15. THE RUSTED HULK

THE CASE OF MERCURY RISING, 15

We slept again.

I don’t want you to start thinking that I lack normal enthusiasm for the more attractive gender, but I was beginning to conclude that the air might be short on oxygen when my eyes closed and I went exploring the land of Nod instead of the land of Angelina, and got lost in a world in which a tribe of stranded Yorkshire men equipped with such barbaric weapons as pitchforks faced up to us, and I, bravely, was on the cusp of going into battle against them, equipped only with a sack of particularly vicious turnips, when my perturbing images were disturbed once again by Mercury Rising.

“Attention!” it said, speaking quite brusquely in order to break into my unlikely warfare. And it turned the lighting up until the brilliance of sunlight being piped to us in a way I didn’t fully understand would have woken me anyway.

“Whaa...” stammered Angelina.

“Attention!” repeated the computer’s strident voice.

“Mercury Rising, what is it?” I asked.

“I have detected a large artificial object ahead of us on a course that will take it into orbit round Venus,” intoned the computer.

“Not more rubbish put in the way of weary travellers, left to rot in the wilderness by thoughtless men from my home world?” I asked, and added, “we humans have got a lot to learn about tidying up the environment before we take serious steps into the Universe.”

“Not at all,” replied Mercury Rising, “this cannot possibly have originated on Earth.”

“Why not?” asked Angelina, “so far the balloonist and the Yorkshireman both came from home and as far as I’m aware the only place where any kind or people live is Earth.”

“Then let me explain,” began the computer, and paused.

“Please do,” I said, “these interruptions are getting to eat into my love life,” I added.

“I don’t understand love life,” replied Mercury Rising, a peevish note to its artificial voice.

“You wouldn’t. You’re a machine and you don’t have to reproduce yourself using the fascinating techniques that Mother Nature has afforded us,” I told it, “so why does the object you’ve spotted convince you it isn’t from Earth?”

“It’s to do with human history” began Mercury Rising a little hesitantly as if it was afraid it might have some gaps in its apparently infinite knowledge.

“What about human history?” asked Angelina.

“Were any civilisations launching probes into space when there was a Tudor monarchy?” asked the computer, “I mean, did Henry the Eighth develop high spec. technical craft capable of enduring for many millennia in space?”

“Of course not!” I replied, “He was an egotistical king who was pre-occupied with siring an heir and otherwise thought life was relatively simple and that it was fun chopping people’s heads off, but we don’t know everything about him. Come to think of it, we don’t know very much about it at all because history is just about always being constantly reinvented. It was all a long time ago anyway, and as I suggested we only get to learn one side of every story.”

“Then I rather suspect that the object I have detected has come from elsewhere,” decided Mercury Rising, “for a start it’s quite rusty.”

“Rusty?” I interjected, “surely that’s not possible. “Surely if iron’s going to rust it needs plenty of oxygen in which to do it, and there surely aren’t clouds of oxygen anywhere in space?”

“I haven’t detected any, and my memory chips are strangely negative on the subject,” its mechanical voice assured me.

“Then what is it you have detected? Let’s get down the stairs and put it on the monitor.”

“And I hope you haven’t woken us for nothing,” yawned Angelina.

Once in the main cabin of the strange vessel that was to be our home for ages yet to come, we sat in the chairs provided for us and I, for one, was grateful that they were comfortable, though that might prove a handicap in the future because the moment I sat down I felt a weight in my eyes forcing the lids to flutter.

But my attention was drawn straight away to the monitor, which apparently had been switched off in our absence and was now flickering back into life, and the object it showed was mind-warpingly unexpected.

It was clearly artificial, an almost perfect sphere with odd little dents in it, irregular enough to not have been part of its original design, and the tell-tale indicator of age was its red-rust colour and the many scratches that were made evident when Mercury Rising used a powerful telephoto lens to enlarge it.

“That’s most odd,” I whispered, “are you sure it’s real and not a picture being sent our way to confuse us?”

Mercury Rising cackled. That was the only word that could explain the sound it made. “Impossible,” it chortled, “there is no detectable signal anywhere near us except for the fading remnants of Radio Two from Earth and anyway, why would any other being want to try to confuse us with the image of a rusty shed in space! And on top of that, I’m really very clever and can’t be so easily confused.”

“Then what is it?” asked Angelina, fed up with the negatives and wanting a positive.

“It would seem to be exactly what you see,” said the computer glibly, “I surmise that it’s an alien vessel that has been travelling through the galaxy for an awfully long time. It may have even originated in a completely different galaxy, who can tell? And on its way it has passed through the odd meteor shower, brushed against the even odder comet with enough water in its tail to start the rusting process on hard steel, and yet it has on board a crew of several who are all gazing our way through their own instruments and wondering who on whatever planet they come from we are!”

“There are people on board?” I asked, my mind switching to the Yorkshire man on the moon who I was certain would have been perfectly prepared to take Igor’s Ark by force if he hadn’t been scared off by the threat of a big bang.

“Most assuredly,” confirmed Mercury Rising, “and it might interest you to know that if that’s the case they must have lived there, bred there so that the original explorers, for that’s what they probably are, have been long replaced by their own offspring, who have, in their turn, been replaced by others until through many long generations they have lived and breathed aboard that shed. I am monitoring them as we speak, for they have open frequencies they use to correspond with other similarly ancient sheds out there in the depths of space.”

“Why call it a shed?” asked Angelina, “isn’t that a bit insulting to them?”

“Not at all. From the little I have so far managed to translate from what is a very alien language it’s what they call it themselves. They have a highly developed sense of humour and find us, or rather, find you, laughably simple, though they do like the way you set about reproducing yourselves!”

“What?” exclaimed Angelina, “they’re watching us?”

“Not at all,” murmured Mercury Rising, “they’re monitoring some of the television broadcasts from Earth and they’ve latched onto one called For Adults Only. And they rather like the idea of the things some of you humans get up to in the name of reproduction. You see, and this is my speculation again, they’re heading for a new world to live on and they’ve chosen Venus because it’s uninhabited, and they’re all female.”

“You said they’ve lived and died through several generations,” protested Angelina, “how can they if they’re all female? Don’t aliens need some kind of input from their menfolk?”

“You’ll have to ask them when you get up close and personal,” replied Mercury Rising, “there’s only so much a clever bit of technology like me can learn from broadcasts aimed at anyone but us and I haven’t a clue about what they look like, how they behave between each other, but I do know they have a completely different attitude to sexual congress. They’re all female and I don’t detect news or talk of a male anywhere.”

“That must make them highly intelligent,” grinned Angelina.

© Peter Rogerson 27.02.20