The Transplants

By Ed Ross

Of the potentially billions of planets in the Universe that could support intelligent life like that on Earth, is it not reasonable to assume that at least one of them contains life that very much resembles humans? If so, would they share our human values?

When Rion and Sena, two refugees from just such a planet travel across the galaxy to Earth to save their species from extinction, they land at sea and are separated in a hurricane. He washes up on the coast of Georgia. An Australian billionaire on his yacht rescues her and takes her to Australia. Pursued by an obsessed NASA official, an FBI agent and multiple foreign intelligence services, they must survive, find each other, evade and escape capture. It's a science-fiction story, an action-adventure story, a love story and a story about how the first human contact with extraterrestrial intelligent life changes everyone involved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ed Ross
• Release date: Jun 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781495155864

Ed Ross

Ed Ross is President EWRoss International, a global consulting company. His previous positions include Principal Director, Security Cooperation Operations in the Defense Security Cooperation Agency; Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/ MIA Affairs; and Senior Director for China and Taiwan, in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.His military service includes two tours of duty in Vietnam as an artillery observer with the 9th Inf Division and a mil intel detachment commander with the 525th MI Group; Chief, Counterespionage-Counter-intelligence, 500th MI Group; a senior political-military analyst in the Defense Intelligence Agency; and Asst. Army Attaché to the People's Republic of China.Ed has traveled extensively throughout Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. He is the author of numerous professional articles on national security issues.

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Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Epilogue

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Authors Note

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright Notice

PART ONE

SURVIVAL

1

A.S. Orgua

THE Aurian Spacecraft Orgua (Transplant), traveling 50,000 miles per second, approached a star system 3 million miles from its outer planet. Optical and electronic sensors embedded in the matter-antimatter-propelled Orgua, a long square tubular structure with a sphere half Orgua’s length in diameter at the front and a large nozzle at the rear, scanned the system’s eight major planets. Orgua’s quartz computer searched for positive answers to four questions: Did the system have a planet an optimal distance from its star so that its surface was neither too hot nor too cold? If yes, did that planet have an oxygen-based atmosphere? Did it have oceans of salt water? Did civilization exist on the planet, evidenced by lights and communications broadcast? Only data received from the third planet contained positive answers to all four questions.

For the first time during its journey of many light years through dozens of star systems, positive answers to these queries set an irreversible process in motion. Orgua altered its course, putting it on a trajectory to pass between the planet and its singular moon. Once the course correction was accomplished, a door in Orgua’s body slid open, ejecting a small conical atmospheric-entry vehicle. A long pulse of energy from the cone’s base began to slow it as Orgua continued on at full speed. Having accomplished its only mission, Orgua’s computer shut down, never to restart. Its sensors became deaf and blind. It severed all communications with the cone as it continued its journey through the galaxy, as if losing a part of itself was of no consequence.

The cone continued to slow. By the time it crossed the moon’s orbit it was traveling less than 50,000 miles per hour. The planet’s gravitational pull drew it closer until it went into orbit around it. The computer aboard the cone initiated another energy pulse from its base to slow it again and put it on a course to enter the planet’s atmosphere and descend to a landing in salt water close to a land mass to avoid mountains, deserts and jungles. It was on target except for a minor malfunction in its computer that failed to detect the weather; the cone was headed for the center of an extreme hurricane.

Rion and Sena, refugees from the planet Auria, had designed and built Orgua with the help of thousands of Aurians, so the couple could cross the galaxy in suspended animation in search of a habitable planet to save their species from extinction. They were the sole survivors of Auria, destroyed by a collision with an errant moon of a neighboring planet, knocked out of an unstable elliptical orbit by a mega asteroid. Having found Earth, however, Rion and Sena now were on a path to an ocean grave.

* * *

The Aegis cruiser, USS Carlton, returning to its home port in Norfolk, Virginia, from deployment in the Pacific Ocean, found itself in the direct path of Hurricane Henry when the storm changed direction. Having passed through the Panama Canal and around Cuba, the Carlton was cruising north along the Georgia coast. The model from the National Hurricane Center received by the Carlton that morning had Henry going ashore just north of Jacksonville, Florida. The Carlton’s captain, believing his ship would pass through the storm track before it reached the coast, thought his ship was out of danger. When Henry veered north, however, heading for Savannah, the Carlton found itself in the path of the storm.

