Outward Borne (38 page)

The ObLaDas did not want any
computer or other advanced technology to fall into the hands of the
Earth People. They already had too many problems assimilating their
own advances, or so the ObLaDas thought, even though the Earth
technology, what they knew of it, was very limited. DePat could
bring the memory cube because the Earth People would never be able
to copy its molecular storage architecture. It would degrade within
minutes of being opened and exposed to the atmosphere, but could
the Earth People figure out how to download the data? After some
discussion, the Das decided that they were not that smart. So they
constructed a module that would convert the cube’s content into the
binary format similar to that used by Earth’s digital computers.
That should be good enough. Human engineers would need to build
their own interface and processors, and write some software to
retrieve the data. Surely they could manage that much. DePat would
make it worth their while to do so.

The final selection of those who
would return was not made until shortly before launch. Even after
life-long preparations, some refused to go. There were mixed
feelings among the Outward’s human population on whether the future
Earthlings should be envied or pitied. Their opinions about the
dogs ran much higher. There was a heated discussion, as there
always was regarding dogs, for everyone had an opinion, and a
well-informed opinion at that. Should the people who would go to
Earth, or should they send only the most outstanding animals? The
ObLaDas did not want any dogs to go, but that was out of the
question, so they argued for small dogs.

DePat and his closest friends,
Eric Allomir and Magnar Remton, nineteen and twenty years old,
spent many nights talking about Earth and the things they wanted to
do there. Eric longed to travel, to get into one of their cars and
drive for hours to all the great places he had learned about. It is
what they did in America, open spaces, the great outdoors, of
course, that was before the gasoline ran out. He always grew quiet
after revealing his dreams. He had never been out of doors and it
was a strain to imagine unenclosed spaces and distant horizons.
DePat was more interested in people. He would watch movies showing
great crowds and walkways jammed with people who did not know one
another. He tried to imagine all the different lives they must have
led, but it was difficult for him to envision a stranger, or anyone
who he had not known all his life, or someone whose past was
different from his own. Magnar was not a dreamer. He would listen
and smile to himself. He did not care what adventure it was as long
as he could go along.

In the end, the ObLaDas selected
thirty-seven humans and sixteen dogs to make the trip. They were
chosen with respect to the whole, rather than any individual’s
desires, in order to achieve an optimal mix of age, sex, and
skills. The dogs were a compromise, with some people keeping their
pets and others bringing outstanding animals from each key breed.
DePat had his Muff and Magnar the Great Dog Huffer.

The business of returning aliens
to their home planet was new to the ObLaDas, and they were not sure
how to do it. They were worried about the acceptance and
acclimation that the Voyagers would receive on Earth, but more than
that, they were worried about getting them there. The return trip
to a planet would be more dangerous, more physically stressful,
than any abduction. If they used the highest tolerated deceleration
rate, which required the humans to be held unconscious in a
pressure distribution tank, it would take about thirteen weeks to
for the return assembly to reach the solar system and slow to Earth
orbital speed. Transport would be stressful, hazardous, and
debilitating in the extreme. They could minimize the transition
between orbit and entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, in order to
land and begin the robotized rehabilitation sequence as soon as
possible. Even so, would any die? Probably. Certainly all the
Voyagers, man and beast, would be severely weakened. They would
require an extended recovery period, so that it would be many days
before the Voyagers would be able to show themselves.

How would Earth People react to
the arrival of the Voyagers, which was how they were to be known?
The ObLaDas has watched all the Science Fiction movies. It appeared
to be universally assumed that all aliens would be hostile, that
the military must be called out, and that shooting would begin soon
after the spaceship opened its doors. Was this real? It made no
sense to the Das, who could not conceive why any planet would want
to harm another, especially if anyone gave half a thought to how
expensive and difficult it was to achieve any level of physical
contact. Some ObLaDas thought the movie attacks were not serious,
because their Earth soldiers were only armed with little rifles
that they must know were completely inadequate. Others were less
sure, and were concerned that aliens were always portrayed as
sneaky, hostile beings, not to be trusted, and might be attacked at
some later date.

With all their uncertainty and
lack of confidence, the ObLaDas sought to manage the Voyagers’
arrival, and the Earth Peoples’ expectations, as thoroughly as
possible. Earth would first be told of the Outward Voyager even
while it was well beyond the limits of the solar system. They would
describe the approach of a single small landing craft and the
return of a few humans, Earth People like themselves. But all would
be cancelled if there was any attempt to endanger or interfere with
the entry vehicle, or any of the Outward’s orbiting assembles or
satellites.

Several decisions had been made
about the return. The ObLaDas would conduct advanced communications
of the planned events directly with the Earth’s population. The
mission should be known to the world and understood as a peaceful
return of humans to the planet from which their ancestors had come.
Whatever reactions, questions, and fears arise must be addressed
well before the landing occurred, and if they cannot be resolved,
well, the People did not really want to return to Earth anyway. The
United States was the most powerful and most threatening nation on
Earth so it would be best to deal with them directly, so the
landing would occur in an unpopulated mountainous region of central
California in order to limit the crush of attention that would
occur if it took place within a more populated area.

Through all this, the soon-to-be
Voyagers continued to receive intensive exposure to the Earth’s
culture and current events. They watched hours of television,
movies, and videos, and held discussions in which they tried,
mostly without success, to make sense of it. During the last days,
in the midst of their final preparations for departure, the
Voyagers were told that their planned arrival had generated a very
high level of interest among Earth’s population. It had certainly
created an intense level of excitement on the Outward. No one was
used to so many momentous events, then, at the very last moment,
the Voyagers were given clothing similar to that worn on Earth
rather than what they wore on the Outward. DePat had assumed they
would all bring their most formal attire, but those colorful
costumes would not be allowed. The People had adopted flamboyant
personal hair and body colors, as well as wildly individual styles
of clothing and ornamentation. This well established practice had
reached an apex at the time of the Earth passage, but the Das
feared that these superficial traits would be seen as alien and
threatening rather than eccentric. They certainly thought it might,
but there was no changing the Peoples’ attachment to their
individual identities, and they began to quickly alter their Earth
Clothes to their own taste. DePat wondered why the fashion
censorship was considered necessary, and why the entry vehicle was
armed.

