“I THINK Balázs gave you a fairly easy ride back there,” was Vihansh’s first remark, once Vikki was seated in her chambers shortly after the trial, at Vihansh’s invitation.

“Easy? I wouldn’t call that easy! He threw all kinds of awkward stuff at me,” retorted Vikki.

“Listen, Vikki, I know Balázs well: he’s an old friend of mine and we go back many years. He’s a hard attorney—one of the best there is. I’ve seen him tear a witness to shreds during cross-examination. But I get the impression, he knew you weren’t guilty right from the start. He put on a show because SSSA wanted him to put on a show, but it was a very soft touch by his standards.”

“Why should SSSA want me to be put on trial?”

“They want to cover their asses. They can’t be seen to be res­ponsible for losing cosmonauts left right and centre, and if they think they can pin the blame onto some individual, they’ll try their damnedest. After all, their record isn’t great. And their predecessors, NASA, fared even worse. In their first fifty years of operations, latter part of twentieth century and beginning of twenty-first, they lost seventeen astronauts—as you’ll know if you read up your history.”

“ ‘Astronaut’?”

“Sorry: that was an early term for ‘cosmonaut’. All to do with what was known as the ‘Space Race’. The Americans called their space travellers ‘astronauts’, the Russians called them ‘cosmonauts’—but in the end the word ‘cosmonaut’ prevailed.”

“Thanks. Yes I did read something about those early disasters. Ground-to-orbit vehicles exploded, or something?”

“Yes. One, called Challenger, exploded just after take-off. Another, called Columbia, burned up on re-entry. Seven casualties in each case. Before those two, another three men were killed in a fire in an Apollo spacecraft on the ground. And much more recently, there was the disaster at the Arthur C. Clarke base on Mars. The dome suddenly burst and depressurised for no apparent reason. Eleven people killed. You heard of that one?”

“Yes. That’s why SSSA are not sending missions to Mars at present, isn’t it?”

“I believe so. Although all those disasters occurred during NASA’s tenure, SSSA have had their share of accidents. Not so deadly: space flight has become far safer overall over the years. Until Murielle, they lost just three cosmonauts. But Murielle’s death has got them mighty shook up and worried.”

“Excuse my saying so, Vihansh: you do seem very knowledgeable about space topics.”

“You’re quite right,” replied Vihansh, a bit embarrassed. “I used to work for SSSA’s legal department—and I’ve spent some time on the board investigating space accidents. And I’ve read up on all the history. That’s why Alex picked me to represent you. Though in the end my services were hardly needed.”

“So what happens now? Will I be able to get back into space any time?”

“That, I can’t answer for now. But shall we say, enough of history for now? We’re going to join in a meeting. The judge has asked me to bring you to his chambers this evening, along with others. Don’t worry about it: it’s no longer a trial. More like a general discussion on the question ‘where do we go from here?’ ”

---§§§---

When Vikki and Vihansh arrived at Judge Andrew Hough’s chambers, they found several people there already. Alex, Gustave, Hal, Joachim, and Dr Ye were seated around a large table, along with Balázs Szekeres. Also there were two men and a woman, all of late-middle-age, none of whom Vikki recognised—although she guessed they were probably from high-up in SSSA. In addition there was a slightly younger woman whom Vikki couldn’t place—though her face seemed vaguely familiar.

It was Balázs who greeted Vikki first of all. “You did very well, Vikki, in court today. Far better than some witnesses I’ve questioned in my long career.”

“Did I, Mr Szekeres? I thought I was being given a mauling.”

“It’s pronounced ‘Sekeresh’. But please call me Balázs. That’s with a ‘zs’ like the ‘s’ in ‘leisure’. This is not a trial: we can dispense with formality.”

“Sorry, Balázs. But I did feel a bit drained at the end.”

“You have to understand, Vikki, that none of us really believed you were guilty. But we had to go ahead with the trial, to avert the risk of mass panic should—what you discovered—leak out. A heavily redacted transcript of the Court proceedings will go out to the Press, isn’t that right, Andy?”

The judge nodded. “Yes, well done Vikki,” he confirmed. “And please, everyone, call me Andy. That’s a name everyone can pro­nounce!”