Captain, we can’t hold this course. We’re facing sustained headwinds of nearly 155 miles per hour and gusts of 180, said the helmsman. The Aegis cruiser tossed violently, nearly capsizing with each monster wave that hit it. The helmsman, who had more than a thousand hours driving warships, knew in his heart the ship and its entire crew were in mortal danger. He’d never been in a storm this bad.

The helmsman, looking at the captain, turned and looked forward out over the bow just in time to see a fireball pierce the low clouds above, plummeting to Earth in front of the ship like a meteorite. Another giant wave hit the Carlton and everyone on the bridge expected it to capsize. The helmsman forgot momentarily about the flaming object in front of him. It was travelling so fast, he figured it would immediately disappear beneath the surface, having little or no effect on the Carlton. It was the least of the helmsman’s worries. Unexpectedly, the cone slowed and hovered momentarily just above the waves before it dropped into the sea, remaining on the surface a few ship lengths in front of the Carlton’s bow. He turned the ship to avoid the object, but another giant wave forced the Carlton into it.

Brace for collision, the helmsman yelled, just before Carlton struck the cone and he watched it disappear beneath the ship. He had no time to consider the consequences; and he never saw the two capsules, joined together side-by-side, ejected from the cone when its collision with the ship’s bow split the cone in two. Both capsules disappeared beneath the Carlton’s hull as if being keelhauled. Beneath the ship, the capsules separated and their outer metal skins broke open, disgorging hard, yellow foam-like cocoons. The two halves of the cone sank as the cocoons floated back to the surface, tossed around violently by the wind and waves.

A third giant wave hit the ship and what everyone on the Carlton’s bridge feared most came true. Carlton capsized. The Captain had just enough time to send out an SOS before the giant wave enveloped the ship and took it under. USS Carlton briefly came back to the surface only to be swept under by another wave, cracking its hull amidships, allowing the warship to rapidly fill with water and sink with all 400 souls on board.

The yellow cocoons containing Rion and Sena, severely tossed about by the force of the thrashing waves remained precariously afloat, forced further apart with each successive wave.

2

Pasadena, California

JAMES Murdock, Director of NASA’s Deep Space Network at the University of California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, showed the guard at the gate his identification pass and drove his black Corvette to his reserved parking spot near the entrance to the building. It was a beautiful, sunny California morning. The hillsides were still green from the spring rain. Before he had time to put up the convertible’s top and turn off the car’s engine, his assistant, Tony Elbers, a studious 28-year-old not prone to outbursts of excitement, came running out of the building toward him.

What’s up, Tony? James said with a puzzled look as Tony reached the car.

You’ve got to see this, James. I’ve never seen anything like it.

James locked up the Corvette and followed Tony into the building

What’s the fastest thing we’ve tracked? Tony asked, as they walked down the hall past James’ office to the control room.

NASA’s New Horizons robotic spacecraft on its way to Pluto, James replied with a questioning look.

Right; it was clocked at around 58,000 miles per hour.

Cut to the chase, Tony; what is it you want to tell me? We have a lot of work to do today analyzing the data on this newly-discovered monster asteroid headed our way; and I don’t have time for guessing games, said James as he entered the control room.

Tony calmed down. I came in early this morning to check data feeds and came across something extraordinary. The Hubble telescope recorded an image of an unidentified object entering the solar system from about a million miles above the Kuiper Belt. It caught the blurred image by accident; it just happened to be pointed in that direction. About twelve hours later the Madrid and the Goldstone telescopes captured images of the same object, but this time it was inside the orbit of Mars travelling in the orbital plane. It was traveling so fast the telescopes only captured images of long streaks of light. The object appears to have a highly reflective outer skin. What’s really strange is that given the angle at which it entered the Solar system, it had to have made a course correction.

You have my undivided attention, James said as he sat down at the conference table in the middle of the control room. Tony was too excited to sit.

I estimated how fast it was travelling…

How fast was it traveling? James asked before Tony could finish his sentence.

Fifty-thousand miles, Tony hesitated, per second. And that’s not all. About 72 hours after the object had passed by Earth, another much smaller object inside the orbit of the Moon, traveling along the same course, went into orbit around the Earth. My guess is that it was ejected from the mother ship far enough out to give it time to slow down. After two orbits, Earth’s gravity drew it into the atmosphere, and it descended at the optimal angle and velocity.

James could hardly contain his excitement. His job was guiding and tracking space vehicles such as Mars landers and probes sent to photograph the other planets, but his passion was searching for intelligent life outside the solar system. What Tony was describing sounded very much like an alien spaceship. No piece of rock or ice in the universe traveled at 50,000 miles per second, not since the big bang anyway, much less changed course. What else could it be?

