Contact across the Solar System

Getting Ready to Contact

When they returned to Venus, the Adamski Gang got back to planning their first-contact effort. The most important part of it was the message that each capsule would carry. They went through several drafts of it, passing the drafts around to various officials and Earth observers for comment. When they decided on a message, they commissioned translations of it into the Earthers' major languages, starting with English.

They also worked on getting the capsules built, with some spacecraft makers doing the work. They thought that it was a very odd sort of request, but they eventually agreed. The capsules were a gift to the Earthers, and the Earthers were to get the capsules' messages, not the SSC's more advanced technology. The capsule makers tested some prototypes in Venus's and Mars's atmospheres, and then in the Earth's atmosphere over where the South Pacific Ocean meets the Southern Ocean, a place where few Earthers visit. When they finished testing, they made some 40 of them with the messages inside the capsules.

The capsules were cones with cylindrical canisters inside. The cones were 1.5 meters / 5 ft long with a 45d cone angle and blunt front ends. On each cone's surface was a heat shield. The canisters were roughly 1 m / 3 ft in size, and they contained the parachutes, the control electronics, and the message scrolls. The canisters also had cartoon instructions engraved on them for opening them up and reading the scrolls.

They would be slowed by parachutes for the last part of their descent, red and white ones to make it easy for the Earthers to see them on their way down.

The final step was to charter a trip by a ship to do the capsule-distribution mission. Orthon would ride it, since he wanted to redeem his reputation after all the embarrassments with George. He would be involved in setting the ship's course and distributing the capsules, so everybody could be sure that it was he who would be responsible. He succeeded in booking some time on the Aurora, because of his long history with it and its crew.

The others would stay behind on Venus and wait for Orthon's return.

In the meantime, someone rescued the Adamski Gang's friendship card from being thrown away, and a certain Sam Lejeune eventually got to see it. He was a software developer with a passion for video games and an interest in archeology and space exploration. To Sam, it was an interesting puzzle. The non-English writing was in no known writing system, despite Sam's valiant searching, though it seemed like it could be an alphabet. It also looked like it had more than one hand in it. The English part seemed to be in only one hand, however.

Orthon. Kalna. Ilmuth. Firkon. Ramu. Zuhl. What's with those weird names, he thought. Sort of like what some science-fiction writer or some fantasy writer might think up. But George Adamski's name seemed like a real one. Was this the techno-music producer Adamski? He searched for the names, and he found an odd book, "Inside the Spaceships", written by a certain George Adamski back in 1955. That book described George's claimed meetings with human or humanoid extraterrestrials with those names. The book seemed like a mixture of Star Trek, woo-woo like reincarnation, and absurdities like the Earthlike back side of the Moon. Sam also learned that George was the first notable UFO contactee, and that UFO contactees are a very weird bunch.

Sam was sure that this was someone's whimsical tribute to George, but he did not feel sure enough. He scanned in the card, and he signed up at some paranormal sites. He posted on his discovery, and just about everybody agreed with him that it was some kind of hoax.