Contact

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The data probe from Contact Ship A37 is brought back to Earth.

I wrote this sci-fi fantasy / romance for a geekette friend of mine. It is almost non-erotic and is a story of first contact between Earth and a distant planet inhabited by creatures so different from humanity that communication is impossible... until contact is created.

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The klaxon alarms at Space Control Central shrieked throughout the huge complex, summoning all off-duty personnel to the main control room which was the heart of the facility. Warning boxes flashed on individual data screens as well as on the large screens suspended above the circle of monitors and consoles that composed Control Central. Hundreds of workers rushed to their duty stations or stood on the wide outer platform that surrounded the central control area and stared at the screens as a mechanical voice echoed the flashing message, announcing repeatedly in a loud monotone, “Alien spacecraft detected. Alien spacecraft detected. False flag alert. False flag alert. This is not a drill. This is not a drill.”

An older gentleman, obviously the officer in charge, strode into the control room. “Sit rep!” he barked to one of the technicians sitting at the primary seat in the console array.

“Whatever it is dropped into sub-light somewhere just beyond Neptune.” she answered.

A second tech added, “The IFF signal says it’s the data pod from a Contact Ship... Mission A37, but the size, propulsion profile, and electronic signature say it’s an alien craft.”

The first tech continued, “A37 was a single occupant, long distance contact ship sent to the source of radio transmissions received by our sensor net almost forty years ago.  An initial report probe was expected twenty years ago, but no probes have been received. It was assumed the ship was lost.”

“Have you attempted radio contact?” the commander asked.

“Doing so now, sir!” snapped another of the techs who was sitting at the communications console. “All frequencies... but there is no response.”

“Incoming message!” yelled another of the communications techs.

“What is it?” yelped the commander.

“Alpha-alpha-niner-niner-bravo-bravo-two-two-one,” he replied. “It’s being sent in a continuous loop using old sub-space codes last used over thirty years ago.”

The woman in the primary seat said softly, “That’s the contact accomplished code from the A37 mission. It’s what a data pod should be transmitting as a verification code if the mission was successful.”

General Mutaguchi stared at the screen for several moments before announcing, “Transmit landing instructions and coordinates. Notify the President and the others on the world council.”

***

Four days later, a slender, silvery object descended gracefully through the clouds above the landing field at the United Space Corps Headquarters. It circled the area several times as it descended through the high, thin clouds. As it approached the ground, it tilted upward slightly so that all forward motion stopped, positioning it just above a large, square, landing pad with a white X painted against a bright red background. Then, pointing into the sky and giving a short burst of its engines, it settled down softly onto the ground exactly in the middle of the X.

Long arms extended from the three fins which formed the base of the strange vehicle. They pushed against the hard surface of the landing pad and the tall craft wobbled slightly. A loud metallic groan echoed across the field as it adjusted itself to perfectly perpendicular. Then everything became silent... very silent... very, very silent.

Several hundred people stood at the edges of the landing area staring at the silvery object that had just dropped from the sky. The craft itself was unlike anything in the Space Corps. For one thing, it was huge. The support and guidance fins barely fit within the landing pad. The fins and body were also very shiny and bright.

All Space Corps vessels were a very light blue that was often scorched on all leading edges from the heat of repeated re-entry. This craft was a bright metal of some sort that showed no evidence of heat from re-entry. It was very obviously an alien spacecraft. And yet, on the widest portion of the craft, about two-thirds of the way forward, was the emblem of the United Space Corps.

To some of the younger members of the corps, the emblem looked strange. That’s because it wasn’t the modern emblem. The Space Corps emblem had been changed about two decades ago to be more stylized and abstract. This was the old emblem where the sun, star, and comet were depicted almost as if they had been photographed through a powerful telescope. The wording was also in the older font no longer used in the current emblem.

Beneath the emblem was a pale blue rectangle with black letters in the same, out of date, font as the emblem. It said “Contact Ship A37-01.”

All eyes were on the craft as a door opened between two of the support fins and a long ramp lowered to the ground. As the ramp landed against the ground with a solid “thump,” a tall figure appeared at the top of the ramp.

