Nebula (2 page)

They left the small conference room and walked about thirty meters to the end of the corridor, where there was a very impressive door with two biometric readers, one for the eyes again and another for fingerprints. There was also a cipher lock keypad with the numbers from zero to nine distributed randomly. Brad put his right index finger on a thumbprint reader and then looked into the eye scanner. A green light began to flash on the keypad, and the numbers redistributed themselves into another seemingly random pattern. He covered the keypad from view as he entered a code, and the lock on the big door made an impressive click. He then turned the handle and it opened, revealing another door inside a small chamber. This time, Brad took his security pass and held it to a keypad near the door handle. He then entered another code and opened that door. They walked into what was apparently the Level-1 laboratory.

As they entered, Harry thought again that this whole deal was like one of those low budget, grade-B movies, like the room with the light bulb and table where he signed the agreements and like the blindfolded ride in the car. It was all a bit melodramatic, but it did tweak his curiosity up one or two notches.

Brad added to the melodramatic effects by explaining that the entire complex was fitted with explosives and incendiary devices. If any unauthorized entry was detected, including mistaken codes or unrecognized biometrics, a countdown would start, and the security team would have only five minutes to disarm the system. Brad said that they had a few false alarms in the past when someone entered a wrong code – you got only three chances before the bells rang and the sirens screamed – but the security team never had a problem that couldn’t be corrected in just two minutes, so the system was judged to be safe enough. “Security,” he explained, “is the most important thing, so we take extreme measures.”

Three people were in the lab, working on a very strange looking piece of equipment. Harry immediately recognized two of them, or at least thought he did. They looked like Yuri Kamarov and his wife, Ludmila Kamarova, but that was impossible. The two of them were prominent Russian scientists. Yuri was a leading expert in complex systems, and Ludmila was a prominent computer scientist. The two of them were well known for their research in interactive, intelligent computing and robotics. But they’d been killed in a plane crash several years ago. These two must just look a lot like them. But Harry was wrong.

Walt
did the introductions. “Harry, I’d like you to meet Yuri Kamarov and Ludmila Kamarova. They’ve been on the project for a few years now. I think that you knew them before they disappeared. And this is Nigel Forsythe. He’s one of our biologists.”

Harry was dumbfounded. Of course, he knew Yuri and Ludmila. They’d met a few times at cybernetics society conferences, and Harry always enjoyed chatting with them. But they were supposed to be dead. The plane that they went down in was never found, but it was common knowledge that it had disappeared somewhere in the Ural Mountains and was probably lost forever. No one could have survived in that area for more than a few days. He had also heard of Nigel Forsythe but had never met him in person. He seemed to recall that Nigel had also disappeared several years ago and was presumed dead.

“I don’t understand this, Walt. What the hell is going on? What have you got me into? These three are supposed to be dead. How come they’re working here?”

Brad replied, “You’ll understand soon enough if you want to continue. At this point, you’ve been given highly classified information that you must never reveal. The fact that these three scientists are still alive and are working with us is classified by the organization that owns this project. Penalties for revealing that information are very severe; more severe than the penalties normally applied by any of our nations. The fact that this project involves more than just US citizens is also classified to the same degree. You can never reveal any of this to anyone other than members of the project. Now, let’s show you one of our very basic toys. We have others that are even more interesting, and you can see them if you choose to join us.”

That was apparently the cue for Yuri and Ludmila to seat themselves at the strange console and to start to manipulate the controls. They were like the pilot and co-pilot in an aircraft, probably seated the same way that they were when they flew their small airplane into oblivion.

The console had a large screen in the middle and two slightly smaller screens off to each side and curving around slightly to the rear. The large screen appeared to be a viewer that looked out in front of whatever simulated vehicle they were supposed to be flying, and Harry assumed that the curved side screens gave views to the left and right, with slight visibility behind. He could see a star background and what looked like a planet growing larger as they flew toward it. He was impressed by the realism of the whole thing. It actually looked like they were flying in space toward – Mars? Yes, that definitely looked like Mars. Harry could even make out the two moons as they approached the planet.

“Hey, this is a really neat contraption. The graphic effects are great.”

“Keep looking Harry. It gets better,” Walt replied.

The simulated spacecraft flew closer and closer to Mars and began to descend into the atmosphere. The surface features appeared “more real than reality” as they swept by.

“L
ook at the side screens,” Walt said. “You can get a view of the surface as we stir up the dust when we land.”

Harry looked at the side screens, and he was amazed that he could even see the disturbance of the sand on the ground as the craft neared the surface and stirred it up with the turbulence from its rapid movement through the thin atmosphere.

“This is the best simulation that I’ve ever seen. How did you do it? It must have taken one hell of a lot of effort and money to build the NASA imagery of Mars into this simulator and to add all the realistic disturbances. I’m impressed.”

Walt grinned. “Harry, this isn’t a simulation. What we’re showing you is an actual recording of a landing on Mars. This is real. Yuri and Ludmila can attest to that since they personally flew the mission several months ago. We only use the simulator to replay the recorded data and to help train new pilots. The sensors on the spacecraft actually see in all directions, so Yuri and Ludmila are controlling the simulator to keep showing the things that they saw in the spacecraft’s view screens during the mission. For the sequence that you just saw, they kept things aligned as they were during the actual approach and landing, but if you like, they can replay the landing with the screens oriented any way that you want. The big screen can even be used to show the rear view, but that’s not too useful unless you need to see what’s behind you.”

“Hold on, Walt. You’re telling me that they actually went to Mars and that this is the record of the landing? You’ve got to be kidding. They went there and came back, and all of that in less than a few years? There’s no way they could have done that. There’s no one on Earth who has the ability to do this. We’re not even close to having that kind of capability. I keep up pretty well with the space program, and no one, not us, not the Russians, not the Chinese, no one on Earth can do this.”

