Chapter 11: Gary: Space cowboy

“Seriously? She likes the rejuvenating gel? Who would have thought?” Gaia said, as she watched Pip bury her fluffy little face into a cup full of golden gel.

After they had realised Pip was hungry, the duo tried feeding her everything they had, both on the ship, and from Noah’s cupboard back in his domain. However, the little alien was apparently a picky eater. Or her biology wasn’t compatible with normal foods. As a last-ditch effort, Noah even started pulling out random items in his inventory including a jar of rejuvenating gel. Pip’s eyes lit up and she darted over. However, these were for trading, so Noah got a cup from the kitchen and filled it up with the large barrel of gel he had in his inventory.

“Well at least it’s cheap, so Pip won’t be a drain on the wallet.” Noah added as he began cleaning up the now cluttered main room.

The three filled their time as their ship eventually made its way to Saturn, the incredible yellow giant filling the front window. Noah decided to really practice his skills as he took the controls, and piloted the ship around the planet, flying above the rings. Pip seemed to get excited, seeing the rings flow under the ship as they soon completed a loop around the planet. Despite how exciting it looked; they were still a few thousand kilometres away from the rings. Even if they flew directly through them, the debris is so far apart it would be unlikely to hit anything.

While getting noticed was a part of their plan, they weren’t aware of the stir they were causing back on Earth with their little joy ride.

[Earth: NASA HQ]

Back at the Johnson space centre, Gary, the junior astrophysicist was sitting at his desk in a bad mood. After sending his email about the odd heat signature he found on Pluto, he was taken into a meeting room. His boss, Mark Stein, who was, according to Gary, a ‘Military dickhead’, berated him with questions. Apparently, a few military satellites had detected something similar, and they wanted clarification.

After signing a lengthy nondisclosure agreement, Gary was sent back to his new desk, located in a dark room under 24hr guard Accompanying him was Susan Wake, a contracted scientist from the military. The two got along decently, but it was mainly because Gary thought she had nice tits. Though as he thought this, Susan gave him the stink eye. Now Gary just thought women were scary.

After a few hours he realised she was actually much smarter and more qualified than he was, so he quickly fell into line. The two looked for more data around Pluto and attempted to determine the trajectory of the mysterious heat signature. The data Gary had was limited, but Susan brought out a USB stick and stuck it into the computer.

She turned to Gary saying, “remember your NDA, you’re basically property of the military right now, so if you leak what I’m about to show you, don’t expect a fair trial when you’re arrested.”

Gary leaned back at the not so thinly veiled threat that came out of Susan’s mouth. “A-ah, yeah, ok, but chill out, it’s probably just a meteor right, why has the military gotten involved anyway?”

Susan ignored Gary and typed in a lengthy password that appeared on the screen. A set of new images came up. Susan simply nodded for Gary to take a look. On the screen were a set of images from Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn, much clearer than the Hubble images. Gary had a feeling he knew where those trillions of dollars in military spending went now. You could take a photo of a blade of grass from space with such a telescope.

The same heat signature was present, and in the slides, it seemed to be moving in an irregular pattern, changing directions on a whim, almost like a… “spaceship”. The words leaked out and Susan gave a subtle nod, before moving onto the optical images. On the screen was indeed a spaceship, and it was advanced. The image was a little blurry, so the ship must have been moving extremely quickly.

“It is moving quickly, too fast for any tech we have, not to mention everyone would know about a country sending a ship like that to the outer planets. So, the conclusion we came up with was that it wasn’t one of ours. Judging from the rate of rotation of our satellites, and the distance between the object and us, it must be moving between 15-20% the speed of light. Oh, and one more thing.” Susan clicked on another application, typically used for asteroid tracking.

“It’s not coming directly towards us; it’s visiting every planet in the solar system. And based on the rate it’s moving on to each one, it could be only a few days until it arrives here, or even less if it chooses to bypass Jupiter. Command believes the object is searching each planet for life or resources. Though it’s all speculation at this point. We have people trying to understand the thruster technology but it’s fairly useless without being able to analyse the actual ship.” Gary’s hands shook as he reached for his glass of water to the side, almost dropping it as his hands felt numb. A combination of excitement and fear overwhelmed him.