James Murdock knew about objects in space as well as anybody. He was scientifically gifted; and since childhood had fantasized about becoming an astronaut and traveling to the Moon, Mars and the stars. In college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he took mostly those courses that would help him become an astronaut, graduating with honors with a degree in physics. He obtained his master’s degree in astrophysics from Princeton. He applied to NASA to become an astronaut in his second year. His grades were straight As, and his physical conditioning was impressive. When NASA doctors gave him a medical exam, however, they discovered an inner-ear problem, the result of a childhood illness, that caused him to have random, mild vertigo attacks, and he washed out of the program. The attacks were rare, and James had convinced himself they wouldn’t have been a problem. Nevertheless, they disqualified him. NASA was impressed with James, however, and they offered him a desk job. He quickly won promotions, and after only eight years he became the Director of the Deep Space Network at the JPL, run by the University of California for NASA. James was an outstanding employee, but he never got over his desire to be an astronaut; and he never got over his belief that man wasn’t alone in the Universe. This incident was just what he had been waiting for.

Where did it land?

As best I can figure, it landed in the path of Hurricane Henry off the coast of Savannah, before the storm went ashore around 1:00 A.M. this morning.

Does NASA or the Pentagon have a team on the way down there yet?

It doesn’t appear that either plan to send anyone right away. The USS Carlton went down in the storm with all hands, and the Coast Guard’s top priority is to search for survivors. NASA has alerted the Coast Guard to look for evidence of a downed satellite, that’s what they’re telling them, while they conduct their search and rescue operations. NASA doesn’t want to spread the word that they’re looking for an extraterrestrial spacecraft. A couple of specialized US Navy ships are headed for the area, but it will take them two or three days to get there.

When do they plan to send a ground team to look for the spacecraft and its passengers?

Can’t say, Savannah, near where the Carlton went down and other places hit by the hurricane, are off limits for now.

They’ve got to get someone down there. If there were aliens on the spacecraft, alive or dead, we have to find them as soon as possible. The meatheads at NASA have grown too complacent. They spend too much time reaching out and not enough time reaching up.

Ralph Camp at NASA told me they don’t believe the craft contained any passengers. They’ve already plotted the origin of the mother ship based on the trajectory it was on before the course correction. He said the closest place it could have come from was at least 45 light years away; and NASA doubts any living thing could survive a journey that long, even in suspended animation. We’re talking at least 170 years in space.

My guess is the didn’t-contain-any-passengers line is just another cover story. Any civilization that can build a spacecraft that travels 50,000 miles per second likely has figured out how to sustain life during long space flights.

I agree.

Tony, I want you to make me a flight reservation for tomorrow to the closest airport to Savannah that’s open, and reserve me a rental car. If NASA won’t send someone down there, I’ll go myself. After I’m gone, you can inform the front office and NASA. I’d rather ask for forgiveness than permission.

That’s not your job, James.

I know, but I can’t resist this opportunity.

How will you get into the area if it’s closed down?

I’ll figure out something. Now show me the images and all the data you’ve collected on this object.

* * *

James returned home at seven o’clock after a full day’s work attempting to learn everything he could about the object that had landed in the ocean near Savannah. As he entered the house, a four-bedroom single story house with a brick facade and cedar siding, through the door from the garage into the kitchen, he was greeted by his wife Margaret, an attractive 40-year-old strawberry blond with freckles. A civil-litigation lawyer at a Pasadena law firm, she had arrived home a half hour before James and was preparing dinner. The smell of fried chicken filled the air.

Margaret was the opposite of James. He had his head in the stars while she had her head in the practical issues affecting the clients she represented and managing the family’s affairs. James never paid a bill or managed their investments; Margaret did all that. James was Margaret’s second husband, but their two children were James’. Both were busy professionals who enjoyed sharing what each other did at work; what they fought over was all the time James spent on nights and weekends chasing information and theories about the possibility of life on other planets. Like any loving wife, she wanted him to spend more time with her and the kids.

James knew Margaret wouldn’t be happy when he told her he was going on a trip over the weekend, but didn’t beat around the bush; he came right out with it. Honey, I have to go on a trip tomorrow.

Margaret looked up from the frying pan. What! This is Friday; can’t it wait till Sunday or Monday before you have to leave? Tomorrow is Bill and Carol’s anniversary, we’re invited to dinner at their house, have you forgotten?

James sighed. Please give them my apology, but this is urgent and can’t wait.