Chapter 21 Return

The Voyagers’ arrival was one of
the most thoroughly documented events of all time. Even so, the
true facts have been buried beneath layers of speculation over the
years of hearsay, analysis, lies, and a healthy portion of
elaborate fiction. The level of interest and attention the landing
received was phenomenal and, by most reckonings, well warranted. By
now, however, the legend of the space travelers is so well
entrenched that it is no longer subject to change. Nevertheless,
there are some communications and events involving the Voyager’s
arrival that have not been previously disclosed.

Earth first learned of the Outward
Voyager through a brief text message that appeared on the evening
of 5 January 2065. It interrupted a local high school sports
program, a lacrosse game, which was being fed into the San
Francisco area. Very few people actually saw it live, but within
minutes, the message had gone viral. It claimed that an alien
spacecraft, the Outward Voyager, was approaching the solar system
and that a landing craft holding a small number of humans would
descend to the Earth’s surface and return them to their home
planet.

The ObLaDas had sent that first
message several months before the arrival assembly was launched
from the Outward Voyager. They continued to inform the planet of
the mission’s progress and to monitor the Earth’s reaction to their
pending arrival. The Das were prepared to call off the mission
altogether if the planet turned hostile or became frightened, but
there was not much chance of that.

The initial reaction was as
tremendous as it was mixed. Just think - people who were the
descendants of those abducted centuries before – who were born in
interstellar space – who knew aliens – who had dogs, no less.
Naturally, some assumed that the message was a hoax, a new
milestone in the long list of hacker accomplishments, but an
investigation quickly showed that the signal had come from a
location in deep space, almost to the moon. The U.S. Government
confirmed that there was a satellite in that location and, as far
as they could tell, it had not come from Earth. It must be real,
most eventually decided, even though the belief in extraterrestrial
life was very low at that time. Earth had been searching for
signals from space for almost one hundred years and had found
nothing. Most people had given up on the idea, no matter how much
they wanted it to be true. It took a while for the general
population to accept the existence of aliens. Even so, many doubted
that an abduction had ever occurred, there was no sign or record of
that having happened, and it seemed fantastical that it would have
occurred so long ago. Of course, some others had long claimed that
alien abductions happened all the time and were willing to
testify.

The ObLaDas did have some reason
for concern. There was an undercurrent of fear - the lander would
not hold humans at all, it was a hoax designed to allow the aliens
to invade Earth unopposed, the ship should never be allowed to
land. Those panicky opinions were overwhelmed by some common sense,
however. Few were willing to consider endangering any people that
might be on board the lander, and besides, the aliens could have
come in secret if they meant us harm. But, in fact, there was
little that could be done to prevent it. For some reason, many
others assumed that the People of the Outward Voyager would be
deprived or stunted by their years in isolation, that they would
need a great deal of care and assistance was certain. The ObLaDas’
message: “It is our hope that that you will welcome us, that we may
live together in peace, and learn from one another, so that Earth
may become a better place for all,” was meant to imply that this
was not so, it attempted to communicate that the Voyagers had
something to contribute, but it was largely ignored.

As the weeks and months went by,
the Earth’s interest in the space travelers continued to grow.
Curiosity won out. Who are they? What would they be like?
Speculation ran rampant. Opinion became almost entirely favorable,
though not always accurate, and the peoples’ level of anxiety
increased as the landing’s high degree of danger became known.
Medical experts worried about the risk of travel and disease, and
how the Voyagers would adapt to life here.

In contrast, the Federal
Government’s anxiety increased in direct proportion to the public’s
anticipation. From the first, the U.S. Government considered the
arrival of the Voyagers to be some species of disruption that they
rather not permit. They were worried about the unknown, or perhaps
that they could do so little about it. The military could not
locate the main ship or communicate with it directly. They had
underestimated how far away the Outward Voyager was, and how fast
it was traveling. That infamous Administration had suspended
elections and a number of freedoms by claiming that their continued
rule was in the interest of National Security. They maintained
power at that time by effectively controlling political and news
communications within the country, and it saw the new arrivals as
an independent voice that might prove difficult to manage. They
were correct in this. The ObLaDas acted from the beginning, with an
independence and openness that was to become a characteristic mode
of behavior. The Earth’s populace, however, did not view the
arrival of a mere thirty-seven humans as any kind of threat and
largely ignored the government’s dire reservations. The people
wanted to meet their fellow men, see what they looked like, hear
their stories, and share their lives.

The final communication from the
Outward Voyager was sent as the lander assembly entered the solar
system. It laid out the series of events that were to follow in
more detail than ever before. The landing would occur in a remote,
but still undefined, location. No access to the interior of the
lander, or to its technology, would be allowed while it was on the
surface and, from here on, the Voyagers would be the sole contact
with Earth. No further communication would originate from the
Outward Voyager as it passed beyond the solar system. Travel from
the Outward Voyager to Earth was very stressful, it explained, so
that the Voyagers would require two to three weeks to recover their
health and complete preparations to leave the ship. The People
would then depart and make themselves known. After they had been
properly welcomed, the lander would return to the Outward Voyager.
The world’s population groaned when told that they would need to
wait for twenty or more days after the landing to see the space
men. It was widely held to be unbearable.