here I'm not dressedake grabbed a pair of binoculars frorand quickly found the object, ""Strange, meteors dontIsually last this long before they burn"Is there a difference asked JoThere certainlyreplied Blake, stillhrough his binoculars, " meteors are relatively small, butasteroids can be huge, anything from theand what size is this one asked joHellish big, came Blake's answer, " Looking at thisould be extinction sized
oh hell jo this could be thewe should have somethis time it's too closeBlake continued to watch the object, and then jumped upnd dashed into his observatory, " What's the mattersked Jo as he disappeared into thesummerhouseThere's something strange going on here, I thinkslowed down, came his voice from the observatoryBlake switchede poweentered the dark space of the wooden structure and a lowred glow filled the cave The telescope also came to lifewith whirs and clicks, finally ending in a bleep He wentdirectly to a control panel where he switched theelescope to manual control, as above him the two leavesof the roof opened The object could be seen in the skythe south-west, and now seemed like just another very
brightude of velhe monitor that allowed him to align thescope he brought the instrument around until the objectthe cross-hairs on thethen hed hion to the eyepiece He brought the telescope intofocus, and suddenly sat back in his chair with shock,with so much force that the chair nearly toppled overAfter a few seconds blake's eye went back to thegered the hd video camera, whichminutes muttering,“Idon' t believe this,”ocredib"What,'s incredible baby, " asked Jo, from the doorwayCome here and look at this invited blake
Jo madewhere her husband was sitting, and heswitched the hd feed to the monitor"Whatlooking at?" That babe is what that thing up there iIt looks like a space ship, said Jo, the shock registeringNo it's not iss-2 Ive seen that hundreds of times andit definitely came in from space just nowBlake fumbled in his shorts pocket and brought out hisphone, he pressed a preprogramed button and held ithis ear“ Ronnielake, have you got anything outof the ordinary on your scopes? Well can you take alook, to the south-west? Yea, I'll holdWhose that,” askedRonnie at work, he's on monitoring duty tonight, you
met him last family day that Goonhilly ran, he's the oneOh hi ronnie, you have nothing, but I'm looking at itright now, I'm sending you the video and the lt-Dec'toible to the naked eye and through myscope, can you check it out please and ring me backhe pair continued to watch the object on the telescope'smonitor as it slowly changed orientation It was clearot a natural object in any sense, it was bright and lit bthe Sun farthe west, from their vantage point itseemed to consist of a large sphere, surrounded by fourtube-like appendages
The four tubes were all connectedby two rings, each about a third of the way along thetubes, there was no light that could be seen at this timechanged the magnification by replacing a shortersed the telescohe resolutionot as good but it did show slightly more detailAlthough they could not resolve them, there seemedbe some markings in the tubes, which may have beenhe space between the tubes and the sphere wasfilled with a latticekind andsurface detailperipheral vision, to reduce the blurThe two staredthe screen, and they both jumped as the cell-phone rangHi Ronnie, what have you gotlistened for some minutes as his colleague updated him,inally Blake said,“OKDoctor anded telm what you have just told me, send him my video an
see what he wants to do pause, " Yes please let meknow what he says, speak to you soon, byeWhat did he say,” askedIn brief, he couldn't find anything therehough hehad a visual, no radio emissions or image bounce at allprototype dish that we haven,t started to evaluate as yetit's meant to work like a kind of range finderultraviolet toand gotultraviolet side of the spectrum, and here's theastonishing bit, it's around five-hundred thousand milesout I shudder to think about just how big that thingtance of the moonust be about halfof the moonAnyway, Ronnie's goinget hold of anderson andgive him the data, then it's down to him what he doesDoctor Ralph Anderson had been the director ooonhilly earth Station since the late two-thousand andens and hadthe staticobtaining the contract as the communications hub for theESA and the private consortiums that wanted to mine theMoon
Goonhilly Downs was the first station to pick-upthe signals from the very first telecommunicationsatellite Telstar It had also beBritish early-warning network during the cold-war, and aon hadlaxing with friends aftwhen his cell-phone rang, seeing w