With the mispronouncing of names out of the way, the introductions could continue. The two men were introduced as Duke Weaver, Chief Executive of SSSA, and Luis Mendés, Chief Scienti­fic officer, while the older woman was Lavinia Morel, head of SSSA’s exobiology division. Vikki knew the names but had never met any of them. An impressive gathering indeed!

Then it was the turn of the younger woman to introduce herself. “Hello, I’m Estella Beeston, but most people know me as ‘Stella Strange’. You may have read one or other of my books…”

Stella Strange! Of course! Vikki realised who she was at once. One of the brightest up-and-coming writers of ‘hard’ science fiction in the business. Vikki had read her debut novel Dawn of Phobos with enthusiasm: indeed it was partly that book that persuaded her to go ahead and sign up with the SSSA Space Force. Of course, Stella’s picture as seen in the front pages of her e-books must have been taken some years ago, which was why Vikki hadn’t quite recognised her.

But why was she in this meeting? This wasn’t a science-fiction congress: it was here to discuss hard facts. Vikki was about to ask “What are you doing here?” but she bit back on her words in time.

It was Duke who came to the rescue. “I should explain,” he began, “that we asked Stella to come along because her vivid imagination might very well be useful when it comes to understanding these out-of-this-world phenomena. We’re hoping she might come up with some ideas we’ve missed. Even a writer of fiction has to draw some of their material from fact.”

That made some sense, even if the premise was somewhat bizarre. But then—they were there to debate a topic which had plenty of the bizarre about it. That was, of course, assuming that discussion about the Bala was on the agenda.

Vikki held her peace while Judge Andrew, who appeared to be chairing the meeting, made his opening statement.

“I should explain that I, and my legal colleagues Balázs and Vihansh, are here mainly as observers, and because we were concerned with the trial which has just concluded. We expect to comment only in the event that any legal matters crop up. We shall leave most of the discussion to the experts and the witnesses. Only those present in this room, plus the jurors in the trial and the court officials—all of whom have been sworn to absolute secrecy—are cognizant of the extraordinary circumstances which bring us together. I therefore pass on to Duke here who will present the issues.”

“Thanks, Andy,” Duke began. “Well, we’re here to discuss the events surrounding the Valentina’s recent mission to Enceladus. All of the surviving crew of that mission are present, except for Paul Udike who is at present on Ganymede. But Paul is listening in on this meeting via video link.” Duke pointed at the holo-monitor set in the corner of the room, which Vikki hadn’t noticed until then. It was currently blank, so Paul hadn’t yet joined in. “Unfortunately,” continued Duke, “the lightspeed time-delay to and from Ganymede is currently almost an hour and a half, so if Paul wants to make any contribution we’ll have to wait a while for it!” Everyone smiled at this, especially Vikki.

“First of all,” continued Duke, “we’ll be dealing with the verified life-forms, apparently native to Enceladus, which were collected from beneath the ice. For that I’ll pass over to Lavinia here.”

“Thank you, Duke,” Lavinia began. “I’m afraid some of my report is rather technical: I hope you will all bear with me. As I’m sure you know, two distinct families of what we’re almost certain are native Enceladean life-forms were collected and brought back to Earth. One of them, a single-celled microorganism, is somewhat similar to Earth’s Archaea. A number of specimens were still alive when the sample reached Earth, and a few have survived up till now. We were able to confirm the late Dr D’Anterre’s conclusion that there are two distinct species. Since she was the first to describe them, we are retaining the taxonomic names she assigned to them—but after lengthy discussions with the ICZN, we have agreed to prefix the generic name with a lower-case ‘x’ to indicate that these are extraterrestrial genera. So they become xEnceladium danterrii and xEnceladium mcmanusii. Their metabolism currently remains a mystery. We suspect that they exchange genetic material by conjugation, since we have not detected any viruses in the sample.”

“What’s ‘conjugation’?” interposed Vikki.

“Sorry, I’m being a bit technical. It’s a process whereby a bacterium or archaeon transfers genetic material direct to another of its species. Non-sexual genetic diversity. There’s also a process called ‘transduction’, in which a virus is involved in the transfer—but we have not observed that.”

Several of her audience remained nonplussed—but they made no further comment.

“Anyway,” continued Lavinia, “we’ve definitely determined that there is genetic material in these specimens, in double helix structure similar to DNA—although it’s not true DNA.”

