Alien Enigma

Dedications

To my wife Betty again, for all her love and support

Darrell Bain

I dedicate this story to truth. Mankind will never find its proper place in the Galaxy without embracing truth

Tony Teora

Prolog

"No change from
Liberty's
record, sir. Not that they came close enough for any fine detail," reported Serena Shaft, the ship's executive officer, as soon as the clangor of battle stations had died down. Captain Wilson wanted to make peaceful contact but he knew the
Jeane Baptiste's
Captain had been no fool-she and her ship went missing at this exact location five years before. He ordered the
Athena
to full alert as they passed the hundred thousand kilometer distance from the planet Xanadu. Their destination was the alien city of the same name, discovered on the maiden voyage of Wannstead Industries' first interstellar space ship, a survey vessel named the
Liberty
. The second, the
Jeane Baptiste
, was sent to investigate the planet but never returned. Now it was the
Athena's
role to get some answers.

"Can't say I blame them, not on a first voyage," Captain Wilson replied from his central position in the control room. "We're here to find out what kind of critter inhabits the place, though. Bring us in closer, about a thousand kilometers. Com, initiate contact protocols." His voice was calm, not displaying the tension he felt, the responsibility for his crew. Nor did it display the sense of aloneness he felt this far from Earth.

The world below grew in size as the ship made its slow approach, showing typical blue and brown and green of an earthlike planet. On a separate screen, the alien city was displayed. The image was slightly fuzzy because of the distance and magnification but it became clearer as they neared.

"No response to protocols, Captain," the com officer said.

"Noted. Keep broadcasting."

"Approaching a thousand kilometers, Captain," the XO announced.

"Noted. Let's get in a little closer. David, bring us down to five hundred kilometers and offset to keep the city in sight."

"Yes, sir. Five hundred kilometers."

Four minutes passed in tense silence as the ship slowly approached the alien planet.

A flashing light obscured every screen in the control room. The ship shuttered once, hard. Rumbling noises momentarily overrode excited voices.

"Captain, we're taking fire!"

"Get us out of here, David! Maximum thrust! Weapons free, return fire!" The captain's voice was louder but still perfectly calm.

Another bruising crash of noise hit the ship. The screens, which had been coming back on line again, blinked out in a haze of static. This time smoke rose from beneath the control room console.

"Captain, we're losing power!"

"Keep trying. Guns, what are they throwing at us?"

"A plasma charge, I think. It's chewing us up." The weapons officer's last statement was superfluous. Red lights were dancing along those parts of the console still functioning, indicating heavy damage.

"Captain, we've got thrust but the ship's not responding! I think they've caught us in a ...a goddamned tractor beam of some kind!"

"Our lasers aren't working and readings show the missile tube is blocked, Captain. I can no longer return fire. Not that it was very effective, damn it to hell," the weapons officer exclaimed. His voice had a tremor of fear in it.

The ship began a continuous, ominous vibration, interspersed with sounds of tearing metal.

"XO, shut down the thrusters!" Captain Wilson yelled. "We'll tear the ship apart if we keep bucking whatever it is that's grabbed us!"

The sound of the straining thrusters died. Shortly thereafter, the city's assault on
Athena
ceased, but the tractor beam holding it in thrall drew it down toward the planet, toward the alien city of Xanadu and whatever fate awaited the ship and its crew there.

Chapter One: Xanadu

On the question to renowned Cosmologist-Physicist
,
Stephen Hawking,
on whether scientists should contact alien civilizations from other planets ...

I think it would be a disaster. The extraterrestrials would probably be far in advance of us. The history of advanced races meeting more primitive people on this planet is not very happy, and they were the same species. I think we should keep our heads low
-
Stephen Hawking 2010

" ...and no one can deny that forcing a major reform of the United Nations before allowing it to have a military, or letting it purchase interstellar space ships from America, was one of our finest hours, instigated by one of our greatest citizens. Even the treaties mandating construction of the ships only in the United States for a period of twenty years was a laudable achievement. But even that gratuitous act is overshadowed by the way the administration and Congress caved in to Olson Wannstead's other demands.

