The Message

By Jeff Lefler

In a world of advancing technology more is known about the universe
than ever before. There are billions of galaxies. There are billions
of earth-like planets and some of them are not very far away.
After years of research at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a ship
has been constructed with the hope of it being able to reach one
of these earth-like planets. But who will make the journey? Who will
take the risk? What will they find and how will it change things on
planet earth? Uncertain of the ships fate long after its departure,
many wait in anticipation for the message.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496920799

Book preview

PROLOGUE

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The alarm clock sounded, and John quickly turned over to silence it. He quietly shifted to the side of the bed, trying not to wake up his pregnant wife. She reached over and gently grabbed his arm. She hadn’t slept well either. The due date of their first child was only weeks away.

Did you get any sleep last night, she quietly whispered, knowing that Apollo is finally ready for takeoff?

Are you kidding? John said as he leaned closer. Apollo is going to the moon. We are finally going to the moon! John kissed his wife and whispered for her to go back to sleep.

In what seemed like an eternity, John drove the short distance to the NASA launch site at Kennedy Space Station. He took one last look at Apollo as he arrived at the site and entered the building. The beautiful spaceship lay in wait, pointed to the heavens, ready to make her historic journey. As NASA launch director, John would now only see Apollo on the on-screen video until it made its historic return from the moon landing.

After hours of final system checks, the clock ticking just past noon, launch time was less than an hour away. John, like everyone else, was trying to force down some lunch even though he was too nervous to eat. As he sat at his desk confirming testing reports from his test director, he was approached by someone from his support team.

John, she said, you have an urgent phone call from your wife.

John quickly grew anxious, put down his sandwich, and picked up his phone.

Honey, it’s happening! she said. She paused midsentence for a moment as a contraction came. The baby is coming today!

John, mixed up in emotions between the shuttle launch and the birth of his first baby, didn’t know what to say.

Sweetheart, sweetheart, I am so excited! But … he hesitated, partly because he was overwhelmed with emotion and partly because he knew he could not leave. But I can’t make it right now. Shuttle launch is in less than one hour.

I know, honey! I know. Susan is with me right now, and we are leaving for the hospital. I understand you can’t leave the launch site. Just meet me at the hospital as soon as you can.

John’s wife had always been supportive of his love for space and his duty to NASA. Her understanding came from many late nights, lone dinners, and one-way conversations on the progress of the NASA space mission. She knew how dedicated he was to his work, and she was happy for him.

It was 1:19 p.m., July 20, 1969. All checks had been made and shuttle takeoff was approved. The launch clock showed three minutes until takeoff. The command center was quiet. Everyone was focused on the task at hand. John, though distracted by the prospect of his wife giving birth without him there, managed to stay focused on the launch. Final checks were confirmed, the crew was ready, and everything was in line.

John received the go-ahead confirmation from the test director and gave the command to start launch. The jets fired up, the ground began to rumble slightly, and Apollo was off. As the smoke and fire made a trail across the sky above Cape Canaveral, the shuttle climbed higher into the sky, out of view from the Earth, and left the atmosphere. Contact with Apollo was now by radio only.

The shuttle had successfully launched. John, though keenly interested in following every moment of Apollo’s flight, knew he had completed his main task of shuttle launch. His thoughts were now mostly on his wife and baby. Two hours had passed since John’s phone call from his wife. He hoped he could make it to the hospital in time for the birth. His coworkers at the launch site knew the circumstances and encouraged John to leave for the hospital. With Apollo now orbiting the Earth, it wasn’t necessary for John to be there. He confirmed everything was under control and quickly left for the hospital.

