Alien Encounter

By Terry Parker

Have you ever looked at the night sky with its millions of stars and wondered whether there might be something living near one of those stars and looking back?
When an exploratory craft from the planet Gaia picks up a weak, undecipherable signal from a distant backwater planet, the crew decides to take a risk and check it out. What they discover is Earth, a planet populated by the first sentient beings any Gaians have encountered beyond themselves. Even more intriguing, these beings may possess something missing from among the Gaians. The crew makes several attempts to contact and interact with humans, and eventually they find themselves approaching a secret US base located near Alice Springs. The Gaians struggle to work with these beings so unlike themselves, driven by emotion rather than reason and logic—but doing so may be their only hope of returning home.
In this science fiction novel, a crew of explorers from the planet Gaia comes to Earth, where their first contact with humanity demonstrates the power of emotion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Sep 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781504318921

Terry Parker

Terry Parker was born in Yorkshire and has been writing since the age of twelve. He moved from the UK to Australia with his family at fourteen and has served as a naval officer and an IT project manager. This is his first work of fiction. He currently lives in Wahroomga, New South Wales.

Book preview

BOOK 1

PLANET EARTH

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1

CHAPTER

Aliens

C ommander Malmo 6 aboard the Gaian exploratory vessel IEC Reason 3 was frustrated. They had been in deep space for 7 years by earth measures, allocated to a sparse section of the Galaxy in search of sentient life. She was the junior commander of the fleet and therefore had been allocated an area that was unlikely to yield results. For the umpteenth time she surveyed the myriad of sensors that might detect life. Nothing! She would have to return to Gaia empty handed. One more fruitless sweep and then home. The crew had become restless after years in space and yearned for home. and she was painfully aware any further delay could result in serious consequences. She blamed herself of course. This was her first command and her lack of self-confidence was starting to show. Captains were intentionally remote from the crew so they could make unbiased decisions for the good of the service but the downside of the isolation meant that she had to rely on her officers to manage morale. And there was one officer who had questioned her judgement at every turn. She told herself to discard these negative thoughts. After all, Gaians, members of the Interplanetary Exploration Council Service, were trained to control emotion. In fact, excess emotion was a serious crime on Gaia.

What was that? A faint audio noise from their least sophisticated device; a passive audio-phone which was rarely used. Radio waves in the audio spectrum were not expected in deep space. She increased the sensitivity on the device to no avail. Perhaps it was just space noise.

She called her second in command, Leppo 2. Leppo was the most senior male in the Fleet, having risen to the rank of Deputy Commander. He would never be given command of a space vessel but she had come to trust his judgement and they had developed a close working relationship.

Leppo, I think I heard something in sector 7 but whatever it was, it is no longer there. We could go and investigate but Sector 7 is at the extreme end of our search area and we are due to return to Gaia very soon. Do you think we should go and have a look?

Commander, I have come to respect your instinct. It’s worth a try.

Could she extend their journey beyond their allotted period based on what? Her instinct?

What did Leppo mean by instinct? Gaians were logical. If a course of action could not be logically justified, it should be discounted but still she could not eliminate the thought from her mind. It made no sense to follow a weak undecipherable signal when they were already overdue to return to Gaia but Malmo was stubborn. There was no evidence to confirm that the audio was from a sentient planet but despite her Gaian training, she would press on.

Leppo, we will take the risk. Plot a course to sector 7 and call the crew to full alert.

The signal had disappeared and could not be recovered and because it was a single source it could not be triangulated; They would have to steer in the direction of the signal and hope to find its source as they neared Sector 7. This was their last chance at success and Malmo was very aware that each decal (two weeks in earth terms) took them further from Gaia.

It was the Navigating officer, Sofal 9, who identified a planet at the far end of the sector that could possibly support life. They had found Earth and the existence of Sentient Beings. They would be the first Gaians to contact sentient beings other than Gaians

Malmo summoned her officers to advise them of her proposed exploration. Yes, there was sentient life on the planet and it clearly had a technological capability but they had run out of time and needed to conduct a survey of life on the planet as per IEC directive 14.5 (b).

It would be difficult in any circumstances but their limited time would only increase the difficulty and the risk. IEC Directives were very specific. They were not to reveal their presence (That would happen after the survey data was analysed) and any contact with sentient beings was to be minimal.

Malmo had decided on a risky course of action. They would select a remote part of the planet to land. and Malmo would descend to the surface alone and attempt contact with a sentient isolated from the main centres. Reason 3 had the most advanced technology on Gaia including a revolutionary system to temporarily amend DNA, allowing shape-change to match that of the sentients. The system was basically untested and absorbed huge amounts of power and could only be used on a Gaian keyed to its memory. Malmo was that Gaian

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2

CHAPTER

First Encounter

M y name is Jim Stewart and last week I encountered an Alien. She didn’t have a large proboscis, two huge eyes small body and a pronounced forehead. In fact, she looked quite normal.

