Ancient Birthright (21 page)

“Do you have a suggestion about a return transmission to Earth, sir?” Renna asked.

“Let’s give it a little more time and see if Beldon contacts us and explains what’s going on. We’re just over three years from our arrival at Earth. We’ll need to ask them for assistance pretty soon if we don’t discover a solution ourselves,” Command Prime said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Saigg, would you, Renna and the rest of your menagerie like to accompany me to the growthbay? I want to check on the Petuuas, ah, I mean Pteros and see how they’re progressing.”

Saigg walked beside his Dad on the way to the growthbay. “I’m going to tell Beldon and Cindy about our fuel problem and see if they have any ideas that could help us.”

“I think it’s time. We can’t wait much longer, or they won’t have time to help even if they could,” Jamz said.

Saigg pushed the actiplate to retract the access hatch to the growthbay, and then waited for the others to enter. Five of the six Ptero’s were circling the growthbay about thirty feet above the floor. The sixth, Baany, was standing on a crate holding up soft foam targets in his beak as the others tried to fly above him and snag the targets with their clawed feet. Tuuan and Reedn took one look at the activities and tried to hide behind Renna’s head. These flying critters were something unknown and potentially dangerous.

“Hey Baany, how are they doing?” called Saigg.

Baany looked toward the door just as one of the flyers made a dive on the target and miss-judged his height. Baany took the blow on the side of his head and tumbled off the crate.

Dantee’s eyes widened at the sight of the falling Ptero. She was down, and running to where he lay in a tangled pile before any of the adults could move. Saigg watched as his tiny daughter ran up to the stunned Baany and started examining him. She climbed on top of his quivering body, marched up to one of his closed eyes, and pried it open to stare directly into it while she patted his head.

Saigg knelt to examine Baany’s wings. Nothing seemed to be broken, and Baany had stopped quivering and lay still for a few demibeats as he took deep breaths all the while Dantee was patting his head and saying, “Oooohhhhhh, oweee.”

“Kn...knocked the wind out of me,” Baany gasped. He held his right wing out to Saigg, so he could help him up.

Chapter-21

Beldon, Cindy, and their team of linguists and scientists grouped around Duane’s desk, listening for a response to the transmission that Colonel Striker had just made.

“Colonel Striker, I’m a little surprised you made this transmission,” Beldon said. “If they answer, every nation on Earth with intelligence gathering capabilities will pick up the reply and know what’s going on.”

Striker moved to stand behind Duane’s chair. “I’m open to suggestions, Beldon. We need to establish communications, and soon. It’s apparent they’ve been talking to someone in this section of space. If they don’t talk to us, I think the President will order a first strike to make sure no other nation gets a technology jump on us.”

“If they open communications with us, won’t the other nations with space launch capabilities respond the same way?”

Beldon looked at Cindy for her agreement. She nodded her head, not finding any way around telling Striker about their activities.

Beldon released his breath and took the plunge. “Colonel, I know who the
Universe Explorer
has been talking to.”

“If you know something Dumas, I want you to tell me now,” Striker’s hands curled into fists as he turned to face Beldon.

Beldon let out another big sigh. “I first discovered the
Universe Explorer
and began communicating with them almost five years ago. The reason we developed the program to teach English was to help the crew of the
UE
to learn our language. Early on, I realized the military would eventually get involved and overreact, so we developed a method of single time cyphers that permitted communications without interference. I never worried about encrypting the out bound messages since they were sent on a tight beam. Someone would have had to be sitting directly in the path of the beam for an extended period of time to intercept my end of the transmissions.”

Striker glared at Beldon for a few moments. “You were the one using the spare VLA antennas, and no one on the installation knew, not even your father? Or was he in on it all along?”

“Dad knew nothing about it until you made that first intercept of our transmissions. Our homemade version of a VLA antenna went into operation that day.”

Striker’s face was set in a grim mask of fury and accusation.