mmediately prepared himself for trouble""Excuse me, Ihave to take this, work, he told his guests HelloAnderson here he said and then listened in silenceOK Ronnie leave it with me and I'll cethe esaBlake to expect a call from them, as hehave all the data at this point, bye He stoodMost aIte, prompting a question from his wife asat was wrong, Just work my love, a little problemHe said almost absent-mindedly
turning to their guehe said, "I'm sorry, I am going to have to leave you for alittle while, please just canny on and enjoy yourselvesand he left the lounge bound for his office Ralphdroppeddchair and sat thinkingor several minutes before he took any action His homeoffice was fully equipped with everything an ofticehould have including a secure line to the esa dutyFinallye receiver from the blacklephone and dialled zero-nine, one three, to actsecure scrambler that the esa had insisted upoAfter several clicks and bleeps the call was answered bylles Mason who was the duty officer for the night at thheadquarters building in Paris, he gave his personal codeand asked for the Centre for earth Observation inFrascati, Italy After close to halfannounced"Observation Centre, who's calling?This is doctor Ralph Anderson at Goonhilly Downs inCornwall, England, he then gave his personal identitycodeThis is mario vinchensa speaking How can I help you
de"One of my senior staff members, who happens to havea very sophisticated astronomy system at his home, hasbservedsort of craft out beyond the mbut even so, it's visible to the naked eye Our rangingquipment gives the range at around half a million mileswe have video of the object whiclyou supply acan send to you the video and all the datAre your sure this is a space-craft sir, I canon our local scopes, the range should cover at least thatfar out, queried Marioone of our dishesLR Doppler Radar saying either, until one of my staff brought the visibht Ranging System on-line, with the coordinates ourf engineer gave us we were able to detectanswered the doctorAre you available to hang on sir? I can bring theGalileo-sT onto the coordinates offered mario
"canyou send the data to this number, 39-537-193877, it willcome directly to me herector Anderson plugged the data stick into hiscomputer and dialled the number Mario had given him,the computer showed a message that heted the file on the data -stick and hit the sendbutton, seconds later the data-send had been completedI have it doctor, Marios voice informed him "let meopen the package, he said There followed severalminutes of silence, before Mario voice again soundedMama mial is this video for re
ld seem so, it was taken throughsorryhirty-centimetre refleHD CCDcamera, by my chief engineerfeed theso galileoand see what we have, the sound of keys being tappedcould be heard in the background, "This may take a feminutesThat's fine, said Ralph, Have the up-grades binstalled yet?Si, well most of them, we wait only forsoftware but the new lenses and receptors are onboardand working just fine
Here we go, eccellenteWhat do you see Mario?see the ship like in your video, it's just hanging therew did your man find it, "Mario askedI am told he was sitting out and saw a flash, he thoughtwas a meteor or asteroid, but it didn ' t moveusedlescope, you have the rest in the packageI will have to pass this up the line, we have a protocofor this eventuality, explai
ned Mario, "I have to contactdirector and he will takeinstruct you and your staff to stand down on this matternd to remind you of our non-disclosure agreement,soo ourBuona notteAs Doctor Anderson broke the connection to the esachensa grabbed another telephone, a blue onethis time, that was connected directly to NASA HQ at300 East street sw washington dc it was four in th
This novel, is entirely a workof fiction
none of the namesliving or dead and anyimilarity in name is entirelcoincidental
This work of fiction isovered by copy-rightDerek p
blake 2019o copying or reproductionmanual ophotographic ispermitted without the copyright holders writtenAutCornwall in the uk therefore this booktten in uK English
ChapteThe de summerlong light nights of June and July werhe land Blakeoutside their summerhouse overlooking the EnglisChannel
There was little or no light pollution in the farwest of Cornwall, so the sky was bright with stars,evendistant stars burned with a fire never seencitlesBlake laid back on the sun-lounger a martini in handd stared up into the night sky, "See that smudge ofht over there, he said to Jo, his wife of over twentyHmm, what smudge Blake, is it something on yoFunny, said blakenorth-eastabout twenty degrees from the horizon, see itWhere asked Jo with some frustration she turned oher lounger to face behind her and looked up, yes, I seeIreof letting me enjoy my drink and my bookGood guess, yes I am, "laughed Blake,u knoow far away that smudge is?sure you will tell mechat is its actuaa galaxy, like our Milky Way, with billionsAnd that's why it's so fuzzy, becausese stars?”