“Double helix but not DNA?” queried Gustave.

“That is correct. Of course, in a species evolved on a planet—all right, a satellite—many millions of kilometres from Earth with no possibility of interaction, it’s hardly surprising that a different genetic structure has evolved. We’ve determined that this ‘pseudo-DNA’ is made up of nucleotides each containing one of six distinct nucleobases, as against the four found in Earth-based DNA. All the nucleobases are exotic: none of them match the ‘C’, ‘G’, ‘A’, and ‘T’ bases we’re familiar with. So this is exotic material. Perhaps we ought to call it ‘xDNA’ or something.”

“This must have been a very exciting discovery,” put in Alex. “So we have finally proved that this really is native Enceladean life, not the result of contamination by Earth-based probes?”

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

“Absolutely. We also found proteins present composed of exotic amino-acids: not surprising seeing as they were assembled under the guidance of exotic messenger RNA. Altogether our team has done excellently and I am thrilled at these developments.”

“You can say that again, Lavinia,” commented Duke. “We may be at a turning-point in human history.”

“What about our other ‘exciting discovery’?” put in Vikki. “Aren’t we going to move on to that?”

“All in good time. Lavinia, please continue.”

“I now come to the slightly more macroscopic life-forms discovered under the ice. As I said earlier, only five specimens were still alive upon arrival on Earth, although there were several almost intact dead creatures which we were able to dissect. The live specimens consisted of what we believe to be a male and three females belonging to one species, and a separate species of which only one female survived. Yes: we have determined that these creatures possess a form of sexual reproduction, which I shall come to later. Unfortunately, all these specimens have since died. We had hoped to observe breeding from one of the species, but in this we were unsuccessful.

“The creatures are of basic arthropod pattern, similar to the copepods which are present in abundance in Earth’s oceans. There are similarities but also some differences: these specimens possess five pairs of biramous appendages, three pairs for locomotion and two for feeding. The locomotive lower appendages are singly-jointed and the outer segments are paddle-shaped for swimming. On terrestrial copepods there are usually no appendages at all on most of the abdominal segments, and only a single pair on the final segment for swimming. On the Enceladean specimens, the upper branches of the biramous appendages appear to function as some kind of gill, although their function is obscure: there is very little oxygen dissolved in the water at that depth. We surmise that they feed on the same Archaea-like organisms which I have already described, although we were unable to observe any feeding behaviour.

“The cells of these creatures have a nucleus, comprising the same exotic DNA-like material that we saw in the Archaea types. We strongly suspect that certain of these cells can undergo meiosis to create haploid cells for the purpose of sexual reproduction and genetic diversification, although we have not yet observed this. And since we have no living specimens left, our scope for further study is limited. Nevertheless, we are rating this as a discovery as exciting—if not even more so—as that of the Archaea-like specimens.

“We have given scientific names to these two arthropod-like species. We at first asked Dr Ye here if he was prepared to have them named after himself—being the first person to study them—but he has declined.” Dr Ye nodded, shyly. “So we decided to honour our colleague who sadly lost her life on Enceladus. They have been named xDanterria gracilia and xDanterria hirsuta. Provisionally placed in the same genus—although that is subject to possible revision, following further study.

“Thank you, everyone, for bearing with me,” Lavinia concluded. “I hope my report was not too technical.” Several of her listeners had shown blank expressions during much of her speech, though they brightened up at the end of it.

“Thank you Lavinia, that was fine: an excellent summary of your team’s work,” said Duke. “Before you ask, Valentina crew mem­bers,” he continued, just as Vikki was about to interpose, “yes: we intend to send another mission to Enceladus. It is now considered to be the most important extraterrestrial world in the Solar System. We shall be putting a lot of effort into the voyage, and of course we hope there will be no casualties this time.”

Vikki felt a surge of delight on hearing this. A chance to meet up with the Bala again? She couldn’t refrain from asking “Who will be chosen to crew the second mission?”