It was bi-pedal and vaguely human in appearance, but obviously avian in nature. He, or she, or it, was totally covered in fine feathers and had a beak instead of a mammalian mouth and nose. It took a moment for people to recognize the being’s body coloring. When they did, a murmuring gasp went through the assembled crowd. If the alien had been wearing clothing, he would have been wearing the uniform of a Space Corps mission commander.

The bird/man walked slowly down the ramp pulling a bulky two-wheeled case behind him. When he reached the ground he stopped, carefully removed two objects from the case, and set them on the ground in front of his feet.

The first object was a long cylindrical data probe. A report rocket from Contact Ship A37 should have carried this probe back to earth and jettisoned it into the atmosphere. The chute assembly was still intact at the top of the probe.

The second object the feathered being placed on the ground was a blue urn. It appeared to be a Space Corps standard issue burial urn. In gold on the side of the urn was the emblem of the Space Corps, again the older version. Beneath the emblem was a name, Commander Amanda Sills.

The being surveyed the gathered crowd silently for several moments and then spoke. His voice was very high-pitched and his words were somewhat difficult to comprehend, but what he said was clear enough to be understood by all present.

“My name is ‘Contact,’” he said. “I have brought my mother’s body back to her home planet.” He gestured toward the urn with his feathered arm. His voice was somewhat musical, but it sounded sad as he spoke.

Then gesturing toward the data probe he continued, “And I have brought her mission report. After we have watched it together, I would speak with your leaders.”

No one spoke in response. Everyone seemed frozen in shock. Then it appeared as if, somehow, a smile appeared on his beak and he said in a much happier sounding tone, “I come in peace. Take me to your leader.”

He then trilled in what was apparently laughter. Several of the people present joined him until General Mutaguchi stepped forward and said in a loud voice, “We welcome you in peace. Please accompany us and we will take you to our scientists and then to our leaders.”

***

Contact, General Mutaguchi, and a myriad of scientists and technicians crowded into the small communications theater. Normally visual communication between Space Command and nearby ships was handled through this room. Today, two technicians stood in front of the commo screen connecting the data probe to the communication network.

After some static and necessary adjustments of the audio and video controls, the face of Amanda Sills suddenly filled the screen. An identifying label appeared across the bottom of the image which said, “Mission Report of Commander Amanda Sills, Contact Ship A37.” A second line beneath it said, “Day one, Mission Date 01:01:17 / 1600 hours.”

“This is my first entry into the mission log of Contact Ship A37,” Commander Sills began. “Launch was normal and unexceptional. I entered stasis shortly after clearing earth’s gravitational field. This is my first scheduled awake period, so as far I, and my body, am concerned, it is day one.

“It is hard to believe that over a year has passed on earth while I, under the influence of faster than light travel and the stasis pod, have aged but a day. It is even harder to imagine that the next time I awake, over ten years will have passed on earth and I will be approaching a possible life-containing planet.

“I have checked that all is well with the ship and that the destination coordinates are accurate.” She chuckled slightly before continuing, “Space Corps learned the hard way that coordinates calculated from within our solar system do not always correspond to coordinates as they truly exist in distant space.” She smiled, “But everything was true and accurate and I am on course. My medical readouts show me to be in perfect condition. The mission status is still GO so I will now return to my stasis pod until tomorrow.”

***

The screen faded. When it again brightened, the label stated, “Day two, Mission Date 11:09:14 / 0300 hours.”

“Day two,” Amanda began. “There is an anomaly to report. All is fine with the ship and with me, but the electronic signature of the mission planet has disappeared.” She pressed several buttons on a consol not visible in the image, and two graphs appeared on the screen.

“As you can see,” she said, pointing to one of the graphs. “The obviously non-natural electronic emissions which brought A37 to our attention stopped abruptly about four earth years ago.”

She swept her hand and the second image overlaid the first. “This would correspond approximately to the time that our high-energy communication burst would have been received on the planet.”