As John arrived at the hospital, images of what the baby might look like flashed in his mind. Would it be a boy or a girl? Would the baby have blue eyes like his wife’s or brown eyes like his? John was directed to the room where his wife waited. As he approached the room, overwhelmed with emotions of the birth of his first baby, he realized that they had not even decided on a name yet. He entered the room and found his wife with their new born baby in her arms. He had missed the birth. Tears began to well up in his eyes as he looked upon his wife and newborn child. He hadn’t been there for them when they needed him. He hadn’t been there for the birth of his child. Bending down on one knee beside the bed, he looked at his wife and then the baby, and whispered, his voice cracking, I’m so sorry, honey. I wish I could have been here.

She quickly wiped away his tears, grabbed his hand, and brought it toward the baby, resting it on the side of the baby’s face. Looking lovingly into John’s eyes, she calmed his worries and brought him peace. She gently whispered that this was their son and that they would call him David.

THE BEGINNING

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Wearing torn, worn-out shorts, a battered T-shirt, and bare feet, Moriah lounged out on the couch, his guitar in hand. He finished strumming a song and then froze for a moment, letting the music fade out until there was complete silence. He sat back for a moment, smiled, and then began to play an eloquent, classical rendition of Happy Birthday.

Happy birthday to me … Happy birthday to me … Happy birthday, dear Moriah … Happy birthday to me. He continued playing, his fingers picking at the guitar as if it was an extension of his body.

He stood up off the couch, put his guitar in a stand nearby, walked over to the console, and sat down. Looking at the computer screen, he thought to himself as he grimaced, This may be the best birthday yet.

He selected Flight Plan from the computer’s menu and read over the resulting image: Calendar Year: 2050, Mission Year: 35, Distance Traveled: 12.9 Light-Years. He looked more closely at the detail on the flight-plan map and could see that he was only twenty-two days away from reaching Earth 2.

He pressed on the Systems Check button, and a message he had seen often indicating that all systems were functioning properly showed on the screen.

I am almost there … I am almost there, Moriah said to himself. Yes … Happy birthday to me: I am almost there. Moriah sat back in the chair as he thought more deeply about it. It had been thirty-five years. He had been through so much. But yes, finally, he was almost there.

He pondered over his journey, and he thought about Merk, Sigourney, Lexy, and his family. So much had happened that no one else knew about. He stood up and started walking back to the center of the ship. He flopped himself down on the couch just for a moment. "What was I thinking? I have to tell people. People have to hear this story! They have to know how it all happened. They will want to know how it all happened."

Moriah stood up quickly and went back to the computer at the console. He didn’t have much time … only twenty-two days. He looked at the computer and selected New Message. A blank screen appeared. I have to start from the very beginning, he thought to himself. I have to tell them everything. He paused for a moment in thought as he looked at the keyboard and then began typing away …

CHAPTER 1

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It’s been thirty-five years since I have seen or spoken to anyone—back when I was only twenty-two years old. Since then, I’ve had the best times of my life and the worst times of my life—all while alone. But there’s not much time left now. In just a few weeks, I’ll finally be there.

There are some who say it’s the journey, not the destination. But for me, it’s the journey and the destination. How did I get here? That’s the reason I am writing this. It’s been thirty-five years, and I have just realized, just now, that after all I have been through, after all I am going to go through, I need to tell people my story! After all, this has been the greatest journey anyone has ever made. This is like our first trip to space or our first steps on the moon but much, much more important! This will affect human life forever! This will be in the history books. People will want to know how it all began and what happened along the way.

There are a lot of things that got me here—many people, conversations, discoveries, and events that, all put together, put me on the path to where I am. They are the reason I am here. This didn’t start just thirty-five years ago; it started much earlier than that.

There may be things I’ll write about that you don’t think are important. But they were important to me; they are important to me. There are definitely accomplishments and regrets. I’ve had a long time to reflect on those things. If ever anyone had time to really think about their life, really reflect on what is important to them, what they are proud of and what they would change, it is me.

I can’t tell you about everything—there is so much to write about and so little time. But I’ll do my best.

So here it goes—here’s my story.

