The Inner Ring (gxg)

Chapter 30

The next few days was a flurry of excitement and activity among the crew, and evidently back on Earth as well. The initial pictures of the frozen aliens had stunned the population and caused some radical actions. Some countries and states had to ban the hunting of foxes, as there were many who were suddenly convinced that all foxes were secretly aliens in disguise. Other states and countries actually promoted the hunting, since the people in charge believed those very same conspiracy theories, and didn't want an alien uprising.

The latest news, that there were two alien races, and that their home worlds had been found caused an even bigger uproar. People were having enough of an issue dealing with the fact that there was another intelligent species out there now had to accept that there were at least two of them, and that they knew where humanity's planet was. Bomb shelter supplies were sold out across the globe, as many people started acting as though an interstellar war was imminent. Cement and rebar were in short supply, as holes were dug for many new underground homes.

Pepper just laughed about it. A cement bunker wouldn't save them if the aliens decided to attack. But hey, if it gave them a little peace of mind then she guessed it was okay. Of course, all those private citizens acting that way got all the war mongers in politics thinking the same thing. Defense budgets started to go through the roof, as countries started to think about a real war in space, rather than a fictional one. Had they been out at Uranus instead of back on Earth, they would have realized all the petty wars they had been fighting, and weapons they were hoping to use would be as useless as the aforementioned bunkers.

The time also gave the group more insight into the bridge panels. In addition to the cameras and radar, they had found one that pulled up a ship model, which everyone assumed was a damage control panel, based on the amount of the danger blue coloring around rooms where the hole bisected the ship. After that, another panel showed the ship in a similar state to the radar panel, but didn't have the buttons, just the dial. On the display screen, there were several box options that resembled those on the computer, but Pepper and Vanessa kept quiet about them. It was decided that this might have been a navigation panel, but without knowing the language, nobody was sure.

The other panels remained a mystery, either having baffling displays, or controls that required the language to be known. This included the computer, which Brody and Anton were excited to see, if only for the keyboard, which gave them the symbols that the alien species used in their language. Several pictures were taken of it, and Brody was resolved to learn the language by the time the mission was done. It might not help on this mission, but the way things were going, it was almost assured that there would be a follow up at some point in the future.

But the best part of those days, was at the end. Emily announced that she had found the alien home.

"This isn't 100% accurate, but I ran it by the people in our mission control, and they're on board with my models and computations," she announced. "We used the position of the planets from when the arrival happened on the radar panel to determine the direction, and there were no other viable candidates that we could find. So, we think this is right unless there is a star that we're not aware of. If that is the case, our friends live near a star called 55 Cancri A, about 41 light years from Earth. If that projection is true, then based on the planetary movement in the radar visual relative to the movement of the ships themselves, our estimate is that these ships were moving between nine to ten times the speed of light."

"Are you serious about that?" Anton gasped.

"Very. Again, these aren't 100% accurate, but so far everyone on the team has agreed with them. We may want to run them past NASA and the Europeans, but that is your call," Emily assured him. "I'm not sure if that knowledge getting out will hinder anything, but it would be interesting to say the least. Oh, and if we ever go to that system, I want in. Hypothetical projections of one of the planets there, Cancri E, have it made from carbon that could be in the form of diamonds."