Janet Edwards - Earth Flight

I sighed with relief. Fian and I would return to Alien Contact!

The General Marshal pointed to another of the forest of raised hands, and a woman spoke. ‘Beta Sector Daily. What about Commander Tell Dramis and Major Weldon?’

‘Commander Tell Dramis takes command of the search teams in Zeta sector, with Major Weldon as his deputy,’ said the General Marshal.

My frustration returned. My cousin Drago was already out in distant Zeta sector searching for the aliens, and my old friend from Next Step, Keon, was helping with the research into the light sculpture. Fian and I would return to the Alien Contact programme, but not until some unknown time in the future.

A blatantly hostile voice asked the next question. ‘Beta Veritas. Why promote Jarra Morrath, but not Drago Tell Dramis?’

‘Bigot!’ Lolmack and Lolia chorused the word before I’d worked out the significance of the man missing out the clan prefix in my name.

The tone of the General Marshal’s voice made it clear he’d also realized he was dealing with someone prejudiced against me. ‘I’ve promoted every officer who played a significant part in establishing contact with the alien sphere, including Commander Tell Morrath. Commander Tell Dramis and Major Weldon had already received their promotions, and Commander Tell Dramis was strongly opposed to the suggestion of a further promotion to Colonel. His exact words were that he’d rather be locked in a prison cell with a Zeus sewer rat.’

There was a burst of laughter from both the audience on the vid screen and my classmates. Drago had done a lot of talking on the newzies – his jet-black hair and devastatingly handsome face made him incredibly popular with their viewers – and everyone could picture him saying those words.

‘Alpha Spectrum,’ said the next questioner. ‘How long will it take to find the alien home world?’

‘That depends how far away it is,’ said the General Marshal. ‘Humanity currently has well-established inhabited worlds in Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta sectors, fledgling colony worlds in Epsilon and Kappa sectors, and has just begun Planet First assessment of possible colony worlds in Zeta sector. A complete search of that area of space will take between five months and a year, depending on how we divide manpower and resources between Alien Contact and Planet First efforts.’

‘A year!’ The Alpha Spectrum reporter’s words were echoed by Krath sitting next to me. ‘But each sector only has 200 star systems. How can it possibly take that long to search them?’

‘Each sector only has 200 inhabited star systems,’ said the General Marshal. ‘Portalling between inhabited worlds gives the illusion they’re packed closely together, when they’re actually scattered widely across space. We’re extremely selective when we choose our colony worlds. For every star system with a planet satisfying the criteria of Planet First, there are a hundred with a planet where human beings could survive with some difficulty, and many thousands with planets completely unsuitable for human life but with their own alien plant and animal life in abundance. Far more star systems exist without any sign of life at all.’

The next questioner sounded aggressive. ‘Gamma Sector News. You believe the alien home world is within humanity’s space? How could Planet First Stellar Survey have missed a planet with an advanced alien civilization?’

The General Marshal shook his head. ‘On the contrary, we believe the alien home world is probably further away than that. Tactical considerations, however, mean our first priority is to eliminate any possibility of it being within humanity’s space. Expansion was extremely rapid during Exodus century. Humanity was too impatient to spend enough time checking its colony worlds, let alone waste effort on uninhabitable star systems.’

He paused for a moment. ‘That reckless overexpansion led to the near collapse of our civilization. It may also have led to signs of an alien civilization being missed in Alpha, Beta or Gamma sectors. After a century of colony worlds struggling to deal with issues overlooked by those first rushed Planet First checks, there was a new attempt to expand and the nightmare of Thetis. A single lethal alien animal species was overlooked, portal quarantine procedures failed, and the chimera infested other worlds, threatening the survival of the human race.’

There was a moment of grim silence before the General Marshal continued. ‘After the lesson of the Thetis chaos year, humanity finally realized it was vital to allow Planet First teams the time and budget to do a meticulous job, but financial and logistical realities mean we still can’t make an exhaustive search of uninhabitable star systems. I’d be extremely surprised if we’d missed a planet with technology sufficiently advanced to construct the alien probe in Delta, Epsilon or Kappa, but those sectors will be rechecked anyway.’

The Gamma Sector News reporter wasn’t giving way to anyone else. ‘The newly formed Isolationist Party feel searching for the alien home world is a mistake because humanity would be better off not encountering aliens.’

‘I fail to understand the logic of trying to pretend an alien civilization doesn’t exist when they’ve already got a probe orbiting our home world,’ said the General Marshal. ‘We urgently need to know if any of our inhabited worlds are dangerously near alien territory. I’ll take a question from someone else now.’

The next questioner went back to the subject of Fian and me. ‘Alpha and Omega. Our viewers want to know when Commander Tell Morrath and Major Eklund will be available for interviews. They’ve made no public appearances since the signal was sent.’

The General Marshal smiled. ‘I’m fully aware of the ferocious levels of public interest in Commander Tell Morrath and Major Eklund. Fortunately, the remote location of their class protects them from continual invasion of privacy by the vid channels of every sector. No Military officer should have to suffer merciless interrogation by the newzies.’ His smile widened. ‘Except for myself of course.’

‘But Commander Tell Dramis and Major Weldon appeared on Earth Rolling News for extensive periods,’ said the Alpha and Omega representative.

‘Only to provide public information on behalf of the Military.’ The General Marshal paused for a second. ‘That’s all for now. If you want my answers to any questions that weren’t asked, then I’m sure Gamma Sector News will be happy to invent some for you just the way they did after my last newzie conference.’

The General Marshal left the podium while everyone was still laughing at that comment, the vid coverage switched back to the Earth Rolling News studios, and Lecturer Playdon went up to the wall vid and turned it off.

‘A year!’ Krath sounded as frustrated as I felt.

‘If the alien home world is near to Earth, then it may only take a couple of months to find it.’ Playdon turned to look at me and Fian. ‘Congratulations on your promotions, Commander Tell Morrath and Major Eklund.’

I was startled by my classmates applauding. Not all of them of course. When they found out about my lies and my Handicap, some had accepted me, but others tried to drive me away with insults. Eventually, I’d won grudging tolerance from most of the ape haters, and now I was famous a couple of them were fawning over me in a way that made me want to vomit, but there was one person pointedly folding her arms and refusing to give even a token hand clap. Petra would never stop hating me. Not after Joth’s death.

There was the usual stab of pain as I thought of Joth. I blamed Petra for his death, because he was killed doing something stupidly dangerous after an argument with her. She blamed me, because the argument was about her making him insult me. We could both be right, or both wrong. It really didn’t matter. Nothing could bring Joth back, and Petra and I would always be enemies.