Since I was a young boy, I loved to hear my father tell me the story of my grandfather’s launch of the space shuttle Apollo. Yeah, my grandfather was there. I guess maybe it was my grandfather who started all of this—my love and passion for space, for discovery; my need to know what is out there beyond Earth, beyond our solar system, beyond our galaxy. Maybe if he hadn’t been so passionate about space exploration, my father wouldn’t be. And if my father wasn’t so passionate about space exploration, maybe I wouldn’t be either.

On one of many nights when I was a young boy, my father looked at a picture on the ledge just above my bed. I caught him looking, and so, just as excitedly as I usually did, I asked him to tell me—again—the story of the Apollo shuttle launch. He smiled as he looked down at me; he had known it was coming. He took the picture from the ledge above my bed and pointed to his father surrounded by engineers and the shuttle crew with Apollo and the launch site in the background …

This was the day I was born, David told Moriah. "Back then, no one had been to the moon. We only looked upon it. For so long, it seemed so far away. Space was something that no one had really seen before. Not like we see it now, anyway. It was out there, and we could gaze upon it, but to go there—to go there was a different story.

"At the time, there was a race to the moon going on. We wanted to have people walk on the moon by the end of the decade—before 1970. For years it was our major focus. There were many preparations and things that had to be done. Many, many people put in endless hours to achieve this goal. And your grandfather—he was one of those people.

"After years and years of preparation, the time finally came to send people on a shuttle and have them land on the moon. It would be the ultimate discovery of our time!

"Grandpa told me that everyone was nervous and excited, as you can imagine. Everyone in the world was watching. Everyone wanted to know if we could make it and what we would find. The night before the launch, Grandpa could barely sleep. He just tossed and turned all night. It was better than Christmas, he would say. When morning finally came, Grandpa got up really early to go and make sure everything was ready for the launch. They had all sorts of tests to do. They had to get the pilots in their suits. They had to check all the computers and make sure everything was ready to go. Your grandpa was in charge, so he checked everything again and again. They couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong. Everything had to be perfect. He had a lot of people helping him test everything and make sure everything was working properly.

After hours of test after test and check after check, when everyone was finally ready, Grandpa said they could start the clock countdown to takeoff. Can you imagine, Moriah, what it would feel like to be the one who got to give the orders to start the countdown! Even to be there as the clock counted down—ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two one … and then blastoff. When Apollo started to take off, Grandpa said you could feel the ground rumble. David patted the bed to create a rumbling vibration for Moriah just as his father always had done when he told the story to David. It was something Moriah had grown to expect during the story—and he giggled and perked up in excitement whenever his father did it.

They sat in the big computer room, and everyone watched the ship take off, Moriah’s father continued. "Someone said, ‘We have liftoff.’ Then, when the shuttle reached outer space, everyone began to clap, cheer, and hug each other. They did it, Moriah. They launched the ship—Grandpa launched the ship. And then it eventually made it to the moon and became the biggest space discovery of its time. Grandpa, and others, had dreamed of someday reaching the moon. And now … now they had finally done it."

That’s my favorite part, Moriah jumped in. He showed his father a picture he had drawn. The spaceship was in the background, ready for flight. Below the launch site were the astronauts in their flight suits. Around them were all the people who helped with the launch and, in the center, Grandpa with Grandma holding a baby in her arms.

David looked at the picture and smiled. He put it on the ledge with the other picture and tucked Moriah into bed. He stroked Moriah’s forehead, gave him a hug, and then kissed his cheek. I’m so proud of you, he whispered in Moriah’s ear. He turned off the light, left the room, and closed the door, leaving it open just a crack.