“I kept waiting for the FBI to show up and take me away in handcuffs, but I figured it would be worth it. I’d be famous for initiating the first contact with an alien race. I was a sixteen-year-old high school kid when I found the
Universe Explorer
. A kid the school bullies used for their private punching bag on a daily basis. I wanted to feel as if my life had meaning, as if I’d accomplished—something.”

Cindy took Beldon’s hand and laced fingers.

“I didn’t have any real friends in school, so when I made contact and learned that the person on the other end of my transmissions was my age, it didn’t take long for us to become friends. Saigg was appointed to lead the research team trying to communicate with Earth after he figured out my number tags and modified one of them to signal me that someone was receiving the pulses from the VLA. In reality, we’ve grown up together even if we’ve been billions of miles apart.” Beldon scanned the rapt faces waiting for him to finish.

“When I wrote the programs that found the
Universe Explorer
, I had the idea that once I discovered something using the VLA, I would be able to sell the search program to NRAO or to the Air Force and maybe get a full scholarship to the University of Arizona.”

Striker took a chair and signaled one of the techs to start recording Beldon’s statements. “Tell us what you know. But at this point, I’m still considering throwing you in the brig.”

“The
Universe Explorer
is a colonization ship.”

“You mean they are coming here to colonize Earth?” Striker looked as if he wanted to strangle Beldon.

“No. I mean it is a colonization ship that has delivered its passengers and supplies to the planet they were dispatched to colonize. Now they’re on their way home to pick up additional resources that are missing on the colony world. The ship encountered a problem during the outbound transit to the colony planet and was delayed in its initial arrival.” Bel shifted in his seat trying for a more comfortable position.

“So why are they stopping at Earth?” Striker asked the question it was apparent everyone else wanted to ask.

“I told you, they are returning to their home world.” Beldon gave Striker an ‘atta boy’ when he was the first to come to the correct conclusion.

Striker’s eyes widened, and his voice rose an octave. “You’re telling us this ship is originally from Earth?”

“That’s right. I didn’t make contact with an alien race or in the case of the
Universe Explorer
, races. I made contact with an ancient civilization. One that is to some extent more advanced technologically than ours, but in different ways. Saigg told me the sentient species on the
UE
come from a society that has never had artificial governmental, ethnic or racial boundaries. The only real private boundaries they recognize are those of personal living space. So they have no concept of war, conquest or domination—”

Dr. Phillips, a theoretical xeno-biologist interrupted Beldon’s story. “Mr. Dumas, this is ridiculous. No one has ever uncovered evidence of an advanced human society that had achieved the level of technology necessary for space travel, let alone travel to another star system,”

“I never said they were human. From the time frame that Saigg explained to me, the
UE
left Earth orbit a little over two-hundred and thirty million years ago.”

“Why, that would put its departure during the Jurassic period,” stated the same scientist.

“I came to the same conclusion,” Beldon said.

“With all the Jurassic fossils uncovered, no one has ever seen evidence of manipulated artifacts or something as specialized as the manufacturing facilities that would be necessary to construct a ship large enough to colonize another world.”

“Again I think you are gauging your objections on the bases of our current technology and construction techniques. If I understand what Saigg and his mate Renna said, their main areas of scientific advancement were in horticulture, bioengineering and gene splicing. They didn’t build the
Universe Explorer
. They grew it along with most of the on-board systems and equipment. The Earth they came from was mainly tropical and filled with plant and animal life. Their society and mental development had an uninterrupted span of hundreds of millions of years without war or global strife. A span of time so great that multiple intelligent species developed.”

“Why, specifically, is the
UE
returning to Earth?” asked Striker.

“The world they colonized, Danuaa 3, has little or no aluminum or calcium in its makeup. The absence of calcium is causing a problem in population growth, and aluminum is necessary for many of the chemical processes they use to power their equipment. The shortage of aluminum forced them to return to Earth where they knew the element was plentiful.”