Well partly, it's also a long way away, guess how faBillions of miles?it's 2 2 million light yearskilometreto4,696,575500,000,000000 thats146 quintillionasked jeno i didn t lookrite it down for you
" Blakfound a piece of paper and a pen from his shirt pocknd wrote the numbers outSeriously! Look if its that far away how come we getvisitors uFos etcetera?"Theres no such thing as aliens, they only exek and other fantasies those who believe in aliensvisiting Earth just come under conspiracy theorists, " saidBlake a little too forcefully, "physics is the same in theAndromeda galaxhere, one plus two still makethree, no matter what planet you'reBlake and Jo had been married for coming up to twentydevoted to each other nowwhen they had met at university They had two sorboth now at college, one son, Donald had turned out tobe a near genius at mathematics, but was determined tobecome a medical doctor whilst the other paul wassetting his sights on being a physics teacher blake was
a naturalised British American who had come toin,originally to study at Oxford in his chosen fieldof advanced electronic systems when he had metstudying Classics and Ancient Languageverything changed for him
Blake had had no intensionof staying in England, and was there just to getameof 'oxford on his degree and ph d, but fate had otherns for him, he met Jo and fell deepove with herThey had married and moved to Cheshire, where he hadtained a post at Joderalcentre of manchester University where he developed amore sophisticated and accurate tracking system for themain dish: whilstt to work for manchesterniversity itself as a researcher and occasional lecturerWith the advent of the moon exploration, blake obtaineda job with Goonhilly Downs Earth Station, in Cornwas chief electronics engineer The move was more abouqualitylife ratheralaries were considerably, less but living in Cornwallmore than made up for that They had both becomehated with lifethe manchester suburbs andwhat was callemprising mainlyupper-class snobs Jos commute into the city hadbecome a bind and seemed to take longeBlake, although based at the site near the tiny village ofGoostry just outside of Knutsford, he also was requiredo make theey into Manchester at least once aweek Blake did not like being in the limelight and hisoccasionalnt to lecture advanced engineeringstudents was not his ideal of heaven on earth
So one day whilst reading the Telegraph Newspaper,Blake noticed a recruiting advert for Goonhilly DownStation whoed a chiefer blake knewGoonhilly, of course, it had obtained fame by being thefirst Earth-station to recelecom satellite, Telstar In the late two-thousand andtens
the station had been awarded the contract to handleall the cobetween earth and the mow that the Moon was being considered a commercialventure It wasnt the job that attracted him, nor thesalary, it was the fact that he would be based inCornwall He and Jo had visited the county initially ontheir honeymoon, money had been an issue then and acamping holiday fitted the budget They had fallen inlove with the county and had visited there many timetheres appointed for the job and, now having a goodbank balance, they managed to buy a beautiful houseoverlooking the sea, about four or five miles from hiswork-place They were settled, and happy andhat nothing on Earth could disrupt their happinessJo had found a part time job with Exeter Universibased at the Penrynon the outskirts ofalmouth, lecturing once a week and had becomerenown for her ancient language research, takingprivate commissions from museums across the worldhe had gained some notoriety for the translation of theReligious' stone that had been discovered in the early
twenty-twenties, close to Basra, in Iraq She had alsobeen acclaimed for her work on what was thought to bea contemporary Gospel, dated from the time of thedisciples Their two sons loved themost of their time at university, the eldest, Donalddinburgh medical School and Paul folloengineering, at Keele University inStaffordshire, with a view to teaching The two spentevery recess in Cornwall and both had romherey local and intelligent yowhom both Jo and blake entirely approved
They spentours every stsurfing the atlantic rollers oalking the high sea-cliffs and beaches On this night ingust they were both out together with the girls, blakesuspected one of the local hostelriesCan I get back to my book now, please, pleadedphilistine there is more to life that greek literature youknow Blake settled back and continued viewing thesky He was pleased with the way he had set his gardenup, and not a little proud; he had brought in a specialistn wooden decking and had bln observatoryconnected to the deck The observatory looked southward the english channel andobstructed view of the sky from the north aroundthe south-west, the observatory contained his pride andjoy, in the form of a twelve inch, computer guidedeflector telescope Being in the business, Blake hadbuilt the control system from scratch and was almostadvanced as the systems he had installed in Cheshire
He intended that night to sperough the telescope, he thought about taking somephotographic images of the Andromeda galaxy, if thelear sky held The big problem here,tside of thevillage of Coverack, was that sea mistknown to some, it often rose quickly and obliteratedthe sky Although living in this idealistic Cornish fishingvillage, where fishing was still a major part of itseconomy, there were still disadvantages Thetourists durinthe narrow lanes and roads were often blocked by driversre not used to the narrow roads and streets Thein their bmws and audi cars and drovedown the middle of the roads, afraid to getauto-mobiles scratched by the trees and bushes thaedged the lanes, known as hedginge sank further back and sipped his Martini again, hehad never managed to shrug off the american habit oese drinks, even though hardly anyone in the uk drankthem
He had never takehe local drinks of cidnd bitter-beer either, although ony a larger didquench the thirst He closed his eyes as he let the liquidcirculate his mouth and taste-buds, as he opened his eyesgistered a flash of light in his peripheralvision Blake's head snapped around thirty or so degreesand caught sight of, what seemed like a meteor flaringhrough the atmosphere " Jo, look there's one of yourn ships coming to visit usaido Looked up and laughed, " Well let 's hol