“Well, you’re part right and part wrong, Harry. You’re right that no one on Earth has this capability, but you’re wrong to think that we’re putting one over on you. This is real, and it’s not something that was accomplished by any space program in the United States, Russia, China, or anywhere else on Earth, except for our project that used technology from elsewhere.”

Harry was speechless for a few seconds as he tried to take in what Walt had just said. “Elsewhere? What do you mean, elsewhere? You’re telling me that you just showed me video from a ride in a UFO that you bought from some aliens on a used UFO lot? Come on, Walt. I admit that I’m impressed by the video, but I’m not an idiot. Sure, the simulator is the best I’ve ever seen, and the Martian landscape looks pretty convincing, but the rest of it just sounds like bullshit to me. Come on Walt, let’s stop clowning around, and tell me what this is all about and why it’s so secret.”

“Calm down Harry. You’re not an idiot, and we’re not playing some joke on you. I felt the same way when they first showed me video from an earlier flight. But I’m telling you the truth. We used technology that we got from alien travelers who had an accident on Earth quite a long time ago. We managed to reconstruct the spacecraft and a lot of their systems, and we even found a partially completed base that they were building on Mars. But that’s the limit of what we can tell you at Level-1. If you want to learn any more, and there’s a lot that’s much more interesting and important, then you’ll have to sign on for the long commitment.”

“Let me get this straight. You and your project somehow got hold of a crashed UFO and put the pieces back together. Then you flew to Mars and found a base that the aliens put there and then flew back, all in less than a few years. That’s pretty hard to believe. Did you do all that by yourselves, or did these aliens help you?”

“Until you get cleared to the higher levels, I can’t tell you any more about the aliens other than they didn’t help us. It took us a long time and a lot of money to do it. I came onto the project pretty late in the game. They had already rebuilt the spacecraft and needed to expand the project. They needed people like me, Yuri, Ludmila, Nigel, and quite a few others to do what needs to be done. We need you too.”

“Where did all this money come from? Something like this has to show up in the federal budget. You can’t bury something this big. And what’s this need to do something.”

“First off, it’s not funded by the government. I can’t say any more about that or about what needs to be done until you agree to get cleared to the higher levels.”

“Levels? How many levels are there?”

“I can’t say until you agree to commit to the project for the long haul. I’m sorry, Harry. Those are the rules. You can back out now, or you can decide to go further. You don’t need to decide today, but we can’t give you more than the rest of the week. After that, you will either be in or out.”

Snap decisions were never Harry’s favorite things. He liked to think things over before making important decisions, but here he was, with the pressure of making a very important one in the next few days. It was one that could affect the rest of his life, and he didn’t even know what he was getting into.

“I’ll need to think this over, but at this point, I doubt that I can agree to sign on without a bit more information. It’s all too vague.”

“OK. There’s a bit more that we can show you,” Walt replied. “Brad, can we load the data for one of the outer planets, maybe Saturn? That’s a pretty impressive one.”

Brad thought for a few seconds before replying. “Yeah, I guess that it’s OK. He already saw Mars, so why not Saturn. But that will have to be it for today. Yuri, can you do the Saturn trip?”

“Sure. It may take a minute or two to load, but Ludmila and I ran it earlier today so a lot of the background images are probably still in runtime storage. We’ll play the flight exactly as we did it, and we can steer the projections to give the best views that our cameras recorded.”

Two minutes later, Harry was watching in amazement as the simulator flew toward the large, ringed planet. It did a quick fly-by of several of Saturn’s moons, skimming just above the surface of several of them and then descended almost to the surface of Titan and hovered there to give Harry a good view. The projections in the view screen panned across the landscape, so Harry could see it almost as if he were standing on a hill several hundred meters above the surface.

The landscape and the views out to Titan’s horizon were spectacular, clearly alien in all aspects. The differences from Earth in terms of atmosphere and chemical composition of the soil itself provided a weird but beautiful mix of colors and textures that were almost like a surrealistic painting. Harry stared at the display as it scanned the full 360 degrees and then shifted view to gaze at the huge planet in the sky above Titan. It was the most spectacular thing that he had ever seen.

After a minute or two, the sightseeing on Titan ended and the simulated flight soared up through Titan’s thin atmosphere and took a path just above the rings, skimming over them and giving Harry a fantastic, close-up view. It then turned downward, directly toward Saturn, and flew almost all the way onto the gas giant itself. It stopped its descent just before it seemed that it would crash right into the surface, and then it did a loop around Saturn at a speed that Harry couldn’t even guess. Once again, he was almost blown away by the realism and the beauty of the pictures on the screen. The scenery on this trip was even more impressive than the views of Mars.

“That’s unbelievable,” Harry said. “How in the world did you get those close-up images? It’s almost as if you went there and took the pictures yourselves. But you blew it if you’re trying to convince me that you did. This demonstration proves that your story of Yuri and Ludmila flying the mission is obviously a fake. The flight didn’t even try to imitate trajectories that were anywhere near feasible orbits. That was a dead giveaway. Besides, it would have taken years to get to Saturn and return.”

Walt let out a big sigh. “You still don’t get it, do you? Yuri and Ludmila did go there and take these pictures. Orbital mechanics have nothing to do with it, and we can travel at relativistic speeds, so the time to get there and back isn’t much of a concern. This was real, and all the data in the simulator is from runs that they did throughout the solar system. I’ve been trying to tell you that what we have here is technology that’s so far beyond our own crude spacecraft that it’s a chance in a lifetime to get onto this project.”