Ariel knocked at the door of her father’s office.
“Come in,” said John Simmons, staring at one of the screens on front of him, and typing replies to a number of forum posts.
He looked over and saw his fifteen year old daughter, “Hi Ariel, what’s happening?”
Ariel sat in the chair beside John and said, “Dad, you know how I’m part of that ‘Alien Search Challenge’?”
John nodded and said, “Yeah, the one where you get allocated a section of space and get to analyse it to see if you find any anomalies. You started as part of the Earth orbit one, but didn’t you switch to deep space?”
“Yeah, I did,” said Ariel, “The one covering Earth’s orbit was to see if anyone could spot the alien ship that was beaming down hunting parties. It was pretty tricky trying to isolate all the known and unknown satellites amongst the space junk to try to find an alien vessel that probably has some sort of stealth tech anyway. I wanted to try the outer space one. I wanted to see if I could find something else.”
“Good idea,” said John, “There must be other alien ships, even if they are just support or transports that bring the aliens somewhere nearby.”
John waited and prompted Ariel, “It’s pretty low probability, which makes the analysis quite tedious and boring. But you have been hooked on astronomy since you were little. Always looking up at the night sky telling us all the names of the planets and stars you could see. Lucky we have a clear sky in Broken Hill.”
“Oh, it’s not boring, Dad!” said Ariel enthusiastically, “And we’re not just looking through our home telescopes. The Australian Research & Space Exploration people have crowd sourced the analysis. I qualified as a participant and we have pretty good tech here to help.” Ariel waved her hands at the impressive array of screens in John’s office.
“I know all that,” said John, “You were young to join, but we were able to prove that you could do the job even though you were home schooled and didn’t have a bit of paper. One of my contacts on the forums was able to convince someone to just give you a go. Your analysis was good. Do you want to give up now or take a break? The chances of finding something are pretty remote.”
Ariel grinned and reached across for control of John’s keyboard. John rolled his chair back a little as Ariel pushed her chair next to his and typed furiously, until she pointed at the screen.
“This is the section I was allocated to analyse,” Ariel said, waiting for John to respond.
“It looks pretty much like the night sky to me,” said John, but knowing that Ariel wanted to be a bit theatrical, asked the question he knew she wanted, “What have you found?”
Ariel grinned and zoomed in on the starry sky displayed on the screen while she explained, “This is way past Earth and over towards the Kuiper Belt, beyond the orbit of Neptune. I used some of the algorithms you showed me in the AI supported analysis tool and found this…”
She stopped zooming in until John could faintly see a small black bit of space amongst the stars.
“And that is what?” asked John.
Ariel spoke into her Dad’s microphone, “Enhance!”
John grinned, “‘Enhance’? Like they do in the TV shows to miraculously get high definition from low definition security footage?”
Ariel grinned back, “Yeah. Why not? Anyway, look at the black patch.”
John shook his head, “Can’t see it.”
Ariel sighed and said, hiding her cheeky smirk, “Dad. You’re obviously getting too old.”
She then clicked a few more buttons and brought up a video on screen, “Here is a sped up video version of the enhanced dark spot. See anything now?”
John’s jaw dropped.
He looked at Ariel and then back at the screen, “Bloody hell, girl. That’s a bloody big space ship. But the shape looks pretty boring, just a block or long brick. The blue exhaust at the back gave it away.”
He put out his fist to Ariel who bumped it with her fist.
“Let ARSE know what you have found and I’ll let the forums know. Something is coming. I wonder if it is new or a regular visitor and we - or should I say you - have only just seen it? Well done!”
Ariel and John both grinned and started typing.
****
Major Tierney and the other ARRG country leaders were very happy with the results of the GWS messages. Human deaths were way down and their experience with tracking hunt arrival and departures was improving with more exposure. It was still dangerous. Sometimes hunts managed to encounter humans that were off-grid or, as Johnny Cartwright had suspected, some humans died attacking the hunters. Overall, human and hunter deaths were both way down.
Now the hunters could have a safari of Earth wildlife and not people.
****
News of the large ship approaching Earth had reached all who needed to know. It had been dubbed ‘The Brick’ in honour of the girl who had spotted it. Finders get naming rights. As it came closer more telescopes and devices were focussed on it. The shape was indeed that of a brick. It was hard to determine scale, but it looked huge. At the current rate it would reach Earth in about fourteen days, making the transit time from the Kuiper Belt to Earth around five weeks.
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Rose sat back in her chair, humming away to her K-Pop music playing in her headphones as she monitored her screen in the Cartwright Foundation’s Space Centre. It was her shift and the main mission at the moment was to see how The Brick was travelling. She had been part of the Cartwright foundation for a year now and was used to the boredom of monitoring, interspersed with moments of high adrenaline excitement.
“Beep, Bop, Boop,” hummed Rose meaninglessly along to her music then suddenly stopped, finger in mid air above her desk. On her screen she noticed The Brick change course with a flare of blue light to one side.
She pressed a button on her keyboard and lights lit up on various consoles around the centre.
Rudy, the man in charge of the satellite program, was nearby and reached her first, “What is it, Rose?”
Rose had taken control of the central huge monitor and zoomed in on the image of The Brick, “The Brick has changed course. See, those look like some sort of course adjustment jets or something.”
“Why change course?” asked Rudy, “What is there on the new heading?”
Rose zoomed out a bit and marked The Brick with a tag ‘Brick’ and plotted the new course. An assistant nodded and as the view expanded a new tag was added, ‘J27’.
“Oh, no,” said Rudy, “It’s on a collision course with our exploration ship Johnny 27.”
“It’s unmanned, which is good,” said Rose, “But these images are over four hours away at light speed.”
Rose looked at a note on her screen sent by her assistant, “Based on The Brick’s speed, it will collide with J27 in thirty hours.”
