paintings hang like windows looking out into the world; all displaying scenes of ships and seas. His end table has an antique sailing ship in a bottle. It is strange to see such luxury so far out in space, but then Captain Rileymen had many years to collect it. He is a graying old man now, approaching retirement, but I can still picture him as a young ensign on the seas of earth in the infancy of planetary space travel.

"Martha," I attempt to sound confident when we shake hands. "Please, call me Martha. I'm a civilian scientist you know; not an officer."

"Then Martha it is," The Captain agrees. "I know you're a scientist, but I must say that you don't look like a scientist."

I am not sure if I should take this as a compliment or an insult. He expects, I guess, a bookish old lady with her hair tied tight in a bonnet. Instead, I am a young woman, 34-years of age, short in stature, with brunette hair that comes half way down my back.

He motions to a pair chairs sitting in front of his desk. They look like they are made from finely lacquered wood. So does his desk, although I figure they must only be plastic simulations. Even a person of Captain Rileymen's esteem could not gather the resources to get real wood this far out into space.

"Now Martha, do you know why you are here?" He questions. I notice he properly waits for me to sit first. He acts the perfect gentleman, nurtured in the romantic traditions.

"No one told me anything, but I think I know." I answer. "I suspect it has something to do with the lost satellite."

"Excellent deductive capability," He speaks a thought. "You are correct, but that is only the beginning."

He fumbles with something in his desk and then hands over an orange colored file. "This explains the mission, provided you care to accept it."

I take it with interest. Orange means Secret. Higher than Classified but lower than Top Secret, it sits in the middle of the echelon of classified information. My security clearance allows me to read Secret, but I seldom get the opportunity. On those rare occasions when I do, it shines like candy to my eyes. I feel a curiosity to look inside.

"You'll have plenty of time to go through the file later," He speaks before I get the chance. "You can take it with you. For now, let me explain."

I let him, of course, and lay the folder on my lap unopened.

"As you already suspect, we lost a satellite," He dumps his big arms on his desk. "Two days ago we lost contact with Spy-3. No warning signs. No messages. It simply stopped transmitting."

He is right. I already know this. As a research scientist, it is my job to study the images radioed back from the three surveillance satellites orbiting the planet. The pictures from Spy-3 stopped in mid-frame two days ago, just like he said.

"What you don't know is that it dropped into the atmosphere," He continues. "The Engineers don't know why, but they theorize one of its maneuvering thrusters stuck in the open position. It lost orbital velocity, which caused it to lose altitude, and it fell into the atmosphere. Yesterday we located the spot where it crashed. You have the details in your hand."

I never could be patient. I undo the clasp of the envelope and pull out the lap-screen computer when he pauses. When I touch it, a keyboard appears on the display. I have been around classified information enough to know this is where I am supposed to enter my personal identification code and password.

"Most of the satellite burned up in the atmosphere," Captain Rileymen speaks uninterrupted as I page through the file. "But it looks like the most dangerous segment survived - at least partially. The nuclear reactor core landed largely intact but heavily damaged. The first set of pictures show it resting at the bottom of a crater, but later images show it has been moved. We do not know where it was moved to, but we assume it was to one of the surrounding Longton villages. Naturally, we feel concern over its plutonium fuel. It could cause injury to anyone who might choose to investigate. We have further concern over its advanced technology. It might create a danger to the pre-industrial culture living on the surface. The Longtons are an inherently curious people, and we expect they will eventually want to investigate it."

The "Longtons" are the alien civilization that inhabits the planet. I know a lot about them because it is my job to study them. It is the reason I live in deep space and the reason I analyze satellite imagery.

"I would say there's a near certain chance they will try to open the container," I start to tell Rileymen, assuming he wants my expert opinion on the subject. "They are an inherently curious culture, much like Humans of about 300 AD. However, even more dangerous, they are a religiously fragmented community. There's danger they might discover the satellite and treat it as sign of a deity; a God..."

Rileymen puts up his hand to stop me in mid-sentence. "That's not why I called you into my office."

I look back confused.

"Let me give you some background first," He makes me wait. "Our mission is to research on a non-interference basis. That is why we use spy satellites. Some say this is wrong. It is an evasion of privacy, even dishonest, but it allows us to look down upon the planet without interfering with the natural order of things. The crash, however, presents a problem. It creates a potential for interference, and we need to take action against it."

I look at him confused. I agree with everything he says, but who am I to do anything about it?

"We plan to organize an expedition down to the planet's surface," I think Rileymen reads my mind. "The plan is to land at night in the central desert, away from any substantial Longton population. The expedition will then travel first by vehicle and later by foot into the Longton village closest to the crash site. You will pose as visiting travelers from a far off land. The mission is to interface with the Longton culture, discover as much as you can about the crash, and then take whatever steps are necessary to prevent any damage."

I notice he uses the word "you" - as in "me" or "myself." Me, Martha Kitlras. At first I think he makes an inadvertent slip of the tongue, but the look on his face tells me otherwise.

"You don't mean?" I stare back in disbelief. "Not me! I can't possibly go on such an expedition!"

"Why not?" He questions simply. "I'm told you are the most qualified expert in the lab. You selected the Longtons for your master's thesis. You've worked on this project for the two years. They tell me you are better than anyone else at speaking their language."

"Well, yes but..." I start to say. What he says is true, but...