I was doing field work for my PHD in astronomy on the gibber plain near Cooper Pedy in outback South Australia. My thesis is that the gibber plain which consists of small stones, meteorites and very little vegetation, acts as a huge reflector sending radiation out to the stars. I had been two days into my research with my ears still ringing from a Jimmy Barnes concert in the Alice when it happened.

I love the solitude. The stars are magnificent in the desert-no artificial light. I was idly calculating the distance to the nearest star, Alpha Centuari which is 4.37 light years away or around 80,000 years for an earth satellite to reach it, lost in my own thoughts when I felt a gentle brush through my brain. A gentle but irresistible wave. Perhaps it was the magnificence of the starry night?

And then she walked into my campsite.

I was surprised when she squatted next to my campfire but then she started to speak. You can imagine my shock. At first, I thought I was in a dream; this could not be. She seemed non-aggressive and I listened in paralysed silence. She seemed perfectly at ease with a high-pitched informal style that reminded me of the concert that I had just attended.

I found out later that this was no coincidence.

The first night she arrived without fuss, spoke for a while and left as she came. I was too petrified to respond and spent the next day thinking of nothing else but the twist of fate that had brought her to my campsite, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest civilisation. Who would believe me anyway?

She returned the next night at precisely the same time, 8:00pm under the same panoply of stars. It was strange to think that somewhere out there, millions of light years away, was her home. At this stage, I was convinced that she was not from earth.

By the third visit, I was better prepared and was brave enough to ask her purpose. She replied in that sing-song voice, a little garbled as if she had not quite mastered the physiological requirements for human speech. She explained that she was part of an exploratory task force that had been sent out from her system to investigate the possibility of intelligent life in the universe.

She and her crew had been allocated a very sparse section of the galaxy which held little promise but, as the crew were ready to return to their home planet, they received a short burst of radiation, with a signal in the auditory range indicating an intelligent source.

They had deciphered the language and decided to investigate. Their ship was placed in a stationary orbit around the source of the signal while they studied the inhabitants.

The signal source, as I found out later, originated in Alice Springs, specifically the Jimmy Barnes concert and coincidentally, I was in the middle of the alien survey area not far from the Alice. They could learn the language from the auditory signals but needed to identify the sentient animals that had sent the signal.

They surmised that the animals with the largest population would be dominant and therefore Sentient. She had been genetically modified to match what they thought were the sentient beings so that she would not cause alarm but they had made a mistake. When she realised her error on our first meeting, she decided to make the most of the situation and despite her odd shape, she had decided to gain my trust. She calculated that as I was alone and did not seem aggressive the risk of discovery was minimal. In that, at least where I was concerned, she was correct.

She pulled a small battery sized metal disc from her pouch and asked if she could record our conversation. It seemed to me that her language had improved, if that is what you would call an imitation of Jimmy Barnes, and our conversation became easier each night she visited.

After five days, just before my helicopter pickup was due, she left leaving no trace of her visit. I did not think that I would see again. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I thought of telling my friends of my encounter, but they would probably dismiss it as a strange dream brought on by the loneliness of my situation. Anyway, who would ever believe a story about a Talking Kangaroo?

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3

CHAPTER

The Meeting

M almo returned to her ship despondent but immediately called for meeting with her officers. It was not required for a Commander to explain her actions but Malmo had always been an inclusive Commander and preferred to involve her crew in her decisions.

She started with a very un-Gaian statement. Commanders were not supposed to make mistakes.

I made an error. Our simulation of the audibles were convincing though not native to this part of the world. Unfortunately, the creatures that are most prolific in this area are not sentient and I shocked the one sentient that I found. We will label this creature SC1 (Sentient Creature). Despite his surprise, I took a risk and was able to communicate with him and learn something of their culture. This will surprise you but it appears that the social framework of this planet is paternal. In other words, the females are considered inferior to the males.

She thought that she detected a sense of satisfaction from Leppo. How ridiculous, to think that males could command space vessels or run governments. Or was it?

In retrospect, I now realise that we should have investigated further before we attempted contact, however I have decided on a second plan to make contact. I will travel to the surface again, this time accompanied by Deputy Commander Leppo. I will have to change shape again to match the shape of the Sentients and that will take time that we don’t have. I will therefore undergo the shape change as I travel. Leppo will not shape change and will remain hidden to observe the contact

It was Sofal who responded.

Commander, we respect your judgement but our time is limited and we already have information on the planet. Surely our best course is to return to Gaia and let another mission complete our survey? After all these Sentients have little to offer us. Their technology is primitive and they appear to have little intelligence.

There was always a but when