A Colony on Mars (31 page)

. Finally the alien holding their translator machine smiled at the others and gave the thumbs up. He must have indicated, “Got it.” The leader of the group was then handed the device by the technician, who had been working with it. The leader spoke into the machine is his native voice and the machine translated what he said into imperfect English. “We from planet #######, we come peaceful. Explore #######. What planet you from?”

Fred did not have a chance to respond, a smal intercom speaker affixed to the wall of the orbiter came on. “This Captain Cummings of the space ship Arton Four.” The alien machine did not translate this but all three aliens looked up at the box on the wal , indicating they had heard the noise but their translator couldn't handle the translation. Alvin retrieved his translator and repeated, “This Captain Cummings of the space ship Arton Four.” Alvin's machine translated that immediately. The alien continued, “Thank You, we need new planet, our planet break up, loose orbit looking for home for our people.” “Any other planet this system make home for many people?” “No, Fred answered these planets al dead we use for mining operation.” “You have room on your planet for more people?” “No, too many people now,” said Fred” hungry people we need more planet also. “OK we ask other ship visit your planet soon? Maybe we can help you people. If we find more good planet than we need we tell you people. Our ship very fast, go warp 4.” The alien turned to leave, “Wait, how many people you have need home for?” “Our planet now has four mil ion people and it is no bigger than this dead planet here.” Fred pulled out a copy of a chart of planets that had been discovered from the observatory on Arton that showed the 105 other planets worth exploring someday. “Is your planet on this chart?”

The alien studied the chart for a minute. “Yes, Yes, Our planet circle this sun right here, that our planet see.” The alien pointed to a planet six or so light years from Mars. “Fred thought these poor guys are a year and a half from home already at warp 4.

Fred also noticed that the quality of output from their translator had suddenly improved. Fred had started to say “Sorry I can't help you when the intercom from Arton Four kicked in. “This is Captain Cummings again, you did a wonderful job ensign Jones now please direct these people over to the Four. Tel them I will have the door open for them to fly their Shuttle right on board and tell them I wil be expecting them. “What was that noise?” The Alien asked.

“That was the intercom from the second ship behind us in orbit. My Captain is on that ship and wants to talk to you.” The alien thanked Fred, disappeared through the air lock broke connection. As the alien shuttle approached the Four a gaping hole appeared as the boarding lock opened. The alien commander never hesitated, he flew his craft right into the Arton Four. Captain Cummings had rigged his office so that everything said on the ship was being transmitted to the planet.

Cummings started out by saying that he did not have a translation machine so they would have to use the one the alien had. Actually Cummings did have one that had become programmed to the alien's language during the last five hours. Cummings figured that two translation machines in operation would just confuse matters. The alien's machine said “Greetings, my name is

##### #########, of the planet ########## (that is the way Cummings translator worked also, if there was no word for what was being said it would just beep, this one clicked.) We are unarmed and come in peace, Our ship carries no weapons not even for our defense.” “I know said Cummings that is why I am talking with you. We have already scanned your ship and found it clean.” “We scanned your ships and the mining colony down there and found them clean also. Where do your miners stay, underground? If you can breath the atmosphere on this ship you sure couldn't breath the air on that planet.”

“Yes the miners are housed in an underground airtight cavern.” “Did you listen in on my conversation with ensign Fred? If you did then you know why we are here. We are disparate people, we have more people than we can feed, many are dying from starvation. We are not and never have been aggressive people. We are what you would call pacifists. The only way that I have of proving this to you is our literature which you can't read at the moment and our videos. You can watch thousands of hours of our videos and never see a weapon of any kind.” About that time a shuttle from the planet flew into the landing bay.

“Please come with me gentlemen, we are going to take a little trip to the planet. If you have any others you would like to bring along we can pick them up at your ship on the way down.” “How many more does your shuttle carry?” Each shuttle holds sixty passengers how many shuttles do you require?” “First lets just us go to your planet then we can send for others.” After boarding the shuttle the two other aliens handed their translators to the leader who plugged them into his and pressed a button on his. Al three translators began to hum. In less a minute the leader had apparently updated the other two translators.

CHAPTER – Dedovians visit Mars March 2176

“I never expected anything like this the alien said when he stepped out of the elevator in the Utility cavern and onto the waiting bus. They were whisk away through the Ocean cavern, then a slight detour through the vineyards in the Hour Glass cavern to New Phoenix. When they got off at the old Federal building in New Phoenix all of the leaders of Mars were waiting for them. They had all either heard or been briefed on what the alien had to say. “If what you have to say is true and so far we have every reason to believe that it is perhaps we can help you. Here is our situation.” He described the destruction of Earth, and the loss of their nine bil ion people. He explained that the population of Mars had been depleted to help with the re population of our home planet. He told them that either Mars, Earth or Arton could accommodate their entire population. Our question for you is how fast you could move people to Arton and how fast could those people learn our language.”

The Alien studied the chart, did some computations then announced, “I make it to be a little under one light year from ####### to Arton. We have thirty ships, capable of Warp speeds They can each transport 864 passengers. With no cargo and over crowing we could maybe take 2,000 per trip. A round trip would take by your calender, about five of your months. That would only be 60,000 of our people in one of your years. By making new ship production our only priority, we could possibly move a little over one mil ion of our people to Arton, and then if our planet remains viable for another fifteen of your years.”

You must understand that we never entertained any hope of getting all of our people off of Our planet. Our aim was to establish a significant presence on some other planet in order to preserve our race.”