She swept her hands again and both images disappeared. “I can only conclude that either a great catastrophe has overcome this planet... or they have intentionally shielded their electronic transmissions, in which case, my arrival may be viewed as less than welcome.”

Commander Sills looked gravely into the camera and said somewhat flatly. “I have made the final adjustments to the approach and landing programs. I will need to return to the stasis chamber for a short while. Once the ship is in orbit, I will be awakened and oversee the final landing.”

***

The screen again faded. This time, when it brightened, the label indicated, “Day three, Mission Date 14:03:21 / 0900 hours.”

The screen showed only one of the interior walls of Contact Ship A37. Commander Sills’ voice sounded somewhat distant and very strained. “Ship is not under my control,” she said tersely. “Cannot override landing command sequence that has been initiated by an external source. This may be my last entry. I can only hope the data probe launches as programmed before I crash.”

***

When the screen once more brightened, the time stamp said, “Year twelve, day 203, Mission Date 26:04:09 / 21:30 hours”

Commander Sills appeared on the screen. Small wrinkles on her face and streaks of gray in her hair indicated that she had aged perhaps more than the twelve years indicated by the mission date timestamp. A gasp went through the assembled crowd as they noted her nakedness.

“There is a defect in our stasis systems,” she began. “It suppresses the aging process, but does not stop it. Since coming out of stasis, I have aged at an accelerated rate until my body caught up to and has now surpassed my true chronological age.  I will not be able to return to earth personally to give a report on my mission. I am therefore recording this and entrusting it to my son, Contact. I have asked him to bring it, and my ashes, back to earth.”

She looked around herself for a moment and asked, “Where should I begin?”

After a short laugh, she answered her own question, “It is best to begin at the beginning. My last log entry aboard my ship stated that someone, or something, had taken over control of the ship. The beings of this planet call themselves ‘The Bluuuur,’ or at least that is as close as I can come to saying it. They feared that I was an invasion force and took appropriate action to neutralize any threat my ship might pose.”

She paused and looked at something or someone outside the range of the video recording device. “They are not mammalian, but they are not truly avian either. They are capable of flight, but only for short distances. They have prehensile hands with opposing thumbs and slightly elongated, but prehensile feet. Their sexual organs are surprisingly similar to human.”

She laughed for a moment and then said in a more serious tone, “When I showed Contact the library videos from the ship, he pointed to the dinosaurs and said, ‘ancestors.’”

She shrugged and gave a wry smile. “Who knows? Maybe they are an evolved form of dinosaurs? In any case, they are not humanoid and do not act, look, or think like any species on earth.

“When the ship landed– or should I say crashed because it ended up flat on the ground rather than in the landing / take off position. When I landed, the outer hatches opened of their own accord and several of the Bluuuur entered the ship holding weapons of some sort. They were obviously very agitated and were screeching and trilling loudly both to each other and at me. I think they were trying to communicate with me, but I could understand nothing and the universal translators only repeated their screeching in my ears. Finally, they dragged me from the ship.

“I was taken to a building of some sort and several other Bluuuur attempted to speak with me– at least I think that is what they were doing. Then one of them picked up a marker of some sort and made unintelligible scribbles on a section of the wall.

“I took the marker from him and attempted to use universal symbols to try to establish some sort of rudimentary communications. I drew a right triangle and labeled the sides. I drew the hydrogen atom. I drew our solar system and attempted to draw the galaxy, or at least a spiral with a bunch of dots in it. All of this was met with more screeching but no indication of understanding. Finally one of the larger Bluuuur trilled loudly and all of them went outside, leaving me alone in the room.”

Commander Sills again paused as if sorting through memories in her mind. “I’m not sure how long I was left alone in that room. I think it was several hours. During that time, I tried the door, but it was locked. I also attempted to look at the various charts or images or whatever which were mounted on the walls of the room, but they appeared to be nothing but a jumble of lines and colors with no coherent meaning. There were two video screens of some sort, but they held only changing colors and a meaningless jumbles of lines and shapes. Then five of the Bluuuur re-entered the room.