Where are you going this time?

Savannah, James responded waiting for his wife’s reaction.

Savannah! You may recall, sweetheart, from this morning’s news, Savannah was just leveled by a hurricane, one of the worst hurricanes in U.S. history. What could possibly require your attention there? Last time I checked your job was guiding and tracking objects in space.

An alien spacecraft has apparently come down off the coast, and I’m going to investigate, James responded as if he were telling her he was going to the grocery store.

There’s been nothing about an alien spaceship on the news, she reacted, as if space aliens were the latest group of illegal aliens from Central America.

No shit, honey, I’m telling you the truth. Tony showed me the tracking images of it when I arrived at work this morning.

How do you know it’s a spacecraft and not something else?

Because it was traveling at 50,000 miles per second, and it changed course.

That information peaked Margaret’s interest, but she still couldn’t contain her lawyerly skepticism. She gave him that look she gave him when the subject of life on other planets came up. That’s wonderful, honey, but even if that’s true, that’s not your job. You’re just doing this because of your obsession with little green men.

Trust me sweetheart, I wouldn’t be flying off to Georgia if this was some silly UFO. After nine years of marriage, you know what something like this means to me. Besides, I doubt they’re green.

When will you be back?

In a few days. By then, Savannah will be crawling with people looking for the spacecraft, and it will be all over the news. I want to get there first while anything worth finding is still findable.

What do you want me to tell Bill and Carol, that you have been abducted by space aliens?

Tell them that NASA sent me to Georgia as part of an investigation into a downed satellite. If they ask you about the satellite, tell them I couldn’t talk about it so it was probably one of those DoD spy satellites. That should satisfy them, and they won’t think we’re dingbats. And tell them we’ll take them out to dinner when I get back.

James went into the master bedroom, took his well-worn nylon carry-on out of the closet and filled it with the things he thought he needed for a week’s trip. By the time he was finished, Margaret was calling him and the kids for dinner.

After dinner, James walked out onto the concrete patio off the family room and looked up at the stars. He couldn’t know where his search for beings from another planet on Earth would lead him, but this was a once in a lifetime opportunity and he would pursue it wherever it led.

Margaret joined him on the patio after putting the kids to bed, turning off the lights in the family room so they wouldn’t obstruct their view of the stars. When I married you, I had no idea you were such a dreamer. I’ve tried to share your dreams, but I don’t have the imagination you have; and one of us has to take responsibility for the house and the kids. I hope you’re right about visitors from outer space this time, so long as they aren’t here to enslave us. Perhaps then you’ll stop running off everywhere looking for them.

3

Williamson Island, Georgia

THE U.S. Coast Guard Cutter, USCGC Endeavor, cruised north along Williamson Island east of Savannah in one meter waves looking for survivors from the USS Carlton. The sun was still low in the morning sky, and the light from it fully illuminated the coastline littered with dead birds and fish and debris washed up by the hurricane. During the hour and a half since sunrise Endeavor had been out, it had seen no signs of survivors or bodies. As it reached the northern tip of the island, the captain spotted a body on the beach above the waterline through his binoculars.

He flipped the switch of the boat’s intercom. Seaman Nelson, grab a body bag, take a couple crewmembers in the Zodiac and recover that body on the beach, the captain barked.

Aye-aye, Sir, Nelson responded. He selected two seamen to go with him, and the three men ran to the inflatable Zodiac boat with a wood floor, bench seats, and transom with an outboard engine hanging from the port-side deck crane. Lowering it over the side, the three seamen climbed down into the boat and drove for the island where they found the body of a man lying face down in the sand. From his outward appearances he showed no signs of life. The man’s skin was a pale gray as if he’d been dead for a while, and it was mostly covered in a strange yellowish substance that had dried in the sun and was flaking off.

Roll him over, Nelson directed his two companions.

They rolled the body over to reveal an exceptionally well built man with strong, handsome features but no body hair—no hair on his head or limbs, no eyebrows, no pubic hair.

What’s all that yellow stuff? asked one of the seamen.

Hell if I know, replied Nelson.

What do we have here, said the third seaman, a Carlton survivor or a space alien?

Damn, said Nelson, it looks like he’s breathing, noticing faint movement in the man’s chest. Nelson took off his right glove, knelt next to the body and felt the man’s carotid artery. He’s not dead. He’s got a pulse. Nelson took the mobile radio off his belt and depressed the push-to-talk switch. Captain, this man’s alive!

I’m calling a med-evac helicopter now.