"Yes, caved in to his demands that some of our most venerable social contracts with our citizens be discontinued, that they be abandoned like unwanted pets set out to starve in the streets! We have managed to ameliorate some of his most drastic actions but ..." the speaker paused dramatically for a moment so that his disgusted facial expression could be seen against the backdrop of a United States flag prominently displayed in the studio from which he was speaking. " ...but, my friends, that same party is still in control in Washington more than two decades later and is stealing our freedom in front of our very noses. There was no need to surrender to Wannstead's retrograde idea of government where so-called free enterprise leaves many individuals and their families destitute. There was no need to simplify the tax code so that wealthy individuals no longer pay a fair share of the wealth given to them by this great country. There was no need to balance the budget on the backs of those citizens living at poverty levels and in need of assistance for food, shelter and health care. And there was certainly no need to begin paying down a national debt that has served admirably for decade upon decade to stimulate the very economy that allowed Olson Wannstead to generate his vast fortune. Those are just a few of the reasons I need your help in the coming election. We must fight the growing ..."

"Shut the damn thing off," Olson Wannstead ordered. He touched the button on the arm of his big easy chair to order another drink and looked across the den at Brian Wannstead, his thirty-year-old son.

The television screen on the wall of the den died as Brian voiced it off. "Do you think Gordon will win?" his son asked.

The elder Wannstead shrugged. "I hope not but we can live with it if he does. It doesn't make that much difference now since our monopoly on constructing ships is going to end soon. We've done well, better than I ever expected, if fact. Anything else we accomplish is just icing." He grinned, giving substance to his handsome face that was just beginning to show wrinkles. "Of course, we'll keep the corporate offices and manufacturing plants here so long as we can earn enough for more ships of our own, but otherwise our future is on our own planets."

"Are you planning on setting up a new colony, Dad? We already have two and only one of them is self-supporting."

"There are some really great earth-type planets in the Bolt Cluster. That's where I'd like for us to expand, but we'd have to learn how to solve the damned enigma of our missing ships first."

"You think we can, Dad? We haven't had much luck so far."

The elder Wannstead shrugged. "I don't know. We certainly can't keep throwing ships at it. If the last one we sent doesn't return, I think we'll be forced to turn the problem over to others."

"Not the U.N! Surely there's something else we can do," Brian exclaimed. The disgust in his voice held all his and his father's dislike of the world organization, despite Wannstead's part in its reformation over two decades ago.

"No. The United Nations has fallen back into the old pattern. It's becoming bloated and one-sided again, and the blocs of smaller nations are gradually gaining sway. Besides, even if we can't gain access to the Bolt Cluster, I don't want news of Xanadu's existence to get out. Sure as hell, it'd spark an arms race and probably lead to war. At the very least it would be destroyed, along with all that technology just sitting there, waiting to be exploited." He sighed despondently. The alien city, designated Xanadu by his own late father, was discovered when
Wannstead Industries
began exploring interstellar space with its first experimental ship, the
Liberty
. On its maiden voyage, an overlooked parameter dealing with distances threw the ship far out into interstellar space near an unnamed cluster of stars. With his usual acumen for aptness, Wannstead senior, who had insisted on going on that first flight, called it the 'Bolt Cluster' after the way the ship had bolted to such an unplanned distance from Earth.

Luckily, that first experimental model hadn't been built to land on planets. It was strictly designed to gather information and report back, with safety a prime consideration. It merely noted the presence of the huge alien city on an earthlike planet and, playing it cautious as ordered, never came closer to the planet than a hundred thousand kilometers. That was still close enough to get a fair recording of what they saw. Wannstead named both the city and planet Xanadu, after the beautiful and opulent Kublai Khan Yuan Dynasty summer capital in China.

It naturally became the objective of the first flight of the initial standardized models of interstellar ships manufactured by
Wannstead Industries
, and these
were
designed to land on planets. That first ship, the
Jeane Baptiste,
never returned, nor did a more massive militarized version, the
Athena
, launched five years later, even though its Captain was instructed to ease into the Bolt Cluster and check other systems first before going near Xanadu. Another decade passed and Olson Wannstead decided to try one more time to land a ship near the alien city. Its Captain was also ordered to be cautious and check out other earthlike planets in the cluster before trying again for Xanadu. That was the
Bella Galax
. It failed to return as well. Profits still soared so he tried again, but that ship too was overdue by a month and he had just about lost hope of it ever coming back. It was also the last vessel the company could afford to lose. The great interstellar ships were extremely expensive, costing hundreds of billions of dollars each.