I’ll never forget what happened that day. It was the day my father was born. It was the day we first launched to the moon: July 20, 1969. That day meant everything. My dad told me that story hundreds of times. He never got tired of telling it, and I never got tired of hearing it. Every time he told me the story, it was as if I was right there with my grandfather, counting down to blastoff. Now you see where I get my love of space. It started with my grandfather. He loved space, my father loves space, and I love space. Ever since I can remember, that’s all I wanted to do—just learn about space. I wanted to learn everything there was to know. I wanted to see everything there was to see. When other kids wanted to go to baseball games, ride bikes, or play video games, I just wanted to go look at the stars and planets with my dad. I could look at them again and again, always hoping to learn something new or see a little further or more clearly. We were lucky to live where we did. Often, my dad would take me just out of town to look at the stars and planets …

It was darker out here than in the city. Moriah loved getting far enough from the city lights that you could see the expanse of the stars clearly. Moriah enjoyed the ride with his dad to Angeles National Forest not far from their home in Pasadena. His dad had been bringing him here for quite a few years now—since even before he knew how to walk. They parked the car in the familiar spot and walked a short distance into the field where they had been so many times before. Moriah’s father took the telescope out of the case and carefully set it up on the tripod. He looked to the sky and carefully positioned it, looking through it for a few moments as he made small adjustments, finally bringing it to rest at a certain point. His dad stepped away from the telescope, and Moriah moved into position to look through. He could see countless stars surrounding the planet his father had focused on. Moriah recognized it as Venus.

Venus wasn’t hard to distinguish from the others—other than the moon, it was the brightest natural object in the sky. Venus was most bright shortly before sunrise and after sunset. That was the reason ancient cultures referred to Venus as the Morning and the Evening Star. Moriah knew everything about Venus—that it was an inferior planet from Earth, and so it never appeared to be far from the sun. It was very similar to the Earth in size and gravity, and it was the closest planet to Earth. That’s why Venus was called Earth’s sister planet. But Venus was way too hot to have people on it—it was the hottest planet in the solar system at over 800 degrees Fahrenheit. If it wasn’t so hot, maybe humans could have tried to go there someday. Moriah enjoyed looking at the planet every time his father brought him here, despite the fact that he had seen it so often. After Moriah had spent a few minutes looking into the telescope, his father navigated it to other planets. At this time of the year, they could also see Mars and Saturn very clearly. Moriah was almost good enough to find the planets on his own, and sometimes he did, with a little help from his dad.

Within a few minutes of navigating, Moriah gazed upon Saturn through the lens of the telescope. He knew that the rings of Saturn were made of clumps of water ice, some dust, and other chemicals that orbit around the planet. He knew that there were many rings around Saturn, and that the farthest ones from the planet were hundreds of thousands of miles from the center of the planet. At age nine, he couldn’t really understand how far this was, but he knew it was a lot farther than driving to Mount Rushmore—and that was very far.

He knew he needed a telescope to see that far away. The rings looked so small, but he knew they were so big.

Dad, Moriah asked as he looked through the telescope, what is after the planets in our solar system? How far does it go? What else is out there? Does the telescope show everything we can see? How does it stop? Is there a wall? Is it a bubble?

David knew that the trips to Angeles National Forest with the telescope weren’t going to satisfy Moriah anymore. For years he had been happy to look at the planets through the small telescope and learn about them. But now he had seen enough of the close stars and planets. Moriah understood our solar system, and he knew all there was to know about the planets in it. But now he was starting to ask some of the questions David and his coworkers asked themselves every day: How far does it go? What else is out there?

David looked at Moriah, proud of him for knowing so much about the planets and solar system we live in, but knowing that he needed more. I think it’s time that I took you to work with me, Moriah. There is a much larger telescope there. We can look at things farther away, and I can teach you more about what is out there. Tomorrow I am going to take you to the lab and show some of what we know is out there.