Placing the man in the body bag to keep him warm, they zipped it up just enough to cover his torso. On board, the captain was talking on the radio with the pilot of a nearby search and rescue helicopter.

Twenty-minutes later the USCG Eurocopter HH-65 Dolphin arrived and hoisted the rescued man aboard in a basket; then it headed for the only hospital in 50 miles that wasn’t completely destroyed by the hurricane. St. Joseph’s Hospital on Mercy Blvd in Savannah, six miles inland from Warsaw Sound and the mouth of the Wilmington River, was badly damaged by the storm, but it had an emergency generator run by a 2,000 gallon underground propane tank. Most rooms of the six-story structure, except those on the ground floor and basement and those with broken windows still were usable. It served as a temporary facility until police and the National Guard could evacuate casualties to cities not devastated by the storm.

Two Savannah police officers helping out at the hospital took the bald man’s body off the helicopter on the impromptu helipad near the hospital’s front door. They placed it on a stretcher and maneuvered it around the broken glass and downed tree limbs littering the entrance. Inside, the hospital lobby was packed with people needing medical attention and with other first responders doing what they could to help the overwhelmed hospital staff.

Where do you want this one? the police officer at the front of the stretcher asked.

Follow me, Dr. Emma Harris responded. She led the two police officers carrying the stretcher up the steps to the second floor. None of the elevators worked on emergency generator power. Walking in front of them down the hall she looked for a room that wasn’t filled with patients. Finding one, just vacated by a patient who died, she said, Put him on the cot in the corner, please.

The officers placed the stretcher on the floor, unzipped the body bag and lifted the nude man onto the empty cot.

What’s with this yellow stuff? one of the policemen said with astonishment.

Harris examined it before covering the man with a blanket. Don’t know, but he’s alive. Maybe he can tell us when he wakes up. If he’s from the Carlton, this yellow stuff could be something from the ship and could explain why he has no hair. Something might have caught fire and he got covered with a fire suppressant.

A volunteer nurse’s aide entered the room looking for Emma. There you are. They’re calling for you downstairs, she said. Six more incoming; and one of them looks like she’ll need a leg amputated.

Patricia, would you please take this man’s vitals; clean him up, put a gown on him and make him as comfortable as you can under the circumstances? The volunteer nodded; Emma and the two police officers departed, leaving Rion unconscious on a cot, light years away from a planet that no longer existed.

4

Savannah, Georgia

RION had hardly moved a muscle since the two policemen had placed him on the stretcher 10 hours before. Since then, a nurse had attached an I.V. to his arm with fluids and nourishment and had checked his vital signs several times. The clipboard leaning against the wall beside Rion described him as:

John Doe, 6’2" male, approximately 195 lbs. Green eyes. No hair (anywhere). Injuries: unknown. Patient found on Williamson Island. Possible survivor of USS Carlton. Patient’s skin pale gray with blotches of yellow when rescued, possible fire retardant. Skin color slowly returning to normal. Saline-plus I.V. administered at 10:00AM. No medications prescribed (or available).

Rion, semiconscious, lying on his back, opened his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. A pattern caused by water damage looked like the figure of a man holding something above his head. Ryan closed his eyes and his mind drifted back to different ceiling he remembered.

* * *

Rion stood in the back of the 800-year-old Dari Supreme Council chamber in Betin, the capital of Dari on the planet Auria. He looked up at the faded murals on the domed ceiling depicting great leaders from Dari’s past. Full-length paintings of six men and one woman radiated out from the center of the dome from head to foot like spokes on a wheel. Four sculptured columns supporting the dome, their exterior the most recent modification to the chamber, told the stories of the four major periods in Dari’s history—the age of exploration, the age of conquest, the age of industrialization and the age of space travel.

Rion knew the stories of those depicted in the murals well. They were engrained in the cultural, political, and military life of Dari; and he was reminded of them whenever he came to the chamber to visit his father Menor, Lord High Minister of Dari and Chairman of the Council. One section of the mural in particular always caught Rion’s attention. The 200 year-old painting was the least faded because it was over 600 years younger than the others. It wasn’t the visible mural, however, that interested Rion; it was the one beneath it that had been painted over.

No explanation identifying the leader who had been painted over or why remained in Dari’s history or literature. When Rion, on one of his first visits to the imposing structure as a young boy, had asked his father about the original, Menor told his son that records kept by the chamber’s builder indicated that section of the ceiling had sustained severe water damage shortly after the mural had been completed, rendering the leader depicted unrecognizable. The artist died shortly afterward and the mural went unrepaired. Who it was, was lost to time; there were several possibilities. When Rion asked Menor why it had taken so long to paint over that section, Menor said that it had remained unfinished for centuries as a tribute to the original painter, considered Dari’s greatest artist.