“We can’t answer that for now,” said Luis, speaking for the first time. “Nor can I give a date when the mission will launch. On the Valentina mission we took advantage of a gravity-assist from Jupiter to save time and fuel. For your unheralded return trip, Jupiter was out of position, and you had to collect up almost all the fuel reserves on Rhea in order to reach Ceres, leaving the base on Rhea seriously short. We may have to send an uncrewed spacecraft to Rhea first, to replenish their fuel dump before they get desperate. After that we can consider launch options for the crewed mission.”

Vikki was rather crestfallen at hearing this equivocal response, but she held her peace. Surely, when it came to selecting the crew, Alex would put in a good word!

If Alex herself was chosen to lead the mission, that is.

Duke was speaking again. “Now we come to the more enigmatic part of our discussion … yes, Vikki, we’ve all noticed how eager you’ve been to move on to this topic! So what are we to make of this supposed visitor from outside the Solar System, this ‘Bala’ as you name it? Only two of those present here today: you, Vikki, and you, Gustave, claim to have actually made contact with this being. More­over, it appears to have played a part in the death of Dr D’Anterre, which obviously imposes a restriction on any future attempts to approach the object. But I now ask Luis to fill us in on what we know up to the present.”

“First thing to emphasise,” began Luis, “is that all matters relating to this phenomenon remain Top Secret, and no word of the subject is to pass outside this room, without express instructions from Duke, Lavinia or myself. I’m sure you all understand the reason for this. The last thing we want is to spread mass panic worldwide.”

Luis referred to his tablet. “I can report that we have so far located six objects in the Solar System which approximately fit the description of a ‘hummock’ or ‘snowdrift’ as described by the Valentina’s crew. One of them is free-floating in space, orbiting the sun in an almost circular orbit a few million kilometres outside Saturn’s orbit. This one is roughly cylindrical rather than hummock-shaped, but that may be its adaptation when it is not grounded on a planet or moon. It is about fifty metres long by six metres across—that is, considerably larger than the object encountered on Enceladus. We were fortunate to be able to re-direct one of the drones from the Saturn system to make a close encounter with it, so we were able to observe it in detail—but it shows no surface features.

“The other five are all grounded on separate worlds. The one on Enceladus, almost certainly the same one the Valentina encountered, is still at exactly the same position it took up when the mission departed, some three hundred kilometres from our base. It has been under constant observation from the L1 drone which was left behind in the neighbourhood, and no activity of any kind has been reported. Indeed, I would put it that ‘it shows no signs of life’. Of the remaining four, one has been spotted on Nereid, Neptune’s third-largest satellite. It appears to be the same size as the one on Enceladus, and like it has shown no movement. It is being monitored by the only drone we have anywhere near: the one which occupies the L2 Lagrangian point outside Triton’s orbit, some distance from Nereid, so close inspection has not been possible. I remind everyone here that Nereid’s rotation is not synchronous with its orbit, so sometimes the object is on the side facing Neptune, sometimes not—if that has any relevance.

“The next we found, on Uranus’s moon Miranda, we were able to study more closely, thanks to the uncrewed base we have on Ariel. It looks very similar to the one on Enceladus, and likewise has shown no activity. Then we discovered one on Enceladus’s near neighbour Mimas: that one was hard to spot since it was partly hidden by a crater wall. And the last one turned up on Charon—”

“You mean ‘Chiron’, don’t you?” Gustave interposed. “Chiron the Centaur.”

“No, not Chiron. Charon, Pluto’s largest satellite. What made you think of the asteroid Chiron: were you expecting there to be one there?”

“It’s just that the Bala actually told us that one of its companions was settled on Chiron. It also mentioned Nereid—but it said all the rest of its companions were drifting in space. But I suppose it may have re-grouped after the ‘accident’.”

“Whatever—we’ll come to that,” Luis resumed. “All the grounded apparitions are new, in the sense that they don’t show up on earlier photos of the respective moons. This lends credence to the theory that they may be some kind of space vehicle—or even, according to what you postulate—a space-travelling extraterrestrial being.”

“Well, I’m glad you don’t dismiss our account out of hand,” remarked Vikki, rather condescendingly. “So what do you make of the Bala, from what we’ve told you? Or rather, from what I said in my testimony at the trial?”