I remember how excited I was when my dad told me that. I couldn’t sleep that night and could barely make it through school the next day. That was my first of many trips to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where my dad worked. I spent many hours over the next thirteen years at the lab. It was where I first met Merk and Sigourney, where I learned a lot of what I know now—and, of course, the last place I visited before leaving on this mission. I’ll never forget that day. It all started when my dad picked me up early from school as planned. I was going to miss some school, but my dad and I thought about it more as a field trip. A field trip just for me …

They drove through the streets of Pasadena until they arrived at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory where David worked. Moriah could see the many buildings that were all part of the laboratory. Most of them looked like normal buildings on the outside, but he knew they weren’t normal at all. The laboratory was where they built robots to travel to other planets to investigate them and send information back to Earth. His father had talked about his workplace. He also talked a lot about Merk and Sigourney. Now Moriah would get to see it for himself.

David parked in his usual reserved spot close to the door. They entered the building and passed by the security desk. David signed a paper and got an official pass that he placed around Moriah’s neck. Moriah felt like he was important and belonged there.

After turning down a few hallways and walking down a corridor, they approached a door that was locked. David motioned his key pass in front of the scanner, and the door opened to a large room where several people were looking at computers and talking. Moriah felt a little insecure but safe with his dad’s arm around him.

They walked across part of the room and past some computers and gadgets that looked strange to Moriah. As they approached, two people turned around.

Sigourney, Merk, I would like you to meet my son, Moriah.

Hello, Moriah. Sigourney smiled warmly. "We have heard lots of great things about you from your

Reviews for The Message

[arkhamreviews · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I was disappointed with this one. I remembered it as being one of the better stories in the series but on reread it was rather tedious. So much time is devoted to Cassie's moral dilemma about how morphing into intelligent creatures is as bad as being a Yeerk (note: the two things are totally different).There is also a lot of silliness this time around, like when the Animorphs get directions from a whale (a creature that the dolphins automatically know as a Great One). Previous books aimed to realism in the portrayal of animal instincts. The way that the sea mammals behaved (such as dolphins only ever wanting to play) seemed to fly in the face about that.However, the book did do a good job of introducing Cassie and it made for nice variety to have such an introverted narrative voice. Her motivation for fighting the Yeerks was very different from the previous three characters but seemed to suit her very well (despite, in my own opinion, lacking the emotional weight of Jake or Rachel's). The story also introduced Ax who I remember as being a very fun character. I'm looking forward to reading book 8 again to get the first story told from his perspective.All in all, probably my least favourite story so far. Hopefully book 5 is more entertaining.

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The fourth book sees the introduction of a new character. This is largely a plotty book, rather than character development, this time, though Cassie does struggle with a couple of ethical questions. They don't seem quite convincing to me -- but it makes sense that she does ask questions, so it didn't bother me too much. It was nice to read a book in which the morphing is mostly fun and playful, and in which all of earth seems to join in on the side against the Yeerks. It's a little too touchy-feely, but with Cassie as the narrator, it's okay. She isn't really my favourite character, so that's probably why I liked this book a little less.

One thing that does get tiresome is the formula for the very first chapter. They state their names, tell you they can't tell you a lot of stuff, reintroduce morphing... I can see why, it allows people to join in mid-series, but at the same time, it gets irritating, especially when you're reading the books all at once.

[benuathanasia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Cassie-centric book that introduces Prince Ax (Elfangor's little brother). Cassie's moralism was an interesting insight into her as a person (as well as her growth throughout the book as she has to balance the greater good with individual rights) and Ax's illustrations of exactly what the Animorphs are fighting for added heightened tension to the underlying conflict. Despite the amount of thinking about greater issues that went on in this book, it was very action-heavy at its climax (both the major and minor climaxes), but stilled allowed quite a bit of time for fun and games and just messing around with morphing.

[cheryl_in_cc_nv · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A short comment for every book of the series until I get a chance to re-read them. All three of my sons and I loved this series and read every single book - I even bought every single book (most, but not all, used; some through school book sales). I'm excited to re-read them to see how the five main characters develop and to watch all the different transformations again.

[mutantpudding · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I started out reading these just to see what I never read as a kid but now Im legit into them and need the next book imediatly.