As they returned to the communications centre door, Will asked “I wonder what that language is and what it means.”
“Same here. Once I know the location of the other end of the signal, I’ll contact my HQ and let them know something odd’s going on here. I’ll give them all the information I can, so that the Head of Operations can decide what to do next. Don’t worry, though, your presence won’t be mentioned.”
Once they were back inside the building, they removed their helmets and moved to the computer terminal, where Billy entered the details from his measurements. A few seconds later, a detailed three-dimensional image of the local solar system was displayed, with a narrow cone overlaid upon it, with its point at the asteroid and broadening out as it went into the distance.
“Well, well, well. I should have realised, judging from the direction of the antenna” exclaimed Billy. “It seems to be pointed at Astraeus 5, the outermost planet of the system. It’s a dead, barren planet and no-one has found a use for it yet, so it’s uninhabited. It’s only about 5,000 kilometres across, so it’s pretty small. There was a long debate as to whether it was big enough to call it a planet but once it was discovered that it only goes around the sun, rather than another body, it was agreed that it was the only suitable category for it. At the moment, it’s only about 250,000 kilometres from here, so there is no real loss of signal strength to speak of, making it easy to transmit a large amount of data there without noticeable losses. It moves quite slowly around the sun, so pointing an antenna at it is a fairly safe bet”
“It’s odd. I’ve been to this asteroid loads of times and have never been anywhere near that planet, although we call it Zeon 5. Is there any way of being any more precise as to where it will be on Astraeus 5? A diameter of 5,000 kilometres still gives us a large area to search for the receiver” asked Will.
“I have a small laser light source I sometimes use when I’m aligning dishes and other stuff that I can use to narrow it down a bit. Whilst there will be a small amount of dissipation because of the distance, it won’t be much, as there’s no atmosphere for the light to go through. Unfortunately, the receivers will pick up the signal over quite a large area when we get there, which won’t limit the search enough to make them useful, although they’re probably worth taking anyway, so we can listen in as we go. The surface of the planet is almost totally flat, apart from a few small craters caused by space debris, so when we get fairly close, I can use our zoom camera to look at the surface to get an idea, programme the details into the ship’s navigator and that will get us fairly close to the receiver. That’s the best I can do, though, so we’ll need to use our eyes after that” replied Billy.
“What about a heat sensor? The receiver might give off a little bit of heat that can be detected when we get fairly close to the planet.”
“It’s unlikely that there will be enough heat generated by the receiver but you never know, I suppose. The receiver will need to do something with the info it’s getting, so there may be enough kit to give off some heat. As it’s relative to the background, it might just be enough if I set the receiver to be on high sensitivity. Good idea. At the same time, I’ll link it to an infra-red camera system, which will let us look at the surface, rather than just rely on the detector.”
With that, Billy felt he had enough information to call his control back on Columbus. He asked Will to stay where he was, so that he wouldn’t be in view of the camera, then moved over to the communicator. He pressed the call button and the monitor display changed from the company logo to the middle-aged face of the senior operator, Joe Willmore.
“Hi Joe. There IS something weird going on. Someone has fixed a small transmitter and a beam antenna outside pointing to Astraeus 5. The odd thing is, all it seems to be doing is sending routine entertainment broadcast streams there. There seems to have been no attempt to intercept any private messages, which is a bit odd in the circumstances but that would require knowledge of the encryption methods we use, so might be beyond the technical knowledge of whoever fixed up the transmitter. I took some video recordings and they’ll be with you in a few seconds. It could be a hermit who’s set up on Astraeus but it all seems a little odd. Just to add to the strangeness, one of the bits of equipment on the surface has a label on it with writing on it in a language I’ve never come across before. Have a look at the video and photos I’m sending you. Any suggestions as to what you want me to do?”
“Hi Billy. That DOES sound odd.” He hit a few buttons on the computer keyboard, “The photos are here. Give me a couple of minutes to give me a chance to have a look at them, and I’ll call you back.”
A few minutes later, there was a chime from the communicator speaker.
“Hi Joe. What do you reckon?” asked Billy.
“I agree. It’s most unusual. What I can’t understand is why they’re only streaming freely available stuff and aren’t trying to get hold of anything confidential. Maybe they were in a rush and didn’t have the time. I have fed the words on that label into the main computer here and it translated into “Made in Spain”. Apparently, the language is one that surfaced in the late 1800’s on Earth, called Esperanto, although it’s evolved over the years. The original idea was to have a common language to create harmony between different creeds and nationalities. Eventually, several million people used the language across the planet but it never became the main language in any country. Whilst it still has users on Earth, there are only a few other users in other systems. What I really don’t understand is how the part got onto ‘Roid 2. As far as I know, all the planets that use the language are purely agrarian or mining and don’t produce electronic goods. I suggest that you go over to Astraeus 5 and see what’s at the other end of the signal path. I’ve called the cops and asked them to meet you over there, so expect a call from them soon. Are you OK with that?”
“Fine by me. I’ll get over there and have a look. I need to cobble together a few bits of kit, though, so I can have some hope of pinning down exactly where the signal is going to.”
“OK, whatever you need. The cops will take a few hours to get there anyway, as they’re currently in Sector 3, near to ‘Roid 1. Joe out.”
“Billy out.”
Billy turned to Will and said “Let’s see what we can rustle up so we can narrow down our destination. Some of it will already be on my ship, so we only need a few of the more obscure items from here.” With that, he gave a list of things that he thought they would need to Will.
Once they had everything Billy could think of, he said “We’d better get out of here. Before we do, can I take a holo-image of us both, for my collection? It’s a hobby of mine.
“I’d like to do the same, if that’s OK” replied Will.
“Yeah, sure. Might be hard to explain to someone else, though!”
When they left the comm building, they carried the items they had collected and placed them next to Billy’s ship, then returned to the out-of-place communications antenna where Billy attached a small laser light to the main arm, and made sure it was pointing in the correct direction, as well as he could. They then went back to Billy’s ship and carefully put the items they had left alongside it on board. As a two-seater Clarion class transport vehicle, accommodation on board would cause no hardship for either of them.
As they left the asteroid, Will took a good look around, to see what the base looked like. “I can’t get over how similar this place is to my Commbase 3. There are some small differences, such as the shape of the building. Also, in my case, the roof is red and the walls are white, unlike this one. The size and location of the antennas is also different but there’s no doubt that this is the same lump of rock. This ship is very different to my ship, though. Much more spacious and streamlined. It makes mine look positively overweight. Mine’s more like a big box with a cab at the front.”