“So, I found an alien? Holy shit, holy fuck… What do we do? Are you going to shoot it?” Gary was about to continue raving before he was cut off by Susan.

“Hold your horses there space cowboy, you’re only on this team because you found it first, and we wanted to keep this information on the down low, to avoid panic. We aren’t going to shoot it unless it initiates hostilities against us. For now, our job is to track this thing as best we can and update the President directly, they’ve already bunkered down.”

Gary took a deep breath, slapped his cheeks, and turned to Susan. “Alright, let’s do this!”

[Space between Jupiter and Saturn]

“U-um, take me to your leader? No that’s stupid… We come in peace? No if I do the spock hands they’ll freak out.” Noah stood in front of the mirror in his room talking to himself. He had the idea of practicing how to talk to the astronauts when he arrived at the ISS but he realised it would be best to stay casual and keep it professional.

“I’m a trader from the void, looking to do business with this planet, it’s a pleasure to meet you?. Yeah, that doesn’t sound too bad right guys?” Gaia was sitting down on Noah’s bed watching the spectacle with a smirk, Pip was comfortably resting in her bosom, apparently having fallen asleep.

“Uhuh, sure, more importantly, I think we’ll have to skip Mars and head straight to Earth, it’s a fair bit out of the way and we already made a detour to visit Uranus.” Gaia said casually. Noah nodded before realising something was wrong with what she just said.

“Hey, I thought the planets were relatively aligned right now? I even checked the star map, Uranus shouldn’t be too far away from Neptune right?” Gaia avoided eye contact before whispering, “…changed…”

“Oi speak up, what did you do?” Noah said as he turned to question Gaia.

“Geez fine, I changed the map when you were looking because I wanted to visit Uranus, the comedic opportunity was much too important to pass on!” Gaia responded with vigour.

Noah was silent as he turned and walked out the room. A few seconds later he came in, bar of soap in hand and held it out towards Gaia. “Eat it, I’m not letting you spend time with Pip until you’ve consumed this entire bar.”

“Fine! but this is bullying, the unions won’t accept such tyranny! You dare separate me from my child? You heartless man?!” Gaia said theatrically before a bar of soap through directly into her mouth.

Thanks to Gaia’s messing around, no wonder the two at NASA saw such an odd trajectory, they had gone far off course and then back, which means they’d have to skip Jupiter and Mars to arrive on schedule. Truth be told, Noah wasn’t too worried, after all, there really wasn’t any deadline. He was just annoyed about Gaia’s reasoning for going off course.

“Comedic opportunity my ass, heh, that one wasn’t bad.” Noah muttered as he left for the ship’s controls.

A few hours later the group passed by Jupiter, Gaia coming out of the bathroom to enjoy the view, soap bubbles still coming out of her mouth. Despite being an energy being, apparently, she had organic functions when she felt like it. Though Noah knew she was just humouring him.

Jupiter is truly massive, and though they decided not to stop and explore the planet, they could always come back. After all, there’s probably a few billionaires willing to waste money going on a joy ride through space.

[Earth: Location unknown]

A group of thirty people sat around a large table. A bearded old man with sharp eyes sat with dignity at its head. “Well, have they arrived?” He asked to the man to his left.

After a quick call to someone, he responded. “Yes President Williams, the scientist named Gary and Susan Wake from space force should be here any minute.”

President John Williams nodded to his aide. “Good, we don’t have much time left to plan.”

A few minutes later, two figures walked through the heavily guarded door. A look of deep anxiety on the face of one Gary as his head turned from side to side, gawking at the fully loaded marines surrounding him and Susan, who for the record was as cool as a cucumber.

“Good you’re both here. Now, let’s talk about first contact shall we?” The tension in the room instantly rose a level at the words of the President.