“One approached me very slowly. He was warbling softly and trying to keep eye contact with me. As he approached, he reached out slowly and grabbed both of my hands. I felt a sting on my arm and everything went black. When I awoke, I was lying in a furry depression... and I was naked.

“A brightly-colored Bluuuur was curled partly around me. He was stroking me softly with the feathers on his forearms. Higher up on his arms, the feathers were large and evidently formed wings when his arms were spread out, but close to his wrists, the feathers were short and very soft.

“I tried to get up, but he pressed me back against the fur of the nest. Each time I tried to rise, he would push me back down with just enough force to keep me in place. After a while, I stopped trying to get away.

“He continued stroking me with his feathers. Occasionally, he would use his fingers to lightly caress or pinch my nipples. After a while, my body began to respond to his touch. Not too long after that, my hips began to thrust upward on their own. I knew what was happening, but it was not something I was trying to do. I had no intention of responding to his caresses, but those feathers just felt so damn good.”

Amanda reddened slightly and coughed lightly before continuing, “Aguuuu– I later learned that was his name. Aguuuu continued to stroke and tweak and drive me higher and higher. With the beak structure of his face, there was no way that he could kiss me, but he gently rubbed his beak against the edges of my chin as he trilled very softly. I was very surprised at how warm his beak was. It wasn’t the hard, boney beak of an earth bird, but rather seemed almost to be covered by skin of some sort.

“Eventually, I had one of the most intense orgasms I have ever had in my life. I tried to say, ‘No more,’ but he continued stroking and driving me higher and higher even after my first orgasm. Then he positioned himself between my legs. I could feel a penis of some sort enter me and throb within me. As I exploded in my second orgasm, I vaguely felt him spurt within me. Then he slid alongside me, covered me with his wings, and pulled me in close to his chest. I ended up falling asleep with my face buried in the soft feathers of his chest.

“The next morning, I awoke alone in the fur bed or nest or whatever it was. Aguuuu had set some food on a table. It appeared to be sliced fruit of some sort and some small things that appeared to be nuts. There was some sort of strange tableware which he picked up and used to push the food into his beak. When I just stared at the plate, he put the fork-like object in my hand and closed my fingers over it. Then he showed me how to push the fruit into my mouth. It had an odd, sweet taste unlike any fruit I had ever before eaten, but seemed to go down OK.

“Aguuuu stayed with me for nine days, each evening he would repeat his love making. On the morning of the tenth day, he showed me some sort of video screen which was flashing various colors and shapes. There was also audio, but all I could make out was various screeches and squawks. He pointed to the screen and trilled softly. Then he left, locking the door behind him. I think he was going to work. After a few weeks, I found that I looked forward to him coming home in the evening. I also looked forward to the daily sex.

“Then my belly began to swell.

“I knew I was pregnant, even though cross-species propagation should have been impossible. At twelve weeks, I went into labor. Aguuuu held me softly with his wings and stroked my forehead as I grunted and grimaced. Then I gave birth... or more accurately, I laid an egg.

“It was leathery and brown and splotchy, but it was definitely an egg. I began crying, but Aguuuu pulled me tightly to him and covered both me and the egg with his wings. He tucked me in very tightly with the egg between our bodies and held me close all night. The next morning he got up only to bring me fruits and nuts. After I had eaten, he again covered me and the egg with his wings. Every so often, he would allow me to leave the nest to use the toilet facilities. Their unique operation is explained in a separate log file.

“Aguuuu spent hours holding me and slowly stroking my body. It wasn’t enough to bring me to climax, but I was in a constant high state of sexual arousal. This continued for another twenty-seven days. As the shell dried out, the egg became harder and harder until it was a very solid sphere lodged between us in the nest.

“On the twenty-eighth day, I felt the shell moving and heard soft tapping noises. At one point, Aguuuu leaned forward and pecked the shell smartly with his beak so that it clearly cracked. After that, he stepped out of the nest and stood alongside it watching as Contact pushed his way out of the shell.

“As soon as my son was clear of his shell, his father put him in my arms and guided his baby beak to my breasts. I cringed as he latched onto my breast, expecting pain, but instead his soft beak formed itself over my nipple and he began to suckle.

