FEDERATION

5 Ambassador

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Even the Federation needed time to plan and organise, but it was quite remarkable that an ambassadorial team arrived only four weeks later. Earth scientists were dumbfounded that anything could travel from one star system to another so swiftly and there was much speculation about which star the aliens came from. In the meantime, good to their word, there had been no further use of the QE transmitters by the people of Earth.

Down on the planet, although there had been some violence and a riot or two, the population was calming down. The stock market soon bounced back to just below its normal levels and the same with the foreign exchanges.

Soon, suspicious people began to wonder if the brief visitation were some sort of hoax. Conspiracy theories developed, many along the lines that the flying saucer had been connected with Area 51 and NASA had taken the occupants hostage. Anyone who'd actually seen the visiting vessel would have immediately known that it was not something which could have been captured by the, still experimental, Space Force.

The arrival of the ambassador took wonderment to a whole new level. The vessel was spectacular. This wasn't a saucer shape like the previous one, but more of a graceful space liner. The ISS estimated that it was in the order of four hundred metres long and twenty in diameter. The front section was a mass of glazed panels and a number of aliens could be seen looking out towards the ISS and the planet beneath. They appeared to be the same sort of mixture of strange alien beings.

'Ambassador Garincha Dela Moroforon brings greetings to the people of Earth and requests a meeting with your leader,' came over the radio in perfect English.

'That'll flummox them!' said Brett.

'Why do you say, that?' asked Fiona.

'Who is the leader?'

'Oh, yes, see what you mean.'

An hour went by before NASA responded, 'It will take some time to set up a meeting. Would you prefer to wait in orbit or descend to the surface?' Obviously, a diplomatic team was applying itself to the conversation.

The Ambassador's response took less than a minute. 'The Ambassador will descend. We understand you use a system comprising three sixty degrees around your equator and the zero line passes through a place called Greenwich. Please provide a suitable and convenient location reference for our ship. It will hover a short distance from the surface and will not require any special facilities other than a clear area.'

'Please stand by,' was the NASA response.

[I discovered, much later, that there was considerable panic taking place in the seats of power around the world. This was because there was no world leader, only the leaders of individual countries. RBB]

As luck would have it, a climate crisis meeting had just finished at the United Nations, so the Secretary General called a special meeting of the United Nations Security Council at the Headquarters. The leaders of the countries of the world actually felt embarrassed that they had no single individual to speak for humanity. Smaller, non-security council members were not at all amused with the situation, particularly the large Muslim bloc countries and the African nations. They felt they were being side-lined, but the Security Council promised to be inclusive. Many smaller countries like New Zealand and much of Latin America were dismayed, and Canada protested that, as the world's second largest country, it should be added to the Security Council for the meeting. The others felt they couldn't do that for just one nation without setting an unwelcome precedent.

Canada eventually relented, but considerable bad feeling had been generated throughout the world. The Secretary General managed to calm things down by suggesting that the Ambassador could address the entire General Assembly. Almost all leaders cancelled their plans to return home and remained in New York to await developments.