"I am even told," Rileymen interrupts. "That you criticized the past expeditions. You voiced objections to the director about your training of the Military teams. You said it would be more valuable if a civilian research scientist was included in any future expedition."

I feel embarrassed. "True," I have to admit. "But I didn't mean myself!"

Two previous expeditions traveled down to the planet's surface. Both teams consisted solely of Military officers trained with months of preparation. I argued a civilian scientist from the lab would have been able to learn more; ask the right questions, seen the situation different from an officer. I criticized the expeditions, and I am surprised Rileymen knows anything about my criticisms.

"This is your chance to put your money where your mouth is," He continues past my objection. "We need to remove the satellite, and we need to remove it fast. The longer it sits on the surface, the more danger it could create for the Longtons. We have no time to gather a Military team and do months of training. We need someone down on the planet's surface in a week; if not sooner."

A buzzer rings on his desk. It interrupts his speech.

"I said not to be disturbed!" He practically yells into the phone. I feel sorry for whoever might be on the other end, but then he nods and calms back down again.

"I need to go for a few minutes," Captain Rileymen apologizes. "I'm very sorry, but something's come up that demands my immediate attention. Why don't you stay here and read through the rest of the file. I think you will find it very interesting."

He rises before I can object. He leaves me alone in his office feeling very confused and in disbelief.

The news overloads me. The information deluges me with too much to process at one time. It is too shocking; too much out of the ordinary of my every day life. I am accustomed to obediently go to my job each day on the research station Crion, located on the dark side of the moon by the same name. At night I walk a few feet outside the lab to return to my quaint cabin to study and do my exercises. I have been on Crion for three months now, orbiting the Longton planet and secretly conducting my research. It is the same monotonous existence day after day, night after night. And now this!

It is not at all what I expected when I received the call to fly up to the Starship Cruiser Atlantis to meet with the Captain. I suspected he sought my advice on the lost satellite, but not to go down to the surface and pick it up myself. I need time to think.

I look through the rest of the secret folder and find it is worse than Rileymen lets on. One page shows an overhead picture of the crash site, no doubt taken from one of the two remaining satellites. I see a streak of burnt forest with a crater at one end. I think I even see a few Longtons looking down inside from the rim. Obviously, the plutonium remains safely intact inside the reactor. If it leaked out, the Longtons would already be dead. I can't help but think they soon will be. I know from my own studies they will eventually crack open the reactor.

The next page shows the location of the crash site on a planetary map. It is near the central desert, which is good news. The Longtons do not dare venture into the central desert, so an expedition can easily make a landing close to the crash site. They will not have far to walk.

Another page presents a written assessment of the situation. It speaks of the Longtons as a curious people who will almost certainly want to investigate the contents of the crater. If the reactor's plutonium core isn't open already, the assessment predicts it soon will be. I have to agree. Then it talks about the religious factions and mentions the same thing I told the Captain about the Longtons possible attempt to worship the satellite as a religious deity. I agree with everything it says. I could have even written some of the words myself, and maybe I did. Some of the sentences look like they were plagiarized out of one of my earlier reports.

The Longtons first came to my attention back at the University. According to the most popularly accepted theory, they descended from the same ancient seed as humans, planted by an unknown and very advanced civilization some 1 million years ago. This means they greatly resemble Homo sapiens in appearance. Their bodies enclose the same basic structure: The same double arms and legs, the same two eyes, two ears, and a single nose. Everything of importance looks the same, but only in general terms. As with any two humanoid species separated by a hundred light years distance and million years of evolution, subtle differences exist.

The two most noticeable differences are in the facial area. The first is a flattened Longton nose that makes it look as though they have all just been punched squarely in the face. The second is hair just above the nose. It is a single eyebrow that goes straight across the forehead. A third difference derives from height. The Longtons live on a planet with 80% the gravity of Earth. This makes them grow taller. The average Longton male is about 20% taller than the average human male, although this only occurs with the males. For some reason, Longton females tend to be slightly shorter than human females. No one has yet been able to explain why.

More important differences are cultural, which serves as the reason for my research. I study how a civilization totally foreign to Humans can live, communicate, interact, and do the thousand other things we take for granted every day. I often think my job is no different than the National Geographic researches who first went to study the ancient stone-age tribes of the jungles of Madagascar in the 19th century. The only real advantage I have is technology. While the early explorers went with cameras around their necks, I rely on cameras that look down from orbiting satellites.

I also listen. Several years ago - back when I was still in graduate school - humans made two high-risk expeditions down to the planet's surface. A group of three young men received plastic surgery and several months of specialized training on what we then knew about the Longton culture. All three were military officers specially selected because they were quick to learn and strong enough to defend themselves in case of trouble. The group eventually landed on the planet's surface, traveled to a distant Longton village, and posed as fellow Longton men traveling from a far-off land. Although unable to speak the Longton language, they made face-to-face contact and were able to communicate on a limited basis. The expedition taught us things we never could have learned solely from satellite imagery.

Lucky for me, the expedition also planted microphones. While on the surface, they buried miniature microphones under the soil to listen to the Longton conversations in the hope of deciphering the language. It is these microphones that got me my job, and most of them remain operating to this very day. I've always had a gift for languages, and the language of the Longtons is no different. Called Longtonese, I first assisted and then later became its foremost expert. I now translate the language for others.