Captain Cummings put in, “the people that you transport wil not be able to remain on Arton indefinitely, but Arton is still closer to your home planet than it is to our home planet of Earth. Arton would be just a temporary place for your people to wait for transportation to Earth. There is someone here that I want you to meet. Gil come up here.” A little Artonian stepped forward and held out his hand to the alien. “These people have said much but let me be the first to say “Welcome to Mars.” A dead silence fel over the crowed. Gil had just addressed the alien in his native tung. “Captain Cummings stammered “Where and how did you learn their language, Gil?” “Oh, I am not yet proficient in their language yet but I have been listening to every word that has they have said since they arrived and I have picked up enough to say a few simple things, it would probably take me more than a week to become proficient. How did you think that all of us learned your language as quickly as we did? There are some things that Artonians are better at than humans are . Language just happens to be one of them. You might just say that Artonians have a faculty for languages.”

Gil then addressed the alien “ You have probably guessed that I am a native of the planet Arton. There are about as many humans on Arton as there natives. Soon I wil be able to speak your language fluently. Our brains are arranged differently than the human brain. The temporal lobe of our brains is almost three times the size of the temporal lobe in the human brain. The Frontal Lobe however is half the size of the frontal lobe of the human brain. In a nutshell this means that humans are better than us at reasoning and problem solving and we are better at languages and speech. Humans show more individuality.” Gil spoke his later words in English and they went through the translator machine.

Captain Horn of Arton Three spoke into the translator. “ We only have four craft capable of Warp speed but they can carry up to five thousand people at a time if we carry no cargo and put atmosphere into the cargo holds. Our ships are larger than yours and are capable of speeds up to Warp eleven. How long do you have before your planet is no longer habitable?” “Perhaps at least ten but not more than 20 of your years. I am just not comfortable yet in converting time to your years.” “I am sorry for that but it is the only way any of us have ever thought about time Increments. One year is how long it takes our home planet to make one complete orbit of our sun, for example a man can generally live for about eighty years.” “In that case we may have from 15 to thirty years. Where is your home planet, Captain?” “It would have been the next planet you would have come to in your search of our solar system. Had you not found us on Mars you would be on Earth by now. Earth is six times the size of Mars and was overpopulated by twelve bil ion people when war destroyed almost every living thing on the planet. That was only about fifty years ago. People from this colony on Mars have repopulated the Earth but with only about two hundred thousand people. The infrastructure was only damaged and has been found to be ninety percent usable. It was the animals that all died from radiation poisoning. We believe that the war came about from a lack of our ability to really communicate with one another. There were over three hundred languages on Earth at the time of the destruction and more than 150 separate nations. Most of them possessed nuclear weapons so when the first one went off everyone else launched al they had at the nation they perceived to be their arch enemy. In two hours the atmosphere became lethal. Within a few days all the land creatures on earth, Including man became extInct. Twelve Bil ion was far too many people, a large number of those people were starving to death every year. Now there are too few people. We feel that the right number of people for Earth would be from one to five bil ion. We made a vow that from now on we would only allow one language to be spoken on Earth. Al of us who survived on Arton, Mars and in space spoke only the English language so it is only logical that in the future all people living on the Earth must speak English fluently. Al of the people on Arton and on Mars speak only English.”

Captain Cummings added, “Once we get the course down pat from your planet to Arton our four ships should be able to transport about four hundred thousand of your people in one years time. I am sure that all four of our ships wil be at your service but at the end of one year our ships are going to have to start moving the people that you have on Arton to Earth. We stil have three ships that are capable of speeds just under Warp that can take of the run from Mars to Earth. Two of these ships have been decommissioned for many years but they are stil in a parking orbit around Earth and could be put back in service.”

The alien said I can not believe our good fortune I will radio home as soon as I return to my ship and give them all this good news.” “What do you mean radio home, our ships will be there long before a radio signal could reach your planet.” “Then perhaps, my friend we have something we can give you. Many years ago we developed hyper space radio. When I talk to my home planet they hear what I am saying as though I was only next door.” “I always hoped that something like that would come along, for us our radio signals are limited to travel at the speed of light.” “We have at least six spare radios on board. We wil rig Mars with one, leave one here for your interplanetary ship to take back to Earth and fit each of your space craft with one. I will have one of our other ships drop one off on Arton, on their first trip there. I am going to recall all of our space craft to ######### as soon as I return to my ship. They could begin the evacuation before we get there. When the first of them makes Arton orbit they can shuttle the planet leaders to the ship and you Captain Cummings and You Captain Horn and Gil of course, can explain what is happening.

That evening a special communication was sent to Earth and to A1and Arton Two telling them what was happening. A communication shot back within 24 minutes asking them to confirm on the other channel. The other channel was the voice channel and was seldom used. Once a link was established Captain Cummings gave a verbal description of the events followed by Gil giving a verbal account in the Artonian language then by a “COME BACK” 26 Minutes later an Artonian voice came on the line speaking in Artonian. It requested that another Artonian send the same description of events in the same language. After four hours of verification Admiral Carter was finally convInced that this was the real thing and that Mars was not being held hostage by these aliens. The Admiral told them to go back to the text channel and send him al the details they could think of. Within an hour Mars was transmitting everything they had learned so far. “Gil who had been talking with the Alien all this time had told him to go ahead and shuttle his people down for a visit and a Tour of Mars. The Alien said that their shuttles were too small so Ben asked the Council Chairman to dispatch one shuttle to the Alien ship to bring down passengers. Ben then ask for fifty or so videos that the alien had referred to in an earlier conversation. Ben also requested a grammar book if they had one and a couple novels. By this time there were fifteen Artonians listening to every word that was spoken and learning the new language.

In their conversation Gil final y learned the Alien's name and the name of his planet. The planet was called Dedov, the Alien was Captain Eurokoma. Ben passed this along to the Radio Room to be Included in the next transmission to Earth.