Johnny Cartwright stood behind her and listened to the exchange, “A collision would give us some idea of The Brick’s size which would be nice.”
Rose jumped a little at hearing her boss’s voice right behind her. She said, “But it would be a shame to lose J27. This craft has gotten the furthest so far. The previous twenty six attempts were a bit sad.”
Johnny smiled and said, “Agreed. Losing J27 would be ‘sad’ indeed. Bah. Let’s make it hard for them. Rudy, can we send a message to J27 and make it move faster across The Brick’s line of flight?”
Rudy considered and sat down at the terminal next to Rose, logged in and started typing.
“Johnny,” said Rudy, turning to face the waiting man, “We need to send it now but doing so will terminate any future exploration plans we have for J27. Giving J27 a push and a shove with those little thrusters should make J27 move away from us enough so if The Brick makes no further changes, the two won’t collide.”
Johnny frowned and said, “Do it. If we do nothing, it’s all gone anyway. J27 can serve a last purpose - helping us learn something about The Brick.”
Johnny turned to the gathering crowd, “Does anyone know why it’s being called ‘The Brick’? Great name, I just was curious.”
While Rudy was busily typing away, one of the crowd answered, “An Australian girl discovered it as part of their crowd sourced space search analysis program. She said her Dad said it looked like a long brick, so she said that is what she would name it.”
Johnny smiled, “Good. I like it.”
He then looked at Rudy, patiently waiting for him to finish.
“Rose,” he said while waiting, “Well done on spotting the course correction.”
Rose blushed and mumbled, “Thanks, sir.”
Rudy stopped typing and looked up at Johnny, “Last chance Johnny.”
“Do it,” commanded Johnny, knowing it would be an interesting termination of the exploration journey of J27.
Rudy pressed a button and said, “Done. We should see something in about twenty two hours combining the transmission speed, reaction of J27 and the time the image gets back to us. Should be just enough time for J27 to move out of the way.”
“That’s great. Thanks Rudy,” said Johnny, clapping Rudy on the shoulder and looked at Rose, “Thanks to you too. Twenty two hours sounds like your next shift. You planned that well.”
Rose grinned.
“Everyone!” announced Johnny, “Time to get J28 ready!”
****
Twenty two hours later Rose was at her station and everyone else were also present to see if their efforts had made a difference. Rose had the same image on the screen with ‘The Brick’ tagged and the projected route shown in red. J27 was also marked with a line coloured blue for the old path and a new red line for the new path.
Rose said out loud, “There it is. The blue light on The Brick. It looks to be manoeuvring to catch J27.”
“Catch or hit?” asked Rudy. No-one could offer any answers other than an unofficial betting pool had started on whether J27 would escape. The lines were too close to tell at this extreme range.
“Are we still receiving data from J27?” asked Johnny.
“Yes, Sir,” said Rose, “Whether J27 is hit or escapes, we will have some close up footage. But it will be over five hours before we get the data.”
Johnny nodded and stood watching for a short while, “Well, excellent work. When contact - or escape - occurs, let us know. Everyone, back to doing something useful.”
****
Once more, everyone was gathered around the desks of Rose and Rudy watching the large monitor.
Even though they knew this all happened over four hours ago, it was live to the observers on Earth.
The lines converged and The Brick continued past.
“Course correction jets again,” announced Rose, “We’ll know the new trajectory soon.”
“No sign of J27,” said Rudy.
Johnny watched the screen grimly, “We wait.”
****
Five hours later, Johnny was in the meeting room with Rose, Rudy and the other appropriate engineers and technicians. The meeting room monitor showed the encounter between The Brick and J27.
“Rose, we have received the data from J27. I’ll split the screen to show the images from J27 on the right and our large scale view on the left,” Rose tapped a few buttons and touchpad.
They could see what J27 observed as The Brick approached.
“Is the front open?” asked one of the technicians, “I can’t see any wall, just black.”
“It looks so,” said Rudy, “our analysis says it looks like a deep opening in the front.
“The Brick’s huge!” said Johnny as they saw The Brick taking up more and more of J27’s view.
“J27’s going into the hole,” said an engineer.
“No,” said Rose, “Close but the course correction we sent was made too soon for The Brick to fully compensate.” Rose winced along with most of the viewers in the room as J27 crashed into the edge of the hole at the side of The Brick and the transmission ceased after a brief period of static.
“Go back a little, please Rose,” asked Johnny, “Back to just before J27 hit The Brick.”
Rose rewound the footage and Johnny then instructed, “Now go slow.”
They once more saw J27 crash into the side of The Brick but slower. Just before the static, Johnny said, “Pause.”
“Roll back a little,” he said and Rose did so.
“Look at the edge of the maw,” Johnny said, “I’m calling it that because that is what it reminds me of. A huge maw like a whale trying to eat krill. Anyway, see if our little old J27 did any damage.”
Everyone looked closely and one engineer noted, “I think one of The Brick’s panels has a dint after the impact that wasn’t there before.”
Johnny sat back and smiled, “That’s what I thought. So, we can damage it if we have to.”
Rudy piped up, “Johnny, based on our measurements, we estimate that the ‘Maw’ is five hundred yards square and the length is about one thousand yards long. It’s huge.”
“Well,” said Johnny, “as the African proverb says, ‘You eat an elephant in small bites’”
Rose and Rudy looked at him.
Johnny shrugged and said, “Or something like that. You know what I mean. Don’t give me that look.”
Rudy’s tablet dinged and after reading his message he said, “Johnny, The Brick is on its way to Earth. We have about twelve days.”
“Twelve days, eh?” said Johnny, “We upgraded the J Rocket in two to save the astronauts. Get everyone together. If The Brick is coming here, we may have to stop it.”