“Indeed we have all read the transcripts,” Luis continued. “This concept, of a living creature having some sort of cavity within its own body, drawing you humans inside, creating a breathable atmo­sphere for you, and then conversing with you by displaying English text on the wall of this cavity—this is what we find hard to stomach—if you’ll forgive the pun. But of course, we know nothing about any intelligent life beyond the Solar System. Stella, do you know of any such concept having been dreamt up in Science Fiction?”

This was the first time Stella Strange, the novelist, had been addressed, and now she spoke up for the first time.

“Certainly not in any of my writing—though it certainly sounds like an interesting albeit weird idea that an author could work on. Nor do I know of anything similar in mainstream sci-fi. Not that I’m familiar with every one of the thousands of different stories out there, of course! There is a very amateurish piece on one of the fanfiction sites: not derived from any of my work, I hasten to add. It describes a cosmonaut who’s kidnapped by tentacled ETs—and yes they puncture his space-suit—who imprison him in a room in their habitat and communicate with him first by writing on a wall, then by speech. There are similarities.”

“Enough for our two friends to have concocted their account from this source?” asked Luis.

“Mr Mendés: I resent that aspersion,” Vikki exclaimed, angrily. “I was under the impression that everyone had come to this meeting with an open mind.”

“Vikki, calm down, please,” interposed Judge Andy. “All right, Luis, we are not in the business of accusing anyone present here of lying. This is not a trial. Please continue.”

“All right. Are you saying, Vikki, and you, Gustave, that neither of you have read the story Stella refers to?”

“Not that it’s in the least relevant, but no,” replied Vikki. “Nor have you, Gustave, I assume?”

“Certainly not,” said Gustave. “Fanfiction isn’t my ‘thing’. What was the story called?”

“That, I can’t remember,” said Stella. “I didn’t read very far into it. As far as I recall, it involved time-travel, one of the impossibilities which I’ve studiously avoided in my own fiction, along with faster-than-light travel. Do these ETs of yours have faster-than-light travel, Vikki, Gustave?”

“No,” replied Gustave. “The Bala explicitly stated, they do not. Its home planet, it claims, is sixty light-years from here, and they can only attain one-tenth of lightspeed. That’s a long trip!”

“And conducted without the benefit of a spaceship, I gather. Propulsion by means of some sort of neutrino-drive implant in their own body. Anything on that, Stella?”

“Once again, no. Not even the most inept of amateurs have dreamt up something like that. Larry Niven, whose work I greatly admire, has something called a ‘starseed’ which can travel in space across the Galaxy unprotected: that’s the closest I can think of. But it doesn’t have any inbuilt propulsion: it employs a sort of photonic sail.”

“Well,” said Luis, “all I can say is, if all this isn’t the product of a vivid imagination—sorry, Vikki, Gustave: two vivid imaginations—it’s so weird, so fantastic, I for one feel convinced it just has to be based on fact. There is an alien intelligence out there, and it wants to contact humankind. Whether for mutual benefit, I don’t know. It appears not to have ventured closer to Earth than Saturn’s orbit, and you, Vikki and Gustave, tell us that it cannot tolerate Earth’s or even the Moon’s gravity, nor the temperature here. And it does not appear to be able to communicate over long distance by radio—or any other frequency in the electromagnetic spectrum. Otherwise I’m sure it would have done so by now—and we would have detected it. So any contact with it has for now to involve face-to-face contact and spaceflight. That’s a good thing in itself, because it means we can keep this discovery under wraps.

“So we’ve decided: a mission to contact this being is imperative. But, bearing in mind what happened to Murielle, we have to take precautions. Those who are to approach the being—the ‘Bala’—will be wearing special space-suits made of reinforced material which cannot be punctured by any sharp object using reasonable force. These suits will be very heavy and awkward to move in, even in low gravity, so we may have to develop special servos to assist with walking. Any questions? And, Vikki, please don’t ask ‘who’s going?’. We know you’re eager to meet up with your ‘friend’ again: all I can say is, we have to do a full risk-assessment first.

“And, once we do contact this being, the first questions we shall have to ask are, why did it react to Murielle’s actions so violently—and is there any risk of it doing so again? And what is its purpose in settling on small icy moons on the outskirts of the Solar System. What are its thoughts about Murielle’s death? We need to be very careful in what we ask it.

“Once again I ask, are there any questions?”

No-one spoke up. Evidently the meeting had come to an end, with much for everyone to think about.