On fiction: Rendezvous with NECA pt. 1

 Author note: the text of my first submission for the writing course over at WriteAboutDragons, in all its warty glory. I got three reviews of it- they were all kinder than my own, but one did point out similar troubles of (character) description. Anyways, I'll be combing this later. Onwards with the text ...

-:-:-

A mechanical buzz summons her back to life. Hard to discern its source, either the timer, or blood resuming flow through long dormant veins. Aching head otherwise empty, she can’t remember any dream. Such a waste of three months of sleep, but the view outside the ship more than makes up for it. She rises on uncertain feet, muscles yet to adjust to the mock gravity of her spinning ship, sense of balance yet to be restored. Thoughts register- they’ve made it, alive- then vanish, muted by the sight of their destination. She’s one of the first, and maybe among the only, human beings to ever lay eyes on an alien craft.

Enormous; even though still one hundred miles away, it fills the viewport. A rotating torus, three spokes connected to a hub with a three-lobed cylinder behind it. Pipes and wires criss-cross over the craft’s blue-gray surface, an irregular gauze that gives a rugged, almost porous aspect. Shadows born at the interplay of shape and sunlight waver as the object turns on its own axis. It seems alive. Not assembled, rather secreted by some monster hidden in great depths. If jellyfish had skeletons, this is what they’d look like.

Another crewman wakes behind her. Squelches of bare feet against the floor, the sound of hands fumbling for support, then calm. He must have seen what captured her attention.

“My, my. Beats seeing this through telescopes.” David Ballard, the physicist.

She smiles. “Makes even you think about God, doesn’t it?”

“God wouldn’t need spaceships, Ms. Evans.” He props his lithe frame against a wall to her side.

“Of course not, just a soul to search for Him would do.” She turns and looks up into his blue eyes, but he stays focused on the viewport and the space beyond it.

“A god in man’s heart? I might believe in that, but I see no reason to worship such a thing.”

New sounds of activity tell her the others rise from suspended animation. Some must have waited for the initial groggyness to pass before they tried to move. Captain Tarsem Chahal seems unaffected as he confidently exits his capsule. “All right everyone, enough standing around. We have two weeks to take a good look at this thing. Doctor Dezaki, begin the physicals for the crew. Myself and doctor Ballard will go first.”

-:-:-

“But why the ecliptic?” Pavel Gubarev says, as he places a newly opened jar of protein sludge on the table.
“Of all angles it could have, it has one that puts it on the same orbital plane as Earth. That’s no coincidence, I tell you.”

The others seem content to try and savor their first meal after months of stasis. Candy-colored, fruity flavored. She’d rather have a steak right now.

Provoked by the silence, he continues. “We first saw this thing ten years ago. If it’s as dead as everyone wants to think it is, then it will just follow its parabolic path around the Sun, and it’s ten years more until it passes Saturn’s orbit. Yet here we are, strapped to the biggest nuclear firecracker ever, rushing to meet it before it gets to perihelion.”

“I take offense at ‘nuclear fire-cracker”, Ballard says. “That isn’t what our fusion engine is.”

“I’m sure you could turn it into one.”

Ballard stays silent.

“We’re here in this together, all of us,” Gubarev continues, “so let’s be honest with each other. Whatever the public was told, you all suspect what I’m saying might be true. I’m just the guy hired for maps and maintenance, so I wouldn’t know. But you Captain? Or you, Ballard? If this thing is … you know, hostile, what do we do?”

“Obey the chain of command, for one,” captain Chahal says. “We’re here to explore. We report to Earth what we find, and we adapt as necessary. That is the mission and it hasn’t changed.”

Gubarev mutters something, but drops the conversation. Not content with the answer. Nor, for that matter, is she, but pressing the issue appears fruitless. Probably, hopefully, it is moot, anyway.

When first discovered, in 2016, NECA attracted attention simply by being a new object passing through the solar system. Soon after though it truly set the world ablaze. First, through its size, much larger than any comet. Second, its parabolic orbit almost exactly inside the Earth’s ecliptic plane, also uncommon. Third, its bizarre shape which suggested technology, not nature, had created it. And then … nothing. As cold as the space surrounding it, and just as silent. Dead.

“How about we speak of happier things,” Jonathan Hendrix, the communications officer, says. “Three cheers for doctor Dezaki and her capsules for keeping us alive-” he turns to Gubarev, “- and sane.”

Dezaki fidgets in her seat. “The blood samples aren’t yet fully t-”

“Relax doc, I feel fine. Cheers!”

Captain Chahal finishes his shake. “Do you deem the crew apt to begin work inside our ship?”

Dezaki nods.

“In that case, Yang, Gubarev, prepare the mapping satellite for NECA orbit. I’d hate it if we don’t find a way in, as, I’m sure, doctors Evans and Ballard would.”

Gubarev grumbles. “I’d like to know which way that thing’s engines point.”

-:-:-

She checks on her collection of micro-organisms. Algae, bacteria, fungi, and something she found herself, self replicating clay crystals from two miles deep inside a cave in Georgia. The microscopic menagerie rests, frozen, in cabinets inside the med/bio laboratory, a representative of life on Earth- and its possible precursors-, its role here much like a canary in old mines. A test of whatever NECA holds, to ascertain potential impact on Earth’s biosphere.

In the medical portion of the lab, Doctor Dezaki re-examines blood samples. Currently, one labelled ‘Hayley Evans’. Her blood, but she’s lost curiosity about the results. If anything, concern for Dezaki has replaced it; the Japanese doctor repeats analyses obsessively, apparently still unsure whether to trust her own suspended animation devices. Then again, a lot on the ship was built in haste. Like going to the Moon in only ten years must have been. But NECA was further away, and hinted at a stronger deadline.

A clock shows the time to perihelion. The closest point of their- and NECA’s- orbit to the Sun, also the point of greatest speed. And, most important, the place where rocket maneuvers are the most efficient. Their mission plan relied on that bonus physical law provides, or else they couldn’t return to Earth. Most of their propellant reserves were needed to catch up to NECA. Two weeks, the clock indicates. Two weeks before they have to leave. Two weeks to find out if NECA planned a similar maneuver.

Jonathan Hendrix enters the lab. “Ms. Evans, could I talk to you for a moment?” He gestures for her to follow him.

“Any signal?” she asks, as they find themselves outside the laboratory.

“We detected nothing. Neither did Earth. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.” He looks around. “If- when- we get things out of NECA, you will inform me first of any results of your tests.”

A frown. “I thought we were here to conduct open research.”

“You scientists might think that, but the real world is messier.”

His condescension annoys her, but she keeps calm. “If we can’t trust each other, how do we hope to make it back to Earth?”

“I believe everyone wants to get back home, wherever they call home, that is, but I wouldn’t trust any of the others, especially Gubarev and that stuck up Ballard brit. Our country comes first, Ms. Evans, remember that. Everyone else will think the same of theirs. If you find anything, I’ll be the one to tell you how much the others need to know.”

She would protest, but the sound system interrupts her. “This is the captain. I hope the labs are ready, we have interesting news.”

The entire crew gathers to the control room, where a flat horizontal screen displays a sequence of high-res photographs taken from Sfetnik, the mapping satellite now placed in orbit around NECA. The images show parts of the torus’ inner side, and the captain zooms in on one of them, to reveal a swirl in the metal gauze covering it. The vortex of tubes has a large gap in its center, and what appears to be a lid or an airlock.

A way in.