“He grew rapidly and in a few weeks was weaned. Aguuuu showed me how to cut up the fruit into very small pieces which he, and then I, dropped into Contact’s open mouth. When he was four months old, he began screeching back and forth with his father. A few weeks later, he said his first words to me. He said, ‘I love you.’

“I hadn’t realized that I was constantly saying that to him until he repeated it. I hadn’t expected him to be able to speak. After that, I worked at teaching him English and began showing him the history and science videos from the ship. I called him, ‘My Little One,’ but at about age two, he told me, ‘Mother, my name is Contact.’ He also began to explain his world to me.

“That is when I learned that my husband’s name was Aguuuu and that the people were called Bluuuur. Contact also explained that the Bluuuur were unable to comprehend any of my speech or video images because their brains processed sight and sound so differently from ours. He told me that to Aguuuu, my videos were just scrambled colors and shapes, just as his videos were to me. And my drawings of shapes and images were just meaningless scribbles to Aguuuu’s eyes. Contact, because he was from both of us and had been raised by both of us, understands the sights and sounds of both cultures.

“One day, when Contact was about ten years old, he and Aguuuu came to me. Contact said, ‘Father has asked that I translate what he has to say.’ Aguuuu then screeched and trilled and Contact translated. ‘I am sorry for what was necessary,’ he began. ‘There was no other way to bridge the difference between our cultures. While you were unconscious that first day, our scientists removed your genetic materials and spliced them together with mine. The result was then implanted within you. The procedure can be done only once, and unfortunately, it also prevents you from having more offspring of your own genetic line. It was thought best that we mate normally so that you might understand that I was the offspring’s father.’

“Aguuuu’s trilling became almost unmusical. I had learned to recognize that meant that he was very uncomfortable, almost embarrassed. Contact continued, ‘Father says that he is sorry for any pain which he has caused you. He is also sorry that your artificial feathers were destroyed. Had they realized that it was clothing rather than some sort of snare or control web, they would have allowed you to retain them. If you desire, he will have the artisans try to recreate them for you.’

“I had become so used to being naked, that I laughed and told him not to bother. I also told Contact to tell him that I forgave him. Aguuuu trilled softly to me and I replied, ‘I love you, too.’

“Contact said, ‘He knows mother. It is one of the few words you speak that he can understand.’

“Contact then went on to explain that the Bluuuur were building a contact ship of their own to return to earth. As the only being capable of communication between our species, Contact would be its commander. Part of the purpose of that mission would be to return to Bluuuur with ten volunteers who would be willing to breed new contacts. These would be raised by the volunteers and their husbands, who would be scientists and educators. In that way, it would be possible for the scientists of both planets to communicate and eventually develop the necessary translation programs and devices.”

Commander Amanda coughed slightly and glanced at something– possibly notes– on the counter in front of her. She then continued, “The Bluuuur have combined our stasis technology with their own to solve our delayed aging problem as well as certain other problems within their units. It will be possible for the ten volunteers to live normal life spans once they reach Bluuuur.”

Commander Sills paused to wipe tears from her eyes and then sighed deeply. “I am growing tired. I have very little time left.”

She held up the blue urn which Contact had brought from the ship. “I have shown Contact what to do when I die. He will bring me home. I ask that I be buried in the Space Pioneers Cemetery. I think I deserve that. On my tombstone, please put this inscription, ‘Mission Accomplished. Contact Created.’”

She once again wiped her face with her fingertips and said softly, “Log completed.” A brightly colored, feathered arm reached into the image and pulled her beneath a wing. A soft, mournful trilling sound could be heard as the screen went blank.

***

Contact stood to address the assembled crowd. He spoke softly. “My mother died in my father’s arms shortly after completing her mission log.”

He took a deep breath as if to clear his thoughts and said, “You have heard her report.” He paused to look around the room and then continued in a slightly louder, and much clearer voice, “The question is, are there ten young women on this planet who are willing to help create the second level of contact between Bluuur and Earth?”

***

Are there?

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END OF STORY
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14.07.15