Contact across the Solar System

The Twelve Travelers Start Off

The twelve travelers went across Europe with their cover story that this was a glorified road trip. Which, in a sense, it was. It worked out fairly well, with nobody washing out or other such troubles. Rumors started to circulate about another SSC trip in the works, but nothing definite.

Then in the middle of June, the SSC announced that they would indeed be taking some travelers on a trip, and the Durnakhemi showed up in the northern Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan. The ship stopped above Tokyo Bay, made a color-change show, and a scoutcraft from it picked up Kyoko Matsumoto. The craft flew with some Japanese Air Force planes, but it was a ceremonial thing, like the US warplanes with the first travelers. The next stop was China, but the Chinese were still antsy about security, and the ship stopped off the coast. A scout flew inland to Beijing, escorted by Chinese warplanes all the way. It picked up Zhiling Zhao and departed, also with a warplane escort.

The ship went to Australia, India, South Africa, Brazil, the United States, Spain, France, Britain, and Germany, picking up Emily Metaxas, Jishnu Malhotra, Joanne Mabandla, Cesar Ramos, Hank Morgan, Isabel Alvarez, Hugo Dupont, Jenny McDonald, and Ingrid Baer. The ship made color-change shows and its scouts flew with local air-force planes and helicopters. Hank was picked up from the White House lawn, as a nod to the grumbling of some Earthers that extraterrestrials won't land there. The sight of a flying saucer on the White House lawn became big news, with one headline writer stating "They finally did it".

Russia was like China, antsy about security. The ship had to wait an hour on the border for a Russian escort to arrive. But arrive it did, and the ship was soon on its way to Moscow. It stopped a little outside Moscow, near Sheremetyevo Airport, with the airport's traffic controllers directing it away from airliners' flight paths. But some of the airliners' pilots nevertheless gave their passengers an eyeful of this spaceship.

After the ship did a color-change show, a scoutcraft came out of it, and a Russian military helicopter soon joined it. The vehicles traveled over Moscow, landing in the city's Red Square where lots of dignitaries and ordinary people were waiting. When the scout landed, some crewpeople came out, one of them carrying an optical disk. The dignitaries made lots of speeches, and the head of the Russian Academy of Sciences stepped forward, also with an optical disk. The crewmember and the academician then exchanged optical disks, and reporters caught it all.

The crewmember then described how the SSC ship Kinden Tarupa crashed in central Siberia way back when, exploding only a few seconds before reaching the ground, and being remembered on Earth as the Tunguska incident. He then congratulated the scientists of the Earth for their diligence in trying to uncover the cause of this disaster. The academician responded by congratulating the SSC for giving in return some remarkable technologies to the people of Russia and the Earth.

The crewmember went back to his scoutcraft and he and another one pulled out another surprise: a memorial plaque and a statue of a SSC ship. The text was in the SSC shared language, Russian, Evenki, and English. He explained what each language meant. The SSC one was in honor of the ship itself, its builders, and its passengers and crew. The Russian one was in honor of the nation that hosts the ship's crash site. The Evenki one was in honor of the people who live nearby. And finally, the English one was in recognition of how English has become Earth people's shared language.

After waiting the whole time, Boris Kovalevsky got into the scout. The vehicle then returned to the ship, flying over Moscow and being accompanied by that military helicopter.

Later that day, each side checked their disks, and they found not only what they had earlier sent each other, but much more. The Russian Academy of Sciences issued a press release about what a treasure trove the SSC's disk was. Synfuels. Plastic solar cells. Microstructured and nanostructured plastics, like synthetic fibers with cotton-like and wool-like structure. Electrodes for electrolytic cells and fuel cells that can be constructed from common elements -- no platinum needed. And more, like some specs of SSC spacecraft. The SSC people found not only lots of pictures and data on the crash site, but also lots of Russian geological survey data.