Rion never quite believed Menor’s explanation because growing up he heard numerous conflicting stories. The most popular of these, and most likely the correct one, was that the original painting was of Kana, the Dari leader who had defeated the indigenous inhabitants of the continent and settled it. Kana and the first settlers worshiped a supreme deity who they believed had created Auria and handed down his laws to Dari’s ancestors. The painting supposedly showed Kana holding a sword high in one hand and the bloody, severed head of a tribal leader in the other as he looked up at a beam of light shining down on him believed to be from the deity.

Deity worship or any form of religion no longer existed in Dari and all but the most remote regions of Auria. Scientific discoveries had long replaced them as sources for the explanation of life and the Universe. Deity worship hadn’t been banned outright. Over the past two centuries, it simply had withered away with help from those in and out of government that believed it no longer was relevant, and it undercut the authority of the state. Over time, as Dari’s written history and literature were converted to digital files, successive Dari leaders directed the removal of all references to supreme beings. Several generations of Darians had never been taught or even read about one. All they knew were stories whispered to them in the night and told to them by old women. Now, what Rion knew was that his curiosity about the mural would never be satisfied.

The cacophony of voices, as Council members shouted at Lord High Minister Menor and each other, brought Rion back to the moment. They wanted to be told the scientists were wrong, that it was all a mistake, Auria wasn’t destined to collide with Rona, the errant moon of Gibo; but it was, and they knew no one could do anything about it. Experts had argued with each other about how to prevent the catastrophe until the truth was undeniable. An asteroid, one twentieth its size, had struck Rona, already in an unstable elliptical orbit, and put it on course for collision with Auria. No nuclear or laser weapons that existed on Auria provided sufficient power to divert, delay or destroy Rona. In less than an Aurian year, total extinction of all life and destruction of the planet were inevitable.

Rion and Sena weren’t there to tell them differently. They were there to give them hope of another kind, that there was a way to save their species from total extinction. Nevertheless, Rion did not expect a warm reception; all but two Aurians would still perish.

Sena looked at Rion and smiled. The task before them wasn’t a pleasant or an easy one; but she wasn’t worried about how the Council would react to what they would say or what would happen when their world ended. All she was thinking about at that moment was how much she loved him and how happy they had been together for the past seven years.

When Menor was unable to quiet the assembly, Rion and Sena ascended the rostrum. Seeing them, Council members began to quiet. It was Rion and Sena they had come to hear.

Menor introduced them, and gradually the Council members fell silent. You all know Rion and Sena, said Menor; from the Dari Spaceflight Research Facility. They’re here to talk about the proposal you all received on your PCDs before this meeting.

Rion spoke first. We can do nothing to save Auria; but with your help we might save our species. Sending time capsules out that one day might tell other civilizations who we were and what we accomplished is a noble goal, but it’s not sufficient. We can send out as many of them as you like, but to what purpose? Even if other civilizations one day find them, our species will be long extinct, just an echo in the background noise of the Universe. Why not keep our species alive to personally tell our story to others? For several years now, under the authority of this Council, we have been working on a matter-antimatter drive for an interstellar spacecraft. Part of that project, led by my mate Sena, has been the perfection of a method of indefinite suspended animation to preserve life through the light-years of travel it will take to find a habitable planet. So far, we have built only a prototype of the spacecraft and successfully tested the new suspended animation process on animals, but we are confident it will work.

How many Darians could this spacecraft save? shouted a council member.

If you read what I sent you, you know that if we had several years to build the spacecraft we could take many; however, given the time we have left we will only be able to build one that would accommodate one male and one female chosen by this Council or whomever you delegate that decision to.

What good is that; how can just two survive? came a sarcastic comment from a Council member. Lessons from the past tell us it would take hundreds to ensure the survival of a few when exploring new lands.

Another Council member spoke up. The odds of success for such a mission are incalculable.

Rion answered. True, but incalculable odds are better than none. The best opportunity would be to find another planet with a civilization not unlike our own.

But you have no idea whatsoever if such a planet exists. How would you even know in what direction to point the spacecraft? a junior member of the Council argued.

All that is explained in the file on your PCDs, Rion replied. It’s a question of probability.

Sena stood, raised her arms and her voice as the Council chamber again became consumed