Cindy interrupted, “Earlier you said the President was considering a strike to eliminate the
Universe Explorer
. If you destroy or capture the
UE
and it doesn’t return to Danuaa 3 with the supplies they need, you will be responsible for the genocide of multiple intelligent Earth species.”

“That brings us back to my original question. Do we want all the other nations of Earth to know about the
UE
at this time?” Beldon asked.

“Let’s save that problem for later. Have them respond using the encryption methods you established,” Striker said.

Beldon looked at his father and nodded. Duane pulled the dictionary from his bookcase and flipped through to a random page. He wrote down three items, the page number, 328, a word picked at random from the page, “coruscate”, and how many entries down the page the selected word was, 14. After padding the page number to four places and the word count to three places, what he ended up with was the number 0328014 which he sent to the
Universe Explorer
.

“Early in my communications with the
UE
, I scanned each page in the dictionary and sent it to them. As long as we used the same dictionary, they always have the correct encryption key.”

One hour and forty-seven minutes later they received an encrypted audio message. “Beldon, what’s going on? We haven’t heard from you in months. Are you and Cindy all right? How’s your baby? We clutched four eggs, but only two were viable. We have a daughter, Dantee and son Reedn. They’re five months old and get into everything. Dantee is something special. I can’t wait for you to meet her. She’s already speaking English. Reedn is all male luzzon. He’s going to be a big boy. Jamz and Caraa asked me to say hi for them. The Ptero’s are about half-grown and should be ready for the transfer when we arrive. I have two problems I need your help with. Please respond, so we know you are okay.”

Beldon turned to Striker. “You just heard your second message from the
Universe Explorer
. What do you think? Do they sound like an invading alien force to you?”

“They sound like my Aunt Martha and Uncle Teddy. Is this for real?” Striker asked.

Cindy walked over and put her hands on Beldon’s shoulders. “They are a family just like every other family. They love and laugh, make babies and watch them grow, work and build, then hope the future is one they can live with. The only real difference is that they have lived their entire lives on board an interstellar spaceship.”

Striker stood and paced across the room. “What’s that bit about the Ptero’s?”

Beldon swung his chair to follow Strikers pacing. “Ptero’s is the name we agreed to use for the intelligent beings that transfer cargo from the ship to a planet. Their name for them is Petuua. They are more a guidance and control system for the load they land than an actual shuttle. You would know them by the name our scientists have given the fossils they’ve discovered, Pterodactyl. They are one of the intelligent species on the ship. From what Saigg has told me, they are stored as frozen embryos, and then hatched when they are about four years from their destination. Otherwise, they could not carry enough food to feed them for the entire trip. The original stock they were engineered from had a wingspan of forty to sixty feet. This version grows to a hundred and forty feet and can land cargo pods of up to ten tons if it’s not shock sensitive and four tons if it needs a gentle touchdown. They had thirty-four embryos still frozen. They hatched six. The remainder will be needed to offload their cargo once they return to Danuaa 3.”

“How big is this ship and what does it have for a crew complement?” Striker asked as he stopped in front of Beldon.

“If I understood Saigg’s description correctly, it’s a bulging elongated cylinder about six miles long and three miles in diameter at the bulge. When in transit to a planet they spin it around the long axis to provide artificial gravity. It has main engines that can exhaust through either the nose or tail. That way they can accelerate and decelerate without having to rotate the ship to point in the correct direction. Current crew is about six hundred with another two hundred or so offspring of the crew who are considered passengers until they reach maturity and join the crew or become colonists,” Beldon told him.

“What should we send as a reply?” Cindy asked.

A Second Lieutenant in Air Force uniform burst into the room. “Colonel Striker! We’ve received notice that the Russians have launched a missile on a trajectory into deep space. The intent is unknown at this time, but it’s on an intercept course with the approaching ship.”

“Duane, see if you can track it with the VLA,” ordered Striker.