Transmission

He got up, taking out a satellite phone that would probably work now that they were in the clearing, with a clear path to the sky. He walked a little way away, talking quietly. Kevin thought about creeping closer to hear what he was saying, but something about the way the soldier was talking suggested that it might not be a good idea.

“I think we’ve found something!” one of the scientists called out, from within the jungle.

Kevin couldn’t sit there, and neither, it seemed, could any of the others in the small camp. He found himself just one of those rushing forward, hurrying to keep up through the jungle, the soft earth underneath giving way as his feet pushed into it. He followed the scientists into another small clearing. Kevin had been half expecting a crater there, surrounded by desolation. Instead, there were just a few scars on the earth, hinting at something coming through there.

The strange part was that the trees around it didn’t seem to be damaged. If something had fallen to Earth in the recent past, shouldn’t there have been damage, wreckage, even smoldering embers?

Then Kevin realized that he was thinking about it the wrong way. The aliens had sent their messages years ago, even traveling at the speed of light. Why would their escape capsule have only just arrived? Why wouldn’t it have been here years, even decades, waiting for someone to discover it? He found that he liked that idea, of something secret waiting there for him to uncover it. It made him feel like a treasure hunter.

The scientists had already started to work their way along it, working with their various devices. From what Kevin could hear, he didn’t think it was going very well.

“I’m not getting any responses from the metal detector,” Phil called. The researcher had sweated clean through his Hawaiian shirt by now. “I haven’t heard it this quiet… well, ever.”

“I’m not getting any response looking for a heat signature,” another of them called out.

“Well, we wouldn’t,” Phil called back. “It’s been cooling all the time since it landed, and we don’t know when that was. What about the magnetometer?”

A scientist dragging the thing that had looked like a handcart shook his head. “The ground’s too uneven. I can’t tell if I’m getting signals or just interference.”

Apparently, the ground-penetrating radar had the same problem, although Kevin hadn’t known before then that such a thing existed. He didn’t really know how half of the scientists’ equipment worked; it could have been magic, although he doubted they would have liked that comparison. From where he was standing, it just meant watching a bunch of scientists run about with devices and wires, watching screens or listening to things beep. It was fun to watch, for maybe the first hour.

“We will just have to dig,” Professor Brewster said eventually. “It must be here somewhere, so if we dig up all of it, eventually we will find it.”

It seemed that “we” in this case didn’t include Professor Brewster, because the institute’s director made no move to pick up a shovel. Plenty of scientists did, though, and even a few soldiers helped, attacking the earth around them as if it might reveal its secrets if they just worked hard enough.

There didn’t seem to be anything for Kevin to do except wait. He didn’t have a shovel, and in any case it didn’t seem like the best way to find anything. It was just digging randomly in the hope that something would happen. It seemed a bit like digging random holes on a beach in the hope that one would contain a pirate chest. He stood there instead, trying to keep out of their way as they dug.

That was when he felt the whisper of connection through the trees, almost indefinable. It felt a little like the pulse of the countdown within him, except that this pulsing seemed to get stronger as he took a few steps along the path the falling escape capsule must have taken. When he stepped the other way, it grew weaker.

Kevin stopped, trying to be certain. He didn’t want to say that he knew what he was doing until he was sure it was more than just some random feeling inside him. What if it was just the heat?

“It isn’t,” Kevin told himself, wishing he were as certain as he tried to sound.

Kevin started forward, trying to follow that pulsing, staying with it as it grew stronger, picking his way between the trees. Every time it got weaker again, he stopped, walking around in a circle until he found the direction that felt strongest. It wasn’t long before he had a clear route, which brought him out onto what looked like a small deer track. Kevin followed it along until he reached a space where it opened out to reveal a large natural pool, as wide across as a swimming pool, its water green-brown. Instinctively, Kevin knew that the object that had come to Earth was there somewhere, beneath the surface. He could feel its pull so strongly now that he took a step toward the pool, then another, trying to remember the reason why he’d been told he shouldn’t do exactly that…